The street was deserted and the sky grey and I was about to close the coffee shop early when a homeless man sat down on an outdoor seat. He didn’t say he was homeless but he had a trolley full of belongings and matted hair and wore layers of clothes, tattered and threadbare.

He was silent and still, slumping there, staring vacantly at the wet tarmac. I was walking over to ask if he wanted a coffee when he turned around and offered a handful of sand-covered, half-opened lollies.

“Want a Starburst?” he said, holding out a hand that looked like it had been spreading mulch. He was avoiding eye contact.

“I’m okay, thank you,” I said.

“What’s your favourite colour?” he said, sorting through the lollies.

“Ahh, I don’t know. I don’t really eat lollies.” I was lying of course. I just don’t eat lollies that have been half-opened and living in a homeless man’s jacket for a long time.

He picked up a red Starburst. “Red’s good. I like the red ones. Berry flavour.” He smiled finally, revealing a total of four crooked teeth that looked tired of hanging on. He then looked up, meeting my eyes for the first time. His eyes looked vacant, like glass.

“I used to pick berries on me old man’s property,” he continued. “Dirty work. Thousand’s of berry trees, the old man had.” He was speaking slowly like he had to think long and hard about every word. “I usually keep the red ones for myself but you can have a red.” He dangled out a red starburst for my taking.

“I couldn’t,” I said, staring at the lolly which looked like it had melted, hardened, melted and hardened again in the man’s sand-filled pockets. But he continued to hold out the lolly until I, realising his insistence, tentatively accepted. I grabbed it the same way I do when a customer leaves a wet tissue on a table and I’m uncertain of the dubious reasons for it being soaked.

“Thank you,” I said. “I’ll save it for later. Would you like a coffee?”

“Cappuccino,” he said.

“Large?”

“Yep, that’ll do.”

“Sugar?” I asked, suspecting that a man with only four teeth and pockets full of lollies may be partial to a bit of sweetening.

“Eight,” he said and then, after seeing me lift an eyebrow out of disbelief, he added, “I need sweetening, mate.”

“I reckon your teeth would beg to differ,” I said.

“What teeth?”

“True,” I said.

—

The next day he returned and the day after that. It became a ritual: First, he’d amble into a corner store that doubled as a chemist to stock up on lollies as well as what he called ‘dollies’ (methadone in street-talk) and then walk to the cafe and barter a red Starburst for a large cappuccino.

We conversed. By that I mean he talked, usually nonsensically, while I listened. I never minded. Working alone in a hole-in-the-wall cafe, I welcomed the company.

He liked to talk about his family’s farm where supposedly the fruitful berry trees grew and where he worked before winding up in jail. He never said why he was sentenced. But when I asked why he didn’t go to the farm anymore, he went quiet and solemn and stared blankly at the street. He often did that.

For a man that seemed somewhat vacuous, he was very resourceful. He routinely and unapologetically searched the public bins for cigarettes that could be salvaged. He only ever found the butt-ends but smoked them anyway. “You right, mate?” I said seeing him bury an arm into the trash. “You look like Oscar the Grouch.” He also wrote on a napkin a detailed step-by-step guide with diagrams on how to break into public telephone booths, just in case I ever needed two thousand dollars in 20 cent pieces. He also drew a map for me, detailing the best locations in the city to sleep. “And if you’re near the terrace,” he said. “There’s a back alley near the carpark with a hidden stash of blankets. Comfy ones, too. If you get cold.”

I said I had no intention on using the blankets.

—

During particularly stormy nights, I’d think about him, cold and alone, nestled against a deserted alleyway wall, the ferocity of the wind blowing away his only blanket. I wondered how two people who sleep 10 kilometres away from each other and spend their days on the same street corner next to a yellow parking machine and a green bench seat could live in worlds aeons apart. How did we ever get along?

The next day, after those wild nights, I’d ask him if he made it through the night alright. “Pretty hairy it was,” he’d say nonchalantly, probably because he was already high. “Rain was comin’ in hard.”

“Did you at least wash yourself off,” I said.

“Yeah, mate. Bathed in a puddle ‘round the corner there.” He pointed up the street.

“Not naked, I hope,” I said.

“Who has a bath clothed?” he said. For how intoxicated he was, I was always impressed with his wit.

—

I began to look forward to his arrival, especially after a morning of making small-talk. I’d even prep his coffee before 1 pm—when he rocked up—to adequately give time for the vast quantities of sugar dissolve into the espresso. And that too became a ritual. Until he stopped coming.

I wasn’t worried. That he didn’t turn up after doing so every afternoon at the same time for three months didn’t necessarily mean anything sinister. He simply may have needed a few days off or forgot to come in during a drug-induced haze.

He still hadn’t come after two months. The street was deserted again. I hadn’t had a customer in an hour and was under the instructions to close early if the cafe was quiet. I waited though, until 2 pm, the time the cafe officially closed. I packed up the shop and closed the door and walked to my car. The wind was biting and I was looking forward to a warm shower. The rain sounded solid on the footpath.

—

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