Lenzo’s keys were still in the lock when he figured out that Bert was crying.
He was sitting at the rickety folding table, playing solitaire, no meat cooking on the little plugin grill that rested on the broken part of the counter.
“Why you cryin’?” Lenzo asked, light on the empathy, but not totally without concern.
“Saw a guy. Didn’t really know him, but I knew him. Just gone now. To the other side. Nothing left.”
Some tears made it to Bert’s stubbly chin.
Lenzo sat. “You done plucked half a dozen off the streets, got ‘em sober. Can’t save em all. Even the ones still out there worship you, you feed ‘em and shit.”
“I’m crying because I knocked on that door so many times.”
Bert tapped one of the queens, then flicked the card off the table and scrambled his game.
“I wanted to cross that door, never come back. I’d get another bottle of whatever and drink it like it would unlock that door.”
Lenzo pulled at a thumbnail with his teeth.
“You got a second chance.”
Bert’s laughter echoed out of the basement apartment, but the tears came faster.
“Motherfucker, I got a thousand second chances.”
***
Photo by JC Bonassin on Unsplash
The (auto)biographical ones always get to me.