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Saturday, June 13, 1998
13 Jun 98
By Paul Ford
Neighborhood Character
At first I thought it was coincidence. I'd come down from work on 16th St, and there he'd be, the well dressed Black dwarf, descending into the train station before me. We'd get on the same train, and he'd get off at my stop. I'd see him the next day on my way to work, and sometimes coming back.
I would get a slice of pizza, and there he'd be, ordering garlic knots. Everyone knows him, nods. I saw him at the street fair, eating funnel cake.
Somehow he's the clerk at three or four convenience stores in the neighborhood. You go in for ginger ale, and he's behing the counter, speaking to the owner in a rough, tongue-grinding language from Northern Africa. And when I'm browsing the science fiction titles in the library, he wheels up with a steel book cart--he's doing the shelving.
I've never seen him do anything unlikely, like throw grapes at cats, or play zither without his trousers. It's the omnipresent normal presence of his four foot, three inch body that throws me off. I wonder if he thinks the same about me: "why is that massive white guy here on sixteenth street?" But it's more likely he's so used to being everywhere that he never notices me at all.
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