A guy with a grey ponytail was sitting on a dirty blanket outside the secondary bike center. As I was going in, another hard-up guy dragging a sleeping bag over his shoulder passed by and said something. The guy on the ground got indignant and called out to me as I was in the doorway. "Do you believe that? Did you hear what he just said?"
I hadn't.
"Say that again," he said to the man walking by, like a coach challenging a mouthy kid in a middle school gym class.
Obediently: "I said, do you have any meth."
"Did you hear that?" the ground guy asked me.
"Yes. I... don't have any meth," I said.
"I don't either!" he said, shaking his head. "Can't believe people around here."
When I left a while later, he was still sitting there with a few trash bags piled around him. I brought out a bottle of water on my way out. "I don't need that, I'm fine," he said. "Are you sure? It's hot out. Take it," I said.
"No, I'm completely fine," he said, like I was the weird one. It seemed like he saw himself as a broker in a suit on a park bench, wondering why people kept treating him like he was some kind of homeless guy.
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