And anyway, it wasn't his job to offer marketing advice to the homeless. But that cut too close to the bone for Paul he was only a paycheck away from panhandling himself. The shirt and tie are a mistake, Paul thought, he needs a sign-WILL TYPE AND FILE FOR FOOD. Indeed, in his white shirt and polyester slacks, he looked like a caricature of a middle manager from some draw-this-puppy matchbook school of art, one large oval topped by a smaller one. The bluntness of his large, egg-shaped head was exaggerated by a severe buzz cut and a pair of wire-rim glasses, and his body was egg shaped as well-he looked unusually well fed for a homeless guy. Unlike most panhandlers, he didn't carry a hand-lettered sign on a piece of cardboard, telegraphing some tale of woe even more strange, he wore a white, short-sleeved dress shirt and a tie instead of the usual sun-bleached denims and filthy t-shirt. Paul sighed and peered ahead, where a homeless man was walking through the waves of heat between the lines of hulking trucks and SUVs, turning slowly from side to side as if he were lost in a parking lot looking for his car. In the heat, and in the rumble of idling engines, this sounded especially feeble. "You're paying me as a typist," Paul said aloud, practicing, "but you're working me as a technical writer." Waiting for the light, the fingers of his left hand drumming the scalding side of his car, the skin of his forearm baking to leather in the heat, Paul felt less like a man who deserved more out of life than a peasant on a mule cart trapped in the middle of an armored division. The electric blues and greens of these enormous automobiles reflected the dazzling morning glare through Paul's cracked and dirty windshield they radiated shimmering heat through his open window.
His fourteen-year-old Dodge Colt rattled in place in the middle of the Travis Street Bridge, hemmed in on all sides by bulbous, purring pickup trucks and gleaming sport utility vehicles with fat, black tires. He was steeling himself for a confrontation with his boss, screwing up his nerve to ask for a raise, but his present circumstances were conspiring against him. One brutally hot summer's morning, Paul Trilby-ex-husband, temp typist, cat murderer-slouched sweating in his t-shirt on his way to work, waiting behind the wheel of his car for the longest red light in central Texas.
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