A Portrait of Someone Else

Tonight a guy with nothing, but a student loan bought a couch from us. I delivered it because he doesn't even own a bike for transportation. Then I offered to help him move it in the house. As it turned out, Roscoe and I spent a lot of time together. Let me tell you what I know.

Roscoe is an injured Jarhead. No details, just an honorably discharged veteran. I asked what he did and he didn't want to talk about it. I asked where he did it and he didn't want to talk about it. Roscoe has two Chinese symbols tattooed, one on each arm. On his right arm is the Chinese character for snake, the name his comrades called him. On his left arm is a symbol to the memory of the fallen soldiers with whom he served. Roscoe is tall, maybe six-two and lanky. His gait is awkward, he moves prepubescently.

Roscoe used to live with a teacher and her husband. Roscoe has no family and he "holes" up wherever he can. The teacher who took a shine to him would take him to school everyday. It was a nice arrangement, but not a permanent one. Enter Lucy.

Roscoe rents two rooms from Lucy. It all began when Lucy got robbed. When you enter Lucy's house there is a room. In the room is a futon and behind the futon is a baby Grand piano. As I think about it now they must have built the house around it, we struggled just to get in a stupid couch. To the left of the baby Grand is an upright and a little further on is an electronic keyboard. There is a very distinct Asian feel to the decorating. I see a picture, it must be Lucy, she is Asian and playing at a Baby Grand. Roscoe says she is about 100 lbs. soaking wet. Lucy teaches music and has for the past 13 years. Lucy isn't home yet.

Roscoe met Lucy through an old roommate. They met on a hike near the Grand Canyon. Their mutual friend proposed to his love on that hike. It was beautiful Roscoe tells me. Two months later his friend sat and wrote lots of letters to lots of people and then blew his brains out. "It brought us all closer together, but especially Lucy and I." Roscoe repeats often that they have become good friends.

He likes music. A fringe benefit of living with a pianist is a nightly concert he says. He loves to hear her play. I see pictures in a frame, Lucy in the middle at the piano, and all around her are smaller pictures of her students at the same piano. Somebody has written Recital 2008 in the bottom corner of Lucy's picture. There must be 20 students, they're all women, many young, some middle aged.

I sat on the couch, the cushions off and stared out at the starry Arizona night sky. Roscoe sat on the porch smoking and flicking his ashes into the yard. "It's beautiful," I say. "Yeah, sometimes we have a small fire here in this fire ring and we just kick back." He turns his head towards the driveway out front, "I think she's here." For a minute it sounds like maybe someone is, but it isn't anyone.

We took off doors and the couch would not fit through a single door in the entire house. We took the feet off the couch, no luck and come to find out his door was too small to fit the couch in. We lifted the couch over the fence...twice. Finally, we completely dismantled a window.

In Roscoe's room is a high end flat panel t.v. with high end speakers and a computer he put together - high end. There is no bed in sight. As we take apart the window we find screws that have been painted over. Roscoe disappears into a very small closet and pulls out a small lime green backpack. From a plastic sheath he pulls out a large knife. "I don't usually take Janie out around strangers" he says. He peels away the paint, he pries away at the window. We lift in the couch which is clearly too big for the little room. No problem he says, he'll make it work. "I've got to get this back together before Lucy gets home and freaks out," he reminds me.

He and Lucy don't watch t.v., they just rent movies, they sit in the little room together and watch movies.

Roscoe paints and fixes things up. Roscoe cooks. He likes to cook. He takes care of the meals. He pays $400.00 a month for two rooms and he paints. "When Lucy got broken into she was scared. She called me because I'm the scariest cuddly guy she knows."

It will take time. He knows it, to earn his degree in material science; probably about another 8 years. He lives off of grant money and a little income as a math tutor at the college. He tutors up to trig. He doesn't need much. Apparently the material science guys start at $67,500 a year right out of college and he doesn't need much to live on, so he'll be able to save most of it.

I left at 10:45pm, almost an hour and a half after I got there. The couch was in, though every door needed put back on and the window needed completely reassembled. I never did meet Lucy. I liked Roscoe. He seemed nice enough, but in the back of my mind somewhere I wondered if Lucy was there all along, in the backyard, taking a dirt nap.