Out of the Cold Read Free Page B

with one leg who was leaning against a utility pole. He was holding out an empty margarine container and muttering, “Sparechangesparechangesparechange,” over and over in a whispery voice. I shrugged apologetically. I had already given all my coins to the young guy in the doorway.
    On the next block, an old guy sitting in front of an office building was cursing at a well-dressed man who was digging into his pocket for his wallet. He dropped a five-dollar bill into an upturned hat on the sidewalk, but it didn’t silence the old man. He kept right on cursing. I glanced at him and gasped involuntarily when he looked up at me. A jagged red scar slashed through his left eyebrow and ended halfway down his cheek. His left eye looked twisted. When I stared at him, wondering if he was blind in that eye, he started to curse at me too. The well-dressed man gave me a sympathetic look before he turned and walked away. I picked up my pace and wondered what had made Billy and Morgan think this would cheer me up.
    The scenery changed rapidly after that, and I soon found myself in depressing surroundings. The shelter was located in a run-down part of the city a couple of blocks away from a sprawling low-income housing project. Just as I was about to turn the corner, a woman in a puffy coat and tattered sneakers started screaming at me. At least, that’s what I thought she was doing. It turned out that she was just plain screaming—it had nothing to do with me. She shoved past me, pushing a shopping cart heaped with what looked like garbage, shouting and cursing and looking ferocious.
    I arrived at my destination five minutes early. Even though the temperature was well below zero and the sky was a gloomy lead-gray, a loose group of men in grime-encrusted coats, most of them with dirty hair and scraggly beards, crowded the sidewalk in front of the church hall that housed the shelter. At first I couldn’t figure out why they were standing out in the icy cold when they could have been inside where it was warm. Then I noticed that almost all of them were smoking. Billy had told me that the shelter enforced a strict no-smoking policy, so people who wanted a cigarette had to go outside. A couple of them gave me a once-over as I made my way to the door. One of them said something I didn’t quite catch to a second man, and the second man responded with a laugh that was as crusty as his coat.
    I opened the door, stepped inside, and was immediately overwhelmed by the heat and by the stench of unwashed bodies and tobacco that mingled with the aromas of coffee and food cooking. I had never smelled anything quite like it. I was sur-prised that Morgan hadn’t said something about it. There was no way
she
would have gotten used to it.
    From what I could see from the main entrance, the shelter took up the whole church hall and consisted of one enormous room that had been divided into several areas, as well as a kitchen—which I spotted when someone bustled through a door on the far side of the hall—and several smaller rooms.
    I looked around the large main room. In the area farthest from the entrance, some battered armchairs and two sagging couches sat around a television set that was tuned to a talk show. Most of the seats were occupied. A few people, mostly women, each with a bundle buggy parked nearby, were staring at the screen. A few others appeared to be asleep.
    Another part of the room was set up with a long wooden table and folding chairs. People sat hunched over orange plastic trays that held bowls of cereal, mugs of coffee, and plates of toast. Along one wall, a woman—a volunteer?—was handing out plastic-wrapped sandwiches and containers of soup. Coffee was self-serve from a huge urn set up on another, smaller table.
    The third area consisted of a half-dozen card tables ringed with folding chairs, some raggedy armchairs, and a small bookshelf that was crammed with paperback books. Decks of cards, a