Old and Alone: Part Ii

the landline began to ring incessantly, as the bill collectors started to knock on his door--- he would bang drumsticks on the pad he’d set up to relieve his stress & try to think of a way out of it all, but nothing seemed to surface. at this point he stopped eating & he huddled himself in a corner in the basement--- when the landlord came downstairs to ask for the rent, this man, his tenant, once mildly successful, had been reduced to an emaciated figure who seemed to almost disappear in the shadows of the stairwell. “you need to eat something,” the landlord told him, and he went back upstairs to get the man some food--- it was evident to the landlord that this man whom he’d thought he’d known for years, was now trying to starve himself. the landlord returned with a bowl of food & set it down next to him, not unlike a dog owner would do when feeding his dog--- the man, whose eyes now sunken in like Nosferatu, smiled & thanked his landlord--- “i guess that i should eat something,” he said. the landlord asked his tenant if he wanted to go to the hospital, and the man, now eating a little bit, nodded--- the kindness in the eyes of the landlord didn’t shock the tenant, for he’d known this man for years, but the two whose ages were relatively close differed in many ways. upstairs, the man who had come to this country poor & worked himself up the ladder on his own, driving a taxi, getting a medallion, buying property slowly & renting it out, had a beautiful wife & a couple of daughters who were always laughing & making a ruckus--- the tenant had no one in the world but him.