Finding Momentum

"Listen, Drew" Mike tells me, "They cut off my general assistance a long time ago. I got no money to pay the phone bill." We're standing in front of the ghetto again, and Mike's pacing back in forth in front of his milk crate. He rattles off a long list of errands he's got to do. But he can't; he has no money, and no phone.

A few months ago, Mike's lawyer in San Jose abruptly terminated their relationship after hearing about his purchase of a stolen bike. It made her jittery enough to dump him from her caseload. Mike's switched over to a new lawyer in Berkeley since, but the transition process has slowed down his application for Social Security assistance.

It's a chilly evening, and I'd like nothing better than to get to get back to my apartment and get some work done on my projects. I do a little hop and watch wisps of hot breath fall upwards into the night.

Mike's somewhat changed the subject. "You know my cousin? He left me in Sacramento that one time. He said, 'Hey Mike, I'm gonna be staying up here a little longer.' Well I got to get back to Oakland and I tell him that. But he refused and he lock me out of his girlfriend's place. Well I had nowhere to stay and no choice but to leave without him. I got on an Amtrak back to Oakland."

Mike's waiting for me to say something, and I'm honestly in no mood to wait around. "You want me to pay your bill, Mike?" It comes out a little harsher than I meant it to.

Mike stops and gives me a sidelong glance. "You would do that, Drew? It's fifty dollars."

Inside, I gasp at the figure, but figure this is as good a chance as ever to figure out a cheaper plan for Mike. "Yeah, man. Do you have a phone bill?"

Mike looks at me quizzically. "What's that?"

"You know. A paper statement telling you how much you've got to pay and a list of everybody that you call and how long you call them for."

"No, I don't got that. I pay my bill on my phone."

I take Mike's phone, a MetroPCS model, into my hands and poke around at the options. Sure enough, there's an option for on-phone bill payment. Fifty dollars? I think to myself. Ridiculous.

I look up at Mike. "You gonna be out here tomorrow?" Mike nods affirmatively. "Meet me out here tomorrow at 10AM."

--

Mike's old bike was stolen in September. He had walked in to Kingpin Donuts for a cup of coffee, and when he walked out, it was gone. He claims he knows who did it; a shady figure from Oakland was seen riding his bike up the street shortly after. "I know who he is. Don't he dare to ever show his face around here again," Mike growls. I imagine the shady man's eyes to be thin slits, venom pouring out his fingers.

Mike tells me later that the very same shady figure from Oakland ambled up to him a couple of weeks later, a brand-new Trek bike in his hands. "That's a nice bike," Mike tells the snake man, and I'm surprised that Mike doesn't clobber him right then and there. The man smiles an enigmatic smile, and offers it to Mike for twenty dollars. Mike only has fifteen, and that's just enough.

Nobody can prove that the new bike was a stolen, but it makes Mike's attorney nervous enough to dump him. I wonder if it bothers Mike at all: a stolen bike for a stolen bike (it appears the same in the grand calculus of things).

--

These days Mike doesn't have cell phone service, and he has no means for his attorney to contact him. I go home and research cell phone plans. Monthly or prepaid plans? AT&T, Alltel, Virgin, MetroPCS, Sprint, Verizon? Does he need long distance, voice mail, text messaging? Argh, if I only had Mike's bill and could figure out the best plan for his usage patterns.

I'm internally conflicted as to how I should present this to Mike. I want to tell him to ditch his cell phone, let him know that he doesn't need one. Why can't he just use a calling card? Sarah puts some sense into me: "He lives in a world where he depends on his connection to others. In some ways, it could almost be necessary." I don't fully understand the truth of that statement. I suppose the least I could do is find him a cheaper plan.

I am appalled to find that single-line monthly cell plans all seem to begin at $40; and knowing the way Mike uses his phone, a pay-as-you-go plan wouldn't be that much cheaper (edit: Virgin Mobile just might be). I don't have enough information to go on: I know Mike calls San Jose often to contact his old attorney, and I know he splits his time between Oakland, Berkeley and Sacramento. I don't know if he makes more long calls, short calls, daytime calls or nighttime calls. In short, I just really don't know.

I decide to just advise Mike to downgrade his MetroPCS plan to the $40 basic plan with voice mail, a step down from his $50 bill.

--

I meet him the next day at 10 at the food court. Aaliyah purrs through his boombox. He waves to me, bends over to shut off the stereo and slings it into the back seat. It's a silent drive to the phone store on Ashby, so I turn up Miles Davis on the car radio. We pass restaurants and car dealerships and thrift stores.

"You got class today, Drew?"

"Naw, but I gotta get back to school by 12."

Mike's boombox suddenly sputters to life, Aaliyah's smooth coos chopped up by a jammed tape deck: It's been too long- STOP and I'm lo- STOP -st without- STOP -you. "What the--" Mike cries, turning around to finger with knobs and switches and buttons before he finally puts Aaliyah to rest. "My cousin sold me this busted boombox last month."

"How much was it?"

"Fifteen dollars. I took it home and tried it out and the CD player was broken. Took it back to him and complained. He did something to fix it, but it busted itself up again when I got home."

We pull up to the curb and walk into the battered phone store. Various customers are impatiently waiting around as the cashier up front fumbles with a pack of phones. Mike finds a seat near the door and we wait. And wait.

Fifteen minutes later, the cashier finally figures out how to activate the phones. A woman walks up to the front counter, examines the phones, and asks to see the faceplates.

Mike looks a bit agitated. "You okay, Drew? We should go to Emeryville. They got a store there. Line's probably shorter."

But it's just a little longer, and soon enough it's our turn. We walk up to the counter, where we ask to downgrade Mike's plan.

The cashier gives us a quizzical look. "You're already on the $40 plan," he says.

"Then why's he getting charged fifty bucks?"

"Taxes and fees," the cashier replies, and swivels the computer monitor to show us the damning evidence.

Well that goes all out the window. I pay his month's bill and we walk out of the store. "Thanks Drew," Mike tells me as we get back into the car. I give him a grin, but don't let him know I'm silently fuming.

Later, I relate the story to Sarah. "Welcome to the world of institutional discrimination," she says. I wish it weren't so true.

--

Mike and I are eating lunch at Smart Alec's down the corner from the food court. The lunchtime crowd presses in on us like hot steam against a winter window. Mike cradles Aaliyah and his boombox in his lap. Two officers pass us by, and I notice Mike's eyes flicker and move downward, knowing he's out of place in the restaurant.

"You see them?" Mike gestures over at the officers, now mounting their bikes. "They like me. They know me." We still feel nervous, sitting there in the corner of Smart Alec's, chowing on burgers and garlic fries and sharing a Coke and sticking out like sore thumbs.

I ask him about how Belinda's doing. "She's doing okay" he tells me, and spends five minutes telling me a hair-raising story about how Belinda nearly got in a fight with her son's girlfriend's mother after the girlfriend had stolen Belinda's food stamps--or something like that. I can only loosely follow the story between Mike's mouthfuls of food.

Mike stops suddenly, a smile passing over his face. He dials a number. "Hey Belinda," he speaks to the voice on the other side, "how you doing? ... I'm here in Berkeley now just eating with Andrew ... yeah I'll tell him you say hi ... Hey, remember last week, how nice it was? I was just telling you how nice it would be if we got married." The voice on the line is speaking now, and Mike deep in his thoughts, smiling at an unknown stranger just past me. "Yeah, wouldn't that be nice, ha! Wouldn't that be something."

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