There was another man half-sitting, half-crouched in the other doorway as I moved away; his face red, his hair tangled and black and manky. He wore a green coat and clutched a plastic coca-cola bottle filled with something that wasn't coca-cola. "Thank you young man", he said, "very kind."
I smiled quickly at him and began to walk away.
"You've gotta laugh", he said as I passed him, "or life becomes...", but I missed how he ended it. He didn't really seem to be talking to me anyway, and as I glanced back at him over my shoulder, I could see that he had turned slightly, but then turned back to face back up the street, as though he had tried to face me, but his responses were running slowly, or as if time passed at a different rate for him than for the rest of the world, and he had found himself left behind in his attempt to keep facing me, and given up trying.
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