Do I Live Here

"Do I live here?" he asked, looking up at me where I stood on my second-story balcony, leaning against the railing, looking down at him in the alley behind the converted rowhouse that held my apartment and a few others. Beneath the late summer sun, enfolded by scents of looming storms, thoughts drifting through middle distances, I had been sitting when I had noticed him down there, a man about my age, hunching over, peering up between the railing posts with a question stretched across his face. I had never seen anyone step into that alley before, had never seen anyone see me, had never had anyone hail me with a glance. Rising to my feet I had muttered something like a greeting. "I think I live here," he had said, straightening himself up. I knew everyone in my small building. I had never seen him before. But he had seemed certain he was my neighbor. Maybe he was? Who was I to say? Before I could speak, he had asked, "Do I live here?" and pulled from a pocket a folded paper that sure hands fumbled open and waved at me. "Can you come down here and look at this, tell me if I live here?" Wrought iron fire escape stairs connected my balcony to the alley. I could have gone down, but something felt... "What address are you looking for?" He turned the paper over several times, pausing here and there, finally reading out. I leaned closer and asked him to read it again, a bit louder if he could, my hearing being not what it should for my age. He obliged. I nodded down the street, "That address should be a few blocks south." He glanced around then back at me as the space between us swirled with thickening silence ever so faintly cracked by distant sirens. "Does this paper mean that I live there?" Somewhere nearby a murder of crows began a chorus. Not entirely sure of myself, I said, "I don't know.” He pocketed the paper and wandered away in the wrong direction, footsteps riding soft peals of rolling thunder. I hope he found his home, or at least his answers.