Tuesday, April 8, 2008

shopping bag full of urine

He's short, noticeably short, almost like a jockey but with the girth and waggle of a pit bull. Dashing mustache - salt and pepper. He always seems to be wearing matching Bermuda shorts and guayabara and even when he isn't, he looks like he wants to. In colder weather a windbreaker and a cap. He carries either a shopping bag or, if it is a busy busy day, a big, black plastic garbage bag and he goes to all the drug treatment centers and methadone clinics, hidden away on third and fourth and seventh floors of garment district buildings that still haven't upgraded to a better clientele, and he collects all the urine samples and specimens needing to be tested for drugs and disease and occasional health.

So fast emptying locked fridges and tin medical boxes, never caught the act, always seen after the fact usually as he slips into the elevator his shopping bag fuller and fuller of little capped bottles of many people's pee.