Upchuckle

"I'm doing everything I possibly can," he said, his fat fingers wrapped around a margarita. It was 4:30 in the afternoon; I stared at the sidewalk. The concrete shimmered brilliantly beneath us.

I've found it dangerous to gaze too closely at other people's faces. A man's entire biography is written there. In the lines and folds of his expression, within the eyes' deep shadow: a story desperately told. The story can scar your soul. The story is, inevitably, pain.

His life is seriously coming apart. Soon enough he would be high beyond belief, cocaine coursing through his bloodstream, staring at the ceiling, mouth agape, his problems all but forgotten. And I knew, even then, that I possess not nearly enough will or compassion to help him -- to lead a blind man from the shattered glass of his own life.

I excused myself, leaving him to lacerate himself on the shards.