Last Day

Four minutes before I kicked the steel gate that was always locked, the alcove it protected strewn with trash, I had been sitting down in a familiar office, listening to someone I'd known for over ten years tell me that I didn't have a job anymore. It wasn't that I hadn't seen it coming, it wasn't that it wasn't warranted. The fact that things had deteriorated to the point where I was being fired from a bar was what stuck in my throat like a pill swallowed without water. That I had been running late and spent the money on a cab to get there on time didn't help. It couldn't get lower than this. I would have to get comfortable at the bottom. I said my goodbyes to the bartenders and the other managers. People I had grown to call friends and now might never see again, because that's the way these things go.
Back to the steel gate.
I walked out of there without a look back. Out onto the street for the last time and up passed the steel gate. I had always assumed that the building was a disused factory, or a workshop that only open during the day. I kicked the gate twice and screamed 'FUCK!' like a man that didn't know what else to do. Behind the wall, three or four dogs started barking, frightened and confused. A man yelled out 'Yo?!' It never occurred to me that it could have been a living space, but the neighborhood had changed. It had gone from trendy to fully gentrified. European money filled the gaps that the American economy couldn't and condos were sprouting like weeds. Every unused room was now a living space, every inch was maximized for profit.
Embarrassed, I tried I walk away quickly. A bearded man with a gut and sandals crashed out of the gate, dragging trash from the entrance behind him.
"What the fuck are you doing banging on my door like that, you asshole?!"
I don't think I had ever been so embarrassed.
"I'm really sorry, I didn't think anyone lived there."
"Even if no one did, you think you got a right to go around banging on doors like the fucking police just because you had a few drinks??"
I obviously wasn't the first to transgress this way.
"No, I don't. I'm sorry, I haven't been drinking. I just got fired and was angry, I had no business taking it out on your door. I honestly feel bad that the dogs are upset." my words fell on the pavement like spent matches.
"These are rescue dogs! All of them! Do you have any idea what they've been  through? You know how long it will take to calm them down?" The guy was really working himself into a lather for someone that looked like he had slept most of the day. He took a step towards me, raising a hand like he was going to hit me but slipped on a wet piece of cardboard, catching himself on the same gate he'd just stormed out of, the one I'd abused so thoughtlessly. I didn't laugh or try to hit him. I turned and walked away, maintaining ownership of the situation's general humiliation.
"Stay off this block, jagoff!" He called after me.
It wasn't going to be a problem, I had no reason to come back to this neighborhood now. Just one stop at a bar nearby that I liked, since it was quiet and and I figured I might never have occasion to be in it again. I loped ten blocks to the Pencilbox and propped myself up in the warm candlelight. Their cheapest whiskey burned the little cracks on my lips as I stared at a point in space two feet in front of my face.
At first it all seemed promising. After a couple minutes the three bikers that were laughing  as loud as they pleased left. Everyone else talked quietly and the bartender left me alone. Perfect. Then a group of French people came in, sat near me, and  giggled about something or other. I couldn't spend the night glaring at them and watching them pointedly fail to tip the bartender. I headed back to my own neighborhood.
I went to my local bar right under the train tracks, a cash-only bare-bones Irish pub where you could feel the rumble off the train above through your fingertips on the bar. A neighborhood guy named Danny cheered me up the way he knew best.
"Don't sweat it, you'll take a few weeks, your wife can carry the load. Marriage is like that, you give and take, feast and famine."
It was nonsense, but that was okay. Sometimes nonsense is exactly what you want to hear.