Opportunity Knocking

I came downstairs from setting up the bed in the back bedroom, taking my headphones off to hear the knocking on the door for the first time. I don't know how long the knocking had been going on. The window in the front door of the old house I was renting in Weston, Vermont, to give myself some time to settle in to the village before buying, was frosted, so all I could see was the hazy form of a fairly bulky figure out on the covered front porch. It had snowed heavily the night before and all I could see other than the bulky shadow of a figure was a world of swirling white. The knock had been strong when I first heard it, but it grew weaker, almost plaintive, as I got to the foyer. I think it was the note of defeat that evoked that made me reach for the door latch.

I opened the door. "Nick?" I said, recognizing the older man with the white hair and beard, a thick red knitted scarf swathing his neck and shoulders. I knew Nick casually from the homeless soup kitchen I'd begun volunteering at down at the parish house next to the Weston Community Church on Lawrence Hill Road. I'd started helping out there once a week shortly after I'd moved from Savannah, Georgia, before Thanksgiving. It was a small town and there weren't that many homeless here, so it hadn't taken me long to recognize them all.

I looked beyond Nick to take in the sea of whiteness behind him on Markham Lane. This had been a really bad time of year to move to New England from the South. The snow-on-snow world had put me in a malaise where I hadn't been able to move beyond getting the art gallery over on the square between the playhouse and the Vermont Country store stocked and open. Boxes and furniture still to be assembled were scattered all over the living room. Wanting something more steady and less isolating in my life during this moving-in period was a primary reason for signing up to help at the soup kitchen. Interacting with the homeless there thus far provided most of my interaction with other human beings in this snow-covered landscape.

"Good morning, Mr. Crawford," Nick said, producing a cloud of frozen breath. "I was thinking that you had been so kind to me at the soup kitchen that you might have some odd jobs or yardwork you might like to have done for a bit of money."

I stifled a laugh, looking beyond him at the world of snow where a yard should have been. But then I saw the shovel in his hand—the shovel I'd put on the front porch with the best of intentions—and the path that had cleared from the street to the porch. He'd done this while I was upstairs, at the back of the house, listening to The New World Symphony on my headphones, purposely closing the winter wonderland of New England out of my mind.

I took another look at Nick. I remembered him mainly because of the name and his looks and because we were moving into the Christmas holidays. He was an older man, and his white hair and beard and his perpetual rosy-cheeked smile had readily connected the name Nick with Santa Claus, although he wasn't quite as fat as I thought of Santa Claus as being. His tattered clothes included a red scarf and sweatshirt under a tired-looking black raincoat, though, which served the image.

He wasn't dressed for the weather by any means, his clothes being too thin and worn and his sneakers having a slit in the side that exposed a hint of red socks. He wore a tattered old raincoat when something much more protective was needed in the Vermont winter weather, although it looked like he had several layers of sweatshirts on underneath the coat. His hat was more a beret than anything you would wear in cold weather. He was trembling and his skin had a bluish tint to it. He wasn't wearing gloves.

"You come in here right now, Nick, and get warmed up. I was just about to make some coffee. Come into the kitchen and have a cup."

"I don't mean to intrude," Nick said, hovering near, but inside the front door. He wasn't resisting being inside. His eyes went to the living room on one side and the dining room on the other and he clearly could see that I wasn't anywhere close to being moved in.

"Here, give me that coat," I said, taking it from him as he managed to pull it off his back. I opened the foyer closet door to hang it up, and there was Warren's red ski coat and his fur-lined boots. The warm hat with the ear flaps he liked to wear on the ski slopes was perched on the shelf above. I'd purposely put them there to have Warren with me in this move. The whole move to Vermont had been to keep in touch with Warren. He'd been my professor and mentor—and my lover—at the Savannah College of Art and Design. We were together for three years—a year beyond my graduation. Warren had an art gallery in Savannah, where he trained me in buying and selling art. I think he knew what might be happening when he sent me on a buying trip to Europe. He hadn't told me he was having a heart operation while I was traveling. He was gone before I returned, having died on the surgeon's table.

He loved to ski, and we'd come to Vermont in the winter each year we'd been together. He'd ski and I'd read by the fireplace. Afterward he'd lure me out of the ski resort and down into the town to walk its few streets in the snow. That's probably when I saw that the gallery near the square in Weston was for sale. Now I'd bought it and moved to Weston. I had inherited a gallery full of art—a lot of European period art—from Warren. I could have left it where it was in his gallery in Savannah, but the memories there were too much for me. The gallery I had required here in Weston had mainly sold Thomas Kincaid fantasy village "painter of light" oils and lithographs. I had no idea if broader interest art would do well here—but this move had been for Warren. He'd always said he wanted to live in New England. I never had said that. But this was for Warren.

So, I had his winter clothing hanging in the closets around the house even before I'd assembled the bookshelves from IKEA. And I hadn't assembled much of the furniture from IKEA yet. I just now put together the bedframe in my bedroom and raised the box spring and mattress off the floor.

Nick followed me into the kitchen and settled down at the table there. The kitchen, at least, had been made habitable. I made the coffee.

"Coffee will be ready in a few minutes," I said. "I was about ready to fix some lunch, though. Will you join me? It's good to have company on a snowy day."

"I don't want to be any trouble," he said. But he looked pretty settled in at the kitchen table and added, "I reckon it's good to have someone to chat with most any day."

I was surprised that other than his clothes being in tatters and not showing any signs of fatigue from shoveling my walk, Nick seemed to be clean and odorless. That was one thing I'd notice the couple of times I'd worked the soup kitchen at the Community Church—shower facilities must be hard to come by for these folks. Weston was a small town—a really small town regardless of its two mainliner businesses, the major catalog business, the Vermont Country Store, and the semiprofessional theater. I'd been told there were under six hundred residents in the town. And it had just a few permanent homeless, all men, not more than a dozen of them. The town did what it could to support them, but winter here was rough for even the hardiest, well-off residents. I'd already found that out, and I hadn't been here more than four weeks.

I fixed two melted cheese sandwiches and warmed some tomato soup out of a can. Nick didn't complain about the basic fare and polished off all I put on his plate.

"You'll have to let me know what you want for shoveling the walk, Nick."

"Oh, it was no bother," he responded, not naming a price.

"I'm glad someone did it," I said. "Snow's not my thing."

"And yet you came to Vermont," he said, with a smile. "Escaping something?"

"Aren't we all?" I asked. I'd talked with enough of the homeless guys at the church parish hall to know that's what most of us were doing—those serving as well as those being served. He didn't press on that.

"It was nothing," he said, returning, I guess, to the shoveling of the walk. It wasn't "nothing" for me, though. I could get to the mailbox now. There wasn't anyone I was expecting any mail from, but it was nice that I could pretend there might be. For the three years Warren and I had been together, it was just the two of us. That's why I inherited everything from him. He'd made it easy. He'd formally adopted me. "You could pay me back by letting me do some work around here for you—a couple of mornings a week. Minimum wage, of course." Nick said, breaking into my thoughts.

"I don't know that I—"

"You got IKEA boxes just sittin' in the living room, I see," he said. "You want someone to assemble that stuff for you?"

"Yes, I guess that's a good idea," I said. And it was. It was a very good idea indeed. At this point in life I felt like I required assembly myself. I wasn't up to trying to follow IKEA instructions. And it would give Nick some productive indoor time in the cold weather. "Any particular mornings a week you have in mind?"

"Tuesdays and Thursdays would fit my schedule the best," he said. "I work next door for Mr. Dunlop on Mondays and Wednesdays."

"Mr. Dunlop?"

"Yes. Mr. Dunlop from the soup kitchen. You didn't know he lived next door?"

I think I must have blushed. No, I didn't know. Andy Dunlop was a good fifteen years older than I was, pushing forty. He was a tall, slim, professor-looking man. I'd noticed him because he resembled Warren. Quite handsome. Everyone seemed to like him, but he was a reticent sort of guy. I had no idea he lived next door. There was snow on the ground when I moved in here. I hadn't had the opportunity—or hadn't made the effort, I guess—to meet any of the neighbors yet. There had been knocks on the door I wasn't in the condition to respond to and pies left on the porch, but I figured I had to get moved in and the world had to thaw a bit before I got too sociable. Volunteering at the soup kitchen was as far as I'd gotten. I wasn't an outgoing person when I didn't have to be. If you wanted the sociable me, you had to walk into my art gallery, and that wasn't formally open yet.

"No, I didn't know he lived next door. Seems a nice guy. Does he have a family?"

"No, just him now. There was a young fellow living with him, but he left. An artist type. Guess he used up whatever inspiration Weston gave him and moved on. Mr. Dunlop's been sort of sad ever since, I think. Well, I know he is. We talk a good bit."

"You talk?"

"That's where I'm staying for the winter. He has an extra room off his kitchen and he lets me stay there and I do some work for him on some days at his office in the village—wrapping boxes and stuff for his business."

I didn't ask what Dunlop's business was. I was already being too nosy, and Nick didn't seem to have any brakes on what he'd tell me of what he knew. And if he'd talk of such things to me, a stranger, who wouldn't he gossip to about me?

He all but told me that Dunlop was gay and his boyfriend had left him. That didn't bother me, though. I was gay and my boyfriend had left me too. It didn't seem to bother Nick either, which might be an invitation to open up to him about my loneliness to having a man in my life, but I was wary of getting into this with the homeless man. The ache was more than I could bear and Nick was suggesting my neighbor had such an ache as well. But it sounded like this Dunlop guy hadn't had to bury his boyfriend like I had to do. OK, stop that, I thought. Memo to myself: stop feeling sorry for yourself.

"So, next Tuesday morning then?" I said as I rose from the table. I was signaling that it was time for us both to be going on about our business. "You'd have to come by 8:00, though. I have an art gallery to open. You'll be here by yourself until noon. I'll come home and feed you lunch before you leave. How does that sound?"

"I don't want to be any trouble," he said.

"That's what wouldn't be any trouble," I answered. "That's what will fit right in with my schedule."

"Well, then." He heaved himself out of the kitchen chair and we went down the hall to the front foyer. When I opened the closet and saw Nick's totally inadequate, sad-looking raincoat there, my heart clutched. How did he manage outside with just that? Then I looked down at his feet—at his beat-up and slit sneakers—and I wanted to cry. It was an impulse that made me bring out Warren's ski coat instead of the raincoat. "Here. As long as you are working here, I want you to wear this outside. You need something heavier."

"I don't want to be any trouble," he said. "And what would you wear?"

"This isn't mine," I said. "It's much too large for me." But it wasn't too large for Nick, and he could see that quite clearly—that it wasn't mine.

"Well, I don't know. I don't want—"

"And these boots, if they fit. They're too big for me too. They aren't mine either. I can't let you go out again in those sneakers." I wanted to call them ratty, and almost did, but I didn't want wound his pride either.

"I don't want to be any trouble," he said, but he was already taking his sneakers off. Both the coat and the boots fit him fine.

"You know, Mr. Crawford, you're a very nice man. That's what I told myself when I saw you at the soup kitchen. There's a really nice man, Eddie, I said to Eddie. He pointed to Mr. Dunlop and said he was a nice man too, and he is. But you're just as nice. I think you and Mr. Dunlop should meet—you live just next door to each other."

"We do meet—at the soup kitchen," I said.

"I mean, more that."

I don't know what I said. I was vaguely aware that Nick might be matchmaking, and I rebelled against that. I wasn't ready to give up feeling sorry for myself yet—if ever. I was busy hustling Nick out at that point. It had hit me that I was giving away some of the last pieces of Warren I had. The reason I had IKEA boxes in the house was because I hadn't brought any furniture Warren and I had shared. I couldn't face the memory of even the furniture we'd shared. But in letting his ski clothes go I had been impulsive. I had put those things in the foyer closet to hold him close to me, not to give them away. I smiled at Nick, but it was through tears, and I could get him out of the house fast enough at that point.

This had all been a mistake, I was thinking as I trudged back to the kitchen to clean up from lunch. I didn't like snow. It was Warren who wanted to come to Vermont, not me. And I didn't want to be selling Thomas Kincaid, paint-by-the-numbers insipid nostalgia paintings either. What if the shoppers coming to the Vermont Country Store and looking in the windows of my gallery didn't see what they wanted—the folksy village stuff that brought them to a Vermont country village?

Was I making a gigantic mistake? I bet I'd never see Warren's coat and boots again. Worse, I'd probably have to look at them on each soup kitchen day and have to relive "Warren and me" every time I did. I wasn't ready to let loose yet, and at the same time, it was a jab to heart each time I remembered. It wasn't Nick's fault, of course. I would have to adjust. But I obviously had more recovering to do than I had realized.

Memo to self, I thought again: Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Easier said than accomplished.

* * * *

"Are you some kind of crazy, Scott?"

"Yes, I think I must be," I answered. It was Sunday afternoon, and I had to talk to someone. I hadn't spoken to anyone for two days and I was seriously snowed in. I was standing at the window of my bedroom on the second floor overlooking the winter wonderland, complete with a couple of does and their bambis carefully working their way into the backyard from the tree line. Jeffery was just a guy I had known in college in Savannah who, like me, had stayed on in town, working at a bookstore while continuing to develop his art, and who, like me was a submissive gay. He had been the only one I could talk to about Warren, so he was about the only one I still was talking to at all.

"You're going to leave him alone in your house all morning, two mornings a week? Have you gotten any references on this guy?"

Nick was scheduled to come for the first time on Tuesday. I had three boxes of bookshelves to assemble ready for him on the living room floor. "He's a homeless guy, Jeff. He won't have any references."

"He could steal you blind—erase that. He probably will steal you blind."

"This is rural Vermont, not big-city civilization, Jeff. There's nothing here worth stealing. And I'm still in boxes. He'd have as much trouble as I do finding anything useful, let alone anything to steal. And he's Santa Claus. Santa Claus wouldn't steal anything. It's almost Christmas. He'll leave me gifts."

"Yeah, right—like his dirty laundry to wash and fold. I think you've lost your mind."

"Definitely," I said. Jeff was absolutely right. I knew nothing about this homeless guy. I should be more wary—like those deer in my backyard I was watching. One of the does obviously was on guard duty. No matter where the fawns were, she maneuvered herself between them and the house, protecting them behind her flank, and she kept looking at the back of the house suspiciously—but never up to the second level where I was standing and talking to Jeff on my cellphone. After a few minutes, they moved off to the side, into the neighboring yard, the house where Nick had said Andy Dunlop, the guy from the soup kitchen, lived. I hadn't been back to the soup kitchen since Nick told me about Dunlop, so nothing was happening in that scene.

I saw why the deer had gone off in that direction. Dunlop had hung some wreaths from his trees that appeared to be made of some sort wildlife food. The deer had found it. What a nice guy, I thought. That had been what Nick had said about him too.

"What's this Santa Claus crap?" Jeff was asking.

"The dude looks a lot like Santa Claus. He seems harmless enough, and if you'd seen how cold he was and how tattered his clothes were when he knocked on my door, you'd let him in too. He shoveled my walk. You have absolutely no idea how cold it is here in Vermont at Christmas or how much snow we're already buried under."

"Did I ask you to move to Vermont, Scott? Speaking of going off your rocker. But you have partying lined up for Christmas and New Year's, don't you? A couple of ski parties, I'm sure, with athletic hunks."

"Yeah, sure, Jeff," I said. We both knew I didn't. We both knew I had to be at the end of my rope lonely to be calling him. "The homeless guy will be good company for lunch those days," I said.

"You're feeding him lunch too? You are a pushover, my friend."

"That's me," I answered. But as I hung up, the neighbor, Andy Dunlop, came into mind. He was the nice guy. He was feeding the deer in winter—the deer who had enough good sense to be wary of strangers, I was forced to add.

* * * *

I was on a ladder, finishing putting decorations on the Christmas tree in the Main Street art gallery, when the bell rang and a man entered at the front. It was Andy Dunlop, my neighbor and fellow soup kitchen server, who Nick had talked about and I'd done a lot of thinking about without having formally met him yet.

"Ah, entering into the spirit of the season," he called out as I came down the ladder. He was standing in front of the Christmas tree I'd just gotten decorated.

"I happened upon the box with the decorations at home and decided it was time," I said. I didn't feel much into the spirit of the season, though.

"Yes, I understand that you're my new neighbor on Markham Lane. I'm Andy Dunlop and you are, I think, Scott Crawford, recently from the sunny South."

"Well, at least sunnier than here, that's for sure," I said, laughing. "And, yes, I'm Scott Crawford, art gallery owner in Vermont, with more hopes than sales thus far, I fear. We haven't met, but we've worked together at the soup kitchen a couple of times."