Who is Paid
The isopropyl alcohol is low on the shelf, so Murray asks me to crouch and read him the price. A small bottle costs $2.79.
Murray remembers that the same bottle costs $1.40 at the dollar store on 3rd St, a 15-minute drive. He wonders, aloud, whether we should go there instead. What do you think, he asks me.
Later, we will walk to the back of the store to the day-old discounted bakery items. Murray picks up different boxes and asks me what they say. He is looking for something with some pecan in it, you hear me.
Since his cataract surgery, Murray been more or less blind. He takes eye drops for his glaucoma that burn his eyes and make the road look like a big, bright blur. At the cash register, he dictates his PIN to me. He greets every employee by name.
I often run into him outside our building, throwing laundry into his trunk, what he calls his lil part time job. He will ask me what I’m up to, whether I’m busy, will assure me that whatever I’ve been doing hasn’t ruined my good looks.
Twice a week he drives that laundry out to Beverly Hills to supplement his social security income. He has lived, alone, in the building for 50 years, second only to Percy, who lives quietly and somewhat mysteriously on the 4th floor.
It took him a long time to ask us for help—getting his groceries, getting to his eye appointments, getting out to Beverly Hills. He confessed to me that, trying to get out there himself, he drove up on an embankment. After our grocery stop, he asks me to come into his apartment to read a bill, which is not a bill.
He might be the funniest person I have met, a bridge to some long-bygone place and time. He came to Los Angeles alone from St Louis at 18 because he was fascinated by the movies and all that.
He worked in Radiology at Cedars-Sinai for 40 years. He uses phrases like “Well, I’ll be.” In the car, after 10 minutes of silence, he will say, “So, you gonna have yourself a nice lunch?”
He called later in the evening once, making me me nervous. He had been watching the Emmy’s, and just wanted to know if I knew any of these writers and everything.
He has had one cataract removed, and is waiting on the other. He told me once, from behind his mist, that he wishes he hadn’t done it, though he knows he shouldn’t say that, he shouldn’t say that.
Sometimes I am able to take him out to his job on Saturdays, but he struggles to find someone for Wednesdays. He called once—what if I can move it to Tuesday, he said. Would that make it any easier. He leaves the house at 5:30am, after waking up at 4 to put his eyedrops in.
He canceled his LA Times subscription because he can’t read it any more. I thought of a recent edition, announcing the $50,000 signing bonuses, 6-figure salaries, and tuition assistance being offered to new ICE agents as part of the agency’s roughly $75 billion dollars in newly approved funding.
Leaving the dollar store, where he buys 10 disposable razors for 99 cents, Murray presses a five dollar bill into my closed hand. Coffee money, coffee money, he says. He will not be denied.
(If you'd like to help Murray stay home while he recovers his vision, you can donate here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/murrays-recovery-from-cataract-surgery-and-glaucoma)