HECTOR
By
Richard F. DeCrescenzo, Jr.
*****
PUBLISHED BY:
HECTOR
Copyright 2012 Richard F. DeCrescenzo, Jr.
For Nancy
Hector came to the office every day. Sometimes he would come in the morning but most often he would come after he had seen that most of us were back from lunch. He waited, and we could see him waiting on the other side of the street under the alcove of the now abandoned Western Union office. He waited, and none of us could figure out why, or what exactly kept him from walking straight to us and getting it over with. Theories abounded, as one might expect, but there was not one in the office which could explain his patterns, or lack of patterns. Hector came to us from somewhere, made his plea and then he left. At times it seemed as though he had left before he had walked through the door.
I did not meet Hector for the first month that I spent in Hartford. My activities at work kept me from the front of the building until I could arrange my material and begin my day. To the other people in the office I was somewhat of a threat: I had come from far away for reasons they were not privy to, and I was constantly asking for assistance in finding one file or another.
I believe that they must have thought that I was from the government. Fear, I remember thinking, has a funny way of making people act suspiciously. And even though I was not in a position to question the activities of the other people in the office, I could not resist inquiring about Hector once I had seen him repeat his plea every day for the first two weeks of many I spent in the vicinity of the front office. I wanted to know what this poor man wanted and why he had not gotten it. I started where Hector started each day—the receptionist.
Two weeks had passed since I had first laid eyes on Hector and it had become steadily colder with each passing day. The cold, I was told back at the home office in Florida, would not be as bad as I might think. I would get used to it. And the reception desk to which Hector proceeded each day was set far enough inside the building. The receptionist, Susan, sat behind this desk each day and stared out toward the street. But she did not stare, or at least I do not think she stared, in anticipation of Hector's daily visit; no, I think that she had, like the others who encountered him over the years, grown so used to seeing him that they did not find him anymore out of place than the snow or the cold wind of winter. Nevertheless, because I was not accustomed to the visits or the cold of winter, I naturally became interested in the man. Susan, because she had to hear Hector's first words before passing him on to whomever it was she thought he wanted to see, knew him as well as anyone I was likely to talk to. I asked her what it was the man wanted, and her answer was simple: "He wants the impossible." She said this without looking at me, and it did not seem as though she intended to explain what she meant.
Hector had just walked past her desk and toward the street he passed slowly with the same ghostly gait one would expect from a man headed to the gallows.
I could not understand why a man would come to an insurance office each day only to leave with the same forlorn expression and hopeless demeanor of the day before. It was almost comical—who could he be talking to, and why did he fail to get what he wanted? What did he hope for? I wanted to grab the man and demand to know what it was he was after, but as anyone who has worked in an office knows, this is not done. But I was to get close to him. My work took me slowly to the front of the building, and the atmosphere, the degree to which I was feared and mistrusted, lessened to a point where I was treated with enough openness so that an inquiry into the case of this strange man would not arouse a great degree of attention.
Susan accepted my invitation to lunch. We walked in the snow to a small cafe around the corner from the office and waited in a puddle of melted snow and salt until there was a vacant table in the smoking section. Susan smoked constantly and the idea of sitting through a meal in such an atmosphere made me think about the need for tougher anti-smoking regulations. We sat at a table to the far end of the room and we were at a window that afforded a view of the street I thought Hector might walk down on his way to our office. Susan lit another cigarette and asked me why I have been inching my way through the files toward the front of the office.
"Are you looking for a particular file," she asked. "I could help you, you know. I know where everything is."
"I'm pretending to work," I said, "so I can get closer to you."
Susan blushed and looked down. The cigarette curled smoke up through her light brown hair and looked as though it had set her face on fire. She jerked her head back up and to the side in a way that says, "Yes, I am pretty."
"C'mon,” she said, "why are you really looking through every file in the office?"
"It’s really not very interesting."
"Are you investigating someone?'
"No. That would be interesting. I'm doing research."
"Is that all? Then how come nobody knows why you are here?"
"Some people know. But I want to ask you something that I think is more interesting."
"Like what?" she asked.
"Like why that man, Hector, comes to the office every day."
"I told you, he wants the impossible."
"And what might that be?"
"He wants a policy."
"Why is that impossible?" I asked. "Why don't we just give him a policy? Then, when he doesn't pay, we drop him."
"Because he doesn't want it for himself. He wants medical coverage for some girl."
"So?"
"So he won't bring her for a physical and he doesn't have her medical records."
"And he comes each day knowing what the answer will be?" I asked.
"That's right. Every day for three straight years. And every day I send him to Julie."
"And she sends him on his way."
"That's right."
We finished lunch and went back to work. I had not gotten as far as I had hoped, and when I left for home at the end of the day, I felt as though I knew less now than before. Hector, or this ghost we called Hector, was a frustration. Through Susan I hoped I would be able to get a reasonable explanation to the man. Perhaps he was a neighborhood representative of some kind, or a night custodian who, for one reason or another, saw fit to visit his work place during the day. I did not expect to hear that he had been paying the office these visits for three straight years. Each day he came without fail, stayed for about the same amount of time, then went on his way. Each day he left with the same forlorn expression with which he had entered. And each day I waited for him.
When I arrived home on the evening after I had spoken to Susan I, for the first time, could not get the picture of Hector's face out of my mind. The drive home had taken forever, and the snow started to fall again. The unpredictable nature of the Connecticut weather started to affect the way I felt; it was, to say the least, a depressing season to get to learn an unfamiliar region. I began to feel as I imagined Hector to feel. I pictured our faces side by side and our bodies leaned forward toward a sun that did not shine for us as it had before.
We stood, in my mind, as two who did not know where to turn. I, like Hector, went to the same office each day and left with the same expression I had worn on my way in. No more did I have the optimistic outlook I had brought with me from Florida. The fun of playing government agent had left me. I was becoming like them—like the people in Hartford who walked about with that same half sad, half angry expression. These were the people I saw on a daily basis, and these were the people Hector had to see for the "impossible” policy he could not get. I arrived at my apartment and sat in my car looking at the falling snow. Tomorrow, I thought, I will have to speak with Julie.
Fear squeezing hi
s heart for the sake of a few dollars to put poor one back together again. How speak? Who again? Where me go to chew chew want I have not. That sound, that glorious sound of geese and water and smell of food cooked open way back in back in Summer. On the shore there were thousands of geese. They landed and took off as they pleased and they all seemed happy and healthy and you never ran across a dead one like you could walk across a dead person. There are laws protecting geese from men but not men from men or women from men or women from women and men. Safe. How? Go see who? Again and again and again forever until I am dead or back on the shore with the geese and...until we are back on the shore either dead or alive. Honk honk honk honk honk. Yes. Okay. That is all. Maybe tomorrow she will say yes to me and it will have been worth the wait. Then we will go and...we will go and go and keep going as long as we please like the geese who do as they please but do not leave each other and do not let each other die. There will be no more dying because there is still time. I will tell her this again tomorrow. Or I will stop time. Or. Or I will go again and again and again. And I honk honk will honk.
I lay awake that night after speaking to Susan. I thought about Hector and who it was that he wanted a policy for and why.
He needed a policy, and by his appearance, he needed one more than he had need for food or clean clothing. He walked into the office as much an outsider as one could possibly conceive: he was of medium height, young and handsome despite the obvious lack of access to soap and water, he was Puerto Rican and he was unhealthfully thin. He walked slowly like a man who has not had enough to eat for a very long time. His clothes were worn thin and not of the correct size. In all, it appeared as though he lived on the street and did not have a way of making enough money for shelter or clothing or good food. But the most alarming aspect of Hector was the fact that we could see him for hours at a time standing across the street from the office. He did not seem interested in anything other than obtaining the policy for the "girl" Susan had referred to: three years of the same dedication to the same goal which had not shown an ounce of success from the start. He must have had the rules of the policy explained to him from the very beginning. Three years of being turned away had not dented his resolve. I began to think that such a man intended to keep trying until he died. Nothing stopped him. I cannot, I thought, if it is in my power, fail this man. I will get him the policy he seeks for the person he seeks it for if it costs me from my own pocket. I turned in my lonely bed and thought about how wonderfully I could help Hector. I began to feel happy again.
I had seen Julie from time to time in the office, but I had not thought of her as someone I would need to talk to during what was supposed to be my short stay at the Hartford office. She was an older woman, one of the office type that has been in the business for a long time and did not seem to intend ever to leave. She had one of those severe faces surrounded by bright red hair always pulled tightly back and away causing the skin around her eyes to always appear to be on the brink of ripping. Susan had told me she was nice enough. I think she may have meant that Julie was not unusually hostile to the people she dealt with in the office. Those off the street, however, were another matter. Since our office did not contain an insurance salesperson, Julie, by being the Hartford sales coordinator, was referred to whenever someone mistook us for an agent’s office. Hector apparently did not care about the distinction.
By this time I had decided to no longer shroud my inquiry behind a professional or social shroud. I walked to Julie's desk and asked her if she would have time to see me in the afternoon. She agreed that we would meet after lunch. Since she was one of the people that knew why I had come to the office, there was no change in her facial expression: she did not smile and agree, nor did she look directly at me when she spoke. She was, as Susan had said, "nice enough."
When I returned from my own lunch, Hector had just walked past the reception desk back out to the street. I became nervous at the thought of asking Julie questions about the man just after he left, but as I had decided the night before, I was going to be as relentless at getting to the bottom of his dilemma as he had been at attempting to solve it. I walked to Julie's desk and sat in the same chair Hector had sat in and faced the same woman he had just faced. She looked up at me without expression.
"How was your lunch?” I asked.
"I do not eat lunch,” she answered.
"I made this appointment with you to ask you a few things about the man you just spoke with.”
"Go on.”
"Yes, well, I was wondering why he came to see you every day for...I mean, I was wondering what he wants."
"He wants a policy,” she said.
"And why hasn't he obtained one?” I asked.
"Because he is not eligible."
"Why not?”
"Because he wants it for a girl who he is associated with, and she is not willing or able to obtain a physical.”
"And they don't have the money?”
"I do not know about that," she said.
"Well, what does he say when he comes to you?” I asked.
"He says the same thing each time: 'My name is Hector Perez and I have come to get an insurance policy for my Noribel.”
"And that is all he says?”
"No. Then I ask him if he has the form I gave him three years ago—the form that has to be filled out by a physician."
"And he does not have this form?”
"He does not."
"Where does he live? Is he without income; I mean, isn't he eligible for state aid?”
"I do not Know," she said, "he will not tell me and I stopped asking a long time ago.”
I thanked Julie for her time and returned to my desk. I had hoped for much more information, perhaps some light that would lead me to a simple way through which I could resolve this poor man's dilemma, but it was not to be found in our office. I sat at my desk and thought for a long time before I decided that I would have to seek-out Hector and his Noribel and see for myself what the situation was. Since there was not a person in the office who I had to answer to, there would be no difficulty in leaving when Hector did.
I had come down with one of those notorious winter colds and decided to use it for an excuse to leave the office. I did not have to do this, and I did not as a rule use cold remedies, but I also did not want anyone to see me leave without reason. Since it hadn't occurred to me that Hector would travel very far from home on foot, I did not expect to be gone too long. What I planned to do when I saw him enter his place of residence, I did not know, but I did hope to at least get an idea of the situation from which he came. I would follow him, that was the plan, and what I would do when I found out where he lived, and what I would say to him if he recognized me from the office, I did not know. When Hector came after lunch, I put on my coat and told Susan I was going to the pharmacy.
I knew what I expected to see once Hector arrived at his destination: there would be one of those apartment buildings which we associate with the poor, there would be a junk car or two parked in front, and there would be Hector walking slowly up the stone steps to the broken front door. I had imagined how his apartment would look. In fact, I was beginning to have little use for the actual man. I had made him a project, a curiosity like a strange bird that flies into your yard now and then, and I thought that I was right about every aspect to his life that I had the notion to ponder. But it was not that simple. I had not counted on ther being another person, another reason, a powerful reason for Hector's visits. As I walked behind him I thought about Noribel. I must see her, I thought. I have to see her to place her in my picture of Hector. If she is the reason for Hector's visits, then she is the powerful force for his persistence.
Hector turned the corner from Elm onto Bishop Place and I followed. We had already walked over a mile on Elm, and I was beginning to worry that I would not be able to find my way back to the office if the journey took me to unfamiliar roads in what must be the dange
rous section of the city. The buildings were becoming lower in height and increasingly more run down. I quickened my pace and got within twenty feet of Hector as he walked on. We had gone about two miles when Hector stopped, turned to the side, and stared directly at me. Not knowing what to do, I walked to him and stopped. We stood facing each other, and I at first did not Know what to do. My desire to find out what possessed Hector did, however, take control of me. I asked, without thinking, if I could come in. I said I was from the office and that I needed to see Noribel. He looked down, and finally said, "yes.”
I had not planned to go into Hector's home, his life, but it seems now that there could be no other way. There was little information on him at the office. I had to see for myself what, or rather, who drove this man to haunt our office. And it was not until long after my visit to his cold apartment, long after I had spent an afternoon in the company of Hector and Noribel, that I was able to create this version of his story.