No Room For Amazing Grace

Korean Grace popped up out of nowhere again yesterday. She called, gave me broken English directions to the furniture store on Prairie she was holed up in and I drove over to pick up her homeless butt.

Apparently, she's escaped the nunnery again and is hopping around the city again, living in ice house storage rooms, furniture store display windows and gas station closets again. I haven't seen her in months. I thought she was dead by now.

She looked good. I haven't seen her since we both lived on the street, me a fiftysomething streetworn old fat man and her a twentysomething wunderkind. We'd made an odd looking couple on the street.

I took her back to the vets shelter to show her off, show her where I live.

She surprised me when we walked past the piano in the mess hall. She sat down and, in typical ADHD Grace style, started playing classical for forty notes or so, switching to some Korean ballad another forty notes, then country and western. Her long, thin fingers glided over the piano keys effortlessly and I was amazed.

I let Grace rearrange all the music CDs in my room and cut out paper dolls for a while, then dropped her off over at the Hawthorne Airport at dinner time. She looked sad, sad to tears, that I was dumping her back in the street, but I have no room for Amazing Grace in my life right now.

Tags: U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, U.S. Vets, L.A. Vets, veterans shelter, homeless, Revver, viral video, Amazing Grace, escaped the nunnery, twentysomething, wunderkind, odd couple, ADHD, Korean ballad, Hawthorne Airport, dumping her, jarvis, marquisdejolie