"Okay. He's all yours, Lord Bullwinkle. Get him outta here. None of us down here can take much more."

What happened next was right out of a Steve Martin movie. I bundled him into my car and drove from the ER back to the Nickel. My theory was, when trying to return something, it's usually a good idea to put it back exactly where you found it.

"I'm just gonna drop you on the corner of Alameda and Sixth," I said casually. I was in a hurry to get all his junk out of my car and go home to Alexa.

"Ain't no good squat spots on Sixth. Assholes all whizzin' by like there ain't no tomorrow. All a buncha reckless-don't-give-a-damn-hit-and-run half-steppers, like you."

"Right. Okay." I choked down a few more confrontational responses. "So, where do you want to go?"

"Anywhere but the VOA," he said, referring to the Volunteers of America drop-in center. "Them Bible-beaters all hump yer leg fer Jesus. Maybe the Southern…"

The Southern is a recently remodeled single-room-occupancy hotel on Fifth Street across from San Julian Park. For years it had been a hellhole where street people would pay for their drugs at the front desk and then go stand behind the hotel and wait for the dealer to drop the cut down from the roof in baggies. A developer took it over, cleaned it up, and renovated. Single rooms went to homeless people for about one hundred ninety dollars a month. For SRO housing, that was considered pricey.

"Pretty expensive over there," I said. "You got the cash?" I asked.

"No. But you do," he said.

"I'm not gonna buy you a month in a hotel!"

"Lookit this!" he said, holding up his plastered wrist. "This be my green and gold lifetime pass. Green for da money, gold for da honey. This here's gonna cost you. I can't be scuffling for quarters with no broken wrist."

"You were jaywalking, stop trying to shake me down!" I was running out of patience.