The fedora tilts and it isn’t on the old man. It is Mendelssohn the trailer park owner, a reprehensible person with a classical name. A sheep’s face looks up with sunken, watery black eyes as he slams the door behind him. He is a sloppy, filthy thing, in a stained white wife-beater shirt and soiled plaid used car salesman slacks with misshapen loafers. He sports a chewing cigar in a mouth corner and a thin line of brown mess drips off chin and onto the filthy shirt. Mendelssohn is a symphony repulsive.
The wide man waddles down the stacked cinder blocks that serve as a front step. He removes the cigar, wipes his chin then cleans his hands on the used car salesman pants. “He ain’t here,” the bleat of a dying animal “and when you see him, tell him he owes me money.” He turns away from Roger and steps around the broken sidewalk. He stops, takes the cigar from his mouth, blocks one nostril and blows, then walks on. The filth bakes on the side of the trailer.