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ake up, Georgie boy.”

The cop gave the bottom of my shoe another sharp kick with the toe of his boot. I opened my eyes just enough to peer through the lashes, but I didn’t move yet. Start moving right away and you give up your dignity.

“Let’s go, George. You know you can’t block the sidewalk.”

I quietly started pulling my bags together and got to my feet. Dignity is one thing, but if you move too slow you just end up with a pissed-off cop. The young ones were especially easy to irritate, and this guy had only been around for less than a year.

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He liked to call me “Georgie boy.” I guess he figured it riled me up and showed some sort of dominance. I didn’t care either way. My name wasn’t even George. That was just something I told the police a few years back and no one cared enough to verify.

He was still talking while I gathered up my bags and loaded my blankets into my cart. I hadn’t bothered to learn this one’s name yet. I need to see they’re gonna stick around a while before I make the effort.

I grunted something to indicate I was listening and started pushing my cart down 25th Avenue while he was still talking. I’d been on the streets long enough to register when a response was expected and when they just wanted me to be somewhere else for a while. This was the latter. I probably scared a tourist. It happened a lot in this city.

The shopping cart rattled loudly on the uneven sidewalks. You think it’s rough when you’ve got one wobbly wheel in Kmart, try pushing a hundred pounds of your belongings while trying not to run into a jogger. For the most part, the path cleared in front of me like I was Moses leading my people. Few bothered to look directly at me. The only ones who ever looked me directly in the eye were the kids of tourists, and that only lasted until mom or dad told them that wasn’t polite. Then the whole family ignored me.

After a few minutes of walking, I could feel a shadow trailing behind me. I didn’t even need to turn and look. I just knew he was there. He was scruffy and light brown with a ragged, unkempt beard almost like we shared fashion tips. Small enough to avoid scaring folks, but big enough to take on a D.C. rat, the dog had been my companion since the beginning of summer.

I’m not sure where he came from or how we came to be a team. I woke up one morning under a tree that stands guard near the K Street Bridge, and there he was curled up a few feet away. I thought I woke up first, but now that I think back on it, I’m pretty sure he was looking through his lashes at me.

We’d been together since then, almost three months. Not every day. Some days he just isn’t around. I don’t know where he goes, and when I see him next he doesn’t say. I don’t figure it is any of my business. He doesn’t badger me when I come back from the soup kitchen to know the details of my life. I reckon I owe him the same courtesy. Living on the streets is hard and I can’t pretend that it ain’t. Wintertime can be especially rough, but you learn the tricks to survive. You know which churches will give you a warm place to stay and a nice meal with the minimum amount of preaching. You figure out which of your neighbors are just chatty crazy and which are more likely to stab you in the night if you don’t watch yourself.