His other distinguishing feature, besides those pretty, golden eyes, is his ivory-white teeth. They stand perfectly even and ordered, moving, whenever he chews, like disciplined soldiers in a regiment. Upon smiling, Lazarus upsets viewers’ initial perception of him as yet another wretched, homeless soul. Many frown with apparent disbelief that a man of his station, with nothing and nobody, actually cares about dental hygiene. Yet Lazarus has vowed never to walk about with teeth so disagreeable they embarrass him. Black gums and brown, half-rotten molars are inexcusable, he believes, when a toothbrush is practically free. Toothpaste, too! At least baking soda. Shit! Who can’t get that? Being homeless is one thing, Lazarus always says: looking homeless is quite another.

Most days are spent watching cars, pickup trucks, and SUV’s go by. He imagines the lives of passengers, sitting at Thanksgiving dinners, gorging themselves and laughing around their abundance. Or perhaps fixing plates and going to separate rooms where they enjoy self-induced solitude. Either way, they drown in excess and that’s what almost killed Lazarus—the weight of excess—so he dropped it all and never looked back.

It wasn’t an easy decision. He’d never dreamed he’d sleep on the streets like some unknown vagabond. All he’d wanted was to simplify things, to stop wasting life’s energy on the accumulation of useless junk, but he’d built the expectation, and his family wouldn’t release him from it.

Deborah, his wife, didn’t understand why hating a job meant quitting it. “After all,” she explained, “Everyone hates their job, or some aspect of it, don’t they?” Lazarus didn’t respond. “What gives you the right simply to walk away?” That’s how the argument began. It ended with Lazarus toting a packed suitcase of clothes and toiletries, which, after kissing his son and daughter lightly on their foreheads, he carried through the front door. Deborah didn’t worry. She believed his good senses would return. But they never did. He simply walked into another life as if the previous had been a fleeting, momentary thought.