I had arranged to meet Rick in front of Resurrection House, a social service agency for the homeless that's located on the picturesquely named Kumquat Court, just north of downtown. A friend who knew a number of homeless people had introduced me to him, and he had agreed to be my guide for a day and a night as I pretended to be homeless myself. I was dressed in a baggy pair of jeans, a white T-shirt, a battered green baseball cap, and a long-sleeved flannel shirt. I blended in pretty well, but I wished I'd worn a dirtier T-shirt.

Rick was late, so I spent the time watching people enter and leave the building. The men heavily outnumbered the women, and whites outnumbered blacks. There were very few Hispanics, which puzzled me until it was explained that most of the agencies require a pretty strict ID. Typically, the people had that reddened, leathery look that comes from spending too much time outdoors, and many had some sort of injury-a bandaged hand, a black eye, even a broken leg. Missing teeth were common. One woman in particular caught my eye. She had on a tight-fitting leopard-print top, and her breasts were different sizes. What might have been comic under other circumstances took on the air of an unhappy medical condition.

After half an hour, Rick had still not arrived and I was getting worried. As I debated what to do, a man rode up on his bicycle. Fiftyish, thin and beaten-looking, he sized me up and then began to ask questions about Resurrection House.

I explained what I knew. You could get food, they would wash your clothes, they gave you clothes if you needed them, you could take a shower. You could even receive phone calls.

We introduced ourselves. His name was Larry, and he had just gotten out of prison. "Where have you been sleeping?" I asked.

"Any old ditch I can find," he told me. But his luck had changed. He'd met a man who offered him a room, up on Ninth Street behind Popeyes Chicken, in exchange for mowing the grass and other chores. He hesitated a moment and then suggested that maybe we could share. There was something touching in Larry's hesitant offer, a reaching out for companionship and-even more important-an ally.

I said I would if my buddy Rick didn't show up, and then offered to watch Larry's bike as he went into Resurrection House to register. This, I was already learning, was the first rule of being homeless: Watch your stuff at all times.

Larry entered. I could see him at the desk, showing the woman his prison ID.

All of a sudden Rick came running up, almost 45 minutes late. "What happened?" I asked.

"I fell asleep behind a dumpster," he said.

What I soon learned about being homeless is that the simplest chore becomes a monumental undertaking. Today, Rick's problem was his ID. He had lent it to someone under vague circumstances-some sort of security deposit, it sounded like-and he had yet to get it back. Without it he could not get into Resurrection House ("the Res," as he called it) or the Salvation Army ("the Sally").

But he had a plan. If we went to the police department and declared it stolen, he could get another one. He had apparently used this ruse before and knew exactly how to do it. So I waved to Larry through the window. He came out and took possession of his bike, and Rick and I were off.

As we walked, he told me about himself. He was 27, from a working-class suburb of Detroit. His parents were divorced. His father, a Vietnam vet, was a factory worker nearing retirement. His stepmother was religious. He had not made contact with them lately and had no plans to do so; it would only prove what they had always thought-that he was a lazy bum.

We stopped at the St. Vincent de Paul soup kitchen for lunch. It seemed to be unique in that it didn't ask for ID; anybody who shows up gets a hot lunch, no questions asked. The day's menu included shepherd's pie, pasta salad, green beans, cookies for dessert and the weak orange drink that seems to be everywhere that food is offered to the homeless.

Rick was turning out to be surprisingly good company. He was gregarious and full of interesting questions. His manners were impeccable-it was "Yes, sir" and "Yes, ma'am." He knew everyone. When he introduced me, he told people, "His old lady kicked him out when she caught him smoking crack," an explanation accepted with no further questions. Indeed, several men nodded their heads ruefully. The same thing had happened to them.