Enter at the end of the post Excuse me lady, do you have any spare change? I am hungry. When I heard him, I didn’t really hear him. His words were part of the clatter, like a car horn or someone yelling for a cab. They were, you could say, just noise-the kind of nuisance New Yorkers learn to tune out. So I walked right by him, as if he wasn’t there. But then, just a few yards past him, I stopped. And then and I’m still not sure why I did this-I came back. When Laura Schroff first met Maurice on a New York City street corner, she had no idea that she was standing on the brink of an incredible and unlikely friendship that would inevitably change both their lives. As one lunch at McDonald’s with Maurice turns into two, then into a weekly occurrence, Laura learns heart-wrenching details about Maurice’s horrific childhood. Sprinkled throughout the book is also Laura’s own story of her turbulent childhood. Every now and then, something about Maurice’s struggles reminds her of her past, how her father’s alcohol-induced rages shaped the person she became and, in a way, led her to Maurice. As…