she said, josh, "i love you." in her french accent. it was late night on the red bricked stairs outside her front door in beverly hills. she was set to leave to paris for the summer. we were not lovers. she was a beautiful french woman and i watched her two little boys. we'd play basketball, skateboard, soccer, and they'd swear at me like brothers should. it was a job that saved me for awhile, from loneliness and financial ruin. she'd cook us dinners and usually give me more of her ex husband's money at the end of the night than we'd agree upon.
i talk with steve about the homeless epidemic after bumping into each other in the library surrounded by homeless people. i am a few thousand dollars away but i talk about it like an observer. for now i am. he is a working actor who spends his free days weaving in and out of the same places i do, like the library, we are both searching but neither of us knows where to go to find it. somehow he and i became trapped into the same design in this part of town for this time.
i told her i loved her back, and did. she was a wild hearted aunt, a forbidden fruit borne out of our mutual desperation for decency. the rest of the world and our lives could be indecent and so we wouldn't be that way together. a silent agreement that neither of us ever spoke of, no matter the flattery we'd hurl into each other's red cheeks. she had those european cigarettes imported in by a guy she knew, lighter, fragrant, with the grisly photographic warnings plastered on em. at the end of many nights, we'd smoke em and talk about our disappointments, the boys would be asleep, and it would just be us until we'd say goodbye to go be with just ourselves.
