The COPD club, they meet outside at the electrical box in the parking lot for the hotel. The building actually built a shelter for the smokers, but nobody likes to use it. Nowhere to sit.
They're all the same age, my age, but to look at them you get a widely varying picture of biological ages. 2 of them, barely able to walk, coughing up lungs. The other, my upstairs neighbour.
It's the water cooler of community housing.
Upstairs neighbour is on the outs with her boyfriend, she can't support him, he's not pulling his weight, he's bought groceries but he gets them at Dollarama, buys the cheap Neopolitan Ice Cream, she's had enough. He has to get a job.
This is rich, given it's been 30 years since she worked, on disability but she's never offered to explain just how or why...
And running into him, now inspired to get work, hilariously he's been working on the truck at the thrift shop, he's got to have a talk with her, they get along well enough, only - well, she's a handful and wants it all...
Since he's been out of the picture she's made me a "Friendship Bracelet", the kind with all sorts of various beads, colourful, the beads, plastic, wood, glass, some rocks, like what you might exchange at a Taylor Swift concert...
If the pink shirts didn't make me suspicious looking enough the bracelet will cement things.
I pop by to check in on the Other Neighbour, she's been on the down low, broke and in one of her self-pitying humours, her place slowly drifting into a messy oblivion, coffee table littered with empty canned cocktails and mini-liquors, she's stopped asking to borrow money as she has no way to repay it and so I just e-transfer her some cash, community housing means your pay cheque is community as well, which I don't mind in trifling sums but I have bills as well...
She let herself in this morning only to demand that I carry her table, outside on the landing for 2 weeks now, downstairs to donate to the thrift shop. Management must have sent her an email. I could see all this being "the helpful neighbour" growing old real quick...
***
The restaurant, busy ever night except (oddly enough) on Friday and Saturday. Last night, passing through, a refugee from Shambala, the streets are filled with these lost souls, loving the vibe, sleeping in the alleys and doorways, this one, clearly not yet come to his senses, dancing, looking at the menu, dancing some more, I’m too busy for this. I leave him alone, attend the paying customers, it’s a hectic night. When finally I get around to asking him if he’d like to order he tells me the …. looks good, and I ask - just to confirm - if he’s able to pay. He digs through his bag, and after a few minutes shows me a couple of rocks. Just rocks, not crystals, not polished, just river-worn rocks that somehow caught his fancy. Now he must know his audience, because I’m intrigued, but too busy for this at the moment, in the afternoon we could have talked but now I’m hopping, not the time, and so I send him packing and he takes it in good nature…
***
And, out for coffee, the town has a new superhero, the "Unicyclist", tall and made taller by the Unicycle, in full on leather biker gear, reflective motorcycle helmet with full visor, speeding down Ward on his electric unicycle, he makes it look easy, all you have to do is keep your balance...he'd make a great community safety officer, speeding around and administering Naloxone to all the sleeping beauties...