“I’ve never seen you wear a watch.”
“I had one I wore for years, but I…lost it,” he said absently. “This one is already annoying me, so it’s unlikely I’ll wear it much longer. However, it is telling me it’s getting perilously close to nine am. And here I sit, without my coffee and my newspapers.”
“Yes,” I smiled. “But you have M&Ms.”
I waved my hand under the dispenser again, heard the buzz, and five M&Ms dropped out. Except one bounced off my hand and on to the floor. I bent down to pick it up and popped it into my mouth.
The look of utter horror on E.G.’s face was hysterical.
“What?” I asked. “Five second rule.”
“Five second what?”
“It’s the rule. As long as it doesn’t spend more than five seconds on the floor, then it’s still good.”
“Is that some sort of…homeless rule?”
I couldn’t help it, I burst out laughing in his face.
“Yes, yes, it is. You’re not aware of the Homeless Association Board? It sets the rules for these sort of things. How long food is good even after it’s been tossed in the dumpster. Holiday tent decorations. You really have to monitor that stuff. You dotoo much and it’s just tacky. Brings down the whole homeless neighborhood.”
“You’ve made your point,” he sneered, trying to dismiss me.
“They asked me to run for the board, but the politics! You would be amazed. The drunks can’t get along with the meth-heads-”
“I get it,” he said, cutting me off. “Call me ridiculous, but I see no need to eat food off a space where my shoe has stepped.”
“Well, when you put it that way, it does sound a little gross,” I mused.
“Flowers!” he barked. “Is there a point to all of this? To that?” he asked, pointing at my red and green battery-operated M&M dispenser.
“I thought it would be fun for the office.”
It had been a silly impulse, really. I don’t even know what made me think of it. I’d been walking through the aisles of Costco, humming:
Check my Costco ID. Check it real good.
When I stopped at an end of the aisle display because the color caught my attention. It was fun and whimsical, and I had room in my life now for fun and whimsy.
If E.G. needed anything in his life…it was more fun and whimsy.
It had been over a month since he showed up at my apartment. Drunk and trying to escape his grief. I didn’t think about it too much, because, like we both agreed, we pretended it never happened.
Still, I couldn’t help but wonder who’s couch he’d slept on before he’d met me.
“I’m also certain I’ve made the point, on several occasions, I don’t do fun. And haven’t I explained how sugar, especially in the morning, is poison?”
But he was changing, I thought to myself. He relaxed more. Smiled more, even when he didn’t want to.
The other day I’d bought a box of donuts for us and there was zero freak out from him. When I’d offered him one, he man-splained how sugar in general was terrible for our overall health and starting the day with a sugary breakfast was a sure way to crash mid-afternoon. But when he bit into the chocolate frosted and groaned, I felt this massive sense of satisfaction.
He was changing. I was changing, of course I was changing. My whole life had gone from one of constant fear and uncertainty to routine and normalcy.
It had been like falling through some black hole into a parallel universe where you realized this was how other people lived. Fresh sheets and pillows whenever I wanted them, simply by doing the laundry. New clothes if I saw something I liked because there was money in my checking account to afford it.
I was starting to discover things I liked. Cheese. And things I hated. Kiwis.
I had a person in my life. Someone who relied on me, which brought its own kind of power.
