And the woman said to the homeless man

I was sitting on this deck, on the top level, overlooking the lake. It used to be "exclusive" to people eating at this fancy restaurant, but the owners of that restaurant got caught up in some human trafficking and prostitution scandal, and had to close shop. So now the deck and all it's tables and chairs have become the ideal hang-out spot for bored teenagers, middle aged men with medical weed, and of course, the classic bum. 

Today was mostly bums (middle-aged pot heads are working at the moment, and the teenagers are... mostly... at school), and me. The deck is right by the parking-lot, there's just some fancy fencing and what used to be fountains and planters in-between the deck and the curb. The fencing has a gate, so if you were eating on the deck at the restaurant, you could just leave through the gate once you've paid your bill. 

I'm a fairly little person (at 88 lbs? Fairly?) so I was sitting up on the gate swinging back and forth, back and forth, pushing against the fence with my moccasined feet as I came near it, and leaning forward just enough to keep me from crashing into the fencing behind me. This bum was sitting in a chair on the parking-lot side of the fencing and smoking a cigarette. On the deck-side, several bums were reading, sleeping, smoking, or just staring out to space. And there was one other guy, who was obviously drunk but didn't look like a bum, slouched against one of those tall gas heat lamps. 

I find it to be a pretty comfortable place. I like being around the bums, though I mostly just come for the view, but usually some pretty interesting stuff goes down at such a location in a resort "community" like this one that borders some rural mountain towns. 

There was a newer Lexus SUV parked right infront of the bum in the chair, all clean and shiny and black. Not a strange site in this area, most people seem to be pretty well off, for the most part. You could see the camel-coloured leather interior through the windshield, and lots of shiny dangly things (probably angels?) hanging from the rear-view mirror. A woman came out of the dry cleaners a few shops down, and stretched out her arm and made several clicks to her remote controlled car key. The Lexus made a "click!" and it's lights came on. This woman was about five/five, and dressed pretty well, with some designer leather purse, probably Gucci or something. 

She approached the car, bagged dry cleaning in hand, and was about to open the back passenger side door when the bum in the chair said, "Hey lady, spare some change?"
The bum was pretty much the standard thirty-​something bum. Five-o'clock shadow at ten in the morning, overall smell of beer, army cap and this grey hoodie with holes in the elbows, and a military surplus pack. He could probably clean up pretty nice. 

The woman, still holding the door handle, said in a sweet polite voice "God will provide." Then she opened the door, and hung up her dry cleaning on one of those hook things. I was about a whole two feet from the bum, dressed as shabbily as i was, she may have thought that I was following him around, bumming too. 

"What if God sent you here to provide the guy a few bucks, and not just to pick up your dry cleaning?" I asked, still swinging on the gate. "You know, religious types say that God works in mysterious ways and has a reason for everything. You're probably only here so you could give this guy a few bucks. That could be the only reason you even went out today. The only reason your clothes got dirty, maybe the only reason you exist, is to give this guy a few bucks." 

The woman probably thought I was crazy, after staring at me looking scared and puzzled, she shook her head and said shouldn't I be in school today. i said "No, I'm graduated." She shook her head some more and walked behind her car to get in, rather than walk in front and touch toes with the bum. She drove away.

"You really think that?" The bum asked, turning toward me. His breath was like cigarettes and booze all thrown in with the dumpster. "You think the only reason she exists is to give me some money?" He laughed a little, his teeth were stained a golden yellow. "I think, that she probably doesn't even exist at all, really. She's probably fake, just like everything and everyone else."

He laughed. "You think we're fake, huh?"
"No, I think that at this moment, we're probably the only two people are real. Only because we're here, we're really here, right now, and we're not going anywhere."
"Huh."
"But if she was real, and I was wrong, she's probably gonna die soon."
"You think?"
"Yeah. She didn't give you money, and that's the thing that would have saved her life. But she blew her chance. So now she's gonna be taken out."
"You're kind of crazy."
"I probably am. But that's why I'm here, to be crazy. As soon as I stop being crazy, I'll probably die. It's just how it is."
"That's a pretty sad way of thinking."
"I'm happy with it."



Tk