Generic old white lady.

Ask me what she looked like? She was old and white. Kind of hunchbacked so I figure she was older than I am anyway.

So I’m sitting by the chess tables that nobody ever plays chess on. I’m having a smoke or two and doing everything else that I do best, which is pretty much nothing. Nobody is going to pay me for my busy thoughts, you know?

Generic old white lady shuffles up on her fat feet I mean nothing was fat about her but her feet and they were rolling out over the top of her artificial leather slip-ons but fuck it they still get her where she needs to go. She must’ve needed to get right up next to me and park her ass and she started talking.

You still smoke? My friend Tammy smoked she smoked Virgina Slims you know the real skinny ones (and she held her fingers about a millimeter apart and she squinted to give me a visual to help me understand skinny) and she smoked two or three packs a day she was like a chimney and she didn’t even slow down when the price went up because cigarettes used to be really cheap when I used to go to the store to for my father (pronounced faa-aww-thuh) it was just ten cents for a pack so it used to be real cheap but my father didn’t stop either and I don’t know if it was cancer that killed him but he was always coughing. It was definitely the cancer that took Tammy she was up in Methodist in a tent when God came for her and she was really nice but you know how people are they smoke themselves to death who was that actor you might be too young because you know everyone in Hollywood used to smoke but who was that actor oh John Wayne he smoked all the time and they kept taking parts of his lungs out it was so bad but my sister and I liked him we always watched the Westerns when we were girls my mother (muthuh) gave us each two nickels and sent us to the films there was a theater on 9th street where the grocery store is now but we always went and saw the westerns oh we loved the horses do you ever look at the horses in the stable here they are so beautiful but they look so sad. Anyway my sister died too and I miss her but I think it was the cigarettes she loved her cigarettes and sometimes she would take a drink too but not too much some people drink so much I don’t get it I never liked the taste. It’s funny you still smoke not too many people smoke anymore because people know but it reminds me of my friend Tammy I miss her but that cancer is so bad okay I gotta get to my shopping. Nice to talk to you I hate sitting inside all the time there’s nobody to talk to.

Takeaway: when you are lonely you can always walk outside and tell a stranger that they’re going to die.