One
Lisa had seen him before. The homeless man on the other side of the road as they were driving on the opposite side. He was holding up a sign that said NEED MONEY TO MAKE IT BACK HOME. In front of him he had a blanket laying upon the grass, but Lisa couldn't see what it was he was offering. What struck her most was how young he appeared, and she immediately wondered what circumstances in life would have brought him to such a position. She also thought that it could possibly be scammer she had heard of people pretending to be struggling in order to earn some extra cash. This was unacceptable in Lisa's eyes, not when people with very real problems existed in this world. He had been there the whole summer. If he was a fraud she figured someone would have found him out by now. There were a few times that she caught sight of him playing a guitar sitting cross legged on another worn blanket strumming away. She was never close enough to hear the music, just the motions.
"What do you see out there?" Her father asked her. He was riding shotgun and he was now blowing a puff of smoke out of the open crack of the window.
"A homeless guy. He's young."
"Is he good looking?"
She turned toward him playfully for a moment, "He's homeless."
"They are people too you know."
"You know what I mean." She shook her head and kept her full line of sight on the road ahead. She flipped her turn signal on and moved to the right most lane before turning the blinker on again to pull into the gas station.
"We're gonna be late to the movie you know?" Her father reminded her.
Lisa pulled up to a pump and went about the business of selecting the unleaded fuel and removing the gas cap. She sighed as she watched her money tick away cent by cent, and dollar by dollar.
The passenger window was going fully down, and her father flicked the cigarette out onto the pavement and stuck his head out the window to look back at her. "Hurry. We have maybe five minutes."
"We're only going to miss the previews? She reminded him as she returned the nozzle, and replaced the gas cap.
As she rushed passed him he said, "Best Part."
Inside she was relieved to see there was no line. She told the clerk the amount and swiped her card, and was no sooner rushing back out to the car. The engine turned, and she put the car in drive and they were off again.
"That's gotta be a record." Her father said.
"I know right, there's no one out today." After a stop light and a couple stop signs, and a few turns they arrived at the theater and Lisa began power walking to the front doors. When she made it she turned around to see her father simply strolling toward her puffing on another cigarette.
"We need to hurry, we're gonna miss the previews, won't have any good seats." She said imitating her father in an overly dramatic whiney voice. He was smiling as he took yet another drag and he stopped next to one of the black tower ash trays and he slowly dragged on it again. "I hope you know what a hypocrite you are."
He nodded and pushed the cigarette through the ash tray's hole. "That's what your mom kept tellling me."
"It's not fair to bring her into this debate when she can't defend herself."
"I'm sure she's taking my side right now." He pressed his index and middle finger to his lips and raised them up to the sky.
They were returning down the same route they had come before and had just passed the same gas station when her father started up again, "I'm not saying it was bad."
"I know." She said slightly annoyed.
"It just could have used less of that computer generated crap."
"I agree."
"Then how did you like it?" He said astonished. He was opening his pack of cigarettes as they stopped at the traffic light.
"Hey, you had your three for the day." Lisa said as she snagged the pack away from him.
"Are you counting the one I smoked before the movie, or whatever you call that shit." He pointed at the theater somewhere off in the distance with his thumb over his shoulder.
"You're the one who chose to smoke them in such quick succession, don't put that on me." Lisa stuffed the pack into her coat pocket as the light turned green. They were in area of the local mall, a big yellow Best Buy sign hung from the outer wall of the building on their right, and on their left the first entrance to the mall and a traffic light ahead. This one was on yellow but the car ahead had been going to slow to make it through it before it turned red. The car ahead went through anyways and received the annoyed sound of car horns from the cross traffic.
"Dumbasses." Lisa's father remarked.
"Mmm-hmm." She agreed. Her eyes were then turning to the divider in the mall parking lot where the homeless man had been standing with his sign. He wasn't there. She looked down at the clock and showed 5:15 in faded green numbers. It made sense that he wouldn't be there she figured, she seldom seen him out there after four.
"It's green." Her father said, and then an car horn honked behind her to tell her as well. She continued driving. "Something on your mind?" He asked her.
"Nothing, just zoning out I guess." She smiled timidly and kept her eyes forward.
"Need to stop smokin' the pot. Drugs'll do that to you."
"And you'd know first hand, wouldn't you?"
"Of course, weed, coke, uppers, downers, shrooms, you name it I done it." Her father began rolling his window down, "But I didn't know what it did back then till I tried it. Now that I know you can't."
"But you had fun first?"
He shook his head, "Doesn't matter, I didn't in the end. So you don't get none."
"You're depriving me of valuable life experiences you know." She said as she turned down a side street.
"Why do you need to have those?"
The home was about five miles from the mall and they pulled into the driveway sometime soon after. As they stepped of the car her father said, "You know i've never done coke right?"
"Yes daddy I know you've never done coke."
"You still can't though. If you think you will you have to let me test it first." He shut his door and they walked up the steps of the porch. "I did like that one scene, with the girl."
"Sure you did, she showed her tits." She turned the key, "Why wouldn't you like that?"
As they stepped inside he continued, "I haven't liked just tits since I was in high school. And no it wasn't that scene, it was when she beat the shit out of that guy in the space station." He said seriously as he threw off his jacket on the back of a dining room chair.
Lisa did the same with her coat on a different chair. "What do you want for dinner tonight?"
"Are the options the same as last night?"
"If by the same you mean spaghetti or spaghetti. Then, yes, its the same as last night."
"Both those options are horrible, spaghetti it is then." He went to a cupboard and pulled out a pan and filled it up with water. He twisted the dial on the stove and the flamed ignited on the burner and he placed the pot on top. As he passed her, as she grabbed a box of spaghetti, he placed his hands on her shoulders and kissed her cheek, "My work here is done. I'm gonna watch American Idol."
Lisa sighed. "Why do you watch that crap?"
"Because I had dreams once darling, I had dreams once." He said as he pulled out a can of beer from the refridgerator. "I'll make sure to turn the surround up so you can hear every last note."
"Let me grab my headphones first." She was turning the can opener on the spaghetti sauce can, when that was done she dumped the contents in another pot and placed it atop a burner that she then switched on.
On the other side of the wall she heard the familiar voice of Ryan Seacrest and she sighed again. "He likes hot young girls beating the shit out of people, and blood and guts, but he likes American Idol." She said to herself, "That makes perfect sense." Soon the water was boiling, and she poured the spaghetti in.
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