The day was hot and sunny like most days were in California. It was a good time to eat outside. A car growled along the freeway and for a moment I thought it might be you. 

“Yes, it brings back memories. But old age plays tricks and I haven’t heard that sound for a very long time.” 

I asked the new boy what the date was and he said it was 29 September. “That makes tomorrow the thirtieth then.” He looked at me like young people do. “I guess it does,” he said kindly and went about clearing the breakfast remains. 

The new boy, who was called Trent, put a copy of The Hollywood Reporter in front of me. “I know you like reading the showbiz news, Joe.” I flicked through it but I only recognised old studio names. 

“The people that we once knew have gone and so did the good movies.”

I heard Trent talking to Maria, a Mexican girl who had been here for years. “I think Joe is talking to himself,” he said. “They all talk to themselves here,” she told him. “Or they talk to somebody who isn’t there. Sit with him for a while.”

“Did you hear that? They think I’m senile. Old age isn’t nice. The truth is, there aren’t many people to chat with these days. The ones who want to talk are strangers, but even they get up and go.” 

Trent sat at the table and lit a cigarette. He was in his early twenties and I suppose might have been considered handsome. He was blonde and blue-eyed like most boys around here. He hadn’t shaved and probably hadn’t slept. The cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth and I couldn’t help staring. “Is everything okay, Joe?” 

“Look at him. Remember when you used to do that with your cigarette?”

The boy made small talk. He needed to make old people feel part of this strange world, and wanted me to act like everything was normal. But I was lost to the memories that lived inside my head. 

“Are you looking at him? This boy cares nothing about how he looks but his soul shines. He is what you should have been.”

“So tomorrow is the 30th of September. Is that date important?” I’m roused from my thoughts and saw that Trent was waiting for an answer. 

“I want to tell him to get in his car and find a good road to kill himself. That way he will be remembered as he is now.”

A breeze blew across the fields and made the trees around us sway and whisper. 

“I knew that you couldn’t resist coming back to look.”

“Sometimes you die because living is not an option,” I told Trent. He looked confused. “I have known people who destroyed themselves to continue living.”

“What do you want me to say, Jim? What do you want me to say that I’ve not said a thousand times?”

“I don’t understand what you’re saying Joe.” Trent leant across the table and took my hands in his. “What is it that you’re trying to say?” I looked at his worried face and saw myself as a young man.

“A long time ago, I knew a boy about your age. He had everything and didn’t realise it. But he died and everything stopped.”

“Who was he, and what was he like?” Trent knew that I am an ex-smoker and offered me the cigarette. I took a drag but handed it back when I started coughing. 

“Are you listening, Jim? I don’t want to shatter an illusion but I’m still pissed with you, and it might do me good to tell the truth, but I know I’m going to lie again.”

“He was kind and gentle,” I said. “And very talented. He was one of the finest actors I ever saw.”

“Well that’s what the world chose to believe, isn’t it?”

I looked at Trent and realised that he was from a generation who cared nothing for the past.  When he was older, he might be interested in history and remember this conversation. He was supposed to be working and looked around to see if the bosses were watching. When he squinted, I saw a boy too vain to wear glasses. “I’m going back home to see my parents,” he said. “I haven’t seen them in months.” I was struck by his accent and asked where home might be? “I’m from Branson, Missouri, Joe.” 

“That street corner on Overland Avenue where we met. You rode a motorbike and made small talk. ‘I’m from Fairmount, Indiana,’ you told me, and then you asked me if I wanted a blow job.  Here’s another boy, far from home, in a place that promises everything, but gives nothing.”

Maria appeared and gave me my medication. Five tablets, three times a day. If I don’t take them I will die. Except that I’m on borrowed time anyway. 

“I shall see you in hell because that’s where people like us end up. You’ll still be a handsome son of a bitch and will grunt when I ask you something, and I’ll be an ugly old man. How is that fair?

“Remember when I told you I loved you? The next day you came around and sat staring at me. Not a word for an hour. Staring like a madman. And I looked back, trying to make you talk, but you wouldn’t say anything. Then you pissed in the corner of the apartment and left.”

Somebody was in trouble. There were sirens on the freeway. Police cars, ambulances, and fire trucks. A chopper flew overhead. Everyone was in a hurry to help someone who might be trapped in the wreckage of a car.

“Tomorrow is the 30th September, and seventy years on, I believe you deliberately crashed. Was it because of me? Did you intend to die? Did you think that they could put those fractured pieces back together again? Did you want to be immortal?