We have a mutually beneficial relationship. I buy her lunch so that she can eat a good meal every now and then and I can have the pleasure of her company and watch her eat.

One day after lunch I accompanied her to the Farmers Market and carried her basket for her just so I could watch her handling the fruit and vegetables.

Tonight on my way home from work I called to check on her. She said she was on her way out to the laundromat, so I carried her giant bag of laundry five blocks on my shoulder just so I could walk next to her and bask in her presence.

Sitting in an oddly comfortable hard plastic chair I watch her move between the washing machines and the sorting table and the token machine. She moves with grace and power and immense beauty, and as she bends over the washing machine I imagine standing behind her, my hands on her, her legs spread, the vibrations of the machine traveling through the two of us and out in to the world, perhaps naked, perhaps entering her, perhaps fucking.

The machines running, she sits down next to me, inches away, staring intently. "Shouldn't you be home with your family?" she asks, as she always asks, at lunch, at the Farmers Market, and now at the laundromat.

"Probably," I answer, as I always answer, "But it's not like they even notice when I'm gone."

"Maybe they just don't know how to tell you," is her standard response, along with the sympathetic clucking noises.

But I can tell, as I can always tell, from a deeply repressed twinkle in both her eyes, that she appreciates my choices.