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Looking back on it, Philip came to realize that that entire month leading up to the leg incident had been nothing special, if not dismal. Up until the three days before he woke up on his lawn, in fact, he had wanted nothing more than the just live out his days doing fairly little, solitary and quiet in his 3 room house in Pacifica, the front yard surprisingly well-kept considering he did nothing to keep it up. His life was, without being sad, empty. He had no love, and didn’t look. His waking days were spent working in a decrepit independent film theatre in the Tenderloin district, and his nights were spent at the bar or alone at home, selling drugs occasionally when times were tight, but mostly just carrying on as best he could– which, as it turned out, didn’t involve too much action. Rather than feeling a void, however, until recently Philip hadn’t worried himself with what could be: after all, what could be didn’t matter, only what was, and what was was just fine by him. He didn’t have any hobbies or pets, but he did enjoy occasionally driving to Fort Baker right before sunset, when the breakers from the bay would come crashing into the rocks, splintering and spraying all over the tourists and other sightseers drawn to it’s destructive beauty.
His co-workers at the theatre, as it turned out, were much on the same page as he was. Many were dropouts and other bohemians who, rather than pursue a career, prefered to smoke weed, doodle, and talk about how they loved the horrible state of things in demure tones. His boss, an alcoholic, didn’t tend to be around very often, even when things went wrong. Then again, the theatre’s patronage, a steady torrent of around 5 or six senior citizens nightly, didn’t cause too much of a scene, except once when one, a tottery old man named Clarence, toppled headfirst from a fire escape into the arms of a crack-addled hobo. Needless to say, the action was short-lived, leaving the hobo bruised and deranged and poor Clarence with a brain hemhorrage, but it was enough to be writ as history within the walls of the ancient building. The building itself seemed, much like both its patrons and its employees, to be going absolutely nowhere. Dubbed “The Tree of Life” by one hippie or another in the late 60′s, it’s art-deco interior was in bad shape, and the architect who designed it must’ve had only one leg, because from the outside the entire building seemed to totter precariously on the edge of the cracked sidewalk. The locals hung around under its many eaves when it rained, smoking cigarettes and looking from side to side as if expecting some sort of attack, but never ventured into the building it seemed, not that any of the employees minded, or blamed them.
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