Ron was loading the smoker with Chicken and stoking the fire with wood chips, while brother Love taught me "one two look at my watch". It's a deceptively simple greeting.
"How does that go again?"
"One, two, look at my watch"
The one and two are accompanied by sort of, sideways high fives, not really a handshake...
So by the time I get my rhythm right, and I'm able to connect on the slaps, I've forgotten to look at my watch, which is hard to remember cause it doesn't even rhyme or make any sense.
But this kind of stuff can seem really important when you're eating barbecue under a huge faded rainbow mural, in the doorway of a derelict warehouse which was supposedly part of the scenery in "confederacy of dunces".
Pretty soon I'd mastered "one, two, look at my watch", and was fake checking the time like an old pro.
Speaking of old pros, Brother Love was a 50-something golf genius.
I don't know golf, and I'd never seen him play, but the way he and Ron were talking, I believe that Love could put a ball anywhere he wanted from absurd distances.
Brother Love had aspirations of joining the senior golf tour. He and Ron were always talking about it, and I said I'd make a demo video of him driving balls to the edge of the earth.
Brother Love lived in the warehouse, which is weird, because he was a smart talented guy who wasn't crazy or addicted, and he had a nice truck, if that's significant. It was a really leaky damp warehouse.
Anyway, the warehouse is going to be renovated, so he had to move out, and while he was staying temporarily at a friends house, he died of carbon monoxide poisoning.
I got the call from Ron over the holidays.
So I guess no golf video.
It's a little shocking.
The thing about city living, is the friends you make "by accident" people who you get to know, because they are around, more than they are the "type" of person you would get to know.
I'd seen Brother Love around, on and off while I'd been renovating the house across the street, but I'd only recently begun to get to know him, and I was a little disappointed that he was moving.
He was a really good guy. I'm lucky to have known him.
RIP
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