"Out” by Braden Spratt
Winner of the 2014-15 Saint Louis University Library Associates Undergraduate Writing Award
I’m out tonight.
I’m out With the chilling sidewalk beneath me and a frigid sky above me and a rags draped on me.
With a world that never stops to say “hi” moving around me and a fucked soul within me.
With: a Used Body and a Fractured Mind and a Drained Heart and Blue Toes and Achy Bones No Home No One No Home No Choice and No Shower No Home No Pride No Place No Peace No Home
The only possession I keep is hope. And a sick feeling whispers in my brain and tells me
I’m out tonight.
-Sophie Anne Wieczorek
Wasn’t there a rock there yesterday? I’m pretty sure there was, what asshole would move that rock? It’d been there for a week. Three more steps and I should pass the tar patch that looks like that jumpy animal from Australia. What were those fucking things called? He wondered to himself if it has an infant inside its pouch. Did the jackoff that laid that do it on purpose or was it an accident, or maybe... the government had placed the kangaroo there to distract him. He kept his eyes on the ground because there are cameras everywhere, and if I don’t keep my eyes down they might get my picture, and if they do that they might be able to clone me. Goose pimples began spreading over the course of his skin and he began to rub his hands over his arms to try and flatten the painful pin pricks because it’s so fucking cold out. A series of soft thumps resonated in his ears and he saw a large stone skittering for about four feet on the cracked asphalt in front of him; obviously, someone moved it there to make me kick it on his way to The Bridge. He picked up the stone and placed it in his right pocket with an unused bus ticket because they could try to take it from me for good. He moved his hands over the rough areas and appreciated the smooth and pushed down the sharp spots. He felt no pain; feeling had left his hands. He gripped the stone in his pocket. It was just large enough that it did not allow his thumb and middle finger to touch. It was just small enough that it didn’t cause any unseemly bump or hinder him.
A jogger dressed in neons rounded the corner of the block ahead of him and faced him. The chord from her headphones bounced in rhythm with her pony-tail, which shook like the pompoms his little sister had waved at the football games when they were little and his sister had smiled and hugged him and laughed when she saw him and hadn’t been afraid to talk to him. Jogger wore sunglasses even though it was cloudy out and kept her head locked forward. Jogger’s neon orange jacket disturbed him. He tried to keep his eyes pointed to the ground but it kept drawing them to it like a moth to a mother fucking flame. Jogger kept a crisp cadence. Her head remained locked. He stopped moving. The flame kept getting closer and he realized this isn’t fucking fair. The flame doesn’t move to the moth. His eyes became hollow orbs and his pupils dilated as a stock of epinephrine was released from the adrenal glands just above the kidneys and into his bloodstream. It’s cheating. Flames don’t move to the moth. I’m not a moth! I’m not a moth! I’m not a moth! “I’M NOT A MOTH, YOU CUNT!” He took a step toward Jogger and raised his wings. If asked, Jogger would have agreed he wasn’t a moth. She didn’t see a moth lunge at her--she saw a man that had more in common with an untamed pitbull than an average passerby. Jogger received her own stock of adrenaline and the tempo of her beats along the asphalt increased to a rapid staccato. Within moments Jogger had turned the next corner. She’d left behind a swirl of breath in the winter air that mixed with his and formed a romantic image that someone with the time to think about romantic images probably would have found very meaningful. He gave it no thought. He continued to The Bridge.
He hated going to The Bridge. Brooklyn sat across the water and Manhattan screamed behind him. Scores of people milled about him in cheap flannel, baggy sweats, and WalMart gloves that had been handed to them the night before by some soft-breasted lesbian in her mid fifties with short white hair wearing a chunky scarf and a heavy ash coat she’d had for twenty years because it was reliable and she didn’t “have a need for a new one with so many people out there that had so much less.” She would roll down the window of the Prius (she owned because fuel efficiency and protecting the environment were passions of hers--second only to helping those “abandoned by our community” and Downton Abbey) and coo lightly in a voice that wanted to sound like it had compassion, “Excuse me, I’m ______ with the Winter Warriors. Are you out tonight?” If You said “yes” she’d get out of the car and shake You’s hand and You would almost think she was greeting a friend she’d bumped into at the Starbucks You’d gotten kicked out of the week before. Then she’d ask if You wanted a ride. You would prolly say no (but if You said yes she’d take You to a gym at the elementary school where You attended as a child and have thirty beds in six rows of five, or five rows of six depending on how you look at it, where You could pass the night without worrying about the cold but instead worrying if the person in the bunk next to You is going to steal the garbage bag of items You had managed to scrape together) and then get asked if You needed blankets or clothes. You would get to touch the blankets and see which texture You preferred. You would have to decide if the fuzzy puce gloves went well with his or her skin tone and had a mature enough look, or if You should instead try the sleeker black ones because they had a classic look that wouldn’t go out of style.
“Hey, Charlie. Fucking cold, isn’t it?” a voice called and brought him back. He turned and saw her. He twisted his head away and quickened his pace forward.
“Charlie, slow down!”
Charlie slowed down but he didn’t turn his head. She was carrying the same blue backpack she had carried in high school with glittery pink letters SWA monogrammed on the back pocket. A small grey mutt followed Sophie as she walked, led by a thin rope. When Charlie met Sophie for the first time a few days ago he couldn’t help thinking about touching the poppies blooming on her cheeks and I bet it would feel so good to slide--“Hey, Sophie,” he said as she approached his side.
She grabbed his left arm and put it around her shoulder and slid her right arm around his waist. They walked in rhythm and became a single unit in the scores of people that waited for the food truck to arrive. She smelled like the girls locker room when they changed after volleyball practice and he’d accidentally walked in and immediately been pelted by towels and screams. She ignited a sensation in him to write a verse of poetry,, but she made him think roses. No, dumb fuck. Roses are too used, she looks like dawn on Easter morning. Or her smile feels like a clear fall day and someone’s getting married. But nothing seemed good enough. “Think, fucktard.”
“Huh?”
Stay by me. “Nothing, just, maybe we shouldn’t walk around together.”
“Stick by me, Charlie. I could use a man around here. Too many cocksuckers with ‘fuck me’ eyes on them. But no one messes with Charlie.”
“That Charlie’s a fucking maniac.” said the man sitting, leaning closer to an unidentifiable form under a cocoon of blankets, scarves and jackets. He watched Charlie walk with the girl by his side. “He got fired from Home Depot two years before for not being able to carry packages over fifty pounds and because his eyes can’t open much more than a crack. Everyone knows he’s the craziest motherfucker out here,” he pointed at Charlie and leaned even closer. The cocoon gave no response. “Shit, my balls have been clenched up against me non stop for a week. But yeah, that crazy shit will stand yelling at a wall for an hour and convince himself that the grocer at Walgreens has secretly taken his fingerprint so she can place them at the site of a bank robbery. One day I was talking to him, just shooting the shit. Scariest damn conversation of my life. He kept his hands tangled in his hair the entire time and kept moaning on about the systematic killing of the propiterians by the borswazin or something. I figure they’re from whatever batshit universe his mind lives in. Well he kept yelling about it then started punching the curb until his knuckles went bloody. Then he fell asleep. He didn’t lie down. He didn’t even close his eyes. I could see they were bloodshot and yellowed through the slits like he had been giving a personal screening of Hell. He was just gone. Fucking crazy, but it looks like the new girl doesn’t know it yet. She chose the wrong protector.” He looked over, the cocoon didn’t move. “Hey, better get up, looks like the foods here.” The cocoon stayed.
The collective moved suddenly into a singular mass as a large white van pulled in with the words BROOKLYN BRIDGE FOOD PROJECT.
A man stepped out of the van wearing a $109 dollar North Face jacket. The light bounced off his hair which was like wheat, being blown in the wind and then frozen in time, always bending but never breaking. The clouds had moved and the sun had reached the time of day when it begins t put a hazy yellow line around the border of each profile. “Everyone, get lined up quick. Sorry we’re late. We gotta get everyone through before the sun starts to set. Let’s go!”
Four like-haired boys between the ages of thirteen and nineteen got out of the van with boxes full of paper bags that contained a PB&J, a Capri Sun, and a small non recyclable bag of Bite-Size Oreos. Two long plastic tables materialized and moments later an assembly line of beneficence was established. There was a station for food, a station for bus tickets, and a station for handing out clothing. Charlie took his place in line with Sophie still on his arm. When she turned his chest pressed into his. ...not big but I bet they’re warm and could give a fill up my palm. The line milled down quickly and soon Sophie was at the first station.
“Hello, I don’t think I’ve seen you here before,” the man said as he handed her a bag.
“Yeah, I’m fresh in off the bus.”
“Where are you from?”
“I came up from Atlanta.”
“Why come up here?”
Why the hell is he asking so many questions?
“I thought people might like my work better up here. I write and draw. People weren’t too welcoming down there.”
“Are you out tonight?
“In a couple ways.”
The man squinted.
“Yes, I’ll be out tonight”
“Who’s holding up the line?!” Yelled a former nurse, ten people back.
Who the fuck is talking to her like that?
“It’ll be mighty cold tonight”
“Isn’t it every night?”
Why does she keep talking to him? Is he undercover?
“Fucking move!” called out a veteran, eight people back.
“DON’T YELL AT HER!”
The crowd under the bridge went quiet. Sophie looked at Charlie appreciatively.
“If you want to go in stick around, we can drive you to Providence House.”
“Nah, I’ve been in one of those places before. I’ll take my chances out here.”
The line began to move and the cars continued to hum above them. “Charlie, good to see you again. Here you go.” He handed him a baggie of food.
“Thank you.”
“Actually, this is my final project to be an Eagle Scout,” Charlie overheard the boy half his age telling Sophie. “We’ve been doing it all winter.”
“That’s so cool.”
No one does something for nothing.
“I actually have one of my pieces in my bag, if you’d like to read it.” She slid her backpack down her shoulder. The young scout’s eyes traveled from her shoulder to her breast to her hips. Charlie saw him wanting to rip off her shirt and plow her there on the table. Right in front of him. He gets her and everything else. No, fuck, no, no NO NO NO. Charlie took the edge of the table and lifted it in the same motion a barbell curl is performed. Twenty-eight scarves, thirty-six hats, and forty-nine pairs of miscellaneously sized mittens fell to the floor as the young man took three terrified steps back and Charlie took three enraged steps toward him and grabbed the two fistfuls of his $80 Eddie Bauer slim-fit winter jacket with the detachable hood.
“Charlie!”
“Charlie, step back. Let go, Charlie. Drew, get out your phone. Call the police.”
“Charlie, let go.”
“Charlie. We’ll have you tonight. Your ass is ours.”
Charlie let out a yell and pushed the young man into the van. Then he turned and ran. Sophie followed, pulling the mutt along behind her. They ran along Pearl Street and kept heading south until they were passing Wall Street and running by the waterfront on the piers. Sophie dropped the leash but the small mutt followed closely behind.
“Charlie slow down. Stop for a second.”
He turned and looked at her and saw that you’re glowing. And when I see you glow I feel like I’m glowing. He stepped closer to her until there was only a foot between them, then turned and walked to a bench overlooking the river. She followed and sat next to him. The mutt barked quietly and sniffed at their heels. They sat in silence until the sun had set and then they sat for a couple hours more. Their faces shone with light that reflected off the icy water which reflected the light of the dead moon that was in turn reflecting light from an indifferent sun.
“Charlie, I’m worried for you, I’m afraid you might never know how I feel.”
“Can you say that again?”
“I think I love you. And I’m afraid you might not always be in control. We should try and find-” she was cut off as Charlie grabbed her head and pulled his mouth onto hers. Her mouth locked into his and he felt her respond to his touch while she tried to push him off of her. Their chests had created a cage for her arms and she could only shove weakly away from him. She pulled her head back and he followed her and continued to kiss her passionately as the city melted away around them. He pulled back and smiled at her.
“Stop! Charlie, let me keep you with me. I’ll put my hand on top of yours as it rests on the gear shift in our car. We’ll STOP! HELP!” He tried to kiss her again and she threw her head forward into his and heard a small crack that could have been a twig snapping in half but was his nose breaking.
He look a step back, stunned. “You too?”
She turned to run and he grabbed her arm and pulled her back into him. He understood the consequences of this choice when he felt her left heel dig into his left foot. He still had a tight hold around her chest as she struggled and the mutt yipped at his heels. He reached into his pocket with his other hand and grabbed the rock. He brought it down directly over her right ear. She stopped struggling.
He carried Sophie over to a bench and laid her down, faced away from the street. This is my fault I let her close they’re all in it together no one can be close I should move on. The mutt followed him for a block before he kicked it. It yelped sharply as it ran down an alley and away from him. He walked along the pier and rubbed the ticket in his pocket.
Winner of the 2014-15 Saint Louis University Library Associates Undergraduate Writing Award
I’m out tonight.
I’m out With the chilling sidewalk beneath me and a frigid sky above me and a rags draped on me.
With a world that never stops to say “hi” moving around me and a fucked soul within me.
With: a Used Body and a Fractured Mind and a Drained Heart and Blue Toes and Achy Bones No Home No One No Home No Choice and No Shower No Home No Pride No Place No Peace No Home
The only possession I keep is hope. And a sick feeling whispers in my brain and tells me
I’m out tonight.
-Sophie Anne Wieczorek
Wasn’t there a rock there yesterday? I’m pretty sure there was, what asshole would move that rock? It’d been there for a week. Three more steps and I should pass the tar patch that looks like that jumpy animal from Australia. What were those fucking things called? He wondered to himself if it has an infant inside its pouch. Did the jackoff that laid that do it on purpose or was it an accident, or maybe... the government had placed the kangaroo there to distract him. He kept his eyes on the ground because there are cameras everywhere, and if I don’t keep my eyes down they might get my picture, and if they do that they might be able to clone me. Goose pimples began spreading over the course of his skin and he began to rub his hands over his arms to try and flatten the painful pin pricks because it’s so fucking cold out. A series of soft thumps resonated in his ears and he saw a large stone skittering for about four feet on the cracked asphalt in front of him; obviously, someone moved it there to make me kick it on his way to The Bridge. He picked up the stone and placed it in his right pocket with an unused bus ticket because they could try to take it from me for good. He moved his hands over the rough areas and appreciated the smooth and pushed down the sharp spots. He felt no pain; feeling had left his hands. He gripped the stone in his pocket. It was just large enough that it did not allow his thumb and middle finger to touch. It was just small enough that it didn’t cause any unseemly bump or hinder him.
A jogger dressed in neons rounded the corner of the block ahead of him and faced him. The chord from her headphones bounced in rhythm with her pony-tail, which shook like the pompoms his little sister had waved at the football games when they were little and his sister had smiled and hugged him and laughed when she saw him and hadn’t been afraid to talk to him. Jogger wore sunglasses even though it was cloudy out and kept her head locked forward. Jogger’s neon orange jacket disturbed him. He tried to keep his eyes pointed to the ground but it kept drawing them to it like a moth to a mother fucking flame. Jogger kept a crisp cadence. Her head remained locked. He stopped moving. The flame kept getting closer and he realized this isn’t fucking fair. The flame doesn’t move to the moth. His eyes became hollow orbs and his pupils dilated as a stock of epinephrine was released from the adrenal glands just above the kidneys and into his bloodstream. It’s cheating. Flames don’t move to the moth. I’m not a moth! I’m not a moth! I’m not a moth! “I’M NOT A MOTH, YOU CUNT!” He took a step toward Jogger and raised his wings. If asked, Jogger would have agreed he wasn’t a moth. She didn’t see a moth lunge at her--she saw a man that had more in common with an untamed pitbull than an average passerby. Jogger received her own stock of adrenaline and the tempo of her beats along the asphalt increased to a rapid staccato. Within moments Jogger had turned the next corner. She’d left behind a swirl of breath in the winter air that mixed with his and formed a romantic image that someone with the time to think about romantic images probably would have found very meaningful. He gave it no thought. He continued to The Bridge.
He hated going to The Bridge. Brooklyn sat across the water and Manhattan screamed behind him. Scores of people milled about him in cheap flannel, baggy sweats, and WalMart gloves that had been handed to them the night before by some soft-breasted lesbian in her mid fifties with short white hair wearing a chunky scarf and a heavy ash coat she’d had for twenty years because it was reliable and she didn’t “have a need for a new one with so many people out there that had so much less.” She would roll down the window of the Prius (she owned because fuel efficiency and protecting the environment were passions of hers--second only to helping those “abandoned by our community” and Downton Abbey) and coo lightly in a voice that wanted to sound like it had compassion, “Excuse me, I’m ______ with the Winter Warriors. Are you out tonight?” If You said “yes” she’d get out of the car and shake You’s hand and You would almost think she was greeting a friend she’d bumped into at the Starbucks You’d gotten kicked out of the week before. Then she’d ask if You wanted a ride. You would prolly say no (but if You said yes she’d take You to a gym at the elementary school where You attended as a child and have thirty beds in six rows of five, or five rows of six depending on how you look at it, where You could pass the night without worrying about the cold but instead worrying if the person in the bunk next to You is going to steal the garbage bag of items You had managed to scrape together) and then get asked if You needed blankets or clothes. You would get to touch the blankets and see which texture You preferred. You would have to decide if the fuzzy puce gloves went well with his or her skin tone and had a mature enough look, or if You should instead try the sleeker black ones because they had a classic look that wouldn’t go out of style.
“Hey, Charlie. Fucking cold, isn’t it?” a voice called and brought him back. He turned and saw her. He twisted his head away and quickened his pace forward.
“Charlie, slow down!”
Charlie slowed down but he didn’t turn his head. She was carrying the same blue backpack she had carried in high school with glittery pink letters SWA monogrammed on the back pocket. A small grey mutt followed Sophie as she walked, led by a thin rope. When Charlie met Sophie for the first time a few days ago he couldn’t help thinking about touching the poppies blooming on her cheeks and I bet it would feel so good to slide--“Hey, Sophie,” he said as she approached his side.
She grabbed his left arm and put it around her shoulder and slid her right arm around his waist. They walked in rhythm and became a single unit in the scores of people that waited for the food truck to arrive. She smelled like the girls locker room when they changed after volleyball practice and he’d accidentally walked in and immediately been pelted by towels and screams. She ignited a sensation in him to write a verse of poetry,, but she made him think roses. No, dumb fuck. Roses are too used, she looks like dawn on Easter morning. Or her smile feels like a clear fall day and someone’s getting married. But nothing seemed good enough. “Think, fucktard.”
“Huh?”
Stay by me. “Nothing, just, maybe we shouldn’t walk around together.”
“Stick by me, Charlie. I could use a man around here. Too many cocksuckers with ‘fuck me’ eyes on them. But no one messes with Charlie.”
“That Charlie’s a fucking maniac.” said the man sitting, leaning closer to an unidentifiable form under a cocoon of blankets, scarves and jackets. He watched Charlie walk with the girl by his side. “He got fired from Home Depot two years before for not being able to carry packages over fifty pounds and because his eyes can’t open much more than a crack. Everyone knows he’s the craziest motherfucker out here,” he pointed at Charlie and leaned even closer. The cocoon gave no response. “Shit, my balls have been clenched up against me non stop for a week. But yeah, that crazy shit will stand yelling at a wall for an hour and convince himself that the grocer at Walgreens has secretly taken his fingerprint so she can place them at the site of a bank robbery. One day I was talking to him, just shooting the shit. Scariest damn conversation of my life. He kept his hands tangled in his hair the entire time and kept moaning on about the systematic killing of the propiterians by the borswazin or something. I figure they’re from whatever batshit universe his mind lives in. Well he kept yelling about it then started punching the curb until his knuckles went bloody. Then he fell asleep. He didn’t lie down. He didn’t even close his eyes. I could see they were bloodshot and yellowed through the slits like he had been giving a personal screening of Hell. He was just gone. Fucking crazy, but it looks like the new girl doesn’t know it yet. She chose the wrong protector.” He looked over, the cocoon didn’t move. “Hey, better get up, looks like the foods here.” The cocoon stayed.
The collective moved suddenly into a singular mass as a large white van pulled in with the words BROOKLYN BRIDGE FOOD PROJECT.
A man stepped out of the van wearing a $109 dollar North Face jacket. The light bounced off his hair which was like wheat, being blown in the wind and then frozen in time, always bending but never breaking. The clouds had moved and the sun had reached the time of day when it begins t put a hazy yellow line around the border of each profile. “Everyone, get lined up quick. Sorry we’re late. We gotta get everyone through before the sun starts to set. Let’s go!”
Four like-haired boys between the ages of thirteen and nineteen got out of the van with boxes full of paper bags that contained a PB&J, a Capri Sun, and a small non recyclable bag of Bite-Size Oreos. Two long plastic tables materialized and moments later an assembly line of beneficence was established. There was a station for food, a station for bus tickets, and a station for handing out clothing. Charlie took his place in line with Sophie still on his arm. When she turned his chest pressed into his. ...not big but I bet they’re warm and could give a fill up my palm. The line milled down quickly and soon Sophie was at the first station.
“Hello, I don’t think I’ve seen you here before,” the man said as he handed her a bag.
“Yeah, I’m fresh in off the bus.”
“Where are you from?”
“I came up from Atlanta.”
“Why come up here?”
Why the hell is he asking so many questions?
“I thought people might like my work better up here. I write and draw. People weren’t too welcoming down there.”
“Are you out tonight?
“In a couple ways.”
The man squinted.
“Yes, I’ll be out tonight”
“Who’s holding up the line?!” Yelled a former nurse, ten people back.
Who the fuck is talking to her like that?
“It’ll be mighty cold tonight”
“Isn’t it every night?”
Why does she keep talking to him? Is he undercover?
“Fucking move!” called out a veteran, eight people back.
“DON’T YELL AT HER!”
The crowd under the bridge went quiet. Sophie looked at Charlie appreciatively.
“If you want to go in stick around, we can drive you to Providence House.”
“Nah, I’ve been in one of those places before. I’ll take my chances out here.”
The line began to move and the cars continued to hum above them. “Charlie, good to see you again. Here you go.” He handed him a baggie of food.
“Thank you.”
“Actually, this is my final project to be an Eagle Scout,” Charlie overheard the boy half his age telling Sophie. “We’ve been doing it all winter.”
“That’s so cool.”
No one does something for nothing.
“I actually have one of my pieces in my bag, if you’d like to read it.” She slid her backpack down her shoulder. The young scout’s eyes traveled from her shoulder to her breast to her hips. Charlie saw him wanting to rip off her shirt and plow her there on the table. Right in front of him. He gets her and everything else. No, fuck, no, no NO NO NO. Charlie took the edge of the table and lifted it in the same motion a barbell curl is performed. Twenty-eight scarves, thirty-six hats, and forty-nine pairs of miscellaneously sized mittens fell to the floor as the young man took three terrified steps back and Charlie took three enraged steps toward him and grabbed the two fistfuls of his $80 Eddie Bauer slim-fit winter jacket with the detachable hood.
“Charlie!”
“Charlie, step back. Let go, Charlie. Drew, get out your phone. Call the police.”
“Charlie, let go.”
“Charlie. We’ll have you tonight. Your ass is ours.”
Charlie let out a yell and pushed the young man into the van. Then he turned and ran. Sophie followed, pulling the mutt along behind her. They ran along Pearl Street and kept heading south until they were passing Wall Street and running by the waterfront on the piers. Sophie dropped the leash but the small mutt followed closely behind.
“Charlie slow down. Stop for a second.”
He turned and looked at her and saw that you’re glowing. And when I see you glow I feel like I’m glowing. He stepped closer to her until there was only a foot between them, then turned and walked to a bench overlooking the river. She followed and sat next to him. The mutt barked quietly and sniffed at their heels. They sat in silence until the sun had set and then they sat for a couple hours more. Their faces shone with light that reflected off the icy water which reflected the light of the dead moon that was in turn reflecting light from an indifferent sun.
“Charlie, I’m worried for you, I’m afraid you might never know how I feel.”
“Can you say that again?”
“I think I love you. And I’m afraid you might not always be in control. We should try and find-” she was cut off as Charlie grabbed her head and pulled his mouth onto hers. Her mouth locked into his and he felt her respond to his touch while she tried to push him off of her. Their chests had created a cage for her arms and she could only shove weakly away from him. She pulled her head back and he followed her and continued to kiss her passionately as the city melted away around them. He pulled back and smiled at her.
“Stop! Charlie, let me keep you with me. I’ll put my hand on top of yours as it rests on the gear shift in our car. We’ll STOP! HELP!” He tried to kiss her again and she threw her head forward into his and heard a small crack that could have been a twig snapping in half but was his nose breaking.
He look a step back, stunned. “You too?”
She turned to run and he grabbed her arm and pulled her back into him. He understood the consequences of this choice when he felt her left heel dig into his left foot. He still had a tight hold around her chest as she struggled and the mutt yipped at his heels. He reached into his pocket with his other hand and grabbed the rock. He brought it down directly over her right ear. She stopped struggling.
He carried Sophie over to a bench and laid her down, faced away from the street. This is my fault I let her close they’re all in it together no one can be close I should move on. The mutt followed him for a block before he kicked it. It yelped sharply as it ran down an alley and away from him. He walked along the pier and rubbed the ticket in his pocket.