*
On the way home from his morning jog, Albert Keech noticed a small crowd by the alley. His sneakered feet padding on the pavement in perfect synchronization, he sped up, rejuvenated by the thought that the tart might be naked again. As he came closer, he realized they weren’t looking, they were listening. A musician? No. It was a voice, a little girl’s voice, sweet, innocent and melodic, saying something about god and the nature of the human psyche. It was an odd, but compelling dissonance; high minded pseudo-intellectual phrases on a too-young tongue.
When the crowd shifted, Keech saw his tart. She was standing on a garbage can, reading. The girlish voice was hers. It was all he could do to keep from laughing. For a moment, he didn’t even think about sex.
Instead, he tried to absorb what she was saying, rolling it around in his head the way a connoisseur might mull the first sip of a rare wine. The experience was all but destroyed when a drunken street man, smelling of piss and decay, touched Keech on the shoulder.
“Excuse me, do you have spare change?”
Keech turned to him.
“Why on earth would I give you money?” Keech asked.
“So I can eat, stay alive.”
Keech’s eyes narrowed.
“Why would I want to keep you alive? If all the poor, disgusting people like you were dead, no one would be poor and disgusting anymore,” Keech said.
The beggar misinterpreted.
“You want to kill me?”
He took a sad swing at Keech. Keech grabbed the beggar’s shaking hand and held it motionless.
“Idiot,” Keech said, “Did I say I wanted to kill you? And even if I did, does that mean I would kill you, here on a crowded street? Can’t you even distinguish between reality and some words?”
The beggar stared at him, confused and frightened. Keech was about to do something rash when he caught a glimpse of the electronics store, its window full of televisions. All of them flashed the bright red words, “This is it!” in reference to some soft drink.
Standing there, the beggar’s vibrating hand locked in his own, the tart’s girlish voice singing in his ears, Keech had an epiphany. He thought about the untold score of images that danced through the heads of millions as they sipped their sodas. He wondered how many, if only for a second, remembering this gaudy commercial on some hidden level, really thought that the soda was “it.” He looked at the crowd listening to the tart, then back at the frightened bum. A grin played across his face as he said, “Well then, maybe no one can distinguish between words and reality.”
He decided not to kill the beggar. Instead, he took the feeble, shaking hand and deftly broke one of the bones in it, the one he knew would hurt the most. The beggar, whimpering, slouched off into the shadows. Keech turned back to Calico and listened.
After a few more minutes, she clambered down from her perch on the garbage bin, curtsied and said, “Thank-you, pretty please.”
The listeners stood quietly for a few moments, all lost in thought. A few tossed money. Most wandered back to their day. Soon, only Keech remained, watching as she scooped up the coins.
“No, no, no, my dear. Thank-you, pretty please,” he whispered.
He wondered how he could get her up to his apartment without being seen.