Outside the Wire

  #

  A working girl sheltered in the alcove that led into my building. Her soul was twisted and forlorn gray, shot through with little crimson rivulets of spite, all stuffed in an overweight body in fishnets and too much makeup. She'd turned at least two tricks already and her pupils were little pinpricks in the dark.

  "Party, Greg?" With a cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth, she gave me her best impersonation of something desirable and I stifled a laugh.

  I tried to be nice because she'd been someone's little girl once. I saw the father who died and the succession of her mother's boyfriends that turned the little princess into a whore. The last decade she'd spent on the street had polluted and poisoned the soul she'd been born with almost beyond recognition. I knew a monk who would have called all those hard lessons opportunities for personal growth. I called it a shame.

  "All partied out, Miss Jimenez."

  Her eyes roamed freely over me and she said, "For you it's half price."

  "Hard to refuse, but you know how Sarah feels about that. Speaking of, why'd you dime me out to her about my score?"

  "You know, she can be persistent. 'Sides, she was all proud, telling me you were cutting back on the smack. So I jus' had to say to her, no sister, you're man is a junkie to the core."

  I nodded at her thoughtfulness and started toward the door. She stepped to intercept me and reached out a dirty hand.

  I grabbed her wrist and wrenched it sideways. Hard enough to move her along, but not hard enough hurt. She smelled of cheap perfume, cigarettes and that musky pungency of stale sex.

  "No touchy the goods, Anna." Skin to skin was rough on me. I was cool not being cruel to this broken spirit, but that didn't mean I wanted to be her friend.

  The used-up woman shot me a spiteful look but didn't press it. Instead she looked away and said, "S'okay, your loss."

  Loss. A common theme across the length and breadth of my existence.

  I brushed past her, not inhaling, and pushed open the unlocked door.

  Inside, I braced my hand against the wall where mailboxes were once mounted. I waited while the tingly little wave of post-high nausea swept through me. When I was sure I wouldn't puke up my pancakes I picked my way through the garbage in the dark hall to the room I shared with Sarah.

  The hinges gave a screeching protest as I pushed the door open. I flicked the light switch, forgetting the electricity was off. Or maybe the bulb was burned out, I forget. Enough red neon came in from the no-name liquor store across the street that I could make my way through the sparse furniture to the kitchenette. The light started with one letter and added one until all were lit and then it blinked on and off twice before starting again. It wasn't quite a strobe, but the effect was great when I was lit. Not so good when I was trying to hold down my pancakes.

  I opened the refrigerator and got a whiff of something old, but no light came on. So it must be the electric. I found a stash of fast-food ketchup packets behind the jug of vinegar I used to cut my smack, and slammed the door shut.

  I should save them for when I was hungry, but I wanted to get the acidic taste of bile out of my mouth. I bit in and sucked a few down.

  I spun at the sound of a little thump on the counter. Disembodied yellow eyes stared reproachfully at me. As the U-O-R blinked on, the rest of Milton came into view.

  He gave me a low rumbling meow, followed by a shorter, louder one for effect.

  "I'm not in the mood, cat."

  Milton continued to stare and then slinked his inky-blackness across the counter, sitting on the edge, facing me but looking away. The cat pulled away as I tried to scratch him between the ears and repeated his short loud meow.

  "Didn't Sarah feed you?"

  I rummaged in a cabinet while the cat paced the counter, watching. I finally found the last little pull-top can of tuna and left it open on the counter for him.

  The overcoat made a rustling swish as I dropped it in the hall. I went into the bedroom and flopped down on the thin mattress resting on the floor. I rolled over on my back and tried not to think of Sarah.

  The blood red neon went through its brighter, brighter, off, and on routine and I stared at the archipelago of dark moldy splotches on the ceiling.

  Sarah was liable to do something stupid. I didn't see it, but I knew she was going to warn that Dominican girl. This was a really bad time to play the Good Samaritan.

  Milton padded in the doorway and hopped up on to my chest. His breath smelled of fish and his yellow eyes bored into me.

  "She made her own bed cat," I said.

  Sometimes I think cats are tuned into something the rest of us can't see. Other times I think they just serve as a really good vehicle for our own guilt.

  "I'm not the hero she thinks I am."

  Milton never blinked.

  I rolled the cat off and said, "Fine. But you owe me for this one."

  I grabbed my overcoat on the way out to rescue my friend. The friend that had saved me so many times from falling any further than I already had.