his fear took her to the hole in the old wooden fence, the hole that had been kicked into the fence by a drunk back when the snow was still on the ground. it opened onto the flat pad of tarmac where the cars sat all day, then came and went all night. the scent of her man between the cars. it went through that quiet lot all mixed up with the other smells, all mixed up with fear and anger and hate. but a fresh smell, fresh smells, cut through the path the old bitch was following, and struck her nose dumb for a second. a harsh perfume, a pollutant in the late afternoon, a sickly tang of chemically simulated flowers hiding the nicotine and tar of too many cigarettes, wafted past the old bitch, trailing behind a pair of heels clicking on the tarmac. she peeked out from between two parked cars and saw the woman of store-bought effluvium walking away from her; she caught a light scent of piss beneath it all too. all of it that woman’s. chemical flowers, nicotine, tar, piss, then her man was back in her nose and she returned to the trail she’d been following, passing between cars for four more rows until she reached the half paved alleyway. his smell was getting stronger. her man was near.
she passed under the yellow post that blocked the way in and out of the lot just ahead of a car coming up behind her. the old bitch felt the pressure to move tickling her tail, making the hairs shiver. she tucked her tail under and darted to the right, taking refuge under the shadowy safety of five stories of brick and steel. she didn’t notice shadows the way her man did. she didn’t watch them shift and elongate and morph as the day passed, but she noticed the drop in temperature, the sudden cool that came without wind. she sat for a moment and watched the car that had made her tuck tail turn left and head to the street. she scratched at a wide itch behind her ear. satisfied with the results, she very nearly took a rest. she was cool; she was tired; she was hungry; she was old. midway to her belly, however, she remembered her man in a waft of his stink as it hit her nose. she was up and moving again.
ten paces, twenty, nearly thirty, the smell getting stronger and stronger, the old bitch sniffed out his show poking out from behind an industrial bin, overflowing with garbage from the building looking behind. she followed the shoe to the ankle, then the whole leg, and sniffed her way up his body, joining his crumpled form behind the bin. his jacket and shirt were gone. his pants were pulled down to his knees. the stink of fear lingered, the smell of her man was still here, but that was all beneath. the smells now were blood and shit and piss and damage. not the light piss of droplets in panties she’d smelled off the woman, but the deep yellow piss of dehydration and an emptied bladder. she licked at the bloody bone that stuck out of her man’s arm, tasting the salt of raw meat; he didn’t move, not a muscle moved, yet a faint moan escaped his parted lips. she sniffed around his body and took in the burst internal meatiness of bruises and snapped bones. his shit spilled onto the tarmac, smeared down the sides of the stick protruding from his asshole. she licked at his lips, and felt his breathe coming as a struggling faintness.
the old bitch new instinctively what this was. she didn’t need philosophy or religion for the knowledge that she was losing her man, that he had already been taken from her. she’d been born into a life where death met her on side streets, where she took the lives of animals that threatened her or crossed her, where cars killed her pups, where starvation took you if violence didn’t, and she knew her life was now speeding to an end with the loss of her man. he had provided. she would survive for now, of course. she could still fend for herself. but her man had bought her time with his gifts. he had given her life some leisure, and now she was losing him.
she’d forgotten the scent of anger and hate, and the stink of her man was so strong now she would never remember it or follow it up. the men with their sticks and noise boxes and heavy toed shoes wouldn’t follow it up, either. her man would be disposed of without ceremony. and she would roam the streets until she found herself a corner, went to sleep and didn’t awaken.
she curled up, for now, against the belly of her man, careful not to push against his still bleeding arm; she nuzzled into his neck until she felt the beat; she listened for his breath as it quieted; she waited to smell death.
