𝙋𝙤𝙧𝙩𝙡𝙖𝙣𝙙 went mostly to bed two hours ago. And that’s how long Mike’s been beating the pavement downtown. He slipped under the bridge an hour ago and hasn’t stopped since. Every hustler and hooker and first-timer looking for an easy score is out, tonight. They swing off the doors around the porn shops and dirty movie houses, but Mike doesn’t feel like kissing up greasy moustaches, or hiking his jeans down in the back of an off duty cab. He’s bathing in the light, tonight, breathing in the neon glow from every leg-kicking open sign. He’s got half a strut on, the click of his boots echoing back to him between the claxon thunder of car horns and the rumble of the engines, and the motoring of all the mouths spilling out from bars, already drunk at nine pm after starting right on five. Mike skirts them, both hands in his coat pockets, his elbows bracing wide either side to edge through the club crowd lines and around, back onto the street. The air isn’t clean, but the edge of the cold on it makes it taste a little less like stale cigarette smoke and car fumes, and so he breathes it in, deep, and imagines it like a golden cumulus filling his stomach, expanding to close out the emptiness, kill the edge of his hunger where only cold coffee dregs touch the sides. He digs a mint out of his pocket, and it rattles against his teeth as he throws it in his mouth. Maybe he’ll take one, tonight. Just one, just enough to scrape together a meal before he heads back to the squat.
𝙄𝙩'𝙨 already busy around the public bathroom across from Graham Husson park, but Mike joins the lineup anyway. He doesn’t throw off his coat like the others, he looks their pale, needle scarred arms up and down and all he can think about is numbness, and cold. And about how the arms aren’t what they want, and there’s no use rolling your sleeves up like a muscle shirt just to show off how much you like Mexican tar. He leans back against the wall under the phosphorescent glow of the bug zapper. His eyes could be purple in the light of it, but he breaks the illusion every time he turns his head, and the blue bleeds out. He’s been standing there only a couple minutes when another car comes in, it doesn’t slow at first, but Mike can see through the rolled down window the moment the guy turns his head, and lays into the break. He can’t tell from this distance how old, he can only see the shape of him. The chevette looks rusted out in the streetlight, and as it starts to idle, all the hustlers on the line start shifting, striking poses. (Scott would have something smart-ass to say about it. That they’re fresh out of flight school, wings and all, fairies. How a real hustler doesn’t have to vogue for it.) It’s that thought that makes him sway off the wall almost at the same time the guy leans across the passenger side seat, and meets his gaze. He’s young, Mike thinks. Too young, and too good looking to be cruising. He has eyes like the bug zapper, violet and electrified, and bones in his cheeks hand cut with a bowie knife. His hair’s a little dark but Mike can tell its sandy and he wonders if, when he gets closer, he’ll have a tan. He looks like warm places.
𝙏𝙝𝙖𝙩'𝙨 when Mike gets close enough to lean against the window, bent over in his blue jeans, elbows sitting on the edge, one hand on his cheek. “Hey, you look a little lost. It’s forty for a date, fifteen for directions, if you have a map,” Mike says, his dirty-blond brows arching for just a moment before they sink again. He rocks a little on the toes of his boots. “C’mon. What do you say cowboy, huh? Are we gonna go for a ride or what?”