Free Every Last Drop by Charlie Huston

approach.
He nods. —Not unwise, I will admit.
He turns. Stops.
—One thing, as long as killing has come up, I think I must renege on my earlier statement. —What was that?
—When I said I'd forgo threatening your life. At the risk of becoming redundant, let me assure you that this is by far the most pressing issue on which I have ever employed you. And let me further assure you that if you should betray me in any way, I will kill you when we next meet. With my own hands. For the sheer pleasure of it.
He raises an eyebrow.
—Need I add that failure in this case will be deemed a betrayal? No. I think not.
And the door swings shut behind him.
I turn to the City.
It's there. Right where I left it.
Is she? Is she where I left her? In the harbor of Enclave. Is she as I left her? With a new thirst she never asked for?
Is she alive?
Evie.
I look away from the city, the ghosts of the lights still in my eye.
I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die any minute now. Any second. I'm gonna up and die right here if I don't get a fucking cigarette in my mouth in about one second.
I hobble down the fire escape from the roof of the Freedman Home, along a weed-choked path to the street and look down McClellan at the glowing storefront of a twenty-four-hour bodega. I'm not overly concerned about going in there with one bare foot and a considerable amount of dry blood on my clothing, this is the Bronx after all, but best to minimize the visual impact I might make.
I cut over to Walton and head north. There's a little A.M. action on One Sixty-seven around the tight cluster of stores. They re all dark except for another bodega, but its the same grouping of shops and signage you see on every merchant block up here.
Send Money, Cash Checks, Income Tax, Abogado, Peliculas, Cell Phone, Discount Fashions, Unisex Salon, Long Distance Pre-Pald, Travel.
At the corner some kids hang around the subway entrance passing a blunt and a couple bagged forties. Two gypsy cabdrivers stand outside the bodega
drinking cafe con leche.
I cross the street far down from them, my eyes scanning the tops of streetlamp posts, tree branches and the telephone and cable TV wires that cross between the big apartment blocks that line Walton.
At Marcy I spot what I'm looking for and shimmy up a lamppost and untangle the pair of sneakers that some kid has tossed up there to dangle in testament to some shit that I have never figured out as long as I have lived in this city.
I sit on the curb and stuff my feet inside, leaving the laces undone. They're too small, but the right one fits a little better than the left. Not having a big toe is already paying off.
Farther up the street I jump and grab the bottom rung of a fire-escape ladder, pull myself up and climb two stories to the landing where someone has left their laundry out to dry overnight. I take a green Le Tigre and a pair of khakis, drop them to the sidewalk and climb down. In an alley between buildings I strip out of my bloody shirt and pants and pull on the clothes.
No, not exactly what I'd buy for myself, but they were the first things I saw that looked big enough to fit.
I ball my old clothes and stuff them deep in a garbage can. All except my jacket. I roll that into a bundle inside a few sheets of discarded newspaper and put it under my arm.
At One Seventy there's another strip of shops. No one lingers outside the bodega here. I limp up the street and inside and the proprietor looks out from behind his Plexiglas kill-shield and his eyes just about bug.
Seems I could have spared the bother of getting rid of my other outfit. One-eyed white guys in full preppy mode make an impact all their own. But, bottom line, I'm too freakish just now to be anything other than a junkie. And this guy knows what to do with a junkie. —The fuck out.
I don't get the fuck out.
He takes his hand from under the counter, shows me the can of pepper spray its holding and points at the door. —Don't make me come out there and spray you, bianco.
I point