*

*

Alex is sitting on a bench in the small bus station.  A fluorescent light flickers in the fixture above his head.  It is 3 a.m. and he’s waiting for daylight.  In four hours he’ll be able to get some coffee somewhere.  For now, he’s waits. 

He’s got his iPhone plugged into an outlet.  Even if it was charged, he couldn’t call anyone.  Certainly not Gram or his father.  They’d only yell at him for getting kicked out of the Hostel.  He did think about calling, and he weighed the options for several minutes.  His dad would just add this fuck-up to the long list he keeps of all Alex’s fuck-ups, going way back to high school.  Alex hears the Interlocutor’s voice calling him to confess.  He decides not to acknowledge him.  Instead he lights the remains of a cigarette he found in the bus station’s ashtray. 

The smokes keep his dreams in their place.  That’s why he was smoking in the Hostel’s kitchen.  The dream of the black corks coming at him to stop his breath was doing that throbbing thing.  Alex had to smoke or be suffocated.  He knew he’d be locked out if he stepped outside to smoke, so he opened a window and sat by it, blowing the smoke out carefully. 

            He got caught.  Someone saw him and called the manager, an Algerian guy with a really scary face.  Alex had to pack up all his stuff. He dragged the bags down the street to the bus station.  It was only after he got there that he realized he’d left his food in the fridge.  Maybe he can pick it up in the morning.

            He’s hungry now, but he’s used to being hungry.  In the City, at his mom’s, there was hardly ever anything to eat.  Sometimes she’d make some nasty bean concoction.  After he lost his SSDI, Alex had to guilt trip his mom to get a little cash for a sandwich.  And he’d have to listen to her go on about how she couldn’t afford to support him and he had to get back to handing out fliers so he’d make some money.

            Alex looks out the window to the edge of the parking lot.  He sees a small moving shape.  It’s the fox again.  She’s never very far away, but she usually stays in the shadows, like this.  She is after his liver and Alex has to be constantly vigilant when he’s outdoors in the nighttime.  Once he fell asleep in the park after smoking some really strong weed.  It was in the summer.  He fell asleep on the grass.  The fox came so close he could hear her panting.  She tried to bite his rib cage but he rolled away and she just got his shirt with her teeth.  He sat up and yelled and slapped at her snout.  She ran back into the trees.  Alex’s friends woke up and they were scared.  Scared of Alex, not the fox.