"There, eat." Dean threw a plate of over-seasoned, extremely salty salami slices, spicy sliced beef, pigeon peas, rice, and eggs lots of eggs. And they are the most delicious things I've eaten in the last three months even if the risk of getting hypertension increased tenfold. The cook leans back with a face of clear amazement while I gurgle down the egg. He lets out a snicker.

"Christ, you look like a lamp pole in Vietnam, I thought you're loaded as those posers up in the valley now.......or did you blow the scratch on boosters?" I swallow whatever the hell I put in my mouth a second ago with great effort before taking a swig of his house-made tea

(I don't want to know the recipe. I don't.) in the big ass plastic cup that seems suspiciously similar to those cheap shit college kids use.

"First of all, I don't do boosters. Nowadays that chemical got a higher chance of giving you myocardial infarction or dropping dead on the spot than hard substances." He rubs the sweat on the apron and pulls out a pack of cured cig while dragging both sides of his mouth down and squinting his eyes in the purest form of ‘Said it. Done it.’

"Second of two." I take another chug of...... tea to get the sputum down along with the food. "I'm doing just fine, keeping it to myself, earning an honest check, visiting old friends while making new ones from time to time." To which he let out a smirk, ash brown skin under the lack of illumination except for bare sunlight through the blinds made him look melancholy and ludicrous. Like a jugular taking the act too seriously.

"You forgot about the part about staying out of trouble."

"Isn't that a guarantee with me being around?" Dean got half of his teeth out and brows knit to the left. His line of sight jumps around me before pursing his lips and nods lazily.

"Fine, it is." He puts a roll of yellow wrap filled with Virginia tobacco in his mouth and purse his lips to send it right between his teeth so he can talk with the smell of the most expensive third-grade product.

"Shit, now for the million-dollar question—What the hell were you doing for half a year? You dropped off the radar more utterly than a corpse! Corpse stinks and I got a pretty good idea of how you'd smelled after you bit the dust. But no, not even a whiff left......" He takes the initial drag to ignite the smoke.

He used to complain how the wrap paper's goddamn fireproofed.

"I was off town for a while. Vocation." I answer between bites and swallows while glancing up at them small pupils squeeze into the seam of a big face. Dean wasn't moving, but it still felt like he stopped completely upon my answer as he tilted his brows, corner of mouth uncertain if it should curl or shut until he saw the look in my eyes. Then, he let out a short cackle sounding like lumber combusting in a forest aflame.

"Boy, you're the last person I've thought to get tired of this damn city, but also the one in the direst need of a break." He moved his hips and across his legs on the empty red sofa while laying his head closer to the blinds, his head turned towards me after blowing a puff to the ash-lit, dim dinner. "So out with it! Where have you been? Haiti? Down south? Fucking Las Vegas?"

"Far from here," I answer dryly and reach for the napkin on his side of table. Dean passed it to me while half of his face wrinkled around the eye leading every facial muscle to the left eye bags.

"Europe? Don't tell me you've been going back on those wops." A gram of rough pork slice made me cough while trying to laugh.

"Ahem. I stopped going east a long time ago, ain't got nothing to do with them slugs in cheap suits for a long time." Dean roll his eyes at the blinds for a moment putting another drag on the cigarette. Daintily at the end of the street, a six-wheeler with the sirens on is gunning up north with possibly a dozen scared officers inside or adrenaline-drunk operator. Depends if they'll turn left at the next block.

"Speaking of which...." He waited till the siren was off our ears before asking. "You still on with that Italian chick?"

"The what?" With my hangover burning like a whimper under a blanket from the siren and scrambled eggs tasting kind of sweet in my mouth. I couldn't bang my head around what he asked, hell. Give me three mugs of coffee and I'd still don't know who is he talking about.

"The one with chains and nails all over, looking as Christian as a stripper in nun's habit."

"....I would say either hell or living the best life. No clue which is it." Dean scratched the back of his ear with his cigarette-holding hand. Leaving brisk of gray ashes on the side of his buzz cut gaining an inch, making him look way past 30 even though he's a couple of years younger than Ivan.

"Son of a......The brunette? The one you pick up at Noch?" That. Narrowed it down by about two percent.

"Didn’t made it, supposedly since I can't remember. And why the hell are you acting like a single-soned mother?" I round the scraps on the plate up in a pile and tilt my eyes up, dean avoids them and shrugs it off.

"Forget it. And how's Ivan holding up? Haven't seen him in ages." He wiped the blackened mark on his thumb and index from taking the last drag too long. His eyes were down on the greasy aprons while asking.

"Much better than me, that nut job had done it all and have it all in Lesnaya." I feel the smirk pulling my face. "The world's a fat oyster. And he snatched the knife from someone's bloody hands now."

"Dostov." A small wrinkle on the lake.

Dean shook his head smiling to his belly. "Remember?" The wrinkle turned to wave. I fake a laughter just in time and push the empty plate away.

"Maxim started it, Ivan continued. I remember." The man pushing to the title of middle age slides a pack of blue to my end of table, I hesitated for a millisecond before putting the cig in pulp paper color in my mouth. I clawed the matchbox from my trousers pocket, index finger pushed the lid off and nib one at the striker only to be met by a single click. Dean extends his lighter at my box of matches, his face writes rueful sarcasm.

I put the dry match back and lean to the only light in this run-down slope. The amber flicks its tail onto the paper, the air smells of an assertive aroma. It reek the ground of a barren plain in constant sunlight and tastes like a thumb pressed against your forehead, with a certain pressure behind it.

"Christ on a spike, I still don't get the kick of this thing." I hinge my chin forward and tilt the cigarette up as slithering smoke waves above us. "Say, you wouldn't happen to notice a fuck load of patrol rides wandering around the neighborhood?" He raise both shoulders.

"Sure, ever since the new policy dropped." He dusts off the ash to let air touch the burning tip, eyes tracing upon it for a moment.

"Policy?" He twists his scanty brows.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

"Mr. Governor threw a new sheriff in town, came here with all kinds of agenda." Dean shows his bare hands as he stares, with the brown dot on filter pointing at his palm.

No wonder.

“Straight from the top?"

"Straight out of the congress's gold gilded rim." I chuckle, he grins.

"What the hell happened to the local autonomy and the beer belly fag?" With the hands still facing up, dean shrugs too before shaking his head and bringing the cigarette back up.

"Took a mark off his shoulder."

Fucking A, now there's a higher chance of running into him.

"Should've sent him to the firing squad if they're thinking about change." My throat itches as the words left. Dean knit his brows for a second and twirl the cig closer to my face with a slit of irritation in them.

"What's going to change if folks like you still think like you do?" I strength my back at the reply.

"...What are you saying?" Thanks to him, a hint of haste can be found in my tone too.

Dean looks at me with the ferocity of a man in wrong. Opens his mouth till the teeth grin out then closes them as he pucks them lips at the left corner of his mouth as if swallowing a melting capsule. Eyes wandering off my vision on purpose. Between my usual tendency and curiosity, I choose the latter out of ...whatever friendship means to me nowadays and wait.

A couple of seconds, few inhales, still head, unmoving wave in his eyes when he finally decided to meet mine.

"Ain't nothing's going to change." Pretty fucking obvious.... "Because of you people." The wrinkle on the pond shifts the color of surface, from sapphire blue of the coast to the asphalt black of further Pacific.

"...Okay. You lost me." I still tried to crack a smirk on my face, as out of character as it is for me. "What people?"

"I...Forget about it, Lee. Never mind that." A vein at the side of my head hurts like a snap as sudden anger under the rug creeps out.

"Forget what. 'Folks like me'?......Fucking hell Dean, who do you think I am?" Dean's mouth twitches before shutting them tight and waving his head at the kitchen.

Dean was the only one of the people I associated with who had a relatively normal life. But before that happened.....

Folks like me?

The last few functioning cells in my head urge me to take a puff, the rest had me made a dry laughter unwillingly.

"Hey, Dean.... Just realized I've never asked before. What got you leaving in the first place?"

The cook widened his eyes as the drag of smirk by the cheek disappeared, along with all the little lines across his face. I take another puff and let the whitish gray brighten the room a little as slim rays of sunlight embodied them like fireflies in bedsheet.

The initial amazement and defensive reflexes in his eyes passed into a calm almost aloof attitude. He looked away, across checkered floor covered in marks of spilled beer, grease, and corrosion from self made detergent. Probably at the counter before the kitchen, behind the cashier.

"Do you remember, days before your fight with that piss-colored fool?" He rubs the middle finger across the temple suggesting what he's referring to. "When the fellas were shooting the shit on the street, by the......"

"Glen. You horn dogs just had a go, we caught a bus, made a scene, got out by Central Park on Kirov. St" Dean blinked twice before nodding in the smallest motion like having a seizure.

"Well, did you notice something wrong?" He asks as if someone's life depends on my answer. I remember everything back in the day, but hell was I dense back then. All I got for his inquiry was a shake of head.

"I was in no condition to be perceptive." Dean snickers with a grin, his eyes jump to the empty plate in front of me.

"You didn't notice I was dead silent after the booth?" I take a drag out of habit.

"Thought you were exhausted. You spent longer than everyone else, we thought you called room service to sustain your stay." I smile, the best I can. He does as well before whiffs of smoke escape his teeth.

"I had a.....long talk with kitten after we finished." I tried to laugh and it came out a hum. "It was her last night. She made it, she actually got that fairweather-looking fuck to agree on a price. And she paid it off, Lee. She did it."

"Good for her." I bite down on the yellow paper wrap and raise that plastic cup of tea into the air. Dean makes nothing of it and continues.

"She said, she's leaving the city tomorrow. But she won't tell me where. I suppose that's fair. But she did say she's going somewhere cold. Had enough of humid nights, probably." Dean takes a second to put down his cigarette on the edge of my empty plate as a tinker of ash fell. His eyes beckoned like an elder gazing upon and beyond the shoreline.

"And she said." The outline of his chin tightens as he closes his mouth temporarily.

"Said. 'Nobody's meant to live in this city.'"

Spot on.

"The words stuck with me, for days. At first, it felt like the stupidest thing in the world." Dean let out a grin. "I even thought about asking professor Dostov over here what the hell was that whore yapping about." I squeeze out a smile, not sure if he can see it through the smoke rising from his cigarette between us.

"A week or so later. You fought in the pit. 'The highest betting of the last five years'. Like it's a ball game or some.......You know I'm not a fan of that place, too much degenerate gathered in one place will produce a smell. But of course, I was there with the gang." He picked the cigarette back into his mouth, finished the last inch, stuck another one in, and gave the half gone one between my fingers a glance. "That day, I'm not sure if you noticed. But that Russian prick was on the second floor, close to me and the others." Dean raises the tip of the cig at me then shrugs off his own question.

Of course I noticed. He told me and Ivan he would be there.

"When you entered the ring, I couldn't recognize you." A drag. "I've seen you in the pit, but I knew that night was different. It was more than the boosters, hell I was getting more used to you being high than not." A puff. "But it was something else, you..... radiates a message. There was more than frenzy in yours and Ivan's eyes. It was an assuredness. You knew you belong there, here. Doing what you were doing..... and the more you do. The deeper you gone the more it arouses everyone by the pit..... heh! I was shutting you to kill the poor son of a bitch with the rest at the end." A sly smile sits at the crossroads of loathing and pity, it gazes upon the world before and the man across the table.

I took a drag that lasted the last of my cigarettes until the chain of ashes resembled an impotent man. Dean passed me the pack, teared lid towards me with the last's filter sticking out catching the beam of sunlight through the blinds on its golden wrap paper.

I sway my palm to decline it before placing my elbows on the table, eyes lock an inch under his.

"That got you decided? That you had enough?" I ask. Well, I try to ask without sounding sardonic. Dean holds back the pack and pulls the last one off shimmers of broken, dry tobacco before he realizes the one in his mouth's still burning.

"Not entirely. But it connected the dots." The cinder tilting in front of his mouth burns bright red in tainted black as he inhales deeply.

"Kitten was wrong. You, my friend. Fellas like you are meant for this city and the rest will eventually turn into you or get thrown into an early grave fill with concrete above......" Dean speaks in a rhythmic tone, like he practiced it over and over in his head to which words translate to songs as he gets deliberately louder.

The ripple on the lake turned into a tsunami. I look up. Not sure how I'd look in my eyes, but it got Dean to lean back on his seat.

Calm down.

Feeling like someone spilt my head with an axe and I told myself while it sounded like I'm taunting myself. Breathe in and breathe out. Continue. The storm didn't stop, but I continued talking with one of the oldest friends I've ever known.

"Not concrete. Above the casket, there's soil, whisky, beer, and vodka...... Every couple of months, sometimes I couldn't find the time for almost half a year, some nights I slept there. It ain't much, but it is not concrete or rebar or ash." I rest my left arm behind the sofa and the other over the window and drag a blade of blind down to let the outside world peek in. First, in a long time, I wished for the bitter sunlight, at least I would've know how to deal with it.

I see you as lots of things but never through resentment.

"Tell me." Please. "If you think that way. Why don't you just bounce off north to catch a fresh one?" Dean darts his transfixed glance at me and laughs without a smile.

"Look around."

He opened his empty palms with a comical surprised face like those half-a-decade-old ads that fooled the rest of the world to come here.

"How would I ever want to leave?"

He sings while gazing over the dead restaurant, empty chairs, stained floor, newly installed fans with rusty hinges, confined counter, cramped kitchen behind notes of unattended orders like paper dolls holding hands, the bent cardboard sign saying the place will be close for the week hanging by the entrance double door and steel locks on them which looks too glistening compare to everything else. Should count him in the bunch as well.

The city doesn't sleep, despite wanting to.

Smiling the most genuine smile in amusement while getting off the red sofa with rips and tears over the sewing. I pulled out my wallet and left a 20 bill on the table.

"I hold no grudges against you. And I hope you neither... and that you left just because you were a pussy." My line of sight traces off his index finger drumming against the edges of the empty plate pushed away. I can't read his face, nor the grin.

"Go to hell Dostov."

"It's Scheduled.” I said while opening the door, outside's too bright for me to see his expression on the window.