“Look. I just need some money. I'll pay you back ten-fold when this thing hits. I can't – I can't tell you about it right now. It's too big. I don't mean it like that. Please just stay on the line.” Dean throws his cell-phone onto the concrete, it skids onto the gutter. He chases after it. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”
Dean grabs it, and on his way up, realizes a man is staring at him, a homeless man.
“I don't think it's going to turn back on, man.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because the chips in the back fell out.” He points back to the gutter. “And they're lying in the water. And that water is really bad for you. I wouldn't drink it if I was dying.”
“Fuck me. Fuck me!” Dean screams, and throws the cell-phone back onto the ground.
It doesn't skid, it thuds, breaking into tens of pieces scattered among a needle wreathed surface.
“You didn't have to do that.” The man says. “Could have just sold it or something.”
“No-one wants to buy a broken cell-phone.”
“Five dollars? Someone would've paid that for it.”
“Yeah. Guess you're right. It's too late, now.”
“Mind if I have a seat?” Dean looks at the curb as if it was private-property.
“I already made room for you, man.” He slaps the concrete. “Not too many people like us out here, now. But there will be.”
“Us?” Dean says, taking a place next to him.
“You're just like me. Just don't know it yet.”
“Yeah. You're probably right.”
“I am right. Now wouldn't you like to have five-dollars? Shit.”
“I have one-thousand dollars.”
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“You don't have one-thousand dollars.”
Dean laughs. “What's your name?”
“Malcolm. Pleased to meet you. Mr. One Thousand Dollars.”
They shake hands, and then stare at the passing cars, shoulder-to-shoulder. Dean feels every single facial-expression given, ranging from disgust to the middle-finger. Malcolm is unblemished.
“I could really use a hamburger and fries. You look like you could, too.”
“Yeah. Let's go.” Dean says so nonchalantly, that Malcolm looks at him for confirmation.
He continues. “Really. Let's get out of here.”
“Hey, man.” Malcolm says near on Dean's ear. “We can just take out some fast-food. A few double cheeseburgers from Micky, and we'll be eating all night.” He eyes the restaurant. “I don't even know what an eatery is.”
“What's wrong with this place?” Dean ask as they enter the line, well on the side-walk. The patrons seem guarded, but they either look away, or move a few steps to the side.
“Too many people.”
“You don't seem to mind me.”
“You're a person. You ain't people.”
A teenager looking at her phone bumps into Malcolm, and when she looks up at him, she scatters away only after making an audible gasp, further distanced by her parents, who glance back at Malcolm and scowl.
“I don't like people either.”
They're sitting in an abandoned construction site between two highways, surrounded by leaning chain-link fences. Seven double cheeseburgers. Two milk-shakes. Three large fries, and five large cokes. Their eating is louder than their words, and their words are all but gluttonous moans and groans. Sitting on concrete slabs by trash-cans withered by wind and wind alone, they're now passed the point of being full, and are quietly sulking in the grease filling their bellies.
“How long have you been out here for?”
“Last year?” He said hesitantly, and then settled on “Last spring.”
“Live here your whole life?”
“Naw. Came here from up north.”
“Why Shere City?”
“Cause it's a city but don't got that many people.” He says, on his third cheeseburger, wrappings bundled underneath his sweatpants. “Mom used to live here, too.”
Malcolm flushes out the obvious awkward question.
“Didn't grow up with her.” Smoothie to his lips. “But I kept track-”
Slow to finish his own sentence in dead air, the next three words from his lips are deep and near-whispered “until she passed.”
“I'm sorry to hear that.” Dean says, stopping himself from downing a french-fry, feeling as if it would be insensitive. “So you just, live out here?” Dean knew it was a dumb question, one he already knew the answer of, but could think of nothing better in the moment.
Malcolm sniffs. “Yeah. Out here.”
They simmered in silence, having their fill of fat and sugar, smelling of salty oil.
Dean looks up at the sky beyond the twin highways, and then at Malcolm.
“I think it's time I go.”
“Hand me a twenty?”
Dean pulls out a twenty and hands it over, their palms pressed together, bill between.
“Take care of yourself, Malcolm.”
“That's my life.”