KerriAnne’s head rang with an empty ache as she stared at dirty corrugated steel above her eyes.

She’d had only one conscious thought through the hollow night, except for hunger: keep moving, keep looking. But since that lovely delicious boy whose smart phone she had caught, along with a piece of his still-quivering thigh muscle, she knew where to go to satisfy the smoky ice desire.

The rumbling shook her helpless body. The truck had sat empty just before dawn. Now, in the day, she moved steadily toward where she needed to be.

♦

Jesse bustled in with groceries twenty minutes before the sun set. Walter said nothing about how close Jesse was cutting it, but his shoulders relaxed.

He put an arm around his husband and gave him a peck on the cheek. Side by side in the modest kitchen, they prepared a simple but excellent pine-nut garlic pesto and arugula salad. Jesse took his plate into the living room and they settled down to watch a video.

When they first got together, he had teased Walter about his vast collection of movies. DVDs, Blu-Rays and an aging collection of videotapes took up three bookcases. But now that going out to the movies was impossible, it was nice to avoid the scalper prices the online services could get away with charging.

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Walter had chosen Sleeping Beauty. “Appropriate,” Jesse laughed.

“Well, Buttercup, you woke me with a kiss. All honor to the prince who woke Sleeping Beauty, now.”

He watched tenderly as Jesse ate.

♦

Malcolm Donald prepared to spend his second night in a tent in the plaza.

He resented his rash promise to live there for a year. People “lived” in stranded busses and BART trains for one lousy night; he surely could have made this outdoor space a “home” by committing to live in it for just a month.

What could the vampires do now if he reneged on the deal? But his commitment had only saved the crowd because dammit he wouldn’t renege; if he’d had any “fingers crossed,” the vampires would have kept pouring in.

So, he groused at his aides Tony and Elizabeth, found fault with the shelter they’d helped him rig, and damned the paperwork they held for him to sign which granted him permission to be here for eleven months and 29 more god-damned days. He told them to “get out of here” as they nervously declined his invitation to “sleep over” and headed for their own homes where Tony was a single dad to an 8-year-old brat and Elizabeth had her husband Sol and three hyper-sweet kids.

Lucky assholes.

♦

Charity Claire was transformed by her night with Jesse and Walter, and the decision they had helped her to make.

She glowed as she arranged bell peppers and sprinkled cheese on the pizza dough (pesto pizza; blood red sauce would have made her nauseous). From the corner of her eye she saw the window she’d had to pay to replace after the Welcome Wagon smashed it.

Welcome, welcome, she thought nervously, trying to get up the courage to say it out loud when the moment came.