1
The night fell into a calm winter silence as the last train left the station. Snow had begun to collect upon the wooden rails and large illuminated clock, which hung in between two dilapidated billboards. His breath hanging heavy in the air, puffing like a locomotive, as he looked up and saw the fleeting taillights turn the corner and vanish south.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Without glancing at the clock he knew it was just past twelve. The final train had run leaving him all but two options to get home, cab or apologize. Had he not pissed his last five bucks away on pints he could have avoided the latter by hailing the former. Loose change clinked against a metal lighter in his pocket as he began to retrace his steps on the platform.
His frozen fingertips fumbled in his coat pocket, eventually retrieving a crushed soft pack of cigarettes. Tapping the open end, Hill pulled the filtered smoke from the package with his dry cracked lips.
“Christ it’s cold.” He muttered under his breath as he held the thin cotton jacket in place with one hand while fishing for the lighter with the other. Hill rounded the corner towards the exit sign, flicking the flint wheel of the lighter with his thumb. The small flame illuminated the damp stairwell with spectrums of light from broken bottles, followed shortly by the orange ember of a long drag.
The turnstile gate put him standing in a small paved lot beneath the elevated tracks next to the Davis Station newsstand. The stand had closed a couple hours ago, the locks already frozen and covered with a thin layer of ice. Blowing into his hand, he placed the cigarette into an abandoned coffee cup and began following the tracks north towards Truman Avenue. Enclosed on either side by buildings, the tracks meandered above forming a latticed roof to a wide alley. Snow and light fell between the wooden sleepers every few feet, the shadows on the ground mimicking the patterns of the rails above.
Although Davis was not a bad part of town, Hill quickened his pace and kept his head on a swivel. “An alley is still an alley, even on the north side,” he told himself as he rounded a concrete planter littered with fast food trash and other unsalvageable items striped in snow. A stuffed teddy bear lay half buried in the planters hard soil, its fur matted and face partially burned and melted near its nose.
He stopped for a moment to stare at the toy.
“Not even a blind kid would play with you, huh?” He said softly as he touched the bear’s charred fur, leaving a bit of black ash on his fingertips.
Rubbing the ash on his jeans, Hill turned and walked out from under the tracks into a flickering yellow spotlight on Truman Avenue. Without the protection of a building, the cold cut right through the thin jacket. Instinctively, Hill put his back to the wind and walked himself into the recessed storefront of an old video rental shop. Its dirty window displays cluttered with foreign and adult faded movie posters, most of which he had never seen. Looking out into the street he contemplated the long walk home; it was at least two miles back towards the lake. Her apartment was only a couple of blocks away.
The circling yellow bulbs from a nearby diner sign lit up the whites of his eyes like road hazards, off and on, interrupting his daze and forcing a long blink. The sign read Evelyn’s 24/7 in large black cursive letters beneath a silhouette of a woman with a pin-up face and an alluring smirk. Crossing his arms, Hill emerged from the shadowed cache back into the wind towards the softly lit diner across the street.
Obscure golden glass lined the wood paneled doors at Evelyn’s, staining the sidewalk in a tinge of disco yellow closely matching that of the sign above. A tacky looking joint from the outside, but it was warm and still open. Hill walked in, quietly stomped the wetness from his shoes, and slid into a nearby booth towards the back window…
