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edge the cop was standing still, turned the other way. I waited for my chance, then climbed out the far end of the window well and went around the next corner.
    I listened for the cop’s breath. His belt. Footsteps. Nothing. I jogged a slow jog back to the front of the building, hugged the wall, and peered around the corner. No cop. Over my shoulder, the street was empty. I leaned against the wall to catch my breath. My hands hummed, far away, one wrapped around the Green Drink cup, the other with the urine jug. I edged along the wall, bricks rough against my clothes, and looked back through the empty hole of a window. There he was. The cop, in the Ruins, kicked a paint can. Examined evidence.
    Hidden behind the wall, I looked out through the glassless window. The cop put a hand to his head, ruffled his hair. The sun caught his hair in a golden shimmer. My heart was so loud, I felt nearly deaf.
    “Sniffles?” the cop called. He turned a slow waltz in the empty lot. His voice was lost on the wind, lost behind my heartbeat.
    He took one step forward, then two. Said it again.
    Sniffles? Had he really called my clown name? He bent and picked something up.
    Then I recognized him. It was the same blue-eyed cop from the day before, the cop who held my hand and called the ambulance. I recognized his shoulders and the earnest squint. A cop, on my tail. Getting closer. He was cute. Handsome even. But still, a cop, a man, not Rex. Off-limits. I stayed hidden. Nervous, I trembled like a kid playing hide-and-seek. The cop did a lonely waltz, called my name as though I were his unwilling dance partner, then stood in the rubble holding the plastic form of a toilet seat, my urine-collection funnel an impromptu corsage for a date that wouldn’t show.

4.
    Chance Pays the Karmic Bill; or, Give Chance Some Peace!
    I WATCHED THE COP THROUGH THE RAGGED EDGE OF THE glassless window. Guilty or innocent, I couldn’t talk to a cop. Even when I knew that up close he’d smell like cinnamon, when his hair was a halo in the sun with pale streaks gleaming and golden as a wise man’s aura. Rex Galore wouldn’t talk to cops.
    Herman, ex-boyfriend-turned-landlord, he’d say House Rule: No cops. Herman had long since lost his license for too many DUIs, and was busted for possession once. Low profile was Herman’s goal. In Herman’s house, I followed his rules.
    The cop spun the urine-collection funnel on two fingers. He whistled the first bars of “Happy Trails.” Another spin and the funnel whirled off the ends of his fingers, whizzed past his face and over his shoulder. “Whoa!” he said. The funnel landed like a Frisbee in the dust. Good thing it wasn’t his gun—Happy Trails indeed. The dry ground of the empty lot made dust storms on the heel of each step as he walked, picked up the funnel, and kept going. His pants were too long. The cuffs dragged at the back of his shoes. He was probably single.
    I needed that funnel.
    I followed the cop for a block, creeping close along the wall. He swung the funnel loosely, like a briefcase. I willed him to toss it into a Dumpster or leave it alongside a recycling bin, but he didn’t stop until he reached his cop car.
    He opened the door and put the funnel in the backseat. He dropped into the front seat, heavy and hot. When he pulled away from the curb, I gave up—what else?—and walked my own direction toward Baloneytown, to my room in Herman’s house. That urine funnel lasted in my hands for less than half a day.
     
    REX GALORE’S USED AMBULANCE WAITED IN FRONT OF Herman’s house like a faithful dog for Rex to come home. The ambulance waited the way I waited—stalled out and nearly abandoned some would say, though I tried to see it otherwise: the ambulance and I, we waited with patience.
    It was an old style retro Travellall ambulance, bought cheap at the county auction. Long and low, it was the same design as a hearse only two-tone, red and white instead of black, a hearse of another color.