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the sun at her back.
    Bellamy leaned back in the front seat, pushed his riot helmet to the back of his hair transplant and scratched the persistent itch on his synthetic scalp. My paranoia amused him and nourished the sarcasm he needed to maintain his own sanity.
    â€œFeel any better getting that off your chest?” he asked.

    â€œNo, I don’t. Everything remains the same. Just because I can talk about it doesn’t mean I can—”
    â€œListen, Coddy,” Bellamy chuckled. “What the hell, huh? I don’t really give a damn. I hear what you’re saying. But me? I’ve got no complaints. I don’t even ask for what’s mine because I’ve pretty near forgotten what it was in the first place. Whatever it was we learned in school as kids about when we’d grow up, that doesn’t mean shit to me now. It’s just you and me in this car, and out there, the rest of the world. Real estate? Who the fuck cares? I’m a homeless cop.”

seven
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    i sat in the kitchen contemplating my vocabulary. I wanted to enrich my understanding of language. As a policeman, I needed to sharpen my oral skills. Starting alphabetically, I summoned up the first noun that came into my head. Anxiety: now there was a nice word. I rolled it around on my tongue, relishing what it meant and how it sounded. Anxiety had a clean ring to it; a word that never stood in one place, but always had the energy to travel. I admired that quality, the power to go places and do things.
    â€œWhat do you want to do this morning, Coddy?”
    Alice’s question hung in the air while she busied herself at the stove. She dropped four eggs into a frying pan crackling with melted safflower oil, sliced up three slabs of local sourdough, then threw the bread into the pan after the egg yolk batter.
    I thought Alice was asking about one or two things.
She wanted to have a long, affectionate conversation with me and she wanted to make love. Ideally, she’d prefer both; a bit of talk and a little fuck.
    If it was so easy to understand, why was it so hard to do? There wasn’t any conflict between us; we weren’t arguing or fighting, but I felt like a mountain separated me from Alice.
    â€œI want that French toast drowning in maple syrup. You got that?” I said.
    â€œYou can put clove powder on it.”
    â€œI like cloves.”
    â€œThen give me your plate, and be careful, honey. It’s hot.”
    She loaded up my plate and put it back down in front of me. The steam rose up in my face in a sweet smelling, seashell pink-colored cloud. I stared down at the golden brown slices of bread, soaked in eggs, drenched in maple syrup. I picked up a tin fork, tore off a hunk of toast and stuffed it into my mouth. I chewed with quick, angry bites, gulping the morsel down my throat, greedily burping.
    â€œI got us a good bottle of wine.”
    Alice smothered a laugh and replied, “A good bottle of wine? Where did you get it?”
    â€œFrom Bellamy. Where else?”
    I ducked my head and proceeded to wolf down the French toast, hunkering over the chipped enamel plate like Bellamy must’ve done when he was a kid in the orphanage. Bellamy had said that in order to eat the food on your plate, you had to protect it with your fists.
    Life was precious; the wine I’d procured from Bellamy
for a box of illegal Black Talon bullets would taste sweet on my day off. My first day off in three weeks. The breakfast dishes could wait. We were going to unplug the telephone and drink a bottle of wine.
    â€œDo you want your vitamins? I got some new ones for you,” she said.
    Alice was keen on pills; she made me take a multitude of assorted minerals and supplements, saying they would bolster my performance on the job and in our bed. If Alice wanted me to take vitamins, enabling me to outrun speeding bullets and nab fleet-footed robbers, I wasn’t averse to the