Stone Age HAA The Holy MAA

Stone Age HAA The Holy MAA

Writing - Noise - Magic

Monday, February 17, 2014

Burning Hands 3

Potty calls, "Hey rag-child, ready to get some bread today?" She pulls out a bottle of vanilla vodka and hands it to Chrissy.

Chrissy smiles like a happy baby and screws off the top. The buzzing liquid warms her up guts first, the way she likes. A dog barks flat with no echo. The train tears over their heads. The river moves with a cold wind. "How?"

Potty touches her black sunglasses. "Let's walk to the new casino. I've got these numbers. We can use them for betting. They're credit card numbers. Walk - it's cold."

Chrissy is not sure how this will work, but already Potty is climbing up to the sidewalk, and so Chrissy follows. They move up old sidewalks, gradually climbing away from the curvy river, the old flats up into downtown toward the casino, which is where exactly? Chrissy doesn't know. She sees all the buildings from dirt level all the time. Nothing looks new.

Potty asks if Chrissy stayed the night at her boyfriend's, and Chrissy says where else, exposing the rift in their friendship: that Potty won't disclose the location of her tent.

"Well, button-girl, get ready to get your own place, cause after today, we'll have some serious moolah."  Potty stops a man in a tan leather, floor-length gown. No wait, it's just a like a long raincoat thing. "Hey gentle-man, could you point the way to the casino?"

The man is wet. Sometimes the weather changes fast in Cleveland and can be different from one street to the next. The man looks at Potty and Chrissy as if he sees some letters in their hair, as if there are some kind of signs in there. He doesn't point to the tower or anything, he says, "Come on down, it's down these stairs, I'm going there."

They follow him down some ancient side stairs into some weirdo old building with brick arches over the low doorway. Chrissy thinks this is not the casino, but her feet hurt like surgery, if surgery were not hot but cold, and so she'll go anywhere.

To be continued...


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