Philly Is a Very Small Big Town

         It was after last call and a cold fog was rolling in like a damp rag as I drifted out of the Black Sheep, the watering hole where I go to forget. The whisky would steel my blood for the chill rolling in off the Delaware as I started walking south for bed and fitful sleep, but not for the past. The lights of Jersey dimly twinkled.

         Then I saw the kid -- I was fairly certain he had been an employee of mine from back when I had the restaurant on Sansom, back when I had a wife and a daughter and all of that illusion -- emerge from the mist, a high-pitched babbling wraith. There was clearly something speedy and powerful coursing through his veins.

         As he crossed Front Street just 15 feet away from where I stood watching, transfixed by his degradation, he stopped on a dime and flitted his head to stare at me, almost as if he'd caught my scent. A tattered Bad Religion shirt hung from his wiry frame as he zipped towards me like a magnet to cold metal. I started walking the other way, pulling my pea coat tight and whistling nonchalantly, but he called my name once, twice, and then shrieked "PAULLLLLLLL!" in a way that only a tweaker could.

         I stopped and turned. My hands shook in my pea coat. I didn't want to meet his eyes, but his emaciated face, hollowed-out sockets, stretched smile, and horribly track-marked arms shocked me so much I couldn't look away.

         "Paul, that you?" he asked quickly and more quietly now, a glimmer of fire in his eyes.

         I stammered. The jig was up. Feign concern. "My god Zach, is that you? Are you okay? Do you --"

         He cut me off laughing and plunged his hands into his grimy jean pockets furtively. "What kind of dumb fucking question is that?" He cocked his head.

         "I was just going to ask if you want help?"

         He paused, his eyes pierced slits.

         "You don't know that I know what happened to her, do you?" he whispered.

         "Look, those were just rumors. I was Zoe's manager and I was married --"

         "You don't get to say her name," he hissed emphatically, pointing at me. He smelled of weeks-old sweat and worse. "And bullshit. The note she left behind...she was broken after you kicked her to the curb. She waited and waited and waited for you." That last part he said calmly and with sudden tenderness, as if her memory stilled the choppy waters of his mind. His eyes glistened.

         I shivered. His hands remained in his pockets.

         "She told me about you and her the night she left me," he continued. "After we'd closed up and you'd gone home to the wifey, she spilled that fucked up shit on me near the dumpster. Still loved her anyway. Still do, yeah."

         The city's stillness was unbearable. My feet and legs suddenly felt like cement blocks. The Ben Franklin Bridge, lit up cobalt blue -- the same hue as the choker Zoe used to wear -- crept up through the fog and night as if to goad him on, the night sky mixed with dirty clouds like her sleepy eyes with smeared black eyeliner.

         "I want you to apologize," he demanded.

         "I've nothing to apologize for," I said with a sudden resignation that surprised me. And then he and I both remembered our moments with her, and how unworthy we both were to be with her.

         He glanced over his shoulder quickly to make sure we were alone and then lunged, one grimy hand grabbing my throat while the other plunged the knife into my gut. I gasped and licked at the blood seeping from my smile, then laughed. The rush of memory gushed forth and for the first time since that whole sordid affair with Zoe and the boy-turned-ghost she had left behind for the likes of me, guilt finally flowed and as he plunged the blade in and out over and over again I didn't really try to put up a fight. Each blood spurt was a penance, my gasps and gargles my first and last confession with the blood blooms as dark and thick as betrayal.