Fall. I... remember. I think. Was it Crazy Dog? Or Blackwing? I guess I don't. But... I remember the words, "Fall is when everything falls down, that's why it's called fall." Or are those just the ghost of words I remember? Dierdre woulda told me. Maybe. I don't know. Sometimes she can get mean. Kardia woulda told me, I know that. I miss her hands. Bruce wouldn't know what to say. Annie tells me she doesn't remember those words, so they must be mine. Live word. Living words. She whispers something that makes me cry. Elessa hands me a tissue. Pink. Soft and still warm from being in her ragged grey coat that she wears over her black coat and red coat to keep the wear on her least favorite of the three. I use it to dry my eyes. It doesn't really help. It's fall and the rain is falling. Big, wet drops that make the tissue slowly, oh, so slowly, spread out across my hand. Big drops that make my tears seem so small, but warm. That's neat. I look around and Red Don's lookin' back at me, his eyes bright over the leaping zeal of the flames singing in the metal banged into the shape of a drum. His hair's actually as black as a night sprinkled with stars of silver-grey. He's called Red for a reason other than his hair. His beard is long, he smells of the screaming spirits of a thousand ears of rye, and he's smiling at me with nubby, broken, rotted teeth. He's my friend. Just like Elessa. She reaches up and pulls the cel-paper tissue from my hand and gives it to the fire. We're sharing the fire. It's warm. It's alive. Two noisy people enter the alley, the fire casts their shadows huge and spidery on the wall. One is a woman, the shadow on the wall, though, shows her to be nothing more than a girl. She's all painted and stretched and hobbled and bound in weird things that make her unhappy. The scent of lust and a number of men linger in the air after her, warring with the sharpness of something trying, desperately, to smell of honeysuckle. The other is a man who is... no, calling him an animal would be an insult to the Furred People, he's as bad as people get. That should be enough. He's red with rage, huffing and puffing and pulling the girl along like she had legs two feet longer and wasn't trying to walk on little bits of plastic. I don't like him. He's making her unhappy. But there might be more. There usually is. I murmer softly with that which I have which speaks with no sound to the street under me as the two noisy people go into their enclosed cage of steel and glass. The street stirs under my feet, and Red Don's eyes grow just a touch wider. He says he likes the weird shit that happens around me. I think he's crazier than I am. I listen to the soft murmer of the rain on blacktop and under it I can hear another voice one like mine, with no sound for others to hear, but I hear it anyway... All those voices. You know that quote? "I feel so much better now that I know that I'm really crazy?" I don't know who it's by. But it does. I do. Feel better, that is, since I figured out that the voices really weren't real. Well... kinda. Real's really weird. Real, someone will say, is a baseball sitting on your hand. Real, for me, though, is the fact that when people see a round, sphereoid object with a core, wrapped in string, wrapped in the vat-grown skin of a non-existant animal, stitched with the vat-grown dried gut of an another non-existant animal or the exuded filiments of a millenium dead trees, they don't just see the ball. They see stadiums, thousands of other people all massed together in an animal basic crowed, people finding the courage to step up to the plate, to risk humiliation in order to be the hero, the singing of the anthems of long-dead city-states, the sound of the crack of the cel bats, and the snap of that object, that ball, in the mitt. The glory of the game, the pride of a city, the joy of a nation, all caught up in something so small. Lots of people just call the ball real. I call the whole thing *Real*. That's why I'm crazy. I see the whole thing. Voices and all. It wasn't always this way. Was it? The street knows. It remembers, too. Remembers lots of things, it whispers in my ear, under the soft veiling murmer of the rain. Tell me, I murmer back, please tell me about these, and I show it the shadows still on the wall. The fire kept them for us, for me, actually for the cel-paper I gave it, the fuel I found for it under the bridges, in the remote courtyards, the branches, bark, and leaves that the trees dropped because it was time, the falling time, for them to let something fall. The street chuckles, glad to have found someone that can listen, will listen, as most things are glad to find someone that can listen as well as they can hear. So few, it murmers, really want to hear... There is a roar of voices, of engines, tires on stone, rubber on pavement, steel on dirt. I cry out. I think I cried out. Elessa is up and spreading out the blankets under the makeshift shelter she put up, and picking me up and... The voices. High, low, basso, reedy. The tap tap, shuffle-skip, marching, stepping, sliding, dancing, bone-jarring run, of multitudes of feet. No. I say. No. Just these. Just these... The street grumbles under its running car breath. Just these. Please. Just these... The street whines and then sighs and then... Two shadows on the street, a cold winter street, puddles crusted with ice and frost. One shadow that of a girl, with straight brown hair, no makeup, tattered jeans, denium jacket, backpack, bandana holding back the hair, and the smell of a human body that's been days without a washing. Her eyes are too wide in that slender, high cheekboned face, and there's a look there, a look that alley cats have, or winter crows. Hunger. Slow hunger, the kind that makes your bones feel hollow. The other is the pimp. Much as he is today, his mouth generous, his arm across her slender shoulders. They go in. When they come out again, the street is softly misted with warm spring rain, the oil slicks rainbows by the sidewalks. The two shadows are laughing, arm in arm, and she no longer has that hungry look and his arm is protective around her now dressed and made-up body. He fed her? Yes. They come again and it's a warm summer night. She hands him a stack of bills outside the door. She's paying him. Exchange for the comfort, the food, the protection, the business, and they kiss, slow and gentle. This time she falls out of the building, her shoe broken, his mouth is wide open, screaming, and the shadow play of him hitting her doesn't have the thuds I can hear in my head. They're both crying. Odd. He picks her up from where he threw her and he's crying and holding her and she's crying and holding him. She says something, and he hits her again. She goes limp. He starts sobbing. I can see the jerk of his shoulders. He walks off, carrying her. If you pray for peace, work for justice. The thought circles in my head. ** --- <<<< --*-- >>> --- ** Frankie... he just... well, you know, he just gets That Way, sometimes. Wasn't over fuck. Jus' a kiss with a sweet boy with long blonde hair. He hadn't paid. A taste... trial pack, hah, to pick up business... but Frankie... he got pissed. Real pissed. Thought it'd be a repeat o' September... broken arm and all. Yanked me up to the apartment, fucked me and yanked me down again. Frankie has to have a bed to fuck on... or else he'd probably a done it on the street just to show himself who owned me and then beat the crap out of me in public to show everyone. Was scared of hitting the street again, so I fought him, natch. Was blind scared when he opened the last door and he flung me around the door so I wouldn't grab the jamb like last time. Then Frankie just kinda stopped dead. There was just a kid, a skinny, scared looking kid. He was lookin' at Frankie, though, with a look like the one Dean gave Frankie just afore Frankie killed him. I screamed. Frankie knocked me back, maybe knowing I'd try to stop him, or somethin'. He hits the kid HARD. So hard the kid just kinda flies through the air. That's when I realized the kid had a bad arm. The arm moved wrong, like it was broke or something. The kid landed on the pavement, with a cry and I could see that he was bleeding. The blood hit the pavement. Then... It was huge. Bigger than an apartment... bigger than a corn field in July... bigger than... Bigger than a dream or a wish or anything... But it fit in the cramped alley. And it was *looking* right at Frankie, looking him in the eyes, with the same look of pity that Dean and the boy had given Frankie. There was no way Frankie was gonna be able to kill this, though. No way. Frankie shook and got all red. Finally, he got out, "What you fuckin' WANT?" The huger than huge thing turned and pointed at me. Frankie turned whiter than a turnip. 'Til my dying day... I'll never forget the look on Frankie's face. All that fear, all that rage drained away. He looked at me and iffn I were him I'da run away, but he looked up at the genie, the spirit and said, so softly I could barely hear him, "No." Then louder, more crisply, "You can't have her." Scared white, he stood there a moment, and then rushed the thing. It blew away, into smoke, into ash when he touched it. As if had been nothing. Nothing at all. Frankie dropped to his knees and started crying. I ran to him and threw my arms around him, and he hugged me back so tight I thought he was gonna break me. Over his shoulder I saw an old bag lady walk up to the kid and pat him on the shoulder. He didn't move. She pulled at him. He rolled over and stared up into the rainin' sky for a moment and then he looked at me. I looked back at him with the memory of Frankie's words in my eyes and he just smiled, got up, and walked away. I wonder what was wrong with his arm.