Blood — black blood — roiled into the stagnant, pale toilet water, and spun wildly, like milk surging through coffee. Quickly, it permeated the shallow pool and dyed it the same inky, sick hue. With one more violent heave, desperate muscles twisted tighter and Deck was emptied.

He could smell that he was still zeroed from the night before. Lume fumes must have scorched my nostrils. I smell blood. Deck chipped the dust of dried blood from his nose as he pushed backward from the soured receptacle, flushing the filth on his way to the floor. He wiped the pungent slick from short, wiry beard, and began to right himself, a guiding hand laid flat upon the icy wall. Deck hung defeated over the empty sink and washed himself, coughing fitfully between sighing breaths. This is a bad comedown. I might need another zero just to eat something, Deck thought, almost making himself more nauseous. The aftershocks vibrated his vision, but all the colors in his sight were still numb and neutral.

The weak door from the dim bathroom groaned open and he limped, swaying back into Enora’s bedroom. Seldom heard quiet lay about her cramped space and a bare morning crept in from the floor-to-ceiling windows. Outside, he could see the fog-soaked city and all of its shining wisps, spikes, and spires, puncturing the cloud cover, still grey as graves.

Deck scanned the room for his clothes and his bearings. Enora lay sleeping in her deep bed, sheets tossed aside. That Lume was some strong shit. Everything’s still Oz and my chest is a bruise. Deck’s lungs sputtered like inflating paper bags with each burning breath he took. Uneasily, he stirred Enora, gently against her soft, freckled shoulder. Her eyelashes, heavy with mascara, gave little flashes of her almond eyes as she yawned.

“You leaving already?” she managed, depressurizing.

“Yeah, I should…” Deck hesitated, then meekly offered, “I think I over did it last night.”

He watched her brow slowly furl.

“No shit,” she sighed, “You were in your drink when I got there.” She rolled, and grasped around for her clutch. Popping it open, she produced a limp spliff and lit it.

“You’d collapsed on the bed, so I went to the loo,” she exhaled, lazily gesturing. ”When I came back, you were undressed and asleep. It was romantic, Declan.”

Deck leaned over her and laid a kiss upon her forehead in apology.

“I’m sorry. I just…” he searched for a better excuse, “must have overdone it.”

“Then get over here and apologize to me.”

Enora crossed her arms over her petite breasts, and taunted him gamely, wafting back into the bed, rolling to her side to extinguish her joint.

Deck took her in as he climbed across the bed over her. Deck pressed his swollen, chapped lips to hers, thin and peach. Sable curtains from her knotted hair were matted to her shallow temples. He pressed her chin to the side, and gently kissed her slender neck.

“Were you really zeroed last night? Be honest with me. Your eyes had curtains in ’em all night.” She gestured toward the little amber Lume inhaler on the nightstand.

Deck felt his skull pound heavily trying to piece the night together from the kaleidoscopic grand mal seizure that is a Lume trip, but he stumbled, “I’m not so sure, Nori. All I’ve got are tiny pieces. Like, Luxembourg. I remember what you said about J…Jill, I think, and Luxembourg.” He yawned heavily. “After that, it’s all just vapor. Smoke of the mind.”

Enora stiffened up beneath him and stared hatefully into his eyes.

“Get the fuck off of me,” she said, cuttingly.

Deck looked all over her cream-colored face for any indication of her anger.

“What’s wrong? What did I say?” Deck said nervously.

What did I forget?

Enora slapped his chest. “You remember the name of my college fling but you don’t remember driving me home?!” She pounded his chest again. “I said GET. THE. FUCK. OFF. ME.”

Shuffling himself from the bed, Deck hung his head.

“Nori. I’m sorry. I don’t…” he stopped, “I don’t know what happened. Everything just got away from — ”

“Yeah. Yeah. ‘Got away from me, Nori.’ ‘Sorry, I got outta hand, Nori.’ I know the sodding story, Declan,” Enora mocked him as she rolled to the other side of the bed. She relit her spliff and plodded toward the bathroom. Exhaling, she whipped the crushed Lume inhaler at his chest.

“You need to quit fucking with that shit,” Enora exclaimed. Deck watched her stop in the bathroom door and sigh. “You’re going to burn yourself up. Fuck up your senses.” She swung into the door and closed it, shooting him a look that felt like pure disappointment. The empty inhaler clattered at his feet. The shower kicked on in the bathroom.

She’s beyond pissed at me. I need to jet.

Deck gathered up his clothes from the small pile on his side of the bed and set himself to getting dressed. As he tugged his ratty black shirt over his head, he stared again out the window at the mausoleum-hued cityscape. The patchwork skyscrapers of the West End shown through the fog with what little bit of sun was visible reflecting off their mirrored windows. He slid on his worn slacks and slipped into his weary boots and started for the door.

Silas will be expecting me soon. I need to score before I see him.

As he bounded down the stairwell of Enora’s towering apartment building — from the fifty-first floor — Deck tried to piece the hazy night back together.

I remember swinging over to Sila’s place after my stroll down Mark Street. I broke him off his cut of my take for the night and he slid me a few whiskeys on the sly. Then, Gerard walked in, pockets fat with Lume. I couldn’t help myself. I walked into the bathroom and bought five off him. Spiked one right there in the stall.

Everything started to vibrate in time with all the little sounds of the world. Big, soft waves flowed beneath me from each step I took and running water from the sink filled my eyes with a wash of beautiful, snowy white noise. I heard the familiar hum of the peeling scarlet paint in the back hallway. As I stumbled back to the bar, all of the mauves and indigoes from the striplights above the bar twinkled and twisted in my ears like somber violin melodies being spun around my head a thousand miles an hour. I could taste the beautiful shape of Enora as she sauntered in and leaned over the bar to kiss Silas. I felt her fiery, heavy breath in my fingertips as she exhaled her cigarette. The whole world was on end and I was rewired something fierce. Zeroed so far out I thought I wasn’t coming back.

Somehow, I sat down next to her. She started talking about college, about her semester abroad in Luxembourg City, and this Belgian girl, Jill, she carried on with for a month or so. I remember that Enora said Jill ripped out her heart and threw it into the Alzette.

After that, I don’t remember a goddamn thing.

Out on the street below, Frank fumbled around in his jacket until he produced a pack of cigarettes. “Shit,” he grumbled at the sight of one bent, limp smoke jiggling around the pack. Store, score, Silas, he planned, lighting the cigarette and starting off toward the West End.

Down below the low-lying cloud layer, the city overflowed and barked cacophonously with buzzers and spinners whipping wildly in a sea of grey overhead. Staring up at them, Deck recalled when he and Giz used to take pot shots at the drones with a modified air rifle. Gizzy jumped with glee every time we downed one. “Booty for the taking,” he always said. Fuckin’ Giz. How long has it been, old buddy? Miss you everyday.

Deck trudged his way along the busy sidewalk. Hosts of people pushed past him as he struggled to walk. His legs felt as though they weighed a thousands pounds and tingled with pins and needles. Stopping to rest against a lamppost, Declan justled for his phone from his pocket and thumbed a ride beacon. A beaming blue rider came humming up to the curb moments later and kicked open its door.

“Where to, sir-r?” beeped the automated driver. Deck climbed in and pushed himself into the restraints.

“Memphis and Fifty-third,” he replied.

“Location confirmed. P-place hand on panel for payment-t,” chirped the car.

“Yeah. Yeah,” Deck snorted, placing his hand against the display. The machine scanned it and blinked.

“Payment accepted-d. Enjoy y-your ride, sir,” and the car lurched forward.

Declan pulled a Lume inhaler from his pocket. He put its small tubes to his nostrils, then squeezed the bulb of the inhaler until it punctured and released the fumes. Deck breathed deeply of the smoky gas and held his breath in a moment. At once, a glow washed over him and he could feel the tingling of his legs subside, replaced by a warm wave of bliss. All of the colors whipping by the window blurred and blended into a vibrating sound wave, as though a new language of the universe had made itself apparent to his very eyes. The skyscrapers above seemed to lurch over and cast graver shadows across the streets below. On the street, people melded and sprung from the amorphous, undulating blob of themselves like bacteria dividing. Declan tapped the display ahead of him and lowered the window. In his eyes flooded a thousand streaming words, flashing and strobing like the neon cathedrals of Times Square. Some beamed as crisply as the gown of a virgin bride and twittered from view like a moth from his view. Others vibrated in the scarlet red of a harvest moon and seared into his eyes like he’d been staring into the sun. He ran his hands over the worn and cracking black leather, tasting the salt of sweat in his pores, as he ran his fingers up each stitch. The smells of the city danced along his tongue and filled his lungs. The warmth of body heat in the crisp air, the stench of day-old garbage and still water, and the mingling bouquet of food carts on the street crept at him with a deep musk.

Deck laid his head back, letting the headrest gently cradle him as new waves of ecstasy shuddered through his extremities and warmed him from his core. He closed his eyes and sighed. The store, a score, then Silas’. He massaged his face. Got too lit last night. Ground to make up now. Deck rocked forward in his harness as the vehicle pulled to a stop.

“Arrived at your destination-n, sir,” the automated driver chirped. “Mem-mphis Avenue. Fifty-third Street. Have a p-pleasant day.”

Deck hopped out of the automa-car and bounded toward Old Man Hasan’s on the corner. As he neared the door, he overheard Hasan arguing with someone.

“…him not to send his little errand boys next time. Roland can come talk to me himself any time. He knows this,” Hasan billowed confidently, calmly from behind his bulletproof partition.

Deck tried to slink in, but Hasan made him instantly, as did a couple of Roland’s bagmen. Zeke and…Oren? Orion? The pair were bruisers, oafish louts with maybe a full brain between. “Mornin’, fellas. How’s business?” he said, playing it cool as he trotted past the beverage coolers. Deck could taste the heat of their anger and smell the salt of their sweat in the air.

“Good enough that you don’t need to mind it, lifter,” Zeke whipped around, his neck veins swelling. He was stout, Samoan or Hawaiian, with the red and black flourishes of some tattoo poking up from beneath his collar. “Oh, and tell your boss that Roland’s not happy with him either, would ya?” Zeke turned back to the old man, and slammed his fist down. “You’ve been light two weeks, as I’ve said. This is the last time Roland will abide such insolence.” His burly coffee-skinned partner remained mute.

Deck walked toward them, spinning a can of Go-Go in his hand. “Look at you, Zekey. Using big words like that,” he smirked, “You been reading more?”

Zeke spun back around and marched up the aisle toward Deck. The two thick enforcers towered over him, chests puffed, fists balled, and noses snarling. Zeke leaned down to him.

“You had better be glad you’re that old Scottish cunt’s favorite little grifter or I’d rip out each one of your shitty teeth and shove them up your — ”

— PREEEEEEEEE spiked the sound of a shock pistol priming and both burly men spun around to meet Hasan with guns to each of their faces.

“I really would rather not make you two involuntarily shit yourselves here in my store, but if you don’t leave this instant, I will happily clean things up for a second time today,” Hasan smiled, “Do you hear me? Does Roland?”

Zeke and Oren/Orion fixed their lapels and slid calmly past the old man, who followed them with the shock-shots.

Deck teased them. “By the way, Zeke. ‘That old Scottish cunt’ is as mick as they come. But I’ll make sure to tell him you said hello, in your own way.”

As they neared the door, Zeke looked back.

“You have made a grave error, Hadji. Lethal,” the bruiser grunted and disappeared into the street.

“HA-SAN! You fucking gorilla!” Hasan barked out, trying to get the last word.

Hasan sighed and headed back behind his partition, shaking his head. After he set his pistols back beneath the counter, he looked up at Deck.

“And you. Can Silas offer better protection than that uptown thug? They’re in here once a month. Always raising up the vig,” the old Iraqi man wrung his hands. “I pay them, but this time…This is too much,” he said, taking down and gripping his taqiyah tightly. Deck stepped to the counter and rested the can on the pay plate. Hasan waved it off.

“You know your money is no good here.”

Deck nodded.

“Thanks. I could speak to him for you, yeah. I can’t make any promises.”

Hasan sighed in relief. “Thank you, Deck. You’re a good man.”

Deck cracked the can of Go-Go and started toward the door.

“I appreciate that, Hasan, but you and I both know that’s not true.”

Hasan looked at him with something like disappointment in his eyes. “Please, just speak to Silas for me when you see him, my friend.”

Deck brought a finger to his temple. “You got it, kemosabe,” and he stepped back on the street. Roland must be up to something if he’s out cranking the vig on his fronts. Silas will definitely want a heads up, but I can’t go to him empty handed. I need to stroll down Mark Street. Time to make a new score.