[@Gardevoiran]

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Chinese takeout. Pizza boxes. Couch has burn marks on it. Been chewed at one of the ends by one of the puppies. Coffee table split in half. Put back together with another piece of wood a different color than the sandalwood, darker. 

Clothes on the floor. Who left their bra here? A bong on the windowsill. Some hippie blanket with that man with dreads looking down at them like a picture of Jesus. He didn’t believe in Jesus, but he found it appropriate.

Opening the fridge. How many days old was all these containers? He found last nights pizza. Cheese, olive and mushrooms. A pile of blankets on the couch began to stir. A big black guy emerged from a cocoon. He looks towards the kitchen. His black beady eyes catch Vincent’s much colder eyes. 

“What time is it?” he ask Vincent.

Vincent just points to the clock on the oven. Before grabbing out a slice of pizza. Santiago gives him a bit of glare, but Vincent doesn’t care as he puts back his pizza. He had errands to run today. 

“That late,” Santiago says.

“I,” Vincent began while finding a paper plate, “will be going out. If you find time among gangin’ and bangin’.” he gave a stray eye towards the bra hanging on the TV,  “Clean up before I get back.”

Taking out a bag of dog food, a scrappy puppy with no cybernetic alterations came running into the kitchen. Mutts were always obedient and well behaved. They tended to have the balance of all the species in their blood which made their temperament demonstrably more tolerable.

Santiago looked around and scratched the back of his buzzed cut hair. They were splitting the cost of rent. He was the one currently making a lot more than Santiago and Santiago begged him to do so. They had a bond since he took over the warehouse. 

“Shit man,” Santiago said, “Why do I have to clean it?”

Vincent only opened the refrigerator and pointed to his pizza box, then closed the door. Santiago groans.

“Fair enough you already cleaned up,” Santiago says, “I just do not know how it gets this bad.”

“Inviting Jaun, Charletta, Ruby, Tuesday and Friday,” Vincent says dryly.

Also part of the Steel Siders.

Santiago looks embarrassed.

“Yeah I guess you have a point,” Santiago tells him, “I’ll tell them to cleanup after themselves a bit better. Tired of looking broke.”

Vincent raises a brow, but says nothing. Bending down to pet Sam as he wolfs down food before he walks out of the kitchen. He says nothing else. He never understood the importance of small talk. It was a way to waste breath about dreams, aspirations, and goals. Instead of setting out to do it. Then people cry about that. Not completing their dreams, or whatever it may be. Perhaps because you spent too much time talking about it.

He didn’t mind the city. Personally he still preferred New York over California. Cities were small and had no grandiosity about them. New York always had a design that reminded him of rich people trying to fight over who had more. Taller buildings, more architecturally beautiful buildings, more lights, more flourishes. 

Until you had an oversize city built on the backs of immigration facing gentrification because some multimillionaire decided to play Legos with the city. That’s why he liked New York over California, maybe he was bias though because he had grown up close to New York that it was a trip away. Spent some time there. Glittering. Dazzling. Busy cities. With people like a dirty apartment.

Scattered. Wondering where they were from. Who they came from. Why they came. Like pizza boxes on a coffee table and on the floor. Who left it here. Why wasn’t it put up. Does the apartment look like a trashcan?

California was smaller. It didn’t have the veracity that New York had. California was about the people. Leading way into progressive attitudes. It showed. Environmental when some multimillionaire pushed for something disgusting. Melting. People all strewn together like a dirty apartment and no one bothered to say get back where you belong. Not that he believed that.

People could be wherever they wanted to be. They were all immigrants in the end of the day. As long as you weren’t blowing anything up, you were fine in his eyes. But that’s not what the rich people would say. They’d use the excuse of their ethnicity to justify kicking them out of their homes, schools, and cities they built to flourish.

The ghetto was a wonderfully dark place. There was fear. Yet there was comfort. He stopped though when a car backfired. He scanned the streets. Staring down a yellow bug. He continued on his way of interpersonal exploration of cities. This is what people missed when they were blazing down the streets. The minute details.

The cracks in the sidewalk. The weeds popping up. Spreading their roots like human anatomy. Veins of the streets. Talking about flying past, he saw a purple car blur past, going way beyond a safe speed. He ducked into an alleyway. He liked to call them cat streets. They were where the unseen wanted to be. Also a lot of stray cats and dogs wondered by.

Squeezed between two buildings. Winding labyrinth of gang signs interspersed carefully along the alleyway quadrants. He finally made it to where his destination needed to be, some young worker was taking out a black garbage bag. An opportunity for him to snag the door before it fully closed and locked him out. Slinking into the back of the Dirty Babe bar Vincent was greeted by fluorescent lighting. 

Someone drops a garbage bag at his feet. Vincent looks up to a towering man of muscles, dark skin, Hispanic mixed with some other ethnicity. Jo from one of the Crimson West, his day job.

“I keep telling you to use the front door,” Jo tells him.

Vincent just gives him a look. Jo sighs.

“Make it look like you used the restroom or something,” Jo tells him.

Vincent isn’t inclined to do so. Front doors were dangerous. Saw an unsuccessful breech once. Kid who came in was lit up like a Christmas tree. Personal destruction. Others would tell him he’s been overly paranoid. No sense of paranoia when his job is what it is now.

Stepping more inside the bar. He does a quick scan. Female, mask, black hair, with a young man, black hair, lavender eyes. Female navy hair, navy hair? Scar on face. Vincent smiled. Man with a box with a face. Several people in suits. This was an operation than. Or so he assumed with all the key details being given.

He supposed he should “mingle”. Sitting down next to the girl with navy hair he doesn’t say anything at first. The bartender noticed him, and walks up to him.

“Juice,” Vincent says quietly, the bartender looks nervous at how straightforward he said it, sitting next to this woman.

“Right, I heard about you, we ran out of apple juice bottles, you don’t mind a juice box?” the bartender asked, “Jo told me to go get it.”

“No,” Vincent said accepting the[i] Tree Canopy[/i] apple juice box before looking at the woman with Navy Hair, “Interesting choice of location. Isn’t it?” he asked her. While poking the straw through the thin aluminum.