Today I had a few drinks with Kent, a homeless guy I’ve known for a while, at the Alahambra. The Alahambra is meant to resemble an on old western town bar, the kind you see Clint Eastwood gritting his teeth in in movies. They’ve got swinging wooden doors and a piano machine that plays old favorites like “Old River” and “Mountain Path” and “Don’t Drink the Water From the Old River by the Mountain Path”. The seats are designed to be exceptionally uncomfortable, just like the kind in the wild west and the place reeks like whisky and wood. It’s authentic all right. Today I’m feeling pretty good so I tell Kent I’ve raised his drink maximum from three to seven on account of I just got my pay check yesterday. Kent says some words that I can’t quite understand and then “thanks damnit,” and I smile at him and he smiles back. He smelled of booze before we got in the place and I suspect he is already hammered. Kent thinks he is a cowboy and that’s why I take him to the Alahambra. He’s wearing cowboy boots that he stole from a thrift store and a ripped button down shirt. Might as well get him pass out drunk I think to myself, it’s going to be cold tonight. After half an hour at the Alahambra I’ve had a couple beers and Kent has had four whiskey and soda’s. He is telling me a story about something that recently happened in his life, but he’s pausing and repeating himself and switching the tense so much I can barely follow him. “God damn kids right? So there’s the alley. They’re in the alley, they come up in and I’m there just sitting like cause I was just minding my business, right? So they came in, and they come took my hat.” “They took your hat?” “Tookit,” Kent says. Apparently some college kids stole his big ugly cowboy hat that he loves. Kent continues, leaning all over the place and closing and opening his eyes like there’s dust in them or something. “They took it. And I’m all there like all. And they took it, and then laughing, and they ran away. They’re running and they tookit. It’s my hat. Yaknow?” “That’s terrible. How old were they?” “Must’ve been cheatin, ran and take my hat.” “Were they young?” “Yeap.” An attractive young couple are sitting next to us at the bar, next to Kent. The guy is talking to his girlfriend and from where I’m sitting I can see the back of his head. I look past him at his girlfriend. She’s making a weird face and looking at Kent who now is leaning on the bar and drooling. I give his stool a jolt with my foot and he springs back into action and some drool hits me in the cheek. “Welcome back,” I say. “Where did it go?” “It went somewhere very far away.” “Another?” “Nope, that was seven,” I say pointing to Kent’s empty fourth. “Pisstime,” Kent says, slumping off of his stool and wobbling toward the men’s room. I order another drink while the piano machine cranks away. There are a few people dancing, but mostly everyone is sitting and drinking and talking. There’s a big blanket of vowels and laughter wrapped around my head so I can barely think. The Alahambra is crowded tonight. I see Kent come out of the bathroom door underneath the big horned skull of something that looks like it’s grinning mounted up on the wall. He’s taking entirely too long to make it back to his seat. He pauses for a halftime break leaning against a big barrel of something and I pay for my last drink and head over. “Time to go, Kent.” “Yeah, I’m ok.” “Good, let’s go.” “Alright.” When we get outside it’s dark and snowing lightly. I can see it under the street lights and the traffic lights and the light in front of the Alahambra. “I forgot my jacket,” Kent says. “You had a jacket?” “I forgot it.” “Alright, be quick,” I say and light a cigarette. Kent comes outside in a large LL Bean winter coat with several layers and levels of interlocking pockets and zippers and hoods. “That isn’t yours, is it.” “C’mon man, it’s cold,” Kent says, homeless. “Alright let’s get out of here.” Kent and I head down the main street toward the park where he’ll be spending the night. On the way back he tells me a story about his friend Mike, who is also homeless, and who, just the other day, smashed a kid with a duffle bag full of books just for fun. “A duffle bag?” I ask him. “Yeah.” He seems pleased. The cold air seems to have sharpened him a bit. He goes on and on about how he thought life was gonna be when he was young, and about all the girls he’d fucked and all the drugs he’d done and all the things he’d seen. For a second I almost wish I’d been right along there with him during it. Maybe not participating in all of it, but there anyways, just enjoying the ride. We get to a spot in a little enclave of trees where three guys are sitting huddled around a small fire they’ve made with newspaper and cardboard and clumps of shit. The smoke from the fire smells like sewage. Kent introduces me and I say hi and the guys grunt. The guys themselves smell like formaldehyde or burnt laundry detergent. One of them holds up a little pipe and asks me if I want a taste. I take a taste. The smoke from the pipe feels like it’s burning up the lining of my lungs. My head feels empty and the man’s dirty face seems to change. The fire is warm. I ask Kent if he’s all set and he says yeah and I go. I get lost on the way back to the T stop but I don’t care. It’s snowing harder now so I step into an alley to get out of the wind for a second. The shadows are sliding around making the place dark and slippery. I’m starting to lose my sense of direction. Now the shadows are spreading out like wet blankets tied to ropes. There’s something bright out in the street, coming toward me, getting brighter. The light massages my eyes and pushes its way around them and into my brain. “Hey man, do you need a ride?” “Yeah,” I say, and walking out of the alley, “I do need a ride.” I get back to my apartment late. I don’t want to lay on my bed because the sheets look too hot so I try the living room. The couch is made of some kind of malleable brown sod, so I sit down on the floor and fall asleep. I have a dream about a crocodile with pale human flesh who lives in an orange river. He’s trying to kill me so I run up onto a muddy hill. He can’t get up and he looks pissed. I wake up with a sore neck and I get a weird feeling like it would be a bad thing to fall back asleep again so I decide to leave to get a coffee. Outside it isn’t snowing anymore, but the sun is just rising, turning all of the frozen leftovers from the storm orange. I buy a cup of dark roast at Cumby’s around the corner. Walking back to my apartment I can see all the people who’ve gotten up early to go to work. They don’t look the way people do in the afternoon or at night. They’re more like shells, or exoskeletons made of rubber. The orange light bounces off them and into the coffee cup jittering in my hand. It feels like the thing is made of electricity, the kind that you can’t feel, the kind that pulses your muscles just so, just enough to make them twitch. Across the street I hear someone yell and I turn. Two men stand face to face, one of them grinning an insane grin, the other holding his head and looking completely bewildered, a duffle bag lying in the orange light between them on the sidewalk.