York PA

INDUSTRIAL, gray, depressing, drug addled, York, PA. is waking as a Greyhound Bus rumbles in, mixing black diesel smoke with pollution. Lefts, rights, bad part of town, the Hound finds the station, opts for a slot, stalls out between the white lines, motor kicks out.

Not a happy place, no joy, not much different than any other forsaken terminal in the system. Bus departure time, mixing to mix with the weary masses, boat People Refugees of an American Economic

Miracle none of them have ever seen.

Mandel exits, ruminates eyes around.

Babies crying, mostly brown skinned, Spanish being spoken, druggie girls and boys hitting up other victims for change. They are meth kids, dumb kids, street wise kids, dead soon from an over dose. Poverty, everywhere as other squalid families fight to keep it together, just barely.

A Vegas starlet hopeful, bleached hair, 16, Phat, tight hip hugger pants, skin tank, cheap leather jacket, Payless shoes. She’s lookin’ for fame in Vegas; a bus ticket a last hope chance from a father that sodomized her.

Mandal in a hurry, grabs her bag, eyes jerking off everywhere, at everything.

Two men, big, swarthy, folds of black hair, look Italian, she doesn’t know, staring, her blood ices over.

Swallowing, a gush of relief, girlfriends arrive, men’s smiles, kisses are exchanged, they rush off, kids just having a good time.

Eyes under the brim of her hat, now, eyes peering at her, men can’t help themselves. She feels something, she turns, sees the ticket puncher, behind the bars, ogling her and gawking her down. Lowered head, adjusted sunglasses, a turn of the neck, she swallow her fear, twists, walks out the double glass front doors. She fucked up, she knows it. Her brain knows it.

Where is a fucking taxi when a girl needs one most?

At the curb now, frantic and trying to keep her thundering heart from tearing apart. No opera in her brain, pretty paintings, just thoughts of snap, snap, snap, the sound a bolt cutter makes, snipping of knuckle after knuckle, glee on Bobby Ugo’s sadistic, grinning face.

Taxi time, luck holding, cab, yellow and blue, pulls to the curb. She waves him off, opens the door, slinks in, bag on her lap, fumbles with a cigarette, fingers shaking, flames it out, inhales, so far so good.

Face behind her shades, eyes covered by her wig and hat brim. She tells the tired hack what she wants and where she wants to go, maybe. He nods, checks her out in the mirror, likes what he see, slaps the taxi in gear, blinker going, blink, blink, blink, throbbing in her temples like blips of fire.

Time moves, a non descriptor part of York, where nothing is beautiful, special, concrete strip malls, convenience stores. It’s the usual stuff keeping the poor alive.

Pay off the nosy cabbie, she does not like the way he is staring at her. Closed door, yellow and blue zooms away, she turns, inhales, blows a flute of smoke out of her nose. Across the street, BIG JIM’S WESTERN WEAR & GEAR, neon, some light bulbs burnt out beckons her.

Paper signs in the windows, touting Six Guns to city cowboy duds, to Tony Llama Cowboy boots. It looks good; she can’t stand the clothes she is wearing.

Stepping from the curb, she J-walks, murders her cigarette butt into the concrete. Once across the street, opens the door, looks behind her, Nada, no men with guns, hatchets or bolt cutters for that matter, so she enters.

Ten minutes pass, she exits, Mandal again, or whatever Mandal is at the moment.

Tight black Levi’s, hip huggers, sleeveless black-T-shirt, black leather bomber jacket, black steel toed work boots, a Boston Red Socks cap slotted on her black wig, huge shades still covering those amazing eyes.

Two bulging, plastic bags dangle at the end of her sinewy and cut arms, broad shoulders supporting it all.

Extra jeans, t-shirts, heavy work boots, under garments, she wears men’s BVD’s now, a modest girl. Other stuff, boxes of ammunition for the guns. A tire iron, an Axe handle, a tin of Bulls Eye, gun powder, still legal. It’s mostly for hunter guys, purists capping off their own bullets. You know, to inflict homicide on elk, deer and sometimes each other.

Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.

Freeze dried snacks, candy bars, a six pack of beer, a pint of Wild Turkey, a pack of Orioles, a new eight inch hunting knife. Just the stuff an average girl needs to have some fun in vacay time. In her other hand, the bag with her old disguise runaway rags. Glancing at them, she groans, moves to a trash bin and lopes them into it.

Pack of Marlboro’s from her jacket pocket, roll playing, she rips it open with her pearl white teeth. Lips like melons pluck one. She flicks the Zippo cap; kick starts her smoke, inhales, exhales, feeling so much better.

Turning, she gazes through smoke down the asphalt street. It’s the usual stuff in an industrial part of town. Junk yards, wreckers, tow truck operations, Chinese takeout, no cats or dogs around, salvage companies, some street walkers, reclaim your beer can centers. You know aluminum cans, automobile carcasses from car wrecks, copper plumbing thieves ripped off from the local schools trading for more amphetamine fuel. Lots and lots of used car lots, the fucking reason she is there to begin with.

Nodding, sweeping sonar eyes, ping, ping, ping, she’s actually feeling pretty good about how everything to the moment has gone down. Adjusting her sunglasses, she begins to move down the sidewalk towards the used car lots. She has failed to see the peeking eyes shining from the stores plate glass windows.

Moments pass, a shop girl moves out the door, to the trash bin and, then retrieves Mandals ex getup. She smiles. She scrutinizes the pretty silk things, rubs her jaw and glares down the street at the blond that was wearing the black wig. No matter, she likes gifts, turns and walks back into the Big Western Store, pretty much death and life now in her sales girl hands and memory.