Blue Boy

Bigelow spits on his gold-plated Masonic cufflinks; polishes them against the knee of his Brooks Brothers charcoal herringbone dress trousers. He circles this dingy block a fifth time as he worries over his opening line: "One day intergalactic space travel will be available to everyone."

Yeah, that seems pretty harmless. Even if she's a cop, she won't be able to hang him with that one.

Night hits Honeybunch's regular hangout wall like a splitting maul - sucks the warmth out of it. Leaves her skin the same color as the cold deep shadow hovering over Northern and Central. She's been warned and busted three times since she's hit this crummy town.

Her kid is stashed four blocks away on the floor of her flat-tired booted truck, trying to disappear beneath a blue plastic tarp-chewing his fingers for nurture.

Freezing.

She's been doing quickie b.j.'s at four bucks a shoot just to buy him a now-and-then Hershey bar and a bag of corn chips so she doesn't have to steal them.

Bigelow's rig is long and shiny.

Big bucks, she figures. Maybe he'll be good for a tenbucker. She'd throw in a buttfuck for fifteen. He wantsa go bareback? Christ that oughtta be fifty but on a night like this, she'd settle for twenty.

His tires growl against the curb. Automatic passenger window whispers as it vanishes. She sticks her head into the hole.

It's like the Vegas hotel room that slimy Mayor flew her to when she was fifteen-except for no ceiling mirrors. She wonders if this creep might slit her throat. Worries if she stinks too much. A fifty-dollar bill lies right beneath her nose. A limp pecker peeks out from beneath his padded steering wheel. His palms shine white.

"N-n-nice night, Miss, uhh, I g-g-guess I don't know your name. Uhh, one day, d-d-d-did you know intergalactic space t-t-t-travel will one day be available to everyone…even such as yourself?"

Honeybunch practically inhales the fifty. Damn near swoons over the instant thought of a bucket of hot greasy breast meat from KFC.

"Shove yer fuckin space rockets, White Ass!" she sneers, as red lights flash through Bigelow's steamed rear window.

His flabby neck looks like a fat ripe tomato as he quickly presses his clammy hands upwards-like he's scared his plush white leather roof will collapse and suffocate him.

Her kid is turning blue on the rotten truck floor-barely able to comfort his little head against the gawddam froze-up brake peddle.

Honeybunch spends another night in a convenient cell huddled with her kind.

Any kind of bread will be just fine.

Spiel the Writer was 6 months old when the dark years of WWII were unleashed. He was 50 and in psychotherapy when it dawned on him the fear present in his parent’s bodies at that time of unprecedented upheaval surely must have had a profound affect on him. His newest chapbook, “come here cowboy: poems of war,” recently written at age 65 and released by Pudding House Publications in the fall of 2006, focuses on how wars, stretching from WWI to today’s aggressive hostilities, have imprinted his life.

Email: Spiel the Writer

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