MEANWHILE a million miles away, Omsatigo sits and thinks. What is he thinking about? What’s the grocery list of his brain’s activity today? It would contain, scrawled in crayon probably, on the back of an unopened bill for some necessary extravagance, at least the following items: drinking smoking music cinder block walls that keep out the neighbors more music; you always have to have, at minimum, music more drinking; as long as there’s more of the stuff, you can have faith that there will be more of the stuff so drink up and of course whores. Omsatigo has a special soft place in his lumpy black coalfired halfshriveled, halfcoiled steaming turd of a heart for whores. It was a whore who saved his life. No, she wasn’t your stereotypical whore-with-a-heart-of-gold, that old picture post card. She was rather a basket case, really, if you want the truth. She had beady eyes, a wiry neck, enormous tits half-sagging despite her youth under their own weight, a doublewide ass that loved to boogie, and a barbedwire brain the likes of with which to tangle he’d never had the honor nor the horror before he met her. He met her at a bus stop. There they both were, imprisoned by that semicolon in life; waiting for a bus. What else is there to do at the bus stop at four in the morning, but talk to a whore? What else is there to do at the bus stop but chat up the fat, hairy freak in the overcoat, and ask him for two bucks? He didn’t have the scratch, but he had a half pint of gin, and that they shared, Omsatigo and his new old whore, while bus after bus cruised by like the inconstant moon. Good enough, he thinks. Good enough. And what he means is, this is a good enough way to spend my last night on earth. Lighting up one of his cigarettes for her, he lays it all on the line. I’m going to die, he says. Why? she says. You got cancer of the testicles or something. No. I’ve just, well, I’ve just seen enough. That’s stupid, she says. She takes another slippery pull of gin. I know, he says. He accepts the bottle back from her. It fits right in his hand; the curve of it is cool. She slides her hot ass closer to him on the cold slats of the waiting-for-the-bus bench. I’ve seen that before too, he says, sounding even to himself like a ridiculous old man trying to sound old. But you ain’t never seen mine in particular, she points out. What’s the difference? he asks. She stops and thinks. She’s good when she stops and thinks. Tell you what, she says at last. You take me home. You got a home? Okay. Give me one night. If you still want to off yourself, it’s no hard feelings. No charge. If you change your mind— If I change my mind? Omsatigo asks, despite his resolve not to be curious about stupid things any more. If you change your mind, then you can pay up and get the hell out like everyone else. A chuckle at the bus stop from Omsatigo’s actual chest. That warms up the night a little bit. Their tiny coordinate on the hyperdimensional map of the city gets lit up once, a red-orange pulse. Was anyone watching? Was anyone manning the monitor that reported that blip? Either way, when the next bus shudders to a halt in front of them, the whore and Omsatigo climb aboard. Climb aboard. We’re bound for some other access point. We’re threading the night with the needle of our passing. Lean on a streetlight pole, huddle in the doorway of the old apartment building across from the all nite cafe. Be there in the lifegiving killing cold—when that cold attacks your nerve, you know you’re alive—or better yet, don’t be there. Leave the bus stop lonely. Let us rumble on past, in the downhill refrain of our end-of-time soundtrack. Stay at home, warm in bed, as we stare out the rumbling window, wondering where this graphite line is going to end. It ends, for Omsatigo and his whore, at Omsatigo’s dilapidated neighborhood. The almost-invisible bus stop at the the end of the block, by the mini food mart with bars over the windows and bars over the door. They walk on the gap-toothed sidewalk, not quite arm in arm, til they get to a certain squat flat, hunkered under the weight of three better-off stories. Hunch under three quarters of a door, and come on in. Make yourself at home. God knows, Omsatigo has.