They say the wolves hide out in back alleys. Another urban legend, the alligators live in the sewers, a murderer licks the hands of a blind woman pretending to be her dog. Originally there was an allure here. The decomposition, fragility, the fact the whole city feels like it could collapse in a moment and that is suppose to make it memorable. Like Atlantis. That’s why people invent so many stories.

I imagined late night parties, women dressed like 50’s movie stars. Dance until dawn at nightclubs, drink martinis and ride in limos. Everyone’s fantasy. But instead, I practically live out of my café, work as a barista for rich clientele in trendy clothes. They are more suspicious of each other than me, even though I fantasize about spitting in their cups or serving them apples with razor blades. I came seeking people only to find I like them less and less.

Cold winters. You have to bundle up tight. He waits for me to take a smoke outside and we talk about nonsense. His name is Edward, tall and bulky, only stops by on the cusp of evening. He likes his coffee black, speaks with a coarse voice. Eyes like charcoal.

“What are you doing later on?” He asks this religiously as if the answer would somehow change.

“Nothing but me and the telly.”

He likes movies more than television. And video games. “It’s my dart night as long as the weather holds up.” Every Tuesday he drives out of the District and into Virginia, goes to the same bar, drinks half-price pitchers in front of the dartboards. His only alternative is the movie theater.

When we get cold, we go back inside. No new customers, just students behind their laptops for exams. An older quartet is debating politics in the corner. That’s what you get for living in a city of politicians and lawyers. I tell Edward its official. I’ve dropped out of college. “I don’t think I can deal with it anymore. I’m no good at guessing what they want me to think. So, I’m just not going back.” A short pause, wait for his criticism. He shrugs and says something snide about universities and starts to mimic the grumpy old men in the corner. A new couple enters and I rush behind the counter to take their order. Edward is gone before I see him leave. He never stays long enough and I fake smile at the woman who orders something pretentious and decaf.

No point in owning a car. The subway runs late and you can usually walk anywhere. Snow and ice. My scarf isn’t thick enough but it feels good to walk anyway and spy into houses. Even in safe neighborhoods people keep bars on their windows. They think it’s to keep us ruffians out, but really it’s to keep them in. Alice is probably still awake in our apartment, baking bread or having sex with her boyfriend. She is abrupt, abrasive, is destined for great things. She waits up for me on the nights I work late.

When my tip money is generous, I take a cab. But tonight I walk anyway, despite the cold. A good excuse to feel alone. I take the long way home away from the bars and into the neighborhoods, into the woods. There is an occasional pedestrian, walking a dog or feeding a parking meter. The sound of footsteps echoes mine, but when I turn there is only dead space. Imagination likes to play practical jokes. I shudder a little, imagine some drunken fool from the bar is stalking me home with a knife or a severed head in his bag. Somewhere a dog howls. Edward startles me at the end of the street, still in his light business jacket despite the snow.

“It’s late. I thought you’d be at home by now?”

“I thought you’d be playing darts?”

He chuckles and beckons. They pretend wolves are cowardly, stay hidden until the last second. I thank him quietly for the company. We walk quietly with cheap looks and expectant glances. I wonder why Edward doesn’t shiver. He seems more aloof than usual. We stop short at an apartment building and he ushers me in. I let my feet drag, linger by the entrance. He beckons again, like pulling invisible strings that force my legs to move.

His apartment is warm and my feet are tired. We sit on an old torn futon, drink wine in dimmed light. He asks the general questions about my day, which exhaust me. Some more uncomfortable silence, a little bit of tenderness. He undresses me despite my modesty. I am not a skinny boy, small framed with a little fat that clings to me. His hands cup the plumpness of my backside, he cradles me to his chest. His hair is dark and spiked, he is furrier than I expected. His gray eyes speckle with gold in the darkness. I let him kiss my neck, half expecting his fangs to grow and tear me with a single bite. But somehow I resist the urge to fight him, let him consume me, rip me open and sew me up again. I fall asleep under his weight and sleep harder than imaginable.

This begins my time in Edward’s loft. It is open and bare, a small bedroom with a four-post bed and a canopy that feels archaic and magical. A tiny bathroom; the toilet doesn’t flush unless you jiggle the handle. The main room has a kitchenette on the side, a small sitting table and a coffee maker. The den is a large open space, the red futon couch, the tiny table cluttered with magazines, an overstuffed ashtray. He compiles his life to a single bookshelf, a few pictures, books and porn. The television set and the piles of movie and video games line up against the back wall. The study alcove is empty. Bare walls, a burnt tint of yellow, either painted such or the buildup of cigarette smoke.

Still dark out when I wake up. The awkward morning after, I put on my clothes and wander out clutching myself. Edward doesn’t notice my perturbed expression. He is naked and drinking coffee, watching the news. “Good morning,” he says cordially. Coffee without cream, but I don’t complain. I just sit down and watch him, balance my mug with my palm, wait for instructions or at least a hint of expectation. He offers nothing, makes breakfast. Study his body: the thick hairy torso, the widow’s peak, his uncircumcised penis swings like a pendulum as he moves about. There is a fading Ying-Yang tattoo on his left shoulder blade. He showers, shaves, dresses in business attire.

“You don’t have class? You’re not going to work?” I shake my head ‘no’. “Then stay today. Eat what you like, do what you like.” He gives me a fresh pack of smokes and a tour of his kitchen. There are no secrets here, he assures me. No Pandora’s Box, no secret door or tests of loyalty. All I have to do is stay. And then solitude.

I should feel restrained in my new surroundings but it is naturally pleasant. I pace between smoking cigarettes on the futon and checking the clock. I look through his eclectic pornography collection, but do not masturbate. No boredom, just security within the confines of the main room. I eat a whole can of olives and finish off the coffee. Alice probably paced all night waiting for me to return. We have our routine arguments; her obnoxious parties annoy me, I’m emotionally unavailable. I never wanted to be the disappointment. But I can’t call her, it somehow feels against the rules.

Edward returns at six. The day passed so quickly. I stand there expectantly, watching him walk in speaking into a cell phone.

“I know, I know. But when I’m done with work the idea of me in somebody else’s living room…” Edward chuckles and winks at me. He talks on in spirals and undresses right there, tossing his clothes in a small pile on the floor. The other person rattles on over the phone, Edward rolling his eyes, motions his fingers for me to undress as well. I have anticipated this moment the entire day, to be torn open, eaten alive, spit out and rejuvenated. He prowls about for a moment, mindful of my erection, a little bit of stalking. Its his domain, he knows where to go and what to say. I crawl up to him, sit in his lap, bathe in his drool and he gobbles me up. The act is quicker than I think. But strangely satisfying.

Afterwards, crude coffee and chocolates. He settles down, has cleaned himself. We play video games, a violent first-person shooter until dinner. He paws my hair, licks my wounds. We sleep heavily. I do not leave his apartment for another two days.

On the fourth day, I leave for work as usual. My clothes smell of sweat. A couple comes in with a baby stroller. They make a point that I shouldn’t smoke with their infant present. While I comply, I remind them that they shouldn’t go to a smoking establishment and expect no cigarettes. No tip. Street children the rest of the day, regular coffees and plain bagels. Relief when the afternoon staff replaces me. Edward is not waiting for me outside. I don’t feel followed on my walk through the city. While there is a lure to go to his apartment and knock on his door, I return home. The walk seems shorter than usual.

My apartment is the third level of a townhouse on U Street. The lofty staircase frightens me at night. Creaks and whispers echo behind me when I’m half way up. One learns that ghosts and ghoulies are just as real as brick and concrete in the right places.

When I enter my apartment, it appears smaller than I left it. Alice sits on the couch watching BBC News with a bowl of ice cream. “Where the hell have you been?” she stammers.

My wide grin fades; its suppose to be my little secret. “Out and about; made a new friend.” My smile returns. I feel devious and confident which infuriates her. She is a demanding girl. I am more in love with the idea of her than herself. The intimacies of our friendship are maladroite.

“And? No phone call? You could have been dead. Then I’d have all your crap and no way to pay off the rent.” She follows me around while I piss, change clothes and drink tea. “You’re going to at least tell me something about this mystery friend, right?”

I embellish, make him sound young and stereotypically handsome. He lives in a house instead of an apartment. I tell her he has a government job though I never bothered to ask. I only call him Eddie. “It’s odd. It’s like he’s got this bottled aggression and he’s looking for an outlet.” Her stare hardens, something maternal about it. “He has something to prove and I need to be there in order to see it. There’s not much I have to do and I kind of like it that way.”

She cocks an eyebrow. “Just like here, only its not.”

We take our tea outside to the balcony, ash cigarettes over the rail. Her boyfriend, Trevor is coming. And Trevor is safe and goal-oriented. He isn’t scared of anything except me.

“Is it possible to hate the person you love? To despise them and need them at the same time?” I don’t respond to questions I can’t answer. “If I could, I would take him and you and maybe someone else and move us to deserted island for a while. We would just have each other and everything would be safe and wonderful. I’d need you there, because Trevor isn’t enough all the time. Ours is a different kind of romance, something unique. You understand, right?” When Trevor does not spend the night, Alice sometimes crawls into my bed and asks me to hold her. It’s never supposed to be sexual. When Trevor arrives, we go to a bar. I don’t like his friends anymore than they like me. I imagine creeping back to Edward’s apartment, know he’s expecting me, watching the clock tick. I only stay for Alice.

Edward waits for me after work, arms crossed, bushy hair. Handsome, passive. We share a smoke outside, bullshit our way through a conversation. He does not invite me back or mentions the four days we spent together. Then off to the movies, disappears abruptly, dodging the lampposts.

I go to his apartment, a bag full of stolen goodies from the café. Tea bags and biscottis, a carton of cigarettes. By premonition, he meets me at the front door, leads me upstairs. Undresses and bathes me, feeds me, bites and marks me. I wait patiently to be devoured but he withdraws. Cradles me against him, I twirl chest hairs with my finger. This dependence obscures my logic and we sleep in front of the television glow.

I call out sick over the weekend. Another two days in the apartment. Our conversations in the morning are light-hearted. He ran away from his preacher father in Oregon. I confess running away from home to join the circus when I was twelve. Nothing in common. We like it that way, thrive on junk food and cartoons. The dinner I cook makes Edward throw up. Feel a little guilty, but chuckle with him anyway. He hunches over the toilet, his large ass in whitey-tighties like two half moons, cracking jokes.

“Must have been something wrong with that chicken or something.” He washes up and collapses on the futon. I won’t try cooking again for a while. “It tastes like acid,” he gurgles, making a strange face, nostrils flare. When a suitable amount of time passes, I sit on the floor and resume my video game, this time a fantasy. Knights in armor fighting dragons. Bondage maidens slaying vampires. His hand teases the back of my neck. I’m naked except for the long sleeve shirt I’ve borrowed, one that billows down to my thighs. We don’t wear clothes unless it gets too chilly. The eroticism dies quickly into something platonic. I pull him to me to nurse; he pulls me to him to feast. It is a give-and-take relationship.

After eight days I return to work. I consider quitting on the spot, fantasize of lounging about the apartment all day. The outside world is too cold and the fluorescent lighting of the café slowly disintegrates my skin. Every moment out of the apartment, I loose a little bit of myself. Only Edward can replenish me.

Day ten, I decide to call Alice. No phone in Edward’s apartment. I only just noticed this. I pull on heavy clothes from the closet, feel like I’m wearing someone else’s skin, and walk down to a payphone. She is either at work or at class. I leave a message and tell her I’m with Eddie and not to be worried. I think about mentioning the rent briefly, but hang up. The outside world is contaminating my borrowed clothes and I want to bathe.

“Do you want to just move in?” he asks nonchalantly. I pick at the avocado halves I bought on my way home from the café. “Just bring your stuff here and I’ll replace the mattress. There’s plenty of room.” I imagined my things on display in the study alcove, a cluttered hole of personality overshadowed by the bare walls of the den. It might infringe on the simplicity of the space that kept it solid.

“We can’t do this everyday.” I reply with sincerity.

"Sure we can. Why not?” Edward lights another cigarette, smokes too much for his own good but manages to stay healthy. His body’s stamina is unnatural.

“For starters, I’ll get fat from lounging around here too much. Second, you’d get bored with me eventually.”

On my seventeenth day in the apartment, I lose my job for calling out too much. They say I wasn’t a good worker anyway, which is bullshit. I am the hardest worker they’ve ever known. Edward tells me not worry. He makes enough money and I’ve saved every spare penny. I can always work somewhere else when the time is right.

Twenty days and I have begun the change. Twenty days and my whiskers thicken. The more I am consumed, the more I’m spit out a little different, my skin a little tougher, less fragile and pale. Edward quits going to the movies, but Tuesdays he reserves for shooting darts. He goes to work and is home religiously by six. Sometimes trips to the market in the afternoon. I sneak home once or twice for a fresh pair of clothes. A walk through the park on a Saturday morning or a stop off at the pub for a gin. But I don’t stay out long. The apartment is safe and quiet.

Edward takes walks at night. Usually in early evening, sometime he waits until I fall asleep. With a guest in his household, he sometimes needs his space. It rejuvenates him, lets him expel energy. He returns sweaty, panting from the run up the stairs and consumes me. It is always the best after he has disappeared for a short while.

On my twenty-eighth night, I wake up and find him missing. His running shoes lay neglected in the bedroom corner. Darkness, but I am learning to focus without much light. No shapes in the apartment, no moving shadows. I make tea, I watch the television. Don’t know enough to be concerned and crawl back to bed.

He enters twenty minutes later, sulks to the bathroom. He’s bleeding from the mouth, bit his tongue or something. I bring him water to rinse and he clutches my waist, buries his head in my midsection. No tears, just sweat. I stroke his hair, it’s thinning in the back. Sometimes he just needs a little fright, a walk too far out, needs the comfort of his home, the place we’ve learned to depend on. I don’t want to understand it fully. The moment is enough.

Day thirty-one. I need to return to Alice. She needs my rent, probably wants to talk. That is if she hasn’t changed the locks and sold my things. Edward is at work. I drink coffee in the kitchen and wander about. I play the video game I’ve been working on and start over twice before slamming the controller to the floor. Lunchtime next, I debate not eating. Alice won’t be home until the late afternoon if memory serves me correctly. I feel like I’m waiting to die, as if going back to her means I can never come back to the den. I could be replaced by the time I return. I have no job, my savings won’t last forever. By afternoon I’m clean and fully dressed in dirty clothes. Outside the sun sets. Dark streets, cold nights. At a payphone, I leave a message on Alice’s answering machine and barely recognize the sound of my own voice. It’s a long walk over.

With luck my key still opens the door, even after a month of neglect. Like every night, the staircase up is poorly lit. A wolf creeps in behind me. You don’t need to see him to know he’s there. No need to fear such escorts, he’ll protect me from the ghosts in the stairwell. I ascend in a sprint. Sounds behind me, vibrations in the air, maybe heavy breathing. When I reach the light switch at the top, I laugh at myself for being so scared of the dark.

The apartment is warm, smells like baked bread. Alice is nowhere. It has been a full month since I’ve seen her face, heard her bitch about politics or the weather. An empty apartment, it doesn’t feel homey anymore. There’s too much stuff crammed into every spare corner.

My bedroom is how I left it. Dirty clothes piled in the corner, untouched textbooks piled on the shelves. I change into something clean, soft fabrics feel strange against my skin. The walls are covered with posters of rock bands and cut-out comic strips, stuff I don’t care about any more. It feels like a child’s room, juvenile attempts to distinguish one’s self from their family. Arrangements of action figurines still in their boxes. They’ll be worth money some day, but are still just toys you can’t play with.

Still no Alice. In a few hours, I’ve ripped all the posters off the walls. My belongings fit neatly in the packing boxes left over from my last move. Trash in the bags, clothes in the wash. I bask in the newfound simplicity of my bedroom. My collections of magazine cut outs, toy soldiers, the Edvard Munch prints that are starting to tear at the corners. All gone. I’m not going to miss them.

I make tea and cook leftovers in the fridge. The door handle jitters and Alice walks in, stammers at my presence. “So, you’re back. How long this time?” She looks like she wants to slap me. Trevor is behind her, silently excuses himself to the back bedroom.

“You’re money is on the table. I left a little extra for utilities.” Alice flings her purse on the couch and snatches the check, examines it with squinted eyes. “I’ve been packing my room.”

“I figured as much. It was bound to happen.” She motions me to sit down with her. Trevor is probably peering out through the cracked bedroom door. “I want you out as soon as possible. I’ll need someone new as soon as possible.”

Quiet nods. She has turned on all the lamps. The whole world knows that the apartment is inhabited, urchins and wolves circle the streets.

“What happened to us, I wonder?” She drinks from my glass, lets her pinky rub against mine. “I have no delusions, you know. I knew what to expect in almost every relationship I’ve had. I knew you just needed a place to rest your feet for a bit. I just always thought that you would be different. In the end, I’m suppose to have a role, even just a minor one.”

I smile warmly. I want to bite her. “I’ve just changed a little bit. I’m a new person and I want to get to know him better.”

“And nobody knows it but you.”

Alice and I go to a bar and leave Trevor home to his own devices. I drink gin, she drinks beer. There isn’t much to talk about, the silence irritates her. Men stand in clusters, music rages from speakers. The smoke is suffocating. The more you look at the men, the older they get. They are bold and jolly, wised with experience. They don’t even notice our presence. It feels like trespassing on sacred ground. Two lambs in the middle of sleeping beasts. But the heat, the smoke, it shields us from the outside. You can grow old here and feel secure. “I don’t think I like this place,” Alice says with a frown. “I just want to go home.”

I take my first packed box and suitcase to Edward’s. We’ll pick up the furniture later. Edward prowls, herds me to his bedroom. He eats me whole in one bite, spits me out and devours me again. “So, I have you for a while longer.” It makes it sound indefinite. I cradle his head on me until he sleeps. Simple and quiet, if I speak it will ruin the moment. I can never return to Alice. I only have this place, the empty den, the coffee maker and the piles of video games.

In the late hours of the morning, I crawl out from under Edward’s heavy body. Dark and earthy space, semblance to a snug cave or underground passage. I feel a little sinister, explore the shadows of the room with new eyes. They say wolves hide out in the alleys, but no one ever bothered to ask why.

© 2007 Jonathan Harper - Contributor's Bio