AH ONE, AH TWO... (The Runaway--XIII)

Josh walked the streets for hours. He started in Chinatown, the last place he saw Nik. At dusk, the morning reversed: the whores took over the street-corners, gaudy like peacocks, while the workers rushed towards the subway, to home. Josh rode the Red line across the river to Cambridge and walked Harvard Square and the side streets where they used to play. Students and tourists crowded the store fronts, licking ice cream and gathering around other street performers, but Nikko was not among them.

Night fell. He and Nik should be setting up on a corner, figuring out their first set. Nik would smoke a final cigarette, sipping a small coffee from Au bon Pain in between draws. Nik would drain the cup, place it carefully on the sidewalk, and say ‘Ah one, ah two, ah three’, and the corner would explode with the Beatles, Clapton, Radiohead, sometimes one of their own songs. Quarters would clink in the guitar case opened up like a casket, and sometimes a dollar or two would flutter in. Last week, a Thursday night, a slow night, a man in a grey suit threw in a five. That made their day.

But without the guitar, without Nikko, Josh couldn’t perform. He tried, standing on the corner of Prospect and Cambridge, but no words came out; his mouth opened and closed like a beached fish.

Josh boarded the last train to Boston. A cool drizzle fell. His flannel shirt clung damp to his skin. He ducked under the eaves of a building and shivered. At midnight, few people walked the streets, but he looked at every pedestrian’s face, hoping to find Nikko. When the rain stopped he turned towards Boylston, back to the hotel, and it was then he realized he had sheltered under the eaves of a Unitarian Universalist church. He thought about his mom and dad and Absalom, he thought about Gemma and Vee and band practice. He thought about doing homework at the warm kitchen table, his mom humming while she fixed dinner, and as Josh ran the four blocks to the Holiday Inn, he felt his heart would drop out of him with the noise and clatter of a broken muffler.

***

Installment 13 in THE RUNAWAY, one chapter in THE MINISTER'S WIFE, my novel under construction. To read more, go HERE and wade your ways backward. As always, thank you for reading my work. Peace...