The Daily Rain

The businessman is no dice, you think, too hurried, too self-important. One look at you and he'll be disgusted. Worse yet, he looks like one of those real edgy types, frayed around the edges, keeping his own self together with caffeine by the mornings and exclusive restaurants with exclusive wine and exclusive but buyable women in the evenings. Reassuring himself that it's alright, it's okay, this is life, it is the thing to do my son, and be off with you about it. Get a job, those'll be his kindest words. That hot cafe latte or cappuccino hurled in your face would veer towards the less kind, but it's still a possibility, and you know it. Nah, the businessman is a no-go.

There's always the clerk, a spindly stick of a human named Raj or Taj or something like that, he's told you his name a thousand times when you buy the morning pint if that's enough to take the jitters away. You've seen it on that cheap white plastic name tag the store makes them wear more times than that even. But no, he's a write-off today. Something about last week (weekend?); some debauchery the brain has buried for its own good. Helpful thing about turning the cerebrum into a chemical wasteland, that; it's damn good for the burial of memories.

Only eventually they all come floating back, don't they? The worst ones do at least. So you get the chemicals and expand the wasteland, the empty vastness of night living inside you, because if it frightened you as a child, keeping yourself in the dark is the only peace you know now.

Still, what was the thing? Last Thursday, wasn't it? Saturday, then. Surely Saturday. Probably. It's hard to be sure, you knew the start but never the outcome. It had begun in Mulraney's Pub, hadn't it? Vic's? Vincent's? That luxurious black fog makes it all so memorably un-memorable.

Anyways, the pub. It had definitely been a pub, you're sure of that. Because where else did one start down the spiral, headed wrong-way via the express route down Jacob's Ladder with no destination but oblivion in mind. A club after that, or more bars, but then clubs, women with clothing that looked like Christmas wrapping on them, men who looked hungry and starved for something besides food or thought, or even kindness. A look you know, a vicious look you've seen before. It can be used, that look. If you know how to use it. Which, of course, you do.

Powders and pills, white smoke and booze and blurry cheap thrills, so vague now they seemed like the third-hand relation of a dream someone's sister's best friend's daughter had.

A dropped bottle of Bell's brand Scotch, that was Raj's (Taj's?) huff. There had been a dropped fifth of Bell's that had made a sound like a .32 going off next to your ear. Or had that noise been replaced with the noise from the pimp's gun when he shot the john, him conducting business so noisily in front of the last dumpster you slept behind.

No matter. You dropped a bottle of Bell's and sonny-jim in there behind the counter won't turn his glance the other way if you lift a tall boy this morning, this morning it'll be the blue shirts, and detox in holding is a hell where the cherubic faces of the other demons are granted laughter at you. Best just to wait, make a mark and shuffle a block down to the next corner store. But not yet. Hurts too bad; the sweats will come soon.

Then there she is, appearing as if by order: a tall woman with a kind face, tired. Mouse brown hair already streaked grey, almost a match to the slate of the sky that signals the rain that will soon coat you, not that it isn't raining inside you already, where it counts. She's too kind, that face shows you, shows anybody who knows how to look, and now it doesn't hurt so much to move, easy does it, don't spook her, this part is like trying to pet the stray dog down the park, all gentle gestures and harmless words. Words that scald the throat but from which there is no escape if you want to get well. For a little while.

Say it. Say it, just say it. If she says no the pain continues and gets worse, if you don't speak the pain continues and gets worse, but if you say it maybe she'll etch those lines of kindness deeper into her worn face and part with a few bits of cash.

"Excuse me, Miss..."

The rest is a babbling brook of nonsense, you both know it, you can see in her face she knows not a word of it is true and she knows that you know, but it's part of the dance. But glory be, here's a raised hand covered in a black glove holding out a tenner towards you. Blessed are the angels in heaven.

"Thank you, I just..."

But she stops you this time.

"That's the last time," she says.

"Last time?" You ask. You could swear she's a new face. A new mark.

"Tuesday. Thursday. This is Monday. Last time," she explains as curtly as her nature allows. She's gone before you've processed the words, the words themselves forgotten as your body processes the feel and meaning of the ten note in your hand. Ten is a half gallon of Flisker's Premium, one step above paint thinner and cheaper by the ounce.

In that moment, nothing matters. You practically float to the next shop, ignore the frown of the counterman there; Bill or Phil or some such word that rhymes with 'ill'. That doesn't matter right now. The way A---'s face looked as they died doesn't matter now. The wretched heaving shudders won't come, so they don't matter. The way weapons used to feel in your hands; the objects of destruction you used, they don't matter. The feel of the bottle in your hand is the only one that matters now, outside and around the corner, sixteen silver and red cents left in your pocket but a warm half gallon of chemical wasteland in your hand to continue the internal expansion. THAT matters.

With the first gulp, eyes to the heavens, the slate clouds break bottom and the rain begins to fall, matching a pace within you, right alongside the rain inside that never stops. How many times have your eyes looked into the vastness of the universe like this, into the sky, into the rain? You don't know. Soon you won't even know this moment.

It's just a small part of the daily rain.