move along

I’m not sure paul and I ever found what we were looking for during those long days on the streets of Vancouver. Sometimes, when we weren’t too hungry, we’d curl up together in a public park. Let the warmth, the grass, the safety of the daylight transport us to other places. Mine were mostly blank expanding hours that never lasted long enough. Paul dreamt in vivid colors – of violence – of losing me in a crowd. Mostly Paul was going through withdrawal. We had no money and no prospects for making any. After some guy punched me in the face during an attack, Paul got into the habit of telling the other homeless kids that we were married. And I tried to walk around looking as stoned and uninteresting as possible. People mainly left me alone. Besides. We stank. Like humid sewers and garbage. If I were lucky, sometimes the woman who worked the late shift at one of the fast food chains would let me in while she was closing and I could take my time. I could let the water run from the tap over the back of my head and through my hair. Hot water and soap. I wonder if she thought about me after I eventually stopped turning up.

Sometimes Paul slept with strange men for drugs. Sometimes he even slept with women. He never took money in these circumstances. Said that he wasn’t prostituting himself. That it was just about people trading for the things they needed. And he needed heroine. I never said a word and prayed every night that he would never expect me to do the same. He would roll his skinny body into a tight fist against my own wasting frame, and I would cradle him in my arms -- his head in my lap -- smelling of rubbing alcohol and the salty residue of men.

Lester started letting us crash on his floor after awhile. He was one of those older kinds. A drifter. Probably in his 50s. Grey and hard. We guessed he was Canadian. He’d let Paul hustle heroine or coke and then they’d get high together in the room. They’d get high on whatever they could find. Afterward, we’d all smoke cigarettes and thank god we weren’t sleeping outside. It had begun to rain more often, and we were never able to find adequate shelter. There was only one small window in the room. A cot-like bed and the two blankets that Paul and I slept under in the corner. Lester had stolen the blankets from a neighboring room that had been empty for a few days. We felt lucky to have them. At night, if I opened my eyes, I often found him standing over us – watching us sleep. I held onto Paul as tightly as I could.

Eventually Lester disappeared. We waited for a few days, but he never came back to the room. The woman at the front desk who wore bright orange lipstick and talked too loud told us, after we asked, that before he left he had paid for the room through the rest of the month. We stayed inside with the shade drawn tight. Rarely leaving each other for any reason. Wondering when the world might, too, swallow us whole. We slept on the floor under the blankets. Paul worked hard at convincing me to go back to the states. To leave each other room to work on the demons. He didn’t want to ruin any other lives. I caught a ride with some kids who were moving down to Portland. And had trouble crossing over at the border.