For Earth is Full of Evils - 1. And the Sea is Full

Fuck, the place is quiet tonight. It's never exactly jumping, but Johnny usually steps aside for more men than this; more sad old bastards who won't touch each other, so they pay to watch boys half their age shake it in this sleazy little shithole.

Not like me, he thinks wryly, and stamps his feet to shake out the chill. Nothing sad about being forty-two and spending your nights at the door of a sleazy little shithole. Where the fuck is Harry? Ten minutes late for his shift again is where Harry is, like always, while I'm freezing my balls off here instead of freezing them off at home, in comfort.

When Harry still isn't here five minutes later, Johnny can't bring himself to care about how his boss'll react if he finds the door empty. If he can find himself some other sadsack willing to throw out creeps and chase off junkies, the poor fuck can have Johnny's job. He's not getting paid for overtime.

Johnny plants his ass down on the doorstep and lights a cigarette to warm his fingers. He sucks in a lungful of smoke and holds it, drawing out the seconds before he heads home, and a hand taps him on the shoulder.

When he looks up, there's a young man looking down at him. For a moment, Johnny wonders when the clientèle got so young, then he recognises the kid as one of the dancers. Long hair, badly bleached, dark roots. Skinny as fuck.

“Got a smoke?”

Johnny raises an eyebrow, head still tilted back. “That's a nasty habit, kid. You sure you're old enough?”

The kid rolls his eyes and waves a hand expansively. “This isn't that kind of a rathole, smartass. You sharing or not?”

Johnny shrugs and holds out the pack. “It's your funeral." It gets him another roll of those pale blue eyes. Funny, he never really noticed the guy before but the face is unforgettable. On the ugly side of elfin, almost a little goblin-like. Appealing in an odd way, maybe, or appealing enough for this crowd.

The lad reaches out and plucks a cigarette from the carton. “Hope.”

“What? You better not be planning some sorta sol-ill-ee-key on the nature of humanity or something, kid. I'm not the right audience for it.”

“Funny, you don't look like the kind of man who considers himself nothing.”

Johnny looks at him sideways, and the kid grins at him around his cigarette.

“When actors soliloquies, they talk to themselves. You're thinking of a monologue. Or possibly an apostrophe, I'm not sure. If I knew the difference, you think I'd be stripping here?” He wipes a sharp-knuckled hand on his jeans, then holds it out. “I'm Hope.”

Johnny snorts and doesn't take it. “You're scrawny as shit and you need a hair cut, but you're not ready to be sporting a girl's name yet.”

“I'm the last sorry son of a bitch working in this dump. Only seems fitting.”

And now Johnny's wondering what the guy's been taking and Hope sees it in his eyes.

“Only Hope was left within her unbreakable house,” he says softly, like he's giving up something precious. “You never read anything outside Hustler, old man?”

“You think I did, you think I'd be working here?” Johnny tries to sound mocking, chase the crazy kid back indoors, but he's amused and he can hear it in his own voice.

Hearing his own words twisted and parroted back at him, Hope tips his head back and laughs. He has clean, white teeth and when his lean face drops back into view, Johnny checks his pupils and finds them fine.

Not high, he thinks, just lonesome. He'd have to be, if he's out here talking to me instead of in there hustling old men for tips.

In the streetlights, Hope looks washed out and a little strung out and his eyes are sad now; like he's looking at something far away he can't remember the road to. “And at the bottom of the box, there was me.”

It's not quiet, but Johnny feels like he can't have heard right. “What?”

Hope isn't looking at him anymore, he's seeing something behind his own eyes or maybe behind Johnny's. “Just me. She opened the lid and they all left and I was all alone. So eventually I left too.”

He reaches out a hand and Johnny doesn't move, doesn't even think of moving, and Hope touches the pad of his thumb to his forehead.

“He never left you, Johnny, not on purpose. He meant to come back but some girl and her man carjacked him and dumped him in the river.”

And Johnny is frozen as Hope pulls away and stands up, looking half like a young man in cheap, scuffed jeans and half like something old and lost and terrible.

“Planned on catching the next flight back, Johnny, after he cleared his head. Forgave you for that blond – those blonds. When those two got in his car, he was hoping he'd get through this and do just that. Hoped it right up until the river closed over his head.”

Hope – for that was his name and Johnny knew now, knew that no creature like this could answer to any name that wasn't its own – stands, and slings his ratty backpack over his shoulder. “I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope, Johnny. Take hope from the heart of man, and you make him a beast of prey. You aren't a beast. You aren't even the bastard you think you are.”

He stops one last time, halfway to the next streetlight, and looks over his shoulder. “Go home. Get a better job. Have a little...” And he grins and doesn't finish his sentence, and Johnny watches him until the road curves and takes him away with it.

A little hope.