To everything
There is a season

 
Been a while since I visited the city and the old girl's changed some, just as I have. I find myself walking down streets that echo familiarity but feel foreign and strange. My hands run over the aged bar rail in Lulu's where I stop to have a drink.
The empty bar soon fills with strangers I don't care to speak with or have time for, though I did see one particular face I'd like to see again - perhaps in a more intimate circumstance.

Leaving then - I round a corner a little past the news stand and sit on a bench enjoying the peace, when I hear a faint crying sound. It persists for a while despite my efforts to tune it out.  Eventually it stops and a woman emerges in its general direction.  She'd been the source of the incessant whimpering as was obvious in her blotchy red face and puffy swollen eyelids. 

I regard her with a certain disdain that she in all likelihood mistakes for care...
Soon finding myself her companion, we cross the street and warm our hands by a hobo barrel. She's relating something though I fail to recall what she said exactly - I was only thinking of how to help make the situation more tolerable; If I slit her carotid artery just there; where she stood canting her head to the side - it would be quick and painless, putting us both out of her misery.

Before I can effect the solution to her troubles, a car pulls up containing mayhem and mischief. The two, a rightly matched pair, spill onto the pavement armed to the teeth and apparently there to divest us of our worldly possessions. I make a token gesture of gallantry by reaching into the barrel and grabbing a partly lit 2x4 piece of timber - swinging it wide in an effort to discourage our assailants.

I needn't have bothered really. As it turned out, the three ran in the same gang and the bitch was soon riding off with the others leaving me to stand by my lonesome, angered at my own hesitation and somewhat lighter in weight.

I pace about town a bit trying to regain control of the beast as he flew in a rage. Eventually I was calm enough to head over to lulu's and lick my wounds though as luck would have it - mischief was there having a drink of her own. The beast made its presence felt as I staggered towards the bar, barely able to look in her direction without wanting to extract a river of blood.

Funny how things twist when you least expect it. For reasons that still remain a mystery to me, she returns me my wallet intact, telling me that it isn't the end of the world. Damnable Dames - even if I lived a thousand lifetimes over I'd never get what flits through their heads! Still, I was barely in control of myself and beat a hasty retreat.

Walking away from Lulu's I couldn't help but grin, amused at my day's adventures in the old town. What else had I really been expecting in a Dead End welcome?