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white hair, said: They was a woman had a dog that done tricks. The dog got sick and died and the woman got sick and died. Don’t know which come first. But no one remembers the tricks the dog done. Just me. If you ever need to know, mister, just ask me. He put the pink doughnut in one of his plastic bags and shuffled away. Was he going to eat the doughnut? Sell it? Bury it? Where was he going? What else was in his bags? On a hunch, you followed him. What were you thinking? That he might reveal something about the city that you didn’t know. Something that would be a kind of clue. On the principle that opposites attract, you thought, he might even lead you to Mister Big. Why not. Besides, you were restless. You’d slept all day, drunk too much, needed to walk it off. Snark was heavy duty.
    The old panhandler’s route was a twisty one down bleak abandoned streets, ever narrower, darker, and more labyrinthine. A wind was blowing down them, chasing scraps of rag and newspaper, causing signs and hanging lamps to squeal and sway. Sometimes all you could see were the blown newspapers and the panhandler’s long white hair and beard flowing along in the shadows. There seemed no pattern to his wanderings, though he stopped at each trashbin and poked around, so maybe he was making his nightly rounds. Doing his collections, straightening up the city, he the only feeble sign of life within it. You’d been trailing along and no longer knew where you were. Didn’t matter. Though you wished you’d remembered to pack heat, you were at home nowhere and anywhere. And there was something about these dark nameless streets going nowhere that resonated with your inner being. The desolation. The bitterness. The repugnant underbelly of existence. Well, you’d eaten too fast. The doughnuts and chili hadn’t settled well. As the old fellow stooped over some gutter refuse, you stepped into a doorway, cupped your hands around a struck match, lit up. You smelled something familiar. And then the lights went out.

    THE CITY AS BELLYACHE. THE URBAN NIGHTMARE AS AN expression of the vile bleak life of the inner organs. The sinister rumblings of the gut. Why we build cities the way we do. Why we love them the way they are even when they’re dirty. Because they’re dirty. Pissed upon, spat upon. Meaningless and deadly. We can relate to that. Here’s a principle: The body is always sick. Even when it’s well, or thinks it is. Cells are eating cells. It’s all about digestion. Or indigestion. What in the city we call corruption. Eaters eating the eaten. Mostly in the tumultuous dark. It’s a nasty fight to the finish and everybody loses. Cities laid out on grids? The grid’s just an overlay. Like graph paper. The city itself, inside, is all roiling loops and curves. Bubbling with a violent emptiness. You have often pondered this, especially after suppers at the Star Diner. You were pondering it that night when some semblance of consciousness returned. Pondering is not the word. Your buffeted mind, its shell sapped, was incapable of pondering. It was more like an imageless dream about pain and the city. Almost imageless. You were being dragged through an old film projector. Your mazy crime-ridden gut was on view somewhere. Your sprocket holes were catching, tearing. Your head was caught in the mechanism. Fade out.

    BEFORE YOU COULD SEE ANYTHING, YOU COULD HEAR water sloshing lazily against stones like crumpling metal. The dirty spatter of rain, squawk of gulls. You were down at the waterfront. They must have dragged you here. You opened one eye. Everything in shades of gray, slick with rain. Could be twilight. Probably dawn. You were lying on your belly on wet rocks and broken concrete under an old iron bridge down in the docklands at dawn. In the rain. Everything hurt. Head felt cracked open. To rise up on one elbow took an heroic effort, but you were a hero. Your clothes were a mess. But your tie had been laundered.
    Captain Blue was sitting on