The old man tries to make out the graffiti on the mile-long freight train as it rumbles past – slow enough for the tagging to be somewhat legible, as coherent as paint-can scribbles can be – but fast enough that trying to read the layers-upon-layers of colors starts to make him dizzy. Smeared stamps of three-dollar, gang-colored spray paint decorate the royal cavalcade of company-branded aluminum-and-steel. Shenzi eagerly sniffs at their cargo of livestock, formerly-towering pine trees, and mysterious shipping containers. An enigma to the old man, but perhaps she is able to smell what was inside. Perhaps she’s trying to decipher the corporate logos and spray-can pissing contest.

Flashing lights at the railroad crossing, fueling-bay pergolas, hundreds-of-thousands of streetlamps, the rumble of the train, and the clanging of the bells that accompany the closing of the barber-striped delineator that currently impedes the old man’s path all come together to drown out any thoughts he might have otherwise been able to hold onto for a fleeting moment.

They’re back in the city. Heading north. The rising sun flares in through Shenzi’s open window as the truck emerges from the obtrusive walls of neon and LED advertisements. The old man presses the button on his armrest to roll down the window behind him, to give her a reprieve from the dawnlight, but she maintains her position on the passenger-side.

As they progress through town, the buildings get shorter and wider, not unlike their occupants. Parking lots spill from the entrances of attorney’s offices and mixed-use medical facilities. An occasional corner shopping-center with a liquor store, hair salon, payday loan place, and tattoo parlor. They pass the old double-decker shopping mall, its parking lot vacant, like the others up and down this street. The old man wonders what happened to that poor UPS driver and hopes he didn’t get fired. Or hopes he did, if the driver could get a good payout from the deal. Mental distress or whatever. His mind drifts to the four-screen, non-stadium-seating movie theater that the mall used to have. Its glass-fronted box office boarded up and marred with bullet holes. Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Jurassic Park. The carousel at the bottom of the escalator that his grandfather would take him on. They would sit on one of the benches with curled armrests on the rotating platform. They never wanted to ride the horses.

Further north. Miles north from the train crossing and the anachronistic mall, Teslas and SUVs form fifteen-long queues in the drive-thrus of Starbucks or Dutch Brothers. Ford Expeditions and Cadillac Escalades fight for parking spots closest to twenty-four-hour fitness centers. Costco and Home Depot and Walgreens edge one side of the street like a civil-war infantry, divided by this battlefield, these eight lanes of pavement, from their sworn enemies: Sam’s Club, Lowes, and CVS. Still, the old man keeps driving. He drives until the lanes merge in each direction from four to two, providing entrance and exit routes to the freeway. The last exit before you’re out of town. Or entrance, depending on your predilection. Before the elevated freeway descends to street-level, the old man turns right, into the underpass and at the next intersection, and after waiting an eternity for the timed light to change, makes a left.

The parking lot of their destination sits as empty as the roads. Typical for his morning routine. Not having a lead or harness for Shenzi, the old man considers tying a length of rope around her neck, but even he thinks that looks trashy. She hangs close as they walk from the truck to the polished lobby, empty except a security guard/receptionist/receiver sitting at the Star-Trek console that he can monitor the hallways and exterior of the building with. Instead, the old man can see from the reflection in the hall-monitor’s glasses that he is scrolling Reddit. The old man nods in that direction. The guy in the mock Sheriff’s shirt nods without taking his eyes from the screen. The badge on his chest is a sewn-on cloth star embroidered across its full width with “B&R”. This guy is clean-shaven. Jeremy, the usual guy, has a long biker beard. Even if he’d shaved, the old man knew this wasn’t the same person. Jeremy sat with his shoulders pulled back and leaned in his chair. This guy, the new guy, is hunched over the keyboard.

The old man calls Shenzi to the elevator and she joins him – after some trepidation. He presses the white button with the calligraphic ‘7’ and it lights up. The lack of stupid-themed floor names comforts him.

At the second-from-the-top floor, the doors slide open and Shenzi runs out ahead of the old man. He follows her to the end of the hall. Without his keys or his phone, he’ll have to rely on the override. At the front door to his office, the old man punches his code into the pad next to the roll-down security grate. The keypad buzzes and the LED light on its right side glows red. When it stops, the old man tries his code again, but receives the same buzz and flash as before. He tries a few other variations – those he would have used in his gate back home, common master passwords – but each time, buzz, red pulse, whirr of security equipment coming to life.

Riding the lift back to the lobby, the old man stops at the desk and asks the cosplay copper at the desk if he can open the doors.

“Do you have ID?”

“No, that’s the problem, no keys, no phone, no wallet. But if I could get into my office, please? I have some things I need in there.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but without ID, I’m not permitted to let anyone into the private spaces on the property.”

“You can make an exception this time, though? Please? For special circumstances? I can give you any of the other information on the account for verification – date of birth, social security, home address?”

“I apologize, sir, but if you lease a space here, you’re aware of the conditions for entry.”

The old man sighs and leads Shenzi back to the brown-on-white monstrosity. He opens the back door to let her in before opening the door around the other side for himself and starting the engine so he can put her window down. He idles in the uninhabited lot for a while, considering how he’s going to get into the office and comes to the conclusion that either he’s, a) not, or b) going to have to find someone who works with him to open the doors.

The old man turns on the radio and turns the dial through a few AM talk stations, hoping some jabberwocky will announce the day of the week. Not the date and time. Without a phone or a calendar or any other way to mark the days, he wasn’t sure if this was a day that they’d show up to the office or not. Unable to get the answers he’s looking for, he presses the volume knob to turn off the stereo. Not wanting to wait around to find out it’s the weekend, the old man reverses the truck into the empty row of stalls behind him and makes an uncontrolled left turn across the empty four lanes to head south. Back into the part of the city with the wide, flat buildings, surrounded on all sides with even wider, even flatter expanses of asphalt and concrete.

When he arrives at the Elbow Room, the old man decides it must be Saturday or Sunday. The patio is full and abuzz. An acoustic jazz trio of vaguely familiar-looking musicians is crammed against one brick half-wall, banging away on standards. Leaving the truck idling and Shenzi inside, the old man takes a lap of the patio on foot, dodging drunk realtors and local politicians waving cigars and glasses of brown liquor. There are some familiar faces, but nobody who can help him with his current predicament. Not wanting to get caught up in any inane conversation, he ducks out to the parking lot and returns to his waiting companion.

They visit some other establishments his colleagues are known to frequent. The Limelite, The Standard, The Manhattan. All full of the same people, wearing the same clothes, drinking the same drinks, telling the same stories. Day-drinkers cutting business deals with neighbors and fellow Foursquare or Church of Christ congregants. Mistresses sipping champagne-heavy mimosas. The lingering malodors of the previous night’s spilled and retched Jӓger and Patrón shots.

The morning commuters have emerged from their cocoons, filling the onramps and surface streets with rubber and aluminum, sun-faded and cracked, blocking out the pavement like a zillion ants who’ve just discovered a feast of roadkill possum. It takes nearly a half-hour to travel the same distance he would have gone in five minutes only a little while ago. Nevertheless, the old man eventually pulls into the parking lot of the next parados of bars and restaurants. These aren’t as swank, but are in a nicer part of town. The part of town that all those blowhards at the historic bars live in, but don’t drink in. Southsiders frequented these north-end emporiums of bad decisions after dark. Never shit where you eat. This particular bank of capitalist establishments represented one quadrant of what was, a decade ago, hundreds of acres of orchards. Almost overnight, it seems, they’ve all been replaced with drugstores and fast-casual dining and row after row of identical apartment buildings, standing in lines as if to represent the trees they’d replaced.

There are several options here, so the old man sets out on foot, Shenzi close behind. He pokes his head in The Five, but doesn’t proceed, seeing that the bar is empty in anticipation of the lunch crowd. Campagnia hasn’t unlocked their doors yet. Neither has AquaShi.

As the old man is passing the Sequoia Brewing Company, he contemplates going inside. It’s one of those local microbrew places where the ‘artisan’ beers have melodies of hops, sweat, piss, and vomit. On the weekends, they’ll pay a shitty cover band in bitter drafts and overcooked burgers to blast the neighborhood with mediocre renditions of Lynyrd Skynyrd and Van Halen. Fifty-and-sixty-somethings will Elaine-dance and drink swill to a ‘Tribute to Fleetwood Mac’ or ‘The Unauthorized Foreigner’. Otherwise, nobody he knew would be caught dead there. That extends beyond the bureaucrats and corporate parasites that he’d witnessed day-drinking around town so far. Not even the broke-ass musicians who play there would drink the beer if it weren’t ‘free’.

Deciding to take a look anyway, he approaches the entrance and takes a deep breath – an aspiration he’ll hold as he takes a speed-lap through the bar. As the old man reaches for the spiral-brass door handle, he’s stopped by a, “Hey nice dog,” emitting from somewhere between the sidewalk and the back alley – concealed by a cinder block structure topped with chain link. Modern-designed homes for enormous rolling dumpsters. More extravagant housing than the average minimum-wage families in this city can afford.

“Huh?” The old man turns.

“I said that’s a nice dog, friend. I used to train dogs for blind kids.” The old man peers around the side of the Villa de Basura and squints to look into the ragged wool beanie and matted beard of the man who’s speaking to him.

“Did you?”

“Yeah, brother. I’m a vet, too.” Obviously not a veterinarian, the old man deduces. “You seem like a good guy. Can you help a down-on-his-luck animal lover out?”

The beggar extends a crumpled Moscow Mule tumbler, something he’d surely found discarded in one of these hideaways. The old man plunges his hands into his pockets, but finds nothing. He shrugs to the shabby fellow and turns to the brewery and its equally-putrid scents.

From under layers of dilapidated wool and stained cotton, the fetid, bearded man pulls a rusted steak knife. “What else ya’ got? Watch? Phone?” The old man has none of these things. The transient inches nearer, aiming the terra-cotta-brown crusted tip at the old man’s face. Shinzi growls. The derelict barks aggressively at her, keeping the blade pointed at the old man with one quivering hand. When the vagrant’s eyes are on the quadruped, the old man snatches the knife away from the disgusting fool, reversing the point so it’s now trained on its previous owner.

“I swear, man. I wasn’t gonna do nothin’. I’m just hungry and need to eat, homie.” The mugger didn’t look so hungry. A giant beer-belly protruded from under a filthy baja hoodie, a fur-coat made from a disgusting concretion of mats to match his facial hair.

“I’m telling you, brotha. I was just messing around.

“I’m just going to get out of here okay?” The mendicant doesn’t move, waiting for some kind of response from the old man, who doesn’t take his eyes off of him for a second. Doesn’t breathe or blink, it seems to the human-parasite.

“All right, get the fuck out of here,” the old man says after a timeless minute. The wastrel reaches his filthy hand out to retrieve the corroded cutlery. The old man didn’t believe what he was seeing. This dumb fuck thinks that, after that, he’s getting the knife back? Hell no!

With a quick thrust, the old man pierces the sclera of the foul creature. He rotates the tarnished steel in a circular motion, separating the optic nerve and sending a slurry of aqueous and vitreous humor down the cretin’s tousled beard, saturating his matted belly fur. With a similar movement, the old man sends the repugnant bum’s eyeballs rolling one at a time like loose marbles into the puddles of piss, dumpster leakage, and human feces that mar the concrete floor under the castered trash bins. Shenzi eagerly laps them up and runs back to the old man, awaiting the next morsel.

The greasy thug lays screaming and cursing, rolling around on the mucky, polluted flagstone. The old man pitches the knife so it lands gently atop a pile of soiled thrift-store sweatshirts and feculent ski jackets. He escorts Shenzi back to the parking lot and, assuaged that he isn’t going to find any of his associates, squeezes the giant Ford into an open space in the dense traffic, continuing their journey.