"Hello?"

"Hey Stan."

"Hey Lou. What's goin' on?"

"I'm over here at the Food Tree. You Hungry?"

"Well, I just ate..."

"What? Cold pizza?

"Yeah."

"C'mon, Stan- I bet you got room left."

"Allright, I'll be there in a few. Don't start without me."

"Too late, pal."

Louis decided his stomach had had enough time to deal with it's contents, so he snagged another plate on his way back to his table. The Food Tree prided itself on "the best variety in Littleton." But Louis had already had his share of fried chicken, pork low-mein, spaghetti with meatballs, clam chowder, barbecued ribs, baked potatoes with steamed broccoli and melted cheddar cheese, beef stew in onion gravy, and crisp garden vegetables: tomatoes, cucumbers, radishes, carrots, and iceberg lettuce. Louis surveyed the several steaming trays, and finally chose a few helpings of chicken cordon bleau, some potato salad, and a handful of egg rolls. He grabbed a glass of iced strawberry-mint herbal tea and sat down. Two egg rolls and one cordon bleau later, Stanley arrived. "Hey."

"Hey Stan. D'you use your student I.D.?"

Stanley sat down. "Hell yeah. Only good thing I'll ever get outta Dillon U is that two dollar discount."

"So watcha waitin' for? Go, boy!"

Stanley just shook his head. "All these plates yours?"

"Uh-huh."

Stanley shook his head again and got up to fetch his own tray.

"How long have you been here?" Stan asked between gobs of green jello.

Louis' face was red. "About an hour before I called you."

Stanley blew out a breath through puffed cheeks, dropped his spoon on the table, and leaned back, lacing his fingers across his considerable midsection. "I don't get it. D'you exercise?" He lit a cigarette.

Louis' eyes were fixed on the dessert cart that one of the Food Tree's several waitpersons was wheeling around. He shrugged without breaking the gaze. "Not really."

Stanley leaned forward suddenly, with both hands and the cigarette pointing at all the plates stacked around Louis' several beverage glasses. "Then how can you EAT so much?"

But Louis was somewhere else. "Excuse me ? Miss? Could I get one of those apple-pie slices?"

She smiled and set one down before him. "Anything for you, sir?" she asked Stanley, who groaned in reply.

"And one of those chocolate cakes too," Louis added.

The girl complied and wheeled her sugary cart of decadence away. Louis tore into the pie, and was halfway through before he switched to the cake.

"I mean, look at you." Stanley said, with fond exasperation. "I bet you don't weigh over a buck twenty-five."

Louis wiped icing from his chin. "Not true, Stan. I'm up to one forty."

Stanley waived the cigarette in a 'whatever' gesture. "Same difference. I'm over two hundred, and I only managed three plates to your- what? Six? Seven?"

Louis finished his cake and went back to the rest of his pie. "So I got a fast metabolator, or whatever you call it."

Stanley rolled his eyes, took a drag, and watched Louis, who ate his last bite with probably as much relish as he had eaten his first. After a while, Stan said, quietly, "You gonna be in town this weekend?"

Louis got out his own cigarettes, lit one, and squinted against the first drag. "Naah. I gotta go back home, go see Johnny."

Stanley ground out his butt, grimacing. "That man is not your friend, Lou. When you gonna join the rest of the world and figure that out?" he said without looking up.

Louis, however, stared straight back. "Listen, lard-butt, if it weren't for Johnny, I'd still be back in Dawn Creek, sittin' on a couch and watchin' Laverne and Shirley re-runs."

Suddenly, Stanley became earnest. "Then forget about 'im, Lou! you're here now, right? You don't need Johnny anymore! Forget about 'im." He was almost pleading.

Now it was Louis' turn to shake his own head. "You don't get it, Stan. I owe Johnny, and I ain't goin' back to the way I was."

"Whatever." Stanley stood up, lit another cigarette. "It's your funeral. But if you're back b'fore Sunday night, gimme a call. We'll look at that p-chem project."

Louis nodded. "Okay Stan. Take it easy."

"Huh, yea. See-ya."

***

Friday. One oh five in the afternoon. Louis Manger was feeling pretty good, listening to Dr. Himpel drone on about Nietzche's effect on western civilization. Actually, he wasn't paying Prof. Himp the least mind. He was fixed on Carla. Maybe her name wasn't really Carla, but that's what Louis called her in his own mind. She just looked like a Carla. She was sitting in front of him and to the left, legs crossed and quite visible out of here tight, short skirt, with dark stockings that started at mid-thigh... She had arched eyebrows above sharp features, deep red lips being fed a glistening wet lollipop by painted fingernails. Her hair was long and dark, and held back by pair of flower berets, adding to that little girl/seductress contrast. Louis thought he might burst, or drool himself into dehydration, so he looked over at Rhonda the ROTC gal, in her army fatigues, rumpled but clinging to her very unmasculine figure. Her hair was piled up on her head in a tight bun, revealing a slender neck. She sat across the room to his right but he could still make out deep blues eyes that toyed with her army green. She sat next to M”en, from Hawaii, with her short hair, curled at the neck, her long eyelashes, her darker skin. She wore a loose t-shirt, a flowing print dress over brown toes in worn sandals. What would Johnny say about such a smorgasbord? He'd call Louis sick, probably. In his day, Johnny had gone for smart chicks, like Sarah, who sat a little to Louis' left. She had a simple face, lazy, brilliant green eyes, wearing a cream sweater, creased pants, white socks and loafers. Louis wanted to hold her thin wrists, manicure her chewed fingernails. Until he saw Jane, M”en's roommate. She had powerful looking calves and thighs in torn jeans shorts, her legs well tanned. Louis could see her sports-bras through the back of her thin, white Nike t-shirt. She had on a ballcap, and chewed her gum vigorously, her pink tongue jumping out to lick saliva off of pale lips, strong teeth.

The bell, thank God, no matter what Nietzsche said. Louis swallowed the lump in his throat, and watched Carla saunter, Rhonda march, M”en glide, Sarah drift, and Jane stomp out of the room. Finally he looked at his watch, even though he knew what it would read, if only for distraction. One thirty. Work in four hours, then the drive home. How could he kill four hours? Well, Johnny would probably-

"Mr. Manger." Dr. Himpel brought him out of his reverie. "I thought your paper on Seneca was quite interesting."

"Yeah? Thanks, Dr. Himpel."

The wiry old man chuckled. "No one's ever quite lambasted the poor old stoic like that before. It's nice to see an opinion that hasn't been spoon-fed to the student."

Louis smiled. "Well I hope you're as kind to me on the final." They both laughed and Louis walked out.

***

As was often the case at the end of the month, or two weeks, or six weeks, or whatever it was when Louis needed to find Johnny, what money he had was already spoken for. So he went to the university library. He didn't bother with the card catalog- he knew where his favorite books were. And when they weren't there, he just took their neighbors. He grabbed Shakespeare's Second Henry IV, Michael Crichton's Sphere, Joseph Turnbull's Theory of Chaos Analysis, and the third volume of A la Recherche du Temps Perdu by Marcel Proust. As he was walking out of the stacks The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway caught his eye, so he grabbed that, too. Libraries were always an area of conflict between him and Johnny. Louis called them never-ending feasts. Johnny said they were horse-pill depositories. Or was it horse-like suppositories? Johnny wasn't God about everything. On a whim Louis snagged Darlene Stimm's Eighteenth Century Medicine and went to the check out-line.

In the dorm room he dropped his stack o' tomes next to the others and flopped onto his bed, shoving aside newspapers, magazines, and comic books, graphic novels, anthologies, and texts. Instead of taking up a more recent possession he chose something due in two weeks, On the Morality of Character, a book suspected to be by Confucius, which was at the bottom of a pile comprised of Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Joanna Going's Psychoanalytic Manifesto, and The Immaculate Perception by Christopher Dewdney. But after reading for a half hour of the ancient Chinese philosopher, Jack Kerouac's Dharma Bums began to tug at him. So with ten pages of eastern thought to go, he dropped Confucius and picked up the beat poet, flipping to where he'd left off without the aid of a bookmark. Just as he finished, a long-haired freshman stuck his head through Louis' open door. "Where's Martin?"

"Dunno," Louis shrugged.

"Oh." Pause. "You see Johnny lately?"

Louis shook his head. "Seein' 'im tomorrow."

The hippie wannabe stuck out his bottom lip. "Cool."

Louis picked up Donald Manderhouse's Ethics and Government, weighing it against Brian Lumley's Necromancer. Which one? The answer was provided by another head in his door, this time a sophomore named Kelly. "Hey Lou, are you still a math major?"

No, I switched to poli-sci last week."

"Yea? What were you before that? Philosophy?"

"That and anthropology. Whad'ya need?"

"Can you help me with algebra s'more?"

"Sure- but I gotta go to work in half an hour."

"Okay." She stepped into his room with her book and sat down next to him. "We're working on asymptotes."

***

Louis Manger had his hair slicked back, a snazzy red bow-tie around his neck. Tonight was concert night at the Hamlin Art Center. Louis served coffee and wine to the gentlemen and ladies waiting to hear the second half of a Rachmaninoff concert

Everybody's face looked the same, above their tuxedos and business suits and leisure suits, above their evening gowns in deep blue silk and print dresses of subtle yellow and white. They wore twill cotton pants, wool, polyester in black and tan and blue and brown, skirts that clinged and flowed, wispy and light, heavy and dull. They wore sky blue shirts and raton ties, loose blouses with big buttons and small buttons and nondescript buttons and shiny buttons. They cut their hair right below the ear, parted it down the middle, permed it, colored it, they had gray shots and receding lines and prominent brows, wavy blonds, and straight blacks and and bouncy reds and wispy browns. Long hair to the shoulder blades, teased in front, combed straight across the bald spot in visible strands. They had rings on their fingers, gloves on their hands, watches and bracelets on their wrists, gold, silver, platinum, copper, pearl. Oddly, Louis found the feet and legs most fascinating: men in sued and leather and brown and black and gray and dark dark socks, each of them. The women were more varied, with off white flats, navy blue pumps, brown open toed sandals, black sling backs, red red spiked heels, regular old high heels, in stockings every one, nude, blue, beige, white, red, black. They swaggered and strutted, sauntered and glided, stomped and marched, stalked, sashayed, and waltzed, simply walked, tripped, skipped, but mostly stood stock still.

Louis had a three hour drive back to Littleton waiting for him, so he refrained from sampling the wine that flowed like water and probably tasted the same. Johnny would have been proud. His first rule was "don't crap where you eat." But for Louis this was a difficult rule to follow, because generally he ate everything, everywhere.

Louis squinted at his watch before he turned off his dorm room light. 12:03. Luckily his mother was typical, in that she delighted in seeing her boy often now that he was off in college, and wouldn't mind being woke three hours before she was due at work. She'd probably, despite his feeble protests, make him breakfast.

Louis got his car going, holding off on the tape deck until after he got some gas, with the vending tips. Once on the highway the night enveloped him. He woke himself up with a few songs off his Pearl Jam tape, then cut the manic edge with some Reba Mcintyre. From her soulful voice he natural moved to a few from Wynton Marsellis, agreeing with the man's both modern sound and adherence to jazz staples. Next came Bach, one each of an organ piece, which filled his car and made the windows glow, and a partita for solo harpsichord, which woke him up. Louis took advantage of his wakefulness by popping in a Phillip Glass tape, but he could only tolerate two minutes of minimalism before drowsiness smacked him in the jaw, and he switched to Lords of Acid. Louis followed that with Barry Manilow, singing along as loudly as possible, and then some Slayer, laughing as loudly as he had sung before. He played some Elvis, which did hold up his driving spirit, and some Clint Black to personify the night, and a few tracks of Aerosmith, because by now his voice was appropriately raspy. Louis popped out and popped in tapes one by one, cuing forward if they weren't already in the middle of a song, sometimes rewinding to snag a favorite. He played Mendelssohn, Benny Goodman, and Genesis. Then Three Dog Night, The Four Tops, and Yanni. He reached into his back seat to snag and then plug in Adam Ant, Nat King Cole, and the Eurythmics. The songs made time short, and he pulled into his driveway sooner that he should have. Not wanting to end his trek with Garth Brooks, he listened to a Sousa march and then went inside.

One hour, two omelettes, three strips of bacon, some toast, some milk, some orange juice mixed with yogurt, a few pop tarts, and half a box of apple-jacks eaten dry and with his hands later, Louis Manger was sharing a pack of cigarettes with his mom.

"And what about Professor Wilson?" she asked, letting smoke drift lazily out of her mouth. "Does he still have that goofy limp?"

Louis smiled. "How do you remember all that stuff? What was it, like, thirty years ago?"

"Hey!" she said, blowing smoke at him. "Twenty, ya little stinker." Her voice was naturally low and raspy, a quality Louis had always liked.

"Yeah, he still limps." He squeezed his eyes from fatigue. "Didja ever have, uh, Doctor Limpkey?"

"For stats? No, I had Garson."

Louis shook his head. "Don't know that one."

"He was pretty old." She stubbed out her cigarette and lit another, while Louis dozed. "What about Flynn?"

"Who?"

"Flynn. Teaches anthropology."

"Never heard of him."

"Believe me, you will." She squinted against a drag.

Louis shook his head, and stubbed out his own cigarette. "No, I switched from anthropology."

"Again? You switched majors again? Louis." She looked at the tip of her cigarette, blew out a plume, and stubbed the stick out half finished. "Well, finish your eggs there, and go get some sleep."

"Yea, that's a good idea. What're you gonna do?"

"I'll finish another novel, I guess. God knows I've started enough of them." She looked at her stubbed-out, half started cigarette, sighed, and relit it. Louis went up to his room.

Louis Manger woke up at about noon, stumbled into the kitchen, and tried to combat his thirst with a swig from the orange juice bottle, then the milk carton, then a few swallows of soda, a tea-chug, and finally some water. He burped loudly, since he knew his mother wasn't home, and went back up to his room to call Johnny.

Louis rummaged around in his closet, where there was piled a collection of shoes; soccer shoes, football shoes, baseball shoes, track shoes, golf shoes, good old tennis shoes, and even a pair of rarely worn fencing shoes, all from several years ago, under them, in a cardboard box marked "train tracks" Louis kept his secret stash.

Louis set it down next to him on the bed and picked up the phone. He dialed Johnny's number and opened the box. In it he kept whatever quantity of substances that it would be embarrassing to be caught with. Louis wasn't a dealer, just a user, although once when he described a high to Johnny, the colors, the smells, the tastes, the sounds, the feelings, and most importantly, the reflections, Johnny had told him to write it down and use it as an advertisement. The phone rang but Louis let it, knowing Johnny was wont to let it go for a few minutes if he was busy. Louis regarded the various pills and powders, vials of smoky liquid and bags of crushed vegetable matter, and of course, all the accessories, the papers, lighters, needles, mirrors, pipes, razors, straws, a few Just Say No Pamphlets that were hilarious when high, and some photos, pictures taken at parties and gatherings and meetings and deals. Louis hung up the phone, then picked it up again and dialed another number. Some of this stuff was old, and probably lethal, but Johnny's sources tended to be eclectic and rarely fit Louis' mood, so he bought whatever was offered and saved it until he wanted it.

"Hello?" a small, quiet voice said.

"Hey- This is Louis. I just tried Johnny's number."

"Yea, I heard it ringing. But he's not home."

"I thought maybe he was watching the tube or something."

Louis decided to walk over to Johnny's place. Sometimes "not here" meant asleep, and Johnny wasn't too cranky if woke by the smell of cold hard cash. Louis contemplated his route. Which way to go? He could take Holyarch to 12th, and that all the way to Oakwood, a left on Graham, and two houses to Johnny's. Or, he could go the other way, take Holyarch to 15th, up to Fair, cut across the park, then- what was that street? -until it met Oakwood on the curve, and the other way to Johnny's, not bothering with Graham. He decided to to take 12th anyway, but over again on Fair to the park, to see who was playing frisbee.

But no one was there. Maybe there was something going on downtown, dragging all the families out of Fair Park onto the asphalt and concrete of a downtown section that wasn't littered with the poor, the hungry, the homeless. It was all for publicity shots, Johnny told him; the city got local banks and factories to sponsor family days so they could take photos and try to recruit new businesses. Louis didn't much care. He walked across the park, thinking with every step that he ought to take off his shoes and wiggle his toes in the grass. But soon he was on the other side.

The trees on the "mystery" street were huge, green, another perfect picture, and hid the street sign. The also hid the sidewalk, since they were so damn big and the street curved, exactly the way the rest of the streets in the Fair neighborhood didn't. Louis was whistling, something meaningless; maybe he'd switch to music as his major, and therefore was walking slowly enough to not startle the dog that was growling menacingly at the little girl.

She was frozen, whimpering, obviously having been told not to run from bad doggies. The dog had its teeth out, its lips pulled back, it's nose crunched up. Louis froze too. The dog took one step back- good, but when the little girl shuffled a foot towards Louis, the dog took two more steps forward, and the girl whimpered louder. She was dressed in a pair if small blue jeans,a pink shirt, and Keds, her hair in pigtails, and would have been very cute if it weren't for the snot caked on her lips and her eyes red and puffy.

"It's okay," Louis said, his heart thumping loud in his chest. The dog barked once, loud, sharp. What the hell kind of dog was it? Some kind of Labrador terrier mix, black with flecks of brown and white. Louis noticed that it's leg looked chewed up, and its ears were ratty. This was a fighting dog, not a run away and bark at you from under the porch dog. Louis finger's went numb, and he could feel his knees start to shake. But it wasn't the shake of fear, like when he and Johnny had met behind the 7-11 with the guy from Chicago, and there had been a whoop of the siren- the cop was putting a scare into some kids who got caught for shoplifting, but none of them could come out from behind the convenience store or he'd see them, high on his authority, and ask them what they had been doing. No, this was the shaking he got when he'd injected something so pure, so clean, he wanted to fly back to Johnny and give him a big slimy kiss right on the face. He smiled.

"I want my momma," the little girl said, quietly, and the dog barked again, and took another step towards her, head lowering toward the ground.

"Hey!" Louis shouted, loud, fast, taking a step towards the dog and stomping his foot. The dog stepped back, and Louis looked him in the eye, his own mouth open, trying to show the dog his teeth. Somewhere he had read how looking an animal in the eye was a sign of aggression, and Louis was feeling very aggressive.

The dog barked again, twice, three times, then cocked his head to the side with his mouth mouth closed, and turned and trotted away. The girl leapt towards Louis, clutching his leg, crying into it, making his thigh wet.

Louis picked her up. His head felt light, his hands shook, and a tiny hot part inside him felt disappointed that the dog had not attacked. "It's okay, it's all right." She clutched him around his neck, her little body shaking with sobs. "What's your name?"

"Sally."

"Where do you live Sally?"

"Over there," she said, pointing.

Louis patted her head. "Okay." he walked across the street, out from under the trees into the glaring hot spring sun, and up the walk to her house. He knocked on the door, and after a few moments, a woman dressed almost identical to the girl, with a kerchief on her head, answered the door. Her eyes jumped from annoyed curiosity to outright fear.

"Sally here had a run in with a bad doggie," Louis said, handing the girl over.

The woman looked at her daughter, as if to see if she was okay. "Are you allright honey?"

The girl hugged her mother, quietly. "I hate doggies."

The woman smiled at Louis. "Thank you." She smiled and Louis felt his knees go numb again, and his chest grew hot. "Thank you."

Louis smiled back. "My pleasure. You might want to call the pound- that dog looked feral."

"Okay, yes, that's a god idea, thank you." The woman smiled again. "Would you like-"

"Momma can I have a popcycle?" The girl said, her eyes still puffy.

"Have a nice day, ma'am. Bye Sally." Louis waved and walked down the sidewalk back to the street.

Louis walked across the park, back towards his mom's house, feeling high, very high. The clouds were an immaculate white, puffy, and the sky was a deep rich blue, almost edible. The park was still empty, and Louis seemed to float across it, smiling wide, his eyes squinting in the bright sunlight. When he reached his house, the phone was ringing. He felt alive, charged up, ready for anything. When he picked up the phone, the line was dead.

He thought about calling Johnny back, having forgot to go over in his euphoria. He sat in his mom's overstuffed chair, looking out the window at Mrs. Garibaldi's flower bush through the window. Man, he felt alive. This was way better than any of the shit Johnny got for him. Maybe he didn't need that crap anymore. Maybe he was ready to move on. The kids at school would be disappointed that he didn't have anything to "share" anymore, but what the hell. He was a hero! He felt good. Maybe he'd switch majors again, maybe quit school and join the force, become a firefighter. For the first time in his life, Louis knew, not just thought, that he could do anything.

He got up to grab a coke out of the fridge, and sat down in the chair again, sipping small sips, feeling the blood course through his veins. "Yo!" A voice yelled through the screen door.

Louis got up. "Johnny. Hey, come in."

Johnny looked around before opening the door, playing the paranoid dealer to a perfect T. "Hey man, I heard you been calling me."

"Yeah, about that, John, look-"

"Well, I figured you was due, so I talked to this guy who knows this guy, and." he held up two depressing-looking balloons in his hand. "I'm I the man or what?"

Louis gazed at the balloons. He felt good- but what would good feel like on top of good? "What is it?"

Johnny contemplated the bags. "Oh, I don't know. 85, 90 percent pure Mexican brown."

"No shit?"

Johnny laughed. "I'd make a pun, now, but I'm gonna show this shit some respect. No shit." He smiled.

Louis thought about the Food Tree, all the girls in his western civ class, the library, the rich folks at the Hamlin center, his tape deck. He thought about that little girl, the way her mom looked at him. He thought about that dog, what it was like to yell at it, watch it run away. He stared at the balloons for a minute, then pulled a wad out of his back pocket. "How's this." He tossed it to Johnny.

Johnny counted it, threw half back. "You're a good kid, Lou," and he laughed. "I'ma give you the good kid special." He tossed the balloons over. "You got works?"

Louis nodded, fingering the small powdery bags. "Yes sir, I do." he grinned.

"When you gonna be back in town?" Johnny said, moving towards the door.

Louis shrugged, heading for his room. "I don't know. When's my next paycheck?" They both laughed.