He nodded and blew smoke rings, picking his way throught the crowd with his talons hidden beneath a worn piece of leather jacket. Head down, eyes narrowed, he tried not to provoke greetings and positioned himself, unobtrusively, in a corner, and began to hum. It was a glacial thaw of a song that hit the ear burning and caused scars on accidental listeners. Like the jacket, it belonged solely to him. In a different kind of light, he would have been easily noticed, but here he was camoflaged in oddity and unrecognizable.
"You're gonna give us all some kind of conSUMPtion if you keep on whistling like that." she glittered at him. "Anyway, that song's been dead for 50 years,...it's startin' to STINK."
He took a breath and continued as if she hadn't spoken but she could tell he knew who she was. She'd seen the camping equipment in his room. She knew how to put up a tent. She couldn't remember how to make a fire with two sticks but she knew his song as well as she knew ones and zeros.
"How many lives have you got left?" she asked him sagely, narrowing her eyes to match his.
"Snakes don't have lives." he mumbled and continued hum-whistling.
"Neither do dogs." she said and put her hand out to touch the top of his small head.
"Oh no! Don't do that, don't DO that, that's how it starts, that's always how it starts." he whimpered in mock disgust as he stood still as a rock and allowed her fingers to fumble through his hair.
"You don't even know what you're whistling." she said, shivering, and turned to walk away. "It's Colder Than A Well-Digger's Ass," she said. "I oughta know, I WROTE it." and disappeared into the undertow of the dim river dream rain.
He stood on the street watching her fade.
"Was that Levitt Tate?" somebody asked him.
"I don't remember." he answered into the fog. "Now I gotta drink alone." he thought to himself and glided off down the wet night sidewalk, not touching the ground. "Colder than a well-digger's ass and I gotta drink alone."
