he pulls the red baseball cap down and becomes the old Cosmos again.
A flock of crows flies over the river. It looks like a black cloud. The crows shriek and clamor and flutter up again before settling to sleep over in the trees. The driftwood fires have burned down.
“Come on,” says Cosmos, “it’s getting cold. We gotta go!”
He stands up, grabs his two plastic bags, and climbs up the embankment. Niner follows behind him. Past the others.
Red Elsa lies rolled up in a torn sleeping bag. Bald Pete mutters to himself, and the harmonica has dropped out of Harmonica Johnny’s hand.
A silver crescent moon hangs in the sky above the riverbank. The white houses look dead. Only the lights of the alarm systems glow like red eyes above the terraces. A blanket of darkness has fallen over the city.
Cosmos takes long steps. Away from the houses, up into the city proper.
But it takes a while before they come to a neighborhood with any life to it. There, mothers are setting tables behind bright windowpanes, and children sit in clean pajamas, fresh from their baths, drinking warm milk.
As Niner stares in, he thinks of Mama, which makes him really sad.
“Don’t you go looking in there,” says Cosmos. “They’re on the other side. If you turned their power off they’d die of hunger. They don’t know nothin’. Nothin’ at all! Hey, old pal!” Cosmos nudges Niner in the ribs. “We own the street! We own the night! We own the sea!” And then he wiggles his ears and makes faces until Niner has no choice but to laugh.
“Well, there you go! And now we’ll be wanting that five-star hotel!”
AND COSMOS AND NINER head off looking for a condemned building with a ripped-up mattress, perhaps even a bed frame.
“You never can tell beforehand,” explains Cosmos. “A condemned house like that can be a treasure trove, full of old blankets and coats and hats and pants and shirts and mattresses with bed frames.”
“Maybe even a featherbed. With real down,” says Niner.
“Real down!” laughs Cosmos. “Well, what did I say: a five-star hotel!”
And their footsteps on the pavement sound like they’re saying: We own the street! We own the sea! And again: We own the street! We own the sea!
Yeah, thinks Niner, if Cosmos could conquer the dogs he’ll be able to find a five-star hotel, too.
And Cosmos does find a condemned house, for he knows where to look: right where the city is at its ugliest. Perhaps behind the slaughterhouse, where it stinks of blood and piss. Or next to the garbage dump.
And sure enough, there really is a condemned house there. It doesn’t look anything like a five-star hotel, though. It looks rather creepy, actually. A horror house with dead window-eyes.
I never would have gone in there, thinks Niner. If I were alone, I never would have gone in there.
The front door is nailed shut with planks. But Cosmos knows what to do.
“Come with me!” he says, glancing quickly down the street. Not a soul in sight.
“This way,” says Cosmos, and disappears behind a big lilac bush left over from an earlier time, when there was still a garden here, and a warm light in the windows.
“We’ll take the service entrance,” says Cosmos, laughing.
The back door isn’t locked. Cosmos pulls Niner into a dark corridor. Three steps lead upward.
“Wait!” says Cosmos, and digs into one of his two plastic bags.
Niner hears the rustling. In the dark, everything is amplified. The rustling in the plastic bag, Cosmos’s voice, and also Niner’s fear.
“WHEN YOU’RE SCARED, YOU’VE just got to sing out loud, Little Hobbin!” Mama used to say.
And it really did help. At least until Mama’s new boyfriend moved in.
“Quit your yelping!” the new guy said. “That’ll make a man’s hair stand on end!”
“Oh, let the boy sing, Hubert!” Mama answered.
“You stay out of it! That howling’s giving me a headache!”
So Mama stayed out of it. And Niner resumed with his singing.
“You bastard!” the new guy hollered. “You rotten bastard!” And then he started hitting, too. First with his hands, then with his belt, and then with a clothes hanger. And with every blow he only seemed to get angrier.
And still, Mama stayed out of it.
That’s when Niner learned to make himself invisible, and to cry without making any sound.
And in the evenings, in the dark, when Niner lay in bed, the fear grew stronger and stronger. Until finally, he got to the point where no amount of singing could have helped.
THE PLASTIC BAG RUSTLES loudly. The house smells damp and musty. Then a match flares up, and Niner sees that Cosmos is lighting a candle.
Their shadows flicker on the walls as they climb the creaky stairs.
And there, at the top, is a room with two beds. There are even pillows and blankets, and a rug on the floor.
“Well, now. Five stars?” asks Cosmos.
“At least!” says Niner.
“Lucky night?” asks Cosmos.
“Lucky night,” says Niner.
“Oughtta take advantage. Might just be a lucky streak. D’you still want to go to the sea?”
“For sure!”
“Hungry?”
“Always!”
“Can you look hungry?”
Niner nods.
“Let’s see!”
The candle flickers and Niner puts on his saddest face. Trembling lower lip. Eyes big and wide. He only has to think of Mama, and it happens all by itself.
“Fantastic!” says Cosmos. “I’d give you my last bit of fried chicken, and the biscuit on top.”
“Tell me all about it,” says Niner. “What’s your plan?”
“I know this bar,” says Cosmos. “It’s called Caracas. Some pretty shady characters hang out there. But people with money, too, if you’re lucky. A lot of money, if you get my drift. The kind that are bored, ’cause they’re so rich. The kind that pay for everything, just to keep from bein’ alone.”
“Like those dumbasses with the mansions and fancy cars?”
