Pattern scooted under the bent chainlink and walked, slipping sometimes, toward the loading dock.
Melt heard the chainlink rattle and looked over his shoulder. He was pissing in the grate in front of the abandoned bus bumper warehouse.
They had all agreed, Pattern, and Melt and Rico, that the grate was the best place to piss to keep the odor to a minimum.
Melt was just zipping up when Pattern yelled “Hey hey, alright! We got a roof!”
He had seen the blue tarp Melt had borrowed from a construction site near Lafayette Towers.
Pattern was smiling.
Rico had been gone for over three weeks, and Captain Gilbey had been by to tell them that the river was icing over so he wasn’t taking the boat out til spring thaw.
No Rico. No fresh walleye. Seemed to Melt those two things just snuffed Pattern’s smile like Melt used to snuff candles when he was an altar boy back at St. Mary’s.
Just took this long brass thing and popped it over the flame.
It made a noise. A little woosh. Melt always liked the little woosh.
He watched Pattern smiling at the tarp.
“I had to move the grill out. Don’t think it’s a good idea to grill with a tarp over the loading dock.”
Pattern nodded.
“Any sign of-”
“Motherfucker!” Melt yelled, then repeated motherfucker twice, more quietly, shaking his head so fast he thought he might pinch a nerve.
“If there was any sign of Rico don’t you think that’d been the first thing out my mouth?”
Melt pointed back at where Pattern had slipped on the snowy asphalt.
“You see any other footprints in the snow?”
Pattern’s head dipped.
The smile was gone, without a woosh.
Pattern walked down the incline of the loading dock, under the new-to-them blue tarp, and sat on top of his sleeping bag that sat on top of three garbage bags full of old newspapers, laid flat.
Pattern pulled a little nugget of weed from a hole in his sleeping bag.
There was a brown cardboard box on top of Melt’s cot.
Melt walked down the incline, saw Pattern eyeing the box.
“Expired cheese popcorn. Dude that does the bottles at Sami’s LottoLiquor gave it to me. Help yourself. It’s kinda chewy but it ain’t bad.”
“Rico’s dead.”
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