Elaa With Cash Register Eyes

[Robert Crisman]

A Nosferatu here in the Combat Zone, and did I not have a faint, stirring inkling of who it might be...and meanwhile, the lights as we crossed the threshhold--surreal...

Like the gold-inlaid teeth of the six-foot TV who held court with her sisters under the street lamp that lit up the corner of HoStro and Vine, which served as the gateway to all the lesser-lit dungeons and dens that stretched out for blocks to the north and the west.

The TVs posed there in varying states of undress, their smiles and laughter like casual machetes, unsheathed and unblooded, eddying around them, waiting for war as night stretched toward all their Godots.

One of them winked, licked her lips, said to me, "Come back when you're done, you hear me, Sweet Thing?" and L'amea laughed and threw her a wink in return; the TVs all howled...

Down a block, blue-lit, the Swankeeper's Inn, el dive-o for days, the bouncer in front a megalith skinhead in tanktop and tats, with cargo pants, stomp boots, and stinkeye, and inside the place, dark smoke and more stink and a clusterfuck crowd, the usual run of pimps, hos, and thieves, a jack man or three, and with them, the one that we'd come to see...

We cut through the crowd, got our drinks at the bar, cleared a space there to sip and survey the room, and we couldn't have been more than 10 seconds in when I saw Elaa--working a trick, with cash register eyes and smiling like some people spit.

[Angela]

I've been wondering when she would show up again.  The cash register eyes and spit-smile tell a lot about what has happened since.

[Mike Handley]

Faved for the last two sentences. Outstanding writing, Homes.