II.

Terry feels, on his lips, the bevels made around the nozzle made from the hard water as he drops to bring his mouth to the tap and catch a poor suction on the stream of water. He is just happy that it’s hard water because there is more of a taste to it and will go further toward quenching his thirst. It’s no different to his night-time trip to the toilet where he will drink from the tap. He often wonders whether one day he’ll have to sit to pee so that the people in his house won’t wake up to the sound of him pissing. You know, taking some consideration for others, that is, as opposed to focusing on himself as he currently has to. Doesn’t make me a bad person. It’s fine. The house comes before the family, he thinks, so one thing at a time.

The water tastes better out of this tap anyway. Why? He knows it is just desperation and dehydration that makes good but there’s dirty fun in it. He had a waterfall tap too. Sure, the grout was black and the floor was that type of vinyl that quickly warms under your feet, just like at the committee, but you can’t exactly call it his mildew ‘cause I can’t be the past owners and myself at the same time. The waterfall tap, though, speaks to him and, at heart, speaks about him. Even if he knows, which he does, that somewhere, heavily buried, he is missing the whole of the bathroom for the waterfall tap to say something something **about himself, it wouldn’t make the water coming out the tap at the back of this Prezzo taste any different. The keys don’t work at home any more. Such an annoying, singular, inconvenient step.

He’d always wondered whether all the other street walkers got dogs before or after they became a street-person. Seemed to him like everyone had them. Whether, maybe, they had had a first before and acquired the second when bedding against the exhaust vents that ran along the bottom of most commercial buildings wasn’t enough warmth for the night. Yeah, exhaust vents. I know what they are. It’s a low bar but an important one for Terry. All that’s between me and you (he is looking at a security guard in his mind that looks mean enough to move him on) is that high-vis you have on and a little thing called job security. I would actually take a job in security. That’s just a high-vis. I think from there I can say I have an income to secure a flat or, maybe, it goes the other way around. Get a flat and then the job can know you have a right to work. It is the exact question he needs to think about so he blocks it out.

Currently, to his mind, he is getting the worst of it on his journey out. It seems to him that the people out here who get some, also get a lot. So, emphysema stacks on top of scoliosis at the same time as your financial aid is cut off on a technicality. The smallest bunch of people hoard all the ills -which he wouldn’t mind if he didn’t feel he was a part of them. Also to his mind, he is receiving more and more. He thinks, I am only one to two steps away from sipping from my waterfall tap while my fake family needs me to sit and pee. Keys and I am in. But then that one task becomes two, two becomes three and everything get further and further away. He lets the tap spill over his water bottle to fill it up and wipes the water on the outside over his coat and with his hand. He flicks his wet downward before he turns to move on.

Oh fuck off. The person behind him had waited for an extended period of time without saying a word, as if he was owed nothing and had all the time in the world. Terry thought the man might’ve smiled at him but keep your distance, you dirty bastard. He flicked his hands backwards and down again. Now, that man looks fucked up. He takes a swig from his bottle and slides out down the road.