Tossing the day’s Tribune onto the coffee table, I fell back on the couch, staring at the cracked paint on the ceiling above me. Cal had gone to buy supplies, and while I thought Rosie was out trying to get some business from the lunch bunch, I was wrong.

“Are you feeling okay?” he asked as he perched on the end of the sofa arm. He looked like a little crane with his skinny legs, knobby knees and delicate neck. The sudden urge to kick him off to see if he would fly came over me, but I stopped myself, tucking my toes into the fabric beneath me.

“Yeah. Just sick of seeing the same shit every day,” I answered, gesturing toward the paper.

“Sexual psychopath laws,” Rosie read in his signature sad tone. “And the psychopaths are …?”

“Look in the mirror,” I replied, noticing how the statement seemed to smack him in his face, “or at me I guess.”

“Cal was telling me the crackdowns are increasing, so I’m assuming it’s getting bad? For him to say something makes me believe it has.”

“It’s not great. You should be careful not to get caught doing whatever it is you do with guys in the alleys. If you do, they’ll haul you off somewhere awful.”

“I’m tired of every place being horrible,” he sighed, apologizing when I looked away. “I shouldn’t complain. I’m grateful you guys keep me around when you don’t have to. The last thing you need to do is listen to me.”

“It’s alright,” I said, shifting uncomfortably. I hated when I was alone in the apartment with Rosie. Every one of his movements made me nervous, if only because he was so goddamn skittish himself.

“If it’s okay, can I say something else?” Rosie ventured, tentative to speak out of turn.

“It’s still a moderately free country,” I answered, leaning over to grab my cigarettes off the table. Noticing my matches were too far away for my arms to reach, I held my hand up for Rosie to toss them to me, glad when he made quick work of doing so. Lighting the fag, I awaited whatever the bird was going to say, hoping he kept it brief.

“He’ll leave, you know,” Rosie began, his words as foreboding as they were sure. “I see it more and more by the day, the way his face goes grey when you talk about the stuff in the paper. He hates what’s happened to the city he once loved. He can’t bear to be here.”