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Message-ID: <31348asstr$994673402@assm.asstr-mirror.org>
From: "alancmcd" <alancmcd@lineone.net>
Subject: {ASSM} Six Degrees Of Separation (1/8) A Handful Of Dust (MF)
Date: Mon,  9 Jul 2001 06:10:02 -0400
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The inspiration?

The reply was silence.

Comments, as usual, very welcome indeed at alancmcd@lineone.net.

Best wishes, everyone.

"April is the cruellest month."
T.S. ELIOT. The Wasteland

SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION
By Alan C. McDonald

Chapter I
A Handful Of Dust
15th April 2001

Sometimes the rats came, but tonight, thankfully, was not one of those
nights. When they did come, Mary could do little about it. They would
scurry around her feet, noses twitching over the debris which people had
left behind - hamburger cartons, cigarette packets, chocolate wrappers.
Mary would sit in her doorway and watch them, always nervous that one of
the creatures would come too close. If one did, she'd make a vague
shooing motion. Sometimes that worked and sometimes it didn't. Once, a
rat had sniffed at her hand.

No better, no worse. It was important that she kept hold of that
thought, because it was the mantra that governed her life. No better, no
worse. The day had given her nothing, and it had taken nothing from her.

A couple walked past her doorway. They were holding hands. The girl
looked at her, briefly, hanging back from the man, but the look was all.
Nothing was said. Nonetheless, Mary was disconcerted at the momentary
loss of her invisibility.

She pulled her sleeping bag more tightly around her shoulders. The night
wasn't cold, but it was useful nonetheless that the coat was warm,
because good sleep needed warmth.

Colin arrived and sat down by her, squeezing into the gap she had left
between her half empty bottle of cider and the wall. Without asking, he
took a swig of the cider. She merely mumbled a greeting, although she
was happy to see him and would have been more demonstrative if she could
have found the strength. He was particularly welcome because Colin
nights were few and far between since he'd started selling The Big
Issue, the self-support magazine for the homeless. Usually these days he
earned the money for a bed. It was generally when he didn't, when cash
was short, that he came here. Sometimes, though, he came just for sex.

She didn't mind the sex. But she loved the warmth he brought. And the
easier sleep.

She glanced at him, searching his face to gauge his intentions, but
found only his usual blankness. His beard was wilder than she'd ever
seen it, puffing up around his neck like a wire collar. His eyes were
more yellow than usual. His skin was white as parchment, and he'd been
in a fight, because there was a fresh, livid purple bruise under his
ear.

She moved the bottle and snuggled close. His arm didn't come around her,
as it sometimes did, but that was okay. She supposed that he was weary.

His heart was beating like a triphammer.

She could comfort him, she recalled.

Once, she had comforted a man on a regular basis. The man might have
been her father. It might not. She couldn't get a mental grip on those
things any more. Maybe she'd never got a mental grip on those things.
What did it matter? She was as she was, and where she was. And a little
better suddenly, for Colin's visit. Well, certainly no worse.

Comfort. She rolled the word in her head. Comfort.

A sly thing, as far as she was concerned, not always birthed from love.
A flicker of passion and compassion trapped in a bubble of time.

But enough, usually, to hold sway in the battle of the night.

She reached out to touch him. It was a labour. He moved slightly, but it
wasn't exactly towards her, and it couldn't exactly be described as a
response. The denim around his crotch was stiff with accumulated dirt.

She worked down the zip of his pants, slipped her hand inside them. As
an afterthought, she pulled the sleeping bag across to mask the
activity. There were few people about this early in the morning, but the
occasional stragglers from the clubs would stroll by, as with the couple
a few moments before, and the police were about most nights as well of
course. So concealment was the best policy.

Colin gave no indication by sound or gesture that he was aware of what
she was doing, but his cock hardened quickly, and she started to pump it
with a ragged determination. The muscles in her wrist ached within less
than a minute, but she didn't dare expose him further, which would have
helped, remembering that he always had difficulty in fastening himself
up. The doorway of HMV was not the most appropriate place for
complicated dressing.

In her early days on the streets, when she was nimbler and he was more
alert, she had used her mouth on him from time to time, extracting from
the miasma that was her past the fact that men really liked her to use
her mouth....

...Men?

No.

A man.

One man.

The reason for her difficulties?

She didn't know....

...And once, they had found a comfortable and secluded spot by the
canal, a spot usually fought over but on that night oddly and
fortuitously abandoned, as though an invitation to treat. They had made
love twice that night, a heaving bundle of rolled back old clothes.

He had touched her breasts.

He had kissed them.

She remembered little of her life, but she remembered that night.

He would never have agreed even then to pleasure her, though, in similar
fashion to the way in which she was pleasuring him now. These days, of
course, he was too drawn of energy, but in the past he had been selfish.
That had never surprised her. Men were selfish creatures by nature, she
believed. Something, again to do with the past, had convinced her of
that before she'd even met Colin.

So, if she desperately needed to, then occasionally she would pleasure
herself. But it was difficult without the risk that she would be seen,
much more difficult than handling Colin.

She felt his erection swell slightly, a familiar sign, and she speeded
up her work as best she could, squeezing him more tightly, exchanging
pain for motion in her wrist.

He came finally, with a slight lift of his body and a sigh, his stomach
distending then relaxing like a deflating balloon. Semen scrolled down
her knuckles. She removed the hand, wiped it on her coat, and then
snuggled closer. This time he did bring his arm around her.

For the first time since his arrival, he spoke. "Wanted to see you", he
said.

For a moment, illogically, she considered telling him that she loved
him. It would have been a lie, but she was tempted by the hope that
telling him might bring about a change. They might as a result end up
facing the world together rather than alone. In the end, though, she
withheld, deciding that any such declaration would, in an unfriendly
world, be a thing of little value to him, and also that it would involve
a compromise that she was not prepared to make.

She contented herself by replying, "Keep me warm."

Her response had taken so long to frame that he was already asleep.

-- 
Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights
reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated.
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