Luck can’t pinpoint when he became a foreigner in his own city.
Wherever he wanders, the streets no longer embrace him. Every corner is a confrontation, remembered orientation contradicting reality. Luck stops to direct his gaze upwards like a question, why, a provocation to something greater than himself. He seeks sight of the sky, surprised to remember there’s a plate overhead now, for the rich. Luck is richer than Creosote on centuries of compound interest, but his preference is ever for the underside. Neon light provokes memories, smoke veils scent and sight alike. The bars down here smell like brotherhood.
This – life – is a parenthesis in Luck’s existence. Luck cannot find his way out of the brackets, he has no climax, no denouement. He cannot read to the text’s conclusion. The city has changed around him to make Luck Gandor a foreigner. His presence elicits curiosity from strangers who own this city, for their lives begin and conclude here; Luck has no conclusion.
It is another foreigner that halts Luck’s wandering, a youth on display under neon and over broken glass. That bruised face holds no resignation, and Luck envies him his tenacity. Chains link wrists to the post. Luck cannot see chains without wanting to strike them; he cannot see a foreigner without feeling chained.
The madam is cruder than those Luck remembers, even for working a street corner; she demands the fee. He quadruples it to claim ownership of key, chains and youth all.
“Do you speak?” he asks, that the youth snarls–
“Yes–”
Luck holds the madam when she would leave, and looses the chain. “Do you enjoy what purpose she has put you to?”
“Yes—“
“Tell him firstly,” Luck instructs the madam, “he is mine; secondly, how to say ‘no,’ and the meaning.”
Words fly, and then fists, for the youth turns to him and cries, hits, strikes, “no—no—no—”
Luck catches him, to hold fury with patience only eternity can teach; the youth’s breath breaks. It’s been long since Luck had a protégé – Firo, he remembers, the name floating on memory’s morass – but there’s a set to this youth’s jaw that appears less like remembrance and more like potential.
“His name,” Luck demands of the madam, that the youth coughs: