Somehow, he felt clearer, and cleaner. His thoughts began to order, and he found himself perfunctorily exiting the apartment out into the light of day. He had his weed, which was exactly what was intended of the visit. He felt suddenly thrown upon the blistering pavement lining the Mile – it was a completely different world. No, that was just the pot. To his right, there was a scuffle occurring between a Mexican man and woman – their voices were raised and the woman’s arms flailed wildly about her as she spoke. Mitzi could barely understand them due their the distance, but they were apparently speaking coherent English, and he heard expletives among other slurs. Abandoning his place in front of Squirley’s door, Mitzi continued walking towards his car fearing that it might be stolen or tagged. One never knew on the Mile. But the woman’s arms were flailing so wildly that he had to look, it was too entertaining. The golden cross that laid between her cleavage glinted and flashed in the sun causing Mitzi to squint. Quite annoying. The heat waves from the asphalt rippled their image so terribly, that it seemed the two must fly away from each other at once.
The man held out a bill. She stopped the wailing and cursing, and Matt could see her contemplating. Her mascara was heavy, so heavy that from a distance her eyes looked but two horrendous pupils bulging from her abnormally hollow face. She seemed not a day older than fifteen, and so her legs and arms seemed emaciated in the current circumstance. Ah, thought Matt, a prostitute, of course. How perfect. The woman then began to caress the man and lead him down an alleyway. Losing his attention, Matt entered his car: No tagging, though one hubcap had been pried loose in an effort to steal it. That could be fixed.
The hit he had taken was wearing off. Mitzy saw the man and his apparent neighbor again. The whole damn scene seemed staged, wistful, like a camera-man had expertly panned the entire complex. Mitzy felt desecration creep under his skin again and quickly slammed the door. The thought of the woman – the girl, really - disturbed him, but that was just how it was on the Mile. What folly. He smoothed his hair with automatic hand, and put a CD in the player. He’d be back next week.
But in Mitzi, Ryan instilled the thought of growing weed. “I wish I knew someone who grew” resounded in Mitzi’s head. And here he was today, fixing his eyes on those two wonderful vessels nearly a year and a half later. But enough with nostalgia, now was the time to plan – preparation was key. He laid out the sheerers and canisters in which the tiny little blossoms tomorrow would be deposited. Tomorrow, they would find themselves into carefully weighed baggies, the scale (of which he’d stolen from his 10th grade chemistry class) sat with its electrical cord neatly wound beside the sheerers. All of his utensils – Mitzi, afflicted somewhat with a tad of obsessive compulsiveness – were arranged concisely in the order in which they would be drawn on tomorrow. Oh tomorrow! Yes, tomorrow was the day of recognition, the day in which his life had culminated. How beautiful.
He took another hit. It had been a long day and his eyelids were heavier than he had expected.
It was on these nights, when he had so little weed, that he would dream of Amanda before falling asleep. She was a transfer from Denver, and moved down here to attend the University in order to obtain her bachelor’s in theology. A bright girl of twenty-two, Amanda had grown up in a small town outside of Denver – a suburb packed with symmetrically grided streets and children destined to be loitering heirs of city directors – and, wanting to break free of her father’s also symmetrical Christian-reform ideals, decided to move once she was of age. Her father, of course, was heart-broken by this fact and removed himself from her life almost completely. The first hint of spite began to well in the both of them, but, the guilt that so often accompanies a father in addition to a Priest, allowed him to help her financially. Thus, Amanda had situated herself in a moderately priced one-bedroom apartment near the University campus and as far away from Miracle Mile as possible. She figured – it being the dregs and impiety of the city – she might only have to pass through the Mile three or four times a week to facilitate her making a little extra pocket money at Corrotto’s.
It was at Corrotto’s that Mitzi first caught site of Amanda SevenBarge. It was this moment in which his impervious obsession began, but so sadly juxtaposed with its vanity. Amanda was quite literally Matt’s antithesis in every way: she had neither smoked marijuana or taken a sip of alcohol (ruling out the fact that the Blood of Christ was alcohol) and claimed never to have wanted to. She depended almost entirely on her father financially and Matt hadn’t spoken to his parents for years, justifying this fact by declaring he had simply “become bored with them.” She, on the other hand, spoke to her father once or twice a week as a token of love, but really as a ploy to keep the flow of money constant. Plus – her father had ignited in her passion for religion and to him she owed more than one phone call a week. They both seemed in two entirely different worlds in which neither of them could even remotely comprehend the other’s.
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