And at three o’clock in the morning, rousting an undesirable from a Dumpster was sometimes quite dangerous, and Frank knew he wasn’t getting any younger. There was only so much more damage an aging hippie musician could take before he’d have to start begging one of the studio guys to come help him change a lightbulb because he’d gotten the shit kicked out of him by a crackhead.
He put the bottles into the recycle bin and set a box of leftover pizza on the café table he’d set up under his RV’s awning. Ever since the city banned smoking within spitting distance of anything or anyone, he’d given up living in the apartment over the studio and instead opted to toss his bag of bones onto a queen-sized mattress in an old motor home. Owning a building was a headache and a half, but owning a parking lot smack-dab in the middle of Chinatown more than made up for the hassle. Especially since he’d found he rather liked living in a quasi-Gypsy state.
It was a long, cold walk to the Dumpster. Set in the tiny alley between his building and the street-front strip of stores backing the private parking lot he’d parked his motor home on, he’d agreed to let the stores use it for their daily trash on the condition they kept it as clean as they could. Still, people had to eat, and they tossed their leftovers into the Dumpster without thinking to close the lid to keep scavengers out. Frank really hoped it was a possum like last time instead of some old man looking for something to eat.
He needed to go grocery shopping, and short of giving a homeless guy a half-eaten jar of peanut butter and a spoon, he had nothing in the RV for a handout. Sure, he could have sacrificed the pizza, but there was going to be a nice tight bowl of Tai before he crashed for the night, and his stomach might catch a second wind by then. Leftover pizza came in handy for second winds.
His sneakers squeaked on the rain-damp blacktop, and as Frank got closer, it became apparent his vermin didn’t walk on four legs and certainly wasn’t an old man. Not by a long shot. Instead, the Dumpster appeared to be hosting a different kind of scavenger—one in the form of a rather scrawny preteen boy.
And like the possum he’d scared the shit out of the last time, the boy froze to a dead stillness when he heard Frank approach, the faint lights from the street beyond catching his eyes and turning them a demonic gold when he cocked his head to spy on Frank over the lip of the battered green bin. If anything, the boy’s hiss certainly was more possum-ish and less grumbling homeless guy looking for aluminum cans to cash in.
Frank cleared his throat and called out to the boy, “Hey—”
That single word spurred the boy into action, and he grabbed at the Dumpster’s edge to hoist himself up. Either he was too short or the rhino covering the interior of the bin was too slick because the boy couldn’t get traction, and he slid back down the side, landing in the—hopefully—mostly paper trash around him.
“Fuck!”
As swear words went, it was an elegant growl—fluid and heartfelt with a tinge of bitterness to flavor its edges.
It also sounded way too world-weary to come from such a young boy.
Because as Frank drew even closer to the Dumpster, he caught sight of the golden hummingbird of a boy trapped inside of the steel bin and instantly took back a few of the years he’d given him.
But then he poured all of those years—and more—back into his assessment of the boy’s dark, liquid eyes.
As kids went, this one was scrawny—dirty-chicken scrawny with a side of bone—barely enough meat on his frame to do more than move his lanky limbs. A mop of tangled, dirty-blond hair covered most of the boy’s face, but what Frank could see straddled the line between delicate and masculine. Sitting on the verge of puberty, the kid should have been fuller in the face, even a bit chunky around the middle as his body stored up fuel for that impressive height jump from child to man.
When that jump came for this kid, his body wasn’t going to have anything to feed his growth. There was barely enough energy stored in his flesh to leave his skin supple, and Frank winced at the crackle of dry skin on the boy’s downy cheeks, a telltale sign the kid wasn’t eating.
As if the jut of his breastbone and rib cage through the thin fabric of his filthy T-shirt wasn’t enough of a clue.
There was a lot of dead in the kid’s gaze. Dead and suspicion, with more than a few ladles of fear. All of that was wrapped up tight with ribbons of challenging aggression. Frank would have been more cautious if it weren’t for the bruises blackening the right side of the kid’s face or his swollen lip turned deep purple where something had cut it.
Even in the wane of the streetlamp light, anyone with sense in his mind and eyes in his head could see the boy’d taken more than a few knocks from life on his chin. And from the chunk of enamel missing in one of his front teeth, he’d taken more than one blow to the mouth too.
“Do you need some help there, kid?” Frank called out loud enough for the boy to hear him over the rustle of paper and debris. The kid ignored him and continued to flounder, grabbing at the lip for another attempt.