east near the far end of the store away from the loading docks. She parked and walked over to it. There was a slight fog that had settled on the grass, which got her feet wet. Maria looked through the passenger window wiping the dew from the glass with her palm expecting to find Silvio passed out in the seat or curled up on the floor. It was empty. She moved back drying her hand on the front of her blouse feeling queasy. She stood for a moment blinking the wetness from her eye before stepping away. The lights from the street cast moody shadows all around her, the sounds of the city had all but been sparse noise on the horizon, one foot at a time, the sound of her own feet echoed down the alleys around her. She positioned pepper spray in her palm listening to a dog bark in the distance interrupting the near silence between the time she picked her foot up then down.

Maria had been barely aware of anyone approaching. She cut across the store lot and got into her car scolding herself for parking on the black hole side of the building. "I'm lucky I wasn't attacked by the devil." She fumbled for the key and stuck it in the ignition when a car pulled close to Silvio's van. She recognized him when the door opened and the light came on but not the Black guy driving. He struck her as oddly handsome though she was too far to make out any fine details of his face.

Silvio stepped around to the drivers side of the truck and she knew by the way he sauntered that he'd been drinking, still she was glad he hadn't been with Lisa and started to slide back across to the other door. It was Silvio's throwing himself into the driver's side window that gave her pause. It struck her as odd, something she hadn't seen in him do in years, it was playful and happy, only when he'd done it before she had been the one behind the steering wheel. "Don't leave me baby" he'd say as he kissed her hanging on to the car door sometimes with her driving off laughing. Maria sat straddle the hump in the middle of the seats telling herself that that wasn't what she was seeing. He was drunk she thought, and she knew how guys joked. Maybe she hadn't seen she kept saying. Maybe she hadn't seen silhouettes become one, it was a trick of light.

She started the engine, after Silvio pulled off minutes later never having paid attention to her car parked on the cross street. When she got back to the apartment the van sat in the driveway with the ticking sound of a warm engine cooling itself in the night air.

He'd splayed himself across her bed passed out. She took comfort in that his clothes looked as though he had been working. For a moment she felt certain that everything was all right. She'd resign herself to his working and meeting up with an old associate, that way the most she had to be upset about was her clean bedspread.

A smile brushed her face and she pulled off his shoe. "Ew, what were you doing building mud hutches" she sighed. He stirred a bit and sat up helping her take off his shirt. "Get up." He mumbled something and stepped out of his pants, fell back onto the bed and curled up with a