The car was parked at a weird angle at the bottom of Fry Street. It—a beige 1998 Toyota Camry; a reliable car; a practical car—didn’t quite fit between a pair of jacked-up trucks. A busted fender, caved in from an encounter with a drunk cyclist a blue moon ago, jutted out almost into incoming traffic. No, that wasn’t quite right; the Ford and GMC didn’t fit around the Camry. The car had been stuck at roughly a thirty-one degree angle from the curb for the last twenty-three months, its gas gauge set permanently to E.

When your wallet makes you choose between filling your tank and filling your stomach, you’d probably choose your stomach, too.

It was a balmy Tuesday—or maybe Wednesday; days have a way of bleeding together in between fixes—morning, closer to eleven than to ten, when a man scraped open the back door (if you can rightly call the creature that rose from the dead a man). Let’s not get too descriptive—he’s just another homeless person living out of a car that may or may not belong to him, and you’d sooner cross the street than strike up a conversation with him; we’ll call him Mr. One. He smelled that day, the way he smelled everyday (like human discharge and wasted potential); his long hair was matted and things better left unsaid crawled around its dreadlocked split ends; every item of clothing he still owned was caked on his emaciated body—which, in the North Carolina heat, amounted to only a white wifebeater stained yellow and mud-and-shit-stained blue jeans. Mr. One stretched his fingers to the heavens, a rhyme about reaching up toward god catching somewhere along his jagged grey matter, though the word god derailed the memory before it had a chance to leave the station.

“Fuck god,” he spat, greeting Wednesday—or maybe it was Thursday—the only way he knew how: with morning breath rancid enough to curdle milk. Now, maybe that’s a cliched metaphor, but he spat out a tooth rotted to the root as he began his daily climb up Fry Street; cliched or not, it fit. “And fuck the horse he rode in on.”

This was how Mr. One spent his Thursday—fuck, it also could have been Friday—and every other day. He would wake when his body ejected sleep like a cramped fart, emerge from his four-wheeled dwelling (though tomb is probably a better title for the Camry), and trudge up the hill searching for Bruce. Sweetgum trees lined both sides of Fry Street, thousands of five-pointed leaves filtering the light, casting eerie shadows on the cracked sidewalks. Those that lived on Fry Street considered Mr. One as much a fixture of the place as the trees and poorly parked car. He was a shambling statue, Thriller-dancing his way up the hill and then shuffling back down it (usually falling and tearing a new hole in his threadbare jeans at least once along the way), before camping out again in the toxic waste of that backseat.

Bruce was always waiting for him at the top of the hill.

On this particular Friday—shit, it might have been Saturday—Mr. One took forty-six minutes to drag his broken body up the hill. Some days, he could make the four-tenths-of-a-mile climb in a record breaking forty minutes (he had even managed to hit a personal best time of thirty-nine minutes and fourteen seconds, once, several blue moons ago); others, it took him over an hour to clamber up Fry Street. Regardless of how many fucking seconds tick-tocked away between the time he left the safety of the backseat and the time he reached the top of the hill, Bruce was always waiting for him at the top of the hill.

Bruce—Brucey Boy to his suppliers; Brucey the Juicer to his clients that paid their tabs; Brucey the Bruiser to the ones that owed too much; just Bruce to his specimens—was as constant to Mr. One as the Camry and withdrawals. Bruce, who stood there at the top of Fry Street with Ray-Bans on his too-smooth face, a salmon (don’t fucking call it pink) colored bro-tank on his too-smooth torso, a pair of teal silkies on his too-smooth legs, smiled the way a predator does when its prey makes itself known as Mr. One lumbered up to him. Bruce, who took enough vitamin S to render a full-grown bull moose impotent and couldn’t fully lower his arms because of how far his lats stuck out from his chest, reached into the surprisingly deep pockets of his shorts, his fat fingers searching for the right glass vial. Bruce, who hopped from one chicken leg to the other (he always skipped leg day) while chewing his morning’s protein shake, pulled the vial full of purple powder—the one labeled “#2”—out by mistake. Bruce—the mad bro scientist, using a rudimentary understanding of chemistry to cut cocaine with pre-workout, over-the-counter weight loss pills (HydroxyCut, Xenadrine, you know, legal speed), MDMA, amphetamines, trying to Frankenstein his way into the ultimate stimulant—replaced the purple vial and sought out the one marked “#1”.

“Dude, man, you ain’t fucking ready for this shit,” Bruce said to Mr. One when Mr. One finally reached him. For a Saturday—or was it Sunday?—the top of the hill was quiet, a little too quiet. Mr. One ground his remaining teeth to dust, his atrophied calves twitching in syncopation with his erratic heartbeat. “I almost don’t want to give this to you.”

Bruce was lying, of course. He really, really wanted to give the vial of powder to Mr. One. And he did. It was orange, the powder, brighter than the General Lee and seven times as loud. How much faster would it be? Mr. One knew just by looking—the way only an addict can know—that this would be the last one. He would snort this shit, sprint back down the hill, spend the rest of his Sunday—it had to have actually been a Monday—in shuddering, convulsing euphoria, and then refuse to climb back up Fry Street again. This would be the last time he’d ever see Bruce.

“I call this one Osho,” Bruce said, his lips cocked in that self-assured grin only children attempt when they pull the orange-you-glad-I-didn’t-say-banana knock-knock joke (no, I’m not fucking glad you didn’t say banana you stupid little shit). Mr. One popped the top, knocked on the door of this particular concoction, found out how Osho said hello.

“Oh…sho,” he whispered more to himself than to Bruce as the juice hit the back of his throat. His veins tightened instantly, his heart slamming itself into his ribs, no doubt trying to escape. Would it be so bad if his heart turned Harry Houdini? It was the last thought he had before Osho cracked like lightning through his tired brain, ripping into synapses dripping with need, tearing into a nucleus accumbens that should be numb to such pleasure but miraculously wasn’t. Mr. One’s Monday—or maybe it was Tuesday—got a hell of a lot better as he trampled back down Fry Street toward his car. He probably wouldn’t sleep for the next week.

“See you next Tuesday, Mr. One,” Bruce smiled at the departing junkie, hoping this was the one that kept the bastard wired for a full seven days.