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  Then it comes to me. An idea as brilliant as it is fucked up. No, even if I say it out loud, Lucy would never agree to such a depraved abuse of a fellow human being. Then again, no one would care regardless of the consequences. We built a god damn anonymous dreamcatcher. No one would be able to trace it back to us, should the worst happen. I look at Lucy, who, as if reading my mind, lifts her head from the nerd throne headrest and looks me in the eyes expectantly, ready to hear my brilliant plan.

  “We catch a random rama off a homeless dude,” I say bluntly. Why even try to sugarcoat it?

  To my astonishment, Lucy nods with a wide grin as she says “fuck yeah.”

  *

  It’s almost 10 PM in Downtown LA. I exit the 101 at Temple, go south at Grand and continue the drive past Grand Park.

  “Where are you going?” Lucy asks. “Huge tent city right here.”

  “Yeah, that’s why it’s not good for us,” I reply. I know the neighborhood don’t argue with me. “There are all kinds of non-profit offices around Grand Park and they’re open 24-7.”

  “What do they do?”

  “The usual, free food, free tents, free rama visors, free condoms, free HIV testing and whatever else our mentally ill populace might need to enable their permanent homeless lifestyle.”

  “Armchair sociology expert over here. So then what should be done to address the homeless problem? Please enlighten me.”

  I turn to see her and she smiles, knowing that’s one of the many buttons she can push to annoy me. Politics.

  “All other cities around LA have vagrancy laws, why not us? It just lets them bus their homeless here where they know no one will do anything about it.”

  “You didn’t answer the question. Should we round them up in concentration camps? Maybe ship them out of state?”

  “I don’t know,” I answer with a shrug. “Most of these people are too mentally gone to fit with society and we’re not going to put them in old timey hellish sanatoriums either. I guess we’ll just have to deal with the smell and go on with our lives. Doesn’t deny the fact it’s good business for the non-profits.”

  “There’s a reason they’re called ‘non-profits’ you know?”

  “Yeah right. Somewhere, somehow, someone is making money from all this misery. It’s the American way.”

  Lucy scoffs and turns to look out her window. Through our relationship, she was the voice of reason to counter my extreme cynicism but now she seems closer to my fucked-up worldview than she was when we broke up. Confirms my theory if you want to see the world the way it truly is, all you need is to let it sucker punch you a few times so you grow older and wiser.

  We arrive close to our destination and I park a block away. Lucy looks around in confusion but I point south, where she finds the 24-7 activity of the Pershing Square tent city.

  “Let me have that,” I say and grab the dreamcatcher off her hands to put inside my backpack. I then exit the car and she follows.

  “What’s the plan then?” Lucy asks.

  “I got a twenty with me, I figure that should be enough for the average druggie.”

  She nods in agreement and we walk down the block and cross the street to continue away from the car. The smell is almost unbearable this close. I turn left to take a look at the tent city built inside and on top the abandoned Pershing Square parking lot. The stink of excrement, urine and miscellaneous bodily odors waft in the air. One can only imagine how concentrated it is below in the three parking sublevels underneath. Who knows what happens there too. Police by law are not allowed to touch or even speak to a vagrant, God forbid they hurt their feelings. Smart entrepreneurs working in the lucrative prostitution, illegal drugs and human trafficking industries know all they have to do is surround their headquarters with a huge stinking mass of mentally ill people and they’ll be shielded against police surveillance. Now that I think about it, probably not a great idea to walk around here this late at night.

  “How about that one?” Lucy points at an obese woman in the distance who is away from the crowd, sitting in a park bench and moving her upper body rhythmically whilst speaking in tongues.

  “I don’t know, doesn’t look like she can be talked to,” I say as if verbally agreeing to a $20 exchange for a life-threatening rama capture would make the transaction any less morally or legally questionable.

  Lucy shrugs and looks around. We continue down the outskirts of the tent city then cross the street, putting us two blocks away from the car. Most storefronts are boarded up. And to think just a few years ago they carried millions of dollars in diamonds and jewelry. A mentally disturbed dude screams in the distance and the scream is followed by the sound of a glass bottle shattering. This spooks Lucy, who now finally seems to realize it’s not very safe around here. She grabs my arm and holds herself closer to me. It’s nice, the feeling of human warmth.

  At least it’s cooled down but not so that I’d have to wear a jacket. Lucy, on the other hand is not shielded against exposure to the elements the way my fat rolls do for me so I feel a slight shiver in her hands. As I wonder just what hell are we looking for exactly, we walk past an alley. I stop immediately and Lucy looks at me, confused. I’m pretty sure I saw movement down there so we backtrack a little bit to confirm a few feet down the alley, someone is sitting by themselves behind an overflowed orange trash container. I don’t hear gibberish or, dark as it is, see involuntary body movements. Maybe it’s just a wino we can actually talk to.

  I can see the homeless dude’s leg from the sidewalk and I point there. Lucy nods in agreement and she follows me towards it. We get closer and from up close I can hear sounds. Grunts? We reach the other side of the trash container and find a man, who probably hasn’t showered in years, pants down, vigorously masturbating in the open.

  Lucy dry heaves and hurries back to the sidewalk. I stand there, frozen. One of those kinds of situations where the brain locks up, struggling to come up with an appropriate reaction for an extremely unlikely scenario. I keep looking down and the man enjoying himself looks up and we lock eyes for a few seconds. He licks his lips through a subtle smile and his hand starts moving faster. This is where I decide that’s enough and follow Lucy away from this guy.

  “Well, that happened,” she says when I meet her on the sidewalk.

  I shrug and say “it’s the price of doing business I suppose.”

  “At least he seems not too far gone,” she adds, looking away probably in embarrassment. “Best specimen we have found so far.”

  “So… we wait here until he’s done?”

  “Yeah. I mean how long could it take? How long does it take you?”

  “Are you seriously asking how long it takes me to jerk off?” I ask, frankly offended at the blatant attempt to violate my privacy. But then I wonder what the median would be. So many factors usually go into determining how long or short it could go. Someone should gather statistical data on the subject. Maybe it could be a question in the next census.

  She giggles and looks down, holding her arms around herself for warmth. I just stand there with my hands in my pockets. We silently agree to wait there awkwardly within earshot of the grunts and accelerated breathing of the nameless, homeless guy pleasuring himself.

  “You ever miss us?” Fuck. Why do girls have to ask such cliché questions? Anything to mask the jerking off sounds ten feet away from us, I guess.

  “Sometimes,” I say, still looking away at nothing in particular. Feels like I should follow that up with something deep but nothing comes to mind.

  “I mean, just when things were getting serious, one day you decide to just walk away,” she says. We’ve kept in touch but never talked about it until now. Now that I think about it, she probably has things to say. Odd choice of setting to do so. “And your ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ bullshit didn’t explain much.”

  I sigh and look down at my feet. Such a cliché reason to break up too. She got me there.

  “I don’t know,” I lie. I do know. But some
things are hard to put in words. “Been alone my whole life, something unsettling about one day just letting someone in.”

  Lucy scoffs and rolls her eyes then says “right. More bullshit.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t know what else to say.”

  “Huh,” she mumbles and our eyes meet. “You choose solitude over the ‘unsettling’ feeling of not being alone anymore? I just don’t get it.”

  “Yeah, you don’t,” I say. In the distance, the breathing rythm speeds up. Sounds like he’s almost done. God damn, how long can an orgasm last? “Look, I’m sure there’s a swarm of nerds out there who would fight over you. You’re a woman, all you have to do is not be morbidly obese and some guy somewhere will ask you out.”

  “Now you’re the one who doesn’t get it,” she says. “People don’t just push each other out of their lives like that, even I know that.”

  “Well, that’s who I am. Fucked up to the core.”

  Just when the situation couldn’t be any more uncomfortable, I hear our friend in the back take a couple deep breaths, signaling he is done. I’m glad our emotional heart-to-heart is over but now we should get back to business.

  “Look, we’ll talk about it later,” I say. Lucy gives me a disapproving look with those big brown eyes that see through me, piercing through my defenses, reading me like an open book when I put so much energy into keeping it closed to others. I despise that feeling, that I would enable any one person to have this much power over me. The power to control my emotions, to dictate if I should be happy or not. Fuck that.

  I sigh, doing my best to push the anger out of me and walk towards our potential business partner. Lucy follows closely behind. Bracing for another shocking sight, I reach the other side of the trash container and my eyes get used to the darkness to find our friend laying on his back with a blissful expression on his face, flaccid penis in his hand, semen all over the place. I see a filthy blanket on the side and reach for it to cover him.

  “Is it safe?” Lucy asks. I turn and see her covering her face but still seeing through the gaps between her fingers.

  “Yeah,” I say and motion with my head to come closer.

  Our potential business partner reeks of sour body odor and alcohol. He looks like an older gentleman, long grey hair and a longer grey beard. There are several discarded cans and bottles next to him and what looks like a begging sign with the typical ‘god bless’ scribbled on it. His eyes stare into nothing, maybe still enjoying the post-orgasm dopamine rush.

  I squat to be closer to his eye level and say “good evening to you, sir.”

  The homeless man seems to react and his eyes slowly move away from the void to focus on mine. He grunts, mouth agape. Christ, the smell. I figure he won’t be the talkative type and pull the $20 bill out of my pocket and hold it up, making sure the light from the street makes it visible enough. Suddenly, the life comes back to him and he reaches for the bill as he stares at it.

  “Wait, wait, wait, hold on,” I say, extending my hand away from his grasp. “I have a business proposition for you.”

  “What?” he asks with a heavily slurred voice.

  “We would like to contract certain services from you, in exchange for this,” I clarify.

  “S-services? What?”

  I stand up and pull the prototype dreamcatcher out of my backpack to show it to him and continue to explain my value proposition. “I would like you to wear this helmet for about ten minutes. We’ll pay for your time, of course.”

  There’s a glimpse of understanding in his eyes and he nods rapidly, I guess imagining all the bootleg booze he could buy with that twenty. I figure that’s good enough for the courts if it comes to it. Consent was requested of the potentially offended party and the potentially offended party gave consent. Damn, in another life, I probably would have been a lawyer.

  Our no longer potential business partner seems excited to join our business venture and so without prolonging the process any more, I put the ‘catcher on him and power it on.

  “Half hour, no more,” I remind our friend and he nods. Good.

  “Well, that was easy,” Lucy points out.

  “Yeah,” I say and pull my laptop out of the backpack. I bring it out of sleep and establish a wireless connection with the dreamcatcher. On the controller software, I see normal operation and the device has detected a suitable brain to run a catch from. I click a couple buttons and the process starts.

  “Woah,” says Lucy when the progress bar moves five points or so every second.

  “Yep,” I say, smug smile and all. “Express diorama catching.”

  There’s no need to even ask our business partner to focus on a memory to give us an entry point. The prototype dreamcatcher finds one and locks in, reporting a diorama is being caught within seconds. I look at him and he continues to lie there looking at me then at Lucy and then back and forth every few seconds.

  Something’s wrong. The diorama catch progress bar stops at 43%. I look back at the homeless guy and his eyes are closed. He seems to have lost consciousness. Fuck me.

  “Could you hold this for a moment?” I ask Lucy as I hand her the laptop. I squat again, cursing having to do so because of how much it hurts my knees. “Hey dude, you okay?” I ask, tapping his cheek a little.

  Out of nowhere, our business partner snaps out of it and grabs my shirt. Startled, I try to pull back but he’s holding on to me with superhuman strength and I stumble, falling on my back with this dude now on top of me, growling, and I see pure rage in his eyes. I look up at Lucy and she’s freaking out while I lie there on a puddle of what reeks of sewage.

  “It’s moving along,” says Lucy, as if this would comfort me in my current situation.

  “Okay,” I say, nodding, while keeping the feral wino from biting my face off. It dawns on me he’s not in pain or else he would have simply reached for the dreamcatcher to take it off his head. No, he’s intensely focused on me, angry. Whatever the prototype is catching, he’s reliving that memory and it’s not a pleasant one.

  “Seventy percent,” Lucy updates me.

  He’s an old man but still somehow musters the strength to overpower me. I decide I’m about done putting up with it and knee him, I think in the stomach. Maybe in the balls. Who cares? It’s enough to get him off me. Our soon to be former business partner now lies on his back. Luckily his head didn’t land in the puddle so the ‘catcher is still dry.

  “Done,” Lucy announces then approaches, apparently to help me get up but then the smell hits her and she recoils as she goes “eww.”

  It’s fine, I manage to get myself off my ass. God damn why does it have to stink so much? I try to shake the disgusting water off my clothes then ask Lucy “we have a good catch at least?”

  “Yeah,” she replies with a smile and shows me the laptop screen where my exact question is answered.

  I nod then kneel down to remove the dreamcatcher off the wino. At least the catch didn’t kill him. He’s just lying there, sleeping. I’m surprised the prototype didn’t get shattered by all the commotion. I guess it’s a testament to my excellent craftmanship. Some unknown goop from the wino’s hair is stuck to the insides of it though. I’ll need to replace the whole casing. No way I’m washing that filth off. My backpack is a few steps away. I walk there and grab it. As I put the prototype inside I realize the backpack will be ruined. Fuck, my car will be ruined when I get in. Hopefully, the detailers at the corner car wash can remove whatever odors remain after I get home and shower. I might have to replace the seats.

  “You better hold on to the laptop,” I tell Lucy who nods in agreement and closes it. “I guess we’re done here.”

  *

  Lucy holds the door for me to get into her apartment but keeps her distance, not in the least hiding how disgusted she is.

  “Wait!” she exclaims then runs to her room and pulls out a discarded cardboard box. Probably one of her servers came in it. She flattens and places it on her carpet and points so I stand there. />
  “So I’m just going to stand here?”

  “Ugh,” she grunts in disgust. “Hand me the thing.”

  I take my backpack off, open it and place the dreamcatcher prototype on her hands. She carefully grabs it from the edges as to not touch the hair goop from the wino.

  “Ugh… eww,” she continues complaining in disgust. For a fleeting moment, I imagine jumping and giving her a bear hug just so she can be as stinky as I am but decide against it. Probably not the right thing to do to your ex. Especially not after that chat we had not too long ago.

  She sits in her nerd throne and plugs the dreamcatcher to a computer then, without even looking at me says “go, take a shower. Just don’t make a mess of my bathroom.”

  “And what am I going to wear after?” I ask looking down at myself.

  “Well…” she says. “You forgot one of your bathrobes. Found it under the bed a while ago.”

  “And you kept it?” I ask with a smirk. “That’s kind of creepy.”

  She turns, ready for a rebuttal, but instead just goes “ugh,” as she rolls her eyes and turns back to continue typing on her keyboard. “Just go, you’re stinking up my place.”

  Might as well, although I’m going to have to shower again when I get home, since the car seat is soaked with shit water. Oh well, I’m a guest, might as well respect the wishes of my host. I wipe my sneakers on the carboard box to make sure I won’t leave a trail of shit water behind me then make for her bathroom. A strong scent of cherries hits me when I open the door. Like she had a dozen air fresheners running at max power in here or something. In contrast, my bathroom only has one of two possible smells: neutral and shit. Lucy still keeps spare plastic bags in a drawer for the waste basket so I pull one out. Carefully, I remove my wallet, keychain and my -luckily waterproof- smartphone and put them inside the bag. I pull another out of the drawer and proceed to remove my shit-soaked clothes and put them in it. Her tub has one of those detachable showerheads I always wondered if she used for masturbatory purposes.

  I don’t take too long in here as she might think I’m jerking off or something. I get out and dry myself with her towel. I’ll need to remember buying her a replacement. While I was showering, she placed the aforementioned bathrobe on her bed so I grab and put it on. She even washed it. Smells like a fresh summer breeze, or at least the scent fresh summer breezes are supposed to have according to laundry detergent manufacturers. No sandals. Fuck I hate walking around barefoot.