EBOOK
About
Freelance journalist Dorlores Gunn is a night crawler armed with a ruthless curiosity and a knack for self-preservation. With her drugged-out TV crew in tow, she scours the night city for saleable stories: violent death in the street is just a service industry providing her next clip, and every victim is a potential actor. Criss-crossing her path is Eli, a bike courier who travels with ease through the clogged arteries of the urban core and rides the periphery when the media pounces on a suspected serial killer. Both become entangled in the police investigation when Dolores becomes the target of a stalker and Eli is hunted by a rogue SUV. In the struggle to survive, neither can be sure if they own the streets or the streets own them.
Crazy with boredom, stoned with sleepless dreaming, so tired she can feel her skin disintegrate, her big toe burning with every step of these cheap fuck-me boots, she cinches the belt of her Spanish leather jacket to accent her hips and breasts, mocks herself for failing to wear tights under the suede miniskirt and makes pretty for the highbeams of an SUV as it slows, passes...
Whoa! Gettin' a little elderly, babe?
and speeds away, leaving yellow dots in her eyes.
Elderly? What's your fancy, jerk - preschool?
She wasn't elderly last time she looked. Maybe she turned forty since this morning. Maybe that's how it goes-life. You look at your watch and find you've been standing on an empty street corner for sixteen years.
She leans against the sodium-vapour lamp (metallic hum reminding her of the dentist) and checks her rubber watch. Six hours flushed down the crapper - meaning, now she's like a Vegas loser, maxing out the card for one last throw.
Nobody else to blame. She understood the requirements - the patience of bait on a hook, the wriggle of a worm. Plus painkillers. We must never forget painkillers. Wishing she had packed more extra-strength codeine, she does a parody of a seductive wiggle for the dusty sedan as it slows down, allowing the driver time to look her over, inspect her for freshness like she's chicken on special.
Brake lights flash red, parking lights shine white, and now the Japanese mid-size idles at the corner, rusty muffler growling like a dog.
Maybe not so elderly after all.
Smiling Miss America into the rear-view mirror, she totters down the passenger side on heels like stilts, checking to make sure the man in the car is alone, no football team if you please. The passenger window slides down and a backlit shadow leans across the front seat, maybe to check her skin more closely for signs of infection.
Are we paranoid? Is the pope a guy?
She bends into the window, half-expecting a lecture on hep C from a poverty activist or maybe an invitation to find Jesus, be saved, such a joke. Now comes the hard twist under her sternum, the corrosive burn in the throat-what a sour bitch of a way to make a living.
"Hi there, honey."
Keeping the voice steady, she affects the Southern belle accent she learned from some caper movie she saw on TV, a tone of voice implying hard yet non-t
Crazy with boredom, stoned with sleepless dreaming, so tired she can feel her skin disintegrate, her big toe burning with every step of these cheap fuck-me boots, she cinches the belt of her Spanish leather jacket to accent her hips and breasts, mocks herself for failing to wear tights under the suede miniskirt and makes pretty for the highbeams of an SUV as it slows, passes...
Whoa! Gettin' a little elderly, babe?
and speeds away, leaving yellow dots in her eyes.
Elderly? What's your fancy, jerk - preschool?
She wasn't elderly last time she looked. Maybe she turned forty since this morning. Maybe that's how it goes-life. You look at your watch and find you've been standing on an empty street corner for sixteen years.
She leans against the sodium-vapour lamp (metallic hum reminding her of the dentist) and checks her rubber watch. Six hours flushed down the crapper - meaning, now she's like a Vegas loser, maxing out the card for one last throw.
Nobody else to blame. She understood the requirements - the patience of bait on a hook, the wriggle of a worm. Plus painkillers. We must never forget painkillers. Wishing she had packed more extra-strength codeine, she does a parody of a seductive wiggle for the dusty sedan as it slows down, allowing the driver time to look her over, inspect her for freshness like she's chicken on special.
Brake lights flash red, parking lights shine white, and now the Japanese mid-size idles at the corner, rusty muffler growling like a dog.
Maybe not so elderly after all.
Smiling Miss America into the rear-view mirror, she totters down the passenger side on heels like stilts, checking to make sure the man in the car is alone, no football team if you please. The passenger window slides down and a backlit shadow leans across the front seat, maybe to check her skin more closely for signs of infection.
Are we paranoid? Is the pope a guy?
She bends into the window, half-expecting a lecture on hep C from a poverty activist or maybe an invitation to find Jesus, be saved, such a joke. Now comes the hard twist under her sternum, the corrosive burn in the throat-what a sour bitch of a way to make a living.
"Hi there, honey."
Keeping the voice steady, she affects the Southern belle accent she learned from some caper movie she saw on TV, a tone of voice implying hard yet non-t