Illicit

Word count: 920

Illicit

When she’d left the apartment, the silent eye contact with her roommate was all they needed—a tacit thanks, just in case. She waited to zip up her tattered suit until she was in the hallway. The less her roommate knew, the better.

Standing in a short alley, she adjusted her dingy cloth mask that itched behind her ears. Her protective suit lay in a crumpled pile against the wall. As she peeled off her second-to-last pair of latex gloves and carefully dropped them into a plastic bag for safekeeping, the cool night air felt toxic and intoxicating.

Behind her, a raccoon quietly rooted through a pile of food scraps in a dumpster. It didn’t even know she was there.

She took a deep breath of air that smelled like sterile fabric and old breath, her boots crunching softly over broken glass as she moved back to the front of the alley and waited.

Hers was a dangerous job. The Conflict had soured the air, leaving lingering traces of chemicals hanging in the air. It was no longer safe to be outside without protection, they were told. Those who did venture out passed each other on opposite sides of the street, heads down, and patrols of policemen in heavy protective gear patrolled the streets. People looked at each other through tightly closed windows—no one could regulate looking—and remembered back through endless days to the time before, when they brushed past one another on the street without a thought, clasping hands and even trading stiff hugs.

People were hungry—so hungry.

She leaned against the wall, hands uncovered in the dangerous air. She could never tell if the tingling on her skin was the air brushing over fine hairs, or wreaths of toxic chemicals slowly killing her. She was hungry, too, perhaps more than the rest of them. Her entire body craved it. Empty, hollow, it waited. The soft scratch of her shirt against her shoulders reminded her how empty she felt, as though her skin were a shell around and empty core waiting to be filled with something warm and life-giving.

Across the street, in a patch of shadow, another figure appeared. He, too, was bare-handed, bare-faced, open to all the silent deadly fury of the open air. A gleam of light glinted off his bald head as he leaned out and acknowledged her with a brief wave, the living brown of his skin a kind of protest.

She waved back, their hands, flickering into the light together, a symbol of solidarity.

She waited for an hour and a half, the emptiness inside pulsing with her breath and heartbeat, as if the craving were a living thing. The breeze across the back of her neck felt like torture. Her stomach was empty, too—they’d spent the last of their money the night before on her roommate’s medication, and the pantry was dangerously empty.

“Hey,” a voice came out of the darkness.

She jumped. How long had she been standing there numb?

“Um…how much?”

She’d heard the question before—someone shy and desperate, uncertain how to ask but ready to risk the patrols for a little contact.

“Twenty for a handshake, a hundred for a minute.”

A shaking hand held out an envelope. Inside, a stack of small bills as big as her hand. Enough for groceries for a week, maybe.

“My mom got sick,” the voice said.

She braced herself, beckoning the owner of the voice, a young woman in the closest homemade approximation of protective gear she’d seen yet, back into the alley. A street down, a siren whooped once and fell silent.

“I haven’t been able to see her since. I’m not sure if she’s—”

They were often like this. Full of their own grief that spilled over when they came. Not that sharing changed anything. Sometimes it made them feel better, though—they had to justify their actions to themselves, or relieve some massive burden.

Satisfied that the patrol was occupied, she beckoned her closer. Touch sent shivers of lightning down her back. The emptiness inside flooded, roiling and bubbling. Breath caught in their throats.

A siren again, closer. Her heart raced. But euphoria rushed through her with the touch of hands on shoulders. They were coming. They would be searching alleys. She could take the money, leave now.

But business had been bad, and in the contact the grief in both their hearts flowed back and forth between them, waking something nearly painful that had been stirring for weeks. Like a hand clenching an electric fence, galvanized solid and unable to free itself, she could not let go.

Tears wet her shoulder and with them fizzed anger, deep and gut-wrenching. It wasn’t their fault that the air was laden with chemicals. It wasn’t their fault that they had to live like this, cut off. She wasn’t even sure it was real. People had to touch, sometime.

She heard the patrol car’s engine starting up as her customer tightened her grip. If a patrol caught you out without protection, there was a fine. Caught out with others—jail time.

Anger seethed. She whispered “they’re coming,” and thickly through tears her customer whispered back “let them come.” So they remained, locked together, filling up, tears trickling as the contact released something long locked up inside.

They remained that way until the first beam of a flashlight shot down the alleyway and the quiet of the deserted night broke beneath the quick, professional footsteps of a patrol.