That's a nice young man, is what John might hear in the brief interim between their two meetings, from a wrinkly old woman he'd helped fold laundry into crisp stacks. Or I think he stole my ring, from a gruff man, thin-lipped and greying at his temples. Another man, less severe than the first: He asked me for my knife. Real polite about it, too.

Danny, in return, tracks what little information he can glean from John's habits from a safe, convenient distance of plausible deniability, which is maybe why he doesn't realize he's been sleuthed out and sniffed down until he finds him in his room.

There's only a small dent in his step as he hooks the door on his ankle and closes it behind him, three-quarters of a bread roll stuffed between his teeth. His eyes skitter from his face to his knife. Wherever John is seated, Danny drags a chair opposite him, flips it around and throws his leg over like he'd mount a horse or person, straddling the back of it. All black, head to toe, squeezed into a different set of tight trousers and his boots laced the way his old man taught him. Beneath his bed: a half-woven basket made of inner tree bark, threaded together the way his mama taught him. The wood was carved into thin, flexible strips for him, by a hunter who he hadn't been able to talk into parting with his knife.

A folded slip of dirty fabric sits on top, cushioning a silver ring he'd taken off a different man whose throat he'd fucked and belly he'd fed after leaving John in the alley. A little crow's nest.

He finishes his roll, licks his fingers clean and dusts the crumbs from his spread-wide thighs, then extends his hand toward John, palm up.

"Can I see?"