Glass pipes. Pieces of tin foil.  Broken bottles. Used condoms filled from the night before.

Makeshift homes made of cardboard, newspapers, plastic tarps. A fire burns in a barrel.

He walks amongst the peasants in his new clothes, unable to hide what he really is.

The blacks with tangled hair, talking to themselves, like poets working on a poem. Immigrants who have given up on the American dream, drinking from 40 oz. cans. Singing songs until they pass out under the sounds of cars, diesels, and busses passing overhead. Former white businessmen in torn suits sucking on a rock. They left their wives, girlfriends, and families behind, no longer working for the gold watch, the 401k, a retirement house in Florida. Young girls sleeping off a night of making men’s desires come true behind dumpsters, in front seats of cars, bathroom stalls. All of them, waiting on their redeemer.  The second coming of Christ to take them away from this hell. They wait. They wait.

Frank is on the prowl. Nicely dressed in Western wear, he goes looking for the rock. He has cash. Plenty of it. He’s able to pick and choose his poison.

Let me have some of that, he says to a beat-up white guy. Frank never did business with anyone but the whites. For some reason, he thought they were cleaner, the rock more pure, never admitting that it’s all the same shit. The disheveled man hands him the pipe, and Bic lighter. Frank heats up the base while music in the background is drowned out from the sounds of the Bronx. Dominican girls shouting out profanities, Puerto Ricans on the hustle, whites looking to take advantage in a far away land from Manhattan. Frank sucks on the tube. And, for a moment, he’s in paradise, back where he came from, the place where he landed when he got off the bus a few years ago. He is home.