The Gutter's Glare

Frank pulled the collar of his worn jacket tighter, the fabric rasping against his stubbled chin. Rain had been coming down for hours, a relentless, cold sheet that slicked the cracked asphalt and made the city shimmer with a greasy sheen. He wasn't going anywhere in particular, just away. Away from the stale air of his efficiency apartment, away from the silence that felt louder than any argument. The streetlights, the garish neon signs of the pawn shop, the greasy spoon diner, and the adult bookstore, all bled into the overflowing gutters, their colors warping into liquid smears of red, blue, green, and a sickly yellow.

Each step splashed, a dull, rhythmic sound under the roar of passing traffic. His boots, heavy with miles, kicked up tiny arcs of dirty water. He kept his gaze mostly down, watching the distorted reflections in the puddles. Faces, mostly, from the posters in storefront windows: a smiling girl with perfect teeth, a stern-faced politician, all rendered grotesque and fluid in the grimy water. He saw his own reflection for a second, a fleeting ghost of a man with tired eyes and a jaw set hard against something he couldn't quite name.

He passed 'The Rusty Nail,' a bar he hadn't set foot in for years. The neon beer sign, half-burnt out, cast a pulsating orange glow onto the wet pavement. Through the grimy window, he saw figures hunched over tables, the muffled thud of a jukebox bleeding into the street. He remembered a time, long ago, when he’d been one of them, escaping the world in a haze of cheap whiskey and smoke. The thought tasted like ash in his mouth.

His son, Michael, would be thirty now. Thirty. Frank hadn't seen him in ten years. A stupid fight, a slammed door, words said that couldn't be unsaid. Pride, that was the killer. A stubborn, useless pride that had eaten away at everything good. Michael had told him once, 'You always just walk away, Dad.' And he had. He always had. Now, the walking was just a habit, a way to keep from sinking deeper into the soft, insidious mud of regret.

The wind picked up, carrying the smell of exhaust fumes and damp concrete. A gust rattled the loose metal sign of a dry cleaner, making it creak like an old ship. Frank shoved his hands deeper into his pockets, fingers brushing against a crumpled pack of cigarettes he knew was empty. He hadn't smoked in months, trying to quit, trying to change some small part of himself, but the craving was always there, a dull ache behind his teeth.

He spotted a hot dog cart, its umbrella dripping, steam rising from its chrome surface like a ghost. The vendor, an old man with more wrinkles than teeth, nodded at Frank. “Rough night, eh, Frank?” he grunted, not looking up from flipping a sausage. Frank just grunted back, pulled a five-dollar bill from his wallet. Didn’t feel like talking. Didn’t feel like much of anything except the warmth of a cheap hot dog against the cold in his gut.

He ate it slow, standing under a bus stop awning, the rain drumming a steady rhythm on the plastic roof. The neon from the opposite side of the street, a blinking 'OPEN' sign from a liquor store, painted the puddle at his feet in shifting hues of red and blue. The city was always alive, even like this, even in the dead of night, even in the rain. A thousand lives intersecting, falling apart, putting themselves back together. He wondered if Michael was out there, somewhere, walking a street like this, looking at the same broken, beautiful reflections.

The truth was, he was stuck. Money was tight, always had been. The job at the warehouse wasn't going to last forever. And Michael, he'd heard through a distant cousin, had a kid now. Frank, a grandfather. The word felt heavy, unfamiliar on his tongue. He had a number for Michael, scrawled on a coffee-stained napkin in his kitchen. He looked at the liquor store's blinking sign, then back at the shifting colors in the puddle. The red bled into the blue, then faded to a murky purple. Like mixing blood and bruises.

He thought about calling. Just once. See what happened. But the words, they tangled in his throat before he even thought them. What would he even say? Sorry? Sorry for what, exactly? For being a man who carried his burdens like rocks in his pockets, refusing to let anyone else see the strain? For not knowing how to say he loved his son, not really, not in a way that mattered?

A final bite of the hot dog, the last warmth gone. He tossed the wrapper into a nearby bin. The city lights continued their silent conversation with the puddles, reflecting a broken, shimmering world back at him. He stood there a moment longer, just watching the water ripple, feeling the cold seep into his bones.

Then, without another thought, he started walking again, not towards his apartment, but towards the bus stop that would take him across town. The cold in his gut wasn't just from the rain anymore. It was something else, something sharper, pushing him forward. He didn't know what he'd say, or if Michael would even pick up. But the thought, once a distant echo, was a solid thing now, a dull, insistent drumbeat in his chest.

He watched the bus pull up, its headlights cutting through the sheets of rain, creating long, dancing shadows in the puddles. He stepped onto the bus, the door hissing shut behind him, leaving the shimmering street and its reflections to themselves.