Despite it all, Amber considered herself cultured. When the progressively punkish crowd she called her friends said that they were going to the coffee house to listen to some poetry, she said she'd go along. She gave her reasons: "I love poetry. I've read a lot, and not just that shit in Cosmo, either. The real stuff, like Shelley and Byron. Those guys were really beautiful, y'know?" Then she packed her cigarettes and opened another beer.

            The coffee house was crowded. Amber hated crowded places where she couldn't escape behind a liquid haze. Crowds of people she barely knew intensified the emptiness of the room inside her head. The caffeine made her jumpy, and the nicotine just teased the coffee further. She sat down by the window and tried to stay calm, tried to keep that disaffected Toastie look. Glancing out the window once in awhile to be sure the rain-shiny street was still there, hadn't glistened away into ether and left her stranded in the crowded coffee-scented room, she sat alone inside her mind. But outwardly she was crushed by people, too many people pushing closer, sloshing her coffee, making her spill it in big, brown, wet stains that burned and made them laugh at her stupidity, her clumsiness, her insignificance. She sat in silence with the girl clones and boy drunks, behind the coffee house people. The grungy starving artist types whined and chanted sap and angst.

            Boring.

            Boring, boring, boring.

            The sap and angst reached intermission, a fresh release as the upper echelons of the starving artist writer scene left the shop. The real show was over, the real daredevils of drivel had done their high-wire acts and leaped into their cups of coffee from astounding heights. All that were left were the shy fuzzy-sweater Lisas and Jennifers who quietly read from Hallmark cards, then blushed and drank some tea; the clone-girls and drunks with enough guts or little enough sense to decide to stand up and rant and wander all over hell with their words (then maybe by pure chance, an accident perhaps, hack up a hunk of gold in the pretentious phlegm); the hungry young pups, who sounded dark and dangerously close to knowing what the fuck they were talking about as they whispered about anxiety and fear through the rain-slicked alleys; and the starving artist types slumming for some kicks.

            She watched them all, paid attention to few, and was struck by only one. He was dark and dangerous, and scared to be in front of the crowd, his first time, his rite of passage, the end of his innocence, the loss of his virginity. He spread the legs of his inner starving artist self wide and said,"Be gentle, I'm a baby, and I'll bleed." But she watched him push against the crowd, less and less afraid. He ground out the sounds in ritual cadences, with no rhymes and few reasons. None that really mattered, not to Amber. All that mattered were the welts she felt with every eager word.

            He reached his climax, closed his legs. He was full of himself, satisfied, she thought. Still, she could see that he hungered for it now, his appetite newly whetted. She watched him arch his back under the kindly starving artist hands that stroked his fur and said, "Good boy. You're a pretty puppy, aren't you?"

            "Lap it up," she told him with a glance and the sizzle of the match as she kissed her cigarette to life.

            She, too, wanted to let him know that he was, indeed, a pretty puppy. She wanted to run her fingers through his spiky dyed hair and look at his dark and dangerous eyes, to try to find something to fill that empty room she owned. She would tell him that she was nothing but a scrawny cat who wanted to climb the fence and howl at night, but who ended up in heat among the trashcans and debris every evening. She would tell the dark and dangerous pretty puppy starving artist type that she wasn't good enough for him, and he would lie and say that she was wrong. But somehow she knew that it wasn't that easy, that he couldn't really spread the legs of his starving artist self and let a sick cat in to find some solace in his innocence.

            A few nights later, Amber stood on the dance floor watching sluts and drunks grinding and thrusting at one another under the neon of the strobe lights. Her hair was freshly shaved, the bright orange-red bob falling over stubbled nape of neck in proper post-Toastie fashion. She had her Toastie gear on, too: her tight black miniskirt over multi-colored tights and low-cut thrift-store top, bracelets and bangles half-way to each elbow, and lipstick like a candy apple.

            Amber was positive that the bitch who stole her boyfriend was talking about her and spreading lies, and that the other bitch, whose boyfriend she had stolen, was probably doing the same. She was sure that her last three fucks were probably comparing notes on how well she performed in bed, or on the floor, or in the back seat, as the case might be. And she just knew that everyone was staring at her and could tell how much smaller her boobs were now that she had lost the weight she'd gained in high school.

            As she stood and smoked, she scanned the bar for a friendly face. She looked in vain for some haven in the psychotronic glare of glam and posture, for some sign that all could somehow be right with her world, for a face with an honest smile, for a refuge from the pretense of the scene, or just for anyone who would buy her a drink. Across the floor she saw the pretty puppy boy, talking to another dark and dangerous type. Lean, hungry bodies slouched against the bar, the two looked cynical, haughty, full of that starving artist arrogance. He glanced her way, and she dropped her eyes. The music paused, changed to a more aggressive beat. She lit another cigarette and blew smoke in his direction. When the smoke cleared, he had moved away.

            The crowd on the floor erupted as a painfully angry thrum burst through the speakers. Drunks and punks thrashed themselves around the club, bent-backwards baseball caps and partially-shaven heads cracked and jerked under the blacklights, some bobbing above the mass. Spastic arms and legs splintered the artifice in the atmosphere. Then the bouncers broke through the swarm of drunken fun and happy violence, unknotted the tangled arms and spikes and legs, and grabbed the dark and dangerous starving artist pretty puppy boy, threw him down the steps and out the door onto the rain-slicked street.

            Amber wasn't yet drunk enough to be oblivious, but she'd had enough to follow the spiky-haired puppy boy out to the street. He got up off the gravel, cursing the bouncers' need for an example, for someone to blame for the disruption of the prefabricated ambiance. He reached up and touched his ear. His hand came down covered in blood from where an earring once had been.

            "You're hurt. Let me take a look at it." She walked over to him and brushed his sweaty, fallen spikes back from his neck.

            "I'll be fine. Really," he answered her, but didn't step away.

            "Let's go over to the coffee shop and get this cleaned up. You'll get infected." Amber took his hand and led him down the street to the shop. He followed her, and she could feel his eyes on her, tracing her curves and lingering first once place, then another. She inhaled deeply several times. She wanted him to like her. She liked him already.

            His dark and dangerous energy had touched her as she shivered with nothing to warm her in that empty room, and the words had frightened her beyond alcohol's protection. She thought that he knew her in his dreams. He must. How else could his words have been spoken in her voice, how could they have mocked her with such ease? In his mystery was also excitement. She was bored with ordinary punks and drunks. One fuck was the same as the next, give or take an orgasm. But here was a conversation, an interest beyond bed and beer and leather and lipstick. Here was a challenge, a thrill. This boy was rare, like happy memories.

            After cleaning his ear with a napkin and water from the drinking fountain, the two ordered and slid into a booth. The girl at the counter put on a pot of thick coffee for Amber and spooned out some mint tea for the puppy boy. Amber thought he was funny and eccentric. He said he didn't like coffee, wouldn't touch the stuff. She made sure to lean forward every so often to give the puppy artist boy a better view. She really wanted the starving artist to like her, to talk to her, to be her friend, and maybe even sleep with her.

            "Your poems are really cool, y'know?" she told him as she flicked the tip of her cigarette into the foil ashtray and gave him a sideways glance. "Your words just moved right through me like I was butter, and you were, like, this red hot knife, or something." She blew smoke through her nose into the void between them.

            He smiled, a hint of fear in his face, and glanced into his teacup. "Thanks," he returned, then looked back up at her and tried to find her eyes.

            She rambled to avoid his pretty starving eyes. "I liked one in particular, but I can't remember the name. It was something about that feeling that grabs your stomach and leaves it, like, cold and, like, full of a huge powerful fear or something. Anyway, I liked it a lot. It was for real, y'know? Like, it sounded like me, only I can't write or anything like that. Takes too long. Makes me nervous." She crushed out her cigarette, then took a sip of her coffee, looking at him expectantly over the rim of her cup.

            He shifted in the seat, looking uncomfortably pleased at the honest admiration she'd injected in her tone. "That's really cool. That one was written a long time ago. Well, in a relative sense. I mean, I haven't really been writing all that long. Hell, I'm only eighteen." He drank some more tea and looked into her face. "It's called Angst."

            She avoided his glance as best she could, but she knew he saw through her, those times when she let her guard down and he looked up from his talking and his tea. He could see right through her drunk post-Toastie pupils, like transparent black windows into her vacant room, she a timid little scared-rabbit lump curled in a corner.

            "Yeah," she said, reaching for her purse to get another cigarette, to break his stare, to retreat, to hide.  "I think your other stuff was interesting, too," she spoke around her cigarette. She paused after pulling out her lighter, leaned forward, and looked at him intently. "Want to go back to my place or something?"

            "Sure," he answered. They stood and pulled on their coats. He waited for her to light her cigarette, before they entered the cold of the night.

            "By the way, what's your name?"

            Amber would look back at the walk to her apartment and worry about her rambling, worry about his silence, worry about the strange, soft breathy laugh he used to chase away her words. She would look back at their conversation and wonder whether he really liked her, whether he was just a starving artist who needed a roof and body to keep him warm. Amber would wonder why he liked her. Why he said he liked her, anyway. He barely knew her, had only seen her at the nightclub and the coffee house. But his words, that fucking poem, his quiet patience, his queer little laugh. His confession that he'd not only seen her, but had watched her for long periods of time because he really liked her attitude. Did those things mean anything? Enough?

             Amber knew she had to find the thing inside him that she lacked. She had to search out and steal his spark, relight the burned-out pilot light that left her apartment cold. He safeguarded his secrets well, though. The two talked for hours, trading stories, rumors, lies. He teased her with progressive charm and guile as the night crept on. She tempered her sarcasm, so as not to offend his pretty puppy sensibilities. He laughed easily with her, pulled her close and held her to him, smiling. She pulled him to the floor and unplugged the lamp with her foot.

            As she kissed him in the darkness, and pulled her clothes over her head "to get more comfortable," she felt the desperate urge she'd felt so many other times return. She bit his ears and crawled across him, using her only skill, her secret weapon, her shyest shame, to strip the layers from the starving artist and tap the source that fueled the pretty puppy boy. His barriers were stronger than her barrage, and he answered her efforts with compassion. He wound her in his slender, starving arms, pulling her into sleep.

            In the morning, he kissed her forehead and closed the door quietly behind him. She had done her best to steal his spark. He had stayed the night. He had laughed with her. He had held her so close she could feel his heartbeat and hear his stomach rumble. He had kissed her softly. But the pretty puppy would not take what she offered, what others stole. As the lock whispered the boy's goodbye, Amber turned over, in her bed and in her head, pulled the blankets up around her ears, and cried herself back to sleep.