“We’ll fall into a chaos.”

Renee’s tone is mundane, like ordering breakfast at a diner.

I should not have gotten drunk with her, knowing the psychotropic medications she is prescribed and how ineffective they become under the influence, and how fucking crazy she gets.

Yet she was buying, and I am cheap.

The fields of regret expanded as the effects of the scotches I drank receded.

We broke into the abandoned Hollywood Theater on Avenue A, curious to see what was inside before the building was demolished.

Renee ran up the stairs to the balcony in her zebra-print stilettos. I followed her into the darkness.

We arrived on the balcony, and the chattering began.

“Are you mad at me? I’m sorry, honey. Please don’t hate me. I love you so much.”

“I love you too, Renee.”

My soul strained, withered in her relentlessness.

Why do I love her?

It was time again to be her man and surrender. We found seats under the skylight that weren’t wholly disgusting and sat, hoping the rats would not appear out of the darkness.

She nuzzled my neck.

Everything with Renee happens at night. She sleeps during the day, claiming insomnia, and when darkness falls, she drags me to the bars, getting party-girl drunk but still hitched close, fingers wrapped around my belt loops, talking, kissing and pushing me into her.

I learned to be subsumed into Renee, losing myself in her mouth and her kisses, which ripped, pulled and dragged me toward what she wanted.

Through the dim light from the skylight, I scanned the torn, rotted curtains, the crumbling, molding, fallen lamps and assorted debris scattered around the stage and floor below, with its upturned seats and garbage left behind by the junkies who used this abandoned movie theater as a shooting gallery.

I want God to take us now, pleading for peace.

I want us remaining on the balcony until this plays out, and I can have my life back.

We kissed. Renee puts her mouth on my neck.

Again, I am Renee’s golden chalice—or cup of piss, whatever.

I cannot remember what I was thinking. Renee—

Blood trickles down down down—