Reheating Cabbage (Excerpt from "Gypsy")

Smoke lingered over a heap of cigarette butts. A lightbulb swayed above the desk. The wall was tacked from floor to ceiling in photographs, obituaries, tabloids, event clippings. The phone buzzed by a raggedy scrub of dark hair, a bump amidst piles of scribbled lined paper.

“Allo?”
“Faerchild, is that you?” came an incredulous voice. “You sound like shit.”
“Reynolds,” the name curled in an already groggy mouth. “It hasn't been long enough."
"Cut the bull, kid. This call is entirely charitable. So you better start kissing some ass or I'll drop this convo faster than you can say brie cheese."
The dark haired young man opened his dazed bronze eyes enough to roll them. "I don't know, ma femme, I can say that pretty damn fast. What do you want?” he said.
“For once? The same thing you do.”

The mop lifted from the desk. “You found her?” he said, his accent losing some of the heaviness it gained from sleep.

“Why don’t you get your ass out of bed and come find out.”
He was already shoving a leg into a rumpled pair of Armani slacks. “I wasn’t in bed, Reynolds.”

“Sure you weren’t. Just get down here by nine, ok.” The line went dead. He dropped the phone, bouncing on its tangled cords, and popped a half-burned cigarette between his lips. Not to smoke it, just to hold him until he got off the subway. He plunged down the apartment’s iron ladder, leaving the door open behind him.