"Mid, I'm hungry," said Apollo.
"If you want to open the shutter over the port-hole, I don't mind,"
said
the Midnighter, not looking up.
"No, I mean I want to go down and get lunch somewhere." Apollo waved a
hand
towards the Earth, hanging luminously outside the window.
"Oh," Midnighter looked his partner over, thoughtfully. "Where do you
want
to go?"
Apollo folded his arms across his chest, and looked happily thoughtful.
"Remember that hot dog guy in central park?"
It had been damn cold, Midnighter remembered. Febuary 22nd, in the
last
year of their Bendix-imposed exile. They'd been sleeping on a couple
of
park benches the night before, and when they woke up a small hot dog
stand
had been set up thirty feet away.
They'd wandered around the park for
the
entire day, trying to find a stalker that the police had lost near here
two
nights ago. Whenever he could, Midnighter would maintain a radio. He
often
lost radios when they had to leave a place quickly, but he persisted,
and
they often got tips about where to go next for bad guys by listening in
on
the police frequencies.
The stalker, Midnighter had read about in a newspaper that he happened
to be
using as part of a pillow.
Around five in the afternoon, they'd caught him. Midnighter's idea of
'caught' had required him to scrub his gloves off in the men's room.
After
that, they'd passed the two benches they'd used the night before, on
their
way to the current night's haven, and the hot dog stand was still
there.
The vendor watched them walk past, then called after them,
"Hey! You guys want something to eat?"
"We can't pay you." Midnighter had pointed out.
"Thanks, though." Apollo had added.
"Yeah, well, don't spread it around, but I'll give you these on the
house."
The vendor started making up a couple of hot dogs. Midnighter noticed
that
they were the last two on the grill of the cart and would have had to
be
thrown away if they weren't used now anyway, but didn't comment.
Apollo
completely missed that, and was absolutely delighted with the vendor's
altruisim. The three of them -or rather Apollo and the hot dog vendor-
had
talked for a bit.
The next night Apollo had discovered a warehouse
down
near the docks, full of bins of styrafoam packing peanuts. They had
moved
in there, and never ended up running into the hot dog vendor again.
"Yeah, I remember him," The Midnighter picked up his coat.
~Fin~
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