Whisper me a story of the painted sky over the Points. The sky crackles and the rain comes down, as if the Lord is crying in shame onto the neighborhood of sin.
The thunder roars as if it is the beat of some fucked-up music. The men are coated with grease, the women are coated with sweat.
The walls of the low party-house of the Five Points shudder and moan as more drunks stumble in. Smells of blood, puke, rotting flesh, pussy, shit, dirt and urine linger in the air, mixing together to create one gag- inducing stench. But they're used to it. They live and will die in this hellhole. They'll resort to cannibalism before they starve.
The Butcher is no doubt upstairs, running his long spindly fingers over the sweaty spine of a woman. Or two women. Large rustic tables are set up with many people slumped around them, who look more like dying animals than people, clutching their empty mugs of cheap liquor in clumsy hands.
Johnny's clear blue eyes search the room, looking for the only man that can ever satisfy him, sexually and otherwise. Johnny strains to hear his voice over the yells and moans and grunts of the filth that lived among him. He turns around and around, searching.
They come to rest on a large man with hard blue eyes that are glassy from the booze, a rosebud mouth, and a large muscular body. He is fondling a prostitute with long frizzed blond hair and large breasts. She seems to be enjoying herself, giggling and putting her hands on his clothed crotch as he whispers sweet nothings in her ear. Johnny observes this with some amusement.
Any other man in the Points would treat his whore like.a slave. But Amsterdam, with his sweet mouth and his gentle fingers, would actually befriend his whore, romance her as if he had to try and get laid. Of course the girls always willingly obliged him, and no doubt they would have even if he hadn't treated them so nicely. Amsterdam was a strong believer in knowing his lover before he slept with her. Or him.
Well, there was only one man Amsterdam had ever loved, physically and emotionally, and there he stood, watching Amsterdam fondle the girl.