Excerpt from a novel

Sleep's an intermission between car exhaust and drugs. It's the next oblivion, after liquor and sex lose their variety. 'At night all cats are grey,' the French sneer. If you don't understand that, you haven't been with enough women. Or men. Sleep is the epilogue: When there’s no juice left you sprawl like a stack of dried twigs, blanket piled around your hips. Wade claims the most fun sleep is with two broads working you over. I think the most honest sleep is with yourself.
There's been times when what I wanted most was to lie down in a convenient gutter, pull a blanket of slush over me, and go to sleep. I agreed with Sid: I could have used sleep in a cardboard box, if anyone offered some. But apparently I didn't fit any longer; there was no room at the bridge inn.
I sat still there in the dirty sunshine, maybe looking like I was asleep, listening to rat scratchings, car whines, and the low boom of railroad cars hunting for a permanent love.
"You gettin' out of here?" Sid asked. "You gonna tell that bitch to leave me alone?"
"Yeah."
"Then give me the smokes."
I threw the pack toward him. "Go to hell, Sid."
"Yeah, you too. Got any booze?"
"Not on me. For that you would kill me."
A sigh. "Yeah, you're right again, man. Tell that old fart if she shows up with a bottle I'll talk to her." He crawled into one of the boxes.
"Yeah, man," I whispered after him.
He didn't answer, but I could hear long drags from inside the box. I sat there for a while longer, smelling the warm cardboard, listening to some flies. Then I sidled along the boxes until I could angle around the bridge roots and come, blinking, into the remnants of a day.
Fifty feet behind me Sid squatted in his box blowing cancer spores into his lungs. On the other side of a concrete railing cars rushed past, hunting. A few miles away Emmaline sat, waiting for someone to bring life's news back to her. "You got to talk to my brother," she had said. "You got to bring him back. Got to save him."
I brushed my palms over my pants and ambled down the sidewalk. Stories where the beast transforms into a beauty aren't true. Beauty can't exist without a beast inside. A pack of cigarettes might entice Sid into daylight, but the sun wouldn't change him. A revival meeting, NA, six hot whores, a social worker, or love wouldn't either. Emmaline thought faith might, but either she or the faith was wrong. Remember high school physics? Two things do occupy the same place at the same time.
I dug in my pocket for the smoke. Creased and leaking tobacco shreds, lost behind Sid’s brand new rollups, but I stuck it between my teeth, scratched a match along the bridge to get a light, and started back to Emmaline's disapproval. As I walked, I watched sunshine change bits of trash and lost tin cans from pale gold to amber, rose, cinnamon, and finally a dark, rich red shadowed with royal purple.