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His rest was disturbed, his dreams uneasy. He opened his eyes and craned his neck and saw through the porthole-like window the unclouded darkness in which were embedded voyeuristic stars winking at him from their lofty perch.
He tried to recall his dreams, but already they had receded into the far distance borne on the tides of sleep, leaving him on a shore washed empty and smooth.
Awareness was a state reclaimed with reluctance. First and foremost: a stiffness suffusing the proprioception of his spine, courtesy of his narrow makeshift bedding. Every bone in his body protested every motion. Yawning, he was alerted to the miasma of his own breath, a concoction of dehydration and leftover of last night's dinner acidifying the cavern of his mouth.
Memories of last night brought to the surface an image of a flaming red head bent over a bowl of pho, an unobstructed view of a receding hairline and thinning crown. Within the confines of his unwashed jeans his cock twitched, a small animal stirring in response to the warmth pumped by the engine of his heart. This metaphorical hunger, however, was soon eclipsed by the dawning realisation that he was ravenously hungry.
The glowing dashboard display read three-twelve at the witching hour. Outside, a gust of wind tapped at his window before rushing down the length of the road, howling in mocking laughter.
He reached across the central console and flipped on the courtesy lights and the fog lights. Then, he slipped out of the car while stepping on his sneakers and hugging his winter jacket to his body. With the light on his back he shuffled his way to the shoulder of the road and squinted unseeing at the sea of darkness before him. His hands trembled as he pulled down the zipper of his trousers and fished his cock out. Cupping his shaft as one would a vulnerable creature against a dangerous predatorial world he relieved himself onto the ground below, which at this time of the year was patiently waiting for grains to be sown.
With at least one bodily demand fulfilled he scurried back to the car, his shell of carbon fibre and steel and lapsed automotive insurance and the only home he, this small animal, currently owned in the unbearable largeness of the world now that the Palo Alto mansion had been sold to cover his debts and badly at that and the Long Island apartment had been repossessed. He forewent the backseat in which he had spent the better part of the last six hours and clambered onto the passenger seat. The wind had bitten his fingers numb during his brief sojourn to the exterior and now blood was returning to them in dull pinpricks of pain. With hands therefore made clumsy he scrabbled and groped his way across the central console but his fists came up empty save for crumpled wrappers of candies and energy bars.
He wanted to kick and rage at his car but it was one of the few things still in his name and one was inclined to become all too cognisant of one's possessions when they were few in number. So he fisted his hands in his lap and leant back against the greasy headrest with a display of discontentment for an audience of no one.
Closing his eyes, he thought of Kyle sitting in this seat last night as Eric ferried them both across the city for noodles with what was unbeknownst to Kyle the last dollars in Eric's bank account. Sooner or later he would have to tell Kyle about his living situation or rather its lack thereof. The alternative was Kyle discovering the fact independently and feeling hurt that Eric had neither confided in him nor sought his help. The calculations of a man's pride were a mystery to the self-styled martyrdom of Kyle Broflovski.
He found a plastic bottle on the passenger door that was two-third empty and finished the stale-tasting water within in one swallow. His stomach gave a pitiful gurgle. Remembering his fuel situation, he turned off all of the lights and thought of how he could drive away and never come back and never have to face Kyle and leave some of his debts behind while he was at it.
While staring motionless into the dark he was suddenly reminded of getting into the driver's seat to find Kyle closing the glove compartment in a hurry. Under strict interrogation, Kyle turned beet red, a different shade from his carrot hair in a most unlovely manner, and muttered something about Eric being disallowed from opening the glove compartment before midnight. Eric was about to pressure the answer out of him when Butters with his infernal timing called and then Eric was swept up in an elaborate charade of pretending that everything was fine and nothing had gone to shit and he still had some face to save in front of Kyle.
Eric pulled the glove compartment open, which had been emptied out of warning letters with red font from the banks before Kyle got into Eric's car last night. In the otherwise empty space was a foil-wrapped chocolate bar like what Liane used to buy to bribe him to do his homework before bed.
Don't eat it before midnight, Kyle had said. Eric glanced at the central display not at the hopeless hour but at the date and inadvertently blushed.
He ate all of the chocolate save for one square, which he returned reverently to its wrapper and stowed back in the glove compartment. Once that was done, he dropped the back rest of the seat and dozed off and was disturbed by neither malicious hunger nor mischievous wind.
When dawn broke he sucked on the last square of sweetness as he watched the sun rise above the lunar mare of the fallow ground and anoint the emptiness in gold. Then, he turned the nose of his car back towards the city where someone was waiting for him.