I sat in Julius’ passenger seat, staring out through the fogged windshield, the winter afternoon sun crystallizing the darkened interior of his Mercedes. Smoke billowed heavily throughout the cab as he exhaled, passing me the joint. I said no thanks, I don’t smoke anymore.

“Take the motherfuckin’ joint,” he said, coughing. I took it and sucked at it feebly. I had money on the brain and way too much to do to be high while I was doing it.

“See them niggas over there?” he said, smiling, nodding through the windshield to the southwest corner of 23rd and Lawrence. “I ain’t been here in years. I used to crip wit dem niggas back in the eighties.” He coughed again. “They still doin the same shit, playin the same dice game. Prob’ly ain’t even thought a movin’ out. Niggas prob’ly even carryin’ the same heat.”

I passed the joint back to Julius.

“That nigga with the blue goose down, that’s Jack,” he said, smoking. “That’s what we used to call him, Jack, ‘cause he couldn’t stay out the box.” He chuckled, and then he stared severely, straight down into the shimmering bands of light infiltrating his Mercedes. His mind was reeling back into a past that had either been lost to him for years or intentionally suppressed. I looked out the windshield and saw Jack and a few other men shooting dice and laughing in the cold. A bundled old black man with a cane sat watching them from a bus bench. I wanted to tell the old man that buses didn’t come on Sundays. Nothing came on Sundays.

“So what you doin’ in Five Points?” he asked.

“Makin’ a livin’,” I said, shaking my head.

“White boys don’t come around here much.”

I shook my head and looked him in the face. “I used to live here,” I said, and took the joint as he handed it back to me. “My moms still does.” I took a deep drag and looked out past a strip of three-story tenements to the poignant skyscrapers of Denver, their arms reaching high and wide to the darling blue of the clear sky. I thought about all those suits that would be in all those buildings tomorrow and the next day and wondered why they were so much different from guys like me, guys like Julius. I wondered if it was because of us that they were the way they were.

“You got hoes out here?” he asked.

“I don’t pimp,” I said. “Just heaters and dope, when I’m in Denver.” I watched as Jack and another guy argued over the roll. The sun peaked and the thick ribbons of smoke in the Mercedes danced a paranoid winter waltz in my mind. A black Caddy thumped slowly by us, its windows as black as night in Five Points.

“Niggas is always sweatin’,” Julius whispered, shaking his head.

“Let’s get this paper,” I said, and Julius started the Mercedes back up and we creeped into the sun-filled afternoon, the cold just another part of this world we couldn’t seem to escape.