He was a crazy bitch; the kind of slender guy likened to jungle kitties with thoughts like claws tearing down the wallpaper. The kind of woman that holds a certain gravity for us poets. It is not their beauty it is their quirks; It is some small madness within them which we pompously believe we understand. And they are more intelligent than we could ever imagine, they will make you cry blood and poetry. 

They will make you more productive and crazy than you've ever been. Somehow, no matter what a crazy bitch you know he is, you will be forever affected with a hope: that understanding might be possible. You cannot survive too many of these, but will always be willing to try again.

This is what Norberto was thinking as he sighed and shifted again in his narrow hospital bed, trying unsuccessfully to get comfortable. His shoulder hurt, his back ached, and his leg muscles felt twitchy from inactivity, though he had only been laid up for two days. If he felt this bad, he wondered how much worse Brolin, who had been hospitalized for weeks, must feel?  They had both fought over Mark.  Not because the jungle cat was a particularly sexy guy, but because he had the most perfect feet either had ever seen.  Huge size 13 feet with perfect toes and soles without blemish. For the first time the two stopped obsessing over their own feet and focused their attention on the tantalizing tootsies of another.

"Norberto? Are you all right?" Brolin's voice, from the shadowy no-man's-land of the next bed. 

"Yeah, Bonito. I'm fine. Go back to sleep." 

"You're restless, and you keep sighing. Is it your shoulder? Are you in pain? Do you want me to call the nurse?" 

"No, I don't want you to call the nurse. Geez, Bonita," Norberto exploded, "You still have my bullet in your back, you can barely get out of bed without help, and you're worried about my pain? Why don't you think about yourself for a change? Jeez, you can be annoying!" 

Brolin didn't answer, a sure sign him feelings were hurt. Norberto sighed again. "I'm sorry, BonitO. I didn't... I'm sorry." 

A long moment of silence stretched between them, then the cop said, in an apparent non sequitur, "We haven't really talked since..." he hesitated, as though searching for the right words. 

Norberto provided his own. "Since I shot you." 

"No," Brolin disagreed "Since... Mark.  I can’t have him, but you…"

That was when things got crazy.  Brolin leaped upon Norberto and slugged him only once, but it was a blow strong enough to stun him.  He then moved down to the young Latino’s bare fate a shoved his nose against the youth’s foot. Once again, just at the base of the toes. He wiggled his foot as I touched it with my nose and released more of that wonderful moist sweaty foot fragrance. He inhaled deeply. 

"Stop fighting this!" he ordered, then he began tonguing the youth’s sole wildly. The Latino lad giggled and his toes wiggled faster and faster from the tongue-tickling, as that smell continued to waft from his foot to Brolin’s wanting nostrils. 

He continued to lick as the pain from his injuries seemed to fade. It was intense. He stopped the foot-licking and pulled away from the helplessly laughing youth. But instead of Norberto using this moment of freedom to get away or call for a nurse or someone, he positioned his bare feet near his enemy—practically begging him to continue with the foot-worship.  He moistened the Latino lad’s sole, licking every square inch from heel to toe, lightly tickling the foot as h went along.

This foot-worship session didn’t stop until the hospital’s head nurse walked in on their fun.