A dark, grimy story about a couple of addicts at the end of their rope. Gallagher’s descriptions are so rich I was holding my breath so I didn’t smell the scene:

She went back inside, finished with her first and probably only cigarette of the day (they had no money left) and her precious alone time, spent contemplating the rain’s pattern on the alley, the smell of Atlantic City in the morning, something like bacon wafting over from some breakfast place making her feel both hungry and sick, smell of ozone and the cigarette she smoked and the cloud of someone toking weed nearby, a wake n bake in progress somewhere, trying not to the think about anything in particular, though memories of their last few days together intruded, wild days that ended definitively the night before when he’d barked at her and she’d pushed back at him because she wasn’t going to put up with that shit.