

Second Edition published by Capacity Press (Ray Succre)

Copyright Ray Succre 2012

Cover design. Ray Succre

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This book is dedicated to Bonnie Morrison,

the best test reader a boy could have.

Thanks, mom.

## Amphisbaena

### Chapter One

He had so very nearly lost his life, that what remained was wonderfully precious to him. It was obvious in the anxious brightness of his eyes, how proud he was, after the great shock, of being alive. But he had been so much hurt that something inside him had perished, some of his feelings had gone. There was a blank of insentience.

-from _Lady Chatterley's Lover_ , D.H. Lawrence

The pressure of the deep coerced against his outer and inner self, an astounding force of weight and volume, and he felt there should be no return for him to the surface from the ocean's depth and immensity. His last breath had been taken with so little effort or thought before his drop from the raft above, and as this breath searched to escape him, he would cease being threatened by demise and would encounter this with certainty, a dire end as nutrient for various forms of life on the ocean floor. The great shark he had seen when entering the water nudged at his left leg, testing him for reaction, and Bill began to ascertain the probability of his reaching the ocean floor so far below had diminished. He concluded that his body, once lively and now useless, would meet digestion long before the silt.

The ocean surface opened toward the expansive sky then, like a vast ammobium at day's break, and swallowed the Sun. This burning round of hydrogen dimmed, drifting through the dark beneath the waves. Little time had passed before the Sun, fighting off its own perish in the water, let out a tremendous volley of light, which gave Bill a grander sense of vision. With the ocean illuminated and the water warmed with outstanding natural light, he looked below and noted that there was not one shark but hundreds, and several of them were larger than the raft he had abandoned above. The sapped air in his chest tugged upward then, abandoning his system, departing his mouth in a rapid, eager stream of burbling gas through liquid. This indicated an oxygenated hope at joining the air above, which was its natural state. This also finalized Bill's probable demise. The pressure intensified and his head ached with severity.

The first Atlantic White Tip to approach was one of the largest. With a strong jaw replete in teeth, a body streamlined for predatory articulation, and a large head gravid with inhuman senses, the White Tip was a watery horror. The shark drew its gray body about him several times with both hurry and ease. The speed at which this creature could turn and vacate then arch and hark back was mesmerizing. Bill thought it a hopeless and strange thing to be so impressed by the approach of a devil. He watched the brute, knowing it would soon take him for pieces and eat them in a world for which man was not innately suited to live.

The White Tip circled back and sped forward at the small, foreign animal, closing on Bill. The turning of its body brought the maw near to the prey's middle. Bill did what most lost primates would do in alien habitat, about to be devoured. He faced his attacker and tilted back, allowing their torsos to meet. There was a strength he possessed that welled in him, awaiting release, and as the shark collided against him, chest to chest, Bill permitted his knowledge to manifest action. This was a tactic he had learned from the tango, dance of passion. The long White Tip calmed at the touch and allowed Bill to become the leader. The man placed his right hand on the White Tip's lower back, extending his left to grasp his partner's right fin. The shark understood and settled its left fin on Bill's right shoulder. Bill tilted his head and looked into the shark's eyes, slowly nodding as they held one another. The first beat struck and they began to truly live.

The tango set them close to one another, gliding through the water to the wonder of other sharks. A vast conglomeration of tuna crowded near and whispers traveled fast through their ranks. The power of Bill's form and movement was hypnotizing to them and they held this rare display of dance in a startled, ominous reverence. Bill and the great predator, now his acquiescent partner, spiraled with each step down into the depths as the beat drove them on, hearts meeting in a revelry of melodious rhythm. They reached the ocean floor and were joined by groups of starfish devotedly turning about on rocky perches. Bill was pleased to learn that starfish chirped like birds, a pleasant sound to discover in such a usually dark place. The starfish continued turning and chirping to the tango and soon were met with responsive sounds from arriving nudibranches. Prominent octopods crawled from beneath rock and moved about in wondrous rotations with scuttling Jonah crabs, creating the scene of a vast, underwater celebration.

"Follow tight," Bill advised his partner. This was upsetting to the shark as the statement inferred this primate thought the advice relevant, and that the White Tip had not been following near enough to proper form. The shark lowered its head due to this, dejected, but Bill's hand fell against the shark's chin. With a gentle but empowering lift, Bill returned the predator's toothy head to a proud height.

"Stay wonderful," Bill said then. The shark smiled, feeling foolish for having doubted the land-dwelling visitor. On the ocean floor, Bill shifted his weight to his left foot and performed his forward rock step. A haze of uprising silt masked their feet and fins from clear view. The shark gasped at the keen motion of Bill's rock step and gained a potent respect for the human's mastery of the Argentinian dance of lovers. Bill drew his weight back to his left and stepped forward with the right to complete a gliding, aquatic half turn. He had ascended into a realm of dance not reached by his kind, and he had done so by descending into a dark realm of the Earth just as unimaginable. Bill had assumed the focus and streamlined motions of a shark, the mystique and depth of the great oceanic trenches, and held within him the very rhythm of the tide.

"You're really good," the shark said. Of course Bill was good. He had left the place of his kind, the land, and ventured into the natural pond, releasing his air to the faint past. What creature did so without a grander sense of purpose? Only man would give up his necessities for a more august prize. This was his power over the world, over the birds and sharks above and below. Bill had come not to feel passion but to become passion, and show all he encountered the true nature of his wicked moves. Bill released the White Tip at a rhythmic prompt that only he fathomed and the great shark fell into tonic, the only spiritual state a shark could attain, and one that overwhelmed the creature in pleasurable shock. The White Tip drifted from him into the fog of upraised silt that had risen during their tango.

Without a partner the dance ceased. All of the ocean crowded near and admired his form, breathing his presence. This was the moment Bill had expected and called. He turned and looked for the power he knew to be near. There was no greater judge of a man than a being superior to man. After a short scan of the ocean floor, he saw this superordinate being. Bill smiled and waved. Poseidon the Earthshaker returned this greeting standing on an outcropping of rock in the distance. Two seals were circling the Hellenic god with an artful syncopation, each seeming to follow the route of the other with watery perfection.

Bill waited for what he knew Poseidon would rummage up for him. This Grecian god surely understood the nature of dance, that the artistry of motion could shake the Earth nearly so much as a titan. Soon Bill saw Poseidon's gift, a mermaid, edging toward him from behind the outcropping. She seemed pretty.

"Thanks, man," Bill said. Poseidon offered a thumbs up and leaned back to watch the presentation. The mermaid would be Bill's dance partner for all time and there could be no greater dancer with which to tango in the underwater theater than a woman who was half fish. She drew near and Bill reeled back, horrified. From across the murky floor came not the pretty mermaid he had at first surmised, but the ghastliest woman any man had ever chanced to see. She did not have the lower half of a fish, as he had come to believe was proper in a mermaid of worth, but rather, the lower half of a serpent. Her upper half was grotesque and malformed, and her hair coiled in sporadic drifts. This turbulent hair was comprised, as her lower half, of snake material. Each strand adrift, menacing, the gorgon's grotesque head was topped with a horrid bouquet of serpents.

"Oh, come on," Bill said, agitated with the Earthshaker, "She's a gorgon. Totally fugly. Let's not go that route." Poseidon only smiled as Medusa, the cursed nymph, a monstrosity for which the Greek god maintained a friends-with-benefits relationship, arched toward Bill. Her body undulated through the water, trailing the snakes from her head over her back and shoulders. A motion near Bill's groin alarmed him and he looked down, batting at what he saw. Sea serpents. Dozens of them. They coiled and swiveled between and around his legs as if looking for the spot to bite first. Medusa stopped near and eyed Bill up and down, gauging him with a sexual appreciation. He averted looking into her eyes because he had seen the movies and knew what would happen.

"I came down here to dance. This is bullshit," he muttered, watching the snakes dart about his body, closer to him with each circling. Some of them had risen to neck level and now eyed this portion of his body with zest. They were forming opinions about his dancing and this bothered Bill. Nervous, he caught a glance at Medusa's eyes, which was quite an error. This brief contact was all the gorgon needed for her curse to overcome him. Bill felt his limbs stiffen in the onset of paralysis. His skin hardened and cracked. His thoughts dulled. As his body petrified, becoming the heavy stone that would certainly keep him weighted to the ocean's floor until the end of time, he used his last movement to signal Poseidon. The god watched with intrigue as Bill Sherman slowly lifted his hand and offered its middle finger. He was but a rude statue then. There was a motionless moment in which Bill could see the sharks descend. One of them shot forward and struck him at the Earthshaker's command, shattering Bill into a stony drift of imprecise, awkward debris. All the man had wanted was to tango.

***

With the human forearm's relation to the wrist, each of these keeping deep gristle, but mere neighbors by centimeters and coexisting in an excellent mode of pivot and pinion, thrusts of the hands could be made and with much velocity. The locomotive portion of the human brain, controlling a bioelectrical superhighway through the body, could lift arms however unfit, and these signals could ripple the abdomen like a ribbed sea, even while legs, the neck, and the tongue wriggled into their own levered movements. The brain created deep, intricate motions in even the smallest portions of a human body. This body could be entirely retracted, ready to spring out wild, leaping into the air, flipping, twisting, whatever the orders given by the gray brain above. So it was, with a keen harmony of small, appendant gestures, that Mary Christine St. Ellsworth let her shoulders fall back and her knees rise, bringing her body into a position dedicated not only to falling, but to doing so in an infantile, total yield of her body to the laws of common physics.

Bill Sherman woke from one awful predicament into another. He lifted his head forward, confused from having fallen asleep in his chair during the lecture, and followed the sound of the scream to its creator. The calendarium's vaulted ceiling sent this sound unevenly across the walls and caused the scream to seem of higher pitch and depth than it was. He watched as Mary's slim, aged back fell onto the table in fit. He blinked through this several times and then stood.

Mary Christine St. Ellsworth, in her newly haywire mind, thought up a marvelous trick of kicking out her pantyhose-covered, rheumatic legs when she hit the table. She did this into the gut of Walter Osbourne, who did not anticipate the incoming assail. Thus surprise was born in him. He discovered then that the floor of the Latin Hall Calendarium was warm, and he found, pain from his stomach aside, the subtle glide of this warmth against his shoulder and face almost welcoming. Walter remained on the floor beside the table where Mary battered herself screaming. Her lecture was assuredly over.

There are men so severe as to look away from an escaped breast the instant they learn of it. These men close their eyes tight during orgasm, disdain usual restroom activity, and are to be found with thin matching socks, enunciated clothing, and in a manner of life sealed away from outer disturbance by a strong use of the grumble. Richard Dutch had expended just under one thousand breaths isolating and stigmatizing his grumble, and when he gave this to the air the sound was so honed and deep, so ultimate and resigned, it could be mistaken, as it had been in the past, for an admission of loathing. Ms. St. Ellsworth's breasts had been unsheathed from their guard and, having slid from her blouse-top to the base of her gizzard, now wobbled and undulated with her unpredictable flails of the waist and legs. The Dutch gave his grumble and the loosed breasts continued jerking about in her seizure. This was as if a game wherein each breast tried to reach her chin before the other but were thwarted back by the sonic heaves that issued from her mouth.

"Christ, someone cover those things up," The Dutch said, his eyes aside and mouth downturned. The emission of neither his grumble nor comment were heard, however, over the shrill, mind-lancing squeals Ms. St. Ellsworth had concocted in her spasms. Conjoining this awful, vowelish sound were the agitating yips of Merveilleux, her three-legged, poisonous corgi, now snapping its clean, tooth-brushed teeth at Mr. Osbourne's hair, for which he had little. This tiny tri-ped was of such viciousness and temerity that one might discern her newest intent was to take Mr. Osbourne for her kill. Walter made a kind of whine on the floor as he leaned his balding head away from the dog and weakly batted his wrist at her. Merveilleux gave a shaky and wild assurance that her clout-nail teeth would keep this wrist au courant with their various uses.

"Hold her down!" John Beasly said. He was the progenitor of the calendarist conference. His presence had been in support of Mary's lecture, which was to outline the future of their small group.

"No, sit her up!" Janet Hogue said. She was the representative of Holt and Finch Publishing, Guides and Articles Division, and was the editor of several calendarists present.

"Put her tits in her shirt," said Tipsy Osbourne, cold and pessimistic wife to Walter, yet bold and foul-mouthed devourer of vanguard sex with a nervous John Beasly. She stood near her lover, watching Mary's collapse with agitation.

"Is it a disorder?" Bill asked. He was a struggling calendarist and stay-at-home dad, though for children that were not his own, and in a home that did not belong to him. He was prone to falling asleep during lectures he cared for and had lately been overcome by a falloff of his creative skill as a maker of calendars.

"Watch it— she's kickin'!" Todd Lansington advised. Todd was a successful calendarist and kit-car enthusiast, a lover of women, and a jocular dope.

"This is fucked," exclaimed Ryan Culver, a twenty-two-year-old high school graduate and breast fanatic, at that moment in a mode both horrified and aroused. He was the most recent owner of the Latin Hall Calendarium gift shop. His pressing of the gift shop into the online world had generated revenue uncharacteristic for someone of his age and education.

"GAAAAAANAAAAANAAAAA," came from Mary Christine St. Ellsworth, the late-life owner of the Latin Hall Calendarium (but not its gift shop), curator of the attached Museum of Calendaric Artifacts, and the author of the publicly shrugged-at _True Measure in Gregorian Time_ , a somewhat officious, non-fiction novel describing the invention of the western calendar. Her life and ownership of the calendarium would terminate from a blood clot in her brain, one so small it would not have affected most people of even below average health. This would take place in nine seconds.

A quiet room accepting the tired voice of an older woman through four small speakers in the ceiling corners had erupted into a confounding mess of shouts and questions, the fling of arms, the grasp of hands, the bounce of breasts, the cease of a heart. The room returned slowly from this ruckus, to the quiet it had initially kept, and all were silent. Bill Sherman first uttered the thing, and to the dozens of others in the calendarium, the statement was both apt and powerful.

"Mary's dead." This was delivered in a tryst with disbelief.

Walter Osbourne, having risen to his feet by using the same table Mary lay on as a brace, stood at her hose-covered feet and stared down in a daze. His wife, Tipsy, had fit the two escaped articles back into the deceased woman's blouse and was slowly rubbing her palms on her pants as if to cleanse the hands from their contact with dead breasts.

"She... she was just talking," Walter mumbled, shocked."Does anyone have a phone?" Todd Lansington asked, examining his own. People began fumbling in their pockets for these devices, taking more time than one might suspect was normal. They stood there staring around the body but not at it, patting their chest pockets, flexing their eyes and making noises of 'hmm' and 'oh' and other small sounds of looking about for something. There was a yapping from the floor then, which quickly became a muffled series of growls, as if the mouth of the dog had closed around cloth. This muffled sound was followed by a slight, pained gasp from Walter, who shook his leg to dislodge Merveilleux before nudging his heel back hard. The growling transformed into a yelp and ceased.

"Isn't Nina supposed to be here like, any minute?" Ryan asked.

"She will," John Beasly replied, "She's bringing the gift bags because I forgot them."

"It's not your fault," Ryan responded, trying to affect care. John scoffed.

"Of course it's not my fault. Why the fuck would this be my fault? We're not even talking about Mary, we're talking about her daughter. Fault doesn't apply."

"Well, I know," Ryan appealed. He had only thought to say something deep, like in a dramatic movie, and simply had not thought it out before uttering his statement. The room began to elevate into a clearer consciousness, in that all felt certain enough about the events that had taken place to begin stating things at one another.

"My phone is dead."

"Mine, too."

"Just awful."

"She was just talking..."

"I don't have my phone."

"Poor Nina, her mother died."

"I can't believe it... just... she's just _gone_."

"I can. It's always like that."

"Jesus, I've never known someone that died."

"Wait until a funeral for someone you've slept with."

"Does anyone have a working phone?"

"Was it a seizure, you think did it?"

"Can someone shut that damn dog up?"

"Her calendars were amazing."

"Oh, they always were."

"Always will be."

"Does _anyone_ have a phone with reception?"

### Chapter Two

She could not remove it from her thoughts, and for the third time that day, Sandy opened the envelope, extracting the small slip of yellow paper: "Someone is in love with you. Now mail this on to someone you love romantically, but who doesn't know." Who had sent this? Certainly not David; since the divorce, he had all but refused to acknowledge knowing her. She thought about the men she worked with, crossing them out of her mind one by one. After a moment of concluding she was being gullible, Sandy rose from her chair and dropped the slip of paper, with a laugh, in the garbage. She did not have time for dull games, or childish men, for that matter. Even if the note was genuine, it presupposed she held a love for someone, or was looking to be loved, herself. This was untrue, most days.

-from _The Chain Letter_ , Rita Gordan

The house on Bessinger was neither old nor new, the same being true for Bessinger itself, the circumferent neighborhood, and most of the residents and homes that created the place. In a middle-aged zone of materials, a faux cosmos of track-housing and sequential mailboxes, Bill Sherman spent his days. He wrote out his calendars and snapped images with his camera, allowed himself to be part of a household, and until recently, emailed his publisher each Monday. The publishing company, Holt and Finch, was middle-aged, and Bill's computer was middle-aged, and it was during a morning months ago, after watching a middle-aged bird being torn into by a rare-to-charge, middle-aged tabby on the lawn, that Bill had begun to question the nature of publishing. Where magnanimous, gray rules and tactics once promised him a means to some future demographic, to publication, he now saw only birds and tabbys. Where he knew camaraderie and networking through the Calendarium, he now saw Mary Christine, its chair and creator shivering in her guts and having dropped on a cheap, collapsible table, dying shocked, painfully, suddenly, out of reason and without dignity. The calendarium, his residence, his occupation, and even his dismal mood... none of these things were old or new.

The house on Bessinger was not his own but where he lived, and though Bill had enough mental draft to acknowledge he had not, nor would he ever, be very pleased with his life inside the house, he lacked the cognitive artistry to actively realize he was also miserable _outside_ of it. Tulips seemed to wilt before his feet as he fetched mail that was frivolous and impertinent. His creative works, which once left his hands with a tart and spicy quality needing so little coercion, now but trickled from him, mimicking the low pressure dribble of water from the kitchen sink. The dreary weather was not only above his town but had snuck within him and now characterized even his appearance.

There was a quiet, near ghostly shriek in his subconscious with each moment of his life spent turning a doorknob, showering, preening, and then straightening a damp towel. Headings with numbers appeared beside his head, transparent and meaningful, alluding to all the worthwhile things he had thought of and even wanted, but a fantasy of numerals that did not describe his actual life. _Children: 1. Countries Visited: 8. Languages Spoken: 3. Figures in Annual Income: 6. Total Past Sexual Partners: 0._ These were sums of what he would have preferred over what he had.

Bill had a brother with three children and the brother had a home with four rooms. The brother was successful in most areas of life save two: Marriage, which he had failed, this of his particular achievements having been judicially dissolved several years back, and fathering, which he was good at, and a thing he felt in his heart, but a function he was unable to perform as often as he wanted owing to being successful in a busy occupation. The two men and three children, of which only one was female, maintained the household and followed daily regiments of general domestication. Uncle Bill attempted to impart on the children bits of his wisdom and thought, and the children made a stronger attempt to not hear it.

The uncle watched over the three children through the days. Each morning, he left the home's garage in which he had taken residence with a desk and bed, and entered the tottering, minute-by-minute world of babysitting. He listened to their sudden changes in music. He played with their progressive toys. He ate what they ate and he yawned when they yawned. At times, Bill compared the children's traits to their father and mother, picking pieces of each child and charting it as being of one family side or the other. Christian's ears belonged to his father. Nick's feet belonged to his mother. Jessica's eyes were somehow much like Bill's own eyes. He set their toys and habits near his own childhood happenings and articles, comparing to discern which of the two generations had the world best. His conclusion fell to either side and changed by day.

Each flu infection was felt, each swear word heard, each meal given, and each meal taken. Years had passed in this manner. The days were connected to more days, head to tail, an ouroboros. This was indicative of the way the children were connected to minutes, each twisting into another, changing them, not always for the better. These durations, one by one, found them a bit less childish, a touch older, yet nowhere near enough of these minutes in their lives had accrued to begin filling a lively calendar.

"I thought you were doing the car wrecks thing." Roger said in the kitchen. At the table, seated with the children, Bill sighed. His brother's insight into his workings was only tertiary, and carried little sway over Bill, but Roger's mention of the new calendar was upsetting. The new calendar had become problematic and Bill did not prefer to estimate how much time he had thrown away by working on it, or else how much time he had spent wanting to work but being unable. The children at the table were being quiet and somber, and into this scene Bill gave a second sigh, exaggerated loudly and with traces of a moan, to attempt drawing a rise out of them. Only Nick noticed, glancing up at his uncle with annoyance.

"Are you still doing the car wrecks?" Roger asked, having received no answer to his previous statement.

"That's on the backburner," Bill answered, "Hey, did you know the first auto crash pre-dates the invention of the automobile by three years?"

"Wouldn't that be impossible?"

"It'd have to be. But I once ate toast without any bread, so there you have it."

"Seriously, what happened with the car wreck calendar?"

"I don't know," Bill admitted. The notion that Bill did not know what had happened to the car wreck calendar was exactly what had happened to the car wreck calendar. He had lost his knowledge of the project. For a time, he had managed to work with this new calendar on a sort of creative autopilot, but even that had malfunctioned. Bill had somehow removed himself from his work and was now having trouble finding his way back in. Such was the way of good art projects that needed closeness but did not receive this for a long enough span of time. Bill was troubled most so because he was not confident he wanted back into his creativity. He imagined a bald, officious man in his publisher's headquarters, peeking at the new calendar over Janet Hogue's shoulder and laughing his head off at Bill's work. Car accidents by month... what stupidity.

"Can't find any more accident pictures?" Roger inquired.

"I don't know," Bill repeated. He thought of Todd Lansington, another calendarist he knew and one that was successfully living off of royalties. Lansington lived in a two story, warmly furnished cabin in Virginia, and was likely right then grunting in approval of himself, noodling out more money-fetching calendars on themes of 'babies in grown-up outfits' and 'funny statements next to cute, infant animals'.

"Well, you knew last month. Talked my ear off about it. New work, new blood, you said." Roger was a kind and busy man, a good brother, and the only obvious sibling trait he had kept from his childhood was that of shrugging off his little brother's troubles, often to Bill's benefit. Roger managed his own audio/video franchise store, was divorced just over three years, and had an unlikely obsession with dishes always seeming dirty, no matter how clean they were.

"It's not the car wreck part that's gotten away from me, it's the calendar part," Bill said after a moment.

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know." This was the third time the confession had been uttered. Mary Christine, Bill's only reliable backer, flashed him then from the coffin.

"Is it because of that conference, the lady you knew that passed away?"

"No," Bill said, frustrated. The demise of Mary was troublesome for all the reasons one might be troubled by an acquaintance's death, and while she had given Bill a chance, introduced him to Holt and Finch, her passing was not what had caused Bill to abandon his calendar. That outcome had been built over months. To relieve his being foiled by Roger's questions, Bill imagined himself leaping from his chair, landing on the kitchen table, kicking aside the plates of the raucously quiet children. Roger would look at his brother, take in the power and emotion. The judges would wait with calm and, after pausing to receive his nod from a nearby coach, Bill would perform his wondrous backflip from the table and onto the floor. When he landed, he would be complemented with six points from the Canadian judge for his clean rotation, five by the British judge for the arms-up finish and steady dismount, and eleven by the American judge for enacting his angry will on others.

"You're just in a rut, man. You'll kick it," Roger said.

"Sure," Bill acquiesced.

The morning, despite a brief talk of ruts and careers, soon spiraled into the general. Roger vacated for work and, by noon, Bill had grown tired of listening to Jessica whine about Christian, and was near to giving up his attempts at drawing the notice of Nick away from the young man's private television. Saturdays were often easier on Bill, as his brother's weekends were the prime events in the children's lives. The three children would sit in a theater watching action and eating buttered popcorn, or venture to the Science Center to look at kiosks that outlined carbon dating. They would be with their father and Bill would have some time for his work, or in recent months, sulking. Instead of these activities, however, Bill and the children were forced to spend that Saturday with one another, as Roger had been asked to fulfill a task at work that, when mentioned in the house two days prior, even uncle Bill did not grasp.

"Pancakes are for breakfast, not lunch," Christian said, waving off Bill's preparation.

"Pancakes were invented by the Mongols, who only ate one meal a day. That was their lunch. It goes by logic then, that pancakes were invented for lunch."

"How come you don't have a job like dad?" Christian asked then, nudging his accent of 'you', 'job' and 'dad' in a rotten, bendy way that only a young, teasing child could get away with. At nine years old, Christian had begun asking an allotment of questions that carried more depth than in previous years. The trouble with this was that Christian had also developed a mean streak and had a preternatural understanding of taunts and rudeness. Seated beside him for lunch was his sister, Jessica. Only she was eating the pancakes. Christian rose and waited for Bill to respond to his snipe. He was at a mouthy age, though a somewhat fun one. The boy was intrigued with insect habits, his privates, and showing people up.

"For the same reason you don't have a job," Bill answered, returning the sponge-mop to the utility closet near the kitchen.

"Nuh-uh. Because you're not a kid," Christian replied.

"No, I mean that, like you, I have nothing going on in my life. I'm barren to purpose."

"Nyeh," Christian said, walking off to his room. This was the standard sound he uttered when annoyed with his uncle. His agitation was easy to capture and was one of the only means Bill had discovered beyond bribery to induce the young boy into entertaining himself.

"How about you, mein piglet?" Bill asked when Christian was gone. Jessica glanced up and stared at Bill, food in her mouth, not chewing, not moving. She was deeply confused, somewhat paralyzed by his attention. Her view of him over the four years of her life had not changed since the start. He was large, alien, and tended to talk at her in befuddling ways through all times of day.

" _You_ like pancakes for lunch, right?" Bill asked. He received only the continuation of her moronic stare. This was the deepest, purest state of confusion, and she wore this aspect more than any other. Bill was bothered being stared at in this way, with a blank nothing behind the shininess of her eyes, which were his own young eyes. Jessica was nearing the age of attending kindergarten, did not chew her food enough, and her favorite pastime was ever-so-slowly pointing at people for no reason when they were not looking.

"Do you want more?" Bill asked. Jessica puzzled over this a moment, then lifted her hands and looked at them, examining the pinkness and shape, though for what reason, only she knew. The little girl leaned her head to the side then, seeming taken aback with whatever her hands had told her.

"Vexed. Well, there you have it," Bill said with a clap, giving up. He turned for the sink, intent on seeing an end to what had been started there. Bill had learned that the best tactic to use with little Jessica, when she was puzzled, was to leave her be. Explaining things only set her into a near catatonic stare. Slow, she regained her sense of place and lowered her hands, eyes lifting again to gaze at her uncle, mouth thoughtlessly open, the balled pancake mash sitting on her tongue like a drowned mouse. Some time passed before she returned to eating.

The game involved uncle Bill using his eyes as weapons, lowering the lids to sinister slits and peering hard at the back of Nick's head. The duration he could do this, at several inches away, translated directly into strategic goals. After twenty seconds of this fantasy game, Bill would win a headband. After forty, a garbage disposal device. If he lasted a full minute of staring without a response from the young man, crouching behind the chair and peering at Nick's head, Bill would be awarded a black, fully-staffed, private jet. Nick's game, however, was on the television, and involved stealing cars and running over pedestrians that held an admiration for seemingly random profanity. Nick acknowledged this game by vanishing within its zones and fashion. While his body sat in a chair near the middle of his room, in a reclined position, his mind had been taken out and drawn ever more perversely into the virtual, carjacking euphoria beyond him, beyond the screen, beyond even life. Nick did not acknowledge Bill's staring game, however, due to his knowing nothing about it. Bill won the garbage disposal device but grew bored of staring into the back of Nick's fifteen-year-old head and gave up shortly before he would have won the private jet.

"I'm behind you," the Creeper said. The young man did not respond but for several quick taps of colorful buttons on his game controller, and the smooth glide of a rubbery thumbstick.

"Your brother and sister ate. You need to come eat," Bill the Creeper stated. A thin, Australian man onscreen then drew a shotgun from some invisible perch near his person, and used it to blast a woman in the chest, killing her. She screamed first, gurgled after. The murderer then shouted obscenities at her corpse for awhile, took her money, kicked the body, spit near it, stole her car, and then, while evading police, began shooting at an innocent hot-dog vendor on the side of a busy avenue. Such homicide, such action. Nick watched this occur, his face showing that the entrancement of these actions, and his having controlled and caused them, was all-encompassing and physiologically hot to him.

"Pause it. Go eat," Bill said. Nick did not respond, but made the Australian man stop the stolen car, get out, and throw a grenade at a man on a moped. The Australian man was designed to be late twenty-something, unemployed, and enjoyed mass hysteria, gun and drug-trafficking, prostitutes, and manslaughter. He died quite often. Nick Sherman was fifteen, sedentary, unpredictable, and thought his scrawny self better than those around him.

"Pancakes. I made them from equal parts peace and love," Bill said. The young man's shoulders twitched and the character on screen, driving with great speed across a tall bridge, jumped from his car, flailing with a scream of horror as he plummeted from the bridge into a bay far below. After a sigh, Bill walked around the chair, stood in front of Nick's television to block the view, and waved hello.

"FOOD. Made from equal parts peas and grubs," he said. Still not looking at his uncle, Nick paused the game, set the controller on his lap, and without movement or expression, gently began to weep.

### Chapter Three

Bradley released the rare Spangled Pigeon and watched it fly above the rooftops, vanishing. So much had been lost to the duties of his work. When she laughed at him he swiveled wild, stormed in close, taking her arms and giving a snarl. This made Geneva back down, as it was obvious who was on top in this pecking order. Not wanting to look at him, she sauntered to the cage door of the aviary, ready to enter for her examination of pigeons. She was caught up quickly in his arms, Bradley having followed to grab her. She spun on him with an anger that melted the moment his lips met her own. The cage door creaked open and he moved them inside, two people embracing to the bristling coos of birds.

-from _Winged Sanctuary_ , Brianne Laux

A calendarist, by his nature, preferred the segmentive over the subjective and the illumination of monthly data with creative monstrance. The page for July comprised many boxes, each containing a numeral that followed a set ascension from the 1st to the 31st. These boxes were hyper-real, obvious, right angles and captured space, and the numerals within them were bold but plain. The human necessity of knowing these numerals, to reference them when required, gave a calendar its power. Beyond this function, most calendar publishers saw the art on the opposing pages as a tertiary articulation, a means of selling the calendar to various, specialized individuals, and little more than the color of paint on the car. Bill was unlike most calendarists he had met in that he preferred the subjective over steel fact, the art over system. He cared little for the facts within a calendar, the dates, the lunar activity, what astronomical phenomena certain boxes were to indicate or which of these simple spaces would contain eight point italics indicating _Bastille Day_ or _Christmas_. His realm of profession involved the facing pages, the illuminators, the signifiers... specialization in images.

Deep in history, much of it unknown, those most liberated by chisels and wavy lines discovered a new manner of showing others their creative works. They coupled stone tablets indicating the time of year with art. This art was viewed. The bits of currency and hides came rolling in, and these primitive tablets experienced good sales. When Aloysius Lilius, in the late 16th century, first began scrawling bits of shapes and drawings on his astronomy forms and calculating dates within dates, the modern, international calendar was born. This Calabrian man had understood the power in a measure of time, in the labeling and tracking of dates, and that, like humanity, they required certain reforms to remain accountable over a long period of time. The Gregorian calendar, named for his pope, Gregory XIII, had an exact date of birth: February 24th, 1582. This coincided with the month and day of Bill's own birth. While Gregorian time was the accepted mode for calendars of modern civilization, the more ancient people with chisels and an unexplainable need to express the beauty of flowers and rivers would have understood Bill's profession best. He provided art to be coupled with flat, stapled, paper time-sheets. This was the only mode he had learned, after dropping out of community college, for compelling another human being to hang Bill's art on a wall. All of the more usual routes were bogged down in best talents and a mire of networking via station, and even the better talents still had to face a lottery-like period of randomnity before being detected.

A good calendar needed an invigorating idea, something so crisp and new that no one suspected the notion until flipping the piece open. Bill had concluded long ago that a good calendar sold the numbers contained, while a bad calendar, or a pointless one, was _sold_ by those numbers. The difference lay in why a human being would purchase the calendar in question. For the dates alone... bad calendar; for the experience of twelve works of art, with the convenience of knowing the date... good calendar. It was this system that caused so much animosity in Bill toward Todd Lansington. The world spun and the decades passed, the years were days and the days were beasts. One of these men struggled for his joys. Todd, however, articulated this magnanimous system of passing time with dull images of puppies being mischievous, yet more fantasy Hollywood airbrushings, and early American hot rods. His subjects were trite, cliché, and for some reason, everyone ate his work as if they had never seen such a thing, perhaps because they had. To some, calendars were a mode of comfort. These people wanted what they knew. All arts faced this embittering conundrum. To Bill, the only fresh thing in Todd Lansington's work was his signature, the style of which he changed for each image out of boredom.

With _Special Clouds_ opened before him, at the month of July, Bill sighed and rubbed his eyes. How was Lansington able to spend creative time on this wholehearted, repeat-offender dreck? How was he able to get on at Holt and Finch as a paid calendarist? Holt and Finch was able to distribute his calendars into major stores, onto the rack for all to see. Bill never received this sort of distribution, though the two men had the same publisher. Todd Lansington had become both a thin friend and a slight nemesis to Bill, through the calendarium and the occasional internet chat. Bill examined July again, shaking his head. How could Lansington look at himself and not laugh? Clouds. Gray clouds in blue skies, by month. One said _The Drifter_. Another: _Spraycan Flare_. Twelve months of the same clouds Bill could look outside and see at that very moment. These images did not elicit a response from him other than sourness over knowing they were more successful than his own images. There was no snapping aesthetic to witness, no experience of a greater meaning, no divulgement of a hidden thing, or human sensation. The clouds weren't even unique, as the name of the calendar would have implied. There was nothing special about them.

In his mind, Bill left his desk in the garage, climbed atop the roof of the house, and let himself feel the wind in the sky. His clothes were not rippling enough, so the wind increased and caused this to happen for him. Bill's face cooled from this arch breeze and the entire world was visible from his perch on the roof. This was a deep moment for him, a real reckoning of fate and place. He experienced more of the true world in this manner than any human ever had, and was likely to ascend any moment into the heavens. There was a small chime then, which emanated from the sky. This chime was followed by an interruption: One of Lansington's special clouds drifted down from the blue and surrounded him, nuzzling right up against his chest. This annoyed Bill.

"its a shame about mary," the cloud printed, the text of this statement appearing across its body for Bill to read. Bill thought this over and, sitting at his computer in the garage, typed a response into the chatbox.

"Hey Todd. Yes, it is. How've you been?" There was a moment wherein Bill thought to turn off the computer and ignore Todd's abrupt chat, but then Bill was compelled in his loneliness to value others who were in his trade, even if he was weighted down in jealousy and creative tantrums regarding them. Was Todd good to know or bad to know? A coin could have been tossed for discovering the answer to this.

"awsome. just got wind janet picked up a coupel of my kids. Were shooting all the way to chain retail, buddy," appeared on the screen. Bill stared at the words as if he had just been disqualified from a running race for moving too slow. His shoulders dropped and his nostrils flared in disturbance.

"I thought Janet was there to scout Walter. They had meetings," Bill typed.

"waltre messed it up or wahtever. i called her and we set it up. she menioned you too," Todd typed. Bill wondered over this last statement. Janet was Bill's editor at Holt and Finch, and she was also Todd's editor, but Bill's relationship with this publishing house had waned over the previous two years. That she had mentioned him to Lansington was a surprise. Janet Hogue had not bothered to return Bill's emails in months.

"Janet mentioned me? In what capacity?" Bill typed, a sensation of eagerness fidgeting his fingers.

"liks your york."

"Likes my work?"

"somethign about napoleon or i don't now. anyway, MAJOR RETAIL! ka-ching."

"I sent a feature to Holt and Finch last year with major historical figures we view in a negative light. History's bad guys, that sort of thing. Napoleon was September's theme."

"o so you made a cally with tyrants." Bill grunted at Todd's use of the word 'cally.'

"Not really. Some of them were. It was called ' _From the Rind_ '," Bill responded.

Tyrants. Bill had long ago reached a conclusion that a calendar could be more than a vessel for exhibiting images of pleasance. If paintings could portray violence, morbidity, or negative emotion, so could calendars. If films could outline human fault and present the hysteria of character, so calendars. If books could be used to impersonate things like sadness, woe, social sexuality, or historical dismay, why not a calendar? Did this specific tool not display art, as well? A populace that could accept photographs of kittens playing in string as art was a populace with an open door. This door, cracked slim when concerning calendars, was still plausibly open to other ideas, if they were to come along.

"your weird, bill. but what do i know, cuz she likes ti."

"That's good news for both of us. You on your way to big-kid sales, me maybe finally getting a response from H&F, even though I got it via broken telephone, through you and not H&F, itself."

"what telepone/? I'm on teh internet. are you texting formm a phone?"

"No... broken telephone is a game based on relaying information; came into use during the 3rd century. In New Zealand. Never mind," Bill said.

"oh weirsd. whatyou think of mary christines boobs?" Over the four years Bill had known Todd, or at least, four years of Todd believing he and Bill were associates on some level, the successful artist had not once mentioned his wife. Bill knew one existed, in the way a person knew a football team had talks in the locker room, but with Todd, there was no highlight to this effect, no press, and his instant messaging wandered often into discussions openly horny. Bill found this to be a little low, as if they were teenagers talking through keyboards about the Student Body President, but in the case of Todd's statement regarding Mary Christine St. Ellsworth's breasts, Bill did have an observation to make.

"They didn't match," Bill typed, "She was sixty-four, but her breasts looked thirty."

"yah, i noticed that too. wondre if she was embaressed."

"I don't think she was conscious of what was going on at that point," Bill replied. Those present during Mary's demise were certainly embarrassed, or fed up with the image they had witnessed, but Mary herself could not have known what was happening.

"hey, her dautghter is taking over the calendraium."

"Really? I thought Nina was doing the Peace Corps thing." Bill had assumed that the calendarium, the only museum in the United States dedicated to calendars, would pass to someone on the board of directors. That Nina might grow to be involved seemed unlikely. Bill had met Nina only twice and in both instances Nina had given off a sort of chewing-gum and glitter vibe.

"man, ninas kind of hot," Todd messaged.

"A little young and self-absorbed for my taste," Bill replied.

"but now i know what her boobs wlil look like when she s old. rockin."

Bill had taken an extended hiatus from dating and women, a separation that had begun many years ago. He was no curmudgeon, in the sense that he intended on one day returning to the arena of social interaction, but enough negative, cold, and even tawdry things had occurred in his past relationships that Bill had no urge to commit himself a continual route amongst more of them. He was on vacation from women, perhaps for a longer spell than he had intended, and while he was lonely and the urge to promote himself in public to women had been strong, he refrained. Bill could not have understood whether this was bold of him or cowardly. He felt beaten, yes, but setting aside his need of a relationship had been a difficult thing, and cowards tended to follow the simplest means out of a dilemma, the path of least resistance. Bill did not feel he had escaped a troublesome string of events, but that he had smartly rid himself of articles until a time when his slate was, in effect, cleared. This could have been a mistake, as that time seemed never to arrive and nothing, he was discovering, ever really shone clear where a mind was involved.

"gotta love a good rack," Todd added.

"I suppose so," Bill typed.

"nina nina nina. naked. i bet ryan has storys."

"I can't imagine Nina taking over Latin Hall. It seems improbable," he typed, dodging Todd's introduction of open, sexual want. Bill knew from past chats that if he let Todd go on about his more intimate urges, the man would only begin to detail them the more. This was foul to Bill, though not due to the notion of lust or even mild perversion, but rather any connection it might have with Lansington.

"well the dutch says so. gotta be so," Todd reinforced.

The only contribution to her mother's lifestyle that Nina had offered, so far as Bill was aware, was in providing Ryan Culver, a short-term boyfriend who had received an inheritance. Ryan was a young man Nina had pressured into purchasing the Latin Hall Calendarium's attached gift shop. Perhaps this was an attempt to please her mother, or simply an instance of familial business. Regardless, the relationship was short-lived. Nina left him when the gift shop did not do well, and then tried to reinitiate the relationship when Ryan proved to be quite smart in establishing an online presence for the shop. He had begun marketing the various historical gift shop calendars to hobbyists across the world, and in one maneuver that proved quite lucrative, approached several universities and high schools on the notion of providing entire campuses with calendars at a discount, something for which most staff offices needed anew each year. Ryan had also become the only seller of traditional Greek, stone-carved sundials in the country, each calibrated to a hundredth of a centimeter. In the short time he had been handling the gift shop and website, Ryan's intelligence had grown both in business and reasoning. He did not take Nina back. This seemed to please her mother on various levels.

"i don't know. it shwat I heard from the dutch. he says nina's taking over," Todd continued.

"That's a surprise. Bad news for Ryan and the gift shop. So how is old Richard Dutch, these days, anyway? You talk often?"

"big asshole. and no."

"Ah. The indomitable Mr. Dutch. He is unchanging."

Richard Dutch was co-founder of the calendarium, and for many years had been the curator of the attached Museum of Calendaric Artifacts. Ryan Culver sold replicas of the actual relics Richard had acquired. The Dutch was the sort of man that had attended university, studied a specific history quite strongly, and disregarded most else in life. It was all anyone knew of him, beyond that he was easily annoyed and purportedly a calumet enthusiast.

"Hey Todd, listen: what do you think of a 'cally' themed around automobile accidents?" Bill typed. Though he disliked Todd's work, they were in the same industry, if it could be called such, and an opinion other than Roger's might prove encouraging.

"only you would do that."

"I wish Arnie was still heading up the Articles Division at Holt and Finch. He got me. I don't think Janet does. I never hear from them. I'm starting to wonder if they're still my publisher." Arnie Lozier had left the earthly realm three years prior. Sarcoma.

"no janet likes your tyrant thing. call ehr."

"It's not about tyrants. Just major figures in history, most negative. But I think I'll call the office, yeah. She really liked it?"

"sh said special."

"Special, huh? Like your clouds," Bill responded with humor.

"huh?"

"Your feature, ' _Special Clouds_ '. I'm looking at it right now." July's image was of striated clouds, these perched snugly in an auburn-crested sunset. The image was titled _Old Man's Hair_. His signature for that month was _T. M. Lansington_ in a scrawl. On the page previous, which depicted a single small cloud entitled _Little One_ , his limned signature was _Todd L_. in a tightly-bunched cursive inscription. Bill had toyed with utilizing something like this in his own work but after a brief experiment, trying on Lansington's shoes, he dismissed the habit with a strong, internal mirth.

"o yeah, i rembemer. dude, i forgot halloween," Todd typed.

"What do you mean?"

"look at october. gotta go."

"All right. Later, Todd."

"yah by, bill."

With these keyboard back-and-forths at end, Bill closed the program and shut off his computer. Online chats with Lansington were always short but intriguing. Perhaps Todd's unintentional clowning was the reason Bill continued keeping the man in his contact list. The Virginian might have been a cad at times, but he always had an inside track on what was going on with Holt and Finch, and usually a slight rumor or two regarding people they both knew. That Todd was older than Bill by nearly a decade was invisible online. Bill found it surreal whenever he spoke with Todd at the calendarium conferences, as the young, moronic dog he always pictured was not the forty-something, placid man he encountered in actual life. Text was a thing that had been disguising men for thousands of years, and the scale of this had tumbled into the exponential with the emergence of the internet.

Bill lifted each page with attention, as he had learned to do with calendars, passing August and September's visions of blue and white. October opened before him. There was Todd's image of two jet cloud streaks across the general blue, titled _Contrails_. Todd had signed this _Lansington_ , but in a childish sort of font designed to look innocent and wondering. The box for the 31st of the month was wreathed in black-art vines with a pumpkin beside, but just as Todd had informed him, no holiday was present. The space was blank and held no mention of Halloween or All Hallow's Eve. What a large mistake, forgetting a major holiday in a calendar.

Bill leaned back in the chair, closed his eyes, and in a moment of unexpected bliss, experienced his first life-loving smile in months.

### Chapter Four

"No way am I going to Parker's party in that. Don't think so. Shiny and black is last year; you want me looking like a dead eel? You heard what he said to me, and if Jesse's looking for 'the real thing', I'll give it to him in red. He's got another thing coming if he thinks that somber choir girl wants anything to do with him. But me? I got him pegged. Get me something expensive and red. If this doesn't wake him up, he was born without his fun stuff. You watch, Parker's party is where Jesse and I hook up for real. Now find me the shoes I'll be wearing when it happens."

-from _Glitter Gladly_ , Jane S. Campion

If anyone could claim knowing Bill Sherman any better than Bill Sherman, the most probable candidate was Roger. While the eccentricity of Bill's daily antics and the haphazard format of his thoughts were alien to the older brother, Roger Sherman had the benefit of time, in the sense that he had known his little brother for decades. This broad, dulcet span of time was now approximately 11,715 days along, giving Bill a kind of tenacious, ever-increasing clarity to Roger. The younger brother's childhood was all laid out and the teen years had been recorded and settled. Bill's middle twenties were odd, and now, at thirty-one years of age, Bill appeared to most as odd and caring little for those around him. This was untrue, however. Roger's resource of knowing the younger brother over so many years was key in learning just where Bill's rough separated from the green in his wild. While the younger brother's mind made little sense to Roger, he could at least understand when this mind had come about, and how, over the years, Bill had become so unsocial.

"It's only three minutes at a time, which is mild. There'll be women, is the thing," Roger said.

"I don't care. It's obnoxious and inhuman," Bill replied.

Bill's first love-interest was a sparsely talkative young girl, Annette, but who went by Bean, and shared a fourth grade classroom with him. When asked by his older brother why Bill liked her so, in youth, Bill stated that she was a fast runner. This was not, in Roger's estimation, a strong enough reason to adore someone, but he acquiesced after noting the pleased look on his little brother's face, which was not common. Eventually, Bill had worn her down enough to commit her to a movie. They were two children heading to see a romance, of all things, and each with a parent in tow. Bill used his month's allowance to buy an assortment of penny candy, 500 pieces of it to the one, and placed this in a paper bag, penning little caricatures across it. This was a present he would give her before the movie, and wholly conceived by young Bill, himself. The Friday evening of the date arrived but Bean did not, and poor Bill was pinned into watching the uplifting, true-love-and-kissing movie with his mother. The following Monday, when Bill asked why she had not come to the movie, Bean's response was mild, as if she did not care and possessed far too little energy for explaining herself. She simply said "I must have had the day wrong." She also explained that she would not be committing to another movie date with young Bill.

While Roger could account for the fact that the young girl was indeed fast, having later in high school run against her as a senior when she was a freshman, he could not corroborate Bill's ever-on statements of mutual crush. Despite what Bill remembered, Bean had not been fond of him and found his crush to be both annoying and dull. She had told Roger as much one afternoon while stretching before practice.

The older brother mused over Bill's first attempt at a date, so long ago and yet he remembered this with clarity and recency, re-examining the map he had designed of Bill's life, which he felt was accurate. Bean had stepped on Bill young, and in a careless manner. To avoid the awful sensation of this, Bill quickly adopted a view that Bean _did_ like him, and much, but that time had simply gotten in their way, and being a woman (and to a younger Bill, flighty), she had only moved on to the next boy, as if the timing had simply been off. This was an indicative beginning for many things, if one looked sharp enough, from Bill's later fascination with calendars to his longstanding and somewhat melted comprehension of women.

"Yes, I agree. It _is_ obnoxious. Not really inhuman, though. At any rate, you're both of those things, so you should do fine," Roger prodded.

"Roger, we don't live in an urban area," Bill replied.

"So what?"

"Speed dating is a city thing, where people are busy as hell. It won't work in a small town. It's too... sport-like. Or hokey. People here have time to meet and get to know one another. Speed dating here would be attended by people that idolize city life, or are too dumb to get to know someone else in the usual means."

"I don't know about all that. Cities don't have a patent on meeting someone you like."

"Just imagine the power any misunderstanding would gain in a date that only lasted a few minutes. Blinking at the wrong time could get you rejected."

Misunderstanding. Leah Kendall, a girl that broke up with Bill in the 8th grade over something so trivial as a brief and nervous attempt at waist-holding, had misunderstood. It had been a brief and intangible conclusion that caused her to dislike Bill, and with great suddenness. Bill had placed his arm around her while they walked in a hall toward a general group of classes. She had accepted this awkward advance despite its lack of priming or foreshadowing. The trouble came when Bill witnessed another young man and woman near some lockers with their arms in a different arrangement. Bill continued an advancement on his arm's occupant by attempting the same arrangement. He lowered his arm so that it held her not about the shoulder but around her waist. Leah shoved him, explaining as she left him behind that such a thing was only allowed on his birthday, and he had ruined it. The break-up was publicly mutual, as Bill shouted after Leah that her waist wasn't very good, anyway. Privately, however, the break-up was a disruption to him created by a simple misfire of adolescent cause and effect. He was a little wrecked, particularly when Leah was seen tongue-kissing beside the wood-shop with her next boyfriend, four days later. She did not seem to mind having the new boy's hand on her waist nor his other, busier hand beneath her shirt.

"You're going. I already signed you up and paid," Roger said. Bill groaned, aggravated.

"Jesus, Roger. Don't do shit like that. I don't need you signing me up for anything. And there's no part of me that wants to go speed dating. _Especially_ not with my own brother. It'll be like full admission that we're lifelong failures at being able to please women."

"Okay, two things. One, you said it'll be like full admission that we've failed somehow with women. You didn't say _it would_ , you said _it will_ , which means, on a subconscious level, you've already decided to go. So relax and maybe figure out what you're going to wear. Two, I think it's pretty obvious we _have_ failed at being able to please women. Can you think of a time in your life when you might have, just maybe, pleased a woman on some broader level? Don't answer, I already know. Let's just admit it and go meet some women, man."

"I've pleased women," Bill defended.

"Not just in bed. I mean the actual deal. Her."

"Julie Blanchett."

"No."

"Yes."

"Bill, she wasn't pleased. You ran over her cat."

"That was after we broke up, and it was an accident. The damn thing liked to sleep behind tires for warmth. Before all that, we were totally happy. She was pleased."

"Obviously, happy people always break up," Roger replied.

When the senior prom had come around, Bill decided not to go. This was a much anticipated event, the prom. A certain jealousy had accompanied the younger Roger's knowledge of what Bill had done the night of the prom, instead of attending. Bill had skipped the traditional dance for a drive to the beach with Julie Blanchett. Roger's irregular jealousy, dissolved long ago, had been due to Bill having lost his virginity that night, in a discomforting, beer-induced, sand-coated, scuffle-like exchange of sexual properties. At the time, Roger was enrolled in the local community college and, being five years Bill's older, had still not managed to convince a woman to have sex with him. This would arrive in due time, and with much young electricity, but at that point, Roger was a little ashamed of being beaten to the act by his little brother. Bill's relationship with Julie Blanchett would end after five months of getting accustomed to one another and three weeks of active sexuality. Prior to running over her cat, their breakup was created when Bill was overheard by one of her friends engaging in a particularly lurid conversation with another girl at the back of the room in his Civics class. The two were deep in dirty talk, and it was mostly Bill showing off that he could talk in this way, nothing more, but to Julie Blanchett, this was enough.

"I mean _ongoing_ happiness," Roger clarified, "you know, the kind that gets people to want to marry one another. The kind you feel for your kids. The kind where people forgive small things you do that piss them off because you forgive all that, too. Because that's the thing, the longstanding love."

"Except for the part about kids, you don't have room to talk about 'the longstanding love', man," Bill replied, raising an eyebrow.

"I know, and I want some. Did you know that Karen's been dating nonstop since she left?"

"You talk about it."

"Yeah, but shit, she's dating. I'm not. I got the kids. She's getting laid. I want some of that life. I think I deserve it."

"So, a new mom for the kids' and a sex partner for you?"

"Fuck that. You know I'm not that base. I'm not looking for a new mother for the kids, not yet I'm not, but I'm definitely starting to think about someone awesome I can be with."

"Someone awesome, huh? At our age? Wouldn't a woman like that already be accounted for? Or at least prefer someone else as 'awesome' as herself? You're thirty-something, a dad- and I don't just mean you have a kid, or half custody, here; you have _three_ kids, _full_ custody. And you've got a boring kind of job, very little time, baggage a-plenty, also bad breath, and you come equipped with ME, a jobless, loafing, man-nanny that lives in your garage."

"Okay, fuck you about the kids and the bad breath. My kids are cool and my breath is fine. That aside, you really don't know anything about women, do you?"

"I know enough."

"I'm thirty-six, in good shape, semi-attractive, raising three kids in a house that I happen to _own_ , a steady job with good income, I'm helping out my brother... the list goes on. And the kind of 'baggage' I have only makes me more attractive," Roger said. Bill chuckled with humor and organized his thoughts.

"All right, I gotta know. By what bizarre logic does your history with Karen make you more of a catch? I gotta hear this."

"You want to know why my background is good for meeting women? Okay, this is the deal: A terrible woman I trusted and committed to was awful to me for years. YEARS. Cheated on me. The works. And then left me. And now I'm selflessly raising our kids and making a good life for them. I have a good job and I have nice things that I work hard to provide for my wonderful children. I even manage to help out my little brother. Sure, that's spin, but you have to understand: That's a strong line-up, man. My back story is all true, and as long as things haven't changed too much in the last decade, it should make someone maybe want a second date. Which is a start."

"That's kid logic," Bill muttered.

"We're not kids, man. We're adults. We're smarter. We can figure all this shit out. And we should."

"You make it sound like you're going to meet some great new soul at the speed dating setup. You won't."

"Then I won't. Big deal."

"Jesus, then why go?"

"Because I won't meet anyone new staying home either. This is my house. I live in it with my family. I already met everybody here."

"Women have never liked me, Roj."

"That's not true. Lots of them have. Julie Blanchett did for awhile. That girl at the thrift store did a few years ago, even though you wouldn't talk to her. And Karen's sister did," Roger said, then realized the awkwardness of this statement. Karen's sister, Andrea, was a person whom Roger had mentioned in the past, due to necessity and certain forms of connectedness, but a woman that Bill never mentioned on his own, which indicated that something internal, a strong, emotional trouble, had rooted over his thoughts of this particular past relationship.

"I don't think so," Bill said, eyes dizzied. The conversation decelerated for a few minutes, but in the manner of a stalled letter being written to someone all too familiar with the person writing, new things were quietly rummaged up and fresh points slowly crept in. As Roger knew, it did not take long to wear Bill down, and after a short span of this-and-that pontification followed by a short delay for some if-but-then bickering, the younger brother agreed to attend the speed dating event. To Roger's surprise, this consent was not finally given with the reluctance or disgust he had predicted, but with a change of character. Bill sighed, his face altered, and he gave a nod of the head that showed something the older brother did not expect: A slight glimpse into a previously hidden form of exasperation that Bill had never shown him. Roger knew his little brother was stubborn, and annoyed by past interactions with women, but Roger did not suspect his little brother was injured. The older brother was caught off guard by this short peek at what seemed a rare-to-breach show of weariness.

Bill's shift of character, though brief, was caused by the mention of Andrea Wright, a young woman that Bill had cared deeply for, the second half of high school, both before, during, and after dating Julie Blanchett. Though juvenility and a green body had surely swayed him more than outward events, Andrea was the only woman Bill had ever claimed to love, beyond their mother. She was also the only woman Roger had ever truly regretted one of his friends dating. Don Pepple had been a good friend of Roger's, but untrustworthy around women. This friend had stolen many girls from their boyfriends back in younger days, and for a month had snuck Andrea from Bill, which ended that relationship. Andrea chose Don Pepple over Bill and it was learned later that she had become pregnant from her foray with Pepple. This was a lesser development, however, as the pregnancy was discovered post mortem.

Andrea Wright died in the last semester of her senior year, falling from a moving boat while intensely inebriated, and to no one's notice. This had occurred during a river party, but a week after the dissolution of her short relationship with Bill. This tragic party where she lost her life was the same in which Roger had been introduced to his future ex-wife, Karen. When these two first met, Karen Wright was a mouthy and wonderfully crass woman that would later prove to be quite attracted to Roger. She was also a woman that would remain an older sister for but a few hours into meeting him.

### Chapter Five

"Maybe if you stopped with the wine and sobered up, you'd actually have a good time," Albert commented, the two of them near the back door of the expensive flat. Elaine tossed back the glass and the remaining wine vanished between her frowning lips.

"Don't kid me, Al. If I don't keep this glass moving, I'll turn into one of them. They know everything about everyone. They talk about art all damn night. Pissing all over each other. They're like spiders. Noisy little spiders," she said, dull.

"These are my friends. Don't embarrass me."

"Then go be with them. I've escaped. I'll stay over here, away from their little nips behind this peppy, invisible wall. If they have to ask, tell them I'm drunkenly disinterested."

"Or maybe just an arrogant bitch," he said, leaving her to the empty glass.

-from _Schadenfreude_ , Amber Simon

The room was air-conditioned to a point of discomfort. Though there was no laughter being given upon sight of Bill as he entered the speed dating warehouse just so, he heard it everywhere. At first glimpse of his sloppy walk and inglorious posture, guffaws and horselaughter could have spilled into the hollows of the tall room. The reception desk was but a table. A young, Portuguese woman sat behind this, extending clipboards while attempting identical, knowing smiles at each participant to pass her. She was wearing a black and white striped referee shirt. With clipboards in tow, most found seats at their leisure, each to one of many small, raised cocktail tables set out in a large circle. There were drinks to be served, or so Roger had explained, and two of them were allotted free to each participant. After navigating to a quickly-constructed 'bar' and ordering both of his at once, Bill made his way to Roger's table and sat down opposite.

"What are you doing?" Roger asked. Bill looked around, puzzled.

"Why? What's wrong?"

"That's where the dates sit when they meet us. Go to your own table or people will think we're gay."

"Oh."

The word 'free' had come to mean a great many things in Bill's modern life. In the descriptive, it meant 'of no cost', and in his current setting referred to not having to pay for the two drinks, though at twenty-five dollars per entrant, the drinks were not necessarily free. In relation to persons, 'free' could be either singular or plural, as in 'a free man', or, in reference to the vast assortment of people possessing U.S. citizenship, 'the land of the free'. Freedom, a term Bill's nation considered of high merit and non-exclusionary benefit, had the connotation of not having to bow to another's wish and power, or being fettered in doing things you did not want to do, finding yourself in a state of being in which others could manage your destiny or alter your life outright without consent. You had to concede to give someone that ability over you.

"Tonight, someone could very well change your life," the referee said, "I've been doing these events for a couple of years now, and I can vouch that they work. The important thing is that you keep an open mind, accept that you want to meet someone, and really try to hear your dates out. I met my husband speed dating in San Diego. That's where we're from, originally. Anyway, I do feel that tonight just might rearrange your destiny. You're going to have a lot of fun." The last line the referee gave had the air of a command to it.

"Yeah, sorry to interrupt, but I just want to make sure I understand these Guides, here," a woman near Bill asked, her hand up like a grade-school student. She held the photocopied sheet of instructions all the entrants had been given.

"Okay," the referee prompted.

"Well, I have one that just says 'kissing'. What does that mean? Am I just supposed to kiss my date or something? Because I don't want to do that."

"Oh, no no, those are subjects for conversation," the referee clarified, "When you sit across from each date, you'll go to the corresponding Guide on your sheet, and that's the topic you introduce. So, when you're with your fourth date, you'll use Guide #4. Then the two of you chat about it and hopefully, there'll be a spark!"

"That's kind of what I thought, but I wanted to ask. And also to make sure everyone else knows it. I don't want to sit down with somebody I don't know and have him try to plant one on me right off the bat." The room chuckled at this.

"It's better than what I have, " a man said, "My list starts with 'Pregnancy'. " The room laughed louder then.

Roger gave a slight smile and nod, as if this was all old hat to him. He had always possessed the odd skill of seeming like he belonged in most situations. In college, when trying out for track and field, the students near him were quite different than those in high school, much more confident, much more skilled, and they had a strange, collective attitude that they knew they could beat you at any event you thought up. Roger matched this confidence, skill-sense, and attitude the instant he uncovered it. Unlike Bill, Roger could fulfill places and systems. He was as if a puzzle piece with the grand ability to alter his shape and image somewhat, which enabled him to be fit at will. The only trait Roger exhibited that could interfere with this ability was his horrifying laugh, which, when triggered, generally produced a sense of shock in whoever had caused it to blast out of him.

"There are two stages of the dating circle, one for men and one for women, and then we'll go on to the final rounds. For now, let's do the men first," the referee explained.

"Doing the men so soon?" a middle-aged woman voiced. There was another chuckle and an older woman near Roger covered her mouth, a bit embarrassed.

"So, let's get this started. You're in for a great time, I know it. We need to adjust a few things, though, so that the circle is guy-girl-guy-girl, all the way around." A few people dropped off of their tall bar stools and, looking around, found seats in the preferred arrangement. Roger was one of them. This seating rearrangement took longer than one might expect, as two of the people moving, both older men, seemed picky about which women they wanted to sit between. Eventually, with only the two men left, standing in the middle and glancing back and forth between the two available spots, one of them just sighed and picked. This left the other man looking annoyed, sitting down between two women near to his own age.

"Okay, I think this is all kosher now, so let's get going! You ready?" the referee asked. She had gathered up and now exhibited a voluminous level of perk. A few people responded that they were ready. Most of the men looked confused and doubtful. This was a smaller town and they were in a new element they did not ascertain was entirely trustworthy or functional. Some of the men bore a look that explained, if you were a man, that in their minds they were imagining conversations in the slight future, wherein their friends would be teasing them for what, in actual time, they were about to do.

Bill was looking around the circle at all the women, trying to feel something more than simple instinct. He was not the sort of man to believe in love at first sight, and in fact, did not believe in love at all, but he did suspect there was a chemical system that kicked on in the human body when the eyes viewed someone these chemicals felt to be an intrinsic match. This reaction would be a complete mystery to the human achieving it, and the person would most likely call it love. It was Bill's hope that, at some point in his life, his chemicals would sort someone out and convince him he needed or wanted togetherness with that person. What an excellent feeling that might be. Bill did not entertain that he could achieve this particular connection tonight, however.

"All right then! Girls, you'll each have three minutes, so make 'em count. Don't worry about your drink if you already have one; you'll come back to it after the first round. Now, here's how it works. Each of you goes clockwise around the circle, with three minutes per date, and then you'll have about two minutes or so to relocate and jot things down between. You'll just be writing down names, adding a few little notes. But the important thing is that we keep the cycle moving on time. For instance, you there," the referee explained, pointing at a larger woman who looked to be bone-shaking nervous, "the guy clockwise from where you are is your Guy #1. The next one is Guy #2."

Bill felt strange being her Guy #2. Being the 'next one' for a person he had never met. A certain insignificance came into play when thinking of himself in this way. He felt to be part of an experiment in which his person, his ideas, his history, and his life, mattered little but for the results; like a cheap car that could go from point A to point B in a substantial and fully-expected manner. This got Bill wondering how he might distinguish himself as being greater than a Guy #2. How, in the three minutes allotted per date, he might show himself to be far more intricate and of a sturdier depth than being simply a man, numerically sitting in a circle, being met due to nothing more significant than the direction a clock travels.

"Are there any questions?" the referee then asked. No one responded. Several of the participants were looking about at the floor and ceiling, occasionally one another, none wanting to appear eager, which was a handy fear in this instance, as none of them were.

"All right! When I say go, we go. You ready, Bill?" the referee asked. Bill startled and looked at her.

"Uh, wha—"

"Ready," the man at the reception table answered, a large timer sitting before him, facing out at the circle.

"Go!"

Women vacated their seats and each walked over to Guy #1. Roger gave a small grin at the woman who approached his table, as she stumbled and nearly fell flat on the ground. A somewhat rigid woman with heavily styled hair and a larger-than-average chin lifted onto the bar stool at Bill's table and examined her clipboard. She looked up then, giving Bill a kind of clinical stare.

"Television," she said, watching him. Bill floundered at this statement. He had stopped watching television several years before, not as a boycott, or even a purposeful stand, but simply because the general programming had become heavy with cliffhangers and anticlimaxes, devices Bill found to be cloying.

"Um... I don't really watch television anymore. I enjoyed it when I was a kid. What about you?" Bill asked. He felt this was explanatory enough and gave a lead-off that indicated he wanted to hear what she thought on the matter. At four seconds in, it seemed to Bill that their relationship was certainly strong. So far, so mutual.

"I watch T.V. sometimes," she replied. There was a silence then, elongated, and when the woman did not elaborate her response, and when it occurred to Bill that he had nothing to say in reply, the silence puppeted Bill's right hand toward one of his drinks.

"Cool," Bill finally said, looking away and taking a sip of his whiskey-and-cola. The quiet continued. This silence was comfortless enough that Bill, with nothing to go on and an irresponsive date, simply continued sipping his drink. He began entertaining himself by creating small death scenes in his mind. Looking about the room and coming up with all the ways each person would one day depart the Earth. The demise of the woman he sat with would take place in an evening dress, and in a large city, surrounded by well-dressed others. It involved the crash of a wine-glass, a gagging sound, and a piece of steak, medium rare.

Two curt statements later, both of these in response to Bill's attempt at thoughtful questioning, and the referee declared the first date over. The young woman left him at his table, moving to the next. He examined his notation sheet and jotted down: _Gal #1 (didn't get name), Guide topic- Television. Human appearance persuasive and functional, but underlying persona denotes an automaton that has been cleverly disguised for social interaction. My attraction: B. Soul: C._

The larger woman who had been singled out earlier made her way up onto the stool opposite him. She was a shaky, fidgety person. She looked at him apologetically and then her eyes wandered to various pre-selected regions around the room. While not a fair exchange of properties, her nervousness granted Bill confidence.

"Hi," he said. She gave an embarrassed smile.

"Uh, hey. My friend said I should do this," she explained. The woman would undergo demise from an infection of the liver caused by prolonged, polygenic diabetes, but not for a very long time.

"The topic?" he prompted.

"Oh, sorry. I'm... not doing this right," she said, looking at the clipboard. After a moment, she sighed and then stiffened a little in preparation.

"Okay so... it's Sex." Her fidgeting shot up even before this word had been uttered in entirety.

"I see," Bill said. She shook her head lightly, as if on the edge of apology.

"Well it's fine, isn't it? Never really goes badly, and you're usually pleased it's happening, at least during, right?" She gave a subtle snort and raised an eyebrow.

"Oh, it can go badly," she said, rolling her eyes in a manner heavily noticeable. She seemed to regret saying this, however, near to the instant she had done so. At least a certain comfort-zone had been reached and, though she would not look at him, she was talking.

"Tell!" Bill said, intrigued. She widened her eyes, a little mortified.

"Uh, just... you know, with the wrong person or something. But it's mostly good. You're right."

"Okay. Extended foreplay: Fun or a chore?" The woman then lowered her head with a strong frown.

"Um, that's really personal and... none of your business."

"I'm sorry, I'm not very good at this. We've only got around 105 seconds left in our lives together, so I thought I'd make a leap or two."

The woman did not respond and instead looked over at her Guy #3, who was engaged with a stiff but ongoing conversation with Bill's Gal #1. He was doing much better than Bill had.

"Well, can I get your name to fill in my list?" Bill finally asked, empathetic. He felt bad, of course, for inflicting himself on her in a way she had not enjoyed. She sighed and pursed her lips, looking around, frustrated.

"Mel." Bill penned in her name on his form.

"Thanks Mel. Sorry about all that. I don't really know what to say for something like this. You seem nice." This statement, said idle and meant to encourage her with the next date, brought about an unexpected mood. Mel's appearance became angry. Bill decided to say nothing and took on her characteristic of looking about the room. It was a useful habit, he discovered.

"TIME!" the referee finally shouted. Bill's second date had lasted a three minute span that felt to be an awkward ten minutes of shame. Mel slide off the barstool and walked to her next male, irritated. Bill wrote in his notes: _Gal #2 (Mel), Guide topic- Sex. Subject has longstanding esteem issues, but this meekness is overridden easily with broaches of taboo. Agitation was triggered upon the mention of foreplay technique/endurance, and did not fade in power for duration of study, causing analyst to feel like a jerk. My attraction: C. Soul: B+ (Possibly generous and due to this analyst's guilt)._

"Hi, I'm Carol." Carol would one day cease from heavy, pneumonia-rallied aspiration, all through a sleepy night in a far-off, pleasant Spring. _Gal #3 (Carol), Guide topic- Relaxation. Subject displays a laxity in social appearance, denoting a pleasant and mild temperament. Upon closer scrutiny, this analyst learned that subject's primary recreational interests relied heavily on the consumption of marijuana, tea with honey, roommate-oriented sitcoms, and open, sexual relationships with numerous men. NOTE: likes blue eyes and children, has two of each. Will be legally single in twelve days. My attraction: C+. Soul: B+._

"Oh, Brandy." Falling down stairs in a walker while trying to escape a house-fire. _Gal #4 (Brandy), Guide topic- Life Goals. During 'date', subject displayed a strong (and somewhat opportunistic) sense of princess, an unflinching lack of interest in myself, or for that matter, anyone, and seemed to possess a limitless reservoir of hand-gestures to accompany speech, often relying on these gestures in place of it. My attraction: C+. Soul: F._

"Amy. Hey, you're a little cute." Abdomenal hemhorraging at an age just over a century in scope, having outlived all of her friends. _Gal #5 (Amy), Guide topic- Tastes. Analyst is quite fond of subject, who displayed many human characteristics analyst found positive, and she demonstrated a keen joy for abstract painting, both in viewing and creating. Physical attractiveness of subject reaches high levels, and settles in the top 5% of women with which analyst has carried conversations over the last 31 years. NOTE: Likes rats, statues, snakes, not fond of children. My attraction: A. Soul: A._

"Uh, are you gonna finish that and talk to me, or what?" the next date asked. Alcoholism, coupled with a decade of methamphetamine use would degrade her liver to the point of impuissance. It would be an intentional handful of muscle relaxants that finished the job.

"Sorry, the last date said a lot," Bill replied, looking up and realizing the last date had not only talked much, but stolen his second drink, leaving him without.

"Whatever. I'm Regina. The Guide is 'Religion'."

***

When it came time for the second phase of the speed dating trials, the point of meeting one another had been lost. Bill had already met all of the women present, and conversed, at best, on various topics. He had attempted conversation, and when most of these failed with gusto, he simply imagined scenes of demise. One woman fell beneath a collapsed roof in a great, New England storm. Another left the Earth from a tumbling car in Wisconsin, twenty-one years from then. One date died from bone cancer, nearly four decades into the future, while another date departed from asphyxiation due to swelling of the esophagus, only years away. Talk of the weather and talk of the day met people meeting people needing people.

There were two women for which he felt an internal attraction, for which his chemicals had nodded at, and these were the only women present he felt he wanted to continue speaking with in a romantic scope. One, Brittany, would eventually die in a shroud of advanced Alzheimers disease, through which she would not recognize the finality of her life, but instead believe what came through the fog of her thoughts, which was that the Sun was hugging her head. The second was the abdominal hemorrhaging woman who died late in life, Amy.

The rules of the second phase required a full restart. Again, Bill was to converse with all present. This round was different in that a Guide was not used, but a list of questions to be asked. This seemed more of a factual meeting and Bill was a little relieved that the bulk of the conversations, especially those with women he had already annoyed, would be clear and precise. He would not have to do much initiating on his own. The questions were all simple and easy to answer, and he was no longer nervous. He thought it would have been of greater benefit to have started the first round with these questions, saving the Guides for the second round. With his thoughts of demise rambling through his mind when things grew awkward, Bill settled and awaited the second round's onset. The only change in system was that the men would now do the traveling, thus beginning with their last date and continuing through to the first.

"Hey Patrice. Before we get to any of this, found anyone you're interested in yet?" Bill asked her. The woman would perish from a bad reaction to treatment being received, in attempt of thwarting the spread of sphacelus. This would occur on the floor of her wondrous kitchen, on a splendid, coveted property in southern London, one that her third husband would provide as settlement in thirty-one years. Patrice thought about Bill's question of who she preferred, gauging its appropriateness. She nodded after a moment and lowered her voice.

"Honestly?"

"Sure." Both of them were distracted then by a sudden, boisterous emanation of laughter coming from Roger, who was talking, and it seemed with much fun, to his date. Everyone in the room had stopped and looked at him a moment before settling back into their talks at hand. Roger had not noticed this attention and sat with his date, smiling, talking, and nodding.

"I'm sorry, what were we talking about?" Patrice asked then.

"I was asking if there was anyone you're interested in yet," Bill repeated.

"Oh. That's right. Well, I think I sort of like Guy #3. His name's Cliff. He seems cool and I think he likes me." Bill counted backward around the circle until he reached the man she had indicated. This man would die uncommonly old in peaceful drift while asleep in a soft, public bed.

"Great news. I've always liked names based off geologic formations," Bill replied, turning his attention back to her and realizing that he had spoken in a way counter to his mood. He was only having fun with his comment, calling up levity, but his tone had come off pompous. Regina needed to think about his jab for a short span, but then lit up and gave a chuckle, the first positive expression Bill had elicited from her, having earned only disgust when, during their previous 'date', he had explained his fascination with hornets and other winged nasties, which was in obvious contradiction to her fear of them.

"Uh, so I'll get started. Favorite music?" Bill asked.

"...I guess Dance," Patrice replied.

"Alma Mater?"

"I don't who that is."

"Oh, it's just what college you graduated from."

"Didn't."

"What's your preferred public transit, bus or train?"

"Uh, neither... maybe train, if I had to. Does ski-lift count? I went skiing last year and the lift was neat."

"I'd say that counts. Let's see... Name a person that has inspired you in the past."

"Uh, nobody. Or I guess my sister. Wait, wait, no. Duh: Jesus."

The couples met per cycle and each elicited the various answers and statements expected of them. Roger discovered that a previous date from the first round, one in which he had not enjoyed, raised in rank and became his favorite of the night the second time around. Bill continued asking the questions, and thought it a wonderful idea to continue asking each date who they fancied most thus far. Most of the dates were thrown off by this, but then grew comfortable and seemed to enjoy the date more. An ice-breaker of sorts. Most also had someone picked out, he found. Mel, the woman Bill had embarrassed, did not, however. She only replied in a gruff tone that the 'whole thing sucked' and that if she had any sense, she would cut her losses and become a lesbian. This particular answer received a laugh from Bill, but a caring, interested one, and not cruel or in assurance.

"Nobody here? Not one?" Mel took a slow breath through her nostrils and narrowed her eyes in fatigue. With a quieter voice, she spoke.

"No, not really. I mean, that guy over there is pretty good-looking, I guess," she said, quickly using her hand to indicate the man who happened to be Bill's older brother, "And well, he was funny. I like that, of course. I don't know, but he has all these kids and he talked about cartoons. That's not my thing. Uh-uh." Bill glanced at his brother. He decided Roger would die decades from then, on an airplane over the Atlantic, of a stroke, and seated beside a woman he had been married to for only three weeks and bedded twice.

"I see. Well, who knows, right? Maybe his kids are really fun or something," Bill prodded, knowing that few people would ever concede this to be the case.

"I hate kids. Hurry up," she said.

"Sorry. Right, okay. Uh, tell me your favorite sort of music?"

"Rap."

The cycle continued, with Bill meting out the questions per his style, always learning of who the women were most interested, if anyone present. It was to his pleasure when Amy, the date highest on his list from the first phase, settled back when he asked her who she figured most with. She answered that this person would be Bill, himself.

"Really?"

"You sound stormed."

"Do I?"

"Like I knocked you down with that." Bill thought this over.

"I think I wasn't expecting anyone to find me that preferable."

"Maybe you're right; no one does, no one likes you much," she said.

"Huh."

"And maybe it's only that the other men here have the personalities of scratched scabs, and you're not quite as bad," she added.

"Shit. Thanks," Bill responded, a sour taste in his mouth.

"I'm only saying, how do you know?"

"Well, I don't. That's why I was surprised."

"Now you know. If we were all the sole occupants on a boat about to sink into the Atlantic, and someone drank seawater and went all belligerent and crazy, put a knife to my neck and told me I had to 'like' somebody I've maybe exchanged a dozen sentences with, I guess I'd point at you." Bill adopted a puzzled expression then, not out of the expectation that he do so, or out of surprise even, but because of actual, soul-deep puzzlement. Her brand of complement was wholly destructive. At that moment, in Bill's mind, she leaned over the table and began fiddling with his mouth, inserting her fingers. She pulled at the edges hard, causing him to wince. When he tried to respond, she gently nudged his tongue back down with her finger, which tasted greatly like pity. After removing her hands, she slumped into her chair, unphased. Bill snapped out of this and set about asking the questions.

"Favorite music," he inquired, stunned.

"You don't care."

"Alma Mater."

"No."

"Preferred transit, bus or train."

"Let me think... okay: Who would want to know that?"

"Person that has inspired you in the past."

"The damn buddha. Do you even like love, Greg?"

"Bill."

"Cool. Do you?"

"There's no such thing as love, in the traditional sense." he confessed. This statement was in part accidental and brought on from the rampantly fast banter that had ensued with the list questions. The statement also brought on a pause from half the occupants of the room. This particular uttering was a shock to most present, who Bill now realized were somewhat listening to everything around them. Roger gave a smile at his little brother and slowly shook his head. Attention. Everywhere.

Bill's nerves triggered then. With little else at his disposal into which he could channel the adverse energy that the stares and silence had brought him, he opened his mind and simply began screaming. In this place, his lips flew open and noise poured out. His teeth spun and eyes bled. Spit from his mouth struck Amy's face as he flung out his arms, causing his remaining glass of ice to shatter against the floor. Roger ushered toward him quickly, trying to calm him with words. Several of the women present gave instantaneous birth, much to their pain and shock, and had their eyes forced open to the past and future of Bill. Bill's scream was sacred. Bill's scream was nature. The coarse roar was in all ways a tool of primitive Earth, and all who heard it were shaken from modern times, waving and cheering and crying, falling each into an obliterated Bill-ness the planet had accommodated with screams since the dawn of the larynx.

"Interesting. No such thing as love," Amy responded, staring him in the eyes.

"Sorry, that's just what I think." he admitted. She cocked her head to the side, then.

"Wow. Boring. You believe in marriage, Bill?"

"A little. I think so," he said.

"You're a fuckin' rat," she announced with a grin.

"I am?"

"You won't acknowledge love exists, but you'll take its money."

"What money?"

"Marriage. That's a union of people, and they do it for the rest of their lives. Or at least, that's supposed to be the thing. How could you make a woman stick with you for the rest of her life if you can't even agree there's a reason she should? That's like asking for a paycheck from a job you don't have. You're gonna be a lonely man, Bill." Bill was unprepared to even think about that response.

"I'm sort of already a lonely man," he came out with.

"Call your mom more often."

"I don't have one." Amy's eyes and mouth popped open.

"Ah... Okay. That's it. That makes sense."

"I don't—"

"You need mom, not a real woman," she said, nodding with an exaggerated look of pity.

"That's ridiculous. Grow up," he said.

"And I'm thinking that's your dad talking," she replied with a disinterested nod.

"I don't think speed dating suits you."

"Look who's talking."

"I'm fine here."

"Eh, we're out of drinks and intrigue. Come on, let's get out of here," she offered. Bill's sense of the speed dating event had warped and he sat there. His reckoning of this woman was entirely busted.

"You want to leave?" he asked, stunned. His attitude was one that urged him to remain unphased by her constant shift of statements and questions, as well as her haphazard persona, but arguing with this adopted attitude was his mind, itself, which had asked him to be shocked.

"You forgot 'with me'," she clarified.

"You want to leave and you want me to go with you?"

"Yes. No. A little. Come anyway."

### Chapter Six

And so it was that her nervousness abated in the grand, fire-warmed house, Raul's strong left hand embracing her right hand, Byron's articulate right holding her left. They led her into the open room and stood, waiting. The music began and she was drawn into it, swept clear of herself, the three becoming as if a romantic manifestation of the resilient beat and its winsome melody. Raul led her with his arms, sturdy boughs about her slender shape, and for a refrain she was his. The bridge arrived and Byron cut in sharply, swiveling her about and defining her body with rapid movements, stormy yet fluid, graceful yet tightly staccato. Both men smiled, Raul with his darker grin, and Byron with his knowing smirk. Emily turned between them again and again as the snow fell outside the house, sealing them in, keeping them atop the mountain. The snow did this for the men, for Emily, for the rhythms of the firelight and the nights to come.

-from _A Tango for Three_ , Stephanie Mast

The obvious nature of alcohol was known by most people to be a means of relaxation, occasional dulling, and an endeavor that can produce, in its best and worst moments, an utter loss of barricade. That inhibitions plummeted during drunkenness had been the cause of hordes of divorces, abuses, crimes, and a motley conglomerate of indecent, wicked behaviors throughout civilized record. The imbibing of alcohol, despite the potential for causing heinous activities in a more reliable means than sobriety, was also incredibly pleasant and fun, and a means to a wondrous end for many.

There was nearly a pint of vodka in Bill Sherman, his bloated soul atop a leather perch in Crooks, an over-stylized bar that purposely gave off the impression of dankness and public isolation, but that was in reality quite pre-designed and franchise driven. The man serving their drinks was tall, had a markedly thin nose, and a squarish chin that did not seem able to grow hair. Bill decided the bartender would, by his late fifties, be so beleaguered by cirrhosis that any chance of reversal would be medically implausible, however also that this bartender would surprisingly survive to reach sixty-three. The amount of potato-distilled alcohol Bill had imbibed was not only relaxing to his mind and tongue, but to his sense of remark, which in turn caused him utter a magnanimous observation to the unwary bartender, at that moment passing him.

"You make drinks. And... and I drink drinks," he said. The bartender lifted his chin at Bill's statement and, irritated, mumbled a thing inaudible to Bill or Amy, but a thing that, had they heard it, would have shaken their comfort to the very hub.

"I piss a little in some of the bottles."

As the hours tilted and spilled their brains to the floor, gasping there like cod on a dry stringer, Amy became, if possible, more aloof, while Bill entered a realm of psychosis so extreme as to make him feel he could say anything at whim, and to no consequence. The vodka had rerouted certain elemental devices Bill required to breathe, and so it was with each breath that something, and most likely something devoid of lead-in or priming, fell from his mouth and wandered aimlessly into obstacles and too-close ears.

"I don't care. It's special. It's goddamn perfect. It's- I don't care. No, no, I don't care," he said, feeling to emphasize a particular sentiment he held over his enjoyment of fast food tacos, and specifically a newer creation, the Mesmerada Crunch, at a more popular franchise.

"No one cares," Amy said, buzzed.

"You don't get it. They work on these things. They... the executives hire scientists. They perfect the... the fuckin'... the product. So it's unstoppable."

"Whatever you say."

"No, you don't get it. If _you_ don't like it... you... don't like it. Then you have a disease or... or you're abnormal person. You're sick. You're not normal. Okay, Amy?"

"No more for him, cool?" Amy voiced to the bartender, who frowned but nodded, glancing at a particular bottle of vodka for which he had just recently spent time doctoring. The bartender was saddened. Nothing was fair.

"Thanks, MOM," Bill chuckled, looking about the bar for his wallet, which he had set down earlier for no explainable reason other than that he could have had a subconscious desire to be robbed.

"Yeah fine, Bill. I'm abnormal. I'm diseased. I'm your mom. Whatever."

"No, no, I get it. You're... you're like a 'free spirit', or something. That your game?" Bill asked in a mutter.

"No, I'm else-wise. And you're too cheap about information."

"What's that mean?"

"It means you don't like letting conversations flow. You get hung up on meaningless things and ask dull questions. Over and over again. You're not very bright," she noted.

"And you reached that conclusion how?" She looked at him and held her hand out. Bill watched as she slowly pointed to the area of the bar's counter directly in front of him. He followed her point and discovered his wallet, sitting in a small puddle of ice-melt.

"Any more questions?" she asked.

"There's nothing wrong with questions," Bill said, sliding the now wet wallet into his back pocket.

"Sure, but they're nothing like actual talking."

"Here's a good question, then."

"I don't want it," Amy said, reaching into her purse.

"Are we still on our date now?" Bill asked.

"No."

"Do you think you're seducing me with your... your mouthy, spitfire ways? Is that what's going on?" Bill asked.

"Do you feel seduced?"

"No," he admitted.

"There you go." While Bill had achieved a level of drunkenness not entirely free of stumbling, he had enough wits present to perceive a certain habit Amy used in their discussion. When Bill asked a question, Amy tended to answer with another question, forcing Bill to feel ignorant and unintelligent. Bill was ignorant regarding a wide spectrum of worldly things, but he was not, by normal means, unintelligent. He was, however, duly plastered.

"I'm gonna figure out a way to switch that," Bill said, waving his wrist.

"Switch what? You're talking in tongues, Bill," Amy said.

"No, when I ask you something... because I'm interested in you, no, I am, but then you don't answer, you make me stupid, and ask me."

"What?"

"You answer my questions with your questions so I'll look dumb."

"You don't need my help in that," she said.

"Then why won't you answer my questions?"

"Gee Bill, why is it so important to you?"

"See? You did that. You questioned me and made me look dumb again. I can do it, too. Ask me a question. Go ahead," Amy sighed and scratched a moment at the back of her nape.

"Sure. Fine. When was the last time you slept with someone, Bill?"

"Why do you want to know?" Bill replied quickly. Amy shrugged. Bill seemed pleased with himself.

"See," he went on, "now I made you look foolish. It's mean."

"Why do you think I look foolish? It was a straight question."

"Because... why do you think... I needed to?"

"Needed to what?"

"To answer your question."

"You asked me to ask a question. Why didn't you just tell me something instead?"

"To play like your game," he explained.

"Do you feel better now that you think I look foolish and you haven't answered my question, or did you maybe feel better when we were just talking?" Bill thought about this for some duration, a time in which Amy stared at him in a penetrating and managerial way.

"No," he finally said.

"No what?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know what?"

"Just... No."

"Must feel pretty dumb about _that_. Come on, let's go back to my place," she offered. Bill thought about this and nodded.

"Okay, I give my consent."

"Consent for what?"

"Me. It. The big deal. I'm giving my consent for you to, you know, conjugate me." At this, the bartender perked his head up and watched Amy's reaction. It was a hobby of his, working the bar, to take note of how different women reacted to the stubborn advances of boozed men, especially those men unaware of when sex was likely a particular woman's quiet agenda throughout their drinks and conversation. He supposed that men and women might be better off if they were more forthright in their notice of availability and want, when it came to sexuality and plausible partners. The last time the bartender had engaged in sex, it was after but twelve minutes of conversation, at the close of his bar, a conversation that ended with his stating to another man that if they continued talking, they might learn to dislike one another, so it might be in their best interest to leave then, have a wonderful meeting of physicality, and simply move on with nice memories of spontaneity. It had been the only time that tactic he had developed worked, even remotely.

"You want me to 'conjugate' you? Are you kidding me?" Amy asked.

"But be nice about it, all right? It's kind of been awhile."

"Sex, Bill? Is that what's on your mind?"

"Isn't it on yours? I'm all over it."

"Then go home; you can conjugate yourself all over the place for all I care. But if you stay with me, we're gonna go listen to music, got it?"

"Oh."

***

Sitting on the carpet of Amy's living room within the second story of a downtown apartment building, a room entirely unlike her and filled with what appeared to be various dolls and images, some unflinchingly lukewarm, Bill teetered back into sobriety, or close to it. He realized that the predicament in which he had crawled was not so tough as he had remembered. This was not a trial, spending time with a woman he was interested in, and moreover, the time he had spent with her carried in its gut a sort of pleasant vibe. He found difficulty thinking of else but Amy, due not only to her proximity, the remnants of drink, and their conversation, which at times had dipped into the light perverse, but because he was in her domicile, her den, and had been ushered in at her behest. He felt, having been invited into her apartment, to be all powerful within it. A boozy vampire.

"If I fall in love with you, I'll turn into an elephant," he said.

"You're making light of my situation, Bill. It's not appropriate," she replied.

"No, I'm not. If you tell me you're a creature from some ancient mythology, that you're a big snake with two heads and roll around in a big, snaky circle, I feel entitled to reciprocate that honesty with my own statement regarding _my_ true form."

"Bill, I'm not kidding. There's no escaping it."

"I'm not joking either. I'm a Pachyderm Changeling. I become an elephant, like a werewolf becomes a wolf, but I only do it when I'm in love."

"You don't believe in love. You believe in chemicals," she stated.

"Yes, but chemicals are awesome. I have tons of 'em. Elephant chemicals. I would like to one day fall in chemicals with someone." Bill then lowered his hand to her thigh. The subject of sex had come up several times, and to Bill, each of these instances had heard the introduction of this topic with an eloquence of conversation, a perfect use of imminent segue on his part. To Amy, Bill broached the subject of bedroom activity in the same manner a truck might back into a fire hydrant. The smooth music Amy had put on in the background only highlighted his clumsy advances with greater clarity.

"Bill, this is important. I'm not like you, or anyone. I'm a creature. There are things I can and can't do," she informed.

"Oh?" he asked, his hand finding a perch along her leg and his mind having removed most of the world from his frame of reference but for the two or three feet surrounding his hand. Amy was wonderful. Amy Amy.

"For instance, Mr. Touchy-Feely, I can't ever cross a bridge, I eat my young, I can't make eye contact during a full moon or it kills you, and I..." she stopped talking then. Bill's hand had moved forward, in an exact measure of distance one might expect from a horny slide-rule.

"...and I _can't have sex_ ," she finished.

"Please?" Bill asked, adopting an innocent appearance.

"So move your hand; it's not wise to touch me, especially not like that. You want to get bitten? Death is instant when I bite."

"I'm comfortable like this. My hand is tired. You move your leg," he said, attempting a warped version of being coy.

"I'm not playing with you," she replied.

"I was kind of hoping you would."

"Hand," she said, growing frustrated.

"So you have two snake heads. Are both of them poisonous? Which reminds me," he said, smiling, "where exactly is the _other_ head? Does it bite, as well?" At the end of this statement, Bill gave a slight squeeze of the upper thigh he had not removed his hand from.

"I kill with a bite. The other head has a bite that inspires feelings of pleasure and comfort."

"Sold. Can I meet that one?" he replied. Bill liked feelings of pleasure and comfort. True to this preference, he leaned forward then and, after a momentary awkwardness where Amy's irritation created a void of time and space between them, he kissed her. Through the drinks, atmosphere, inebriated confusion, and now the dulling rise of sobriety, their lips met and Bill felt for a moment to be lost. With their eyes closed and the room having dissipated into the past, Bill escalated the moment with a more intimate manner of kiss. This was somewhat horrid, as her lips had a strong, industrial taste, like that of rubbing alcohol. Bill pulled back to find Amy entranced and distant, her very persona seeming to have dimmed into a more physical and sleepy state. She stared blankly toward the middle of the room, adrift for a spell, her lips parted, her eyes dull.

"Vodka was pretty strong, I can taste it on you," Bill said, trying to hide his distaste in lieu of his hope that the kissing was but a beginning to more of it. Amy looked over at him, fogged. She blinked in a way that seemed entirely slow.

"...I haven't done that in a long time," she said. Bill took heart of this and, foul taste aside, decided he might do best to follow through with more of what had effected her so. She lifted her hand and set her fingertips against his chin, ceasing him.

"Let's get intimate, Bill," she advised.

"Sounds wonderful," he agreed. Amy breathed for a moment in conclusion while Bill admired her. He felt both sneaky and cautious at the same time. Bill did not believe that dating, romance, or sex, were systems of interaction one might refer to as games, but he did believe there were certain modes of activity concerning each of these things, and navigating them called for varying one's behavior in specific fashions, which could feel to be somewhat of a game at times. That she desired him caused him to feel that he had won, in some mean or manner.

"Hold on, I have to get ready, first," she said, lifting to her feet and glancing at him over her shoulder, exiting into the bedroom. Bill found this particular exit to be both enticing and alluring. The portions of his being that were inherently male applauded his current situation, and many of these invisible modes, existing but in particles within particles, were patting one another on the back and complimenting each other's handiwork.

" _Good job with the pheromones, you."_

" _I can't take credit. It was you up there with the wit. Cheers."_

Any anxiety Bill might have been prone to had been edged down by the introduction of vodka to his system. While he had sobered to an acceptable degree, the effects of the alcohol were still doing some work in keeping him from fidgeting. He knew he should have been nervous, but then Amy seemed in the state to be intimate, and with questions of whether this would happen out of the way and concluded, he had little to be nervous about save for his performance, of which he felt no immediate alarm. Bill's first true sexual event had taken place on a beach while skipping prom. This had been a horrible tryst of motions that served only to make him fear the female generative structure and learn a hearty dislike of discovering sand in bodily crevices at a depth for which he had never known anything could reach. He was informed with much starkness after this specific encounter that what he had done was awful and not fun at all.

Julie Blanchett, the girl in question, had been with other men, or boys, really, and saw fit to compare young Bill with their performances, one by one, in a tone clean and scientific. Through this, Bill learned that he was shorter than Evan, funny shaped like Ben, but even funnier, was not as fast as Luke but more repetitious, and he made goofier faces than Jim, someone for whose name she said in a laugh. After this startling, hurtful, and altogether humiliating discussion of his off-to-a-bad-start copulatory ineptness, very little would serve to phase Bill or cause him much sexual anxiety, so much so, that for a long period of time, beginning in his mid-twenties, he simply did not feel to want intimacy at all. This non-sexual bout of years began at the age of twenty-six, and would end quite soon. He was fine with being an inexperienced and awful lay, as it were, because in his mind, Bill had concluded that sex-as-pleasure was a somewhat unnecessary and overtly meaningless act that he was entirely disenfranchised with.

"God, I want you. Get in here," he said.

"Okay, she's on her way," Amy replied, entering the living room again.

"That you are."

"You're in for a treat, lucky Bill."

"So, you mentioned biting, huh? It's a first for me, but I'll try some, for sure."

"You don't mind that I'm a two-headed snake, do you?"

"No, it's hot."

"Good. That settles things. Here we go," she said, making toward him. Bill outstretched his arms and tried to tack on a sexy expression, which was successful in his mind, but were there two of Bill, the other might look upon the first and explain to him that the expression in question was not sexy at all, and more the look of an inebriated harbor seal. Amy stepped around Bill, and continued toward the front door. There was a soft knock as she reached for the knob.

"Uh..." Bill began.

The door opened and a young women entered. She had a look of comfort, of softness and warmth, an almost maternal effect. She was quite beautiful and Bill was taken aback as she entered the room.

"Honey, this is Janine," Amy said.

"Oh, hi," Bill greeted, pleased to have been called 'honey'. No one but his mother had ever called him that. He was confused and a little worried that this guest would serve as an accidental deterrent to what he believed was going to happen that night with he and Amy. Maybe this friend would not stay long. After a moment, he came to understand that Janine was waiting for him to do something beyond greet her. He extended his hand. Janine grasped this but instead of a handshake, she caressed. This sensation strummed across Bill's nerves like a deftly played, resonating chord on a twelve-string guitar. He swallowed and attempted to draw his hand back. Janine chose to keep it. Bill glanced at Amy, embarrassed that her friend was coming on to him. After gauging Amy's expression and then noting the look in Janine's eyes, Bill inhaled and his heart rate increased.

"Oh lord, is this what I think it is?" he blurted out. He had heard of this sort of thing but never thought he would run across it. A slight ovation began at the base of his skull, echoing throughout his body. Was he even worth the carnal expenditure two women might experience with him? Of all the available men in the world, why would Amy have chosen someone as inconsequential and average as Bill to bring into an escapade of this magnitude? Perhaps inconsequence was exactly why. He was the sort that might not return, if this was asked of him.

"I shouldn't tell you this, Bill," Amy said, a little frustrated, "and in fact, I'm sure I shouldn't tell you this, but... well, I think I kind of like you a lot, is the thing."

"I like you too, Amy," he responded.

"Do you like Janine?" she asked. Janine smiled a care-free expression that was expert in containing other sorts of smiles within. Bill felt dozens of messages being expressed without a single utterance, and he was helplessly drawn to most of them. "Do I like Janine... is that a trick question?" he asked, wary.

"What do you mean?" Amy asked.

"Well... I don't really know." This was becoming awkward, though the sensation of dread that had begun to seep into Bill was alleviated by Janine's free hand, which had slowly engaged another specific portion of his body that no one had interacted with in years.

"So, okay..." Bill stammered, filling up the air with some sort of statement, even if only a pointless murmuring. He was not certain if he should be pleased or if this was in some way a negative act. What was Amy up to? Bill's first thought was that he had stumbled upon an estranged sexual relationship, of some derivation lesbian or open, and was somehow invited to take a sexual part in it, which was the stuff of legend among certain men and touted antics. His second thought was more awful, and involved the idea of being tested, or pushed off on another, or worse... they were about to sacrifice him to some lower religious deity. Bill scanned about for anything looking remotely ceremonial.

"Bill, I'd like you to get to know Janine. I can't have you physically, don't have what it takes. But I can be very good to you, if I like you. Janine, however, can't be good to anyone, outside of sex, at least."

"Worthless, really," Janine added.

"All she thinks about is pleasure. Not food, not sleep, not love or money. But she has a certain essence you'll find ample and... a way about her you'll like much," Amy said in a voice denoting graciousness.

"And I think I'd love to have some alone time with you," Janine said, meaning this.

"I don't understand," Bill struggled. This was more correct than anything he had said all night.

"I have two heads, honey. There are two of us. If you're in a relationship with me, you're also in a relationship with Janine. You date both of us or neither."

"Are you serious?"

"We're serious," Janine said.

"And Bill... you have to learn which head is for what," Amy added with caution.

"Two heads, okay," Bill said. Whatever they wanted to call it, the night had shifted into the surreal, and it seemed obvious to Bill what was now happening. Amy had issues and liked to watch, Janine had issues and liked to be watched, and Bill had issues that he might never be offered something like this again.

"I'm in. Sure," he said then, though not certain if this was true.

"Have a good night, Bill," Amy replied, making for the door.

"Wait, you're leaving?" he asked, Janine's other hand maneuvering across his chest.

"Have to. I'll see you later," she answered before turning to Janine, "and hey, be nice. He doesn't believe in love."

"Really? Fuck, that's hot," Janine said, her hands growing heavy across him, expression becoming slightly wild-eyed.

With that, Amy entered the hallway and shut the door, leaving the two alone. Bill and Janine stood there in the middle of the living room, Bill trying to decide what to decide, and Janine staring into his eyes, her hands on him, insinuating everything one might suspect. The removal of Amy's proximity sent Bill into a strange and isolated drift of uncertainty. He felt as if he had jumped from the night into another, somehow having crossed from Spring into another year's Fall. His confidence seemed to have vacated with Amy.

"Maybe... maybe some different music?" he offered.

"You're a good guy, Bill. "

"Uh, thank you. You seem nice, too. "

"Maybe you deserve something good. I think you do. "

"Do I?" he asked, nervous. Odd talk. His mind was puzzled and uncertain of how to respond.

"Uh huh. Something good. I can tell. You deserve everything I want to do with you," she said.

"Thank you."

"Do you want me?" she asked then. Her eyes were unfocused and her beauty was staggering.

"Well, yes... I mean, I do, yes. I want you," Bill uttered. In his puzzlement, he had begun reacting and responding due to expectation, and not what he thought. In reality, he had been set adrift on a buoyant sea of strange, outer enticement, and the speech center of his brain was getting much less of his body's usual resources than it was accustomed, both from drink and arousal.

"That's all I need, then," Janine said, these words leaving her mouth beneath a mischievous twitch of the eyebrow.

"Okay. I guess we—"

"Get my clothes off," she said rushed, dropping quickly and dragging him with her to the floor.

"Jesus, Janine... a little fast," Bill mumbled across her rapidly nipping, kissing lips. She gave a small bite at his shoulder and wrapped her legs around him.

"God, you're so warm. Call me names," she said.

### Chapter Seven

Estefan would not be returning from Chicago. The mild lies she had told in the past were forgiven, but the severe truth was not. He knew the reason she had undermined his job so many times was out of jealousy. Angela had fallen in love with him, with a man she could not understand, and so her sabotage was as if a playground tactic. He wanted her more than ever, but had to resist, to deny himself. This hidden move to Chicago would solve his problem with expedience. Estefan could not be aware, however, that Angela was more calculating than even he knew. She was, at that moment, on a plane bound for Chicago, only an hour ahead of the flight he was about to board, and she had full intent on changing his made-up mind, a thing she was proving all too good at.

-from _What He Doesn't Know..._ , Samantha Hunt

Then perhaps it was the wheel. Seeming to turn forever, yet never moving. A certain convexity distorting the rubber, either by anomaly in the camera lens or a simple trick of light. The wheel had gone round and round, overtaken tens of thousands of miles of pavement, only to end facing the sky, wobbling and spinning its last. For this dire moment, one in which a photographer had been present to snap records of this scene for an insurance company, the wheel should have been normal, but was now demolished without having taken much injury, itself. Bill needed a useless wheel, but a healthy wheel; a pointless expression of its own worth. There was art there. Instead, Bill noted that the wheel appeared to have a subtle bend, though the hubcap was undamaged.

"I'll scratch you up, maybe," he said, using an eraser to attempt this, nudging the shine from the hubcap in the photograph. This somewhat worked. The vehicle was destroyed, which made Bill think of October. The weather was gray and dim, calling in him thoughts of December. He settled between these, writing 'possibly November' on the back of the photograph in black felt-tip. The image was not startling enough for the climax of the calendar anyway. December would need something wholly engrossing and vehement, something that demonstrated not the amount of damage or even the result of the accident, but the exact epicenter of what it meant to discover a vehicle being torn from the fold. What Bill needed was an image of a collision in progress, a snapshot of a wreck as it happened.

When he woke that morning, his soul had already been up and in the kitchen, standing in what little the window let through of the fine weather. The soul was culminating over whether to make bacon or not. When Bill entered the kitchen, he joined with his now energetic soul and the idea was near instant to him: Bacon and eggs, coffee, then the calendar. A three step process to enlightenment, he felt. This mood was inspired, of course, by the previous night's events, and for reasons outright obvious. Having met the two women, and considering what had transpired with one of them after the other had vacated, Bill wondered at the repercussions involved.

The desk drawer was open, Bill having seen fit to retrieve his collection of auto wreck photographs from their wooden hold. He fetched several of these and laid them out in order, imagining the series of events they depicted, which remarked in an abstract way on the series of events that had led to his encounter the previous night.

November's image had been difficult in the way a lug-nut under the befriending of rust might not loosen at times, even with a bit of leverage. His eyes sought out details in the photographs of a wreck, four of them set out in an arranged chronology dictating the order of events. First, the rough image of the devastated Chrysler on its roof along the interstate, a halo of beady glass around it, smoke still trailing the undercarriage. The second image was of the same, but had men in the background, chatty officers. By the third image, the smoke was gone, the glass was swept, and the lifting crane had harnessed the destroyed car. In the last image, the car had left the pavement and hovered in the air beneath two large cables, being raised to a height for which it could be levered over the hauling truck and lowered, taken to the grave. This series contained what Bill wanted to exhibit on the November page as a whole, but he needed a single image, and would not use four on one page. These snapshots were not vessels for which Bill had found anything true. He wanted the wreck featured but he simply could not find in one photograph any of the true wreckage he sought to illuminate. These images were not what he needed.

"It's already happened. I missed it," Bill said quietly, examining the first photograph. Aesthetically, the fourth was the scene most fitting with the calendar, as it showed the vehicle in worst state: Destroyed, abandoned, being hauled away from the world. But the real wreckage was not present. This would be in the driver's expressions, in the swerve of traffic, in the sound of the vehicle beginning to flip. The real wreckage would exist in the airborne glass and the flicker of sparks, in the _span_ of the wreck, not in the aftermath. This, by nature, was aloof. Bill did not suppose he would be likely to find images of cars while being destroyed, save those on bad home-cameras, security loops, or collision test footage, grainy affairs that were useless to him. Money was a matter as well. Bill did not want to think about how much a particular agency with an exciting wreck image might charge to use it in a calendar, versus how much a typical accident scene photograph went for, which was minuscule and involved Bill's purchase outright, rather than through royalty arrangement.

"Jessica's eating crayons," Christian voiced into the garage. Bill lifted from his calendar work like crocodile eyes from a lake, resting atop the surface of this statement.

"Which colors?" he replied.

"All of them."

In taking the box of crayons from little Jessica, Bill found the need to adopt a ribbit, or in his best attempt, a sort of croak that contained several noises in the range of consonants R and B. Jessica's stubbornness in releasing the box of crayons underwent a pacifying, as the croak, mystical to her, was far more convincing and informative than the usual things that came out of her uncle's mouth. With a weighty realization, a slow yet slack enlightenment, Jessica's four-year old hands loosened and the mangled box of half-eaten crayons were allowed to be removed. Her clutches were then empty, though maintained their shape, as if holding and feeling the phantom traces of this same box.

"Sweetie, this is straight wax and dye. You could get sick eating these. Crayons are for coloring, not eating, okay?" Bill explained. He had a skill, a well-adopted parental system of talk that he used for this, one that he had learned over the last few years of third-party child-rearing. This paternal tone, which involved soft speaking with hard-subjects, and notions clearly explained as simple observations, no longer functioned on Christian, and had never activated Nick to do more than glance at Bill, but it still worked on Jessica.

"Rib?" she questioned then, curious, her mouth and hands streaked in blue and violet drool, a fleck of torn crayon label stuck in the corner of her mouth.

"Yep, ribbit. Frogs don't eat crayons, right?" Bill said, approaching the wondrous lecture from a more fantastical and child-like highway of thought. Jessica closed her eyes and frowned, beginning to cry. This, in her mind, was because red, which tasted better than the other colors (for she had dined a bit on each), was the color of pretty, like flowers, and flowers were for big bunnies and little girls, and Uncle Bill had called her a frog, which was a sad and sinister creature, no good to any color but green, the worst color, and then Uncle Bill had shown her, with his loud boy-ribbit, that she was no good, and a bad frog that did not get to have big bunnies or wonderful red ever again.

"Oh, you're not in trouble, Jess! I just want to make sure you know not to eat crayons," Bill said, noting her cry, which was created by the opening and shaping of her mouth into a form not unlike a hole blasted in a muddy hill by a cannon. Bill knew by this frame of mouth that she was quite upset, and by her scrunched eyes, though Bill was well informed on Jessica's manner of crying, which did not involve tears, and possessed no sound at all.

"Dumbass, you made her cry," Christian said. Bill winced and turned his head to the boy.

"Hey, you don't talk to me like that," he enforced.

"How do you _want_ me to talk to you?"

"We can start with a little civility, maybe a smidge of respect." Christian then scrunched his eyes and opened his mouth, in a manner similar to that of his sister, only Christian was not weeping, but simulating uproarious laughter. He covered his mouth and leaned far back.

"Nice. You'd better shape up, kid, or no bike ride, later," Bill stated. Christian snapped out of his laughter with an angry look, which then mellowed and became the trademark bitterness Christian held over most things.

"You ride like crap anyway," he said, making his way to his room. This was the most common sight regarding Christian that Bill had come to know, the shape of his small frame highlighting utmost perturbance as he exited a room in which Bill had come to exist.

"Good job; flexing your independence is healthy, you little shit," Bill called after.

***

Women and telephones. Audio communication and the female gender. A wire, two mouths at two ears, pleasuring one another across a vast distance by a need to do so, despite the lack of proximity or physical touch, and in the wake, even, of isolation and home-chore behavior. Was there anything more fetching one could do with a small trifle of technology that sat in one's pocket eating up metallic power? Two calls had twisted Bill into a mess of giddiness and expectancy, both of which involved women, and neither of which involved misunderstanding, stress, or monotony, things for which Bill's days of late had been plagued.

"I did mean to contact you but things have been very abrupt lately with the division," Janet Hogue said from her desk in New York at the Holt and Finch Articles Division, or as Bill had called it in the past, Calendar Land.

"Sure, I understand. I'm just thankful there was a positive response."

"Oh, of course. Mr. Lansington was correct in what I've been thinking with your submitted work."

"What about _From the Rind_ captured your attention the most?" Bill asked.

"My attention? I suppose the subject matter. You do understand I can't print it, we can't use it, but we think it's a step in a different direction that might be of interest to the public, in the near future."

"That would be of interest to me, as well," Bill admitted, upset that his calendar was not being accepted, but pleased that his publisher had contacted him and thought him of talent, pleased that he did, in fact, still have a publisher.

"That's good to hear. We can't run a calendar with Hitler in it, edgy as that might or might not be, frankly, but we'd be curious to see more of your work in this... this genre. I don't remember what you call it but..."

"An impact piece," he said.

"Right, an impact piece. So, we're wanting to take things a step further, and what you're doing could be a big part of that. Not so much right now, but maybe soon, you follow?"

"I have material, for sure. I'm working on—"

"That's great news. With Avalancha and LindCorp progressing the last few quarters in the major retail outlets, we need to push harder to maintain our balance. We have no momentum right now, and we need a new direction. Since what happened with Ms. St. Ellsworth, we've been having a tough time getting our artists to embrace new directions, of course. She was always key in navigating the calendar culture, you know?" Bill was annoyed at being interrupted, but shifted his thoughts and continued.

"Well, Mary was an inspiration to many, myself included." The emergence of Janet talking a bit of shop with him was surprising. Her publishing style was more business than relation, was crafty, and she tended to keep the quieter workings of the Articles Division to herself.

"I think she would have appreciated your new direction, as well," Janet added.

Mary Christine St. Ellsworth had brought Bill into a group of individuals that knew other individuals. This second tier of people knew more than individuals, they knew companies. Without Mary creating the network that Bill had come to function within, he would have never gained the approval of John Beasly, and thus, never been introduced to his original publisher, Arnie Lozier. Janet Hogue, though she had taken over Arnie's role in the Article Division of Holt and Finch, and though she took part in the calendarium conferences and knew all involved on some level, was not a part of the group by her own volition. She kept her ear to the rail but her contracts and approval in the distant background. Arnie had always brought these things with him, presenting deals, praise, and criticism in tandem. Mary Christine's approval of Bill was Arnie's approval of Bill, through others, and this had been palpable. With Mary's demise, and Arnie's death nearly three years ago, Bill felt to be adrift in his occupation, as if he had spent a portion of his life reaching a certain height up a difficult scaffold, and now that he was there, someone had stolen his lunch and there was no one to talk to.

"Well, she was looking over a piece I had in progress when it happened," Bill said, thinking of Mary on the table, kicking and screaming, dying. If Bill only had an image of a car doing the same, his new calendar would be wondrous.

"Oh, I see. Bad timing, I suppose," Janet replied.

"There's no good timing with someone dying like that, so suddenly."

"No, of course not. Look, I have to go, Bill. Duty calls. Uh, but yes, let's talk some more about the... the impact thing, and we could conceivably start moving something for you again," she offered.

"That would be ideal, Janet. I haven't had a feature accepted in two years," he said. There was a short pause then.

"Two years? That can't be right; I thought your hard labor calendar was last year, wasn't it?"

"Yeah, _Vehemence_. Well, _Hard Sweat_ when it hit the stands. It came out last year and it moved quite a bit, but was originally accepted a year before that. I haven't had anything picked up in just over two-and-a-half years." Bill thought to add the statement, "since Arnie died", but decided against it. This would be too similar to stating: "since _you_ came along," despite that such a statement would be true. Janet, his publisher of just over two years, had not optioned a single work from him.

"Well, I'm sorry to hear that," she said, "Let's remedy this; we'll talk more later."

There was a commission of goodbyes and agreements, then the clicks customary of disconnected lines. Bill was enamored by the conversation, which, while containing a rejection for _From the Rind_ , had still gone his direction, for once. With Mary's demise, the calendarium had been cast into an uncertain status, and without the calendarium, there was no meeting of like or unlike minds in the calendar scene beyond designer and publisher. While Bill preferred not to associate with Lansington or Richard Dutch, John Beasly or Walter Osbourne, he needed to. These were the players, the heavyweights. These were the people by which Bill had risen into his publishing deal, and who he competed with on varying levels. By emulating Walter Osbourne and Todd Lansington, Bill had secured his somewhat lax publishing deal with Holt and Finch, however it was Beasly and The Dutch that made those connections for him. Richard had talked Bill up to Mary. These were wonderful events in Bill's life, but ultimately unsatisfying, for he was feeling seduced, settled, and not fiery in his projects.

While it was true that Beasly had introduced young Bill to his future publisher, this alone had not secured a contract. Bill's talent and emulation of others had not reinforced a relationship with Holt and Finch either. These things had aligned in his favor, but Beasly had done the most, the strongest thing Bill needed, and was the most culpable reason for Bill having ever been noticed or any interest taken in him at all. John Beasly had invented the Elvis and Marilyn Monroe calendars, which had become so famed and common in households during previous decades, and which had made so much money for the publisher and Holt and Finch's Articles Division, that Beasly very nearly owned Arnie Lozier. Until Arnie's death, what Beasly advised was what Beasly received. Arnie had liked Bill, but John Beasly had told him to. He was an old, knowing Arnie that had drafted Bill's contract, and behind each paragraph and bulleted clause, behind each signature and term of conduct, there was John Beasly. He had enjoyed Bill's energy, was all.

A new direction, Janet had said. _A new direction_. Perhaps this direction was one that potentially aligned with Bill's ideas, that might coincide with his views on calendar art, with his own art. This held promise in a way that even Arnie Lozier had never offered. Arnie wanted Bill toned far down, relaxed, three-parts imitation of Ellsworth or Lansington, one part edginess. This resulted some ridiculous calendars, in Bills estimation, but they had created his fledgling career, and there was little wisdom in ignoring one's parents.

_Vehemence_ , his calendar depicting some of America's roughest, mortality-questioning means of employment, was riskier than his previous works, but had only really been accepted because the image for April displayed a man working in an industrial furnace, scraping the accumulated black off the walls. The nature of the furnace, which never fully cooled due to constant use, was dim and hot, and the man had developed a muscular, toned physique scraping in this environment. He was impelled to work sweaty, and often with his shirt off.

It was April's image of a buff, shirtless, sweaty man, wearing his protective hardhat, smudged in soot in a fiery furnace that the Articles Division had used for the cover. People who enjoyed looking at such men were a large demographic, of course. Bill had not intended to make a calendar that catered to those who wanted to see sweaty, strong men, but due to his publisher's marketing, he had done just that. This had evolved on Holt and Finch's end. The notion that they persuaded the calendar into seeming like something it was not bothered Bill, but not so much as when the calendar was first released and Bill discovered that Holt and Finch had used a small perch in Bill's publishing contract to re-title the calendar before launch. The new title was _Hard Sweat_ , which appeared in a sexy font above the image of the shirtless worker.

Bill's artistic vision had been made to seem little more than a pin-up calendar for women, which was a gross misrepresentation. How strange it would be when these women purchased his calendar on that particular merit, only to discover on the first page, January, an image of a liverspotted veterinarian putting down an old cat with a syringe full of poison. The furnace worker, a man named John and a friendly, family sort Bill had photographed two counties over, became somewhat popular due to the marketing, and was even later interviewed in an erotic online magazine. John had answered his questions, nervous but honest, under the name 'Mr. April'.

Amy's call found him on the wake of the conversation with Janet. An awkward Bill answered, but a pleasant and hopeful one. The conversation was slow to react at the outset, as with most great things, but required only the settling of the previous night's unusual turn to smooth things enough for comfort.

"I'm just wondering who I'm dating, is all. I don't want to put up any false emotions or anything, but you should know, after last night... I kind of feel guilty. Sort of. I mean, I feel closer to Janine than I do to you, is the thing. Is that how this is supposed to work?"

"No. And of course you feel closer to her; you're a guy. That'll fade after a bit. I'm planning on growing you up a little. You could use it," Amy replied.

"Growing me up?"

"Billy, I kind of want to make a man out of you. You'd like that, right?"

"You're not gonna get me into a fistfight with somebody or anything like that, are you?" he asked.

"No."

"I guess I'm in, then. Maybe we should talk about this whole Janine thing, though."

"Okay, talk." Bill nodded and organized his line of thought. His eyes roamed over the four images of the Chrysler accident.

"Well, what does she think about all this? I mean, am I supposed to just go over to her place late at night and hang out with you during the day or... how does all this work? It's a much more... _futuristic_ relationship than I'm used to," he admitted.

"It's more ancient than futuristic, but just give it time. Two heads, Bill. One wants you when the other does. You'll figure it out." This was an odd statement to him, and he did not take the time to ponder it, having other things on his mind.

"Part of me thought that maybe I'd never hear from you again... you know, one night of strangeness with strangers... that sort of thing," he said.

"Is that what you want?" she asked.

"Well, I don't know what to want. I mean, last night, I kind of surpassed _want_ and went straight to _get_. But yes, I'd like to see you again. Yes."

"Good. I hid something on your back seat last night, while you were getting busy. Read it, and others," she advised.

"What do you mean?"

"Just check your back seat. It's a romance novel. Get used to it, because that's how I want it."

"You want me to read a romance?" he asked.

"Lots of them. From now on," she answered.

"...Oh hell, you don't think you're going to somehow make me all hunky or something, do you? Is that what you mean? Because it won't happen. I don't have the genes for that stuff."

"Interpret it however you want. But I want romance, Bill. I'm a woman who's willing to be very good to you, but on my terms, and I'm needy. Deal with it. I want romance novel kind of romance."

"So now you're a woman, huh? I thought you were a two-headed, mythological snake," he said, frowning.

"That, and needy."

"So... the price for stumbling onto the fast-track of dating two beautiful women, or else a giant snake, is that I have to be all romantic?"

"One woman, two heads. And you can handle it," she said, bored.

"I can't believe you like romance novels. They're... they're tacky and fake. I don't know that I can stomach to read those things."

"Would you rather wait to see how things work for awhile? Play it safe and be you?"

"Well, sure," he admitted.

"Because we can just skip all that test-drive offal, you know, and start being a couple that feels good all the time, if you're able to handle that."

"We just met," Bill said, intrigued with her intentions.

"So?" Amy asked, annoyed, "We can still try to inspire ourselves to new heights in a relationship, can't we? I imagine something like that has to start early on, wouldn't it?"

"Uh, I don't know," he said, confused. The idea of "inspiring new heights in a relationship" sounded stressful and too near hard work to be all that fun.

"Reckless Bill. Silly, baby Bill. We'll work on that."

"Whatever that meant. So, I'm right to believe that you and I are going steady? Not Janine and I?"

"Steady is what people said decades ago, Bill. But yes, you and me. Read the book."

"And not Janine?"

"She's the lower half, buckaroo. I'm the upper. That gonna sink in?"

"No, yes, I get it, I think. We're pretty wild, I guess."

"Huh?"

"We're on the fringe. Outsiders. Crazy non-conformists in a relationship that involves sex with another person. Tell you the truth, I never thought I'd have a stake in that sort of thing. Are we gonna do threesomes, too?"

"Moron. Moron. Moron."

"Okay."

"Janine's not a person. Go ahead and try to have a conversation with her sometime, Bill. Seriously, there is no other person. When you and I hook up, she's just the other head. Two bodies, two minds, but one person. Jesus, Bill, you're kind of dense."

"Right right, the two heads, the upper and lower halves thing. I got it now," he lied.

"Nice lower half though, right?" Amy asked.

"I can't thank you enough."

"Yeah, you can. I'm thinking Thursday, line dancing."

"Pff. You're kidding, right?"

"No. What's wrong with Thursday?"

"I like Thursday. One of my favorite four days is Thursday. Thursday is fine, line dancing is not."

"You'll like it," she said.

"You really want to learn how to do the hootenanny with me?"

"Idiot. A hootenanny's an event, not a dance style. Came into use during the late stages of the Civil War, and was code for a public celebration in the south that allowed the presence of northern women, but not northern men. War or not, babies had to be made on both sides, you know," she explained.

"That is such bullshit. 'Hootenany' is a southern twist on the word 'hettany', which was the style of dress women wore to a specific celebration in the early Fall. It was a meet-and-greet for eligible young men and women. The eligible women wore hettanies, the eligible men wore their father's clothes. These days, hootenany only means a party where there's music and people go to get each other's phone numbers. There. Consider yourself informed," he replied.

"You have no idea what you're talking about."

"Whatever. You made your definition up, too. Let's do something more fun. I'm not into dancing. Seriously."

"We'll do what you want next time. So, Thursday. You don't have anything else to do."

"That would be your assumption," he said.

"Which happens to be true," she shot back.

"Which does happen to be true, yes, but I don't know; line dancing is kind of lame."

"So are you."

"Eh... fine. Shit, okay. I'll go. Is it the three of us?"

"Three?"

"You, me, and the lower half?"

"That's rude. Don't be juvenile, Bill. Sex is for the bedroom."

"Not according to Janine," he informed.

"Good for her. Can we get back on subject?"

"Sure. So, this is gonna be like a Clark Kent thing, where I'll never see him and Superman in the same place at the same time? You and Janine?"

"Who cares about that? Just hang up the phone while you're still into me."

"Why would you think I'm into you?"

"Because you agreed to go line-dancing, you spineless crab. And anyway, joke's over. Fuck that, let's just go have dinner. You can pick me up at seven."

"Oh, more insults. Nice. You're so pleasant. And you tricked me," he said.

"It's not difficult."

"Dinner at seven, and no line-dancing, then? For real?"

"Bring your good looks, too. I don't want to sit across from the just-woke-up version of you."

"Technically, you don't know what that looks like, remember?"

"Janine told me all about it. Hey, what do you do for a living, anyway, Bill?"

"Uh... I seek out mouthy young women at speed dating events, and use them to achieve life-altering physical encounters the likes of which appear in kinky magazines," he explained.

"So, are you an entrepreneur in this business?"

"Well, no. Today, I'd have to say I feel more like the major shareholder in said business."

"There's just something about me," she said.

"There might be. So now, what do _you_ do for a living?"

"Who cares? Stuff with computers. Or not. Or I work at a department store. Or I don't. Whatever the hell I'm up to."

"Sounds like a great career," he said.

"Oh, and one more thing, Bill."

"Yeah?"

"Bye." And then the line went dead, leaving Bill in a state of numb befuddlement and awe.

That there was 'something about' Amy only understated his current feel. There was, simply enough, everything about Amy. At the least, Bill had managed to understand the nature of the relationship on a logistic level. He was dating Amy, and would be going to dinners and the like with her, if it worked out, and occasionally, they would retire to her place and Bill would be granted... Janine, who preferred to be called any number of things ranging from the slightly sexist to the outright derogatory. This name-calling and tacitness, while not a mode or stylization Bill had been drawn to in the past, had proven quite alleviating, behavior that busted the beams of his stress and relaxed his expectations entirely. So long as this behavior was play, it was both relieving and overwhelming play.

The prospect of his date the previous night, while odd and wholly unnatural, seemed very pleasing to Bill, as he now felt to be dating someone for whom his mind felt a strong kinship and intrigue, someone that seemed to be quite smarter than him, and when the time for dim lights and a bedroom came about, he was, for a short while, dating someone for whom his body found haunting and pleasurably mesmerizing. Was this cheating? It felt like cheating, but somehow in a good way.

The arrangement in which Bill now found himself consigned was surreal and almost exotic to him, but more than this, Bill felt a spiral of happiness and confidence that he had not known could form in him. Perhaps these sensations had not, and had come from without, sometime in the night after finding himself enamored with Amy and entangled with Janine. These positive shocks seemed, when overcoming Bill's general mood for the first time in many years, implausible at first. These sensations, upon encountering the stronghold of his pessimism, which was weakening, found that his current arrangement ever having been offered to him seemed far too generous and unlikely, hence unreal. How could there not be toxins hiding in all this nice, clean, new air?

"I think maybe I'm being spoiled," he said aloud.

### Chapter Eight

The virtues of celibacy aside, she felt with each evening to be less Sister Patterson and more Elisa, a person whom she had not been in some time. What prayer could oust the handsome florist from her mind? She had tried in vain at many, only to awaken in the morning full of shame for the state of her dreams. She found herself awaiting his next visit to the abbey with zest, a sensation improper yet one that she could not avoid. Was the Lord testing her, as she had once thought? Was this but paltry temptation in the guise of friendly flirtation? She was unlike the others, being energetic and young, and knew she was pretty from the looks she received. This had irritated Sister Gantry from the start, though not, it seemed, Father Daling. In either case, Sister Patterson could not vouchsafe her age or appearance any more than she could be rid of the quiet man with the flowers, who revisited her each night in her sleep, a bouquet and honest eyes at his disposal, and with Elisa the subject of his desire.

-from _A Daisy for Sister Patterson_ , Eva Zaretsky

The blue above was steady and had asked for him, and after much reflection and the forming of a strong decision, Bill lifted his knees and flapped his arms, to great effect flying. The boring, deadly ground became but a memory below his bare feet.

"I'll do it right now," Bill said, taking a breath and looking about.

Holding the romance novel in his right hand, he let out a keen sound, attempting a hawk's cry, and began his final evolution into a sky being, a primate that had left the tether of gravity to build his locomotion on the wind, on dives, on the flutters of those wings stretched lovingly from his body. The book's pages rippled in the currents and he laughed as his body joined the clouds for recreation and sport. They were special clouds, and existed within him, within all manner of blue and beast that had found in the sky a home. Bill slowed between two contrails and began a pleasing tap-dance, tipping his feet against the air and bending his elbows where appropriate. For a span of time, there was no creature on, within, or above the Earth that was grander and more eloquent than Bill. Tippity tap, the book was warm in his hand and the air fluttered through his hair. Tippity tap, it was a wind-bath on the almighty upper stage of the planet, his feet sharking on the breeze and dancing him across the blue. More of Lansington's clouds moved toward him from all stretches of the sky, flashing red, orange, and green, denoting by these colors when the various traffic of traveling birds was to cease, slow, or pass.

"Stop and have a dance, you!" Bill shouted at a flock of Canadian geese, who, though their wings were sore and backs stiff, chose to pause their long migration, lining up with Bill in the sky and beginning a wondrous line-dance. Wing to wing, they all faced the same arch of horizon and kicked their webbed feet, each meeting the third kick with a subsequent twist and bobble of hips. With each of these flicks of the waist, they voiced a slight 'woo' sound.

"See? This is the shit!" Bill exclaimed, his smile having contorted his face to unrealistic proportion. There was no bigger grin, no higher happiness; Bill had found the truth of flight, the means of real ascension. Shangri La, Nirvana, Paradise, the Promise Land... all of them had it wrong.

"Woo woo," the birds replied. He kicked and they kicked, he wriggled his hips and they waddled their bottoms. When he lifted his chin and smiled at the Sun, they arched their necks and tilted their beaks at the troposphere. Such dancing, such ecstasy of form and life, such nature.

"You're all into me!" Bill laughed, driving quick into his next set of moves.

"Woo woo," they choired. Bill's teeth shined as if fresh from grand dentistry and his eyes glanced out to his avian compatriots, a vision of marvelous, syncopated glamour. Peripherally, Bill noted a scrawl of black and turned his head. Below him, in a danelian slant, was Todd's abbreviated signature, _T.L._ He then slowed his movements, solemn, seeming to draw seriousness and reverence from the very sky. Was it December already? The clouds flowed around his body and held him, learning of his great knowledge, waiting for him to release his joy and hostility all at once, to create, to own December. Bill ceased his movement. After a moment in time where he nearly appeared to be brooding, Bill lifted his head swiftly and thrust his hips to the left, hands and arms to the right. The sky pulsed on this ethereal strike of a beat. What better motion to conduct while dancing his soul through the sky, while preparing to enlighten the world, than one perfected by Elvis Aaron Presley? Bill jerked to the right, the left, the right, his ankles tilting and his knees jutting loosely. The clouds followed his motions and the geese gave a woo. He gathered the power of precipitation, of friction, of lightning, and his hips thrust left, right, left. Todd Lansington's sky-borne signature shattered and fell to Earth.

There was an acrid, ear-shriking noise filling the world then. This tone that ripped through the air was familiar and high in pitch. The body that lay beside his own was warm. Bill opened his mouth, then closed, wondering if it were in the cards to continue his horizontal position for a bit longer. Would Janine mind if he stayed? Or Amy? By the mere thought of her, Janine seemed to wake.

"Uh?" she mumbled.

"Hi, that's my alarm," Bill said, reaching over for his coat on the floor, where the cell phone causing the tone was located.

"Your alarm?"

"Yeah, I set my phone's alarm in case I slept. Just a second," he explained, reaching into the pocket. The time was askew, just past three in the morning. It was in his best interest to return home, as he was supposed to watch the kids early in the morning.

"That's not your alarm. That's a text message. From Amy," Janine said. Bill mused over this, unable to locate the cell phone in his coat.

"Hey, where's Amy? I wanted to hang out with her tonight. And how did I get to the apartment, anyway?" Bill asked, a realization overcoming him.

"Ditching me when you're asleep. I'm impressed, Bill. You must really like her," Janine mused, shaking her head.

"Wait... hold up. What's going on?"

"Ah, you can sleep later. Let's go again," Janine said, turning toward him and beginning to knead her hands against his back and shoulders on the floor.

"Again? But when—" His statement was interrupted by a horrid squeal, which issued from behind. He startled and flung himself over, his eyes scanning over the room in a panic.

"Oh, whatever. Killjoy," Janine said, bored. A mass of blackness was crawling toward Bill along the floor from near the far window of the apartment.

"Christ..." Bill muttered, his nerves triggering. The blackness took form, stood tall, a sort of Amy. She was nude and Bill looked up at her, horrified. She had no genitalia between her legs. Bill glanced at her face, which was a frustrated turn of beauty. Bill had never found her so frightening or attractive. Then her eyes flashed, and Bill, having made eye-contact for only a moment, grew dizzy.

"What are you..." but he found his mouth would not conduct its usual motion and his throat let the sound of his voice trail into a short stream of nonsense.

"You can't get me a new teddy bear and expect me not to want to hold it," Janine said to her with a tint of child-like simplicity. Amy frowned at this, then spread across the room, her entire body enveloping Bill, squeezing, a warming sensation yet horrifying. He sweltered in yet more dizziness. She was a mass again... a cloudy manifestation of serpent and woman. A newer, lighter cloud rose up before Bill then, in the apartment, as he lay on the floor of the sky. This cloud began to alter in diameter, and its oblique shape took on indicators of dimension.

Then perhaps he was above the apartment. He glanced down from his perch in the sky and saw that this was the case. Far below him lay the urban area of his small town. How many miles had he ascended? The new cloud phased smaller, grew tight, became dense and dark, personal. Its billowy edges and wispy, steam-bodied form took on a look of depth, and after several seconds, wherein all dancing geese ceased, the cloud had undergone the complete transmutation into a giant serpent, a head at each end and with the blackened pages of a romance novel for scales. They scraped over one another as the snake coiled and curved, sidewinding a quick path to Bill. He dropped the novel, which fell away with a sob toward the Earth.

"Woo woo?" Bill asked.

"Amy!" the geese cheered. One of the long serpent necks curved and shot around his nape, coiling and constricting, choking him. The other head darted up his pants leg and burrowed in deep. Bill leaned back in a euphoria man had never known, a pure sense of physical bliss that permeated his psyche and coated every last speck of his being. The geese, Lansington's clouds, and the sky itself, all lined up behind the sleek, two-headed serpent, all tapping their feet in a dulcet rumba, watching the tryst unfold, waiting each for their turn with him. Bill gagged and grimaced.

"Come love me, all you marvelous beasts of life!" he shouted.

***

"Oh honey, it's just what happens sometimes when you're asleep. You've had a scary dream before, right?" Roger comforted. When Jessica sniffed her nose and gave uncle Bill, who stood beside her small bed, a frightened glance, Roger could only sigh. Bill held his cell phone, which had given notice of having received a middle-of-the-night text message. This message weighed on Bill's mind, distracting him from the present situation. More unusual was the manner Bill came to be holding his cell phone: He had risen from sleep clutching this in his hand while yelling his head off.

"Sometimes you say things in your sleep, is all. Even your daddy does," Bill helped. Jessica gave a small gasp then, finding this idea disturbing. Roger turned, giving his younger brother a reproachful look. The message Bill ruminated over had been from Amy, and was a startling thing to discover upon waking. Roger had been standing beside his bed, a look on his face that carried both anger and concern, for Bill had been shouting strange things.

Jessica yawned while giving both of the men present a suspicious look. Her mind was turning on the data she had collected audibly, from Bill's peace-destroying shout, which had, eighteen minutes previous, jolted her from sleep. The shout had been sudden, quite loud, and plunged Jessica's mind into the worst forms of childish horror, which would take more than a few minutes to settle. What he had shouted in his bed had streaked through the house and surrounded her. Menacing. Frightening. It was a thing she would not forget quickly.

"You want something to drink? That make you feel better?" her dad asked. Jessica slowly nodded. The two men left her room, Roger making certain to keep the light on, and entered the kitchen to fetch the little girl a glass of milk. Bill felt awful for the trouble he had caused, especially considering the time of morning and Roger's work schedule, which was disturbed by the events of the previous minutes.

"I'm sorry, man. It's not like I did it on purpose," Bill defended in the kitchen. Roger, irritated and tired, poured milk into a lidded cup and tightened down the waterproof seal. When he had first roused Bill, Roger had been quite upset with his little brother, but not so upset as Jessica, who had begun wailing in her room. Bill, without time to explain or offer his apologies, had followed Roger quickly to her room, where they found a little girl upright in bed, mouth turned down and eyes wide, crying to herself in dread. Both brothers had approached with the skill of calming her, using quiet tones and expert talk, being time-centered parents of a sort to the little girl. Bill helped to ease Jessica, but had been distracted by both his nightmare and the odd manner of waking with his cell phone trickling electronic notes from his hand. The text message would not leave his scattered thought. The message had been from Amy, and consisted of the simple, capitalized: JANINE SAYS SORRY. G'NIGHT.

"Goddamn it, Bill. 'Teddy bear is in pain'? Of all the things to scream in the middle of the night for a young child to hear."

"I'm sorry. I don't know what... what happened. I was asleep," Bill responded, feeling like a cretin.

"Man, I have to get up for work at 6:30, which means you have do the same to watch the kids. Why are we up in the middle of the damn night getting a drink for my terrified kid? What the shit does that even mean? 'Teddy bear is in pain'. Damn it, Bill."

"I- you had to be there. I'm sorry."

"You yelled it like a damn drill sergeant. And I don't care if you're sorry. I care that Jess doesn't have nightmares because of this."

"I know. I'm sorry."

"Shut up with the 'sorry' thing. I get it. Just... I don't know. Go back to bed. I've got this."

"I tried to explain what a nightmare is but—"

"She's four, okay? She knows what a nightmare is. What she doesn't know is the sound of a grown man screaming mad in the middle of the damn night, Bill. Just go back to bed. I'll... sort this out. Hopefully, I can get back to sleep sometime in the next year. Her too."

"Man, if it comes to that, I'll just stay up with you," Bill entreated. Roger looked at the time displayed on the microwave.

"Christ, it's after five."

"I'll put on coffee. We'll just stay up. It's like, a little over an hour," Bill offered. Roger thought this over, toying with the cup in his hands. He sighed.

"Yeah, all right. Let's just do that, then," he concluded. Bill made his way to the cupboard.

"Man, I feel really bad about all this. I've never done that before." This was true. Bill had always been a sound sleeper, and not prone to nightmares in general. The unexpectedness of his middle-of-the-night screaming bout was what had initially caused Roger not to be angry. The anger he felt had taken some time to evolve, while talking to frightened Jessica. Due to this delay in his anger's fruition, the emotion surfaced more as irritation than open hostility.

"Don't worry about it. Lemme go talk to Jess and give her the milk. I'll be back. Make the coffee strong, all right?" Bill noted the weary expression on his brother's face and he felt atrocious. The disposition he had caused his family inspired much guilt in him, but the text message he had received continued to bite at the surface of his mind. Janine was sorry? Bill looked about, shaking his thoughts loose and searching for the tin of coffee.

"Strong," Roger repeated, making his way down the hall to Jessica's room. Bill took a breath.

"I'll do it right now," he said.

### Chapter Nine

It had been a cruel thing to poke fun at her. Since being removed from the store at her complaint, he had found a strange development in himself: He continually thought about her. She despised him for what he had said. Perhaps Harold was right, and the occupational role she played was no less or more important than his own, and that everyone deserved to be with someone they admired. Robert wondered if the decisions she had made, the lifestyle she lived, had been developed for her by others, just as his had. She was not a beautiful woman, in the traditional sense, held odd features, yet also had a strange, enhanced attractiveness. Unique. Haunting. Her shouts at him that day had been fierce and unexpected, as well as wholly bewitching. Robert thought about his brother's anger and about his own arrogance, but beyond these things, his thoughts continually and illogically fell upon the checkout girl, Casandra in her uniform spewing lovely profanities, and these thoughts were now driving his stark attraction to her.

-from _The Dougan Brother_ s, Joyce Musso

It was over coffee in the well-lit kitchen that the two brothers tiredly wore their chairs, held their cups, and discussed the fairest portions of the romance novel Bill had retrieved the night previous. While neither possessed an expertise or depth of study on the subject, and only one of them had attempted to read a work of romantic fiction, the two felt at ease enough with the genre to hypothesize their inherent distaste of it. Bill, holding the book Amy had requested he read, opening to his dog-ear near the middle, continued his vocal sentiment that the book was godawful. This alone perforated his mood in an ample radius of guilt, for his views, now being expressed openly to his brother, seemed to him a minor betrayal of her fancy, and thoughtless, rude, though his whine over the book's emasculating flaws was also quite fun to express.

"Then he says (and I'm reading this exact), 'It is not me, but the history that you feel within you,'" Bill continued.

"Who talks like that?" Roger asked, chuckling.

"Wait wait, then, it explains after that bit, 'He knew the truth of her now. No find in the pharaoh's musty sarcophagus would quench what she had traveled to Egypt to find. Science and history had guided her, yes, to the tomb. She had come so far, but not for the dig. She had come to find Dr. Franklin.'"

"Of course she had. Dr. Franklin," Roger said.

"'Being with him before the mummified remains caused her to ache with thoughts she could not let settle, ideas that were no longer objective. Her own history ached for the doctor. Her own science repeatedly drew her eyes to him. She could not help herself, examining him as he examined the ancient remains. Such strength, such care, such intricacy, and yet so idle, so hidden.' Then she says, 'This is the real thing, Doctor. What we came for', and the guy, the doctor, says, 'But is it?'"

"Think these idiots are gonna do it on the tomb?" Roger asked.

"They can do whatever they want; they're all sparse and contradictory."

"Karen used to read those things."

"Yeah, I don't get it," Bill replied, "Is this supposed to be some subconscious urge to live in a horny fairy tale for a few days? With some buccaneer that looks like an oily body-model, or a rough, built Irishman that tames horses and then, oh gasp, a woman?"

"Those sound perfect. You should write one," Roger mused.

"No, those are real books. There are plugs in these things for other books. They're in the back. Some are serial, like ten books long and stuff like that."

"Somebody reads 'em."

"Well yeah, but I mean, how many times can a chick fall in love with different guys and still be even remotely interesting? If I met a woman and she told me she had been in love ten times in the past, I'd ditch her right then. She'd be illegitimizing herself, and me."

"Is that a word? Illegitaga... illegimatis... fuck, I can't even say it."

"If it isn't a real word, it should be. For this book, at least."

"Huh. Well, I'd ditch her too."

"Yeah, I mean, if you met someone and she said 'I will not let you fall in love with me', while on the job, you know, at work, where it's not even warranted or related to anything... you've never even spoken to this lady, and she just walks up and says that to you."

"I'd think she was nuts."

"You'd have to. But would you then proceed to treat her badly and inflict your shitty moods on her, then take her on a mountainside or something? "

"That sounds awesome. I'd totally do that."

"No. I mean, really. Would you be interested in a woman that treated you all ditzy and cruel, but then let you see her in the shower or something, I guess hoping you'd override what she's said and then do... I don't know, dominating sorts of behavior until she 'gives in' to your desire?"

"Okay, again, you're sort of making me like that scenario," Roger said.

"I just don't understand why these things sell at all. Do woman have some sort of thing where they want to be dominated and treated like shit by some buff dude, then turn him all weak with horniness so the two of them can 'give in' all erotic and helpless?"

" _Treasure Island_."

"What?"

" _Treasure Island_. Stevenson. We read it that Summer, remember?"

"Sure, yeah."

"What was the allure? Why did we like it?" Roger asked. Bill needed no time by which to concoct an answer.

"Are you kidding? Being marooned. Crazy adventure. Fucking pirates, man. Pirates."

"But fantasy, you know? People doing things you want to read because they're unusual things. They're unusual people."

"Oh, I see where you're going."

"Yeah. Maybe people read these cheesy romances because it's not real. It's just a special sort of fantasy." Bill drummed his fingers on the novel before him.

"This is no _Treasure Island_."

"Well, no. That sounds more like _Mysterious Erection Island_."

"You're not kidding," Bill said, "There's sex all over the place in here, even when they fight. They do it the first time on a cot in a lab, but the cot is small, so she has to move weird and do some 'steamy, sensual position' to make it work. The whole thing is really reaching."

"What was the position?"

"Who knows? One that let him 'grasp her buttocks' and 'control her movements'. You know, the whole taming-her thing again. She was on top," Bill said.

"Reverse Cowgirl," Roger guessed.

"Maybe. I mean, why not just have the lady say 'Listen Romeo... I want to be on top, facing your feet. It's my deal. Just relax; you'll like it.' Anyway, the archaeologist supposedly has this little, uncomfortable cot because he's mysterious."

"Sounds more like he has shitty funding."

"He's supposed to be this grumpy, genius sort of guy."

"He's a heart-penis," Roger said then, "That's all. Pump pump, sad sad, screw screw."

"Jesus, I hope so. I'm supposed to be romantic after reading this. I can't act like a two-dimensional archaeologist who gets a stiff-one next to a pile of dusty bones. I can, if pressed, be like a pumping-crying-then... screwing... thing, or whatever you said."

"There's a new girl down at the shop; I hired her for the customer service position. She's funny as hell and rather stunning. I have to admit, I'd love to take her on a mountainside or on some cot in a pyramid. That'd be a great thing for me, right now."

"Can't I write her a crush-note or something? I used to be really good at those. Or give flowers? These books are like torture," Bill said, ignoring his brother's confession of want.

"Well, to you. Probably not to her."

"Obviously. I just don't understand what I'm supposed to be learning from all of this. It's pure tale, nothing more. And not even a good one. No moral, no meaning, no point, no anything. Seriously. I'm just reading a brief story about hooking up. I can't learn anything from this. I mean, Amy and I already did that. We hooked up. We're dating."

"How's that going, anyway?" Roger asked.

"Great. I like Amy. She's new. I haven't dated someone like her," Bill said, pleased.

"I get it."

"Yeah. We've gone out a couple times and I think we've hit a sort of stride, you know? I know what to expect now, when she's having fun, when I'm annoying her, that sort of thing." This was something Bill had taken great pains to learn when younger, when and to what extent he was either pleasing, annoying, or being static and usual with people, especially women. He did not feel to have made ground with his scanning for these things, not until meeting Amy. She made far more sense to him than the women he had been with previous. Of course, it helped that the sexual tensions, doubts, and physical expectations were not between them, getting in the way of their vision of one another. These troubles were for Bill and Janine, and even then, they were minor dilemmas and solved with swiftness. Bill was free, for the first time in his adult life, to see the woman he dated through a clear lens, without the fogging of his heavier breaths distorting it.

"Does she get you?" Roger asked, offhand.

"What do you mean?"

Nick entered the kitchen then, his eyes swollen and ears red, having woken up minutes before. He made his way to the cupboard for a coffee cup.

"The babysitting, your calendars, where you've been, what you do," Roger continued.

"Oh, pretty much. She paints a little, so she likes that I make art. I haven't shown her any, but she's fine on that front. And yeah, she knows I watch the kids."

"How'd she react to that?" Roger asked, noting his son and the way the young man poured coffee into the cup. Nick tipped the coffee pot like an adult, not in the child-like way Christian poured juice, without enough estimation of the fluid's weight or flow. This was a silly thing to note, but Roger was full of this familial trivia, and lately found he somewhat missed the pre-teen Nick, who had always been clingy and mimicked Roger much.

"To me watching the kids? Fine. I don't think it matters," Bill replied.

"No?"

"No, why?" Bill asked.

"Well, women and kids, man. Most women want to know how a guy handles kids," Roger explained.

"Oh, she doesn't ever want to have kids." Nick exited the kitchen, back to his bear den. The goings-on there were likely the sort that encompassed most young men's rooms, and neither Bill nor Roger would want to know them.

"I think he's half zombie," Roger said then, nudging his finger at Nick's vanishing. Bill nodded and rubbed at his wrist a moment.

"Weren't you when you were his age?" he asked, more a statement than a question.

"No. And neither were you."

"I was three-quarter zombie. I remember it all too well," Bill corrected.

"Dude, when you were in high school, you'd wake up late, eat a quick breakfast while talking about Julie or whoever else, mention some weird thing you had discovered, like buzzards have three testicles, and then taunt me for awhile before heading out for school."

"Jesus, I remember that now. They do, you know."

"Yeah, you made sure I knew all about it. Anyway, when _I_ was in high school, I'd wake up late, drink coffee, freak myself out about a test in geometry or physics, and rush out the door."

"And pick on me. And ruin Santa Claus."

"Yeah well, whatever, I'm just saying that's pretty normal, but _that_ kid..." Roger said, again pointing at the area of Nick's exit, "he sort of worries me."

"Why's that?" Bill asked.

"You're with him a lot, I'm sure you've seen it," Roger said.

"Seen what?"

"He doesn't have any interests in anything."

"Oh, that," Bill said, well aware of Nick's solitary form of being.

"He plays video games," the father said, "And that's it. He doesn't even seem to _like_ the video games. He just sits there playing them, like, forever bored. And he doesn't seem to notice girls at all, even a little, or eat much, and he sure as hell doesn't talk to me, and... I mean, Nick doesn't even bother picking on Christian or Jess. It's inhuman."

"Do you want him to pick on the kids?" Bill asked.

"Of course I don't, but... _not_ doing any of that is irregular, isn't it?"

"Talk to him," Bill advised.

"I've tried. I think he reverts to video games in his own head during conversation. He's just... not there. He can do it at will. You used to do that, too, but not when dad was talking to us. Then, you'd at least listen."

"Sure."

"You know what else?" Roger asked then.

"What?"

"This is gonna sound weird but... I don't think he even, you know, jerks it or anything."

"Ah god, I don't wanna think about that stuff," Bill said with a frown.

"Well no, but I mean... we're guys, right? Is that natural at his age?"

"We've gone afoul. Next subject, I'm done with this one."

"Yeah well, I worry, is the thing. I want my kid to be at least a little normal."

"Teenagers are _supposed_ to twist you up, shit you out, all that. You get it; you've been a dad long enough. You'll always trip out about the kids. It's like an inborn prerogative. We drove dad crazy sometimes. And I know you remember being a teenager and what that's like: Everyone wants you to act like an adult, but no one will treat you like one. It's like a prolonged, horny limbo, and it sucks."

"I guess so. Schedule or not, I'm trying, at least. Anyway, what about you?"

"Me? Sure, I'm trying to understand the kids."

"No, we got off track. We were talking about your love interest. You know, how she doesn't like kids."

"Oh, yeah. Not into kids."

"But you are, is what I'm getting at. And you have experience now. I know you want to have your own eventually."

"Naw, maybe one day. And only one kid. Anyway, I'm fine right now. We're on the same page, she and I." Roger shrugged over this, checked his watch.

"So uh, you gonna stay the night sometime?" he asked his little brother with a knowing tone.

"Oh we've gotten to that already. We've only been dating about three weeks, but I mean, things are moving fast. The bedroom's not a problem," Bill said, knowing that Roger would likely conclude the sexual activity he had been up to was indeed a problem, owing that the activity did not take place with Amy, so to speak.

"I know that, I mean sleep over. Like, wake up and eat breakfast and talk, stay the weekend, all that. You know, adding a bit of domestic life to your relationship."

"Oh, well, I don't know. I spent most of a full night there once, but like I said, we've just started out, so a weekend would be kind of odd, at this point."

"It's a weird step, but if you like her, it'll happen sooner or later."

"No, not that. It's more like Amy has... there's sort of a hitch with her living arrangements, I'll say."

"She live with her mom or something?"

"No, a roommate," Bill said, unable to rummage in his mind an explanation of Janine that would serve so early in the morning.

"Oh, yeah, that makes nights awkward. I had a roommate when I met Karen. It's another hoop to jump through. Pretty lame."

"Something like that." Roger raised his eyebrow and adopted a feigned alarm.

"Roommate's not a guy, right?" he asked.

"Oh, no. No, she's a she."

"Is this the 'Opinionated Friend' setup?"

"Not opinionated, no."

"Or else maybe the 'Ugly-Jealous-Friend' situation?"

"God no." Janine was anything but ugly and did not seem to hold traces of jealousy over Bill or Amy. She seemed to exist for the sole purpose of physical interaction, and the most pleasantly relieving kind. Bill had visited Janine several times now and was fond of these visits, but also bothered by her behavior. There was so much more to a human being than what you could do with them nude. He could not shake the suspicion that Amy and Janine's dynamic was altogether askew, that there was more going on between them than two women dating a single man.

"Well, then you're in the clear. But keep your eyes in your head, is all I can say."

"They're uh, related," Bill said.

"Sisters?"

"They're like sisters."

"Well, if they fight a lot, geh, stay away from drama, little brother. Keep your dates away from her place as much as possible, then."

"No no, it's more like... I don't know. Doesn't matter."

The subject of Bill's dating arrangement trailed off then, with Roger setting his cup in the sink and Bill letting his mind wander toward his calendar work. Several minutes had eaten from Roger before he decided to tell his brother something. This was an easy decision, but the timing of the statement could have been odd. Roger had never been adept at introducing things. He had found it of greater benefit to state them when he could.

"So listen, I met someone," Roger explained.

"You?" Bill responded. The older brother frowned.

"Jesus, thanks a lot."

"Ah, I meant I didn't think you had time to meet people. The speed dating thing was like, some desperate attempt. And it didn't work."

"Yeah well, it kind of did."

"You've been doing more speed dating? When?"

"No, just that one. I kind of moved on someone there, you know, got her phone number, and we met and had lunch yesterday on my break."

"I don't know a lot about romance, but I know _that's_ not very romantic."

"You make do with what you have. Break time was all I got yesterday. I gotta pay the bills and I have to do it above a certain level to keep this family afloat."

"I know, I'm just messing with you a little."

"So, she's pretty cool and we're going out again, this time for dinner."

"Sounds like things are working, then. Congratulations. She's from the speed dating thing?"

"Yeah, that's where we met."

"Hell, then I dated her, too. Which one?"

"She was my Gal #5."

"Lemme guess, the uptight woman with the large chin. Had a gray sweater?"

"Deanna? No, not my style." Bill's eyes widened and he smiled.

"I'm impressed, Roj, I never even got that one's name out of her."

"She was about as conversant as roadkill. I just asked her up front for her name."

"I started doing that, too. Uh let's see, the laugh-track-and-weed lady?"

"Huh?"

"One of them had a thing for sitcoms and smoking pot. That was her favorite recreational thing."

"No. That wouldn't be Mel. Mel was—"

"Mel? The larger girl with the self-esteem issues?" Bill asked. Roger paused there, annoyed.

"That's a shitty thing to say, man."

"I don't mean it that way; both of those things are objective. I mean she was larger in size and she also had a pretty low self-image. I did like her, though."

"I don't give a shit what you like, Bill. We hit it off. What's wrong with that?"

"Nothing, I think that's great. I didn't mean to sound so shocked or anything. She was nice. And she mentioned you, you know."

"When?"

"On our date. Round two. The lists were boring so I asked if she liked anyone yet. She pointed at you." Roger smiled then.

"Yeah?"

"That's a fact. She said you were handsome and funny, even if you talked about cartoons the whole time."

"Oh hell, I know. I don't understand how I got started on that. I mentioned the kids and suddenly I'm talking about the new season of _Kid-Squad Go!_ "

"I can't stand that show. It's obnoxious."

"No? I kind of like it. But anyway, that makes me feel good if she mentioned liking me."

"She wasn't into the idea that you had kids, but apparently she seems to have gotten over that, which is cool. I'm happy for you, man."

"Well, that's not right. Mel loves kids. She can't wait to meet them."

"She said that?" Bill asked, surprised.

"Did she tell you she hated kids?"

"Well, no. She didn't say 'hate', just that kids weren't her thing. Obviously, she's willing to try new things if she knows you have kids, and if she's still willing to get involved with you."

"Yeah... yeah, I guess so. Huh."

"Does she 'get you?'" Bill asked then, repeating his brother's earlier inquisition with humor. He was beginning to get tired of hearing his own voice, and decided to start in on breakfast for Christian and Jessica.

"Who knows? We're going out Saturday night again. It'll be our first full-on date, an evening, you know. Oh, by the way, I need you to watch the kids Saturday night."

"I can't, man. Shit, I'm going out with Amy," Bill said, rooting through the refrigerator for various breakfast articles. He had decided on eggs and toast, which would be simple, and a breakfast he knew Jessica was fond of.

"You are? Damn. I knew I should have asked you earlier."

"We'll find a sitter," Bill said.

"Something."

"Hey, maybe that Mandy girl, down the street. Remember her?"

"Oh yeah, she did it before. Wait wait, no, I think she went off to college this year," Roger said.

"If she did, she's back in town right now. I saw her out front yesterday, jogging past. She uh... was smaller."

"Smaller?" Roger repeated.

"I think maybe she had a reduction," Bill said.

"A reduction for- _oh_. Yeah, those. Well, she was sort of disproportionate, so it makes sense. Good for her."

"Probably cheaper than seeing a chiropractor for life."

"Man, I sort of forgot about that girl. They were kind of daunting, weren't they? Or freakish."

"And underaged."

"Oh, I _know_. You weren't supposed to notice them, right? But then you'd get all guilty because you _did_ notice them. A lot. Anyway, go see if you can set it up later today, would you? If she'd watch the kids maybe."

"Will do," Bill answered, setting the egg carton on the counter and retrieving a skillet from one of the lower cupboards. The skillet was not absolutely clean, however, and had a small fleck of something burnt near the rim of the handle. This indicated the likelihood that Bill, and not Roger, had done the washing. He quickly held the pan over the sink and nudged loose the burnt grit with his thumb, doing so with a turn of his body so that Roger would not notice. Roger's compulsion with the dishes was unruly, and Bill did not feel like encountering this agitating impulse right then.

"Whoa whoa, hold on... little brother!" Roger exclaimed, his mind sparking. Bill looked at him, waiting. Roger put his hands out, a gesture that indicated he had come across a wondrous notion or epiphany.

"Ho ho, little brother!" he repeated.

### Chapter Ten

On the one hand, Todd and Wendy were dynamic, having found a sense of oneness in their relationship. They shared not only their accounts and materials, but seemed, in a behavior that Joanie found disturbing, to portion even their outlooks and tastes between one another. Each was well-versed on the other's occupation and thoughts. She and Mitchell were entirely different, however. They shared neither their incomes nor, at angry times, their bed. Each of them was separate and agreed to the relationship, but was a self untied to the other's inner workings. They argued, had split up several times, and were prone to long grudges, however, they were the more fiery of the two couples at the dinner table, and if she had to choose which she thought would outlast the other, it would be her own relationship. Even then, having fought in the morning, they sat at the dinner table across from the other couple and Mitchell was holding her hand out of view. Todd and Wendy looked pleased but dull, and seemed to have lost their physical appetite for each other long ago.

-from _Tomorrow for Fish_ , Alicia Hines

There was perhaps no more inscrutable temperament that Roger could demonstrate than the one in which he used to take account of Bill's habits and choices. The new relationship with Amy exhibited the younger brother well. This was as if a stopper had been pulled and Roger was free to gauge the contents of his younger brother's makeup, to learn through observation just what made Bill the man he was. The manner in which Bill spoke and interacted with Amy, at first on the phone, and now in front of Roger, gave the impression of confidence, a sort that Roger had not seen in his brother for some time, the last demonstration of which had taken place on the front lawn of their parents home, almost two decades ago, and involved Bill having finally performed a laid-out backflip on the trampoline before Roger could. Reading Bill was like, Roger mused, reading a calendar, and there was no better way in which to gauge a calendar than by the structure of its dates. Bill would, if granted insight into Roger's current thoughts, disagree.

"What are you, Nostradamus?" Amy asked, "There is no feasible way the United States Department of Defense, or Department of Transportation, for that matter, would ever consent to letting civilians have access to hovering cars. Even if they could be built, with afterburners or a flight apparatus, whatnot, they'd never let you or I have one."

"I think they would. It'd be the future. We could all fly around," Mel replied. The two girls had not spoken much since the double-date's outset, but were warming to one another. This was of benefit to the group, as prior to this, Roger and Amy, being those with the most energy, had done most of the talking. Bill, while being outspoken in life, seemed to quiet himself more when around Amy, which Roger found fascinating. She tended to outwit him with ease, and though Bill was no stranger to the art of teasing others, this was perhaps the first relationship he had entered wherein he was not the one doing the teasing. Amy was better at it, and Bill's cowing to this showed something of him that Roger enjoyed, which was that Bill was not trying to impress her or be a strong figure for her, as he had done in past relationships, but rather, he simply liked being around her and did not feel a need to show off.

The restaurant was not so busy as to be discomforting, but had enough current patronage to cause the foursome remain at a mellow volume. With their meals before them, and all but Amy eating pasta, they tapped at their meals and sipped from their glasses, engaging in worldly conversation of the future. The teeter-totter introductions had passed, and they were free to converse on outer topics that reached beyond the table and who would be ordering what.

"Ah come on, it'd be heavily regulated and give us way too much freedom to kill ourselves. They'd slam down the congressional cock-block on that instantly, for the same reason you can't fly a jump-jet around town," Amy retorted, having not yet touched her sole.

"Cars were insanely dangerous at first, but they let everyone have those," Roger threw in, nudging with Mel.

"And it's a nightmare," Amy responded, "People fly through windshields, they drown in rivers stuck in seatbelts. Tires blow out and send tons of death all over the place, into poles, trees, houses, other cars... The human body isn't designed to handle all that. Cars don't handle it that well, either," Amy retorted. Bill tuned into this explanation with zeal, for it touched his thoughts regarding the automobile wrecks in his floundering calendar.

"So you shouldn't drive a car because you might die? By that logic, you shouldn't go outside because lightning might plunge into your neck," Roger responded, finding this discussion, and Amy's opinion, of interest.

"Cars are capable of speeds and mobility humans can only dream about having themselves, and they fascinate us, but they run afoul for the same reason. We get enchanted by them and they can kill us for it," Bill said.

"That's the thing," Amy continued, "People shouldn't drive cars. People shouldn't fly planes. They shouldn't eat the things they eat, or believe half the dreck they believe. It's unnatural. But they do it anyway. They just shrug and keep doing it. People are sort of driven to make things anew. Build things they don't need. The whole species is totally fucking crazy."

"So, this is like a naturalist thing. Some sort of eco-religion, right? How could anyone live like that? Would you really want to live in caves, subsisting on twigs and grasses?" Roger poked.

"I take it you don't drive," Mel added.

"No, I drive. And I eat whatever I eat," Amy responded, "But I do it because it's what exists for me. Part of being human is engaging your culture, figuring out where in it you want to fit, where you don't, and what parts of it you're willing to take in, or that you'd rather get rid of. Bypass too much and no one likes you, but if you accept too much of it... well, then there isn't much _you_. This kind of living people have now is just what people have made. I'm not some idealist asshole with vague utopian yearnings or whatever. I mean, don't get me wrong. I don't want to be a hermit that can't eat steak or drive to the movies. I groove like everyone else grooves. It's just that while I do it, I find a lot of things to be very silly, that's all."

"This coming from a woman that likes romance novels," Bill tossed in, approaching her tastes with a smile and a jab.

"Me? I don't read that crap," she said, finally taking a small bite of the sole.

"Wait, what?" Bill dropped his fork on his plate and turned to face her. The surprise on his face was a sundry of humor and actual daze. Bill knew she was lying; she liked romantic novels.

"They're hopelessly sad and fake," she said, acting as if to judge him for reading them. Bill realized then that she was not lying; she had lied in the past about liking them.

"Wait- you're serious? Then why the hell did you give me one and tell me to read it?" Bill asked, his voice raised in the slight. Mel listened to this conversation with a lesser attention, as it did not involve her, and in her own mind, was not the sort of conversation for which she was allowed to take part. She had only a vague idea of what they were talking about, that Amy had given Roger's brother a romance novel to read, which he did, and apparently this was all a prank.

"I gave it to you so you could pick at it and get all annoyed."

"Oh, he did that," Roger chuckled.

"Anyway, it was mostly Janine's idea, but every now and then, she has an okay idea. I don't know, the book was Bill-like, you know?" Amy said.

"It was nothing like me," Bill said, agitated but laughing, "It was poison. I don't read those things either."

"Come on, Bill. You're a smarty. I know you figured out a thing or two about women from that book."

"That thing taught me nothing but how to get laid in an Egyptian pyramid with an old, gruff, guy archaeologist."

"Might come in handy, one day," Amy said.

"Yeah, I bet."

The waiter approached and, bending slightly before their table, inquired as to the acceptability of their respective meals. They all consented that the meals were fine, though Roger asked another glass of wine. Mel raised an eyebrow at this, but said nothing. The waiter nodded, making his way to the next table in his section. As he did so, Bill noted the strange walk and odd posture of the man, and let himself decide the waiter's fate. This server would not understand when, at the age of sixty-one, a man in a mask in his living room chose to stay when ordered to leave, despite that the waiter had armed himself before approaching the intruder. The waiter would be just as confused when the unarmed thief rushed forward in the dim room and brought about a physical conflict that carried them both to the floor. This confusion, which had as its seat a misdirection in his understanding of human nature, would last only as long as his life, which was to vanish in a flit of metal from his own firearm, and post haste.

"So, Janine is who? Your roommate?" Roger asked. Amy thought this over a moment. Bill's nerves itched. He had not yet mentioned the truth about Janine to his brother, for the certain awkwardness the explanation would have to carry. At some point, Bill would need to set his relationship straight to Roger, and tell him that he was dating two different women that functioned, where he was concerned, as one.

"We live together, yeah. I'm pretty attached to her. We're like two parts of the same person," Amy said.

"Cool. Bill mentioned you were related. Sisters?"

"Oh, we're related by blood. We come from the same family, but it's a distant sort of family."

"I see. Connected somewhere up the family tree. We have relatives like that," Roger said, indicating Bill and himself with a quick wave of the hand.

"Distant cousins. Everybody has those, even if you don't know about them," Mel added.

"The connection's there, for sure. Mainly, we support one another," Amy replied.

"Two incomes make the rent. I know just what you mean. You have to do it these days," Roger said, looking over at Bill and narrowing his eyes.

"It's coming. Relax. My publisher will pick up some work soon, I think. She said so," Bill rummaged, mock-defending.

"But no, I'm being sober, here," Amy reverted, bringing the previous topic back into discussion and aiming into Bill's court, "when you were bitching about how awful the book was, you thought about women, right?" Bill sighed.

"I'll vouch for that, though it wasn't pleasant," Roger voiced.

"Are you kidding? I thought about grasping buttocks and damned mummies," Bill muttered. Mel found this confusing. Amy nodded.

"Okay, yeah, but that aside, you wondered why a woman would want such a book, right?"

"I puzzled over that, yes," Bill admitted.

"Well, what'd ya learn, B.S.?" she asked.

"Don't call me B.S. Come up with something better. And all that book showed me was that, apparently, there are women out there who think that being unpredictable and sporadic means they somehow deserve to have exotic, masculine men tame their burning loins or whatever. I can't believe you tricked me into reading that crap."

"Ever tamed someone's burning loin, Bill?" she asked. Roger snorted at this.

"No, that requires antibiotics," Bill replied. Roger laughed, which temporarily halted the conversation, as well as those at nearby tables. Mel was a little shocked at this laugh and with the conversation in general. She used the moment to quietly pick at her meal.

"Well," Amy coaxed back into talk, "when you've finally 'tamed' the elusive burning loin, maybe you'll feel kind of exotic and masculine like all the guys in those books."

"You mean like a two-dimensional stereotype with rippling pectorals? Why the hell would I want that? Burning loins are bad news."

"No, I mean like a commanding, high-performance, three-dimensional Bill," she said before elevating her voice as if a high-pitched, warbling character in a cartoon, "the kind with a self he's happy with."

"Okay, self-help overtones and weird childishness aside, I think I'd prefer the pecs."

"You need a large chest like I need toxic shock," Amy replied. Now it was Mel's turn to snort.

"You don't think I'd look good all buffed out?" Bill asked, curious.

"No, part of your charm is in that whole, pot-bellied, should-brush-more-often, left-shoe-untied nature that you put out for the world to see," Amy replied, seeming offhand.

"Pff." Bill waved this statement off, then ever slowly leaned back to examine his shoe, which surprised him in being untied.

"That was sneaky," he admitted.

"Is your shoe actually untied?" Roger asked.

"Yes." Roger's eyes widened and he clapped his hands once, light.

"Little brother, you can't possibly date this woman. She runs circles around you." This was a bizarre experience for Roger, watching Bill squirm under the microscope of his girlfriend, noting how Bill seemed to fight it here and there, but yet ultimately enjoyed it. Roger was somewhat delighted to see his sibling taunted in this minor way.

"Well, I like her running in circles," Bill said, feigning disgruntlement.

"He's the kind of guy that makes loins burn," Amy added. Mel gagged then on her lasagna. Roger smiled. Amy was rather sensational.

"Sorry; I didn't mean to make you choke," Amy said. Mel took a moment to catch her breath.

"Um, it's fine. I just- mine don't burn until at least the third date." Roger was surprised and found humor in this. Mel was loosening up a little. He had hoped this would happen, especially after Bill had explained to him his thought that she had a low self-image. This particular thing did not perturb Roger, but it was something for which he would desire bettering if the relationship continued. Roger had learned many lessons from his failed marriage, and one of these was that he preferred not to attempt changing others, unless it was to please them or keep them from disliking themselves. With Karen, this had been implausible. She loved herself, hated life, and felt that bouncing around on men was a pastime that should not be restricted by the taboos of variation and frequency. Roger had learned this facet of her thinking and subsequent behavior the hard way.

"Hey, every girl has a system," Amy responded.

"Third date, huh? What date is this?" Roger asked, joking.

"One-and-a-half," Mel replied after some thought.

"Want to go out next Thursday? And then see half a movie Friday?" Mel rolled her eyes at this, but seemed to find some humor in it. Amy then leaned to the side and whispered something in Bill's ear. Bill responded by nodding, and then removed a small portion of his pasta and set it on Amy's plate for her to try. She smiled, gave a brief 'thanks', and then flicked his ear with her finger. Roger, noting this interaction, reached a conclusion that he found entertaining and in need of oration.

"You know what? I think maybe I figured out what's really going on with the romance novel thing, Bill. What you're supposed to learn from it, or study," he offered. Amy's stake in this caused her to tilt her head, indicating she was intrigued and waiting to hear Roger's synopsis.

"Lay it on me," Bill said, tooling his fork in his pasta.

"You're the chick."

### Chapter Eleven

Was it that she had forgotten his troubles, or was ignoring them for a caring purpose? He had spent so much time alone, and yet did not allow himself the fault of dissipation, of giving up. His rash mind had tempered over the years, and his face had changed, lapsed into another appearance, becoming unkempt, more human, even unsavory. Through these layers of obstacle and his better knowledge, he had somehow found her preferable, and sought to care for her in his own way. This was disastrous and wondrous at once. What little she knew of his history, and what sparse bits of intrigue had propelled her to him. He had been alone by choice, and for a duration that had altered him, isolated him. His business partner had been his only acquaintance for many years, and now, with business picking up, this woman had allowed herself to be lowered into his life, needing nothing but that he want her, waiting for what she believed he was and would become, but something he knew she would find, in time, not to exist.

-from _Everything and Even More_ , Miriam Dalhberg

There were large things disguised as small things. These intricacies held much sway with the man, and the woman, while not urged or openly asked to accept them, needed to adopt them as positives. The kids. His life. His brother. His art. His future. These were tertiary processes, but mere adjectives of life, and they were the facets for which Bill had come to know the world, shaken its hand, and taken up with one of its most unique creatures. The creature, in this instance, was clever and thoughtful, rude and sardonic, but had him, somehow, and in a powerful grip.

As Saturday evening bore out its usual accommodations, with Bill and Janine affecting their both primitive and advanced sensations of lust, Amy sat in the Arch Street Diner, bits of construction paper littering her table, one of which had even fallen into her coffee. The month had been strong for her man, with his job having turned about, and the slim girders of his confidence slowly being replaced with more durable material. Sex had begun this, but a greater sense of affection was what gave these alterations their pliability, was what benefited Bill most, even if he knew little of it, or who to thank for these changes.

Amy wore her Saturday night alone, sipping her coffee and cutting the construction paper, knowing that she was successful as a woman, that she understood her independence, and that she had chosen to please and better a man because she wanted him bettered, pleased, and not because the ages had given her this manner. In truth, the ages had offered her nothing but hollow judgment and a life of hiding herself within a shape that frightened men, that caused them to shun her into other forms, other fashions of women she had not wanted to be. Man's governance in his past cultures had been an awkward bombast of role-driven, gender catastrophe: Disgust for a mother, fear of a daughter, yet somehow still there was love, and all around it, more life.

Dinners became drinks and drinks became dinners in equal fashion, their nights growing into trysts of edification. She found so much in Bill she had not expected. The ability to end life, to cease hearts, to paralyze and heap fear were her ways, which for Bill were useless and needed to be hidden. The ability to mesmerize and charm, to satisfy and hold were the ways of her sister, the truth of Janine, and these were facets that Bill was fond of. And so it was with an amount of tremor that she gave Janine to him, certain nights, and so it was that Bill left her, for small spans, to know the illusion outwardly, to be had and held by it, to feel human and adored, confined by his own emotion in a room for which his true relationship could not enter. His body, his humanity, was loved, but never by her, never by the true snake for which he had instinctively known to grasp by the neck.

The manner in which Amy had entered Bill Sherman's sad life was not so much like opening up his doors and shouting down the halls, but more like slithering in through the basement, up into the living room, under the door into the bedroom, and she now coiled in a hearty arrangement in his attic. She was a lovely snake, fierce in a way, secure and insecure at once, but so important, so sharp, so meaningful and serious. So sexy. Janine existed merely, and Bill had come to accept the arrangement of using her, or being used, himself, but which was occurring he could not ascertain. Janine did not exist much, but found him of such benefit, gave him such compliments, that Bill had begun to find her hyper-real, a quivering nerve into himself. Her praise of him was so overblown, however, that he had ceased believing the things she said. Janine's mind seemed designed for little more than pillow talk, and a marvelous, empowering sort. His occasional nights with her approached clarity, in that he no longer felt to have created a bond with her, no matter the antics performed, no matter the creaturely warmth between them. Each moment he spent with Janine was a moment, in his mind, he had spent with Amy.

The evening would offer Amy four cups of coffee, the last of which would sit until cold, while she dawdled her time at the table, cutting out the little hearts and stringing them together with pink twine. She thought it such a silly thing, and for a bit of celebration that many men did not hold close to their minds, but still she sat and cut out the hearts, making arms-length rows in her ongoing valentine.

As a girl, if she had shown little warmth to a boy, it was because, congruent with many other troubles boys found themselves in, there was another person, and in this instance, another girl. That she had both allowed and promoted this situation was a purposeful doing, and the boy seemed happy. As a woman, if she had outwitted a man and made him feel at times to be minor in stature and thought, it was only because he had not realized he enjoyed this sort of her, and as she prodded and teased, outrunning, racing to his humor and taunting him, the man seemed happy. As a serpent, if she had worked about his neck and changed his direction, if she had hidden herself in the brush, seeing his luck, changing these things from near his feet, giving him a means, it was because this was her nature, creating lariats and pitfalls, traps to catch him and keep him close, as all predators knew to do, whether it be for the kill, the mate, or safety. These were her means. She worked behind and ahead of him, altering outcomes and cutting little hearts, crushing on him and sipping her coffee.

The man could have no notion of the goings on in Amy's mind. She was too clever and her process too agile for him to decipher. Had he the ability to know her in this way, to cross-pollinate his thoughts with her own, he would have understood that Amy, herself was prone to fantasy, and that her own mirrored his considerably. As his hand sparked, conducting its sensations of physical attraction, of pleasure and human syncopation with her other self, with Janine, Amy fantasized that this touch was upon her. When the man kissed her other self, she imagined he kissed her, and when he visited Janine in the apartment, initiating bouts of physical bliss the likes of which she could not feel, she almost seemed, by her imagination alone, to feel them.

It was a supreme jealousy Amy had for Janine, an envy for her lesser, for a head that held no poison and possessed no petrifying stare, a head that could only feel, hold, and nearly worship a man in those manners he seemed to feel most. The irony was that this was an unloving head, and wholly disabled from knowing what it instilled in Amy's lover. Amy's emotions were untied from this arrangement, let free, and were by their own hubris condemning. She reaped a bounty of him that she could not earn, for he cared about her, but she lost another treasure in which she had held a strong aspect, as she was now both poisoner and poisoned, and had never been a head by which humanity wished to endure.

It was his kiss that kept calling into her, that had brought her coiling about his chest and nape, not to bite, not to kill, but for his warmth, his companionship. Bill had unwittingly, in the most human way, charmed a great snake for which he could not see nor hear. He had touched her, only briefly, tasted her poisoned lips, transfixed her with his very self. How long had it been since she felt to be female? Bill's very kiss, in its short, sparse nature, drunken and dopey, had made her feel for once to be what she had failed so magnanimously to be: Human. A woman. Fit. Amy knew Bill as a woman would, but Janine knew him in the manner a snake knows a man, as a warm enemy for which to strike quickly, bite hard, destroy from the inside-out as you coiled, watching. There were a great many sorts of poison.

After examining her handiwork, Amy wrote _Be My Valentine or I'll Slit You Open Like a Fish_ on a stark white, then began cutting out the largest heart, which beat for her in the diner's grease-heavy air, a pulse of her fond thoughts. Perhaps she might cut out some letters as well, larger and shapely, spell something outwardly cute but inwardly devious and string this together. Valentines Day, in the modern time, was a holiday that best serviced the wry. With hearts set out and the twine running through them, a message written and her gesture near complete, Amy settled into doctoring the creation while her fourth cup cooled. She added ribbon, twisted the strand of hearts into a helix, thought of Bill, thought of Bill.

Amy wore the clothes that were made for her, ate the food that was served her, in the world as a point to the world, human and real. She listened to the talk and she spoke with wit and insight. These were doctorings, details, spin. She made herself seen, she neglected her poison, she settled with Janine and stretched them apart, gave them each a plausible chance at escaping their sick obscurity. She had made them women. What was she earning from this? Human frailty when she was not quite human. Ophidian urges when she was not quite snake. The fears and dread she inspired as a quiet beast now fought against her as a woman, dreadful and frightening as she was, as she hid from. This was the matter by which she drew her remaining life. This let her poisons sleep, gave her anger a tempering, and her fears, as serpent or woman, a glimpse of reprieve, of love. The Sun rose and she was desired, womanly, or the Sun rose and she was hideous, ghastly. These were differing creatures with but one day repeating, and faced the same, isolated penury at day's end, for she was, in either form, wholly alone.

In the final detail, as Bill left the apartment and Janine, setting out on his drive home to his family and sleep, Amy set the money on her guest check. The string of hearts was laid out across the table, a valentine, her night near its end and adorned with a gesture of affection. There was a slight sigh that left her as she slowly smiled, coaxing her glue-pen about the word _Fish_ , creating a sub-heart around it, soon shimmering and specked in the sweetly girlish use of glitter.

### PART TWO

### Chapter Twelve

The smell of oil and diesel sat in the air, rusty engine parts in heaps near their feet. The tall stacks of compressed automobile, thousands of pounds each, towered around them. He leaned on one arm, propped against one such tower and leisurely gave the explanation she had asked for. It was here, amid so much ruin and stressed metal that she surpassed her inhibitions and gave in to her whims. As Eddie continued detailing where her car had been stacked after being crushed, Laney reached out and placed her hand on his. She was not interested in what had happened to her wrecked car. Did he not know that? Eddie ceased talking, a dark mood overtaking him. Don't, his eyes told her, but she had never been one for listening to a man's eyes.

-from _The Scrapyard_ , Heather Allen

When Amy entered the living room, leaving behind their previous, non-domestic romance, Bill Sherman's levels of oxytocin, norepinephrine, and general endorphin rose. When she glanced about the room with an uncritical eye, unusual for her, his oxytocin level raised a smidge more, and the amount of vasopressin in his system dropped dramatically. Amphetamine molecules sped and androsterone levels increased. This condition, with a more alert consciousness and an urge to enjoy his surroundings, systemically demonstrated his attraction for Amy to be near overwhelming, yet by some power the man remained docile. It would require a surge of dopamine, a raise of serotonin, and a near flood of DHEA to arouse him sexually, and while these had been aroused much in the last month, not by the woman for whom he felt attached. This, he would have surmised, was due to the system by which he dated her, which tolerated the frequent visitations to another woman, one that inspired his sexual chemistry with a greater index. What Bill would not have known, despite his hormonal acceptance of it, was that Amy was chocked with the squalene pheromone, which worked on Bill only slightly less than it would have functioned on a male viper, the latter, when exposed to squalene, being fully robbed of his urge to mate.

Love to Bill was a chemical affair, and had he the rudimentary, biochemical knowledge of his body's workings and regulations, he might have aspired to accept his feelings for Amy as being, in fact, his definition of romance. The chemicals were there, hearty and well-constituted, and it was by no accident that Bill felt such a bond with her; his was a sturdy, mechanical system of pumps and wells that controlled this sensation of union, that caused his thoughts to grow fond and quite clear, to make him alert and thankful. That he had transformed, over the weeks, into a bit of a show-off was physiologically concurrent with his dating style and state, and so it was by several bodily processes, most not recognizable to the bare eye, that Bill's hand ushered over, attempting to find the hand of a wondrous woman.

"Keep it to yourself, B.S," Amy said, smacking his hand back to him.

"Sorry," he said, riddled with both adoration and embarrassment. Things had been agreed to, of course, and he was not to touch her.

They entered the kitchen and Bill gave a shout, calling the kids. His noise was responded to by a similar loud utterance from his older brother, in the garage. Amy followed as they made their way through the kitchen entryway, walking into the large, attached garage, which was devoid of vehicles (both brothers' cars being parked out front). This was the room in which Bill lived, and at that moment was also arranged to evenly separate three bicycles, one of which Roger knelt beside, a rag with him, turning a rear-hub nut with an aged wrench. Christian sat beside his father, watching in a bored manner, while Jessica stood near Bill's desk, looking at a photograph of a World War II era medical jeep that had collided with a retaining wall.

"Hey man, fixin' bikes?" Bill asked. Roger grunted, unable to tighten the nut further.

"It's the heat. We were out for like, maybe twenty minutes when his rear tire blew out, and then when we were walking home, Jesse's front tire popped," the father explained.

"That's a drag. It's hot out, makes the air in the tires expand," Bill commented.

"Found that out."

"Hon, that excellent example of boyhood over there is Christian, and the gnomish youngling over by _my desk_ is mighty Jessica," Bill introduced, indicating he was not so sure he enjoyed the little one being near his files and photographs. Amy gave a brief greeting to Christian, who shrugged, bland. The nine-year old considered his father with a level of respect only slightly elevated from the level at which he respected Bill, this being near enough to zero to be mathematically insignificant. Amy would be allotted this same level of respect by her mere association with the haphazard uncle.

"Man, when you get older, other guys are going to want to be just like you," Amy commented, examining the young boy. Christian's eyes dulled, more in confusion than else. Roger was puzzled by this statement, as well.

"Because of your build. Look," Amy added. An uncertain Christian slowly looked down at his arms and legs.

"You'll fill out and just dominate. It'll be weird at first, but awesome," she closed. Christian only sat there, blinking a moment, adopting the expression he wore when beginning to conjure a rude or snide remark. This outcome did not occur, however. Instead, he simply shrugged and sat there, perplexed and running these statements through his nine-year-old mind. His father was looking at him then, scanning for traces of what she had said. The only thing Christian was able to quickly determine was that he found Uncle Bill's girlfriend to be strange.

Amy drew back then, with a slight gasp, noting that her hand had been quietly adopted by another, much smaller one. The reaction to tug her hand away passed, and after a thoughtful moment, Amy allowed the contact. Jessica stood next to her, looking up.

"Pree," she said, a curious smile and smooth eyes denoting a mind being quite active. Bill noticed the look most when she colored.

"Well, thank you. A girl's gotta try," Amy said, kneeling down and facing the little one.

"She can talk, but she's been reverting back to baby-speak lately. They say it's normal but I don't know, it seems funny to me, going back to gibberish," Roger explained with a touch of defense. Amy gave Jessica a comically suspicious look.

"Naw, you pree," Amy said.

"She usually isn't into people. Congratulations," Bill said, impressed with the way Jessica had taken to Amy with such immediacy. The little girl had lately been moody, and the two men had discussed the notion of getting her a friend or two. Preschool would serve many purposes for Jessica, and Roger had come to the decision of enrolling her for the next year. That was seven months away, however. Until then, Bill had been running through notions of finding her some acquaintances, somehow. Jessica held Amy's hand and was examining the palm, taking account of each knuckle, feeling the general contours.

"Pree, huh?" Roger noted.

"Oh, she complimented me, but I shot it back," Amy explained. Jessica chuckled and then began leading Amy by the hand to the kitchen-entry.

"Uh, where ya takin' her, slingshot?" Roger asked. That was a new one to Bill, a nickname he had not heard before.

"Crittoys," Jessica said, paying them little attention and pulling Amy through the doorway. Jessica had uttered this in a way that indicated she thought it was obvious why they were leaving.

"Relax," Amy said over her shoulder, "The little mongoose just wants to show me the toys in her brother's room." Christian frowned and stood up then, following.

"Don't go in my room," he said strongly. After a moment, the girls had left and Christian disappeared after them. The three were gone, leaving Roger and Bill alone in the garage. The sound of Christian bickering at Jessica subsided and became muffled.

"Huh, that was abrupt. We just walked in," Bill said. Roger wiped the small allotment of grease from his hands on a rag.

"Little brother, I feel I should state for court record that I'm incredibly jealous of you right now."

"Oh yeah?" Roger waved his hand toward the kitchen entryway where Amy had exited.

"She's cool as hell," he said, "You don't deserve that girl, you lucky ass."

"Well, she has her good side and bad side, like anyone," Bill said, relaxed.

"Yeah, I bet she does. I'm giving full disclosure that if you two break up, I'm totally going to call her."

"She'd eat you alive," Bill said.

"I could only wish."

"How are things with Mel?"

"Okay. Not great, but moving along, I suppose. We've had a few dilemmas arise, but nothing too problematic or anything."

"Like what?" Bill asked.

"Oh... well, mostly what you said. Self-esteem issues. I kind of get sucked into this game where she'll... insult herself, you know? And so I have to do some back patting and cheer-up sort of stuff, trying to make her feel better. It works, mostly, but just comes back later. There's only so many times you can tell someone they're not ugly, or that they're not dumb, before you just get tired of saying it, especially if it's true. Mel's not ugly or dumb except in her own mind."

"I understand."

"She thinks all of her past relationships went bad because she's not a good person to be with, I think. I don't know, she's talked about those guys a little, and it sounds to me like she dated some real fuckheads. Just... losers. But she sort of thinks it's her."

"That's awful."

"Yeah, right? I mean, we get along; I'm just hoping I can sneak a little optimism into her sometime soon. Not even a lot, just enough to let her not hate the way she looks or get all grumpy about doing things in public. That would change a lot, I think." There was a loud yell then with a touch of whine to it and the entry door opened. Christian hopped into the garage, aggravated and rubbing his face.

"What's up, buddy?" Roger asked, concerned.

"Dude, you're stupid-ass girlfriend spit in my face," he exclaimed.

"What?" Bill responded. Roger cocked his head back, baffled by this.

"Watch your language," the father said.

"She spit on you?" Bill asked. Christian rubbed wetness from his eyes, his large frown opening.

"It was sick. She's screwed up," he said. Amy appeared in the doorway and growled like an animal. Bill looked at her, confused. After a moment, Jessica appeared, peeking from between Amy's knees. Jessica also growled. Roger only stared at this, blinking.

"Uh, what's going on?" he finally managed. The boy then started a slight laugh, looking back at Amy.

"You're right, he looked totally stupid," Christian said. Amy nodded in appreciation of the young boy's performance.

"The water on your face sold it," she said, "Now let's have you run into your brother's room and tell him that Jessica's upside down in the toilet and kicking her legs, and you can't get her out. Wait, can you cry?" she prompted seriously.

"Um- just put more water on my eyes," Christian responded.

"Oh, that's _perfect_ ," Amy said. The young boy then jogged to the two girls and they exited into the kitchen, closing the door behind them. A moment later, Bill and Roger heard the sink faucet activate.

"I don't know what to say," Bill muttered.

"Don't say anything. Go buy a damned ring."

"She got through his horrible barricade of shit."

"Seems like it."

"The little monster likes her."

"I wouldn't put too much stock in it. Christian will do anything when girls are around. He's at that age," Roger said, still trying to piece together what the spitting thing was all about. It seemed apparent that this activity had all been a ruse to confuse him.

"You think so? I don't know- I'm with him most days, and I haven't noticed anything like that," Bill stated, thinking this over.

"Is he around girls when you're with him?"

"Well, no. Just Jessica."

"There you have it."

"Wait wait, he can't be at 'that age'. Not yet; he's only nine."

"And?"

"When I was nine, girls were nothing more to me than a nauseating mess," Bill commented.

"Yeah, but it happens younger and younger these days. I think it's all the hormones in the food we eat. Girls are starting their periods at like, ten"

"That's a disturbing thought."

"No, but seriously, you were a late bloomer. All I thought about at nine were girls." Their conversation reached an abrupt end when the two men discerned the sound of numerous footfalls rushing through the house, one of them much heavier than the others. These ceased near the bathroom.

"Sounds like they got Nick," Roger said.

***

Bill had felt empowered that initial night Amy had allowed him into her home. Now, with this woman he was so fond of in his own, a juxtapositional sensation crawled through his innards and caused him much nervousness. While he knew there was no dilemma with having her over, the sensation of impending judgment, and worse, unspoken judgment, was difficult to suppress.

"I thought you didn't like kids," Bill said, idle, as she thumbed through _Hard Sweat_. If having Amy in his home brought him nervousness, her casual inspection of his work caused him torment. She paused on April, examining the image of the sweaty, shirtless furnace sweeper, his strong torso glistening in the firelight of the dark corridor in which he worked. This caused Bill a frustrated grunt in his mind.

"I don't know, Bill. For a guy that doesn't like romance novels, I'd say you could have a bright future in doing cover art for them."

"Ah hell. That's what everyone calls 'Mr. April'. That picture was a total mistake. It ruined the calendar. Seriously though, I thought you didn't like kids," he said, both changing and reverting the subject.

"Oh, I can't stand kids. They're revolting little things. They start out by slipping through someone's legs, you know, horrid live birth, and then do all these even fouler things. It's abhorrent. I hate kids, I just like them a lot," she said, not paying much attention, examining the muscular, male bounty of Mr. April.

"Jessica seems to like you, and even Christian," Bill said, not quite able to remain silent while she looked at his art, this being a situation that his creative side found to be both hopeful and nerve-wracking.

"Jessica's brilliant. Just wait. Christian's a punk but the sort that doesn't like other punks. That's good. Needs a hobby, though. Camera, or a dog, maybe cello in a year or so.

"Christian on a cello? Not a good fit."

"In a year or so," she repeated.

"Well, If you say so."

"This one's somewhat incredible," Amy said then, having flipped to May. The image in question was of a police deputy putting down a severely injured deer on the side of a rural road. The deputy looked officious and cruel, yet his posture and the way he held his firearm were somehow warm and effeminate.

"Oh, thanks. The whole point of the calendar was—"

"You don't have to explain it," she said. Bill paused on this.

"You don't think so? I mean, I'd hoped the idea came across."

"It's the grave. Everyone's dying. These people stagger it back, right? They're moving and eating, just doing their thing, hating and loving things, and of course, staying alive even when they encounter modes of dying everywhere. All these jobs in here involve fire, poison, guns, surgery... things you kill or that can kill you. It's kind of a super-masculine theme, but for a piece of work like this, there's nothing really wrong with that. I like it, B.S," she said, thumbing through Summer and into Fall. Bill was not so annoyed or stunned as his mind had initially strove to be, but he was more than impressed, not with her explanation, nor that she had understood the calendar clearly, but that she _wanted_ to, that she had seen Bill in it, and knew something of what he had done. She saw a bit of the artist in the art, it seemed, rather than simply examining a photograph, gauging the picture, falsely admiring how red or blue something was. He did not agree with her synopsis that his calendar carried an abundance of masculinity, however.

"Save it for the lower half," Amy said, only lightly irritated. Bill's glances about her had, over the previous eight seconds, begun settling in areas and places for which signaled his rise in DHEA. Her discussion of his calendar had provoked some of this, being that complimentary statements were as if petting to someone like Bill. Her posture, as well, had aided in switching Bill's mode into one more intimate, as her usual rigidity had gained a bit of laxity while viewing his art, hinting at a comfortable stance. This was alluring on her. Bill was unaware of what, exactly, the slight twist of her back, the thoughtful and yet distant look in her eyes, or the pronounced lift of one of her knees had done to him, but his mind had been quick to begin wanting, and felt this in earnest.

"Save what?" Bill asked, innocent. He had still not learned he was being lustful. This conclusion would take another three seconds to culminate in his brain, though with the influx of vasopressin even then spilling over his system, maybe two seconds.

"Do you need to go take care of something?" she asked, eyebrow raised.

"Sorry. I... you holding my calendar just uh..."

"The thing is, Bill, I aim to see more of it, so maybe you should go make a sandwich or something. I don't want you getting all monkey over a girl looking at your work."

"No, I just, you know... I like that," he admitted.

"It's getting on my nerves," she said.

"Well, I can look, can't I? You can't expect me _not_ to notice you're attractive. It's human nature."

"Well it's not _my_ nature. This can't be a recurring problem, Bill. Save your dirty thoughts for Janine. You'll like it more."

"I wouldn't put money on that," Bill said, attempting to sound mischievous, but coming off more pouty. His vision wandered about her again, though he was quick to catch it. Amy sighed and rolled her eyes. After a moment, she stood in a stiff manner and addressed Bill in the pragmatic fashion a police clerk might use to explain the nature of a bench warrant.

"Bill Sherman, you wonderful, artistic, and modern man, the fact that you have reproductive organs fucking repulses me," she said. Bill grunted and shook his head.

"That's uh, tolerant of you," he replied, sour.

"No, I get it," Amy said, "You can't help it, right? Can't control your nature, all that? Listen, men walk this Earth in search of some answer to their lives, hints to help solve little riddles, riddles and lives they'll never figure out because they have to stop every five seconds to smack around these dopey hot dogs between their legs. It's ridiculous; I'm never going near that stupid thing, and the way I care about you is stronger and better. You _can_ control yourself, and you will. Just deal with it," Bill frowned in distaste, rolling his eyes.

"Okay, it soaked in. Ignore that you're pretty. Forget that you're sexy. Done. Just a witty shoe in my mind. Nothing much to look at. Got it," he said. Amy smiled.

"That's my man. That's what I like to hear."

"Whatever you say, Snakes," he replied, frustrated.

"Ooh, I like hearing _that_ , too. You know, being emasculated into obeisance is sort of cute on you," she said, light-hearted and teasing. Bill had not taken to the tease with his usual demeanor, which would have been pleasance, owing to his fondness for her prods and taunts. He fell into a new reaction, one that swiveled on a quick decrease in vasopressin and a sudden increase in dopamine. His heart rate increased. A fine mist of adrenalin sifted through him, pushing Bill away from the usual satisfaction her jibes brought him, and instead strutting him into annoyance. Bill discovered just enough of this feeling stockpiled in him that he cashed it all in at once for a sardonic jab.

"Yeah well, like you said; save all my good feelings and cuddle-stuff for the woman that actually wants me," he said. This cut into Amy unexpectedly, and she retreated, for a moment, into a place she seldom visited and only when certain cruelties shoved her there. She did not respond for a moment. In her mind, he took on an ugly face, one that she lurched forward and bit. This muddy, mental ostentation made her feel, for the first time in their relationship, that her poison was capable again, ready to flow freely from her angry mouth. She looked to her valentine hearts, the string of them Bill had tacked up above his desk, a craft she had put together and given to him in crush, over a month ago.

"There you go. Like I said," she replied, both nervous and cold.

### Chapter Thirteen

"These are the tree sits. They're where we live and keep an eye out for the logging crew." Amber examined the crude structures, somewhat like tree forts her brothers had made when she was a child. Each sit nested at a height in the tall trees that caused them to be out of reach but for those who inhabited them.

"They look dangerous. Has anyone fallen?" she asked.

"They're dangerous if you don't respect the tree. Some of us free climb, even, but we did have a lady fall two months ago. She was only halfway up when it happened. Twisted both her ankles when she hit, but was okay after a couple days. Everything is going well right now, but falling is a risk we all take out here," he said.

"It must be lonely up there in the trees, protecting them by yourself," she said. Cody looked at her with a discontent that became a slow, sighing nod.

"I'm glad you came, Amber," he said, taking her hand.

"Even though my father runs the crew that wants you out?"

"I'm glad you came," he repeated.

-from _The Owl_ , Candace Rogers

"it's the 15th, 2 weeks. walter isnt going tho, hes in brazil working." appeared in the chatbox, just beneath Todd's automated heading: **Mountain Lover** says.

"Working? Is he doing a South American theme or something?" Bill typed in response. While the interruption to his work time was an agitation, Bill was somewhat thankful to have this discourse with Lansington. Their creative works fell at opposing ends of what he might consider the calendar art spectrum, but Bill had lived the last few years in a particular, self-imposed climate of loneliness. Meeting Amy and Janine had cured portions of this, but no amount of time with Roger could make Bill feel as if he had a male friend. Roger was a brother, Nick and Christian were children. Apart from them, Todd Lansington was the only other male with whom he had kept regular conversation in the last few years. Bill may not have enjoyed Todd much, but Todd was a man, and there were times when a man simply needed to be acknowledged by another, one for whom he was not related.

"i guess. walter needs a new cally cuz janet rejecte d his last one."

"Was that the mock-up he was showing us at the conference?"

"yah, the knocked up chicks." This surprised Bill. The calendar that Walter Osbourne had shown him at the conference, before Mary had her attack, was promising. Bill remembered he had thought, upon thumbing through the mock-up, that Walter was on to something, possibly something grand. Each month displayed another image of a pregnant woman in final term, but none of these images showed anything but the abdominal region, a small amount of underwear-line, and their arms and hands. Some in shirts, some bare. Beyond this, one could see the interiors of their homes. Without faces, the image-set had the effect of incredibly personal anonymity. While the cliche of pregnant women holding their swollen bellies was stout in the work, Bill had been impressed that Walter had, at least briefly, abandoned his usual subjects of muscle cars and sunsets.

"Yeah, 'With Child'," Bill typed, "I thought it was kind of slow, but the natural background of their own homes made it more distinct and homemade. It had promise."

"some of the ahouses were filthy," Todd responded.

"I only remember one of them being all that messy."

"chicks with big egg-bellys. dude, pregnant women arent amazing. everbody knows that. just pregnant. who wants a cally fullof huge stomachs? maybe the tits."

"No, the whole pregnancy thing is pretty intimidating, if you think about it. I think he had a good idea, and while I usually hate a canned backdrop, for once maybe he should have done a white sheet session. Highlight the women, their state. Get the skin tones down, then use the white to shop in something juxtapositional, like their homes. He had that, the homes, but the skin tones are all off. The skin is dim."

"but good tones=stretchmarks."

"Well maybe, but he could have cloned over those, if he cared. Wow, Holt and Finch dropped an Osbourne piece. That's a first. Walter is one of the heavies."

"things are changing. janet's mad picky. and john's retiring. plus, mary's wormfood. I'm startng to think its just you and me, billy-bill."

"I heard about that, Beasly wanting to retire. I don't think he will. He might stop publishing, but that guy could never stop making his art. It's indistinguishable from him. They're the same. That guy will be 90 years old and still airbrushing retro poses of Elvis and James Dean and whatnot."

"lame"

"Well, he should do someone new. Same style but new. Criminals or political figures or something."

"eh. whatever. but hes done with holtfinch. old."

"A shame. I owe him. He set me up with Arnie back in the day."

"you don't owe him anything. now its every man for hismelf."

"It's beginning to feel that way. The calendarium conferences were somewhat special to me. I fit somewhere. I got to meet everyone. I know there are other groups and conferences, but I have no connection to those. With Mary gone and Nina taking over, Beasly retiring and Walter getting rejected... shit. I don't know what this means."

"means get your shit in gear. submit to janet fast bfeore she cracks the whip."

"You're telling me. I spoke with her recently, and you're right, she liked ' _From the Rind_ '."

"tyrants one?"

"Yeah. From what she said, I suspect my auto-wreck piece might slay this. I think she might really go for it. She definitely encouraged me."

"janet's two-faced tho."

"Yeah, sometimes. I don't know. I have to try my own thing."

"seperatse men from the boys."

"I'd agree. You working on anything new?"

"doing one about girls on prom night. diffreent dresses, races, cute girls. calling it _Starlight Girls_. they weren't cute tho so i have some models posing instead. ringers."

"You're hitting up the sweet sixteen demographic, huh?"

"chicks dig prom."

"You know, it's short for 'promenade'. The Promenade. I think it sounds better when it's not shortened, more imposing and important. I wonder why no one calls it 'Promenade' anymore," Bill mused in type.

"you'r turning gay."

Something triggered in Bill then. It had been Todd's use of the term 'ringers' that caused it to steep, to brew in his brainpan, fermenting and growing in activity. Todd was using models to portray high school girls, because he did not feel the real thing was attractive enough. Crass arrogance aside, Bill had a similar difficulty in that his wreck photographs were tired and too far from what he wanted to show. Could Bill hire a 'ringer', have a car wreck created just for his December slot in the calendar? His mind turned on this, ironing out details and figuring. He could wreck a car... it would be so simple. He could post his high-shutter camera on the side of a road, and then wreck the car himself while the device snapped at high-speed. He could set this up, have another person, Roger maybe, trigger the camera at the appropriate time, and then, say, wrap the front end of his car around a tree at a rich velocity. This was an epiphany.

"Todd, I have to go. I need to make some phone calls. Thank you... you just gave me a great idea," he typed.

"what, go gay? i always assumed."

"Later, man."

"Yah, later. the 15th."

***

"I'm not doing that. Neither are you," Roger said, shocked. Bill stood on the sidewalk in front of their home, speaking at his brother, who sat in the passenger seat of Mel's car. Mel was looking more concerned than Roger, who was used to his brother's thought process. Bill's epiphany now perched atop his skull like a vivid, hungering jellyfish.

"You'll kill yourself. That's crazy," Mel said.

"No, no, we'll do the research. Plot it all out. Harnesses and all that. I'll call some people, download articles... this is perfect. I know exactly the kind of wreck I want."

"Bill, listen to me," Roger began in a lecturing tone, "No. I'm not gonna stand on the sidewalk with a damned camera while you flip your car down the road. You could have your head taken off doing that."

"It's not for awhile. I have to plan it out. Just think on it," Bill entreated.

"No, Bill. Not only am I refusing to do that, I'm not going to let you do it, either." Roger replied, jerking his thumb toward Bill's old, weathered car, "I'll steal that piece of shit long before I let you kill yourself in it."

"It's crazy," Mel repeated.

"You'll come up with something, Bill. I know you. But no tossing a car around in front of a camera. Uh uh," Roger said.

"It'll be the perfect December shot," Bill continued, mischievous.

"We'll talk about this later. Mel and I are gonna be late," Roger said. Bill stepped back from the car. Mel looked at Bill carefully as she began to press the accelerator.

"Bye Bill," she attempted. It had occurred to her that she had not spoken much to Roger's brother, but had only listened to his frequent oddity and creative mullings.

The car left him there and continued on its way to their movie date. What Roger did not realize was that his brother had latched onto the notion of designing an automobile wreck with such certainty that Bill would be plagued by it until success or failure. To Roger, nothing was so important as health and avoiding death, and while Bill would have agreed with him on some level, Bill was infected with art, one of the most promiscuous and clever modes one could contract. It often arose in Bill with enough momentum as to supersede his health and avoidance of death, and more closely held its own health and life as that more important.

Walking across the yard toward the house, Bill reached into his pocket and retrieved his ringing cell phone. He noted the caller and was pleased she had returned his call so quickly. He answered with mirth.

"Hey there, Snakes. What's cookin'?"

"Hey there yourself, B.S. I'm cooking toast," Amy replied.

"Listen, there's a conference coming up in about two weeks, on the 15th, and I need to go there and talk with some people I know," he primed.

"Fascinating," she said with sarcasm.

"My publisher will be there, too. We do around two or three of these a year, at the calendarium. Anyway, I was sort of thinking—"

"God no. Forget it," she interrupted. Bill sighed.

"I know it's a bit of a drive, but worth it, and I just wanted to ask if you'd—"

"rather be stabbed in the face?"

"...yeah. Seriously, I'm asking if you'd like to come along."

"You want me to go to a calendar museum to talk about calendar trends with calendar insiders and professional calendar makers?" she asked in near monotone.

"Yep."

"Well shit, I'm sold," she said, elevating, "What kind of watch should I sport? I figure time is a big deal with you sort, so I assume you've all got a thing about watches, too, right?"

"Nope. Some of them are a little uptight, though, so you might want to take a bath and brush your teeth, for once," Bill said, a smile creeping across his lips.

"Oh ho, listen to the man with the right hook! I'm impressed, B.S. I thought it would take months before you gathered the guts to mouth off at me."

"I'm a quick learner, Snakes."

"All right," she sighed, "I'll go, but you have to promise me we won't cross any bridges."

"Right, the whole no-crossing-bridges thing. No worries, there aren't any bridges between here and there except the rather abnormally large bridge of space between your two, smaller-than-average eyes."

"You're on a roll. Consider me backhanded. Do we have to take your shitty excuse for a car?"

"Or you could just bite onto your other head and roll around in a hoop," he offered.

"Oooh! You've been jerking your brain off to an encyclopedia!" she said.

"Oh, I may have looked up a few things, Snakes. Like... according to Nicander of Colophon, a couple hundred years ago, _your_ sort are uh, 'dull of eye' and have these big, ugly chins. I have to say I agree with that description."

"Wouldn't anyone?"

"How about it, mein wee amphisbaena? You gonna start sitting around and getting all dumb, eating bon bons and junk food for the next few years, get all huge of chin and dull of eye? Because if Nicander is right, that might be a deal-breaker for me."

"I think I preferred the pushover Bill to this new, sinister one. And Nicander was over two thousand years ago, Mr. Scholarly, not a couple hundred. He also had his thumb up his ass, this irritatating, nasally voice, and he was totally allergic to common sense. Nobody liked that guy. Not even his own dog. But seriously, we're way too big in serpent form to roll around in a circle. We do, however, move quite fast and are pretty adept at sidewinding."

"Oh, of course. Sidewinding," Bill replied, feigning boredom.

"Born in the Grecian fields, buddy. Lots of heat, lots of sand. Ya hit sand, ya gotta sidewind. Gives Janine a headache, though."

"You know, I'm not sure how far into your dementia's black hole I want to fly my spaceship. At what point should I inform you that you're insane? Should I do it over coffee here at the house?"

"Your mother was the insane one; look at what she made of you. And do you even plan all this crap that comes out of your mouth, or do you start thinking about it after it's been said? Coffee at your place sounds fine."

"My mother created a brilliant man. I plan everything. I'm a genius. Don't pretend you're not aware of it," he said.

"Sure you are. A real alpha living in his brother's garage. When you get done talking about yourself, go ahead and clean up the mess with a towel and then come pick me up in your poor-ass car."

"Around six."

"I'll be here," she said.

"Oh, and Snakes?"

"Yes, B.S.?"

"Do everyone a favor and put a brush through your hair. Christ."

### Chapter Fourteen

"Listen Lunches, these are Bro's waves today, and they're bustin' late. He called us together and Bro doesn't like girls hangin' around and watchin' from the sand, you know? It's too distracting. Thanks for bringin' food again, but you can't stick around. If you wanna get real and meet the guys, we'll be behind the surf shop in a couple hours, but they don't have time right now. The comp is coming up and we got Madness to contend with. He beat us bad last year and we need to hang him back, you get it? We got lip but we need to get our feet away from caps and into some serious rolls. This is what I'm all about right now; I love seein' ya here, but we gotta focus on waves, not curves."

-from _Surfer Gaga: A Nancy Wilde Romance_ , Nancy Wilde

When Karen lifted her small hands from his upper arms, where she had braced him, getting his attention for her final uttering, Roger drifted. She would not be returning, not to him, neither their house nor the previous thirteen years. That the marriage had proven a ruddy, discorporate experience for him was of no comfort, and the abruptness of her leave struck the severest blow. The manner of maintaining cohabitation, a life amongst their children, and marital, had comforted Roger, kept him domestically anesthetized from the shrill and harping effects the two parents had on one another. Karen was fogged in routine, as well. The evening on which she chose to vacate their muddy bond, inebriating all memories of the past decade, was an evening that followed a day in which their daughter had begun to crawl, their youngest son lost his first melee with another boy, and their oldest child, Nick, a boy who's ears were at times perked by the ongoing arguments of his parents, lost his interest in both of them. It was a day wherein she had made finalizing phone calls, met with a drafter of contracts and papers, and with but a signature, began exacting the perfunctory trial of divorce.

The evening in which his wife left him had followed a warm year, one that had seen all of his meals fill him well, his blood pumping strongly, and his mind at an elevation from which he could see himself in his children, a musing he had earlier in his life forgotten he enjoyed. Roger would end this year and final evening trying not to give his crying a sound, not to give his worries a hold. He laid in his bed, holding a pillow in a childish way, as if this soft, stuffed object of cloth could alleviate the shame he felt in losing his children's mother, in having been unable to keep a wife, in having lost Karen after the briefest climax of her hands leaving his arms in the front yard.

"We haven't liked each other in years," she had said, "It's obvious. We're done."

Had Roger been more in tune with his soon ex-wife, and his thoughts a stronger sense of the feminine, he might have gained ground on the rope that she had pulled away from him. He might have caught it, for a time, and kept on to what they had started with, which was a bit of love, enough to purchase in one another a perch for which to care. Had Roger a sense of thinking more like Karen's, he might have understood that it was not Roger she was leaving, but Roger with her children in a house, and not their marriage she felt had failed, but their life together. Roger had a masculine mind, however, and would only begin to feel, like a family cat being given away before a long move, that he had somehow failed to be what was required, faltered at some invisible crux in their marriage. He believed that the reverberations of this unknown fault had swelled over time, to the point of dashing his ship ashore and, each morning after, this belief would haunt him with the notion he was alone, and that, by quieter reasoning, he deserved it.

No man swore off woman. He would breathe at times beside her, hide atop, below, and within her, and during his spans away from her, his mother or grandmother, his lover or wife, his aunt or his daughter, he was still somehow near them. He was never far from woman, even if he knew her but slight. He was both entranced and revolted by the woman. The woman got into him, tugged things loose, repaired things, always moving, always being. A man couldn't chart where, how or even when his satisfactions or disasters might be achieved, or in what small dale he might uncover her, and come to know the woman for whom he was to love, but it was there, and many men believed these hidden dales were everywhere. Pockets of life wherein woman, in all forms and means, might be standing about waiting for him, or patrolling loosely to shove him back should he discover her.

Could it have been that every woman was correct for him, in some way, and that a man was to search for a partner soul in which the most of his own traits were found? Would he know by vasopressin discharges and oxytocin drafts who to want? Was he to speak to them, ask their love if he was plausible, or use strength, telling this love he was its course? Was she simply another sort of man, one that thought differently and wore other organs, one that feared him or searched for a self in him? Man fucked her, bought her, held her, ran from her, gave himself to her, and both longed for and feared her. At any point, it seemed the world could cause her to do and feel the same for him. No man swore off woman; the pressure was astounding and without it, he might cease to ever feel anything at all.

"I'm just not feeling like... like I can be in a relationship with you," Mel said. Her small house agreed with this statement and the artifacts on the walls, alien to Roger in the forms of diva posters and various, cheap trinkets on dressers and shelves, pressed him to understand and not drag things out too long. He did feel the urge to exit, to avoid what he dreaded would be an uncomfortable and overwhelming stance of rejection from her. Their dates had been pleasant, though not so vocal, and their talks in one another's homes had encompassed many notions and preferences, though nearly always returned to the one subject. This topic, as if an ongoing speed dating guide, was the sense of inferiority Mel felt, a sense that did not simply skim within her mannerisms and lift into her speech, but that broiled in her, always seeping through, always shaking its head at her.

"Do you think you could be in a relationship with someone else?" he asked, trying to sound calm and detached, which was the way he wanted to feel. Mel turned her head and sighed, raising a slightly perturbed lip.

"There isn't some other guy," she said. This answer seemed tiresome to her.

"No, I just mean... you're okay with dating, I'm just not the right one. Is that it?" he asked, still feigning a clinical tone. Mel opened her mouth to respond, but did not have a response as quickly as she thought she would.

"Roger, don't think it's like that. It's not..." and she trailed off, exhaling and then beginning again.

"I like you. You know I do. But you know that I'm... just not what you need. That's all. And you're not what I need," she explained. There was a lower intonation at the end of this statement, denoting finality, giving evidence she was certain that what she had said was what she meant.

"I see. What uh, what is it that you need?" he asked. Mel shook her head and lowered her brows.

"No. No no. I'm not playing that game," she said.

"Oh I... yeah. I only meant, you know... is it my kids?"

"Not personally. But you do have three. And I'm not a mom," she replied, cautious.

"I'm not looking for a mom."

"Roger, you just started dating again. It sucks, I know all about it. But I'm not the person for you. It'd be way better if you found somebody more like yourself. That's just not me, you know?"

"No, I understand. I guess... I guess I should keep looking. I hate dating, though. God, I haven't had to do it in so long. I don't... I don't want you to think you weren't good enough or anything like that. I'm into you. I mean, that's why I've been going out with you."

"I feel the same way. I think you're a cool guy, cool family, just... I kinda think maybe I need to find, you know, a guy and, like someone... maybe a heftier guy, you know what I mean? More like me. We could screw around a lot and just... deal with things and just maybe go to clubs and stuff. You know what I mean by that, right?"

"I think I see. You want someone of a similar... well, weight, and that wants to go to clubs a lot. You're right, that's not me. Um, okay. So, I guess this is where I take off," he said, hiding his anger. Mel stood and hugged him then. He rolled his eyes above her.

"I had fun. Thanks, Mel," he said, suffocating his nerves with steady, mechanical breathing.

"You're great, it'll happen," she said, lifting up on her toes and kissing his cheek. He pretended to be understanding, but in truth, he knew this was dating-as-usual for Mel, and that she had used these same spoken lines to reject men many times before. It only made him feel all the more disliked and bland in soul. Roger smiled and made his way to the door, a door that led out of one more woman's life, a door that perched before lonely futures, and one he passed through while thinking only of the past.

***

"Jesus, man. I'm sorry. I didn't see that coming," Bill said. The table before him had the remnants of a short dinner, one that Roger had prepared in an attempt to clear his head, if for even a span of minutes.

"I didn't either. Well, maybe a little, but not really," Roger said, his eyes sore and head sluggish. He had felt off since leaving Mel's house, not himself, not anyone.

"Did she say why?"

"She wants to meet someone more like her," the older brother explained, "but then, when she was describing what that would be, she mentioned a big guy, screwing and clubs and shit like that." Bill pushed his meal away, having finished, and made his way to the cupboard for filters. Roger looked to be in need of waking and some strong coffee might help. Bill's role, of course, was to listen and justify his brother, a particularly human thing to do. A secondary role would have been to stay put for the first role. Bill was unable to do this. He was antsy.

"A big guy and clubs?" he repeated, measuring coffee.

"She meant someone her size."

"Oh, like a fat guy."

"Yeah, and the club thing... eh, it just all started to come off like it was an age thing. Like I'm too old or something."

"Well, if that's why she wanted to break up, it's pretty shallow."

"I don't know. Maybe. It doesn't seem very shallow, though, just a drag."

"Maybe she just couldn't handle that you're in average shape and she's not. You know, like seeing you all the time just reminded her that she was obese or something," Bill empathized, getting cups from the cupboard for the two of them.

"Maybe. I don't know, _is_ there an age thing? Am I just too old?"

"For what?"

"For speed dating. For women under the age of forty. For lots of screwing and clubs and... fun, whatever. I mean, I know I'm not fat, but I know how to talk and hang out. I know how to screw. The weight thing can't be the only reason she left."

"No, I don't think you're too old to date someone like Mel. But do you want to go to dance clubs?"

"Maybe, I haven't thought about it. I guess not."

"I mean, if age was her reasoning, on some level, that's _her_ thinking, not yours. Likewise for the weight issue. Is your age a big deal to you?"

"I'm thirty-six; that's a gigantic deal to me," Roger said, as if this should be achingly obvious.

"Oh." This surprised Bill. It had not occurred to him that his older brother might hold some turmoil over having left his early thirties behind.

"I'm not looking for younger women or anything. I mean, I'm not one of _those_ guys. It'd just feel strange to start crossing them off the list, you know? And no, I'm not into dance clubs. I wasn't into those even when I was in my twenties. Maybe I'm in a different league now. But then, where the hell am I supposed to meet the women I'm expected to date? I admit, I kind of liked the speed dating."

"Yeah?"

"Well yeah, it was energetic and it worked. It was efficient. I kind of thought doing it would be fun and, you know, fruitless. But worth checking out. Turns out, we both met women there. Mel didn't pan out, but Amy did," Roger said, using his thumbs to run a few circles around his temples, slowly, relieving headache.

"Well, maybe give it some time and then have another try. I've heard some people do it all the time," Bill offered. He felt awful for his brother. Roger had been alone for a duration, after years of a marriage that only functioned in a regimental means. The divorce had not crept in but rather leaped from the blue. A divorce that Roger had not agreed with. He had not relinquished their life together, the marriage, the work of raising children as two, so much as he had been abandoned by these things. He had taken himself away from the notion of dating and meeting women over a decade before the divorce, and now was stuck in a strange limbo regarding it. The worst thing that could have happened to Roger while taking these early steps out with women, would be flat rejection, and while Mel had not rejected him in this way, and had given him a brief relationship, Bill was agitated with her for not having the sense to let Roger down easier, or at the least, slow.

"Man, I _liked_ her. I really did. It wasn't like with Karen, but I did like her," Roger confessed.

"At least you know you're ready to date, right? You gave it a shot. If it didn't work, it didn't work. You can meet as many people as you want," Bill said, realizing that his advice and confidante manner was becoming quite tit-for-tat and expected.

"I have this nagging voice in my head that's been telling me I can't do that, I can't meet more people. I missed the window for re-entry. I mean, think about it... I'm middle-aged, divorced, haven't dated but once in the last fifteen years, and I have three kids. I have crazy baggage, right? And my hairline is receding, I have hemorrhoids, I'm at work all the time... Think about it. I'm sort of fucked over here."

"You have hemorrhoids?" Bill asked. Roger was put off by his brother having focused on this particular admission.

"Like six years. You don't?"

"No."

"Wait a bit."

"Well, that wonderful prophecy aside, there are women looking exactly for someone like you," Bill said.

"I doubt that."

"Hey, it may not happen soon, or maybe it will, but some lady out there is going to be amazed that someone like you is on the market. She'll want to snatch you up instantly. You're a good guy, smart. Responsible. You have all sorts of traits women like. It'll just take time, some more trying. It's all perspective. You know that. You thought you were a catch a couple months ago, remember? What's changed since then? One woman, that's all."

"Huh, that's true."

"Yeah, somebody else, not you. So forget that. You're okay with things, she's not. Trial and error, man."

"Yeah well, why do I feel like I'm destined for more error than trial? And I've had enough trial in my life, anyway. Shit, you have no idea how lucky you are to have met someone that likes you that much. That woman... man oh man, I want to kick you," Roger said.

"Give it time. Like the saying goes, there are lots of other fish in the sea. And hey, for the record, Amy and I aren't all roses. We've got our troubles, too," Bill confided. He had it in his mind to discuss the relationship he shared with Amy, to have it known to someone other than himself. That he would tell Roger about the abnormal relationship he was in with the two girls was a certainty, but the notion of doing this had lately brought with it a coaxing that made Bill want to tell his brother sooner than later. He felt as if he had been hiding the truth from his brother, though knew the timing was important. Timing, a rampant function of truth and spin, was a perverse mechanism of faux secrecy, but not utilizing it correctly was as if a blunt, domestic insanity.

"Yeah, right. Troubles. Like what? Who gets to call the other one first each day?" Bill chuckled at this. The end of this chuckle was not carried from his mouth in elation, however, but on a sort of exasperation.

"Eh..." Bill began, but was tripped by his thoughts, which were in the process of concluding something. The decision as to when he would tell his brother about Amy and Janine had been initiated several days prior, but had taken until that very moment to fully manifest itself with a result. Putting this off any longer would only convolute Bill's eventual divulging of the secret within his relationship. Bill chewed the inside of his cheek a moment and then nodded.

"Okay, so, Amy and I haven't had sex and... she's a little off her rocker," Bill said. This was stated in a gust of admittance that rode a light tone of embarrassment. Roger thought the statement over for a moment.

"I thought you said you had," was all the older brother could think to say.

"Well, yes and no," Bill replied, vexed. Roger inhaled and nodded.

"So, we're talking about..." he began, cupping his hand and jerking it twice away from his torso, a gesture to finish the statement.

"Oh, no no. There's real sex, it's just not... ah hell. How do I explain this?"

"Just explain," Roger said, confused.

"Okay, here's how it works. Amy's roommate, Janine? I date Amy, but I can only have sex with her roommate," Bill said, uncertain this was the proper way to summarize his situation, which contained many other layers. Roger thought this over and then lowered his eyes to the table.

"Little brother, tell me you're not cheating on your girlfriend with her roommate," he said. His body had tensed as if his entire state of existence would, for the next several seconds, depend on Bill's response.

"Not at all. Hell no. You know me; that's nowhere near the kind of thing I want to be involved in," Bill defended.

"So, what are we talking about?"

"I date Amy, various days and nights, but when it comes time for us to be intimate, she leaves and Janine comes in. Janine and I do our thing, and then I see Amy the next day. It's an arrangement, is the thing. It's a relationship for three, not two."

"Wha- like..." and Roger lowered his voice for no real reason, "...like they're lesbian swingers or something?"

"What? No. Dude, they're related. That'd be disgusting. They just date me, not each other. I'm only saying that Amy won't have sex. She simply won't. So, when it comes time for something like that, she has Janine step in," Bill explained, his hands moving about, nervousness getting the better of him.

"Amy gets off seeing that?" Roger asked, shocked.

"No, it's just Janine and I. Amy leaves. It's been going on since the start," Bill clarified. Roger cleared his throat and adopted his expression for distaste.

"You're a fucking idiot," he said, standing up.

"Ah man, it was her idea. I don't think she _can_ ," Bill professed. This cooled Roger for a brief moment.

"What do you mean by that?" he asked.

"I don't think she has... uh, the apparatus... you know, down there." This was as good an explanation as Bill was willing to give, considering Roger's reaction to what he had already exposed. In truth, Bill had begun to suspect the very thing he had stated.

"That's what I think," he continued, "I mean, I can't even touch her or she gets mad. She gets angry if she thinks I'm even checking her out. Every now and then she'll put her arm around me, and she'll occasionally rest her hand on my shoulder during a movie or whatnot, but I can't initiate that at all. Only her. My relationship with Amy involves two women. Two women that know each other very well. The three of us... it's hard to explain. We sort of fulfill one another's needs but... in a unique way, is how I'll put it."

"Is this Janine chick a sex addict or something?"

"I don't think so, no. But it's all she does with me. The only time I see her is when we've been set up to meet. I know nothing about her, other than that," Roger rubbed his eyes then, weary.

"Amy... she has metaphors for what we're doing, you know, like the two girls are just two different parts of one body, you know, and one half is the upstairs and one half is the downstairs. The girls seem perfectly fine with it, too. In fact, they insist on it. I just don't know if I can keep doing it. Things have changed, I think."

Roger slammed his hands down on the table, staring at his little brother, a contempt curving his mouth and narrowing his eyes.

"I think you're selfish. And stupid. What you're doing to those girls is sick. I don't... Well, you're just a fucking pig," he voiced, walking away, exiting the kitchen.

"It's their arrangement, not mine. And it's consensual. I feel a lot weirder about it than you do, believe me," Bill confessed.

"I'm so fucking lonely," Roger said, cold.

"Ah man, I—"

"Don't say anything, Bill. Just shut up. That girl has some kind of disability or something, and what do you do? You just hook up with another girl. Her _friend_. Or cousin or whatever. You're a moron. Women always bitch about men not wanting to commit. Well, I married Karen. I committed. It was the right thing to do and I was pleased to do it. We had kids together, bought a house."

"Man, that—"

"Shut up. Then she fucking left. She didn't commit, right? So I kept the kids. I'm raising them. It's the right thing to do, isn't it? And I want to do it. I'm not a bad guy, I'm one of the good ones. I fucking commit. So where's my reward? Where's the person that appreciates my... my goddamn commitment? Or this smooth relationship that's supposed to happen when you're good? I'm floundering here, asshole. And I hate it. And _you_... you don't even deserve what you have... and you don't respect it. You're just fucking around with all your 'other fish in the sea'."

"Roj..."

"Just fuck off, Bill. I can't even look at you," Roger said, waving his hand in dismissal. The older brother breathed heavy, distressed and angry as his feet carried him. Bill thought to follow, knew to let it be. His brother had not understood the arrangement, and concluded something errant. Perhaps he was correct. Bill would have to wait until his brother calmed to explain the actuality of the relationship he was in, and before this, give it some deeper thought, himself.

Roger had exited the kitchen. After several moments, Roger also left the house, having shoved the front door shut on a strong exhale. Bill stood in the kitchen, stunned. With adrenaline having shut him into a light panic, and the seriousness of Roger having scolded him, the first time in nearly nine years, he swallowed and turned the untouched coffee pot off, then made his way into the garage to think. He would need to watch the kids until their father came back. Bill wondered if they had overheard their angry father, and how Bill might try to explain Roger's anger to them, if they had.

The light of day emanated from behind the horizon and began its slow transformation of contrast, dimming and casually darkening. Roger, on foot and with his hands in his pockets, muttering and heated, made a course toward town with no real destination, and for several hours left his neighborhood and home behind.

### Chapter Fifteen

Mandy's grandmother had only a rudimentary sense of modernity, and had been stuck in a false, old world way of thinking for too long. She now owned a cell phone, but this in no way modernized the old woman; she only used the cell phone for checking up on Mandy during the granddaughter's dates with boys from school. Acquiring these boys called for little, a flash of skin, a dirty word at the right time... Her grandmother would never understand that the new way of doing things, regarding boys, was identical to the old way of doing things. Her grandmother's trouble was in trying to join the new too late, while having never bothered to truly accept the old, or even that she, herself, had become old. Girls had been showing and hiding their bodies and wants since the start of civilization. Her Grandmother simply could not grasp this form of tease, which forced isolation and primness onto the old woman, and Mandy was damned if she would let her grandmother's prude behavior be her own, even if they did have to live together.

-from _The Women on the Hill_ , Rosa Damascena

If the sumptuousness of curvature was to be studied in a sexual focus, in a scope of pure want and urge, the primates known as homo sapiens might discover that it was not through spiritual means that a bare thigh or arched back drove them to heat and desire. These things were tertiary frailties, for what configuration was most certain in man's mind? Roundness. The jagged edge of a broken stone carried uncertainty, was taken with itself, involved. The straight edge of machines, their boards and cogs, their feeds and output... these were rarely round, and always intricate. It was curvature in all things, the analog redirection of straightness into another form, a looser, less predictable form that called man's thirst for emotion, for the overturning of suppressions. Round was comfort, round was politic and soft. If one were to ask a man which he thought, even abstractly, was softer, warmer, and even sexier to him, exhibiting for him two images, one of a sharp, clear cube, and one of a smooth, clear sphere, the man would more often choose the object with curve, that one with the greater demonstration of placidity. The man would more often choose Janine.

Was it art that worked her eyes into their modes of attraction, that bequeathed them a power to call, to ask, to entreat and even beckon? The shaping of clay into figures was an art. The strokes and lifts of a painter's hand giving an illusion of depth was an art. Surgery, atom splitting, roasting a pig, cutting hair, birth... all of them arts by a manner, if only for their alterable style and mutation, their linear or vagrant possibilities. Was lust an art? The opening of her tricky mouth and uttering of causal words introduced her sexuality to the very air. She breathed differently in this state, her eyes dimmed into a coziness most found in those near sleep, and the heat in her hands and her belly and mouth and legs and mind increased to the touch. Her heartbeat itself met the man's on a fulcrum, and as her heart slowed, calm and controlled, his own sped into a dizzying static of want and need, the degrees of which increased with her every uttering and touch. Yes, as with all venom, whether natural or contrived, in the perches of snakes or the basins of chemistry, her charm and enchantment over a man was a powerful, well-learned art.

Janine lay in the chair, curled and with her calves draped over one armrest, her hair loose and wily, resting her head in one propped hand. The commercial ended and she was returned the film for which she had waited to watch. The screen began to show her its new story, a sandy, gray-weather assault of young men against opposing young men. Some were portrayed brazen, some nervous, soldiers entering a scene wherein great struggle had burst into the world, a battle of guns and orders and running, a war scene full of gunpops and machined shrikes, and screams, all the lovely, pained screams of youngly destroyed boys, screams high in pitch, each the last breath lost, explaining needy, arrogant deaths atop the sand. Janine watched a commander shout his nearest man over a hillock, and as this man raised, stepping atop a crest of beach grass, his torso was met with the thwipping of metal, bits of demise tearing through his body. He fell back, patting hard at the fatal wounds, grunting and tightening his jaw until he couldn't. The commander shook his head and shouted another man over the hillock, and Janine drew her free hand in, moving it ever slowly into that distinguishment by which her upper thighs were separated.

Bill was a weak sort of man, so trivial and wasted by his kind, His inconsequence was a pivot by which his sexuality tottered, as if his own poor life was in control of hardening him, as if they were his very faults that caused his sorts of lust. Bill had been but half a man, a half-failed, half-pertinent, half-dead animal. Bill's wayward encounter of Amy was all he had required to begin a descent into his full manhood, of course finding his luck to be female, his confidence to have been hiding, his yearnings to be answered by attraction. How better Bill must have thought himself, with Amy at his side, with Janine beneath him, the two women taking whatever they pleased from him. Bill was happy to believe he was on a great new path, to wonder where his life might go, to feel that he was reaching his heart's hastened pulse atop her. This was no accident. Janine knew a failed man needed his relationships to reach at success, to allude there was something within him that was preferable, even to himself. Most men copulated by this standard and by the standards of their impersonal cultures. They held themselves to rituals and levels of life that were at odds their nature, modes atop modes, stories they thought needed to be lived out.

Man thought he was to show strength and ingenuity, yet had intimate laws that were contrary to his love of civilization, while building cultures that did not accommodate the diameter of his soul. He tolerated diplomacies designed to create accordance with other men, but in all ways infesting these with his helplessness and truths. He thought often he ought not fail in bed, but in all ways did, for he was not the sort for beds and oughts. What torture for him. What sad, tame deaths he had in his future. Bill was frightened by a past that contained women who had not wanted him. Janine had known many men with this conditioning. Pleasuring these primates beyond the simple sway of their bodies was so rudimentary for her. She needed only embellish, the simplest thing, and make him believe he deserved more. To Janine, man had never, in his angry, hungry existence, deserved anything greater than what he had developed in the beginning, which was little more than a weak, needy self. A man's very purpose was exactly what he feared: Impermanence.

The young men fired weapons and ran, shouting and falling, crawling and communicating. Some stood and fell again, some killed others. Janine rose from her chair and sat before it, her back against the footrest, knees declined and head tilted back. Guns fired like rapidly beaten drums, vehicles whined and groaned, and the bullet-struck sand shot up in small flits of violence. So much capacity, so much compression, boys and all around them, expiry. There was a time when her sister would have been beside her, enjoying the sight of this disaster. It wasn't long ago that Amy's poison knew men, that she took them and filled herself. This had been their nature, two sisters, one by which a man was lured, tempted, held and pleasured, then constricted, and one by which he was petrified, struck dead, met in horror and devoured. Nature.

Amy had once been perfect. Divine. The alpha head of a magnificent creature. She had never known failure, never felt the fool within her gain ground, and her poison held its staggering truth over all it came to know. The world had been for her a predicament of survival and eager, uncompassionate hunger. Her power had been self-endowment, moving through the folds of a snake's land, all directions of sight but a home for snakes, nameless coils of life, tightly fit to the world. This had been their creation, their promised floor of heat and prey, until the morning humanity bit them.

It was a man, of course, a petrified, weeping man, poisoned and at his last breath. A nothing. The charms had been lifted and the temptation had run its course, bringing him into Janine's coils. He was held for a time, cruelly given pleasures and life, until Amy woke, hungry. A serpent's hunger is a yearning for vitality, a call to kill and live. This man, unable to move but for his shed of tears atop fading breath, used the last of these bits of life to change her. With his last exhale, he looked upon her teeth and serpent head, sensing the burn of her poison within him, her truest self, and he muttered that she was beautiful.

It was man's sickness, beauty. Having it uttered to her changed Amy. Beauty began following the amphisbaena, nudging against her two heads. One head adopted it to tempt men the more, while the other head only thought about beauty, puzzled over it, confused itself. In time, this infection devoured the alpha, Amy, the striking head whose eyes carried paralysis within the briefest glance, the head that brought ends to all men. The idea of beauty turned the murderess against her perfect form. She saw man with serpent eyes and her poison flowed, but she would no longer petrify, no longer give him her strike. She saw in him a weakness, knew it was where beauty had been created, and instead of lashing at this weakness, destroying him, sinking her teeth into that sensitive spot as a hungering snake should, she began to long for a weakness of her own. It was the human obsession with beauty that had ruined everything.

Janine lifted her head and smiled, the expression crisp across her face like a crumbling, dry bloom. She could smell him, his trivial scent, adulterated with traces of deodorant, aftershave, and other products he thought the world would enjoy. How little Bill knew about scent. Janine's mouth opened and she ran her tongue slowly through her lips, tasting them, the air, tasting Bill through the layers of sweat, soap, cloth, and masculinity. This newer tongue was weak; with her original, she would have had the pleasure of smelling his very heartbeat and mood. Bill reached the landing of the second floor and Janine lifted onto her bare feet. She would soon slow him, temper his body, lessen his need to complete the sex that he was imagining, even then before the door.

"Come in, shrew," she said quietly to the room. There was a knock then. Janine's smile remained exact, calculated and insensate, as she walked to the door and opened for him.

"Hey, amazing. I thought I'd stop by and say hello," he said, the edge of his lips lifting into his expression for slyness.

"Uh huh," she said coy, lifting her hands around his neck and bringing her waist close to his in the doorway.

"So, hello," he said, enjoying her contact and fondly thinking ahead to what he trusted he would receive from her. She was so tautly formed to his hands, so present.

"Amy figured you were lonely, mister man, told me I should give you a call," Janine said, examining his body as if she in some way required it. This was the physical display she knew best, the predicament of hidden want. Its dimensions and facets were those Janine had mastered long ago. Lust was the best appearance when one wanted to hurt a man.

"Oh, did you call me? My phone never rang," he said, intrigued.

"No, I didn't call. But you did," she replied, bringing her lips close to his.

"I've been thinking about you all day," he lied. She sensed this with ease.

"Come inside," she said, allowing him room and closing the door behind him. Shortly, mothering his whims against the wall beside the door, Janine let Bill drift into a secluded range of pleasure for which he had learned to trust and know.

"Tell me I'm pretty," she said, breathing heavy across his mouth, holding back poisons within poisons.

"That would be an understatement. You're much more than just pretty," Bill said, going along and directing his hands to those portions of her for which he mingled most. Janine slowed him and sped herself, heightening what she understood of him. She caressed and operated, a hybridization of sensuality and vehemence. For her it was another night, another reaction, another plainly hypnotized man who foolishly thought he had found beauty.

### Chapter Sixteen

To be attracted to something, that thing must be more attractive than some poor original. You can't go to an intriguing thing without leaving another, less-intriguing thing. I was merely neglected because of Elroy's pure attractiveness, and as I heard it put many times, like a harsh and loud trombone with the capacity for but a single, agitating and off-key note, Elroy was completely peculiar. The odd desire people held for him gave him his rightful fifteen fame minutes. Elroy outlasted these fifteen by hours, however. Those hours grew like ivy into days, and the stalks of those days began intertwining themselves into a spreading, tasteless mesh that covered my social life. It devoured everything in its path and left me nothing to walk on but an intricate network of vine and leaf that surfaced my world entirely. In the end, when some magnificent force deemed Elroy's time in the limelight up, I had even loved him myself.

-from _The Broken Meadow_ , Robin Young

The room was the same but the occupants new and there were more of them. There was an unending line of people, whether they stood in wait to enter the room, or were in their homes, at various occupations, standing in line while driving their cars. The line continued on, human link by human link, each tethered to what they believed to be another, a partner, a love, even a soul mate. Those that had been disenfranchised with the effects of attraction wanted it most, hating it with severity. Those who had felt it and to their reasoning found benefit, returned again and again for more of the elusive sensation. There were means for finding it, of course. Monogamy insured amounts of attraction remained, whether these remained strong or became but trifles across lengthening days, with a single partner. Playing the field, finding partner after partner brought with it an exciting and clearly unknown element, for the attractions found could be achingly strong, or if trivial, still allow the sensation those playing sought most. The places for this were numerous and beleaguered in both loneliness and camaraderie; taverns, churches, social networking programs and meeting places, even speed dating events in large rooms full of nervous people.

The referee announced the general constitution of rounds in which the men and women would engage one another. Her description, though no newcomer would ascertain it, was verbatim what she had said when Bill, Amy, and Roger had last attended. In that first attempt, Bill and Amy had met to much spark, and Roger had left with pleasant thoughts of Mel, who was now out of his life. Instead of falling back and folding his recuperation in thought, in doubt and worry, Roger had chosen to sprint, to move quickly and repeat his attempt. They were compatriots and mischief makers that agreed to accompany him. His brother and Amy were in it for a bit of fun, and in an assuring way, to pat Roger's back with their presence. The referee's husband announced the timer's readiness and she called the game afoot.

"The Guide just says 'Looks'," a young, Filipino woman stated, introducing to the first man in her rotation the topic by which her list began. Bill nodded and scratched his chin. She held an expression of nervousness that Bill understood, and seemed from the moment she sat across from him to have already made her choice that he was unacceptable. Bill imagined that the things she would not accept were exactly those that would one day cause her undoing, when she would refuse to see a doctor for an ongoing abdominal pain. By the time she would finally report to a medical professional, her state would be entirely prone, and the professional's prognosis would be that of a coroner's.

"Looks, yeah. Well, I was very lucky, is all," Bill addressed, "I've had friends who weren't attractive, as it goes; I'm sure you've known people like that. I don't judge with friends. But most of them don't have the same opportunities that a strong appearance nets, you know? I didn't create that system, but if it's there, I'll use it. They've always been jealous of me, actually, even some of the women I've dated, but I say let 'em. It's not my fault I have the bod. I was born a certain way, and it's not their fault they weren't. Some people look good, some don't. God's plan or something," he said.

"Okay," the young woman responded, dazed by his presumptuous level of vanity.

"You like a good looking man, right?" he asked, nodding as if to indicate she should agree.

"Uh, maybe. Sure," she said, finding Bill to be highly obnoxious.

"Then you're in luck," Bill replied, opening up his arms and turning his hands inward, pointing back at himself with his fingers, "Because that man's right here, and he's been me a long time; He's good at it." The woman's eyes widened and she covered her mouth.

"Oh my god, you're a freak," she said behind her hands, stunned by his ridiculous, pious arrogance.

"That's all right, you can go that way. Tease me, whatever. But the real question is: When will you let yourself feel the attraction? You know it's there." The woman's mouth turned then, and she slowly lifted her palms until she had covered her eyes. With her elbows on the table and her face resting in her hands, she slowly shook her head.

"I knew this whole thing was a stupid idea," she said.

The dates continued, each minute a span of awkwardness and hearty attempts at interest and dialogue. When the men sensed discomfort in a date, they filled up the time talking at the women. When the women found discomfort in a date, they looked away and entertained themselves, let the men talk until time was called. Roger and Bill, stationary, awaited their prospective dates, Amy using her date with Roger to tell him which of the other women she thought he ought to approach straight, and which he might prefer to coax slowly, and, in two instances, which he ought not approach at all. Bill continued his utmost vanity, prospering all topics introduced by his dates to his grandiloquent appearance and his disbelief in the notion that opposites could attract. He quietly exasperated one particular date, a woman he decided would, at life's end understand why gusts of wind and high places were dangerous combinations, by continually scratching the edge of a nostril with his finger. He would speak, and slowly introduce the finger to the tip of his nose, speak and scratch, and when the date was nearing completion, he committed to a bit more nasal depth, overtly picking, which caused his date to look away, her face in a curled expression of disgust. He did this while talking about refinement and his sailboat.

Amy's third date was an older gentleman who's hair had grayed well, a man with eyes that bore the tempering only studiousness brought. His hands were clean and smooth, and neither they nor his eyes looked to have ever acknowledged a marital ring. Earlier, when Bill had explained his system of imagining people's deaths when bored, Amy had thought this a silly endeavor. Now, however, she found herself doing the same, and enjoying it much. She concluded her third date's perish would be by aneurism, and while distant, this final snuffing was not so far ahead that his home would be paid off when it occurred.

"It's a tri-level, but the midsection has a single room of its own, giving me five bedrooms, three-and-a-half bath," he said mildly, detailing his previous answer, which was a response to the introductory Guide of 'Home and Hearth'. Amy fidgeted and gestured widely.

"Five? I've never dated a guy that had five bedrooms. That's _crazy_ ," she said. The man gave a smile. In addition to imagining the future deaths of their dates, Amy having taken to this only recently, both Bill and Amy had chosen beforehand to adopt new personalities for the event.

"I wouldn't be too intrigued. It's still relatively small, as houses go. My first house in Palos Mordes had only three rooms, but nearly double the square footage," the man went on.

"Double, huh? That's big. I don't care what anybody says, 'new car' smell is nowhere near as cool as 'new house' smell." The man thought this over.

"I'd have to agree," he finally said, edging a smile. He was fond of her.

"Hey, lemme ask you something."

"Of course." Amy kept her voice even and asked with a tone of naive curiosity.

"Do you think girls should always do it to a guy in a bedroom, you know, to be familiar and everything, or more spontaneous, like, you know, she jumps you in the closet, or the kitchen? Ha ha! The back yard!" she came out with. The man, while caught off guard, fell back on the more worldly habit of not ever appearing overly surprised. He quietly mused her question and folded his hands on the table, appearing to be unphased by a question that had undoubtedly phased him. His reserve did not fluctuate outwardly, but his mind was turning about her with much emphasis. Even then he was imagining the woman across his table without her clothing.

"Whatever you want," he said quietly. He felt this to be an expert response.

"That's great. You're cool to be open like that. Some guys just aren't into it... you know, letting things get wicked hot, right? But me, I'm like... hey, right now, get to it. Ha." The man raised an eyebrow and believed he had uncovered something to pursue. His anticipation, while hidden somewhat well, was still evident to Amy.

"You seem very free, enjoying life," he said then.

"Thanks! Yeah, I like to take what comes, you know?"

"Would you like to get together sometime? I have my own bar at the new house," he offered.

"Ah jeez, don't tell me that! When I drink, I get crazy. Oh my god."

"Friday night?" he detailed.

"Oh, Friday I can't. That's the day I go for my blood test, and I'm always woozy after."

"Your blood test?" he asked, leaning back an inch.

"Yeah. Pff. I guess mom was right. Never trust guys at parties."

And so the circle of needs and hopefulness continued, each woman meeting each man, some feeling slight ignitions, some dreading more of what they had come to dislike. Roger's dates went well, in that he spoke with honesty, made sure to mention his children, and remained just as open in divulging that his return to dating was a more recent conversion. This, to him, was the proper way to handle his situation, a realization he had come to after his short relationship with Mel. The only facet of the speed dating scenario that Roger found disagreeable was that Amy dated men other than Bill, which seemed to him a thing that could backfire with ease. Not that he doubted Amy's resolve, but that Roger and Bill were both jealous sorts, despite that they had denied it much in the past. He did note that Bill seemed to be enjoying the event, though continually wore an uncharacteristic look of smugness, which was odd.

Roger's understanding of his brother had been breached heavily by the news that Bill was involved with two women. Bill had always seemed to be in a certain zone with Roger, in that they were in predicaments with life and women that, while dissimilar, had pressed them into an isolation together, a meager masculinity that was nearly identical. They had lived together, single, having somewhat abandoned women for a time. When they had tried to reinitiate themselves in the dating world, both had come away from it with positive result, having found women that seemed to enjoy them. When Mel left Roger, however, this similarity between the two brothers was damaged, and when the older brother discovered Bill's relationship to be possibly perverse, or at the least, sexually eccentric, this damage reached deeper, and with much velocity. A severing.

It was not until Roger began to pity Amy that his tolerance increased. When he watched her, he saw the intelligent, witty, beautiful woman he had come to know, but he now also saw sadness, defense, and a woman who was entirely injured. In this way, perhaps she and Bill were correct for one another, despite that there was some other woman involved. Did Amy truly have no genitalia? The thought of this disturbed Roger. Had the idea of another woman really not bothered her? Had it been her urging to create such a relationship, as Bill had explained? He had spent several days calming after his argument with Bill, and, once returned to his normal regiment as older brother and host of Bill's living quarters, Roger had no reason to disbelieve his brother. Neither of them were liars, or thought to fabricate so much as the other was concerned. Roger had come to acknowledge Bill's current relationship as Bill's own business, and something by which the younger brother should not be judged. There was envy, of course, as Roger was the sort of man for which free and knavish sexual encounters had not come, yet had been fondly imagined for some duration. As he spoke with each woman, speed dating and overcoming small curbs the night presented, he kept note of Amy, her dates around the circle, and thought it likely that these men understood her only in the slight. He could have no idea, however, that both she and his brother were putting on characters, deadpanning their dates with humor and mischief.

"How about it? Anyone you like?" Bill asked, clever.

"Mmm, the man behind me and to the left," Amy responded, taking a sip of her drink, which she brought with her on her dates as both refreshment and prop, "about three o'clock to you. He had a wonderful wink that he gave me, and his speech was very wet, lispy. While he talked at me, I came to believe his tongue was a small mound of rigatoni that he kept flopping against his teeth and lips. You?" They were one another's sixth date of the night, and had chosen to ignore their Guide of 'Foreplay'. Bill pondered her question a moment and then winked at her.

"There was a redhead. I told her she was a good match for me, then asked if she'd ever been a cheerleader. When she said she hadn't, I said 'Oh, that's a real shame', and completely stopped talking to her. I think she wants me dead."

"I don't blame her."

"I don't blame the rigatoni man for winking at you," Bill replied.

"How'd the non-cheerleader die?" Amy asked.

"Arc flash from a faulty fuse box, advanced age, and the neighbors don't find her for over a week. Rigatoni man?"

"Hyponatremia, to the point that his cells begin to burst. Horrible affair. No open casket," she said.

"Damn, that one's better than mine," Bill admitted. Amy then turned and quickly pointed at each man she had dated previous to Bill that night, quietly announcing each conjured death as she did so.

"The guy in the shorts: Pulmonary emphysema from cigarettes, ironically after only two years of smoking. Next up, your brother: I figure leukemia from extended radon gas exposure. And then we have Mr. Academic: I originally thought aneurism, but changed his rather quickly. Drowning from heavy entanglement in kelp. Much more enlightening. Uh, that guy with the suspenders there: He gets it from a serial murderer, and it involves a blow to the head followed by some unsavory cutting. His _death_ actually comes later though, while unconscious. We're talking an open mouth, a kitchen funnel, and oven cleaner. Then, rigatoni man, who I already described. Uh, last but not least, there's you. You meet a mountain lion while hiking through the Cascades and slowly bleed to death while trying to make the six miles back to your car. The uh, mountain lion knowingly follows behind you the entire way until you finally drop. Really frightening," Amy said, concluding this tour-de-macabre with a slight nod. She had uttered this grotesque hodge-podge of demise and horror with a simple air, as if she were talking about what she might order at a particular restaurant. Bill stared at her, both with pride and from sudden emasculation.

"Those are _all_ better than mine. Jesus," he muttered. Now it was Amy's turn to wink. After this, she had a sip of her drink and then gave a glance over her shoulder at Roger.

"He's really doing well," she commented. Bill nodded. He had kept an eye on his brother throughout the speed dating event.

"I'm just impressed he wants to do this again so quickly. I don't think I could."

"No, you couldn't," Amy agreed, "You'd need time to reflect. For better or worse, your brother's an achiever, but he's never really figured that out, is the thing."

"Huh, he _is_ sort of an achiever," Bill repeated, perhaps realizing this for the first time. Roger did not have his home, children, job, or health, due to luck. He worked hard and planned much.

"I'm thinking the girl in the sweatshirt is his best bet," Amy said.

"Her?" Bill questioned, "No way. The woman in the big hat. With the glasses," Amy glanced at the person in question.

"Oh, I thought that at first, too, but she's kind of dumb. Don't get thrown off by the smart glasses."

"You think? I don't know, the girl in the sweatshirt is sort of... animated, I guess. She gestures wildly. All over the place."

"Yeah, but _you_ liked her. I'm sure your brother does, too," Amy responded.

"I did sort of like her. How'd you pick up on that?" Bill asked, surprised and a little guilty.

"I was sitting at the next table during your date, remember? You let her do the talking. You only do that when you like someone. Your brother does just the opposite. Talks ears off when he's into a girl. They'd get along well, I think." This brief synopsis of Bill's dating behavior caught him aside. Did he talk less when he was fond of someone?

"Huh. Well, I'm just glad he's out and about. Trying to meet women," he said.

"It's good for him," Amy agreed. Bill looked over her physique, not in a lustful way, but with admiration. He had come to believe there was no one quite like Amy, and that he was, as Roger had explained, lucky in having met her. Bill would have once argued that his arrangement with Amy and Janine was an advanced or elevated relationship, that it was better in some way, unique and exciting. He now had begun to realize that, in a more perfect world, there would be no Janine, and he and Amy would be alone in most things. Not being able to enact his physical desire for Amy was as if a torturous itch he could not reach, and abating it had become a game of getting his mind on other things when she was around. Now, when he caught himself thinking sexual thoughts about Amy, he quickly replaced her in his mind with Janine. When his thoughts calmed, and this was usually quick to occur, he removed Janine from his mind again. In equal means, he had found himself thinking of Amy when with Janine, from time to time. He allowed these particular instances a greater duration.

She had become quiet for a moment, sitting across from him. Amy was rummaging in a certain den of thought, and designing the way in which she would make it known. Bill glanced at the large timer and noted that they had just over a minute left in their date.

"Listen," Amy began when her mind had surfaced. Bill had a gulp from his drink, which he had ordered without ice for the specific purpose of maintaining gulps.

"About the collision," she finally said, "I want to be there."

"When I wreck the car?"

"Yes. I still think you're demonstrating a concentration of idiocy that even I didn't realize could reach the depth you're taking it, but uh, in case something happens, I should be there," she said. This sounded more aligned with an admission, than an explanation.

"I'd like you to be there," he said.

"Good. Just... you shouldn't be so stupid, B.S... You really shouldn't."

"Noted. If it makes you feel any better, I've got a tow truck reserved and the speedway is rented. I'm not doing it on some old road or whatnot. And not on concrete."

"The speedway?" she inquired, curious.

"Yeah, they do monster truck rallies in the center of it, which is all soft mud and dirt. I rented the space for a couple hours and I'm staging all of this with a lot of planning. Rest assured I'm not doing this spur-of-the-moment or anything."

"You shouldn't do it at all. It's asking for trouble," she said, resigned.

"I'm even alerting a paramedic, so if anything were to happen... it won't, but if something _did_ happen, I'd be at the hospital in like, record time. Believe me, I'm all over this. I even downloaded a physics book last night and I've been designing my ramp with the power of full-on, exacting math. You'll be more relieved once you see how I'm setting it up. Nothing too crazy."

"Just be careful, Bill."

"Done. And I'll feel a lot better with you there. Thank you."

"Sure. But also... you know I'm not big on promises and all that dreck, but I think I kind of want one on this," she said.

"What am I promising?" Bill asked, touched. This was a worried and upset Amy, a person with which he had never been introduced.

"That you won't go do it unless I'm there," she said, serious.

"I promise. No problem. I'd prefer to have you near when it happens. You're my Gal #6. I don't take that lightly," he said.

"All right then. So, getting rid of _that_ dismal subject, and now that my little plead is out of the way... you ready to start the show?" she asked.

"Born ready." He lifted his glass and put back the last of his drink, then set it aside, smiling. A performance had been arranged concerning their eventual speed date, and dialogue written. Bill adjusted his position to sit very straight on his bar stool. Amy lifted her drink and held it in an offhand way. She then slumped down a bit, frisking her hair out to make it messier.

"Hit me," she said quietly. Bill cleared his throat and looked around, prepared his mind and vocal chords. Amy nodded.

"Is this a joke?" Bill suddenly asked, his voice lifted enough that most of the circle could hear him if they chose to.

"Uh uh! You're a kindred spirit. I can feel it. And you're so cool, too!" Amy replied, jittering a bit and acting somewhat antsy, an anxious puppy wanting to be pet.

"There's no way I'm doing that with you. I don't even know you," he voiced. They both maintained the raised volume, and several of the daters in the circle looked over toward them, both concerned and annoyed.

"Where's your spontaneity? Ooh! You know what? I've always wanted to go to Rio some day!" Amy exclaimed. Bill frowned, as if he could not believe this woman was as brainless as she seemed. Many of the men in the circle sighed, having each had their three minutes with the ditzy, goofy Amy. One of them chuckled and shook his head. Bill did not agree with Amy's synopsis that this man would die of emphysema, and so revised the death, surmising that this particular man would die from a ripcord malfunction high over rural farmland.

"You have money, right? We could like, just go!" Amy said, bouncy.

"Rio? What are you talking about?" Bill asked.

"It's sunny all day there, and the beach is awesome," Amy said, wiggling a little on her bar stool. Bill looked away as if annoyed, an established and quick-minded person having no choice but to put up with someone not bright and irritating, due to circumstance and proximity.

"Yeah well, I've been to Rio. It's not that great," he said.

"RIO? Oh, you'd be so hot in Rio. In shorts, on the beach... totally hot."

"Well, you're disgusting and ugly," Bill returned, snide. There was a gasp from one of the other female speed daters, and Bill heard muttering from numerous couples. The referee called time, but not in her usual shout. The round of dates had ended but no one moved. All the room's attention seemed to have found them. Roger was looking at Bill, confused. He knew something was up, but not yet what that was.

"Ugly?" Amy asked, but in a mode that sounded turned on, not insulted. Bill heard the woman at the table to his right mutter to her date a short sentence that culminated with the word 'prick'.

"Ugly all over. Your neck needs a bath and your tits look like a kid's elbows," Bill said to Amy. Another woman several tables away gave a false, mocking laugh, and looked to be on the verge of joining this conversation, most likely to berate him on his date's clueless behalf.

"You know what I like to hear," Amy said then, her voice sexual, her eyes narrowed.

"Yeah?"

"Maybe I'm a pig," she added. Now most of the men were puzzled, and some of the women began demonstrating expressions of light to heavy shock. The referee only looked at her husband, who manned the timer. He appeared to regard Bill with much anger, and was likely unaware that they shared a first name.

"Sure you are. A disgusting pig," Bill said, staring at Amy, now appearing to be highly activated himself. The husband at the timer stood then, nearing the point of interrupting. With this stance, he bore the look of a man carrying physical confrontation in his mind.

"You're so hot," Amy said then, reaching out and taking Bill's hand across the table. The referee's angry husband faltered then, uncertain of what was going on. Bill leveled a stare at Amy's chest, a long one, the duration of which most of the people present could openly note, and then raised to her eyes.

"You know what? I have the week off. Fuck it, I'll take you're ass to Rio," he said, indicating she should be impressed. Amy followed this cue expertly.

"For real?!" she exclaimed.

"Car's out front. Could hit the airport in twenty," he said. The referee cleared her throat and announced 'time' again, but still without shouting.

"I'll look so fucking nasty in Rio," Amy added, hinting at lust. Bill found this tone in her voice, one he had never heard from her in actual life, incredibly stimulating. He fought back the urge to kiss her right there, acting or not. He pictured her looking nasty in Rio and was very fond of the image this brought him.

"A silly pig on the damn sand."

"God, I want you."

"Let's go," Bill said, sliding onto his feet. Amy did the same.

"You first, I'll follow," she replied, still holding his hand. Bill began leading her out of the speed dating room, both of them rushed.

"Goddamn right, you will," he said as they exited. Roger snorted and let his mind wander, laughing inside at how he imagined they had planned this little scene. The mood in the room was one of stunned rabbits. People simply exchanged looks. No one had anything to say beyond the minor sounds of grunts, snorts, chuckles, and sounds of intrigue. The referee's husband sat back down, lost in thought. The man nearest Roger shrugged and mouthed the word 'wow'. Bill and Amy had left, but their traces, originally meant to comfort Roger and relax him, to accompany him, were still, by the couple's disturbing charade and exit, humorous and more than present for him.

"Uh, time," the referee again called.

### Chapter Seventeen

It was miserable. They were stranded together on the great Arctic permafrost, uninhabited for hundreds of thousands of years. She could not stand him, and yet he was one of the only human beings in the hemisphere, and certainly the only one for hundreds of miles. Mr. Mesler would not be returning in the helicopter for another month, and the study had to continue, the core samples had to be gathered. There was a single thud against the steel door then and it opened. She shuddered from the blast of freezing air and Felino simply entered, ignoring the rule of five knocks before coming in. He quickly closed the door behind him, sealing out the frigid arctic cold. After flinging off his goggles, he drew his hood back, muttering about his boots, which were crusted in ice and snow. It was then that the frustrated engineer looked over at her and stopped speaking. She had not had time to cover herself, and having been in the process of changing out of her gear and into her sleeping clothes, she stood in the heated, metal vault of their shared domicile, exposed in nothing but her underwear.

-from _Hearts on the Ice Sheet_ , Patricia Bell

The grandest thing that the woman disguised as a flutter and the man disguised as a pig could think to do was drink wine. In a somewhat celebratory mode, their faces pleased and the previous charade surging mischief through them, they made the stairs of Amy's residence and entered the small, two bedroom apartment.

"I think I'm too good-looking to be seen in a hovel like this," Bill said, approaching a yawn and sitting in a chair near the window. Amy entered the small, L-shaped kitchen and retrieved a bottle from the refrigerator.

"What's a hovel?" she asked, procuring two glasses and the corkscrew.

"Never mind, trollop," he replied.

"Oh my god! The way you talk... you must be so smart," she said, returning to the living room. The night had carried the two of them through much fun. Bill's relief over his brother's new dating resolve was pleasing, and through the catalyst of Amy's antics and his own mischief, this good feeling had cascaded into a sense of joy that did not feel to dissipate soon. Amy, who's adopted character was not bright and carried a persona altogether giddy, seemed to have taken on some of the latter in her actual mood. Her smile was genuine and Bill's eyes enjoyed seeing this.

"The boys at the club will think less of me," he said, casual.

"You're in a club? What kind?"

"The kind where women of your disreputable stature are generally halted at the reception desk and then ushered in discreetly through the service entrance and into the showers."

"Stature!" she said.

"But I'm here. I suppose I've boarded the train. No sense dodging it. And you do, when I need to search for a reason, have a sort of mongrel attractiveness. Scruff, but not completely uncoaxing," Bill said, swirling his wine. Amy grunted like a pig for a moment, which caused Bill to snort, though without his permission. Amy then smiled and sighed.

"Okay, any more and I'll start to hate the both of us."

"It's kind of fun," he replied, "It's like a license to insult. I can say all these horrible things because I think I'm better. That must be empowering as hell, in real life."

"Being obnoxiously naive was somewhat fun, I'll admit," Amy said, tilting her head rapidly side to side and looking eagerly dense.

"Not to mention being 'easy'," Bill added with a chuckle.

"Is there a difference?"

Supposing wine had the ability to churn one's insides into pure motivation, Bill's subsequent lines of thought, throughout the evening, would be expected. Wine, however, did not possess the strengths of hypnotism, and so it was with another device that Bill's inner wants, concerning Amy, continued to shake his trestles. Something in the room had changed, he realized. The walls were the same as any night previous, and the trinkets and general articles matched the bits of their stock in his memory, but the room felt different, new. He felt to be very present in it, moreso than in previous visits.

Bill's thoughts swiveled, at times, nudging his eyes out, rolling them across the floor to where she sat. The eyes looked her over, they noticed her contours and idiosyncrasies. They glanced up her legs, peered down her shirt, rolled atop her own eyes. The room had changed. The two of them had changed. He felt it as clearly as he might feel a pin-prick. What was it?

Amy had changed. When his eyes fell upon her body, the two adults drinking their wine and spilling their teases, rough-housing in speech and riddling at one another's eccentricities atop the clean, blurring carpet, she did not snap at him. When he wanted her, taking little care to remove his urges from his physical mannerisms, she did not stunt his glances, nor quip his thoughts limp. She did not mind, for once. When a bold moment had wriggled into their conversation, a moment wherein Bill had mentioned she looked good that night, and certainly of the caliber for which most men speed dating would stare and design naughty thoughts, she found it a complement, rather than offering it a shrug and intelligent dismissal, as Bill would have expected. This moment, an instance of toward approach that she accepted, was followed by more of them.

Bill was male, and at even the age of three had learned that frivolity and showing-off almost always involved repeating actions, gestures, and things spoken that gained the reaction he sought. A little boy repeating the punchline of a joke over and over again, thinking to get a laugh each time, faced trouble when he realized fond thoughts did not work in this way. He would need new punchlines, new jokes, for new laughs yet the same attention. Affection worked in an identical means, and for the first time in their relationship, Bill felt he had finally stumbled into a realm of physicality with her. He had somehow run across the right statements or antics, and the laugh, or approval, was fresh again. This confused and delighted Bill; it seemed she was human, after all.

The night slanted. The moon did not pass over their town, nor did it rise or set. The moon had not come out that night, choosing instead to revolve around the Earth out of sight, turning the clouds on their sides, and gently pushing the seas against their foundations. The people of this place walked at angles, and their cars lifted past buildings that had left the ground years before, into a set sky that, for the moment, had tilted and warmed and become a sort of heaven to all within and beneath it. Was it air the two breathed, or was it that they inhaled and exhaled words, words that caused smiles in voices, voices that lulled fond ears and brightened pleasing eyes? Bill set his glass aside, having reached its bottom, and fought down a sigh of weariness from drink. The night had moved into his mind and his eyes had returned to him, corking it in, letting it ferment and reach into his blood.

Amy rose and walked into the kitchen, the wine having touched her shoulders, setting them downward. The hour of sitting in a steady position had diminished her adeptness with walking, and this sleepiness now hugged her feet, causing them to feel less certain of the flooring. Bill thought of the room, having rendered himself into a subtle lethargy within it. The comforter on the bed, the paintings on the walls, the small plastic trinkets, and even the way in which Amy's desk was arranged took on a certain girlishness he had not noticed before. He imagined her looking at each of these things before buying them, going over their uses and appearance in her mind. He imagined her standing in her apartment through the years, as each new article appeared on the wall, each new novelty was set on a shelf, as she became, in each of these instances, more and more the woman Bill would later know. He was with her, watched her move into the kitchen, her body adorable, her obscene wit now lessened in lieu of a pleasant evening. He watched her walking, watched her hands and their slight swinging motions, saw her posture and nape, her hair just so.

At the refrigerator, without having opened it, Amy stopped moving. She felt so simple, finally, so human. It was with no subtlety that she reached her arm over and set the empty wine bottle on the counter. It wobbled a moment before settling, turning as she turned, as the night had turned, as her heart and its need had turned. She braced her shoulders against the appliance, and let his hands find her waist. The sensation she felt was one that had approached from far off, but which had gained on her quickly. It was a calm impression of availability in her mood, the feeling of being alone, paradoxically, with another. Perhaps the wine or moon had encroached on her wits, perhaps she had been charmed by a man, or her comfort and tolerance had crested at some pivot in the age of their relationship. Bill kissed her and the sensation became clear. She had begun the night secure, and had, by means still unknown to her, in the manners of docility and want, found herself overwhelmed in a sensation altogether new. Romantics would have called it abandon. They leaned against the refrigerator, lips met and eyes turned off, his hands on her waist, her arms around the man she had come to love.

He had, in previous trysts, of which there were but few, found the moment of a firstling kiss to be a gradient arrangement. You met her and events unfolded. The relationship did or did not work out, but there was a hearty volume of dimness between meeting a woman publicly, and after some time, meeting her in a more intimate and private manner. You knew at certain points that an interest had been fostered. You knew advances were felt, that the emotion contained in your mind was a culminating thing. It was not a shot across a field, but an amble, and both people waged this walk under their own resolutions and in open conditions. Bill had thought his previous assignments of partner to be quite modern, and his relationship with Amy to be the most so, yet there was an almost primitive zone in holding Amy in her apartment. This zone did not feel gradient, but triggered, and he was in it. With his past affairs, Bill had made his ground in an even manner, and the togetherness that was to come was known by both people somewhat in advance, even if it was not spoken. There, in Amy's apartment, his latest wish granted and a cliff-side of relief scaled, he felt, for the first time, that he had been accepted by someone that _knew_ him. This felt both animalistic and machined, less than conscious, and the more to his chemical mindset. She was not growing sexual with him, as others had done. She had accepted his advance, as if his nature itself had been deemed appropriate, but only at the last minute. Perhaps passion. True want. This was both wondrous and unlike her.

He drew back a moment, an acrid taste atop his tongue. He opened his eyes and saw her watching him, unguarded, pleased... happy. The taste on her lips was as if she had recently chewed a headache pill, and Bill found himself perplexed by this. It was the second time he had encountered this odd, unpleasant taste. The trouble of this would not bother him, however. Amy cared for him and he adored her. The tastes of lips bore no power to him. He wanted Amy and Amy wanted him. With both of them breathing heavy, the consciousness of each vacated the room, collaborating as wanting creatures, syncopated to one another in a very small space just past their own bodies. How tiny the world became when one was lustful, how trivial and insignificant the world's happenings when there was desire to be felt.

"You're so beautiful," he said, feeling her warmth. There was a petty flash in his mind then and a piercing sensation against his shoulder. He stepped back as a shock of black crept through his stomach, causing him wince and gasp. This pain lifted into his ribs, arching about his lungs, heating his head with ferocity. Amy moved from Bill's sight, which then cut out. His ears stung and his neck felt to be crawling with small, cold things. He felt her walk behind him. His limbs had nullified when his flesh grew numb, and his heart had woken fast, each beat like the jerking of a fish lure, trying, just flailing to slug his blood through. Bill tried to speak but had no breath to carry his thought. He thought to collapse but his legs and backbone had become as if dry wood. He felt as if he had been pinpointed by Death from an improbable, vast, and thus unfair distance. A sniffling sound emanated from behind him by several feet, Amy having entered the living room. There were several seconds in which Bill's pain and panic shoved his head forward a few inches, to scream where he had never thought to scream, from and into his mind, and at the world itself.

"I love you, B.S. But if you ever touch me again... It'll be over," Amy said, cold. Bill's heart seized tight and his limbs bent inward. His knees shot out from beneath him and he collapsed on the linoleum. When his eyes opened, he could see again, and from his heart he detected a strange, stretching sensation. Amy retreated, crying quietly into her bedroom, closing the door behind her and shutting him out. What had happened?

The minute was an hour and the hour was a lifetime. His skin cooled. He breathed with caution. His hands and feet tingled with the flow of blood. Without concern or puzzlement, he did what any animal would do in this rigorous altercation. He slowly crawled, weak and with thought to escape. As his arms pulled inward and legs pushed behind him, he slowly left the kitchen and made his way on his stomach through the living room.

The hallway outside of the apartment was brightly lit, as now seemed the world to him. He propped himself sitting against the hallway wall, the aching sensation in his legs an appreciated horror. He was facing the stairs but did not want to attempt them. His motions through the air itself seemed to sting. Bill's capacity for breathing returned gradually, and though his skin felt taut and nettled, it was as if the air he drew was precious and excellent, and even the minor things he could see were invaluable and brightly present. The metal frame of the floor's circuit breaker seemed of amazing construction. The light fixture above, while having always been dim, now shone with a light that made him want to believe in a superior intent or ethereal figure. The friendly and trusted form of Janine reaching the top of the stairs before him brought a sense of relief and safety.

"Hey there, cute stuff. First fight, huh?" she asked, looking at his bitten shoulder. Bill only blinked, letting his head drift to the side. A sleepiness had overcome him and his joints now felt raw with his motions.

"Well, she doesn't know her own strength sometimes," Janine said. Bill was having trouble thinking, processing his thoughts, concluding.

"I'm... sick," he was able to mouse out.

"I bet. She's not gonna want to see you for awhile, tiger. Let me help you down to your car."

The stairs were a trial that Bill's knees could not bear, and so it was with Janine's support that he reached the ground floor of the apartment building. She coddled him, helpful, making sure his angle was correct before descending each stair, before attempting to walk across the lobby, before reaching his car beside the curb. With each stair descended and each foot of floor crossed, Bill felt to be of more sturdy health. Inches of his body woke and sent him signals with each breath, and with them, a mind more capable of understanding what had happened. By the time he and Janine reached his car, he was able to stand on his own well enough, and his anger was staggering.

Janine used her cell phone to contact Bill's, several feet away in his pocket. When it rang, he paid no notice, staring up at the apartment window. His dismal view through it into the apartment was dizzying. In a moment, the ringing of his cell phone ceased. He stared at the window, feeling cheated, the subject of an awful treachery. Amy had inflicted some horrid, cruel thing on him, and had thus created a terrible, mistaken night out of one that had promised so much more.

"There, that was me. My number is on your phone now. Save it, okay? Give me a call sometime. She might not want you around right now, but that doesn't concern me. I'd still like to see you, Bill," Janine explained.

Bill lowered his stare to Janine, her kind face in the night air, a woman that had helped him but also a woman somehow a part of Amy's bizarre life. Connected so, Janine was but another portion of Amy. He said nothing. Janine came forward and kissed him, then retreated backward, looking at him sadly before turning and entering the building. Bill made his rickety way around the car, hoping his hands had returned, at least, to the level of accountability and dexterity needed to unlock his door, navigate a wheel, and take him home.

They had.

### Chapter Eighteen

She woke and packed her things for the daytrip, boarded the tour-boat for the outer reef. It was a simple matter of want. Longstanding. While Jackson had respectability as a doctor, and had even expressed his great interest in Cassie, his brother was who she had on her mind. Grant was not accountable, had little in the way of ethics, and had a lean attractiveness that his brother did not, despite their similar appearance. Grant bent rules, he spoke in a manner that made you enjoy him, a voice that got away with things and eyes that intended to get away with more. Grant and Jackson were as if two versions of the same man, and a certain pleasure had evolved in her for learning what separated them most from one another, what kept them from getting along. At first, long ago, it had been the Caribbean, and Grant's decision to live atop it in his boat. Over the years, when they had repaired their family relationship and Jackson's water phobia, only excuses had kept them apart. Now, with the tour-boat tiredly coughing atop the water toward the row of old boats at the reef's edge, perhaps the newest obstacle between the brothers would be Cassie, herself.

-from _Twins in Barbados_ , Carol Stark

The disrepair was not in the road but at the edge, where concrete met trim layers of worn gravel, weed grasses, and the weathered posts of dusty road-signs. This plane of convergence, where the automotive world met the fields and properties of nature and her rural occupants, proffered the illusion of security, of even passage along a road that cut through lesser known portions of flatland, woods, hills, and even along trim, haphazard creeks. Bill continually aimed the older car at invisible points between white and yellow lines, aligned wheels he could not see, moving parallel with a stream of road reflectors that were scarcely whole anymore. These actions, by way of branching roads and occasional intersections, would bring him to the grounds on which the Latin Hall Calendarium had been settled. This destination was a place for which he was to attend subtle conference, let his field of expertise be caught up in people, gathered in an auditorium built with expertise by other caught up people, and in a zone surrounded by fields in the physical. He drove and spoke and fretted in the car, hours adrift, hours remaining. He did this atop gray, beneath blue, ahead of his thoughts and behind the day. He did this beside Janine.

Amy would be angry; he had originally asked her to accompany him on the trip. Bill's choice in taking Janine at the last moment was pointed, however, and Amy becoming angry was of great importance to Bill, for she had twisted him into grudge, harshly. Was it so childish to return her cruel treatment upon her, and to do so by means of the very person for which she had pushed him at, these months? He felt that he understood, at last, the true nature of Amy and Janine. Despite his motivations and the cursed, flawed relationship he had with Amy, Janine was the woman that wanted him. Janine was lovely and knew his mind. She had never snapped at him or nagged him back from his urge to hold her, his want to feel as if she was, in fact, with him. If Amy's gumption was to shove Bill into arrangements with Janine, to alleviate her own inadequacies or coldness, then Bill could not be judged for using the arrangement to his liking. By this logic, he had set out on his trip to the calendarium after calling Janine and asking her along. If Janine was the half that wanted him, then Janine was the half that more deserved to be offered his time. Was it not simple supply and demand? He was dating, after all, and this function required a certain degree of commitment. It was give and take, and if the two women were to be judged beside one another, only one of them seemed to be both giving and taking.

"We should pull over in the next town," Janine said, toying with her hair and watching the scenery pass.

"Yeah, I could use something to drink," Bill agreed. The day was uncommonly hot, though this may have been due to the surrounding hills, which seemed to diminish much of the wind that Bill was accustomed to. Janine adjusted the air conditioner, turning it down a notch.

"I could use some attention in the back seat," she said, still admiring the brush-line that followed the road. They had entered into a more densely vegetated area of the county, and would soon find themselves passing through brief and intermittent clusters of forest. Bill slowly rolled down his window for some fresh air.

"All right," he said without energy, something within him causing what he could only ascertain to be weariness. He was pleased for the company, but long drives and hot weather did not make Bill want any kind of physical interaction. The idea of crawling around on one another seemed like it would only increase his chance of heat stroke. Janine's mode altered, however, and she leaned over, putting her arm around his headrest, the other hand on his stomach.

"Or," she offered, "we can get some iced coffees, pull in behind a grocery store or some such place, and I can nurse you off, quick and neat." Bill smiled a bit at this statement and the way she had phrased it.

"Really?" he asked.

"Mmm hmm. I like a good duck-and-cover every now and then."

"Oh hell."

"If you're up to it," she added. Bill chuckled then. Emasculation was Amy's bit. On Janine it came off more obvious and relaxed.

"Oh, I get it. It's either pleasure between the legs, or a kick between the legs. What a choice. Real sly," he said. He was discovering that spending time with Janine on the long drive was quite fun, and began wondering just how angry Amy would be with this small adventure.

"Ah c'mon, Bill," she said, smiling, "Men and women have been dishing it out on the side of the road since people first decided migration was cool. Give a girl a shot, will ya?" Bill's eyes widened and he pulled one of his hands from the wheel, set it atop hers.

"Has anyone ever told you that you've pretty much mastered the double-entendre?"

"You like?"

"I like."

"Then I'll keep it up. You?" she quipped.

"Uh, I'll try my best."

"That's what I like to hear. So, it's settled. Cold drinks. I'll have a talk with your lap. Next town."

"That _does_ sound more than appealing. A little unfair to you, but I won't complain," he said.

"You're driving. It's five hours there, five back. I'm putting in what, ten minutes of work? I think I'm coming out ahead," she reasoned. Bill enjoyed this statement.

"You don't logic like any girl I've ever met, Janine. Are you sure you're not a guy pretending to be a woman?"

"You want to check? Pull over," she said.

"No no, hold off. The road's getting narrow and I should start focusing," he deflected warmly, "God, I hope they have iced coffee. I'm dying out here. This heat sucks."

"I'm sure they do. And yes, it does," Janine said, reaching over and adjusting the air conditioner again, setting it at the level it was previous. Her changes of the car's temperature were tactical, though Bill did not know this.

"Music," she said then, abrupt. Bill was surprised by this rapid change of subject. He slowly peered around and looked for his case of albums in the back. He spied this, wondered how long it had been since he had updated his collection. Music had not been on his mind much in the past few years.

"There," he said, nodding his head in the direction of the rear passenger seat, "in the black case. There should be something in there you'll be into; I kind of like a little of everything."

"Perfect, because that's what I want to listen to," she replied.

***

The equilibrium of the conference shifted the moment John Beasly announced that he was being sued by Manatee Publishing for rights infringement. This was a jolting development that caught Bill unaware. It seemed Beasly had a calendar published several years ago under a pseudonym, and then recently had it printed again by Holt and Finch, under his actual name. Why a man like John Beasly, who's output within the calendar community was regarded as high, would resort to double-publishing the same calendar confused Bill, until he saw the calendar in question.

"It's incredible, John. I don't know what to say," Bill responded, holding the calendar in his hands, thumbing through the pages.

"All this talk of 'edge' has twisted up the way things work," Beasly replied, "I've been making calendars on the side for Manatee for years, under the name Richard Seabest. These are my outlet for cutting loose, you know? Getting into something I hadn't been able to do with Arnie or Janet. So, when Janet started up this whole nightmare about 'risqué, provocative' art, I decided to use one of my Manatee calendars. "

"It's definitely risqué and provocative, no doubt there," Bill admitted.

"Well, I thought the rights had reverted back to me by now, because of my old contract. I'd forgotten that Manatee made me a new contract last year, and the provisions were different. So, by that contract, which I regrettably read over too fast and signed half-drunk, the rights hadn't reverted. Anyway, that's what happened. Wham. Lawsuit. I don't know why they didn't just let it go. They only gave it a slight print run anyway, thousand copies, and it's been off the shelf for four years. Publishing it again with a mainstream press would mean more money for everyone, even Manatee, is the thing."

"Janet must be pissed," Bill said.

"Janet can go hang herself. She doesn't have half the insight Arnie had."

Bill reached the spread for September, which depicted an old-style pin-up girl, as all the images in the calendar did, but each of the women were faceless and being groped by men in a way that was not hidden in the least. The harshness of each piece was not in the women or their outfits, the poses, the groping, or the general cleavage exhibited, but in the background. In the other characters and locations for which each of these took place. September's image was of a scantily clad, faux cowgirl without face, complete with a lasso and horsy stick, and depicted her being felt up in a rough manner, over her clothes, in a prison courtyard while inmates in the background howled in a horrific manner. The airbrushing was keen and showed a dexterous but patient hand. This was a shocking turn on a traditional calendar genre. The concept was adept and risky. Bill was stunned.

"John, this is huge. I don't know what to say."

"You said that already. But thank you."

The conference passed from meet to meet. They all gathered and listened to young Ryan Culver talk about how well the gift shop was doing, and how he had reached the point where its online presence was an exclusive internet source for ancient replica calendars. Money was coming in, he was fond of saying. This almost sounded to be a slogan he had drafted up beforehand. When Culver was done, Janine attempted to lure Bill toward the restrooms for a round of activity that Bill had to pleasantly decline. Tipsy Osbourne arrived on Walter's behalf, with Mary Christine's dog Merveilleux in tow. Nina had shown disinterest in keeping her mother's corgi, and apparently, Tipsy had decided to take the dog when she discovered that Merveilleux was in hate with her husband. Bill spoke with her shortly about him, and about Walter's rejection from Holt and Finch, inquiring as to how the man was doing. Tipsy waved a hand carelessly and explained that Walter had been getting lazy, had it coming, and that it was about time someone told him he was not untouchable. Bill found this statement, coming from Walter's own wife, grotesque and sad.

It was during Nina's speech before all present that the trouble arose.

"...and with that in mind, I've decided not to imitate my mother, or try to fashion myself to be what you all want me to be. I think you'll be better off finding outlets that would work for you, rather than pressuring me to do whatever it was my mother did for you. For that reason, I've accepted an offer to sell Latin Hall and all its property. However, this won't take place for—"

"You're selling it?!" came from amidst the group of listeners. This had been spoken by Richard Dutch, two seats right from Bill. Nina thought this over for a moment, possibly choosing her wording with care.

"The property," she said.

"Well, what does that mean?" John Beasly asked, angry.

"When they take over the property, they'll likely want to build something else, or turn this place into whatever they want it for," Nina explained, offering slight and occasional shrugs. She demonstrated no particular emotion save for puzzlement at having to answer questions. This was obviously an impediment to her day, which likely held plans for other things she felt more important.

"You're a damn floozy," was announced. This was Richard Dutch again.

"That's uncalled for," Nina replied, irritated. The Dutch emitted his wondrous and powerful grumble then. Bill watched as Todd Lansington, seated beside the Dutch, nodded with pleasure, a smile carved across his face.

"I beg to differ, kid," the Dutch said, "You're about to destroy something I care deeply for, without so much as a thought about what you're doing, or who you're doing it to. I believe, in this instance, a well-placed insult is most certainly called for. It's why they were invented, you peacenik bimbo. For shit like this."

"Aren't you retiring anyway?" she asked, frustrated. The Dutch did not respond to this question.

"Look," Nina began, "I know this is bad news for everyone, but I don't really have a choice. I'm not interested in any of this. That was my mom's thing."

"Your mother would be rolling in her grave," Beasly said.

"Somehow, I doubt that," Nina replied.

After the devastating announcement of the Calendarium's closure, all members fell into disconsolate gripes. Bill continually fended off Janine's advances, mild but with certainty, and took his place among the angry calendarists and those connected, trying to get at the future. What would happen? Bill did not have it in him to attempt other venues, to join groups as a newcomer. He supposed this was an end of days for the enthusiastic group he had been a part of, the network that had helped make him what he was. Beasly's fear of losing his reign on his publishing contract, and the subsequent lawsuit caused by that fear, put him in a position not unlike Walter Osbourne's rejected state. The Dutch was retiring, and even young Ryan Culver was facing the skids, as his successful re-envisioning and subsequent business achievement with the gift shop would now also see an end. For Ryan, this devastation contained more than its manifest impact, as his own ex-girlfriend, one that had treated him badly and left him due to her perception he was not an achiever, was the one giving the deathblow to his business, his well-deserved and hard wrought achievement. Nina had, with the nonchalant flick of her wrist, disbanded a union of people that had all done well because of one another. Without this bond, how would they fare? Things did not bode prosperous for those calendarists by which Bill was acquainted.

"There, look," Janine said into his ear, interrupting a conversation Bill had initiated with Lansington. Her hand pointed to the middle of the room, where John Beasly and Tipsy Osbourne were engaged in a conversation, John appearing angry, and Tipsy looking somewhat unphased by the recent news.

"What?" Bill asked. Janine leaned closer and whispered to him.

"They're nasty for one another," she said.

"Who?"

"The woman with the dog, the man with the calendar."

"John and Tipsy?" Bill asked. This seemed a ridiculous concept.

"An affair. For awhile." Janine said. Bill could hear the quiet smirk she spoke through.

"That can't be right. Not them," Bill retorted, baffled at the idea of those two in an affair.

"It's mostly her, but he isn't turning it down. I think he will soon, though." Lansington watched this interaction between Bill and Janine. He was unable to hear what they spoke of, but found himself quite captured with Janine. After a moment, he cleared his throat in an obvious way, getting Bill's wavering attention.

"Who's this wonderful creature you're with, Billy-Bill?" he asked. Bill swiveled his thoughts away from the notion of Beasly and Mrs. Osbourne, a little revolted and hoping Janine was reaching a dim and incorrect conclusion.

"Oh, Todd, this is Janine. Janine, Todd Lansington. He's a calendarist, too."

"Hi there," Todd said to her. Janine let go of Bill's shoulder and leaned a smidge to the side.

"Calendars, huh? I like meeting people that like what Bill likes," she said.

"Good for you. We're pretty lame, actually. They say playwrights have it hard, but I bet they just haven't taken a good look at us types, yet," Todd said.

"Nobody has it hard if they can give it hard," Janine said, lowering her shoulders and looking at Todd in a flirtatious way. Bill did not like this.

"Uh, Janine, I need to talk some business with Todd for a second. Sorry," he interrupted. Janine only shrugged.

"Got it. Boys are boys. No girls allowed. Whatever. I'll go look in the gift shop," she said, bored. Todd watched her walk away, his imagination in a realm an uncomfortable Bill could spot with ease. When she was out of sight, the two began to talk.

"She's something else," Todd commented.

"She's several things else," Bill responded, a bit frustrated.

"Must be nice."

"About Holt and Finch. You heard anything yet about this new direction Janet's going with?" he asked, changing the subject. Todd shook his head.

"No. Well, yes. Beyond buzzwords like 'edgy' and all that crap, I've heard a lot of publishers have started dropping contracts, which is bad, bad news for everyone. The Dutch told me that, so... I'm inclined to believe it. Also, there's a rumor that LindCorp and some of the majors have been drumming up new blood online. I don't know about Holt and Finch yet. But I guess everyone's kind of feeling it out, looking down other avenues. Just a rumor, though. Other than that, all I know for a fact is that Janet always gets back to me on a cally a week after I send it, without fail, and she's usually all over the thing. It's been almost a month now and I've heard zilch about _Starlight Girls_."

"You're prom-themed piece."

"That's the one. You know, I haven't had to deal with it in a long time, but I'm pretty sure I'm about to get rejected," he said, raising an eyebrow. His expression was a go-figure tilt of his mouth's edges followed by a long inhalation.

"You think all that's true? You think they'll drop your new calendar?" Bill asked. This seemed implausible and frightening. Todd let the air back out in an equally long sigh, nodding.

"What is it that Janet wants?" Bill asked.

"I'm not sure, and I think that's why she didn't bother showing up today. She's sweating us."

"This is all so vague. I hate this kind of drama," Bill said, "I mean, what's the big agenda? Does she want to retool the entire division? I don't get it."

"I think I do, and you're in luck, Billy-Bill," Todd said.

"What do you mean?"

"Last time I heard from Janet was about a month ago, just before I sent in _Starlight Girls_. She sort of mentioned you a few times."

"She did?"

"A few times. Which was a few times more than she mentioned anyone else."

"What does that mean?" Bill asked, concluding what he thought it meant but not wanting to be the one to openly state it.

"I think you know. She wants where you're going. Whatever you've been talking about with her, she's all over it. I hope it's something I can do, frankly, because I have a sinking feeling I'm about to be shoved on the backburner."

"Jesus, Todd. I hope that's not true." Bill felt both pleased and shameful over this turn of events. He knew that he worked hard, at times, and that this warranted at least a bit more success than he had seen, but he did not prefer to see the other calendarists he knew being contractually dropped and rejected. This was not a good way to get ahead, by witnessing the destruction of those already there.

"Just remember me when you're on the cover of Rolling Stone, all right?" Todd said, patting Bill's shoulder. Bill had a slight laugh at that idea, a laugh that tapered off as he looked over and saw Janine near the corner of the room, gesturing him to look at her. Todd turned his head and the two men watched as Janine lifted her shirt, exposing her breasts to them. After a moment, she lowered her shirt again and walked out of the room, toward the gift shop. No one had seen her do this but Todd and Bill. Neither men said anything for a moment. The air in the calendarium became thick to Bill, and his proximity to Lansington made him suddenly aware that he both pitied and despised this man.

"Bill, that was the greatest thing I've ever—"

"Keep it to yourself, Todd," Bill interrupted, irritated, leaving Todd behind and making his way toward the gift shop. As he walked, his phone rang. The antic Janine had pulled in flashing he and Todd was over the top, too much. Could she not realize she was embarrassing herself? While Bill understood, or had been told, that Janine was meant in their relationship to be the 'lower half', she certainly had her own thoughts and mind. Why did Bill never have any insight into it? All she put forth was sex, talk of sex, innuendos relating to sex. She was unable to put a seatbelt on in a car without somehow hinting at copulating. Was sex all she thought about? This seemed unlikely, but that was all he knew of her. When he had tried to get to know her on the drive to the calendarium, asking about her week and trying to discern even small details regarding what she wanted out of life, she instead showed him the slow rise and fall of the back of her head.

Bill ceased his walking when he noted who was calling him. His thoughts about Janine trailed into worry, instead of aggravation, and he wondered, just briefly, what was about to happen. He placed the phone to his ear.

"I wasn't sure if you wanted to talk to me," Bill said.

"Having fun?" Amy replied, angry.

"Actually no."

"Asshole," she said then, hanging up and rendering Bill unable to respond to the statement.

This brief call and its final remark nearly had Bill send his cell phone hurtling against the wall. He was certain that Amy's problem with him was her own fault, not his. She had sickened him two nights previous, left him in an awful state, and had now hung up on him for trying to salvage his week by having a good time with Janine, a woman that Amy had wanted him to be with, in the first place. Bill groaned and looked up at Janine, his face frustrated and strained. She was wandering about in the gift shop, blankly looking around at miscellaneous objects, posters, calendars. Ryan Culver sat behind the register, looking hopeless, worried, and under a tremendous amount of stress. Poor Ryan, his business being jerked from beneath his feet. Poor Walter, poor Richard, poor Mary and Todd and Beasly and even Merveilleux. Not poor Bill, however. Not if he could help it.

"Come on. We're leaving," he said to her. He had Amy to contend with, the closure of Latin Hall, and his self-designed automobile wreck was but a week away. He needed time to think, and the long drive home would serve this purpose well. Janine turned to face him and narrowed her eyes enough to show an almost inebriated look. She placed a hand on his arm and brought her waist in close.

"Good. You deserve better than this treatment," she said, moving her hand around toward the small of his back. Bill turned and made for the exit, leaving her hand in the air.

"Grow up," he said.

### Chapter Nineteen

His fear with having woken in these new surroundings had not abated, but simply worn through him and become a prolonged crash of sadness and misunderstanding. Weeks had passed since she had successfully thawed him, and he seemed now to be running on fumes. Wendy reached her hand out and placed it on his large forearm, endearing empathy and trying to establish a sense of compassion with the ancient man, if he could be called a man. To her shock, he stood and grabbed her by the arms, drawing her in close. She gasped and struggled away from his inhumanly strong grip. The fierce desire in his eyes struck out at her from beneath his pronounced brow. After exiting the examination room in a hurry, she sealed the magnetic lock and breathed. Dr. Ling and the three specialists in the monitoring room rushed to her.

"We saw. Are you all right, Wendy?" Harold Ling asked, concerned.

"That's Doctor. And no female members of this team go in there alone with him from now on," she ordered. The truth was that she had no fear, but had experienced the strength and longing of the thawed subject, and now felt overwhelmed by a highly charged and sensual exhilaration.

-from _Neandertal_ , Christina Roncone

There was little to Bill's mind when he called her. While his urge was of a simpler means, to leave things as they were and go about his afternoon, there was a shade of guilt in his mind and this aspect was a nagging one. His trip with Janine had proved disastrous on many levels and he did not want to see her again anytime soon. His relationship with the two women had become uncertain and miresome. Already, Bill had imagined several potential tactics for evading it entirely. He had mulled over the idea of calling her and breaking things off, ending the relationship. This was not the reason, however, that he had decided to call Amy that morning. The purpose of the call was due to a promise, and one Amy had been quite certain he keep.

He achieved but her voicemail. Standing in the garage on his homemade ramps, which were in the process of being assembled, he frowned and waited for the designating tone. When this emitted, he left a message both rambling and chocked with frustration.

"It's me. I don't know what's going on or where we stand, but today's the day I have the speedway rented, and I know you wanted to be there when I rolled the car. So, anyway, that's today, about three o'clock, PLD Speedway. I got everything set, tow truck guy, ramp... called the paramedic switchboard and they know all about it... If you still want to come, I guess show up around then. Or call me first, uh, whichever," he said. This was not enough. Bill sighed and ambled into uncertain territory then.

"So listen, I don't... I'm confused about what happened last week, so maybe we should figure it out, or... Give me a call, then. Or... or don't. I really don't know what the deal is, so, whatever you want to do."

Bill enclosed an unintentional pause at the end of this ramble, before uttering the simple 'well, bye', which concluded his message. He was not certain he wanted Amy present. Bill, over the week, had given her a great amount of his thought. Much of this was with fondness, as he did miss her. Some of his thoughts, however, were spiteful. Bill had reached a conclusion after attempting to summarize his relationship with the two women. This conclusion was that Amy had been toying with him, playing to his emotions, but then shutting him out when it came time to understand hers. It was unfair and cruel. His relationship with Janine was akin to pointlessness. The arrangement of meeting her had been nothing but sex from the start. This had quickly begun to seem less a great opportunity for Bill to have some fun, and more like selfishness on both Amy and Janine's part, and it had made him selfish, as well. Bill wondered why he had taken so long to realize this. From the first night he had spent with them, his intriguing night with Amy and his purely sexual late night with Janine, Bill had been docile and allowed the strange predicament of two women. This arrangement had become arraignment, however, and it was clear that what Bill wanted was in no way related to what the women provided. Bill had begun to thirst for simplicity, for inclusiveness, for monogamy. He now felt to have been used from the start.

***

The speedway green was clotted with weeds and was hardly what one might deduce to be green. The area in the center of the speedway was large, dry, and a shambles of caked dirt and desert-like, haphazard berms caused by last year's monster truck tires and this year's vacancy and heat. Several months would pass before this area would see tilling again, be smoothed, moistened, and more dirt brought in, not until the monster truck rallies began in late Fall. For the time being, it was ragged and dry, and any prospective damage that resulted to the surface would be negligible, something that could be repaired with but a shovel, if a repair was even necessary. The track that enclosed this broad dirt plane was in excellent condition and there had been several local races in the past month. Bill had never been much for auto racing, for rallies and whatnot, but due to his having rented the green, he had been aware of the speedway schedule for several weeks.

After searching with much ingenuity, Bill had learned that ready-made jump platforms for cars were not something one found with ease. He had viewed the inventories of a few Hollywood supply companies and even called a warehouse for a professional stunt coordinator and construction engineer, but there was nothing available to him, and anything he needed would require a custom design, and for this customization, he would have to pay the coordinator for both time and materials, as well as for a presence during the wreck and transportation to his home town. Even the licensing involved in this was dismally expensive. The cost of going a professional route was insurmountable to Bill, and in the end, he settled for simplicity and rudimentary supplies, a homemade ramp and improvised gear.

Bill had visited a local auto-body shop and bought two small, grated ramps, the sort one used to drive the front wheels of a car a foot off the ground, to better get under it for prospective repairs. Most people used these as an alternate for a mechanical jack, but Bill was going to use it to wreck his car and, it was hoped, catch a small amount of air first. These two ramps had been placed together, side-by-side, and were held in place with several two-foot tent spikes, hammered through the reinforcement holes on the corners of the ramps, and sent deep into the ground with a sledgehammer. The home-made jump was situated at the exact center of the green, and was but two feet wide. This was satisfactory to Bill, as he felt he could drive at it well enough, and though the jump was short and narrow, he only planned on hitting it with his left two wheels. He had planned his jump to result in the car launching with a corkscrew motion.

"I've told you not to do this, and you don't seem to care. That really pisses me off," Roger said in retort. Bill had asked him what he thought about the angle at which the car was going to hit the jump. The younger brother was nervous about this particular detail, as his study of the wreck's physics, or the few laws and equations he had known to at least try to reference, had failed once angles came into play. To Bill's dismay, the car's weight (which he did not know) and various angles happened to be involved in every aspect of the wreck.

"I know all about that. Save it," Bill responded, annoyed.

"I think it's unsafe and a bad idea. You don't know what's going to happen."

"Do you think it's a good angle or not? I can't do this twice," Bill repeated. Roger grunted and rubbed his hand over his mouth, looking at the starting position and down the green at the shoddy joke of a ramp. The flatbed tow truck was parked at the far end of the speedway, waiting for Bill to call him in.

"I can't say. I don't know, Bill. And neither do you. We shouldn't be out here."

"Noted. So, just press down on the shutter switch when you hear the horn honk. It only films for five seconds if you let the button up, so don't do that. Hold it down the entire time. Don't just press it, hold it down. Then just watch the screen, try to keep the car in frame."

"This is asinine."

"I don't care," Bill said. This was somewhat accurate.

"Man, what the hell is going on with you? You've been pissed off all week, even with the kids."

"Jesus, I'm so tired of this. Just work the fucking camera, okay?" Bill asked.

"You were dumped, am I right?"

"Why, you want to take a shot at her?"

"Bill, I was joking when I said that."

"Amy's two people, Roger. Two shitty people. One plays head games with you, the other one's like a free prostitute. Lucky me, I got twice as much bullshit as I'd get in a normal relationship."

"I knew it. That's what this is. You got in some tiff with Amy and now you've become Captain Prick, ready to launch himself and his car into... idiocy, or death, whatever. This is stupid, little brother."

"Keep it in frame," Bill said, acting bored as he climbed into his car and checked his roughshod harness. This was not a harness in the technical sense. Bill had taken two oversized sweatshirts and made his driver seat wear them. He now slid into these shirts, so that both he and the seat's backing wore the shirts, in effect causing his upper torso to be firmly secured to his seat by way of the now tight sweatshirts. After working his arms through the sleeves, he breathed a moment, thinking.

"So it's over? You two are done?" Roger asked after shaking his head at Bill's harness.

"We three. And I have no idea where I stand with those girls. Amy isn't talking to me and Janine is incapable of holding an actual conversation."

"I'm sorry, man. That's awful."

"Yeah well... it's what it is," Bill summarized.

"Man, I _really_ don't think you're in the mindset to do this thing. Skip today. Put it off. That sweatshirt thing doesn't look very safe."

"We only paid the speedway for two hours, Roj. It started twenty minutes ago and we'll have to clean up our mess after. We're doing it."

"Bill, come on... don't."

"When you hear the horn," Bill said, closing his door. Roger swore under his breath, then realized there was no purpose to hiding the certain pedigree of anger his worry and frustration had bred. He raised his voice loud then.

"Dickhead," he called, walking behind the camera, queasy on tipping nerves. This was happening. Bill started the car and pulled forward. He began circling around in the sparse, weedy grass, heading toward his starting mark, which was designated by two golf poles he had stuck in the dirt. Roger watched his brother drive toward these and thought to break the camera, leave. He settled himself by muttering profanities and pacing. As Bill reached the poles, he pulled around again and parked between them. Roger looked at the speedway's far end, at the crest of the loop in the race-lanes. The tow truck sat idle there, waiting for the call to hoist the car onto its long bed. Roger wondered what this man was thinking, how he might be interpreting what was about to happen. Roger also wondered how long it might truly take an ambulance to arrive after a call to the emergency dispatch, even though they had been notified in advance. The older brother hated that he had needed to prepare his phone for such a call, which he had done earlier in the day, programming the dispatch office number into his phone and setting it as a temporary speed dial. Why was Bill so bent on doing this? Were there truly not enough good pictures of car wrecks on the internet? Bill thought of this as creating art. Roger thought of it as an atrocious remedy for a silly problem. For a calendar, of all things.

She had not come. Bill sat in the driver seat, held snugly by the sweatshirts, without helmet, without gloves, without the intelligence to turn back and give up his photo shoot. That he was aware of these things should have motivated Bill to realize the difficulty of what he had prepared to do. This awareness, however, did not slow him. Bill's heart, were one to gauge it with a tool that could discern emotion, was teeming with resentment, isolation, and the sense that it had, in some way, been betrayed. His mind was so brimming with life, a substance prominent and yet so elusive to any who sought it, that his creative reservoir had overflowed and, fed by emotions he was not prepared to control, usurped his judgment.

Most men when under the pressure of a powerful, creative urge, one in which they, themselves, are the sole victims, could be lesser judged for going to absurd lengths to fulfill it. This was true in hunger, in sex, in sleep and health, and it was true in anger. An angry man had an increased capacity for disregard and his more usual thoughts became compressed within him, densely set into a pit and doused in emotional backwash, a pit from which he would always be able to rummage small evils and still further angers. This pit deepened only with time and feed. He flung his hands, he shouted, he struck things, even himself, he cursed others and grew cold, or praised himself and became rotted with conceit. Sometimes he did these things with tools, with a gun, a stone, money, or even a car. Modern man was most often put to these devices by troubles with occupation, catastrophes involving love or its lack, and notions of failure, on any level. Bill's occupation had become embers. He felt more failed by the moment. Love was a nightmare and she had not come.

The horn emanated.

"Fuck," Roger mumbled, pressing his thumb down on the shutter's trigger. He held it in the way he held his breath, which had been shoved down entirely. The car moved forward and soon reached a swift speed. Bill had decided days previous that 35 miles per hour would be his goal for top speed. His car reached this speed with ease and he maintained it carefully on the green, making a wide arc toward the ramps. Roger caught him in view and pivoted the camera, following, keeping the car centered in frame. Dust was pluming behind the vehicle and Roger could not help but ignore the car, the ramps, the day. He watched Bill, who looked so small in the driver seat, so abnormal, pinned inside with the sweatshirt harness. This was lunacy. The car accelerated then, increasing in speed, approaching the small, makeshift ramp.

"No no, what are you doing?" Roger panicked. Bill continued accelerating. The older brother watched the front wheels undergo a final adjustment, aligning the left side of the speeding vehicle with the ramp. The Sun disappeared and the world vanished into nothing. The speedway dissolved into a single stretch of dirt that had lured in his little brother and set him on a collision course with the unknown. It was all that was. Even Roger, himself, ceased to exist until the moment the car hit the ramp. There was a horrid screech of injured metal and the vehicle lurched. Roger then existed ten-fold.

The camera gathered up rapid snapshots for its customary five seconds once the older brother released the shutter button. The last of these frames included Roger sprinting across the green at a car that had collapsed on its roof.

***

The large, auburn beast crept closer to him. Bill continued to play dead, knowing that the beast was most enticed by living prey. The halls of Bill's spacecraft had been engaged by rust, so much that they had become nearly as reddish brown as the animal that now stalked him. This bacterial infection in the hull of his frigate and instruments had been a harbinger that the beast was coming, a warning that Bill's crew had not heeded. They had vanished, one by one, into the gut of the monster, feeding it and allowing it to grow, to redden with maturity, only to make it hungrier, smarter, and more volatile. This monster lowered its massive head to Bill's ear and sniffed him there, laying on the flight deck of his damned, corroding ship, his navigation panels and instruments scattered around beside him from the wretched, powerful swipes of the monster's broad limbs.

The snout of the animal pressed against Bill's temple, and there was a moment of utter clarity, a sensation crawling through the two of them that united them, universal, as lives for which all of creation had pit against one another. The crew had not been enough to satiate this beast, and Bill would be but a footnote in the foreign animal's hungering tracts. This would not stop the venomous beast. It would search on, angry and of vicious intelligence, looking for people, for a replenishing cycle of sustenance, and would in time call more of its own, more death, upon discovery of Earth. Was there nothing that could be done?

The moisture of the beast's snout itched against Bill's earlobe. He kept calm, held his eyes closed, pretending to be dead, holding his breath. The duration he could do this was coming to a close, however, and the beast was nearly atop him, examining his body for signs of even slight movement. Bill then heard the soft swill of air as the creature opened its terrible jaws.

"Let's rock this place," the beast said in a low voice. Bill understood. It was time. Death was not a concern, but a punctuation on the vividness of being. It was life that the beast needed to devour, and not death, this latter being but an outcome in preparing one for digestion. There were other ways, however. Bill realized this now. He opened his eyes and sat up.

"How now brown cow?" he asked. The massive, auburn beast, who had hailed from a galaxy so distant that man would never discover it, was privy to all the latest dances. The beast took Bill's hand and Bill leaped into the air. He landed on his feet and dashed into his best moves, shaking and twitching, kicking and bobbing his head. This called the song forth, enticed it to seek them out from its home in the black stomach of deep space, beckoning it to them with irresistible verve. The music found them and ignited in the failing navigation room, enveloping the dancers in auditory detonation, a great fanfare of tempo and drive. This was a triumphant and quite danceable song.

What moves the beast had, what incredible jive and balance. They spun and jumped, they swung from the beams, perfectly syncopated, two dancing souls who had all the moves. Bill did funk, Bill did house. The beast had disco, the beast had soul. Rust shook loose from the metal interior of Bill's doomed spacecraft, falling about them in a hazy snow of deep brown flecks. Their hearts met through the open air, pulsing to the beat, bleating out life in the vacuum of space.

"You're a freakin' master!" Bill exclaimed.

"Count on it, runt. I'm all about this," the creature replied. The ship was stripped away then, pieces of the frigate hurtling off into unknown solar systems and mysterious galaxies, leaving the two of them freezing in bare space. The beast whooped and Bill gave a hurrah. Their moves would keep them warm, and oxygen was for amateurs. Bill knew what had begun, and had waited all of his life for it. This was the truth of existence, the nature of the beast, and Bill's anticipation peaked within his mind, awaiting the beginning of the true test. The interstellar breakdancing competition was afoot, and no one had moves better than Bill Sherman.

They lurched back and forth, handing off the moves. Bill's flawless tut was met by the creature's energetic top rock. The creature shifted this dexterous move into an up rock and shot it back to Bill with a pointed, clawed hand. Bill swiveled his head and turned over, pivoting into blowups and rollbacks, his back twisting and his feet at all angles. Such synergy of body was tantamount in getting up into his floor rocks. The beast's robot pantomime was met with Bill's clone hands, each a-swivel about his body, drawing his arms in all directions, but with one hand symmetrically mirroring the other. His arms were drawn about by the hands as if sentient ropes of beat. The beast swallowed, appearing nervous. Bill was the Prime. Bill was expert. There was no one better.

Women appeared, attractive but vague, holding hands in a great ring, their bodies in poses that sealed the two competitors within a circle of physical beauty. These female spectators admired the beast and doubted Bill, but this mistake would be set right soon enough. Bill cracked his neck and smiled.

"Hey ladies," the space monster said with a wink. Bill knew these women, these sirens of outer space in their prom dresses. Their presence, unbeknownst to the beast, was symbolic, and Bill had an in with them because he knew their creator.

"Those are the _Starlight Girls_ ," he said, a wicked grin overcoming him. The girls smiled and nodded at this, then waited. It was clear they wanted moves and the two competitors had them.

Bill understood their manner of dress, however, and quickly switched form. It was promenade time, and Bill's waltz had never been beaten, especially now that he had fused it with his floor shots, breakdancing the waltz to a wondrous fruition. This was a fusion of eloquence and beat, distinctive schools of motion. It was when he missed a direction change that things faltered, and with his direction incorrect, his weight unbalanced and his angle off, Bill's forward worm into the backward steps of the waltz failed. Agitated with himself, he quickly tossed himself onto his feet and rolled his arm forward, pointing the skit back to the auburn beast. The _Starlight Girls_ watched as the marvelous, frightening creature accepted Bill's handoff. Without pause to design, the beast erupted in a combination of pops and locks, switching between them with a drop that shot him through a swift flurry of hand hops. Bill stepped back, horrified. The monstrous creature ceased his routine then, folding his arms across his chest and staring at his competitor. Everyone knew what had happened; Bill had been beaten in front of the _Starlight Girls_. They smiled at the beast and the beast smiled back. Then, the cold of absolute zero crept over all present. The _Starlight Girls_ froze solid and drifted off, their lovely bodies and modern prom dresses vanishing into the black of space.

The monster gauged Bill carefully, uncertain of his status as victor. In space, the winner of a thing was only what those present decided. Now that the _Starlight Girls_ had been destroyed, Bill had some control again. The human had cheated, but was still in. What the monster did not know was that Bill was a sundry of powers. The auburn behemoth had moves, but Bill had heart. Bill had more than talent; his very soul was a dancer. It was so easy for Bill to play out sad, to gloom about in his eyes and hang his head. He filled with sorrow, his emotions a turbulent, wistful mess of sweets and bitters. It was time to get low. Time to slow down. The universe crawled to a near halt as Bill let a single, elegant tear roll down his cheek. This tear became ice, frozen to his melancholy face.

"Are you okay?" the beast asked, nudging the teardrop loose. This bit of ice drifted into space unseen. The beast's redness shimmered from the refraction of light off the distant suns. Bill had the creature in his trap, and knew as much. The game was more than a wage of talents and a degree of perfection. The game was about portrayal, about images and truth. Bill said nothing, closing his eyes and beginning to weep. He covered his face with his hands and curled, fetal, a deconstructed spaceman, a frail, frightened human.

"Aww," the creature said, tenderly nudging Bill's chin up, "Don't be sad." The suns flared and shot out light in all directions, blinding bright and hot as man's hell. Bill thrust his limbs out, drew them in again, and with a grace of being began moonwalking perfectly. Planets collided, solar wind tore through his shirt, and the sun lit his face like a god.

The beast was mesmerized by this, in utter awe. Never had a being danced in this manner, never had the beast seen such magnanimous power of form, such intrinsic truth in movement. Bill had transfixed not just the monster, but the universe itself, his awesome moonwalk emanating waves of joy and prosperity across all of creation.

The beast slapped him then. Bill shook his head and ceased. The suns went out.

"What was that about?" he asked.

"Dude, you need stitches," the monster said. Bill felt his face, discerning no injury. The beast indicated the competitor's left arm then. Bill looked down and saw the long cut that arched across the top of his forearm. When had this happened?

"Did you do this?" he asked, horrified, his sense of trust shattered. The auburn beast had betrayed him.

"You cheat, I cheat," the monster replied.

"Don't be like that. You're being—" but Bill was halted then, his eyes widening as the creature's hands darkened in color. The arms began coiling and swimming about. They were each the body of a familiar snake, a head for each hand. These arms spiraled toward Bill, taking hold of him and drawing him in. One snake slid its head across the small of his back, pulling Bill in close, waist to waist in a somewhat sexual manner with the murdering, space creature. Bill felt used.

"No, _you_ grow up," the beast said.

### Chapter Twenty

The difference between a warm body and a cold one seemed but a matter of hours. Gina found Angela's morbid career disturbing, and did not enjoy meeting with her sister at the mortuary. On any other day, she would have avoided the frightening place entirely, not stood on the concrete basement floor beneath the halogens, and but ten feet from the sheeted corpse of an old man. Gina was in a panicked state, however. Angela, having been the older sister, had beaten her to many things in their lives, and so possessed a certain foreknowledge in Gina's dilemmas. Slowly, the younger sister felt her stomach with fear and curiosity, thinking of Arshaq, how he would react when he found out, how he might leave her for the implausibility of it being his child. The cold corpse on the table, beneath the light blue sheet was a human being that was gone. No longer living. Dead. Gina knew she could never settle this state on her unborn child, but what then? And what about her failing relationship with Arshaq? She sighed and slid her hands into her pockets, waiting. Angela would know what to do. Angela always knew what to do.

-from _The Mortician's Sister_ , Marjorie Hutchinson

The prints were glossy and keen, but the wreck itself was neither vivid nor invoked interest. At best, with proper bordering and some color enhancement, the images of Bill's destroyed vehicle were merely acceptable. He could use what he had, but there was no image for which he felt would end his calendar well enough. Spread across his desk were dozens of images involving the collision of his car with the shoddy ramp, the subsequent slide of the car through the dirt, and the car's final cease atop its roof. These images depicting his stupidity and loss of control were enough to choose from, but none of the images contained the aesthetic Bill had hoped would result. The day at the speedway had been somewhat useless, a dangerous foray into a territory that had produced no yield Bill thought worthy of December's slot in the calendar. Perhaps he should have thought to spray-can the number '12' on the door before the botched wreck. At the least, a dopey gimmick like that would have given the images a point of use beyond a simple demonstration of his pig-headedness.

The left front tire had been aligned with the homemade ramp, as far as he knew, but the ruination of the photograph shoot was in the last-moment adjustment Bill had made in his trajectory. His understanding of where the invisible wheels were, in relation to his position behind the steering wheel, had proven to be flawed. Prior to striking the ramp, Bill had rotated the steering wheel about four degrees to the left. A mere four degrees, such a small change of configuration, of angle, and one that, at the speed he had reached, would seem negligible to the human eye. This alteration of his approach, however, had changed the result heartily. Bill had missed the ramp with his left front tire and instead struck the ramp just beside the wheel in question, with his fender, then the undercarriage of his car. The ramp had not lifted the vehicle up, or corkscrewed the vehicle over, as Bill had designed in his imagination. The ramp had simply punched the bottom of his car, as if the Earth itself had made a fist and shot it upwards beneath him, causing Bill to lose control of his direction. The car bounced to the side, dug into the dry, easily perturbed dirt and lifted onto its side. After a moment, the skid having ceased and his momentum devoured by both the striking of the ramp and the harsh grade of the ground, his vehicle had halted, ever so slowly tipping over onto its top.

Bill had wanted bravado and articulation, but he had achieved a mediocre accident that told the eye nothing. Worse, he had alienated his brother and required twenty-four stitches across his left forearm, stitches that itched without mercy beneath the cast he had been placed in, his wrist broken. Perhaps, Bill thought, this was a signal from hidden powers with ambivalent motives, an omen that he was to quit those things in his life for which he had tried so hard. Would it be implausible to simply stop? To forget his calendars and move on? Take a job somewhere unimportant to him, be the sort of Bill that others often judged he was not? The wrecking of his car had been errant and dull, but painful in many ways. He had no transportation, had frightened his brother and, by later talk, his nephews and niece, as well as causing Roger to miss a day of work watching the kids. Amy had not met him at the speedway, indicating that their relationship was over. His calendar was incomplete and for the first time, Bill found he did not want to finish a project. He had been blocked in the past, unable to search out what he desired to show in his art, but he had never lost interest and he had never grown bored or given up.

Bill examined the photographs and sighed from a place he hated having, a disturbing, introspective vent that served no real purpose but for the emission of occasional sighs, and the slow intake of data that only served to cause doubt. Bill had felt many things of late, in the way a small lake's surface felt stones thrown far into its middle, and he had begun to sense that there was very little of him left to effect. Perhaps it was a time of torture, one that Bill was not meant to surpass. Failed men peppered history, so why not himself? This was more plausible and to Bill, logic aside, an aggravating certainty. Poor Bill, after all.

The vehicle, which had been taken away to the scrapyard, was Bill's only mode of transport, beyond his feet, and destroying it should have yielded a greater result. There was a small shame in him that his car, reliable and trusted for so long, had not gone out in flames, had not been mangled or devastated. The car had been scratched badly and set on its roof, which showed little injury from it. The vehicle was destroyed by legal standards, and had been rendered unlawful to drive on public streets from then on, and so the scrapyard had a meal, and Bill had regret. He glanced over at his music collection, in the black case on his desk, the only thing he had removed from the car before his planned wreck. Bill was not the sort of man that would understand or fully conceive his rash actions in advance of their happening, and so it was a surprise, even to Bill himself, that he reached his arm over and pushed the black case off the desk, into the waste basket. He had felt to do it, and with his mood heaving back his better senses, had complied.

"Was that your entire back catalogue?" he heard. There was a soft sound of the door closing behind her. Amy was quiet when she wanted to be, and noisy at times by that same system of want. Bill stood, turned to her in the garage, uncertain of what he could or should say. It seemed best they not remain together, though he did not want the relationship to end. He was careful in formatting his thoughts on this.

"Hey snakes," he said, somehow guilty and indignant.

"We should talk," she said.

"That sounds good." Amy approached him, taking note of his desk, seeing the images set out on the surface. She found the idea of this man examining pictures of himself in an act of bullish desperation to be endearingly human, and decidedly male. She brought in a deep breath.

"Any of those come out?" she asked. Bill slowly shrugged.

"No. Maybe a few. But not really," he said, not wanting to look at her. This caused Amy to wonder if he was being defensive or guilty, protective or sheepish.

"Roger let me in," she said.

"I know."

Having entered the garage with quietude, Amy had thought not to disturb Bill at work, or at least, not until a time when he might pause and notice she was present, but her mood now was not similar to this manner of entry. She looked sour and angry, serious and disarrayed. The endurance of a man's symbiotic strengths and emotions were of equal accountability to a woman's endurance and adaptability. Had the eras they knew together been forsworn by these identical pieces of human cognition? Had history itself been helmed by lives that disguised emotion with lurid logic, and that coated their reasoning in lewd emotion? Were the two as inseparable as the man and woman themselves? Need did this to people. Love did this. Most did not deserve it. Bill watched as Amy noted his left arm. He held it up in better light.

"Uh, I kind of broke my wrist. A few stitches under the cast, too. But it's all that happened," he said, attempting to sound as if this outcome was expected and of no importance. Bill's boyish, proud indication of his injury and the offhand description of it made Amy furious.

"You stupid shit, you could have died," she said. His carelessness alarmed her and his arrogance attracted her. This was not, however, the teasing, taunting Amy, the Amy that spit in her humor. This was a wilder and wronged Amy, a woman that was repulsed by the extemporaneous actions of someone she had come to care for.

"Yeah well, it's done. I tried to call, you know," he defended.

"Oh, I got the message."

"Didn't want to come?"

"I wasn't feeling well," she said, attempting the nonchalant manner he had used in explaining his stitches.

"Oh." How plain pettiness was. How shirking they were being, as if this were a proper means for men and women to discuss their difficulties with one another. So civil and limp. So falsely altruistic. They were pots full of blood, hot teakettles that did not whistle, but murmured in undulating lies and courtesy.

"I'm pregnant," she said then. Bill blinked.

"Come again?"

"Pregnant," she repeated.

The room was made of planks and sheetrock and paint, all of if bullshit; a man could not shout loud enough for his anger to get through these layers, a man could not exit quickly with these contrived borders between himself and the nearest, dearly sought elsewhere.

"Really," he said, annoyed at this bit of fakery.

"A baby. Yours." There was a portion of Amy's statement that seemed to have been uttered in an injured tone, though this was coated in the volatility and disturbing acid she was exuding. Bill snorted, an act that Amy found made him look ridiculous and stupefied.

"You're a fucking lunatic," he said, turning back to his desk, sitting down, pretending she was not present. She would leave shortly, and the sickening relationship he had been pushed into would leave as well. He was done with Amy, with Janine. He was through with upper and lower halves. Relationships were dreck. They made you invest hard things, facets of yourself you needed, and let these offerings get trampled on by people that did not understand themselves, much less you. To Bill, Amy and Janine had become two heads drooling the same sort of inanity. He was tired of the carnival ride they had tricked him into getting on. Circles and drops, lifts and rotations, the thrill of it waning more with each uncomfortable, gut-churning swivel, spinning him closer and closer to throwing up.

"You shouldn't have done what you did. There were rules," Amy said. Bill frowned. His affection for Amy had been kicked back into his face too many times, and now it was as if she felt to blame _him_ for this. Janine's affection for Bill had been shoved back, as well, and that was also supposed to be Bill's fault. He imagined that both women thought everything was, at this point. No portion of Bill concluded the wrongness in their arrangement had been his fault. He had followed rules. He had done nothing but kiss Amy, something that common relationships found to be necessary, not an insult. The physicality of the relationship had always been between he and Janine, and he had tried to alter this, but Bill did not feel at fault for Amy's eccentric celibacy. A thought occurred to him, then.

"Wait, is this your dumb way of telling me Janine's pregnant?" Bill asked, now beginning to feel numbness and shock. If Janine was pregnant... Bill had no idea what would happen if Janine was pregnant. Bill could not imagine a more negligent mother.

"No. She can't have kids. That's my responsibility," Amy said. Bill raised an eyebrow.

"Who knocked you up?" Amy nodded then, her lip curling in disgust at his snide tone.

"You're an ass, and you're acting like a child," she said.

"Go to hell, Snakes. You don't even have a crotch, remember?"

"It's higher birth, you dumb shit! You broke the goddamn rules!"

"This is ridiculous," he stated, not wanting any more of Amy's oddity. It was time for her to leave.

"You wouldn't stop! I told you, but you wouldn't stop. 'Amy I want you', 'Amy let's touch', 'Amy let's kiss by the damned fridge'. You fucked it up. Do you have any clue what this means?" She asked. Bill did.

"The loony ward."

"FUCK YOU," she enunciated, flinging up her shirt to reveal the rounded appearance of middle pregnancy. Bill glanced down at her stomach and his eyes locked there. A dizziness overcame him.

"Wait, wh—"

"You think this is a joke? It's not, Bill. We have to deal with this," she said. Bill only stared at her rounded abdomen. She did look pregnant. He swallowed and blinked, having descended into a sort of torpor wherein his eyes, mind, and mouth had no input for one another. This hazy state was a deprivation of his senses brought on by surreality and improbability.

"It's a joke. We never had sex," Bill said.

"You wanted me. You had me. This is the result."

"No."

"That's exactly your problem, Bill. You're never satisfied. You let your stupid wishes and wants run crazy. And that particular flaw of yours has gone and stuck a kid in my cabinet." Bill swayed a moment.

"This is insane," he said, shaking his head.

"We have to take care of this."

"Amy... what's going on with all of this? You're doing it, right? This is you doing something to me, isn't it? Just tell me," he entreated, his mind numbing.

"No, you _did_ this, Bill. You couldn't keep yourself in check. You think men have just the one act, when it comes to conceiving? Uh uh. You wouldn't have survived the ages. Men have all sorts of stupid little tricks in their toolbox. Just because you can't see something, doesn't mean it's not in play." This made no real sense to him.

"So, are you telling me you've had an immaculate conception?" he asked.

"Jesus, you're dumb. Higher. It's a higher conception. You know how I was born? My mother's blood dripped down on a field. You know how Athena was born? She fell out of Zeus' fucking head after he ate her mother. Your dick has nothing to do with it, Bill."

"What the shit does that even mean?"

"Metaphorical. Symbolic. You wanted me pregnant. Voila," she said, waving her hand wildly.

"You're saying that I 'willed' you to have a baby?"

"Part of you did," she said.

"This is ludicrous."

"You think? I have to eat this thing now. You fucked up, Bill, and I need your help in order to—"

"Eat it? What does _that_ mean?" Bill asked in shock.

"I told you. We eat our young. That's just how it's done. We have rules." Bill shook his head and gave a small, confused laugh that rode into a darker tone of mania. He gathered his next statement and made it strongly.

"You... and I.... never... had sex. Got it? If you're pregnant, I have nothing to do with that. And eating it? I don't..." Bill rubbed his eyes, lost for a moment "...Well, I think it's obvious you're out of your mind. Just leave. I don't want you in my garage. In my life. Ever."

"Now's not the time for breaking up, idiot," she said, worried about his resolve, which he had explained with such certainty as to seem irreversible. She was on the verge of tears.

"Yeah, it should have been awhile ago," he countered.

"You pathetic twat," she muttered.

"Get out. You're fucked in the head."

Amy let out a small yelp, distressed and hurt by this treatment. There was a brilliant surge of light in the room then, which spent itself near to the instant. The garage light fixture dimmed considerably, as if its power had been drawn by another source. The air grew stale and took on a strange, chemical smell. Bill gasped as the black serpent, larger than he, shot forward, striking his chest with its head. The eyes were illuminated as if small flames in lanterns, leveled before his own. Bill stopped breathing as the head swiveled to his left and the body of the great serpent twisted around him, coiling and dragging him to the floor, wrapping around his body, squeezing with a power Bill could not fathom. It was as if a machine had drawn him in and was compressing his body with hundreds of pistons. The air in his lungs shot out, painfully. The veins in his neck, hands, and head lifted forward and his skin grew hot. In his mouth was the taste of her mouth, in his ear were the whispers of her wit.

The head came around again, twice the size of his own, a macabre knit of scales and pits, a slithering, long-dormant grotesqueness. The mouth opened and her fangs were exposed. Bill curdled in his mind and had no means of motion or sound. The maw shut and a thin, forked tongue flit forth, again and again, sniffing at his fear, his blood, learning where his veins lay and in what state of dying the entrapped prey had reached. The tongue flickered and the eyes bore through his face, watching, predatory, horrific. It was all clear then. Bill understood. The wounded mind she kept, the sickening shield of wit and subtle cruelty, her eyes, her body, her sister, the nature. Bill's mind turned over and lifted its hindquarters, exposing the worst part of him, the sad and hiding part. This was the hub of his creative efforts and the spring from which poured his affections. She thought to terrify him, to hurt him. Was this what he had done to her? Had he caused her to do this? Was Bill crushing Bill and Amy but holding him?

"You don't scare me, Snakes," he gasped. Love was chemical or it was fate. There was an independent, emotional drift, or there was a turbulence of hormones in an always circulating spate of blood. Love was a never true thing. The intensity of his affections had been sputtered to a near dissolve, to the extent he had wanted her removed from his life, but had he one? Was there any more life in his body than in the bodies of cabbage or in the cavity of a tooth? Life was a never true thing. There was little reason to do anything but trust the things it offered, to relinquish what it did not. Life had not offered Bill to Amy. Life had offered Amy to Bill. The coils stopped constricting, but the flame behind her eyes grew more intense. Bill watched as she opened her jaws. The fangs in her wide mouth dripped.

"You're afraid of me," he said. The air, musky and immaterial to the eyes or ears, slid across his teeth, prodded open his throat. Her eyes widened somewhat and her mouth closed. The coils that held him loosened much. Bill drew a small amount of breath, his head warm and skin aching. Were the two girls animal or human? Were they Amy and Janine, or the serpent? Could they be all of these things, existing in such forcible distortion, inseparable as dark from light? Bill felt her powerful heart beating near the left side of his nape, in one of the warm, black coils. Near the right, upper portion of his ribs, he felt a smaller, secondary heartbeat not his own.

"God, that's so dumb, Snakes... I'm harmless." The head of the giant serpent drew back, appearing confused. Bill watched as the snake drew in its forked tongue and looked away from him. He noted the curvature whereby her head drew down into her sleek body. Nothing jagged, nothing straight. Her back arched and her form wrapped about his own, holding him, the two bodies connected by a moment of predation, of nature, each knowing the heartbeat of the other, a long, unbearable, overwhelming moment between two creatures.

"This is all because I love you," he choked out, unable to breathe. He wanted to laugh. He wanted to scream. He wanted to strike her and kiss her and choke her. The serpent's body, tightly wrapped around his own, went limp and drew back. Bill had a harsh intake of air, almost gagging on it. A moment passed and the lights shot on brightly. Bill lay on the floor, panting, his eyes feeling worn and his body aching. Amy was atop him, straddled, her hands on his chest. He noted the watering of her eyes and she abruptly stood and walked away from him, leaving him there on the floor, sniffing her nose and wiping her eyes.

"Maybe we should do couples therapy," Bill said on the floor, wrecked and exasperated. He was what history had asked him to be, what some women sought, what most men feared. He was a changed being, a failed, loved, and damaged being. This was both a demonstration and demolishment of his pig-headedness, a crumpling of the images of Bill, in all of his forms and modes, prints that were masculine and glossy but represented an inevitable wreck that was merely, by his own standard, acceptable.

"We need to talk, B.S... but not now," she said, leaving the garage and shutting the door behind her.

### Chapter Twenty-One

What the weeds knew was what Eleanor knew, that Brian's father, a groundskeeper by trade, had not been a diligent man with his own land, and had neither kept up the property nor lived well on it. The estate's liquidation required her coldness in gauging the worth of the house and grounds, and she regretted the weekend of romance with Brian. She was attracted to him in a hushed way, but had made a mistake in growing comfortable with him, and she had no doubt now that her low appraisal of his family's estate would damage him. What remained for her to discover was whether he would allow their personal interest in one another to be tainted by her jurisprudence over the haggard property his father had left behind. Would he choose to despise her for this? Perhaps he would, and rightly so.

-from _The House in the Dale_ , Elaine Wosen

He had packaged the calendar and dropped it at the post office. This was a difficult thing for Bill, as he was still not pleased with the layout of the final art. He felt he had chosen the best of the images gained from destroying his car, but these had been lukewarm. The concluding photograph in the calendar, and representing December, was a shot of the vehicle as it began to tilt, falling over. There was a billow of dust behind that tapered into two distinct streams, almost reminiscent of Lansington's contrails image in _Special Clouds_. Bill had caused his own special cloud, but thought his was much more noteworthy to look at. The dust cloud made the image. The car looked silly, illogical on its side, but at an angle that denoted it should not be upright. The picture seemed boring until one took in the billows of dirt in the air. December's image did not denote motion without the dust cloud, which not only trailed the wreck of the car, but had shot in front of it from the vehicle's sudden loss of velocity. The cloud was what told potential viewers that violence was underway, and had been going on for at least a few moments. A certain bonus was that the dust cloud blocked out the stands around the raceway quite well, and unless you knew the picture had been staged, the wreck looked to be likely off the side of a highway, in front of something white and aged. This whiteness could be easily confused with a house or storefront.

A long project had come to fruition, and the submission was made. Bill underwent a brief mood of worry and doubt after the package left his hands, taken by the post office clerk, but this dread had been overcome shortly by a sense of pride. A good coincidence occurred when Janet called to ask his progress, only hours after he had sent the calendar. This was a redeeming call from his publisher, and a call that Bill answered with both positive and culminative news, having provided work, having fulfilled the rules that governed his occupation. If anyone understood how long it had been since Bill had completed a work for Holt and Finch, an acceptable work, that person would be Janet Hogue.

"In fact, I sent it out today," Bill answered, "I think you'll like it. I did have trouble with December, which has always been a curse of mine, but I think the finished product will be to your liking."

"December's the end. Needs punch, for sure. And I certainly like things that are to my liking," she responded. Bill heard this through a palpable tone of approval and what he discerned to be a slight smile. With calendarists losing contracts and Osbourne being rejected, a smile, even if only in his imagination, was a good indication something beneficial was occurring.

"It has all the elements we've talked about, I mean, to my reckoning. There's edge but it's not completely in your face, the visceral tone is there, uniqueness, but without a lot of... just being overly dark, you know? It's not blatant, I guess is what I'm saying. It's what I think you're looking for," Bill explained, confident, and being of mind to speak in a somewhat open mode, due to this new reimbursement of his self. His completion and submission of the calendar was a hard-won feat, one that had been approaching for some time. He had begun the calendar over a year previous, and to have finally concluded this project was relieving, gave him a tangible sense of achievement. The world had begun to make more sense to him, certain obstacles had diminished, and the fog of his life had felt a much-needed breeze in his altercation with Amy. It could be supposed that Bill, a man for whom love was a chemical affair, had been dropped into an uncertain mist of them, and with much emphasis. He loved the horrific snake. He simply loved her.

"That's good to hear, Bill. We're waiting, and we've been having difficulties," Janet said. Bill leaned back in his chair at the desk, his cell phone to his ear and Amy on his mind.

"Any ideas on what you want to work on next?" Janet asked, nudging him. This was standard Hogue behavior. She pressed more than Lozier had, and while it was obvious when she did this, there was a sort of comfort involved. This tactic of 'keep moving' she prospered was indicative of a publisher that wanted artists working, rather than simply dealing with them in a pseudo-expedient manner. Most of this was just telephone spin, but it did make Bill feel more secure about his contract, and he did have an idea about his next project.

"Yeah, I've been mulling something," he said, thinking of Amy, thinking of a history full of snakes and a history full of Eve's. Perhaps his calendar full of sinister men, _From the Rind_ , was flawed due to the sense of what it portrayed, and the trouble was with the men, not the theme. Perhaps the men should have loved their snakes. A calendar of these sinister men was not enough, but a calendar of these men with their wives and love interests would be achingly human. What horror and love could do so close to one another... this could show a palpable sort of human truth. Were there pictures of Hitler in love?

"Good. Keep it up. Things have become unsteady here, as I'm sure you've heard, and I know a lot of you are talking, but right now, what we need is good work. That's the thing."

"I'll give what I've got. And yeah, people are talking," he said, "The calendarium is being sold. Nina's shutting it all down. Osbourne getting shot down on one of his, and the Dutch maybe retiring... You know artists; the gossip is astounding."

"Oh, I know all about it," she replied, weary, "Though I'm sure Richard Dutch won't fully retire. He'll likely do a little freelancing here and there. I think he doesn't want a contract anymore, is all. But yes, things are a-change, Bill." Janet was attempting to sound hopeful, yet ended her statement with a tell-tale sigh. It occurred to him that this same tone was becoming common in his life. Roger used this shade of voice when divulging that Mel had broken off their relationship, Amy used it when she left the day previous, needing to think, and Janine often used this tone, but to a more hinting effect, as a tease to arouse him. Even Christian utilized this sound, when having to put up with Uncle Bill's antics. Of course the tone was familiar to Bill, but most so because he, himself, had begun exuding it, and often. That was a previous Bill, however. That was a sad man that did not want the world to be what it was.

"Well, at any rate, you should have _Collision_ within the week, and I'm hoping you find it right for the new direction Holt and Finch wants to go."

"I'll be happy to receive it. What inspired the title?" she asked. She seemed of genuine interest, for once.

His relationship with Amy had been somewhat of a collision, Bill mused. His troubles of late were similar to the events surrounding his own car's demise. He had raced forward, he had passed certain markers, he had struck the love wrong and smashed himself silly. Amy had not come because Amy could not stand to watch him hurt himself. Amy and Bill were still together, somehow, and while the altercation during their last meet had been spiked with absurdity, resentment, physical and emotional collision, they had come out of this with a sense for one another that was far greater than what they had harbored previous. New Bill wanted to understand Amy, and while wanting to comfort her in some way, also knew that Amy needed to be accepted for what she was, not what he wanted.

"The title is interconnected with the theme. The thing is, I designed the whole calendar around auto wrecks. Actually wreckage. Images of vehicles that have been destroyed, mangled, smoking... but, I mean, there's more than that. This might come off pompous, but the whole thing kind of mirrors a loss of security, somewhat, but that's really just the beginning."

"Wrecked cars?" she asked.

"Yeah, but there's more going on than that. And a running lack of symmetry I employed. I mean, all the images are hazardous, I guess is the word, even when the wrecks aren't. You know, because vehicles are pretty symmetric, but I've noticed destruction can be, too, so I focused on less symmetry and more... just more of the theme, really. Anyway, I tried several titles, but _Collision_ just seemed the most apt and realistic title. It's not necessarily a creative name but... well, it's sort of bullshit-less, you know?"

"Wrecked cars?" she repeated.

"Twelve of 'em, plus a cool schematic of collision points on modern sedans that I've gotten a hold of for the cover, I mean, if we don't go with one of the other twelve. You might be interested to know that, being the dedicated artist I am, uh, for the last image, December... that picture was staged. It's actually—"

"Bill, we have a problem," she interrupted.

"What?" he asked. A sensation of dread filled the pits of Bill's psyche.

"I don't know what this means," she said, puzzled. Bill could hear the murmur of the Special Articles Division surrounding her voice, an office buzzing with rush and regiment. So many were rejected from words typed on paper, words written amid this same mesh of sounds, this same office. Bill had placed everything on _Collision_. This project was all he had worked at for the past year. In the possibility it might fail, he had neither contingency nor counter-measure.

"What it means?" he asked.

"We have a situation," she rephrased. Bill had a disbelief that Janet Hogue would dare judge his calendar without having seen it. Surely, she was only confused about his description. All would be clear once she had the calendar in her hands, once she could examine his artistry, his selection of images, his system of days and how he had formed them through painful, tedious hours of layout. Calendars were essentially squares full of squares full of squares. There was more art to be had in creating these than most people could know. Bill had worked himself into every facet of every square in his calendar.

"Oh, well, I'm sure you'll get the meaning better when you see it," Bill said, cautious.

"No, Bill. I'm talking about a much bigger problem." He closed his eyes, then.

"I'm listening."

***

Bill entered the kitchen, zombified or aghast, for these expressions on him looked the same. He tiredly sat in a chair at the table and looked to Roger, who was cleaning out the microwave. How could Bill have misjudged people to the extent he had? His notion of how and why people reacted the way they did seemed deft enough. He had navigated Holt and Finch these years using this knowledge and understanding, he had watched over Roger's three children with only vague ideas of human nature to guide him. How dangerous this all seemed now. He had misjudged someone heartily, and there was now both resentment and loathing in him. These, meeting the sense of care for Amy he had recognized of late, collided and liquefied, creating a reservoir in him that had the powerful stench of bitterness and misery. Misery was an old acquaintance of Bill's, but bitterness was an entirely new guest.

"I need you to help me commit homicide," he said. Roger turned and viewed his little brother, reaching a hand deeper into the microwave to attempt nudging loose a several-days-old spot of burnt and re-burnt cheddar. He nodded.

"Uh, melee, sniping from a rooftop, or rat poisoning?" Roger asked.

"Shoving a dildo in someone's ear hard enough to make it come out the other ear. Whatever that is," Bill said. Roger chuckled at this, only slightly shocked.

"Well, I think that'd be the use of a blunt instrument, Bill, and definitely melee."

"I've been fucked. By a thief. I... I want to hurt something," Bill said, still baffled at the news Janet had given him, news she had only discovered in the course of their phone call.

"What do you mean?" Roger asked, concerned.

"Todd stole my calendar. He gave it to our publisher as his own."

"The wrecked cars? The one that broke your wrist and nearly gave me a heart attack?" Bill rubbed his face, weary.

"He made his own. He knew the theme I was working on." How had Bill misjudged Lansington so much? The Virginian calendarist had always seemed a dope, but Bill had never thought he was a thief.

"What a fucking rat. Who is he? Another calendar guy?"

"Yes. I'm so stupid. So, so stupid. He said it right in front of me and I didn't get it: Every man for himself."

"Isn't that plagiarism? You can sue for that," Roger said.

"Probably not. I mean, he made his own. He didn't steal mine, just the idea. Holt and Finch signed his calendar four days ago. He must have thrown it together fast. Or else... or else he's been stabbing me in the back for months, planning this."

"Can't you tell your publisher what he did?"

"She knows. I just talked to her. But she's his publisher, too. She'll talk to him, for sure, but... I know nothing will come of it. I haven't provided anything in two years. I'm at the edge of my contract's elasticity, you know? They'll drop me like they dropped Osbourne."

"Another calendar guy?" Roger waited but did not receive an answer to this. He watched Bill, who was staring a blank at the wood grain of the table top. The little brother's stillness was worrisome.

"You'll get past this. It can't be as bad as it sounds. And I know you. You'll be on another one soon," Roger said, trying to cheer his brother somewhat. Bill shook his head a small amount and set his hands on the table.

"...No. No, I don't think so. I think I'm done."

"There are other publishers, right?"

"No, I mean _I'm_ done. I don't want to do this anymore. No more calendars. No more publishing. No more living in my brother's house. This is the end; I need something else to happen."

"You want to move out?"

"I should, yeah."

"What for?" Roger asked, but not in a mode of curiosity. Roger was offended, but Bill was not yet aware of this.

"Figure myself out, like you have. Get a job, get a house, try to fucking relax. What have I done in the last decade, Roj? Jack shit, that's what. I can't even pay you rent."

"You think I've got anything figured out?" Roger asked, rhetorical.

"Compared to me? Yeah, you're doing great." Roger widened his eyes, disbelief encroaching on his brow and lips.

"Great! Did it ever occur to you that you live here because you _can_? Because we're a family?"

"Oh, of course, I'm just saying."

"I'm divorced, Bill. I'm fucking _divorced_. The kids have a twice-a-month mother because of me, and I don't have a wife anymore. I work in a goddamn audio/video store. They say I'm the manager but I don't amount to shit there. And come this fall, I have to take a pay-cut or risk losing control of my store. Losing control means 'unemployed', in case you're not getting it. Christ, Bill. I barely make the raised payments on this fucking house now, so what's gonna happen _then_?"

"Well, I should get a job, is the thing. I'll—"

"With me having to pay a sitter to spend the day with the kids? Know how much that costs? I let you live here because I love you, little brother, but make no mistake, if you were to leave right now, me and the kids would be fucked. You need to figure that out, man. I offered to let you move in right about the time Karen was moving out. You ever thought about that? The timing wasn't a coincidence. I needed you here."

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean how it sounded."

"You're not sorry, you're feeling sorry for yourself. I get it. Go ahead. Sulk. Whatever you have to do. But don't think I've got some great life worked out. My life functions because I work the hell out of it, and because I have you helping me. We're two heads on the same guy, Bill." This statement caught Bill off guard and ushered him down a long road of bizarre correlations.

"A great life?" Roger continued, "Come on. You think I want to keep getting shot down at these stupid speed dating setups? You think I remotely enjoy meeting new women that look at me like my kids are a venereal disease? I don't want that. I hate that. I'm sorry someone stole your idea, but maybe you should go kick his _ass_ , not mine." Roger shut the microwave door hard, threw the washrag in the sink and quickly turned the faucet on, washing his hands.

"I've had sex once in the last four years," Roger said, irritated, "How much do you want to bet Nick gets laid before I do? How fucked up is that?"

Bill cleared his throat loudly, causing Roger to turn around and note that both Nick and Jessica were standing in the doorway that led to the living room. Jessica looked concerned with her father's raised voice. Nick looked a little insulted at having been mentioned.

"We're not mad; we're just having a conversation," Roger said, quick to recover parenting mode.

"Kidz eh fuck?" Jessica asked.

"Oh Jess, please forget I said that. I said 'the kids are fun', is all," Roger steered. This seemed to please her. Nick pursed his lips, seeming on the verge of calling his father on this particular lie. He knew better, of course, and instead remained in quietude, his most common exhibition. Roger began toying his tongue against the back of his teeth, a nervous habit. Bill sat at the table, ruminating over Roger's anger. This outburst had been unexpected and honed. No deep thought was required to discern the older brother had been stewing over the details of this anger for some time.

"And... and the getting laid thing... that's not permission or anything," Roger said to Nick, who shrugged from the awkwardness of this statement. The young man grunted and then made his way around his father to an upper cupboard. Jessica followed and was shortly presented with a cup, which Nick filled with orange juice from the refrigerator. The two brothers were silent, Roger ringing out the washrag and staring through the kitchen window into the outside world, Bill sitting at the table, feeling uncomfortable and bitter, hoping the children did not see him as the source of their father's outburst. Bill's function with the kids relied on momentum, and the upkeep of their approval, or at the least, their tolerance. He would feel horrible if the kids concluded he was ruining things in their home.

Nick and Jessica left the kitchen then, the former giving a brief glance at Bill with a raised eyebrow, the oblivious latter ambling into the living room to enjoy her juice. The awkward quiet was not long lived.

"I didn't know you were so unhappy," Bill said when he felt things were clear. Roger turned from the sink and leaned backward against it, folding his arms across his chest. He appeared to have taken on shame, or on a parental level, guilt.

"I'm not unhappy, Bill. And neither are you."

"No?"

"No. We're just kind of cheated, is all." Bill mulled this over, estimating outcomes and various dead-ends his life held close. He did feel cheated.

"That seems about right," he agreed.

"Think about it. Have I done anything overtly wrong? I'm divorced, but that was her doing, not mine. I took on the kids and set us up with what we have. It's not a bad life, so have I done anything wrong?"

"Not wrong, no," Bill confirmed.

"Some jackass stole your calendar, one you spent a lot of time on. I know all about how much you worked on that thing, and you nearly killed yourself making it. Arm's all cut up and you've got a damn cast. Hell, I wanted to break your other arm after the speedway, but whatever, the point is, you worked hard on it, and someone else robbed you. Did you do anything wrong?" Roger prodded.

"Well, no. The wrong happened to me."

"Yeah. That's all. Neither of us has done anything wrong. Our lives have become the way they are because of other people. We haven't done great, per se, but we haven't done anything wrong, either. We have our faults, yeah, droves of 'em, but none of this bad shit in our lives is actually our fault. If it was, we could blame ourselves, we'd have a license to feel bad and miserable. Honestly, I don't think we have that license. What we have in our lives is whatever the hell works," he said. Bill understood this, though was slow to achieve its acceptance with any clarity. There was much sense in it, however.

"I think I see what you mean."

"Even your deal with Amy and her friend. That was their doing, right?"

"Dating the two of them? Yes," he admitted.

"Are you at fault because of that? Did you do anything wrong?" Bill thought this over hard. He conjured images from his memory of Janine nude, of Amy sitting across from him in restaurants. He thought of meeting Amy, of the trip to Latin Hall with Janine. Then he thought about holding Amy, kissing her, being held by Amy, choking. He thought of her abdomen coiled around him, squeezing, her abdomen rounded beneath her shirt, carrying a baby. Bill breathed consciously then, needing to remember he required air.

"Yes," he said, "as a matter of fact, I did do something wrong."

### Chapter Twenty-Two

The customs of Dr. Mishra's own nation would no doubt be alien to the Ushubi, and she understood that it was their need to comprehend, and not simple tolerance, that caused Ghury's people to have maintained such pacifism with the surrounding tribes over the decades. They understood that the differences between customs were powerful. It was ironic that Dr. Mishra, herself, an educated person, had neglected to fathom this power. She had not understood at first that the bador leaves, boiled to softness, were symbolic. Ghury had explained that eating them meant sacrificing her future for a better one, giving her better luck in the world. She had learned afterward, however, that the Ushubi believed luck was interconnected with offspring. This, in turn, was tied strongly to themes of gender and marriage in their culture. She had miscalculated Ghury's intent. By eating the bador leaves with him, she had, through Ushubi rite, agreed to become his wife, and though she had not known the consequence of her actions, her rejection of him that same night from her tent had caused many to request that both she and Ghury be reprimanded.

-from _The Bee Hunter_ , Evelyn Stewart

The stairs were navigated two at a time for the first floor, but then his heart rate made its way into his thoughts, and he became cognizant of how much this rate did not approve of his juvenile fashion for ascending stairs. He slowed to a normal pace up the second flight, making his way to the apartment. There was a pleasant smell emanating from behind the door and Bill's mouth began to water in the slight. The explanation he had given over the phone was only partially acknowledged, and Amy's reaction to it seemed of light disinterest. She thought it a better idea that he come over and they talk over an early dinner. This served Bill's stomach well, as he had grown hungry on the way over. Having given his car to scrap, it was with no small amount of humility that Bill made his way to her street in a boxy, public bus.

He was shouted to come in after his knock, and did so, entering a warm, sunlit interior of the apartment, enveloped in a smell he determined to be pasta. Janine peeked out from the kitchen and spied him.

"Howdy, you," she said, eyeing him up and retreating back into the kitchen. Bill followed, peering in at her handiwork.

"I didn't know you could cook," he said. The aroma of the sauce was strong and wondrous. He noted the fettuccine boiling on a rear burner and the bottle of wine on the counter, beside a corkscrew. There were a few, sparse ingredients about, creating a tidy sort of mess.

"There's a lot about me you don't know," she said, however there was little aggravation or sarcasm in this. She sounded informative, as if she wanted him to know she was a varied woman, and ought not be thought of as creature of singular talent.

"I imagine so. Olive oil with some spices and bacon I'm smelling?"

"Sort of, but not really. It's bosciaola with prosciutto."

"I see. Well, it smells great in here. Where's Amy?" he asked. Janine chewed at the inside of her cheek a moment and continued stirring the sauce.

"Your girlfriend is in her room, pops," Janine said, this time including the aggravation Bill thought he could expect of her. Bill weighed this in his mind. The addition of the word 'pops' had a connotation that bothered him. He did not want to think about the illogical pregnancy, its certainty or falsehood. He had no cause to believe he knew what any of it meant, but would by the night's end, he was sure.

It did not seem time to offer apologies or express his want to repair what had happened over the last weeks with Janine. He had pushed her from him, been rude to her, tried to get her to be something she was not. The time for his asking to be forgiven was approaching quickly, but he wanted to do this during conversation, over dinner, attempting to relax. He had thought to have a talk with Amy, but including Janine in this reparatory conversation was probably a strong idea, and all might be open with the three of them present. Now that he looked upon her in the kitchen, the way she stood, stirring and irritated with him, an inclusive conversation regarding the three of them was most likely necessary. Bill had made mistakes that led the girls to make mistakes, which in turn had caused him to churn up yet further mistakes. If there was a proper tourniquet for this sort of bleeding between people, it was a good talk.

"Thank you for cooking," he said, exiting the kitchen and walking through the living room. The sunlight that held this room gave the floor a brightness Bill was unaccustomed to. He had never been to the apartment during the day, and there was a sense of normality to the room that he had not met before. This was a common apartment, the knickknacks and television, the stereo and carpeting, all of generic interest and simple. His mood in the apartment, of a particular anticipation in previous visits, had cast a vibe over the place, and now that he was not anxious, not pleased or expectant, the apartment came off as neatly and mildly domestic. This was no longer the apartment of Amy and Janine, but simply a girlish apartment. How odd that desire and fondness could alter a location in one's mind with such ease.

Bill thought back to the theme park he and Roger were treated to when younger, the physical fun, the palpable excitement. Perhaps that park had been no place of wonder, as he had always thought it to be. Whenever he reminisced on those trips to the theme park, perhaps he was only remembering a good time in a certain place, and not a certain time in a good place.

He knocked at the door.

"I'll be out in a minute," Amy answered from within the room. She sounded rushed, tired, getting dressed.

"Take your time."

***

"This is incredible. I've never had pasta this good," Bill admitted, in the lucky position of being genuine while answering Janine's request that he compliment it.

"For real?" she asked, cocking her head, estimating in fun.

"For real. The prosciutto is really rich and there's a unique thing going on in this. I can't place it, but it's awesome. What's it called again?"

"Pasta bosciaola. And what you can't place is capers and tarragon."

"Well, you could serve this in an upscale restaurant," Bill added. He was serious. The pasta was beyond sating or flavorful, and had overwhelmed his appetite in a wondrous way.

"Don't let her fool you. That's all she can cook," Amy said with a smirk. Janine hit Amy's arm lightly.

"Then go hungry," Janine said. The dinner was causing what Bill had hoped, and though he did not ascertain their view on this small meeting, the dinner was also going the way Amy had wanted, as well. The Sun was setting and the lights had dimmed, akin to that motif one might find in romantic restaurants. Whether this was contrived or not was a matter of the subconscious. Amy had not planned the event with particular lighting in mind, or even with the knowledge there would be such a good pasta. Neither had Janine, for that matter.

Bill felt this a good time to initiate what he knew was a necessary thing. He had not looked forward to this, as delving into emotional feedback was a thing most men found disturbing. His phrasing would be called into question, and Bill's manner of this was ham-tongued and overt. He wanted to explain himself, of course, but in doing so, would naturally need the girls to explain themselves as well. This ran a great risk to Bill, as their summary of the relationship might not meet his hopes. Bill's realization that he had run the arrangement afoul might not be acceptable to them alone. Perhaps atonement might be called into being, or some behavior expected that he could not fulfill. Bill was a man, and in his nurtured modes of logic, and in his crippled use of emotional disclosure, his view on recuperation was connected strongly to his view on embarrassment and humiliation. Bill wanted to apologize, yet loathed the idea of being forced into a mode of recovery.

"Well," he began, "it's good the three of us are together. I think we all know we need to talk about some things." This was a fair enough introduction for the moods present. Amy raised an eyebrow and leaned back, folding her arms across her chest. She had known this talk was eminent, but gave in her expression a notice that his timing was a little abrupt.

"Now, huh? Well, all right. Let me hear it. And squirm a little," she said. Bill was not certain he understood. Janine reached over and put her hand on Bill's shoulder, giving a slight rub.

"Ooh, this is gonna be great. He's dreading this," she said, wry. Bill understood then, and couldn't help smiling over their treatment of his introduction. They were making sport of his big apology. This helped him quite a bit.

"I'm trying to be really straight and somber and, you know, just uncomfortably serious," he said. Amy smiled, waiting. Janine was not so quiet.

"Lay it down, Bill. I want to pick at it. But you got two points for complimenting my dinner, so I'll go easy," she said. The two girls then waited for his apology. Bill sighed and looked around the room a moment, having been had, teased, and approved. The relief he felt was due to the obviousness of his apology being tolerable. Their taunts and irreverence explained as much. Having had the apology accepted beforehand made giving it much easier.

"Okay. The two of you were very clear and up front about the rules, and I guess I didn't take them very seriously, and I got greedy," he said. Amy and Janine looked at one another, feeling this a lame start.

"I'm not good at this," Bill said. The girls waited.

"All right, let's do this a little more open source," he began, "I think it's obvious that no matter how we want to think of it, I'm not in one relationship. Each of you are, but the two of you are one-half of this relationship, and on my end, there's only one of me and I'm really having two different relationships that meet up in places." Amy nodded at this, no longer with humor. In truth, she had not planned on caring much about his apology. She had forgiven him and hoped he had forgiven her. He was the man she loved, and now she knew she was the woman he loved. All the rest seemed tertiary to her, save for the rules of their association and her predicament with him. These were the real reason she had asked him over. Of course she wanted to hear out his misgivings and explanation, but she already suspected what he thought. For Amy, the truth of this dinner was that the rules of their relationship, or as Bill felt, relationships, needed to be re-established. There was a moment wherein he glanced at Amy's stomach area for hints of her pregnancy. He had begun to think that the previous day's encounter with her had not been true, or at least, the sort of truth he had come to expect from Amy, which was a sort of odd, outer truth. In the dim light of their dinner, she did not appear pregnant.

"Given that, I think the most natural thing, for me, would be to treat our arrangement as if I were in two separate relationships. I know that's not the case, but it would help me greatly to think of it this way." Now it was Janine's turn to nod, agreeing with this statement. Janine only found Bill to be interesting in a tangential way. Her relationship with him was Amy's relationship with him. No one was doubting that anymore, not even Bill.

"And also, if it's possible... no uh, just no more snake... or at least, not _at_ me," he said, nervous. Amy lowered her head. She had felt more than simple shame over her reversion in the garage. The eruption of that dilemma had been weak of her, and she had since promised herself it would not happen again.

"Done," she said quickly, "That was an accident, and it was wrong of me to let it happen. You shouldn't have to worry about that."

"Okay then. I just uh... okay."

"Still waiting," Janine said, a hint of mischief in her voice. Bill sighed. Apology time.

"All right. I'm on this," he said, gathering himself and putting on his best face of address. He looked into Amy's eyes and began.

"I overstepped my boundaries because I couldn't help but want you, is the thing. On some level, that's just human. Regardless, it was made clear at the start I wasn't allowed to do that. I won't blame it on the wine or anything. I moved on you and I shouldn't have. I'm sorry. While I won't do it again, I can't promise I won't think it. But I want what we have, even if I can't fulfill it entirely. I know that's what Janine's purpose is supposed to be, and as strange as this whole thing is, I do understand it more now than I did at the beginning. I'm sorry, Amy. I fucked things up because I didn't control myself. And I'm sorry, Janine, for pushing you away from me when you were only trying to help. You're affection is wonderful, of course. Amazing. I just didn't realize its purpose until after I'd neglected it." Bill's apology was lacking in wisdom and even a level of intelligence, but it contained that elusive element people called 'heart', and was wholly sincere. The apology was outlined and stated from a place in him that had decided to be honest and that did not want to lose them.

Amy's arms lowered and she placed her hands on the table. She seemed both surprised and upset by what he had said. Janine clapped several times.

"Well, that wasn't so bad. I rather liked it," she said, patting Bill on the back. Amy smiled but the smile was false.

"Good job, B.S. It takes a real man to completely cower for a woman," she said, not looking at him. Bill laughed at this. The teasing Amy was a person he had found he needed.

"Might want to check to see if it's still there," Amy added, tipping her head, indicating his groin.

"I'll do it," Janine voiced. Bill smiled and let the moment have him. Let the teasing and joking dissipate the sobriety of his apology. It was relieving and he was thankful for the humor. He felt that all three people present understood the situation. Clarity had been achieved, though probably not due to Bill's apology. That had only served to give himself a voice, and through this, his own clarity.

"Okay, ground-rules," Amy said, changing the subject, though not entirely.

"I've been thinking about that," Bill said, "and if we're all going to continue being together, I have a request that... it would help me maintain what we have... at least, in my mind, it would."

"Does he have room to make requests?" Janine asked.

"Well, he thinks he does. Let's hear him out," Amy replied.

"I thank you. So, here's what I've come up with. You'll probably think it's dumb, but like I said, it would help me out. What I'm proposing is this."

"A proposal?" Janine interrupted, "Wait, I'm confused. Which one of us should be on our knees for this?" Amy grinned after this statement. Janine was not without her own wit, even if it only encompassed a few of life's common attributes.

"Ha ha," Bill said, blasé, "Anyway, I think we could separate the days with one another. Like, just as an example, Janine and I see each other certain days of the week, and Amy and I see one another on the other days. Like that."

"You're right. That's dumb," Janine said.

"Always the calendar man, eh B.S.?"

"Yeah well, what do you think? Would that work for you?" he asked, hopeful.

"I could go with that," Amy said, but more with bored consent than pleasant agreement.

"Whatever does it for you," Janine said.

"Okay. Good. So, I figure we'll just say something like... first half of the week is Janine, second half Amy. Any dates we go on, or things we do from Sunday through Tuesday, that's Janine and I. Wednesday through Saturday, that's Amy and I. But I do think we should have a day or two a month for all three of us. I like this. It... it settles things," Bill advised.

"She's got more days than me," Janine said, mock pouting.

"If that's a problem then we'll make Sundays off limits. We all agree not to date on Sunday. With Janine's three days following it, I'll need to rest anyway," he said. Janine gave an excited gasp then.

"Ooh, rest a lot," she said.

"I'm kosher with this, but Bill, it'll fail. I mean, you do have some idea that this will completely fall flat, right?" Amy asked.

"Will it?"

"Eventually," she responded.

"We'll deal with that eventually, then," he replied. Bill ate the last of his pasta, still immersed in how perfect the meal was. He had conspired with his two love interests, in plain view of one another, and things had become smooth. Outlets were created and times had been managed. While Amy was likely correct in assuring him that this would inevitably cease to work after a time, Bill was still pleased that it would likely work until then. Dinner was a success and the relationships had been patched. He wanted to leave with Amy right then, go to a bar, a movie, a bus ride, anything. There was one impediment to this newfound status as their collective boyfriend, however. The new arrangement hinged on whether Bill could keep his hands off the woman he loved, and was dependant on how the final topic of the night was handled, what it meant. Bill's mind had, with much devotion, staved off the topic from his thoughts until the time came to draw it forth.

"Um so, about yesterday," he said, a little nervous again. Amy looked down at her plate and finished the last morsel of her pasta. Janine sat back, having already eaten hers, and waited for what Bill would say. She found this dilemma of horrid interest.

"Are you truly pregnant?" he asked. Amy looked down at her abdomen, then loosely off to the side, into the room, away from Bill. She seemed uncertain.

"What happened was as much my fault as it was yours," she said. Bill puzzled over this.

"But you're pregnant, right? Did you have a test?" he asked. Janine smirked at this and, after a moment of relaxation, belched lightly.

"No one needs to worry about that anymore, Bill. You don't and we don't," Amy responded.

"I never really worried about it to begin with," Janine threw in.

"What do you mean?" Bill asked Amy.

"I was pregnant, yes. Your... your daughter would have been wonderful, but we don't have to think about that anymore."

"I... a daughter? How could you know? You're losing me."

"Bill, that's been taken care of. No more pregnant me," Amy said with some shame. Bill's eyes softened. A sense of guilt and sadness came over him. What had he made her do? How had he come to be this sort of man?

"You... you had an abortion," Bill said quietly. Janine lifted from her seat then and leaned over, kissing Amy on the top of the head, rubbing her back for a moment. She then carried her plate and glass into the kitchen, leaving Bill and Amy alone at the table.

"No," Amy said. Bill thought about this and a shrug crawled up from his shoulders and into his skull, running down all thoughts present with curiosity, worry, and abject confusion.

"Was it... miscarriage?" he asked, feeling as if this word was somehow not for him to use. Amy shook her head slowly.

"Like that, but no."

"Then what?" he asked. She gave a weak smile. This smile was more of a wince.

"The kind of... of thing I am... we eat our young, Bill. We don't have a choice." Bill's mind turned outward, his thoughts perching in jagged places, all of them offering but grotesque images and horrific notions.

"Not this again," he said, having tried to ignore her statements of eating young from the day previous, considering these admissions to have come from a version of Amy that needed attention. He had hoped that version had been sated and would not surface for some time.

"I don't understand," he said weakly.

"And... I'm sorry, B.S... there are rules. The father has his share. That's the rule," she said, looking as if she expected him to stand and hit her.

"You- you _ate_ it?" he asked, not believing this.

"And the father has his share," she repeated, lowering her eyes to her plate of vanished pasta, then nodding at his. Bill watched this, then looked down at his plate. The prosciutto had tasted rich, and some sort of spice had made the sauce unique.

"It had to be this way," Amy said then. The realization struck him with the force of a slingshot-launched marble to the forehead.

"Jesus Christ!" he shouted, jerking up from the chair, sending it backward toward the television. His thighs struck against the table as he stood and the silverware skittered across the plates.

"Are you fucking kidding me!?" he asked, his voice in a panic.

"No, Bill. I'm sorry."

"We've been eating our kid?!"

"Yes and no. It's not an actual baby any more than I was actually pregnant. It was a higher pregnancy, would have been a higher birth. Deities have a different system. This early, it was only a symbol, so the eating of this was symbolic."

"Oh, fuck no," he mumbled.

"Relax, there was no baby in your dinner, Bill, but the metaphor was there. The metaphor was in the sauce. And you ate the metaphor. Since that's all the baby was made of... there you go; baby gone."

"Oh dear god," he muttered, light-headed.

"There are a lot of things you might see one way, that are most likely another way, you follow?" she asked.

"I don't want to."

"Well, I'm sorry to hear that. At any rate, dinner's done, and we talked it out. I... I have to go to sleep for awhile, B.S. That's part of it. You, uh, you can spend time with Janine. I don't know when I'll be... available again," she said, getting up from the table. She appeared to be dizzier than Bill. Janine came out of the kitchen and retrieved the two remaining plates and glasses from the table. Amy stumbled a moment.

"Go to bed," Janine told her, concerned. Amy turned and made her way to the bedroom. Bill was staring at the plates Janine held, aghast. Higher birth, higher pregnancy, eating one's young, deities, kids entering the world by plopping out of some ancient god's head...

"It's you and me for awhile," Janine said, "And don't mind dinner. You liked it, remember?"

"Everything's fine, Bill," Amy added, entering her bedroom and softly closing the door. Alone with Janine, Bill stared at the plates, his mind turning and a pang of revulsion stuttering in his knees. Janine shrugged, bored.

"No worries, Bill. If you're not into metaphors, just think of it as a bunch of religious shit."

### Chapter Twenty-Three

As the altimeter ticked off her descent beside Mitchell, Sophie felt a brief surge of release. The rush of air had begun to wash through her, bathing her mind clean of perspective. Beneath her, so much was visible and yet so little, the ground for as far as she could see, plain, ending always at the broad curvature of the horizon. She was above this, for a moment, above the horizon, far from the ground, and gauging how little time she had to descend was gauging how long she had fallen, how far she had come. To understand her place in this, and to predict the next place, she had only to examine the path that had led her there, and that would continue to lead her. She needed only to understand the past from which she had fallen.

-from _Freefall_ , Myrtle Johannesen

The northerly wind through the pinyons brought the evening air a substantial permeability, and the dampness this carried was a constant itch upon his young skin. The anurans cracked open the surface of the water, each with two starlit eyes and arms splayed. Slowly, these crept from the water for the night's remainder, in search of one another, of meals, and perches for which to alight and make song. The twilight was distorting and unconcerned with Bill. He entered the small clearing with his legs soaked to the knees, having earlier lost his footing and undergone a partial drop into the cold river. He was a young man driven by a potential for gaining that which had been previously unavailable to him, a young man who thought he had a lead on a girl that, he hoped, was again within his awkward reach. The wind tilted his mood a moment, brushing coldly against his wet shins and sloshing feet.

She was to meet him, or so they had agreed, but she was not present yet. In his wait, and with a desire to reprieve his soaked tennis shoes, Bill thought to sit on a nearby log, but discovered this was too rotted to support him. He instead leaned against a pinyon, fumbling with a lighter that would not function. From the bank came a snake, working its way from mud and brush. This serpent, but a yearling, allowed itself a route that passed closely to Bill's feet, gliding past him, silent, into the woods. The snake, a creature prone to abruption and quick maneuvers, twisted its head to the side, licking the twilight, upon hearing a sharp sound from Bill.

"Shit," Bill had muttered, his lighter refusing to function. After numerous flicks of the flinted wheel, the plastic lighter finally ignited, and he applied the flame to the appropriate end of the cigarette, his third ever. Bill had openly dated Andrea for several weeks only, and the relationship had ended a month previous. She had given him simple reasons, but the truth of the matter was a thing she had kept from Bill and everyone else. Bill had only discovered the dilemma she faced by inferring it the day they broke up. She had divulged it then, slowly and with guilt.They were not easy minutes, waiting for Andrea. Each held his ankles and toes colder than the last, and with this encroaching frigidity, so also did his mood grow cold. There was a short series of moments that caused Bill to believe he had been lied to, and that she was not coming to meet him. He was carrying on a conversation with her in his mind, a conversation that involved the two of them being in a hallway at their high school the following Monday, and he was getting the better of her with his anger at having been stood up. This argument, an internal, fictitious, and wholly unsettling thing, was interrupted for the better when he realized she was entering the clearing and coming to him.

"Are you smoking?" she asked. The night was becoming dark enough that he had trouble seeing her features and his mind had adjusted to go by outlines and silhouettes. The moon had not emerged that night, and the woods, full of long shadows, brought only the obfuscation of usual light. Bill's smoke drifted into the boughs.

"Sure. Have for awhile. I like to smoke," he lied.

"That's a dumb habit."

"I'm a dumb guy," he said. She snorted.

"Okay Billy. Whatever you say."

"Bill. I don't like Billy. That was like, 6th grade."

"Oh. Well, that does sound more grown-up, I guess. Wait, didn't you tell one of the girls on my team you were going by William?"

"No," he replied. She kind of frowned at this and then said what she had prepared to say.

"So, I talked to Allison. She's the only one who knows, and her mom."

"Her mom?!" Bill asked, mortified.

"No, just relax. She's... part of this. They're the only people that know," she said.

"That's not good."

"You think I don't know that?"

"Why does her _mom_ have to know? I don't want anybody's mom knowing about any of this."

"No shit, Billy. I don't either. But there's no choice. She's kind of crucial to how we get out of this," Andrea explained. Bill exhaled hard, uncomfortable. He wanted to take charge, be something he had not been before, but he had no idea how to do this, or what it would entail. He was simply too Billy and not enough Bill.

What he did not know was that Andrea was dating another man in quiet, and this man was real to her, not a high-school student like Bill. Though the relationship Bill had initiated with Andrea was short, and its abrupt end had never truly been accepted by him, his adoration of her had begun years before the relationship. Getting together with her had been a climactic event for him. Andrea had moved on quickly, however. She did know better than to tell him the actual reasoning of their break-up, that there was another man, but even without this information, Bill had been somewhat crushed by her departure from their short romance. The other man, twenty-two years old, had been dating her for over a month, and she felt he was far better for her, so long as she could work out a specific problem that had arisen. This problem, and her future with this man, involved a series of lies to Bill Sherman about a very real dilemma.

"It works like this: I'm supposed to have one of my parents go with me to the clinic." Bill's eyes widened and his nerves jolted him.

"Relax, that's not gonna happen," Andrea said, "Allison's mom is coming with me instead. She'll say she's my mother. She'll get me in. My parents will never know."

"She'd do that?" Bill questioned, suspicious.

"Yeah. She understands. The same thing happened to her when she was in high school. So anyway, now I've told you what's gonna happen. We're in the clear," she said. If all went according to her plan, Bill would leave her alone after this, and the problem of her pregnancy would be dissolved, and she would soon be free to date her new boyfriend, Don Pepple, openly. Don knew of her pregnancy, but thought he, himself, had caused it. This, Andrea knew, was not true, but everything would work out for her if Bill simply kept quiet about their past relationship and went away.

"I'm so sorry about all of this. I wish there was—"

"Billy, or Bill, whatever... just listen. Let me cut this off before you get ahead of yourself," she said. Her tone wore into Bill's ear with a harsh frivolity. This was a young woman about to decline him in every possible way, a young woman that was pregnant from the only instance where she had not declined him. Bill held an incessancy when thinking of her; he had taken himself through more thoughts of her this year than conscious thoughts of anything else.

"Let's just go to the party," Bill said, wanting the subject changed. He was worried she was going to reject him wholly, as she had done in the past, and if only they could have a good time, if only they could walk around together, be seen publicly as a couple, she might realize he was right for her after all, and that no one thought him too trivial a person to make a boyfriend. She cleared her throat and placed a hand up lightly, indicating a sharp address.

"Billy, _I'm_ going to the party. I want you to leave," she said.

"Leave where?" he asked, knowing what she meant but having been unable to rummage a true, counteractive response.

"Go home. I'm not going to the party with you. I'm not going to do anything with you. Ever. So you just need to go home."

"That's what they all say," Bill replied, trying to smile, "Come on, let's go see everybody, dance, have a good time." Humor was of benefit to all stings.

"You and I were a mistake. An accident. It's done. I know you think that there's something here," she said, waving her finger between them, "but there isn't. And there won't be. Billy, I'm asking you to go away." Bill kept on his dopey smile, looking about the clearing. His vision fell toward the river, where the stone-torn surface shimmered beneath what light was available in the clearing. Bill thought to jump in the river then, to do something mad. The water would be frigid, slow, shallow but accountable. The water always moved forward, never back.

***

It looked like water. The small trickle fell forward, dropping into the plastic cup, which began to fill. At the half-way mark, she told him to stop. He handed her the red cup. Bill had chosen, in a moment of young ostentation, to simply drink from the bottle. Andrea smelled her cup and her lips curled. Bill raised the bottle of tequila and examined the level. He had no knowledge of alcohol and subsequent brands, nor of reasons one might prefer one over another. The tequila Andrea had retrieved from beneath the sink in the kitchen had a colorful label and was missing about a third of its content.

"They won't notice?" he asked. Andrea shook her head.

"There's a couple other ones down there, too. My dad has parties. He won't notice. I did it once before," she replied. Andrea's explanation was sufficient for Bill, but when both of them heard a thump come from the front driveway, Andrea's actions were swift and controlled. She bent and set both her cup and the open tequila bottle beneath the sink before shutting the cupboard door. Bill, having not realized what was happening so quickly, began to understand that someone had arrived at the house other than Andrea. Still holding the cap, which Andrea had forgotten in her haste, he looked about. After a moment, he simply slid the bottle's plastic cap into his pocket.

The arrival of Andrea's sister, Karen, ran the superb risk of spoiling things. Karen had graduated two years before, and had also dated Bill's older friend Nate for a time. She was a rather awful girl, crass and mean. There were many young men that had been pleased when she graduated, thus removing her from their daily interactions. Karen Wright had spent much time picking at them, as well as at a younger Billy Sherman. She entered the home and spied him with her sister in the kitchen. Stopping and standing at the kitchen entry, her examination of the two young people was achingly long. She clicked her tongue and was slow in making her way over to them.

"I know you," she finally said, pointing at Bill in the offhand.

"Yeah, I remember you. Karen, right?" Bill replied, trying to sound friendly. Though it had been two years since last seeing her, she still inspired a touch of dread in him. She had been foul-mouthed, aggressive, and quite cruel in her eyes. She felt she was better than those around her and thus, entitled to insult all concerned. Certain boys did this, as well, but with most of these, the behavior seemed an act, a kind of unpleasant, aggressive, lop-eared play. When Karen was cruel, it did not feel to be an act, or even usual aggression; she was mean all the way in.

Karen looked at her little sister, who was standing nonchalant with her back against the kitchen sink. The older sister yawned, then chuckled.

"Brought a guy home, huh?" This was delivered in a bored, rhetorical way.

"I'm on the yearbook staff. I have to do an interview with the captains of the teams," Bill came up with.

"Oh yeah?"

"He was supposed to come over earlier," Andrea added taking hold of Bill's story, "but I wanted to go to the dance after practice, so he just came over now, instead." Karen's lips curdled and she rubbed her eyes, tired.

"Convenient, seeing as how mom and Dipshit are out of town." There was an awkward quiet then.

"It's just... when the interview is set up," Andrea finally said, uncomfortable.

"Yeah sure, little lady. Don't let him talk you into swallowing," Karen said. Andrea groaned.

"You're a bitch," she announced, angry. Karen raised her eyebrows, put on a mock smile, and agreed. Bill was at a loss as to how he might handle this situation. Trouble existed in various guises and all around him. New sorts of trouble.

"Anyway, I just stopped in to get something from my room. Have a great time," Karen said, turning and leaving in a designed manner. Andrea and Bill looked at one another. She frowned and rolled her eyes, a sort of apology. Bill lightly nodded. After several minutes, Karen wandered past the kitchen entrance on her way to the door. She stopped again. Bill and Andrea had been having a contrived, sequitur conversation, both of them fake and entirely bored, about yearbook policy, while waiting for Karen to leave.

"Hey, you got a brother, don't you?" Karen asked.

"Yeah," Bill replied.

"About my age, right? I think I remember him. Did he go and get handsome after graduation?"

"No."

"Got a picture?" she asked then.

"You already have too many pictures up on your wall," Andrea threw in, annoyed, "You don't know even half those guys."

"That's not true. I know half," Karen replied, intrigued with her younger sister's statement.

"Okay, the guy in the football jersey for Woodland. By the light-switch. You've got a big heart drawn around him."

"He was great. I call that one _Mr_. _Cock_."

"Whatever. You ever meet him more than the once?" Andrea asked, annoyed.

"Who cares? He was hot in a jersey. I'm only sorry I didn't get a picture of him from the back," Karen said.

"Maybe you should have. At least then you'd know his name," Andrea countered. A well-gestated silence submerged the kitchen in still air. Karen lifted her head and focused on Bill.

"Do her a favor and go down," she said then, moving her stare to Andrea with boredom, "God knows, the little priss could use it." Andrea gave a faux smile at this, mirroring that of her sister, earlier. Karen then exited through the front door and closed it behind her. Andrea and Bill were free to speak naturally again. They heard the vehicle pull out and drive away. Andrea retrieved the tequila from beneath the sink. After a brief sniff at the bottle's mouth, Bill had a long pull, which burned into his eyes and made his hair feel crisp. The awkwardness was slow to abate, but did.

"So," she asked, entering her cup of acrid tequila, "Why do you like me?"

There were many things that Bill had found difficult to word in his life, from thoughts regarding what he wanted to pursue after high school, to the abstract ruminations on whether he was a younger version of his older brother or not, but the details behind his developing a crush on Andrea Wright were not such difficult things to explain. He knew many tidbits of eccentricities and contingents regarding this young woman, details he had noted and events he had been attracted by. Bill set the bottle on the counter, smiled, and told her all about her.

***

He moved forward and drizzled the contents into his mouth. This caused him to shake his head, wincing from the burn, having taken down the liquid in the small, red cap.

"Jesus, what is this?" Bill asked. Nate twisted the cap back on the pint and slid the bottle into his coat pocket.

"Booze," Nate replied, simple.

"I know that, but what kind?"

"151." Bill looked at him in question then. Nate patted at the pint in his pocket.

"It's rum," he rephrased.

"How drunk am I going to get on this?" Bill asked.

"Trashed. If you drink enough. I'm gonna go smoke out back with Shawna. Keep finding me, though; we'll drink this shit down," Nate said. Bill nodded, wondering how it was that Nate always had a girlfriend, how Nate always had a car, a little money, snack food, cigarettes, and booze. These were things alien to Bill, but one by one, Nate had been introducing them to him. Bill did not feel particularly close to Nate, who was currently enrolled in his second attempt at passing the 12th grade, and thus graduating. Nate had many things, and always some line of fun to be had, but no one liked Nate much, including Bill. As if some needy, older brother, Nate was someone that came and found you for the sole reason that you might begin looking up to him, respecting him in some way, but Nate was dislikeable, really. He was dirty, not very smart, and was always getting into trouble. Bill knew why, but had yet to distance himself.

The bravery was in him, for various reasons, and Bill was undeterred in his quest to interact with Andrea Wright. Under usual weights of schooling and schedule, as well as his lack of aggressive action, Andrea was unapproachable. He had crushed on her for well over a year, and had not been able to do so much as talk to her. There had been a note, months ago, given to her through a classmate they both knew, but she had not responded to what he had written. Bill had only surmised she was not interested in him, but the school dance was proving this theory wrong. Perhaps it was his constancy, his dedication in pursuing her, or else his strange and quite new ability to make an ass of himself in front of her friends. The Bill of previous days would have never struck up conversation with someone like Andrea amidst the close proximity of her friends, who were as if a gaggle of geese that chattered incessantly with one another. There were several of them always present, but the new Bill had decided in a moment of bravado to walk into their group and say hello.

"Hey. I'm back," he said. One of the girls giggled, not because she found him cute or of interest, but because they had no doubt been talking about his idiocy while he was away with Nate.

"Uh, hey," Andrea said. A song struck up, one that did not bore, so Bill began dancing. This was the way he had initially gotten them to laugh. The tactic proved to function more than once, it seemed.

"Oh my god, stop!" Andrea said. Bill would have none of this, however, and the admirable quality with which he jerked his head in various directions gained their excitement, in the disguise of embarrassment for him. The song slowed for the chorus, and Bill mellowed his feet, getting close to her.

"So, I finished an article for the yearbook today. You'd like it," he said.

"Would I?"

"It's about the girl's softball team."

"Oh, because I'm the captain," she said in a nod.

"Yeah. There's a picture of you that goes with the article. And one of the whole team, too."

"How long is the article?"

"Well, four sentences," he said, smiling.

"That's it?" Andrea found this amusing.

"Yup. It's a complement. I'm on the yearbook staff and we only got two sentences," he said.

"Really?"

"And not even a picture."

"Huh. That's a shame," she said, not caring much about this.

"I know, right? Because I have this picture of me where I'm wearing a mini-skirt and my legs are all gross and white, just awful, and I know that picture would go perfect in the yearbook."

"You have a picture of yourself in a mini-skirt?" she asked, feigning nausea.

"Yeah. It's totally sweet, too."

The songs wore on and Bill continued his conversational assault on her. He felt he was making ground. This was difficult because he found her to be aloof. There was also the impediment of her cuteness, which was difficult for Bill to push out of his mind so he could have space to think, enough room to conjure things he might say.

He had begun to sweat, and with a mouth dry from the dancing and talking, Bill chanced leaving her be. He needed something to drink, and made his way to the water fountain just outside the gymnasium.

"You got her on the ropes," he heard Nate say. Bill turned and nodded hello. Shawna was with him.

"Who is it?" Shawna asked. Nate pointed quickly at Andrea, across the dim gymnasium and then turned back to Bill.

"I don't know what your stuff is, but she seems to be into it," Nate commented.

"Her? Andrea Wright?" Shawna interjected, "She's in my geography class. You're kidding, right?" Bill shrugged.

"Everybody's got a type," Nate said.

"She's an airhead," Shawna replied. Nate's newer girlfriend wore the expression of a woman wholly unimpressed. Bill frowned at this. Nate leaned forward.

"So, uh," he said, patting his pocket where he kept the bottle, "you know?"

"Oh, thanks. Yeah, let's do it. Gimme a second," Bill said, bending to the fountain and nudging down the chromed button. A stream of clear shot from the receptacle and he lowered for a drink.

***

He had a sip of the canned soda, the aluminum playing a subtle jest of sour on his tongue's tip. Standing near the tree-line, idle, drinking his soda and looking out into the open area, Bill watched the girls being athletes. Some worked hard, some played, but all of them spoke often, and in a way that was powerful and decisive. Bill felt this to be the best part of the girls he went to school with, when they said what they thought, and not what they wanted others to hear them say.

Andrea Wright noticed him at the edge of the softball field, standing there by himself. Bill was uncertain that his behavior, interloping on their sport practice, was tolerable. He did not have the nerve to talk to her amidst so many other girls, but he wanted to show interest, in some way. He had written her a note the week previous, but this had gone unanswered. Andrea spoke with a friend on the field then, pointing toward Bill. She then made her way toward a group of girls who were pitching the large ball back and forth quickly. The friend approached Bill at the field's edge. He thought to leave, enter the woods and make his way home, his discomfort raised as it was, but doing so as this girl approached would have been more odd than what he was already doing, being near them.

"What's the story?" the girl asked, stopping about fifteen feet from him. Her face was flush from running drills. Bill found the girls less attractive in this mode, but also found he wanted to be around them more when they were grimy and working. This was a strange facet of women, he thought, as he wanted to be with them more when they were less attractive.

"Me? Oh, nothing. Just hanging out," he said.

"Who are you?"

"Uh, I'm William," he said, upgrading his name to a more adult form, "I like this field so... so I'm just hanging out." He had no greater response prepared.

"Well, you need to leave," the young woman said. She did not appear worried about his presence, but irritated. Bill apologized, feeling awful. Meaning no wrong was of little assurance when you were asked to go away. School was made of rules, and so were boys and girls. The young woman gave him a short glance of pressure, indicating he should not dawdle in leaving. She then returned to the other girls, the drills and routines, jogging toward all of this with her hair flitting side to side, no longer as girlish, but altogether real.

Bill finished his soda in a singular effort, and headed back into the woods, slowing to toss his empty can into the brush.

***

He left his lean against the pinyon, pacing near her in the clearing, frustrated. Women made so little sense. They did not want you, but then possibly did, yet would not admit it, until they did, only to later deny they knew you while also blaming you for having to do this. He slowed for a moment to toss his cigarette into the river, sighing.

"I love you," he said.

"You need to leave," Andrea replied. The world was made of rules, and so were consenting adults, even if one of them later proved to be repulsed by the other. Bill rubbed his mouth, upset, and left her there. Exiting the clearing, his body dithering among the dark trees, Bill's anger at her quickly twisted away from him, undergoing a rapid metamorphosis, becoming a shame that he held for himself. While outside of his conscious grasp, this was a common reaction for him. Andrea walked slowly toward the party, several hundred yards downriver. Her sister was waiting for her, as well as her boyfriend, Don Pepple, who she had been seeing for nearly a month in secret. This man, believing her child to be his own, was footing the bill for the abortion. If she felt any trouble about dating an older boy, she had suppressed it. Bill would go away soon enough, and graduation would remove him further from her life. She felt there was no fault on her part for his having developed so strong an interest in her. Her reckoning was that boys like Bill did not understand girls like her, nor should these boys achieve them. There were layers to relationships, just as there were layers _of_ relationships. Andrea had concluded long ago that Bill was not at her level. She thought that her slip-up with him had been nothing more than an accidental check to see if this was still true. She had found that it was.

Bill had no inkling of the destructive and hurtful knowledge that he would receive in the days to come, nor could he have predicted the harsh approach of that short-lived sadness his town would soon encounter. By the next morning, after a night of unpleasant dreams and teary-eyed juvenescence, when the horrible randomnity of Andrea's drowning would join into local news, Bill would be overcome with the surreality of life, and so would many others that she had called friends. It would come out that she had been pregnant, of course. To Bill's shock, the name of another man would surface, a rumor that would prove to be true, for Bill's own brother knew the other man. Don Pepple, a close friend of Roger and a man Bill had met in the past, would be thought publicly as the man who had impregnated Andrea before her demise. Poor Andrea Wright. Poor Don Pepple. A young couple in a youthful love cut short. Poor small town. The town itself would conclude in its usual way, publicly private, that the baby she had carried was not from the Sherman boy, for Andrea would have never slept with Billy Sherman. She had dated him sparsely for a few weeks, likely out of valedictorian pity. Poor Bill Sherman.

This was still to come, however. For now, Andrea had exited to the fateful river party, and Bill walked between the trees on the rough path that he knew would lead him toward his home. Andrea did not want him, which he had known for some time. He had managed to change her mind for a spell, and he wondered if he might simply do this again soon. He thought of her as a soul mate, the woman that had been chosen for him in some way, somehow, for life. Young Bill believed in these things, and they felt wonderful, they felt true. He surmised in all manners of thought that he and Andrea had hit a rough spot, but that they would meet on the other side of this, that these arguments they had, this pregnancy he had caused, their lopsided beginning, would be fodder for humor later in their lives. It would make a smart story, was all, that they might think back on in the future, together as they were in Bill's mind. This made her statements of the evening more hurtful, however. Relationships were unfairly painful and strangely addictive. This was a system wherein he had discovered it nearly felt good to feel terrible.

The snake in the brush slowly made its way back to the river's edge, and after hearing the sound of a man sniffing his nose and sadly muttering to himself, the reptile slowly descended back into the water. There was night's activity to engage and much movement to be had. The snake would use different forms of slithering on the terrain it encountered, swallowing small prey, swimming to its nest, and breathing in the cool air, the scent of the pinyons, various bits of life from the black.

### PART THREE

### Chapter Twenty-Four

She had been more persistent in her social life when she knew fewer friends, and now that things were going well, with her first single entering the top ten chart, the number of acquaintances in her list of contacts was growing with exponents. With this onslaught of insiders and music lovers, new friends and old friends, she found she had less to say than ever, yet was required to talk even more. Ammit had ceased speaking to her, and in this she was crushed. He had returned to the mountains, left her to the city he trusted so little. What did he do up there with his unventuring family? While she attended press conferences and album release parties, piling up more industry contacts and offers, Ammit was in a place for which there was little civilization, a place with people she could not meet, and a past he would not disclose. Was the city so awful? Had it overwhelmed him enough to drive him away, or had she played a part in this? In recent years, the city had popularized her, and its urban culture had begun to love her. She feared this was a love she could not return, for her heart was with the man in the mountains, however he lived, and whatever he had gone to find.

-from _Appalachian Secret_ , Gina Morgan

Resentment was perhaps the most human of the volatile arts. Even the minuscule emmet, a simple device of a creature and an insect of diminished proportion and duty, could be said to experience the sensation of pleasure, and his loyalty to his own was staggeringly powerful. This same loyalty, however, in an animal of consciousness could become an aching and complex trait. The memory one had over one's past was the hallmark of avoiding future injury, for if a dog bit once, it might bite twice. The conscious emotions of a man were entirely intermeshed, however. His memory of a biting dog could be coupled with his love of dogs. His caution when approaching one could well be conjoined with an exuberance, or anger, or a sadness beyond simple injury. Volatility was often thought to be the result of a lack of empathy, a decline in one's ability to wear another's shoes. In truth, it was man's strong skill in this that gave resentment its strength. The most modern humans carried in them a sense of compassion so dexterous that they often saw need to ignore it, and in this manner, the most modern humans could also learn to resent one another with relish, and on ever deepening levels.

Bill managed the stairs of the apartment building slowly. He had traversed them with much speed in the past, but that was anticipatory. Today, he expected only bad news, news that Amy was not well. Janine had answered the phone earlier, and some conversation was had. This had existed as a string of small conversations that Bill continually had to keep from devolving into talk of naughtiness. His mood disallowed this form of banter for now, and his concern for Amy after the dinner the three of them had shared was both strong and quilted in small shames. He reached the landing between the first and second floors and paused, using a small, metal rod to scratch mildly beneath his cast and around the stitches that, healing, had begun to itch with an agitating regularity. The cut had been jagged, but was sewn shut quite well. The fees for this procedure and the placing of his forearm in a cast, as well as the mounting debt from taxis and buses, were not closing off so well. Not wanting to risk an errant scratch bringing up any blood from the cut, he shook his arm for a moment, letting the small movement of his skin diminish the itch.

Twenty-four stitches arched across the relaxed crescent of his injury. These would, in time, be unnecessary, for his cut would heal well enough to be rid of them. When this occurred, over a short span of time, the stitching would be rescinded, taken from his flesh and thrown into a depository for medical waste. The staples and stitches in Bill's mind, however, had ceased being of use long ago, yet had not been thrown away. Higher consciousness was a great augmenter of those processes most animals trusted to guide them. Man's inhibitors were adjustable by his mood, and this could breed carelessness, trauma, acting, and even self-destructive behavior. Perhaps he was trapped in his cities and structures, a flesh of his mind made with the materials he knew, pacing and scratching at himself. Perhaps he fevered too strongly with his need to yoke the world in which he was born. The past encounters and injuries in a lizard were as if a switch activated. When this reptile came across something similar in its future, it backed down and vacated the trouble, or else attempted a new form of assault. Man was intended to do similar, but his intelligence, a bastion of eager traits and incredible reaches of association, got in the way. He could tell himself to remain in love, or to continue a dangerous, unnecessary activity, or keep himself feeling injured, even if he never, truly understood he was doing this. Such cultural benefit, such unnatural behavior.

Flesh woke and healed when an abrasion was present, and the heartier the wound, the harder the blood worked. Nerves of pleasure released endorphins and nerves of pain released their sharpness. The wound heated, the pleasure was small, the pain strong. In time, these would both dissipate, leaving behind a scar that existed as little more than biological duct tape. The mind, however, was only of a broad relation to the flesh. The mind puzzled and surmised when its own form of abrasion was encountered, but this virtual flesh made of memory and the scattered signposts of associations, when the abrasion was strong, did not work the harder, as flesh and blood did. The mind preferred to hide things. The mind dragged these bits of horror and hurt into secret vaults and suffocated them, astringing every detail into often irretrievable gists and symbols, blips of scenes, and then marked with tall signs indicating emotions had reached destructive heights there. The mind and the flesh were similar, yes, but one worked as a unit, repairing and growing as it could, and the other was made by varied realms of function, usurping what it could from banks within banks of the self, and these areas of function were often feudal. An intelligent mind could denigrate the natural urge toward self-preservation in times of hardship, and call it cowardice. An intelligent mind could praise the unnatural boldness of a man leaving the group to seek out his own dangerous isolation. The mind was a twisting and child-like thing.

Humans. Derived from birth. This entrance to the terrestrial mode began in pregnancy, which came about from conception. Conception resulted from attraction, from urge, and even simply a certain time of life. That Bill had created a child in his youth was a well-hidden fact to those he had known. There were spans of time that had him believing the child had been Don Pepple's. There were other spans that convinced him there had even been a third man. Andrea's sad, sudden demise, at the end of his senior year in high school, had twisted a number of people into strange and uncomfortable nooks of doubt. The death of someone young alarmed the surrounding youth far more than the deaths of those they considered old.

Children enjoyed teams. The home team versus the away team. The team of the young versus the team of the old. The baby freshmen were a team, the young sophomores were a team, the more relaxed juniors were a team, and the seniors, about to depart school, about to leave room for all previous grades to ascend a level, were just as much a team. Life was considered by many to be above this ugly, disturbing, and wholly linear nature. Life was not blocks atop blocks, the base strong, the top of the tower wavering and preparing to fall, but life was not controlled by people, nor did they ever truly feel to understand its cold and atrocious remedies.

When Andrea Wright drowned late in the Friday evening, it meant to many that all were doomed, all would face an uncertain penance, either by an other-worldly being at death's gate, or more cruel, the utter remission of consciousness, and being forgotten to the nonexistence for which they had come. When Andrea died, they could die. Why did their parents, closer to an eventual time of natural expiry, show so little concern after that first week? Was it simply that this batch of youth had entered a certain time of life?

Amy's pregnancy was simulation, and not real, to Bill's thought. But then, Amy had an element to her that seemed unreal as well. He had no reason to believe she could like him, or love him, but she had confessed this. It was illogical, but true. Had she falsified her abdomen and caused him believe a lie, or had she been, in fact, pregnant with his symbolic child, a child of adoration and want? This seemed unbelievable and improbable, but ostensibly true. Why did he still want her? What purpose was he served in approaching her doorway and hoping she was, after all, his? It might be thought that being human, and unable to be possessed, made a woman seem all the more enticing to a man. He felt to register himself as the holder of her affections, and thought these a strong indication of submission to him, and at times considered this noble. In truth, it was but civil.

The roles men and women had played with one another over their darker and less certain beginnings were difficult to assuage, despite that they had created a world that tested these near to the instant. Bill was not the sort to see women as living, walking material. This was for brick-steady, unswayable men, those most easily settled and considered. Bill's modernity was a challenging pollination of ancient modes and new ideals, a primitive heart feeding a mind under stress from the acrobatic guises of society. If Amy had been pregnant, it would mean that Bill had failed twice to do something the Earth urged him to complete, becoming a father and rearing his own. That he did not yet want children was a choice, and one he gauged often. That he had initiated a potential fatherhood twice, each ending in quick and saddening fashions, was a devastation.

He knocked at the door, aware of the unintended loudness with which each rap of his knuckles entered the hallway. There was a moment of doubt in him just then, and this brought a subtle anger to his mind, an agitation that his relationship with the two women necessitated such doubt. It passed quickly and the door opened.

"Took your time on the stairs. I started to wonder if you'd chicken out," Janine said. She likely had seen him enter the building from the apartment window overlooking the street. It had been several days since the dinner that caused so much uncertainty in him. His stomach still felt to be in the grip of an ongoing nausea.

"Oh, saw me through the window, huh?" he asked.

"Something like that. You want to come in?"

"Yes."

The apartment had undergone cosmetic changes in that the couch, chair, and television had been moved to accommodate a large table near Amy's bedroom door. This table contained a terrarium and several books, a few porcelain figurines Bill recognized as having come from the shelf near the kitchen. There were three rats in the terrarium.

"You bought rats," Bill said, surprised. He did not imagine Amy being particularly allured by pet rats, though Janine, with her enjoyment of toying with things, would no doubt find them of interest.

"I'm making some changes," Janine said.

"How is she?" Bill asked, looking at the bedroom door. Janine had warned him over the phone that Amy could not be seen, that he would not be able to visit her or talk to her.

"She's asleep. You know that."

"Is she okay?"

"She's okay."

"She's really not pregnant?" he asked, still confused in his deeper zones.

"Of course not. But she needs her sleep. It's just you and me for awhile," Janine said.

"How long does she have to sleep?"

"Like I said. Awhile." Janine was getting frustrated.

"Okay. I'm just worried. I don't... I don't really understand." Janine approached and gave Bill a warm hug then. He was not expecting this.

"I know you don't get it. And that's incredibly cute of you," she said.

His mouth dry, Bill fetched himself a glass of water from the kitchen. She opened the refrigerator as he did this and Bill spied a small bowl of fettuccine. He gagged drinking the water and used a moment of blinks to get a hold of himself. Janine noted this and chuckled.

"Relax, hon. I made it yesterday. You liked my cooking, remember?"

"I'm never eating pasta again," he said, somewhat serious.

"That's a drag. She wasn't kidding, it's all I can cook," Janine replied, pulling a small container of apple juice from the shelf and closing the refrigerator. She made for the cupboard and as she moved around him, Bill stopped her, his hands on her shoulders. She was startled by this show of certainty.

"Janine, listen... I need to know," he said, his eyes meeting hers with much resolve.

"What is it?" she asked.

"If we hadn't... you know, eaten the pasta the other night, would Amy really have had a baby? A real baby? Not some weird metaphor or figurative whatever, but an actual kid?" Janine had a slow breath, thinking this over. She adopted a reasoning expression.

"Well, Bill, she would have been pregnant for a little while, and then she would have gotten sick. More sick than she is now. A lot more. You wouldn't be able to help her at that point. And then the baby would come. You'd see it, sure. A little girl. An alpha. But the thing is, after the birth, we'd all have to sleep. No way around it. You, me, Amy, the baby... all asleep. But the baby would wake up first and leave. After you woke up, you wouldn't be able to find the baby. You'd look around and the baby just wouldn't be there. You'd probably panic, of course. And I'd be there with you, I'd be awake, but then you'd try to wake up Amy. She'd be gone, too, except not like the baby, which would still be alive somewhere. And with Amy gone, I'd have to leave, Bill, just like her, except slower, from having too much of me missing."

"Amy would die?"

"Yes. And I'd starve to death. There are rules. I'm a part of her, not the other way around. She can live without me, for a little while, but I can't live without her." Bill let go of Janine and began drinking the remainder of the water from his glass, not wanting to think about what he had just been told. Much of his life had been experienced in scenes, small bits of realities that had all been punctuated in losses of some kind. His relationship with Andrea Wright, his school days, his jobs and even his cars. All had faced dismal end strokes that wiped these things from his life in a way that disallowed he revisit them. He only wanted Amy to be all right, and for Janine to help her.

"Having a kid is a sacrifice, ask your brother," Janine said with a shrug, "just a more ultimate one for Amy and I. Let's face it, children are sort of like innocent, unintentional thieves." Bill lugged the water and swallowed in gulps, somehow using this to get away from her statement, focusing on something else. The notion of children being thieves reminded him in brief about his predicament with Todd Lansington.

"That answer your question?" Janine asked, quietly. Bill nodded, setting the glass down.

"Just help her," he said.

"Of course," she replied. There was a twinge of upset behind Bill's eyes then, one that wanted to relieve a certain pressure that had been created, in the form of several tears. His throat constricted and he then picked up the glass. He placed it in the sink while shaking off the sadness that had tried to envelope him. After a moment, Bill cleared his throat.

"So, what do you want to do tonight?" he asked, changing the subject.

"I thought a walk through the park," she said. Bill did not expect something so non-sexual, or anything that involved leaving the apartment. He had almost dreaded that Janine would initiate advances in his current state.

"Is it okay to leave Amy?" he asked, doubtful.

"Sure. She's asleep, not a vegetable." Bill found this concept alleviating.

"The park, huh?"

"Animals. Sun. You and me," she said, for once advising something between the two of them that did not require being delivered in a mischievous tone.

"Yeah?"

"Holding hands, that whole thing. Maybe we can stop at one of the vendors and get something to eat. I don't know, I feel like eating something grilled."

"I know just the cart. You can smell it a block away," Bill said, pleased.

"Good. You do realize I want to ravage you in the bushes, right?" she then said. Bill grunted and nodded.

"How did I know that was coming?" Copulation, while Janine's preferred measure of an afternoon spent well, was for Bill a highly biological act. There were emotions at play, and even what he might describe as a surreal pleasure that did not seem entirely earthbound, but within this, no matter how grand he might be made to feel, the physicality of these encounters was weighted fervently in hormones and a certain reproductive pep. For the time being, Bill's biology just wasn't in it.

"I know it's what you're supposed to do, and what you like, but I don't feel right," he said.

"I see," she replied, looking a little disappointed.

"I mean, while she's out like that... I'd- I'd just feel guilty about it," he said, trying to excuse himself. The three had spoken about the designations of their relationship, but having sex with Janine, while designed, was not an enforced regulation. Obvious allowances should be made if he were, say, turned off, or had the flu, or was tired. That he was to perform the sexual functions of his relationship with Janine in no way meant he had to do so whenever she pleased.

"You're killin' me, sweetie," she said, "But sure, I imagine we can figure something out. I'm hoping you change your mind when you see what I'm wearing under this." Bill looked her over, feeling as if this was somehow inappropriate. The sensation of this examination being incorrect made him focus more on the portions of her he thought he should not be thinking about just then. This sensation was crushed the instant she reached her hands up toward his chest.

"No, no no," he interrupted, "Can...can we feel okay without the sex? I mean is there anything else _you_ want? Just for tonight, is all. I know there's rules. Just for tonight." He was trying to both appease her and explain himself in a way that was not contrary to his protective nature for Amy. It felt wrong to have sex with another woman when Amy was ill, when she was asleep. In a usual relationship, it would be dastardly and sinister, but these notions had atrophied in his relationship with the two women, and were scarcely present. The openness of his interaction with Janine was overwhelming at times, and something that Bill looked forward to, so long as he desired her, but still the wrongness had crept in. Bill could not help but find the idea of making love to Janine grotesque while Amy was in such an unnatural way, even if this arrangement had been created and encouraged by Amy. Janine pouted a moment in mildness.

"Have a good time without the sex? I suppose that's possible, but certainly not as fun. Come on, let's go," she said, walking through the living room and retrieving her coat from beside the door.

"The park?" he asked.

"The safe, clean park, and where only the animals will be getting it on."

"It's not Spring," Bill mentioned.

"It is when I'm around," she said, assured. Bill followed her into the hallway and shut the door. As they descended the stairs, he reached over and took her hand in his own. She did not react to this, neither pulling it away nor gripping him with any kind of want. Bill was relieved by this.

"You should know you're missing out," she said, rounding the landing at the top of the first flight of stairs, "but, if you have something else in mind, I aim to please." Walking beside her, hand in hand, Bill smiled weakly.

"Thank you," he said.

### Chapter Twenty-Five

His stubbornness and warmth were at odds, yet seemed by their very design to be a single trait. This nature was a strength within him, and she understood that now. How long would he be gone? Days were weeks in this melancholy time without him, for she had realized in his absence that she needed to see him, feel his stubbornness angering her, his warmth in caring about her. One of these set her up for dismay and misunderstanding, while the other brought her back from these things with ease. Being with Timothy was not simple, as if a constant bout of spinning, but she knew now that she wanted this, and no amount of asking the days for his return would bring him to her. Her thoughts only cleared, and the time without him only continued. In this sad state, she felt to finally understand that Timothy, frustrating and contradictory, was in fact the man she loved, and she could only hope this would be dear to him when he returned.

-from _Dear Private, How Goes the War?_ , Verna Richmond

There were reeds in his sleep. Whistling sticks that sang and trilled in the low hours. These fatalized Bill's career and the songs they offered were long and simple. He saw tall reeds, and these told him that Amy would not want him when she awoke. He saw shorter reeds, edging from the turns of his hometown river banks, and these told him calendars were dreck. The reeds had become the screech of a bus, which Bill had boarded. The bus brought him home. There was madness aboard the bus, straining through the minds of many, each person holding a degree of malformation, gesturing with busted limbs. These passengers were a broken clan, the bus people, and they welcomed Bill. All of them were going home. When Bill left this bus, however, having pulled up before Roger's house, the bus people were horrified. They shouted that this was not his home. He would have to wait on the bus with them. The air was torn open by another whistle, this one shrieking the bus to pieces and scattering the clan of passengers to the elements. Bill had only waved goodbye.

"DAMN IT. HOLD ON," Roger said, a broomstick in his hand, trying to dislodge the fire alarm on the ceiling of the garage. Bill had been asleep at his desk, dreaming of certain losses he had not realized had come for him. The fire alarm was obnoxious, and had woken him to anxiety. Bill looked about but discerned no smoke.

"What's going on?" he asked.

"SORRY, I WENT CHEAP." Roger shouted over the piercing tone of the alarm, "THEY GO OFF LIKE THIS WHEN THE BATTERIES GET LOW." Bill stood from his chair and stretched, noting the discomforting kink in his neck from the awkward position he had assumed during his several hours of sleep. The broomstick collided with the fire alarm again and sent it loose, dangling from the ceiling. The electronic shriek ceased. Roger lowered the broom and sighed.

"Well, that's two down," he said.

"Two?"

"The one in the Christian's room went off last week. I replaced all the batteries in the alarms when I knew I was getting custody of the kids. I guess they're all tapped out. Three years isn't bad, though."

"New batteries," Bill advised, still groggy and disoriented. His cheek was damp and itched, no doubt from his having drooled while asleep at his desk.

"Will do. Sorry about that. I can't believe you didn't wake up right away. I was in here for like, ten seconds beating at that thing before you peeked your head up."

"I'm tired," Bill said, rubbing his eyes, "What time is it?"

"Just after six."

"A.M. or P.M.?" Roger chuckled at this.

"P.M. You came in here a few hours ago. Probably been out a half hour."

"No, I think I was asleep most of the time," Bill surmised.

"Oh. I guess if you need it, you need it."

"Lately. I don't know what that's about," he said, thinking of Amy.

"Looks like you need to take out your trash, too," Roger said, eyebrow raised. Bill glanced over at his waste-bin, which he knew was entirely full. Roger had brought this up due to what the bin was filled with, and not Bill's lack of household choring. The waste-bin was full of photographs, pens, calendar mock-ups, Bill's career. Atop this swiftly compiled heap of articles was his straight-edge and digital camera.

"...It's- it's been a bad month, man," Bill said, not knowing how else to explain that he wanted to throw away every tool he owned relating to his occupation. This had been a rash decision, but one he felt sure about.

"I'm not judging. I'm done with that. Do what you want to do," Roger said, a roll of the eyes counteracting this.

"I'll tell you about it another time," Bill muttered.

"Can I offer an idea?" Roger asked.

"Sure."

"Your girlfriend said Christian needs a hobby. Remember, like a cello, all that?"

"Yeah, I remember," Bill said, not wanting to talk about Amy with Roger just then. The amount of information Roger did not know about Amy and Janine, and now even Bill, was too broad to approach so simply.

"If you're just gonna toss it out, how about that camera?" Roger asked, "She said maybe a camera."

"That?" Bill responded, looking at his older, digital camera on the heap in the trash. An expensive camera once upon a time, this was now a gadget nearly outdated. The notion of giving the camera to one of the kids appealed to him.

"Actually, that's a good idea, if he wants it," Bill offered, "Sure. It's digital, though, so he'll have to learn a little about how the menus work."

"Oh, he'll figure that out in two seconds. No worries. Does it need a computer?" Bill retrieved the camera from the garbage.

"There's a lot of memory on this, so, it should be fine for awhile, but it does fill up fast. I guess I could let him store images on my machine until he gets one. Or maybe he could use Nick's computer for a bit. I'll show him how all that works," Bill explained, handing the camera to his older brother.

"Are you sure?" Roger asked.

"Take it. Not a problem." Roger nodded and examined the camera, turning it over in his hands.

"Okay then," he said, "Thank you. He might like this. Listen, on another note, I have to do some shopping, anyway, so I'll pick up a few batteries while I'm out, for the alarms. No sense letting all of them go off one by one."

"Sure."

"But do you think you could watch the kids for an hour? I don't feel like chasing Jessica around the grocery store. I'd be heading out in a few minutes. We're sort of out of food, too."

"Oh, that's fine," Bill agreed, stretching his mouth to loosen the sleep-induced pastiness, "Is Nick here?" Nick had reached an age in which he could be trusted to watch the kids, but Roger never designed this. Bill had been slowly trying to convince him that Nick could fill in at times.

"No, he's gone. And you know how he is with the kids, anyway," Roger said.

"All right, give me a minute so I can wake up.

"Sure. Yeah, it's only Jess and Christian. Nick went out riding with his friends." Bill was intrigued by this.

"Nick has friends?"

"Technically," Roger said with a tilted mouth, "But he mostly just seems to ride his bike next to them. They don't talk. It's goofy. I never hear any actual speech coming from those kids when they meet him out front."

"That sounds suspicious." Bill stretched again, yawning.

"Well, it's a new generation. They're all kind of weird, I think," Roger reasoned.

"Huh. We can call it Generation Silent."

"Except for their stereos. I know all about it. They buy those things from my store."

"Hey, you might know this," Bill came out with then, "I heard someone reference their generation a few days ago, said they were a baby boomer, that whole thing, but it got me wondering. Are we Generation X, or Generation Y, or whatever they call it? When's the cutoff?"

"Uh, I'm X. You're probably some sort of bullshit in between," Roger said.

"Cool."

Bill sniffed his nose and groaned a little before making for the kitchen door. Some coffee would salvage his evening quickly enough. Falling asleep during the afternoon was something Bill did not do often, and the sensation of waking in the same day for which you fell asleep was alienating and surreal. From a lifetime of sleeping at night, the human body expected a new day upon rousing from bed. You went to sleep on the last night of August. You woke up on the first day of September. Falling asleep for a nap during the day, beyond being something generally utilized by the very young, the very tired, or the very old, was a fast lane into confusion for Bill. Caffeine would remedy this confusion post haste.

"Hold on a second, man," Roger said, serious. Bill stopped at the door and waited, groggy.

"Karen's out there with uh, your other girlfriend. Just so you know," Roger explained. He knew all too well about Bill's dislike of Karen, and how, over the last few years, this dislike had festered into a severe despisal. The notion that she was in the house bothered Bill to the degree of causing him shudder, and having Janine present was an odd situation Bill had not expected.

"What?" he asked. The custody arrangement with the children involved their mother taking them for a month out of Summer, and one weekend a month. For these weekends and visitations, Roger drove the kids over to her home. Karen never came to the house, even though, long ago, she had been the one to choose the residence. Roger did not want her in it, and so arrangements had been made regarding the kids and visitations. These had been stone certain over the past few years.

"The kitchen. Just be nice, all right?" Roger asked. There was a tone of apology in his voice. Janine's presence threw him off, but Karen's presence stunned him into rising grudge and a grating mood.

"Why is she here?" he asked. His agitation was a roving animal that sat just behind his eyes on a perch of fatigue and bone. Karen's Summer month was not to occur for another six weeks. Her normal activities at this time of year were job-hopping, drinking heavily, taunting young men, and playing older, blue-collar men against one another for her shoddy interest.

"Just be nice," Roger repeated, holding the camera and broom.

***

He felt as if his mouth had been stolen by them. The cattiness, the awful synchronicity of the way they spoke to one another had stolen all the air from the room. Bill could not imagine a more uncomfortable situation to take place in his kitchen just then than walking in on Karen and Janine sitting at the table and chatting like awful cohorts.

"You're here," Bill said to Janine. She took account of him.

"Yep. Called a taxi." There was a moment in which Janine shot Karen a quick glance and both of them kept back smiles.

"Oh god, and you've been talking about me," Bill muttered, walking to the coffee machine. This was oddity, as Janine had now met his brother, Roger's ex-wife, and possibly Jessica and Christian. This had occurred while Bill slept, which caused him to feel unguarded and uncertain. He had never planned on initiating a meeting between Janine and any of these people.

"Karen was telling me about how you used to have really bad acne," Janine said, laughing a little toward the end.

"Should I tell her about gym class?" Karen asked, wry. The two women seemed to have developed a quick colloquy and were in good moods. Bill was not.

"Don't talk about me. Why are you even here?" he asked, irritated. He was addressing Karen, but his question might have also served well for Janine.

"Roger asked me to come over. If you think for a little bit, you might remember we were married and have three kids together. Take your time. It'll come."

"What about gym class?" Janine asked, curious.

"Forget that. I thought you were going to call whenever you wanted to meet me," Bill said to Janine. Karen found this statement to be of great interest.

"Well well, Billy, I didn't know you had it in you. I thought you sort of disavowed the ladies," Karen said, baiting but somewhat friendly.

"You don't know what you're talking about," Bill answered.

"Apparently not. She has to okay it with you before you'll see her? You've learned to cowboy-up. I never took you for the dial-a-pussy kind of guy." Janine gasped and covered her mouth, enjoying this statement much.

"Oh, fuck off," Bill said, idle. He began filling the coffee machine reservoir with water. Where Karen Wright traveled, profanity prospered.

"What about gym class?" Janine asked again. The one-track mind of Janine was persistent with whatever it latched onto. Karen laughed a little and then quieted.

"Well, the main gym at our school was open on one side," she said, "right next to the nets, and Billy was uh... easily aroused by the girl's volleyball practice."

"Bill, not Billy. And knock it off. That never happened. It was a rumor everyone liked to tell but it never actually happened. Not to me," Bill said. Janine nodded at Karen to continue.

"...So, like all the boys, he had sweat pants on for gym class. And he always had a stiff one, right? So one day, one of the girls hits the volleyball over into the gym, which happened all the time, but Bill ran over and fetched it for her. He brought it back and, like usual, had this little boner—"

"No, I didn't," Bill said, measuring coffee into the filter.

"—and when he was a few feet away, he tossed the ball back to her. But right then, another volleyball gets spiked at a net, and it comes flying off to the side and..." Karen paused there to snort, getting her breath, "...and it smashed him right in the dick." Janine began laughing then, matching Karen in both tone and fervor. Each warbling note of laughter from their mouths brought with it another notch of humiliation and dismay to Bill.

"Wait, wait... so then the girl that he tossed the ball to, freshman chick, I think her name was Renee, but anyway, she sees him fall over and his face is all red and he's holding his crotch, right? And she says... she says, 'Oh my god, you broke it?'" Both women cackled then.

"Funny story that never happened," Bill threw in, setting the coffee machine to initiate brewing.

"No, but she was really concerned! She thought it was really broken," Karen said. Roger entered the kitchen then, holding the broom and camera, looking amused.

"What's the joke? I wanna hear," he said.

"I was telling her the volleyball story," Karen said. Roger grinned.

"Oh hell. I laughed for three days when I heard about that," he said.

"You're all terrible, gullible people," Bill said, leaving the kitchen and going back into the garage. He did this in an amused way, as the laughter in the kitchen, while being at his expense, was still somewhat contagious.

***

"She's fine. It'll be awhile, but everything's fine," Janine said, somewhat alleviating Bill's concern about the sleeping Amy. Amy and her state had reached into every facet of Bill's conscious mind. The bitter taste of the generic coffee he had made reminded him of the chemical taste on her lips. The garbage bin full of his occupational articles only made him think about her view of his wreck calendar. He was worried for short durations, then calmed himself, only to begin worrying again.

"But uh, I have to know, Billy. Is that story about the volleyball thing true?" Janine asked, sitting at his desk in the garage. She had begun using his computer to look up clothing online, which bothered him in a mild way.

"Jesus. No. Well yes, it was two classes before mine, and happened to Bill Hoskin. But he was cool and I wasn't, so after the weekend, the story was about me. That's the reality. And don't call me Billy, not even when you think it's cute. I hate that name."

"The volleyball story sounds kind of like you, though."

"On what grounds? Have you seen me in the habit of getting struck in the crotch by volleyballs since we've met? It doesn't sound 'kind of like me'. It was Hoskins. Different Bill. End of story," he said. This tale had obviously touched a nerve with him, and his explanation had the air of finality to it. Janine was willing to let the comedic subject go. She instead focused on Bill's physique, which was currently invested in shoving down the papers and items in the wastebasket, in preparation for taking it to the curb. He had explained the wastebasket's contents to her, and she knew from the way he divulged the explanation that he was having second thoughts he was too stubborn to indulge. This was good, she thought. Stubbornness was a good trait for a woman like Janine to encounter in a man. Those prone to obstinance were easy for her to grasp.

"So you're really getting rid of it all?" she asked, intrigued. Bill lifted the waste-basket, which was quite heavy with paper, discs, and various other articles.

"I think it's a sign," he said, "I had a decent run of it, but calendars won't get me anywhere. I'd rather be rid of it all outright than trickle around being all sad because I'm not going anywhere. Clean break," he said. Bill had much doubt about this, however. He had consigned himself to an art, and over the years had made ground with it. No person that did this, making personal achievements of a level that summoned artistic pride into being, was ever quite rid of it. Bill surmised he was in for some mopey years ahead, but did believe this was the best decision for him.

"You're showing some pretty amazing courage, Bill," Janine said then.

"Think so?"

"You believe in all this stuff, right?"

"What, in calendars? Of course I do," he replied.

"And you're still willing to leave it?"

"I can't stomach what it's doing to me. The industry has gone haywire. It only tempts you into performing, then it turns on you and crashes you back to nothing. It does this over and over again. I love calendars, but I hate publishing."

"I think this is the right thing to do," she agreed.

"Really?" he asked. He did not think anyone would find the removal of his career from his life to be positive.

"Bill, I think I know you somewhat well, and what I know is that you're not satisfied with yourself. There's always weight holding you back. You create it, but it keeps you from doing what you want." Bill thought this over. Amy had also told him she thought he was never satisfied. Janine corroborating this notion only caused him to fret over it. Did he not allow himself a certain satisfaction in life?

"Huh. Is this the penny analysis or the nickel analysis?" he asked.

"Ha ha, joke. But I'm serious, the kind of man you want to be can't happen without a clean start, and a total break. By ditching what you used to want, you're making room for things that want _you_. It's bizarre how many men don't realize that."

"You really think this is the right thing for me to do? Get rid of all this?" Bill said, straining to small degree, holding the heavy waste-bin. A reassuring second opinion would help him much.

"Throw it out. Sooner the better. You need to figure out where you want to go from here. You'll be clearer about it if you're not dangling in the past. Especially if you don't like that past, and you obviously don't." Bill noted a brief glint in her eyes, a smart and sharp twitch of her brows. Janine was quite possibly smarter than she seemed. She lifted her hand and placed it over his as he stood with the waste bin. She was right. A fresh start was the most appropriate and useful thing. Bill only wished he had realized it sooner.

After pouring the bin into the home's larger garbage can and dragging this to the curb at the street, Bill made his way back through the house. He rolled his eyes when encountering Karen and Roger at the kitchen table.

"You got a hot one, Bill," Karen said after him as he left the kitchen, shutting the door.

The dry mustiness of the garage, which was constructed of sturdy beams and once fragrant wood, and only drywalled on the two side walls, caused Bill a feeling of warmth. The scent and sensation of the air in this place indicated to his mind that he was in his home, in his place, his nook of the world. Every home had a smell, but Bill's home in the garage had a scent different than the rest of the house. More wood to it, paper, electronics, and the remnant scents of laundry loads. Janine looked over several women's coats that she had found online while Bill was taking the trash out. They were all small coats of various, dyed material. Bill felt shameful in his mind's wish that she were Amy, just then.

"That guy's on here," Janine said over her shoulder as Bill approached.

"Guy?"

"From your retreat or whatever." Bill's stomach turned. He saw the blinking display in the corner of the computer screen, indicating a chat had been initiated and was waiting for his response. Lansington.

"Uh, I need to get this," Bill said. Janine pushed the chair out and stood, moving to the side. Bill sat at the computer and sighed quietly, then selected the chatbox and read the message.

"heya bill. that chicky you broght have a freind? help a guy out." Bill shook his head. It seemed Lansington was unaware that Bill had discovered his back-stab. How quaint. Janine mused to herself with a small breath's exclamation.

"Tell him to go nail his wife," she said, amused. Bill thought about this.

"How do you know he's married?"

"Wears it in his eyes," she said, simple.

"Oh. I knew he was from some time ago, but part of me thought maybe he was divorced or something. I've never heard him mention her."

"Well, I've met guys like him. Always looking for some. But a single guy looking for action behaves totally different than a married guy looking for it."

"Yeah?"

"Single guys need, married guys want. He's an insect, is the thing. Has to have a queen around, you know, but then still forages wherever the hell he can stick it," she said, bored. This was another surprising comment from Janine, indicating once again that there was more going on in her head than thoughts of sex, even if her statement did revolve around sex in general. There was a moment in which Bill thought to type this statement about insects, or even Janine's first statement about his wife. The chatbox blinked and a small tone emanated. Todd had typed another message.

"u there? it says you are, just idle." Bill read this and set his fingers on the keys.

"You're a thief. Don't contact me again," he typed. After a moment, he sent this statement and then logged out of the chat. Bill struck the power button with finality and set the computer to shut itself down. He would later delete the very program itself. He wanted no future contact with Todd.

"I kind of wanted to buy one of those coats," Janine voiced.

"Oh, you did? Sorry. Maybe in a bit?" he asked.

"Whatever. That wasn't very witty, though," Janine said, "I don't even know what that means."

"Oh, Todd being a thief? Well, he's a shitty person. And he stole from me. I don't want to talk to him again. Ever," Bill said, agitated and sullen while sitting at the desk. Janine stepped closer to Bill, resting the left side of her hips against his shoulder.

"What did he steal?" she asked, not seeming surprised, but wanting to know.

"My calendar. He stole my idea, made his own version of it, and then submitted it to our publisher. That pretty much screwed me over, and it's one of the reasons I just threw away all my gear," Bill said. He felt good stating this in open air. Janine was right, getting rid of unwieldy things was an excellent thing to do.

"Are we talking about the car wreck thing?"

"Yeah. It pisses me off. I actually went out and wrecked my damn car, busted my wrist, got stitches," he said, holding up his arm then for emphasis, "and spent pretty much all the money I had left making that calendar. And that... that _insect_ stole it. Right out from under me. Every man for himself. What pisses me off the most is that he didn't suffer for that thing. He probably threw it together in a week."

"He did that? Well, what comes around goes around. That's the cliché, anyway. You can't do that sort of thing without having it visited on you later," Janine said.

"Pff. Karma, huh? Maybe he'll get in a little car wreck after cashing his first royalty check for it. That'd be ironic."

"More poetic than ironic," Janine offered, her voice low. Hearing Bill state his negative urge for wanting this person to be hurt had turned her on fiercely.

"But that's over. He's not worth your time. You are. And you're the new you, right?" she said, her limbs warming and her breaths short.

"I hope so. That'd be great."

"You deserve great." Her hand kneaded at his shoulder.

"You know... you're always telling me what I deserve. I mean, it's nice of you, but maybe I don't deserve anything," Bill thought aloud, "Maybe, you know... free-floating is just the way life works. Nobody deserves what they have, or don't have. It's all... luck, or drifting around, or cause and effect. Maybe people only deserve what they've done. Does that sound plausible?"

"No," Janine replied with speed, "You've worked hard and been screwed over. You've been watching your brother's kids for him. You're a level dreamer, which is rare, and due to this, most women have treated you badly. No one seems to have treated you right. You deserve better. I don't doubt it at all. And I want to help you get it."

"Well, I'm all ears," Bill said, not knowing how else to respond to this.

"Later. Right now, I think we should celebrate. Oh, and look, there happens to be a bed right here in the garage," she advised, her eyes bright and her hip pressing harder against his upper arm. Bill had wondered if this would arise. He glanced to his bed near the far wall.

"Not here. The door doesn't have a lock on it and the kids are home," he said. This was factual and correct but did not indicate his deeper reasoning, that he was nowhere within vicinity of a sexual mood. She had picked up on this without his having said it aloud, however.

Janine had noticed lately that she was beginning to fail at charming him. The more she tried to entice, the harder he drew away. If not for the particular steam of a chase, his behavior was illogical to her. Had he built an immunity to her body, to her lust and hints of naughtiness? She had caused men to fall over dizzy in the past, by simply repeating back to them what they secretly wanted to hear her say. She had pleasured them without so much as even touching them. Bill had become resistant, and this made Janine angry. Could men do such a thing, lose their ability to want? It seemed unlikely. Men, to Janine, were little more than a bundle of wants and needs, each feeding haphazardly from the other.

"My place," she said.

"No, not there either. It's like I said... not while she's sleeping there," he explained. Janine pursed her lips, aggravated.

"Not your place, not my place, not the park, not outside. And no car means no back seat. Tell me we're more creative than having to rent a hotel room," she said, trying to affect humor.

"No no, the truth is I don't feel up to it," he admitted. Honesty might benefit him. Janine only shook her head.

"I know, and I'm sorry," he said, "but with everything that's happened... I'm just kind of messed up. It's definitely not you. I feel really down, is all."

"Then maybe that's where I need to go," Janine offered.

"No, let's just... wait awhile," Bill preferred. Janine straightened her back and exhaled, hiding her anger. After a moment she lowered down beside him, looking him in the eyes. Each decline on his part caused her to feel less potent. There was insecurity to be had in this, and insecurity in a woman, to Janine, was the worst and weakest of her possible traits.

"Listen, here's how it's gonna be," she said, strong, "Tonight, we'll go out and celebrate your new life. This will involve getting wicked drunk. Then, when you've kicked your inhibitions out the door, and you're not feeling down, we'll find us a nice spot somewhere, and you can take out all your frustrations on me."

"That's a terrible setup. I don't want to use you, Janine. I just need a little time and I'm sure we'll be back on track. Besides, my frustrations are a lot stronger right now than drinks would be," he said, hiding his annoyance at her having used a commanding tone with him. Did she not understand the sex had no benefit if it was unwanted? That pressuring him with incessant advance and innuendo only made him weary of the predicament? Impotence could result from such stress. Reflecting her hints and naughtiness back at her when he was not in the mood had begun to seem like a chore.

"I'm a big girl, I can handle it," she responded.

"No," he said, taking her cue of commandment and capping her offers with a plain but certain end. Janine felt her blood's surf reach a bitter shore, and this mood of rejection stung against the back of her eyes. She stood and walked to the door.

"Wait, you're leaving?" he asked, surprised, "I still wanted to hang out, just not naked. I didn't mean I wanted you to go or anything," he explained, trying to emphasize that she stay. Her presence was comforting to him, her talk encouraging. With Amy's prolonged sleep, Bill had begun to feel lonely in his heart. Janine looked back at Bill with a warm expression, which then shifted before him, becoming a stare both sobering and cold.

"You have a good night, Bill," she said.

### Chapter Twenty-Six

It was the fire behind his eyes that moved him to her, that drew him from the shadow in which he had waited. With the successful A.D. King off on business, trying to sell more works, Lawrence now had Carmen all to himself. Though she had declined him and their short, lusty affair had ended, Lawrence saw reason to strike it up again. Perhaps Carmen needed only to be reminded of her desire for him, reminded that Mr. King was not near, nor would he be soon. Lawrence watched as she rounded the corner, moving toward the entrance to her building. He followed quietly, watching as she checked her mail. When she entered the elevator that would take her to the top floor, he simply walked in behind her. The elevator doors closed and the small compartment began to lift.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, baffled. He captured her with his strong arms then.

"He's away, isn't he?"

"Lawrence, no. I'm with A.D. now. I'm done with you," she said, struggling against him.

"Of course you are," he replied, leaning forward and kissing her neck.

-from _The Sculptor's Passion_ , Geneva Rundy

Having to put up with Karen, who had stayed for several hours, altered Bill's evening for the worse. Why Roger had seen fit to invite her into the house was beyond Bill. Of course they had been married, and had three children together and many years, but Roger had made it clear after the divorce that she was to keep their lives entirely separate, and that the movement of the children between them would be well-planned and routine, and would not involve the house, or Karen visiting it. What bothered Bill more was the careless way in which Roger had acted with Karen around. Bill had known his older brother for over three decades, and it was painfully obvious to the little brother when the older began showing off. Roger did this by using a certain amount of laxity. He grew humored and mellow when around a woman he enjoyed, as if everything was old hat. In the case of his history with Karen, this was somewhat true, however. Bill was disturbed by Karen's visit, and did not like that Roger had both caused and enjoyed her being so near.

The evening had worn into night and Bill was surprised to find himself tired, just after eleven. He had assumed his mid-day nap would have ruined his sleep schedule, and he would be awake through the long A.M. hours, trying to find things to occupy his mind until he grew tired. Perhaps it was the stress of having Karen in such proximity to him, and the pressure he felt from Janine, the guilt and surreal worry he felt for Amy, or the utter collapse of his career. Bill had watched Christian and Jessica for two hours while Roger and Karen went out to the grocery store, and during this time, with Jessica being needy and Christian asking many questions about the gift camera, Bill had needed to put his stresses and worries away, nudge them in deeper, in order to better handle the kids. Doing so felt strangely fake, as if, for those two hours of watching the kids, he had to pretend to be a different, unworried man. Bill had never taken care of the kids while under such outside weight. He found this of marvelous difficulty and was prone to being short with them. He wondered if this was similar to the stresses one would have to deal with as a modern, single mother.

The mattress was cool, which Bill enjoyed much, owing to the heat the garage tended to keep and for longer than was pleasant. Under his sheets, Bill yawned and turned over, letting his face down on the pillow with a dizzying comfort. What a wonderful thing, a bed. No matter how strange and obfuscated one's life might become, sleep was the escape. All slept, all could get away from their lives to at least a bare extent. You were not required, even, to remain yourself when asleep, and could be halfway to something or someone else. There was no anxiety in having to steer any of these things. Sleep was parking the car and not having to judge the driving of others before and behind you. Sleep was not feeling hungry, or urged, or even tired. It was getting out. Sleep was gone-time, and of late, Bill's preferred place of refuge. Even his desk, an object that had given him much of his own world, did not feel to be comforting anymore.

There was a noise from the corner of the garage. It was the sound of an empty box being nudged. Bill slowly turned over and sat up, peering in the gloom at what he dreaded would be a rodent, thus requiring he get out of bed to deal with the problem. The dark was pierced by form then, which heaved at him at tremendous speed. Bill collapsed into his pillows as the behemoth snake writhed over him. The weight was strong and continually shifted over his legs and stomach. He grappled his hands around the body of the black serpent as it spun him over twice, quickly coiling about him and arching his head back, his hips and feet up in the air. This was a powerful, animal force. Bill gasped and attempted to ask Amy why she was doing this. He was pleased she was awake, and healthy, but he was frightened of being handled in this way. His shoulders dipped down and touched the bedding. Why was she acting like this? He craned his head, now filling with blood and growing hot and strained, upward to a point of visibility, looking down his own body, which he could not see through her coils. This was not Amy.

"Janine?" he asked. There was a wracking of pain in his back then as she drew tighter, constricting him. His arms were caught at his sides, pinned against his ribs. He looked at her, horrified. She drew back then, tightening before flinging her head forward. Her teeth sunk into his left shoulder and she clamped her mouth down hard, jerking him over onto the floor, their bodies rolling several times as she constricted and pulled at his shoulder. His shorts were pressured down his legs, twisting them. She had tightened enough that he could not breathe or speak. Slowly, having settled against one of the walls, she extended, hoisting him several feet into the air, his body facing the floor, her teeth sinking deeper into his flesh. There was a sharp sensation from his groin then. A strange and peculiar feeling of stricture. The large coil about his waist inched tighter, grinding against his hips. There was a nullifying texture against his abdomen and thighs. She then spun him over so that he faced the ceiling. A damp but abrasive patch of the snake's underbelly settled on his own, and a pressure began at the epicenter of the bite, edging from her mouth and fangs. He felt it travel out into his body, an alien, dour feeling. It caused his arms to spasm and eyes to twitch. His ears grew hot and Bill felt his body become aroused against his will. The pressure of the bite undulated through him, centering in his mind and groin. The coil of Janine that had settled atop his waist nudged slightly to the left, and Bill felt the sharpness again. This time, it carried with it a sensation of increasing depth, pressuring down around the portion of him it had sought out. He realized what was happening, that coupling had been achieved, that this was her violent counter-play of sex, and forced. Bill hated her for this, and hated himself even more.

Unable to speak, Bill soured. His anger was a reef of many sources and dangerous things. Janine ripped her teeth loose and reared back again, watching him. She lessened her constriction. He caught his breath and choked. After a moment, their eyes locked in hidden explanations of disgust and vehemence, Bill spit at her. He watched the edges of the snake's snout raise in the slight. The bitch was enjoying it. Bill looked away then, not wanting to pay her any more attention than she was taking. She would have to deal with him tomorrow, and the man she would come to know would be nothing like the man she thought she knew. The serpent's head darted forward again and nipped his other shoulder, biting down on it, then pulling back again. She did this repeatedly, biting him and piercing his skin with her fangs, each time jerking at the bite, to inflict more pain. Bill only winced and clenched his jaw, waiting for this sinister tryst to abate.

When Janine reached her fill of bites and tortures, she lowered her head near his own and her forked tongue issued forth, smelling his anger, his fear and disgust. The tongue darted at his temple, catching his scent and helplessness as she constricted and loosened, again and again.

"Go to hell," Bill finally muttered, not giving her the benefit of looking at her. The body of the snake shook then, as a brief tremor shot through the coils toward the head. There was a pause as the two of them, intertwined together, Bill's body held aloft in the scales and musculature of the massive snake, could not tell the one from the other. This moment passed quickly, and when it did, Bill was spun end over end, the coils loosening. Janine had reached a point of satisfaction and flung him from her. He discovered himself free then, in mid-air, having been tossed back at his bed. He crashed atop it and, in the carried bounce, turned himself quickly to face her, his hands in fists.

"You wanna play? You wa—" but he was cut off. He felt her jaws clamp down against his throat. He gagged and his eyes shut, his hands about her head, trying to dislodge her, kicking his feet in pain.

***

"Just a second, that's almost all of it," Bill said, fishing the last of his papers from the garbage can. The sanitation worker stood bored beside the garbage truck, waiting for Bill to finish so he could continue his route.

"Okay, that's all of it. Sorry," Bill said, arms full of his occupational articles.

"I guess don't throw shit away you want to keep," the worker said, shaking his head. He had been startled by the garage door opening and this unkempt resident running out, shouting for him to wait, but now that had passed, and the worker was annoyed.

"I agree," Bill said, making his way across the yard and through the garage-door entrance.

Several minutes were needed to sort through the items as Bill placed them in stacks and small heaps on his desk. Through this time of sorting, Bill cursed under his breath and, at times, atop it, loudly threatening the unpresent Janine. He wanted to pummel her for what she had done. Flinging him against the wall by his neck had been the final torment she had enacted on him, and was one designed to knock him unconscious. She was a coward. Bill's imagination, a fertile place of genuine creativity, had been working hard in fantasizing what he wanted to inflict on her. He wanted to do so much, however, that these avenging fantasies had all blended into a single, uniform manifestation of his hard resentment. The only detail for which he could hold onto for any length of time, until he calmed, was one in which he returned the treatment she had inflicted on him the night previous. This bothered Bill and only angered him the more because he knew this sort of activity, forcing himself on her, was one of the worst things a person could do, and even more repulsive, something the disturbed Janine would likely enjoy.

What her behavior and thievery meant to his relationship with Amy was uncertain. Bill did not want to lose Amy, and felt strongly for her, but he would not tolerate Janine again, ever. When Amy woke, he would have to level with her, and explain what had occurred. He only hoped Janine would not explain it differently. Bill's blood heated then. The nerve. The sick, freakish nerve of Janine. Did she think she would not face staunch repercussion and his absolute despisal over this? Had she planned on such a thing? What was she doing, and why had she seen fit to attack him as she had? It was cruel, thoughtless, and horrific. He shuddered imagining her long, serpent body and her sinister, smiling head. Bill set his hands down flat on the desk and breathed then. He wanted to throw her off the top of a building.

The bite marks on his shoulders and upper arms were deep, but narrow, and Bill was bruised heavily around them. The marks on his neck were minuscule and the bruising shallow, owing that she had clamped down on him somewhat hard, but had not used her fangs. This bite was meant to secure him and then, coiling herself around his left leg, help in tossing him into the wall, but not injure him beyond this. His back was sore, neck and jaw ached, but while his headache from striking the drywall was ever present, it was not so troublesome as his hands, which continually jittered from anger, as well as the fright he had not yet been able to shake off. Least of his physical injuries was his groin, which now stung in a solvent way, as if his genitalia had been immersed in rubbing alcohol. What a horrible thing she had done. Bill pounded on his desk then, his lower lip between his teeth and his brows arched downward to the point of shutting up his eyes.

Bill spent the hour recompiling his calendars and putting his documents and photographs into an order they had never been treated to, an efficient, ready-for-anything order. Giving up was the wrong thing to do, and he knew this now. Janine's agreement that he throw these things out in order to create some sort of 'New Bill', was asinine and ridiculous. She wanted no 'New Bill'. She had only wanted to separate him from something he loved, and when she encountered him debating this, had sought to weaken him, to push him at it, edging him further from his comfort and normality. The encounter she had shoved upon him the night previous had only served to exhibit her true thoughts. He understood then that Janine thought nothing of him, and likely never had.

Perhaps she hated the arrangement Amy had created. This would not explain her zeal for sex, however. It seemed obvious that this was Janine's sole occupation, screwing and sweet-talking until you despised her. There was no definite goodness to her, and Bill had to wonder just what it was Janine was up to. She wanted sex, and had seen reason to steal it from him, hurting him in the process and dissolving any relationship she and Bill had managed to keep, but to what gain? If she did not want him, why lust after him? If she needed an exposition of sexuality so often, why not just get it elsewhere? She was tied to Amy and seemed bitter about it, quietly hateful and ruminating over what she wanted, yet never seemed to achieve. Was she trapped with Bill? She did not want him beyond the means of a pet she could both pleasure and torture. Why were either of these modes necessary for her? She was a petty, horrid woman, and Bill could find no reason she would want to pleasure him. She seemed to derive nothing from it until the night previous.

Had Bill failed to please Janine? Were love and resentment but the same thing to her, and was she unable to have her own means without Amy's concurrence? Bill thought about her explanation of the baby, that after the birth, Amy would have died and Janine would have starved, that Janine was a part of Amy. Was this true? Was Janine but a limb on a greater being? A parasitic second head? During puberty, Bill had grown hair and all the usual developments of a maturing adult. He began thinking of sex often, wanting women and growing in physical dimension. When Amy had gone through her own pubescent stages, had she developed differently than a person? Instead of an increased desire for sex, had she developed another organ or limb to handle these things?

Janine was a portion of Amy. Was this tangible, secondary persona but Amy's sexuality manifest? Had the wondrous snake been granted a separate brain, a separate head, a conjoined yet fractured, fraternal psyche? Bill rubbed his eyes and sighed. These things seemed both implausible and certain in his current analysis, and caused his head to ache, but what was true? Could Janine be but the longstanding bodily material of Amy's hormonal maturity? Truth seemed far from him in any direction, and only treachery seemed to have drawn near enough for him to grasp, to be certain about. Lansington's cheap stab to his back, Nina's closure and sale of the calendarium, even Amy's death-like sleep from which she was to lift again in time... these things were upsetting but clear, they were accountable. Janine was not.

When he had reached a degree of calmness, Bill realized he did not want to deal with Janine just yet. There had been much confrontation in his mind regarding her trespass, but after cooling off, he desired only more calmness. He would confront her later. Right then, Bill did not want to see her or think about her. Knowing he was watching the kids that day, he wanted to get his mind together and settle himself enough to think straight on his situation. Janine would have to face him, he would make certain of it, but this was a matter of twilight and planning, settled anger and inhibited cursing, not over the phone, but in person, in her apartment, to her damnable face. Oh, there were things he planned, and certainly much in the way of angry shouting, but that needed to come in the proper guise and mode, and these would wait until nightfall.

### Chapter Twenty-Seven

With camera ready, her nerves honed, Nika waited behind the fast food menu board of the drive-thru, knowing it was only a matter of time before the action star passed her in his trademark Craysport SE, looking for his favorite lunch. Elijah B. disliked craft service, and made it a point to leave at a scheduled time most days to visit this particular chain of fast food. This time, she would be waiting. As a paparazzo, it was natural for her to resort to such tricks to get a snapshot or ten. The elusive Elijah B. would have no idea she was laying in wait to snap a picture of him eating, or that, if the pic was juicy enough, he would soon grace the cover of Star Intrigue's July issue with the heading 'Elijah B. Goes on Post Oscar Junk Food Frenzy' She leaned against a large waist-disposal bin and checked her camera again. If all went according to her plan, and his nearby film shoot broke for their lunch at the usual time, she would only need to wait a few minutes, tops.

-from _Twinkle, Twinkle, Famous Star_ , Marika Nieves

He chanced letting Christian use his computer to transfer several dozen images the youngster had already taken. Though Bill did not have enough money for a new camera, now that he wished to salvage his career, he would not stoop so low as to take his previous camera back from Christian. Amy had been right, the young boy's interest in the camera was keen, and he had already gone beyond taking usual shots, now playing with the angles of the house, the texture of the walls, closing in and snapping these images up, letting them stack in the vast, digital basement of the camera. Bill found himself to be a little proud of this development, even though it had not been his idea. After transferring the images, Bill found a larger piece of memory and installed it in the digital camera, giving it back to Christian, who was pleased enough with this that he stunned his uncle with a 'thanks'.

The day was approaching noon when she arrived. Bill heard the car pull in and, through the window, noted her reaching the door. He answered the knock and let Karen in.

"Hi Billy," she greeted.

"Karen."

"We have to be there by one or we lose the appointment," she said. Bill only shrugged and sat down on the couch.

"Yeah, all right. What do you care?" Karen said then, irritated.

"I'm just the babysitter," Bill replied, not wanting to try to affect cheer with her.

"Whatever you say. Anyway, we girls need our haircuts, so, I'm here to pick her up." Bill did not respond to this. After a moment in which Karen expected either a remark of understanding or, at the minimum, a nod, she let out a slight groan.

"Don't tell me Roger forgot to tell you," she said.

"No, I know about you picking up Jess. He left a note for me on the fridge."

"Oh, good. In her room?"

"Backyard with Christian. He's doing a photo shoot of her."

"A photo shoot?"

"You'll see." Bill wanted her to finish her business and vacate. His dislike of Karen was tied to a great many things, and his general mood was overflowing with yet more complicated troubles. He continually bashed Janine in his mind and could not be rid of this. Dealing with Karen in such a state was as if having to capture a dirty, stray cat before the approaching car struck you.

"Huh. Bill, are you okay?" she asked then.

"No."

"You know, Roger and I had troubles, for sure, but not you and I. If he's fine with my coming over to pick up my daughter, I don't see why you have such a problem. As far as I can remember, I've never done anything to you. This whole protective bit for your brother is kind of lame," she said.

"You're kind of lame."

"Lemme guess, you put on your asshole socks today."

"Nope, this is all me. Jess is out back," he repeated.

"You've always been a prick to me. I figured it was because you thought your dumb family was better than me or some such bullshit. Well, we're adults here, last time I checked, so lay it on me. What's the deal, Mopey?"

"Knock it off. That's reaching, and you know my family has nothing to do with anything."

"Does this dick attitude have something to do with my sister?" Bill's eyes widened. This was entirely unexpected. He had never spoken with Karen about what happened to Andrea. It was a surreal zone of perturbation, guilt, and supreme doubt within him, and he suspected Karen held similar difficulties with the subject. Andrea had not been discussed between them, in the way malignant brain tumors were not brought up between people experiencing migraines. Bill's relationship with Andrea had been short, but loaded with secrets. There was a spangled mesh of potent regret in him over Andrea Wright. Karen, however, had lost her little sister. This was a far more powerful loss than what Bill had gone through with Andrea's demise. Bill had always thought it would be severely out of place to bring up Andrea with Karen.

"What? No," he responded.

"Is it when I came in and saw you two getting ready to hit if off?"

"That's none of your business."

"Bill, I was on ludes that night. And a lot of other nights. A fly landing on a piece of bread would have been sexual to me. Tell me you weren't so offended that you still hate me because of that stupid night."

"No, not at all. That's... that doesn't even make sense," he replied.

"Good. That'd be asinine. But what else then? Is it because she drowned?"

"I'm not talking to you about this. There's nothing to talk about as far as I'm concerned. I don't like you. That's all. Get over it."

"Is it women?"

"What?"

"Do you just not like women?"

"Save the gay innuendos for someone else," Bill said.

"That's not what I meant."

"Women are fine. You need to get your little girl and go do your haircut thing."

"Did you crush on me?" she asked then.

"What?!"

"A crush. On me. You," she said. Her eyes had become mild, as if she was trying on empathy for the first time.

"Christ, no."

"All right," she said, putting her hands up in defense, "just trying to cover the bases. It's not right to be so against someone without a reason."

"No more wrong than it is to shack up with someone you don't know. Or cheat on someone you do."

"Oh, I get it."

"Jessica's out back. Go have your fun."

"Bill knows everything, I guess. Great judge of character. I'm the slutty girl that married you're trusting brother. Got it. Now it makes sense. Wow, keen eye, Billy. You must be great with women. No doubt from all the experience you've had," she said. This was cold of her, which was easier for Bill to handle than a sort of Karen that wanted to be friendly.

"There's no such thing as 'good at women', any more than a woman can be 'good at men'. But if we're talking about experience, which is a quaint way to refer to it, that's all you."

"That was quick. You've gotten clever while I was away. Seriously though? I'd appreciate it if you could lay off a little; don't take it out on me just because you don't get laid very often."

"You don't know what you're talking about."

"Can we get back on topic? You're watching my kids and you look sick. I think it's within my realm to ask if you're all right. I'm not picking at you when I say you don't look well. If I had to be frank, you look like you've been using."

"I'm not into the drug thing. That was more your style," he responded.

"Granted. So, what is it? Hangover? Flu? Roger said you got in a wreck. Something not healed up?" she asked, glancing at his wrist cast and then the slight bruise on his neck.

"No, I'm fine. I had some trouble with someone last night, have a headache. That's it."

"You get in a fight or something?" Bill sighed. There was no getting rid of her. He slumped against the armrest of the couch and fidgeted with the remote to the television. The remote, he learned, was missing batteries, which were most likely in the camera Christian was, at that moment, using to take pictures of his little sister in front of various walls and brush out back.

"A fight. Yeah, sure."

"Bill, tell me that pretty little girlfriend didn't smack you. I like her, but I'll go smack her back if she's that way." This was a strange response to Bill, and he did not understand where it came from or what it hinged upon. Certainly not friendship, unless Karen was trying to create this. Bill's thoughts soured upon imagining such a thing.

"Janine's not my girlfriend," he replied.

"Whatever you call it. Fuck buddy, booty call, Friday's ass, whatever. She take a swing at you?"

"No. My girlfriend is her roommate. Janine just won't leave me alone." This was both true and false in one simple statement.

"Wait, the woman that was here yesterday isn't your girl?"

"Not really, no."

"That's different. Is it like a jealousy thing?"

"I don't know what it is. She actually doesn't like me at all." Bill began to feel as if he was talking too much with Karen. His drudgery signal tripped.

"Wait, let me see if I can fill in the blanks. Tell me if this is close: You met a girl, started dating, but things led to things and you got drunk and screwed around with her roommate. The girl you like doesn't know, and you want the mistake to go away, so you can keep dating the girl you like, but the roommate you slept with won't back off, or maybe threatens to tell if you don't keep with her, or better still, she has some other guy on the hook and he's the one who roughed you up. Something like that?"

"Not even close," Bill admitted.

"Well, good. I never thought of you as a cheater, anyway."

"I'm not, I'm just a fucking mess."

"I have to say, whatever's going on with all that, you're in a toxic relationship, Billy-bill."

"Yes. And for the last time, it's Bill."

"Fine. Bill," she said, resting her hands in her front pockets. She swayed a moment.

"You know, you really don't look like a Bill, though. You never have."

"Well, I am."

"I don't know. A Travis, maybe."

"I look like my name would be Travis?"

"Or maybe a Mike. Yeah, that's better."

"Travis?"

"You asked, I answered." This was only correct in the barest, fundamental way.

"I didn't ask. You told me, then required me to ask, then told me more."

"Roger doesn't look like his name either. I've always thought that."

"Do I want to know what you think he looks like?"

"I used to call him 'Joey'."

"Wait, I remember that. He hated it. Is that why you called him that? I just thought it was some joke between you."

"Well, it was. But that's where it came from. He looks like a Joey." Bill thought this over a moment.

"That kind of fits. Weird."

"Look in the mirror and say 'Mike' sometime."

"I'll have to try that." There was a short period of unspoken eye banter that curdled in Bill's skull then.

"Jess is out back," he said, wanting to move on. He did not enjoy talking to her, though this conversation had been somewhat tolerable. Any more conversation, however, and he felt they would revert to their more usual mode of verbal smites and lower blows.

***

"What's up, Mike?" he said in the mirror, "Not much, Travis. Thanks for asking." Christian lowered the camera from his field of vision and glanced at Bill in the mirror. His uncle caught this look and chuckled.

"I'm trying on a different name. What do you think?" he asked.

"Try 'Dumbass'," the young boy responded, still annoyed that his mother had taken Jessica for the day but not him.

"Don't talk like that," Bill replied, being more tolerant of Christian's attitude than usual, "And I look nothing like a Dumbass. Or a Travis, I'm noticing," Christian returned his aim of the camera to the toilet and, crouching slightly, snapped the picture.

"You want to know something weird?" Bill asked then.

"No."

"I used to take pictures of toilets and plumbing when I was a kid, too." Christian snapped another image, up close, focusing on the metal flushing handle. He chose not to respond to Bill's statement. After a moment of trying on several different names, his cell phone rang from the kitchen charger and drew him from the bathroom. He retrieved his coffee from the kitchen table and checked the phone. Bill understood who was calling when he noted the Manhattan area code.

"I want his head on a stick," he said, answering the phone.

"Bill?"

"Yes. Hi Janet."

"Oh, I thought I had the wrong number for a moment."

"No, it's me. I want his head on a stick."

"Todd."

"That's him."

"I see. Maybe it's different where you live but there are laws against heads on sticks out here in New York. Well, for now, at least. Listen, I called to tell you where we're going and what's going on with your calendar," she said. Bill's nod was nonsensical, but still felt proper.

"Okay," he responded.

"Uh, well we've been turning over a new leaf, so to speak, and there's a lot of movement going on. We're relocating to a different floor of the building, so things are a mess, but over all, everything seems to be functioning. Anyway, we've had a look at your new piece and the consensus was that it's good, but not quite for us," she said. The way she spoke was as if she were telling him the water in her shower had lost some pressure, but someone would be out soon to fix it.

"Wh...you don't want it?" he asked, his eyes closing and stomach tightening.

"You're going to hear about this sooner or later, and I know how close you are to the situation, but we've decided to go with Todd's new piece, and since it conflicts with yours, we won't be able to use what you sent. We do have—"

"I knew this would happen. You'd side with the geriatric, hacked-out bullshit Lansington throws up, even though he stole his new work from me. What's it called? What did that idiot call his stolen calendar? Let me guess: _Steel Tragedy_." Janet paused for a moment and then uttered simple fact:

" _American-Made Sorrow_."

"Oh hell, are you kidding? That's cheesy, Janet," he muttered.

"Now Bill, I know there are problems between you and Todd, but truthfully, those should be kept out of Holt and Finch. We're not here as an intermediary to settle artistic squabbles, we're here to serve as a reputable publisher of calendars, and you'll want to remember that we're _your_ publisher, as well."

"Then publish me, for fuck's sake."

"We want very much to take on some of your work, and we will when things match up, but for right now, we're unable to take on _Collision_. We do have an idea that—"

"When things match up? How will they ever 'match up' if you keep changing the fucking rules? I matched up! You know it and I know it. You've been all pleased about my new work, the 'new direction', all that shit. What's changed between then and now? Nothing, except some cliché, trite Virginian stole my idea and squirted it over on you. Don't talk to me about matching up. You choose who matches, and you're choosing the dipshit that forgets to put Halloween on the 31st of October."

"Bill, if you'll let me finish—"

"Mr. Sherman. Only people I like call me Bill." Janet sighed through thousands of miles of wire at this bit of childishness.

"We want to give you an open contract," she said. Bill puzzled over this.

"An open contract?"

"Yes. I don't want to leave you high and dry. Truthfully, this is the second idea I came up with. Initially, I thought maybe we could solve this by putting _Collision_ and _American-Made Sorrow_ together, as a single, two-year calendar."

"Absolutely not."

"I know; I assumed you wouldn't be all right with it. So, I've been able to talk the higher-ups into an open contract as a solution. It would be identical to the current contract you have with us, but it would give you the right to submit any work we decide not to use wherever you please."

"Wait wait, so you want me to keep my contract with you, but if you reject something of mine, I'm free to send it elsewhere? You're willing to give up pre-exclusivity? I wouldn't be violating our publishing agreement?"

"Exactly. _Collision_ and _From the Rind_ are good works, Bill, but we've got our hands tied, and believe me, tied in more ways than you know. Things are a mess right now."

"Maybe you just have your thumbs up your asses."

"Come on, be nice. I don't have to continue this conversation. What we're offering is very rare for a large house, Bill."

"So you're telling me I can send those calendars elsewhere and still be kosher with Holt and Finch?"

"After we draw up the new contract, yes."

"Send it to me."

"I'll have it out tomorrow. Personally, I think Manatee or even Swale Publishing would be interested in your work, but you'd have to talk to them. Now, I want to be clear, we still want first choice on any new work you put out. That's not negotiable. We know we can't publish all of what we receive, and it's not normally a problem, but in this situation, it _has_ become a problem."

"And this is your solution? Letting me sleep around?" Janet paused on this for quite some time.

"Bill, I pushed hard for this," she finally said. Bill thought to repeat that she call him Mr. Sherman, but this was juvenile and there simply was no other name for him. Not Billy, not William, not Mike or Travis, and not Mr. Sherman.

"Well, I'll take a look at it."

"Good."

"Janet... it really doesn't bother you that Lansington stole my work and you're going to reward him for it? That's fair to you? You're fine with it?" Janet sighed and mumbled aside the phone. There was a pause.

"Bill, the stress I'm under at Holt and Finch is astounding, okay? I haven't dated in over a year. I don't ever see my family. I'm sure you can understand how troublesome that could be. My _birthday_ was four days ago and do you know what I did? I fired three people and hired one person to do all three jobs. This one person can't stand me and likely won't last long, and I can't blame her. I dropped two contracts that day and was told I had to relocate our entire office up four flights of stairs by the end of this week. And then, just before I went home so that I could catch a glimpse of sleep, on my own birthday, I was informed that if I failed to get the Special Articles Division's ducks in a row by the end of Summer, my employment with Holt and Finch would be summarily terminated. No, if Todd stole your idea and submitted it, I wouldn't like that. It would be trouble for all concerned to publish him with that material. But you have to understand, Bill, I'm not allowed the luxury of 'being fine' with things, or judging 'fair'; trouble follows me around day in and day out." Bill listened to this with a sinking pit of gall in his stomach. Janet had never been personal with him.

"I don't know what to say, Janet. I'm sorry to hear about all that," he replied. He was angry, but also felt somewhat bad for her.

"I'll send out the contract tomorrow. Bill, please think well of me; I stepped outside my lines to make this happen for you."

"Well, thank you, then. I'll go over it when it arrives," he said, feeling a touch of guilt.

"Good. We're on level ground, then. So, if everything is in order, I think we're done for now. We'll talk later about the contract."

"Sure, okay."

"Goodbye, Bill."

"Hey, have a good one, Janet," he tried. She ended the call then. A pinion had become unfastened in Bill. He was angry and cheated, yet had been offered something unusual, and then heard an unfortunate story about his publisher's life. These things together made him feel almost shameful. Nothing in his life made sense, especially when it seemed to make the most sense. With a shaky hand, Bill abruptly flung his phone against the kitchen wall. It struck hard and then clattered across the countertop, resting on its face near the sink. Bill ran his hand through his hair, exhaling slowly. He realized Christian was watching him from the hallway and turned his attention.

"Hey there, kiddo. Uncle Bill's having a tough week."

"Why'd you throw your phone?"

"I was hoping it would shatter, is all."

"Who's Janet?"

"My boss. Kind of. Someone I work for."

"What did she do?" he asked, curious. Bill noted the camera in the young boy's hands, thought of himself when young, holding his own camera, long ago.

"Life can be very harsh, is the thing. You do... what you're supposed to do, and everything runs the way it's designed to, but if you decide to do something else, like in my case, following a strange dream... well, the design doesn't hold well. Sometimes feeling a little free can hurt you more than you'd expect."

"Did you get fired?"

"No. I got... something else."

"Oh." Bill retrieved his cell phone and opened it. When nothing happened, he shook it a moment, then nodded as the screen lit and the device began powering on.

"You've probably already started noticing this, but when you take an interest in something, there are other people involved. Always. You can't get away from them," he said then. Christian scrolled through a menu on his camera, uninterested with his uncle and seeming only to listen in the slight.

"If you want to ride your bike at the park," Bill continued, "Well, you'll likely run into someone walking that doesn't like you riding by. If you find a quarter on the ground, someone else will eventually want to separate you from it. If you want to take pictures with a camera, sooner or later, someone will want to look at them and tell you what they think. And the thing is, you'll want them to do this almost as badly as you'll want them not to. Does that make sense?"

"I don't know," Christian said, activating the camera's shutter with the settings he had chosen. The whirs and clicks of the machine's interior workings sputtered to electronic life.

"Some of these people I'm talking about mean well, but do things that get in your way," Bill continued, "And some of them are pretty bad news, and see you as being in _their_ way. And then... well, some of them are women, and it's of high probability that every woman on the planet is completely out of her mind." The young boy frowned at this, unsure of how he should respond. He slowly lifted his camera and took aim at his uncle. The shutter snapped then, having taken its burst of light and captured it into a frame. This image exposed the figure of a tired man holding a battered phone.

"And the worst part is, we make them this way."

### Chapter Twenty-Eight

Bess swam down and stared at the prize. The ring of keys glittered with light on the floor of the reef. Marcus would be so pleased she had found them, finally, and that they could leave the reef and return to Manila. The two had been stranded in the uninhabited atoll for days, and now she had rectified her losing the keys overboard by finding them again. Bess looked through her mask at the golden sheen of the metal ring. Manila was waiting, and they would part ways when they reached the port. Everything would change. With the end of their unintended stay in paradise, so would end the passion that had boarded their vessel and overcome them. Bess arched and swam slowly to the surface. When there, she removed her mask and looked at Marcus, who stood frustrated but hopeful on the deck of the boat. As with dives previous, he asked if she had found anything. She shook her head and made for the boat, leaving the keys below.

-from _Paradise Passion_ , A.D. Phan

The passage that brought him to the door was not so arduous as his mood. When Janine had interloped and forced herself upon him, she had snipped the only remaining artery that could carry trust between them, and this trust, now having dissipated, was irretrievable. With his resentment and tension moving his feet up the last flight of stairs, he breathed in a conscious, controlled manner, attempting to settle himself for the argument to come. That he would take an aggressive stand was beyond doubt, but Bill had no prediction of how Janine might respond to this. She was both single-minded and mysterious at once, and this same facet of her character had caused Bill nothing but problems.

Bill felt he had been dragged unknowing into a foul relationship. With Amy having been gone nearly a week, he had learned that Janine was no one he wanted to continue knowing, but he suspected that leaving Janine meant leaving Amy. Bill dreaded this. He had come to rely on Amy to show him a portion of himself, and he enjoyed nothing more in these last months than discovering everything he could about her. Amy had entered his life like a grand firework, splashing bright drops of color over an otherwise black draping. He did not want to lose her, but the price of Janine was overwhelming. It was with this conundrum of dread that Bill approached the door, his nerves jeweled in doubt. He lifted his arm and thought of his future. The days to come, concerning both his occupation and the stalemate in his relationship with Amy, would be difficult and were likely to become an utter shambles.

The knuckles rapped hard and he waited as she unlocked and opened the door. Janine eyed him with a choosy look, as if differing portions of her mind were discussing him by quality of meat. She smiled and nibbled her lip. Bill noticed at the instant she opened the door that she was wearing no clothing, naked but for heels.

"Hi grouchy," she said, pulling the door wide and letting him enter the apartment. He walked past her quickly. For a moment, he concluded that his anger was likely palpable in the air that brushed her as he passed. She closed the door simply. He watched, bitter, as she retrieved a dark drink from the kitchen. The apartment was as he had last noted, though there were no longer rats in the terrarium. Bill examined the door to Amy's room, wishing she was with him. Amy would be furious over Janine's transgression, and Bill wanted Janine to experience the full weight of what she had done. Janine reached a spot across the room from him, a place for which to settle herself. She sniffed her nose in a commonplace way. After this, she was available, and faced him naked, each of them on one side of the living room, as if this particular space between them could offer more sanctity.

"How dare you," Bill said, cold. Janine was unphased and took a light sip of her drink. This infuriated him.

"You fucked up, lady. What you did last night was beyond wrong. Do you have any idea how badly I want to throw you through this fucking window right now?" he exclaimed. Janine shrugged, affecting a slight pout.

"You gonna answer me?" She took a breath and tilted her head, eyes locked on his, waiting. She was putting up with him.

"This is over. You and me? Destroyed. I don't know where this puts me with Amy but I swear to god, I will never fucking talk to you again. You repulse me," he said. This summarized his thoughts quite well, which was problematic, because he had imagined this particular skirmish being one that would have lasted longer.

"You put holes in my shoulders, you cunt. You bit my neck," he said, unable to understand why she seemed to think of his anger as being so slight. Did she not know he was on the verge of pulling a shelf from the wall and hurling it at her?

"Look fine to me," she said, shrugging.

"Yeah, I'm all better, now. Go figure. Another trick, right? You stay out of my life," he voiced. She leaned her back against the wall and crossed her feet, swishing her drink in her hand.

"I saw who you really are last night and you're disgusting," he said. Janine moved her arm with the drink to the side, and used her free hand to gently lift her left breast. Looking at him, she slowly raised the cold drink and began toying the base of the glass against her nipple. Bill's lips curled.

"Freak bitch," he said. Janine lifted her head, smiling.

"Are we gonna get it on, or not?" she asked. Bill snorted, baffled at her gall.

"If by 'get it on' you mean me punching you in the face, sure, let's."

"I'm game," she said to him, eyebrow raised. Bill nodded, feigning a brief laugh.

"Yeah, I bet you are. That's not gonna happen."

"Ah, come on, Bill. A girl needs a slap every now and then, don't you think?"

"I'm out," he said, shaking his head in disbelief, making for the door.

"Come put me in line, straighten me out," she said, child-like.

Bill flung open the door and walked out, his mind raking steam from his chest and pressuring it against his feet, moving down the flight of stairs with stomps and hard gestures. He hoped to never encounter her again, for she was of great disturbance to him. There was no life with her. There was physicality, and the world stopped there. It was as if there was no meaning to Janine outside of herself, nothing to be learned or understood beyond the intimate activity she sought incessantly to begin. Bill exited the building with a shove at the front doors and made his way toward his home, walking, a furious creature who could not be rid of the notion he had been used.

Janine closed the door and leaned against it, sipping her drink and crunching the ice. She was unphased by the visit, had expected it, and found Bill's feelings to be unimpressive. Men were not only predictably enraged, but thought of their aggravation as having far more power than it did. The world was changed by calm men, not angry ones. The bricks humanity used to build its place were shat by the frightened. An angry man was nothing but mortar, and lived out his moments like a calendar flapping in a storm that all else ignored. Bill was a stupid, small man, little more than a stick that thought it could will itself into a spear. His words brought little venom and his eyes showed nothing but a tiresome, interior weakness.

"Explain this," she heard from the bedroom door. Janine glanced over quickly and nearly dropped her drink.

"You're awake... I thought it would take longer," Janine said, shaken.

"I know what we thought. What did you do?" Amy said, looking tired and drained. She had been asleep for nearly a week. Janine was put off by this treatment, and grew nervous. She waved her hand in dismissal.

"Trouble in bed. Nothing you'd know about." Amy gauged Janine in a sharp and animalistic way. There was a quiet moment where the two of them smelled the air, keeping things from one another.

"Explain it," Amy repeated, rigid. Janine rolled her eyes.

"Fine. I took him," she said.

"Which way?" Janine huffed at this, giving Amy a look of doubt.

"The right way. The old way," she said, folding her arms across her bare chest. Amy walked across the room toward her, which caused Janine to unfold her arms and back into a corner.

"Get away!" Janine voiced, worried. Amy grasped one of her arms and tugged it aside.

"You don't know—" but Janine was cut off by Amy's hand, which left a sting against the left side of her face. Janine felt this portion of herself, looking at Amy in shock.

"WE DON'T... DO THAT... ANYMORE," Amy said, enunciating each word with sternness.

"Well, we should. This is failed. You know it," Janine countered, her face flush. Amy frowned. This was not the first instance these statements had been uttered by the lower half, who lacked the fortitude to do much of anything beyond what she was already good at. Amy had known Janine for a very long time, and while the two of them were infrangible and close, there were times Janine had to be shaken back into resolve.

"You knew this wouldn't be easy, but you agreed to come with me," Amy said.

"What choice did I have? And I've changed my mind. None of this works. This... thing you want doesn't work. It won't. Ever. This was a huge mistake for us." It was a bitter paradox between them that Janine and Amy each knew about men in the way the other wanted. Janine wanted to poison and take, to end what she surmised to be lower life, and Amy wanted to know and love, to begin what she felt was a form of higher life. Each understood only what the other sought to understand, a singular creature with two minds, two wills, and but the one heart.

"We're miserable," Janine said then, "Don't tell me your not."

"Misery is part of this purpose. It's part of being them," Amy reinforced.

"No man will ever be what you want, and you'll never be what they want," Janine said.

"Welcome to being a woman. Adjust yourself," Amy said, angry. There was a pause that gently glanced against Janine's sigh.

"He's immune to me," Janine said then, quiet.

"What?"

"He's immune. Probably from you. I can't charm him, and I can't keep him." This was a severe admission on Janine's part. She had but one skill, and it had begun to recede on the man for whom she was to devote it. Amy was surprised by this, and on a certain level, understood Janine's shame. Amy's poison had not weakened, but she was unable to use it. Neither of them were so natural as they preferred, and both had lost much, gaining only a confusion that at times was gleeful, and at other times, dismal. Amy would not let Janine use this as justification for what she had done, however.

"Good. He's immune, then. You'll just have to do it the way everyone else does, without tricks." Janine stood up then and shoved Amy.

"AND BE WHAT? US? THEM?" she shouted. Amy's eyes narrowed.

"I'm tired of this!" Janine said, coming in for another shove. Amy deflected this easily and got a hold of Janine by the arm.

"Don't touch me! This is _your_ fault." Janine voiced, struggling and trying to jerk away. Amy reached over to slap her again and Janine twisted to the side, causing the two of them to stumble against the television, Janine striking her head on one of its sharp angles. There was a heated moment of confusion before they fell to the floor with the television crashing down between them. Amy was on her feet and looking down at Janine before the latter even realized what had happened. Slowly, Janine looked up at Amy with tears in her eyes. She raised a hand and felt the back of her head. When she examined the hand, there was blood. Amy stared down at her in a way that implicated regret. The upper half stood even, tall, and the lower half remained on the floor.

"Why are we fighting?" Janine sobbed. The alpha's body lost its rigidity and she slowly crouched beside the other.

"We're not supposed to be like this. Don't you see? It's failed," Janine said, covering her reddened face.

"I'm sorry, sweetie," Amy responded, taking Janine's hand.

"Look at us. We're not them. They're not us. We're not compatible. We're... we're nothing here," Janine said, wiping tears from her eyes.

Amy sat down then, in a daze. What had changed? They had become something to understand beauty, to know what it was that gave man his sense of love, but Amy now realized she had been alone in this. The enchantress had followed her, yes, but not so willingly as the poisoner had once thought. Amy had felt the call to be enlightened and become a creature that could carry love within, a lesser creature, a greater creature, but perhaps she was now but half of a sad and naive charade.

"Maybe this was all a mistake," Amy said then, quietly stroking Janine's hair and feeling her own tears surfacing.

"We should have never come here," Janine muttered.

### Chapter Twenty-Nine

"It's not my fault. You know I won Homecoming King, so I have to go dance with her. I get that you're mad, and I do want to be with you, but I have obligations, you know? This is all part of it. The king has to dance with the queen. Maybe Sadie set this whole thing up, sure, and I know you hate the idea of me dancing with my ex, but it's homecoming and she won."

"Don't. She's playing a game with you, Kyle. God, I hate her."

"Look, everybody's waiting. I have to go, all right? You knew what would happen if we got together, and I told you from the start that I have a responsibility to the team and Passion High. Now, being Homecoming King, as much as you hate the idea, I have a responsibility to dance with Sadie."

"I hope she gets kicked by a cow on her stupid ranch."

"Hey, try to cheer up, okay? You'll be fine without me, and I gotta go. You're way cool, Jenny, but I can't be here with you and over there with her at the same time, you understand?"

-from _Passion Senior High #4: Homecoming Heartthrob_ , Rita Gordon writing as Corvus Piper

The Latin Hall Calendarium had already been emptied of its conglomerate goods and bulldozers had begun work on Ryan's gift shop. That the calendarium was being taken down and demolished was a sad treachery to its many members, but that this place was a loss of their inside was another, worse thing. They were not in contact save for brief, occasional calls that were awkward because of their obvious need, and that pretended to denote care for other than the caller's field of expertise. The calendarium was vanishing by the moment, to make room for an amphitheatre. This was to be a staging arena for the newly created Hellman and Williams Festival, which would be an annual gathering grounds in celebration of American playwrights. The grounds that Bill had visited often would now be utilized in their entirety to host the yearly function. The destruction of his professional refuge stung him only the more once he learned this place was being devoured by another art. A more public, popular art.

Bill's life had crashed in an ineloquent, clumsy way, reeling as if a barefoot man having discerned he had stepped in a dog's leavings. The call and subsequent conversation with The Dutch had been dismal. The Dutch held an ostensible rigidity over the phone, a refusal to be melancholy coupled with an eagerness to despise, and he had offered much news. Bill was astonished to learn that the calendarium's demise had begun so quick, that Nina's sale of the property and all contents had transpired with such swiftness. Not a month had passed since her dire announcement, not even enough time to fill a single page in one of Bill's works. The Dutch had contacted Bill to explain the state of their past meeting grounds, but this was more a tertiary reasoning for the telephone call. His prime motive in contacting Bill was to explain the state of Todd Lansington, who had been hospitalized in Virginia.

"I've never liked Todd. He's a bimbo. But he asked, and I've called." The Dutch explained. Bill's shock came about in a rotary fashion, first when The Dutch told him he was calling at Todd's request, then again when explaining that Todd had been in an automobile accident, and the final round of surprise came when The Dutch told him what Todd thought had happened to cause the accident.

"That's what happens when you've got ass on the brain. I don't feel bad for him," The Dutch said in Bill's silence.

"He saw a woman?" Bill repeated then.

"Naked, of all things. Swerved to avoid her, left the road."

"That's bizarre," Bill commented, his mind turning. A nagging thought had reached the forefront of his mind and was being quite loud in telling him this accident was of relation to him.

"I'd have lied, said it was a deer."

"I think I would have too. And he asked you to tell me this?" Bill asked, suspicious. His thoughts turned to Janine.

"He said you won't talk to him anymore. I don't want to be involved in any dull squabbles between you two, but if you want my two cents on dropping that buffoon from your life, well, good job. He's an idiot. At any rate, he wanted you to know what happened, said you'd understand."

"I see."

"Some sort of in-joke?"

"No," Bill replied.

"Oh. Well, do you?" The Dutch asked then.

"Understand why he wanted me to know? I think I do."

"Great, then we're done with this."

"Thanks for calling, Richard," Bill said then, appreciative. The Dutch did not offer his time often, and when he did, only to those he liked. He disdained Todd, which meant that he thought well of Bill.

"Sure, send me a letter sometime. I'm retired, but I like to know who's doing what before it hits the stands," The Dutch said. With the calendarium's closure, Bill wondered if he would keep in contact with The Dutch, or Osbourne or Beasly. He wanted to assure himself he would, but the truth of the matter was that these were people often aloof with one another, despite their interconnected careers. This might be the last time he spoke with The Dutch. Though they had only spoken over the phone twice since meeting, Bill found himself upset by the notion it might not happen again.

"I'll do that," Bill offered.

"Not email. A damn letter. Paper," The Dutch added in a lecturing tone.

"You got it."

"Goodbye, Bill."

There was perhaps no more settling an action for mulling over one's disasters than a good walk. Considered by some to be overrated, and others to be tantamount in establishing an amount of needed stasis with one's self, going for a walk had never lost its potency to Bill. One might consider that migration, or short distances in a day trip, or even a simple stroll, affected all mammals in this way, and not simply bipeds. When an animal was outcast from its group, what did it do? The animal hovered near, watching for a time, and then, if unable to join its compatriots, wandered. There were uncountable tales from ancient and modern history that involved the use of walking to discover resolution and purpose. The travel of a solitary being over long terrain, for no other purpose than thought and centering, looking for oneself in a vastness of isolation and unknown destiny, was iconic. This was a zone of existence well known to the history of civilization. This was walkabout, promenade, expatriation, exodus.

Bill ventured from the house to think. His mind was dizzy with speculation and the heavy lids of suspicion he had now built atop his thoughts. Had Janine done what she seemed to have done? Had she somehow caused Todd Lansington the poetic accident for which they had spoken of in the garage, days ago? Todd thought he had seen a naked woman, and due to Bill's encounter the previous night, this notion of a nude woman inflicting hazard seemed applicably Janine in tone. The fact that Richard Dutch had been asked to contact Bill on Todd's behalf indicated Todd thought Bill had something to do with his accident, or would approve in some way. This could very well have been a hint that Janine had been the alleged woman that caused him to veer from the road. Todd had met her at the last meeting of the calendarium, and would have known her connection to Bill, if she had truly been the woman Todd thought he had seen in the road. Had Lansington been high? Drunk? Or was he lying? Were any of these things more or less plausible than Janine somehow having caused Bill's thief an automobile wreck so far away?

The afternoon was vivid and Bill found himself wishing for sunglasses. His eyes traced ahead several steps, his head downward to avoid the eye-wounding blue of the Summer sky. When would Amy wake? Janine was twisting his life with quiet hands, a terrible, hurtful woman. She had always been under Amy's watch, and seemed almost tamed by the woman Bill cared for, but with Amy asleep, Janine had moved much, changing not only their apartment, but Bill's life, none of this in the positive. His abrasions and cuts from her assaulting copulation had healed at a rate that was unnatural, and had nearly vanished the day following her assault, but those bruises and slits in his mind had not. He was shaky, and felt every minute as if it were struck by tiny stabs of electricity. This jittery man was not who Bill wanted to be, and he felt there was nothing short of leaving town that would remedy his life well enough, unless Amy woke and could level his field of happenings with something positive. He felt to be atop a thin wire he was unable to continue navigating; to one side of him was weak escape, and on the other side was a deep wretchedness, a desperation made from beams of oddity, and these held up by certain traumas.

Confused and with sore feet, he stopped into a convenience store and decided to buy a few things for the house. Bill was a man that needed a destination to continue. An ambling walk was good for him, so long as this led somewhere. Soon into the trek, however, he would need to establish a route, a point of cease, or else his thoughts and creativity might eat him. The store was cool and the objects of his purchase were not heavy.

His walk home became minor in his mind. He could not remove Todd Lansington from his thoughts, and kept going over how this man, a competitor and until recently, a somewhat distant friend, had been injured. Was it wrong for Bill to find a small bit of satisfaction upon hearing this news? The man had stolen from him, and sought to prolong this thievery by trying to remain friends with Bill while doing so. Bill thought Todd's offense was great, and his own offense, in finding small amounts of humor and gratification in Todd's ill-fortune, only minimal. Bill had never considered himself a good man, but he did surmise he was a decent man. Could a decent man construe what happened to Todd a fair atonement, or a deserved predicament? Bill began doubting himself, walking home with the bag of supplies, his head lower by each step from a curb.

Trouble had reared again that morning, adding to his other quandaries, in his discovery of Karen in the kitchen making breakfast for the kids. At first, Bill was annoyed by her visit and presence so early. There was no worse time for Bill than in the morning, just out of bed. He had given a general comment stating the time of day and that this time was a little early for her to have come over, but she had only responded in a falsely offhand way. This lack of rudeness and uptake of nonchalance from her had sent dread through Bill. He knew better than to say anything, but it seemed obvious Karen had not come over, but rather had stayed the night, ostensibly for reasons Bill did not want to think about. Did Roger not understand the sheer distress this could cause? Had he not thought out the ramifications of getting physically involved with his ex-wife? Bill sighed thinking about this predicament. He needed to have a talk with Roger, and soon.

Having reached his block on Bessinger street and approaching the house, Bill realized there was someone in the front yard, heading to the front door ahead of him. His heart spun and his mood inverted near to the instant he recognized her. Bill jogged into the yard and called out. She turned and greeted him. Simply seeing her and knowing she was awake and not hurt alleviated much of his doubts. She was beautiful, and the sun lit her as if wanting to, cropping Bill's focus on her, drawing her into a wondrous frame. Amy stood in front of the door, a backpack on, her hair pulled up and her presence excellent.

"Good god, are you a sight for sore eyes. I'm so glad you're all right," he said out of breath, "Things have been rough. I've been crazy worried." She smiled and he wanted to grab her, hug her. He thought better of this.

"I appreciate that, B.S," she said.

"Man, I really, really missed you, Snakes."

"Let's go inside," she advised.

"Oh yeah yeah, of course."

***

The house was warm from Summer, and being a weekend, Roger had decided to take the kids to Parker Drazen Zoo. Bill had troubles with Karen's early morning presence, and these troubles were given thicker cementing when Karen had agreed to accompany Roger and the kids to Parker Drazen. Christian had held a particular anticipation for this place, owing to his new found hobby of photography and his plan to take many pictures there. The young boy had spent much of the early day talking about bats, creatures for which he planned on dedicating many shots. Jessica was not excited, as her last visit to the zoo had been mired with the dilemma of her getting sick while there. The manner the family had left for the zoo was much as that: Like a family. This caused Bill a sense of phasing, ongoing expendability, and a sour view of the current household, which seemed to include Karen Wright more often than he would have preferred.

With the house empty, Bill and Amy sat down in the living room and adopted the poses of people about to talk much. He lifted his feet onto the couch and smiled at her, taking in the sight of the woman for whom he had given so much thought of late. Amy set her backpack on the floor beside her chair and leaned back, noting Bill's boyish posture and the quietness of the house. She gathered her thoughts. Bill had so much to tell her, but his glee with having her back overestimated his ability to converse, and he became prone to the trouble of not knowing what to say first. Amy waking and coming to him was the best thing he could imagine happening, and this had occurred at a crucial time. They had much to discuss.

"About Janine," Amy said. Bill put his hands up.

"No, no. There's bad news there. Can we save that for later? I kind of just want to hang out with you for awhile. Are you hungry at all? We could cook something. Or go out in a bit?"

"I'm fine, Bill."

"Okay, that's good. So, you're feeling better again? You're done with... with the sleeping spell?" he asked.

"I'm awake. I'm fine now."

"Jesus, that's a relief. I...I know it was my fault in some ways, and I just want you to know that I won't let this happen again. I want you to be all right. I mean, always all right. I'm so sorry about what's happened," he admitted. He waited for her to speak, but his happiness disliked the quiet that ensued, and he found himself wanting to override it with the assortment of things he thought.

"I missed you," he said.

"I missed you, too," she agreed, still not looking at him and fidgeting with her hands. Bill noticed this, realized she had not yet mentioned that she was pleased to see him. Moreover, Amy did not seem happy, but uncomfortable. A strange sensation of horror crept over him.

"Wait..."

"We can't be together," she said. Bill's legs grew weak and he laughed.

"I know, I'm too good-looking for you. Showers are a daily thing, hon, not an annual thing," he said, forcing his mouth into an unpromising smile. His stomach became a dismal pit of motion and his skin felt loose.

"I came over to tell you I'm leaving you," she said. Bill's face went numb. He blinked several times and then slowly stood, as if he had chores to do, tidying to attend.

"I want to do this easy, okay?" she said then. Bill swallowed and then looked at her, his throat heavy.

"Um," he began, but found he did not have the words.

"I'm so sorry, Bill," she said, finally looking at him. This caused her to give a slight wince of recognition. She was hurting him.

"Well, no," he said then. Both of them gauged one another.

"Just no," he repeated, "How about that? You don't get to leave me. Fuck off." Amy's brow moved in contention as the first tear began.

"Bill, don't," she muttered.

" _You_ don't. I waited for you to come back and... and my whole life is turning to shit, and a lot of it because of you and Janine. We settled everything and you went to sleep, and now you're awake, and things are still settled, so I'm... You don't get to leave me like that. That's... it's ridiculous."

"It was a mistake being with you, and I won't keep it going." Bill's mouth upturned a moment. This statement dove through a hole in him that he did not know he had, and descended into an incredible, miserable, hurt place. This was not the first time he had been referred to as a mistake, but this _was_ the first time he felt insulted by it.

"Why would you say that?" he asked, trying to enact an argumentative stance, rather than a desperate one.

"I think you know why. I'm two people, and both of us have to agree, and we haven't. Not in a long time. Bill, I won't be with you. I'm ending our relationship now, before things get worse."

"WORSE?! You've toyed with my head from day one. You gave me obnoxious rules. I think Janine went and hurt someone I know yesterday. I got fucking raped two nights ago. How can it get worse? I'm in a nightmare, and I'm STILL not giving up, so you have to get a hold of yourself and not give up, too. Don't... don't fucking do this to me, Snakes. Come back all the way."

"I don't want you," she said, plain.

"That's shit. Yes, you do."

"No, I don't. I tried to, but you're not what I want. You never were," she said, standing and retrieving her backpack.

"That's not true," he said, weak. Amy unzipped her pack and withdrew a kind of wreath made of dry, dark materials. She set it down on the chair she had vacated.

"That's for luck. Put it on your door. Don't call me or try to visit me. It's over," she said coldly, walking for the front door.

"What is this? A parting gift, you heartless..." Bill stopped, unsure of what to say, how to arrange his thoughts. He said the first thing that entered his mind.

"Don't leave, there's no sense in it. You're Amy. You make me happy."

"Goodbye, B.S," she said, opening the door.

"None of this is my fault! Just stick around, we'll talk it out," he offered, trying not to sound pleading, though his mannerisms had adopted this emphasis. Amy paused and looked at him, walking slowly backward through the open door. The tears on her face were lit by the afternoon Sun.

"I love you, Snakes," he said. This was true.

"I don't care," she replied, walking out. Bill moved to the door and looked into the yard, to follow her, trying to think of what he could say, what he could do, anything to avoid the awful heartbreak that had begun to damage him. He could find no trace of her, and felt in his blood that she was no longer near. Somehow, she had left his neighborhood in an instant. Bill's hand reached for the doorframe to steady himself. He had waited for her to wake, dealt with so much trouble, had things inflicted on him no one deserved, and now this? She had left him?

In the yard, turning and quietly scouting all directions in hopes of seeing what he knew he would not, Amy, somewhere, Bill's apprehension flooded with confusion, which overwhelmed him. He thought for a moment to feel the world's rotation. A horn from a truck a ways down Bessinger seemed as if it had come from within his own head. Dizzy, the man slowed his life and allowed his breath to catch. Amy was gone. To the sounds of occasional cars and the druzz of bees from the weedflowers at the yard's edge, he sat down in the warm grass, weakly present and with an unsteadiness in his chest. There was no good about him.

The Summer afternoon lilted, its breezes and fragrance settling across Bill Sherman's slumped back and shoulders in the yard, warming his hair and living on in spite of him. His breathing slowed and, sitting with his legs crossed, he propped his elbows against his thighs, hands against his face, and quietly consented to hate himself and all women.

### Chapter Thirty

Thinking over her manner of approach, how she would confront and berate him once inside, Diana waited within the brush near his study, watching him. Henry tooled innocently with his replicas, examining the intricate molds and axles of the small, electric trains. How she had ever cared for this man was a mystery; he was so boring and predictable. His oh-so-important circle of friends and faculty would soon know, however, that behind Henry's academic facade was a selfish and egoistical man, as well as a plotting betrayer of those for which he supposedly cared. That he had taken advantage of her when she had been vulnerable was his mistake, and one he would pay for, soon enough. Diana stepped onto the porch of the house and turned the doorknob, designing to expose him in his study, his unaware musing and tinkering having lifted him into a dreamlike relaxation. She was interrupted, however. The sound of a cleared throat and a grunt issued behind her. She turned to discover Henry's smiling, horrible wife, having finally caught her, arms then raising the shovel with which Diana was to be struck.

-from _Meet Me After Class_ , Molly Silver

Over the hours, his weariness from having been deserted culminated into a wild sense of activity. He was morose and upset, yet had begun to fidget. That he had at first felt slow, and had moved in this fashion about the house, neatening the locations of small objects and taking his time in cleaning out the refrigerator, was expected. He should have remained in this mode for much time. That this abated and he filled with a mania of vitality changed the day near to the weather itself. The clouds had gathered, _Tempest_ from February in Lansington's _Special Clouds_ , and a lowing wind began. Day became twilight and this fell within night, bringing Bill a sense of reaction. His hands quickened and his feet sought to move him much. The night walk was to gather more of what he had failed to grasp during his earlier trek. Amy had broken up with him, and toiling about the house was torture in this state. As with his walk earlier, he embarked with no actual destination. This changed quickly, however.

When Andrea left him, long ago, he had argued in the slight, but the severance was waged and her affections had been nullified. She may have forgotten him before he had even left the clearing. The young Bill had entered the woods then, and made his trying way home, rounding trees and keeping to the thin trail that snaked from the river to the area of town in which he had lived. Toads fattened the air with undulating chords, and at times he heard even bats swish through the boughs, echolocating their own thin trails beside trees, brush, and even Bill, if they swooped him. He was a boy, and had lost a particular treasure, one that had abandoned his interest before leaving, and when her drowning was discovered the following morning, this failed relationship, short as it was, would sting him for some time.

When Amy left him, early in the afternoon, he had argued against, but the termination of their relationship had been sturdy, dense, and whole. She would not forget him so easily, he felt. Bill entered downtown and made his eager way to her apartment, rounding the tall structures and storefronts, keeping his wide path full of intersections and walk signals to the area in which she lived. Trucks roiled the air in engines and moving mass, and at times he heard people from their windows, talking amongst themselves from within homes and passing cars, from the ends of crosswalks, and even beside him if they chose to come so near. He was a man and had been given his own forfeit in a woman's look, with eyes that held him strongly and knew him. If he found her again that night, he hoped this failed relationship, short as it had been, would be renewed and hold him for some time.

The woods were damp from the natural littering of rotten logs and moist soil. Young Bill made his way over the overgrown roots and between the lines of growth along the trail's periphery. The trees crowded in, blocking out much light, and the clouds' vitriol sought to make itself known, as the droplets fell between the boughs into his youthful clothes. He reached a small clearing and sat on a portion of a fallen tree, smoking. After several minutes, the cigarette smoldering near the woodland moss, he stamped his foot on it and twisted, snuffing it out. He was close to leaving the woods and he hoped his loss would also fall behind. He glanced from the trail's end at the small house, the lights emanating from behind the windows, indicating his parents were home and likely waiting. The trouble he faced was greater now that he had arrived home. She had left him abruptly, as if he did not matter to her. Why had he not been good enough?

He stopped for a drink of water in a corner store about to close, paid the cashier in coins and an expressive optimism. The bottle of water opened, Bill drank in sips, walking down a secondary avenue that passed the museum and an ARMY surplus store. People passed him on the bench as he sipped the water. When finished with this small pause for reflection and from the ache in his calves, he stood and dropped the empty bottle in a public trashcan. Bill reached the building and looked up at the second story window. The apartment was lit from within, and he felt a pang of shame in coming here. Bill made for the front door and entered. A sigh caused him pause before his resolve sent him into the trouble he knew was coming. Her explanation had been frivolous and unfair. What about him made him a mistake?

He would level with her. Amy knew his feelings for her were sturdy, and had not wavered in the time he had known her. Even when angry, when petty, when he had taken Janine to the calendarium instead of Amy, he had still held her in his heart with much authority. There was no negative to being loved, Bill thought, even if you did not want it. He had thought love to be a chemical affair, a strange and uncohesive bout of dopamine and other forms of physiological stricture, but now felt there to be more. Perhaps this chemical resolve _was_ the actual nature of his care, and there was certainly desire to be had in this way, but Bill believed there was more now. A cautious longing had developed, nonsexual in scope, not marital or even in view of bonding, but a surreal and overwhelming sense of thoughtfulness. Want was not enough for Bill to approach her, nor was adoration or physical demand. He had abjured these as causes of his trek to meet her. These were pauper emotions when compared to the volatility of what he felt. The only word he knew for this was love, and while he had not believed in such a thing in the past, he had no other route for explaining his newfound fervor. He thought he and Amy ought not separate, and chemicals aside, he thought it with wildness and heart.

Bill did not knock, for this was ineffectual to him. What he sought was resolution, and in rummaging for this, he thought it best to be resolved. Men, under duress, held their physicality as indicative of their thought, and at times, the state of a man's body was an indicator of his interior. The body and soul were not so inseparable, and were by most standards but a singular system of restraint, psychic acuity, and physical consciousness, and when either were tainted in upset, the other responded. Bill's body, because it was his duressed mind, turned the knob of the door and walked in without asking.

The apartment was near empty, most of the belongings that had been present on his last visit, the night previous, were now gone. The girls had been busy and seemed on the verge of moving out. How drear Bill felt discovering this. Not only had Amy left him, but she was leaving the apartment, as well. Where were the girls going? Another town? Another place? Would there be another Bill, one they hoped would not fail them as it now seemed he had? He noticed the woman he did not want to see among the moving boxes, smiling. Janine looked up at him from her perch, squatting beside a box of evenly stacked dishes. A slight drift of cold air from the open window chilled his neck and face for a moment.

"There he is," she said, pleased.

"Where is she?" Bill asked. There was a potency in his mind that believed it was visible in his tone and mannerisms. This may have been asinine, for he appeared as he always had to her.

"I thought you would have been here sooner. Guy-guns blazing. You're not much of a man, are you, Bill?" He noted the boxes, some in stacks, and that most of the articles of the living room and kitchen were either packed, or in small, neat heaps for eventual sorting. He looked toward Amy's bedroom. That door was closed.

"I don't know what you told her, but I'm setting it straight," he said.

"She's not in there," Janine replied, mild. Bill found himself surprised by the attire Janine wore. In his last visit, one that had exposed his anger in a tepid but punctual manner, she had been entirely nude. Now, she was wearing somewhat usual clothes, which was unlike her. Bill had always noted that Janine dressed herself in clothing one might consider sexy. Seeing her in loose, black sweats and an oversized t-shirt, a bandana keeping her hair back, was foreign to him. Caught by this, he thought for a moment she was more attractive in this way, more usual. Bill shook these thoughts loose, however, and returned to his task.

"Where is she?"

"Out."

"Listen, I love that girl. And I'm not letting you jerk her out from under me," he said. The anger in him had risen. Perhaps he was a fool, thinking of his current mindset and actions as possessing a certain chivalry, though perhaps he was apt in believing this. Janine seemed to hold his stance and aggravation quite dear, for she smiled and stood, looking him over.

"Practice looking confident in the mirror? You should, it would help," she baited.

"Go to hell. Where is she?" he repeated.

"Atta boy. Swearing counts. How stupidly male."

"I'm not putting up with you." Bill's adrenalin had begun to steer his thoughts and his heart rate reached 115 beats to the minute, which was firmly beyond the established threshold at which human beings ceased listening to one another.

"You know, I could really go for a nice, old-fashioned hate fuck. Last chance," she said, holding her arms out and adopting an innocent pose.

"You're repulsive, and you know nothing about men," he said, repelled.

"Oh, I do, Bill. That's the thing. You're the one that doesn't know much about men. And it's been a great help to me that you happen to be such a stupid one."

"Save it. When's she coming back?" he asked. Bill was attempting supremacy and force in tone. He did not want to deal with Janine further. She was a treacherous, horrible person, and thought only of herself. That Amy and Janine had been so close in mind was baffling to Bill. Yes, they both possessed differing kinds of wit, and were both up to something always, but one was vain and arrogant, and the other was thoughtful and caring.

"You screwed up, getting immune to me. That was troublesome. You went from being ninety percent dick to around ten percent dick. Ask anyone, pleasing ten percent of a man is pointless. But... that turned out to be a great thing. If you hadn't moved away from me, my sweet sister wouldn't have decided to ditch you."

"That's not gonna happen," he said.

"Already did. You're very slow, Bill. Of course, if it hadn't happened, well, that would mean I'd need to solve this problem, myself, like an alpha."

"You're the lower half, remember? Keep that word in mind: Lower," he said, wanting to put her in her place, but knowing that his knowledge of this place was flawed. While he thought he understood the relationship Amy and Janine had with one another, he did not yet understand how they had begun to disagree with one another over him. Bill had caused much rifting between the three of them, by the simple act of existing and liking someone.

"Higher and lower, blah blah blah. That's more of a human thought, Bill. My sister and I are more here-and-there."

"Thinking isn't a strength of yours. You just slither around with your legs spread. Low is all you got," he replied.

"Not if Amy didn't wake up. Do you have any idea how hard it was to knock her up? It took planning, Bill. Lots of planning. Of course she'd eat it, and she'd sleep; that's how it works."

"You... you staged that?" Bill asked, incredulous. Janine winked. An electrical arc bridged his temples and his hands balled into fists. He wanted to shove her, denigrate her, keep her low and punished until Amy returned. Amy would take over from there, she would see Janine for what the bitch was.

"But, big sis woke up early and came to her senses. And we get to leave, now. Which is really the best thing. So, thank you, little gnat," she said, waving him off with her hand and looking down at the box of dishes. She squatted beside them and reached her hand in, nudging things about before retrieving several plates in a stack nearby, setting them in the box atop others.

"You're out of your mind. You've been sabotaging Amy and I from the start," Bill said, exasperated. Janine giggled a moment in a false way and then nibbled her lip, pleased with herself, but more for his reaction to what she had explained.

"She trusted you. Why did this have to happen? That pregnancy fucked everything up, and you did it out of jealousy. You don't deserve to be near her," Bill said then.

"Jealousy? No, Bill. Nature. It's what I do. I've been what I am for a very long time. You know how a relationship works: Someone has to change, and if it's not the woman, it's the man. And since you're incapable of the kind of change we truly need, you're history."

"That's for Amy to decide, not you. Staging that pregnancy was nothing but sick meddling. You're worthless," he countered.

"Oh Bill, but a sleeping alpha is so much easier to snuff out. You can just... stop her heart in any number of ways. Good thing it didn't come to that," she bragged. Bill was shocked, imagining a scene in which Janine poisoned Amy. Was she that mad inside? Had she really thought to end Amy's life, or was this another sick ruse on her part to get a rise out of him? Bill stood still, watching this woman near her box of plates. She was so slight, so immature, a wicked, spoiled little girl. How could she be so arrogant and sinister as to do what she said she was planning?

"That's pathetic. You know you'd starve without her. You said so yourself," Bill answered, trying to hold calm, play the argument fair.

"You just don't know anything about nature, do you? Maybe that's why you're so weak."

"You're embarrassing yourself," he said.

"When you kill the alpha, you're the alpha." Janine closed her eyes then and breathed, as if imagining this feat of murder with much zeal.

"It's true for us," she kept on, "it's true for lions, it's true for gods, and it's true for men. You come in quick, you sever the head, and then you're the head. The alpha. A lonely one, Bill, but an alpha. There's nothing in this world you can have that you don't first have to take from someone else. It's a shame you've never figured that out. You might be more successful," she said. Bill watched her, a substantial worry crossing his face and filling the room. She could smell his repulsion. Janine stared at him then, her head cocked to the side, as if waiting for whatever response he could muster, having concluded that his response would no doubt be enjoyable, laughable.

"That doesn't even make sense. You wouldn't do that."

"No, I _didn't_ do that. And I think it's time for you to go."

"I'm not leaving until Amy knows about this. You don't scare me," he said.

"Of course I do. Your nerves are like a wildfire, Bill. Your spine's going all crazy. I know all about it; can smell it from here, even with _this_ boring thing," she said, indicating her nose, "Oh and hey, didn't you say something last night about throwing me out the window?"

"Amy won't sta—" his voice was cut short by the immense force colliding with his chest. His feet were wrenched upward and he caught only the barest glance at the curving mass of black that had struck him from across the room. The ceiling shot past and there was a snap from his wrist's cast as it struck the window frame. His arms swung back and his legs kicked as he entered the cold air of night. The light of the apartment spun left, away from his short grunt of confusion, outside, lost within air as he shot away from the second story window. His senses flashed on a surge of panic as he caught sight of the sidewalk below.

### Chapter Thirty-One

Had there been contact, Colina and Donnan might have better understood that their hearts drank from one another. While he swam the lengths of the pool, enforcing regiment on himself with vigor and trying to keep her from his mind, Colina was sick with regret for how she had treated him. She tried to contact him often, and would in time accept that he was no longer to be a portion of her days and nights, but this period of acceptance would not come soon, and so it was that she called and sent him letters, though these things were unacknowledged, and possibly never received. For Donnan, however, the injury of losing her was just as strong. His family was pleased with him and, could he stop missing her so, life on the estate would continue in a smooth and strideful manner. This life had been set before him, asking only that he forget Colina, that he cease his dalliance with the woman his family had learned to despise. This grand life of wealth and station waited only for him to adopt it. Colina was gone, and he had done as he was charged, but no rank or excess could fill him. The Summer bore on, Colina weeping in the uncertain moments, and Donnan breathing hard, swimming forward, lap after lap, his mind in a turmoil of heart-sick misery.

-from _The Man from Dunmore_ , Beth Fionnaghal

When two people held a rope at each of its ends and tugged to unfoot the other, there was little to control the arising of a victor than strength and balance. A creature with a head at both ends felt this tug-of-war in an entirely different manner. The strength of one would always overpower the other, but if the balance of the stronger could be assuaged, the weaker of these heads, while being unable to collect more of the body between them, could still pull the stronger to her side. Janine despised humanity, and sought to drag Amy away from it, from the flawed souls of men and the intrinsic faults in mortal life. Man's world was a place where a temptress was treated to slander and loathing, after being loved shortly and with potency, of course. Amy had lost the tug-of-war between them because she had never known it was taking place.

The construction-paper hearts had usurped her thoughts. Packing boxes of her clothing and general materials, emptying her bedroom of belongings, she felt the pang of the valentine she had made him, coming across the defected hearts. These were in a small bag she had brought home from the diner after making his valentine, months ago. They were oblong, warped, cut badly, and so had not been used in the chain of hearts that made up her craft for him. She had not been able to throw them away, however, as they held a certain value to her. Discovering these rejected hearts while emptying her bedroom had stopped her in a bout of regret and sorrow. He had been so hurt when she left him. He had even pleaded in a wholly weakened way. Amy hated herself for having caused this, but leaving him was necessary. Janine would not get along in the land of men, and this meant that Amy could not stay.

Giving up their true form had been a long process of being absorbed by the world, and retrieving this form, shedding their humanity, would take longer for Amy than it would for Janine. Janine had never fully adjusted, had found her body to be adept, and centered in it, ignoring that she would need a greater mind to truly import herself in the world of people. Amy had come so far, had traveled away from herself for so long that she felt there was no entire return for her. Humanity had scored her in flaws and emotions, and she could not shut them off. The alpha had been turned against itself, and her sinister nature had suffered. Retrieving poison and murder from her heart would be a trial she did not want to think about, and would require a length of time she could not fathom. Janine would help in this, as was her role, but Amy knew that leaving Bill and the world was, in effect, leaving what she had become, and returning to a creaturely existence that her new self had learned to hold in shame.

Somehow, he knew her. Though her shape was kind to his sort of eyes, and her recurrent synopses of his life and doings had been crass at times, he had concluded her of much worth to him, beyond these aspects, beyond the womanly design she wore. Bill understood her, implausible as this was, and he had accepted her. She had put this man through much, and Janine had wrung out his patience like a dishrag, and still he wanted Amy. For once, a man had not told her she looked beautiful as she had wanted at the start, but had made her feel as if she was, and in a potent fashion deeper than flesh. The crime was not that he had made her feel like a woman, or that Janine had made him feel, in the basest sense, like a man. The crime was that Amy had caused Bill to feel loved. With her leaving, this was, above all else, the terrible thing, and the one consequence of their relationship that she regretted most.

Janine entered the room and began helping her pack, carefully rummaging things aside to reach at heavier objects, those that would need to be set in boxes first, at the base. There was a quiet moment when she stopped this activity and hugged Amy, holding her firmly and with care. This moment's end came when Amy's cell phone rang. Janine was startled.

"I thought you turned that thing off," she said, agitated. Amy approached her nightstand and saw his name on the phone's display. She had asked him not to contact her, but he had persisted throughout the day. Was there any more proof of man's need? To press where he had been repelled? She wanted to answer and thought about this briefly, a pang in her mind that cared deeply to hear him again, even if he was to failingly plead with her, or even berate her. Amy sighed and left the phone idle, as she had done several times now, returning to her job of packing boxes. Janine went to the nightstand and glanced at the phone, then grunted.

"That's their problem. They like faith over certainty. They eat it up. I'm taking this," she said, leaving the room with the phone. Amy was in a state of sorrow from these calls, but kept to herself as it picked at her mind. She let Janine take the phone away, saying nothing, trying to focus on the packing that more and more gathered her away from him.

There was only so much Eve one could hold dear, before inevitably seeking out in her nature something more serpentine. Ignoring tales of apples and gardens, the serpent and the woman were of indistinct heritage, both having risen on the Earth as beings that altered direction much, and were in constant threat by man. The one he loved, and the other he loathed. Both had felt his bootheels over time, both had been worshipped by him, but only one loved him. The woman. It was the snake that hid from him while the woman remained. It was the snake that bit him where the woman could only touch. The serpent coiled and darted and slithered and hid, it discovered prey and shot at it with a stored, sudden velocity. The woman was as man, coiled internally, darting with her thoughts and above slithering in all ways. The woman did not hide, cared little for prey, and shot at herself for meaning, rather than into the world's materials.

Amy felt the hollow in her abdomen and the lack of the child that had occupied it. This gift had been a higher conception and was aching proof of Bill's fortitude for her. That having the daughter meant a fatal sacrifice was the child's end, but even this dire outcome did not frighten Amy. She now found herself musing on Bill as a father, a man with a little girl like Amy. He would have been a good father, she thought, but a father that would face the same predicament as his brother, being without a mother for his young. Amy felt her stomach then, lost in thought. The short span of their pregnancy had been as if a horrible, wonderful dream. She was pleased that the dilemma had been slaked, that she and Janine, and even Bill, had risen to the inevitable responsibility of ceasing the problem with so little qualm. Bill had done so unknowingly, which was cruel of her to allow, but when he discovered the nature of their having eaten their young, he had handled it. Bill had committed after something that could have caused him run from her endlessly. He had stayed in want of her. The pregnancy was over, but she did find herself wishing she could have remained with his child longer.

Amy had fallen into a great conundrum of being both serpent and woman, but the more troublesome puzzle was that she felt to be neither of these. She coiled and bit, she slithered and hid, but was as man, above slithering, seeking herself within, needing meaning above beauty, and in all ways capable of love. Her Eve was ugly for a man, her serpent was the truth, her Eve was flawed and trespassed where no snake would venture, but her serpent killed those with such faults, and who arrived too near its hidden abode. Bill was no Adam. Bill was a wondrous, caring creature that wanted her in whatever means she came to him. Bill thought of her even more than Janine did, and with more height. Amy wanted to leave the apartment, find him and explain herself, settle her mind to him and be, in some manner, even with anger, forgiven.

There was a scuffling sound behind her and she noted Janine peek her large, serpent's head into the bedroom, licking the air quietly. Amy stood and went to her, petting the head and holding the chin gently, motherly.

"Don't worry, sweetie. I just need a little more time," she said, doubting this even as she spoke the words.

***

The cell phone was returned to the desk with a mild fling and he tried to rub some of the strain from his face. The casting had taken hours, and while this was discomforting, he had managed under this duress to make several calls. He was worried about her. Now that he fully understood Janine's motives, and that she had been willing to kill to get what she wanted, Bill felt a surge of protectiveness, and heeded his impulse to warn Amy, to make certain she knew what Janine had planned and was capable of. The pregnancy, the sleep, these were turns of Janine's quiet hand, and Bill's injuries, his broken leg and taped ribs, his newly re-broken wrist, torn stitches, and severely skinned left forearm were results of Janine's not-so-quiet hand. He had to let Amy know what had transpired, that Janine was not to be trusted, even by her own sister.

The phone taunted him and he thought to take greater action, to return and hope the women had not yet vacated the apartment. He was frightened. He knew now what Janine could do, and having thrown him from the second story window of the apartment building, it was possible she had thought to kill him. There had to be a way to reach Amy without Janine interfering, but trying to uncover such a way only labored Bill's mind. The two women were one, they were tied. If he returned to the apartment and Amy was not there, if he encountered the malefic Janine again... he might never reach Amy. Bill groaned and leaned back in his chair. He would wait and continue calling.

The crutches made it difficult to maneuver in the kitchen, but he made his awkward way around the table and down the hallway toward the restroom. Using his left wrist was painful, and so he needed use the right hand to open the door, but it was this side of him that was most broken. He was furious over his injuries, over what Janine had done. More and more, he was surmising she had planned on hurting or killing him from the beginning. All the pillow talk, all the sexuality, was a blind. She operated by casting diversions of a deeper mode, a subterfuge. Captivation and coercion were Janine's specialties. What he wanted to do to her was violent and beyond simple grudge.

"You ready to tell me what happened, or are you still a prick?" Roger asked behind him as Bill tried to enter the restroom. Bill slowly turned himself about, pivoting one crutch, and then the other, until he faced his older brother. When Roger had seen Bill getting out of the cab with crutches, returning from the hospital, he had rushed out full of questions. Bill's anger and sense of humiliation, however, had caused the younger brother to push Roger back with curt phrases. He had left his older brother without explanation to stew in the garage, alone.

"I misjudged something," he said. Keeping things from his brother had begun to feel terrible.

"I don't know what's going on, little brother, but if someone did this to you, I'll take him apart. What happened?"

"No one did this," Bill lied, "It was stairs. I was at the top and misjudged the first step. Rolled all the way down."

"What? Where?"

"The Sticks. I drank too much."

"Those concrete steps out front?"

"Those are the ones," Bill said, feeling guilty at lying to his brother. There was a point of pride in him that caused him to keep the truth from his brother, regarding the injuries. Roger did not know about the odd turns Bill's relationship had undergone, not the pregnancy, not the sleep, not the true nature of Janine, not even that Amy had left him.

"Jesus man, lucky you're not dead. That's gotta be, what, twenty steps?"

"I didn't count them. Listen, what's going on with you and the former Mrs. Sherman?" Bill asked then.

"What do you mean?"

"She stayed over the other night. I know she did." Roger frowned and looked past Bill, in thought. He gathered himself quickly.

"Yes. She did. And there's nothing going on there," he said.

"Staying the night is something."

"Bill, I hate dating. Don't you get that?"

"Yeah, but there are bad repercussions to sleeping with Karen, man. Really bad ones."

"No, there aren't. We're done. We talked about what happened and we know it's better to keep our distance. There's too much shit we don't like about each other. Yeah, we had some fun the other night, but that was it. She's not coming back to the house. Even she thinks that's the best idea, and we don't want to confuse the kids."

"Oh, well, that's good. It'd be a big mistake bringing her in close like that."

"I'm well aware of it. And for future reference, stay out of my business."

"No."

"Yeah, well, you're all banged up. I'm not going to argue with you," Roger said, annoyed.

"I appreciate it. Uh, I didn't want any attention about it but you should know Amy and I broke up. She uh, she left me. That's why I was drunk last night." This was in part true, and in part false. It was true enough for Roger to hear. The older brother looked at Bill's cast and wrist brace, examined the angle of the crutch-tips on the carpet.

"I guess we've both been tossed aside this year. Fuck speed dating, right?"

"I could agree with that outlook."

"Ah man, that's awful news. I really thought she liked you. And while I don't pretend to know what the deal is with that other girl, she seemed to like you, too."

"That's what I thought. Women, right?"

"Pff. Seems to me that if you're gonna date two women, you need to be twice the man. But even one woman can turn someone like us into like, half a man."

"That seems about right."

"So I guess that means two of them can make you a quarter man."

"Hell, I never thought of it that way. I think you're right. I feel like exactly a quarter of a man."

"You'll bolster up. There are literally billions of other women out there, and you've dated two of them this year. There are others, for sure. We've just learned our lesson about where not to meet them," Roger said.

"I don't want to meet a billion women, Roj. I only want one woman."

"I hear that," Roger replied, turning his attention to the leg cast, "That sucks, man. That really does. Stays on for six weeks?"

"Eight."

"Oh, it's changed since we were kids. Well, let me know if you need anything. We're brothers, right?"

"Sure."

"Jesus, that's a lot of stairs," Roger said then, shaking his head, imagining.

"Yeah, I've had better nights," Bill said, lifting one of his crutches for emphasis.

"Hey, at least your body and mind match up, right?"

"I guess they do correlate right now. Huh."

"You know, I feel bad saying this, Bill, but I've actually been having a great week."

"Oh yeah? Tell me about it. I'll experience your good week vicariously." Roger paused for a moment, looking pleased with himself.

"Okay, the thing is, I was let off my leash at work. The regional manager was fired, the one that's been riding me, and the new one is all about giving me what I need to stay solid."

"No shit?"

"Nope. My job is fine," Roger said, a slight grin crossing his face. Bill crutched his way over and pat his brother on the shoulder.

"You kick audio/video ass," Bill said.

"And satellite ass, come October," Roger replied, making for the kitchen.

"Wait, hold on," Bill stated then, wobbling atop his crutches. Roger looked back at him, waiting. Bill was embarrassed and annoyed, but came out with it.

"Man, I think I need help with something."

"Sure thing."

"You know, uh, with the bathroom."

"Oh."

***

He set the phone down again, angry. There had to be a way of reaching her. Perhaps he could go to the apartment and take cover across the street, wait for Amy to be alone, or leave the building by herself, and then he could approach and talk to her. A portion of him thought that it might be best to talk to Roger, get him to go along, help out. There were the police, as well. Bill had chosen not to inform the police of his assault the previous night, as he doubted they would see his point of view. Janine would only deny what happened, and there were no witnesses that he had been flung from the open apartment window on the second floor. Bill had called the hospital from a payphone a quarter block away from the apartment, a payphone at the bottom of the steps at The Sticks pub. He also worried that including Roger or the police would only push Amy further from him, would cause her to mistake his resolve for simply trying to remove Janine and win Amy back, in a fashion not unlike a coup. Bill was not so petty as to hold this as his prime motive. He wanted Amy safe, and after this, if plausible, he would also want her with him.

"Uncle Bill?" Nick asked, entering the garage. Bill craned his head around.

"Hey there, Nick," he said, surprised at the act of Nick speaking. The young man did not do this often. Bill had noticed that Nick was beginning to fill out and his face had altered of late, merging into what would be its adult form. During his adolescence, he had looked somewhat like Karen's side of the family, but more and more, Nick had begun to resemble his father.

"Dad says you do art," he said, holding an illustration pad under his arm.

"Some days. You didn't know that?"

"No, I mean he says you can draw," Nick rephrased.

"Oh, a little. What ya got?" the uncle replied.

"I have an art class for 6th period, and it sucks. But so we have this assignment and she doesn't like how I draw, so she wants me to draw hands all day, which is lame. Anyway, so you do art and I was wondering if maybe you could show me how to draw hands."

"The 'she' in this instance being your teacher?"

"Yeah. She comes up with our mid-term projects, and mine is I have to draw twenty-five hands. Nothing else."

"Hands, huh? They can be tough. She say what style?"

"I don't...no. What?"

"Just let me see what you got." Nick hunched down beside Bill at the desk and opened the pad. Bill's braced wrist held the pad aloft while his other hand turned the pages. Nick's drawings were quite bad.

"These are good," the uncle said then, smiling.

"Yeah, I know. But I can't do people's hands. See?" he said, stopping Bill five pages in and pointing to the figure of a woman. Though she was clothed, the breasts were enormous and were not closely symmetric.

"Jesus," Bill said.

"That's what I'm saying, I can't draw hands, so I just, you know, draw the arms and then, just squiggles for hands."

"They sort of look like jagged mittens," Bill mused, reaching over and retrieving one of his pens from a small upright canister. He set his hand down and began drawing beside the busty, crude woman, explaining the nature of thumbs, how to hide fingers behind others, the correct shape of nails, where the knuckles generally went, and even how to simplify when drawing from the side.

"There's only three fingers," Nick said, doubtful of the first drawing Bill made.

"Well yeah, it's a cartoon sort of hand. Putting all the fingers in when you do something like this looks off, so most people just give three fingers and the thumb. Next time you're watching a cartoon, check it out. You'll see the three fingers thing in action," the uncle explained. Nick took the pad and tried to outline what Bill had done. This was of little improvement to the squiggles he had drawn previous, but there was something slightly better about it. The young man had the ball of the hand in good proportion this time, at least, and seemed to be thinking about the thumb's angle.

"This looks stupid," Nick finally said.

"It won't if you do it a few more times. That's the deal with any art, man. The more you do it, the less stupid it comes out, and the more you keep wanting to do it." Nick took this into account and then looked at his uncle quizzically.

"Hey uh, dad said you have two girlfriends," he came out with. Bill was dismayed to be reminded of this dilemma just then, and wanted to pick up his phone to try calling Amy again.

"Not anymore," he admitted.

"Is it okay to have two different girlfriends?" the young man asked. Bill thought this over, unsure of how to respond. He concluded something for himself, and decided to utter it aloud for Nick.

"No, man. It's not okay to be with two women. People might tell you otherwise, maybe even women, but take my advice, it's not okay enough to go through with it. Not because of taboo, or ethics, or whatever else, but because the kind of woman that will actually love you, that will want to stay with you, is not the kind of woman that likes to share. Two women are around one-and-a-half women too much. You do know how psychotic they are, right?" Nick closed his drawing pad then.

"Everyone knows that," he said.

"Good for you. I don't think I figured that out until this year," Bill said. Nick left the garage then, not even bothering to thank his uncle for the drawing or the advice on women. It was probable that the former had been overshadowed by the latter, however, which may have annoyed Nick to the point of forgetting the favor done.

"You're welcome," the uncle called after.

Bill thought about Christian and his enjoyment of the camera. The boy ran about taking pictures of just about anything, but focusing on certain forms and angles that he seemed prone to admiring. He had already dumped over a hundred images on Bill's hard drive, and those were just the ones Christian had decided to keep. Nick's drawing pad showed something of differing skill. Nick did not seem overtly talented from what Bill had discerned, while his younger brother Christian did. This was similar to the earlier predicament Bill and Roger had faced when children. Roger had played guitar for several years, and had been both diligent and atrocious. Bill picked up a camera and a pen and began making things that impressed Roger. Thinking of himself and Roger in this way, and of Nick and Christian, Bill began to reach a clear conclusion. Roger had not wanted to play the guitar as much as he had wanted to be a guitar player. Nick did not want to draw as much as he wanted to graduate and be rid of high school.

Bill was pleased to be creative, in a variety of means, even in the simple act of making things from nothing, and Christian seemed to be of this mode, as well. The senselessness of recent events washed over for a moment and Bill saw something amid the ruins, something he could examine clearly, for once. This was a thing that brought him happiness, and that he had somehow buried. Now, in a clear moment of circumspection, it seemed obvious that Bill needed to get to work, and soon. Calendars had failed him only so much as images failed Christian, or hands failed Nick, or badly mashed chords failed Roger's clumsy, childhood fingers. The setback was a thing you simply got around somehow, if you were to continue, if you were the sort to need or love it. The setback was a part of creating, regardless of skill, whether it was parenting, a rejected calendar, a blurry photograph, or even falling in love.

### Chapter Thirty-Two

"But how will I know you? In the mornings I am watched, and all contact is guided or overseen. You could not come to me then. Afternoon is study and evening belongs to my father. If you mean to visit me in the latest hours, you must understand they will not run you off if you are caught... they will beat you near to death. Mr. Crane patrols the grounds, and I have seen him with his dogs. He is not a compassionate man."

"Then I will come to you in town. You will know me by my greeting, which will be to excuse myself for not watching my step. Tomorrow, you will come across a burned man, bandaged. I will be him. The day after, a beggar. I will be near you always, and you will not need to look far in finding me. When you are alone, for even a moment, you will not be alone. I will be there."

"They'll catch you and beat you, as certain as they did the barrister's boy who kissed Gretchen."

"Then they'll catch a different man to the day, each loving you more than the man they beat previous."

-From _The Courier of the Mask_ , Kirsten Rickerby

Perhaps his brother was correct, and that two women with one man inferred the need for a man of twice the usual stock. There were many reasons that Janine may have despised him so, and this could have been one of them. His manliness or lack thereof was questionable to him, and while he had never held much regard for notions of machismo and bravado, it was plausible much of the world did, even if this was not spoken often. The modern psyche of men still kept dear to these notions, but had altered their facades and given intricacy to their detailing. It was not to overwhelm the world with one's self, but to succeed within the world on a level that called a certain societal respect into being. Culture had long been obsessed with myth, and in later days, fame as myth, and culture had always been obsessed with power, and in latest days, rumor of power by something even as simple as the power of rumor. Spin and propaganda had evolved, talk had grown wings, and even the notion of love, ancient as it was, could turn and topple to mean whatever was needed. A man hospitalizing another man could be called love if you set the right music to it.

He had not wanted to talk to Todd, but while looking up historical tales of the amphisbaena, the chat window lifted into view and Todd had sent a message. Bill wondered if he was to read this or simply delete the program entirely, as he had planned to do but forgotten. There on the screen was the man's small message. One that was childishly phrased, badly spelled and rife with typographical error, and for all usual purposes, could have been ignored. The message, however, held meaning to Bill.

"i apiologize to you man" Bill breathed through his nostrils then, debating, and slowly rested his hands on the keyboard.

"You okay?" he typed, waiting.

"not realy. you talk to thedutch?"

"He called me, yes."

"how did htis happen?"

"I don't know, Todd. You stole from me. After that, I know nothing, really. The Dutch said you drove off the road while avoiding someone."

"her. you know who i maen"

"I accept your apology, Todd. And I should apologize to you, too. Accept mine."

"i could hav been killed."

"I didn't cause any of this. I'm appalled by it."

"oh whaterver. i guess i accept"

"Then we're clear. Just don't talk to me again," Bill typed. He then prepared to log out of the program and leave the conversation. He had said all he wished to say.

"getrid of that bitch and dont talk to me either," came the response. Bill closed the chat box and exited the program. A minute later, after navigating several menus, the chat program was deleted and no longer existed on his machine, just as Todd would no longer exist in his life. The Dutch was right, there was nothing Todd provided that warranted knowing him, not even pity. Bill looked at his crutches, examining the base of each, and sighed. It seemed Janine had injured more than one man in the previous days.

It was a long walk on those small, rubber nubs to Amy's apartment, and would take hours. He needed to start soon. After a clumsy fetching of a glass from the kitchen cupboard and drinking a good amount of cool water, he left the house and began on his long trek to reach Amy. There was a part of him that thought this was akin to a hero's quest, the man traveling great distances and under constant curses, beleaguered in mischief and woe, an odyssey, but Bill did not feel much like a heroic person. In truth, he felt more parasitic, a lesser man that would not give up, even when he should, even when it was obvious he was alone in his endeavor. He did not expect Amy or Janine to be there, however, and so he was likely playing a fool's role. It seemed, at the rate Janine had been packing the apartment, that they would be easily gone by the time he arrived, and so Bill crutched over the concrete toward town, certain he would find only vacancy when he arrived. His reasoning for not taking a bus or taxi was due to this. His walk was a slow punctuation of his failure. A brief exodus of closure. He needed it to feel correct, to think, to relieve himself of the girls and what had transpired with them. This was a sad period at the end of the sentence, and Bill knew it. He had decided to take his time, and settle his thoughts with a short span of crutch-awkward movement.

Had Amy been a woman of this world? She had found him as if at random, during an event designed for those consumed by tasks and with little time or patience, and her intrigue for him had been swift. Bill felt that she was someone amazing, and had thought this since first speaking with her during their bizarre, introspective, three-minute date. She had stolen his drink and moved on, then returned per schedule, but somehow liked him. He could not explain this any more than he could explain why he had been so drawn to her. Her beauty was a partial attractor, but her strange insults and incessant teasing had been as ignitions in his mind, and he wanted her near to the moment she first pissed him off. She had been cold and sweet to him, fun, she understood him, and at times caused him to feel immersed in a particular sort of hysteria that regarded but the two of them. She had been a woman of this world, but contained another within her, and had not allowed Bill to visit it but sparsely, during rare moments of vulnerability. He had come to regard knowing her as a certain delicacy.

What of Janine? She had arrived in his life the evening he had met Amy. Her interest in him seemed stout and full of activity, teeming with wants and running over with the urge to pleasure. Just as Bill had never met a woman like Amy, he had neither met a woman like Janine. A crucial difference was that one was very real, a woman that had come to love him, he believed, while the other was as if built from the stock of fantasy. A man could read about Janine in adult magazines and see her in pornographic films. Some might brag to general cohorts about things they had done and would do with a being like Janine. She had brought out a primitive yet vivid man in Bill. He supposed, now that the relationship had dissolved and he had lost them, one long before the other, he was ashamed of that man. Janine was not a woman of this world, but had repeatedly performed for him as a placeholder of lust and fantasy, requiring no other benefit from him, and had served to do nothing for Bill but please him. No true woman would be satisfied to do only this. It was not until Janine's ulterior contrivances became known that Bill had even begun to think of her as real. She was a biological actress, and felt herself above real women and men.

And what of men? Was Todd Lansington a man of this world? As Janine had commented, was he an insect that kept a queen yet foraged elsewhere for private endeavors? Was a man meant to have more than one sort of love, and by his very body's innovation? Yes, by nature's design, he was intended to stray and take up many, yet by civility's design, he could not. It was an ancient man that had been designed, but it was a modern man that had endured. A man of Bill's time was gauged less by nature than he was his culture. He was pressured by expectation to fulfill his civilities, to temper himself, to become gravid with diplomacy and the greater means of his society. He was asked to sacrifice certain of his urges for a grander world, a world that was not solely his own. The true, modern man was a beast that had left his bullies behind, being but their descendant and not their survivor, a beast that could love one as his equal, that could be loved as one's equal. This had taken the small groups of his early life into the broader fellowship of his latest life. Modern man was less constricted than ever, yet on more volatile ground, for he was now somewhat free to break himself, even openly, and no beast or insect had ever held this power.

Bill set his crutches beside him and sat on the curb, not a mile from his home. He was done. Amy was gone, for his benefit or grief, and he could crutch no further in his condition. His wrist had begun to sting from the pressure of holding himself atop the crutches, and his ribs were pained with his faster, increased breathing. He had stranded himself and would require help, likely a taxi. He was done, and knew it was time to go home. As the sweat itched his skin and his breathing slowed, Bill felt for a short moment that he could leave her in this way.

"Do you need help?" he heard to his side. He looked up and saw the older woman standing near him. She was looking at his cast and crutches with a puzzled and empathetic expression.

"Oh, thank you. I'm all right. I just kind of overdid it, is all. Calling a taxi," he said, feigning a smile. The woman stepped forward and bent beside him.

"Let me help you up. There's a bench over there," she said. Bill lifted his arm and the woman slid her own beneath his shoulder, aiding him to his feet and helping him settle on his crutches.

"Thank you," he said, meaning it. She walked with him to the bench and stood near as he sat, making certain he did not fall.

"It's not that bad, I'm okay. Just got winded. I'm uh, sort of hindered," he said with humor, indicating his brace and cast.

"I can see that. Are you going far?"

"No. I went about a mile on these things, now I'm heading back home."

"I can give you a lift. I'm parked up a block," she said.

"That's nice of you, but I can just call a taxi. It's no big deal," Bill replied. The woman then began rummaging for something in her beige purse. Bill had never understood the preference older people had for such light, innocuous colors. Was an old woman in bright yellow and blood red such an avoidable thing? Perhaps, Bill thought, that when someone reached an advanced age, they, themselves felt light and innocuous, and this could manifest in their tastes for things. The woman extracted what she had been looking for, a cell phone.

"Oh, I've got a phone. I'm just going to sit for a little while and then I'll call. Thank you, really. I'm fine," he said, feeling awkward that she was still present. His mind drifting, he fell back on a nervous pastime, and imagined the old woman would one day depart the Earth after accidentally poisoning herself with undercooked chicken.

"Can't you have your wife pick you up?" she asked then, "Cabs are expensive."

"Uh, well I'm not married," he replied, uncomfortable.

"Ah. Yeah, me neither. Never could figure all that out. Divorced three times," she said, offhand, putting the phone back into her purse.

"Three? Wow," he replied, not wanting to sound rude. He was more intrigued than judgmental.

"You know how it is. You meet someone, then you un-meet. At some point, you won't un-meet somebody quick enough, so you get married. Then you can't un-meet. So you throw things at one another until one of you leaves. One left me, I left two."

"Well, you don't seem bad off because of it," he replied.

"Happens to people all the damn time. Romance is shit," she said. Bill smiled at this.

"I uh, actually just had a breakup two days ago," he admitted. It felt good to tell someone for which he had no connection beyond civilized randomnity.

"Oh? Who left who?" she asked.

"She left me," he said. Saying this openly was both upsetting and freeing at once.

"You deserve it?" Bill chuckled at this.

"Hell, I don't know. I fell in love with her and she didn't want that. Well, her friend didn't want that, actually."

"She had an ugly friend that didn't like you," the woman said with mirth.

"Something like that."

"I've had a few ugly friends like that. They're usually right, you know."

"Ah."

"You loved this girl?"

"Very much, and I still do."

"Did she love you?"

"I don't know. It felt that way. But she didn't want me and...the ugly friend did this to me," Bill admitted, waving his hand about his cast and wrist brace.

"Taped ribs, too," he added. The old woman's eyes widened at this.

"Someone _did_ this to you? I figured you took a wrong step in a crosswalk," she said, concerned.

"Yeah, I went to see my girlfriend and she wasn't home, but her friend was and... I sort of ended up falling out a second floor window."

"She pushed you?"

"In her own way."

"What would cause someone to do that? You don't seem so bad," the woman said.

"Thanks. Well, my girlfriend and I had been pregnant, is the thing, and we didn't have the baby, and her friend was... pissed off about a lot of things, but we didn't really know. She... sort of orchestrated the whole thing, the pregnancy, and had very bad things planned."

"How do you orchestrate a woman's pregnancy?" the old woman asked, intrigued and curious. Bill thought this over and came up with an explanation he could relate aloud.

"Uh, the friend put holes in our diaphragm," he said. The older woman blinked, thinking this over.

"You kids these days fight too dirty. Causing someone else to get pregnant... that's just... just _vicious_. I think I'd have punched her lights out," the old woman said then.

"And so my girlfriend left me," Bill said after a moment.

"What did this other girl have to gain from knocking you up?" the old woman asked then, confused.

"It's hard to explain. Said that she knew we wouldn't keep the baby, and when... when we took _care_ of it, she knew my girlfriend would be out of it for awhile. And planned on using that to... well, do something bad. Not to me, even, but to my girlfriend." The old woman nodded slowly, against what seemed to be her puzzlement.

"The uh, ugly friend is kind of big on betrayal, is the thing," Bill said. The woman pursed her lips and then seemed to come out of a light daze. Bill's story was an odd one, certainly.

"We're a little out of my realm, here. Sorry. I'll be on my way. Are you sure you're okay, though? I could get some water from that machine," the old woman said, pointing at the bottled water dispenser across the street, beside the same convenience store Bill had visited several days prior for a few household supplies. That had been but an hour before Amy had left him.

"No, I'm fine. I think I'll just sit here for awhile. Think about things," he said. This was a good idea to him. She nodded and finally decided to leave. Bill was thankful for the conversation, but did feel awkward speaking about his life with someone he did not know. He imagined most people could benefit from simply telling a stranger about a few past mistakes, every now and then. This had been relieving and he felt clearer than in the hours previous. Perhaps the Catholic priests were on to something with their role in hearing confessions. Bill wondered then if a non-denominational confession system might be of use to society. Therapists played a part in something like this, he supposed.

Bill sat on the bench, lost in thought as the old woman left him there. She turned at one point to look him over again, from a distance. He was broken heartily, and an utter mess. After rounding the corner of a taller building, a tear fell from the old woman's cheek. She had only wanted to see him again, ostensibly to say a final goodbye. What she had encountered was far greater than what she had sought. She understood everything now, what had happened, what needed to happen. The old woman was no more then, and Amy made her way toward her near-empty apartment, furious.

### Chapter Thirty-Three

That the one might turn against the other caused pain. That either now understood the torments they had brought upon themselves only exacerbated the dilemma they now faced. The woman had perhaps dipped them into fantasy, in a house of ghastly portents, and set them to angry arms. Samuel and Joshua were of no capacity to endure her, or else had endured too much, and the one's love had met the other's despisal with great ferocity. With Leanne in the greater hills, the carriage drawing her ever further from Samuel's reach, the two men faced one another in the hall, no longer diplomats, but the incompatible, cutthroat brothers they had always been.

-From _Unhoused in Crosswind_ , Gloria Swinden

She entered the apartment in quiet, noting that the emptiness of this place now exalted her movements with greater sound than in the past. There was nothing left in their domicile but three mid-sized boxes they had saved for last, due to weight. Two were full of books and one contained plates, the same she had been packing when Bill had come over two nights previous. Janine went to one of the book boxes and nudged it with her foot. She did not want to lift it on her own, as arms, she had discovered, were somewhat weak things. She paced a bit, glancing out the window, examining the kitchen, looking over the vacant apartment and wondering just how it was that they had ever come to be in such a stilted, prostrate dwelling. She understood its use, but thought it far too near the dwellings of others, which was unnatural to her.

How simple everything had become. The reverberations of their change into women had been as if ripples on a pool's surface, but growing only in size, allowing them to crash into one another, creating more haggard and roughshod quakes of water. The current beneath this surface was not convoluted, but pure and far more powerful, and that the two girls would be returning to this was magnificent to her. The man was gone, and soon, they would again set about their true nature. They would quiver waiting for men, to have these things, steal them, and before the fatal bite that gave man what he needed most, death, Janine's charms and entrancements would run a bitter, excellent course. Men were of use, but not to themselves. Janine was relieved that Amy had woken to her senses, and that this world of so-called beauty, but a dim contrivance and wholly incomprehensible, was at an end for them.

The scent she discerned then was strong, and she turned about, gauging the air around her. Janine swallowed, hopping in thought, her eyes concentrating in a peripheral, anxious way. The smell had filled the room and was a scent she knew well. The alpha was home, and herself, and the truth. Amy stood in the front doorway as the door slowly opened. Janine smiled with emphasis. Amy had not given off this odor in some time, and it meant she had come full circle, that she was ready to leave, that she had given up the dull charade and was carrying her true form at heart.

"Let's get these boxes out and go," Janine said, pleased. Amy thought a moment, looking at the boxes and tilting her head slightly.

"How did you get me pregnant?" she asked then.

"What?"

"Answer," Amy replied.

"That was you and him, honey. Are you okay?" Janine's gut felt to turn in on itself and her head began to ache. What had happened? Had she encountered that stupid man again? Janine would break him in half if this was the case.

"How long did it take? Charming me. There must have been weeks of it," Amy came out with. Janine resolved herself. There was no sense in avoiding this conversation. They were sisters, and Amy had run aground of late. Janine felt she had saved her sister in many ways.

"You're overestimating me. It took months. You're not easy," the entrancer said. Amy walked into the apartment and shut the door, never taking her eyes off Janine.

"Tell me what you did," she ordered. Janine groaned in annoyance and settled herself.

"I only let you loose for a few minutes. When you and that idiot were here drunk. You did exactly what I thought you would, let him touch you too much... and you enjoyed it. Voila. Pregnant."

"So we'd eat and I'd sleep," Amy said with confidence. Janine debated this statement before speaking.

"Yes."

"Give me your reason," Amy said. Janine was on frightening ground. That Amy had returned to her senses was a wondrous and necessary thing, for Janine had planned on killing her otherwise. Now that she no longer held her sister as a liability, Janine needed to smooth over her actions and create a better truth.

"I hate this place. And I knew if you got pregnant, you'd realize how dumb it is that we've come here. You'd set yourself straight and we could leave. You can't love these people. You can't love at all. Not even me. I just wanted you back to being you. And it worked. I didn't make you leave that man, I only reminded you to. You knew what had to happen, I only helped you realize it," she said. Amy thought this over and shook her head. Janine felt the tension increase in direct proportion to the odor in the air. This was a terrible thing and it frightened her. She adopted a sadder poise and slowed her breathing, glazed her eyes.

"Sweetie, we can go now. It's done. You know me, so none of this should have been a surprise. But it was, and I'm sorry. I just missed you so much and... you're the strength, sis, you're the reality of you and me. Without you, I was so alone. You deserve better than what you thought you were getting. I've always protected you and I always will, just like you'll always protect me. That's how we are. Now come on, be with me, sis. Let me help you carry these boxes," Janine said, approaching Amy with a settled walk. Amy stood still, a perplexed look on her face. She snapped out of it the moment Janine's hand touched her arm. There was a black flash and Janine stumbled backward in a clumsy way, her back colliding with a box of books. She gasped and took Amy in while sitting against the box, horrified.

"You don't have the months for your enchantment to work, idiot. You can't charm me and it's embarrassing that you thought to try. Stand up," Amy said. Janine caught a second odor on the disturbed air of the room, this one terrifying to her. The acrid feel of it almost stung her skin. Amy's poison was flowing again. She detected it as easily as a just-snuffed-out match held an inch from her nose. It was marvelous to know the true Amy again, and it was also alarming. Janine braced herself and frowned, knowing that she would have to answer to Amy, and that all would need be explained. Amy was unfairly situated with her, being the superior of the two in nature. Janine resolved herself and gave a nod, slowly beginning to stand. It was during this rise to her feet that the feet were no more. Amy closed her eyes.

The floor of the apartment was a clean, bristling place, a small world of minuscule things. This sea of fibers reached upwards illogically, into the pressure of the lowest atmosphere. There was a timbre to the way they scratched one another, and then the world above opened. Into this sky, the Moon appeared. The Moon in the blue sky. It shot over, spinning and turning in predictable fashion, looking for its place in a night that had yet to arrive. The sunlight discharged behind the couch then, and the day began to darken. Night had never been known to waste time, and drank from it with vengefulness. So it was that the Moon found itself surrounded in black, a cold and purposeful chill overcoming it. The Moon had once been a part of the sky, but had fallen. Even the very light the Moon now exhibited seemed of grand fodder to the Night's sky, which hunted and ensnared it, dragging it across the black and, after hurting the Moon, shoving it away again. It was not long before the two crashed together with force, away from the world in which they had come to preside over. The Moon struggled, unable to meet the encompassing truth of Night, and slowed. Night held tightly as its rotation stopped and the shuddering began. It was only with luck and a brief allowance of the night that the moon shot free again and raced across the world.

The smaller head careened across the apartment, dragging its body behind like a rope on a flung stone. The amphisbaena writhed over on itself, constricting and coiling with a violence only betrayal could encompass. The smaller head struck the wall hard and the larger head lowered near to the floor. As the coils rippled, one head stealing control of them from the other, the snake gyrated and flung its curves with much weight. Twisting upwards and against the outer wall, the window was struck and shattered, the boxes were flung aside. The alpha jerked over and sent a waving roll of itself through their shared body, across the tendons and musculature, shoving the charmer's head hard against the ceiling to the sound of breaking plates. The charmer was dazed and created coils, these arching and twisting around the enemy and itself, sidewinding about the alpha and tightening, pulling. The alpha did the same, and the two creatures, but two heads of one, circled quickly, wrapping themselves tightly in one another. It was then that both heads met close and, their necks under the weight of their bodies, skulked low to the floor, at odds each other.

Bill Sherman was but a man, and his knowledge of animal truths was hindered by his own, human truths. Man and woman fought for the purpose of proving right, of usurping, and for coming out a victor for any various cause they believed to be greater than themselves. They died for flags, for the speed of cars and contrivances of modernity, for anger and love. A snake could not wage its skirmishes for these tangential things. The snake would die for food, or to protect its young, or in failing to defend itself from another. There was animosity in the serpent, but never anger. There was calculation and reason, but never trust or meaning. The serpent was a creature of abiding and subtlety, until aroused into action. When this occurred, the serpent was a fire in flesh, became swift and volatile, a roiling length of reactions.

There was a cold moment when the smaller, the articulate and weakened female, extended her tongue, sensing what she could of the larger. This lesser head was tired, of a weaker strength, and had become dizzy with the struggle. She could not kill the larger, and had no choice but to submit, lowering and turning away, prone. There was no fighting the alpha. They would have to settle their differences over time, when the minimal half could regroup and plan a greater strategy. The fight was at an end for the time being, and her submission, while hated, was necessary.

The Earth had advanced man and woman, to the degree they could ascertain abstractions beyond what they encountered. These summations of language, these concepts of the enlightened mind were applicable to whatever they chose, and so a potent pit had been opened, down into which they could toss sentiments of love, of forgiveness, of hurt and other sensations of the surreal. These were stored well in the pit, as if snakes themselves. The pit was uncontrollable, however, and soon things would lift from it, horrible or wonderful, and take them back for a time, anesthetize or accelerate them. These abstractors of thought, these emotions, adapted man and woman to a world built from confusions and massing. These could also cause them to adore those they had previously thought of as weak, and turn on those they had once held as accountable.

The great half had been enlightened, and though it smelled fear and saw the prone half's indelicate loss, the alpha's reaction became abstract. Amy thought, rather than released. Neither halves of this serpent were unscathed by modernity. Both felt the independence expected of them, both had learned to mistrust and unfoot the other, and both had discovered the sensation of being hurt by someone. The lesser snake had not learned to love, to understand beauty, to temper her despisal and bitter result, seeing these as paltry domestications and a shirk of her true nature, but the alpha had allowed the poisons of the world to run their course, to wake her from her beginnings and mystify her. For this reason, with the two tangled on the floor in black rounds in the rough of bristling scales, the alpha forgave the lesser, and found that she loved her. The smaller head breathed and waited to be released.

There was a moment wherein the two serpent heads, close to one another, one having overpowered the other, were still, and then the superior arched and shot forward, sinking her fangs into the neck of the lesser. Janine struggled, shocked, the poison spiraling into her mind and shutting her breaths out near to the instant. The massive serpent body began constricting, coils about coils, the thinner ones shaking as the stronger coils rolled inward, tightly cycling, squeezing to the point of rupture. Janine's mouth opened in a last gasp, horrified and betrayed. This was over in a moment.

### Epilogue

He lifted her from the ground and held her aloft at his chest. Her breaths were intermittent and seeped with the intricate medley of joy and shame. Her mind tilted atop this strong decree and she wondered if her body might feint from the impact of his resolve. Would he lift her beyond the room? Would he take her to the church altar, and then carry her across the threshold as her husband? This notion worried and thrilled her, to know him as a wife, and not just a lover. She looked into his eyes and laughed back the notion she was dreaming. The rogue had her and he loved her. With his pistols packed away for good, he carried her from the room into the village courtyard, letting the light of the oil lamps fall upon her warm face, which had begun to exhibit the tears she had fought so hard to hold back.

"I trust you," she said, feeling the strength in his arms as he walked.

"Yes, now you can," he said.

-from _The Dogs in the Villa_ , Laurie Bastone

The knob would not turn, meaning he had been locked out of the house. With a dismal turn of face, Bill walked back into the front yard and examined the home. He could see Roger through the kitchen window, the kids in the living room watching television. This was a consequential life they lived, and there was much warmth and pleasantry between them for those spans in which they were near one another. Bill waved his arms and Roger saw him on the grass.

"I CAN'T GET IN," Bill shouted. Roger paused and his mouth drew into a frown. After a moment, a steel shutter closed behind the window, blocking him from view. Uncle Bill watched, sadly, as these hard, metal blockades slammed shut in the house, closing off all windows from view. One after another, the doors and windows of the home were sealed by the jarring, metal slats. The family had taken much time, it seemed, in plotting to keep Bill from joining them. The sprinkler in the yard came on then, no doubt at the behest of one of the kids, and Bill's clothes became saturated with the water it sprayed at him. He stood on the lawn, wet, locked out, unwanted and pathetic. He was humiliated. Quickly, the living room shutter opened and Christian, visible for only a moment, snapped a picture of his degraded, fool of an uncle. The window shutter closed then, nearly as fast as the camera's. Not wanting to give up, and with an urge to join his family, Bill began to devise a way in, some manner of getting into the home. He lifted his search to the roof and his eyes spotted the chimney.

The wind had increased, and Bill used this as an opportunity to reach the roof. He would use his hidden skill, riding a creative gust to reach his family within the house. With a steady gait, he knelt and, on the proper surge of wind, leaped high into the air, flapping his arms hard, lifting up and over the house. Flight was simple, an ability gained from musculature and lightness of form. One needed only change the shape of his soul to be capable of it. Bill realized, however, as he began to lower toward the roof, that he had forgotten to be injured. As he watched, a white cast swallowed his leg. He grunted from the extra weight in this, horrified as his wrist kinked over into a brace. Bill held crutches then, wooden and heavy. These caused his flapping a considerable slowness. He could not remain airborne and plummeted onto the roof, struck it fast and uneven. He thought to call for help, but who would help him? Bill tumbled off the slant of the roof and crashed to the ground of the front yard again, twisting his back with severity. Several birds on the telephone wires chirped at him then, enjoying this foolish attempt at flight by a primate.

"Fuck off," he said to them, "Try your brains at algebra some time."

The sky stared down as he lay on the grass of the front yard, and as the twilight came over him, shifting the world from the end of day to the beginning of night, he realized he had broken his back. He could not move and the birds only watched him, having slight conversations with one another on the wire. Bill had suspected this would happen at some point, that the injuries to his wrist and leg would spread, encroaching on more of his body. He knew what a broken back meant. It was the end. The birds would show him by morning what it meant to be thus injured, and would take him in bits. These morsels of him would lift to the sky in their small bellies, attaining flight at last, but as dead matter. There would be no Bill. A sensation of chill came over him as he realized there might not have been any Bill in him for a long time. He was personally insignificant.

"Wait there. I'm a street nurse," he heard. After a moment, a woman crawled up beside him, on her hands and knees. She wore dirty, dark clothes and had ratty hair, no doubt from her living on the streets, an arrangement of sleeping in shrubs and in the corners of unattended backyards. Her shirt was torn enough for him to note that she wore an even dirtier shirt beneath it. She likely swapped them whenever the outer shirt became dirtier than the inner shirt.

"Are you a nurse or a squatter?" he asked.

"I go where I want, I heal who I want," she replied.

"Well, I can't be helped. I fell and I'm paralyzed. No dancing for me. Not anymore."

"Dancing is overrated."

"I'll have to stay laying down now. People who see me like this will find me unforgettable, yet trivial."

"You want a pull?" she asked then, showing him a plastic peanut butter container that looked to be filled with water.

"There's something wrong with your peanut butter," he said.

"No, it's vodka. You use what you got," she answered, unscrewing the lid and taking a drink, not spilling despite the wide mouth of the plastic container. After this, she poured a small amount over Bill's lips. He had a swallow of this.

"Now you're anesthetized," she said.

The street nurse was precise as she rolled him over, examining his broken spine. Bill could feel nothing, and with his face now in the grass, could see nothing. He heard her shifting, moving into new positions to examine his back from different angles. A wet sound came from his shoulders and the nurse began talking to herself, mumbling as she worked, her hands deep in his back, jerking his spine left and right. Bill felt no pain during this, only a rudimentary sensation of pressure. His face was nudged about on the grass, his neck loose and reacting to her tugs. After a minute, one in which Bill had begun to cry from the hopelessness of his predicament, he was overrun by a great pain in his right arm.

"Oh god..." he muttered, moving the arm.

"That's one. I have to replace the fuses in succession or the whole circuit will blow. Know what happens then?"

"I get to be worm food, then bird food," he answered. There was a sharp clink then, as if two large marbles colliding. His left leg jerked. After a moment, with various clinks and pops filling the air, Bill's limbs were active. The nurse hummed a tune as she twisted something between his scapulae. There was the cough of a small gas-motor activating then, and Bill felt her close up his back as if shutting saloon doors. The vibrations from beneath his shoulders itched in an incessant way. He could hear the muffled noise sputtering from within his chest, near his heart.

"What did you put in me? What was that sound?" he asked, turning over and looking at her.

"Your actuators were shot. Had to rig you up. I installed a small engine in your back."

"You had one?"

"No," the street nurse answered, pointing to a dismantled weed-eater on the lawn, "Hope the owner doesn't mind."

"Oh, that was my brother's. He doesn't like me anymore," Bill admitted. Amy stroked his hair and leaned down, kissing him.

"That's a no-no," Bill responded, distant.

"Not anymore. I'm good at fixing things."

"You're a good street nurse."

"I make a better girlfriend," she said, examining him close. Bill groaned and sat up, saw that he was sitting in blood.

"Did I bleed all this? It seems like a lot," he said, worried.

"You have plenty more."

"Janine won't like you being here," he said.

"Janine left."

"But she's your other half."

"I don't have halves now. I've decided to be a whole." The birds lifted from the wire and shot back behind the house. These were replaced by small stars, who perched on the wire and chirped, eager. Bill noted they were stereotypical in being the simple, five-point design. Some of them spun.

"I love you," he said to her.

"Are you sure? You're not an elephant," she replied, raising an eyebrow. Bill wondered about this. It was true that he was not an elephant.

"I'm not a cat, either," he said. There were many things that were true, if you only knew what to consider. If he were to rummage through a world atlas, he could spend an entire day naming places in which he did not live. Every statement to this effect would be true. It would be a day of utter truth, wherein he could say more true things than anyone ever had.

"No, you said if you ever fell in love with me, you'd turn into an elephant. Remember? In my apartment the night we met?"

"I never said that," he replied, but this was not true.

"You're right, I did," he rephrased.

"Do you want to see me?"

"I see you. You're beautiful."

"Don't lie," she said, looking down at the ground.

"I only want to say true things. I'm an elephant," he said.

"Would you like to have dinner with me?" she asked.

"Is it baby?" Amy laughed then. This sent warmth through all of his nerves.

"No, I'm thinking Chinese carry-out. I could bring some to you," she offered.

"It doesn't matter. I'm not wanted in the house anymore. I did too many things. I ditched my career, then I picked it up again, sort of ditched it again... I want to pick it up. But I watched the kids in the wrong ways. It seems obvious. They don't need me anymore, and Roger's angry because I wrecked my car and hurt myself, and I... I judge him."

"Plain or fried rice?" the street nurse asked.

"They don't want me inside anymore. I screw everything up. He got his job all better, and his ex-wife isn't going to come over anymore, but if I go in there, it'll all fall apart again," he said, feeling pathetic. The street nurse was annoyed by this, and pointed at the door of the house. Bill followed her finger and saw the wreath on the door.

"Amy gave me that when she left," he said, pitiful.

"I told you, it was for the house to have good luck. Now it does. Nothing to do with you or anything you've done. They want you inside, so get rid of those dull shutters, head inside, and wait for me."

"Are you sure?" he asked.

"Yes." Bill looked at the blockade slats behind the windows, puzzled.

"Okay, so open," he finally said. The shutters dropped from their frames then and Bill could see Roger inside, waving him in. The kids stood in the living room window, each going in and out of little poses, trying to make him laugh.

"There you go. I'm proud to be your main squeeze," she said.

"Cute. But can elephants eat fried rice?" Bill asked, standing. Amy was gone then. He watched his family through the windows and listened to the chirps of the stars. Twilight became night and he walked into the house to great cheer.

***

The evening was quiet and the sounds of traffic and commerce had dimmed within it. Garbage cans had been pulled to the curb for several blocks and she found herself cooled by a subtle drift of air that had swept down from above. The bags had become heavy and she was thankful to be so near her destination. With a lift of her arms, she pressed forward, entering the yard and approaching the door. Pulling a hand free, she knocked. A slight commotion arose within the house, stoking against the door, which unlatched and opened to reveal the small girl.

"Hi there," Amy greeted. Jessica smiled.

"You ca say my unka hi?"

"I did, yes. Big hi, with food." Jessica looked at the bags and thought about what was in them. Roger reached the doorway. He was not so pleased as the original greeter.

"Does Bill know you're coming over?" he asked, suspicious.

"He knows." Roger thought this over and then stepped aside.

"Honey, move out of the way so she can come in," he said. Jessica did as her father asked.

The house was settled and the two boys were sitting on the couch, the younger playing a video game, the other wearing a look of frustration while drawing in a pad. Jessica hopped over with a barking noise and quickly tapped the younger boy on the back of his head.

"Don't," Christian mumbled, his attention drawn in sporadic durations to the game he was playing.

Amy entered the kitchen and set the bags down, cautious to make sure none of the boxes within toppled or had begun to leak. Beside these, she placed the _Get Well Soon_! card she had purchased. Amy stood up straight then, stretching her back from the walk with the heavy bags. The smell of Chinese take-out was already filling the house, and Nick peeked his head around, hungry.

"Feel free, it's for everyone," she said to Roger with a smile.

"Oh, thanks," he replied, wanting to know his brother's reaction to all of this before accepting the food. Roger eyed Amy as she walked to the entrance of the garage, wondering what she was up to, what was afoot. She had left his brother, Roger knew, and he was not certain what her visit meant. He could only hope that Amy was certain, and that Bill understood it. Roger did not want to see his little brother hurt more than had already occurred, either in body or mind.

"Come on," Roger said to his daughter, ushering her beside him, away from the food on the table. They returned to the living room to allow some privacy for Uncle Bill.

Amy entered the garage, her heart alight as she closed the door behind her. Bill stood motionless, his broad head up against the ceiling and his thin ears frisking in anxiousness. With a small snort, he lumbered forward on his massive legs, ducking his head to reach her. Much of the garage was filled with his great, gray body, and he lifted a foot and stamped it down mild, an expression of his wondrous happiness. Slowly, Bill raised his trunk and Amy took hold of it with her caring hands.

"I love you, too," she said.

About the Author

Ray Succre lives on the southern Oregon coast, U.S., with his wife and son. He has been writing for fifteen years, his work having appeared in numerous journals and magazines spanning a great many countries. He began writing novels in 2007. Amphisbaena is his second published book.

## Also by the Author:

Novels

Tatterdemalion

A Fine Young Day

Thank You and Good Night

Poetry

Other Cruel Things

