

Novellets; Summer Romance and Adventure

Novellets; Summer Romance and Adventure

By J. McMahon

Published by J. McMahon at Smashwords

Copyright 2011 J. McMahon

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The Titsou of H'you

John McMahon

"You have come from H'you?" I looked up from my scotch into his gaunt face, the color of an overripe mango, a sort of yellow bruising to purple. A very unhealthy looking color for a human. He towered over me so that I had to strain my neck to meet his dark shrouded, sleepy eyes. He looked as much like Svengali as any cinematic representation ever created.

I was already jittery when the man sat down next to me and started asking questions. It had been an unnerving four days in H'you and then a long hot and uncomfortable bus trip back to the capital, Mendu.

I had avoided the empire club when I was here before. It seemed seedy in a depressing way. The kind of place that sucks time from your life and offers nothing in return. I was discomforted, hot, confused and aching when I got off the bus and immediately thought of the place, it seemed the perfect place to pass through this state of mind.

I entered through the crumbling door way out of the blazing heat of the day into the dark interior only able to see spots where strings of ferry lights were draped from the bar and around the walls. I stood at the threshold until my eyes adjusted to the dank and I could see the layout clearly. There isn't much to the place, a bar where five bodies are bowed over unseen glass's. Each drinker sitting with an empty stool to either side of him as a buffer against conversation. Two abused ceiling fans strained slowly to churn the air, heavy with smoke and the heat of mid-day. Along the walls a few paintings depicting hunting scenes hang; badly rendered daubs of horses bounding through briar thickets, of hounds and men in tight red waist coats, vestiges of the Empire clubs more distinguished past.

Mismatched tables and chairs filled the rest of the interior, and draped across these in various states of repose where an equally mismatched selection of young women who were either snoring lightly or staring bedazzled into the screens of ten year old cellular phones. They all wore baggy shorts and T-shirts and I couldn't help but to think how much more attractive they would have been if they were dressed normally in sarongs and silk shirts as their sisters and mothers would be.

I took a seat at the bar with the fancy idea of drinking four or five icy gin and tonics. I could feel the alcohol in my throat, burning coldly into the empty pit of my stomach. I would be just drunk enough to wander off to a dark room and sleep for twenty hours.

It was a nice plan, and one that would have to wait for another bar because all the Empire Club had was the cheap, sour national beer and bottles of the same third rate scotch with labels from three different distilleries. The barkeep attended to me in polite if evasive English while I picked one of the three identical whisky's.

He poured a niggling sip of scotch into the bottom of a glass, looked over his shoulder and asked me 'doulbin?' I eyed the drop and said 'quintupin'. He pursed his lips and shrugged. 'Four doulbin' I said. 'English pour' he laughed and filled the glass near to the brim with booze and ice.

I force swallowed the first taste of the stuff knowing that it would get better as I worked my way down. Taking a deep breath to settle the whisky I caught his smell. It was the smell of the markets in the afternoon when all of the meat is starting to break down in the hot sun, giving off the odor of rot mixed with that of a Chinese apothecary; musty wood, dried roots, powders and old age.

I met his eyes above me but he quickly looked away, staring straight ahead. If I hadn't just returned from H'you I would have thought he was talking to someone else. The bartender put a small glass of some dark colored, sweet smelling liquid in front of him but he made no move towards it.

I turned back to the whiskey and took another large pull from the glass. This went down without the grumbling protestof the first. "Did you meet the Titsou?" His accent was hesitant and muddled but the uncertainness of it was plainly a ruse. He was clearly faking the Yurmanese tone and lilt.

I turned to him but he remained staring straight ahead at the mirror in front of us through which he was watching me. I met his gaze in the reflection and saw myself as well. Disheveled, dirty and exhausted looking.

"It interests me that you were able to go to H'you and leave it again." He spoke to me through the glass. I shrugged and took a very large gulp of the now watery scotch. "Where?" I asked. He said nothing.

He must have been nearly seven feet tall when standing upright but his shoulders hunched over and his back bent as if the sheer size of his body had crippled itself. His face was thin, the bones created deep hollows in his cheeks and under his eyes. He was dressed in a black robe or cassock and wore strings of ornaments and idols around his neck. Particular to this age and place in the world his eighteenth century mystics garb was offset with the digital gee-gaws of the twenty first. Ear phones hung around his neck almost invisible among the teeth and vials clasped to chains. On his wrist was a thin and very expensive looking nautical watch and in a leather case stuck inside the rope he used to cinch his vestment was the unmistakable red flashing light of a cellular phone.

No one else took any notice of him, or me, as we sat there uttering incomplete sentences at one another through the mirror. The men gazing into their warm beers didn't lift their heads and the bar tender had gone back to the state of semi sleep that I found him in on arrival. The girls neither woke from their impossible attitudes of sleep nor looked away from their old phones.

"I have many question concerning the Titsou, perhaps you would have the time for visiting my shop and speak with me." It occurred to me again that his over formal third world English was an affectation. That he was forcing the incomplete sentences and odd tense forms. The fact that he was putting up a verbal front was another reason to want nothing to do with him.

I finished my drink and fished in my pocket for some thin, worn notes. It was impossible to estimate what the drink might cost so I laid out way too much and got up grabbing my new bag holding all my new clothes by the strap. "Don't know 'em" I said as I turned away from the stooped figure. I could feel his eyes on my back all the way to the door. When I had walked a little ways away from the Empire Club, squinting in the harsh light; I looked back and saw him standing in the entrance, filling it completely, watching me from just inside the dark room.

I didn't know what I could tell this guy that he probably didn't know already. No one who dresses like that would have any questions about the Titsou.

I walked on past the Ulster Hotel which is the one remaining spot of luxury in the city. A city that was once famous the world over as a stop off for the filthy rich and morally handicapped. Once, these pitted and broken streets would have been the strolling grounds for swells in high fashion suits accompanied by dames with legs to kill for.

Today the only people walking it are the locals; carrying bundles wrapped in cloth on their heads. Their faces caked in turmeric paste against the fierce radiation of the sun. Thin old men with youthful, muscular bodies glistening with sweat. Fat women wrapped in colorful sarongs spat flumes of blood red beadle juice into the creases of the foot paths.

What had happened in the last forty years of Yurma's history explains everything I can see. From the bare wires dangling from long dark light posts to the sewage trickling down every street. No nation could survive forty years of constant civil war without becoming a behavioral sink. No peoples could stand the reality of dying at any time, of seeing every one they know killed or maimed in the name of some abstract political movement without losing some degree of its collective humanity.

But none of this explains the Titsou.

I found an old style Chinese Hotel where a dirty room with a fan was the price of a beer in New York. The woman who walked me up the tight stairs talked without pause in Yurman or some southern Chinese dialect of which I am happily ignorant. I followed her, one step behind, my eyes level with her bony old ass struggling under the light sarong she wore. Straggly gray hairs wisped around her thin blue veined legs which reminded me of the man in the bar who had the long black hairs dangling from moles on his face that the Chinese are so proud of.

The old woman showed me a hot room which consisted of a bed accompanied by a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling and a fan that stood on the floor. The walls were single sheets of thin laminate board which would make the place an echo chamber of the other tenants' intimate noises, but there were no other tenants and I badly needed the sleep. The bed sheets seemed clean, there were no visible insects. The shower she showed me actually had water running through it; it was a place to rest

Once I had showered the grease, blood and dirt of four days roughly spent from my body I tucked myself between the sheets of the hard bed with the light off and stared at the chinks of day showing through the imperfect corners of the dark little room. I was physically and mentally exhausted and could feel my body going limp as I lie there. My head throbbed with the ache of sleep deprivation exacerbated by the cheap scotch. My eyes closed on their own, refusing to open, almost instantly I was taken with the sensation of falling that marks the descent to sleep but my nerves had been torn raw in H'you and the subconscious fright startled me awake. I lay in bed moaning with fatigue but sleep would not come again.

This trip to Yurma was meant to be an intrepid expedition. I wanted the discomfort, the inconveniences and multitude of unexpected side adventures that have become so difficult to find in the rest of the underdeveloped world. I wasn't looking for the apple pie trail or pagan beach raves or organized jungle treks. I wanted to slide into a country where there was no tourism structure and just see how it would be to live. What it took for these people to pull through day after day mired in an existence of impoverished futility.

I told people I was going to Yurma and those who knew that it existed scoffed and shook their heads. Why not Pakistan, or Iraq they asked. Why not three weeks in East Timor or Georgia. And they were right, any of those would have been right. But Yurma wasn't a flash in the pan trouble spot. Georgia would be finished one way or another in a couple of years. East Timor will flare up and dissipate and flair up again. But Yurma is a stalwart, ongoing disaster with more than forty years of uninterrupted civil war under its belt.

I arrived in Yurma from the Chinese boarder and spent two weeks picking my way south through the occupied territories of the controlling drug cartels who produce opiates in the west and amphetamines to the east for the first week. Then less significant though as dangerous, the territories held by the weapons producers and the small areas still being protected by what's left of the indigenous tribes of the north including the fierce Naga; legendary for the taking of heads and the hats they adorn with human teeth.

I went slowly across the borders of what amount to feudal states in the north. Riding on local buses with my small bag I was un-molested from town to town. Sleeping in little boarding houses and eating in ramshackle cafes that served food ranging from delicious avocado salads to fish that was obviously rotten and visibly diseased cuts of pork, all of it powerfully spiced to kill the parasites living in the local water supplies and accompanied by heaps of white rice to make up for the small portions.

I sat on shaded platforms for hours with Yurman peasants waiting for busses. At first they would play at ignoring me in weary and nervous attitudes like a mongrel dog with a tell tale ring of foam around its muzzle. But after a few hours of sharing the same spot of shade their curiosity would over ride their instinct for self preservation. They would produce betel boxes and urge me to take one of the wads of leaf rolled with lime and the slightly narcotic betel nut meat. I would share with them whatever I had with me, some chocolate, or whatever food was in my bag and we would laze on the platforms spitting the red juice into the dirt.

A lot of the old Yurmans speak English very well, if in some ways comically formal. I was consistently referred to either as sir or master and often old women would prostate themselves in front of me.

Most told me that they almost never saw white people traveling anymore and were finally more curious then afraid by my small bag, lack of camera and the fact that I was waiting for local buses. They said when white people came they were driven from Mendu to the old cities and temples in huge white trucks with body guards at high speeds and stopped for nothing and no one against being kid napped and executed.

Most of the people I met worked indirectly for one of the drug lords as mules or in the chemical factories where they cooked speed, or they worked for the munitions producers and smugglers as donkey labor. They asked when America or Australia or some part of the UN was going to come and liberate them. Come and crush the Junta who had driven the country so far away from what is considered humane conditions in the rest of the world that it seems it would be almost impossible to set it all right. How many years would it take to de-mine the country, to pry the guerrilla factions from the mountains, to crush what is the largest private standing army in the world financed by the huge profits of heroin and methyl amphetamine?

By the time I had made it to Mendu slowly winding my way over a third of the country I was more than a little sick in my stomach and in my soul. The deprivation, poverty and ignorance of the people had worn through me.

In Mendu I spoiled myself and checked into the Ulster Hotel where there were clean sheets, warm showers and cool balconies where uniformed staff brought cold drinks in clean glasses while I lay on a wicker chaise lounge and took in the vista of the cracked and filthy capital.

I spent several days there relaxing and recovering my health as well as my enthusiasm. There is no way to prepare oneself for spending time in a place like Yurma when you come from a world of instant gratification. With high speed connection to Japanese pornography and home delivered fast foods and overnight package delivery to anywhere in the world.

From a land with fast acting pills to relieve the discomfort of over eating and anti- depressants to temper the stress of pampered house pets it is very difficult to suddenly accept buses that flume diesel smoke with seats of ply wood, eating only twice a day and calling yourself lucky at that or when government troops kick in the door of a bamboo hovel and massacre a family of eight for planting a banana tree outside the limits of their allotted home plot in front of fifty witnesses who suddenly find the sky very interesting.

It was when I was relaxing at the Ulster that I came across the pamphlet written some sixty years before by a French anthropologist about his discovery of a stone aged tribe living deep in the jungle where Yurma, Loas and Thailand all meet somewhere between Ken Tung in Yurma and Laos Prabang in Laos. I was fascinated, the pamphlet was only a page long but what it described was worthy of an entire book.

The author, only twenty five at the time, undertook an expedition to follow the basis of the myth concerning the ghosts of the white trees known to missionaries from the tribal peoples they were duping with tales of Jesus. Accompanied by two Shan guides he left for the dense jungle where these spirits had been most frequently seen and returned months later to the small town of H'you with three men from the tribe who came willingly and stayed with him for several months.

In that time they absorbed French as well as English and the local Yurmanese dialects. I looked on the map that hung on the wall of the hotels fools lounge and found that the town was only four or five hours from Mendu straight into the mountains that form the Thai-Yurma border.

I had no idea what I would find there, if there were any descendants of the three tribesmen who the French anthropologist had named the Tistou, since they had no name for themselves. I didn't know if the Frenchmen were still there or if there was any real record of the discovery in the town at all. It was an adventure, plus the town was in the mountains which in its self was appealing, to get out of the lingering, oppressive heat of the plains.

I asked at reception if they could buy me a ticket to H'you in the morning. The woman behind the desk looked at me as if I had asked her if she would mind giving me a hand raping her daughter. Her eyes went wide with shock and disgust. She said nothing and went back to work. I rang the service bell for the day manager and asked him the same question. At first he gave me a startled glance, then motioned to meet him at the end of the desk. He held my forearm and asked quietly 'what do you want in H'you?' 'I want to go there, to have a look. I read about it.' I told him. 'Excuse me sir but what did you read about H'you?' I showed him the pamphlet that I had planned on stealing as a keep sake. He took it and scanned it quickly then handed it back to me. 'That was a very long time ago sir, there is nothing for you in H'you, it is a very dangerous place.' He was gravely serious and if I hadn't heard this about every town I had been in since I entered the country I might have taken him seriously. I nodded in agreement and decided that I would just make it there the way I had come from the north. Go to the bus station and hop a local bus, I didn't realize at the time that this was the only way to get there.

In the morning I checked out of the luxury of the Ulster and reentered the world of penury that is Yurma. Just in front of the Hotel I was called to and waved at by a mob of rake thin trishaw drivers who creaked up to me on their ancient tricycles. They looked like some giant troop of insect life with their skeletal frames, the decrepit mechanisms that seemed an extension of their bodies. I hopped into the first one to make it across the street which didn't stop the others from giving chase as we silently pulled from the curb. The old man used all of his weight standing into the pedals to get it started, puffing on his green cigar, he asked with a smile over his shoulder 'where will you go master?'

We moved slowly through the hot crowded streets. I watched from the shade of the passenger's seat as sweat poured down his black back. I could see every muscle, every sinew ripple back and forth across his torso as he peddled. Women moved along the streets in single file lines, their flower print sarongs, their long black hair braided in a tight pony tail hung to their asses and swished as they moved under the big wicker baskets balanced on their heads.

We reached the huge gravel parking lot that made up the bus station, it was crowded and the air stifling, heavy with diesel fumes. I paid the old man off and was immediately surrounded by teams of urchins who simultaneously begged, hawked goods and made attempts at shaking anything that might come out my bag, pockets and pant legs. I kicked at them and they laughed good naturedly as they tried to sell me Viagra, boot leg whiskey and cartons of knock off cigarettes. I bought a carton for the price of a bottle of water in the west to use for bartering and bribes further on. As soon as I did that I was assailed by the rest of the children. They pleaded in English and told me it was unfair to buy from one and not all. I laughed and kicked one softly in the ass to let them know I wasn't a total fool.

I walked around the various tables selling bus tickets but I couldn't see any signs for H'you. Every thirty seconds a man would grab me by the forearm and yell into my face 'you, where you go?' as he dragged me towards whatever bus he worked for, 'you go Mallady? You go Pagon? You go Peo.' The three most popular destinations in the country, hundreds of kilometers away from one another but his bus was going to them all.

As soon as I would lose myself from one another would latch on repeating the same litany of destinations. I kept walking and seeing the same signs the same buses but nothing for H'you so finally I asked one of the men who had attached himself to me. 'H'you?' He looked at me like a degenerate criminal. Then, pulling me by the arm he walked me around the outside of the busses and the food stalls, behind the open air toilet to where an old, old even by Yurmanese standards, battered bus sat low on broken springs and spat 'H'you'. 'Ah' I nodded and tried to hand him some money. He looked at me with the same disgusted air and walked off without a word.

It was an ominous looking machine. The windows were all knocked out of the broken moldings and the tires seemed to be only half inflated. It sat lop sided and was painted with five different layers of the same sick green, one peeling from the other like some reptile shedding multiple layers of rancid skin all at once. When I found the bus driver asleep on a piece of card board under the front end I bent down and asked him 'is this the bus to H'you'. He looked up out of one eye from the shadows and murmured 'H'you'. I didn't know if this was a question or an affirmation. 'H'you' I said shaking my head up and down. 'H'you' he repeated shutting his eye and paying me no moreattention.

There was no one else in the area, no one else going to H'you. I sat on the rear step of the bus and opened my bag. I had a map of the country that was probably twenty years old which I had bought in China. Most of the names were spelled wrong using a Chinese English transliteration. I looked in the area where I found the town on the map in the hotel but there was nothing there. The sun was getting truly hot now and I started to wonder about the wisdom of this trip. What was I looking for, and if I was able to make it to H'you what would I find there. I sat, moving up into the bus step by step every few minutes to avoid the sun and started to doze in the hot shade myself.

I was woken from my stupor by the rumblings of an old truck bellowing towards the bus. It was churning dust from the dry powdery gravel and darkening the air with a steady cloud of diesel exhaust. The gears ground down as it slid to a stop just in front of me. Five Yurmans jumped out of the cab and quickly began unloading baskets and bundles from the box onto the bus, brushing by me. I managed to catch one of their eyes while he staggered under a large wet looking roll, 'is this going to H'you' I asked as he took the steps shirtless and sweating with the bundle dripping pink water over his torso. He didn't answer but I could here him in the bus calling to his friends and laughter erupted among them.

The three came down together and the last stopped in front of me. Without taking the cigar from his mouth he asked 'you go to H'you?' 'yes, I want to go to H'you is this the bus'. He didn't answer but he pointed and made a couple of high pitched sounds pointing up the stairs while looking to his friends who joined him, making the same noises. He pointed in quick jabs 'uh, uh' the muscles rippled across his torso and bulged in his shoulders and arms. 'OK, H'you, eh?' lunged into the cab of the truck and ground the thing into gear spitting gravel from the rear wheels as he wove back through the bus station.

While I stood watching the truck speed away the bus started up in an explosion of noise and smoke. The driver must have crept from beneath the engine while it was being loaded. He revved the bus hard for ten seconds, the exhaust blowing directly on to me so I could taste the diesel and engine oil in my nose. Before I could get to the front he slammed the transmission in to first and the bus started to roll slowly towards the street. I walked along it, knowing it wouldn't actually go anywhere until it was full.

When we had entered the mal of the station, the bus inching along, me walking in the cloud of black smoke the driver started to blow the weak sounding horn constantly. All the way through the crowd he still had no passengers and made a left onto the street. I jumped onto the rear step holding the rail which vibrated loosely under my grip. We made a couple of turns; still empty the bus rattling at bottom speed clogging traffic behind it, the horn eeking again and again. One then two then four and a steady stream of people caught the front handle from the narrow cracked streets and hefted themselves aboard.

When there were enough people aboard that the driver gaining confidence increased his speed I climbed the stairs to look for a probable looking English speaker. What I saw was a collection of what so far were the sorriest, most impoverished people in a country defined by just those terms. They were all wrapped in layers of cloth despite the already stifling heat. In make shift hoods and under tattered knit caps were faces drawn and old irregardless of age. Eyes bulged from hollows creased by thin hard cheek bones. Lines cut deep from nostrils and mouths. I bumped from seat to seat along the narrow aisle. Faces, instead of looking up and staring as they had so far on the trip, turned away or withdrew into the shadows of their layers. I caught the rail that ran the length of the bus's ceiling and squeezed myself into a tiny seat opposite a small family occupying the opposite seat.

'Are you going to H'you' I asked slowly. 'Is this the bus to H'you', I repeated dumbly not waiting for a reply. The four faces I was staring at disappeared into the depths of their rags their eyes lowered to just visible slits of white.

'This is the bus to H'you sir, do you go there?' It was a tremulous but educated voice, spoken by an old man four seats back dressed in a tattered suit. I had stumbled right past him. He held his hand up inviting me to join him.

We sat close, our legs and shoulders pressing together. He smiled at me not saying anything else so I asked him 'do you live in H'you?' He shook his head, 'I am not going that far' continuing to smile but saying no more. The bus picked up more speed as it was almost full now. 'How far is it?' I had to almost shout over the deep thrumming of the engine and the grinding of the transmission under our feet. 'It is quite far.' A typical answer, maybe due to the fact that there were almost no maps available of Yurma that its people are extremely vague when discussing distances. Even within towns distances are like some unfathomable mystery. They answer with very close, not so close, quite far, very far, but without knowing. Up until this point I had never had a Yurman tell me, I don't know, even when it was plainly obvious they had never heard of the place and had no idea where it was or how to get there. I suppose it's all part of the Asian face saving ploy.

'Where will you get off' I asked the old man. His face, a complex collection of wrinkles and folds, adjusted to hear what I was saying, contorted in understanding and then rearranged itself into a look of concern. 'Why do you need to go to H'you?' he asked with his lips so close to my ear that I could feel his hot breath and smell the pungent beetle he was sucking on. I shrugged, 'I don't need to go there, I want to, I read about the Titsou.' His eyes popped wide open with disbelief. He put his bony old hand on my shoulder and spoke some declaration but the bus was down shifting to climb a small incline in the road so I couldn't hear what the old man said but the look on his face was one of clear warning. I nodded understanding and we said no more, deafened by the racket of the bus.

As we banged and jolted along the broken road, windows rattling in their casements and the exhaust coming through the floor, people wilted into sleep around me. The heat was terrific; the air coming in through the windows was little relief and brought clouds of choking dust blown up from the dry barren fields around us.

There was no life on the road to H'you. There were no animals; no famished looking cows watching mournfully from the fields as I had seen in the rest of the country. No feral dogs sleeping in the shade of huts, no huts. There were no bands of squalid children waving and chasing after the bus. After two hours I saw a lone man standing idle in a dry patch of weeds staring into the full strength of the sun, I took him to be mad.

The man I had sat down with fell into a deep sleep while I watched the parched scenery so I moved to an empty seat where I could stretch out a little. I watched dumbly our slow progress over the hard plains approaching the mountains steadily but never seeming to make any progress towards the stacked green hills over hung with grey, white rock face.

I must have slept or just lost myself to the rhythm of the bus or fallen into a stupor from the heat because suddenly we were winding around a tight bend on a narrow road surrounded by green. The air was cooler which might have woken me, and felt fresh and fine in my nose after the weeks of dry dust.

The bus was now all but empty; only a bundle of people wrapped together against the cold air instead of the heat were heaped in one seat, the driver and I remained. The transmission was whining against the steep incline of the road and now the mountains loomed directly overhead.

I was suddenly anxious to see the town I had been warned off of. I wondered if this would be just another false warning. Another case of people fearing those over the mountain or across the stream. Towns ten kilometers from one another often mistrusted each other more vehemently then opposing nations half a world away. Was it the knowledge afforded by close proximity that allowed them to know each other's wickedness so well? Or is it just the natural fear of what we can see but not understand?

We wound around the mountain roads. The jungle was a dense wall just at the edge, brushing the windows as we rattled by, the old machine laboring hard. It was impossible to tell in what direction we were headed. There was only rock wall on one side and jungle slanting off to the other. The driver geared down for the inclines and pulled the clutch in for the decline as the bus descended in free fall down the hills and skidded around the tight corners. My stomach dropped a few times as the old vehicle felt as if it were riding on two wheels. The other passengers never stirred. Either they were asleep or just took all of this senseless danger for granted.

We veered right at a y in the road and the gradient flattened out. Shacks started to Appear along the side. The sun was setting beyond the hills but in the fading light people could be seen like specs working in the rich green patty fields that now stretched to the horizon along the right. This road led straight into the town.

The shacks became more frequent, and then they were attached to one another. The road widened a little as it became the high street of town. There were no signs. There were no visible electric lines or motor traffic. People walked single file on either side of the road, the bus erupted in a fit or horn blowing as a herd of water buffalo were being led from paddy to pasture. Then we stopped in a wide dusty parking lot surrounded by shops and serviced by a tea house.

I got off the bus aware that I had only an hour or so to find a place to stay before the sun would set. In every town I had visited no matter how small I had been met by at least one tout; trishaw driver or relative that had directed and cajoled me to a small hotel or guest house. But here there was no one.

Men rushed to the bus in order to unload the boxes, wrapped bushels and dripping packages that were loaded in Mendu. The other passengers departed and silently disappeared into the heavy shadows of the narrow streets that opened at both sides of the tea house. I stood a short distance from the bus for a couple of minutes looking around, trying to get a feel for the place. The men unloading worked at a furious pace hefting whatever was handed to them and then almost running in a squat jog under the weight away into the gloom of evening. It was so unlike the normal rhythm of work I had seen carried out so far.

Normally there would be a long line of lanky men and boys wrapped in the long sari or sarong portaging with a slow and easy pace, puffing on their green cigars and laughing or singing under their burden.

Standing dumbly in the dirt was getting me nowhere. I walked to the tea house and took a seat at an empty table. There were six others tables and four had groups of men sitting at them. They sat silently sipping their glasses of creamy sweat orange tea. No one spoke, there was no music, there was no television and no one stared at me. They seemed deliberately to avoid recognizing my presence and as I sat no one came to serve me.

At the center of the table was a cheap tin pot of the weak bitter tea used to thin out the thick orange kind. I was suddenly dry and thirsty so poured one of the small ceramic cups and drank it off. As soon as it hit my stomach I realized that I was also terribly hungry. The sun was about to sink, which meant I had been on that bus all day, it must have been eight or nine hours since I had eaten.

The old woman who was bent in half from a life time of planting and replanting rice shoots worked over a low counter making tea. She ignored me completely so I approached her.

I squatted in front of her so she could see me and greeted her 'mingala bai' in one of the only Yurman phrases I knew. She still didn't look up at me. So I continued. "is there a guest house or hotel here?" I thought this being the only business I could see she might put me up. "No", she waved me off, "no, go away", she waved at me.

This was incredible; though people had been occasionally indifferent to me I hadn't met anyone who could be described as rude. I stood shocked and more than a little pissed off. I looked at the men sitting at the tables. One looked up and caught my eye. He pointed indifferently to his left and spoke in awkward English "there, go there." "Where?" "There, go... Titsou." "Titsou?" I asked surprised. "There" the man repeated "Titsou".

I couldn't believe it. The Titsou were still here. I grabbed my bag and walked quickly out into the gravel lot again. The bus had left and now it was dark in earnest. There were two smaller streets leading off the high street and I thought to take the one to left, but then I heard the rumble from far off. It was a din like you would hear in the back ground speaking to some on a phone in a crowded restaurant. There was a halo of light in the distance. I walked on, the high street went up an incline, after a few minutes walking in the dark I came to the apex and looked down at a bustling, brightly lit area of town that hummed with music and loud laughter and shouting. The smell of cooking food rode on cool drafts. It seemed to be a festival, which could explain the emptiness of town.

I walked quickly towards the noise and light anticipating a time of ribaldry. Who knew what kind of jungle insanity would be going on here tonight? I hadn't had a wild night since arriving in the country and thought this would be right on the mark.

Then I was just outside the glow of the throng. Watching the people silhouetted in the streets. Being rocked by what sounded like Nigerian pop music. There were open salas all around crowded by groups of people eating and laughing and talking in French. These were the Titsou. Amazing, here were these people that wandered out of the jungle some forty years ago knowing nothing of the contemporary world partying with all of the intensity of a New Orleans Mardi Gras street festival. I stood outside the light of the party just taking it in.

One of the people from the nearest sala bounded off the platform and moved in an unusual gait across the open space to a car parked in the middle of the street. I hadn't noticed it before, even though now I realized it was the source of the music, as the figure passed in front of the headlights I saw him outlined clearly. I thought it must be a trick of the light because it seemed to be a hugely fat and squat person but the silhouette moved in an incredibly quick and graceful way.

The shape was less that of a man then of an ape. The shoulders were massive. The back wide and bent. As I watched the man, it was now definitely a man. I suddenly realized the car was a Mercedes Benz. I stepped back from the edge of light into the complete dark for a minute to think about this. The man had started his looping stride back to the sala but then froze and lifted his face to the sky, it seemed he was tasting the air, he turned to look straight at me. I couldn't decide whether to move further into the dark and try to make it back to the bus station or step forward and let him see me. Suddenly he was moving across the space between us at an unreal speed.

It was the base fear we all harbor at a subconscious level, a fear genetically imbedded in our sullied primitive instincts. The fear prey has of the predator. The fear that someday something incredibly strong is going to come out of nowhere with terrible speed and break your spine with a single blow; is going to crush your wind pipe with huge incisors. The fear was going through me. Before I could react he had closed the distance and hit me with the force of a bull rhino that knocked me unconscious.

I have no idea how much time passed. When I came to I didn't remember where I was, or what had happened. I was submerged in complete blackness, lying on a loose mucky dirt floor. The room or cell was cool, almost cold and the smell of ageing meat was thick in the air. When I scraped myself from the floor the sounds I made echoed around me. I sensed the ceiling was tight to my head and the walls close in. I made a few cautious shuffle steps, my foot caught something hard and cold I stepped away quickly and slipped crashing into a pile of wet bundles. They were the bundles of thawing meat that had been unloaded from the bus.

I flailed around in the pile trying to catch a hand hold to pull myself up. Behind me a door was flung open and the room was filled with the yellow light of the night festival. I turned but was blinded after the complete darkness. Before my eyes could adjust I was clasped in a vice like grip and dragged out into the night. The air was fresh and it awoke my dulled sense of pain. My body ached from whatever blow had brought me to the room. Pain turned to delayed panic.

It was one of the Titsou dragging me by the legs. I kicked out and tried to turn on to my back. We were moving fast over the ground and as I began to struggle the Titsou, without missing a step in his long loping gait delivered a kick to my kidneys which made me retch. The pain was tremendous and if I wasn't being dragged I would have fallen and curled into a fetal position.

From the ground I could look up and see the faces of other Titsou looking on in curiosity or amusement. It was a horrific vision. Though their faces were not in-human, more like pre-human, their bodies were animalistic in every way except for being hairless. They were all but naked, wearing random pieces of clothing for decoration rather than to protect any sense of modesty. A pink spaghetti strap top pulled taught over a massive torso here. A pair of baggy hip hop style shorts hanging off there. A little girl in a white dress holding a dolly. All of them bent over with huge muscular shoulders and thick necks atop bodies hung in layers of fat. Bodies layered in steps of brown rolls glistening in the bare yellow light.

Though I was in pain and stricken with a kind of terror I had never known before I couldn't make a sound as I looked up at the bodies lining the sides of my path. I was spun fully in the air and slammed against the base of a platform. Before I recovered any feeling hands reached down out of the blinding light and stripped my clothes off in shreds. I was pinned to the ground as it happened by a foot that gripped with brutal strength and felt cast in lead.

Naked and unable to breathe I was picked up again and hurled onto the sala. I rolled to a stop and opened my eyes. This sala was more brightly lit then the rest. It seemed to gleam with gold and the shimmer of silk. My vision was blurred with tears as I lay on my side struggling to breathe. My back still ached where I was kicked and my lungs felt crushed. I was staring at something that through my blurred eye sight and ruptured perceptions I couldn't understand.

The chattering of the crowd stopped. I rolled to my stomach and tried to push myself up but there was a flash, a blur that connected with the side of my head like a gunshot which lifted me up and over and onto my back. I didn't understand what it could have been. It felt like a baseball bat, but had come from nowhere, and then the thing I had been dumbly staring at re-arranged itself so that I could take it in at a different angle and realize that it was an immensely obese Titsou woman in full repose.

She had slapped me. that was clear, but impossible. She was more than twice her height in girth. She couldn't have moved like that. Her arm was nearly the size of my waist. She lay against a hill of silk bolsters on an upholstered silk matt. There was no distinguishing the parts of her torso. Her breasts disappeared amongst cylindrical layers of fat. Between these flashes of gold chains and amulets glinting in the light that hung from her neck but soon disappeared into the crevices and ravines of her formless body. Her arms and legs were only recognizable from the elbows, and knees, above the joints it all blended into the rest of her.

Around her and between us were platters of food. Every conceivable type and condition of anything edible. Prawns were piled in a pink tower of crustaceous antennae. Heavy piles of organ meat; fried and boiled articulated and ringed on lacquer platters. Skewers of chicken, pork, beef, fish and dog were stacked in different levels for consumption. A silver serving tray the size of a small bath tub filled with white fluffy rice took up an entire corner of the platform.

It was too much to see and comprehend at one time. Suddenly I regained my vocal abilities and began to scream with what I imagine is the most primal, basic instinct we have left as humans. That scream of pure terror. The child's nightmare scream. The scream let out just as the knife rips into the solar plexus. Total reaction, no cognition, all reflex. As soon as the sound escaped my mouth I was smacked with the same terrible speed and accuracy as before and knocked back across the platform to where I had started out.

The blow cut my scream short. This time the woman looked at me. The face, not much larger than the face of a normal human, or Titsou any way, atop this great leviathan of a body.

She spoke, not to me but past me, in French. This language I had always related with refinement and culture coming from what could only be described as a mutant. Unfortunately, or maybe not, I can't speak French. So the smooth sounding dialogue between her, and I supposed the one who had dragged me here, sounded no more threatening than a Marcel Marceau gag. There was no shouting and no inflections of threat. I dared not move again as this went on. My head rang with pain. I hurt so badly I forgot the humility that should have accompanied being naked atop the platform.

When their dialogue finished the women looked at me directly. I had shifted my gaze just to the right of her head so as not to have to think about her physiognomy. 'what are you doing here, in H'you?' The voice was Miss Maples', it was the voice of a well educated elderly women who lived in a cottage somewhere in story book England, not of this. I knew they spoke English, I had read it in the pamphlet. But it shouldn't sound like this. It should be harsh and guttural at best, just barely comprehensible. I had lost the ability to speak, shaking my head in an indeterminate direction, meaning, I suppose the bus station.

She pursed her lips then speaking in French again I was dragged off and thrown to the ground. This time I thrashed around a bit as I was on my back but the first kick, delivered by one of the children, connected with my shoulder and I heard a terrible crunch. I supposed my cartilage had all just been ripped out of place.

I was dragged through the crowd which seemed to be breaking up already. The music began to blare from a half dozen different sources and the lights burned in my eyes. I was dragged then pushed up against a wooden post. A thick leather cord was pulled tight against my throat. I strained against the cord as the huge hand of the Tistou who was holding my skull in a solid painful grip fumbled at the sides of my head.

There was a quick thump on the right side, then the same on the left side. I felt a strange numbness in both my ears for a second and then a burn as if they had been torn off. I leaned forward in an effort to relieve the pain but choked against the strap. If I leaned back the burn flared to an unbearable singeing, I sat there twisting against the pole, choking and burning in my ears. The Titsou's face leaned down to meet me eye to eye, he smiled sweetly and whispered bon noi as he cracked my skull against the thick wooden pole and I went out.

I woke into a state of pure pain hours later. The sky was streaked with a murky gray, dawn was emerging. The lights still glowed around me but it was all murky and confusing. My vision was blurring and if I wasn't sitting down I would have fallen down. I wanted to shake my head to try and clear it but was instantly reminded by pain that something was pinning my head against the pole I rested against.

My senses were seeping back. Someone was speaking English, American English. Clear and understandable. There was a response in the high British tinged with French. I couldn't follow what they were saying but knew they were behind me. I sat there pinned and choked trying to hear, to comprehend what was an incomprehensible situation.

I was being held by monsters. Monsters; alive and walking and listening to African dance music blasting from the stereos of Mercedes Benz's. I had been attacked, beaten, stripped, humiliated and what? Tied to a post, for what? The realization that they might eat me was real.

Then clear enough I heard him. 'He's awake now'. Then squatting in front of me, a Caucasian face. A plain white face looking me over questioningly. Dressed like any one going to the mall to price shower curtains. No bones around his neck, no Khaki, no pith helmet.

'emm, can you hear me?' He shouted at my face. I tried to speak but could only groan. Then he was out of sight, but I could still hear him.

'Go ahead then and take the nails out, bring him over, shit, what the hell is he doing here?'

The Titsou grabbed the top of my head again and the burning pain in my ears tore open, flaming up so that I screamed. I could hear the nails rip through the tissue and scabs. Blood filled the canals on both sides of my head. The strap was released from around my neck I sagged, and gasped for breath; the Titsou caught me with his foot grasping my chest with his prehensile toes. I sighed with the relief of being able to breathe free again.

The Titsou scooped me up onto his shoulder. I retched once and then threw up a streak of yellow bile over his naked fat back. He giggled 'merde' as he started to trot. The lights and disorientation of being carried like a sack made my head swoon and I passed out again.

I came to again in the full light of day lying on a bed in a small room. Sun streamed in through the windows, heating the room. It must have been late morning. My body ached, my head was pounding, my ears felt like novelty items. They throbbed audibly.

Worse was the dry, clenching thirst that made it difficult to take in air. It had been more than twenty four hours since I had anything to eat or drink. The room was spartan with only the bed, one odd looking chair and a few books piled on a make shift shelf. There was no liquid in the place. I sat up slowly feeling every bruise and abrasion on my abused body. The silk sheet draped over me stuck to the side of my head with dried blood. I pulled it away ripping away hair and scab. I felt the gash and the blood that had starting oozing out of it again.

I sat looking out the window wondering about the silence. My hearing was obscured by the tidal sound of pulse rushing in my swollen ears. There was nothing else. Outside the streets beyond the little yard of the house were empty. There were no people, or Titsou, or cars or motorbikes. A lone feral dog appeared and scampered for a moment in the bright sun before disappearing into a slit of shade.

'The American' I thought, this is the house of the American, and as if on cue a door I hadn't seen, being in the wall behind me, opened and in trod the American, looking now more as I had expected this morning. He was naked except a single native cloth wrapped around his torso. He was deeply tanned, thin and wiry.

He glared at me without saying anything for what seemed a very long time, then turned and left the room. My stomach quivered. Fear and hunger mixed together in a wave that made me nauseous again. I retched audibly. The American leapt through the door again and yelled 'don't you dare puke in my fucking bed you idiot.' I clasped my hand over my mouth and nodded until he stepped back out of view then I concentrated deeply on settling my guts. Breathing in through the mouth out through the nose, after a minute the saliva that had filled my mouth drained away. I wondered for a second if I should try and bolt through the window and back to the tea house were the bus left from. They were laughing when I arrived, had pointed me in this direction. Had sent me here on purpose, they knew exactly what was going to happen so there was no hope there. Besides that I could barley move. How was I going to run, leap. I had no clothes.

Just another moment and the American returned carrying a try on which was a pitcher of water, glasses, a tea pot, some bread and a pile of what looked like little rubber balls. He stopped in front of me offering the tray. Without a word I grabbed the glass filled it drank it off and filled again. The relief of sating the burn in my throat spread through my entire body. I hurt less, was instantly more lucid.

He put the tray at the foot of the bed filled himself a glass of tea and sat in the odd looking chair which had arms that swung out to become foot rests, like a gynological examination table.

I must have been staring in a desperate, wanting way. 'Eat' was all he said, turning his head to look out the window.

I grabbed what was on the try and ate franticly. I stuffed myself with the bread and the little balls which tasted like sausage. I guzzled the water. It must have been a pathetic display but he paid no attention. He sat with one leg resting on the extended arm of the chair sipping his tea looking out to where the two dusty streets met in front of his house.

When the food was finished and the carafe emptied he picked it all up and disappeared through the door way again. I couldn't see into the other room without moving from the bed and now that my stomach was full I was overcome with fatigue and lay back against the pillow barely able to keep my eyes open. The room was warm, eating and drinking had eased my anxiety; suddenly the entire night became questionable. It was an impossibility.

It was no more than a nightmare brought on by fever or food poisoning. But all I had to do was touch the puckered scabs covering the holes in the tops of my ears where the nails had been to know that it was very real.

With that firm realization came terror, the Titsou; beating and kicking me, the enormous women on the sala eating what could only have been yards of raw intestine. The lights and music beating out of cars. The pain, and before I really understood it I was crying like a child. Whimpering, holding myself uncontrollably uttering little animal sounds. I knew that I was going to die and didn't care how I looked.

The American came in with some clothes, tossed them on the bed near me and without taking notice of me crying instructed that I should take a shower, Wash the cuts, and abrasions and treat them all with the antiseptic he was holding in a white bottle. Though I was sure to die it registered as a good idea.

He lead me still naked, clutching the clothes, into the other room which was huge and filled with tables and fans, bottles of chemicals, instruments and tools that I didn't recognize. He was pulling me quickly through the space and then pushed me into the bathroom slamming the door behind me. I was in the dark initially and thought it had been a trick and that I was trapped again, then the light snapped on and I saw that it was a completely serviceable bathroom, primitive but usable.

The cool shower was refreshing but still there was the deep fatigue that had struck me after eating. Pure exhaustion so that it took all of my strength to walk to the little bed room. I was too tired to think about what he did in the other room, drug lab, organ harvesting, explosives factory; I didn't care, I wanted to sleep.

In the small room I sat on the bed. The American was in the chair again just as he had been before, sipping a glass of tea. 'Where is every one' I asked thickly. 'Asleep' he answered quietly without moving. 'The Titsou sleep during the day.' He nodded to himself, 'you can see what bad timing it was arriving at dusk like that can't you?'

Bad timing I thought, but had nothing to say and lay back on the bed.

Everything was still, not a sound in my world and I floated into a thick blackness.

I woke again later in the day; now the room was shuttered, light strained in through the cracks. It was much warmer I was damp with sweat, I felt feverish my head swam when I sat up. Next to the bed was the pitcher of water. I drank two glasses greedily then slowly got up and walked slowly to the toilet. The American was in the big room, sitting at one of the tables, studying a piece of paper closely. He looked up briefly, barely taking notice as I walked in.

I came back to bed physically exhausted by the trip. Lay painfully down and closed my eyes. My head pounded with the pulse of my feverish blood. The American came in and pulled his odd chair to the bed. He handed me some tablets and refilled the glass of water. Then sat and watched me.

'What's going to happen?' I asked him trying to concentrate. He shook his head 'I'm not sure yet. Get some more sleep.' I looked at him, his face blurred. I tried to speak again but couldn't form any words.

I woke later to find the room empty again. The shutters were open now that the heat had dissipated and so had my fever. The light coming through the window was that of soft evening, producing dim, washed out colors. I sat up and found the water pitcher in its place on the floor along with a covered plate of the same type of sausage balls and congealed rice. I had little appetite and ate leisurely with the plate resting on my chest.

As the ambient light faded blurring the interior of the room the door opened and the American entered fully dressed. Outside I saw the strange outlines of the Titsou looping across the road in the distance. The big sodium arc lights had come on and smoke floated on the cool evening breeze. Smells of meat, diesel and rot mingled in the room.

The American sat in his chair opposite the bed and watched me eat a ball of glutinous rice. I chewed the bland wad waiting for him to talk. 'I don't think there's anything I can do for you.' He said finally, betraying no emotion. I understood what he meant but couldn't accept it. 'What does that mean, what have I done?' He reclined in the chair staring at the ceiling, picking at the caning of the seat with his fingers. 'You didn't do anything, you were just ignorant or arrogant I guess.' He leaned slowly up right so that he could look me in the eye at last. 'you came here' he blurted it as an accusation throwing the pamphlet from the Ulster hotel on the bed.

The anthropologist's etching of himself standing with his arm over a smiling pygmy crudely printed on the cover. 'you found this somewhere and followed it here. You thought you were going to have a what... some kind of rare fucking cultural experience?' I was sitting up now, I held the opened pamphlet, scanned the lines of print, I couldn't see where it said anything about cannibalism, obese humanoid monsters or nights of raging hip hop and open air orgies. 'How was I supposed to know?' I shrugged. He stood up and paced the length of the small room, 'did you see H'you on any maps? When you asked about getting here didn't you think maybe the people rolling their eyes and cursing might have meant it was a bad idea?' He reached over to the bed and snatched the pamphlet from my hand. 'Did you notice the print date of this. Think maybe things have changed in Yurma over the last sixty god damned years, eh, yeah think?' He stabbed his index finger against his temple three times hard then balled the paper up and threw it against the wall over my head then walked to window. It was near completely dark now.

In spite of the heat of the room I was chilled by the slight breeze and brought the coverlet up to my shoulders, noticing as I did the amount of weight I had lost on the trip. 'Then how did you end up here?' He spun from the window, staring down at me. He wasn't a big man but he had a kind of savage tenacity stored in him that surfaced for a second when he was agitated. But then he folded and exhaled 'about the same way you did, stupidity.' He collapsed back in the chair.

We stayed this way for a while, him sunk in his chair me laying with the covers pulled up to my neck not wanting to hear any more. Thoughts of fantasy raced through my head. Ideas that this was not as serious as he made it sound. That maybe he was playing it up. Here by himself, desolate little town, nothing to do, lone kid shows up why not have a go at him. Probably keep me over night and put me on the bus with a stern warning before going back to his miserable life. Then a scream punched through the music of the night, cutting through my thoughts. He cast his eyes back at me and I knew again that this was real.

'The Titsou, yes that's who these people are, don't want you here. Sadly you're here. You offer them nothing and they see no reason to let you live.' He didn't turn around while he said it. 'I can' he paused and breathed hard again, 'I can shoot you, that's the best alternative.'

I laughed, not for a reason, my body just started to chuckle. He nodded at the window 'I know but...' and he shrugged. After a minute he got up and walked back into the night.

Once he was gone I bolted out of bed. My head thrubbing; I stumbled then caught my balance against the door jamb of the other room which was lined with big transom windows. I knew there wasn't much hope of surviving in the jungle or getting a ride or even escaping the town when they found out I was gone but it had to be better than being shot, or eaten.

My thinking wasn't clear, the room swam around me from however many concussions I had suffered the night before. The windows were set high off the floor, I dragged an old iron and wood chair beneath one. I was studying how to slip over the sash without slicing my arm and legs on the jagged metal when I heard him in the door way. Half standing on the chair gripping the edge of the window with his clothes falling off of me I looked back him. He leaned in the door with a gun at his side squinting at me. 'Stupid' he spat, took the stairs at a bound and came towards me. 'how far you think you're going to get?' Pulling the chair from beneath my leg and grabbing me by the arm he swung around banging the chair back against one of the tables and sat me in it. 'What do you want me to do, just sit here and let you kill me?' I tried to scream at him, vent, give him a taste of outrage but I was already drained and just moaned the words out. He sat down next to me, 'If it wouldn't come back around to me I'd say do it, I'd help, but now it's my life as well as yours.'

I put my head on the table while he made another pot of tea. He put the pot and two cups on the table, found a dish of hard sugar and chipped a couple of pebble sized chunks into one, then the other. 'I don't take sugar' I gulped from beneath my arms. 'Splurge why don't ya.' He sat again and slurped his hot water that hadn't yet become tea. 'Oh, yea here.' I heard a soft thunk in front of me and looked up to see my wallet. 'Great thanks, don't want to lose this.' I picked the wallet off the table and slapped it twice in the palm of my hand. He laughed 'Yea, it can be a bitch replacing all of the ID's.' Then I laughed. He snatched the wallet back and started flipping through the celluloid pages of my life. He stopped and examined my driver's license, looked up smiling and said 'Money earnin Mount Vernon, eh.' And we both laughed.

He sprung from his seat, upsetting the table, knocking over the chair he was sitting in and throwing the open wallet back at me. 'What the fuck is that?' My C.I.A I.D. card was facing out of the open wallet. 'Yea, oh by the way freeze, CIA.' 'you ass hole I know what that is'. He paced again for a minute, 'What's your forte?' 'Huh?' 'What do you specialize in?' 'I'm only second year, I mean nothing yet.' 'You're not getting this at all.'

He went to another table and brought me a pencil and what I thought was an extraordinarily high quality piece of paper considering the circumstances, 'make up a menu; the richest, heaviest menu you can think of, thick and savory but debilitating you know? Then list all of the ingredients you'll need to make it.' I sat shaking my head in disbelief, 'you want me to cook?' 'This is going to save your ass.' Then he dashed out of the room.

Yam pakora with chunked avocado laced with mint sauce

Butter milk risotto with prawns and shallots

Crispy battered sea bass and eel pie with sourdough pastry

Pork cordon bleu in blue cheese sauce

Foie gras and butter stuffed pheasant tureen with truffles

Port influenced bread pudding topped with heavy cream and fudge chips

It was a terrible menu, a combination of foods that would have me expelled from the culinary institute but as far as fatty, rich foods that are delicious but then bring wishes for instant death, even an excruciating ugly death about an hour after eating, this was the best I could do.

The list of ingredients filled the rest of the paper. I laughed continuously as I wrote words like fresh sage, aged blue cheese and whole white truffles had me giggling helplessly. Other then chili peppers and lemon grass I hadn't tasted any other spices, where would he get the pounds of full cream butter, or bottles of port. Then there was a question of actual cooking apparatus, these foods required more than the normal single propane burner and wok that restaurants were equipped with here.

The American returned after about an hour and snatched the menu from my hand and started to read. I leaned back, 'I don't see how it would be possible to do any of this here, where would the ingredients come from?' He scoffed and looked up from the paper 'the Titsou know every drug dealer, arms manufacturer, slave trader and miscellaneous scum bag in the three surrounding countries, they can get whatever they want.'

He finished reading the list, put the paper on the table, tapped it with his index finger twice, smiled and said, 'you may have to improvise a little though.'

The next thirty hours was pandemonium. Supplies, ovens, special pans and ingredients were brought into the town on pickups, motorbikes and horseback. They had supplied me with ten Yurmanese women who looked so cowed and tormented I couldn't see how they could produce anything that wasn't bitter and sour. I could understand their attitude of course being under the thumb of over ruling deformed monsters on a daily basis.

The American explained the situation to me. The Titsou valued nothing as much as food which explained their obesity. He told me to think of a pariah dog, a dog that's spent its entire futile existence from the instant it was birthed in a sewage strewn alley until the day it died in a hole in a barren field. Imagine that dog spending its every waking hour in a nonstop hunt for food. Fighting over food, scavenging it from every crease and crevice in the hostile world of its existence. Then take that thing with all of its routing instincts and drop it into a twenty four hour all you can eat haven of meat. This dog is pre-programmed to eat and starve, eat and starve, now all it has to do is eat but this is not going to change its nature. It is going to eat its self sick and then be sick and eat more. It's an animal this is what it does.

The Titsou since they came out of the jungle have never learned that food wasn't going to disappear. They were hunter gatherers. When their physical, and instinctual advantages gave them the upper hand in the cut throat Yurmanese world of contraband they used their profits to eat. Up until sixty years previous they had never had a meal, never had something fried, or sugared or salted. For sixty years they have reorganized their culture around food.

His plan for me was to make a meal, a rich meal for all two hundred of them. A hedonistic meal of the richest foods from the west. Let them eat it. Let them enjoy and gorge to a point of satiety they had never before experienced and then hope that hours later they would be ill. Ill from the dairy, from the spices and the pure quantity. They would see my existence in the world as worthwhile but wouldn't want me here.

So we did. Sides of meat were delivered and butchered. Bags of imported long grain rice were cooked. Forty inch pans of sour dough pastry were laid out. Sauces were thickened. I was ill with fever and ached throughout my body but I pealed prawns and reduced cream until I passed out and was revived to finely mince chicken liver for pate.

When the cooking was done and the tables were laid at dusk the following day I was spent and could no longer dredge a fear of death up from my id. The American took me to his house and laid my limp body to rest. I looked up at him before sleep over took me again with what he took to be a question but I know was a vacuous stare, he shrugged and said 'we'll see'.

I slept again. Or I slept at last. I heard nothing of the orgy that carried on through the night. The eating and ribaldry of a normal Titsou business night enhanced by flavors they had never before experienced. I had asked the American 'what if they like it, what if they like the food and don't get sick after.' I was soaking bread with port at the time, my hands shaking from the hours of work. He nodded a few times with his lips pursed, 'then you'll be like me, indentured.' I thought at the time the expression of despair that marred his face as he said this would ferment into nightmares but nothing would penetrate my sleep that night.

Early in the morning he pulled me from bed. The windows and door were open and the hazy light of dawn lit the room. 'C'mon' he shook me still mired in sleep 'first bus in fifteen minutes, you have to go.' 'I go?' I mumbled. He drenched me with the carafe of water and pulled me to the floor and yanked me upright as I stumbled for footing. My body ached with a deep muscle thrumming. ' cant' I moaned not yet awake, not ready to move. 'I need sleep'. 'Mam has said for you to go, you have got to go.' 'Mam?' I uttered confused. His mother I thought. 'Let's go man.' He pulled me through the door, onto the porch. The cool morning air lifted the sleep from my brain. I took some steps on my own and froze. In the dirt yard of his house was one of them. A big, scarred bull male. Nearly naked and glistening with oil or sweat. The American looked at me, at the Titsou, back to me. 'He's here to help' he said as he dragged me down the front steps. The loose dirt of his yard was soft and warm under my bare feet reminding me I had no shoes, passport, clothes or bag. But before I could protest the Titsou had taken three bounding steps and collected me onto his shoulders, turned and bound down the road with the incredible speed I had seen the first night I arrived.

At the tea house the old bus sat idling. Its noxious diesel dissipating into the clear morning air. The Titsou placed me gently onto a chair. There was a plate of the double helix shaped Chinese donuts still hot from the wok and a glass of weak tea in front of me but I had no appetite. A few minutes later the American joined us at a slow jog. The Titsou met him out of my hearing range, they spoke a few words and the Titsou bounded off again, paused in the road to let out a tremendous belch and then disappeared in the rising dust and heat of the morning.

The American hauled me up from the seat and led me to the bus. Before I could ask he handed me a folded cloth. 'Everything you need is there, when you get back to Mendu make plans to leave as quickly as you can, and of course this, none of this ever happened.' He stared into my face and that look of mean deliberation I had seen before passed quickly through his eyes. I nodded dumbly.

He led me to the rear steps of the bus which had already begun its tortoise like crawl. I stepped up and leaned out to extend my hand. 'What's your name?' I asked finally, up until then it hadn't occurred to me that I could ask this. 'Charles' he said, 'get on now, and don't come back.' He nodded while the bus shifted to second churning up more dust, spewing more black sooty exhaust. I threw myself into a seat at the top of the steps. The bus was empty. I unfolded the cloth in my lap, there was my passport and a fat wad of money in Baht, kip, Dollars and Euros; more money than I had ever held at one time.

The imperfections where the walls meet making up this little room are showing a dim light again. I don't know if I slept, maybe for a minute while I was thinking about sleeping at the Americans, in Charles' room. I should have slept on the bus but I couldn't get over the feeling that the next stop is where I would be pulled off by one of the, well one of them, and treated to another round of humiliation and pain before being served up as a curry myself. I should have slept here in this room instead of retelling, recounting. I didn't and now, despite the weight of exhaustion under my eyes it's time to move.

Just as Charles said, get out of the country straight away. Not to the air port though. I don't want to be closed in now, boxed into a window seat, moving along in a tight line through the fuselage, cramped into a toilet the size of an upright coffin, even for a few hours. There is a boat leaving this morning, it's expensive but I can afford it. I read about it when I stayed at the Ulster. Part of the old Orient Express tour package. A slow ride to the boarder of India and Bangladesh. In Yurma this area is still known as Nagaland, home once to the fiercest peoples in this part of the world, a remote people who hunted heads and wore strings of monkey skulls. A strong, small warrior tribe who decorate their conical boar skin hats with teeth as a symbol of their keen hunting ability.

"Of course" Charles said "this never happened." I wish it didn't. A few days on the Chindwin River, cradled in the lap of luxury while watching the landscape of dire poverty languidly float by trying to forget four nights and three days of depravity.

She Loves He

She returned three days after she had written the letter, unannounced, to find him wet and naked studying the destruction of the kitchen.

He hadn't slept in those seventy two hours. On the first day he went to work and though he hadn't so much as lay down over night he worked with a frantic energy born of confusion and fear. After another sleepless night he called in, they asked him if he were sick. He held the phone tight to his ear squinting at the wall answered 'no' and hung up.

He paced his small apartment during the day back and forth over the length of unevenly finished pine flooring. He walked slowly; inspecting the walls, running his fingers over book bindings stopping at his desk to search for something that wasn't there. Sometime late in the afternoon hunger pangs broke through his semi conscious mutterings so he ate a few stalks of broccoli; raw, over the kitchen sink.

Early in the evening he went to a bar and started to drink. It wasn't the right thing to do but it felt good. It felt good to watch the sun disappear through the smoggy window while sipping icy bourbon out of big mouth water glasses. It felt good until after work drinkers came in to rock out and high five and flirt and get drunk and fight. When they showed up he paid the bill and crossed the street to buy a bottle then walked the two blocks home.

It should have been a beautiful night, the end of summer, with just a slight edge to the breeze blowing through the streets. People crowded the sidewalks with lawn chairs and mini barbeques. Mothers walked small children by their little hands. The elderly told lies, kids raised hell on bicycles but He didn't notice any of it.

At the apartment he lit only the iridescent Jesus plaque over the counter where he sat with the letter she had left in her absence. He examined lines of writing under the dull green light cast by the emaciated savior. 'I knew then I would never love you again' then? Three months ago? 'What I have discovered is that you are a coward, morally weak', she discovered, how hadn't she known? 'When you're ready, when you want to be good to yourself I will be waiting'. She'll be waiting, but she won't love him, so what will she be waiting for?

She had planned this. It wasn't spur of the moment. It wasn't an act of passion or dispassion. How long? The entire three months, since he had taken her on vacation to the south of Spain. Is this where she decided she would never love him again? She could have told him then.

Did she go to live with some other man? Some guy from her gym? Maybe the one with the Indian eagle design copied from a cigarette package tattooed on his back. Wasn't she the same girl he had fallen in love with? Smart and odd and strong willed. She wouldn't have any time for him. Or could she? He was young and buff and would happily sit and watch TV. He wouldn't get drunk and rave about senseless problems in his life. He wouldn't spend hours quietly brooding. He wouldn't get indignant over popular trends and reality TV. He wasn't a moral coward.

He was a moral coward? No He couldn't agree with that. What was a moral coward? A person who wasn't willing to stand up for their own beliefs? That wasn't him, he stood up. He stood up and shouted and pointed his finger and fought over it. He had been physically beaten, denied employment, arrested, scorned by peers for his un-wavering stances, stances that maybe only he held, but he would not be changed.

Did she mean morally deficient, that He was a cad? That his morality was wrong, offensive, disgusting? How could it have taken her this long to come to that conclusion? He hadn't changed, she had. She was a moral coward she was morally week. She had left a letter and snuck out with a suit case while he was at work. Leaving his closets full of her clothing and his shelves lined with her girl things and his sheets breathing her smells; she was the fucking coward.

So he drank slowly all night. Listening to the same lonesome songs over and over and staring at the letter. Reading it line by line working out a reply, a defense to each charge levied, and sometime around three a.m. he started coming up with his own accusations.

At four he began laughing out loud. Glad to be rid of her. Get on with his life. He threw the glass he had been drinking from and it smashed one of the kitchen windows. The glass shattered and the wood frame shook. Cool air flooded the room, it felt good against his hot face and so he threw a small pot and broke the adjacent one. He took a long drink from the bottom of the bottle, turned on a Latin porn movie and then fell into the big crescent moon shaped chair and watched through slitted eyes as the silent women humped and rutted until he passed out filled with despair.

He woke late in the morning on the floor, at the base of the big backed ochre colored chair. He watched sun light streaming through the broken windows trace over the seams along its fat sides and decided the chair would have to go no matter how chic it was, it was ugly and uncomfortable. Why had he bought this chair? He lay there against the cool polyurethane coated boards and wondered, watching the lines of hot sun out of one eye. But he knew why. He was lying to himself, pretending to search for a reason and ignoring the clear memory of her excitement over the chair and joy when he bought it and brought it home. She loved the chair, rocked back and forth in it, swiveled around and curled her legs up and slept in it like a cat. Like a cat, content to the point of selfishness. She loved this ugly fucking ochre chair, it was no moral coward.

After an hour of lying on the floor urging consciousness to subside he gave up and pulled himself to his feet. His mouth was dry and tacky. His eyes burned. When he drank from the cracked water purifier his hands shook and he spilled water down his chest soaking his dirty shirt. He sat heavily in one of the old wooden spindle chairs at the counter. There were stacks of books and dirty pots holding shallow pools of filthy water scattered over the wooden top. Tiny hunks of glass covered the floor. He had left the refrigerator open and what little food it held had melted or begun to rot. The answering machine flashed messages from his job that he didn't want to hear. It would take hours to right the place. Clean, have the glazier in, make amends at work.

He showered and went to the same liquor store he had been to the night before. The owner stood behind the counter, the bulk of his power lifters build made feminine by being trussed in an apron. He avoided eye contact as he paid for the two magnums of red wine. Judgments, he didn't need judgments this morning. He didn't care what this prick thought. What did he do? Lift weights so he could get stronger and lift more weight, futile, joyless masturbation.

He wasn't going to clean, he wasn't going to sweep up the glass, and he wasn't going to call work or eat. He was going to open a big bottle of cheap red wine, turn on some depressing, monotone, droning music and sit there riffling books and reading that fucking letter while drinking glass after glass of the warm acidic plunk.

The day was hot already and when he entered the kitchen he was wet with sweat. The bourbon oozing out of him. His stomach gurgled sickly and suddenly his bowels were trembling. He slammed the bottles on the edge of the counter and rushed to the toilet. It came out of him in a burst. He was emptying, gutted. His stomach clenched painfully, the toilet swirled bourbon, flecked green with broccoli. He rested on the seat of the bowl holding his stomach and breathing deeply. The cramps subsided. He reached into the shower and spun the handles. One full turn for hot and a quarter for cold. The water hit the curtain, steam drifted over the rod. He eased himself around the edge of the tiled half wall into the hot water. Now he felt as drunk as he had been the night before and stumbled slightly on the slick floor of the tub. He ran lather coated hands over his face and let the streams of water rinse it off; he opened his mouth under the shower head; tinny water filled and flowed from his mouth. As he was running his index finger through the crack of his ass excavating any remnants of fecal debris a tremendous crash sounded in the kitchen. He froze to listen, it sounded as if someone had kicked in the door. He cut the water, it was dead quite. He stepped daintily out of shower and into the doorway between the bathroom and the kitchen.

The counter had torn from the wall. The books and pots and huge bottles of wine had been too much for the slim toggles that had held it to the wall. They had broken and pulled through the sheet rock and now the mass was scattered across the narrow floor leaving two black holes gaping in the white wall. Both bottles broke and were bleeding red over books and scattered pages of the letter. Rivulets wound through the broken glass strewn across the floor. He stood dumbly watching, unable to move when the outside door was flung open.

She took one step into the room and froze to take in the scene. The chaotic vacuum created by her absence. She must have heard it fall from the hallway. She turned her head slowly to look at him. Naked and pebbled with water, face drawn from lack of sleep and food, his eyes narrowed with the double shock and the sudden growing pain of anger. "BABY, No" She cried shaking her head. Holding a clump of her long black hair against her cheek with one hand. Her lower lip caught between her teeth. They stared at one another for a silent second; she turned and ran through the living room to collapse onto the bed sobbing.

He remained standing over his debris, watching the lines of red run mazes through the shattered glass. She was crumpled on the bed snuffling and moaning into his sheets. His sheets and he didn't want to comfort her. What right did she have to come here and burst into to tears? She got what she wanted; she was out, away from his moral cowardice.

He walked the thirty feet to the bed his feet making wet smacking sounds on the floor. Water ran over his torso, down his spine. She didn't look up; her face was buried in a swirl of pillows and sheets torn from under the mattress. He wanted to stand above her silent and mean, let her wallow in sadness and misery and pity. He wanted to reach in and turn whatever spike had stricken her.

But then he couldn't and collapsed on top of her. Pulling her to him as she grasped at his chest desperately, pushing her face into the crook of his neck. Her long hair covered his shoulder; her face was wet and hot with tears. She couldn't speak; she sobbed quietly and then whimpered audibly. He held on tight feeling strength return to him, feeling warmth entering the cold, hollow niche of his belly. He rubbed his cheek against the slick side of her face and squeezed her around the middle hard enough for a couple of small snaps to issue from her back.

They lay together on the black cotton sheets letting their emotions settle. She gripped and re-gripped his neck between her arms. She wouldn't let any distance come between them. She didn't want to make eye contact.

Two days later he lost his job.

It was a normal afternoon, a normal service. He had replaced the air filters on the units of a small antique furniture gallery, the way he had for years. He was quiet and concise with his work. There was never any danger of damage but at the end of the job he found himself busting for a piss.

He had worked in the gallery without any conflict despite the absurd demands of the little man who managed it. He had always thought of the managers attitude as essential to selling the overpriced chairs, it had nothing to do with him. That afternoon though, he had the audacity to ask to use the toilet. His nerves were frazzled; she had come back, fucked him and then left. She said something about staying with a friend and watching television. This he couldn't get out of his mind, that she had left him to watch T.V. He finished the job and suddenly needed a few minutes of privacy away from the manager and away from the outside world and traffic. So he asked to use the toilet; the manager tossed his mane of black hair and produced the key at the end of his long tapered fingers. He took the key and locked himself in the toilet.

Inside he unzipped his fly, fished his penis through the slit but no urine would come, He leaned his head against the mirror and stared into his own eyes. Without permission tears welled and he wept softly to himself, urging his bladder to co-operate, frustrated, thinking and trying to not think about her. His urethra straining.

It didn't take long to collect himself. He opened the door and met the manager with red eyes. He wanted to leave, get in the truck and go on his way. The manager stood in his way, blocking his from escape. He handed him the key and went right and so did the manager. They locked eyes, "what?" He asked trying to temper the sorrow in his voice. "Did you defecate in my toilet?" The manager demanded - disgust audible in his trembling voice. He looked at the manager to try and understand why he would ask this. From his bulging eyes and trembling lip he knew it was a serious question and before He could answer it he struck out at the manager in a feeble, elementary style blow. His fist badly curled, clipping the manager on the bottom of his chin. And so he lost his job.

He had lost his job and sat in the apartment she had left but not vacated. She was still there in bits and pieces. Her clothes still hung in the closets and her coffee was in the kitchen and her cello sat in the living room. Her cello that she hugged between her knees and leaned into for hours every day, her face the picture of rapture. It had a name, a strong male name; Oscar, it was never a moral coward.

He made amends; he cleaned the place and had the glass fixed and finally changed the sheets that still faintly smelled of her. Then he sat at the big ash desk and watched the phone, it was a fax machine and a phone and a copier; it could do so much, but it couldn't make her call.

He watched the phone often and for long periods of time. Sitting at the desk touching the objects scattered across the surface; lacquered dish, piece of whale bone scrimshaw, wooden elephant, a tube of epoxy. He sat at the desk and played his fingers over its finely crafted hard wood top, tracing his finger nail along the Mahogany inlay that bordered the edge. He sat at the desk watching the phone so often that it became his default activity the way most people will stare at television. He sat at the desk watching the phone without realizing he was sitting and staring but the phone never recognized his vigilance.

But then it did. It rang. It buzzed the way digital phones buzz. His head was on the desk, lower than the receiver with a glass of vodka within arm's reach when it buzzed. He looked at the black molded plastic thing that represents so much innovation, so many miraculous discoveries and three A.M. innovation and though he wanted to pick it up and hear her voice, hear that she was coming home but he couldn't lift it. He was afraid that it might be someone calling about refinancing loans or a new long distance program. He didn't pick it up; he laid his face against the hard wood of the desk and in a rage memorized the tears that fell from his eyes.

Days were weeks and she didn't return. She was somewhere else, maybe curled into the arc of some other man watching a movie, a romantic comedy and laughing because she would like that. Maybe just washing her underwear in a sink, whatever she was doing she wasn't doing it with him and wasn't going to be, ever again and she was glad of it. His naïve expectation of her returning had painfully dwindled so that he didn't even hear the slamming of the building's entrance door any more.

Another week and he started looking for a new job. The apartment still held her things but he had forced himself to bury them all in the closet out of contact.

Weeks later he returned home from a promising interview to a blinking answering machine. No one called his land line. But the light went red and dull and red again so he had to push the little button. It bleeped there was the fuzz of static and her voice: " I just...wanted ... to see if you are alright" her voice said, "are you alright?" and then the digital click before she could betray any emotion.

Am I all right? He thought, No I'm not fucking all right you selfish bitch what the fuck do you think. How do you leave like that and then call asking if I'm all right. Do you want to know? Then call and ask. But don't leave a message, are you all right? And then without thinking about it; the answering machine, phone, fax, copier splintered against the wall, black shivs of plastic scattered everywhere. Sorrow, anguish, pain, Anger.

The day after he exploded his phone/fax/copier his cell phone rang. The manager of the HVAC Company he interviewed with called him back with an offer as an analyst and systems designer. It was better than his last job; paid more, less hours, no supervisor to deal with. He took it without satisfaction or expectation. It was only a job and he knew that he could get another as easily as he had gotten this one. He was a specialist in a very small field and was compensated well, but it wasn't a life, it wasn't a career, when his day was done he thought no more of it. His apartment was still empty and his bed smelled only of himself.

On his first day at work He was driving his new company truck to a storage facility in the airports warehouse district when his phone bleeped. He looked at the ID but didn't recognize the number. He had few friends and was avoiding them all. He answered, pinning the phone between his chin and shoulder. "Yeah" there was a moment of hesitation; he could hear the caller inhale as if in surprise. "Baby?" the whispery voice asked. His stomach dropped and his shoulders sagged. "Yeah" He barely answered. "Baby are you alright?" She asked it slowly. He shook his head involuntarily several times, what did that mean. "Yeah, I'm all right". "Are you sure?" He guffawed, "yes I'm sure, what, what do you want?" "I want to know if you're all right, I'm concerned with... for you." His mind raced through several thousand answers, many of which ended in 'fuck you', but that also literally made him think of fucking her and confused and hurt him further. "I'm working, I can't talk." There was another long silent pause. "Will you call me when you're done?" Why he thought, why did he need to call her, what could he say to her, she was gone, she wasn't coming back. "Yes" he mumbled and dropped the phone from the crook of his neck into his lap. He wasn't going to call.

He spent the day measuring, and plotting the future path of duct work that would bring controlled air throughout the building. He measured humidity, and located cold spots around the foot print then drove home slowly in traffic staring at the rear ends of cars and wondering where all of these people were going all the time.

Just as he closed the door on the hall and began to remove his shoes the phone vibrated the same number she had called from earlier. He sat awkwardly on the floor with one shoe on and one shoe off looking at the screen light up with each shaking fit. Questioning.

"yes?" he asked. "Hey, baby how are you?" It was the same question asked without the tone of loss and concern she had spoken with that morning. She asked it the way she used to before she had decided to never love him again, before she left, when they slept in the same bed and ate dinner with each other and made love and fucked. She asked it like nothing had happened. He pushed the red button and the phone went dead.

He tossed the phone onto the re-attached counter while he went to the fridge. It vibrated harshly against the wood; the internal mechanism propelled it across the surface with each burst. It was an irritating sound, like a circular saw coming through the a-joining wall of your apartment. He stared into the cavern of the empty refrigerator. Blank white, the hum of the compressor tripping on and cold air sifting down over his bare feet. The phone quit its buzzing, beeped feebly once then lay silent. Her number would be on the screen awaiting a return call that he couldn't make.

Hours later he sat with a book in his lap in the same beige, moon shaped chair he vowed to be rid of. He wasn't reading and wasn't thinking. His mind was wandering loosely through snatches of memory. Not searching for anything. Touching down here and there to observe some moment of the past. Some tossed up argument, some little comment that passed unnoticed at the time. Moments that may have called for contrition to which he was ignorant at the time. He didn't know these indelicacies were paving the way to separation.

There was a solid thumping at his hollow core door that echoed through the long apartment. He froze in the chair. A change of weight would cause the base of the chair to squeal, giving him away. The door thumped again. He hadn't heard any footsteps or the resilient smack of the front entrance door sprung back into its metal casement. It might be the innocent plea of one of his elderly upstairs neighbors needing a can of dog food opened for dinner or the concept of the fax machine explained once again.

"Open it you pig, I know you're in there, wanker." The door thumped more heavily. It was his loudest, rudest friend; the over fed and oft intoxicated Lucas: English born, Swiss educated, American deviated. He wouldn't leave, he would stand out there pounding and yelling, he might leave for a while but only to refresh the stocks of malt liquor and fried chicken that he kept on him at all times. The door thumped again. "Open up you tight cunt, I want to go out and get pissed but you have all of my money."

He pulled himself from the embrace of the chair and shuffle stepped to the door. Flipped the row of locks and let the chain hang down before shuffling to the kitchen and opening the cabinet where he kept wine. The door burst open and in stepped the absurdly dressed Lucas Ganz. "That's French slang for whore" he loved to bellow referring to his last name.

"Good one mate open a bottle of plunk, what's in the fridge then." Lukas whipped open the door and poked his treble chinned face inside. "Nothing?" He murmured. The big balding head loomed around the cold cavity then yanked from inside the open door. "Well that's a fine fucking thing, what d'ya at having nothing to eat, very unlike you." He tossed his hand over his shoulder and returned to the high backed swivel chair.

Lucas pried the cork from the wine bottle and filled two bulbous glasses with the deep bruise of a Pinot. Ambling into the room and gulping down the red he handed the other glass off as he paced the boards the length of the apartment and back to the kitchen where he refilled his glass and leaned against the counter wiggling the recently re-bolted top with his bloated body.

"You should lose some weight" He lobbed up. Lucas considered this with a nod of the head and produced a deep fried chicken thigh from his pocket, ripped into the extra crispy skin with his teeth and washed the greasy meat down with a huge slug of wine. He could smell the oil from where he sat.

"There is something different about this place." Lucas observed in a ponderous voice assuming the air of an infallible but recalcitrant detective. "It has been cleansed but is not clean. There is something" Lucas sniffed the air while he chewed the thigh bone "rotten here." He nodded at the gnawed poultry. Lucas tossed it into the empty sink. Meat and bone against hollow stainless steel. "No, it's nothing to do with me meat." Lucas flicked a cigarette into his mouth and fired it with a disposable lighter. "No there is definitely a foul smell amongst these rooms, the smell of despair, of loss." He covered his head with his arms and moaned "Fuck off will you? Leave me alone. Drink the wine, take another bottle and get the fuck out." "It's true then?" Lucas hopped up and down madly "it's true, you are once more eligible, in your bachelorhood. She has gone, fled the nest." "She left me you fucking idiot, left a fucking note on the counter, took a suitcase and ...left."

"And ?"

He looked at Lucas from the crook of his arm, the jowls trembling along either side of his face. "And what? She left there is no and." He squawked painfully. Lucas sneered and flicked the butt of his cigarette into the sink with the chewed thigh. "Of course there's an and; and your talking every hour, and she's living with some twenty year old bar tender, and she's gone back to her mummy, and you've been hiding here in your dismal little apartment fired from your job disconnected the phone and avoiding all of your friends."

Lucas lived in an abandoned garage that reeked of diesel with a huge untamed dog that chewed through the walls and furniture and pissed everywhere amongst two hundred thousand dollars worth of computer equipment. "Which and is it?"

They opened another bottle of cheap wine. He complained and brought out the letter; explained all of the fine points that he had circled through the red stains of the broken wine bottles. Poked at the accusations he had underlined with his finger, countered, explained, then moaned and collapsed into one of the turned wood chairs. Lucas sat listening indifferent to it all, copiously drinking the wine.

"So you've done everything; tracked her down, broke her door in, threatened suicide, beat the shit out of her new boy friend, slapped her up, stood in the street screaming declarations of love and fidelity?"

He looked incredulously at the flabby smiling face; he needed a shave and probably a bath. "No, what... I haven't done any... I'm trying to figure it out." "Well mate" Lucas stood patting his stomach. "It doesn't matter any way, the spring has sprung." "what is that? The spring has sprung? What kind of shitty euphemism is that?" Lucas poured the dregs of the bottle into his sixth glass. "It means once a spring has been pulled out of shape it never functions properly again. Any reconciliation from this point on is doomed to failure; you'll never trust her again. Things cannot be patched up. It's over, even if it's not over right this second, even if and probably when you two go out a few times, find yourselves in bed for another go at it, it's over."

Lucas tossed the wine back while He glared up at him. "Get your wallet, let's go out and get pissed you fucking moral coward."

The bar had replaced a thrift store less than a year ago. The vintage clothes movement had died after a good ten year run, the only people still doing it were the ones doing it ten years before; the poor. The place was over crowded with cut rate furniture and non ironic toys and paintings.

The bar itself was made up of bedstead's, arm chairs, card tables, desks and end tables jumbled together and hammered into place. It was rickety, and so soft from the chip board top sucking up spilled drinks you couldn't lean on it. But you could still smoke inside due to some loop hole in the zoning regulations of the immediate area. He thought it was ironic that this firetrap was one of the last venues where intoxicated people consuming flammable liquids could play with fire legally.

He was miserable when they walked in. There were enough people so that they would be in close proximity with the other drinkers but not enough to afford them any anonymity. The music was a blend of esoteric bands; Jeff Buckley, the Flaming Lips, Nells Cline that inspired strangers to comment despite it being loud.

Lucas's words of logic had hit home, the spring had sprung, true enough. Did that alleviate the suffering or the loss, no, but maybe it would make the future clearer, less hopeful, more realistic. They sat in a pair of mismatched chairs facing a love seat where three young women garbled on about reality television and chain smoked cigarettes.

Lucas nudged He with his elbow. He didn't want this. He didn't want Lucas winding him up, luring these girls into conversation in order to serve him up as a friend in need, the elbow again. He turned to tell him to cut it. "Drinks mate, get some drinks into us." Lucas urged him grinning askance at the girls. He got slowly to his feet "What?" Lucas smiled "manhattans, this chick here makes the fucking best manhattans, pints, mate, pints of manhattans is what we need." The girls sneered at the fat English man mugging for their benefit.

They were. Thick, lavish, deep red, like blood-fuming alcohol. Delicately mixed, strained and shaken into pint glasses. Where else in the world? Lukas was leaned over the hideous coffee table separating him from the girls laughing through the smoke. "Here he is, I was just offering these lovely young things a drink, you don't mind do you?" He plunked the thick glasses onto the table and sat down staring blankly at the three interchangeable girls. "Don't bother" the one in the middle stood "we're just going to eat." Waving her hand in a motion learned from black women on T.V. "Hold on a minute love." Lukas reached into the pocket of his stained tweed coat as the girls squeezed through the gap between table and settee. In his hand an oil stained packet of wax paper that he opened offering up the half dozen congealed chicken wings stuck in a dense red sauce, with a conceited shrug of his shoulders, "you got to be prepared" he winked as the three passed by muttering, looking up and away. "Slag's" he called as he stuffed two of the joints into his mouth and de-boned them with a single pull.

The alarm He set for six thirty blared at him and he mechanically reset it to seven. At seven it blared again so he reset it again for seven thirty. At eight thirty He realized he was still in bed and leapt out on to the floor in sudden panic. Three days on the job. His head pounded, the mucousy residue of vermouth thickly coated his tongue. He put some clothes together and walked out of the bedroom naked carrying them in a bundle. His stomach had a sick ache from the sweet drinks. He didn't know if he needed to shit or vomit but he would have to do one or the other before leaving. Halfway through the living room he stopped dead.

Lying on the floor wrapped in a sheet which would now have to be burned was the pasty, doughy body of Lucas; thickly matted with hair, intertwined with an equally portioned presumably female person. Around them were two empty bottles of wine and two broken glasses along with a full to overflowing ash tray. He grunted and buried his face into the artificially meadow fresh clothing he cradled in his arms and hop jogged to the toilet.

When he had cleared his bowels he stood in the shower for a long time letting the cool water run over his hot bloated face. Counting down the minutes he was late. Ten minutes needed no excuse, twenty a mumble about traffic, half an hour something about hitting a dog maybe, but an hour and a half on his third day, what? His mother died, he caught his member in his zipper and had to go to the emergency room to have it extracted. He dried and dressed, hurriedly stuffing shirt into waist band and bunching socks over toes.

In the kitchen he held his mouth under the tap and let the water run, swallowing as much as he could. He rummaged through the screws, broken flashlights, spent sharpies and dull razor knifes in the kitchen junk drawer until he found the extra set of keys. She hadn't returned hers. Back in the living room the two on the floor had rearranged themselves. Lucas was snuggled up to the woman's side his face stuck into the well between her arm and breast, an unseen smile driving deep dimples into his puffy cheeks. The woman had come out from under the sheet and was exposed full frontally.

Most deflating of all, the nipples that clearly should be indented into the fat of her F-plus breasts were held at the surface by heavy gauge rings which were themselves indented into the fat. He overcame a notion to clip the keys to one of the rings and instead dropped them on the triangle table next to the moon chair which he now re-vowed to be rid of.

He got to the truck and tossed his drawing tube on the seat next to him. As he headed off the side street on to the avenue he plugged his head set into his phone and played back his voice mails. The first three were hang ups and then the fourth was her; "Uh... I really need you to call me back when I call." Long pause "you said you would, Um... so you need to... O.K."

"Yeah Ok" he muttered as he gunned the engine of the truck up onto the entrance of the expressway and into the bur of truck traffic. The fifth was her again. "This is really rude, I'm not asking a lot just return my call, don't avoid me." Don't avoid me he lipped, raising his eye brows in disbelief. She must be fucking joking. Then another, two thirty A.M. "I just woke up and saw that you never called. What are you doing? Just call me O.K." 'What the fuck' he thought. 'What is this? Alright then.' He reached down and punched the return call button. The phone rang while a container truck cut him off with inches to spare at sixty miles an hour, crossing three choked lanes to exit. You have to admire that kind of skill he thought.

She picked up "hallow" she sounded bright and happy as she normally was in the morning. Seemingly none of this had affected her sleep. "I'm calling" "Hey baby what's up?" He squinted through the windshield. "What's up? You called me five, six times basically demanding that I call you." "Yeah, I want to know how you are, I'm concerned that's all." He was silent, couldn't think of how to answer this. She was concerned, that's all. "Well don't be all right, just uh... well you could get the rest of your stuff you know." "Yeah," She huffed "I guess I should, but you know I don't need most of it just now." "Oh, well then don't inconvenience yourself." "You don't have to get stroppy." She hiss whispered, he knew the look on her face, the slightly bared teeth and narrowed eyes. "I don't have to get what? Listen, get your stuff out by the end of the week, I'm not dealing with it; it's been a month already. Do you have any idea how selfish this is, leaving like this and not bothering to deal with your shit, I noticed you got your cello out though, get your stuff and leave my keys."

He was getting hot and drifting on the road, a horn blared as he crossed the line. He brought the truck into check. "Maybe we should wait and see what happens." There was a question in her voice, or maybe a nervous tone brought on by regret. "The spring has sprung, there won't be anything happening" He snapped the phone off and over took the car that had been malingering in front of him. The anger had burned through his hang over. He felt fresh, relieved; a weight had been lifted from his back, he could sit up straight.

He pulled into the parking lot an hour and forty two minutes late; got out of the truck carrying the drawing tube like a weapon and strode though the front door into the purified, constant sixty eight degree, fifty percent relative humidity of the Pur-air building. People he didn't yet recognize nodded to him. He nodded back, his face set somewhere between a smile and a sneer walking purposely to the design room. At the kitchenette he met the design installation manager.

"He, how's it going with the ware house?" "Fine, I took all of the specs yesterday. It won't take long to lay it out. There's quite a lot of prep work but the whole thing is pretty straight forward, done by the end of the week." "Good, sounds like you've got it under control then." They nodded to each other, neutrally, then a moment of awkwardness while they collected their pre packaged snack things and mumbled some kind of parting nicety. He took his tea to the table. No mention of being late, of looking like shit, of smelling like a boozatorium.

As the day progressed He felt better about everything. His plan was drawing its self. The dimensions and measurements seemed to be falling out of the sky directly onto his paper and when he checked them with the CAD program all the pieces fit perfectly. After six hours what he had expected to take three days was finished. He rolled the drawings on his desk thought to give them another check in the morning before filing them for permits and strode from the building. Came late, left early and two days ahead of schedule.

He had designated a particular set of vibrations to her number that coincidently sounded like the warning of an agitated rattle snakes tale as it vibrated against the metal top of his desk, which it had four times during the day.

He pulled the truck out of the parking lot nodding to the security guard who scrutinized him as a shirker. He laughed and punched the roof of the truck, 'the spring has sprung man, there's nothing to be done about it.' Now that he embraced this theory of Lucas' he felt as if whatever had been coiled in him had sprung as well. He would get home early enough to have a run on the track in solitude. The air was perfect for it; cool, tinged with cold when the wind swept up from the river. Cold air. Then a hundred or so pushups. His body was soft and tired from a month of wallowing in grief and anger.

When he turned onto his block there was a space just in front of his building, it was tight but with a few deft cuts he had the long box in tight to the curb. He stepped out and hit the alarm. It chirped as the locks snapped, He looked at the truck as if for the first time. It was a big manly, working truck. Not some tricked out SUV with floating rims and performance fairings. It was a two door full size V8, with twin lock boxes in the bed. 'Damn' he thought as he opened the door to the building, this is a good job. Just two days before he didn't care if he kept it or lost it. It wasn't something he was going to lash his life around but it wasn't digging ditches either.

The front door smashed shut behind him on its fifty year old, eight inch gauge spring, the house shuddered on its frame with the concussion. Every time that door closed it was like an explosion, four years he had been listening to it crash and now he was going to fix the goddamned thing for good; get modern, install something hydraulic.

He went through the motion of snapping open all of the locks and pushed the door but it wouldn't go. Lucas must have locked only one or two of the dead bolts but not all three when he left. He tried them all again. Turning each to the right. It wouldn't open again. Again and again each back to the left then to the right and nothing.

Then he heard, just faintly, the tiniest gasp for breath from behind the firmly shut door. He went to the basement, walked to the rear and then up the exterior steps and out on to the back porch where he could see Lukas through the kitchen window crouched against the door listening for him. He was resetting the locks as He opened them. He returned the way he left and fitted the key into the bottom lock, now he heard it, a distinct giggle as he turned the barrel over again. At the same time he undid his fly and squatted low to the floor urinating softly at the threshold. It was difficult turning the locks with his left hand and sweeping the head of his penis back and forth to maintain a low pressure stream until there was a burst of muttering and stumbling against the door as the warm liquid seeped over the threshold and soaked Lucas's filthy pant legs where he was kneeling.

"Fucking cunt, you fucking cunt" he yelled as his body slopped around the floor. He twisted the lock and stepped into the kitchen. Lucas stood in the puddle of piss bare foot with his hands raised in the air shaking his head in disappointment. "You're like a fucking school boy I swear to Christ." He stepped over the puddle. "and your bovine?" "Uh" Lucas looked from his soaked pant legs with hurt in his eyes, "harsh mate, harsh, she is a lovely girl, look at this kitchen. Clean as a whistle and she's made a lasagna." He raised a brow, "it's just that I got a look at those steel rings piercing her flesh and it left an impression." Lucas undid his pants and stepped out, letting them drop into the dispersing urine. "What rings is that?" "The ones in her recessed nipples." "Pervert." Disgusted, shaking his head.

He went to his bedroom to change and noticed fresh sheets on his bed. He groaned to himself but decided to leave it. He put on a pair of running shorts and a hoody. Lucas sat in the moon chair in his underwear. "What you doing?" "Running." "I thought we'd go to the pub." "I'm not going to the pub." "So then you're over it? that's it?" He shrugged as he stepped into the room "the spring has sprung." "Bollocks, your bird has been calling all day."

He looked at the reassembled phone on the desk. For all of his slobbish drunken irresponsibility Lukas could fix anything with a circuit board or micro chip and play any instrument with a string or a valve. The red light blinked in a rapid set then paused and blinked again. The message board was full. "What did she say?" "I didn't listen to your personal messages, she seems to want to talk though, keeps saying how are you, are you OK." Lucas imitated with a high pitched whining girls voice. "What does that mean, specifically?"

He jogged the four blocks to the track and then ran in earnest for twelve laps, three miles. He panted hard, the long muscles in the back of his legs ached. He was light headed when stopped and lay down in the grass at the edge to stretch. All around him in the far end of the park middle aged drunks slept in the weak light of the afternoon, propped against the wrought iron fence that ran along the street. Bottles in crumbled paper bags held tightly to their sides even in sleep. Their faces told of beatings and weeklong benders, street life as it has been as far back as streets have been laid.

When he returned to the apartment the kitchen floor was damp, the cabinet where he kept wine was empty. A note scribbled across a sheet of the letter lay on the counter; meet us at Philo's, nine o'clock. You will receive a bill for the cleaning of my pants as they are of a particularly delicate fabric, wanker. Don't be late.

He could see the old pants draped over a chair on the deck, the legs flapping in the wind and wondered what Lucas had walked home in.

He hit the play button on the machine and listened to the string of almost identical messages from She while he stripped of the sweat sodden clothes. 'Are you alright, will you call me, I don't want to lose contact with you, let's talk, be good to yourself, I'm concerned about you'. He turned on the shower filled a bucket and sluiced it over the urine puddle which had spread across the entire kitchen floor then ran a mop over it and stepped into the hot water. When he came back to dress wrapped in a towel she was still talking. Christ he thought, what is she doing.

He dressed and sat at the desk, listening to her voice. She didn't sound upset or anxious or angry. She knew he would be all of those things. What was she doing? He took the pan of cold lasagna from the refrigerator; it looked good, well the girl ought to know how to cook he thought, the size of her.

But then she could cook and she was a wisp. But she didn't cook, she created. Her foods were works of passion and they tasted it. You couldn't eat much. Her foods were saturated with flavor so readily satisfying that to finish an entire slice of torta was to be a glutton. What was she doing?

He sat at the desk eating the cold dish and drank what was left of a bottle of Chianti that sat plugged on the counter listening to the messages over and over. Examining them in his head.

He tried to imagine her home coming. Her smile when she came through the door the huge cello case wheeling behind her. The initial moment when she would stand just inside the door way pretending apprehension, bristling with subdued energy and then the sudden burst of affection. Whipping off her shirt to release herself from her bra and laughing exhaustedly as if she had just freed herself from a whale bone corset and then folding herself into his lap and whispering nonsense into his ear as she teased and kissed his neck. But he couldn't, he could see all of this in his mind but only as the past and never as the future. The spring had sprung. He wasn't just deceiving himself.

He felt his throat go tight and the drawn wanting ache at the corners of his eyes as tears welled, one last time he thought and let them drop against the Ash top of the desk as she asked again "hey baby what's up?"

He didn't go to Philo's to meet Lucas at nine; neither his cell nor the re-assembled shell of his home phone rang all evening. He sat in the moon chair pretending to read while letting his thoughts create and dissolve alternative futures for himself. He thought about a long trip to a far off and complicated country; Uzbekistan, Sudan, East Timor. It wasn't a vacation he was thinking about. It was a journey to a place where people lived in strife, where existence was closer to the bone. A time that would put this into perspective, in comparison, the trifling significance of his hurt. He wondered if he was able, if he could cope with the hard ships of living like the other eighty plus percent of the world for even a little while; runny bowels, sores in his mouth, diseased water, and speculative foods. Then it went off. The home phone. He rocked back in the chair and let it go. A voice came through the digital recorder. "Uh hello, Heath, I uh was calling to invite or ask you where, no why..." It was no voice he recognized, no one that knew him called him Heath, that was reserved for cold callers and police officers.

He spun the chair and swiveled forward to the receiver, popping it from its cradle with his fingers, "yeah" he shouted into the air while he juggled the thing to his ear. "Yeah I'm here." There was a short pause with a lot of back ground noise "hello, Heath?" He analyzed the voice, the drawn out vowels and the soft rounded consonants. "Yes" he answered tentatively. "Heath, we were wondering where you are, you should have been here by now." No one he knew called him Heath. "Are you a cold caller or some related piece of shit?" he asked cheerfully. "Naw" she said "I'm a friend of Cathie's." He thought about Cathie and decided he didn't know her. "Who is Cathie then?" "Cathie" the girl repeated as if the name were common knowledge between them. "Cathie, she slept over at your house last night with Lucas." He laughed out loud, "You mean she slept with Lucas last night in my house." "Yeah, OK, anyway we're waiting for you." "I never said I was going, wait who are you?" "I'm Clem, Cathie's friend." "Right, I got that, but why are you calling me?" "Lucas said you were broken hearted and needed a freedom fuck, you know, to get you back into the game, out of a rut." She said it as flatly as she would have told him the name of her dog. He held the phone away and looked at the mouth piece, "uh what..." "Well" she purred, the essence of the bad little girl purr. "I lost my cherry but I still have the box it came in." He paused, "where are you?" "We're at Lucas's house." He could picture the filthy interior of the garage; torn, discarded furniture, fast food wrappers, puddles of dog piss, empty bottles and experimental hardware sent to him free by companies for review. "And how do you feel about being there, in Lucas's house?" "Its disgusting right enough but funny too." "Who else is there?" "Us; Lucas, he won't put any pants on, says you pissed on them, Cathie, me". She chirped herself in. "Where's Elvis?" "Who?" she went high pitched revealing some foreign sounding basis to her accent. "The dog he keeps there." "He locked him up, poor thing, Lucas says he would keep humping on our legs." "Lucas just wanted to eliminate the competition; look I want to be upfront with you on something, I saw your friends' nipple rings." "Did you?" she asked laughing. "and how did you like them?" "I did, and now I ... normally... I would be all for the piercing of nipples and putting big metal rings through them but... I'm not used to seeing nipples quite like uh... Cathie's." "Like?" "Well like pork rinds sunk into bowls of pure white yogurt, that kind." "So this is getting too?" "If you had nipple rings would they also be swallowed in dollops of fatty tissue?"

No must have been the answer because less than an hour later Heath and Clem were involved in grunting and pushing and grinding in the foul surrounds of Lucas's toilet. Lucas wandering the garage plucking drunkenly on a bouzouki. Cathie straightening things, picking up soiled clothing and Elvis bellowing and howling in his cage.

The Girl, Clem, fucked like she had been reared back stage of some Amsterdam S and M sex extravaganza. If there was a Viagra for women she was on it, or she had been smoking meth. Except her teeth were white and her gums didn't bleed at a touch. Or as Heath found out she had just spent fourteen months in medium security detention locked down for twenty three hours a day with nothing for relief but her lurid imagination and strong right hand.

They had left Lucas and Cathie rubbing their spongy bodies against one another while sucking back bottles of red wine and walked the eight blocks back to Heaths apartment in the cool night air. The frottage and deep kissing in the sticky environ of Lucas's toilet had peeked their lust, silently moving at a fast clip there was complete understanding of what they were going to do.

First on the reattached counter which Heath had fixed at three points using spring loaded bull dog toggles, he worried as he pounded between her legs watching the lip bounce up and down about it ripping it off again so he kept a firm grip on her skinny ass.

They made their way through the narrow apartment. On the floor doggy style, her thin back slick with sweat. Then in the cursed Moon chair, double lotus, his thighs aching from the run earlier supporting both of their weight while thrusting up at an awkward angle.

Against the bed, her bent over it. Then He sitting and her reverse cowboy riding him as he lay back watching the length of him sliding in and out of her little rose colored slit. Finally on the bed clamped together, her legs scissor pinioning him against her grinding torso in a desperate missionary fuck.

When they had finished rutting in each other's bodily fluids she rolled on top of him and licked at the end of his wilted erection like a cat cleaning its young; soft but deliberate. Her head settled between his legs, the darting tongue tasting the sex when the phone rang on the desk just over their heads. The nagging electronic whirl six times and then her voice, "Hey baby, what's going on, just calling to see how you are, are you OK He, you need to call me. Let me know what you're thinking...OK. I hope you're all right". Clem's head snapped up from giving head, a line of saliva ran from the side of her mouth "My god is that her?" "EM" He moaned, he was laid back against a stack of pillows content and comfortable for the first time since he found the letter. Clem's face came into the light, her hand still clasping his semi, "she calls you?" "All the time." "Why" "Don't know, I don't pick up the phone, can't see any point." "She still loves you." "No, she told me, she'll never love me again." "Was that in the letter?" He sat up, "How do you know about the letter?" "Lucas told us about it at dinner, awful sounding thing." "Yeah." He nodded "but I think a lot of it was true." Clem sprawled atop He, "well she made a damned fool mistake if you ask me, you turned me out." She nestled her face into the crook of his neck and sucked the skin to a bruise.

They slept a while. Waking to find themselves in an aroused embrace so they fucked again. Hard and straight this time. No showing off, no tricks, a straight gouging rhythm that brought them both off in minutes. When they lie gasping for air with the sweat drying on their bodies the phone began its annoying peel again. Before He could react Clem bound from the bed and snatched up the receiver. She was silent for a moment then He heard her giggle "He's fine honey." He could hear She at the other end shouting. "No I don't think so, he's in bed just now, I don't think he wants to talk to you." There was more muted gabbing from the other end. "Well that might be true but you split, he's a moral coward remember? And now he's mine." Clem dropped the phone on the desk and jumped him, slapping her body against his and making over done porno movie sounds, screaming and pulling her own hair as she slapped her hand against his still damp stomach making pink prints. The receiver sat on the desk looking like a gaping mouth, with the line still open.

It wasn't late when they got out of bed and He was starving. He had had no dinner and then all of the sex and the running. They went to a late serving Mexican place and had a relaxed meal. He sipped his beer while she told him about the routine of institutionalized life. He sat listening to her describe the sterile, mind numbing world of psychiatric wards that had been her life for more than a year but he couldn't focus. He felt a pang of regret at what Clem had done when She called. It wasn't something he would have wished on her no matter how selfishly she was treating their break up. Maybe that will end the phone calls he thought layering jalapeño dip across his Quesada.

When they finished eating they each had another beer. It was nearly two A M and though He had to work in the morning he was eager to get back and have another round of sex. He paid the bill leaving too much tip in his excitement, then led Clem out the door. "You have a cell phone?" She asked. "Yeah" He fumbled in his jacket and produced his phone. She dialed a number from memory. "Hey honey, can I get a car at el Mojave, fourth and eight... five minutes, right." She handed the phone back and smiled. "You gonna walk home?" He blinked a few times not wanting to reveal his let down, or even the anticipation he had felt just the moment before. "Yeah, it's not cold." His voice revealed all. "ehhh" she stammered rolling her toe on the sidewalk, turning her ankle "I just want to go home and sleep by myself, It was really great, everything but, I don't like to spend the night, ya know? Tooth brush and towels and, like where's the conditioner, I mean you don't have conditioner do you?" Then she slapped her forehead, "of course you do." "Right, then I'll see you" Heath said it sharply and meant it to cut. "Don't be like that" she took him by the lapels of his jacket and kissed him quickly against the lips. "I told you, I wanted to give you a freedom fuck and you know help you. Lucas said you were really sad, plus well I'm pretty crazy; institute all of that." Heath nodded. "Right then" and smiled "I'll see you" "right" she winked and He walked home.

During the walk home he thought about Clem and his willingness to get into bed with her. She wasn't ugly, but she wasn't his type at all. She was thin in an unhealthy way. Her body was that of a twelve year old, her breasts were no more then lumps with nipples. Her ribs raked the sides of her torso and her hips were narrow. Her legs were her best feature, long and shapely, with sculpted calf muscles. With her shaved delta and delicate pubic mound it was that much more like having sex with an adolescent. Except of course for her experience, technique and insatiable desire to be pounded, spanked, throttled, gagged, fingered and subjugated.

She was right to go home he didn't want to sleep with her, he wanted to sleep with her but he didn't want to wake up with her. Even if he hadn't turned Clem out she had certainly set him free. He felt free of the depression. He would still miss her, still feel confused by her letter and her selfish abandonment of their relationship but he wasn't going to brood on it any more. He realized how much he missed sex, and not just sex with her; sex for sex sake, sex for fucks sake.

Sex was something he shouldn't go without even when he was otherwise well adjusted. It was an outlet that he needed, and needed more than most. Without sex every other day He became bitter, easily agitated. He started fights, and obsessed about the insulting stupidity of the entertainment that has become contemporary culture, the state of man. Without getting laid he hated, with enough sex he was indifferent.

Deep sleep came easily in his bed infused once again with female odors. He slept dreamless and easy until the horrible shrill of the phone yanked him from his dark comfort. Blindly he mistook it for his alarm and mechanically swung his legs onto the floor and stumbled to the iridescent dial of his old wind up travel clock. Big hand on the four, little on the eight... what the fuck? The phone stopped its grating buzz then a voice sobbed though the speaker. "He" was all it said and then sobbed and snuffled "He" it whined desperately. It was her, calling at four eight in the morning waking him crying. Doing all of the things he had wanted to do so badly during his own sleepless nights but wouldn't.

"He" the voice whimpered "He talk to me, please." It was like the cry of a child in the throes of a nightmare. The result of hours sitting alone in a dark room haunted by scene after scene of your love entangled with a stranger. An anguished state of mind that He knew well. "Please He I need...". And that was all he could take. He picked up the receiver finally and lay on his bed in the dark. "He" her voice asked cautiously. "I'm here" he answered her quietly, hollow voiced.

At work he was exhausted. He fell asleep throughout the long ramblings of the one sided conversation that lasted nearly until his alarm went off. She recounted everything she had written in the letter, and expected him to answer. Initially she was simply upset about Clem answering and her fake sex act. She wanted to be reassured, but He would deny nothing. This eventually brought out her admissions of infidelities. Were they true? It didn't matter. But this she justified by saying she had needed him to be strong and he wasn't. He wasn't strong, he didn't keep her safe. There was no time to question this because she was off now into the realm of the letter. All of it. All eight pages recounted. He knew the letter by heart. He could have answered every question, every charge but didn't want to. It was over. There was no way to be together now and he told her that. "The spring has sprung He? That's your answer?" It was after dawn and his repeated attempts to get off the line for a few minutes of sleep resulted in threats. "you better think about what you're doing to me He." She cried when he finally laid the handle to rest in its cradle.

As he sat at his drawing board checking the specs of his schematic against city codes this is what he got to think about. What he was doing to her. What was he doing to her?

He returned to his apartment at the end of the day tired and irritable, he hung up his jacket and searched in vain for a bottle of wine when he noticed the solid red light of the answering machine. Full. Digital memory and it was full. Why had Lucas brought this horrible thing back to life. He put his jacket on and went back out into the streets.

In one of the numerous junk shops masquerading as retro boutiques he found a cheap plastic rotary phone which he bargained down to fifteen dollars from the original three hundred the tattooed, pagan belt wearing proprietor had originally dreamed off. He switched the two machines without ever checking the messages. What was the need for a land line in this day any way? They were a scam, a way to keep a bloated and obsolete monopoly from suffering the final blow of cheap Asian technology.

Two days passed with no sound from the new old phone. It just sat there on the blonde ash desk top. A relic from the seventies, representing all things cheap and useless like the chevette, disco, President Ford. His cell phone still vibrated the special tattoo he had assigned to her but since he didn't want to think about what he was doing to her he didn't answer.

He finished his first project at his new job and after being forced to watch his manager scrutinize every line, every measurement and reference he was congratulated. "The first project always tells me how long a designer will last here." The manager told him as they sat in the break room, "I think you'll be here until something better comes along." The bearded man said with a chuckle. He didn't know if it was a joke or a compliment so he just made a long "aaahhhh" sound which seemed to satisfy the situation. Then he was offered a project in Atlanta The storage facility of a small museum. The entire project; temperature, humidity, structural moisture control, did he want it? The manager was smiling like he was offering him his first born; virginal, double jointed super model daughter. He shrugged and accepted.

It was Friday he would leave on Monday stay until Sunday, and have the thing drawn and ready for approval by Tuesday. It was a lot of time for what seemed to be a small amount of work but this new company actually preferred accuracy over expediency. Unlike every one he had ever worked for in the past they seemed to care if the systems they designed and installed actually did what they were supposed to.

Friday traffic on the BQE. He gunned the truck onto a Maspeth exit and negotiated the small back streets through Ridge Wood and Middle Village. Neighborhoods that hadn't really changed since the sixties. Middle aged men who lived with their widowed mothers sat in small bars nursing beers. Kids rode bikes in the streets. The predominant skin color was light olive.

Then over the bridge and everything changes. Roll up the window time. Keep your eyes straight ahead at stop lightsville. Don't get into a fender bender here else you want a beatinghood. Ease through here and back to the neighborhood. White suburban rich kids pretending to be poor urban minority kids. Skulking around in hoodies and ripped jeans sipping seven dollar coffees; sneering at him as he drives slowly by in his gas gulping macho truck. They still had a few years of thinking green before they return home to their inherited jobs and SUV culture.

No parking spaces for blocks and He walks by the track on his way home thinking he should go for a run. That's the place to find women. On the track, fit and horny from exercise. Get them home and into the steamy shower. Opens the front door then 'bam' the fucking thing slams back, this weekend he thinks rip that old piece of shit apart and install something nice and quiet. The 'shush' of a hydraulic damper. Like in a doctor's office the only thing you can hear is the air pushing out.

There at the end of the dark hall way two round bodies trying in vain to become one against the wall. "oisy oisy, daddy home from work, did 'e bring us any presies daddy." Lucas grinning, his arms around Cathie's girth who's looking up with a warm smile. He stands some feet away. "And so to what do I owe this pleasure?" "He's a sight better looking than before isn't he?" "Hello He." is all that Cathie would say. He brushed by the two who nearly fill the width of the hall and opened the door, holding it wide and extending his arm with a welcoming gesture. Lucas pushed by and went straight to the wine cabinet that He had replenished with a half dozen bottles of Pinot and a couple of choice Langduc's. Cathy followed holding a big green net bag packed with groceries. He eyed the bag and then Lucas who was struggling with a cork.

"You two been shopping?" "Yea, Cathie's making dinner." "Umm, I didn't know you had a stove, or a kitchen, or even a sink. Do you live nearby Cathie?" She was already laying vegetables on the counter from the bag. She gave Lucas a puzzled look. "No, here you cunt, we're all eating here, Clem's coming over." He rubbed his eye hard so that he saw red spots. Cathie looked between He and Lucas. "You never asked him did you, you lied to me." Lucas succeeded in popping the cork on the bottle and went for glasses. "I don't lie sweetums he's daft is all, I told him, he forgot, big important job and all, fixes air conditioners or some fucking thing."

He went to his bedroom and stripped off his clothes, putting on shorts and a sweat shirt and came back to the kitchen. "I'm sorry He, I thought you knew, We can go..." "Its fine." He waved her off. "But you know Lucas is lying, but he always lies, he doesn't know how not to, it's how he makes his living." "Fuck off you cunt, I don't have to stand for that." Lucas yelled as he sat down and poured out a full glass of wine. "I'm going for a run be back in forty minutes or so, make your self's at home, by which I mean be comfortable, but don't fuck in my bed." "Insolence." Lucas murmured, his mouth obscured by the glass; wine running from his layered chin.

When He returned from his run breathless and soaked with sweat the hall way was full of cackling laughter and rich delicious smells. He opened the kitchen door to find Lucas and Clem sat at the counter quaffing wine while Cathie dashed around saucing and mincing. "Hello" Clem watched He enter, her hand holding a class of red aloft with what seemed a greedy smile teasing her mouth. "Hello." He returned, there was a moment of silence then the three burst out laughing again. "Em?"

Clem and Lucas were guffawing so Cathie filled him in. "Clem was just bragging about what a cocks-men you are, giving us all the dirty little details about your night together." "Christ" He muttered as he pulled his running shoes off "is there no decency?" "She was just about to define the term 'butt slut' for us when you, as you're so apt to do, interrupted us." Lucas said grimacing before sucking on his glass. "butt slut." He repeated, shook his head "seems to define itself, I'll leave you to this bit of enlightenment while I have a shower." "Gaw, listen to him, bit of enlightenment." Lucas rolled his head in an imitation of effeminacy, his fat cheeks shaking, the long scraggly hair hanging from the sides of his horseshoe dome made him comic in a pathetic old drunk at the end of the bar way, which surely he was destined to be one day.

He laughed and pulled of the sweet shirt flinging it the length of the apartment so that it stuck into a pile of dirty clothes. "Now there's a real man, look at that torso. Like a fucking Greek statue come to life, init?" Lucas grumbled turning away in disgust, mumbling "how very American." "Lucas stop" Cathie scolded from the stove, "you're drunk already." He opened the door to the bathroom. "Wait" Clem pounced from her seat. He stood aside, "you have to go?" "No" she mewed as she ran her hand down his stomach over his damp crotch. "I want to suck on your cock while you shower." Lucas looked up pursing his purple stained lips over a cough. He arched his eyebrows and swept Clem in as he slammed the door. "Perverts." Lucas yelled.

When Clem had finished He off and he had cleansed and dried himself they joined Cathie and Lucas at the counter. There was an appetizer of ratatouille topped with crisp ham and a plate of polenta on the table, another bottle of wine had been opened and He now had a glass for himself. Relaxed and content as he always felt after a woman had swallowed his seed.

Lucas was pointing at He's cell phone while attempting to talk, his mouth stuffed with food. He strained, his face went red then relaxed as he took a gulp of wine to ease the lump down. Catching his breath he wheezed "There are thirty four missed calls on this thing, why don't you attend to that?" He eyed him quizzically, Lucas sounded generally disturbed, a man employed in the criticism of emerging technology who refused to own a cell phone. "Why are you handling my phone?" "I wanted to call my mum, but you've had your service restricted, you tight bastard." "Yes, I specified on my new contract that no calls were to be made to Yorkshire." "Devonshire you cunt and why don't you do something with all of these missed calls?" He shrugged as he sat down, "they're all from the same person." Clem gasped and giggled "they're from what s her name aren't they? Your ex, aren't they...uh she's dying of jealousy." Turning to Cathie who was mixing something over the stove. "She called the other night while we were in bed and I answered the phone and told her I was fucking him." Smiling at He with a delighted glimmer in her eye. "I'll bet she's going mad thinking about it." He took a sip of the wine and shrugged "I talked to her about it already, after I got home that night." The three were staring at him, Cathie had stopped stirring and Lucas had stopped drinking. He sneered at them. "This is a, you know, somewhat private, personal situation." "Bullshit." Lucas blurted "we're all involved in this now." "Any way I didn't say much just listened to her rant until six thirty in the morning." "rant?" Clem repeated smiling. "I made the situation clear to her last week." "How so?" Cathie spoke for the first time. "Well, like Lucas said, the spring has sprung, there's no going back to where we were."

The room went suddenly silent as the three stared at him. "You didn't actually tell her the spring had sprung did you?" Cathie asked with pity in her voice. "Yeah" He answered thinking about the phrase, maybe it wasn't such a great metaphor. "Ye sappy cunt, you don't tell a woman the spring has sprung, this is a direct, logical explanation for men, that was for you, so you could understand what was happening. Women will never understand that." He looked to Clem and then Cathie waiting for them to join in with their indignant verbal whipping of Lucas. Instead they were both nodding straight faced in total agreement "Are we going to eat or what?" He responded in his own defense.

They sat at the counter eating the meal. Despite her bovinish nipple rings Cathie's skill in the kitchen was substantial. It wasn't elegant; there was no delicacy about her fare. It was made for the large of appetite and the hardy of constitution. They ate the ratatouille and polenta and then a course of avocado soup, followed by quail tureen with new potatoes in cream. They all ate a great amount with crisp sour dough bread from the Italian bakery on the corner and quaffed the wine. There was no mystery about the size of the girl considering the meal. But she seemed content to be large and ate without embarrassment while Lucas ludely groped her between bites and swallows.

After the food had all been consumed and the dishes were piled in the sink to soak for some later cleaning Lucas produced a lone fat blunt of high powered marijuana. He sat in the dreaded moon chair and fired the thing up with his Zippo lighter, which he snapped closed with a flick of the wrist the way Europeans think Americans must do. He inhaled deeply and leaned back in the chair with his eyes shut, let out a small gasp of smoke and inhaled shallowly again before passing it on. He rocked back in the chair and swiveled from side to side a little like a child on a bar stool for the first time.

"Hey fat head", the three looked at He who staring at Lucas. Lucas opened his eyes when they all went silent, finding himself at the center of it he grimaced. choked once and let the smoke waft from his nostrils as he sat up in the chair to return He's look.

"What?" his voice rasped with irritation at being disturbed while holding the smoke in his lungs. "Do you want that chair?" "What I do?" "I'm asking you a question, do want that chair?" Lucas scowled again, "I thought you loved this fucking chair." "I hate it, she loved it." Lucas thought about it for a moment, thought about this creating some sort of debt he may have to repay some day and declined. "No, Elvis will have it in pieces in a day." He thought aloud then blurted. "No, fuck off with your chair." Sitting back again into the deep scoop of the chair back.

He looked at Clem who was sucking on the end of the joint. She shrugged and mouthed 'homeless' without letting any of the smoke escape. Then Cathie who shyly denied wanting it until Heath said he was only going to throw it out otherwise. "I'll take it then, thank you very much He." "Now" He stood up to replenish his drink "the spring is well sprung, that chair is the last of it."

When Lucas and Cathie left for the garage Clem lay with her head in He's lap on the floor. "So tell me about butt sluts." He laughed. Clem bit him on the stomach. "I'm a butt slut, kind of, I mean I like anal and I'm kind of a slut so, yeah I guess I'm a butt slut." "emmm" He murmured buying himself some time to think of a pertinent response. "You know" she continued sitting up so she could see his reaction "it's one of those things you do when you're a kid, peer pressure, like smoking, guys are always saying 'so do you Greek or what?' and finally you just say yeah, because you don't know what it is and it sounds cool. I didn't like smoking but I like butt fucking so..."

When they were finished Clem took her shower and came back dressed. "Going Home?" He asked yawning "yeah" Clem said "can I use your phone again. He pointed to his cell on the desk. She picked it up and started to dial then stopped, "Jesus He, now there's fifty missed calls." He stood and shrugged on his way to the toilet. "I think you better call her or something that's, that's too much." "What can I do?" He called from the other end of the apartment. "Well you still love her don't you?" He paused, looking at himself in the mirror, tooth brush hanging from his mouth, his eyes blood shot from the dope. "What difference does that make?" Clem walked in and leaned against the door frame looking into the kitchen, "you don't believe all that shit about the spring being sprung do you?" He thought again quickly, "Yes, I do." "that's dumb He, I've broken up and gotten back with my boy friend at least ten times, he's the one had me committed but look I'm still with him." He spat a white foamy plume of tooth paste and stepped half way out of the room "you mean now?" "Yeah, didn't Cathie tell Lucas." He shook his head silently, the toothbrush hanging from his mouth his hands at his sides. "ohhh, she is a good friend."

Clem was holding the door ready to leave. He stood in front of her in the kitchen naked still. She reached up and kissed him on the cheek. "He, I'm not gonna fuck you again, OK." He smiled a smile of relief and satisfaction. "Yeah that's alright." "Ok then, see you." "See you." He closed the door gently behind her and heard her foot falls as she made her way to the front then the tremendous crash of the door slamming shut. He picked up his phone, fifty two missed calls.

He landed in Atlanta four hours late because of the general aversion airlines have for their clientele. He flew in something called domestic business class which seemed just a little more uncomfortable then economy had a year before. When he landed and was again processed through security; had his bags re-checked, his urine screened and his thumb print taken he was ready for the abuse of the car rental agent who laughed out right when He said he had reserved and pre-paid for a coupe for the week. He was given a stack of forms to fill out and a pile of waivers to sign. When they were finished at the counter threatening law suits if he so much as thought about smoking, eating or drinking anything in the car while it was in his care they let him leave under glares of derision.

After twenty minutes of being lost he arrived at his hotel late. His reservation had been downgraded from an executive room to a traveler's room. He asked if this was because all of the executive rooms were full, but no it was only because he was late, if he would like to upgrade he could for an additional one hundred and fifty dollars a night. "but isn't the executive room already paid for?" He asked. "The room was reserved until nine thirty in its previous status. When you failed to comply with the agreed upon check in time you were downgraded at the same rate, if you would like to..." He held his hand out to stop the nonsensical, pseudo contractual gibberish from continuing.

He was starting to think that business travel wasn't what it used to be.

After he had unpacked he took the elevator to the spa/ pool lounge. He had had fantasies while sitting in his cramped seat on the run way for three hours about meeting some gothic southern beauty. About dinners in chic places she knew about after his days at the museum. About long strenuous sessions of hot southern sex; shuttering, filthy, wanton expletives in a thick southern drawl. He thought maybe it would all start here at the pool.

He ran his key card through the sensor and got a red light. He tried again, the red light. He picked up the courtesy phone. A clipped voice answered, the southern hospitality professionally groomed out of it. "Yes sir?" "My card won't work here at the pool." "Try it again with the arrow facing down sir." 'Right because I'm a moron and can't read the diagram on the door.' "Okay, it doesn't work". "Try the card sir" "I have twice, with the arrow down it doesn't work." "Do it again sir so I can get a reading on your status here at the Hotel Marquis Mansion International." Snide and patronizing. He flashed the card over the sensor again. "Okay sir you are booked here as a traveler and don't have access to the spa/fitness pool lounge at this time." "At this time?" "Yes sir, pool privileges for travel level guests are from three to four P.M. sir." "Three to four? In the afternoon?" "Yes sir" "One hour in the afternoon, while I'll be working?" "Sir if you would like to upgrade to executive level for one hundred and fifty dollars per night you will have access to the pool lounge twenty four hours a day; we can do that now if you like."

He hung up the phone and returned to his room to have a bath.

The job at the museum was text book. The building was a Lego set design. All right angels and flat surfaces. Three course cement block, concrete floors, aluminum girded roof hung with a drop ceiling. The walls would be sealed with an acrylic polymer inside. The ceiling replaced and insulated and then HVAC system could be installed. The tests and drawings took one day.

The Museum had gotten a grant from an old money family who were donating their entire collection of confederate uniforms but didn't want to see them destroyed by the naturally abusive heat and humidity of the area. When He was finished on the second day running plume lines to check the level of the floor one of the docents offered him a tour of the place.

He was completely uninterested in the specific history of Atlanta's role in the Civil War but he was very interested in the six foot slender frame of the volunteer who was top heavy with a C cup. She dressed in silk and light cotton.

Most docents are doddering old spinsters who spend their days giving mind numbing tours to slack jawed school children who have it forced on them. This one though couldn't have been thirty yet and exuded a kind of smoky sexuality that He thought of being indigenous to the south.

They toured the museum talking more about themselves then his work or the museum's collection. He watched her carefully. Her trim well defined body shifting to indicate some rust pitted long barrel rifle or rotted canteen bag. She took him by the arm while they walked the cool corridors and when they finished they had coffee in the cafe. To him it was a fore drawn conclusion that she wanted him to ask her out. Gentlemanly like he put it to her that he didn't know any one in Atlanta and with two days left and not much to do in town he wondered if she might join him for dinner. She bristled slightly at the invitation and with all of the exasperation a southern lady could gather without being sincere exclaimed "why Heath I am a married woman."

The sentence lingered in the coffee shops greasy air then she smiled and finished "then dinner is only dinner" pausing to delicately swallow a sip of coffee she added in a tone that swaggered "except of course when it has nothing to do with eating. Let's have drinks... six? Where are you staying?"

He gave her the card with the address of the hotel and checked the time. If he drove quickly he might make the allotted travelers class pool hour.

He missed the travels pool hour by ten minutes but lingered about the locked door with his cell phone in hand waiting for someone with executive class status to crack the seal.

When he heard footsteps approaching around the corner he held the phone to his ear and leaned against the wall with his key card at the ready, murmuring agreement.

The man who approached looked Executive class. He was sure he wouldn't accept his privileges being downgraded to that of a traveler. Then the staff would never attempt to do so faced with his high salary jowls and belly of importance. The man carried nothing with him and eyed He suspiciously as he caught the opened door with his room towel draped over his arm. He nodded to the man and rolled his eyes in mock irritation at being interrupted by the false phone call on his way to the pool. He kept up what he thought might sound like a business discussion as he ambiguously agreed and disagreed with the silent hand set.

When he saw the fat stack of thick terry cloth robes and towels stacked neatly on the attendant's counter he knew the man had identified him as a phony. A usurper, pushing his way out of his allotted traveler's existence to sully the executive waters. He ignored his obvious faux pas, picking up a robe and towel avoiding eye contact with the attendant and followed the bona fide swimmer in.

In the locker room he was suddenly furious with himself for letting the hotel short change and mistreat him. To let them laugh and degrade him even while he, or the company any way paid for it. Who the fuck were these half whit red necks to make him into a traveler without pool privileges. He was as important here as these bloated, ivory white executives with their black socks and thick rolled necks.

His bile had risen and the desire to swim was replaced by his need to rectify the situation at hand. He wanted his come-up-ance. He wanted his executive room with its fruit basket and heated towel racks. Dropping the thick robe and its accompanying towel on the floor he strode out to the attendants desk steeling himself for what he knew was going to be a an hour or more of pre programmed corporate duplicity but he was going to get his executive level treatment by hook or by pike.

Geared up and ready for the fight, glaring at the attendant who was speaking on the phone when the barely audible environment enhancing music that played at an almost subconscious level was suddenly interrupted by a mellow female voice calling him. 'Mr. Heath Barlow, please pick up a courtesy phone, Mr. Heath Barlow please pick up the nearest courtesy telephone' it drawled.

How did they know? How had they read his thoughts? Were they going to capitulate to his demands before he made them in an attempt to seem like a responsible company that didn't treat its customers as deformed step children? Or where they going to down grade him yet again for violating the spa/lounge out of his designated hour? Did they have some tourist/economy level accommodation in the sub basement where bloated families in sports adventure clothing roam cold concrete block halls with blank eyes seeking an exit that doesn't exist and the nights are filled by echoing howls and the giddy laughter of the true reality television \- Arbys consuming American people?

The spa attendant looked up just then and smiled. "Can I help you sir?" Was it a ruse? Maybe he wasn't in the loop. He pointed to the phone, "That's me, they want me on the courtesy phone." "Ah" the boy responded and handed him the beige handle. As soon as he put his ear against the hard body a perky commercially southern voice piped up. "How may I help you?" "I'm He.... ah Heath Barlow I'm being paged." "Just a moment Mr. Barlow."

He could see the long pool through the frosted doors in front of him. He could smell the chlorine; almost feel the cool water sliding over his back as he swam laps. Better to forget about all of this now and take a swim, focus on dinner tonight, the challenge of getting the long southern sex pot between the sheets.

"Mr. Barlow, the Atlanta Sheriff's department has left a message for you to contact them, I have a number here." "What?" He blurted, "the Atlanta sheriffs...what do they want?" "I don't Mr. Barlow I only have a number and a contact name, I can patch you through now if you like." He thought for a moment, something to do with security at the museum, code conflict, some kind of registration process. "No I'm at the pool I'll call down from my room." There was a lingering pause and a soft cough. "Mr. Barlow you do realize that the traveler's level pool spa lounge hour is over don't you?" He handed the phone back to the boy behind the counter.

In his room he shuffled through the folder of contract papers and jotted down the various licensing numbers. This could get complicated he thought. He checked the clock, 4:45, he had a little time, and they wouldn't want to get into all of the particulars over the phone if there was a serious problem he would go there in the morning.

He rang the lobby and they passed him on to the APD and then he was voice to voice with what sounded so much like a movie stereo type cracker cop he could barely stifle the laugh when the man announced "Deeetective Jourisdick." He composed himself before answering the man. A floating image of a bloated, red faced cop was bouncing around his head. "This is Heath Barlow, I was asked by my hotel to call you." "You in the Hotel Marquis Mansion International?" "Yes" He groaned, he hated talking to cops, the repetition, and the senseless questions looping in circles trying to trap you in a lie which they can't follow themselves. "Big deal" the cop grunted. He held the receiver away from his face and gave it the bug eye. "I got a call from some Detective in Brooklyn, which I guess is where you live, he wants to talk to you, now." The cracker gave him the information in a slow sneering sarcastic manner and hung up without saying good bye.

It could be his apartment, the truck... what else? He couldn't think of anything. He had no family in the city, no one who would use him as an emergency contact, unless Lucas needed to be bailed out but they wouldn't call him here in Atlanta to post for an overweight English tech junkie, besides he had plenty of money of his own.

He rang the precinct on his cell phone. In his experiences dealing with cops, no matter the situation, nothing good ever came of it. Guilty or innocent, victim or perpetrator he had never been treated as much more then scum and it always ended up costing him money.

The phone was answered with the predictable brash, sharp, ill educated cops voice specific to the NYPD. "Thirty Two." "What?" He asked. "Thirty two." the voice repeated, now incensed at having to repeat a number, "thirty second precinct." "Right." He answered in a way that he knew irritated cops. "My name is Heath Barlow, I was contacted by the Atlanta PD to call here and talk to a Detective Remer." "What's this in regards to?" "How would I know, what did I just say? I was contacted, I'm in Atlanta." There was some harsh mumbling from the other end. "Hold the line" and an abrupt click.

He shuffled the papers on the desk in front of him and fantasized about the museum docent, he pictured the long legs in his mind and the way they turned her as she walked in her high cut tailored business suit. "Remer" the phone barked. He had expected a man, a man with a Latino accent, 'Rèmer', instead the woman pronounced it as Reamer- as in; 'reamed her, it damn near killed her.' "Heath Barlow" He offered up wondering why the desk sergeant hadn't already passed this on. "Mr. Barlow, excuse me for disturbing your trip but I have a few questions for you." He relaxed into the chair, it didn't sound like this was going to be serious, the woman's voice was easy going, almost pleasant, for a cop.

"Are you acquainted with a Sheila Vasquez." He bolted in his chair, his mind turned over and raced with possibilities. She had what? Taken out a re-straining order, charged him with egregious mental perversion, burned his apartment down....? "I am, of course, you know that, that's why you're calling me." He couldn't disguise his distress. "Mr. Barlow I'm sorry to have to tell you she's dead." The detective said it evenly without letting a vowel quiver or a consonant stammer, just the way she was trained. "Ohm." He moaned in a way that sounded very curious to his own ears. "You had lived together?" Remer asked after a respectful pause as He sat watching his spectral reflection in the tinted glass of the sealed, unbreakable hotel window. "Yes, we had." "I know this must be a shock Mr. Barlow but I just need a little more information, how long since she had moved out of your apartment?" He chuckled, a dry one tone laugh. "She left a month, more, five weeks ago? But hadn't really, you know moved, most of her stuff is still..." "So she still had her own keys?" "Yeah.. Yes she did I asked her to move the rest of her stuff and leave them a few days ago, I ...uh didn't want to see her clothes anymore." "Was that the last time you spoke with her?" "I think so, on the phone, I haven't seen her in person since just after she uh, left." "Okay Mr. Barlow can you give me a contact number for a family member that can identify her." "No, there is no one, not in America." "Then Mr. Barlow I'm going to have ask you to do it, when you return." "I'll be there in seven hours. How did she die?" He asked hollowly not thinking just following the script he knew from so many television murders, so many movie deaths. "Maybe you should wait until you arrive to..." the detective trailed off in difference. "No I want to know, it doesn't really matter how but...I want to know." "She hung herself Mr. Barlow, in your closet, among the clothes you wanted her to get."

The detective spoke the words coldly perhaps remembering callous break ups of her own.

He returned to New York that night on the last flight out of Georgia. He had packed his bags and left the hotel room without telling anyone; not reception, not the museum not his manager at pur-air not the leggy southern docent he had hoped to fuck.

He drove to the airport and returned his rental and stood around the counter waiting for his name to be called off the standby list. He knew it would be. Planes were almost never full, when the representatives say a flight is full it is a straight, bald faced lie told in the hopes of generating an extra thirty or forty dollars for a multi billion dollar company. The kind of greed based business ethics that are running America and He knew it. So he made sure to tell the woman who was dimly punching keys on her consol that he was returning early in order to identify the body of his girlfriend. He used the words; morgue, body, identify, detective while the woman continued to peck at the keys instinctively like a test chicken hitting a button to receive a pellet of food.

They finally called him at about the time the plane was scheduled to take off so that when he actually entered the fuselage he was scolded by one of the hyenas dressed in navy blue for being late for the flight, he nodded his head smiling as she jammed him into a seat made for an adolescent with an eating disorder.

In the air he found that since he was flying stand by there was no food reserved for him. He hadn't eaten since lunch at the museum but wasn't actually very hungry. What he wanted was a drink. A glass of that cough inducing air red. Like grape juice and formaldehyde shaken together in an eye drop bottle and sold for ten dollars a hit. That's what he wanted but when he asked if he could have a drink the same hideous thing with a scarf around its neck and the aluminum wing pin on its chest just laughed and snapped off his seat light.

He sat in the dark staring out the window refusing to think. Refusing to feel anything. The spring has sprung he said to himself a couple of times over the four hour flight, nodding at his nearly transparent reflection in the port hole.

The lights of New York passed under while he sat rigidly maintaining his frozen state of mind.

They landed and were run through the normal procedures of abuse and embarrassment which have lately become a necessary part of living free. He walked the mile to long term parking with his small rolling bag and his drawing tube. The night air was cold and tinged with high octane fuel as the wind tore through the vast emptiness of the airports down time structure.

He walked purposely, focused on the parking garage and keeping his mind in check. He pictured the truck, he saw himself driving home, He knew the route he would take to his apartment where he might have a bottle of wine waiting for him. Then the parking garage was in front of him. Huge and hollow, with ramps spiraling up the center, lit with dangling lights. It could have been a festival ornament from a distance but this close it was unmistakably industrial; like a penitentiary or an abattoir.

He spiraled the truck out of the great empty concrete structure into the boondoggle of the JFK expressway then to the absurdly narrow Van Wycke which cut and traced a jagged path to the BQE. A route he had driven thousands of times. But this time he found so many interesting sights in the dead of night. The Paris Inn with it toy sized Eiffel tower. 'Wow' he thought 'look at the size of La Frack city, used to call it La crack because of all the drugs, that's funny.' The cemetery just past the 48 St.exit, 'looks good at night very restful, nice place for a walk.'

He pulled the truck into the parking lot of the Van Dam diner. An all night place where societies drop outs went to eat. Derelicts, washed out alcoholics, con men and third shift truck drives mingled with middle aged Greek and Puerto Rican waitresses in a common language known only to its inhabitants. It is an environment that is particular to the twenty four hour Queens diner, an almost utopian world where racial prejudice and class differences vanish in the face of polyester booths, swivel stools and muzak; with steak and eggs at any hour of the day.

He ordered some kind of enormous combination breakfast and was shocked to see that it was already three A.M.. No point in going home he thought, just linger here for an hour or so and then straight to see detective Reemer, 'it nearly killed 'er', he thought and slurped too hard on his coffee. Choking and coughing, rousing the ere of those in the know, those who spoke the language.

He sat on a candy colored stool with a paper in front of his face poking his fork into the various textures on his plate. The soft flesh of a poached egg stained red from the hot sauce he had reflexively splashed across it now seeping its thick yellow yoke. He burst the taught skin of a sausage and the ground meat inside filled the wound. He broke the brown gold crust of home fried potatoes and even managed to slide a bite into his mouth. The plate of thin almost television perfect pancakes sat unmolested with a large wad of butter colored goo melting over the top.

He sat playing in his food, letting the print of the day's top stories glaze over his eyes. He turned pages and shook the wrinkles from the seam to fold it neatly over. He sat and drank each re-fill the waitress poured never looking up, engrossed in the paper, this is how he wanted to appear.

At five thirty he paid his bill, dropped the paper on the used pile and left before the breakfast crowd gathered in earnest. Approaching light had changed the black sky to a deep blue over the expressway over pass. Traffic was still light; he guided the truck through the small streets of Long Island City watching men pack trucks with all matter of materials for delivery, construction and demolition.

Over the Polanski bridge onto McGuiness Ave., still Polish and ramshackle looking in spite of all the recent changes in Green Point. He stopped at a red light where he had a drunken fight many years ago at three in the morning with two Porto Ricans who had either wanted to rob him or that he was trying to buy drugs from, he couldn't remember. He looked at the grassy slope where they had kicked him unconscious and struggled to bring the night back until a car horn woke him to driving again.

It was early enough that he could still park in front of the precinct. All of the cop's personal cars where pulled up onto the side walk making it useless while the patrol cars blocked the street making it impassable. For the first time in his life he walked voluntarily through the big oxide green double doors of a police station.

The viewing room of the morgue was a lot like an empty art gallery. It was cold and white with bright lights washing the walls. It had the same sterile quality, the same feeling of forced reverence. There was a single small table and two folding metal chairs to sit on while you waited for a coroner's assistant to roll your loved one through the swinging doors encased in plastic.

He sat alone as detective Rèemer checked something against something with the county clerk when the double doors banged opened and a young man with a noticeable hitch to his step wheeled the gurney in. The body bag was shiny and tan, they had caught a fringe of her hair in the zip and it stood up like a fine black fan against the whiteness of the room.

The assistant turned, using two steps, in an ungainly gait. He could now see the prescription shoe plainly. He was about twenty three and un-kept in a school boy way. "This you" the boy inquired amused at his own callousness. He nodded, and added an unnecessary "yes". The boy unzipped the bag with a flourish, spread the sides so that She's yellowed face was completely exposed to the high powered lights.

He sighed, She looked terrible. Her eyes stood out from the sockets in a shocked almost comical way, they were streaked with bright red veins that must have surfaced in her last seconds searching for oxygen. Her lips were a pale blue almost white but her face was the color of a high impact bruise. Her forehead was etched with lines as were her eyes making her look so old. If it was a Halloween guise it would have been brilliant but as a way to die it was inglorious.

"As you can see we have basic cerebral hypoxia, ischemic neuronal death here." Club foot announced in a conceited, bored monotone. "It was a partial hang, there are abrasions on both the knees and feet, also on one elbow. A ligature death, implement was a..." he broke of as he scanned the chart. He stared into the burst brown of She's eyes. "...silk scarf, of course." The boy looked up with a grin. "Seems like typical hypoxyphilia, 'cept she's a chick." Clubfoot dropped the paper work on her plastic covered chest. "What?" He spoke for the first time without looking up. "Autoerotic asphyxiation." Clubfoot wiggled his body in a slight disco dance while he said it. "What?" He repeated, looking up now, not able to follow the words, lost in the reality of the situation.

Shouldn't he be given a silent moment to say good bye or be surrounded by officials, or be filling out paper work while somebody uttered placations.

"A bag and a jag." The kid said, saw the blank look on He's face and acted out simultaneously choking and masturbating himself. Sticking his tongue out and rapidly flailing his right fist against his raised crotch. "That's why; you know it's odd, never had a female in here choked while choking it."

He was starting to thaw to the scene. Clubfoot was telling him his girl friend of many years had died in his closet while trying to obtain an enhanced orgasm by reducing the oxygen in her brain through hanging herself. It seemed unlikely.

"Why are you telling me all this" He asked the boy, he was too tired and confused to be angry or even truly upset but he had the feeling clubfoot wasn't following proper protocol. The boy scrunched his shoulders and peered at him over She's bloated, blood bruised face "don't you need to hear all of this shit?" the boy asked in a voice that could only be a taunt.

He was shaking his head trying to answer when the interior door slammed shut. Remer was striding with authority toward the three. The clubfoot hobbled between her and the gurney. "who are you?" he asked patronizingly, shielding her view of the corpse with his body. "Detective Remer" she spoke it automatically while at the same time producing her leather incased gold badge. Club foot looked at He. Who was still looking into She's dead eyes but responded "boyfriend" never the less.

He spent a few days dismantling his life. He was obliged to contact She's relatives and inform them of her death, he left a contact name at the morgue to whom they could work out the details of having her body returned if they felt so inclined, which he doubted they would.

The apartment was emptied, He sold what he could and gave away the rest; including the ochre moon chair to Cathie who was so upset when he delivered it she couldn't speak and only clutched him to her ample, pierced bosom. Lucas carted away anything left after the two day walk through sale, no matter if it was old clothes that wouldn't ever fit him or dog eared books he had no interest in. He ran back and forth from his garage to He's apartment with the booty held to his chest as a looter might.

He made one trip to pur-air in order to return the truck and give them the plans for the museum in Georgia. His manager had no idea he had returned early so that when they met in the hallway he was surprised and then impressed. He was early and the work was already complete. Then shocked as he told him he had to quit. Then indignant as he asked for a reason and then remorseful and generous as he paid him his salary including a hearty severance package. It was a good job.

When he had his apartment stripped almost bare. What was left of his clothing already packed. All of the paintings, prints and photos gone from the walls. The books sold and the furniture and appliances carted away he sat on the floor where the antique ash desk once was with his laptop and spent an entire afternoon searching the internet for plane tickets to places he had never heard of.

His thoughts were to follow that passing ambition of a few weeks earlier. To abandon this life and discover if he was capable of living elsewhere. She's death had taught him how little he understood himself and the people he was supposed to know best. How he had accepted something as silly as the spring has sprung to be his guide to recovery, how he had mistook a rift in life as an impassable mountain.

She had now left him two notes. The first was long and full of accusations and one sided arguments. The second was short and sweet. It was no wonder the police said there was no suicide note. They would never have noticed it tacked above the desk among the receipts and yellow stick up reminders. There was a clutter of paper; pictures of girls in frilly dress's and old men squatting in bombed out streets but that's where she had fixed it. A crumbled piece of scrap paper in her neat hand, 'She loves He', encircled by a heart, with the sad touch of an arrow shot through it.

