

## THE FROZEN OCEAN

By David M. Antonelli

SMASHWORDS EDITION

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PUBLISHED BY:

David Antonelli on Smashwords

The Frozen Ocean

Copyright © 2014 by David M. Antonelli

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

Smashwords Edition License Notes

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

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There are a few people I'd like to acknowledge:

Paula Baticioto Benato is thanked for designing the cover page. Joanne Kellock and Marylu Walters are thanked for guidance on early versions of this manuscript.

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## THE FROZEN OCEAN

### By David Antonelli

His eyes are quenched. The thread is broken. The room has flown;

all that remains is the foul breath of poison, and one small stranded figure,

the figure of some woman, dwindling, fading, disappearing in the distance.

Jean Cocteau,

from _Les Enfants Terribles_

## Part I

Jackie snapped his motorcycle out of gear and pressed down on the break pedal. He squinted in the light of the setting sun as it cast a brilliant orange sheet across the crumbling roadway. When the glare cleared he could make out the figure of a man standing about fifty yards ahead in the middle of the tarmac. The man raised his hand and coughed.

" _Got a cigarette?" the man asked as Jackie approached._

" _No."_

" _What time is it?"_

" _I don't know."_

" _What day is it?"_

" _Don't know that either."_

" _Seems like you don't know fucking nothing," said the man._

" _Sorry." Jackie shrugged his shoulders and focused his gaze beyond the man to a point as far down the road as his vision allowed. His motorcycle was suddenly a frail canoe whirling down a long black river towards some final destination he could not possibly envision and wished would never come._

" _Where am I?" asked the man. He looked around in vacant uncertainty and stumbled as if he'd just woken up and had no recollection of their interchange from only a moment before._

The fifth circle."

" _Where are you going?"_

" _Nowhere."_

The man stepped closer and gave Jackie a look that said he knew he was up to something and whatever it was it wasn't going to last much longer before someone found out. "Who are you running from?" he asked.

" _What's it to you?"_

" _I need a ride."_

" _Sorry. I'd have to dump my side bag to make room."_

" _Who are you running from?" the man asked again._

" _People."_

" _What did you do?"_

" _Nothing."_

"You had to do something or you wouldn't be running."

" _Why can't someone just run from nothing?"_

" _Nothing? That's shit. Nobody runs from nothing. Nothing isn't fucking nowhere in my books. You hear?"_

Jackie gestured over to the fields of brown loam to their left. "It's everywhere. Can't you see?"

" _You're full of shit. There ain't nothin' there."_

Jackie gestured for the man to get out of the way. For all he knew the man had seen pictures of his face on TV that morning and it wouldn't be long before he recognized him. He pressed lightly on the accelerator and glided around the stranger. "I've gotta' move," he said.

Jackie adjusted his earring and looked straight ahead. To one side were the dull ruminant layers of the City shrinking off in the distance like walls of a circular labyrinth capped with myriad crumbling towers and grim metallic cupolas – Orphean smokestacks disgorging muffs of grayish smoke into the blue-black twilight as they ushered you to follow in their death dance towards some metal and concrete netherworld.

He looked in the opposite direction towards the furthest reaches of the ocean where the water met the sky in a thin grey pencil line stretching across the horizon. For a moment he thought he could make out the figure of a great killer whale - shimmering, portentous - rolling its smooth tubular body in the light of the setting sun. He narrowed the gap between his eyelids and the zebra hide pattern of its imagined skin faded into the zebra hide pattern conjured forth by the rippling wavelets - blackish and dancing like little knives across the blood black wash of the ocean. A mirage.

A gull circled for a moment before plunging through the water's rippling black skin – a darkly heaping mass of tide and foam. A blinding splash of silvery droplets erupted from the silky surface as the lanky bird flapped out of the water with a fish in its beak and then flew upwards. So many birds got caught in the undertow and never came up again. That was always the danger in these waters. The smart ones seemed to know by instinct which parts to avoid.

When darkness fell Jackie stopped by the roadside and hid his motorcycle behind a clump of trees. He opened his side bag and pulled out the sleeping bag he'd just stolen that morning. He unfurled it on the ground in front of him. Only three months ago he was lying in Jeanette's arms in the crazy bliss of an abandoned amusement park. But those times had long since vanished into memories he was already struggling to resurrect - or even just curate - and now he was totally alone. In a strange and ghastly way life had given him what he had always wanted and never expected. Freedom. He collapsed on the ground and wrapped himself in the sleeping bag. In a moment he was asleep.

### I

Jackie ran his fingertips through his spiked black hair and looked out past the lighthouse, enjoying for the instant the play of deep azure forms reflected back into the blazing firmament from the mirror of the sea. The vast array of cloud formations had receded with the setting sun, leaving in their wake nothing but a mass of empty black space. _This is me_ , he thought as his heart began to sink and he wiped his nose with the ridge of his thumb. _Nothing but empty black space_. A gull flew by and he heard the sound of a car approaching from the distance. A moment later a beat-up old Chevy pulled into the driveway and stopped. Michael shifted his muscular frame in the seat and opened the door, catching the sleeve of his suede jacket on the antennae as he stepped out. He opened the trunk of the car and pulled out two half-filled garbage bags.

"Christ," Michael said. "I don't know what you want these for, but whatever it is you'd better help me carry them inside. I'm freezing."

Jackie took the largest bag and they walked into the kitchen of his house. Without even flicking the light switch he dropped the bag on the floor, sucked in his cheeks and opened the refrigerator door.

"Just give me a hand and I'll explain," Jackie said.

They quickly emptied the contents of the refrigerator into a large cardboard box on the floor and then began to fill it up again with as many of the small brown butcher's packages from the two garbage bags as they could. Ten minutes later they were finished. Jackie turned on the light and started cleaning up the blood from the floor.

"Boy, I'd give a million to see the look on her face when she sees this." Jackie pulled a bottle of whiskey out from under his coat and took a swig.

"To your own sister," said Michael. He shook his head.

"She needs it. _A dose of reality_."

Michael grabbed the bottle from Jackie and took a swig.

"Lets get out of here. We've got a party to go to."

"Leave your car here," said Jackie. "I'll double you on my bike."

Michael flicked out the lights and they walked outside. The evening sky was fading as they mounted the rusting leather and chrome octopus, decked with its mass of mirrors and rock stickers. It was a vintage Triumph he had just bought with money from his sixteenth birthday.

Jackie zipped up his jacket and took a deep, almost ceremonial breath as he looked out to the beach about a hundred yards from the driveway. The sea had always amazed him - even before it had engulfed his father six years ago. While it gave birth to and supported millions of shimmering life forms, its silver-black waters could also kill, spewing out dead and rotting animals, slimy arms of kelp and half-cracked shells. But the ocean was more than just the pulsing gray receptacle of life and death that stood before him. It could rise beyond itself to become a vast paradigm of all existence, stretching out into all quarters of life and reason to stand for all that was uncontrollable and hopelessly out of reach in life. Jeanette - the beautiful redheaded girl in his Latin class - was one such thing. She was life and death at once embodied in a single glance – a desperate wish for a kiss or at least a hopeful embrace - every facet of that swelling black wash before him.

"So, are we going then?" prompted Michael. "Or are we going to just sit here staring out into the fucking water all night?"

"Suck my dick," Jackie retorted with a sharp grin as he turned the machine's stubby metal ignition key. The ride into the City was always long and treacherous. The dirt roads were more crags than road and it seemed like every day there was another story on the radio about a fatal accident on the perimeter freeway just outside the industrial sector. The bike jolted into motion and they drove off into the grey light of dusk.

The next morning Jackie came down into the kitchen. His mother was sitting alone at the breakfast table humming something nervous and foreboding, her ropy black hair tumbling to the shoulders of her pale blue summer dress. She had something important to say and he wasn't sure if he wanted to know what it was.

"Don't you have classes this morning?" she asked.

"I'll only miss one. Besides, I thought you'd be at work."

"That's no excuse."

"I'm sick."

"I'm the one who should be sick after seeing what you put in the fridge last night. You're lucky I don't ground you. That's what your father would have done."

"It was a joke. It wasn't even meant for you – but it could just as well have been. You two eat too much diet food. I thought that giving her all that fat would help her get back into real food."

She stood up and placed her arm on his shoulder and gazed into his eyes with a look of both authority and surrender as if to ask for his approval while also telling him in the same breath that he had no say in what was about to happen.

"Not this again."

"I'm sorry. It's just that..."

"That what?"

"I might as well spring it on you as painlessly as possible."

"What, then?"

"Well, I don't know how to say this but..."

"But?"

She cleared her throat and looked straight into his tense expectant eyes. "I don't want to beat around the bush, so I'm going to be abrupt." Jackie looked at her and said nothing. After a long silence she shrugged her shoulders and continued. "I know you might be shocked at this, and I've tried as I hard as I could...you see, life does things you just can't predict."

"I thought you weren't going to beat around the bush."

"Well, then. If you would just give me a chance." She put her hand on his shoulder and looked down at the floor as though she were ashamed of something and didn't want him to know about it. "I'm seeing a new man."

Jackie nodded his head in silence. It was best he pretended not to care. He had no idea who this new joker was and he didn't feel like hearing about it. He had been living with his mother and sister in the house by the sea for almost six years since his father's death. She had worked at a Law office in the City as a secretary for the last five years, and had only seen one other man, a cheerful auto dealer who liked to play cards, and even then for only six weeks before he moved away and they never heard from him again. The entrance of another man into his mother's life represented the entrance of another man into _his_ life. It was an invasion that had to be averted at all costs.

"We can talk later," he said, his calm indifference having slowly peeled away to reveal a look of derision. She gazed deeply into his eyes and smiled as though his expression had no effect on her. He felt for a moment he was isolated from the rest of the world by a great obsidian wall and that anything he could possibly do or feel would never have any influence on anyone.

He walked out of the room, grabbed his keys and then left the house. He zipped up his jacket and walked over to the silver-gray Triumph parked beside the shed in the back. He checked his backpack one last time. He had his binoculars for spying, he had his flask of whiskey for lunch, he had his iPod for math class, and best of all he had his _Geisheirra_ comics for English class.

He turned the ignition key and dropped the clutch. Being careful not to slip on the surface of the morning grass, still glistening with dew, he steered his motorcycle slowly over the unpaved path leading to the back door of the house and then out to the secondary dirt road. His wheels spun up as he pulled away from their lot. In minutes he was following the narrow road along the ocean cliffs, which eventually met up with the main artery that led into the City. Past a line of abandoned wooden sheds and through a five mile stretch of switchbacks; then inwards and away from the cliffs. Through a patch of sparse forest breaking into a long dull clearing that eventually led to a smoldering black shell of a field that marked the beginning of an industrial sector. After passing a row of refineries the traffic thickened. Traffic gathered and he soon found himself surrounded on all sides by cars and trucks. He peeled off the next exit to a paved side road in order to get away.

The City was divided into five imaginary circles that corresponded exactly to the five zones created by the transit company for their colored map and pricing system. The sky had darkened and a light coat of rain covered the pavement. He breathed deeply as he examined his surroundings with a hard and compassionless gaze. Factories and freeways etched into the surface of the earth like conducting veins on a silicon microchip. This was the fifth zone. Here all the people were greedy. They drove from factory to bloody sick factory with their long hourglass faces carrying seemingly identical nylon tote bags filled with coke cans and vending machine lunches. They were destined not for greatness in this circle, but rather for _grayness_. Perhaps it was a bad pun, but unfortunately it was true. In this circle people had dust for skin and although they all seemed to see themselves as lucky-sons-of-a-bitches with bright futures somewhere in the middle of the corporate ladder, they were really just the gatekeepers of the City's own special version of Hell.

The next stage of descent brought him past a row of strip malls into the fourth circle, a more residential sector where the people always seemed to be shopping. It was the biggest of the five zones. Its boundaries stretched deep into the City's dark angularity and outwards to the putty-grayness of the outer circle. It was easy to get trapped. Some families got seduced by its mock sense of bliss and ended up staying there forever. He looked over his shoulder at the rear window of and SUV. The seats were filled with grocery bags, children and fishing gear. He always thought these people looked happy on the surface but underneath their Botox smiles simmered a sense of hidden dissatisfaction. He almost felt sorry for them. They were damned to go on borrowing and buying until their lives whittled down to a bitter end groveling in the office of some bank manager or creditor. This was the circle he feared the most. Passing through its perilous byways often made him wish that he were an exotic virus sent to transform the ontological DNA of humanity to a higher state. At least that way he could be safe from the secret traps laid down its inhabitants who wished above all else that everyone would end up exactly like them.

The next circle comprised the third zone on the subway map. It was the narrowest of the five districts from inner to outer radius. The people here were far more pathetic than they were evil. The transit authority colored it blue on the map for some reason Jackie had never quite figured out. Blue was the color of the sky - and hence freedom and hope, things of which there were very little in this circle. The only connection he could come up with was the bluish color of the people's faces as they stumbled out of the cheap pubs and taverns on their way home. Here you could see prostitutes, pimps, and gambling men dressed in their patterned rayon shirts and cowboy boots, with fuzzy dice dangling from their rear view mirrors, all living together in a state of mutual torment. There were even pawnbrokers to help them out in times of need. He stopped at a red light beside a strip of bowling alleys and used stereo shops, before reaching the bridge that marked the transition into the next zone.

The transition to the second circle was always nothing short of dramatic. Jackie passed a small toy store and then a line of clothes shops, each more expensive than the last. He always imagined he'd end up here one day if he had to choose his poison. It had all the best movie theaters, restaurants, and comic and record stores. The people were younger and more energetic than in the outer three circles. They often walked in couples or small groups, brightly dressed with strange haircuts and European shoes. The buildings were also different, seeming for the most part crumbling old brick designs adorned with colored awnings and cracked cobblestone walkways. In the center on the northern quarter of the circle a park unfolded with a cascade of winding paths and a small lake glimmering in the middle. In the spring there were outdoor concerts and street entertainers. It always had the air of the foreign and exotic. There was even a series of canals running through the more exclusive parts of this circle, draining into subterranean sewers that apparently ran all the way outside to the country. Its inhabitants were glorious in their decadence. Their world was one of green sparkles and hair dye, endless cappuccinos and poetry readings, theater, dance, and quiet rebellion with empty guitar cases and spray-painted army boots: a world hovering between man and God yet strangely denying both.

He turned onto a narrow side street and followed it to a smallish footbridge that spanned over one of the minor canals. He slowed, dismounted, and parked his motorcycle beside a law office. He crossed the bridge and walked half a block to a curio shop. It was already too late to make it to his first class so he might as well take advantage of this opportunity to buy Jeanette a small gift. There was a tiny porcelain figurine of a Chinese woman he'd coveted since the first time he saw it gleaming in the window a few days earlier. He pushed his face up against the display glass and looked inside. It was still there. Frail and boundless, a universe unto itself. A universe of calm and beauty. The calm and beauty that only Jeanette possessed and only Jeanette could radiate. Whenever she was near him he felt that the entire world, no matter how horrible, was good and that everything would always work out in the end. She dressed like the girls in all the European music and fashion magazines: medium length hair dyed at the tips, which were ironed out and gelled to pristine stiffness, white tee shirts with brightly colored logos highlighted by the contours of her small supple breasts, ripped up jeans or tartan skirts depending on her mood, and black leather shoes braced with brilliant silver buckles - but never boots, which would have been too forward and presumptuous. She had style – quiet, brilliant style. Whenever she bent down to take a sip from the fountain everyone would turn to look, mouths agape with awe and wonder. Even when she was angry, her eyes would narrow like a storybook creature born from myth and magic and her head would turn gently to one side as though she imagined she were somewhere else, a better place than whatever world she knew, a realm free of all conflict and pain.

As Jackie stared into the display window he imagined her holding the statue with her eyes to the sky and one foot dragging languorously behind her. He opened the door and walked over to the cash register. The man behind the counter had a bitter wrinkled face and hunched over the counter like a streetlight over a crumbling sidewalk.

"What do you want," the man said bluntly.

"I'm looking for a present...for a girl."

The man's eyes shrank until they looked like black tiny raisins in the dim light of the overhanging bulb.

"A bunch of punks wrecked a car across the street the other night," he said. "You wouldn't happen to know any of them, would you?" he said as though he expected some kind of confession.

"No. I didn't hear a thing."

"What school do you go to?"

"Fillmore."

The man looked both surprised and suspicious.

"That's where my son goes," he said. "What's your name?"

"Jackie."

The man's eyes registered some form of recognition and his face puckered up a notch.

"I'm Bruce Johnson," he said. "My son goes to your school."

Jackie inhaled nervously. "I'm not sure I know him," he said.

"So," the man continued, assuming a more positive business-like tone, "you want to give your sweetheart a gift?"

"The Chinese one. The woman with the fan."

"Ah," he said introspectively. "A good choice. A woman brought it in a few weeks ago. An heirloom, she said. From Peking."

"How much?"

"A hundred and twenty."

"What? I was in here a few days ago and it was only fifty."

"Sorry. Must've been priced wrong."

"Would you take eighty?"

The man's expression did not change. "If you knew anything about antiques you'd agree it was quite reasonably priced."

"What about a hundred? I can borrow some from my mother."

"If you haven't the money, I haven't the time to quibble." He turned away as though Jackie was no longer in the store.

"Fuck," Jackie muttered under his breath, "if that's your attitude I'll spend my money somewhere else."

"I'm sorry?" The man looked shocked.

Jackie stepped back. Something unutterably dark and ultimately unknowable lashed out and took hold. "Shut you're trap, you stupid old cunt," he yelled, although his voice seemed to emanate from something inside him but still external to himself.

Jackie turned to walk out, knocking a line of glass figures off a ledge as he left the store. He was already on his motorbike before the man had even made it to the street. Jackie darted into the traffic and wove ahead of a small convoy of trucks to get some free road ahead of him. His hands were trembling and his forehead was covered in sweat. Two blocks further was the beginning of the innermost circle.

The central circle was surrounded on all sides by a dead canal littered with trash and rotting food. Jackie had heard the story of its development and eventual decay hundreds of times from various relatives and parents of his friends. He even wrote a historical vignette about it once in school. Two hundred years ago it was built as an ornamental moat around a large castle. Then a revolution broke out and the castle was burned to the ground. The revolutionaries established a new order and built over the ruins of the castle. The moat was then turned into transport canal for the local merchants and businessmen and over several generations it gradually turned into a thriving center of commerce. Fifty years ago the entire neighborhood was once again burned to the ground, but this time it was accidental, something to do with an uncontrollable blaze in a local kitchen. After this there was a brief movement to resurrect the old buildings and create a historic tourist area. One civic administration even proposed that the canal be converted into a waterway for scenic cruises around the historic inner core. All these hopes came to an end when a private interest group bought out the land and converted it into an ultra-modern commerce center. They hired the most avant-garde architects they could find to erect a massive superstructure of interconnected spikes and domes, which was supposed to offer a vision of a fresh and vibrant future sprouting from the middle of a decaying city center filled with mossy old Victorian brick townhouses and cobblestone roads. Under this renewal plan, the canals would be used for hydropower and sewage disposal. However, half way through the project they ran out of money and left the center half finished as it stands today. A series of incomplete buildings, some with half-finished walkways and open roofs - a vision of postwar Berlin cast in a strange modernity. The canals were left empty and soon the locals used them as garbage dumps as a statement of their dissatisfaction with the unfinished chrome and glass atrocity in the center. The sponsors eventually went bankrupt and the lands were claimed by the equally bankrupt city council, which immediately voted it would be used for government and civic functions. Offices were established in even the most incomplete buildings without any further modifications to their structure. In protest to this, groups of outsiders ravaged the government offices one summer with clubs and rocks, smashing some of the most beautiful patterned glass roofs and domes as they looted the offices inside. A few arrests were made the next morning and a monument of the government's victory over the rioters was erected in brass and cement at the gateway to the main bridge from the older outer circle.

Jackie slowed down as he steered his motorcycle across the main bridge past the brass monument. These days the central circle was inhabited largely by government drones in uniform and greedy businessmen from the outer circles. He passed a conical glass building with a long broken cylindrical walkway projecting out of the side about forty feet from ground level like a suction hose dangling from a nineteen-fifties pseudo-futuristic vacuum cleaner.

His school was now only two blocks away. It was located on the first and fourth floors of a stark ten-story cube, which was as wide and deep as it was tall. The second and third floors were damaged in the riots and never refurbished, while the fifth to tenth floors were used by the government telephone company for office space.

Jackie pulled up into the parking lot and jammed on his brakes, leaving a faint skid mark on the pavement. A few students, cocooned in baggy knee-length parkas, stood in a human clump beside the door smoking and laughing. The loudest of the bunch - a girl wearing a dirty red jacket, her shaggy dreadlocks falling to her shoulders - shouted at a few passing cars as she kicked repeatedly against the front door of the building. Jackie bowed his head into his chest, scurrying past them as he went inside. He had half an hour before his next class, so he decided to check the cafeteria for Michael.

He was sitting alone in the corner of the cafeteria when Jackie walked in, his skin-tight brown hair and ripped tee shirt giving him the look of a young sailor as he chewed on a toothpick.

"Late again," he said. "But you know what?" The tone of his voice was both hopeful and angling. "If I had just another dime I could buy a bag of chips."

"Ha. I'm broke too. Blew it all on off-sales."

"You've got a drinking problem," said Michael.

"Fucking right I do. But one thing you've got wrong. Drinking's not a problem. It's a solution. A solution to all the boring bastards in the world."

Michael laughed in a sinister infectious way that made Jackie laugh as well. "Like the Principal," Michael said, still laughing under his breath. "The bastard just told me today if I didn't improve my grades soon, he'd kick me out."

"Probably better off that way."

They sat quietly for a moment as they watched the students walk in and out of the cafeteria. Then Michael broke the silence.

"There's a party tomorrow night at this girl's house. I don't even know her last name but she's a real looker. I wanna rip her lid off. I heard she's got the hots for some science guy. They spend lunch together out by the canal staring into their calculators. She deserves better. And that's why I'm here. That guy's no competition. _No fucking competition at all_."

"Where are we going to get booze?"

"My brother has a liquor cabinet at his place. I'm thinking of going for a visit at around dinnertime. I can probably get something one way or another."

"Great. Call me tomorrow."

Jackie tilted his head and turned away to the door. He had an assignment to finish before his next class and he hadn't even started.

After school he grabbed a quick bite to eat and called home to say he might be a little late for supper. On his way back he stopped to scope out a short stretch of beach he'd somehow never seen before. It was possible a recent forest fire had cleared a row of trees revealing the sandy white patch, but he couldn't find any evidence of a fire anywhere. The area was strewn with dead seaweed and broken branches. He looked out at the water. The clouds on the horizon were illuminated by a pale gray light as if dusk had arrived four hours sooner than usual just to impose its mood on the proceedings. He felt cold as he walked along the beach, kicking the toes of his boots into the sand as he made his way towards the water. When he reached the foamy wet shore he found a small bird flapping its wings desperately as if it were injured and half expected a predator to pounce out of nowhere at any second. It was gray and brown - about the size of his fist. Jackie picked it up. It squawked in a shrill and desperate way that said it was afraid of him. He opened his palm and stroked its throat with his finger. Its feathers were soft and velvety. One of its legs had been cut off completely, leaving a stub that looked like a small twig. He wondered if it was a natural accident or if someone had cut it off for fun and eventually just got bored watching it suffer and decided to leave it to die rather than torture it more. He lifted the bird to a point about six inches from his face and looked into its eyes. They were tiny black beads that somehow conveyed a sense of mortal fear despite their hard granite surface and a complete lack of expression. He touched its head and it quickly struck his finger with its beak. He pulled his hand away quickly and let the bird fall to the ground. If he could only find a small container to bring the bird back with him. Maybe he could save it somehow. He had no idea how to care for it, but there was still a chance. As he was looking through the side bag on his motorcycle he heard a piercing bark and then some screeching behind him; a small dog was lunging at the bird. He ran and shouted at the dog, picking up a rock and throwing it as he raced across the beach. The dog yelped loudly as it ran off, as if to somehow still assert its primacy in the face of defeat.

The bird now lay motionless on the ground. Jackie picked it up. Its wings were bloodied but it was still breathing rapidly. He knew now that there was nothing he could do to save it. He kicked off his boots and rolled up his pants to his knees. Holding the bird in one hand while trying to keep his pants up with the other he walked awkwardly out towards the shore. The water was cold and clear but the bottom was clean and sandy. He waded away from the shore until the water almost touched his knees. His legs stung in the cold water. He stroked the bird's head once with his finger. It had a look of horror in its eyes as if it would rather die than face whatever it was it thought was coming to it. Jackie tightened his grip around its body and immersed his hand in the water. The bird struggled weakly in his grip until it was still. Jackie fixed his gaze on the pink and blue cloud patterns, streaked evenly across the darkening sky like a massive metal grating, as he counted to two hundred. He felt heartless and merciful, yet even more heartless for being even the slightest bit proud of himself for being merciful. When he finished counting he opened his hand and let the bird go. To his surprise it floated to the surface and turned over on its back, one eye looking blankly to the sky like a small pebble or black pearl.

Jackie turned and walked towards the shore. When he reached the water he was suddenly aware of a certain coldness encompassing him, a coldness that came from nowhere and spread out equally in all directions and from which there seemed at that moment there was no chance of escape.

### II

The next day it snowed all afternoon. Heavy white flakes descended slowly from the sky like fragments of comets or shattered stars draping over the world in a cloak of pure light. After his last class Jackie waited for Michael by the front entrance at their usual meeting place. Thoughts of the dead bird still lingered in his mind as though reflected back to him by some vast mirror standing far outside of time. He could almost hear the desperate thudding of it wings against the wet sand as he leaned against the front entrance of the school watching the snowflakes land delicately on the pavement.

After a few minutes he grew impatient and started kicking his toe into the concrete steps that rose to the main entrance. A small group of students approached him from behind. One of them pushed his shoulder into Jackie as he walked by. Jackie turned around to see Johnson standing there grinning at him. Behind him stood Jeanette and Johnson's best friend Jerome. She had a look of mild discomfort on her face that suggested she didn't approve of her company and would rather be walking with someone else. Avoiding eye contact with his two young rivals, Jackie turned and smiled at Jeanette. As though her lips were on an invisible string connected to his innermost feelings, she smiled back. Jerome looked suddenly agitated and stepped in front of her as if to mark his territory.

"My dad says you've got a _penchant_ for wrecking glass figures," Johnson snarled, his stained teeth showing beneath his thin bluish lips.

" _Penchant_?"

"He says he's calling the cops."

"Let him," Jackie said casually. "Those figures are all junk anyway."

"What would you know?" Johnson pushed Jackie into Jerome.

"Watch where you fucking walk," Jerome threatened Jackie as he pushed him back towards Johnson.

"You watch where you're standing," Jackie snapped back. Jeanette had stepped away and was quietly leafing through a book, her eyebrows curled as if to express her complete disregard of the scene unfolding around her. Jackie paused for a moment in an effort to catch her eye. If he let them push him around he came off looking weak, but if he fought back he risked coming off as an oaf. He had to do something to trump his rivals, grabbing her attention and taking center stage while still proving he wasn't like _them_.

"If you weren't so invisible maybe I would have," Jerome said with a smirk.

"Invisible?"

Just then a new student emerged from inside the school followed by three others and pointed accusingly at Jackie.

"Hey, listen here..." The student pushed Jackie up against the wall and grabbed his left arm. Johnson stepped behind Jackie and grabbed his right arm.

"Let me go!"

"We're getting sick of you around here," Johnson stated in the factual manner of a math teacher. "Why don't you take your stupid little scrap heap out of this school and never come back."

"Yeah," said the new student as the other three in his group started packing snowballs. "We've had enough of your stupid little fag machine!"

Jackie felt a dull thud against his face and suddenly he was under a barrage of snowballs. Still holding Jackie's arm, Johnson punched him in the stomach with his other hand. Jackie curled up and fell to the ground. His head was bleeding and his face was cold and wet. He closed his eyes to kill the pain, all the time wishing he could turn back time just a few minutes or spontaneously teleport to an alternate dimension free of embarrassment and humiliation.

"You fuckers are dead," shouted a new voice from around the corner. Jackie opened his eyes. Michael stepped from around the corner and stopped, his figure towering over those of the other students. He held a coke bottle in one hand and clenched the other to a tight fist. Johnson and the other student quickly dropped Jackie's arm and cowered backwards. The three students who were throwing snowballs ducked behind a row of parked cars. Michael broke the bottle against the rim of a trashcan, leaving behind a thin glass funnel with a jagged circular edge. He brandished the makeshift weapon in Johnson's face.

"Boy don't we look tough now," said Michael. "Next time I catch you pushing my friend around, I'll carve up your face and spread it all over the sidewalk."

Johnson and the other student turned and ran back inside the school.

"Fucking cowards," Michael yelled.

Jackie wiped the blood off his temple and looked over at Jeanette. For the first time he noticed the details of her attire. Her black down jacket was obviously made of some fine fabric like silk and her jeans had tiny pen scribbles all over them.

"You're bleeding," she said with concern. She dropped the book into her bag and walked over to him.

"What happened?" asked Michael. "You're lucky they didn't break your arm."

"They bumped into me and just started pushing me around. No way I was going to take that." Jackie's eyes were moist and he started to sniffle. He felt the urge to cry but stopped himself. Not in front of Jeanette.

"Are you OK?" she asked as he sat there on the ground looking up at her.

"Don't know. There must have been a rock in one of the snowballs. Damn bastards."

"They're all losers anyway," said Michael. "We'll get them back. We'll get him and his skinflint dad back. We'll let him know what we're all about."

"I could have taken Johnson on if he were alone, but there were just too many other guys."

"He'll get what's coming to him."

Still on the ground, Jackie leaned towards Jeanette until his head was close to her hips. He detected a halo of perfume that seemed to emanate from around her neckline. He hoped she would bend down towards him but instead she stepped back.

"I've gotta go," she said suddenly. She had already crossed the street before he could muster the strength to stand up.

Later that evening Jackie was sitting alone in bed reading a _Geisheirra_ comic waiting for Michael's call. In the comfort of his room the day's humiliating events seemed to reveal a silver lining that he hadn't noticed before. Instead of embarrassing him in front of Jeanette, the callous attack had only managed to break the ice between them and bring her closer. Their plot had clearly failed. But that still didn't excuse them for what they did. If anything, it gave Jackie all the more reason to strike back and make sure Johnson never pulled anything like that again. What if Johnson _had_ succeeded in embarrassing him in front of her? What then?

Geisheirra glided over a mountain and then down towards a deep emerald valley hovering in the distance like an apparition. The music of the rice flowers flowed like a cascading brook of sound into the sky around him, lifting the hearts of the workers as they waded through the mud in the half-drained fields. This was the feeling he liked most, the feeling of being amongst humans. He wanted to touch their skin, feel the warmth of their bodies as he rode through their heart and veins on a nanoscopic carpet hewn from blood and lymph.

He passed over a wooden shack, a row of stables, a silo, and then a great metal cistern. There was a sudden flash. The universe quaked as whole galaxies imploded and flew asunder like the shattered flowers of doom itself. Geisheirra looked around in awe. Before him, in all his might and glory, towered The Gray Orchid, his imperious master and creator.

The sky thundered as The Gray Orchid began his mighty oratorio: I am might without limit, the source of all darkness and drain of all light, the center of all that is, was, and ever will be, devoid of all emotion, the final singularity of absolute domination and victory. I am The Gray Orchid.

Geisheirra bowed and replied: There is more to existence than power and destruction. If only you could see the world as I do. The universe is a pattern like an empty canvas in a wooden frame. We are the ones who must fill it in. So what if the universal scheme has been disrupted. Let it die. Let it crumble in the wake of human feeling. This is the task of feeling. At the end of time all physical order will be nothingness and the great pattern will be nothing but a heap of ashes.

The starlight almost seemed to cry out in despair, dissolving into utter blackness as The Gray Orchid offered his stolid reply: Why have you betrayed me, my once so loyal servant? Your words are both bold and vacuous. Your so-called feelings will only destroy you. Watch how the mindless moth flies into the brightest and most deadly lights. Such are emotions. Go now and never return. You have no place in my court. A barren asteroid would serve me better. Go follow your love and watch as it destroys you.

The universe trembled for a brief eternity as The Gray Orchid once again established the only law, HIS law. A great burst of energy surged through the cosmos and suddenly all was darkness.

Jackie set the comic down and smoothed his fingers over the gash on his head. If only he had the power of _The Gray Orchid,_ the power to numbly destroy whole planets and vanquish his enemies with the mere blink of an eye. He took out a piece of paper and drew a picture of _The Gray Orchid_ standing on the surface of the moon, his fearsome boson armor shining in the unearthly light of Andromeda. His helmet stood around his head like the outer walls of a great castle with his eyes the two dark centurions guarding its intrepid gates. After filling in the lunar background with craters and small boulders, Jackie drew Johnson lying on the ground, his bronzed athletic physique drawn to look like a heap of rotting twigs, his skin shrink-wrapped around his skull with a charred meat complexion. _The Gray Orchid_ had vaporized him into oblivion and now there was only silence.

Jackie crumpled up the picture and the phone rang. It was Michael. He'd stolen a bottle of cheap Chianti from his brother and wanted to meet in half an hour. Jackie went to the bathroom one more time to clean the cut on his forehead, now a deep red-brown gash, and was out the door five minutes later. He could indulge in revenge fantasies some other time. With a bottle of wine now written into the evening's proceedings there was no time to waste.

### III

Jackie leaned towards the window and closed it. Outside towered the stark form of his vintage Triumph pressing up against the bare wooden shed in the backyard like a medieval warhorse encased in layers of exotic armor. The grass beneath it was covered in a grainy mat of frost and the trees were completely bare. He turned his head away from the window and walked back to the breakfast table just in time to catch Maria, who was striding dutifully into the kitchen. She took a seat directly between him and their mother, who was still dressed in her pink bathrobe.

"Up at last," his mother said. "We haven't had breakfast together for a long time now. You both are growing up so fast I can't keep track of you. But somehow I feel you're both still children to me and that's why I've called you together to talk."

Jackie looked over at Maria. She curled her lips to hide a sarcastic smile in quiet anticipation of the lecture she knew was about to come.

"You know I love you more than anything on this earth. Both of you. We all took a great blow when your father died and I was left alone to cope with the grief of his loss and the task of bringing you up. For years I felt an emptiness inside that could only be soothed by the comfort of knowing that I had a higher purpose in life: that of raising you. I know I wasn't always the perfect mother, but I did my best and often made sacrifices in my personal life for your own good."

Jackie grinned at Maria. She looked away and then broke into a restrained and self-conscious laughter.

"This isn't funny," Kathleen said, glaring at Jackie as though he had done something to provoke Maria's response. "When I met Robert I thought he was the perfect man for us. I hadn't seen anyone for over three years and I was starting to wither inside. That's one thing most children never understand. Their parents have needs too. Don't think I don't get the same desires to go out and find adventure like you. As you get older you're able to keep them in check and weigh the advantages of personal pleasure over personal duty. In Robert I thought that both came together in a perfect package. But in the end it turned out he wasn't a good substitute for your father...so perhaps I made a mistake."

Kathleen paused for a moment and then composed herself. First she looked at Jackie, then at Maria. She took a deep, uncertain breath and sighed as she cast her eyes downwards.

"I've already told you I've met someone new. I haven't told you who he is, but you may already know him. His daughter goes to your school. He's very warm and caring. That's all that really matters. He's gentle and likes children. Most of all he loves me and I love him. His name is John. John Fehrer."

"Isn't that Jeanette's father?" asked Maria. Jackie was stunned. The mere mention of her name in front of his mother would have been bad enough.

"Yes, that's right," she said with a look of pleasant surprise. "Do you know her?"

"Sort of," Maria said. She turned to Jackie and raised the corners of her mouth with a thin cruel smile. It was the same look she always gave him when she knew he was on the ropes and wanted to let him know she couldn't wait to mock his desperate lunges for freedom.

"No we don't," he said abruptly. "I don't at any rate."

Maria laughed quietly into her fist.

"She's staying in the City with her mother," Kathleen continued. "John's ex-wife moved here from the west coast three years ago. Last year Jeanette moved away from John to live with her mother. John moved here only six months ago. He's already well-established in the City and still spends a lot of time with Jeanette."

"What does he do?" asked Jackie.

"He's an engineer. Mechanical engineer."

"I thought you were going to tell us he was a gynecologist."

"Maria!" Kathleen said, glowering.

"Sorry. I couldn't help it. But it doesn't matter. It's just between _ladies_ here as I'm sure Jackie doesn't even know what one is."

"Of course I do."

"Then what is it?"

"I'd rather not..." Jackie paused. He felt embarrassed talking about such things in front of his mother.

"Ha! Mr. Dark and Meaningful doesn't even know what a gynecologist is. What a joke. Wait till I tell all my friends!"

"So if you're so bright, what do they do?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?"

"So you don't even know yourself," Jackie exclaimed proudly.

"Yes I do."

"What, then?"

"They study twats! And I bet you don't even know what _that_ is!"

"Maria!" Kathleen yelled. "I told you once. No more foul language. This is serious."

"Twats," Maria peeped, looking over at Jackie with malicious anticipation. "T-W-A-T-S."

"You bitch!"

"He's an engineer! He designs buildings," Kathleen yelled. "Let's stop this. I need to know what you think of John before he moves in. I think it's time that I finally start to live my life. I'm getting older and soon you'll both be old enough to live away from home. What I mean to say is that if you have a very strong dislike of him, which I find rather unlikely, I _might_ reconsider my decision. This doesn't mean I'll go back on it, but simply that I'll reconsider it. You're getting older now. I want you to try very hard to like him. I've made many sacrifices for you and as time passes you will no doubt have to make sacrifices for me. It's part of the dance of life. I do more now for your grandmother than she does for me, but this is only because she did do so much for me when I was young. If it wasn't for her I'd never have any of all this. I'd never have had you."

A heavy shadow fell over the table. Jackie and Maria looked carefully at one another to gauge the nuances of each other's reaction in order to clarify their own feelings and better see how they themselves should be reacting.

They ate in total silence. At the end of the meal Kathleen set her fork down neatly on her plate and cleared her throat.

"Just to convince you of his good intentions," she said. "I've decided to invite him over for dinner tomorrow. The sooner you guys see what he's really like, the better."

Jackie pretended she hadn't said anything and left the table.

The next day Jackie hovered numbly through his classes, speaking only briefly to Michael and avoiding any possible run-ins with Jeanette or Johnson. After dinner he retreated into the cool darkness of his room and contented himself by studying the slow migration of a flock of shadows across the ceiling. He chewed on a fingernail for almost half an hour before putting on a CD. Before the first song was half way through he was already bored. He took out the CD and tried to read a book about a Vietnam veteran who gets lost in Mexico with a pound of heroin that some serious men in Texas wanted really badly. After the first chapter he set it down. For some reason he didn't find it even slightly engaging. So he went downstairs to the family room to watch his favorite film, _Miles from Nowhere_ , which starred a famous androgynous male pop star who goes from town to town being treated as an outcast by almost everyone he meets. He had already seen it seven times and always liked the way the lead actor's strawberry blond hair fell across the side of his head like a kind of miniature velvet drape. Sometimes in class he would dream of a future where he could sit in front of a bank of television sets, as the lead man does in the film, watching all of them simultaneously while a beautiful Texas maid fixed him wonderful meals and doted over his every word. Jackie slipped the black DVD into the slot and before the opening credits had even finished he'd changed his mind and decided it was a flaky piece of kitsch made for teenyboppers and sycophants. It seemed nothing struck his fancy.

Later that night his mother came into his room. Shadows danced across the walls, cast by the dim orange glow of a nightlight plugged into the socket on the opposite side of his bed.

"You seemed upset when we talked this morning. Is everything OK?"

"Yes."

"That's a nasty gash." She smoothed back his hair and kissed his forehead. At first he pulled back slightly, but then he let his neck loosen. She hadn't come in to talk to him so intimately in months. He was almost afraid of her. She looked frail, weak, and vulnerable as if she wanted him - even needed him \- to love her and kiss her to show her how much she meant to him in order to validate her existence. Up close her face looked dried and wrinkled. He'd never looked at her in such a disinterested and analytical way before. Mothers weren't supposed to need their children, at least as far as he knew. So why was she acting this way?

"I fell off my motorcycle."

"You should really wear a helmet. I worry about you sometimes."

"How can I even afford one? I don't have a cent to my name. Not since I was fired down at that lousy grocery store."

"You _did_ have enough money to buy the suet you put in the fridge."

"I didn't buy it. Michael's dad gave it to him for his dog."

"What about this? We can go out next Saturday and get you a helmet. You also look like you need some new clothes. Look at you! The rips in your jeans, the messy hair." She tried to fix his hair with her hands but he pulled away defensively."

"You just want me to be like everyone else. Can't you just accept me for what I am? You want me to be a boring science student with a calculator and beige slacks."

"Oh, come on. That's not true."

"Then why do I always get science books for Christmas? No wonder my marks are falling. I'm sick of it all."

She rested her hand on his shoulder and kissed him on the forehead, being careful to make contact with the gash.

"We haven't gone shopping together for a long time," she said. "Do you remember the last time we went?"

"Not really."

"Think. It was last spring. I bought that music box for auntie and Maria bought those silly purple shoes."

"What did I get?" He felt suddenly enchanted by the way her eyes got all wide and glimmered when she said _purple shoes_. It was as though that glance had just initiated him into a secret world of femininity where unusual fashion accessories held secret powers and seemingly trivial events like a _combing party_ took on almost ritual significance.

"Let's see," she turned her eyes upwards in thought. "Oh, I know. You just bought a stack of comic books," she said in a way that made comics seem like children's books he should have outgrown a long time ago. The short-lived spell was broken.

"So, you think you can just buy out our feelings?"

"What do you mean by that?" Her words slowed down. He could tell she knew what he meant.

"You know. It seems a bit strange that you should suddenly take interest in getting me a helmet when I've driven without one for the last six months."

"Come, now. It's the gash. It never really occurred to me that you might get hurt till I saw that gash."

"Michael's mom bought him an old Chevy the week she started dating another guy. A few weeks later the guy started knocking him around and it's only gotten worse since. Now the fucker wants to sell the car as punishment. But the real reason is because he needs a fast buck for all his gambling."

"You're not implying..."

"How should I know?"

"Jackie," she whispered in his ear and pulled him over to her breast. Again he resisted at first only to give in almost immediately afterwards. "You know how much you mean to me. I'd never let him touch you. John never would. He's not that kind of man."

"Why now? You could have offered to take us shopping a month ago?"

"Jackie. Really. It's no trade off. I know you must feel strange with your father and all. Like I'm somehow betraying our whole family and that having me offer to buy you something could just be an easy way to gloss over the hard feelings. Maybe you're right. Maybe I should have noticed. I guess that means I'm not as perfect as you expect me to be."

"No."

"But as for Michael, don't you think that he invites all the trouble he gets into just from the way he is?"

Jackie let her last words echo in his head. _The way he is, the way he is, the way he is_. She'd never understand. She was too old for that. The thought occurred to him that she was just another aging person trying to hold him back and it was a mere coincidence that she was his mother. She could just as well have been Michael's mother for all it mattered. Maybe being a parent was just a job and nothing more. A job to mold younger people into your own way of doing things. If this was true, then maybe sex education class was really just a way to make you think you had some biological debt to your parents. It was all quite sinister when you thought of it. Society was a bleak conformity factory where everyone was taught to be weak and bland and the same as everyone else but since this was impossible adults often resorted to secret acts of cruelty, antidepressants, affairs or pointless diversions to give their contradictory existences meaning. It was a world that was ultimately lonely, grey and unlivable.

"No," he said.

Jackie bowed his head in silence and waited for her to leave. After what seemed like an hour she stood up and walked out the door, also in silence. The room was left dark and quiet with Jackie sitting alone on his bed staring at the ceiling.

### IV

The next morning Maria greeted the dawn at her bedroom window with an upward stretch of her arms. In the sheer exuberance imparted by the interplay of lilac and bronze light on the edges of the sky she gave way to her impulses and decided to wake Jackie up early. When the sunrise was complete she walked down the hall and slipped into his bedroom while he was still asleep. The gash on his head had already started to heal: the bright red color had faded to maroon and the incision was noticeably narrower than it was the night before. She knelt beside his bed for a minute admiring the gentle architecture of his face. People always said they looked alike. The slim, contoured nose, the wide, alert eyes and the pale, almost bluish complexion of his eyelids. A thumbnail representation of the unfinished entity inhabiting the tall gangly body lying supine before her, his facial features had ceased to be merely childlike but had not yet become distinctly masculine. She tiptoed over to the window and opened the curtains so as to grant passage to the slate-gray light awaiting its chance to pour in from the surface of the ocean. He stirred.

She didn't want to wake him too abruptly so she set her hand lightly on his shoulder. No luck. As she stepped backwards she became slowly aware of all the posters in his room. She always envied his interests. Her room was empty except for a few left over toys from her childhood years and a teenage heartthrob from a television serial that she cut out last summer from a glamour magazine. In painful contrast his room was glaringly awash with emblems of the daring young man emerging from within. Towering in full color over his bed like a Japanese billboard stood a poster of _The Gray Orchid_ he had copied by hand from a comic book and colored in himself. The other walls were speckled with a mixture of rock posters, post cards and cut outs from various travel and motorcycle magazines. She always wished her room could be so intricately decorated but whenever she sat down to gather together a handful of striking magazine photos and rock posters she'd end up tearing them up and throwing them in the trash. They never looked as good as _his_ did. As the gray light filtering through the morning clouds gave way to a pinkish glow from a clear patch of sky on the horizon she started to feel angry. Very, very angry.

Yes, he was more creative than her, more artfully fragile and even more bold and gutsy. So what if he was failing all his classes while she was a straight-A student? Jackie was - along with Michael, as they were inseparable to the point of consubstantiality - the talk of the school. Mother liked him more as well. It was obvious from the way she pulled him so close to her the night before. Not only that, it suddenly occurred to her as she gently stroked Jackie's cheek with the edge of her fingernail, Mother went into _his_ room first. It was an outrage, an obvious transgression made all the more intolerable by the fact that she was a full year and a half older and, as the eldest child, it was her right to hear the news from their mother first.

She looked around his room one last time. The gaudy decor was bad enough but even more alarming was all this business about Jeanette. It clearly had to stop. How could Jackie and Jerome possibly like her in the first place? Maria knew what Jeanette was really like. Behind her apparently pretty face was a ruthless and manipulative woman capable of almost anything. It was all in her big glassy eyes and the way she used them to get what she wanted. But if she told Jerome the truth he'd just accuse her of jealousy and push her even further away. If only Jeanette liked Michael instead. Then Mother could be happy with her new romantic interest in Jeanette's father, Maria would be free to pursue Jerome, and Jackie could go find someone else. But it was obvious from the way Jeanette looked at Jackie that she liked him. But fortunately for now at least Jackie was too oblivious to notice and too shy to do anything about it even if he did. Yes, behind all his hip posturing was a weak-kneed coward. Sure he acted tough when Michael flashed around all his leather and brawn, but by himself he was too much of a wallflower to ever make a move on Jeanette. But Jeanette might try to push things on her own. And if she did try to force herself on Jackie, it would clearly spoil everything between Mother and John.

Maria gazed down at Jackie's wiry figure, which was still crumpled up beneath the sheets, gently swelling up and down to the rhythm of his breath. It was so easy to love him, but now because of Jeanette it was even easier to hate him. Maria frowned down upon him as she started to shake him vigorously. He opened his eyes slowly as though he had been reading her thoughts all along and was intentionally resisting her in some covert act of defiance.

"What's going on?"

"Shhh. Don't wake the whole house up."

"Oh, you. For a second I thought it was an emergency."

"Here? You should know by now nothing ever happens here."

"What are you doing in my room? Aren't getting any action at school so you have to come on to your own brother. How pathetic!"

"Shut up. It's important. I want to talk about Mom."

Jackie rubbed his eyes and lifted up his frame until his back was leaning against the headboard. He needed to know what she really thought. She was always so good at pretending to be on Mother's side no matter what the situation called for. If Maria ever disagreed with something Mother had decided, she'd pretend to go along with it just to make it look like he was the only one opposing her authority. Sometimes she'd even put words in his mouth when he wasn't even present, claiming that although _she_ thought their mother was right, _he_ was totally against her. That way he'd always end up getting in trouble. But later, Mother would always feel guilty for singling him out and then reverse whatever seemingly controversial decision she had made. That way Maria would come out looking squeaky clean – escaping all accusations of rebellious behavior - while also getting the self-same results she had connived for from the outset. Jackie knew he had to be careful what he said about John, but he also had to get Maria on his side – in essence manipulate her while letting her believe she was manipulating him.

"So, what do you think?" Maria asked.

"About what?"

"You know."

"Mom?"

"Of course. Who else? You're not that stupid."

"I think it's good for her," he said, concealing his true feelings.

"You don't _really.._."

"Listen, who invited you in here anyway? I thought you wanted to know what I thought about Mom. And that's what I just told you. What's the point of asking me if you're just going to doubt everything I say? I think it will be good for her. I really don't like the idea of a new man coming in here, but she is getting older, and that changes things."

"I was just testing you. I think it's good too. She needs a stable man to take care of her."

"In other words you absolutely detest the idea of him moving in and you just want me to be the bad guy and tell her because you want to come off looking like Miss Goodie Two Shoes. For once let's just face the truth and stop pretending. I'll be honest. I was lying. I hate the very idea of John and you hate the idea as well. I bet he's going to strut in here any day now and start knocking us around. He'll take down all the pictures of dad, he'll make us do chores on Saturdays, he'll make us dress in stupid-looking clothes for school, and he'll make us go to church and cut the grass. You heard what Mom said: He's a _fine and upstanding citizen_. You know what that really means."

"It's so awful, isn't it? You're right. I was afraid to tell her. I wanted you to. She listens to you more than me. I don't know why."

"Because I'm more dangerous," he said sniffling his nose while clenching his teeth. Maria laughed. The combination of the two incongruous gestures, one a sign of vulnerability, and the other of attack, was almost comical.

"If you say so."

"So, you're in then?"

"In?"

"We have to save her from him. And don't you dare tell her I said this or I'll rip your fucking cunt out."

"How?"

"I'll do it with the tongs I stole from biology class." Jackie grinned triumphantly.

"Not that, you jerk. _How are we going to save her?_ "

"I'm not sure yet. But, we can't let him take over the house. Grown men are all like Vice Principals. They want control. They want boredom. That's because their lives are all so dull. They have to make sure nobody else enjoys life because they can't."

"How do you know?"

"Come on. Any fool can see. Haven't you ever noticed that when men get over thirty they start thinking about all that crap about family, community, jobs, boats, promotions, and then half of them become community league coaches. You know why that is, don't you?"

"No."

"It's because they want to make it look like they care about us. But they don't give a damn. Schools are just state-sponsored brain washing colonies. Any fool can see that. They like to start young. Wring every ounce of life out of you so you end up just like them. With John it'll be no different. He'll start by trying to be nice. He'll want to play ball with us. He'll want to take us out yachting. That'll be the first stage of his thought control process. A few months later when he thinks he's won our trust he'll suddenly tell me I can't go out with Michael. He'll say he's a destructive influence." He tightened his lips and slammed his fist against the wall. "The fucker!" he said emphatically. Then he assumed a more sullen tone. "It's bad enough that he's Jeanette's father."

"As if you have any chance at all with her," Maria said plainly as though listing the ingredients on a cereal box. Jackie froze.

"What do you mean by that?" He looked at her in disbelief.

"I hear she likes Michael."

"How could you say such a thing? You're just jealous because you don't have any friends so you have to make up for it by starting a fight between me and my best friend. Just look what's going on. I try to help you. I open my heart and tell you something personal - give you my _wisdom_ \- and you repay me with _this_."

"I'm just trying to save you from embarrassment. I don't want you to get hurt."

"I don't believe you," he said.

"You're not obligated to."

"Good. Then we're both happy."

"I just don't want to see you get hurt," she repeated.

"How _tender_ of you. Now back to my original point. You and I have to protect Mom. She may be getting on my case lately, but she is our mother after all and we have to stand ground and do what's right. If he moves in, we can't give an inch. We have to fight for our rights – including her - or we'll all end up like prisoners obeying his every whim and fancy. And in no time she'll start doing whatever he says. So we have to nip it in the bud before it starts."

Maria nodded her head in agreement. Was Jackie just exaggerating everything because of Jeanette? Maybe John was nice and they just hadn't given him a chance. Maybe he would only want what was best for every one concerned. But on the other hand, if Jackie _was_ right they'd have to protect themselves in whatever way they could. Mother was soft and vulnerable and could get tricked into believing John was a righteous man when he was really a worthless womanizer in disguise.

"So you're with me?" Jackie asked in a whisper as though he expected Mother to be listening from the other side of the door.

Maria ran her tiny weak fingers over the warm cotton of her flowered nightgown and looked deeply into his eyes. She could see a gentle honesty behind his flamboyant manner and obvious arrogance, a humble frailty beneath the thin veneer of worldliness that he'd adopted since he started hanging around with Michael last year. She envied him to the point of hatred, but whether she liked it or not she still loved him and wanted to protect him.

"Are you with me?" he repeated as he pulled off his underwear and climbed out of bed.

"Yes, you silly. Of course I am." She forced a stolid smile, holding back the flood of emotions that wanted her to just grab him and show him how much she really cared for him. She pulled off her nightgown and quickly jumped on the bed beside him, using his pillow as a shield as she brandished a fold of her lacy garment at him like a whip.

"Ha. You can't defeat me," Jackie cried out in a mock baritone. "I am the mighty _Gray Orchid_. Time is but a roundworm on my foot, the universe a playground for my every caprice." He leapt up on the bed and pulled off her nightgown. Then he grabbed her hands and used the gown to tie them together at the wrists. She yielded only slightly as he took the other end and tied it to the headboard.

"Ouch," she laughed as he smothered her head with a flurry of pillow blows. "Let me go."

"I am _The Gray Orchid_. I am Godhead unto myself. I inhale the myrrh of life and exhale the frankincense of oblivion." He took a jack knife from his drawer and flipped out the blade. A sadistic grin emerged on his face.

"What are you doing?"

"Rip out your cunt – what else? I know you're lying and you're just waiting for a chance to rat me out."

He held the blade in one hand and pulled down her underwear with the other. It was the first time he had seen her fully naked and was surprised to see the form of the person he had known since birth resembling in any way the dazzling sumptuous divas he had seen in porno magazines. She shrieked.

"Not bad, eh? I can undo a girl's panties with just one hand now."

"What a joke. Every one knows you're still a virgin."

"You'd be one too if Jerome wasn't drunk enough to take pity on you that night at the party."

"You liar!"

The blade winked in the light as he ran the tip down the gentle slope of her belly. He tightened a strand of her pubic hair and then cut it off.

"Let me go or I'll scream."

Before she could utter a sound he quickly cut a cat scratch outline of a heart on her stomach with the blade. When the loop of the heart was closed he pressed the tip of the blade into the center. As he watched Maria breasts move up and down with her breath he could not help but think of Jeanette spread out languorously there before him.

"I'm serious! It's starting to hurt!"

His face softened and he pulled the knife away. "I'm just testing your faith. You know I'd never hurt you."

There was a sudden pounding on the door. He quickly tossed the knife under the bed, picked up a blanket and threw it over Maria.

The door burst open and their mother charged in. She suddenly froze, staring at them blankly for a moment as if she hadn't quite figured out what was going on. Then a look of revulsion spread across her face.

"My goodness, get your clothes on!"

Jackie pulled a second blanket off the bed and over his naked body. Then he opened his arms in an exaggerated gesture of benediction.

"Don't look at me that way! Untie your sister at once and bring her some clean clothes like a gentleman."

"It was only a game."

"A game, now? That'll take some explaining. See me after school. No, wait. John is coming over tonight. See us _both_ after school." She stormed out and slammed the door behind her.

"See, I told you so!" he shouted at Maria. "It's already starting. See us _both_ , see us _both_ , see us _both_..."

"So I'm supposed to worry about this potential prison master dating Mom while you still have me tied to the bed? Notice any irony?"

He dropped his blanket to the floor and untied her. "I hope you're satisfied," he said. "None of this would have happened in the first place if you didn't sneak in here without my permission to observe me as I slept and then wake me to interrogate me."

Maria stood up, silently put her underwear and nightgown back on, and then walked gracefully out the door.

### V

Jackie gathered his books together and stuffed them into his backpack. Images of Maria lying naked on the bed in front of him half an hour before still lingered in his mind, her skin dry and white as though dusted with flour and her nipples too coarse and leathery to belong to anything but a lower mammalian species. He was at once disgusted and compelled by his behavior. Disgusted because she was his sister and thus could never imagine being attracted to her, but compelled because his actions represented a breaking away from the values established by the narrow world of his upbringing. Who ever said it was wrong to cut off a lock of your sister's pubic hair as punishment – especially given she had entered his room without his permission? In which book of scripture was it written that some pasty-faced God would strike you down if you tied up a female sibling and took off her clothes in retribution for the sort of heinous lies and machinations she was capable of? As he walked downstairs his entire moral universe assumed a light grayish pink tone and everything suddenly seemed possible - dangerously possible. Even the cruelest actions he could think of perhaps only seemed so because they were labeled as such by adults, adults like his mother, his schoolteachers - and maybe even John.

On his way through the kitchen he passed his mother. Her eyes were hard and cold and her posture slouched. She seemed like an altogether different person than the warm sensitive creature that comforted him so openly on the bed just the day before. His mind flipped back to a time four years earlier when she held him in her arms all evening. He had just been bullied at school for wearing a pair of new oxfords and ran home in tears, swearing to never go back for a single class again. When his eyes had dried of all their tears she sang him a lullaby and even lit a candle by his bedside. The memory once sweet now oozed into his heart like some fragrant poison sequestered from the drawing rooms of French royalty. Those days had passed along with all their countercurrents of weakness and bliss. Now there was no turning back and the remainder of the day blossomed forth like the trumpet of a deadly flower, every passing minute its brilliant rainbow petals stretching further and further into darkness, imposing an ever tightening stranglehold on every movement of his thoughts and feelings. Yet the deeper he peered into its shadowy incensed interior, the more curious he became as to what lay further down the hollow between its petals.

Jackie drove his motorcycle into school that morning with reckless abandon, slicing through the half-frozen puddles that mottled the side streets like a pattern on the hide of some gigantic beast slumbering only inches beneath the pavement. At one intersection near the outskirts of the third circle he purposely splashed a well-groomed businessman who was crossing the street beside a miniature lake of mud. For some reason Jackie was angry, but couldn't quite figure out why. Sure, Mother was furious with him for tying up Maria. On any other day that would be cause enough for him to be angry, as would Maria going along with Mother's harsh rebuke as if she had nothing to do with starting the fight in the first place. After all, it was Maria that had provoked him to tear off her clothes by whipping him with a fold of her nightgown and then jumping in the bed beside him. But there was clearly more to his frustration than that. It came from within like a dark tide controlled by the workings of some celestial body hovering through the sky some millions of miles away, an emotional expression of the cosmos whose underlying cause lay completely outside of human grasp or comprehension. It was something like light itself or maybe more like death, if the two could even be said to be different and not instead consubstantial, two apparently opposite poles of the same thing, something he could feel and experience but never explain. Something that only _The Gray Orchid_ could comprehend.

The engine of his motorcycle sputtered into silence as he slowed into the school parking lot. The area was completely empty except for two boys. As he approached he noticed one of them was Johnson.

"Didn't you get enough of a pounding yesterday?" Johnson goaded him.

"Just you wait," Jackie replied. He wanted to punch him but knew there would be a better time, a time when he and Michael could give him what he truly deserved. Besides, Jeanette had a break and might be waiting for him in the cafe.

Jackie turned and walked away from Johnson and towards the front entrance of the school.

"I hear you're mom's fucking Jeanette's dad," Johnson yelled. Then he started laughing. "All in the family, eh?"

Jackie didn't even turn around. That was all he needed to hear. Only five minutes earlier he deemed trashing Johnson's Father's store too harsh a punishment for the snowball incident. But the insult had just changed everything. Nobody could humiliate him like that and get away with it. Now that Johnson had brought Mother into it, then his entire family would have to pay the price to balance out the world order. The time had come and the outcome was unavoidable. He and Michael would break into the store that night and set matters straight. Mr. Johnson had it coming to him anyway after the way he treated him the other day. But before they ransacked it he would first pocket the oriental figurine he wanted so desperately to give to Jeanette. It was a perfect outcome. Hit two birds with one stone. He imagined presenting the frail statue to her as they walked hand in hand along the ocean side pressing his gift against the warm swell of her urchin-white breasts. The slim lines of the cream-colored porcelain would visually echo her slim white fingers. She would tell him what music she liked or the details of her ballet class, the pencil thin lines of her slanted eyebrows diving and swaying with the expressions on her face or the music of her voice. The dark salty mass of the sea would rumble beside them as he took the statuette out of her hands and set it in the sand beside her feet to kiss her. Yes, burning down the store was the only choice that was now possible and for that reason was no longer a choice but necessity itself. The blackened flange of the demon flower had opened one notch further.

Jackie passed a row of classrooms before stopping for a drink from the feeble stream of water trickling out of the rusted fountain against the north wall of the corridor. He wiped his lips on his sleeve and turned through a door at the end of the hall, jogging up the stairs to the second floor cafeteria. When he entered he saw Jeanette sitting alone at a table by the wall taking notes on a book she was reading. He walked up from behind her. She was dressed in black jeans and a crimson colored Y-front muslin top that looked like it came off the racks of one of those exotic imports stores in the second circle that always seemed to smell like incense and candle wax. He stood motionless behind her and quietly watched as she wrote, admiring the gentle blue roundness of the characters as they flowed from her hand through the pen and onto the page. He quaked inside, overwhelmed by the shear beauty of her presence - a beauty she always seemed totally unaware of, making it all the more indomitable, all the more treacherous to behold.

"Hey," he finally said, trying to act casual. She turned and smiled awkwardly as though he somehow broken some unwritten code of conduct but was too kind to tell him. He felt silly and wished he had said something more poignant or at least humorous that would subtly let her know that he was the right person for her.

"I was worried about you," she said after a long pause, her face assuming a deep look of compassion that melted through his insecurity and made him feel more confident. Everything was always _right_ in her presence. "What did they do to you? I hope you're alright."

"Oh, it was nothing," he said.

"It doesn't look like nothing." She looked up at the gash on his head.

"I'll get them back," he said.

"Be careful. Don't do something you might regret." She set her book down.

"What are you reading?"

"Just some book I picked up from my dad's dash board. It's on child psychology."

"Really?" Jackie raised his eyebrow in curiosity. He never thought John would be so ham-handed in his tactics. Child psychology? No doubt he was reading whatever hogwash he could find to learn how to manipulate him and Maria.

"Your dad into children?"

"Sometimes. I don't see him as much as I used to, though."

"Has he told you?"

"About?"

"Oh, umm. About the book...I mean. Yes, that's it. Has he told you about the book?" The sense of uncertainty that had vanished between them only a moment ago suddenly re-emerged. Perhaps it was better not to tell her. If he came off sounding like he approved of John living with his mother, Jeanette would think he wasn't interested in dating her. Yet if he voiced his disapproval too strongly he would come off looking like he was too attached to his mother or worse, that he despised John's entire family including Jeanette. Yes, it was best not to say anything.

She looked at him oddly and smiled.

"The book? No. He never talks to me about serious stuff. He still thinks I'm some little baby. It makes me sick. On my birthday he gave me a pile of silly pink hairpins that would look more at home on a Barbie doll. I told him I wanted the new _Elasticons_ album, but he just won't listen."

"It was your birthday?"

"Oh, no. This was in the summer."

Jackie struggled for something clever or romantic to say. She looked restless and reached towards her book.

"Oh," he said as she opened it to the page she'd left it on.

"What?" she looked confused and nervous.

"I'd...I mean there's a place by my house where you can see the ships go by."

"Really? That sounds nice." She toyed with a rampart of hair that was dangling over her nose, twining around her finger repeatedly and occasionally drawing it into her mouth with her tongue.

"I'd like to show it to you some day," he said with sudden valor as though a great weight had just been lifted from his chest.

"Sure. Dad says he's seeing your mom now. Maybe when I come up for a Sunday dinner sometime?"

"Sure," he said abruptly. His heart burned inside. "I'll see you later." He turned and walked away without even waiting for her to answer. She'd clearly blown him off. Why else would she treat his advance as a mere invitation to spend _family_ time together?

At lunch break he met Michael. His nose was slashed and his hair jumbled all over his head like a mess of wild vines.

"Christ, Jackie! Where were you all morning?"

"What happened to your nose?" Jackie asked with the same concern Jeanette had just shown him for his forehead.

"Johnson and his lot got me. There were five of them. One even had a knife. The fuckers held me to the ground and slashed me."

"Bastards," Jackie replied.

"Don't worry, we'll get back at them."

"His old man's store?"

Michael's eyes widened with anticipation. "I was afraid you might not be up for it."

"Not after what happened this morning. He called my mom a whore to my face...and now this!"

"Good. We'll meet later tonight. After dark."

"My mom might try to ground me for tying up Maria this morning. But she can punish me all she likes. When is she going to learn I'm not a kid anymore?"

"My mom's boyfriend just beats the piss outa me whenever he feels like it and my mom just says I have it coming to me because I'm too lazy to go out and get a job."

"Who needs a job anyway? My motorbike is all I need. My bike and my pen. One day the world will know who I am and I'll sit around in clubs snuffing cigarillos out on people foreheads."

"Then you'll be like all the other assholes out there. There's no avoiding it. I figure one day I'll just wake up and realize I'm a boring loser and have become so dull that I don't care anymore."

"Don't say that."

"Its your old lady you should be worrying about, not me. In a few months John will have left you all penniless. That's how they operate. My mom's had four guys since my dad took off and every last one has freeloaded off of her. They were all big fuckers too. Construction workers, a few of them. If they were my size I would've beat them senseless them ages ago."

"Maybe you should have."

"What can I do? What's over is over. Anyway...listen. " Michael looked at his watch. "I have to go home and do my chores."

"What about the store?"

"Tonight. Meet me at midnight by the first bridge of the innermost canal."

"I'll be there. I might have to sneak out through the window. But I'll be there no matter what."

Michael turned and walked away. Jackie watched his dark figure ripple like a shadow on pavement and then vanish in the distance. In times of darkness they always stuck together.

Later that afternoon Jackie sat glumly in his room, waiting for the evening's dinner as though it were his execution. Everything in the world seemed cold and bleak. Even the rock posters on his wall were dull and uninspired. Every now and then he'd hear a car rumble outside and, thinking it was John, he would jump up and put his ear to the door, awaiting the sound of the inevitable knocking that would signal Jackie's impending doom. After several false alarms John eventually arrived. Jackie heard the squeak of the door downstairs and a deep voice boomed through the house like a lumberjack's warning call through the woods. Jackie waited quietly in his room for ten minutes before his solitude was broken by a shrill a knocking at his door. He went to open it, but then he stopped. John hadn't yet earned the right to visit his room.

The door banged open and a tall man with a gray beard and a heavy wool sweater, nautical motifs sewn on the sleeve, walked in. He smelled of cologne. He was smoking a pipe and pulled it out of his mouth as he crossed the threshold and patted Jackie firmly on the shoulder. He smiled and his face metamorphosed in such a way as to foster a strange resemblance to Jeanette. Jackie found the sight unsettling and stepped backwards towards the wall.

"Pleased to meet you," John said, extending his hand, revealing a touch of eczema in the palm. Jackie kept both his hands hanging freely at waist level. "You mother's said so much in the short time I've known her. I almost feel like I know you." John turned his head to look at a poster on the wall and Jackie noticed that from another angle he looked like a different person altogether, one that was more outwardly successful and adroit in business matters than the rustic man he had just met. "Ah, The Gray Orchid." His face relaxed and he put his arm around Jackie. "When I was a student I used to collect comics. You're mother said you're a big collector. I'd like to see your collection sometime."

Jackie nodded his head impatiently and then looked away. He wondered how a man John's age could know anything about The Gray Orchid.

"I hear you're good at math," John said. Jackie sensed he was trying to woo him with flattery.

"Who said that?" At best he was average in math.

"Math's interesting. Don't you think? And you can always use it in computing. There's a thousand carpenters out there..."

"I guess I don't really care."

John looked confused for a second and then regained his composure. "You will one day," he said with a fulsome sense of wisdom.

They went downstairs where dinner had already been laid out on the table. Maria was smiling as she leaned against the dining room wall and Kathleen was in the kitchen stirring something in a large glass bowl. When she came in they all sat down.

"Why don't you tell them about yourself," she said to John as she grabbed his palm and kissed it.

John cleared his throat and grabbed a bun from the table. "I don't really want to bore you," he began as he buttered the bun. "So I'll try and keep it short." He coughed again before elaborating on his hobbies and pastimes. He was a true outdoorsman. He was into health food, jogging, and rock climbing. As he went on he seemed friendly enough to Jackie, but there was always something of a put on or _sale_ in the way John said everything.

"Life is there, you just have to go out and grab it before someone else does," he said as he already took a second helping of potatoes. Jackie watched his cheeks jiggle as he spoke. "This is the time in your lives where you have to get going or else you might end up missing the boat entirely." Maria's face glowed with awe while Kathleen's eyes blossomed with obvious satisfaction.

As the evening progressed the conversation turned to cross-country skiing and John even related a few stories of his travels through the Norway. Jackie's mind wavered from suspicion and even hatred of the man – puffed up with his grandiose hunting trips and sharp protruding nose - to a kind of numb apathy where it seemed the only solution was to stare into his plate and wait for the meal to end.

"Once I led a whole team of hunters on skis in pursuit of a pack of reindeer. They'd gone so feral from starvation they'd become dangerous. A few men in a nearby village even got gored. These were no beasts for Santa's elves!"

The way he said _Santa_ came off more condescending than funny, as though Jackie and Maria were still small children utterly transfixed by the naïve myths parents tell them to hide the truth about life and initiate the whole conditioning process.

When desert was finally served, Jackie's thoughts turned to later in the evening, and more specifically the statue. He only had an hour to go before he had to sneak out the window to meet Michael.

"You and I have to go out hunting sometime," John said to Jackie. "I'll take you up north. We can rent a kayak. That's the best way to get into the deep forests. I'm a purest. I don't like to hunt where everyone else hunts. The animals behave so differently by the campsites. They know humans all too well. They're not afraid when they see a hunter so there's no adrenaline in their blood when they're shot. It's just not natural. In ancient times hunters liked to stalk their prey until it was blue with fear. That way the meat tastes better. I'm sure they have scientists working on the reasons behind it, but I say it's just not right for an animal not to fear its killer." He put his hand on Jackie's shoulder and smiled broadly.

Maria stood up and excused herself from the table in order to go upstairs and do her homework. Jackie followed a few minutes later so as not to arouse any suspicion. He shook John's hand begrudgingly before ascending to his room to rejoin his solitude. As he stared at the contours of his stuccoed ceiling a feeling of hatred took over, a hatred in its purest and most unidentifiable form, something unreal yet renegade inside him with no source or purpose beyond itself. He opened up a comic and started to read.

The Gray Orchid moved in lifeless robotic steps over the vast and lonely craters of the moon. Although the lunar surface bore the timeless mark of solar genesis, it was a mere flickering in a vast symphony of energy and light that only he could understand. On the furthest horizon of the cosmos a wondrous pattern spread through everything. Every grain of dust, every creature no matter how lowly, and every blazing star was but a tiny pixel in a great cosmic pattern. Yet this pattern was not without its flaws: the thorns on the rosebush of oblivion that human beings called feelings. Therefore Love – apparently the most powerful of all these meaningless emotions - was nothing but an imperfection in the colossal template of the universe.

Jackie set the comic down and stared blankly out the window. Making sure that his door was firmly shut he mentally sketched out his plans for the evening. The one random factor was that he'd have to wait for John to go and his mother to go to bed before he could sneak out. He picked up the phone to call Michael to convey the message that he would meet him at the pool hall, but he might be late. After all, he had no idea when John was going to leave.

If at all.

### VI

When John went home it was already dark. Jackie got out of bed and dressed. A golden shaft of light extended down the hardwood floor from underneath the bathroom door at the end of the hallway. He thought he heard a sound from inside the bathroom like water splashing and then something like soft whispers. Maybe it was _them_ after all, and John had only pretended to go home so he could conceal the fact that he was staying over. Jackie tiptoed downstairs to survey the situation. Indeed, John's coat was still there, draped sloppily over a kitchen chair. Jackie grabbed his leather jacket and slipped out the back door as quietly as he could, being careful not to let it squeak as he closed it. The backyard was illuminated with the soft light from the upstairs bathroom. He took one last look at the window, hoping and not hoping at once that he would see two shadows moving inside, before as he wheeled his motorcycle out onto the road. All was still. He walked the motorcycle a good quarter mile down the road before mounting it and turning the ignition key.

The ride into the City was quicker than usual. Its dark outer circles peeled away like layers of an emperor's battle regalia as he made his way towards its center. Some of the buildings looked like elongated metal hands digging their fingers into the ground while others – taller and more angular – appeared in the muted light like war helmets from another era, decorated with secondary and tertiary buttressing and slender towers reaching up into the dark and glossy sky.

The sidewalk was empty when he pulled up to the pool hall. Michael's motorcycle was parked beside the back entrance. Jackie parked his Triumph beside it and entered. Michael was sitting alone by the front door nursing a glass of beer.

"Look, we have to move," said Michael, setting the beer glass down with a loud clank. This place is shutting down any minute." He gulped down the rest of his beer and reached for his coat. On their way out he leaned over to whisper in Jackie's ear. "I've got a kerosene jug hidden in the alleyway. I figure all we have to do is siphon some gas from my bike to set the place ablaze. Like a goddamn volcano of fire."

"I brought my lock picking stuff."

"What for? All we need is a brick and a hand to throw it."

Jackie nodded in agreement, but then something occurred to him. How was he going to take the figurine if they threw a brick through the window? He wouldn't have enough time to run in and sift through the blaze. Besides, if porcelain piece was still standing in the window as it was earlier that week it was likely to fall on the floor, never to be found again, or even break when the brick crashed through. And if Michael caught him holding the figurine he would make fun of him for months. Jackie had to come up with some reason not to break the window without letting him know why.

"It's alarmed," Jackie said awkwardly.

"What?"

"The window.

"No it isn't. I checked earlier. Besides, how would you know? It's not like you're friends with his old man, is it?"

"I checked it earlier. It could tell it was wired. And what if there's some money in the register?"

"What if? This isn't for money. It's for revenge."

"And sweet revenge at that, but let's be realistic. We're both a little short. Don't you think it would be better to break in without smashing the glass? Then we could steal the money before anyone finds out and burn it down on our way out to destroy the evidence."

"I thought a quick strike would have more effect, but if you put it that way..."

They mounted their motorcycles and plunged out into the damp ooze of the night. The streets were bathed in a sickly yellow light that seemed to have no source. Jackie could made out a series of yellow mirages on the road ahead, yellow reflections on the incomplete glass walkways that hung out of the sides of the dilapidated structures like twisted limbs on a hacked-up mannequin, and even more yellow rims around the barely visible cloud formations hovering overhead like premonitions of war. But nowhere could he tell where the dull yellow light might be coming from. He lifted his visor at an intersection to smell for smoke. Perhaps there was a fire somewhere in the inner city. Nothing but the smell of the ocean.

When they crossed the bridge into the second circle a sharp chill moved down Jackie's spine. All about him smacked of decay. Here languished the wasted grottos of the past. Crumbled mossy buildings, imprisoned by a gauntlet of listless canals and zigzag roads, stood like half-dead ushers guiding them into some ancient cursed world altogether more treacherous than the post-modern chaos of the inner circle. London-style streetlights lined the roads in every direction, their gothic iron crowns reaching upwards into the silent realm of the ornate buttresses that scaled the sides of the buildings as if somehow trying to escape the earth and ascend in metaphysical rank to the lofty order conferred upon the sky. The streets looked so different in the darkness. One word entered his mind: oblivion. Everything around him was drenched in it. He felt barren and alone. Naked. The air hung heavy with a strange smell, at once reminiscent of oriental mysticism and death.

Michael pulled his bike over to the curb in front of an empty parking lot. Jackie traced his friend's path, mirroring his every move like a spiritual double envoy from some vast and barren realm for some ultimately unknowable purpose, and parked directly behind him. Michael lifted his visor. In the sallow light his features were almost unrecognizable. The angelic sculptings of his face had transmogrified into a mass of shadows and mist. A thick stench permeated the air.

"Christ!" said Jackie as he reached for his nose.

"Rotting vegetables from Hell."

"Well, look at the positive side. If we park here it should ward off any potential witnesses."

"Good idea."

"No. It's a _bad_ idea. Good ideas are crap. I'm into bad ideas. _Really bad ideas._ "

Michael laughed before rolling his bike behind a broken section of brick wall that only half-enclosed the vacant lot. Again Jackie followed, his smaller motorcycle appearing in the yellow light like a bizarre toy replica of the larger chrome nemesis in front of it. Michael pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He lit one up and gave it to Jackie. Then he lit one for himself and they started walking towards the shop.

"Listen," said Michael. He looked almost beautiful in the near-darkness of the night. "This is the plan. We pick the lock. No screw-ups. Remember this was your bend on my idea. I wanted to hit it as quickly as possible. If we get caught it's your fault."

"I'll pick it no problem. No problem at all. If I remember right it's pretty lame as far as locks go."

"We get the cash, we stuff our pockets and then I dump all this kerosene over the floor."

Michael grinned and held up the kerosene can like a trophy. Jackie looked sharply into his eyes. They were the pale sapphire-blue color of an ice cave he once stumbled upon in the mountains. The sublime curvature of his lips marked a gentle path across his rough cheeks.

"Do we really have to wreck the whole place?" Jackie asked, thinking once more of a way he could secretly stuff the china statuette under his leather jacket without breaking it.

"Why not? We might as well. It's not like Johnson isn't asking for it."

"Then let me do it. It's my revenge."

"Fair enough. I'll douse the floor and you throw the match while I wait outside and watch."

"Just imagine the look on Johnson's face when he finds out!" Jackie exclaimed just loudly enough to damp any suspicions Michael might have that he might have some other motive for being there.

"Shhhh, do you want to get caught?"

"Sorry."

When they reached the outside of the store Jackie could see make out the dim outline of the oriental figurine in the window. He stood back, admiring its gentle beauty.

"So are you gonna just stand there and gape into the window or what?" Michael whispered impatiently.

Jackie trembled as he took a small wire from his left pocket. He looked up into Michael's eyes. He sniffled once and knelt down facing the door so that his eyes and the doorknob met square on. He twined the wire between his thumb and forefinger. He imagined he could feel small beads of sweat emerging from his skin lubricate the wire's passage across the crook of his thumb like tiny ball bearings.

"This'll be a cinch," he said with false confidence. Michael stood lurched over him like some strange mythical creature half angel, half vulture as Jackie listened to the soles of his shoes crunching against the pavement.

Jackie straightened the wire and carefully inserted it into the old-fashioned hourglass keyhole and prodded it around until he felt some resistance. Years ago he'd learned to pick locks from a circus man who spent summers in a cabin across the inlet from their house.

Just when he felt he was close to cracking it a car rolled around the corner just a block away with the placid whir of a ceiling fan, barely audible, yet somehow intimidating, like a snake hidden in grass. He curled up against the door and Michael flattened his figure against the pavement. The car slowed, but only slightly, as it passed. When it had vanished in the distance they both stood up. Jackie reached for the length of wire left hanging from the keyhole and knelt down, reassuming his eye-level view. Five minutes later the door was open and they were both inside. Michael produced a miniature flashlight from his pocket and searched the room for video cameras before walking over to the cash register.

"The stupid ass left it open!" he whispered.

Jackie felt uneasy and scuttled crabwise towards the window, searching upwards and out of the corner of his eye for the figurine. Sure enough, the yellow light from the street provided just enough illumination to see it standing in exactly the same place he'd seen it from the street. It would be rather unusual if it wasn't there and had somehow moved on its own, but his anxiety had mounted to such a degree that any sign of adherence to solid physical laws was a relief.

"Hey, look! There's a few hundred bucks in here!"

Jackie inched across the room as Michael held up a wad of bills in his hand.

"This isn't so bad," Michael continued. "I didn't come here for the money, but now that it's here..." A dark cloud passed beneath his bluish eyes. After he cleaned out the register, he took the kerosene flask from his backpack and began to dowse the floor. When he was finished he tossed the can irreverently at the wall, knocking down an entire row of porcelain dishes in the process.

"Christ! Do you want to get caught?"

He grinned and tossed his lighter to Jackie.

"I'll wait outside." Michael slipped through the doorway and out onto the sidewalk, leaving Jackie alone with the lighter and figurine. In Michael's absence a sudden fear ripped through him and he almost tripped on his way over to the window. Jackie ducked down to make sure Michael wasn't watching from outside and reached his hand upwards to grab the porcelain figure. He could feel the cold intricacy of its sculpted contours against the skin of his palm. He tightened his hand around it and pulled it slowly towards him, for an instant imagining that he was Jeanette cradling it against her soft white breasts.

There was a kick at the door and he froze.

"Hurry up, you jerk," Michael shouted.

Jackie stood up and took one last look at the fuzzy grey world surrounding him before he flicked the lighter and touched the flame to the carpet. A ridge of fire tore across the floor. In seconds the whole place was ablaze. The fire exposed new features in the room as though a police searchlight was beaming in from outside: the rhombohedral shape of the ceiling, the menacing row of antique marionettes up against the far wall, and a big picture of Johnson's family in a sailboat hanging behind the cash register.

Jackie felt a deranged sense of satisfaction as he darted outside into the empty street. He looked right. Then left. Michael was nowhere to be found. Jackie's first thought was that his friend had been caught, so he ran into the closest alleyway and hid behind a row of garbage cans. He heard a storm of crunching feet from behind. By the time he turned there was a tall dark figure towering over him.

"You're under arrest," it stated imperiously.

"For what? I didn't do it!"

A wicked laugh rippled through the air and the dark figure moved out into the light from a nearby street lamp. It was Michael.

"I fooled you, didn't I?"

"That wasn't funny."

By this time the store was lit up like a Catherine wheel. Michael grabbed Jackie's hand and they ran to their motorbikes, not stopping until they were standing right in front of them.

"Tomorrow. Johnson's face. I can't fucking wait!"

"Tomorrow."

Jackie mounted his motorcycle, the statue held tightly between his chest and tightly zippered jacket. Apart from the sound of Michael's breath, there was only silence. Such was life in the inner circles. The place would probably burn all night before anyone called the fire department.

An eye for an eye, Jackie thought as he revved up his motorcycle. Johnson had been repaid and he now had the key to Jeanette's heart.

The next morning Jackie saw Johnson standing in the hallway by the main entrance of the school. He was huddled up alone in a corner by a row of gray lockers, his head buried in his hands. A group of students stood around offering their support. One of them looked up at Jackie and shook his head accusingly before turning back to Johnson and kneeling down beside him like a nurse over a patient. Jackie felt uncomfortable as he turned to walk away. He thought he could hear the sound of Johnson sobbing as he made his way further and further down the hallway.

Later that afternoon Jackie was standing by the water fountain angling for a chance encounter with Jeanette when an announcement came over the intercom. It was the Principle. His tone was deep and mournful as he described the _heart-rending tragedy_ that had befallen the Johnson family. He implored the students and their families to give generous donations to help the Johnsons out in these _hard and trying times_. At first Jackie cursed at the Principle under his breath. How did he know about what really happened? At one point during the announcement he was even moved to approach Johnson and tell him what a jerk he was and how he and his father had gotten what they deserved. But as the minutes passed and the Principle's words echoed deeper and deeper into his mind he started to feel ashamed and wondered what Jeanette would think of him if she found out what he did. That afternoon he went home in silence, convinced that every pedestrian he passed on the street somehow knew in great detail what he had done and had already reported him to the police.

Three days later Jackie was sitting at home reading when and listening to music when a news flash came over the radio. Michael - described as a tall and rough-looking youth with a leather jacket and a motorbike - had been caught outside a gas station with a can of kerosene and a crowbar. He had been taken in for questioning and within a few hours was linked to the arson incident at the china shop. Jackie dropped his book on the floor and thrust his head into a pillow.

The next day John moved in and the snow came for good. The temperature dropped to minus twenty centigrade and the water in the inner city canals filled with enormous plates of ice that looked like giant lymphocytes. After school Jackie sat alone in his room imagining that the same cold water, with all its frozen branches and ice-covered rocks, was scraping through his veins as it numbed his mind with desperate thoughts about what the police were going to do to Michael and, perhaps even worse, what John was going to do to his mother. For the first time in his life he felt truly alone.

## Part II

Jackie parked his motorbike beside a row of short order kiosks and walked down the street past a small boathouse, a naked flagpole standing in front of it like an unfinished ornament abandoned in the very act of its erection. He turned onto a narrow wooden sidewalk. He could barely hear the creaking of the slatted planks as he stepped forward, the rush of water through the drainpipes was so loud. He needed a place to stay. A place to hide from the police. The sidewalk eventually led to a park filled with piles of smoldering peat, mud and timber, each one blatting out clouds of cold, damp smoke, as though to mock the final breaths of the vanquished at some great massacre.

He strained his eyes in an effort to extend the field of his vision. A woman was walking along a path at the far edge of the park. From behind she looked like Jeanette, although he couldn't really tell, the veil created by the smoke and rain was too thick. As he walked closer the wondrous glow of Jeanette's calm meniscal eyes blossomed before his mind's eye. His pulse quickened as he accelerated to a light jog.

He slowed his pace as he neared the woman, approaching furtively from behind. Indeed, she had the same walk and hair color as Jeanette, but wore a long baggy raincoat that would have looked more at home on an older woman. He touched her on the shoulder. A stranger's face turned to look at him. She stopped, bewildered.

" _I'm sorry," said Jackie._

The woman looked confused. She had a small hooked nose and thin black eyes.

" _I thought you were someone else," he said._

The woman shrugged her shoulders. She turned her head without uttering a sound and continued walking.

" _I need your help," he yelled after her._

The woman turned around, now walking slowly backwards, but still away from him.

" _What do you need? Money?"_

" _Anything."_

" _You look too young to be homeless. Where are your parents?"_

" _I'm not sure."_

The woman stopped.

" _Where do you live?" she asked._

" _In the third circle."_

" _I'm really sorry, but I don't know if I can help you." She had the kind look of a nurse or daycare worker that made him long for some form of comfort._

" _Not even a shed to clean up?"_

" _I don't know if I want my shed cleaned up. Not after what they found in that garage by the ocean."_

" _What garage?" Jackie's face tightened and he reeled backwards, clutching for a moment at a rail that wasn't there._

" _Haven't you heard? There was a murder. They're still not sure who did it or even what the motive might have been." Jackie looked away at a bird that was circling the peat fire._

" _I don't read the news."_

" _Look. I'm sorry," the woman said. "I should really be going now." She turned to walk away. "I hope you find some form of solace."_

Jackie searched his pockets for change and walked back towards the piles of mud and peat. He had thirty-five cents left and hadn't eaten since the morning. The sun glimmered like a great white chandelier, as it ghosted out from behind a layer of dark clouds. By the time he had reached his motorcycle it had completely vanished again, leaving a homogeneous gray mantle of simmering thunderheads in its wake.

### I

Jackie reclined on the sofa in the living room, studying the subtle grain patterns of the deep oak rafters that spanned the ceiling above, the smooth varnished floors below almost glowing in the pale light of dusk, providing just enough light for him to observe every detail in the room. It seemed that since John had come into his life that his senses had sharpened, like those of a wolf or bird of prey. All the subtle things in the house that once reminded him of his father had suddenly been disrupted, marred, and violated. Beside the sofa, the antique clock his father had built ten years ago seemed to tick out of step with the rest of the clocks in the household as if to voice its ominous disapproval. At night, alien footsteps now thudded through the hallways and a new voice, hushed and deep, could often be heard murmuring behind his mother's bedroom door. To avoid uncomfortable meetings in the hallway Jackie frequently hid in his bedroom and perused the pages of fashion and music magazines, dreaming of the cool indifference imparted by the runway models with their elegant gothic jewelry, dotted scarves and hazy charcoal blazers they all paired with rugged motorcycle boots – this was a luminous and singular world impervious to those of most adults, a world such as only _Geisheirra_ and those who emulated him could occupy.

Jackie went to his bedroom and picked up the latest _Geisheirra_ comic from his bookshelf. _Geisheirra_ had just saved a planet from an interstellar hurricane by redirecting the neutrino winds directly from a quasar and into the electromagnetic trough created by a renegade black hole that had been blasting through the universe like a comet, leaving a trail of negative matter in its wake. The comic ended with a full spread of _Geisheirra_ flying away from the black hole like a bolt of pure white light, his skin-tight uniform gleaming in krypton blue with electric forks of white energy dashing down the sides of his legs and arms.

The phone rang and Jackie picked it up. It was Michael.

"I'm in trouble," he said. His voice was deep and ominous and in the background he could here a rumbling like a truck or large piece of machinery.

"So what happened in court?"

"I told the judge exactly what I told you."

"And what did he say?"

"He said I had to go to a reform school."

"What bullshit! I can't believe it! They don't even have any proof. No videos. Nothing."

"The judge said I was lucky I didn't get sent directly to jail instead."

"Did they ask about me?"

"Not a word."

"That's cool," he said. "That means I can come and help you escape."

"Don't. They'll only find out more and arrest you too. Anyway, it's probably better than living with my old lady and all her jerk-off boyfriends."

"When do you have to report?"

"Next week."

When Michael said goodbye he spoke in a pale and listless tone that Jackie had never heard from him before. Jackie let the receiver drop slowly. It was yet another example of adults interfering with the lives of anyone who defied them. He shivered as he closed the pages of the comic on his bed. It was an outrage that someone so innocent and pure as Michael was being sent off to boarding school to be tortured and brainwashed by the likes of state-sponsored sociologists and counselors. Michael was an artist of in the medium of vandalism, an angel in reverse. He was given the talent of defiance in much the same way that _The Gray Orchid_ was blessed with virtuosity in destruction or Jeanette the gift of beauty. Michael's rebellious acts were something that enriched the world rather than menaced it. What sort of a world was it in which someone was punished for precisely what God had made him to do? While some were born as preachers to spread His mighty word, others were born to deny it. Yet if God made all and knew all, wasn't each position - that of the thief and saint - equally just? Without a doubt, if _The Gray Orchid_ were God he would have seen the truth of the matter and let Michael go free. _The Gray Orchid_ knew the way beyond men, the way of true and pure justice.

The next day John knocked on Jackie's door. Jackie reached to open it but had not touched the handle before John had already entered. He threw a pair of rubber boots in Jackie's lap.

"We're going hunting."

"Hunting?"

"Yes. Deer." John smiled in a way that reminded Jackie of a television personality he couldn't quite place \- someone he might have seen on some insufferable Sunday afternoon nature program.

"Sure," he said begrudgingly, hoping John would detect his lack of interest and cancel the invitation. Jackie had never been hunting and wanted to keep it that way.

"Besides, I feel I need to get to know you better."

John had the car packed up in less than an hour with all the appropriate hunting gear and by mid-morning they set off. They drove for about an hour in utter silence, Jackie often wondering as he monitored John's solid unerring gaze when was the last time he saw Jeanette and what he would think if he knew that somewhere in Jackie's bedroom was a white figurine that he planned to give her, until they reached a patch of forest hemmed by a flat colorless field. John got out of the car and loaded two rifles while Jackie waited inside.

"Come on, then," John shouted. "I'm going to teach you to shoot a gun. I think it's absolutely necessary in this day and age. Not only for self-defense, but for the art itself. Modern man has lost touch with his roots as a hunter. If you look at any tribal society you'll find that skill in shooting a bow, say, is as highly cherished as the ability to produce art or pottery."

They took a narrow path into the woods. After about ten minutes they stopped in front of a river before continuing for about a hundred yards until they reached a wooden footbridge. On the other side was a field full of grazing deer.

John put his hand solidly on Jackie's shoulder in a way that seemed in equal parts paternal and contrived. It was a clear signal that John had arrived on the scene and was now the dominant male figure in Jackie's life.

"All the deer always come here this time of year," he said in an almost scholarly way that Jackie found annoying.

"So you're just going to shoot them while they eat?"

"That's when natural predators attack. There's a path of least resistance in nature. Even though a cheetah can easily run down its prey, it would rather stalk it by a water hole and surprise it when it's too late."

"It just seems lazy to me."

"Maybe because laziness is just a form of self preservation."

"Perhaps."

"Here." John handed Jackie one rifle and leaned the other against a tree. He accepted it with a mixture of awe and revulsion.

"What am I supposed to do?"

"It's simple. First you cock the rifle, then you aim, and then you fire. The first time I tried I fell flat on my ass, the recoil was so strong." He laughed in a clumsy ingratiating way that made him appear more trustworthy.

John took the rifle that was leaning against the tree and in one swift motion cocked it and fired into the sky.

"Simple as that! Now you try," he said.

The gun felt cold and hard and gleamed ominously in Jackie's hands like the fuse box of an atomic bomb. The still, lifeless power of its nozzle terrified him. He cocked the trigger and aimed the gun into the sky. Imagining that a spot of glare in his field of vision was John's face, he fired. The butt kicked back into his shoulder, knocking him to the earth.

"Ha," laughed John. He grabbed the gun from his hands. "Every generation has to learn the stove's hot."

He tightened his lips and looked away from John. "I want to go home," he said, still looking away.

John lifted his rifle and the sound of a gunshot echoed through the air. A deer on the other side of the river stumbled as if it were drugged and then fell. The others beside it ran away, but only as far as a tree about ten yards from the dying animal.

"Quick and painless," he said as though he was trying to justify what he had just done. "Some people, you know \- mostly Indians - like to hang on a tree a big cone with hooks around the rim and a block of salt at the end. The deer come and try to lick it, but when they try to pull their heads out, the hooks dig in. The lucky ones just sit there and wait for the Indians to kill them. It's a lot cleaner than what happens when they try to struggle free."

John set the gun against the tree and turned to Jackie who was standing awkwardly in the rubber gum boots John had given him and his black silk bomber jacket. The deer shook violently for a moment and then stopped. Jackie could hear its last breaths heave arduously from its chest before it finally gave in to silence.

"Is it dead?" he asked.

"It should be. You'd better not get too close though. If it isn't it might still be dangerous."

Jackie stood in stoic silence, his eyes dark and focused on the ground.

"It looks like you're not into this."

"No. I guess not."

"I thought it would be a good time. I'm sorry."

Jackie shrugged his shoulders as if to say _you_ _should have known_ and kicked the tree beside him. John went into the field to appraise his trophy as it lay on the ground in front of him.

"Come on and give me a hand," John shouted. "I'm just trying to be your friend. The least you could do is help me take this back to the road."

Jackie helped him drag the body to the side of the road and then waited while John walked back to get the guns and the jeep. The sight of the dead deer with its sad dumb eyes and coarse blunt snout filled him with a searing emptiness he'd never experienced before. Life was so inglorious in its conclusion.

They drove back in silence as the sun set on the cold December landscape. As western music played thinly on the radio Jackie kept looking back at the dead animal lying in the rear of the jeep, almost wishing it would come to life so as to end his sadness. When they got home it was so dark that he couldn't even see the searchlight from the nearby lighthouse.

### II

Jackie poured himself a cup of hot chocolate and coughed into a handkerchief. Kathleen and Maria had just left the house to do last minute shopping and John was out chopping wood by the side of the house. It was only ten days until Christmas. Jackie sat shivering with his feet soaking in a pail of warm water, the last vestiges of a week long cold clinging to him like barnacles to the side of a aging pier. After the water had cooled he relocated to a cozy armchair beside the fireplace and waited for his mother to come home while John finished chopping the wood. The minutes inched by and Jackie became increasingly mesmerized by the warm glitter of the colored balls dangling from the Christmas tree. There were small blue ones the size of almonds, large red ones with silver eyelets gleaming in the center as they hung like ripe apples from only the thickest branches, and green diamonds with pictures of elves' faces hand-painted on the surface. In all their antique glory they stood emblematic of a lost world of promise only attainable in some ideal realm of imagination and beauty. Such a world could never exist in reality, he concluded, even though it burned inside him with all its torment of images and color, wiping clean the halcyon slate of his dreams every night to paint it anew.

Over the past few days he had spent long still moments standing on a stretch of frozen grass staring seaward at the barges as they maneuvered through the swell and clap of gray-green waves. During these moments he became acutely aware of myriad layers of infernal worlds, renegade with light and color, breathing inside him. He would close his eyes and slowly become accosted by a seductive swarm of strange and beautiful thoughts. Yet all around him remained cold and lifeless. Frozen seaweed, frozen leaves and frozen crab shells: winter light, the very antithesis of what was stirring inside him. His mother and John were in no way associated with this inner world. If anything they were its enemies, its violators. Although history was filled with examples of men and woman who could see into such inner realms, by and large scorned by society and barred from adult minds by churches and governments alike, they were the exception rather than the rule. And more often than not these visionaries were ridiculed as madmen or burnt at the stake as heretics. Growth of the human species was thus nothing more than a slow process of decay. As you entered into adulthood you were expected to take on tedious jobs designed to suck every ounce of life out of you and eventually left you in a whimpering heap craving nothing more than a safe home to roll up and die in. And then in some pathetic attempt to bounce back and regain their lost youth, adults would start to have children. But once the infants were old enough to speak it wasn't long before their parents started to burn with envy because their children reminded them of the beauty they once had but could no longer possess. And that's when their ridiculous rules and sadistic regimens of self-discipline and punishment started to come in, most often derived from the teachings of the Bible that sat collecting dust on every parent's shelf just so they could claim there was some higher purpose to what they were doing. But it was all a lie and Christmas was the cornerstone of it all, the time when adults could pretend to be spiritual and try to regain footing in that sacred inner world they'd spent three hundred and sixty four days a year pulverizing to death with their boring laws and pointless jobs.

What they were doing to Michael was a prime example of this spiritual leaching process. That very morning, in the bitter December cold, Michael had gathered his things together and packed them in the back of his mother's convertible while he and Jackie stood, exchanging what seemed like last words, behind a tall sycamore tree. A few minutes later Michael's parents ambled out of the house like unsympathetic zoo keepers waiting to haul a wounded bear off to its death table to be put down. Jackie shook Michael's hand as they looked away from each other, already preparing for the isolation that was about to come. Jackie waved to him as enthusiastically as he could as the car rolled into motion, watching it shrink off into the distance until Michael's image in the car window was no longer discernible behind the early winter haze.

When Jackie finished his cocoa, John came in to his room and patted him on the head like a coach consoling a player after a sub-par game.

"You must be pretty upset about your friend going away." John sat down beside him. "I can understand that."

Jackie didn't know what to make of this advance. Was it an act of friendship or transgression? John seemed sincere enough, yet something about the exaggerated calm of his manner made Jackie suspicious. There was something in his disposition of a sanctimonious teacher lecturing a student on the ways of life. Noticing Jackie's apprehensions, John pulled away and set his hand back down on his thigh.

"It's certainly understandable," he said. "But you have to think of all the other people involved. Young people see the world as stacked against them and never see the bigger picture. Do you know how much Bruce Johnson suffered in losing all those antiques? They were his life. He spent years collecting them, culling them from the most coveted collections in the country. He didn't sell any old junk. " Their eyes met and Jackie had the strange sense that John could read his thoughts, peering through his skull as if it were a thin veil of tissue paper. John's expression became suddenly terser, as though responding to something objectionable he had just divined from Jackie's mind. Then he continued. "When I was a boy, we all wanted to be good men. That was a part of being a gentleman. And that's what the ladies liked as well. You didn't score any points in any one's books with attitudes like your friend's."

There was a long silence during which John's heavy breath seemed like the only sound on earth, and then he stood up and walked out without saying a word, leaving Jackie alone in his room.

As Christmas approached the days grew darker and colder. The ocean froze at the shores and Jackie spent the afternoons and evenings walking by himself along the beach, trying to alleviate his loneliness by searching for the biggest and most perfectly formed sheet of ice he could find. Once he grew tired of this game, he would always navigate a path towards the distant glow of the house, where he would quietly go upstairs to bed. Sadness was always tolerable. But awareness of one's own sadness was something far worse. With Michael gone all he had left was the slim hope of winning over Jeanette. To make matters worse, Maria had predictably strayed from her initial vow to defy John's authority. She would often downstairs until bedtime with their mother and John watching television and drinking tea.

Two days before Christmas John announced that they would all be attending church as a "family" every Sunday morning and instead of contesting this severe edict, Maria agreed with the enthusiasm of a child treated to a trip to the candy store.

"Yes, she said. I think all decent people should go to church. It brings the family together."

On Christmas morning Jackie could hardly get out of bed. It wasn't like any other Christmas he had experienced in the past. It was more like an average day, a day for people like Johnson, made only worse because it was supposed to be a special day and wasn't. Maria knocked on his door three times before she pushed the door open and barged into his room.

"Come on," she said impatiently. "Everyone's waiting downstairs."

"I'll be there in a few minutes. Just let me get dressed first. Who invited you in here anyway?"

"I'm telling," she said. "You can't talk like that on Christmas." She slammed the door.

Jackie dressed and came downstairs.

"Merry Christmas," said John. He patted him on the shoulder. "Lets open some presents."

Jackie nodded silently and moved over to the couch beside the Christmas tree where Kathleen was sitting beside Maria, a fully wrapped present in her lap.

Kathleen handed him a small wrapped box and they all began to open their respective gifts. Maria got a pair of skates and a new dress. Jackie got a new sweater, a couple of science books and a gift certificate for a record store in the City. John gave him a hunting bow and proceeded to tell him stories about yak hunting in the Yukon Territories.

After a late breakfast, Jackie lost interest and went out to skip stones across the intricate weave of ice and seaweed that hemmed the ocean's shore. When he came back the house was empty and there was a note that they had all gone out to pick up Jeanette for a movie. How could they? Without even asking him. Even more cathartic and unsettling, if Jeanette had willingly gone along with them wasn't this tantamount to admitting her role as his half sister instead of his potential girl friend? In defeat, he spent the remainder of the afternoon shooting arrows at his bedroom wall until he heard a car rumble up to the house and the door creak open. He put the bow down on the floor and turned out the lights. He filtered through the muddle of voices downstairs until he was satisfied that Jeanette had not come back with them. Then, in the state of surrogate comfort afforded by his new conviction that Jeanette had rejected her role as his half sister by refusing to come back to the house after the movie, he closed his eyes and fell asleep.

### III

It was New Years Eve. Jackie and Maria sat together grooming themselves on the bed in front of the standup mirror in her room. Jackie's mood had considerably lightened because of a party down the shore he heard about that Jeanette was supposed to be going to. It was a perfect opportunity to gain foothold in her life and maybe even give her the statue if he could only find a way to get her alone and away from the crowd. Jackie selected a studded leather belt out of her closet and started to slip it through the front loop of his pants.

"Since when do you wear cool stuff like this?"

"You idiot," she mumbled, a hairpin dangling out of her mouth. "You can't wear that belt. With your black jacket it's just too much. You need to mix things up. Some guys never learn. It would be like wearing a baseball cap and a muscle shirt or eating a steak with peanut butter spread all over it. Just too chewy."

"And what would you know about men?"

"That they don't know how to dress." She pushed him playfully against the wall. "The trick of fashion is blending together disparate elements. A man can't look too masculine, nor a woman too feminine. You should wear feminine colors with a leather jacket. And likewise for women. A little masculine swagger in our stride is a turn on isn't it?"

"Well, I guess so," he said begrudgingly. Agreeing too strongly would be tantamount to admitting she was right and that his efforts to look like one of the men on the catwalk in the magazine he kept hidden under his bed had failed.

"Do you go for those wilting girlie-goo puff ball types in white ribbons and lace?"

"No," he scoffed. "Of course not."

"Right. Because you like Jeanette. You like her black leather belt. That's why you wanted to wear one. You wanted to impress her by trying to be like her."

"That's crap," he said. "I thought it was cool. I wanted to wear it. Now give it back."

"All right. Don't tell me I didn't warn you. I'm just trying to help. And you need it. You don't really think she's going to go for you, do you? Everyone knows you were involved in the arson incident to get back at Johnson for the snowball incident."

"What? That's..."

"Come on."

"That's crap. I had nothing to do with it and Michael was framed. It was an insurance scam. Johnson's old man set the fire to cash in."

"Oh, really? And did Johnson's _old man_ just leave that statue under your bed for charity? Please. You stole it."

Jackie turned suddenly away to hide his expression. How much did she know?

"I bought it," he said, turning back to her with an unflappable gaze he borrowed from John. "And what are you doing looking under my bed? I'm telling Mom. When she finds out she'll kick your ass so hard."

"Don't make me laugh, _little brother_. If she and John..."

"What does he have to do with it?"

"He's our father now. Don't you get it yet?"

"You stinking little Judas. What about our pact?"

"It's hopeless. We can't fight what was made to be. Mom is in love with him. Just accept it and stop your whining. Dad is dead, but I'll never stop loving him. He'd want her to be happy. You're just being selfish. And really, you're not in any position to argue. That statue could get you in even deeper trouble."

"You wouldn't dare tell. I'll fucking kill you if you speak a word. What I did with the knife last month was just square one."

"Like I'm afraid of you. Just admit you stole it to give to Jeanette. Just admit it."

Jackie walked towards the mirror, shook his head back and forth in frustration, and threw up his arms in defeat.

"All right. You win. But, I had nothing to do with the fire. And neither did Michael. Johnson must have told his dad about the snowball fight and it gave him a perfect opportunity to burn down his shop so he could pin it on someone else. It's so sick when you think about it."

"You expect me to believe that?"

"You'd better. It's true."

"And the statue? When are you planning on giving it to her?"

"Don't know."

"Do you realize that every time you think of Jeanette like that you're hurting Mom? She doesn't suspect anything, but if she found out she'd be in ruins. She found John first and any romance with Jeanette is a direct attempt to undermine her future."

"That's crap. Love is love. Anything can happen."

"You're betraying Mom by betraying our new family."

"Traitor." He shoved her against the wall. "He's only out to ruin her. Just you see."

Jackie put the belt back on, closing the buckle slowly and deliberately in front of her about six inches from her face, and walked sharply out the door, slamming it as he left. It was getting late and the party had probably already started. He rushed to the bathroom and locked the door. Exposed like a hatchling insect by the dim grayish glow of the fluorescent light bulb overhead, he examined himself in the mirror. He cringed at what he saw. He looked old and weak and his hair was too long. Jeanette would certainly hate it. Where a few months ago his hairstyle had a distinctly sculpted look, now it seemed like the sort of cut you might see on the head of a redneck gas station attendant: greasy and unkempt with no concept or form, saying in no uncertain words _I don't care if you like me as I don't like you either and have no wish to talk to you and never will_. He took out a pair of manicuring scissors and, clump-by-clump, cut his hair back to as close and approximation to its appearance of two months ago as he could. Then he found a packet of red henna from Mother's private drawer and squeezed it over his head. After a few minutes he rinsed it out and, when his hair was towel dry, he went to his room and hid the figurine beneath his chest of drawers. Then he ran downstairs and threw on his leather jacket.

Mother and John were sitting quietly in a cozy enclave they'd built from throw pillows on the couch in the living room: she with delicate wrinkles on her hands and John with a face like a stone flourmill: round hard and cold. They were so lost in their own little world they didn't even notice him. He slammed the door as he left the house. The night air sharpened its teeth on the flesh of his cheeks as he walked to the garage to rev up his Triumph.

The drive to the party was short but the service road detour was filled with crags and potholes peppered with clusters of renegade roots and vines piercing upwards through the cracked pavement. At one point the road broke open onto a narrow strip of beach with barely ten feet of sand separating the land from the silvery blades of the ocean. He stopped his motorcycle and leaned it up against a tree. The waves sucked against the ever-reluctant shore like a giant pair of lips. Jeanette. A massive vortex of mute black passion heaving before him in all its arcane power and mystery. He felt it closing in on him from all sides. He smelt its salt. He heard its desperate cries. He could even feel the spray of its delicate hands against his face. But most of all he could see it there before him. A darkness so lost to abstraction that it was no longer thinkable. A singularity beyond all grasp of reason. He closed his eyes and listened. He imagined the waves lapping up against his ears like the halcyon whisperings of some primeval race. Words with no meaning beyond their sound and shape. He wished they were Jeanette's words.

He made it to the party by eleven. A row of cars lined the back wall of the house, as if to provide a second line of defense after the rocky shore to protect the inland world from the ocean's madness. He parked his motorcycle and walked up to the side of the house, looking through a sparsely lit window and then again through the line of lacy curtains behind the glass, but could see no one.

He knocked on the door. There was no answer. After several attempts there was still no answer. He turned the knob and walked in. The living room was empty but he could hear the sound of loud music and the clamor of drunken banter coming from beyond the basement stairs. Following them down, he almost stumbling on a teddy bear left on the bottom stair.

He turned into an open door and walked into a large finished family room. The music was coming from the other side of the door positioned at the opposite side of the room. It opened slowly before he had a chance to cross the room. Maria was standing against the opposite wall smiling with great admiration and encouragement at Jerome, who was wearing a football jersey and doing air-guitar to the song playing on the stereo. After what happened earlier she was best considered a spy from the world of John sent to check up on his behavior.

"How did you get here so early?" he asked.

"Got a ride."

"From who?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?"

Jackie strode willfully over to the stereo and turned the volume down. By this time Jerome had moved in front of the door to the next room as though to block it. With Johnson nowhere in sight, Jackie pushed Jerome aside brusquely and walked through. There, sitting Shiva-like on an oriental carpet, was Jeanette. She was surrounded by a small group of young men he didn't recognize. Her hair was tied back on either side with small ribbons of crimson cloth hanging down in tiny rivulets to her shoulders and further downwards to her white muslin shirt, untucked and wrinkled, forming a dramatic backdrop to her vintage leather jacket that fell in waves of elegance and defiance to the fringes of her tartan skirt. Her face was pale and she didn't seem to notice that he had just walked in.

Trying to catch her attention, Jackie turned his gaze to a window and looked outside. It was dark. The deep layer of snow encasing the earth like a lead sheath was illuminated at its surface by a bright tumescent moon. Snowflakes blurred his view of the thicket across the road such that he could only make out a dim and bristly smear where he thought a bunching of trees should be visible. He turned around and looked back at Jeanette, who was now looking right at him. He motioned to sit down beside her and the guys, following the cue announced by the shift of her attention, turned and left the room.

"I want to show you something," he said.

"What?" She said as though snapping out of a trance.

"Outside."

"You just got here. It would be rude to go before trying to talk to at least a few people."

"We can come back later when it fills up. It seems pretty dead now."

"Yeah, I guess," she said with begrudging compliance as though she had not yet decided whether it made a bit of difference to her one way or another.

She put on a long striped toque that made her look like an old fashioned skater and then a pair of suede mittens rimmed with white cotton. When they got outside they followed a short icy path to the border of a small wooded area. Jeanette stood up on a log that lay stretched across a patch of snow and sand and balanced herself like a tightrope walker as she tottered towards the other end.

"Come on," she said. "This is fun. I always wanted to be a dancer, you know. But I used to be a lot better than this a few years ago."

Jackie leapt up behind her on the log but slipped as soon as his feet made contact with its sleek surface. She thrust out her hand and braced his arm until he regained his balance.

"Practice," was all she said, laughing.

They walked in complete silence to the mouth of a wide path. Jeanette stopped and stared into his eyes. It was as if all his fantasies were now stacked like a deck of transparencies directly in front of him, each one visible beneath the thin veil of the ones above it. She said nothing and then continued down the path past an old brick kiln and after that a mill house that stood alone before the frozen pelting of the ocean. She smiled and stopped abruptly, letting his arms brush against her.

"So. It's almost New Year's and we can't even see the stars. My dad says you can see a new constellation every day if you look hard enough."

"What about quasars? They used to think they were vast pulses of energy from dying galaxies."

"Dad was telling me something about that a few weeks ago."

_So now he's an expert on quasars,_ Jackie thought, as he watched the moonlight flow in cool streams of mercury over Jeanette's pale arms.

"What do you think of all this?" she asked abruptly and in a tone that Jackie did not like. "With my dad and your mom, I mean."

"I don't know," Jackie said, not sure if he should tell her the truth.

Jeannette looked suddenly nervous as she averted her attention to a pile of driftwood jutting out from a sheet of ice around her feet. She seemed to be studying the natural form as though he had somehow upset her by his remark and wanted to let him know how she felt. He stood like a mute wondering what to say, gazing for long moments out at the ocean with all its power and menace. Perhaps it had an answer. A large wave rolled in and smacked against the shore. A procession of smaller waves followed, ushering his heart into motion.

"I'm not so sure he's good for my mom," he blurted out.

"He _is_ my father you know." Jackie felt a sting and stepped back.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"For what?" she asked. Then she continued as if she already knew his answer. "I guess it's natural."

"To hate a stepfather?"

"Michael hates his, doesn't he?"

"Yeah. I guess that's one good thing about reform school. It'll keep that bastard away from him." His face contorted with a sudden burst of anger that seemed to frighten her.

"I don't want you to take this the wrong way, but sometimes I wonder about you."

"Wonder what?"

"Just wonder. I don't understand you. You seem sort of dark on the one side but kind of gentle too. Like when you're on your motorcycle. It's sort of tough looking but kind of vulnerable too."

"I can't afford a bigger one."

"You don't want a bigger one. That'll make you look like a _real_ biker. That's what I like about you. You're different. I don't quite understand you when you're angry, but maybe I will someday." The word _someday_ echoed inside him with all its beautiful images and permutations.

"Different from what?"

"From guys like Jerome and Johnson."

"I should hope so."

"Jerome keeps sending me flowers. I told him so many times not to. I don't know what to do anymore."

"Try passing him on to my sister. She's dying for him."

"I never noticed," she said in a way that implied that she had noticed but was just too polite to say so.

"Hey," he said, touching her shoulder as though he was now a marionette controlled by the aura around her. He gazed into her eyes for a long moment, almost pinning her up with his own eyes as she did so. She was startling. "Have you ever felt like dropping out?"

"Of what?"

"Society. You know, everything."

"Don't you have any ambitions?"

"Ambitions? Maybe. I think I might want to do something in animation. I don't know. I like drawing but I'm not sure I'm good enough. Maybe I'll just end up designing video games and then give up and become a carpenter. That might be fun. I could make little things out of wood."

She laughed gingerly and tugged at his coat.

"That's what I mean. You're different. A bit negative on the surface, but sweet underneath it all. But maybe you just need a girlfriend."

_Yes, like you_ , he thought, although the objective tone of her comment frightened him, as though she had some other woman than herself in mind for him.

She dropped slowly to her knees and began to pick away at the ice with her fingers as he rested his gaze on the part in her hair. No one ever called him sweet before. He imagined her as a ballerina with small pink slippers and her hair all knotted up like a loaf of festive sweetbread. She wrapped her arm quickly around his leg and rubbed her cheek against his thigh. Jackie let his hand drop to her head. He could feel her warm breath against his wrist.

"Have you ever thought about me before?" she asked, her eyes reflecting the dim wash of starlight.

"Like what?"

"I don't know. Don't you think it's a bit weird with my dad and your mom?"

"You mean because we're almost like step brother and sister," he said, testing the waters. A shadow of disappointment fell across her brow and suddenly they were two expressions of the same being and he knew exactly what she was thinking. He fell to his knees to join her.

As he slowly drew her face towards his, the relationship between John and his mother looked all the more ridiculous, all the more dreadful, all the more damning. They sat huddled in rapt silence as the lighted snowflakes fell on their cheeks like tiny fireflies, each one burning for a moment on his cheek before it melted into a droplet of water and spread across his skin.

"Come closer to me, " she whispered in his ear. "I've always wanted you, yearned for you. Like that time I saw you after Johnson's gang hit you with the snowball. You looked so vulnerable. I just wanted to hug you. But then a weird look came through your eyes. That's why I pulled back. I felt so confused."

"I thought you would think I was crazy. If I asked you out, I mean. With your dad and all. And when you walked away from me after the snowball I was convinced you didn't care."

He moved closer to her. She ran her fingers through his wire brush hair and touched her lips to his.

"Don't worry. My dad doesn't have to know. Besides, we knew each other first." He watched the coiling of her frozen breath rise upwards into the diaphanous melodies of starlight drenching the universe of his vision. He felt suddenly naked sitting there beside her with only the cold sand beneath him and the mineralized carcasses of deceased sea creatures strewn about like clovers in a barren field on the wake of some Apocalypse. A feeling rushed into him like he hadn't felt since he first met Michael. A feeling like the person beside him was about to irreversibly change his life.

They walked along the beach past a stubby white lighthouse and then an abandoned pier with rotting wooden planks extending into the ocean. Inside were rusted old pinball machines and a shooting gallery filled with rotating targets. There were ducks, elephants, and even a clown. Jeanette tried the trigger of the gun but it was jammed.

Further along the beach there was an amusement park, also abandoned, but apparently not for long, because the owners had taken care to surround it with barbed wire and turreted fences decorated with dozens of stark KEEP OUT signs. Jackie shimmied up a corner post where the barbed wire line was broken and helped Jeanette up to the top. They straddled the bare metal ridge for only an instant before Jackie jumped down to the inside of the fair grounds. Jeanette followed, falling like the shadow of a sparrow along the side of a cliff.

She pulled up against him and unzipped his coat, wrapping its cold leather around her as best she could. In the darkness the amusement park looked like an outpost of some extinct civilization. She let him go and they wove through the looming metal cagings of the roller coaster and Ferris wheel before stopping at a bumper car tent. The cars were still there. They took their seats inside one and snuggled up against each other. He kissed her lips for longer than he imagined was possible, their tongues intertwining like neighboring blades of grass. His hand fell down the back of her shirt and under the rim of her skirt. He expected resistance but got none. She undid the buttons of her shirt and guided his hand downwards. His index finger pushed up into the soft bristles at the bottom. It was like nothing he'd ever felt. He wondered if it looked like the pictures he'd seen in magazines.

Just then a dog barked and he pulled back.

"Maybe we should go," she said suddenly.

"Don't be afraid," he said, although he was afraid himself.

He pushed up against her with all his weight and smoothed his hands down her back and under the elastic of her panties. They felt thin and soft, not like men's underwear. He put his hand up her skirt and pulled her panties down. She put up little resistance. He could just barely see the outline of her naked thighs when he pulled his own down.

"I don't have anything," she said.

He pulled her closer.

"We _should_ use something."

"Back in the house?"

"Too far."

She pulled him closer and kissed him. It was the signal he needed. He pressed his lips against her left cheek. He was no longer intimidated by her beauty. It was as if it had suddenly become a part of him, a second body in which his soul could dwell. She was his. The rust on the seat scraped against his knees while the cold air chilled his thighs. He yielded to the surprising strength of her arms pulling him closer and in a few awkward spurts they made love. A feeling of unparalleled satisfaction seized over him; he had finally been granted access to the most exclusive and forbidden chambers of that ancient steam house he had always knew existed but never once been allowed to enter, standing alone in the center of a marble-floored room dressed only in a white towel bathrobe as he held the golden key that belonged to him and him alone for the rest of eternity. His body tensed as he inhaled the light of a thousand stars twinkling in the night sky. It wasn't like he'd expected. It was more physical. He rolled away from her, still panting and sweating, transfixed by her profile etched from the darkness by the silvery reflection of the moonlight off the sea. As the minutes blossomed and faded away the first pink rays of dawn began to creep over the horizon. They lay together on the frozen beach listening to the sound of the waves and the rhythmical cackle of gulls saluting the morning. New Year's had come and gone without either of them noticing.

As dawn broke he drove her home on the back of his motorbike and kissed her on her doorstep. Even the disjointed madness of the outer circle looked beautiful as he walked slowly back to his motorcycle and then headed back home to sleep. When he got in he could hear the shrill sound of his mother crying in her room. The light was on and he could also hear Maria and John's voices comforting her. He wondered what she could be so upset about but whatever it could be seemed so distant to him as to be irrelevant and he quickly turned his thoughts back to Jeanette and drifted off to sleep.

### IV

Jackie slipped out of his bathrobe and into the shower. He pulled the translucent plastic shower curtain over the rim of the tub and draped it neatly over its cold porcelain surface. The orange and red Thai-goddess patterns festooning up the curtain's sides and gathering at the center in one great cathartic mandala cast shivering candle flame images across his pale body. It was already getting dark and New Year's dinner was at least two hours away. He gazed out the small porthole-shaped window positioned at the center of the wall above the bathtub. The view outside was obscured by an overhanging branch and beyond that a set of swings - the ones he and Maria used to play on before their father drowned – rocked slowly back and forth in the wind. A cloud passed over the horizon and a final purr of light faded to darkness.

Winter was always darkness. Outer dark. Spiritual dark. Inner dark. A darkness so broad and all-encompassing there were no longer boundaries between its blackest seeds and darkest fruits. Only that morning the snow had reflected a sun of clean white light across his face as he walked along the icy beach. But he knew the truth, that it was really darkness in disguise, a brand of light inverted and so limitless in its powers of seduction that it drew him away from the world's greatest song and brought him face to face with that deathly inner mirror he knew was his and his alone. And when night fell, this light's thin disguise peeled away in flimsy layers to reveal the truest nature of things: fathomless pools of lightless cold ensnaring dilapidated chimneys on snow-frosted rooftops, the colored lights framing the household windows shining dimly on the scattered bottles of cheap brandy, now empty in the gutters.

He sucked on his finger and grabbed for the pinkish bar of soap on the floor of the tub. Then he filled the tub up with more hot water until it was almost unbearable and began to wash himself, thinking only of Jeanette as she moved her hand up and down the skin of her body. He imagined his body was her body and kissed her imagined shoulder while gazing emptily at the colorful figures dancing on the surface of the shower curtain.

Later, still wrapped in his towel, he sat staring grimly at the ceiling of his bedroom willing the pillow under his cheek to become Jeanette's hair and face. Now that she was his, the fear of losing her was far worse than he ever dreamed the pain of never having her could be. Maria walked in.

"I talked to Mom," she said. "Boy are you up the creek."

"For what?"

"Don't be stupid. _Jeanette._ Don't think I don't know about what happened between you two last night."

"How do you know?"

"Jeanette told John. Then he told Mom and Mom told me."

"What? She would never tell him. You're wrong. Dead wrong. She loves me. I know it."

"Really? You'd better check again."

"Get lost, you frigid bitch." He leapt out of his bed and grabbed a box cutter from inside his desk.

"Please," she said. "Not this again." He brandished it in her face before slowly letting it drop. "I'm not totally unsympathetic," she continued. "You must feel awful that she would toy with you like that." She touched her index finger to his forehead and he quickly brushed it away. "If you are nice, maybe I can help convince Mom that she shouldn't ban you from seeing her altogether."

Jackie felt a sharp pain in his chest. "This all must be some big mistake. It has to be. She would never tell John." He started pacing back and forth.

"Calm down, Jackie. Calm down."

"So what exactly did she say to him?"

"I don't know."

"Maybe she didn't tell John anything at all and it's all a set up between you and Mom to get me to cough out the truth."

"Mom would never do that. Anyway, I'm not sure I should be telling you this, but I heard Jeanette really likes Michael and just wanted to use you to get to know him better."

Jackie quaked in every quarter of his being. "Michael? That's ridiculous." There was no way she could ever like _him_. Most girls did, but Jeanette was different. She had more style. She wouldn't go for him at all. _Or would she?_ Suddenly he was no longer sure _._

"I'm....I'm so very sorry," she said effusively. "I wish it wasn't true."

Her voice dropped to a shrill whisper and she stretched her arms around his trembling figure. "It must be so painful. I know you and I argue all the time but underneath it all I still care about you."

"What about Jerome?" he said, suddenly more incredulous. "That bastard's been sending her flowers for months."

"Oh, give me a break. He has better taste than that."

"Come on...everyone knows he calls her day and night."

"Last night he told me he just wants to be friends with her. She's so full of herself she just spread the rumor he liked her to bolster her ego. And to think, she's going to be my half sister. But once Michael gets out and they have a chance to start hanging out again..." She paused and shrugged her shoulders as if to signal that she was wise and knew what life could throw at people, good or bad, and had come to believe that the best approach was just to accept it and move on. It was an attitude Jackie did not like.

His head dropped and his face sagged. "I love her," he said in resistance.

"Life is like that. You have to grow up and accept it. I know it's hard."

"I don't believe it. It simply isn't true." He watched her eyes to see if she sensed what he was really feeling.

"Yes. It is. I'm sorry."

Just as Jackie was about to speak the door opened and John entered. He was wearing a white tee shirt with a large blue dolphin woven in the center that made him look like a grade school swimming instructor.

"I know this involves both of you to some extent, as we are all part of the same family now," he said, without even trying to excuse his intrusion, "but some things are meant for men and men alone." Maria took her cue and left the room.

John sat down beside Jackie and set his hand gently on his shoulder. "I heard something very alarming last night."

"Maria told me already," Jackie said coldly.

"I'm dumfounded. I didn't want to believe it. She's my daughter."

"I love her."

"Do you? Do you even know what love is?" John stood up and arched his eyebrows. "I was young once. I remember carving hearts into trees and burning holes in my wrist over a girl I met in summer camp. I thought I really loved her. Thought, at least. After I poured my heart out to her she ended up rejecting me and going out with someone else. Naturally, I was devastated. But do you know what? I saw her two years later and wondered what I ever saw in her. She had put on weight and there was a certain bitterness in her expression that kept me from even acknowledging I ever had feelings for her or even once knew her. It was all so crazy. And don't think I am trivializing your feelings. I was sure it was true love at the time. I would have died for her."

Jackie stared down at the carpet in disbelief. How could anyone suggest that his love was nothing but a silly phase? The whole charade was clearly a set-up to keep him away from Jeanette. Maria must've spied on him at the party last night and then rushed back to tell their mother everything. That's what all that crying was about. John and Maria were conspiring to destroy his love and usher him to the same tiresome existence they had.

"You weren't listening to me," Jackie said, raising his voice dramatically. "I said _I love her_. Do I have to spell it out for you?"

"And how can you be so sure your love is reciprocated? My daughter is an honorable woman and would never implicate herself in such a _controversial_ romance."

Jackie turned his head up calmly and looked at John in the same way he had looked at the wounded bird he drowned only a few months before. "What makes you so sure?"

"I've had enough!" John stood up. The bland reserve that normally filled his expressions suddenly vanished and Jackie could see that John was a man that could and would hurt somebody if he felt there was just reason to do so.

He pushed Jackie against the wall and slapped him in the face. "You have to learn at least some crumb of respect young man! I'm the man of the house now. I've tolerated your moods. I've given you time to adjust. I've done everything to befriend you and you just spit insults back in my face. I love your mother like no one else and I'm not going to let you come between us and ruin my life and my daughter's life at the same time."

He bolted out of the room and slammed the door behind him, the sound of his clattering footsteps drowning out the sound of the storm now blowing outside the window. Jackie leaned back on his bed. His face felt hot and he wanted to cry but couldn't. Somewhere in all the darkness around him was an even deeper darkness, a darkness that spoke to him and told him that there was no use wasting his emotions. He walked out of the room and picked up the phone in the hallway. He dialed Jeanette's number and let it ring for five minutes but there was no answer. He set the receiver back on the stand. Somewhere downstairs he thought he heard John's voice but this time the sound of the wind was louder and he really couldn't be sure what he was hearing, if anything at all.

### V

Jackie awoke several times that night to the bleakness of his room. Shadows sprawled across the ceiling like wax drippings from an altarpiece candle at a satanic mass and images of John and Maria wandered through in his head as though imprints of these very shadows, vanishing and reappearing in cascades of vague impressions reflected off of windows in some empty darkened room. Every time he opened his eyes he felt he was emerging into a newer, more hostile nightmare than the last. How could it be true? Jeanette had to love him. It was carved in stone. She proved it to him the night of the party. Everything John and Maria had said was a lie. Yes, it was all a lie, he reassured himself over and over as the night wore on. All a lie or some grotesque miscarriage of a dream of some secondary or tertiary nightmare that had no validity in the real world. Yet no matter how many times he convinced himself of this, every time he awoke he felt awful all over again. Jeanette was gone. It was over. She didn't love him. Even if she did, John and his mother would interfere. His emotions surged back and forth with the grim regularity of the tide. From dream to reality and back to wicked dream; from the false security of knowing it was all a lie to the hideous torment of knowing it was true.

When he woke up for good it was morning. The world around him sprang to life with light and color, the sound of the dying storm pushing impatiently against the frosted windowpane and whistling through the wooden cracks and into room, but inside he could only feel the weight of the previous evening crushing down on him like a gravestone. As he lifted himself out of bed he felt a sudden urge to see his mother and seek her refuge. It was all just some mistake and once he explained his true feelings she would understand and make John change his mind. He dressed sloppily and went downstairs to find her. She was sitting alone on the couch in the living room knitting a sweater. From the length of the arms he could tell it was for John. For the first time he noticed that his father's picture was missing from the wall.

"I've sent it in to be cleaned," she said, noticing him staring at the spot where the photo used to be. Her voice had the trembling uncertainty of someone trying to lie there way out of an embarrassing situation. "You're not obligated to believe me," she said as she looked squarely into his eyes, reading their every inflection.

"First he slaps the shit out of me and next he burns all of Dad's photos. What's become of you?"

"Don't talk to me like that. Besides, we have other matters to discuss."

Jackie sat down beside her. Whatever the truth, no matter how devastating, he knew she wouldn't lie to him about something this serious. Maybe about a photo, but not about _this_. John and Maria, yes, but not his own mother. Even though he feared the truth, he sat there gravely and prepared himself to listen.

As she began to speak a softer more caring look fell over her face. "I know you're sensitive beneath all your anger," she pulled her hair back and held it in her fist behind her head the way girls did at school when they acted like they liked you. The gesture was unnerving and he tried to imagine what she was like when she was younger but couldn't. She seemed too old and mature to ever have been young. "Perhaps too sensitive," she continued as she let her hair drop. "People like you seem to experience life with far more emotion than the average person. What might be a normal day at school for some might be quite different for you. And while some adjust quite quickly to new situations, apparently never growing overly attached to anything, others feel the loss of the past in a much bigger way."

Jackie remained silent, anticipating the anguish her words would no doubt bring him later in the day when he'd had enough time to think about them.

"Loss, what loss?" he said, seeking the security he hoped he clarification might bring.

She moved closer to him and set the sweater aside on the arm of the sofa.

"First of all, John is very sorry about what happened last night. He told me he's never regretted anything as much as that. He's a good man. He wants to be your friend. He doesn't want to replace your father like you might think, he just wants to be your friend. It'll just take time. There's bound to be growing pains."

"Well he isn't doing a very good job."

"Now," she said and then paused. "About Jeanette." Jackie winced at the sound of her name. "I know you must like her very much, but there are so many complications. Very few people end up staying with their high school love for long. You've got the whole world shining before you. You're talented, good looking, and you come from a good home. All you need is to find some direction. You should quit wasting your time and concentrate on school for a while. Stop forcing things and let other new things happen. There's a thousand girls out there that would love to go out with you." She paused and took a deep breath in a way that looked like it had been rehearsed several times before. "You have to understand, I'm in a different situation. For me there are no other choices. The chances of a single widowed mother with two children finding a good man are so small. I just..."

"I don't see how they're related. They just aren't. She doesn't even live with us."

"I never implied they were."

"John did."

"He was just being defensive. We're talking about his daughter here."

"Sorry, _my_ girlfriend, not just _his_ daughter. And maybe you should ask her what she thinks of him. You might be surprised."

Kathleen's face hardened and she suddenly seemed like a much older person than she really was. "That's enough. No need to bring John into this."

"You mean the man who barged into my room last night and slapped me?"

"This is getting out of hand. I tried to be reasonable about all this and break it to you softly, but the bottom line is that John and I have decided that you and Jeanette can't see each other anymore."

"It's too late. She loves me. Did you get that? She loves me!" He threw a sofa pillow across the room at a lampshade, knocking it over as he stormed towards the door. "She loves me," he shouted.

With that he ran upstairs, his figure vanishing from his mother's view like that of a small rodent scurrying into its den. She started to follow but quit mid-stride at the bottom of the staircase. It was no use. He wouldn't listen and she didn't want to make it any harder on either of them than it already was. She turned and walked slowly back to the sofa to resume her knitting. After a few minutes dropped the sweater and looked off into space, focusing her gaze somewhere in the middle of the room as if someone was standing there talking to her while she looked them directly in the eye. Then she bent her head down and started to cry.

A few minutes later John strode into the room and sat down beside her. Sensing her pain he fumbled with a lighter for a few minutes and said nothing. Finally, she cleared her throat. Their eyes met, each anticipating the same conclusion.

"I don't know what to do," she said, not even slightly aware that Jackie was listening from the hallway upstairs.

"It would be unfair..."

"I just don't know what to do," she repeated.

"I've done everything to get along with him."

"I know. It's not your fault." She put her hand on his thigh.

"He seems to have an irrational hatred for me. But, it's not just that. Jeanette's grades are going down. I don't know if the turmoil of her seeing Jackie at the same time we are moving in together has gotten her down or what. It's a lot for a young person to go through. Being a teenager is hard enough. And all this arson business on top of it all..."

"I know."

"I'm going to ask you something. I want to know what you think. I don't want to seem unfair or harsh."

"What?"

"Just an idea. Maybe it's a bad one."

"What?"

"Well," said John. His words became heavy. "I know Jackie is sensitive - as is Jeanette - but I thought for a while tonight and decided that the most reasonable solution might be to send Jeanette to a girl's school." Jackie, who was now watching them from the top of the stairs, thought he could see her eyes widened with opposition. "Now wait," John continued. "It's not what you think. I don't want it to look like a punishment. It's not one at all. I don't hold this against her one bit. It's just that a private school would be so good for her development. The teaching quality is so much better."

Jackie stood up from his crouched position and walked slowly back to his bedroom. A sick feeling came over him. The thought of Jeanette going away to boarding school was too much to bear. He buried his head in a pillow but even then could still hear murmurs of their conversation through the floor.

"I don't want you to do this for me. I mean why should she suffer..."

"It's not suffering. Let's not look at it that way."

"How can you make it look like it's not a punishment?"

"I don't know. It's going to be hard."

"What about her mother?"

"I've spoken to her already and she thinks it's a good idea. We both want the best for her. There's no way this romance will lead to anything but disaster - for everyone concerned - and I just can't think of any other solution."

The house went silent for several minutes before John stood up and left the room. He grabbed his coat and went outside to walk along the beach and gather his thoughts in preparation for one final and decisive moment. When he came back all the lights in the house were off except for the one in Jackie's room. He had to check on him to make sure he was handling the situation well. He had to apologize, or at least explain himself better. If he didn't things would only get worse. There'd be more fights and who knows what might happen? Teenagers were known to get suicidal. If that happened - even it wasn't really his fault - Kathleen would certainly never want to see him again. She would always associate him with the loss of her son. He imagined her frowning at him with deep glowering eyes as they stood across the room from one another at a memorial service. No, he didn't want that to happen. But on the other hand, if he wasn't hard enough on Jackie, then he might turn Kathleen against him and undermine their entire relationship. He had to do something to make things better.

He went to open Jackie's door, but at the last minute was overcome by guilt and decided to wait till the next day when the situation with Jeanette had crystallized. Perhaps if they all slept on it the perfect solution would come and they would all be able to navigate their way through this difficult crisis. He opened the door of the master bedroom - in an irrefutable way now his own bedroom as well - and turned on the light. Kathleen was asleep soundly under the covers. He curled up beside her and closed his eyes, listening to the hypnotic whir of the weathervane on the roof. In a moment he had already lost all consciousness of the room and had descended into a sleep so deep and remote that the moment he opened his eyes he had no memory of ever having been in that bed or room before.

### VI

The next morning Jackie was sitting outside on the deck watching a magpie perched on a tree in the yard when John came up behind him and tapped him on the shoulder. Jackie turned around and looked at him with cold apathy.

"I'm very sorry about what happened between us," John said. "I am really trying to make things different." Jackie remained silent, staring at him without once even blinking, through him and further onwards as though focusing on a point twenty feet behind him.

"Well, if you're going to be that way about it, I'll just get it over with so you can get back to whatever it was you thought you were doing."

Jackie turned his head and fixed his gaze back on the magpie.

"You aren't going to like this, but I've decided it's best to send Jeanette to a boarding school so you can't see each other anymore," he said with a mixture of regret and grim finality. "I'm really sorry about it and I'm also sorry to have interrupted you." John threw up his arms in a gesture of defeat and walked inside.

Jackie's let his head drop into his chest before leaning further down to pick up a small stone, which he quickly threw at the darting black bird. Then he ran upstairs to his bedroom and slammed the door. His insides burned with pain. What he had overheard the night before was true. Jeanette really was going away. How could she listen to them? It was horrible. What if he never saw her again? The school was probably hundreds of miles away. Way too far to visit. They were locking her up just like Michael. It was absolutely unbearable. Parents. It was just another step in their heinous master plan. _Best for whom?_ He asked himself. _Best for you?_ Certainly not for anyone else involved. He tried to relax on his bed by contemplating the intricacies of his heavily postered wall, plucking out new patterns he'd never seen before as his eyes scanned only half focused in repeating arcs from side to side: a maddening bluish spiral reeling out of _The_ _Gray Orchid's_ head, an ugly yellow mark staining the ceiling directly over his bed, and a long quivering shadow piercing downwards from a crack at the top of his closet door. In his state of delirium he looked down at the logo on his tee shirt and thought it read _Fuselage_ rather than _Fugitive_ , which it had always read before.

He heard a whistle outside and the tangled delta of images flooding through his consciousness ground to a halt. He had to call Jeanette. He needed to see her. So what if John told him not to try. With all his authority so-called wisdom the best he could do was to advise Jackie to forget about her and start searching for _other fish in the sea_. What kind of man could refer to his own daughter as a fish? It was absolute proof that John should be stripped of his status as her father. How could the universe be so twisted as to allow such a manipulative coward to send away a creature as pure and ethereal as Jeanette to wither away in the dank chambers of some backwards boarding school? Jackie bit into the sleeve of his shirt, longing for her soft red hair and the tender touch of her cheek against his.

In a sudden fit of inspiration he picked up the phone and dialed Jeanette's number. An older woman's voice answered. He stuttered as he asked for Jeanette.

"Just a second," the woman said, her voice dropping a few octaves as though to draw attention to the mounting suspicion lurking behind it.

Jeanette finally came to the phone. "Hello?" Her voice was cold and distant. He cleared his throat. "Jackie?" she asked. She sounded like a woman lost somewhere. He imagined she was floating in water, possibly even an aquarium where the glass walls could add further emotional insulation than the water already provided.

"Jeanette. Jeanette. What are we going to do?"

She did not answer.

"Jeanette? We can't let them win, we can't."

She coughed and cleared her throat.

Jackie emptied his words one last time into the telephone receiver, but Jeanette still did not answer.

"Jeanette! Can't you see what they're doing to us?"

"I do," she finally said with numb resignation.

"Then why don't you say something?"

"I can't."

"Then I will."

"Don't, Jackie. Don't. We'll only make it harder on each other."

"Don't you even care?"

"Jackie. Please. You know I care. You're not the one getting sent away."

"We have to do something."

"I got a package from Jerome. He says he loves me and now my mother said if I go out with him, I don't have to go to that school."

"I can't believe it."

"You know I would never go out with him and that you're the only one I love."

"Then why did you mention it?"

"Just to show you how manipulative they are."

"So what am I going to do while you're away? Maybe we can drop out of school and run away to a new city where we can be together."

"You know I can't quit school. My parents would be so ashamed."

There it was again. Parents. Jackie tightened his fist around the phone. "Well, your s _o-called parents_ are responsible for almost breaking my jaw. At least one of them anyway."

"I'm sorry," she said in helpless acknowledgement. "I heard."

"I'll visit you every day and night."

"My mom said they don't allow visitors."

"Then on holidays."

"Yes, on holidays," she repeated weakly, her apparent apathy engulfing him and dragging his heart into territories of his soul he never knew existed, once invisible but now stretched out before him in limitless bleak landscapes like bold and imperious new worlds devoid of any compassion or hope. Was it because she didn't really care and was simply accepting her fate as the most convenient solution, or was it because she was stronger than he and thus able to frame the whole situation in a more long-term and optimistic perspective, quietly feeling the same emotions as he like two souls face-to-face and standing naked in a mirror, only hiding them to numb the obvious pain?

"I love you," he pleaded, his hand now shaking and wet with sweat. "Please don't go. Let's do something. Let's run away. I don't understand why you seem so calm about all this. Don't you love me?"

His mind drifted and for an instant it seemed that he was hovering in the space immediately above his body observing himself babbling incoherently into the phone like the kind of rank invalid that would never be successful with a girl like Jeanette. He suddenly became conscious of how frail he looked in his leather jacket, which, if anything, made him look even frailer, as if somehow emphasizing the objective fact that he wasn't man enough to wear it.

His mind flipped back to the receiver. He stared into it, clenching it tightly in his hand as if it was a rope hanging over the side of a cliff.

"Are you still there?" she asked, her voice imbued with a kind of levity he couldn't understand nor wanted to understand.

"Yes," he said.

"We can write," she reassured him.

"I'll write you every day."

"I'll write back every day," she said back to him in a way that made him feel stronger. He imagined himself tight up against her naked body, his tongue pushed bluntly through her soft lips. A car drove by outside and he started laughing like a child who has cried so long he sees the irony of his own anguish.

"I have to go now," she said.

"Already?" He felt her slipping away, dissolving even, like a ball of cotton candy into a sweaty palm. He couldn't let her go.

"My mother's calling."

"Just a few more minutes."

"I have to go."

"Jeanette?"

"Good bye. I'll miss you. I'll call you from school."

"I love you," he said.

"Good-bye," she said gravely.

"Jeanette?"

He heard a click and the receiver went dead for an instant before there was only the still drone of the dial tone filling his ear. He was alone. All around him was cold lapidary silence. He felt faint and stumbled back to his bed. Any happiness that had momentarily sprung up inside him during the conversation had vanished and all that was left was the trembling mass of his body and the dull confinement of his room. It was all nothing. Absolutely nothing. Fucking nothing.

He left his room and charged downstairs. On his way out John tried to stop him but Kathleen held him back.

"Don't hurt him," she implored.

A minute later he was already on his motorcycle, headed straight to Jeanette's house. He cut through the snow-damp evening like a laser from the hand of _Geisheirra._ Energy, light, sound, color: ozone blue with passion he ripped through the traffic, stopping only once behind a pair of eighteen-wheelers at a red light. By the time he reached her house his face was pink from the highway air and his leather jacket was sleek and enameled from the wet snow. There was no way she was going to leave without one last kiss.

His heart slowed and he assumed a more composed look. If she saw him prowling around outside she might think he had lost his mind and had come to stalk her. She lived in a small modern split-level house with aluminum siding in a quiet little retreat in one of the least distinctive parts of the fourth circle. It was one of a small cluster of about fifty or sixty residences floating like an island sanctuary amongst a glittering desert of factories, railway yards, and abandoned warehouses. From the top of the sidewalk he could see what looked like another identical neighborhood - on the top of a distant hill. He imagined that it was merely a reflection of Jeanette's neighborhood and that the City was really only half its size, an enormous mirror as tall as the sky casting the illusion of it being a metropolis.

The lights were out in all but one of the windows. He became acutely aware of his quickening heartbeat as he approached the front door. What if her mother answered the door and refused to let him talk to her? He walked up to the lit window and peered inside. Although the glass was cloudy from a thin glaze of frost he could still make out what he thought were two figures sitting on a bed. He put his ear up to listen but could hear nothing.

Summoning all of his courage he took three brisk perfect steps to the door and rang the bell. No answer. He rang a second time. After a long moment the door handle moved. The door opened slowly and Jeanette's small ivory face peaked out. Her eyes were dreary as though she had been crying and her hair was wet and smelled of shampoo. She was visibly nervous and nibbled on the tips of her fingernails as she held her bathrobe tightly around her pale body. The door opened wider and her mother appeared, inserting herself between them.

"Jeanette can't talk now," she said.

"Just for a second," he said casually, trying to hide the urgency of his visit.

"Can you leave us just for a second, Mom?" Jeanette added.

"You have to pack. You haven't even started yet."

"I'll stay up late," she offered.

"What sort of impression do you want to make on your mother superior tomorrow? You have to look fresh and tidy like a girl with a bright future ahead of her."

"Come on, Mom," she said in a way that seemed almost tough and not belonging to the Jeanette he thought he knew.

"OK. Just for a minute. But don't complain to me about your alarm clock not going off. If you're not up by six sharp I'll just have to throw you out of bed."

The two women disappeared behind the door and a minute later Jeanette reemerged from the shadows of the front hall, still in her bathrobe, her flesh covered in a mat of evenly spaced water droplets, pink in the glare of the porch light. Her face was almost transparent and her feet, the shape of Chinese slippers, seemed to float above the parquet porch tiles. For that moment she seemed to Jackie like an apparition, something that just stepped out from a stained glass window or medieval illumination. He pulled her close to him. She held back momentarily but slowly gave in.

"Be careful. My mom..."

"Are you sure it's not more than that?"

"No. You know how I feel."

"I had to come just once."

"I know you're upset. And so am I, but there isn't anything I can do. I can't be independent and make my own decisions until I make my own money. I tried to resist but my dad was so angry."

He kissed her lightly and rested his head on her shoulders. Her hair smelt of vanilla. It was a smell that he needed in his life and knew he would miss and even crave when she went away. When she looked into his eyes he felt both warm and vulnerable as if he was relinquishing himself to a higher force, but one that he knew would always protect him. He imagined he could feel her nerve endings tingle against his, the emotional connection between them was so visceral. He pictured her blood cells moving through her smallest veins. This was love. The shattering of all borders between two people. As he pressed his lips into her hair he wanted to vanish into the furthest recesses of her being never to return.

When Jeanette's mother came to the door it was as if she had materialized out of thin air with no other purpose but to loom and hover between them. He kissed Jeanette just once and stepped back. Before he had a chance to say goodbye the door had already closed. He listened to her footsteps until he could hear no more. By the time he mounted his motorcycle he was already composing in his head the first lines of a love letter to send her, a letter that would come with a small paper rose and the statue from under his dresser.

### VII

The next morning Jackie woke up shivering inside the folds of a cold wet sheet. Not only was he sweating profusely from a fever that had taken grip while he slept but the ceiling had sprung a leak and water had been dribbling down on the bed all night without him even noticing. He dried himself with a dirty shirt he picked up from the floor beside his bed and went to the bathroom. He wet his hair and combed it back. The gash from the snowball had strangely reappeared. Only the night before it was almost totally healed and he wondered if he had tore it open again it in his sleep or if the fever had somehow conspired to reinfect it. He touched the soft cranberry lesion and a sharp pain pulsed through his head as memories of the snowball incident flickered in his minds eye. Jeanette was gone. _She_ was gone. _She_. He felt faint and grabbed the side of the sink to steady his suddenly swaying body. The room filled with mysterious Thai-goddess patterns floating through the air in an amazing panorama of colors ranging from candied gold and copper shades through light blush pastels down to deep, almost intangibly dark blues and purples. The patterns swirled viciously and several times vanished into the walls only to reappear again in myriad newer, even more enticing colors. He'd never seen such spectacular beauty blossoming before him. After watching the shapes dance around for a minute their novelty wear off and they transformed into a swarming cone of dragonflies buzzing around his head to drive him mad.

He sat down in the corner of the bathroom beside a wicker hamper and picked up a film and glamor magazine he'd left in there a few days earlier. It would help him calm down until his delirium passed. He tried to read an article about a popular actress and her staring role in a film that had just opened and was garnering rave reviews for its gritty portrayal of disenfranchised youth, but quickly gave up in frustration. The words were incoherent, the images on the page meaningless. He ran his fingers like cat's claws up and down his half-dressed body. Each time he followed the same path over his skin he pressed harder and harder until his nails left pinkish furrows behind them. He wanted to lacerate his entire body and leave his sub-cuticle remains exposed on the bathroom floor so John could witness in Technicolor the full-blown consequences of his thoughtless decision. Yes, the floor would be knee-deep in nerve endings, blood, and skin. It would be salty with sweat, urine, and even more revolting bodily fluids; the walls would be coated with mucous and strands of pubic hair when they walked in to see what was left of him: the skinless, loveless man.

He felt dizzy as he stood up and looked again in the mirror. His stomach turned. He needed Jeanette. He wanted to kill himself. Not out of self-loathing but rather because he once read that when you die you experience life backwards. If this was true, killing himself would allow him to spend his first few blissful moments with Jeanette all over again, only in reverse. He filled the toothbrush glass on the ledge of the sink with cold water and anointed his temples before gulping down the rest in a single motion. Then he smashed the tumbler against the mirror, the reflective glass in front of him shattering into an ordered array of isosceles triangles and tiny needles. He picked up a shard and studied his own reflection through the broken fragment. The scar was still there. It was no illusion. He stared into the glass until he could no longer see the outline of his face, the sharp fragment was so drenched in the blood of his lacerated fingers.

There was a knock at the door.

"Are you OK in there?" John's voice boomed through the wood of the door.

"Yes," he said, leaning against the door to make sure that nobody came in. The hallucinations retreated.

"I heard a smashing sound like broken glass."

"You must be hearing things," Jackie said with emphatic lack of interest. "There's no broken glass in here."

"Oh. The sound must have come from somewhere else."

"I'm sure it did."

"Aren't you late for school?"

"I'm sick," he said. Then he muttered under his breath _go to hell you jerk, if I'm sick you're the last fucking person on earth I want to see_.

"Don't you think you should tell your mother?"

"I did already."

"She must have forgotten to tell me."

"Yes. She must've. I'm sure I told her."

"What's the matter?"

"My head is bleeding again. I'm dizzy. I feel like throwing up. I hate life. Anything else?"

"I'll call a doctor."

"No. Don't. I want to see my mom first."

"If you insist."

Once John had gone downstairs Jackie quickly hid the broken glass under the standup bathtub. Then he splashed some water through the sink to wash away the blood and ran back into his room. By the time he was laying down on his bed he could already hear his mother's soft but heavy footsteps coming up the stairs. A cold sweat broke out on his forehead.

"What's the matter, dear?" she asked as she slowly opened the door.

"I'm sick."

She crossed the room and sat down on his bed. Then she ran her hand over his forehead. Her fingers felt soft and leathery like a bird's wing.

"My goodness. How did this happen?"

"The snowball...don't you remember?"

"It can't be the same one. You must've hurt yourself sleep walking at night. Or maybe the mirror?"

"It was already broken when I found it and I don't sleep walk. You should know that."

"Well, however it got there, the main thing is to make it go away."

"It hurts like Hell," he said.

"My poor boy," she said effusively and hugged him. Her arms had a lukewarm feel that Jackie didn't like. "Let me get a pail of hot water."

She left the room and came back with a blue ceramic pot filled with hot water. She let it cool down sufficiently before dipping a washcloth into it and pressing it up against his brow. The tingling sensation made him think of a hot wind blowing across a beach on a summer afternoon. He pictured Jeanette running through the sand with him holding hands. Barefoot.

"She's not coming back, I know it. If it wasn't for John..."

"Jackie. Why do you torture yourself so much? You brandish your hate like a battle wound. You treat me like you don't care. And you're cruel to your sister. Why? Why?"

"I don't need a reason to hate anyone. Especially her."

"That's ridiculous. We can all work through our feelings."

"I'm not so sure," he said. Something snapped inside him. He threw his head into his hands. He felt he was staring down into a dark well. "I never asked to feel all this anger and confusion. Never."

"Oh, Jackie. Your father was just like you. He felt life's ups and downs more deeply than most people."

"Don't be so condescending. You talk about me like I'm some kind of crazy person. But I'm perfectly normal. All I want is Jeannette. I'll stop being so difficult if you just let her come back."

"I didn't say your father was crazy. He was just more emotional than most people." She tilted her head down and Jackie went silent. When she finished cleaning the wound, she kissed him on the cheek and left the room with a simple nod as if to signal that something important had transpired between them that would make things better in the future, although he didn't feel that way.

Over the next few days Jackie's condition worsened. Every morning he waited for the mailman to bring a letter from Jeanette, but all he brought were bills and letters. After missing two days of school, she finally suggested a doctor be called in to check on his fever and head wound. Maria was sure he was faking and the wound was self inflicted to garner attention and pity but eventually she acquiesced, admitting to John that not even she could come up with such a stellar performance just to miss a few days of school.

The doctor came and prescribed some antibiotics. After the older man left Jackie spent the rest of the day drawing pictures of Jeanette highlighting her long flowing hair and punky black jeans. In some she was walking alone along a frosted beach front while in others she was in the City: riding on a boat through a labyrinthine canal, jumping off a roof top in the inner circle, or just lying down in a sunny park. The next morning the mailman came and left his usual stack of bills. Jackie stormed upstairs in frustration, only cooling down by drawing nasty pictures of Johnson getting pelted with snowballs studded with six-inch long metal spikes. To end his morning session he drew another showing Jerome having mercy sex with Maria against a brick wall in an industrial section in one of the outer circles.

Fed up with being sick and lonely, the next day he finally summoned the courage to call Jeanette. It was his only option. Who cared what anyone said? What did it matter if John found out? Some things were more important than rules and moral laws, and love was one of them. An older woman answered who didn't seem to know who Jeanette was. So she called a second woman.

"Oh, the new girl. She's not allowed to receive calls here - especially from boys not in the immediate family. From the information on her data sheet she has no brothers so I can only assume that you're in the wrong category."

"I'm her friend from school – her study partner. I want to talk about a _math_ assignment with her," he said, trying his best to sound like a diligent student.

"A healthy interest indeed, but we can't make any exceptions."

Jackie hung up and ran upstairs to groom himself in the new mirror Kathleen had bought that morning. The gash was now the full length of his forehead and his eyes had gone so pale they were almost white. But for some reason he felt optimistic. Almost certainly the woman's forbidding attitude meant that Jeanette had pleaded to her to let him come and visit her. And this meant she still loved him and there was still hope.

Two days later the anticipated letter from Jeanette still hadn't come. Now he had no other option but to play his trump card. The statue. Since he was still too sick to go into the City, he would ask Maria to mail it for him as a favor in return for him doing the dishes that night. Although her past behavior suggested he shouldn't trust her, over the last few days she had softened up on him, displaying an almost motherly sense of compassion towards him.

Jackie called Maria into his room. When she entered she was holding a glass of orange juice in her hand. He felt strangely lucid given the apparent delirium of the past week.

"You really must miss her," she said.

"It's all your fault. You betrayed dad."

"Don't make me feel worse than I already feel."

"I need you to do me a favor. One that might absolve you."

"What?"

He pulled the porcelain figurine out from under his sheets. "This statue, about which you'll never utter a word to Mom, is meant for Jeanette. I want you to take it to the post office and send it."

"Do you want me to wrap it as well?"

"If you want. The problem is that I don't have her full address. The phone book doesn't give the postcode. You'll have to ask John. Just tell him that you want to send her some kind of educational material - I'll leave the details up to you."

He took the statuette and coiled a flower around it from base to head. He kissed it for good luck and handed it to her.

"I'll send it as soon as possible. You look so sad and vulnerable. I'd do anything to make you happier."

"Dad is watching you," he warned.

"Don't worry – I won't let him down."

"Maria," he said with weighty sincerity that for a moment he actually believed, "I'm sorry for being mean to you the last few months."

"I understand," she said forgivingly. Then she shut the door. Jackie stretched his legs out and touched his toes on the end board of his bed. A sense of impending victory welled up inside him. The statue would most certainly convince Jeanette to run away from the school to see him.

### VIII

The next day Maria awoke to the crunching of the mailman's boots through the snow. She put on her slippers and ran downstairs. Maybe it was a late Christmas card from some distant relative or better yet, a long overdue love letter from Jerome. Bracing herself against the anticipated cold, she opened the front door and slipped her hand into the squeaking metal box and pulled out the slim white envelope sitting inside. The paper was still cold as she read the address on the front and back: to her horror it was a letter from Jeanette to Jackie. She retreated into the foyer and walked in slow heavy steps towards the stairs. Why her frail and malingering brother was getting love letters instead of her was totally beyond reason. If anything, _she_ was the one that deserved such attention. While he had lounged around all week pining away for Jeanette, Maria had spent her time more productively, perfecting her hair and nails for that one sumptuous moment that Jerome would finally realize how perfect they'd be together. Yes, she was the _new Maria_ with her playful schoolgirl curls and candy apple nails the greatest beauticians in the world would be proud of. She stuffed the letter in her pocket and ran upstairs. Jackie hadn't woken up yet and there was no way he was going to see it without prior inspection.

She tiptoed into her room and held the slim translucent envelope up in the light of her desk lamp. She could just make out the dim silhouette of Jeanette's handwriting inside. Fortunately, it was _just_ a letter. No flower petals. No perfume. With some luck it might even be a polite or even brusque send off designed to remove Jackie from Jeanette's increasingly complex personal life. After all, Jeanette couldn't be too happy at whatever convent or girl's school they had sent her to, and if she had any intelligence at all she'd see that Jackie was more than just a little at fault for her sudden relocation and obvious change of lifestyle that came with it.

Maria picked up a letter opener and slid its blunt pewter edge beneath the glued seal of the envelope, being careful not to tear the front. If indeed it was a send off letter she had to make sure that he got to read it without leaving any evidence of her tampering. She unfolded the delicate sheet of pink paper inside and read it.

Dear Jackie,

I really miss you and hope you are doing well. It seems so long already since you surprised me with your late night visit. I'd like to talk a bit about that but first I feel that I have to apologize for taking so long to write to you. The nuns here have been watching over me at every step to make sure I do my homework and fit in with the other students. They seem to take any solitary activity as evidence of anti-social and hence anti-Christian behavior! What more, they even make us prey in groups! Coming from an atheist background, this is very difficult for me.

I'm really sorry about my reaction to your visit. I was a bit cold towards you and I'm not sure why. Something just came over me. It was not a lack of emotion, but an emotion so intense I could find no single gesture or grouping of words to express it. It was something like love, something like defiance or anger, and something completely indescribable that pushed me so far inwards it almost tore me up. For a moment as I stood at the door in front of you I felt nothing but pain and anguish and I wanted to just disappear. But now that I have had a chance to put everything in perspective I think I'm beginning to understand you. What I once mistook as nothing but rage and scorn I now see as the expression of a higher principle that shines through you like a beacon light. I even feel myself adopting some of your gestures and attitudes already. If this is love, then I must love you. The fact that we can't see each other - and even if we could our parents wouldn't allow it - only makes these feelings more precious and immutable.

I only hope you feel this way as well. But somehow I feel you don't. I almost feel ashamed to express my emotions to you in the way I'm doing now. Maria told me the night of the party that you'd told her that you could never take me seriously and that you only wanted to sleep with me. Only an hour before Jerome had come pleading on my doorstep with a bouquet and then Maria called. I didn't want to believe her but I couldn't stop. I cried for over an hour until I was suddenly overwhelmed with that feeling I just described to you. That's why I was in such a strange mood.

Maria set the letter down and took a deep breath. There was no way she could let Jackie see it. It was appalling. Jeanette had already revealed too much and even worse she had the audacity to think Jerome actually liked her. No doubt he sent her the flowers just as a New Year's gift and all the rest was just made up to make Jackie jealous and provoke a reaction from him so as to get him ejected from school. She pulled in her stomach and read the last paragraph.

I need to know how you feel. I realize you told me on the phone, but I need to see it in writing. I've been tormented ever since that conversation with Maria and I need to know. I love you. I think it can work. I think when we're through school we can be together. We can go off to a place we want to be. Leave all the darkness of the City behind us. I want to get out. But I need to know you love me first. If you do please come meet me next week by the school's front gate on Monday at 12:05. I'll be on lunch break and should be able to sneak away for a minute or two. Otherwise leave me a letter. There's a green-painted stone in front of the gate just to the left side. I'm not allowed to receive mail from you but if you can leave a message under the stone then I can pick it up. I hope to see you soon. I love you and think of you all the time.

Love, Jeanette

Maria took the letter and crumpled it in her palm. Then she took a pad of paper out of her small white desk and started writing. Teachers had always commented that their handwriting was similar. Jackie's was a bit thinner than hers and more jittery, but their letters were almost the same shape and size. Sometimes they even used to split their assignments in half to save the work.

Dear Jeanette,

I got your letter yesterday. To be honest it came as somewhat of a surprise. This is not because I don't think your feelings aren't true, but because of the impossibility of a relationship between us at the present time. I know you must be going through hard times at your new school and that you must miss your home and your friends a lot. I am also going through a bit of a rough time myself.

Maria let the pen drop from her hands and reread what she'd written. It didn't sound like something Jackie would say, but it was probably good enough. Since they hadn't been dating for very long, Jeanette probably wouldn't notice anyway. She stared at the ceiling for a second and continued, one side of her head propped up by her left arm and hand, her other hand wrapped tightly around the pen.

I am sorry about what I have to tell you. I know you are a worthy woman and I find you very attractive, but there are several obstacles in my way. Your father attacked me the other day and to be honest I wish he were dead. I don't know how my mother ever got involved with him, but I hope it doesn't last long. Because he is completely against the idea of you and I being together, I have no choice but to respect his anger. I just don't want any more friction in the household and I want what is best for my mother and Maria.

Another reason I feel I should back away from you is that Michael is my best friend and he has recently been traumatized by being sent off to reform school. I don't want anything more to happen to him. Several times he told me how strongly he feels for you and how he wishes you loved him instead of me. It is getting to the point where I think he is envious of me and it is not only jeopardizing his peace of mind but also our friendship. So I think it's best for me to back off for the time being and let things run their course. Although I must admit I was jealous of Jerome when I heard he was sending you flowers, I have since found out that he actually loves my sister. I'm sorry for any confusion this might bring on you.

I will never forget that night at the party. It was so magical and the letter you sent me was one of the most beautiful things anyone has ever written to me. From now on I would like to think of you as my sister and I know you will soon think of me as your brother. I hope you are not upset with me, but I felt it was the cleanest and most mature way of solving the problem. See you at Easter.

Love, Jackie

It wasn't quite his signature, but it would do. And the tone was perfect – if she was too harsh and didn't give Jeanette at least the small possibility of being with Jackie at some juncture in the future, she might over react and the plan would backfire. Just as she folded up the letter Jackie crashed into her room. He was naked except for his underwear. She shoved the letter quickly under the desk and turned around abruptly.

"Hi," she said curtly.

"You look like you're hiding something. What did you do, steal money from Mom's purse?"

"You only say that because you do it all the time."

"Did you send Jeanette that statue yet?"

"Not yet. I'll do that later today."

"You'd better."

"Or what? I thought we were supposed to be friends now."

"Oh, shut up. There was mail today. I heard it. What was it?"

"Nothing for you."

Jackie frowned and left the room.

Later that afternoon Maria took the statue in her hand and held it up to the light, admiring the skilled workmanship that must have gone into sculpting the sinuous folds and finely etched details from some crude ceramic block jack-hammered from the pits of the earth. Since he obviously had stolen it she was right to have accused him and should not even feel the slightest bit of guilt about what she was doing. She took the paper rose and wrapped it around the figure in a descending helix from head to foot. She placed the ensemble gently into a cardboard jewelry box from her closet and then braced it with a few tiny crumpled balls of newspaper. When she was finished she walked into Jackie's room. He was wearing his leather jacket over his underwear and had an i-Pod wrapped around his head as he flipped the pages of a comic.

"What would _The Gray Orchid_ do?" he asked her without looking at her.

"He'd cheer up."

"No. He would just blow us all to fuck. I think he'd start with John and work his way across the house to you and Mom and then off to vaporize Jeanette and Michael. Then me. He'd save me for last because I deserve it the most. I've been sitting here like a feverish little Quentin feeling sorry for myself when I should have been taking action."

"Action? What kind of action?"

"The worst kind."

"What would Jeanette say if she heard you?"

"She'd probably agree," he said, assuming a cross-legged yogi pose on the bed as he set the comic down. "I'm rotten and deserve to die. I'm a pathetic coward. I can't stand it anymore. I can't stand waking up to my wimpy little face every morning."

Maria dropped her smile and looked down to the floor. "I'll forget you said all this and just go and send Jeanette the package before you do anything you might regret." She left the room.

"Be careful. It's delicate," he said as she closed the door.

She put on her snug fur hat, crimson corduroy parka, and seal-skin boots – a _Little Red Riding Hood_ of sorts, she teased herself - and told Kathleen she was going out on an errand and wouldn't be back till later that evening. Maria stuffed the box into her backpack and folded the letter up beside it. When she left the house she went directly to the bus station at the end of the road. The wind nipped at her face as she waited for the bus to the City. When it came she boarded and paid. It wove through a maze of roads built to service the lakeside properties, passing an abandoned lighthouse, a sterile new gas station that she'd never noticed before, and a deep forest adorned by a thick layer of fresh white snow. She reread the letter once more before the bus finally reached the major highway into the City. Her level of duplicity almost shocked her, but she resisted guilt by reminding herself that the statue was stolen and that therefore she was doing justice by both punishing Jackie and protecting their mother's future. As the bus passed a densely wooded area she thought of Jackie and the starry-eyed trajectory of his recent decay. It was a genuine shame that she had to lay such a wicked punishment on him. Yet it was necessary. There was no way it would ever work with Jeanette and they'd all be better off by nullifying this romance all together. By spring Jackie will have forgotten Jeanette while she and Michael would already have started fondling each other in mutual commiseration over the horrors of institutionalized schools. And best of all, Jerome would finally be hers. She imagined his thick, heavy hands running over her studio-tanned and trimmed down stomach as he whispered sweet profanities in her ear.

The bus pulled into the main terminal and she got off. After washing her face and fixing her curls in the bathroom she went to the ticket desk and bought a ticket to Fullham, the town 100 miles north of the City closest to Jeanette's school. The bus came and she took a seat in the back. By dinnertime they arrived in downtown Fullham. It was a quaint but seemingly busy little town centered around a red brick church with a gleaming copper bell tower. She got off in front of the city hall, which had the squared dimensions and functional look of a fire station, and asked a lanky Polish woman if she could direct her to the school. The woman pointed to the south and muttered something about a short walk. She thanked the woman and ten minutes later she reached the north end of the school. It was modern in style with a pyramid-shaped chapel and a tiny parking lot the size of a backyard swimming pool. The playground in front of the chapel was empty. She guessed that it must be dinnertime and that all the girls were inside.

She walked on until she reached the front gate. There, exactly as described in Jeanette's letter, was the green rock. It sat nested in a tuft of frozen grass with a cap of thin frost on top. She pulled the letter out and knelt down in front of the rock. She tucked the letter under her knee and moved the stone. It was heavy but with some effort she could move it. The grass underneath was bleached and hard like a patch of wounded flesh beneath a Band Aid. She placed the letter neatly in the middle of the small nest and pushed the rock slowly over the top. Then she stood up and walked to the side of the chapel. She took the box out of her backpack and opened it. She took the statue out and set it down on the pavement. It looked like an ancient icon, standing so nobly between her and the chapel. For a minute she considered changing her original plans and giving it to Jeanette instead. The school looked like such a remote and dismal place and maybe Jeanette could use some token of Jackie's consideration to mitigate the pain of rejection that was sure to come once she read the letter.

But her generosity quickly faded when she pictured Jackie lying in bed with the gash on his head pining away for Jeanette as she sat inside the school reading love letters from Jerome. Hatred drooled over her like the jaws of a rabid dog as she thought of all the attention he was getting from Kathleen over the last two weeks. To think that she actually believed him. And even if Jackie _was_ sick and lovelorn, Maria was still in no position to give in to her kindness and sympathize with him. After all, she was on a mission to protect the family and punish Jackie for his crimes and could thus afford no such emotional indulgences.

She held the statue up like a tomahawk. The recoil from the first thrust against the pavement almost stunned her like an electric shock. She picked it up to examine the damage but there was only a minor chip on the woman's finger. Then she tried again. Still no luck. In frustration she kicked at it a few times, but her renewed efforts had even less effect. Then an idea came over her and she ran over to the green rock. With all her strength she heaved it upwards and supported it on her knees as she walked in slow awkward steps to the statue. She dropped the rock from waist level and jumped back as it hit, completely crushing the statue, the paper flower still intact. When she put the rock back into its original place the letter hadn't moved at all. Standing in front of the chapel she examined the remnants of the statue. All that was left was a mixture of white powder and sharp chunks lying together in a small flat pile. She stepped back and brushed some dirt off her sleeves. She had to look clean and tidy by the time she got home or someone might wonder why she had missed dinner and start asking questions.

### IX

As the days passed Jackie's hopes of receiving any communication from Jeanette slowly faded. Several times he tried to call her, and once he even tried to visit her, braving the icy roads at the break of dawn and waiting by the front gate of her school all day for any opportunity to see her - perhaps just a recreation period that might give him a chance to approach her unobserved - but the outcome was always the same. She was kept indoors at all times and was not allowed contact with any men outside her immediate family. Sometimes he would sit alone in bed weaving flowers together and pasting the clumsy rosaries on the back of his leather jacket only to tear them off in fits of hopeless frustration. He was defeated. She didn't love him after all. He'd sent her the statue and now he was exposed as a silly fool prey to all her manipulations and carefully contrived emotional games. Who could ever have imagined that such a seemingly gentle woman could be so cruel and heartless? But was she really cruel at all, or was it more his own personal failing for not convincing her that night at the house that they were meant to be together for eternity? He craved for the time by the amusement park when he was too naïve to see the truth: if only he knew then that it would be their last night together, how much more would he have said to her!

He quickly became bored of playing what seemed like children's games with his jacket and flowers and took instead to carving Jeanette's name over his body with a knife in wild spirals of blood, extracted by slashing his knee with broken glass and decorating himself in designs so beautiful in their morbid complexity that he felt exalted to the level of _The Gray Orchid_ : the level of pure beauty beyond morality, life, or innocence. A narcissistic beauty so dark and all consuming that it radiated inwards rather than out, a black hole sifting away all light that dare cross its radius for no reason but to fill the cherished emptiness of its wild and pulchritudinous void. A dark star verging on a critical mass of pure and intoxicating emotion. Several times he rode his motorcycle for hours cursing angrily as he ripped through the labyrinthine streets of the inner city, pock-marked with the countless broken lives that inhabited it. He imagined he was the trumpet of a black flower spewing out clouds of radioactive pollen into the faces of all those who dared take so much as a whiff of his merciless perfume; a gigantic ocean of toxic waste billowing with tidal waves of godless beasts and mutant fish, a renegade viral particle surging through the blood streams of all those who crossed him, waiting patiently for the perfect moment to penetrate a lonely cell and replicate himself into bilious infinity.

One night he was lying in bed staring out the window observing the sunset as it faded to dusk, the sky becoming infused with a listless gray light that knew no perimeters. He turned on the light and tossed his blanket into the corner of the room. If only he were as powerful as _The Gray Orchid_ , the true poet of hatred and destruction. Perhaps _Geisheirra_ prized human emotion and fairness to all, but his true master and creator would never put up with the outrageous incursions recently inflicted on him by John and his mother. Jackie closed his eyes and imagined John was floating through the dark cold expanses of universe.

I am The Gray Orchid. I am void with no ending, dawn without light, a godless deity with no purpose but to annihilate all those who oppose me. I am the master of nothingness, the harbinger of chaos. I am the flower of darkness, birth without life, benediction without hope, and Genesis without creation.

The Gray Orchid raised his massive arm to the cosmos and stepped forward to inspect a tiny humanoid form that had just materialized before him.

Who are you?

I am the one called John.

What is your purpose?

To protect the old and weak. To crush the young and vibrant.

I am The Gray Orchid. I vanquish the weak and decimate the strong. I am the locus of all being. Darkness is my ink and Doomsday is my poem.

Leave me be. You have no place in the world of men.

Your words are misplaced. It is you that have no place in the world of The Gray Orchid. I destroy all who dare challenge me and crush those who worship me. Bow down before my raging might.

There was a sudden flash. Then there was nothingness. All that remained were a few stray molecules floating alone in space. The Gray Orchid stood motionless, staring out into the starry plasma of the universe. He thought of nothing. Nothing in all its wondrous beauty.

When Jackie opened his eyes he found Maria leaning over him smirking.

"Get ye gone wench. How dare you enter without my decree!"

"Oh shut up. This act is getting out of hand. Why can't you grow up? We've all tried our best to offer you our most heartfelt sympathy. What more do you want? You're dragging everyone down."

"Are you that blind? Down is the new up. Haven't you figured it out yet? Since Jeanette left I see things I've never seen before. You all go about your lives like cardboard replicas of human beings with no notion of the beauty that exists around you."

"Oh, please. Spare me the existential romanticism."

"Romanticism? Shows how little you know." His voice became deep and mechanical. "I am _The Gray Orchid_. Romance to me has no root or structure. I understand not its selfish ways."

"Give me a break."

"Boo!" he whispered into her ear and broke out laughing. She pushed his head away and stepped backwards to the door.

"I've had it. I'm going. That's it."

She walked out in a huff and he kicked the door closed. Only a few minutes later the brief amusement he had just experienced playing mind games with Maria had already faded. With nothing to divert his mind from Jeanette, he sank back into a state of depression. Everything was pain. His room was pain. His body was pain. The world was pain. There was no escape. John had won. Michael was finished. Jeanette didn't love him. All he had left was his motorbike and drawing pad.

Over the next week his depression slowly simmered down bitterness. He was sick of lying around like a paisley-garbed romantic letting every one get the better of him. Anger burned inside him. It started with John and Maria and radiated out into the rest of the world. Women's breasts weren't big enough and their hips were always too fat. Books were boring. Trees were ugly and had to be burned immediately. Dogs were annoying and should be shot. Snow wasn't half as pretty as it was cracked up to be. Drugs were over rated. The whole fucking planet was little more than a festering arena of languor and filth. Even _Geisheirra_ seemed flimsy and weak – a superhero for grandmothers and tea toddlers at best.

One day he spent the entire afternoon in his room throwing an Exacto knife at the ceiling taking bets as to whether the blade would stab him when it dropped. To his dismay the knife always landed butt-first and finally broke when the blade hit the rim of the light fixture on the ceiling. When he finally grew bored of this game, he picked up a piece of paper and made up a list - a list of imaginary ways he thought John deserved to die. Beside each suggestion he penciled in the idea's inspiration, lest he be accused of cosmic copyright violation by some unseen Karmic force.

1. Death by Fire: Mechalos

2. Death by Beating: Primitive Man

3. Death by Melting: Mirage

4. Death by Freezing: The Yeti

5. Death by Drowning: The Ocean

6. Death by Bleeding: The Great Tsars

7. Death by Fear: Darkness Itself

He picked up a pen and underlined the word _Itself –_ intentionally capitalized to give the impression of a title like Count or Marquis - on the last line _._ This entry was the most intriguing. It was also the most difficult and complex because it contained myriad other techniques within its own structure. Techniques of scaring someone to death. All the others were beautiful in their own right. For example, he always loved _Mechalos_. Tremors of excitement would run down his spine as the crazed monster lit up Tokyo like a Christmas tree on all those late-night creep shows and two for one matinees. And _Mirage_ : a ghost of a murdered man condemned to a numbing afterlife that consisted of wreaking revenge on the world of criminals that put him there in the first place. In one issue he turned a murderer into a wooden mannequin and subsequently buzzed him down to sawdust. In another he turned a pair of sex offenders into wax and topped each of their heads with a neat little wick so he could slowly burn them into soot and warm wax pools.

All of them would be suitable for John, yet only one was perfect. He scratched his head in wonder, marveling at his own ingenuity. After careful deliberation he decided that drowning was really the best option. It wasn't the most spectacular by any means but it was the easiest and in many ways the most appropriate from a philosophical standpoint. Wasn't John always thundering around the house like the host of some kind of some kind of low-end nature program with his _Jeep Cherokee_ chock full of bullshit? Didn't he also like to wear sweaters with nautical motifs sewn all over them like pathetic little Cub Scout badges? But best of all, it was Jackie's very own father that drowned in the ocean and, in John's ignoble attempt to replace him, was it not most appropriate that this ersatz father figure one day die in same fashion? The ocean, with its shimmering heave of gray-green ripples and frothy waves that hammered like boxer's fists against the dying sandbags of the beach, was the ideal disposal unit for his sickening existence.

When John called him for dinner Jackie wadded up the piece of paper and tossed it in the garage where no one would find it. Then he returned to his room and listened to his i-Pod at full blast.

Sneaking in the back door with

all those dirty magazines

Your mama wants to know about

the stains on your jeans

In the middle of the song John came knocking on the door. He entered the room with the placid stride of a man from a deodorant commercial and gestured for Jackie to remove the earplugs. Jackie sat numbly in the corner staring through his figure as if he were nothing but empty space. After all John _was_ nothing but empty space. He shrugged his shoulders and then reached over to remove the earplugs himself. But before his fingers could even touch the thin plastic wires Jackie sprang up like a marionette and leapt across the room.

"Don't fucking touch it." He shouted, staring directly into John's eyes, which were suddenly swelling with overblown wisdom and authority. "Don't you fuck with me any more or you're finished. Do you hear me? I've had it. You've succeeded in winning every battle so far and there's no way you're taking this one. You've fucking reduced me to nothing and you're still not satisfied."

"Don't be unreasonable. You just need to let your mother and I support you. I think everything that has happened is for the best. Please for your own good just grow up and accept it."

That was it. He'd had enough of John and his pompous adult posturing. An uncontrollable anger seized hold of every quadrant of his being. Jackie cocked his arm back and drove his fist into John's face as hard as he could. John fell backwards and hit the floor.

"Stop this nonsense!" John shouted. His face was smeared so heavily with blood it looked more like an abstract painting than a human visage. He shut his eyes as though playing dead. Jackie wondered if it was a trick to lure him into complacency before staging a sudden counterattack. He stood up and took two steps backwards.

Jackie felt a sudden urge to undo his actions and apologize for hurting John, but instead different words came out. "Serves you right you fucking bastard."

Jackie spit on the floor and left the room, slamming the door behind him. By the time he'd reached the base of the stairs he was already in tears. A minute later Kathleen opened the front door to find Jackie lying in a shivering heap on the living room floor. When he stood up he found Maria perched behind him like a prosecutor ready to deliver a speech at a murder trial.

"What's wrong?" Kathleen asked as she pulled off her heavy coat and knelt down beside him.

"He's really done it this time," said Maria. "Don't feel sorry for him. Just run upstairs and take a look in his room."

A grave look fell over Kathleen's face as she walked upstairs. When she opened the bedroom door she shrieked. "John! My god. What happened?"

John's face was covered in coagulating blood and his nose was slanted to the side like a wind-bent tree. He opened his swollen eyes and then closed them. She leaned down to kiss him.

Jackie had been sitting in the living room with a blanket draped over his head for almost an hour when she finally came back downstairs.

"Something is going to change," was all she said before leaving the room. She was angrier than he'd ever seen her and her face seemed to belong to a person he no longer knew. He ducked his head back under the blanket and fell asleep.

When he awoke the house was quiet except for the sound of a high-pitched scratching noise coming from the dining room. He stood up and went over to check. He parted the dinning room curtains to see the outline of a comforting and familiar face staring through the frosted window. The cheeks were gaunt and his flesh was the color of icing sugar, but his eyes lacked the fiery radiance Jackie was accustomed to. In its place was only the look of a trapped and helpless animal. Jackie took a deep breath and stood back. Perhaps this was the turning point, the moment where everything would suddenly change and fortune would finally turn in his favor.

### X

Jackie threw on his jacket and ran out the door. He found Michael huddled up next to the garage buried in the folds of a transparent plastic raincoat. Jackie could barely recognize him. His eyes were hidden behind the shadows of a dark hood and his face gleamed in the electric light like a reflection in drain water during a midnight storm. The familiar jagged jaw line had softened around the edges and his back sloped downwards in an overall posture of defeat, standing in stark contrast to the seemingly invincible person Jackie always knew. His lips were thin and tight and his cheeks had flexed inwards, sucking up against the frame of his face as though the flesh itself was drawn by the gravitational field of the moon in subtle heaves and swells, gently undulating with every breath in perfect concert with the ocean tides. Jackie stretched out his hands to help him up from his knees. Michael lost his balance and braced himself against the outer garage wall as he stood.

"I thought you were never going to come outside. I was waiting here for almost an hour."

"You should have tossed a stone at my window."

"With that jerk living here?"

"How did you get out?"

"It was minimal security so I jumped the fence when the guard went for a cigarette."

"When?"

"This morning. But they'll be after me before you know it."

"Have you been home yet?"

"That would be too obvious. They'd just send me back to that torture chamber. I'd rather be dead than have to go back there. They feed us leftovers from the hospital for dinner and I've already been strapped eight times."

They walked into the storage space that was recently appended to the garage, leaving the door slightly ajar so as not to block the last traces of light from the conjoining room. Michael took a sip of whiskey from a small bottle he pulled from his pocket. Then he spit it out all over his chest and collapsed onto the floor. When he finally looked up Jackie noticed that his eyes were swollen as if he had just been crying. He had never seen Michael like this before. Jackie closed the door and knelt down beside him. In the dim light filtering through the door and floorboards he could discern the faint remnants of what were once the chiseled lines of Michael's angelic face.

"You've got to help me," Michael said. Jackie could barely make out his words, his heaving sobs were so intense. "I need a place to stay."

"I don't know if it's a good idea to stick around here."

"What about the garage? I can sneak out during the day and buy food with some money that I stole from one of the guards. That old jalopy she keeps in there hasn't run in years."

Jackie looked gravely into Michael's eyes and shook his head. "I'm in big trouble."

"What?"

"I attacked John last night," Jackie repeated in a slow confessional tone. "Who knows what they have in store for me now. I just couldn't stand him any more."

"I never thought you'd go that far," Michael said with an unnerving mixture of praise and concern.

"I lost control. Something just snapped inside of me and I punched him so hard I broke his nose. But its not like he didn't deserve it. He attacked me first. He thinks he owns the house. Thinks he owns me, and probably everything else in the world."

"I'm sorry, man." Michael had stopped sobbing and his eyes were now focused squarely on Jackie as though his every word was a fragment of some greater code, which if solved would formulate the template for their mutual exoneration.

"There's more, though."

"What?"

"Jeanette."

Michael widened his eyes in a look of tacit approval. "I was starting to wonder when you'd get it together with her. I knew something was going to happen. I saw her before they took me away. I could tell. You can always tell when a girl's ready to get it. Their eyes glow. They get brighter. Droopier. _Wetter_."

Jackie's puckered his face in disapproval. "What happened?" Michael asked in a tone that was suddenly more sensitive, as though constituting an implied response to Jackie's reaction to the crudity of his last comment.

"They sent her off to a boarding school when they found out."

"They?"

"John and her mom."

"I can see why you are so mad. Has she written yet?"

Jackie paused for a moment. He didn't want to answer but did so anyway. "No," was all he said.

"Come on," Michael said like a coach applauding the revitalized efforts of a slumping athlete. "Play the field until she gets out. She'll probably like you more for it."

"It has nothing to do with me or Jeanette. It's John. He said we couldn't be together and Maria and my mom are backing him up."

"How?"

"Just like I've been telling you. They only want to ruin it for us because they're all so jealous of our youth and opportunities. Do you think they still have sex? Of course not. So they have to stop us. Institutionalize both of us. That's the next step. We have to retaliate. Don't think John isn't in her bedroom this very minute trying to get it up while he gives here every reason why it's high time to kick me out."

Jackie stopped for a second and looked around the room as though searching for some form of inspiration. His eyes lit up as a white-gloved hand entered his mind and touched his soul with a magic wand.

" _The Gray Orchid_ ," he said.

"What?"

"You heard me. What would _The Gray Orchid_ do?"

"How should I know?"

"He'd fucking blow John out of existence. That's what he would do. _The Gray Orchid_ would waste no time and vaporize the fuck out of him."

"What are you getting at?"

"Listen," said Jackie, his voice dropping to a whisper. "I think we've been too weak. We've just been sitting here taking it all. I let the bastard move in. I let him brainwash my sister. I let him steal Jeanette from me. And what did I do? I sat there like a pathetic little coward. One thing I learned these past few weeks is that too much love kills you. Bloom like a flower, wilt like a flower."

"So?"

"So, it's time to balance things out."

"How?"

"I'm not sure yet. But all I know is that we have to forget about all those assholes and get a place together in The City."

"A place of our own?" Michael looked perplexed.

"It's part of a necessary transformation to a higher state. Eliminate useless emotions. Stop getting pushed around. Do what we want to do. Fuck everyone else."

Jackie's face lit up with conviction. In Michael's presence he always felt stronger and more complete. He winced at the thought of all the pains he took to send Jeanette the statue and all the days that followed spent sulking about her loss in the solitary comfort of his room. An invisible chord had attached them together and now that it was infected it had to be cut off like a gangrene limb before it destroyed him. It wasn't an act of cruelty towards Jeanette, but rather a necessary act of self-preservation. Since he wasn't strong enough erase his feelings for her he had to do what he could to preserve them forever in formalin bottles, stillborn embryos of love labeled and locked away in the basement laboratory in his soul.

"So is it decided?" Jackie asked.

"What?"

"You can hide out in this garage and I'll feed you and protect you until we find a place together in The City." He paused and took a breath. "We have to break away from them. We have to live our lives the way we want to."

"What if we get caught?"

"I won't let it happen."

"It wouldn't take them long to find us."

"You don't want to go back to reform school, do you?"

"Those assholes can rot in Hell for all I care. If they want me to go back they'll have to tie me down and beat me first."

"We can stay in an abandoned house where nobody will find us. We can get jobs under the table with false ID's. Nobody will ever find out. Just sleep in the garage tonight and we can start looking tomorrow."

Jackie fell asleep in his room watching the slow undulations of shadows projected from the light outside as they spread across the ceiling. His last thought before he lost all consciousness was not of Michael prostate in the garage under a plastic tarp but what Jeanette was doing that very instant and if she could see him standing up and fighting against John would she change her mind and come back to him.

In the morning his bedroom door crashed open. It was Kathleen. Her eye's were heavy and worn as if she'd been up all night worrying about something she was too afraid to talk about.

"I'm so fed up with you," she said. "I don't know what to do anymore. We've tried to be reasonable. We've tried to put up with your moods, your abuse, and your supposed illness."

"Supposed, is it then?"

"Yes, supposed. Especially the way you hit John. A sick man - if I could even call you that - could never have done the damage you did. His nose is broken."

Jackie felt a smile emerging from within, but buried his head in his pillow lest he provoke some new and more serious reaction from her.

"Pull you're sorry face out of there," she demanded. "We have to talk."

"About what," he said without even slightly moving the pillow.

"About your new _boarding school_ ," she said with sudden drama, her raised voice alone an obvious effort to hurt him and punish him for what he had done to John. Her face changed and she started trembling as though she was fighting to hide some greater sorrow beneath her overt exhibition of retribution.

"I'm not going," was all he said as he lifted his head from the pillow.

"It's the only solution. I'm sorry. No punishment could heal what happened yesterday. I told you what would happen if it came to a choice between you and him. It's not that I don't love you. You're everything to me. But I also love John and my opportunities in life are not what they used to be. You'll be on your own in two or three years anyway. If I let this conflict ruin things with John I might end up alone for the rest of my life."

Jackie remained still.

"That's all I have to say." She stood up and an inexplicable tenderness spread across her face. She pulled Jackie towards her bosom, but he resisted. Sadness reemerged in her eyes and she turned to leave the room.

Later that night Jackie put on his jacket and walked out to the beach. The sky was black like burnt sugar and the waves made a sound like a thousand needles falling on a hard ceramic surface, smacking against the tiny ice formations that grew randomly out of the rocks like spears of quartz. A new sense of certainty now quenched his soul. Kathleen was asleep. John was in the living room with the light on and Maria was out with friends. Michael was still asleep in the garage. They were together at last and the loop was now complete. As the cold air swept over his face, his love for Jeanette moved further and further into the distance. He stared into the palm of his hand and imagined it was a limitless void – a cradle to all nothingness. He closed his hand into a fist and smashed it into the icy ground as hard as he could. The dark flower had blossomed in its full entirety. He stood quivering as he stared into the mouth of its grim kaleidoscopic flange.

## Part III

It was almost dark. Jackie snaked his motorcycle down a crooked dirt road towards the ocean. At the end of the road stood an old lighthouse that had once been converted into an oceanfront bar and restaurant, but had just reopened after being closed for many years. Although the beacon at the top of the tower was now dead, a drum-sized spotlight standing beside the road illuminated the front of the structure, giving the impression of some kind of phantom fortress suspended in the indigo light of dusk.

Jackie gazed out at the beach. The wave-brilliant sea, dark and nervy, trembled all around him. Under the long shadows cast by the sun as it crept beneath the looming cliffs to the north, the water's surface appeared divided into a quivering mass of dark valleys and brilliant ridges, each wriggling around the other like eels in a pool of mercury. He savored the salty dampness of the air. Exhilaration. The freedom of being a fugitive. The wrinkled black creases dancing across the waters skin extended in an incoherent web all the way out to the blurred outline of a barge cutting across the darkening horizon. Behind it followed a smaller boat, perhaps a coast guard escort.

He parked his motorcycle and walked inside. The main room was divided by a five-foot barrier into a drinking area and a restaurant. He approached the bar and sat down beside a dark-haired woman who was busily writing on a notepad. She ignored him as he continued to look at her. He pulled out a cigarette.

" _Got a light?"_

Without answering the woman pulled a lighter from her purse and sparked up a tiny flame. Jackie leaned his head towards the lighter and held his cigarette above the tip of the flickering orange and red teardrop.

" _Thanks," he said._

" _No problem," she responded. She sounded Puerto Rican._

" _Nice place, this," he said nervously._

" _It's OK."_

" _Sort of remote, though."_

" _I live nearby, so it's convenient."_

" _Just along the water?"_

" _No. There's a village down the road."_

" _I've never been around here before."_

" _You look like a city sort. The hair does it."_

" _What," he said defensively, turning to examine his hair in the mirror behind the row of whiskey bottles at the bar._

" _I didn't mean to insult you. In fact it looks quite nice. You just don't see that sort of hairstyle in these parts."_

" _Listen," Jackie said pleadingly. "I'm a traveler and I've been two days now without food. I was robbed in the city and I'm waiting for some friends to wire me some money."_

" _You look too young to be traveling alone. Did you run away from home?"_

" _I'm not that young," he said._

" _Ha," she laughed. "Let's see your ID."_

" _They took my wallet."_

" _Who?"_

" _The robbers. There were three of them. They got me outside a bar just as I was about to get on my motorcycle."_

" _Did they hurt you?"_

" _Just a few punches."_

" _I'll tell you what," the woman said. "I'll buy you a hamburger. You look honest enough."_

" _Thanks," he said._

" _I'd offer you a place to stay but my husband and I have guests coming later. I'm just here to unwind before they arrive."_

The room filled up with an eerie red light pulsing from outside. Then it was blue. Without even looking he knew it was the police. He tensed up and looked towards the door. The lights deadened and two police officers - both with similar harsh, equine facial features - walked in. They looked around the room for a second and then walked over to the restaurant area.

" _Where's the bathroom?" Jackie asked the woman._

" _You have to go outside. There's a shack across the parking lot. They haven't done the greatest job converting the place."_

" _Just a second."_

He stood up and walked slowly towards the door, carefully tracking the police from the corner of his eye. As soon as he was outside he ran across the lot and jumped on his motorcycle. In an instant he was in motion, heading back down the desolate road to the main highway.

### I

When Jackie woke up it was snowing outside. For a long moment he stared at the glowing red numbers of his digital alarm clock as they hovered like phantom updates on an invisible stock ticker suspended somewhere in the darkness of his room. It was six in the morning. He rolled over and searched with his hand for his nightlight on the floor. It was nowhere. He got up and turned the light on. A dozen or so old comics were strewn across the floor in a messy heap in front of him. The cover of the closest one showed _The Gray Orchid_ shooting lasers out of his expressionless Orphan-Annie eyes at a weak little man dressed in a sailor suit - John? Beside the man a few women were crying into their handkerchiefs, a black sun rising in the background with the imperious presence of a Nazi propaganda poster.

Jackie slipped on a pair of gray sweat pants he rarely wore in public for fear of being taken for a jock, and draped his jacket over his naked torso. He tiptoed downstairs to the refrigerator to pick up some leftover ham for Michael before and slipping out the door and across the yard to the garage. He pulled gently on the cold metal door handle and the door creaked open. Michael was curled up under a plastic tarp in a sleeping bag on a small mattress in the far corner reading a rock magazine with a picture of some Japanese heavy metal artist on the cover. The room was dimly lit with a flashlight standing upright on the floor.

"We have to move quickly or we're fucked," Jackie whispered.

"Is John awake?" Michael asked in his thick, gurgling voice.

"For what that matters. If he ever screws with me again I'll just give him more of what he got the first time."

"That sounds like a one-way ticket to reform school to me. You were lucky to get off for the fire."

"What are you talking about? I'm just trying to defend you. Besides, I didn't ask all this to happen. I didn't ask to have John screw up my life. I didn't ask for him to run all over Jeanette and my mom like they were jogging tracks. I didn't ask for everybody to get sent away to some stupid boarding school. I'm just fighting for all of us. Fighting for a higher cause. _Kicking against the pricks_ like it says in the Bible. The one good line in that otherwise worthless book."

"I just want to get out of this mess alive and start a new life away from all those losers at school."

"You're not thinking of quitting on me already? Michael, the leather-clad lover boy who gets laid by just standing in corners at parties..."

"You're just jealous. Of course I'm not going to quit on you. I may not be as smart as you, but at least I'm good to my word. It's just that I don't have anything left. I can't go back to my family. And if I do something crazy I'll end up in jail. They'll throw me in some cell for the rest of my life and that will be it. There won't be any parties, any girls, any music. It'll all be over." Michael threw up his arms in disgust. "Look at me! I'm curled up in some body's garage afraid to go outside because I might get caught. It's pathetic. It'll all end - you and me - everything - I know it. That's why we have to be careful to avoid any unnecessary conflict."

"No it won't, Michael." Jackie said. "No it won't." He moved over beside him. Michael slapped his hand in a gesture of consent and they huddled up beside each other in the sleeping bag to keep warm.

"I just want a good life. I want to get a job somewhere. I can drop out in a year and work at a restaurant. In a few years I can even be a bartender. Then I can have my own life. I won't need my parents anymore. I'll be free."

"If that is all you want out of life. But don't you see that you'll only end up just like them? You have to fight it. _Kick against the pricks_. We have to stick together."

"What about Jeanette?"

"I don't want to talk about it," he snapped with shaky, unconvincing eyes. "I'm sure she loves me but just isn't free to show it. For now all we have each other. That's all we really need. Who needs women anyway? Fun for a night, no more."

Jackie turned the dull beam of the flashlight to Michael's face. For the first time he noticed how attractive he was. The messy bed of spiked hair, the pale skin framing his dark brown eyes. There was something stronger emerging from behind his sudden eruption. He felt it behind Michael's tormented face and he felt it in the air around him. He even felt it inside himself. He sensed it rising to the surface and taking over his feelings. He had never felt a male body so close. It felt different than he'd expected. Softer. The delicate mat of fine hair covering his body from his broad I-beam shoulders down to his ankles belied the hard angles of his face and neck. Jackie's eyes followed the dull blade of his lower jaw and cheekbones past his angel-wing ears to the thin shell of bristles covering his head. Then he watched as Michael's gaze ran likewise across his own face. Jackie thought of one thing: violence. With Jeanette he had experienced something completely different – a sensation akin to floating in water or some sort of decadent surrender to a seductive primeval force. He looked up at the ceiling and for a moment everything inside him converged like tentacles of starlight spiraling inwards to a single black hole and he felt as if it was always his destiny to be with Michael.

A car horn honked in the distance and suddenly the spell was broken. "This seems a bit weird," Michael said.

"What?" Jackie asked, but he knew what Michael meant and felt it too.

"Don't you feel strange about this? I mean, look at us! We're sitting here in bed together gazing into each other's eyes like a couple of benders."

"You're right," said Jackie. He pulled away sharply.

There was a sudden kicking sound at the door.

"What's that?" Michael asked, his gaze frozen on the door.

"Who's in there?" a voice shouted. The door smashed open and John burst in.

Jackie and Michael ducked under the covers, but it was already too late. John sprang across the dimly lit room and ripped open the sleeping bag. He picked up the flashlight and shined it in Michael's face.

"By Christ. _Michael_. I should have known you would be hiding in here. You'd better clear your ass out of my garage before I call the police. And you, Jackie, what will your mother think when she hears about this?"

Jackie shrunk away in embarrassment. Michael leapt up to run out the door, but John grabbed him and threw him backwards into the darkness.

"On second thought you're not going anywhere." John rolled up his sleeves and took a step towards Michael.

"Since when is this your garage?" Jackie challenged him. Gaining new courage he stood up half naked and pushed John backwards. His sleek physique with sharply ribbed contours moving from his pelvis up to his neck gave him a sense of primeval superiority.

"Leave us alone!" Jackie shouted.

"I'm calling the police," said John. He backed away to the door. "But first I'll lock you both in."

"No," said Jackie firmly. "You can't."

John turned around and started to walk out. Jackie leapt on him from behind and John shrugged him off onto the floor. Jackie recovered quickly and sprang up before John grabbed him by the arms and threw him back onto the floor.

"You're not calling anyone," said Jackie.

Jackie lunged at John and knocked him backwards into the shadows. Then Jackie picked up a stick and John scuttled across the floor into a dark corner of the garage. When John reemerged from the darkness he was swinging a hoe back and forth in lunging metronomic sweeps like some crazed missionary warding off an evil spirit. Jackie leapt back into the shadows and Michael wormed across the floor into the corner and flicked off the flashlight. Now the only light was the faint ebb of white seeping in through the dirty windows from first the moon and then the snow.

Jackie could barely make out the outline of his mother's lover as John stumbled around, brandishing the hoe in front of him as he desperately probed the darkness for a target. In the black swoon he looked like some kind of grotesque lantern fish from the very deepest regions of the ocean, the blade of the hoe twinkling just enough to give it a dim light of its own hovering over his head like the luminescent whips that hang from the heads of such creatures. John swung it wildly in front of him and an incorporeal shriek pierced through the room.

"He fucking got me in the head," Michael screamed. "I can't see, I can't see. I'm fucking blind!"

Jackie dove into the vortex of the darkness as if into the vortex of a waterspout. Lunging forward he suddenly felt the dull thud of John's body against his chest. Something unimaginably evil welled up inside him as though his body had relinquished all control to a wicked puppeteer perched somewhere in the darkness above him. He reached out desperately and grabbed the handle of the hoe with his hand. The two men struggled for only an instant before Jackie had completely wrenched it from John's grip. Then he swung it wildly through the air. "Stay down Michael, _stay down_."

He felt the handle stop suddenly and vibrate as it struck something hard and immovable.

"You broke my arm!" howled John. The darkness broke as Michael turned on the flashlight.

Jackie darted across the room and blocked the door. Then he pushed John to the floor. Michael turned the beam of the flashlight towards them. John picked up a weed cutter from the floor and took a lunge at Jackie's legs before collapsing to the ground. John slumped on top of him like a sick manatee against a beachside boulder and tightened his hands around Jackie's throat.

"You little prick," John whispered into his ear. With his one free hand Jackie tossed the hoe over towards Michael. "All I wanted was for you and your mother to be happy. But now you are going to stop this nonsense so I can do what's right and call the police on Michael. You and I can forget this ever happened and I will tell nobody, not even your mother."

Michael sprang out of his sleeping bag and grabbed the hoe off the floor. In one motion he swept across the room and swung the hoe into John's head as hard as he could. John staggered for a moment and then collapsed on the floor like a mechanical doll that has just been unplugged. Michael lunged forward to hit him again but Jackie stopped his arm in mid-motion. He wrested the hoe from Michael's grip and was about to throw it on the ground but stopped. A television screen flickered in his mind and Jackie saw the image of a character that was about to do something he would always regret. However, instead of turning it off or changing the channel he simply sat there and watched on, curious as to the outcome. He looked down at John and a blind rage took over that was so all encompassing that he could not control it nor even wanted to. Standing there before him was the man who not only robbed him of his first true love and only family, but also erased his father's image from the household as though he never existed.

"Let me," said Jackie. "The liar will only turn us both in."

Jackie wrested the hoe from Michael's grip and pummeled the blade several times into John's chest. After several dull thuds he dropped the hoe and collapsed on top of Michael, who had been lying in a pool of blood shivering with his head turned away from the gruesome scene.

Jackie stood up and wiped his hands on his pants. John was dead. Not in his wildest dreams did he ever think he could kill someone. Once when he was ten years old he had crushed a tiny frog in a vice, not out of hatred or a wish to kill it, but simply to see what would happen. But this was on a completely different level, imbued with emotions on every side, yet in an unsettling way the same and much easier than he had thought, like moving an object from one side of a room to the other, the final blow really no different than the final turn of the vice that killed the frog. A hoe was swung and a person had died. It was as simple as that. Jackie felt strangely empty as he stood there staring at the ground. He wanted to feel bold and triumphant but struggled to feel anything but the rapid beating of his heart.

"My head," moaned Michael as though he had not yet realized what had just happened.

"Let's see," said Jackie. He picked up the flashlight and directed its dying beam at Michael's bleeding head. Jackie's knees quaked as his mind reeled on with broken images like a runaway film projector.

"I feel dizzy," Michael said before he collapsed. Jackie picked up Michael's body and dragged it to the mattress. He covered him with the sleeping bag and examined the wound with the flashlight. There was a five-inch gash on his forehead, strangely similar to his own from the snowball, linking them together for eternity in a secret pact sworn in blood.

Jackie's first urge was to call for help, but knew he couldn't. Not yet. He had to get rid of John's body first. The ocean was best. Nobody would find it there. Then they could escape once and for all. He closed his eyes and thought of the City. Only there could he get help for Michael.

### II

Jackie smoothed his fingers over his friend's forehead and then again through his hair, the catgut strings of his entire being now tuned to the gentle rhythm of Michael's breathing as he slept. All around was quiet - deep dark quiet. The garage was suffused with a warm peaceful feeling like a church before mass, yet every time Jackie became aware of John's body slumped over beside him in a pool of blood a terrifying chill shot through him, poisoning the air of false charm and converting the room into a prison cell. If his mother found out she'd hate him forever. No matter how hard he tried to explain, she'd still hate him. Sure he had fantasies about John's death, but never once did he ever consider acting on them. They were only games. Hate games. _I didn't do it. It wasn't me. It was something else, something inside. Something horrible_ he kept repeating to himself. It was some dark force that took over his actions. It was an accident. John attacked him first and he struck back in self-defense. No one would buy it. After all, wasn't he secretly wishing John would die all along? He had to be strong. Turning himself in would mean an end to everything he stood for. What was it that burst forth from the darkest shadows of his being that moment he grabbed the hoe and plunged it over and over again into John's chest? He looked down at John's body: curdled out of the smooth milk of existence into a rapidly decaying mass on the floor. He felt something like exhilaration take hold - or was it just fear? – and did his best to suppress it. To show too much emotion was a sign of weakness. He had to take a calm, pragmatic approach to everything. Avoid hysteria, maneuver through the deadly breakers and rogue waves of emotion that were bound to come. His enemy was finally dead and victory was now his, but wouldn't life have been so much easier if he had never played at all?

No matter what happened he had to look after Michael and get rid of the body before anybody found out. He guessed it was about five thirty and the sun would be up by seven. Maria normally got up at seven thirty for school and Kathleen about ten minutes earlier. So, he had to act quickly. He looked over at Michael who was still unconscious on the mattress. The bleeding had stopped, but the gash had swelled so as to resemble a miniature volcanic ridge. He stepped over to his side and shook him awake.

"You're not leaving me here alone," Michael muttered from the depths of unconscious and then opened his eyes.

"You passed out for quite a while. I was scared." Jackie stood up.

"Where are you going?"

"I have to get rid of the body."

"Body?"

"Don't you remember?"

"No."

"We killed him."

"Who?"

"John. He attacked us with the hoe."

"A hoe?"

"We had to defend ourselves."

"You can't just leave me here. I don't have anyone else to turn to."

"Don't worry, I'll be back."

Jackie hauled the body out the door and into the snow. There was just enough natural light for him to see some distorted facial features beneath the thickened mass of blood on John's face. His forehead was deeply furrowed and his expression was one of staunch determination. With his scraggly gray beard he looked like an old southern storyteller waiting at a fiery hearth to resume his tale while all around him was merrymaking and moronic indifference. Jackie dragged the stiff corpse past the house and towards the icy embankment of water that made up the shore. In the distance a convoy of ships was passing across the bland gray horizon, which was just starting to capture the light of an invisible sun still huddled in its own warmth beneath the cold ridge of the sea. As he approached the beach the snow gave way to a rocky area covered with small prickly vines and seaweed. Several times John's clothes caught on a jagged edge and tore. Eventually he was forced to remove John's pants and shirt and drag the ever more stiff figure naked across the icy rocks. By the time he reached the sand of the beach a light frost had already started growing in tiny white nodules on the tips of John's body hair. He stopped and set the body down. The expression on John's face had now changed from one of humorless authority to one of laughter. The wing tips of the mouth were hooked at an almost impossibly large angle so as to give him the exaggerated smile of a clown. Jackie ran to a snowdrift and packed a large snowball in his hands. Standing directly over John's body he threw the snowball as hard as he could into his face. The cold white ball exploded in the center of the nose, leaving just enough snow in the center of John's face to hide the hideous smile from view.

" _Teenage Kicks on a Saturday Night_ ," Jackie whispered to himself in self-mockery and horror.

He threw a second snowball out into the water. The area just off the beach was frozen over, but in several places there were small pockets and cracks where the surging water underneath had managed to wear its way into the open air. Although they were randomly placed, the cracks seemed to form the jagged outlines of countless emblematic figures. He thought he could see a horse's head, a crab, a pigeon, and a castle. For a moment he was even sure he could discern the outline of Maria's face etched on the surface of the floating mass.

After testing the ice he decided to drag the body out further to Cape Point, an old lighthouse that was always surrounded by a few hundred feet of ice in the winter. It was about ten minutes walk to the south. With the body he guessed it would take twenty. By the time he got there the eastern sky was lit up like a white sheet in front of a flashlight. The sun had not yet risen but its rays were already surging up from beneath the horizon to light up the gray mass of cloud that smothered the cosmos like a fire blanket. He could see traces of silver, pink, gold, but no blue. Exhausted from the night's exploits, he hid the body by a rock just fifty feet from the foot of the lighthouse and searched for a hole in the ice. He took a step and the ice creaked beneath him. He needed something just large enough to allow the shoulders to slide through so he could tuck the body under the ice where it wouldn't emerge until spring, by which time it would have either decomposed or at least be completely bloated from the salt water, leached of any discernable features. Sometimes he thought he heard sounds like a bamboo wind chime. He imagined it was swarms of individual ice crystals clacking together in loose rhythm. If just one of them were dislodged from out from its place in the massive card house of ice crystals, the whole sheet would crumble and vanish, swallowed by the waters beneath it.

He eventually found an opening that was just about the right size for the body. He dragged the rigid corpse over to the side of the hole and eased it through headfirst. It took all his strength to push it completely under against the buoying resistance of the water below. When he thought he was finished, the body just floated back to the surface, the head and torso lying flat against the underside of the ice with the knees and feet poking out at the opening. He grabbed the feet and pushed the body back in and as far away from the opening of the hole as it would go. When his arm had reached the limit of its extension and his shoulder was half immersed in the chilled green water, he felt satisfied he could do no better. It seemed an impossibility that anyone would ever find him now. He pulled out his freezing wet arm and shook it a few times before bolting into a light jog. He had to get back home before his mother and Maria woke up. About fifty yards from the hole he stopped and left a cairn of ice lumps as a mock monument, before continuing his jog back towards the house.

He struggled through the heaving undulations of snow that marked the space between the beach and the forest and passed a series of small huts that he'd never noticed before. They were arranged in groups of four and were all submerged three quarters of their height in snow, their flat angled roofs supporting a thick layer of fresh white powder. A few hundred yards further he passed a sign reading "DANGER! ELECTRICITY" with an arrow that pointed back towards the shacks. The only thing he could think of was that they were small power stations, each servicing a small sector of the coast. He didn't have time to stop and check, as the upper dome of the sun was just becoming visible on the horizon beneath a cluster of gray cloud formations. _Electricity_ , he thought. He imagined John strapped in a big white chair, wires fused directly to his head and arms as a priest read out his last rights. But when he passed a naturally formed ice palace, its sleek translucent walls shining in the dawn light like a giant mirror and the elegant cascade of icicles hanging down the sides like a brilliant armory decked with endless rows of lances and swords - the gravity of John's death and the possible consequences began to sink in. It was an ending. What was to follow he had no idea. He was now lost, a wandering Pariah, a murderer without refuge or purpose, a well of nothingness. Since the day John had moved in, the sole objective of his life - apart from winning Jeanette's love - was to rid his mother of the reckless freeloader she was gullible enough to fall in love with. But now he was no more than a random ball of energy floating freely in space, sputtered from the heart of a dying star. How strange, he thought, to be devoid of personal objective other than to hide and escape. Without John his life was now strangely and inexplicably empty.

He stopped and looked more closely at the ice palace before him, digging his knees into the snow as he ran his hand across its great glassy walls. He looked into the glittering hall of mirrors as if they were part of a giant carnival display, but instead of reflecting an image of his face they cast back an image of nothing. He held up his hand. His frozen callused hand. It too had no reflection. In all its layers of coagulated blood, now brown from the winter oxygen, it still had no reflection. He closed his eyes and imagined _The Gray Orchid_ flying over the surface of a great icy planet, a voice playing through his head like some kind of menacing cartoon narrator.

The Gray Orchid quaked as he crossed the threshold into yet another meaningless galaxy. Morphing his body into a giant lens, he redirected the light of all the stars into a thin beam slicing across the cosmos and annihilating everything in its path. Planet by planet - plucked off with the routine simplicity of ducks in a shooting gallery - The Gray Orchid demolished his way towards the center of this new and insolent void. How dare it exist without his permission! When he was satisfied that he had absorbed every last quanta of energy from the now empty expanse of blackness, he stopped to savor his masterpiece of obliteration.

He was without equal, a pillar of infinity in a desert of nothingness.

But in all his supremacy and power, was he too not chosen? Like a great Emperor alone in the highest seat at an opera gazing down in solitude at the rabble, he often wondered what it would be like to be lower in the order of things. An asteroid. A rock. A particle of dust. Even a groveling human. No matter how much he wanted to deny it, everything in existence, every last trace of life and inanimate object, and even he, the incomparable Gray Orchid, was a slave to destiny. Some were chosen to work, others to create, but he, The Gray Orchid, was chosen to destroy. But, chosen by whom?

It was a question to which he had no answer.

The sun was now fully visible, leaking a stream of silvery light across the snow-bleached earth. He had to get home. He broke back into a jog. Past a small beach house and over a gentle snow-covered hill and then through a sparse thicket with clumps of bushes tucked beneath a bony canopy of leafless trees. He shut his eyes as he neared his house. When he opened them he could make out the garage as a gray speck in the distance. Just then an urgent thought entered his mind. If he didn't steal some medical supplies soon Michael's condition would only get worse. There was no telling how bad the gash was and whether or not he had sustained a concussion as well. As he approached the garage, his conscience appeased and spirit invigorated by the fresh light of morning and his mother's curtains spread wide open to the coming day, it was decided. Michael would be the new objective in his life, his new purpose. He had to save him. That was the only thing he had left to live for.

He opened the garage door. Michael was still asleep. The floor was covered in blood and there were still tatters of ripped clothing and piles of oil cans and tools knocked to the floor: the last vestiges of the evening's struggle. He'd have to clean it up as soon as possible to avoid any suspicion. But first he had to make appearances for the same reason. He left the garage and went into the house. Maria and his mother were already up having tea. Kathleen looked gently at him, but he turned his head down. He couldn't face those tender imploring eyes.

"Where were you?" she asked. "I was worried about you."

"Just out fixing my bike. Where's John?" he asked casually. He wondered if something in his voice had just revealed something more than he intended.

"He got up a few hours ago because he heard some rustling near the garage," she said without concern. "He said he'd check it out and then drive into town to get some oil for his snow mobile. It had trouble turning over last night."

Jackie was silent as he watched his mother sip her tea. With every gentle sip he felt further and further away from her, and with every sigh he felt more and more horrible. _She will never find out_ , he reassured himself. If anyone discovered John's body, it would be easy to prove that he died in a hunting accident. Or maybe it was ice fishing. And if his body was never found, everyone would assume he just ran off to another county to hook up with another woman and suck her dry like the last one. Gambling and booze is what they would all say. But was this any consolation for the misery his mother would feel in the aftermath and the fact that he had caused it?

"That's one thing we'll miss about you when you finally grow up," Maria said, a dripping strand of shredded wheat hanging out of her mouth. "You think all your bad moods bother us. We actually think they're funny, don't we Mom?"

"Well, sometimes he's a bit extreme," she said, looking directly at Jackie with a broad smile. "Nothing a few years in a boarding school can't cure. When he gets back all that gloom and doom will be gone and he can look forward to a bright future."

A hole opened up inside him. He wanted to collapse at her feet and beg for her forgiveness. She stood there smiling like a woman from a television commercial who'd just baked her finest loaf of bread. No. He had to be strong. Avoid sentimental emotions. Irreverence and anger was what they expected of him and any weakness could be seen as a sign of complicity once they find John missing.

"You know what?" he said with an edge in his voice. "When I come back from that lousy cesspool of a boarding school I'm going to be worse than ever and you'll only have yourselves to blame."

"Cheery as usual," said Maria.

"I have to get ready for school," he said. "I've got a fucking math test today. I hate math. If there's one subject I hate it is math. What use is it?"

"Come on, Jackie. They couldn't have built your motorcycle without math," Kathleen said.

"That's total crap. Motorcycles have always existed. Their blueprint is etched on the cosmic tablet of the human psyche. I bet those bald freaks in ancient Tibet had motorbikes thousands of years ago. They'd drive through the hills and villages using their minds to steer."

"I think I hear your math teacher handing out another assignment," Maria said trenchantly. "You'd better get going."

"My pleasure," he snapped.

He ran upstairs to pack, shutting his bedroom door behind him to make sure nobody followed. He rummaged around his room until he found his backpack. There was only enough room in it for the bare essentials: whiskey, rum, a few beers and some rope. He didn't know what the rope was for but he figured it might be handy for something. Then he gathered a few colored pencils and a pad of paper. He rearranged the bottles until there was enough room for some medical supplies. In the bathroom he found a bottle of Mercurochrome, a pack of bandages, some hydrogen peroxide, and some painkillers. It wasn't great, but it would be enough to take care of Michael until he had a chance to steal some from a hospital or drugstore.

The last thing he grabbed on his way out was his i-Pod.

"See you later," he said to his mother and hugged her.

"The math test won't kill you, you know."

"I'll see you," he repeated and left, nodding his head in Maria's direction.

He tossed his bag on the seat of his motorbike and went into the garage to get Michael. He had to make it fast or they might get suspicious. Michael looked like he just woke up and was holding his forehead in his hands.

"Let's go," Jackie whispered.

"We have to get to a hospital."

"I know. But we have to get out of here first. Get your coat on and sneak out the rear window. Hide by the trees behind the garage and I'll come and get you on my bike after I clear all this shit up." Jackie looked at the floor and shook his head in disgust. "I don't know what I can do with all this blood, but I guess I'll think of something."

"Just kick some dirt over it."

Michael stood up slowly like a drugged man getting up from a dentist's chair. He put on his coat and shoes while Jackie rearranged all the bottles. The broken glass he just kicked under the tool shelf. When he finished he spread dirt from the corners of the garage over the dark stain of blood in the center of the floor. It didn't seem to make a great deal of difference. There was still a large sticky spot in the middle like a blotch of oil.

"Fuck it. We'd better get out before anyone finds us."

Without a word Michael opened the back window and slid through it. Jackie opened the garage door to find Maria standing on the porch.

"What's the matter? The silver shadow got an oil spill?"

"Yes, an oil spill. I went in the garage to get some oil and it spilled all over the floor when I was poring it into a small jug. Had to kick some dirt over it, but I cleaned up most of it."

"Somehow I can't picture you doing something as base as changing the oil in your motorbike."

"How the hell do you think I keep it running?" he said. "Do you think I can afford to take it in to a gas station every time it breaks down?"

"Don't let me keep you," she said as she turned and walked back inside the house.

"Please," he said to himself as he revved up his motorcycle and drove around behind the garage. Michael was huddled up under a tree shivering. He got up sluggishly and mounted the motorcycle behind Jackie. As they pulled around the side of the garage Jackie did one shoulder check to make sure he wasn't being watched and then bolted off as fast as he could.

"Hold on, man," he said to Michael as the gravity pulled them back on the seat.

The ride into the City was always long and treacherous.

### III

By the time they reached the second circle a blizzard had started. The air was thick with huge wet snowflakes and the glare was so strong Jackie could barely keep his eyes open as he maneuvered through the slushy roads. They parked in a vacant lot a few blocks from one of the more remote canals and stopped to rest for a moment beneath a collapsing awning before edging on in huddled quiet towards the canal, moving slowly forward until they found the closest bridge - an older brick arch with spires on three of four corners. When all was clear, they shimmied down the canal bank and then ran along the embankment until they were safe beneath the hulking brick structure. It was completely shielded from the intrusions of the street. Shelter.

"This stuff is gross," Jackie exclaimed as he wiped his hand over the cold slime on the concrete embankment.

"I need a doctor."

"Don't worry. You just settle down here and I'll find a drug store."

"Where are we going to stay?"

"We'll find a place when I get back."

"I'm afraid."

"Don't worry, Michael. We're free now. Can't you see? We've finally left all the shit behind. No more parents, no more school. Nothing."

Michael stared morbidly into the canal waters. The cold air tightened around his crotch as the snow stuffed the air like feathers in a pillow, an image that stood in stark contrast to the steaming waters beneath the bridge that almost seemed to boil from the infusion of hot waste from a downstream factory. He wanted to collapse.

"I'm sorry. I'm just worried."

"That's natural," Jackie said in a reassuring tone.

"Now you sound like my mom. Next thing you know you'll be telling me how to dress."

"I don't know why you can't be like every one else," Jackie said ironically. "Get a job. Make money. Buy enough crap to help you forget you only get a week off a year and die before you even know you're alive."

"There's no place like home," said Michael, a smile finally breaking across his face.

"Home, where they whip you senseless, chop off your balls and make you watch soap operas until you puke."

"Home, where they've at least got medicine for puke."

"Speaking of which, I've got some medicine. Not _for_ puke, but _in order_ to puke." He took out the whiskey bottle from his backpack and unscrewed the cap. They exchanged swigs before Jackie took out the Mercurochrome. "Just sit back and I'll do what I can for now. Then I can go find some better stuff later."

Jackie painted a pomegranate-red stripe over the gash on Michael's head and then poured some hydrogen peroxide over it. The red coloring disappeared and Michael screamed.

"Ouch! That stuff hurts. What's the point of putting on that red shit if you're only going to wash it off right after?"

"Don't worry. I know what I'm doing." He doused the wound with whiskey followed by a second round of hydrogen peroxide before striping the gash with another layer of Mercurochrome for good measure.

When Jackie was finished Michael leaned back against the concrete embankment and yawned. "I'm sleepy," he said.

"Do you have a fever?"

"I feel a bit hot."

"That's not good. They say that's what happens before you freeze to death."

Jackie wrapped Michael's head with a string of small bandages and a strip of gauze so as to form a makeshift bandana.

"Wait here."

"Where are you going?"

"You need some antibiotics."

"Don't be long."

"I won't."

"I'm afraid."

"Don't think I'm not."

"If you are, you don't look it."

"Don't worry. I won't be long."

Jackie leapt out from under the shelter of the bridge and vanished into the frosty mass of the blizzard. To Michael it seemed as though he had crossed the portal into some higher realm, never to return. He pulled off his coat and draped it over himself like a blanket. As the minutes gnawed through him he tried to sleep, but the whistling of the traffic overhead – or was it just the wind? - was far too loud. Gazing up at the iron girders spanning the bottom width of the bridge like a radiator grill, he wondered how his life had gotten so desperate and confused. Even the reform school seemed a more pleasant alternative than what was likely awaiting him.

When Jackie reached the a small shopping promenade on the street, he could suddenly see more clearly, his hot breath seeming to melt the snow in mid flight as it whirled across his face. He ran back to his motorcycle to make sure it was still there and then wandered through the streets until he found the first drug store. He opened the door and stepped inside cautiously, looking around in furtive wonder like a hobo at a cocktail party who expects to be thrown out any minute for his scruffy looks. When he was sure that nobody was looking he slipped into a vacant aisle and waited for what seemed like an eternity for the young woman at the prescription counter to leave her station and help a customer in the front. After five minutes he finally got frustrated and approached the counter demurely.

"Miss," he said.

"Yes, may I help you?"

"There's a man out by the back who says he needs to see you about his prescription. He's in a wheel chair and it's too much trouble for him to come in. He just needs you for a second."

"Where?"

Jackie pointed to the doors on the opposite side of the store. "Back there. In the parking lot."

"Thank you," she said. She shuffled away from her station towards the back of the store.

When all was clear he slipped behind the counter and looked frantically for anything labeled antibiotic. To his left stood a whole wall of boxes of bottles under a sign that read _Antibiotics_ but the individual labels on the boxes confused him. They all ended in _mycin_ or _cylline._ He eyed the selection like a cat surveying a dinner table and then checked the concave mirror on the ceiling. The woman was just coming back in. He still had time. He reached out and stuffed his pockets with as many different small boxes and bottles as he could and quickly snuck back out to the customer area. The woman appeared from around the corner a few seconds later.

"Where did you say he was?"

"Back there. Beside an orange Toyota."

"The lot was empty."

"He was just over there," he pointed again. The upward swing of his arm jolted a small box out of his pocket.

"You!" she shouted. "I'm calling the manager. Thief!"

Jackie turned around and bolted out of the store. The street was virtually empty. He had to find cover. He ran zigzag through the alleys block after block, not daring once to look back. Eventually he found a narrow network of tunnels. He ducked inside and ran until he reached a dead end. Then he rested until he caught his breath. When he reemerged the alley was empty. He listened for footsteps. There were none. He walked several blocks until he found his motorcycle. At last he was safe.

When he got back to the bridge Michael looked half dead. He was rolled up in his coat, eyes raptly open without a trace of consciousness on his face. Jackie shook him desperately.

"Come on. Come on," he begged. "You can't quit me now. We've only just started. I got you some medicine. I got lots. I've got every fucking antibiotic known to man."

Eventually Michael's mouth dropped open like a punch-dumb boxer and his eyes narrowed slowly. Jackie waved his hand in front of his face.

"Stop," Michael pleaded, his words slow and slurred. "Do you got any medicine?"

"I _got_ lots! See?" Jackie emptied his pockets and picked up one of the generic pharmaceutical boxes and shook it in front of Michael's face like a tambourine.

"How do you know which one I'm supposed to take?"

"Hmmm...I know! I'll read the labels."

Jackie picked up a box and examined it. There were several columns of technical data but nothing simple like: take one tablet for wounds, two for a cold.

"Doesn't say a thing." Jackie looked perplexed.

"How do I know I'm not just going to get sicker?"

"I guess there are two possible scenarios. In one you get better. In the other you just get stoned. If it's the perfect stuff you'll get better and stoned. If not you'll..."

"Just get stoned."

"Right! If it killed you it wouldn't be called medicine. It'd be called poison. We'll start you with one of everything. That way you'll get stoned _and_ better at the same time."

Jackie separated the boxes into twelve different types. He opened one of each up and took out twelve different pills. Some were capsules, others tablets. He handed them over to Michael and then took out the whiskey.

Later that evening the blizzard got worse so they went to find a garage or attic to sleep in. Michael was yellow in the face and nauseous from the antibiotics. His forehead was more swollen than before and a thick line of yellow fluid had emerged on the crest of the gash.

"It's those pills. Just take me to a hospital."

"You can't give up now. They'd send us to prison."

"It's gotta be better than this."

"Come on. It's just a gash. Now you know what I went through with that snowball business."

"Since when is a snowball as dangerous as a hoe?"

"Look, I'll go and find us a place to sleep and you can sit down in a café and wait until I come back."

After a half hour of wandering they eventually found a cafe and Jackie gave Michael a five-dollar bill. "I'll be back by midnight at the latest."

Jackie wandered the streets of the first and second circle deep into the darkness of the night, weaving back and forth through the concentric ripples of brick and water that made up the inner blueprint of the city. Over bridges, under canals and through alleyways laden with garbage and shattered windows he searched for some form of shelter. In the first circle he found a row of unfinished apartments enclosed by a tall fence. The back walls of each of the three story blocks were missing so as to offer passers by a cross sectional view of the naked array of rooms inside. With no barbed wire to stop him they were just waiting to be violated. He moved spider-like up the fence and over into the muddy grounds that surrounded the apartment block like a toxic moat. The sun was beginning to set and the sky burst into a paragon of vast and hostile shapes, each brandishing its own set of tribal colors. A row of seemingly limitless regularly spaced skyscrapers cut into the layers of cloud like a symbol of man's conquest of the stars. Each building was exactly the same as the one beside it: a perfect isosceles triangle with a base about half a block wide and an apex that stretched further up than his eyes could see. Together, they looked like the rows of triangular markers that made up a backgammon table.

He slipped only once as he approached the apartments. He climbed up onto the first level of the building nearest to him and walked past where the wall should have been into what looked like the beginnings of a modern kitchen. The floors were covered in asbestos dust and the walls still smelled of fresh paint. He moved further back into the arcane structure, through a half finished doorframe into a room with a tall bucket in the corner. It looked like a living area. A sharp wind blew and he felt colder. The temperature was dropping. The building would be perfect if only it had some form of enclosure from the outside. As it was there were no doors between the rooms and the open side of the building faced the direction of the wind. If anything it would be colder than the bridge, funneling the wind inwards like an air scoop on a racing car. He and Michael would freeze to death if they slept here. He had to find another place.

He wandered hopelessly through the first circle for another hour. The sun had now set completely and darkness encapsulated the entire city. Never before had he witnessed such lifelessness. Not even a black hole would have found sanctuary. There were no people, no lights, no animals. Nothing. He had to cross over the canal into the second circle where there was bound to be more activity. It was now obvious that his notion was completely wrong that the barren urban wasteland of the first circle would provide the anonymity and shelter he and Michael needed to get started on their new life. Nowhere in his wildest dreams had he imagined that it would be this foreboding.

He took the first bridge he could find and crossed into the second circle. He could already see traces of activity sparkling in the distance. A few lights, some shouting, a siren: life. He picked up his stride and ran until he saw an elderly man crossing the street.

"Hey," he cried.

The man ducked into an alley, vanishing into the night.

Next he found a street he thought he recognized, so he followed it for a few blocks to see what he could find. The streetlights provided just enough light for him to see if there was any FOR RENT signs on the buildings. After what seemed like forever, with the cold wind carving arcane hex symbols into his face, he discovered a tall narrow townhouse with a CONDEMNED sign on it. The turn-of-the-century building was located on a residential block just around the corner from a movie house and a sporting goods shop. The lights were off and there was no sign of any people about. He stepped over the knee-high gate and into the yard. He cringed as his foot knocked over a hidden bottle. No dogs barked.

He checked the mailbox. It was empty. Then he knocked on the door. There was no answer. He tried the bell. A loud throaty chime echoed through the house. Still no answer. He tried the door. It was locked. There was a brass bolt lock and the handle was stiff. In the darkness it would be difficult to break in.

He returned to the street and picked up a medium-sized rock that was sitting in the gutter in front of him. He threw it at the bay window in the front and waited for an alarm, but after the shrill sound of shattering glass there was only silence. Long, promising silence. He stepped over the fence and up to the window. Unfortunately, the rock had only taken out a small circle the size of a grapefruit from the center of the glass sheet. He took off his coat and used it as a protective glove while removing the glass, sharp dagger-like panel after sharp dagger-like panel. When he'd completely removed the lower half of the pane he put his coat back on and climbed inside. His fingers found a light switch on the wall, but it didn't work. To his relief the light from the street was strong enough to help him find the drape cord so he could cover the broken window, hence cutting off the wind from outside. The house wasn't warm, but there was a fireplace. It would do. He'd have to get Michael immediately. With any luck the antibiotics had kicked in and he was already starting to feel better.

He left the house, only this time through the front door. On his way out he made sure it was left unlocked. The wind had died down considerably and the night sky was lit up like a projection on the ceiling of a planetarium. He thought he could even see a comet tailing across the far horizon as he crossed the street and made his way to the movie house, where he could stop and get his bearings. He guessed he was about twenty minutes from the cafe where he had left Michael. But in which direction?

When he reached the main street a man passed by.

"Excuse me," Jackie said softly, so as not to scare the man away. The man stopped, but only hesitantly, being careful not to get too close to Jackie. He stood about twenty feet away.

"Yes," the man replied and coughed loudly into his fist. He was older and wore a maxi coat and oxfords.

"I'm lost. I have to get to a café."

"I thought you might want a cigarette. That's all anyone wants. What cafe?"

"The Neptune, I think it's called." He wasn't sure.

"You must mean Nemo's. There's never been a Neptune's here for as long as I've been here."

"Nemo's?" His mind stumbled. "Yes, that's it." The hazy letters of the sign took shape before his mind's eye.

"It's ten blocks or so down towards the canal."

"Which is?"

"That way," the man pointed to the left.

"Great. Thanks," said Jackie. He was off in a light jog before the man even had a chance to reply.

After ten minutes he could see the cafe coming into view. The neon sign, with the decadent elegance of its script characters, gleamed in the cold night air like a burning angel hovering over a frozen wasteland. He pushed through the door. The interior was virtually empty and a man behind the bar was wiping the counters with a white rag. Michael sat wearily in the corner. A young woman with short black hair and a tattered waist-length leather coat was sitting beside him. Jackie approached the table cautiously and pulled out a chair. Now that he was closer he could see that Michael's eyes were shut and he was leaning against the wall.

"I hope I'm not interrupting anything," he said.

"Ur ye the friend he tild me aboot?" the woman asked. She had a thick Scottish accent.

"Who's this?" Jackie asked Michael, who had just opened his eyes but still seemed completely fazed.

"Rosie," Michael said groggily.

"Ye ur! Ah kin tell. Yir jist like he said. The poor thing. Look at um! Ah found um here half deid. What sort of friend ur ye anyway?"

"What business is all this of yours?"

"As moch mine as it is yirs."

"I gave him medicine. Lots of it."

"Ye really ur is stupid is ye look. Ahm no nurse but it doesn't take one tae know yir not supposed tae mix pills. What did ye give um?"

Jackie emptied his pockets out. "All this."

"No wonder he kin't stay awake. Ye doss cunt."

"Listen, I don't know where you're coming from but we have to get out of here."

"We? Yir not taking um awey without me. The poor thing'll aind up deid in some alleyway wi the likes ay ye caring fir um."

"Has he said much?"

"He seid ye wis looking fir a place tae crash. He seid Ah kid stay wi ye guys fir a night if Ah made breakfast. Ah kidn't resist um. He looked so honest. There's nothing sweeter thin a man in need of comfirt."

Jackie looked her up and down. She looked both opulent and dangerous with her big lush lips and wild green eyes.

"Well, come on then," he said.

"Where?"

"I found a wrecked up old house about ten blocks down."

"He seid ye wis camped oot under the bridge. That's not tae smart, is it? How do ye expect um tae git better? That gash. He seid he got it in a hunting accident. Ye two don't strike me as hunters, though."

Jackie stood up and shook Michael. His eyes were open but his face retained the same stolid expression it had during sleep. He said nothing.

"I found a place," Jackie whispered in his ears.

"Come on, dearie," Rosie said to Michael as she threw her arm around him.

"I have to get my motorcycle first," said Jackie. "Do you think you can wait here?"

"Sure. Go n git yir bike n meet us back here. Ahll wake um up. He seems tae be coming tae."

"Give him another couple pills," said Jackie pointing to the boxes.

"Ye really are a doss cunt, aren't ye?"

"What did you say your name was again," he asked irately.

"Rosie. Nice name, init?"

Jackie turned and walked out. They hadn't even been in the City for a day and he was already the odd man out.

### IV

Jackie parked his motorcycle in the parking lot behind the restaurant and went inside. Rosie and Michael were sitting at a table exactly as he had left them. Michael looked sharply over at Rosie as soon as he saw Jackie and quickly shifted his gaze back down to the table.

"Come on," Jackie muttered tersely. Rosie stood up and gave Michael's arm a gentle tug before they both followed Jackie out the door.

Jackie pointed to his motorcycle. "Don't worry, it can take three," he said. Michael and Rosie mounted the rear of the black leather seat while Jackie stood up in front of them, his body weight balanced solidly between the handlebars and footrests. Jackie revved the engine and the motorcycle lurched into motion. In no time they were snaking to a halt in front of the deserted house. The door was unlocked, just as he had left it.

"We need some candles, don't we then?" said Rosie.

"There's a store around the corner," said Jackie.

"Allright...Ahll go if that's the way yir gonna be."

After she left, Jackie and Michael went to sit outside on the front steps of the house.

"Are you sure you can trust her?" Jackie asked. "I mean, how did you even meet her?"

"She just came up. She said I looked sick and wondered why I was alone."

"What did you tell her?"

"Nothing. We ran away from home."

"Good. Nothing more."

"She can help us."

"Or ruin us." Jackie paused and then continued, a more grave tone weighing through his voice. "You didn't tell her what happened, did you?"

"No. She'd think we were psycho and tell the cops."

"Then like I said...how do you know you can trust her? We have to protect each other from all those bastards out there. What if she turns out to be one of them? How do you know she won't get wind of what happened and start asking questions?"

"She's honest, I can tell."

"And what about our pact?"

"What pact?"

"To stick together."

"I didn't sign anything."

"Come on!"

"What?"

"You can't just abandon me. I let you stay in my garage. Saved you from all those goons at the reform school."

"You're forgetting someone."

"Who?"

"Rosie."

"You just met her."

"She's like us. I can tell. I have a feeling."

"You're just thinking with your dick. You have to learn to prioritize. Get back to reality."

"You're just pissed off because you didn't meet her first. The reality of the matter is that I need to get a doctor. Those pills you gave me are horseshit. Rosie said I could have died."

" _Rosie said_. Oh, I'm so sorry. If Rosie said it, then it must be true. Let's play Rosie says. Rosie says jump off the bridge, Rosie says turn yourself in to the cops, Rosie says dump your friends for just a kiss..."

Michael shrugged his shoulders and went upstairs. He sat down in the middle of the bare wooden floor. Jackie followed, but only several minutes later.

"Would you get real?" Michael said. "Just because you're my friend doesn't mean you own me."

"So that's what it's come to."

"I guess."

"What about the apartment we were going to get in the City?"

Michael looked away for a second and then turned back to Jackie. "I don't care anymore," he said with an undercurrent of regret.

"You don't fucking care? I can't believe I'm hearing this. We were united by the gashes on our heads, by John's murder – we did it together. You can't do this to me. You can't. It's not fair. One day we're in on this deal and now it's over. Now that you don't need me to protect you, you just fuck off."

Jackie threw his hands in the air and kicked the wall.

"Look, I'm sorry."

"Sorry. What does that mean?"

Just then the door downstairs creaked open and a moment later Rosie was standing in the room holding a lit candle in front of her as though she were leading a vigil.

"Now we're in beesnuss," she said. "How's ma angel? Feeling better?" She leaned over and kissed Michael.

Jackie kept his eyes askance of the maudlin scene before him. If only he thought on his feet and hadn't left him at the cafe.

"So, what are we going to do?" asked Jackie.

"Aboot?" Rosie asked.

"His fucking wound."

"Lit's settle doon. We huv tae solve this togither."

"Together, now? Since when does _together_ have to do with anything?"

"Leave her be, Jackie," Michael warned him.

Jackie stretched his legs out across the sagging floorboards of the upstairs room. Rosie and Michael had already fallen asleep and lay curled up together on the other side of the room. The floor was otherwise bare except for the candle Rosie brought back from the convenience store. He watched the ringlets cast by the candle flame waver and flutter across the ceiling. Like the circles of the city, the outermost rings confined and constricted those inside them, strangling them of every ounce of life and freedom. At times he imagined he could feel the entire weight of these outer circles crushing up against his back and head as he listened to the awkward sound of Michael breathing. And like the circles cast by the flame, they were trapped by their own shadow and whatever as yet unseen noose the City had in store for them was already tightening around their necks. For the first time since John's death – which he had now convinced himself was an accident and not a murder - Jackie felt completely powerless, as though whatever he did in his defense would somehow get twisted back against him and ultimately lead to an even greater weight of peril from which there was no escape.

When dawn finally broke Jackie stood up and walked gingerly across the room. The gash on Michael's head was bigger and redder than it was the night before. He shook Rosie's shoulder to wake her.

"Fuck, off, will ye. It's too early."

"Get up, we have some things to do."

"Oh, goodness. Kin't it wait?"

"You're the one that's so high on getting proper care for Michael. Maybe we oughta get a nurse over here."

"A nurse?" She opened her eyes and rubbed them, looking around the room as if she'd never seen it before. Then she looked down at Michael. He was motionless and pale. The wound had opened up and a small amount of blood was trickling down his face.

"Yes, a nurse."

"Christ, I'm sorry. Ah wisn't quite awake. Ah thought Ah wis somewhere ilse. Ye know how it is whin yir asleep in a strange bed n whin ye half wake up ye still think yir hame."

"If you want to talk about your dreams go see a therapist."

"If ye hadn't given him all those pills..."

"If you hadn't interfered."

"Interfered? Ahm trying tae help him."

Jackie kicked the candle against the wall and stamped his fist against the wall.

"Get me a knife."

"What ur ye going tae do? Yir not going tae cut the wound oot, are ye?"

"The hospital. I'm going to the hospital."

"Wi a knife? Why kin't we jist take um?"

"Are you joking? We're getting a house call."

"So that's how they do it in this country, then. Medicare is so expensive yi huv tae kidnap a nurse to git proper help."

"Listen," Jackie said in a whisper that was both conciliatory and threatening. "I don't know how much he told you, but if you want a trouble-free vacation you'd better just get your ass out of here."

"Likesay. Don't think Ah don't know whit's going on between yus. Ye two ur bloody murderers. Ye killed yir stepfather. Yir trying tae make it oan yoir own. Ahve heard the whole story."

"What?" Jackie looked away quickly to regain balance and gather his thoughts. "And you believed him? He's delirious."

"Please. Whit's the point in lying, like? Ah kid've turned ye both in last night. Ah want to help ye. Kin't ye see? Why don't ye jist stop n look at me? Huv ye once asked me aboot ma life? What wid ye do if Ah told ye Ahm a stowaway? Ah left Scotland because ma ousband wis swedging oan me all the time. Good fir nothing drunk he wis. Ah tried tae leave him before, but he'd eywis chase after me with a gun." She grabbed Jackie's hand and then burst into tears. "Yir friend is dying n all we kin do is fight. Why kin't we jist work together?"

Jackie curled his lip introspectively. In all his anxiety and defensiveness it had never once crossed his mind that Rosie could possibly be on his side, but in seeing her cry right in front of him he had suddenly broken through whatever bubble Michael and Rosie had been hiding in and was now a part of whatever it was that had bound the two together the day before. They were consubstantial.

"I...I'm sorry," he said.

He looked into her eyes. Like him, she was a true outcast. She had tried to enter into the cold and hypocritical world of adulthood and it simply tossed her away like a faulty part on a production line. To be sure, she could be blamed for being foolish enough to crave admittance into such an absurd and boring world, yet at the same time she had to be acknowledged for ultimately rejecting it and leaving it behind for good, even if she was forced to do so. Like those who have never born witness to _The Gray Orchid_ might be spared total annihilation on account of their ignorance, Rosie had earned the right to freedom and impunity.

His face softened and its more gentle boyish features emerged from the twisted sneer that was always looming in the background since the first moment he'd met her the night before.

"You're right." He extended his hand in her direction. She pulled back at first, but then allowed him to set it on her lap. He squeezed her leg gently with one hand while playing nervously with a pencil he had picked up on the floor with the other.

"It's OK. Michael told me. Ah understand."

"What more did he tell you?"

"Nothing. Ah think ya guys are beautiful. Scottish men ur so rough."

"What about my bank account number?"

"No. Ah widn't think ye ad one."

"Maybe I don't. Who needs banks anyway? Did it ever cross your mind that when you put money in the bank you are actually lending _them_ money? That's why I think tellers are just a bunch of thieves skimming a few cents off every dollar we earn. And managers are even worse. At least tellers do something."

"They certainly do. Ah wis a teller back in Scotland."

"Really?" A silence dropped over them as Jackie tried to think of ways he could change the topic without admitting to an inadvertent faux pas. Her eyes fluttered back and forth over Michael's pale crumpled figure. "We need a knife."

"Isn't there sum other way?"

"No. Any other way and we're caught. I'll go to the hospital and get us a nurse. I won't hurt her. I promise."

"Do ye need some dosh?"

"I don't have much."

"Here's a tenner. That should git ye a knife at the corner shop."

Jackie threw on his coat and rushed downstairs. He left the house without closing the door and ran immediately to the hardware store around the corner. They had a wide selection of kitchen utensils and would certainly have a broad selection of knives. He ducked past the cash register and into the closest aisle. After a few minutes he found the right section and had already narrowed it down to a stiletto and a hunting knife. After some thought he decided on the hunting knife and paid. You couldn't hide it like you could the stiletto, but the blade was so big you could see your reflection.

When he got back to the house he guided his motorcycle out from behind the trees where he'd left it the night before. He thought he remembered passing a hospital on his way into school every day. If his memory was right it was on the border with the third circle just by the Northern rim.

The streets were clear, bleeding with their own destitution like cool gray monoliths of Christ. In ten minutes he was in view of the hospital. It looked exactly as he'd pictured it: an endless bleak monstrosity with drab beige brick walls and no parking lot. It looked more like something constructed from cardboard boxes and Mechano than an actual architectural entity, its buildings fused to knobby little sub-buildings adorned with crooked chimneys and stubby walkways. Primary entrances, secondary entrances, even tertiary and quaternary - by his reckoning at least \- entrances covered the fading brick like second hand badges on an army surplus uniform.

He parked his motorcycle on the closest street, adjusting one of its many mirrors before turning away to survey the situation and take stock of his options. He took the knife out of its sheath and slipped it down his pant leg. He'd seen it done like this countless times on television. The cold lifeless steel numbed his bare skin. The sensation was strangely pleasant - like a Novocain shot in the mouth. It was the kind of cold that casts a protective blanket over you. Not like the other kind. The kind that threatens to destroy you.

He walked around the edges of the building searching for the right entrance. It would be easiest to take a nurse from the infant ward. They'd put up the least resistance. And there wouldn't be any seven-foot tall orderlies to stop him. What more, they'd know how to care for Michael the best. All those years handling babies would have at least done them some kind of good.

After what seemed like half an hour of furtively scoping out each and every corridor he finally found a room with pastel-colored cartoons painted all over the wall. He stepped up to the window and pressed his face against the flat expanse of the glass to examine the pictures inside. It was certainly a children's ward. The pencil crayon figures were drawn in clumsy proportion and wore grotesque and imbecilic expressions on their faces.

He found the nearest door and quietly opened it. A group of nurses rushed by pushing a baby in a mobile incubator. The child looked almost amphibian with its blubbery white cheeks and overall lack of facial definition.

He waited by a water fountain until an unescorted nurse approached him with a concerned look in her eyes. She had ropy blond hair - ash - and a ballooned, almost grotesquely rounded face.

"You look lost," she said.

"I am."

"What are you looking for?"

"Emergency," he said, not thinking.

"Go outside and turn left. Walk..."

"Why don't you just show me? I've never been too good with directions."

"If you'd rather..." She walked him to the door and opened it. He could feel the chuffing of the stiff steel blade against his leg. It gave him confidence and with every step reminded him of his purpose. They walked outside and turned to the left and started making their way towards a tall beige building. When she was a good three feet ahead he quickly drew the blade and held it in front of him.

"It's that one just down there. On the other side there's a..."

"Shut up and keep walking," he said, sticking it into her back. She screamed. He felt awful inside but wrapped his arm around her throat from behind anyway. "My friend's dying. I don't have Medicare. You're going to save him."

"Don't hurt me, please don't. I'm a young mother. They need me!"

"Just help me out and you won't get hurt."

Her tension oozed from her body and into his. He could tell she was suddenly more relaxed. That's what he wanted. If she was nervous she might screw up on Michael.

"What's wrong? I have to know. I can't help unless you tell me what his case history is."

"He was clubbed on the head with a hoe yesterday morning. It's swollen and he's got a fever. He looks half dead. You've got to save him. Understand?"

"Did you give him anything?"

"Medicine. I gave him a bunch of antibiotics I stole from the store."

"My God. You could have killed him. What if he was allergic?"

"As if I don't feel bad enough already."

"I'll need some supplies."

"I'm not that stupid. You're walking back in and I'm walking right behind. Any move and you're dead."

"I won't. I promise."

They walked in tandem, Jackie's right hand clutched on the hilt of the knife hidden beneath his coat like a jumping jack ready to pop out at the simple flick of a button. Under the illusion of casual silence they passed a few patients and then a young nurse on the way to a supply room. She gathered together a small collection of tools: needles, vials, bandages and even a blood pressure gauge.

When she finished packing them into a small black leather satchel he poked her in the back with the tip of the blade and gestured silently to the door. In a moment they were outside. When they got to his motorcycle he pointed to the seat and made her get on first. He had to keep her in front of him so he could pin her between himself and the steering wheel. If he let her sit behind him she could jump off at any intersection.

"Is this yours?" she asked in a tone that suggested she thought it wasn't.

"Of course it's mine," he snapped, wondering in mid speech if he should have said something stronger like "Do you somehow think I can't afford one at my age?"

"It's nice," she bounced back with girlish admiration. Her disarming attitude at once comforted him and irked him – if she was not afraid of him then there was always the risk she would run away at the first chance and call the police. But did this also mean she had somehow peered through the window of his eyes and saw something inside him that he didn't – some inviolable kernel of innocence - and would never have believed him if he told her he had delivered the final blow to his stepfather or dropped the match that burned down a store, sending his best friend to reform school? And if so, did this prove once and for all that he was innocent and was only defending his territory all along - those things in his life that were truly his - and had Johnson's dad given him a bargain on the porcelain statue, dousing the spark that set off this long and treacherous chain of events that ultimately led to him abducting a seemingly innocent woman at knifepoint, none of this would have ever happened? Or was he simply an evil person at face value and therefore destined for a life of evil regardless of the situation? It was a question to which he had no answer.

He mounted the seat and settled into position, making sure he could see beyond her blowing hair to the road. Her onion-shaped head bumped into the tip of his chin, but no further. He could feel her body trembling as he extended his arms around her and grabbed the handlebars. He kicked out the metal stand and revved the engine, supporting the weight of the two of them on his left leg.

"Do I get a helmet?" she asked.

"What do you think?"

"I guess not."

"Just shut up till we get there and you'll be fine. I've never had an accident before."

The motorcycle grunted into motion. At first he had trouble steering. He couldn't quite grip the handlebars like he wanted to. After a few blocks he managed to steady the bike and the rest of the ride was smooth.

When they got to the house the streets were already busy with people going into work. He parked his Triumph in the yard and with the knife ushered her into the house and up the stairs.

"You guys live here?" she asked.

"What's it to you?"

"It's not that clean in here. Not the right place for a sick man."

"I'll be the judge of that."

When they reached the top floor Jackie opened the door to the room they'd all slept in the night before. Rosie was crying on the floor, slumped over Michael's body.

"He win't wake up. He win't wake up!"

The nurse rushed over to Michael's side and pulled out the bag. She gestured for Rosie to step back, but she resisted.

"I'm sorry. I know you're upset, but he needs air," the nurse said reassuringly. Rosie reluctantly pulled away.

"So, what's the matter with him?" asked Jackie.

"I don't know. I need to take his pressure," the nurse said. Jackie's eyes hardened. He looked directly at her but somehow also beyond her, only half watching as she took Michael's blood pressure. When she got a reading she shook her head anxiously and then turned back to Jackie and Rosie.

"It's dangerously low. His heartbeat's slowing and his temperature is dropping. If he doesn't get to a hospital he could die."

"Look, no hospitals. You heard what I said."

"Let her take hum, Jackie," said Rosie. "We're talking aboot his life here."

"I don't believe her. She just wants to turn us all in," he jabbed the knife in the nurse's direction. "How do you know anyway? You just got here. What about all those needles you brought? You're giving up too soon. What do you have in a hospital that you can't get here?" The nurse shook her head nervously and opened the bag.

"I'll try a shot of adrenaline. That might get his heart pumping faster again."

"Let her take um, Jackie. Please, he's yir friend. What good is escaping the law if ye huv tae die first? What right do ye huv tae make up his mind? Ahll never speak a word tae anyone, promise. Jist let us go. He'll die otherwise."

"Do you know what will happen if we go there? They'll arrest him immediately. When they fix him up they'll just send him back to that delinquent house and next they'll come after me. I've known him long enough to know that he'd rather die than go crawling back into the hands of the law. He's not going to give up that easily. Look at him. He's not that sick. People don't die just because of a little bump on the head. I had one last month and you don't see me crumbled up in a heap of worms."

"It's more than that," implored the nurse. "You said that you gave him a bunch of pills. Which ones?"

Jackie scrambled through the piles of clothes and bags on the floor until he found all the boxes. "These," he said. "One of each."

"I can't believe it," she said. "We have to get him an antidote. You never mix up all these. He's not dying from the cut so much as this. He's obviously allergic. You bloody well poisoned him!"

"It's not true. It's a lie. In all the years I've known him he's never been allergic to anything. Why the hell do they sell it as medicine if it fucking kills people?"

"Wait," Rosie said rushing to Michael's side. "He's awake."

Michael turned onto his side and slowly opened his eyes. He looked too groggy to speak.

"We need the right antidote. There's still time. I'm calling an ambulance," the nurse said. She leapt up and rushed to the door. Jackie pulled out his knife but she knocked it out of his hand. Jackie moved to grab it but Rosie took it before he could touch it. She held it up and took a threating stab at the space in front of him.

"Now Ahve got the knife. Go on, then," she said to the nurse. "Call an ambulance." The nurse ran out of the room and down the stairs.

"Listen," Jackie screamed at her. "He's my friend. Let me make the decisions. Just give me my knife back." He slowly approached her, moving with the deft calm of a snake charmer as he shifted his gaze back and forth between her eyes and the knife. She jabbed it out at him.

"Ye din't huv the right tae make up his mind."

"That's what he'd want. It's not me. It's him."

"Is it, now? Let's ask him." She knelt down beside Michael, still pointing the knife at Jackie. Michael looked up at her. "Whut do you wunt, dear? Do you wunt to go to the hospital or stay here with Jackie?"

"Christ, what trash," scoffed Jackie. "He's delirious. He doesn't even know what's best for him."

"I want to go," said Michael. His voice was so weak that at first Jackie thought he was hearing things. "I want to go to the hospital. I've had it. Let me go."

"How could you say that?" Jackie exclaimed, rushing over to his side. "What are you saying? They'll just lock you away in jail. They've got us for murder. They'll hang us and it'll be your fault."

Michael was silent and reached out his hand to Rosie. She grabbed it and pressed her cheek up to his. A sad look fell across his face as he continued to stare mutely into Jackie's eyes as if he were someone else, someone he had never met before.

"All right, have it your way," Jackie said to Rosie. He waved his hand back and forth as if he was holding a white flag. "I take no more responsibility. Go off and build your little love nest together. I can't believe it. The first girl you meet and you backstab me. Is that all you want out of life?

"Ahm sorry, Jackie."

"Sorry. Is that all you can say? Any minute now the cops will be here thanks to you."

"If he's still alive by the time they get here," said Rosie.

"Come on. I'll give you guys one last chance. It's just a slight fever. We still have time to escape."

"Yir the most selfish person Ahve ever mit," said Rosie. "Git oot ay this room before Ah ram this blade intae yir face." Her eyes became hard and colorless and a shell of contempt hardened around her face, surrounding her like an electrical field. He backed up against the wall.

"Go ahead. Sell him off like meat to the cops. See how happy he'll be."

"Yir fucking crazy," she said, sneering. "Git oot ay here while ye still kin."

He grabbed his coat and left the room without once turning back to look at Michael. He could already hear the sound of a siren in the distance by the time he was guiding his motorcycle out of the yard and onto the sidewalk. He looked in the mirror and fixed his now scraggly bed of spiked hair before turning the ignition key. Now he was truly alone.

## Part IV

Jackie shivered in his sleeping bag beneath the fathomless black indigo of the sky. The park lights had dimmed, revealing a brilliant fog of stars smeared in random condensation patterns across the windowpane of the horizon as though wiped there only seconds before by some mute and thoughtless hand. He drew a jack knife out of his pocket and flicked out the largest blade. He wasn't safe. Not here. Not in an inner-city park. Even though a small enclave of bushes protected him, there was always the off chance that someone might find him there and attack him while he slept. He held the blade up close to his face. It winked to him in the starlight as if to offer its assurance and then went dark again like a fabled Djinn materialized from inanimate matter only to vanish back into that selfsame substance only seconds later.

The bushes rustled. Jackie turned around. A man appeared as if from nowhere. He was older and walked with a cane. In the darkness his face looked amorphous, the starlight betraying nothing of his features. The man walked closer. Jackie ducked down, hoping the man wouldn't see him.

" _Are you lost?" the man asked._

" _No."_

" _What's a healthy young man like you doing alone in a park?"_

" _I'm thinking."_

" _Thinking? Now that's interesting. About what?"_

" _I don't know."_

" _You've gotta know or you wouldn't have been thinking it."_

The stranger's voice brought Jackie even stranger comfort. "Well, I've got this question," he asked.

" _About what?"_

" _What if you think something awful and then the next day through some kind of accident it happens."_

" _Doesn't make you guilty, if that's what you meant to ask. I heard about a woman who tried to kill herself because she dreamed that a plane crashed and the next day it did. She thought it was her fault."_

" _It's not like that."_

" _What, then?"_

What if you hate you neighbor's dog so much you wish it was dead, but only in your head. You never actually think of killing it. Then it comes along one day and attacks you. In self defense you start hitting it with a stick and then all that hatred you felt for so long springs up inside and takes over and you end up beating it to death."

" _That's a tough one."_

" _What if afterwards you feel sorry for the dog?"_

" _Don't know. Then again, I really don't know anything anymore. Thought I knew everything when I was twenty. Thought I had it all sorted out. Right, wrong. Love, hate. I'd read everything I wanted to read and if I hadn't been somewhere, I at least knew whether or not I wanted to go there. Not anymore, I don't. Life takes it out of you. Makes you lose the things you thought you had. Makes you hate the things you always loved and love the things you always hated."_

" _Can you spare a little change? I need to eat."_

The man looked in his pocket and shrugged his shoulders. "Guess I can't help you there either." He turned as if to continue on walking in the direction he was going before.

" _Wait."_

" _I really gotta be going," the stranger said and vanished into the darkness before Jackie could stop him. "Nice talking to you, though," his last words came as if from nowhere._

The City hummed like a great machine. A machine of darkness and evil, impregnating its every inhabitant with the same malignant thoughts. Or was it the other way around? Were the inhabitants in fact the source of all the evil, spewing it forth from the gutters of their soul as they spread it through the City like some kind of post-apocalyptic pandemic? Was it darkness that beget evil or was it evil that beget darkness? Jackie didn't know and he conceded that he would probably never know.

A dog ran by and barked. A baby cried. Everything was in the present - past and future contained within its hard white shell like yoke and white layered inside an egg. Yesterday seemed like a dream. There was the woman at the café, and before that the one that looked like Jeanette. And in between only miles of maddening highways with their endless invective of rest stops and road signs. He looked again to the stars. And further. He thought of John's dead body. Stalked and ravaged by the jaguars of the night, the thought was strangely comforting. Anything familiar, no matter how horrible or imaginary, might help him fall asleep.

### I

Seven PM. Third circle. Jackie stood on top of a small wooden crate in front of a toy store window and stared longingly into the make-believe world that shimmered behind the frosted glass panel: the rows of toy soldiers with their stiff imperturbable smiles, the glossy enameled trains equipped with their intricate, wire-thin suspensions, and the delicate ivory-toned faces of the china dolls lining the shelves inside. Immobile and remote in their abstract and reclusive space, they were false icons of promised happiness that never did or will exist. Every day children gleefully soared past the display, riding their wide-winged smiles as they dreamed of the perfect universe marked out by the host of brightly painted objects. Lies. All lies. Just ways society used to control them. Happiness and love were only illusions engineered by the corporate masters of the world to tempt and bribe youth into submission.

Jackie watched the columns of smoke rising from the rows of factories that stretched outwards from the base of the hill rising from a small valley in the distance. It evoked almost exactly the same feelings as watching the anthill in front of him. He was betrayed. First by Jeanette. Then by Michael. Not to mention his mother and sister. The whole world was conspiring against him. What more evidence did he need? An awful music rose inside him and he wanted to die. Michael had fallen away from him; he was an angel stumbling into the jaws of a great dark abyss. He would live, that much Jackie was sure of. It was how he would live that scared him the most. Sold out like all the rest. No better than Johnson or Jerome. If he ever escaped from the law he'd probably marry Rosie and have kids like everybody else. Then when he finally stood face to face with the sheer torpor of his existence he'd realize his big mistake and start beating his kids just like his parents beat him.

Jackie imagined he was _The Gray Orchid_ peering out into the great wild void of the universe as he walked onward past a row of shops lining the street like fake pearls strung on the sides of a cheap burlap dress. Each equally dismal and useless. Just as _Geisheirra_ had turned on his mighty master, Michael had given up the fight for freedom and dignity and betrayed him. The reason? The false promise of happiness in complacency. _The whole boatload of sensitive bullshit._

He looked up at the sky and a much darker thought entered his mind, a thought that commanded much more weight and power over him than any thought that had ever taken grip on his soul. It wasn't just bad things in the outer world that happened to you, machinations or random events you had no control over that ultimately brought you down, but there were even worse things that happened inside you, ones that you also had no control over, certain emotional changes that once set in motion would eventually corrupt your soul and make it impossible for you to ever enjoy anything again. Having people turn on you was bad enough. It left you alone and helpless. But once the full force of that betrayal had reached inside you and strangled every ounce of love from your heart, something much worse happened that made you change in a dark and irrevocable way so you could never trust your friends – or anyone else - again. Jackie stopped and put his hands in his pockets. Sagging, soot-coated brickyards surrounded by blackened deserts of concrete and glass hovered in front of him like a gruesome epitaph. Whichever way he turned they stood their mocking him in all their shameless gloom. And his life was no different. Every choice was equally fraught with hardships and problems. He couldn't turn back - not that he wanted to. His mother was probably in shock wondering where John was and Maria was probably celebrating the fact that he was in trouble for not coming home for two days. No. He had to go forward. But to go forward he needed money. And to get money he either needed to get a job or steal it. Since getting a job would blow his cover and reveal his whereabouts to the authorities, theft was the only viable alternative.

He played with the mirrors on his Triumph, eyeing every last passerby and studying their habits as they went about their trivial day-to-day matters. Then he studied his face. What he saw disgusted him. It was bony and pale. His hair was greasy and uncombed. He looked like some kind of derelict on the street you'd walk past and want to kick. He'd never make it anywhere. He'd never be anybody. He was condemned to a life of exile, self-loathing, and despair.

A cane tapped from behind. A man was approaching. He stopped and lifted two fingers to his mouth, gesturing for a cigarette. The man's face looked strangely familiar. Jackie thought for a second and then it came to him. It was the same man he'd run into on the highway a few days earlier. Jackie stepped on the gas peddle and accelerated around a blue Volkswagen. For all he knew the stranger had come back to turn him in.

Jackie drove to the border between the second and third circles. To one side of the hill the spider web of canals and crumbling brick tenements that comprised the backbone of the second circle unfolded. In the opposite direction, as far as the eye could see, extended block after block of shoddy low-income businesses and apartment blocks. Half of the inhabitants were probably employed in the sex industry and the other half owned those things that supported the sex industry. Bars, liquor stores, bowling alleys, pool halls, pawnbrokers, and bingo parlors. Freedom. What good was escaping from parents and school if this was all that was waiting for you?

Just as he decided to turn around and drive back to the second circle, a rude voice hollered from behind him.

"What's up?" the voice provoked him. Jackie turned around to find Johnson standing less than a foot away from him. He looked meaner than he remembered, dressed in a black leather jacket with heavy metal rock logos ironed across his ripped-up jeans. "What are you doing here?" Johnson asked.

"I'm testing the new chain on my motorcycle."

"It doesn't look that new. You got burned."

"Burned?"

"Funny." He shook his head in contempt. "If it means anything to you, my dad got smoked on the insurance and could only afford to buy a used furniture shop around the corner."

"I wasn't being sarcastic," Jackie said, trying to avoid a fight. "I'm out of a job."

"I haven't seen you at school for a few days. Playing hooky?"

"No. Just looking for a job."

"Doing what?"

"Anything."

"Seen Jeanette?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Come on. Everyone knows you dumped her."

"What?" Jackie tented his eyebrows.

"Jerome told me." He eyed Jackie inimically. "He's been trying to nail her for quite a while. Ain't been getting anywhere though." He looked away in disgust. "The only thing he can get is that ugly sister of yours. She's had the hots for him since September. But everyone knows Jerome likes Jeanette and not her. That's why your sister hates her so much. Where have you been, Spaceboy?"

Jackie stared at him with sullen aggressive eyes. "What's this about me dumping Jeanette?"

"Anyone at school would have killed for her. And you tell her to fuck off a few weeks after she gets shipped off to boarding school. At least you could have waited a month or so."

Jackie's mouth dropped in disbelief. "I didn't..."

"Jerome just saw her last week. She told him you sent her a fuck-off letter. And what's all this about her dad going missing?"

"Yeah," said Jackie, trying his best to act casual. "He just disappeared the other day. He went out looking for wood or something and he never came back. I think he just sneaked off to see his ex-wife. I never trusted him a minute," he said, his eyes focused on his hands as he rubbed his fingers together incoherently. Had he been set up?

"Maria says he heard a noise in the garage where you and Michael were staying and he went out to check."

"That's bullshit. Michael's in reform school."

"Maria says she saw you with him yesterday."

"I was alone yesterday. And where did she get the idea I was in the garage? She'd better watch it. Her lies are going to get her in big trouble some day."

"Whatever. None of my business. I've just bought in fifty-fifty with my dad. He says when he retires it'll all be mine. The whole damn store. That's doing well in my book. I'm gonna be successful. Look around you. How many kids are there in school who own a business? Not many. Not any, in fact. Nobody but me."

"That's great. But why don't you take your boring business and shove it up your ass."

"You never know what the hell you're talking about. That's your problem. You're full of shit. That's why we snow balled you. Had to give you a dose of reality before you lost it completely. We were doing you a favor..."

"Like hell you were."

"Looks like that snowball didn't do you much good. Maybe next time it'll be a boulder." Johnson stepped backwards to signal the end of the conversation.

"I'll be waiting. But, before you go, what's Jerome's number? Maria has a message she wants me to give him."

"It's in the book."

Jackie revved the engine of his motorcycle and looked Johnson in the eye. However much he hated him, Johnson may have just saved his life.

"Tell your dad good luck on that shop," Jackie said without knowing if he was being sarcastic or actually meant it.

"For what you care. You'll get what's coming to you."

"And you already got what's coming to you."

"Don't be stupid. And, by the way, check out today's paper if you've got a chance."

Jackie nodded smugly and roared off towards the second circle. He had to find Jerome. The gossip about Jeanette, however far fetched, likely the product of malicious fabrication, was too disturbing – or incredible - to let go without further investigation.

He drove until he found a newspaper stand. After flipping through the music magazines and new comics in an effort to dissipate his mounting anxiety, he bought a copy of the daily news. He leafed through the local section, hoping to find something on John that might give him a reason to be optimistic and help him buy time. As long as the body had not been discovered, he was safe. And what was the chance of that? At the bottom of the last page beneath an ad for a new swimming pool store he found a small snippet. He read it word-by-word, his heart jumping in his throat with every line, until he reached the end. The bliss of sanctuary. There was nothing on the body. He was safe. All it said was that Jackie - referred to as a troubled teenaged boy - and John had gone missing and the authorities were on the lookout. In the last paragraph there was something about Michael's escape and how his mother - who they questioned - thought the two events could be linked. There was no word on Kathleen's emotional state and nothing about Maria.

As he wadded up the newspaper and tossed it in the trash he felt a sudden urge to go talk to Maria and tell her what he thought of her. In all the torment of the last few days she hadn't crossed his mind once, and it never even occurred to him that, as soon as the authorities gave up looking for John, Jackie could go back to the house without risking arrest. In fact, the longer he stayed away from home the more people would link him to John's disappearance. But the first order of business was still to find Jeanette. He still had time.

He stopped at the first telephone booth. A small boy carrying a fire engine under his arm stood inside playing with the telephone cord. Jackie opened the door and the boy turned to face him.

"Your hair looks funny," said the child.

"Look, I need to use the phone...desperately."

The child stepped out of the booth and rolled his eyes in exasperation.

"That's all you grown ups ever want to do. This phone booth is where my invisible friend lives. He says there's too many people coming and going and just wishes he could be alone with me and the fire truck." Jackie was taken aback. He'd never been referred to as a _grown up_ before. He felt suddenly agitated.

"Tell your friend I'm not a grown up and tell him I have to call someone quick," Jackie whispered in the boy's ear. The boy stepped away from the door and let Jackie in. The phone book was torn but he found Jerome's number without much trouble. As Jackie dialed the child stood and watched in vacant curiosity.

The phone rang four times.

"Hello?" A deep male voice growled through the receiver.

"Um, yes. I was looking for Jerome."

"Just a second," the voice barked rudely.

A moment later Jerome was on the line.

"What's up?" he asked.

"It's Jackie."

"What do _you_ want?"

"I'm calling about Jeanette."

"Yeah?"

"Have you seen her?"

"I'm busy."

"Come on. Just tell me."

"What if I have?"

"I just ran into Johnson and he said..."

"OK, I saw her yesterday."

"How was she?"

"She was upset about her dad going missing."

"What was she doing out of school?"

"Listen, I don't know what you're getting at, but she said you guys were finished. She says you dumped her."

"That's what I'm calling about."

"What's there to say? I mean, where do you get off calling me anyway. It's not like your my best buddy."

"Your my sister's friend. That counts for something."

"She wishes."

"Whatever."

"Jeanette said you sent her a letter telling her you weren't into her and you thought your parents living together would get in the way." His voice was now more conciliatory and relaxed.

"That's just the thing. There wasn't a letter. Not like that anyway."

"Listen Jackie, I'd like to talk, but..."

"Where's she staying?"

"She doesn't want to see you."

"I'll find her."

"Aren't you supposed to be a missing person?"

"You go out partying for a night and the cops suddenly go crazy thinking you're dead or something."

"You'd better call your mom. Your sister says she's upset."

"I guess I should."

"Anyway, gotta go."

"Thanks," sad Jackie, but Jerome had already hung up.

He turned around and walked out of the booth. The boy was still standing there staring at him, guiding his fire engine through the air as though steering down an imaginary road.

"All yours," Jackie said.

The child darted back inside, making siren noises with his lips as he continued to wheel the fire engine along its invisible trajectory.

As soon as Jackie was on the road he accelerated into high gear and took the first exit to the Northern Highway. He'd studied the map enough times that he knew how to get to Jeanette's school from memory. He had to see her soon and clear up whatever foul play had transpired. No doubt Johnson or Jerome faked the letter in an effort to turn her against him. As he drove by the long straight rows of refineries and stiff metal electrical towers all his old feelings for Jeanette came back. He felt suddenly raw inside. What if she never even got the statue? What if she sent him a love letter in the mail and it just hadn't come yet? Maybe the nuns were locking her up in an attempt to keep her from writing to him. The ideas flew through his head even faster than the shower of white lines hurled at him like spears from the black sheets of asphalt assaulting his senses. Whatever the truth he had to find out.

### II

Jackie groomed himself in the mirror of his motorcycle, smoothing the spikes out of his hair one last time before walking through the gate to the school. There was no way they'd approve of his rebellious image. He had to tone things down and do his best to look as decent and conservative as possible. Nuns conformed to a cowardly existence sheltered from the beauties and terrors of everyday life, committing themselves to a life of stark celibacy by mummifying their once fragrant bodies in long musty robes to ward off any potential suitors. The life of a nun was a slow embalming process from which there was no turning back; once the church got you in its trap they'd use whatever guilt trip or con game they could to keep you from escaping. He wondered what they'd done to Jeanette in the short time she'd been there. Maybe they'd even locked her in a chastity belt and made her pray to Jesus every night to save her soul for once kissing a man. Even worse, they could have cut her hair and tried to make her grow a beard to drive away men. The thought was almost too painful to bear.

He straightened his posture and walked towards the door. His skin itched - perhaps the first sign of fleas or mites - and he could feel a layer of sweat gluing the hairs on his skin to the soiled clothes draped over his body like rags on a stick. He opened the door and walked in. There was a nun sitting at a desk in the front hall. She examined him with suspicious curiosity through a pair of tiny spectacles.

"Yes, young man," she said, blinking her fat swollen eyes. He felt like a fly on a windowpane.

"I came to see Jeanette," he said, trying to be as polite as possible.

"Jeanette who? There are several Jeanettes here. You have to be more specific. Not Mother Jeanette, I take it."

"Jeanette Fehrer," he said.

"The girls don't take visitors."

"I'm family."

"That's strange. As far as I know she doesn't have any brothers."

He paused and tried to think of an explanation. "Just let me see her," he said. "I came all the way from the City. It's so important. We're very close and it's a matter of the heart."

"Now, by heart, do you mean heart or do you mean more...shall we say, corporeal?"

"I have to see her. It's a matter of...of...of righteousness."

"Only the Lord is the true judge of righteousness."

"Maybe so, but I still want to see her."

"I'm sorry. You see, if we let you see her then they'd all have visitors and the place would become a target for randy young men like yourself."

"I'm saying one last time. I want to see her. Please let me in or I'll have to enter by force."

"If you do that we'll just call the police. They know their place in the world order. The Mother Superior is very close to the police commissioner. They'd be over before you could even find her," she said.

"Police?" he said. "I just want to talk to someone. What sort of prison are you running here?"

"Prison? Funny, that's the way we see the outside world. A prison of vanity and pride. And by keeping our girls safely inside the walls of our school we're just protecting them from all the myriad evils out there."

At least she was engaging him in conversation and hadn't called security yet. It was clear he was making no progress. He had to back off. The last thing he needed was cops.

"All right. You win." Just as he decided to exit in a composed and dignified fashion something welled up inside him and he spit on the floor, turning to kick open the door as he left.

"May the lord save you from the fires of Hell."

He waited for two hours on the other side of the street, hiding under a bare elm tree with the playing field in full view. If he waited long enough at some point she would come outside with her classmates for a recreational break or some kind of sports match. It was three in the afternoon and he didn't have anywhere to go anyway. After what seemed like a long time it started snowing. The road was quickly covered in a thin sheen and a deep pinkish grey color crept for the corners of the sky. Over the next hour the snow thickened and the wind gradually picked up as the daylight began to fade. Soon the outlines of the school had disappeared in front of him, engulfed by the darkness or the barely visible swirling wall of snow – he couldn't tell which - and all he could discern was the glow of the traffic lights a block away.

He crawled into a large hollow in the tree trunk behind him. The way it was looking he might have to sleep and wait until morning. Curled up inside the trunk, enjoying what little shelter the tree gave him with its knotted roots digging into his neck and back as he waited for even the slightest hint of human activity from across the street. At one point he stood up and grabbed an invisible branch, pulling it to his chest to caress. He imagined it was Jeanette's white breast and he was holding it close to him like a long-lost treasure.

After what seemed like an eternity he heard some shouting coming from the other side of the street. Female voices. High, ripe, shrill. He could imagine their little throats warbling like birds as he sharpened his ears to hear what they were saying. Then a loud thundering voice ripped through the frail muslin veil of weaker voices.

_Come on girls_ , it said. _Don't mind the snow and darkness. The Lord will guide us through the storm. It's only three blocks to the skating rink._

_Skating rink_. The phrase entered his mind like the solution to some complex mathematical expression. They were going skating. He recalled a large orange recreational building only a few blocks away. If he got there first he could catch Jeanette before she made it inside. He leapt up and ran across the street. He swept the snow cakes off his motorcycle with his sleeve and turned the ignition. Judging from the diminished intensity of the female chatter they were probably a block away by now. He hopped on the seat and steered carefully out of the parking lot, following the direction of the voices. He passed the group on the way, speeding up and dimming his lights so as not to attract their attention. No matter how much he yearned to see Jeanette's tender white face, it was best that he wait until he could catch her alone.

By the time he'd parked his motorcycle and wiped the snow off the front of his coat he could once again hear the chirping of the young women. A wide cone of light from an overhanging street lamp cut a glittering triangle of snowy air from the surrounding darkness. He kneeled down in the edge of the penumbra, just close enough to the light that he could see a few yards in front of him, but not so close that he could be easily spotted.

A few girls rounded the corner and he pressed his back against the wall of the rink. He could barely see the outlines of their faces as they clustered by the door like marbles around a narrow drain. From where he stood he guessed he was invisible, although he couldn't be sure. He studied their faces carefully, looking for Jeanette's classic features. The subtle bone structure that he always imagined would soften and settle as she aged like the body of an antique violin. While all the other girls would put on weight and turn to hags she'd remain beautiful until she died. To his dismay she was nowhere to be seen. When he was just about to give up, a loud matronly voice bellowed through the air like an air raid siren.

_We're here at last_ , it said. _The Lord did indeed protect us from the darkness, as I predicted._

The outline of a fat nun precipitated from the darkness and behind her a second group of girls magically appeared. He strained his eyes in an effort to focus on their faces. Through the shower of snowflakes and dim light he was sure he could see Jeanette. He could tell by the jacket. She was walking at the rear end of the group as though consciously straggling away from it. He wanted to run over and embrace her but suddenly his heart froze and a dark intangible feeling locked its grip around him. Like fear of darkness or the sheer terror of existence it had no source or explanation. _Fear of love_. The words rained down upon him like a flock of harpies, clawing away at his courage with every onslaught. Why should he be afraid? He'd killed a man and disposed of his body with far less of an ordeal. He'd never felt this way around anyone before. Anyone but her.

The nun opened the door and the girls flooded into the building. As Jeanette slowly approached he inched over to the side of the door to poise himself to make his move. When she finally passed, his hand surged forward and crashed on her shoulder. Her head swirled around, and then her hair, only slightly out of phase such that when her head stopped the red-brown ramparts flew around the front of her face to momentarily conceal her eyes. She was wearing a blue sweater and a knee-length black skirt. He had almost forgotten how beautiful she was.

"Jeanette," Jackie whispered through the silence. Jeanette jumped back and bolted to a stop. The last of the girls walked in and the door closed behind them.

"Jackie," she said, her eyes wavering like branches of a willow in the wind. Then a painful sadness spread across her face. "What do you want?" she asked. Her voice had the tone of someone that was both annoyed and surprised, suggesting she viewed him as someone other than what he hoped, a person she really didn't like and wasn't prepared to do anything to change this sentiment. Her voice echoed in his mind as he struggled for words to express his feelings.

"I've come to see you."

"I thought you didn't care."

"Who said that?"

"You did," she said.

"When? I've missed you so much."

"You have?"

"Yes," he said. For an instant her entire existence transformed into something higher than itself. His life seemed pointless in comparison.

"Wait a minute," she whispered. Her face dropped into a pout and tear fell from her eye. "Why are you saying this now? What about the letter?"

"What about the letter _I_ sent? What about the statue?"

"I've got the letter back in my room. It was the nastiest thing I've ever read. And what's this about a statue?"

"I gave Maria a statue to send you. It was a gift. A gift of my love. I was sick. I couldn't bring it myself. She told me you got it."

"I never..." Her mouth dropped in disbelief. She moved closer to him, letting his dark umbra envelope her. His hair was dirty and scraggly and his eyes were filled with crazed wonderment, a deviant sparkle that only made his youth seem more fragile as it gave way to the first traces of manhood.

"That bitch. My god. That bitch," he said, kicking the wall.

"I sent you a letter asking you if you loved me."

"I never got a thing from you. _Nothing_."

"You sent back the coldest thing I'd ever read." She had an expression on her face he didn't recognize. For a moment he was scared. "I couldn't believe it when I read it. I just couldn't believe it was you. I wanted to pretend it never existed but it just sat there staring me in the face every day and night."

"Fuck! I knew Maria was against the idea of you going out with me, but I never knew she'd stoop so low. And just to save _the family_."

"I was so worried about you when I read that article in the paper. So worried. They said you and Dad disappeared together. Sometimes he used to slip away on spur of the moment hunting trips, but it's too cold now for that. And you! Where have you been? What happened?"

"Michael came and needed a place to stay. I knew I couldn't bring him inside and the garage was too cold. We had to get out. Michael and I tried to make it alone."

"Where is he?"

"He's in the hospital. He got into an accident. I gave him some antibiotics and he had an allergic reaction. The nurse said he'd be all right." He thought of confessing that he had abducted the nurse to save Michael but decided it would only scare her and make her think he was desperate and running from the police.

"My God." She threw herself into his arms.

Suddenly he heard footsteps. He let his arms drop and turned around.

"So, there you are," a Nun declared in a thin, grisly voice. "We wondered what happened to you. Come in immediately or you'll have all your privileges suspended for the next month. You've got exactly one minute." She slammed the door.

"How can you stand them?"

"They're not so bad once you get used to them..."

"No. Don't say that. Never say that. They're awful and you can never forget it. You have to come with me. I need you. Now that Michael's in the hospital they'll just send him back to the reform school."

"Where will we go?"

"Anywhere. I can't go back home. I can't stand it. I came to take you with me. We can never be together unless we escape this shit hole of an existence."

"Jackie, Jackie," she whispered. The warm fog of her innocence surrounded him. "I don't believe this is all true. I almost gave up."

"Maria's gonna get it next time I see her. What a double-dealing cow. She did it just to ruin me. I might have a few rough edges, but at least I'm no backstabbing sneak."

"How did you find out?"

"Jerome and Johnson. I ran into Johnson. The poor bastard is working in his dad's used furniture shop. He said Jerome has the hots for you. He told me I was a jerk for dumping you. All along I thought you were dumping me. Why didn't you call me? How could you have ever believed that letter?"

"I was afraid that it might be true. Even though it didn't sound like you I was afraid of confronting you and hearing your cold voice mocking my feelings on the other end of the line. And if Father ever found out he'd have killed me."

The words "father" and "killed" echoed through the hallways of his mind and he noticed once again how Jeanette could look like John in the right angle of light. He felt guilty and looked sharply away.

"What is it?" she asked. She touched his shoulder.

"Nothing," he said. "I think we're safe from him now. It's just that..."

"Listen," she interrupted with comforting weight as though John was no longer an issue that concerned her. She earnestly squeezed his hand. "Come back tomorrow morning and I'll be ready. We can leave together. We can go somewhere else and get jobs. We can..."

"What time?"

"Before lunch. No, come at lunch. I have a break and I can meet you behind the delivery door. It's on the opposite side of the school from the parking lot."

The door opened and the nun stepped out. Her head turned on her tubular neck and she widened her eyes in a look of profound exasperation, as if to say _well?_ Jeanette turned without kissing him and disappeared behind the door. The nun gave Jackie a scolding with her bulging black eyes and then slammed the door behind her.

Jackie was floating on air as he walked back to his motorcycle. Everything was finally set. Janette was ready to run away with him. She wouldn't back out like Michael. They would be together at last. It was only Maria's meddling that kept them apart. John would eventually go listed as missing and everything would sort itself out for the better. She'd never have to find out about the murder. Everything was set. Somehow, out of the smoldering wasteland of his life, new flowers had bloomed and everything had come together. The City's noxious smoke had finally cleared and new rains were cleansing the trenches of his being of all the mud and gravel that once marred its winding contours. From Michael to Jeanette, back to Michael and finally back again to Jeanette, his heart had spun on a maddening carousel ride. But, now he was finally getting off. His head reeled with excitement: the sweet sap of excitement.

He mounted his Triumph and rode back into the City for one last night. The next day he would go home to rest. He'd have to go at a time when he knew his mother was out. Otherwise she might suspect something. He could pick up some things and leave her a note expressing his condolences and reassuring her that he was fine and had just decided to move away for a few days to sort himself out. Then he could be together with Jeanette at last.

### III

The next day Jackie woke up on the cold floor of the abandoned house. The sun burned through his eyelids with a blinding callous light and his shoulder blades ached, the floorboards stabbing into his body like rock into straw. He sprung to his feet and wasted no time gathering together his few personal items to go and meet Jeanette. Despite his poor night's sleep he felt he had been reborn. The darkness of the last few weeks had dissolved like mist on a highway and he wondered why he had ever been unhappy about anything. He washed his face with water from a tap on the wall, thinking of Jeanette and the life they could have together once they left the City. A day ago he was resolved to go to his deathbed without ever seeing her again. And in a miraculous turnaround she was now his with the only possible impediment being her reaction to John's disappearance. As long as he could convince her that fathers went missing all the time, usually running away to drink and chase women, and that wherever he was he was probably happy and would one day pop up out of the blue to see her as if nothing had happened. At the very worst she would have to come to emotional terms with seeing John in the new and unflattering light of a boozing father. It was strange that even in his death John could still exert such a potentially paralyzing influence over his life. Although he craved to tell her the truth, if she knew what really happened she'd never forgive him. His only chance was to wait. Wait until she was so much in love with him that it wouldn't matter. Someday he would reveal his great dark secret as they were walking hand in hand down a fragrant garden path. She would be shocked at first, but after a long and difficult talk she would come to understand that it wasn't really his fault and that it was only an unfortunate accident that he had to hide for all those years out of fear of losing her.

He threw on his jacket and rummaged through his backpack. There were a few old assignments and a torn and yellowed _Mirage_ comic he once brought with him to class. He slung the backpack over his shoulder and mounted his motorcycle, revving it up a few times before hitting the road for the long drive back to the school. The ice from the blizzard had already receded from the road so the trip took him half the time it did the day before. When he got there the parking lot was filled with cars, suggesting there was some kind of parent-teacher meeting in progress. A tall lanky man wearing a tight black suit walked by and Jackie asked him for the time. It was eleven-thirty. He walked over to the other side of the road and sat under the same tree he'd waited under the night before. The snow had completely melted and the air had the smell of wet hay and spring. He thought of all the romance films he had ever seen on late night television. That's what was waiting for him with Jeanette. He was a tongue hovering at the lips of a new life, waiting to plunge inside and thrust away with every grain of passion he had left.

The cars cleared out by noon and he ran across the street and then around the perimeter of the school to the back, being careful to crouch down and weave between the trees and bushes so he wouldn't be spotted. When he got to the delivery entrance all was clear. He hid behind a clunky blue garbage dumpster and waited impatiently for what seemed like an hour. Perhaps the nuns had caught Jeanette trying to leave and were questioning her. A tall man in a blue suit and sunglasses walked by and Jackie started to worry even more. He looked like a federal agent. Perhaps the whole Jeanette thing was all just a setup by Johnson to trap him. Maybe they'd found John's body and hired Johnson to lure him into the clutches of the authorities. He stood up and paced the length of the dumpster, keeping his head low so he wouldn't be spotted.

Just as he was about to give up waiting and go inside to find her, she suddenly appeared from around the corner. She was buried in the folds of a heavy woolen shawl that was adorned with a staggering array of deep enthralling pockets and her face swelled with delight.

"Jackie," she whispered with enthusiasm. "I'm so sorry I'm late. The nuns wanted me to meet some of the fathers from a nearby boy's school. I couldn't get away."

He looked deeply into her eyes. For a moment she seemed strangely vacant, like someone else altogether, the sort of person he would never have gotten involved with. She smiled in an intelligent way and the feeling passed.

"I was starting to worry," he said. "I thought they'd found out."

"About?"

"Me."

"You shouldn't be so paranoid. What can happen to us? The worst is that we get caught by a truant officer."

"We're too old for that."

He wrapped his arms around her and squeezed her as hard as he could. Her body felt weak and compliant, like a bundle of wet grass.

"Not so hard."

"Let's go, " he said. He let her slip backwards and out of his arms.

"Where?"

"We have to go back to my mom's place."

"Maybe my dad's back," she said in a way that said she really missed John and was looking forward to seeing him again. "We should be careful."

"I hope so," he said. He turned his head away.

"I bet he just went out hunting. He used to do that before we moved here. Even in the winter. He'd just get up and leave without explanation in the early morning and come back a few days later with a bag full of pheasants."

"Yeah. I'm sure it was something like that. You shouldn't worry."

"I did when I first heard about it, but I'm okay now. He can take care of himself."

"I'm sure he can," he said. "Listen. Since nobody's home after lunch, we can sneak inside for an hour. I need a shower." He pointed to his chest. "Just look at me!" he exclaimed.

"I'd rather not," she jested. He took her hand and they followed the path back to his motorcycle.

"Then it's off to the ocean?"

"What's in the ocean?"

"I have to go and check on my mom and there's a place about twenty miles down the road where we can stay. There's an old shack with a wood stove and a nice bed. Maybe we can stay there until we find work."

He gestured for her to get on his Triumph.

"I only have my back pack. Is there enough room?"

"Sure. That's all I have too."

"Good."

"We have to go see a friend in the City first," he said as he buttoned up his jacket.

He mounted the leather seat and let her sit in the crook between his loins and the handlebars. The motorcycle wobbled slightly as they pulled out of the parking lot. Jeanette watched the school as it slowly shrunk in the distance into a blur and then nothing.

On their way back they turned down a wide service road and then drove towards the abandoned house in the City. He had to make a quick detour to make sure he had left no traces behind. When they were a block away he noticed the property was surrounded by police. He quickly turned around and accelerated in the opposite direction.

"What was that about?" Jeanette shouted into the roar of the wind, her mouth open like a Japanese kite.

"Don't know," he yelled back. He took the first exit he could find.

"What about your friend?"

"We passed his house already and his car wasn't there. He's probably out," he yelled back.

When they got to the house, he parked the motorcycle cautiously, making sure that if someone were inside, they wouldn't see him coming. He took Jeanette by the hand and walked her up the path to the back door of the house. He opened the door carefully and looked through the crack inside. From where he stood he could see the open closet where Kathleen and Maria always kept their winter boots. It was empty.

Jackie turned to Jeanette and nodded his head. It was safe to go inside.

"Just stay down here while I go upstairs and get some stuff."

"I have something to tell you," she said. "I wanted to save it for when we were alone. It's special."

"Can it wait? They could be home any minute."

"I thought you said they'd be out."

"Yes, but they might come back any minute, especially with your old man missing."

"I've got an idea. We can go out to the amusement park. The one from the party. I want to see what it looks like during the day."

"Yeah," he said. He was suddenly nervous. What if the police had found the body? It was too dangerous to stay in the house for much longer.

"You look tense. Maybe I should wait in the garage until you're done."

"Yes. Yes. That would be much better," he said without thinking. He took her out to the garage and opened the door. A sickening smell wafted from inside.

"My mother kills chickens in here," he said with embarrassment.

She smiled and walked inside. Before he closed the door she pulled him up to her and suddenly kissed him. He was too distracted to enjoy it but pretended he did anyway.

"I can't wait to tell you," she said. He strained a smile and went back into the house.

When he got back inside he found Maria sitting in the living room. She was wearing her coat and had a grave expression on her face.

"Jackie. I'm glad you came back," she said.

"You!"

"Yes, I live here too."

"I've got a bone to pick with you. I just spoke to Jeanette."

"Jackie, I'm sorry. We can talk about that later." Her voice tapered off into a sob.

"No. We'll talk about it now. There's not going to be any later."

"Jackie, Jackie. Why?" She said, shaking her head back and forth as though she was holding back a dam of tears.

"Why? Like why did you tamper with me and Jeanette? I trusted you! When I needed you the most you turned around and backstabbed me. What did you do to the statue? And the letter? I haven't even seen the one you must have sent her. I ought to tie you to the bed and ram a fucking gas nozzle up your cunt."

By this time Maria was crying so hard he wasn't sure she even heard him.

"They found him," she finally said, lifting her swollen face from her hands.

"Who?"

"John."

His heart stopped and he suddenly felt as though he were outside his body watching the scene unfold from the distance. "So," he said, feigning ignorance. "What's so bad about that? You should be happy now."

"Don't pretend you don't know about it."

"Jeanette figures he just went out hunting."

"He's dead. They found him under the ice."

"My God!" he said. He wondered if there was some minor inflection in his voice that he wasn't even aware of that might have just revealed that he was hiding something. "Sure, I never got on with him but nobody deserves that," he said, his eyes bloated with an exaggerated concern that was hiding a much deeper concern that knew no form or expression. "Does Mom know?"

"I called her."

"Where is she?"

"I know you're hiding something. Besides, it's no use. They caught Michael at the Hospital. He was almost dead from antibiotic allergies but they somehow managed to save him. He hasn't spoken yet, but his friend says you were with them and you were keeping him in the garage."

"What a lie!"

"Give up, Jackie. Give up. I'd be angry with you, but I know it's all my fault. Oh, God, why?"

"You don't think I did it, do you? I can't believe it. I wouldn't be surprised if you did it just to pin it on me. Of course I'd be the obvious suspect, but I know you and your rotten schemes."

"There's blood on the floor, Jackie! You can't hide it. You can't." She sprang up and threw her arms around him. "Jackie, I don't know what happened to me. I know you killed him. I know it. I know you wanted to save Mom. Jackie, Jackie," she ran her quivering hands through his hair as she pressed her breasts against him.

He had to control himself. She hadn't told anyone yet. There was still time. He could escape to another city with Jeanette. They had to leave immediately.

"You fucking bitch," he finally said. "It was an accident. He attacked us in the garage and I lost control. All that anger came out and I just couldn't stop. When it was over I freaked out. You'd better not tell anyone. It is all your fault. You just sat there smiling as he slowly sank his cock into this house. You let me down. You let our family down!"

"I'm so sorry. I loved Jerome and I was afraid that he loved Jeanette. I thought there was no way it would work between you and her so I wanted to keep you apart and have her going out with Michael or someone else. Then Jerome could have been mine. That's why I never delivered the letter."

"At least Jeanette cares about me," he yelled into the sobbing heap still nestled in his chest. "Jerome doesn't give a fuck about you."

"I know. I know. I was so foolish to think he could ever love me. Can't you be nice to me just once? Why are we always fighting? It never used to be that way. Don't you remember the way we used to play hopscotch in the sand together with dad? The way he used to draw the lines with that big piece of chalk he kept in his desk?"

"That was when I could still trust you. When you still cared about what happened to Mom."

"How could you imply..."

"How? Are you blind? You're a double-dealing bitch. You suck the life out of people like a lamprey. You sit there with your prim little curls and bright blue ribbons, smiling while you're scheming to drag everyone down to your level."

"Jackie...I'm sorry."

"All for a looser like Jerome. I can't believe it."

"I'm so sorry. I did it out of love. I can't help it if I love him. Can't a person commit a noble crime if they do it out of love?"

"No."

"You're so cruel." She loosened her grip and slid off his body as if all bones inside her were suddenly liquefied and collapsed on the floor. His anger softened and he suddenly felt sympathy for her.

"Can't you see? I hated him so much. I made all sorts of wild plans to kill him. But there was no way I would have gone through with any of them. It wasn't premeditated like you think."

"No?" she said in a trusting tone that made him feel there was still some kind of outside chance that people might believe his story.

"The bastard attacked us. He found Michael and me in the garage and came after us with a hoe. That's why Michael's in the hospital. I had to defend him. Without Jeanette, he was all I had. It would have been so much easier if you had stuck with me from the start like we agreed."

Maria looked down at her feet and stuck her index finger in her mouth. She started groaning and swaying back and forth in time to some kind of inimical and unheard music and then suddenly let out a desperate shriek. Jackie thought of a delusional woman he once saw on a street corner that was convinced that her imaginary baby has just died in a fire. Feeling a new urge to protect his sister and hang on to a past that was rapidly disintegrating, he ran his hand over her hair, trying to imagine the older sister he once looked up to, the one who showed him how you could skim the foam off the tip of a wave and keep it in a jar. A second shriek came and his gaze dropped to the floor. A dark pool was rapidly growing around his feet like a red velvet mantle. Maria looked up, sputtering and spitting, her face smeared with blood. She fell back against the wall and screamed as she thrust out her hand. Then Jackie saw it on the floor. Like a fat pink worm washed up from a crimson ocean the disembodied tip of her finger lay at his feet in front of him.

"Maria!"

"No. I deserve it. It's all my fault. Go away now. Leave me here. My life is worthless now. I can't stand being myself anymore."

"We have to call the hospital! I'll do it."

"No."

"Yes. I have to. You'll bleed to death."

"No, go. I can do it. You have to protect her. She loves you. Go while you still can. They'll be here any minute. I know it." Blood still spilling from her knuckle, she picked up the phone and started to dial.

Jackie shivered as he kissed her on the forehead. He'd never seen her so debased, so vulnerable. He let his head drop into her shoulder as she lifted the blood-wet receiver to her ear.

"Go," she yelled. "You haven't much time."

Jackie felt faint and pulled his stomach in with his hands.

"Go!"

"Just..."

"It's your only chance."

Jackie kissed her again and ran out the door. She was right. He had to go. There was no hiding now. They'd have no trouble proving he did it. The worst part was what he would tell Jeanette. There was no way he could tell her the truth. It would kill her for sure. But if not, what would he say? What convoluted morass of lies would he use to save their love? Maybe if they went out to the old fair grounds together some moment of inspiration might come up and guide him.

He opened the garage door where Jeanette was waiting.

"Let's go," he said.

"You forgot your stuff."

"I decided I didn't need it."

"This is so romantic," she said, smiling in anticipation.

"We have to get to the fair grounds."

Jackie took her hand and helped her mount his motorcycle. He got on in front of her and wrapped her hands around his waste. He could hear her the gentle sniffle of air eddying through her tiny nostrils and the warm pulse of her breasts against his back. She squeezed him as they rolled into motion. A moment later all he could hear was the screaming of his Triumph as they raced towards the main highway.

### IV

The once-great Ferris wheel creaked in the cold dry wind - an abandoned metal siege weapon towering into the stark and cloudless sky. Desperately struggling to break free and once again spin through the air like a giant pinwheel it was now immobilized by the years of rust and broken hydraulics, left in a state of permanent abeyance like a cripple in a hospital ward with no family or friends to claim him. Jackie took Jeanette's hand and lifted her onto his shoulders so she could jump the wire fence that sectioned off the fair grounds from the world outside. She caught her shirt on a sharp metal protrusion on the way over, but managed to undo herself quickly enough that Jackie was able to shimmy up the wire mesh as soon as she had started climbing down on the other side.

"It's so desolate here," she said. Jackie hit the ground and tumbled over.

"It's a fucking waste land. I can't believe that anyone would ever have wanted to come here - even when it was working." He thought back to a moment almost ten years ago when he had came by himself and wanted to enter but instead lost nerve and looked on in fear and confusion at the maddening crowds lining up at the front gate.

"Oh, come on. Remember our first night?" She spun around and wrapped her arms around his thin wiry frame.

"I'm not all serious. I guess it's cooler now that there's nobody here. It gives it a kind of ghostly quality."

"Do you think ghosts are real? I heard someone say that they swirled around us in the air all the time waiting for children to be born so they could enter their bodies."

"Lining up for another crack at life."

"Just like people used to line up here for a ride on one of these," she pointed over to the old roller coaster with all its wooden beams and buttressing sub-beams corroded from years of salted truculent air.

" _Don't mind the rotted winches and rusty cables, have a go at life, ladies and gentlemen_ ," he said through the cone of his cupped hands like a hawker at a fair.

"Life's not all so bad. Just wait till we can get away."

_Get away_ , the words rattled around in his head like old bumper cars. They didn't have much time to sight see before they would have to hit the road.

"Why so philosophical?" he asked, hiding his distraction beneath the rhetoric of a question whose answer he was not really waiting for.

"Well, you know...I told you I had something to tell you," she said in a grave tone that suddenly caught his attention scared him. Perhaps there was something inside of her that wanted to be rid of him and that same part of her wished he were someone else, someone better than he was.

"We can talk later," he said.

Jeanette pulled up the hood of her mantle and grinned impishly, her eyes now comfortably rested in the intertwining mesh of shadows wove by the moonlight across her face. In this dark interplay she became a mysterious figure from a fairy tale, cast momentarily from the vapory fabric of dusk itself only to draw him into some kind of sickly narcotic submission. And afterwards: death. Death at the hands of the waves, death in the breath of the flowers, and death under the renegade gaze of the wild intrepid night – so voluptuous in its snowy beauty.

"Don't you want to hear my secret?" she uttered from the depths of the woolly hood.

"Let it wait," he said with a hush. He had enough of his own secrets to worry about. He wanted to push her away but something about the sheer exhilaration of being a fugitive, the heavy brine-scented air, and the brittle innocence her eyes - a virgin sheet of paper craving to be scribbled on - suddenly took grip. He pulled her up against his chest and tightened his arms around her.

"Oh, I like this!" she said in a way that made him feel manly and secure.

"You'll like this even better," he said adventurously. He kissed her and stuck his tongue inside her mouth in one clumsy thrust. She groaned. The smell of her perfume wafted up from the milky bouquet of her half-open shirt. Michael was right. He needed someone or something to keep him nailed to the ground. Keep all the dark roads inside him boarded shut and permanently snowed over. If he were left alone he'd follow his self-destructive instincts to the end of the Earth. Jeanette was the one. He could tether himself to her without sacrificing any of his most cherished inner values. She'd be a part of it all. They could fight against the bland torpor of workaday existence and adult life, raging on like a blazing beacon of truth from their renegade hut on the shore.

He felt a tingling sensation in his thighs as he kissed her head and face repeatedly, running his hands up and down her back as she blew softly into his ear.

"Not here," she said.

She took the lead this time, guiding him by gentle touch of her hand to what looked like an abandoned confectioners. Jackie kicked at the rotted door until it cracked on its hinges. They walked inside. The floor was covered in old crusted blankets as if someone many years ago had stumbled on the place intending to use it for the same reason. He took off his jacket and laid it on the ground. She pressed him up against the stained pink and yellow wall and kissed him only once before unbuttoning his shirt.

"It's too cold," he said, stopping her from pulling it off. "I need at least some warmth."

She unzipped her pants and let them fall to the floor. His eyes were immediately drawn to the silky hot runnel between her legs. A few brown hairs crept out from under her panty lines, festooning down the white stucco of her skin like elegantly carved baroque patterns on a wall. In brute ignorant passion he ripped off his pants and tried to plunge inside her in the same motion, stuffing his tongue in her mouth as he did so as though to quiet any notion of resistance.

She spit out his tongue and pulled back. "We can't when we're standing up," she said with a laugh.

"Why not?"

He held her in his arms and pushed her against the wall, _giving it_ to her in a way he knew would prove to her that she was _his_ girl. He dropped to his knees and let her body unfurl backwards onto the cold floor. It felt better than before. He was now party to a palette of dull but strangely evocative sensations he never knew existed. Sex with a condom was sex in black and white by comparison.

He thrust into her again and again, but as he did he sensed himself gradually surrendering to her, his guard collapsing like a sail in dead waters, a rush of uncomfortable associations suddenly flying through his head: blood, murder, crucifixion, dagger. There she was before him, pinned up by his penis as if impaled on a holy sword, supine on a medieval altarpiece. _Knowing I'll murder you again, knowing I'll murder you again tonight_ , he sang inside his swimming head, recalling some song he remembered hearing but never understood. Sex was like murdering somebody and yourself at the same time. Violating both body and spirit. He pictured himself in the garage pounding the hoe into John's bleeding head as he continued to rise higher and higher on her wave of passion. And then his freezing body, its head grinning with Jeanette's smile. Somewhere in this listless boring world man's primitive instincts to kill another had survived in the form of intercourse.

He kissed her as he came and then he let her fragile body crumble backwards onto the bleak unmatted floor. Her hair was scraggly and her face unzipped, revealing a host of her deepest emotions that normally lay hidden beneath the calm veneer of her silky gaze.

"Jackie, I've never seen you so vulnerable before," she whispered. Even with his scraggly hair and black jacket, he looked so boyish. His light hair and eyes, his thin arms and hairless chest, his manner: almost ashamed of his own beauty.

"That's exactly what I was thinking about you! But I need to get my pants, we have to run." Jeanette's eyes were suddenly downcast. "I'm sorry. I'm just afraid that someone will find us."

"Can't we stay like this for just a minute? I wish I could lie here with you all night."

"Well," he admired her frail figure and thought of all the times he'd never stopped to enjoy a brief moment of serenity. He was always so tight, so knotted up inside.

"Well, what?"

"OK."

He found his pants and pulled them up his legs, the cloth brushing over his cold dimpled skin. He curled up beside her and put his arm around her.

"We really have to talk," she said.

"About what?"

"Well, the real reason..."

"For what?"

"For why we just did it the way we did."

"Did what?"

"Forget it," she said sharply. "I'll tell you later when you're in a better mood."

Her expression soured and for a moment she looked like a potential enemy, the type of person who might have a vested interest in witnessing his demise. He had never seen her expression so cold and distant. "Later?" he asked as though to appease her.

"It's about us," she continued demurely and then threw up her arms in frustration.

"Later," he repeated, but this time as a statement. "We have to run." If it was a cute little lover's secret, he didn't have time. If it were something bigger and more devastating, he'd rather not know at all.

"Let's go," he said.

"Jackie, calm down. I never thought you'd react so negatively."

"We have to go."

She turned her head down and a tear fell from her eye. He wanted to comfort her but couldn't. The primeval playground opened up before him with all its jeering mobs lining up just to take a shot at him and the white-faced adults standing grimly on the sidelines shouting out orders telling him who he was and what to do. As he looked down at her he felt utterly alone.

"Get dressed," he said impatiently. She got dressed, her face swelling, her eyes on the verge of even more tears.

"No need to be so mean. It's not my fault."

"Let's just get out of here," he said. It was too dangerous to stay in one place. They had to leave before anyone caught up to them.

### V

Jackie wiped the thin white moss of snow from the seat of his motorcycle and gestured for Jeanette to get on. The sun had melted into the dusk and the fair grounds were coming to life with a dizzying interplay of shadows and snow phantoms, whirled across the barren landscape by the derelict gusting of the wind. He took one last look at the Ferris wheel and ignited the engine, Jeanette shivering between his thighs like a lost child. He ran his hand just once through her hair and dropped the clutch, sending his metal and chrome dynamo into a slow rolling motion.

"Where are we going?" she asked with naïve curiosity.

"To the lighthouse. We can stay there tonight if we're careful."

"Careful of what?"

"We can't get caught."

"You seem so edgy. Like you were being chased by something."

"Do you want to go back to that rotten school?"

"No. But it's not as if people will be sending out regiments of paratroopers after us."

"Maybe not, but we can't risk it. With John missing the police might be nosing around for clues."

"He must be back by now. I wouldn't worry. I bet if we went back to your house right now he'd be sitting right there."

Jackie nodded. "We have to hurry."

"Okay. But you have to settle down."

"Just give me a chance."

Jackie pressed on the accelerator, turning the sound of the engine into a natural coda to their conversation. They drove past all the old roads he remembered as a child. Back then each was an adventure in itself. Every road had its own starting and finishing point. Some were wider than others, some were narrow and crooked and tapered down into footpaths before disappearing completely, while others led to highways or old barns, and others still were dead ends. No matter what, each had its own story to tell. Yet as they successively passed the turnoffs to these once magical roads it seemed like all their allure had worn away. In the dusk light they had become little more than lifeless allotments of dirt and grass positioned strategically in space. Geometric causalities, sequences of points, agglomerations of snow and trees. If anything they represented not portals to colorful new adventures, but potential traps in which he could get cornered by the police with their flashing red lights and stifling packs of German Shepherds.

He thought he heard a siren as they passed the turn off to the house. There was no way they could go back there. Maria would be there telling the cops that he'd bitten off her finger as a warning not to rat him out. A mile further down the road they passed a police car coming from the opposite direction. He slowed until it was no more than a blip in his mirror and then accelerated to almost sixty. The lighthouse was a good forty miles up the road. Once they'd gotten out of the danger zone he could breathe more easily.

Just before the turn off to the main highway to the City, a police roadblock came into view, glowing in the distance like a giant road flare with its random pattern of brilliant orange pylons and bright yellow rain coats. It looked like they were stopping every car for questioning. They had to turn back.

He cut sharply into a U turn and skidded. Jeanette's uneasy hands dug into his legs for safety as he accelerated to sixty and started driving back the way they came.

"What was that all about?" asked Jeanette.

"Don't know. There's a side road along the beach we can take. It'll be a lot faster. Nobody knows about it except the locals."

He turned onto a narrow road obscured by overhanging branches with sweeping lacerations cut into the snow by Skidoos and cross-country skiers. The further along they advanced, the lower the branches hung until they had to slow to almost a walking pace with Jeanette in front brushing aside the waist-high branches as they inched ahead. The sun had set completely by the time they broke out of the woods and onto a strip of open beach. He cut across a small service road and then over an acre of what looked like a poorly equipped summer campsite before accessing a second even smaller service road.

Jackie stopped the bike and wrapped his arms around Jeanette.

"It's getting too dark to go further. I miscalculated. The sun set sooner than I thought and the road block fucked me up."

"Do you know any places to stay around here?"

"The beach is covered with all sorts of old cabins and abandoned sheds. The bad economy forced a lot of people into bankruptcy and then the bank seized their beach property. Now half these places are uninhabited."

"So we might even have a choice!"

"But I'd feel safer in a lighthouse. When the ocean's frozen over, the lighthouse keepers rarely come in. A few ships have gone onto the rocks in the fog because of it. They just think that because it's icy by the beach that it must also be icy all the way out to the middle of the ocean so there won't be any boats to worry about."

"There's a closer lighthouse?"

"There's one every mile or so. I just liked the one we were originally going to because it's so far away and secluded."

"It must have been cool to grow up by the sea. Dad always said when you cast something in the water it always came back."

Jackie imagined John's body bloated beyond recognition by the salt water to some ghastly form twice its original size, rolling up onto the beach like a dead whale. He felt like a liar and a clown. How would he react if he told her the truth that very instant instead of waiting for years as he had been planning to? Maybe she would understand and realize that it was all an accident. Or maybe she would feel liberated and relieved - after all, if it wasn't for John they wouldn't have been in this mess to begin with. But these were all fantasies and long shots – inside he knew what she would really do.

"Lets get out of here. I know a place about half a mile away. We'll have to walk. The ground is too squishy here."

They walked under the blanched gaze of a remote indifferent moon that feigned grandiose promise of love and romance but only delivered cold white light. Jackie put his bike in neutral and rolled it along beside them like an ailing mule. They were silent until the probing white eye of the lighthouse became barely visible protruding from the shore in the distance. Its outline could be made out under the dim light of a few nearby houses. Jackie coughed when he reached the door.

"You sound sick."

"I don't want to go through that all over again. You should have seen Michael."

He knelt down to tie his shoe, grabbing Jeanette's leg for balance. He let his hand drop to the ground. In the soil felt something like a pile of twigs. Then the sensation became cold, dense and metallic metallic. He closed his fist around whatever it was and held his hand up to the light of the moon.

"Jackie," Jeanette exclaimed.

Jackie opened his palm and stared in it as though hypnotized by a crystal ball. There was a couple of twigs and the skeleton of a bird's wing. He threw it out into the darkness.

"I thought I'd found a key."

"Some key," she said. "I think it was a gull."

"How do we get in?"

Jackie tried the door handle. It opened. He was immediately suspicious.

"Wait here," he said and slipped behind the door. A minute later he reappeared in the faint penumbral light. "It seems OK. The place is either abandoned or the keeper's been away for a while. Nothing in the kitchen. There's usually food or something."

That night Jeanette slept with her clothes on. The next morning Jackie awoke to the sound of a truck outside. Then he remembered. He'd forgotten to hide his motorcycle. If Maria or Rosie had blabbed they'd be combing the beaches for sure. He'd neglected to cover his tracks. His heart lurched into his throat. He opened what remained of an old curtain and peered through the dusted cobwebbed glass. A police van was crouched outside by a large boulder and all around was a growing crowd. An officer was inspecting his motorcycle with admiration as though it was a museum piece. He ducked down and slithered across the floor to the other side of the room. Jeanette had just awoken and had a comfortable oblivious smile on her face. He cast a darting glance out the rear window that faced a stretch of land between the sea and the waterfront. It was clear, so they obviously hadn't surrounded the entire building. The thought occurred to him that he should tell Jeanette everything so he could let her escape unharmed. It emerged from its cocoon and wriggled around whitely and wingless in the cold darkness for a moment and then died. He didn't have the strength. He'd deny the murder to his deathbed to save her love.

"What's up," she said brightly as she stretched her arms around his neck.

"Cops."

"Here? What could they want?"

"To send us away. Those fucking bastards want to ruin it for us, Jeanette. They hate us because we don't want to live like them."

"We can't let them," she said. "We have to escape. We have to save our love."

Jackie gestured for her to get up. He could already hear the sound of footsteps coming up the spiral walkway to the front door.

"Hurry," he said. "We still have a chance if we sneak out the back and into the water."

She pulled up her pants just as there was a knock on the door.

"Let's go."

Jackie took her by the hand over to the window that faced the sea in quarter view. He pushed it open. It moved slowly on its rusted hinges until it opened fully. There was just enough room for them to climb through one at a time. Outside there was a twenty-foot drop to the ground, but they'd just have to live through it.

The door knocked again. Jackie lifted up Jeanette and sent her feet first half way out the window. She squeezed through and let her body slide outwards against the cement outer wall of the lighthouse as she hung on to the ledge.

The door knocked again, but this time in an aggressive sequence of impatient banging.

Jeanette let go and Jackie watched her as she dropped safely to the ground and fell backwards. He cocked up his leg and once he was halfway through tried to lift the second. The door crashed open as he stood there, one leg on the ground and the other out the window. A policeman stepped in and stopped in a surprisingly casual way that was more avuncular and supportive than angry or punitive. He looked like he could be one of John's brothers, a smarmy look of sanctimonious complacency smeared across his rippled round face. Yes, _live like me_ , his eyes seemed to demand of everything in the room.

"You're under arrest," the man said from the other side of the room as Jackie scrambled to get his second leg up and out. "If you come peacefully we can just ask some questions and everything will be fine and you might still have a future."

Jackie tried to lunge out the window but it was no use, his pants were stuck on a hanging nail.

"Don't even try, son," the policeman said in a gentle monotone, but to Jackie it was more brash and hectoring than anything he would ever hear again.

Jackie tore his pants away from the nail, pulled up his leg and leaped head first out the window. His feet had already vanished from view like an eel's tail in a bed of seaweed before the policeman could even cross the room. Jackie's body tumbled as he fell on the ground below but somehow he managed to recover and spring quickly up to his feet. He waved his arms around frantically to counteract the continuing momentum but stumbled and fell face first on the ground. Jeanette was standing about ten feet in front of him.

"Over there," a voice yelled.

Jackie jumped up and darted away from the building, grabbing Jeanette's hand and running as fast as he could to the oceanfront. A crowd of people slowly followed like cattle curious as to a passing procession. From the corner of his eye he thought he saw Maria and his mother crying in each other's arms somewhere in the distance. Although he only caught a quick glimpse, Kathleen was wearing a dress he had never seen before that made her look like someone more distinguished and successful than she really was. But he couldn't stop. Not now. He let go of Jeanette's hand and splashed into the freezing knee-high waves and ran out far enough for him to duck under the water. There must have been a recent sewage dump because the ice had melted but the rest of the shore was frozen over. He turned back to see Jeanette frantically crying out twenty feet behind him. She couldn't swim. He threw his arms up in the air in desperation. The shore was now lined with police and bystanders.

"Give up," someone yelled through a megaphone. The voice had a clinical ring to it as if it were coming over a hospital PA system. "Let the girl go," it said.

"Fuck you all!" he shouted as he charged back through the water to Jeanette. She was crying desperately. He knew he should be running in the opposite direction but all he could do was give in and follow the tow of the invisible cord tying him to her. He couldn't leave her alone. Not with them. They'd brainwash her and send her away to some home for fucked-up teenagers.

A policeman rolled up his pants and stormed into the water.

"Don't let him come near you," he said to Jeanette.

"Fuck off, pig," Jeanette shouted.

"Don't let him near," the cop yelled as Jackie approached her. "He's under arrest for killing your father."

"Fuck off," she said like a mannequin as though she were incapable of processing what had just been said. "Leave us alone. We want to be alone." If the cop had said that snow was white she still would have told him off.

The officer was now only twenty feet away from her. Jackie felt a large stone under his feet. It was heavy but not too big to throw. He plunged his hands downwards and tugged it away from the seabed. He summoned all his strength and hurled it at the cop like a shot put. It hit the man on the shoulder and he fell back into the water.

"Come on," Jackie said. He grabbed her arm and ran through the knee-deep water away from the crowd and along the coast. The slender gray straw of a gun barrel poked above the crowd like an ominous victory flag. A shot blasted through the air. Then smoke.

"Stop," a voice yelled through the megaphone.

Jackie dropped Jeanette's hand and continued at an even more frantic pace. He was about twenty feet in front of Jeanette. Another shot rang out. Jackie's body flipped as if suddenly snapped by a great invisible hand. He dropped knee-deep into the water.

"They got my arm! Those fuckers got my arm!" he screamed. Jeanette rushed to his side. An instant later, two policemen that had been following the couple along the shore dove into the water. Before Jackie knew it they were surrounded like sharks around a drowning mule.

"You're crazy, young lady. He's under arrest for killing your father. He's likely to be armed and dangerous."

"He didn't," she cried. "You're all liars. You just want to keep us apart. We're not that stupid."

Jackie's eyes were hard and angry, but underneath Jeanette could sense something weaker and more intangible that made her feel uneasy. She knew him well enough by now. His eyes were really begging forgiveness. A feeling erupted inside her and suddenly she was a balloon rapidly expanding to the point of bursting or floating on air – she didn't know which. She wanted to hate him, but she wanted to believe him first. She could do neither. She could only love him regardless of what they said.

"Fucking crap! I didn't kill anyone. I didn't." He suddenly lost all composure, screaming like a man condemned to eternal solitude in a cold white room. He turned away from the unforgiving jury and looked pleadingly to Jeanette. "I didn't Jeanette. I didn't. They're lying. They just want to take you away. They want to ruin it for us."

He reeled around desperately. There was no use fighting. There wasn't even a cliff to ride off on his motorcycle and plunge defiantly into the ocean. Jeanette's mouth opened in utter bewilderment as though to utter some tiny vulnerable sound but nothing came. Their eyes met and he shrunk to a quarter size. It was like the time she stood gazing at him after Johnson threw the stone, only magnified through some great cosmic microscope.

"You're under arrest," shouted a voice. The gun that had been waving about in the crowd came to a dead stop, its hollow pike of steel aimed directly at him.

"You can't have him. He's mine. You can't take him away. It's not fair. I love him," cried Jeanette. A police officer pulled her gently away from him and restrained her.

"Keep your fucking hands off her!"

An ominous white-clad figure emerged from the crowd and injected a colorless fluid into her arm with a slim plastic syringe. In an instant her limbs went heavy and her face bloomed with false bliss.

"Jackie," she said, holding her hand out to him as the police cuffed his blood-covered wrists. "I love you whatever you did. We can still have each other." The white-clad figure then carried her through the shin deep water to the beach and laid her down on a stretcher. The last group of policemen closed in on Jackie from all sides and grabbed him.

"No!" Jackie screamed in desperation. He was being carted off to the electric chair. He kicked their legs. He bit their hands. He spit in their faces. None of them flinched. There were a million Johns in the world, all equally hideous. He watched the now still figure of Jeanette shrink in the distance as they took hold of him and carried him now crying towards a group of cars.

His mother was waiting for him, soaked in tears beside Maria. He couldn't bear to look at her. Instead he turned his head out towards the water. The waves seemed almost to slow down and with them time itself had elongated. Everything was in slow motion. There were massive sheets of ice like giant arrowheads floating in the water. There were whitecaps slurping miserably towards the sand and mud banks of the shore. There was Jeanette, now a frozen pink blur surrounded by a chorus of little blue men. And in the distance he imagined the cloud formations on the horizon had assumed the figure of _The Gray Orchid_ frowning in utter contempt at the scene laid out before him.

Kathleen broke away from the front of the bewildered crowd and ran up to Jackie as the policemen wrestled him back towards the paddy wagon. At first she could only watch in utter disbelief as they dragged him kicking into the cold metal vehicle. This was her son. Nobody could do that to _her_ son. She ran up to the door as the policemen started to close it.

"No!" she hollered. Then she rained her fists wildly down on the policemen's arms, trying to get one last look at Jackie before they shut the damp gravestone-like door. The policemen seemed confused and pulled away. She threw the door open and looked inside. Jackie sat in the far corner of the vehicle with cold expressionless sesame seed eyes as if he had just been just lobotomized.

"Jackie! I did this to you. It's all my fault. We'll get you out. We'll save you."

Jackie turned his head and looked into her dark horrified eyes. He wanted to tell her he was sorry. He wanted to tell her it was an accident. Yet, he couldn't. There had been far too many lies already and this would be just one more. Part of him really had wanted John to die. Part of him wanted to liberate her from his sickening grasp.

Kathleen started crying and his emotions snapped: a brittle fan belt thudding against a pool of coagulated pump oil. Feelings were useless. Instead of sympathy he could only feel indifference. He wanted to care, but couldn't. It was hopeless. He was defeated. Defeated by life with only jail or adulthood to look forward to. Both were ultimately the same. Both meant bowing down to the torpor of society. Both meant failure. Both would ultimately push him away from Jeanette and destroy their love. However much he loved her, it could never work – it would lead to the same dull conclusion of everyone else's love. The future shrunk around him like a wet leather noose in hot desert air.

"I only wanted to protect you," Jackie said with little emotion, his mouth half closed.

His thoughts returned to Jeanette. His skin tightened when he wondered once again what her secret could be. Something so dreadful and hideous he couldn't bare to visualize it scurried out from the corners of his deepest being. It screamed and choked, reeling like a beheaded rooster and then ran renegade into even deeper and more desolate darknesses than it had inhabited before. He imagined a baby inside her belly with its embryonic frog-like features and skin like a mesh of fibrous veins. Why else would they not have used a condom the night before? He had been so naïve not have picked up on this earlier. He hated even the thought of a baby. If she truly understood him and was equal to the lofty task of their love she wouldn't have seemed so happy about the prospect of telling him. What if it looked like John? He'd never live down the guilt. Loving Jeanette was enough of a reminder of his crime. He wished his arm were elastic so he could reach out of the van and across the beach and stick his hand inside her and make sure there was nothing inside. He pictured himself nestled inside in a big white sweater with nautical motifs sitting in an armchair lecturing to a whining little child about hunting and the importance of homework. The diapers, the pacifiers, the wretched little toys, the sickening women in pastel shirts coming over to gape at the baby while it sat wining in their living room.

Emotions now drained away, Jackie's eyes suddenly lifted and he looked towards his mother's pained and crumpled figure and then beyond it. He saw the clouds pull and rip away at each other. He saw a plane. Moving in its reflection in the water was a boat - possibly an icebreaker. He thought he could even see some hovering ice formations swirling in the currents generated by the ship's steady motion. Crevices and crags opened in great stellar blue sheets under the cruel heat of the sun. A gust of cold air blew across his face and a policeman pulled Kathleen's limp figure away from the door and slammed it. Something in her eyes said that she would come to forgive him and maybe already had and would end up loving him even more than she ever had. But that thought alone was somehow darker and more unsettling than it should have been. The motor rumbled and he heard the squeaking of the suspension as he felt the paddy wagon roll into motion. It was clear to him that he had finally lost. But even if he had won, he had still lost. There was no way out. He looked around the van. Now there was only the cool darkness of the small metal compartment to comfort him, and even that much was imaginary.

END

Thank you for your time! If you enjoyed this book please leave a rating or review and check out my other novels on line! David M. Antonelli

