 
### Boiling Point

Stories by Patrick Anderson Jr.

### TABLE OF CONTENTS

GOOD HELP IS HARD TO FIND

PREDATORY

LOOSE

WELCOME TO PARADISE

JADED

THE RED PURSE

THE CONSUMERS

ACE OF SPADES

NOBODY KNOWS, NOLA

DESERTED

* * *

CREDITS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

### Boiling Point

Patrick Anderson Jr.

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013 Patrick Anderson Jr.

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### Good Help is Hard to Find

The church altar looms in front of me and I clasp my hands between my legs, bowing my head. Mike leans in towards me and I feel this tension in my throat, like the closer he gets the harder it is to breathe. I try not to let it get to me, but it's hard when I just know he's going to say something to piss me off.

"What're we doing here, Brig?" he asks.

I stay quiet, keep my eyes on the large, detailed crucifix hanging up on the back wall. This area's got money. It's got to, to keep a cross like that up on the wall of a building this fucking big. One of the best looking crosses I've ever seen. Or the worst depending on how you look at it. Creepy, all that detail in the spikes around Jesus' head, the nails in his palms and feet, the hole in his side and the bloody tears on his face.

Me personally, I'm not religious. But if I had to choose, I'd rather have one of the cheap ones myself; like what they've got over in Little Havana, where the church isn't even really a church, just a room with lines of chairs and a picnic table, two popsicle sticks set up on a stand. The type of cross where Jesus looks like a mannequin and the nails in his hands and feet are just dots drawn with permanent marker. At least then you can just feel bad about the story. Listen to the gospel and shake your head, give a quick nod to the heavens then go on about your business.

But this five foot, thousand dollar crucifix they've got over here, carved out of marble and hanging low to the ground, it makes my forehead hurt from frowning so hard. It's no wonder Catholic people are so damn religious. That shit'd scare anybody to their knees.

I cross myself and kiss my fingers and Mike, he can't leave it alone. He leans in towards me again.

"Brig, why're you doing that?" he asks. "You ain't Christian."

"I know that, Mike," I say. "And this is Catholic."

"You ain't Catholic neither."

"I know, Mike."

"Then why're you doing that?"

I don't answer and he shakes his head.

"You don't make no sense sometimes."

I look over and try to see through Mike's big block head, to the other end of the pew I'm sitting in, third row, to the left of the center aisle facing the altar. I do this sometimes, stare at Mike and try to see what others see. Or don't see. Used to be I didn't try to see the truth. Used to be I just tried to convince myself everybody else was crazy and I was the only one left with any sense. But I know that's not true, which you'd think would set me free, right?

Wrong. Only in books and movies. Nothing ever gets right in real life. It just sits around until it rots and dies.

Mr. Black paid a lot a money for the shrink he sent me to after my breakdown. I mean, normal circumstances I'd have just been put off in a corner somewhere, left to my own devices. But in my line of work there's an image you've got to portray: cool, calm, calculated. And standing there bawling at your boss's daughter's wedding then punching the groom out for patting you on the back is just _not_ a professional way to go about things.

Mike showed up a few days later, and hasn't left me alone since. The shrink, I told him about Mike sitting out in the waiting room picking at his fingernails, and the doc just stared at me and nodded and said "mm hmm, mm hmm," over and over again until, I swear, I thought I was going to have to shoot him just to shut him up.

When I was done he told me I had stress-induced schizophrenia and I'd be alright when I relaxed and saw "things how they really are." Then he handed me a prescription for Clozapine and pushed me out the door. Month later, I'd gained ten pounds and got this crazy craving for pork rinds (I fucking hate pork rinds; even when I was craving them, I fucking hated them. You know what that's like? To crave something you can't fucking stand?) I could barely lift my gun, had to use both hands just to grip the barrel, recoil damn near knocked me off my feet. And Mike was gone, sure, but I was useless, crying all the time and asking people all these random questions about meanings of life and all that. Mr. Black, being the man he is, he said good help's hard to find nowadays and told me to get off the meds. Stress or no stress, I see what I see, long as I do what I do best.

But I try sometimes anyways, every once in a while. Try to see what the doc says is the "reality" of the situation.

Mike isn't real.

"I'm paying my respects," I say to him, glancing at the crucifix. "You cross yourself when you're paying respects to a cross."

"But you don't even believe in heaven."

I look back at Mike, the haggard face, the ruffled shirt and crumpled pants. Another reason I didn't believe anybody at first that Mike wasn't actually there: if he's really a figment of my imagination, why _this_ guy? Mike looks like a plumber, all mushy and wrinkly and sagging around the edges. A foot shorter than me, couple years older too. Don't resemble me or anybody I've ever known in any way whatsoever. Never met anybody who liked bright colors the way he does: baby blue button-downs and cream shade slacks. And they're always a mess, greasy, like he washes them in olive oil.

Mike hates my dark suits too, says something about them every time I'm at the cleaners. Tries to convince me to trade my black shades in for orange or blue or even gray sunglasses. _Even gray would be better_ , he says. _It's just—the black ones are just so damn depressing_.

Looks me right in my face and says, _Brig, why do you dress like the devil's son?_

Gets damn annoying when you're standing at the counter paying for your dry cleaning and somebody's whispering that shit in your ears. And he smiles a lot. Big, toothy smiles. Makes me want to punch him in his goddamn mouth.

I stand up and straighten my suit coat, stepping into the church aisle. Mike jumps up and follows.

"You still haven't told me why we're here, Brig." Mike says. "You're not going to do what Mr. Black told you, are you? Please don't tell me you're going to do it, Brig. It's not right."

"It's my job Mike," I say, heading to the back of the church.

"I thought you said you were going to quit," he says.

I reach inside my coat to check my piece, sitting in the left pocket against my chest, the bulging silencer on the right.

"I never said that, Mike," I say quietly. I glance at him. "You did."

"But this isn't right Brig," he says. "It isn't right at all. It's bad, really really bad."

"Being broke is worse." I pause. "Being homeless is the shitter. You want us to be broke and homeless?"

"No," he says, pouting. "But why can't you just get a real job?"

"How about _you_ go get a real job," I say. "See if anybody'll hire you."

He grumbles behind me as I walk around the last pew, stopping beside the confession booths and sitting on the edge of the pew closest to them. The booths are mahogany, shaped like coffins with floor length wine-red curtains hanging from the top and enclosing the benches inside. The hum of a whispering voice drifts over to me and Mike, whose sitting in the pew right next to mine, stares at me.

"What if you become a fisherman?" he says.

I turn slowly towards him.

"A fisherman?"

"Yeah," he says. "We could buy a boat, head down to the Keys and push off from the coast. Cruise around the ocean, catch fish, eat some, sell some, go out for more. That sound good?"

"I don't know how to fish, Mike."

"Can't be that hard," he says, bringing his hands up into fists and placing one on top of the other, like he's holding a fishing rod. "How do you think all those other people down there do it? You just gotta find the right spot. I bet we'd find the perfect spot."

"I don't like fishing, Mike."

"Then what do you like?" he asks. He leans towards me, conspiratorially. "Killing?"

"I told you," I say. "It's a job."

"I hate to say it," he says, shaking his head. "But I wouldn't be around right now if you weren't doing this. They put me here to help you, you know."

"Help?" I say, then laugh. " _You're_ helping _me_? You've got some—" I pause and whip my head around to face him. "And who is 'they'?"

"They," he says, motioning around the church and turning to look at the crucifix up on the altar. "Him."

"Jesus Christ did not send you here to help me Mike."

"How do you know?"

"Because," I say quietly. "It doesn't happen like that. Jesus doesn't help people like me."

"Why do you have to be so negative?" Mike says in a chastising tone. "Nobody's all bad."

"Never said I was," I say. "Not that good neither."

I tense up as the voices in the confessional booth pause and the curtains flutter, the weight of steel in my pocket weighing my jacket down. The voices resume a moment later and I relax.

"We could leave right now," Mike says and I sigh. "I know you got some money saved up somewhere. We could take it and just go."

"Go where, Mike?"

"I don't know," he says. "Canada? England? I always wanted to go to England. Heard it's real nice over there. England would be good for you, for both of us."

I look at him and he stares back at me with his big, blue piercing eyes. I try again to see through him, see the church wall behind, see anything but him.

"You know," I say, cracking my knuckles. "I used to have a partner."

"Here we go," he says, throwing his hands up.

"No, Mike, really. I used to have a partner. Brown. Good man, Brown. You'd have liked him."

"I bet I would," he says.

"Brown was there the day you showed up, you remember?"

Mike stays quiet.

"Martinez job, Downtown. I was cleaning up when you just waltzed right in. You remember, Mike?"

"Yeah," he mumbles. "I remember."

"You remember what happened when you showed up?"

He stays quiet again, crossing his arms.

"You don't? Weeeell," I say, patting my stomach with fake satisfaction. "Allow me to jog your memory, Mike. Gladly. You walked in and—you remembering this, Mikey? You walked in and I told you to get the hell out, Brown asked me who the hell I was talking to, I pointed at you, and all of a sudden Mr. Black's sending me to shrinks, Brown wants a new partner, and I'm stuck with you, alone, but not _really_ alone, right? That sound about right, Mikey?" I pause here and stare at him and he's looking at the windows and the pews and the floor and the confession booths and everywhere but in my direction. "Now everybody thinks I'm crazy as all hell and I've got to hang out with your stupid ass all day long because you decided that I, quote unquote, 'need your help.'" I spin away from him, wiping the corners of my mouth. "If this is your idea of help, my friend, well," I chuckle, "I'm alright. Just fucking alright."

"Come on, Brig," Mike says, turning his head to the side and giving me a pleading look. "You can't swear in church. It's sacrilegious."

"It's a building."

I quickly duck my head as a figure emerges from behind the curtain of the left side confession booth, a young dark haired woman wearing a tight dress and high heels. She crosses herself standing in front of the booth and stares at the ground, walking quickly around the back pew to the center aisle and heading straight for the altar. Her shoes clack against the floor and the sound rings up to the concave ceiling, bouncing off the walls like a loosed atom. I keep my face turned a little so there's not much for her to see of me, wait until she's out of earshot then stand up and approach the booth.

"Brig, you don't have to do this."

I pause, clench my fists, then reach into my jacket for my piece. Pushing the curtain to the side, I sit down in the booth and pull the silencer from my other pocket. It touches the barrel of the gun with a soft click of metal against metal and I screw it on tightly. Deep breaths drift over from the priest on the other side of the wall and I can hear the scribble of a pen. I check the clip one more time then click it back in slowly.

I'm about to speak when the curtain in the entrance of the booth suddenly swishes to the side and Mike pops his head in. My gun hand shoots up reflexively, pointed directly at Mike's forehead, my breath catching in my throat, finger hovering over the trigger. He jumps back, scrunching up his face as if expecting a punch to the nose.

"What are you doing?" I hiss, bringing the gun down, slowly.

"Look at you, Brig," Mike says, pointing at me and the gun as if the combination explains all existence. "You're wired, man. You don't want to do this. This is a bad idea, Brig, you know it. We have to go."

"I'm trying to work," I whisper. "What'd I say about bothering me while I'm working?"

"I've got a real bad feeling about this, Brig. Come on, let's just leave. Please."

"No," I say firmly, pulling the curtain so it closes him out.

"Is everything okay?" the priest asks from next to me.

I check the silencer on the gun and flip the safety off, my hands trembling for the first time I can remember.

"Yeah," I say. "Just...nothing."

"That doesn't sound too convincing, my son," he says in this light, feminine voice. It's a real eerie sound, that disembodied voice in my ears, and I've got to peek through the small mesh screen separating us just to make sure there's actually somebody on the other side. I glimpse wrinkled skin and a white collar.

"Yeah," I say. "Well, I'm not too convinced myself."

"What's the problem?" he asks.

"I just came to, uh—confess," I say, then chuckle. "Isn't that what you do around here?"

"Yes, my son," he says gloomily. "That is what you do."

I grip the gun in both hands. On the other side of the curtain Mike's feet face me, standing directly behind the curtain. As I watch, they turn and walk away, soundless.

"I'm losing my mind, father."

The priest stays quiet and I chuckle again and realize what I keep chuckling at is the irony of the situation. Me— _me_ —in a confession booth with a priest. If he only knew. "Lost it already, actually," I add.

"Why do you say that?" he asks.

"It's Mike," I answer, loud enough that I'm sure Mike can hear, then I squeeze my eyes shut and rub my forehead. "Not Mike, me. And Mike."

"Okay," the priest says skeptically. "Who is Mike?"

"That's the thing," I say. "He's _nobody_. He's not even real. He's in my head, but I think that's the problem, you know? He's getting _in_ my head. He knows me. He's under my skin, making me second guess myself, making me think that maybe I should reconsider some things, you know? But I"—I pause, stare at my gun—"Thinking like that can get you killed in my line of work."

"What is it you might be reconsidering?" the priest asks, and I'm suddenly reminded of the head shrink's office, how he kept asking me questions, kept me talking, kept drawing circles and happy faces on his notepad, like I didn't notice. I realize then that Catholic priests are like holy psychiatrists or something, and the idea seems so ridiculous that I laugh, long and hard until the priest clears his throat.

"Sorry," I say, forcing the laughter back. "It's just, I'm starting to think I shouldn't be doing what I do. But it's hard to think like that because I never minded it before. And it isn't even like I mind it now, I'm just starting to think it might be—hurting me or something, without me knowing it, you know? That's all it is really. I don't want to screw myself up." I pause. "I mean, its guilt that's eating away at me, but not the type of guilt you'd think it was. I'm not sad for these schmucks out here, nothing like that. It's the things I could be doing that I'm not, you know? I've got dreams. Not like I grew up wanting to get in this business. Just sort of"—I close my eyes, take a deep breath—"happened. But still, it's like, I've got nothing to complain about right now. And I was happy until Mike showed up. So I'm wondering, is it just Mike making me feel like this or is this real?" I shake my head and stare at the mesh screen. "I can't even tell what real is anymore."

I pause and the priest clears his throat, doesn't say anything. I peek in the mesh screen again, same wrinkled skin and white collar.

"You're a man of God," I say. "You believe he created all this nonsense. So you tell me, what is real? I mean, how is it that Mike isn't real and all this crap is when everything in my head's telling me exactly the opposite?"

"My son..." the priest says, his voice sounding tired. There's a moment of silence and I wait, watching the mesh as if the priest's face is right there in front of me. He clears his throat again. "What are the sins you wish to confess?"

"That's just the thing, father," I say, throwing my hands up. "I'm not even Catholic. I've never confessed nothing to nobody a day in my life, with the exception of telling that shrink and my boss about Mike. And even then, I didn't tell them how I _really_ felt about it, just that he was there in the room. But if they had wanted to know what it was really like, I don't know what I would've told them. Like my brain's fighting with itself. Real brutal stuff, gladiator-style. So you asking me that, I don't even know where to _begin_." I bite my lip. "I'd never even think half the stuff I did was bad if it wasn't for Mike. It's just a job, you know? Just a fucking job." I pause. "Sorry about that. The swearing."

"This man you speak of," the priest says. "Mike, he sounds like he's trying to help you."

"But I don't need help," I say. "At least, I didn't. Not until he showed up."

"Maybe he showed up for a reason then."

"See," I say, shaking my head. "I'm not buying that. Mike keeps spewing that same crap but I'm not buying it because—how come it hasn't happened to nobody else?"

I can hear the priest shuffle around in his seat.

"My son," he says again, and no doubt about it now. He sounds tired. And aggravated. "Everybody is saved in different ways. It's how the lord works"

I sit back in my seat and fiddle with the gun between my hands, the curtain in front of me fluttering a bit. On the other side the church's silence feels like it's pressing on the outside of the booth. I imagine the dark haired woman with the tight dress and loud high heels on her knees at a pew, crossing herself repeatedly and staring at the statue of Christ in agony on the back wall.

"I just wonder sometimes," I say finally. "Is there a point? 'Cause I can't see it, if it's there."

"The Lord is the point, son," the priest says. "He is the point, and his will is our reasoning."

"That's great," I say, rolling my eyes. "Uplifting and all that, but what if the _reason_ I do what I do—the things Mike's telling me I _shouldn't_ be doing—ain't the reason that would necessarily piss off the man upstairs? Is there like, a person who calculates your thoughts and passes judgment on whether or not you _meant_ to do what you done?" I cough, swallow thickly. "I don't mean to hurt nobody, not emotionally at least. I just do what I'm told. And somebody else'd do it if I didn't. Like today." I pull back the hammer of my gun with a resounding _clack_. "I'm only here 'cause Mr. Black sent me. I didn't ask for it, I'm just doing my job, the job Mr. Black hired me to do. I don't know you from Joe fucking Schmoe, but Mr. Black knows you. And you probably know Mr. Black. I'm assuming you do, or he wouldn't have sent me here. Mr. Black's a lot of things, I'll say that, but mistaken's not one of them."

I stare at the mesh screen and see the wrinkled cheeks on the other side go slack.

"And," I continue. "If I don't take you out right now, there's a good chance Mr. Black's going to take care of both of us. What would you say is the reasoning behind it all then, huh? What's the _point_ of that? So we throw the self-defense issue in and I gotta ask, don't I got a lawful and spiritual right to protect myself? To provide for myself and survive by any means necessary? And what about you? What about your part in this? You obviously did something to piss Mr. Black off, something which probably weren't too Godly or whatever, something premeditated, malicious, deceitful, take your pick. This's just a job to me. So, who's on the back end of that moral dilemma? Wouldn't I be justified in doing my job _and_ scraping some scum off the street at the same time? Moving on with _my_ life, maybe getting saved in another way along the line? Or am I supposed to sacrifice myself so you can go on doing—whatever the fuck it is you do?"

I wait.

"I-I," the priest stutters out finally. "Mr. Black—I told him it was a mistake last week, Johnny came late and things just got—the cash goes—"

"That's another one," I say. "What about the economy? Does that account for anything? Did God take that into consideration when he created all these rules? I mean, what's a man supposed to do? Starve his way into heaven?"

"I just," the priest says, and I think he's crying, his voice sounds thick. "I need a few more days, a week maybe. Please."

I nod like he can see me and the priest coughs on the other side, a strangled sound. The gun glistens in a ray of light peeking through a space in the curtain.

"I just don't know how anybody's supposed to know what to do," I say. "The world's all fucked up."

"Please," the priest whispers. "Tell him I will pay him soon."

"But like I keep telling Mike," I say. "A job is a job. We've got to live somehow. Better to provide for yourself than be broke and homeless."

"Please," he whispers again.

"And like you just said," I say, turning toward the mesh again. "You _just_ said it. People get saved in different ways. Isn't that what you just said, Father?"

There's a muffled, raspy sound on the other side and the priest starts sniffling.

"What are you going to do?" he blubbers.

I sigh.

"The only thing I can be sure of, Father," I say, snapping the gun up to hip-level, pointed at the wooden wall separating him from me, "is _my_ will. It's all I got in this world, the only reality the way I see it." I shrug and glance up at the ceiling. "If there is somebody up there, he should've made things a little clearer."

I pull the trigger and the gun bucks in my hand with a _whoomph_. I pull the trigger again and my elbow knocks against the wall behind me with the recoil, the _whoomph_ a little louder. I stare at the mesh window and the wrinkled face and white-collar slump down, out of view. Standing up, I scratch my chin, stare at the two smoking bullet holes in the wall, then pull the curtain to the side and step out of the confession booth. I step over to the booth next to the one I just came out of, pull the curtain back and put one more in the priest's head, then turn back to the church. The woman from the altar's gone, and so is Mike. The church is empty except for me and the dead priest, which makes the place even creepier than it already was.

I sit on a pew and, at first, I feel fucking amazing. Like I've finally figured things out. Five minutes later, though, Mike still hasn't come back and I start to feel like a kid walking through a mall trying to find his parents. I stare at the gun, waiting, look around. The sun shines through the stained glass window on one side of the church, rays jetting through the set on the other side so there's this rainbow streak across the walls and ceiling. It's beautiful until the sun moves behind a cloud and the colors disappear and the church's thrown back into darkness.

I unscrew the silencer from the gun and stick the pieces in my jacket pocket then stand and leave.

Outside, I get in my car and pull out the half empty pack of cigarettes from the middle console. I shake one out and stick it in my mouth.

"I don't know what it's going to take for you to quit smoking those things."

I jump and the cigarette falls out of my mouth as I grab my gun from my coat and swing it around to point right in Mike's left eye. He doesn't move, doesn't flinch, nothing. Just sits there, staring at me.

"That's the second time today you've pointed a gun at me," he says.

"That's the second time today you've scared the shit out of me," I say.

"Sometimes a man needs to be scared," he says. "For his own good. Can you get that thing out of my face?"

I don't drop my hand, keep my finger on the trigger and we stare at each other. The air is thick, hard to breathe, and a bead of sweat breaks out on my forehead. Then Mike's mouth quivers and he breaks into a dumb smile. My mouth does the same and Mike laughs so I laugh, put my gun away, and start the car.

### Predatory

The yellow Crown Victoria with the unlit sign on the roof pulls up as Raul walks out of the convenience store with his gun raised, his bag sliding down his shoulder. For years now, Raul's carried around the bag (the _satchel_ , he corrects the boys who hang out at Carlos's crib on 8th street), found in a secondhand thrift shop over on 4th street. It was the first place he ever robbed, the only time in his career he'd ever gone on a run without scoping the place out first, and he remembers it more than all the other times because of the fucking exhilaration he felt when it went down. One of the best highs he's had to this day. Ever since, he's been trying to get that feeling back, that initial gut-clenching, head-bursting rush. The feeling that day, he'd described to the boys, had been like sprinting to the toilet and sitting down just in time to let out a massive case of the shits; like that first, grinning moment before your asshole starts to burn. But today, with his satchel and his gun, he's less frenetic than he was back then. This isn't just fun anymore, its work. And Raul's become very efficient at his job.

Raul hears footsteps behind him and swirls around towards the convenience store, catching a glimpse of the Asian man that owns the place as he ducks back behind the counter.

"See, that's the problem with you fucking chinks," Raul yells. "You're fucking sneaky bastards. That's why nobody but your own kind likes you. Coming up in _our_ backyard, taking _our_ jobs, _our_ money, and smile the whole time you doing it. Put everybody in your family but your grandmother to work just so you can get ahead." Raul shakes his head. "Fucking commie bastards can't—get the fuck _back_." Raul throws his arm up and points the gun at the front window of the shop, where the owner's head's poked above the counter again, and pulls the trigger. The report cracks through the air, sending echoes up the block and bouncing off the buildings. The window cracks then shatters and pellets fall to the ground as Raul laughs. "I fucking told you," he grumbles, looking around. "Sneaky bastards."

A warbled cry comes from inside as the owner's face pops up where the window was seconds earlier, his forehead creased with anxiety and anger. Raul laughs again and turns, looking up and down the street before seeing the taxi at the curb in front of him.

Raul stares at it, considering.

He usually just walks away from these situations, heads to his spot on Jackson Ave to lay low until things cool off. It doesn't pay to run from the scene like a madman. That's exactly what the cops look for after a job, guys running and waving guns in the air like fucking homing beacons. No, Raul's smarter than that. He usually just tucks his gun away, draws the strap of his satchel over his head and diagonally across his chest, then heads home. Like a yuppie on his way to an appointment at Starbucks, walking briskly but not rushing, because he's early, ahead of the game.

But Raul feels daring today, and he damn sure doesn't feel like walking. The satchel's heavy as all hell with all the shit he got from the chink's shop. He's betting most of the weight's coming from that fucking statue he took with the cash out of the safe under the counter. He would've tossed it but he figured, since it was locked up tight, chink man had to be hiding it for a reason. It looked to be made of wood when he first saw it, but now he thinks it feels more like steel, or maybe gold. Whatever it is, walking home with it's gonna be a pain in the ass. And the taxi's already here; no sense in wasting a free ride. So Raul hops over to the back door of the cab, pulls it open and throws himself inside.

"Go," he says gruffly, pulling the magazine out of his nine millimeter and checking the rounds. Five. One less than he left his apartment with. A year ago, there'd been ten, and each expended bullet had been put through a window like the one he'd just shot out. Raul doesn't know what it is with windows, but seeing them shatter makes him feel like he's in an action movie, which he loves. He's never had to actually shoot anybody, probably never will. Most people are so frightened by just seeing a gun that they usually shut up and follow directions. Even the hero-types never really amount to anything worth a rumble. Most of them are quicker to piss themselves and shamefully grab their limp dicks when a bullet shatters all the glass around their heads. And Raul laughs at them, at the instant male reaction to danger: grab your nuts, as if a hand can stop a bullet from destroying the family jewels. He understands it, despite the absurdity: balls are the only things that really matter anyways. Cohones. Huevos. Raul takes pride in his, walks _around_ them when he's on the streets, gives them room to breathe. They're his insurance policy, the reason nobody fucks with him. It's all about how you portray yourself that matters. Like when he was a kid and somebody (doesn't remember who) told him that he's not supposed to run from attacking dogs. They smell fear, get excited by it, attack harder. Humans are just big ass canines when you get down to it.

This, the robbery stuff, is all just one step on Raul's ladder of success anyways. The gun's a tool, one he'll give up soon enough when he moves to the next rung on the ladder and starts investing in that mounting pyramid scheme his cousin over in Jersey's got going on. If he gets in at the top early, he'll rake in enough dough to make knock-off jobs like this chink's shop seem like child's play. No sir, Raul will not be small time forever. He's seen what sticking with the pinch local hits do in the long run. He's been lucky so far, but like his Uncle Ron used to always say: luck's a tricky bitch, always running out on you.

Raul looks out of the car window and the convenience store is still there, the owner peeking at him through the front door. Raul glances at the taxi driver, a man with a baseball cap on, a full head of wavy brown hair flowing from beneath. Raul grinds his teeth and leans forward, looking in the rearview mirror and trying to see if he can glimpse the man's eyes, get him to start moving with one of his patented menacing looks. He made a little teenage chink boy piss his pants a few weeks ago with one of those looks. The boy had tried to puff his chest out and play the hard ass, so Raul put his gun to the kids head, leaned in and let the boy smell his breath. Things went smoothly from there.

Staring at the driver now though, he can't see anything. He grunts.

"Did you hear me, brother?"

The driver remains quiet.

"Go," Raul says again. "Drive."

The car remains still and Raul hears the peal of police sirens in the distance. Sweat breaks out on his collar and he jerks a hand up, slaps at his neck, at the prickly feeling that hits him right below his hairline. Raul doesn't like being nervous, and this cabbie is making his face twitch like a crackhead during a dry spell.

"Look brother," he says. "I ain't got time for heroes." He looks out the back window of the car. "Just get me away from here and I'll break you off a little extra. Just a couple of blocks east is all I need."

The driver remains silent, the car remaining idle. Raul cracks his neck and sits forward, trying again, unsuccessfully, to get a glimpse of the man's face.

"You deaf?" he asks. "They hiring deaf fucks to drive cabs now?" A fit of rage bursts into his veins and he punches the back of the driver's seat, the whole chair vibrating in its frame. "Drive!"

The man doesn't move, doesn't shudder, doesn't even seem to breathe. Raul glances out the window again at the owner, who's finally gotten up the nerve to come outside, speaking inaudibly. He points in the direction of the sirens then back at Raul, his eyes squinted to even smaller slits than they already are. Raul feels a moment of helplessness and can't handle it, isn't used to the feeling and never wants to be. So he does exactly what he does every time he goes on a run, right before he walks into whatever place it is he's jacking: he lets the anger consume him. The anger that's been so easily accessible for as long as he can remember. It's like a video game when he does it, like Super Mario Brothers when they grab one of those mushrooms or the flower and suddenly they're bigger and more badass than ever. Raul turns back to the driver, swiftly sliding the bullet clip—which he's been clutching in his fist—back into the gun and pulling the hammer back with an echoing _clack_. He points the gun at the back of the driver's head.

"I'm gonna give you two choices," he says. "One: you drive, I pay you, and you go on your merry fucking way. The other: I blow your fucking head off and drive the taxi my damn self. Or maybe I walk, just for the fuck of it, so I don't have to deal with moving your rotten fucking carcass, you know?" He pushes the gun into the brown, wavy hair, into the driver's skull. "What's it going to be, brother?"

The driver's head leans slightly to the left a bit, towards the window, still pointed straight ahead. Raul tries one more time to see his face, his eyes, catching only a glimpse of the brim of the hat in the rearview mirror up front.

The man lifts a gloved hand and flips on the meter next to the steering wheel and the car rumbles slightly, pulling off from the curb. Raul lowers his gun and the satisfied smile reappears on his face as he flips the gun's safety switch on and glances back at the chink on the sidewalk. His smile fades a little when the shop owner gives him a faint smile and wave, but then the taxi turns a corner and the man's gone. Raul sticks the gun in his pants' waist, throwing his shirt over the butt of it and shaking the whole ordeal off. He grabs his satchel.

"I knew you was a smart fella," he says. "You don't want to go and get involved in none of this anyways, let me tell you. It ain't worth the stress. Sometimes I just feel like quitting. Then I remember why I started in the first place. You'll see though, I'll make it worth your while. Wait, you'll see."

The man remains silent and Raul shrugs.

"Don't mind the silence," he says, opening the bag. "Gotta count anyways."

Raul takes a moment to affectionately brush a hand across the satchel. He uses it less for its practicality and more because he likes to have something he can call a "satchel." It reminds him of the cowboys, frontiersmen, the original Americans. He would have excelled back then, he knows it. He almost feels like he's been transplanted from that time to this modern society, coming to this life of rules and limits from a life without either. Raul likes nothing more than to feel that, deep inside of him, one of those cowboys crouches with his gun cocked, ready to kill.

He dumps everything out of the bag, the statue bouncing onto the seat, its shiny jeweled eyes staring up at him, captivating him. It's an animal thing, ancient, creepy, with eyes made out of what looks to be sapphire. A long, curved tongue hangs out of its wide, shark-toothed mouth, leering up at Raul. The tip of the tongue is flat, as if mashed in by a mallet, and on the flat part a tiny face is embedded. The face is stained a dark gray, somber holes where the eyes and mouth should be. The thing is disturbing, and Raul's glad he won't have to keep it for long. He thinks the boys might know a few people who deal with rich folks who collect shit like this. He figures it might have to spend a night in his apartment, two at the most, no more. Then it'll be converted to cash and added to his treasures. And if it doesn't sell, he'll dump it in the first trash bin he sees and be rid of it and its chinkiness forever.

Raul rifles through everything else from the bag, separating a few paper clips and receipts from the rest of the treasure he got from the convenience store register. He began referring to the fruits of his labor as treasure a few months ago, to keep things interesting. And he is a pirate as much as he is a cowboy, the gun at his side not much different from a sword. They're all the same characters to him. Raul's the pirating cowboy of the 21st century. He loved those stories back in grade school, the swashbucklers and horse-riding fugitives. They stopped telling them when he hit middle school, around the time he decided that school had done all it could for him and promptly dropped out. He spent the next few years drifting, trying out different scenes for himself, a few small time runs: muggings in the alley with his switchblade, pick pocketing in the subway, that one time he almost slit a dude's throat for not letting go of his briefcase. Nothing big, not until he got enough to buy the gun from that street dealer. Things seemed to fit together after that, and he just went with the flow.

"Not doing too bad neither," he says out loud. "If I do say so myself."

The driver remains silent and hangs a left at a stop sign. Raul counts the money, straightening each bill on top of the last, as if laying bricks. When he's done, he holds up a little over five hundred dollars, fanning himself with the cash then wiping his forehead with a twenty and chuckling. He folds the cash and shoves the whole wad and the statue back into his satchel, which holds nothing else but a bottle of aspirin. He gets headaches sometimes, usually when something is out of whack in the overall scheme of things. But not now. Now, he's too excited to be aching. He still gets enough of the rush when he's on the job to feed the need, his blood pulsing through his head, his neck, his chest, everything on fire.

"Alright brother," he says, pulling the gun out again. "Round here's good."

The driver remains silent, the engine of the cab rumbling along. Raul sighs and edges towards the driver's seat as he glances out the car window, his jaw immediately dropping open. Outside, the unfamiliar terrain surrounding the taxi draws him away from the driver and over to the window. He stares, eyes flitting around. He closes them tight and prays that he's having some sort of episode. When he opens his eyes again though, the dead, grassy plain outside the cab is still there, brown and empty of any sign of life whatsoever.

He scoots over to the other side of the car and looks out of the opposite window, hoping to see something different. Nothing but dead grass. Through the back window he can't even see the buildings that make up the city skyline.

"Hey, man," he yells, his grip tightening on the gun. "What're you trying to pull?"

The driver remains silent.

"I ain't playing around," he says darkly, raising his arms and leveling the gun at the back of the driver's head. "This ain't the city. I don't know what the fuck you're trying to pull, but I'm not with it today."

Nothing.

Raul's heart pumps steel through his veins and a pounding starts in his head that is immediately unnerving. He wants the bottle of aspirin in his satchel and curses the driver for making him need the pills today. He never needs them on days he goes on runs, this is the first. It's another reason he loves going on them so much. They relax him, ease his mind.

But now, instead of being relaxed, he's sitting here tense in the backseat of this cab with his gun pointed at the back of a man's head. He's never shot anybody before, never had a reason to. He's always thought trigger-happy cowboys are just masking their fear with a deadly show, just like those damn kids who run from dogs, jumping fences and hopping on cars. That's why they always get caught. Which worries Raul, because he's scared shitless right now, no denying that, the gun trembling slightly in his hand as he presses the tip to the back of the driver's head. And he can almost bet that the driver smells his fear and is feeding off of it.

But what the driver doesn't realize is Raul's a predator too, a motherfucking smooth criminal, as much of a carnivore as this man in the driver's seat is trying to be, and intelligent enough to know that one predator always has to come out on top. Alpha male syndrome at its finest. When one beast comes upon another of its kind, somebody's got to do some bowing. And Raul isn't the submissive type.

"You got three seconds, brother," Raul says, flipping the safety off and pulling the hammer back on the gun, the second time he's had to do that in a matter of five, maybe ten minutes. He glances furtively out the window, at the dead grass. The sky's darkened all of a sudden, the sun moving away from them as if running from the entire situation. Raul closes his eyes and wills his hand steady. "Three seconds you son of a bitch. Either take me back to the city or I pull the trigger."

The driver doesn't budge.

"One."

No movement, just a pair of gloved hands on the steering wheel, stationary. It doesn't even look like he's steering, they're so still.

"Two."

Raul clenches his jaw, tightens his grip on the gun, and lets the anger wash over him again.

"Three."

Raul pulls the trigger and a blast rocks the car, throwing him backwards. The front window of the cab explodes, leaving cracked and spider-webbed shards of glass in the lining of the car's frame as the discharged bullet practically disintegrates the back of the driver's head. Raul lets out a short, muffled yelp that sounds a little like someone trying to breathe through collapsed lungs. His gun drops out of his hand and to the floor of the backseat, and Raul stares at it, confused. He's pushing himself up when the car suddenly comes to a screeching halt and he flies forward, his head bouncing off the back of the passenger seat.

Raul looks over to the driver, expecting him to be slumped against the steering wheel, blood and brain matter dripping from the steering wheel and dashboard and the spider webs of glass where the windshield used to be. But the driver's head remains in the same position, turned a little away from Raul and seemingly looking out the window, as if staring at the sky and contemplating what to do next. His hands remain locked on the steering wheel and, as Raul moves back a little, he sees the hole in the back of the man's head, surrounded by hair, baseball cap gone. Raul glances down again at the gun under the passenger seat and wonders how the hell a fucking nine millimeter managed to do a shotgun's worth of damage. He stares through the bullet hole at the grassy plain outside and the shattered windshield and the steering wheel, bits and pieces of white bone and skin sprinkled across the entire dashboard.

But no blood. No blood at all. And, as Raul stares, wide-eyed, the driver's head turns slowly towards him.

When Raul sees the man's face, he screams and lunges to pick his gun up from the floor of the backseat. The scream is devoid of all masculinity, and in the back of his head he's dismayed to hear such a feminine sound coming from his mouth. He's always thought he was the type to maintain his testosterone level in all situations. But, with those electric blue dots of light where the man's eyes should be and that wide, long-toothed, raw and pink grin, Raul screams like a little girl wearing ballerina shoes and standing on a chair, pointing at a spider on the floor. The driver's skin hangs off bone, revealing his skull beneath, the bullet hole in the skin of his forehead stretching wide, yawing as the man-skeleton opens its mouth, opens the permanent grin, and exposes a black hole into the back of its throat, as tongue-less and dark as the sky that surrounds them. It lets out a hissing breath that carries a stench like dead roadkill rotting in the sun on the highway, like the man-skeleton's held its breath since the day the man it _used_ to be died and is now letting it out, all the decades of decay filling the car like smoke from a brush fire.

Raul turns and struggles with the door handle, jiggling it back and forth until something cold and hard touches his shoulder and he screams again, a bloodcurdling shriek, and throws the door open, falling out with his satchel tucked into his lap and his gun molded into his palm. He turns to the car and brings the gun up, feeling the rough grass under his empty hand, madly scooting backwards about ten feet before coming to a stop. His breath is ragged and he tries to steady his convulsing gun hand, keeping it pointed at the car. He wills it to be as sturdy as it was moments earlier when he shot the man-thing, right before he—it—turned around and acted like a bullet hadn't just gone straight through its head.

Raul points his gun at the car, the headlights blazing into the distance and illuminating nothing but air. The engine idles and water drips from beneath the car and the inside is too shadowy to see anything but the faint glow of the interior dome light. Raul's hands shake and he tries to steady them and keep the gun pointed at the car just in case the demented driver decides to get out. Raul doesn't care if the thing survived a point blank shot to the head, it's going to have to withstand four more if it wants to get to him. He imagines a bunch of scenarios, the happiest of which sees him blowing the damned thing away and stealing its car, leaving the grotesque body out here in the dead grass to finish rotting. As he thinks this, the back door of the cab suddenly slams closed on its own. The engine revs once and kicks into gear, the tires peeling as the car flips a u-turn and speeds back in the direction it came from. Raul follows it with his gun until it's nothing more than a speck, a star in the distance, then drops the weapon and begins to hyperventilate. He sits gasping and staring at the starless sky. Then his stomach lurches a little, then a lot. He keels over and hacks and coughs, heaving until his eyes are watery and red, saliva and bile dripping from his lips. His head pounding, eyes blurry, legs numb, he nevertheless feels better now that the cab is gone. He has no idea where he is and, looking around, he is able to catch nothing but the slightest hint of the road shining in the moonlight.

Raul dusts himself off and grabs his gun from the ground, moving to pick up his satchel. He manages a small chuckle that sounds more like a cough, but he knows in his mind that it's a chuckle and that's all that matters. He's decided, very suddenly, that the driver was an apparition, a release of mental stress, a fucking hero-type masking himself as a ghoul. The unexplained parts of it Raul can ignore, he believes, and he attempts to throw the entire situation into the back of his mind, finding the task surprisingly easy. He's never been a mind dweller though, and something tells him that trying to figure out what just happened will drive him insane. Besides, he has other things to worry about. Like how the hell he's going to get home. He walks back to the road and looks in both directions, searching for headlights, taillights, any sign of life whatsoever.

The growls come suddenly, very unexpectedly as he is searching the road. They seem to come from all directions at once and he jumps, raising his gun and pointing it across the road at nothing.

"Who's there?" he yells, his voice hoarse. He clears his throat and yells again, louder, "Don't fuck with me. I swear to God I'm not in the mood," then thinks about it and closes his eyes and curses under his breath. The growls didn't come from a human, he's sure of that. Which means all he's just done by yelling is further give away his position to something that can't answer him anyways. He drops his satchel and backs up to where the grass is a little higher, ducking down in a patch, waiting, looking across the road and searching for movement. He hears the growl again a moment later, closer this time. He stays put, his hand moist and hot against the gun. His satchel sits next to the road and he wishes he didn't drop it so far away but he doesn't want to risk trying to get it and being seen before he sees whatever it is that's out there first. So he waits, forcing his breaths to come out quietly and evenly. When the growl comes again, air catches in his throat as he realizes the sound's coming from behind him. And there's more than just one growl. He turns quickly, bringing the gun out ahead of him and focusing his sights on four pairs of red eyes emerging from the darkness.

The closest of the pairs materializes into a wolf the size of a bear. Raul stares, wide-eyed, the wolf's back hunched and at least five feet above the ground. If it were to stand on its hind legs, it would reach seven, easy. Its fur matted around its neck and body, it looks almost like a lion with a puffed up mane around its head, its nose big and black and twitching as its lips curl back. Yellow teeth glisten with spit in the moonlight, drops of saliva floating to the grass in the wind. The wolf's tail stands stiff, jutting straight out and up in the air, almost like a scorpion's tail, and its ears are perked straight out on either side of its head, one of them ragged, barely healed. It growls again, a low rumble that sounds like distant thunder, and the rest of his friends, equally as menacing, move up beside him. They aren't as big as the leader, though they're still huge. Raul finds it very unlikely he could take a wolf even half their size in hand to hand combat. Luckily, though, he's packing a lot more than his hands.

Raul makes a split second decision and doesn't hesitate. He imagines the four bullets in the gun, each one gleaming and ready to fulfill their purpose, points the weapon at the lead wolf's head, and squeezes the trigger. The gun bucks violently in his grip and he swears he _hears_ the bullet hit the giant wolf, curving a little around its snout and impacting its neck like a meteor strike. The wolf falls hard and Raul grins wildly, swiftly pointing the gun at the other three wolves, his cheeks twitching. All three stand their ground, staring at him with glowing, moonlit eyes. Raul decides he probably won't even need to use all of the bullets, maybe one more just to show them he isn't fucking around, which is perfect because those things aren't cheap. He's reminded of his satchel and really wants to get it and his aspirin and throw that damn statue as far as he can into the grass because he has this very strong feeling that it's got something to do with all of this. But he doesn't dare take his eyes off the other three wolves. Their leader is down and Raul knows wolves travel in packs, but hungry wolves might break formation if necessary. They'll retreat soon though, he's almost sure of it, can feel them staring at the gun knowingly. Then he can grab his satchel, dry swallow the aspirin and figure out how the hell he's going to get back home.

Yet, the wolves don't back off. In fact, one of them walks over nonchalantly and sniffs the giant leader, nudging him with its nose then standing up straight and staring at Raul, as if waiting. And, as Raul watches in horror, the giant wolf leader twitches a few times, shudders once, and slowly stands up. It shakes its head, as if shaking off a splash of water, the mane of fur around its neck rippling. The follower wolf licks the leader's bullet wound and the large wolf snaps at the smaller one then levels its eyes at Raul.

The growl it lets out this time is less like thunder, more like a swarm of bees in Raul's ears. An angrier sound than before, hungrier. The other wolves' growls follow a moment later.

Behind Raul, his satchel starts a faint glow that intensifies until the entire bag is a ball of orange light. Raul fires his gun three more times and then there is just the click of the hammer pulling back on nothing.

***

Pete's about to walk out when the double doors burst open and a gurney rolls in. He sighs and looks up at the ceiling, cursing under his breath. Pamela—the intern from Brooklyn—pushes it over to him and then stops, staring and smacking gum in her mouth.

"What's this?" Pete asks.

She glances at the gurney, the big lump under the white blanket, then back at Pete.

"A body," she says, smacking the gum some more.

_Smart-mouthed bitch_ , Pete thinks, and quickly shoves the thought out of his head, replacing it with _that answer that Pamela just gave made me feel inadequate, but I'm not inadequate and she doesn't mean it like that_.

Pete's been taking anger management courses lately and that's what they told him to do in situations like this: replace the angry thoughts with insightful ones. He thought it was stupid at first, but he's got the hang of it now and it's worked wonders. In the past, he would have thrown his clipboard at the young, undeserving girl just for making that comment. Then tomorrow he would have had to explain the scene to Frank Kilner, the department head, and that would have just been one more little mark on the board of "Pete's Fuck-ups." In the past, he wouldn't care that all of that would happen either, because in the past he would be completely fucking plastered while he was here.

But A.A. did for that part of the problem what Anger Management is doing now.

Instead of retaliating, Pete smiles at the girl and nods. She stares at him blankly.

"Any paperwork?" he asks.

"Under the blanket," she says, nodding at the gurney. "You gotta finish it. Found a man-purse on him too, Frank says you gotta bag him and tag him. Prelim x-rays say brain aneurysm."

"Where'd they find him?" Pete asks, pulling back the blanket. The man is young, a few years younger than Pete at least, maybe thirty. Far into the throes of rigor mortis, his mouth hangs open in a silent scream, his eyes taped shut. Pete shivers.

"In a ditch about five miles past the bridge." She smacks her mouth loudly on the gum she's got in there, and Pete thinks _If that bitch doesn't stop smacking that fucking gum I'm gonna_ —He pauses, closes his eyes for a second, then thinks _that annoys me. But she's leaving in a second so I can deal with it for now_.

The girl doesn't seem to notice the internal conflict. Which is good, Pete thinks. That signifies control on his part.

"They found a gun on him," she says. "A bunch of cash in the bag and a little statue. Think he might've robbed somebody. Frank's gonna hold the stuff until NYPD picks it up on their run."

"Is that so?" Pete says disjointedly. He's staring at the man's face.

"Anyways," the girl says, suddenly bored. "Later."

Pete watches her leave then looks back at the body, sighs again and wheels the gurney over to the examination table.

A few hours later Pete throws the book bag he uses over his shoulders and walks out the door again, this time with the paperwork for the John Doe under his arm. He stops by Frank's office to drop the papers off but nobody's there, and Pete stands in the office, clenching and unclenching his fists and taking deep breaths. He thinks _the next time I see that motherfucker, I'm gonna take his fucking five hundred dollar gold pen and shove it up hi_ s—then he manages to get slight control of himself, long enough to think, _Frank pawned that John Doe off on me when he knew I had somewhere to be, then he left himself. And that makes me feel betrayed_.

Pete takes a deep breath and walks over to his boss's desk, dropping the paperwork on top of a stack of envelopes. He's about to walk out when he glimpses something from the corner of his eye. He glances at the office door to make sure nobody's coming then goes behind the desk and picks up what caught his eye, what the girl earlier deemed a "man-purse." He thinks to himself as he holds it, I feel betrayed by my boss and therefore I'm going to actively make myself feel better by satisfying my curiosity and looking in this bag. He opens the bag and inside is a wad of cash, marked as evidence and wrapped in plastic. Next to it, also wrapped in plastic and marked, are a bottle of aspirin and a small statue that's surprisingly heavy when Pete pulls it out. The eyes are some kind of jewel and the thing is ugly as hell but it captures Pete for some reason and—before he can think about what he's doing—he finds himself shoving the thing in his own bag and walking out of the office, down the stairs, and out the front door of the hospital.

Outside it's raining and Pete decides to leave his bike on the rack in front of ER and catch a cab home. He runs to the curb and holds up a hand, hoping today's his lucky day and that he catches a taxi quick. The rain pelting his head, he thinks _when I get home I'm going to shower and head to Anne's house and have a good evening, and the fact that I'm standing out in the rain after working four hours past the end of my shift won't even matter_. As he's thinking this, a taxi pulls up and Pete smiles.

In the cab he wipes water from his face and pulls off his book bag, pulling out the statue and examining it. Truly creepy, the double faces and jeweled eyes. He'll have to show it to Anne. She'll get a kick out of it.

He remembers the taxi driver and looks up at him, a long haired man wearing a baseball cap and black, leather gloves.

"Sorry," Pete says. "Lexington and 53rd. And please, as quick as possible. I'm in a hurry."

The gloved hands tighten their grip on the steering wheel as the car edges away from the curb.

### Loose

The neighborhood's louder these days, at least to me. Cars rattle by during the night, dogs bark, cats hiss and fight, it's crazy. I almost pegged the driver of a garbage truck in the head with an empty bottle of Jack just a few days after Shirley left. I threw it from my bedroom window behind a steady stream of cursing, but my aim isn't so good anymore so it curved to the left a little and smashed off the side of the Mulligan's house.

I just can't understand why the officials of this city decided so long ago that the trash must be picked up at five AM, but they can't buy some goddamn quieter machines to do it in. I can't remember ever hearing this much noise on my block before, Shirley, she can vouch for that. If you ever see her, ask her, she'll tell you. The neighborhood's gone to shit.

"I don't know why the Jensen's can't keep their fucking dog inside," I grumble to Darius one particularly irritable morning. "I swear he does it just to piss me off."

"How would that be possible, James?" Darius responds, looking at his watch and counting seconds off with two fingers held to the side of his neck, breathing evenly.

"He barks right at my window," I say, putting on my shoes. "Every time I'm about to fall asleep, it's like he's standing next to me barking in my goddamn ear. It's a fucking zoo out there."

"Yes, James," he says, continuing to check his pulse, jogging in place. "The dog is purposely trying to spite you."

I stare at him and want to punch him in the eye for using that condescending tone with me, until he looks up from his watch and his expression softens. Then I want to punch him in both eyes.

"Never mind all that," he says, turning his back and talking with his head twisted around to look at me. "Come on. A morning run's exactly what you need."

Darius is that carpooling, co-working, fitness motivating, closest-thing-to-a-friend-since-the-divorce type of guy. He has this method of communication, like he'll comment on a person's grievances and make them feel completely angelic, all while he's slipping the check for the whole table into their hands. It's enthusiasm really, I noticed that after just a few times of hanging out with him. He's so damn eager, he can convince anybody that they like something they've never even tried just by pretending he loves it. It's uncanny, actually. Awe-inspiring. A born salesman.

And yet, the fact that I recognize it does not stop it from working on me. Take this morning, for instance. I'm watching him bounce around my living room like the fucking Trix rabbit when I realize that I don't want to go jogging with him at all. Never did, never will. But I'm going to, because it's Darius.

Before long, I'm standing on my front porch, rubbing sleep from my eyes and dressed in shorts and a t-shirt—both too small for my waist and belly respectively—and brand new running shoes with the laces untied. Darius stands at the end of the walkway leading from my house to the street, still jogging in place and still watching me, only now with this supreme authority in his eyes, as if he has _summoned_ me out here. I glance behind me into the house and can't remember getting out of bed, or getting dressed, or even going to sleep the night before. The sky is awkwardly adolescent, the moon still bright even though the sun's peeking over the eastern horizon. The ducks from the lake across the street squawk into the rising mist, the robins adding in some background effects from the Ash tree on the corner. Cars pass by, a dog barks in the distance. And all I hear in the midst of the ruckus is insomnia. Fatigue. Weariness. Disenchantment. Bitterness. Hatred.

It's been weeks since I've slept an entire night. That can't be healthy.

Darius calls to me from the road. Grunting, I sit on the top step of the porch and grip my shoelaces. My fingers draw across the pearly white cotton and brown smudges follow. I drop the laces quickly, smacking my lips and tasting the remnants of my breakfast, concurrently remembering eating it. I forgot to wash my hands afterwards, now that I recall, bacon oil streaking my fingertips. I grimace and feel the skin at the corners of my mouth stretch with dried grease as I clench my fists and feel the sudden urge to take off my shoes and throw them at Darius.

But instead, I take a deep breath, close my eyes, and allow myself to wonder.

Wondering, I've found, is the only thing that quells the anger, brings on sadness, a much more passive emotion. I wonder about a lot of things, most of all if it was moments like these that brought about the end, that made it easier for Shirley to leave after six years. These primal moments. Sometimes it feels as if an animal lives in me, feeding off of anger and anguish, lashing out when it doesn't get what it wants.

It was my fault, part of me has accepted that, though I'm still at war with myself over the credibility of that fact. Have been since I arrived home from work that day to find the note on the table, short, to the point, _I'm leaving. Goodbye_. I thought then that everything's always between the lines. Nothing's ever just straight forward, though people have gotten so good at making things look that way.

"James, come on," Darius yells impatiently.

I glance up at Darius still jogging in place, hopping from one foot to the other, his cheeks puffing with each exhaled breath. I look at my shoelaces again and shake my head, cursing low. Darius' face drops and he plops both feet to the ground, lifting two fingers up to his neck to check his pulse again.

"Jimmy?" he calls.

"I'm fine, goddammit," I say, my voice cracking at the end like thin glass. Like the vase I broke the night before she left. Her screams were nerve-racking. She swore up and down I was unfaithful to her, total bullshit because I'd never think of being with another woman. And yet she threw her accusations at me as if they were tiny little daggers meant to pierce my skin. And I got so angry that night, so fed up with all of it that I just threw something back at her. I picked up the vase and tossed it, the sound of glass shattering against the wall enlivening me. I wonder now what I would have done if I'd had a little more Jack in my system. Something crazier probably, undoubtedly. And even now that doesn't scare me. I don't know why it doesn't, maybe because I never actually let myself get drunk enough to go too far with anything. So maybe I'm actually bullshitting when I say I think I would have done something drastic if I had been more intoxicated. Maybe the fact I never _let_ myself drink that much was my way of saying I'd never hurt anybody too bad, inebriated or not. Either way, I couldn't have done anything physically harmful to Shirley while I was sober. Even though I was a far cry from clear-headed the night I threw that vase at the wall, hell no, I couldn't have ever hurt her intentionally. Just incidentally. It's a package deal with me. Anger's just a side effect of my love, the love she wanted so badly, which I gave her wholly and loyally, the ungrateful bitch.

I try to shake the thoughts from my mind and I'm successful until another memory looms in its place; this time it's a conversation during which she told me—during a moment of good-natured banter—that she wished I had come with a disclaimer. Like one of those piracy warnings on movies, or the surgeon general's spiel about smoking and death, slapped on the sides of cigarette boxes.

Warning: James may cause lung cancer, emphysema, and heartache.

Do not use James if you are pregnant.

Do not exceed recommended dosage.

Keep away from open flame.

I chuckle through gritted teeth.

"Come on, Jim," Darius says. "You've got me waiting for like a half hour now. Stop stalling." I look up to see my friend standing in front of me, jogging in place again, huffing and puffing like the proverbial wolf. "We talked about this. You gotta get up, get out, get going again. A quick morning jog, makes the rest of the day a ride, a breeze, like cutting cake, man, you gotta eat the meal before you get the cake, you know what I'm saying?"

I stare at him blankly. "No."

"Fuck it," Darius says, jogging to the end of the walkway again. "Just keep up."

I force a smile and glance at the sky, the velvet-blue laced with just a few puffs of white clouds. Suddenly, instinctually, I both wonder if and know that this will all pass: the noise, the stress, the pain. And I'm sad that it will be gone someday, because it's the realest time I've ever had. I've seen enough movies and TV shows; rough times always go the way of storms, violent for a little while and then gone. Almost as if nothing ever happened to begin with. And the writers of those things must have gotten the idea from somewhere. I'm guessing personal experience, which is real enough for me.

I hop a few times, wiggle my arms and legs, crack my neck a little. A sharp pain pokes me in my lower back and I speculate on whether or not it's healthy for a man in his mid-thirties to just up and start a workout routine without some sort of preparation. Like a test drive or something. I rub a few fingers into the base of my spine and lower my head and Shirley steps back into the field of vision that lies behind my eyes.

I'm struck by the memory of a time when I'd thrown my lower back out at the warehouse and Shirley found out. She'd sat at the kitchen table, her yellow spring dress flowing over her knees, and suggested a massage, an honest offering on her part. I accepted against my better judgment; Shirley had never given me—or anybody, as far as I knew—a massage in her life. But the gesture touched me somewhere I can't place right now, and I decided to give her a shot. She went all out: lotion, candles, soft music, the whole nine. And things started off tender, then somehow trickled off into a bout of finger and toe curling pain. In the end I was worse off than before, lying on the couch with my face contorted and ice packs covering half my ass. She apologized so earnestly, told me that maybe I just needed to see a chiropractor, that she shouldn't have messed with a back injury, she's not licensed or anything. And boy, I laid into her, the pain fueling me. _Damn right you should have left my fucking back alone_ , I said; _now it's more fucked up than it was before_ , I said; _you unskilled prick of a woman_ , I said.

I felt like shit about it later. That's some sort of redeeming quality at least. I went into the bedroom and lay next to her and touched her shoulder. She let me, which I never understood about her. No matter what happened between us, no matter how crazy I got or she got, she always let me touch her afterwards. I brushed my fingers across her shoulder, apologized to her, moved my hand closer to her stomach, and we made love. It was gentle, I remember. It always was with us, a parallel. Rage and affection. Passion. She cried afterwards, her back turned to me. I couldn't figure out why then, and I still wonder now what those tears were for. Happiness or sadness. Or if it even mattered.

I rub my back some more, ponder on things some more, because like I said, it makes me feel good sometimes to wonder. Sometimes I even get realizations, little tiny epiphanies that make me happy for a few seconds, like a flavor burst on your tongue from one of those sticks of gum that claim to be everlasting but turn into tough pieces of rubber after two minutes of chewing. And standing there, kneading the stabbing cramp in my lower back, I'm suddenly, absolutely sure that, if Shirley were still here, she would have risked going through that entire ordeal again just to help me right now with this small lingering pain. She would have given me advice, told me what not to do. _Don't overdo it_ , a phrase she so ironically overused. I heard it so many times and yet I still ate four bacon strips and three eggs for breakfast most mornings, half a pot of coffee and two Pop Tarts on the days I woke up late. And she would prepare it all, in spite of her adamant protests. She had been patient, wise, understanding, stern. I had been simple and stubborn, mostly stubborn. Only stubborn. Too goddamn stubborn.

The robin's squeaks and the duck's squawks interrupt my thoughts and I shake my head vigorously, my cheeks flapping against my teeth. It feels good, so I keep doing it. I shake my head for a good ten seconds until I'm dizzy and Shirley floats back to the far reaches of my psyche. Darius stares at me oddly from the road, hands on his hips, tapping his foot on the ground like a father waiting on his son to get ready for school. I give him my best impression of a scowl.

"Let's go," I say.

I hop around a little more and take a few steps forward, walking on my front lawn and forcing a smile for the benefit of both myself and Darius. He shakes his head at me and turns to head down the sidewalk. I raise my right foot and then bring it down and try to raise my left but it suddenly decides that rising is the last thing it wants to do. I get that real awkward feeling a person gets when their whole equilibrium is abruptly screwed with, dizziness and a sudden stomach turning, and I look down to see my left shoelace stretched tight, caught beneath my right shoe. I try to right myself but I'm already going down, falling to my knees, my hands flying out reflexively, just in time to save my face from destruction-by-concrete. Darius' footsteps pound towards me.

"Shit, Jimmy, you alright?"

I sit up without answering, unable to find my voice. My right leg stings sharply and I watch as a bubble of blood appears on my skinned knee. My palms burn, my chin feels raw, and my left ankle pulses with an intense pressure. I glance at the untied shoelace on my running shoes, the brown grease fingerprints now accompanied by dark, damp soil.

"Weren't you just tying those?" Darius asks.

I look up at Darius and feel the animal rise again, tense with wanton anguish. Darius smiles down at me and I know for sure that it's that same damn smug look he's giving me again, the mocking look he gives everybody but he's decided he's going to intensify for my embarrassment, like I'm part of some damn play that he's watching. I know that Darius is looking down at me, not just literally but figuratively, in every sense of the phrase, and that's all I need. I let out an angry growl that makes my ribs shudder and I push myself up, lunging at him. I hit him square in the chest with my right shoulder and hear the air burst up from his lungs like a balloon that's been blown up and then let go, flying around the room as it exhausts its air supply. We fall into a pile of twisted limbs on the concrete, Darius yelling inaudibly as I wrap my hands around his neck, glaring, snarling, whimpering like a wounded cub. Darius slaps at my face, catches my cheek with a nail and opens a small cut which I barely notice. I squeeze his neck. I elbow him in the ribs. I wish I could crack his skull against the concrete underneath us but have enough sense to know that murder would only complicate things further. And plus, I'm not angry enough to risk all of that. There's not enough of the sauce in my system to throw that damn vase at the bull's-eye. And it is the sauce, this anger, potent and intoxicating; a large pool of it that I can drain at any moment but which I leave alone for right now. I am content with simply having my hands around Darius' neck and squeezing, wanting nothing more than to scare him into submission. And just when I think he's going to pass out, a sudden explosion between my legs travels up my spine and hits me right between the eyes. My stomach curdles and I roll off Darius as he brings his knees back down, readying to hit me with another one if need be. I reach down and grab my crotch, groaning with anguish. Darius jumps up when he sees I'm incapacitated, wheezing for breath.

"You... crazy..." he says, bending over a little and placing his hands on his knees. "You... crazy son of a bitch."

I keep my hands between my legs, my face red and pulsing.

"Fuck... you," I say, squeezing out the words between grinding teeth.

Darius' breathing slows and he studies me with his mouth still open a little. I try to get up but my legs feel like jelly surrounding my most tender areas, and I end up just falling back to the grass, chin first.

"No wonder," Darius says, and the way he says it, without any explanation, I don't know exactly what he's talking about. And then I realize he's talking about everything. He swipes a hand across his forehead and flicks it, large drops of sweat falling onto the concrete beneath him. "You need some help man. Some serious help."

Darius turns and walks away, breaking into a jog when he reaches the end of the block. I bitterly pull myself up into a sitting position on the grass and watch my only friend move down the street.

"No wonder what?" I yell, but my voice comes out shrill, like the birds in the trees, and I cough to clear my throat and yell louder, "Fuck you!" A pause. "No wonder what!"

Darius turns the corner and heads down a side street and out of sight. And I sit in the grass staring at my laces, trailing down the sides of my shoes and into the grass like dirty snow.

### Welcome to Paradise

The story of the creature had been passed around like cookies at snack time ever since Sharon was a little girl in preschool, the tale itself as shifty as a four year old's attention span. Once she'd been told the creature stood on its hind legs at about six feet tall and ate rotten apples by the ton. Another person claimed it had cat eyes and could run faster than a gazelle. Sharon grew weary when Kate—her best friend since fifth grade—told her she'd seen the creature once; that it had bat wings and hovered over the wheat fields on the outskirts of Tulsa, Texas, their tiny hometown, swooping down in the middle of the night to capture rabbits and frogs and all other sorts of dispensable animals roaming the territory. The only consensus Sharon was ever able to gather was that the creature was usually spotted around Wildturn Creek, a mile or so from Mr. Johnson's farmhouse.

The night Sharon saw it though, a few weeks after her nineteenth birthday, the creature was much closer to Mr. Johnson's farm. It could have migrated, which would have given Maple County residents more credibility, but the more likely reason was that only one person had ever seen the creature before, everybody else latching on to a story that was too good not to be fabricated. In which case, Sharon was the first to actually see the creature since the tale's inception.

Whatever the circumstances, up until Sharon's encounter, the creature's story had gone through the usual stages of children folklore, the proportional relationship between growth and belief: each year that Sharon gained in age was another level of believability the tale lost. By time she was twelve, it went the same route of Santa Claus and the boogeyman.

The myth ceased to have any impact on her around the time Mr. Johnson's farm became a local hangout. Mr. Johnson himself was a friendly, young corn farmer who had inherited the land from his father (Mr. Johnson Sr.) when he was almost thirty and just returned from his Marine tour of duty during Desert Storm in the nineties. Sharon heard that the young Mr. Johnson lived and worked alone because times were rough, and he couldn't afford any help. This was part of the reasoning made by parents around town for why Mr. Johnson allowed nobody to go too far onto his property. Years ago, cotton and wheat had taken over as Texas' main agricultural income, with corn falling by the wayside. Mr. Johnson still brought in enough money to support himself, buy a couple of pounds of meat over at The Locker and some toiletries at Allsup's, but he otherwise seemed to live a pretty simple, secluded life. On the few occasions when Sharon and her friends witnessed Mr. Johnson's excursions into town, they would smile and wave, giggling when he waved back.

A few of the other kids' parents had known Mr. Johnson before he was old enough to deserve the title of "Mr." When asked about the man by their children, most of these parents just shrugged and said things like "he's a private man," and "he's all alone up there, but it seems to suit him." Either way, Mr. Johnson didn't seem to care about the local kids playing football and riding their bikes in his outer fields and—later on—drinking and smoking cigarettes in their cars parked on the dirt path that led to his house. They took advantage of this freedom, at first only in the few hours after school before they had to be home. Later though, as they grew older, Sharon and the rest of the town's young folks would sit near the entrance of Mr. Johnson's farm well into the late hours of the night, many times up to no good. Tulsa was one of those towns that seemed to promote the "up-to-no-good" mentality. Ever since Sharon was old enough to realize the few children that lived in her town had all grown up alongside her, there had been a sort of manic energy within her that screamed boredom as if it were a type of cancer.

Mr. Johnson paid no mind throughout the aging process of Tulsa's children, just smiling his smile whenever he was noticed, giving his little wave and rolling on into the cornfields behind his house. His only rule was that nobody come closer to his house—and the farmland behind it—than the peach tree that sat about a hundred feet inside the gated entrance to his property, not a foot past or no more fun. The rule itself became so enigmatic to the children that all sorts of consequences entered their minds, most terribly bloody and gruesome, and they therefore followed the law to the letter. An invisible line that Tulsa's children could see as clearly as if it were spray painted on the grass stretched across the field, bisecting the peach tree and touching the gates on either side of Mr. Johnson's land. This, however, still gave Sharon and the rest of Tulsa's youth a 100 foot by half a mile square of land to do whatever they wanted on. So they happily stuck fast to Mr. Johnson's rule, their hangout area secured.

Sharon spent countless hours out there throughout high school with Kate and her other friends; night and day, especially during the balmy summer hours, they sat and gossiped with each other and flirted with the boys that ran around the field cackling, ducking and diving with a football floating in the air like a kite wherever they roamed. Many of those times, especially around harvest, Mr. Johnson would come home from a day at the market to find teenagers sitting on the hoods of various cars, or leaning against the side of his peach tree, beers in one hand, Pall Mall's in the other. Mr. Johnson would always wave to the girls, nod at the boys, tell the girls to be careful, honk their horns if there was any trouble. But they'd be able to handle themselves with all these strapping young men around, Mr. Johnson would add, flashing a clever grin. Just remember to stay on this side of the peach tree.

Over the years, the inevitable happened to Mr. Johnson's image. With such a generous mind and big, white grin that he had no problem flaunting, there was bound to come a day when Sharon and her girlfriends would develop minor crushes on the man. As they grew even older and reached ages of considerable impression, most of them quickly noticed Mr. Johnson's perpetual solitude and grew more vocal about their fantasies. One day during her junior year in high school, Sharon leaned back on the hood of her car, a dusty '98 Ford Escort. Next to her was Kate, and standing beside them was a mutual friend, Ashley. By this time, the young women of Tulsa had fractioned themselves into small groups. Everybody knew everybody in Tulsa (it was hard not to in a town where the population was just under a thousand, and fifty percent of that thousand were old people who had lived their whole lives in Tulsa so figured they might as well die there), but Sharon had realized long before then that knowing everybody did not equal liking them. She'd gone through different sets of friends throughout the years, but Kate had remained her home base. The duo usually had a third around at any given moment (their third at this moment being the mutual friend, Ashley, who was a grade under them and looked up to them like they were movie stars), but it always ended up being more of a hassle than anything to keep up appearances and Kate and Sharon would usually end up dropping the third wheel.

The three girls stared longingly at Mr. Johnson's house, the lights in the windows flickering steadily. He liked candles, they knew. They knew a lot about him by then. Like how it was lights out at eleven every night, without fail, awake at 6 am (they'd discovered this last part after a night of drunken giggling kept them out until sunrise, at which point Mr. Johnson had walked out of his home, smiled and waved at them. Heads had rolled in Sharon's home that night, her parents strict Baptists who believed a lady's place at 6 am was not out in public). They knew that Mr. Johnson harvested his corn every three months, and on those days when he came down the gravel driveway leading from his house with the cabin of his pickup filled to the brim, he'd always throw them a few ears (his corn was, by far, the best sweet corn in all of Texas. When the girls were able to keep his attention for more than a second and ask him how he did it, he'd chuckle and say he had his secrets, and that he was glad they enjoyed it).

The list of facts the girls knew about Mr. Johnson was endless and made him all the more endearing to them: how he wore red more than any other color; how he cut his hair once every two weeks (apparently himself); how the smell of fertilizer didn't stick to him the way it did to other people's dads who worked out on the corporate cotton farms over in Littlefield. Maybe because he didn't use any, the girls pondered. Or maybe because he was perfect, another one would add. They would all nod at that explanation and giggle some more. They sat back and watched the house until the flickering candlelight went out, and in the darkness that followed, they let their imaginations roam until it was time to go home.

Youthful minds are fleeting though, and as her junior year moved forward and ended, Sharon and Kate fell into a rhythm with the boys around town: the boys, taking lessons from Mr. Johnson, tried the smiling and waving number and the girls, skeptical at first, eventually began to fall for the boys, who took their minds off of Mr. Johnson and his farm. By time Sharon graduated from high school, all the years she'd spent out by Wildturn Creek seemed distant recollections. She thought back on that time not too long past while she sat at her graduation ceremony, and the memories made her feel childish. She and her friends out there crushing on a grown man who probably saw them as nothing more than little girls. Children. Which they had been. Which they were. It was quite disgusting, now that she thought about it.

Nevertheless, the day before she left for college, Sharon and the rest of Tulsa's youth made a pilgrimage to Wildturn Creek for one last big hurrah outside Mr. Johnson's farmhouse. It was a party first and foremost for everybody who'd graduated (which was nowhere near 100% of the people who had grown up hanging out at Mr. Johnson's farm), and incidentally a celebration for Sharon herself, who'd managed to be the only person in her graduating class to be leaving for college, and to none other than Stanford University. As her high school's valedictorian, she'd pushed for the opportunity. Sitting there that night in Mr. Johnson's field she thanked the various familiar faces that came up to her from all directions, clapping her on the back and congratulating her. Sharon took it all in stride, soaking in the very limited amount of time she would be seen as something special, a little higher than the cookie-cut individuals that she'd grown up with, all scattered around her, consuming various grades of alcohol and marijuana smuggled into town by the Brady brothers who lay on the grass a few feet from her, blitzed out of their minds.

Sharon partook in none of it, choosing instead to keep most of her attention on Mr. Johnson's farmhouse, on the candlelight flickering in the windows, feeling a bit pensive and simultaneously curious, a feeling she knew well and could never shake whenever she was out at the farm. It lingered in her like a dream, creating this fog that made everything sort of hazy in her mind whenever she was out there. At the end of the night, people lay passed out in the field but Sharon stayed awake, watching the darkness of Mr. Johnson's home and glad to be finally getting out of the small town. She hoped Stanford was a place where sitting outside of an old farmhouse owned by a lonely man would not be anybody's idea of fun. Sharon vowed then to experience things she never could experience in Tulsa, vowed to make a point of it. The next day her parents made the long drive to Lubbock and saw her off at the airport. Sharon took one look back at them before getting on the plane. Her heart surged as the plane took off, and she smiled as Texas faded beneath her feet.

Sharon's first semester in college flew by in a buzz of midterms and finals, parties and all night study sessions, alcohol and pot after pot of coffee. By time she got back to Tulsa for winter break, her hometown seemed a myth to her. After a few hours in her old house though, she quickly realized not much had changed and—more importantly—nothing much would probably ever change. Small towns are stagnant like that sometimes, prone to repetition and tradition, neither of which are necessarily exclusive of the other. Kate called her on her first night back and Sharon knew what she was going to ask before she even said anything.

"You want to come over to Johnson's with me?" Kate clucked her tongue the way she always did when she was about to say something she saw as tantalizing. "Rob's meeting me after he gets out of work, bringing one of the O'Toole brothers, Ronnie, I think you remember him. He was a year or two ahead of us. He just got back from Iraq." She paused, then added, "He's filled out nicely."

Sharon sighed and agreed to go, only because she had to spend the next two weeks at home and Kate was still her best friend, though Sharon didn't know how long that would last. It was obvious to her they were headed in different directions. Kate had barely graduated, and during the semester that Sharon had been away, Kate had managed to both move in with her boyfriend Rob and, subsequently, get herself knocked up. She told Sharon this in a matter-of-fact tone and made her promise not to tell Rob. When Sharon pointed out that Rob would eventually find out anyways, Kate chuckled.

"Gonna be a hell of a surprise, ain't it?"

That night at Mr. Johnson's farm began as many other nights had throughout Sharon's adolescent years. There was an odd feeling beneath it all though, with her and Kate lying on the hood of Kate's rusty pickup truck, parked next to Sharon's parents' station wagon. Kate lit up a joint, inhaled a ghastly amount of smoke, and passed it to Sharon. For just a moment, Sharon felt herself slipping back into a groove and then realized that, where happiness had once been, there was now a deep pit of sadness. What surprised her even more was that this depression she had did not pertain to herself but to her best friend, her best friend's boyfriend who was on his way to meet them, and to this whole town. And, she thought as she looked over at the farmhouse, there was an extra amount of sadness reserved for Mr. Johnson, a man she now realized must be the loneliest person in Tulsa, the loneliest town in Texas. For years he'd had to sit and watch the children on his field grow from kids to teenagers to, now, that edge of adulthood where decisions can affect everything for the rest of their lives.

Sharon felt a pang of pity and, unexpectedly, guilt. She suddenly wanted nothing more than to show the people of this town how much different she was than them. No sooner had she thought that then Kate handed the joint back to her again. She took a small puff, not too much (she'd lost her taste for marijuana, would've much rather had some tequila or a couple of whiskey sours). Right then, Rob pulled up, sitting in his car solo. He stepped out and looked at the girl's sheepishly.

"Ronnie couldn't make it," he said, glancing at Sharon. "Sends his apologies."

Kate scoffed, on the verge of a hissy fit until Sharon shrugged.

"Doesn't matter," she said. "Wasn't really relying on that to have a good night. Just happy to see you guys."

Rob smiled at her nervously and she watched him as Kate curled a finger around the waist of his jeans and pulled him towards her, planting her lips on his. The two of them looked like a painted portrait, like Greek statues. Sharon had known Rob most of her life (just as she'd known most everybody in Tulsa for most of her life) and yet was still surprised at how much he'd grown up. Kate too.

The two had both started out with the same base body type back in junior high: lanky, malnourished-looking flesh draped over skinny bones. She remembered being outside in the fields behind their school back in eighth grade, when Rob had been just a boy to Kate and Sharon, watching nonchalantly as he and the other boys played football. Rob's chest had been bird-like then, his ribs making his skin ripple around his nipples. Now his chest was expansive, full, his waist small. Kate had almost the same bird chest back then too, wearing a padded training bra just to make it seem like she'd grown something. Her thighs and butt had left so much slack in her jeans that she took to wearing sweat pants to school most of the time, until around tenth grade when she'd suddenly sprouted a figure. Rob's face had darkened a little around the same time, gotten a little more serious, and the transformation of his body had coincided with Kate's so perfectly that he and Kate had locked eyes and panted their way into each other's bedrooms by spring of that school year.

They'd been an item ever since, and Sharon had gotten used to their public displays of affection. It was like background music, Kate and Rob lying back on the hood of Kate's truck and devouring each other. Sharon used to think it was gross. Now it was just inevitable, especially if one was away from the other for more than, say, an hour. Like mud after rain.

When they took a break from making out, Rob made light conversation with Sharon, asked her about Stanford, how it felt to be rid of her hometown. The way he described it made it sound like Tulsa was a coat that could be shrugged off. Sharon liked the description. It fit. Every few seconds she glanced at Mr. Johnson's farmhouse, the flickering candle light in the windows. When the tension rose to a certain level in her throat, Sharon let it out.

"Has anybody heard anything about him lately?" Sharon said, nodding towards the house.

Rob and Kate looked in the direction and Kate shrugged.

"Same ol'," she said. "It's Johnson. He's not going anywhere." Kate chuckled. "When we all have kids, they'll come out here and play and grow up doing the same damn things our parents yelled at us about." She glanced at Rob to see the expression on his face at the mention of kids. It was blank and Kate looked slightly pleased, which just made Sharon raise an eyebrow.

"You think he'll live long all alone like that?" Sharon said.

"What do you mean?" Rob said, looking genuinely confused. Now that Sharon thought about it, Rob looked confused most of the time. Kate very well could hide the pregnancy from him right up until the baby popped out, and Sharon bet that Rob wouldn't be the wiser.

"I mean," Sharon said, looking back at the candlelit windows. "Being alone like that, for all those years. That can't be healthy."

Kate made a _pshhh_ sound and waved her hand.

"He'll be fine," she said. "It's Mr. Johnson. If he didn't want to be alone, I know twenty women within a mile who'd have his baby tonight." She chuckled, then suddenly looked sad. "He chose to be like this."

Sharon stared into the distance.

"I don't know," she said. "All these years we spent hanging out here, nobody ever so much as asked him if he wanted to join us for a beer, or just talk or something."

"Why would he want to talk to a bunch of kids?" Rob said.

"Company's company," Sharon mumbled. "We should invite him one of these days."

"You know his rule, Shar," Kate said. "Peach tree's still standing right there and I ain't walking a step past it. We got a good set up here. I bet kids in other towns got to hang out in libraries or some such nonsense." She motioned around with her arms in the air. "We got all this, with permission. Leave the man alone."

"I'm just saying," Sharon said quietly, then dropped the subject.

Conversation continued for another ten minutes, at which point Rob went back to his truck (a vehicle equally as beat up as Kate's, as if they bought them at the same time on a two-for-one deal) and produced two six packs of Natural Light. He smiled at Sharon when he returned with the beer and told her they were in honor of her first completed semester. He'd heard that Natural Light was the chosen beer of most college parties, both for its cheap price and ability to get a person trashed fairly quickly. Sharon laughed and told them she drank heavier than that when she partied up at Stanford: lime and tequila shots were her choice. She told them stories of the parties, of studying until sunrise, of the beautiful campus and her plans to study abroad in England over the summer. Sharon reveled in their amazement and obvious jealousy, feeling a bit like a one-woman show, at least for a little while. When the beers were gone and she and Rob were swaying a little (Kate discretely declining the alcohol), using the hood less as a home base and more as support to keep from slipping to the ground, Kate and Rob decided they were going to head out.

"It's good to see you, Shar," Kate said, then smiled mischievously. "And if you really want to sleep with Mr. Johnson, you should just ask him."

Sharon scoffed, slapping Kate lightly on the shoulder.

"I do not want to sleep with Mr. Johnson," she said, her declaration a little too bright with alcohol behind it. She cleared her throat. "I'm nineteen. He's, like, forty. That's gross."

Kate glanced at Rob who was standing near his truck, staring aimlessly at the sky. Kate came close to Sharon and whispered.

"He's still hot," she said, then looked down at Sharon's body. "And, in case you haven't looked in the mirror lately, so are you."

She winked at Sharon then hugged her and walked over to Rob. Sharon chuckled and waved to them as they got in their separate trucks and followed each other down the dark street leading back to town, Rob's car swerving slightly the whole way out.

Sharon walked over to her car and paused to look again at Mr. Johnson's farm house. What Kate had said—the _idea_ of what Kate had said—was absurd, sure. Mr. Johnson wanted nothing to do with a freshman college student, no matter how "hot" Kate thought she was.

"But," Sharon said, trying to stop her words from slurring, and failing. "But—I could still say hello. Nothing wrong with a little hello."

Sharon didn't realize until then how starved for attention she was. Stanford had turned out to be a haven of academic integrity and advancement. But what she hadn't wanted to admit to Kate and Rob was that, aside from the occasional raucous party, things had turned out to be just as boring up there as they were in Tulsa. The only difference was she didn't know anybody up there, which made the boredom even more oppressive. She had been showing off in front of Kate and Rob; the reality of it was that she missed the town she had been so quick to disown. She missed the people she could rely on to be so predictably obtuse, the guys who would whistle no matter how many times she walked by the pub on Baker's street, even if it was five times within the hour. She'd gotten annoyed with it while she was here, but the complete lack of boisterousness at Stanford had given her a different perspective. The guys up there were educated, reserved, husband material. But every once in a while, Sharon just wanted to be hollered at.

She doubted saying hi to Mr. Johnson would fix that need. He definitely was not the hollering type. But, she thought, maybe it could open her back up to the town she'd so easily shut out of her mind. She was going to be home for two weeks; she might as well make the most of it. And Mr. Johnson had always had a bit of a glint in his eyes when he smiled and waved at the girls on his way past the peach tree. At least, she thought that's what she saw.

Sharon stared at the peach tree that she wasn't supposed to pass and walked over to it, rubbing the rough bark, stray pieces floating to the grass. The dirt trail leading up to the farmhouse twisted and winded down a slight gradient, stopping at the bottom where a stone path pointed towards Mr. Johnson's front porch. Standing at a higher point of the hill, Sharon could see over the house, the rows and rows of corn growing in the large field out back. She swayed a little, using the tree for support, then took a tentative step past the forbidden peach tree. She was surprised when nothing happened, then felt stupid for the surprise. What exactly did she think would take place? She had half expected a jolt of electricity, as if she were wearing one of those electric dog collars.

Sharon pushed away from the peach tree and walked down the dirt path to Mr. Johnson's house, looking up at the windows the whole time. Candlelight still flickered in what she believed was his bedroom (that bit of knowledge due to the many nights she and her friends had laid out in the field and speculated, until one day they'd seen Mr. Johnson's shadow in this particular window, which had subsequently thrown her and her friends into a fit of high pitched giggles). Behind Sharon, the night seemed to follow her, swallowing the path behind her along with the field and her car, shooting back a melody of crickets and a few errant birds in the distance. She reached the front porch and was about to walk up to it and knock on the door when she paused, realizing she had no idea what she planned to say to Mr. Johnson when he appeared. Assuming he even answered. For all she knew, he was sleeping and had just forgotten to blow out the candle. And even if he wasn't sleeping, he would probably be pretty miffed about Sharon breaking his only rule. What if, by passing the peach tree, she had just ruined things for the other kids? The ones younger than her? What if, because of her, future generations of Tulsa residents would be robbed of the same experiences she had out here on Mr. Johnson's farm? She didn't want to be responsible for that.

The thought was sobering enough to give her a start, and she looked down at her feet with disgust, as if they'd betrayed her by bringing her past the threshold. Her head was clearing a little from the alcohol induced state it had been in, and her mouth tasted like old beer which she knew from experience only got worse and more nausea-inducing the longer she stayed awake. She turned and was about to trudge up the path back to her car when a noise caught her attention. She turned and cocked her head to the side a little, listening. There was nothing for a while and she was beginning to think it was her imagination when the sound came again, more distinct. She looked in the direction, at the side of the house, and tried to rewind and play it over again in her head. It sounded like someone speaking, a little kid actually, saying something in what seemed like Spanish:

_Sígame al paraíso_.

She couldn't be sure. She didn't know Spanish except for what she'd learned in high school, which wasn't much more than _hola_ and _por favor_. But the words had the feeling of the language. They'd been uttered, almost whispered, in the strangest pre-pubescent voice. An asexual sound, almost alien.

It was then that the long forgotten childhood stories of the creature that lived out by Mr. Johnson's farm returned to Sharon. She chuckled in spite of the fear that suddenly sprang up in her chest. In fact, she chuckled because of it, the fear gripping her for all of a second before giving way to embarrassment. She looked at the shadows protruding from the side of the house and shook her head. The stories of the creature had been absurd to begin with, but in her self-induced moment of fear, she had laughably added to the story in a way that kept her from taking anything in her mind seriously for even a moment.

There was no creature at Mr. Johnson's farm. And even if there were, it most certainly was not _Spanish_.

She chuckled again, a little louder, almost drowning out the sound of the voice again. Almost, but not quite.

_Sígame al paraíso_.

This time, it was beckoning, and Sharon found herself walking towards the shadows beside the house, captivated by the melodic quality of the voice. It reminded her of when she was about eight and her grandmother had come to stay with her while her parents had been away for their tenth anniversary. Her grandmother—a staunch, God-fearing Catholic (who spoke of her parents' Baptist affiliation as if it were a malignant tumor they should look into)—had taken Sharon to a church in the next town over, since the two churches in Tulsa were both Baptist. At that Catholic Church had been a choir consisting of boys Sharon's age, young and pure. They had sung hymn after hymn that day, and though the actual sermon hadn't interested Sharon whatsoever, the singing had. The boys' voices from back then reminded her of this voice coming from the side of Mr. Johnson's house now: sweet, captivating, innocent. She smiled a little, dazed, and made her way around the corner of the house.

In the darkness she could see nothing but the swaying tops of the corn stalks and the low-lying moon, big and yellow and half-hidden by the crops. It shined off the tops of the corn and threw around the shadows that Sharon walked in, surveying the ground for the source of the voice. When it came again, she snapped her head up. The voice had come from directly in front of her, and the fear tapped at her heart for a second again, then went away. She stared at the corn stalks and stepped towards them, passing the side of the house and walking across the couple of feet of grass that separated the house from the crops. She looked up once to see the back window of Mr. Johnson's (proposed) bedroom, the candlelight still flickering. A shadow passed across the window and she paused, staring up, wondering if Mr. Johnson would choose right now to take a look outside, catching her in the act before she could find the source of the beautiful voice.

No sooner had the thought occurred, Sharon looked down and saw the creature. She knew right away that it was the creature, not just because it looked like _a_ creature but because it was a compilation of the different beings people had described to her over the years. Or, rather, it was any one of those creatures at any given moment. As Sharon stood there staring at it, the thing changed shapes, grew taller and shorter, grew appendages then absorbed them only to have another one pop out somewhere else. When she first turned around, the thing was shorter than her, about half her height, standing on two clawed feet. It had wings like a bat that twitched behind it, as if it wanted to fly away but couldn't. Then she watched as it grew, the wings disappearing into it scaly skin. Her eyes followed its ascent until it seemed to max out around seven feet and then fell to the ground on all fours. It looked up at her and its eyes twinkled, even though there was no light in the vicinity that could possibly be reflecting in them. Its spine was ribbed all the way down to a short nub of a tail, like a Doberman, if a Doberman and an alligator could mate.

Staring at the creature, the creature staring back up at her, Sharon felt one thought permeate her mind and tried to think of something else, anything else, but couldn't. Three words ran like a marquee in her head, over and over:

_So it's true_.

It had all been true. They had all been right, all the people who'd claimed and claimed and who she'd discounted over the years. It made her wonder a lot of things in a short period of time; about the existence of other such myths she'd been so quick to dismiss: Santa, the Easter bunny, God. What if it was all true? What exactly did that mean?

The thoughts stayed with her even as the creature bared its jagged, crooked teeth, a drop of saliva forming in the corner of its mouth and dribbling down. It moved quickly, too quickly, one of its clawed feet seeming only to shudder slightly in Sharon's eyes, and then there was a searing pain in her stomach. She looked down and saw her steaming pile of intestines lying on the floor and, even then, could still only think of the possibilities. The difference in her future. Should she scan the skies on Christmas Eve? Should she start to pray again?

Sharon looked up at that last thought, and then slowly fell to the grass. She rolled over as she did, facing Mr. Johnson's bedroom and noticing the candle was out. Then her face was washed in light and she strained to look over at the oncoming headlights of Mr. Johnson's pickup truck, catching a glimpse of Mr. Johnson behind the wheel with a solemn look on his face, shaking his head.

Then it was all blocked out by the creature's face hovering over hers, its cat eyes winking with light as it whispered in the choir boy voice:

_Bienvenido a paraíso_.

### Jaded

James' pen quivers, his hand casting a jittery shadow across the desk. It takes him a moment to realize the calculation in the movement, the repeated motion of his hand, spelling the letters of her name in midair: J-A-D-E. Over and over again, like an incantation.

James throws the pen down and stares at his open palm, cursing under his breath then closing his eyes and rubbing his forehead. When he opens them again, he's staring directly at the desk lamp, and he squints. It's been about a week since he swapped out the bulb in the lamp for one with lower wattage, convincing himself that the dimmer lighting made for a better writing environment. The truth is Jade demanded it, her body needing the sheath of shadows like a shark needs the sea, seamlessly flitting through his mind.

It's really all quite ridiculous, he knows that. And he really wishes he could just tell her to dick off. James gave up resisting Jade's impulses a while ago, though. There's no point in even trying anymore. What Jade wants, Jade gets.

A gleam from the window to the left catches James' eye, a final flash as the sun dials down, falling below Manhattan's skyline. The lights in central park flicker on ten stories below, and James focuses on the yellow glow reflecting in his window. He used to relish the view from that same window, day in and day out, waking in the morning to open the blinds and let the sun's rays warm his bare chest.

Now, though.

The blinds are open, but it's as if James is suddenly staring through stained glass; not a window looking out on Manhattan but a distorted depiction of the city he used to enjoy.

James' cell phone rattles against the base of his file drawer, the unnerving ring tone pulling him out of his head. He grabs the contraption, presses talk and shoves it against his ear. The voice on the other end springs through the receiver before he even has a chance to say hello, and he can't help cringing at Frank's scratchy tone, like somebody's been continuously punching him in the throat ever since he was born.

" _Jim_ ," Frank barks, then chuckles for seemingly no other reason than to sound like he's not about to have a heart attack.

"Frank," James says, quietly.

"Jimmy, buddy," Frank says. "My man. My main, _main_ man. How's it going?"

"Good, Frank," James says, closing his eyes and leaning back in his desk chair. He tries to keep the exasperation from entering his voice, but he knows what this call's about. And though Frank's a good guy, loyal, a colleague, a friend even—friend might be pushing it—he also happens to be James' agent. And it's deadline time. Which brings money into the equation. Which is sort of like dropping raw meat between two tigers who've always typically been civil with each other.

James thought he had at least a couple of days before this call, though he isn't surprised. He's known Frank for the better part of a decade. If Frank died tomorrow, there'd probably be a clause in his will that instructed his remaining family to " _CALL JAMES AND GET THAT FUCKING MANUSCRIPT!_ "

"We're waiting, Jim," Frank says. Another forced chuckle before he clears his throat, and James can picture him perfectly, sitting behind his desk in his office, tie loosened, sleeves rolled up, fine mist on his forehead with accompanying stains under his armpit, belly just starting the middle age bulge over his belt. "The world's waiting. You done yet?"

James squints down again at his desk.

"Another day or two Frank," he says.

"James, buddy, c'mon," Frank whines. "What am I supposed to tell Milton?"

"Another day or two," James says, then before he can really think about it too much he presses END CALL, puts the phone on silent, then turns and tosses the thing across the room onto his lumpy futon.

Turning his chair back around, James snatches up the bottle of whiskey from the corner of his desk and downs a mouthful, willing himself not to look at the stack of papers covered in his scribbled handwriting. _Begging_ his mind to avoid thoughts of her. But the moment the papers are in view his eyes are drawn to her figure and his mind reels with memories of their time together, the past few short months elongating and stretching like a breached cocoon into a physical presence with life-altering weight.

Jim didn't set out with Jade in mind. He didn't even known that he craved something this— _dysfunctional_ until it appeared, until _she_ appeared. It wasn't like it was love-at-first-sight though.

When Jade walked into Snappy's liquor store that first day—back around page thirty-two—announcing her presence with a pop of the gum tucked in her jaw, James' mood immediately went south. Jade stood there in the doorway for way longer than necessary, smiling, surveying, wearing those dingy low-rider jeans, that plain red tank top, sporting that scorpion tattoo on the back of her left shoulder, and James bristled at the distraction.

The style was to be expected in Gutterville though, the city James had created and placed in Central Florida long before Jade ever showed up, back when Nick Maverick had been barely a newborn, an inkling of an idea in James' head.

James had grown up in Gainesville, living in the Swamp until college allowed him to escape his sweaty, bug-ridden hometown for the compacted and exhilarating streets of Manhattan. Back home, though, James had met his fair share of beautiful double-wide-dwellers, and at first he figured Jade to be the same sort: another hot, white trash floozy looking to make her own luck, by any means necessary.

In that manner, James first impression was set. And by time Jade bumped into Nick Maverick in the whiskey aisle, near the shelves of Maker's Mark, James had to use every ounce of self control to stop himself from intervening, turning Jade around and throwing her out of the store headfirst.

The Maverick, however—always allowing time for banter—just grinned and chuckled.

"Well, dang," he said, staring Jade up and down. "You're 'bout alright, ain't you?"

Jade giggled—literally, giggled—and tossed her hair back, popping her gum again.

"You ain't no slouch yourself," she said, which made James' eye twitch. He tried to ignore her, to get on with things, but after half a page of The Maverick and Jade just standing there staring at each other, James grunted and tossed his pen aside, done for the day.

That was the first week of February, and he remembers thinking then that if the book didn't get finished by deadline—or, God forbid, didn't get finished at all—it would be all that bitch's fault.

And yet he woke the next day with the familiar itch in his hand, that urge that spreads like blood poisoning up his arm to his brain and demands a cure, in the form of words, sentences, plot. It forced him back to his desk early that morning, red-eyed and dry-mouthed, a pain in his right temple that only dulled when the tip of his pen scratched across the paper. And even at that point he tried to get rid of her, but Jade stuck to the pages like a verbal leech.

James hated Jade back then out of envy though, he knows that now. He wanted her gone, wanted her to give the reins of The Maverick's attention back to James himself. The Maverick had things to do, places to be, people to kill. Thinking about it now, about his futile resistance, gives James abdominal pains, actual physical pangs in his gut which make him double over, groaning and swiping for the bottle of whiskey. To think that _he'd_ thought _she_ wasn't good enough for him. Or even worse—not good enough for Nick Maverick. To think.

The Maverick himself is James' magnum opus; the hero every man wants to be, the lover every woman wishes her man was. Six foot two, lean, muscled, shaggy-haired with a five o'clock shadow that screams adventure, The Maverick is indomitable. Jade Mourne didn't deserve his attention, James had thought. Didn't deserve The Maverick's or any other character's attention in the desolate world of Gutterville, especially not the autistic prodigy from chapter eight who hated _everybody_ but somehow latched on to Jade at first sight. She didn't deserve it, James repeated over and over as his hand cramped and convulsed through page after page.

Yet still, Jade kept popping up.

She disappeared for a while around chapter twelve, and James contemplated adding a short aside: a truck accident on the highway, maybe, that split her car—and her—in two. But James was already enthralled by that time, though he hadn't known it yet. He still despised her though, with her stunning beauty and sly intelligence, even more so later on when she pulled up next to The Maverick in her self-refurbished '79 Mustang, just as Nick was recovering from a daring leap out the window of an exploding building. Getting to his feet and dusting off his torn shirt, Nick looked up at the flames shooting out of the fourth story window then turned, eyeing Jade as she flashed her bright, white smile, twitching her button nose just a little.

"Need a ride, Sugar?" she asked, nonchalantly.

The Maverick shrugged and hopped into the passenger seat of her car, a break from his characteristic solitude. Jade took off seconds later with a smile, screeching around a corner and off into the distance.

James had hated that smile most of all.

But, at the same time, without him realizing it, Jade had started to intrigue him. Gutterville was a shithole. James knew it; he had created it, had _lived_ in it. How this mysterious, versatile woman existed in the city was a question that haunted him more and more each time he saw her.

So she stuck around, in the background at first, traveling the streets of Gutterville with a resolve that he wouldn't recognize until later, in chapter twenty, when she appeared once again to divert The Maverick's—and James'—attention after a nice little run-in with the FBI.

A stream of smashed cars lay behind them on page 154 as James stared into her blue eyes, so deep it was like falling into the ocean from space. Sweat glistened on her ample cleavage, the exposed skin beneath her curve-gripping wardrobe tinted a golden brown from the southern sun. That was the first moment James felt an inkling of something other than disdain for her, something more akin to awe.

James raised his pen from the paper, leaning back in his desk chair and studying the short, blunt lines of dialogue that she generated with such poise. He scrutinized them and analyzed them then bit his lip and attempted to rewrite them, to take away that hypnotic factor that seemed to make everything else around her fall into the category of "mundane." His efforts were fruitless though, and James was left wondering how anybody could be so bold and hold such a resonating tone yet still possess such courage and fearlessness with an unmatched level of sexual prowess and energy, like the perfect genetic combination of a supermodel, a middle-aged college professor, and a U.S. Marine.

"Keep 'em wanting more," Jade said, glancing at Nick and batting her eyelashes as she lowered the smoking cannon of a gun clutched in both her hands. "Like my ma always said, keep 'em wanting more."

Both James and The Maverick froze, her voice capturing them both. The effect was maddening, and the lengthy writing session he'd planned for that evening ended after only an hour. He threw his pen down and turned off his desk lamp, those same few lines of quick dialogue staring up at him, taunting him, still visible in the fading daylight.

James spent the next day out in the streets, avoiding his desk, roaming the park and Midtown, staring at buildings as he crossed one intersection after another. Manhattan is a beautiful city, busy, full of confident women, and by that afternoon James had set his eyes on one at a coffee shop in Columbus Circle.

James first noticed Carol because of her eyes, blue with long lashes and deep pupils, like a pool with no bottom. She sat alone at a table with an open laptop and a fat-free vanilla latte, typing away with a small grin on her face. James ordered his coffee and sat at the table next to her, waiting a moment before turning in his seat and leaning towards her.

"Seems to me," he said, flashing a quick, hopefully disarming smile. "Like whatever you're writing is seriously amusing." James pointed at her laptop. "You've been grinning non-stop for like ten minutes now."

She turned and smiled wider, her cheeks flushing as she looked James up and down.

"Have I?" she said. "I didn't even notice. That's embarrassing."

James shook his head, smiled again and introduced himself, watching her tongue touch the roof of her mouth as she formed the "L" in _Carol_. He was about to ask if he could join her when she looked away quickly, towards her laptop screen, frowning.

"Everything okay?" he asked.

"Sure," she said, her hand stroking the side of her computer. She closed the screen and turned back to him. "Everything okay with _you_ , James?" The way she said his name made his stomach tingle.

"I'm just fine," James said, studying her, allowing himself the freedom of expectation for just a moment until he noticed the wedding ring on Carol's right finger. His face dropped suddenly and he glanced at Carol's face, the faint scatter of freckles on her cheeks, hair pulled back in a bouncy ponytail.

"You look familiar," Carol said, squinting. Her eyes suddenly went wide and she turned away for a second, reaching into her purse and—to James' dismay—pulling out a book.

On the front cover: the twenty-two-year-old male model who'd been chosen to portray Nick Maverick throughout the series, bare-chested and slightly-bloodied in all the right places, holding a machine gun in one hand, a beautiful brunette in the other. Back cover: James' smiling portrait, ten years younger. Carol grinned, her eyes glazing over for a moment.

"You think you could sign this for me?" she asked.

James reluctantly took the book and opened it to the inside cover. Carol handed him a pen and he was about to start writing when she cleared her throat and James looked up.

"I love your work," she whispered, leaning forward and touching James' knee. She gave him a shy stare, glanced at her computer then back at him. "We should hang out some time."

James frowned, his mind turning back to the papers on his desk, back to Jade. He left the store a few minutes later, promptly returning home to sit in his office with a pen in hand, and that had been pretty much the end of it. He was hooked.

But even though all this attention on Jade was affecting James in various ways, it seemingly hadn't affected his ability to move forward with the story. Until that point, The Maverick had been James' pride and joy, the closest thing he had to a best friend, and there was still enough of that sentiment there to always see what came next. The next gunfight, the next mystery, the next moment of comic relief.

James held no misconceptions though; if he were any normal resident of Gutterville, with the same middle-aged physical attributes he possessed every morning—waking up in his Manhattan condo to trudge into the bathroom and take a piss and brush his teeth and stare at his steadily-wrinkling face in the mirror—stepping in Nick Maverick's way would probably yield a boot to the skull, or The Maverick using James' spinal column as floss, or ripping his leg off and beating him to death with it, or eating cereal out of a bowl made from his skull, etc.

But as creator relating with created, James and The Maverick had always had a healthy, non-violent relationship. Until Jade.

James realized right away that Jade's advances towards Nick were warranted: The Maverick was a powerful man, and Jade—like most women James had known over the years—was attracted to power. James understood this about her; took solace in it, in fact, because—in all reality—who was more powerful than him? He had created her dammit, had given her the most precious of all commodities: life. There was nothing greater than that, greater than the intimacy of crafting something from nothing.

And yet she still stayed focused on Nick Maverick, this man with nothing to offer other than a few cheap thrills. This man who had captured Jade's interest, this mediocre stunt artist posing as a bad boy. James looked at The Maverick then—really looked at him: the straggly blond hair, the piercing green eyes, the hawk tattoo blazing up the right side of his neck. He studied the toned muscles and gruff voice and sly over-confidence. James looked at The Maverick fully for the first time since he'd created him, and realized how shallow this man had turned out to be. The Maverick and his one liners—dialogue James had once thought was witty and clever—now felt like broken glass grinding against his nerves, even more so after he realized Jade was falling in love with the man.

And it was true. She was in love. James had no idea when or how it had happened, but Jade had become enraptured by The Maverick's presence.

The moment it dawned on him: Jade and Nick stood in an alley awaiting Devin Will, The Maverick's childhood friend— _only_ friend in Gutterville, to tell the truth—and their supplier for a wide array of weaponry. James was just beginning to wonder how Jade had suddenly become The Maverick's sidekick when she faced Nick, placing one hand on his chest, the other in the palm of his right hand as she whispered her words.

"I don't know what's happening here, Sugar, I just—" Her voice faltered a bit and she stared into The Maverick's eyes, caressing his cheek before looking away, shaking her head, then looking back at him longingly. "Just take care of yourself out there."

James glared at The Maverick, who flicked his cigarette onto a parked car, dropped Jade's hand and turned away.

"I'm always careful, babe," he said, putting a hand on top of the car and flicking his hair out of his face. "Don't worry about me."

James tried to toss a rabid dog into that scene, but it just didn't work.

That was around the time Jade's dialogue began to expand, from brief quotes to long-winded exposés, much more revealing and yet still so seductive. James learned things about her that transformed the last bit of contempt he held for her into something much greater, a feeling that even admiration and love couldn't describe.

"Nick?" she said to The Maverick one evening, in the tiny kitchen at her apartment in West Gutterville. Covered in grime, she and The Maverick stood side by side, cleaning their pistols and the M-16 he'd taken off the Colombian drug lord's chubby sidekick. Stacking packages of C-4 in the duffel bag at their feet, Jade glanced at Nick. "You ever read any Chaucer?" Jade asked.

At the question, James burst out laughing, falling into hysterics so all-consuming he had to drop the pen for a moment, shaking his head and swiping at his eyes and hacking until spit dripped from his lips to the carpet. He finally got a hold of himself long enough to grab his pen and reread the lines.

The Maverick. Reading Chaucer. James fell out of his chair laughing again.

"No, ma'am," The Maverick finally responded. "Can't say I have."

"He's a poet," Jade said, glancing up at Nick and smiling, the set of her lips displaying both shyness and cunning. " _Was_ a great poet, in the 14th century."

"Uh huh," The Maverick said, scrubbing the inside of the M-16's barrel with a toothbrush.

Jade dropped her pistol and turned to The Maverick, leaning against the counter and sizing him up.

"He wrote this one poem, in _The Canterbury Tales_ , called 'The Wife of Bath's Tale,'" she said.

"That's nice, Babe," The Maverick said, jamming a bullet into a clip.

"There's this line in the poem," Jade said, stepping closer to Nick. "'Filth and old age, I'm sure you will agree, are powerful wardens upon chastity.'" She paused, let it sink in while The Maverick put the clip down, handful of bullets rattling together as his eyes raised towards the ceiling, brain attempting to crank through the syntax.

"That rhymes," The Maverick said.

"Yes," Jade said, nodding. "It's a poem."

"Poems don't always rhyme, babe," The Maverick said, in an almost gloating tone of voice.

"Also true," she said quietly, touching his arm.

"Alright," he says. "You got me. What's he talking about?"

Taking another step forward, Jade came face-to-face with Nick, her eyes drooping lustfully.

"He's saying that being old and dirty is a turn-off," she whispered, brushing a finger across The Maverick's mud-stained cheek and rubbing the residue between her fingers. "And I'm saying—I understand the old part." Jade licked her lips. "But I think Chaucer was wrong about the dirt."

James' smile disappeared right then, and if it wasn't for the explosion that rocked Jade's apartment building a minute later, he doesn't know if he would have been able to make it through the next few pages.

It was that day James realized two profound truths: Jade was much deeper than he had previously thought, so intense that he felt ashamed for ever believing she was anything else; and The Maverick had no idea what he had in the palm of his hand.

The Maverick: the ultimate sex symbol, the one man every woman in Gutterville would gladly cheat on their husbands and boyfriends with. And Nick Maverick, oh yes, he accepted the role, proving himself anything but true to Jade. Nick flirted with the outer reaches of infidelity on a daily basis, with every other girl that popped their enticing figures into a scene.

Chapter 32: Jade hadn't gone but two stores over in the Downtown Gutterville Mall to search for disguises that The Maverick should have been looking for _himself_ , when a sexy young blonde in a mini-skirt and tank top showing off her flat stomach and gleaming belly ring—cusps of her butt cheeks barely covered by the thinnest fabric known to man—walked into Nick's line of sight. The Maverick was on her in a second, cornering her by a hot dog stand, mouth an inch from her ear and whispering utter nonsense while Jade walked past display after display, frantic with worry. James ground his teeth so much that day his head started pounding, and he had to turn in early.

The Maverick could have had anybody, but he chose to string Jade along, this woman who began her life in Gutterville with so much confidence, so much buoyancy that it had made even James react defensively. He shuddered to think that he had mistaken his own insecurity for hatred.

One evening, James couldn't take it anymore and summoned enough courage to sit at his desk and try to turn Jade's eyes skyward, to James' face in Gutterville's stars. She smiled when he did this, and James' softened for a moment, rubbing the paper between his fingers lovingly.

Reaching over, Jade touched The Maverick's hands, and James watched as Nick wrapped his fingers around hers, engulfing them in his massive palms, the first sign of genuine affection he'd shown up to that point.

James frowned and jumped up, knocking his chair back and storming away from the papers, standing at his window, fists clenched as he stared down at the park with all the tiny people strolling and laughing and pissing him off. He didn't return to his desk until much later, after he'd calmed down, had a couple sips of scotch and eaten a bowl of peanuts. But by then his simmering resentment had taken a seat deep in the darkest reaches of his psyche.

He couldn't deal with it, Jade's ignorance as she bypassed him and went straight to Nick whenever something bad happened. And The Maverick showed _no_ gratitude, _no_ sense of appreciation for the will of this world he had been born into, this world that bent— _reformed_ —its very laws of physics around Nick Maverick's well being. Why, if it wasn't for James—for the discarded knife he'd placed in the warehouse when Nick was near death, tied up by the Haitian warlord and awaiting a rusty machete to the throat, or the overlooked pistol in the ankle holster while staring in the face of the sadistic KKK member tweaking on meth—Nick Maverick would have been buried in five different places by chapter 36. End of story, goodbye, do not pass go, do not collect your two hundred dollars.

And what then?

Would Jade have turned to James for consolation? He didn't think so.

And to James' dismay, The Maverick—instead of recognizing his mortality and approaching the situation with humble gratitude towards the man who had fashioned his survival—just smiled his sly smile, brandishing the knife or happened-upon nine millimeter or spontaneously materializing coil of razor wire as if they had all been there the whole time, Jade sitting near, smiling and wide-eyed with sickening admiration.

On one occasion, James even tried withdrawing his help. He just sat back and vowed to let The Maverick figure it out himself, see how long he lasted then. Nick subsequently used a monkey wrench to murder six men, earning both a rocket launcher and a kiss from Jade. James kicked a hole in his closet door that night.

So it was only inevitable that the thought would enter James' head, the seed that developed into a festering sore of an idea, a finality that could possibly fix his quandary once and for all. He played around with the scenario in his mind, dismissing it repeatedly week after week, chapter after chapter.

James was not a murderer.

He could not get rid of the only hero he had ever truly known.

Nick was a part of him, whether James liked it or not.

And Jade was The Maverick's girl. Whether James accepted it or not.

James told himself these things, keeping the urges at bay semi-successfully for some time. Then one evening he sat staring at the paper, throat clenched as Jade and The Maverick stumbled into Nick's apartment, into his sparsely furnished bedroom, only a single dresser and the bare mattress in the middle of the floor which Jade fell back on, squirming with desire. Pulling The Maverick on top of her, Jade wrapped her arms and legs around him, swarming The Maverick with every inch of her body, biting, sucking, teasing, ripping. Flipping him over, Jade climbed The Maverick as if she meant to conquer him, and screamed with an ecstasy that instantly shattered James' resolve.

Jumping away from his desk, his eyes stinging with tears, James ran to the living room and grabbed the bottle of whiskey from the top shelf of his liquor cabinet. Bringing it back to the room with him, he yanked off the cap and downed a quarter before he was able to look back at the jagged lines of script. And there she laid, sweat dripping on The Maverick's chest as her legs tightly gripped his back, her taut thighs glowing in the moonlight.

Frank called around the time James realized what he had to do.

James stands now, ignoring his blinking phone on the futon as it rings again and again. He knows Frank; the man isn't going to give up, not until he's got a manuscript or James' balls in his hands. But James can't think about Frank right now. He clenches his jaw and squeezes the whiskey bottle in his fist to the point of shattering it, then slowly relaxes, takes a deep breath, nods.

He will not give up. He will not admit defeat, not with so much at stake. Love. Companionship. Sanity.

James hovers over the papers on his desk, staring menacingly at The Maverick, pen between his fingers, steeling himself for the task at hand. Within moments, though, Jade fills his vision, and he tries in vain to see her without the tint of adoration clouding his judgment, her curves just barely visible beneath the white bed sheets. Nick Maverick's white bed sheets.

James grunts loudly and flips the pen around in his hand, cracking his neck as he plops down on his desk chair. He closes his eyes and touches the pen to the paper, and is just summoning the courage to move forward when Jade looks up at The Maverick, holding a hand across her chest to keep the blankets in place. As if sensing her gaze, The Maverick turns from the sliding glass door leading out to his balcony, overlooking all of Gutterville. He stands before Jade completely nude, no shame, the moon illuminating him in a milky glow.

"I love you," Jade says, and the words are like a gunshot to James midsection. He drops his pen and bends over, holding his stomach and chest and biting down on his tongue, stifling the moan that threatens to tear his throat apart.

It's a long time before James manages to reach a shaking hand out towards the paper in front of him, brushing his fingertips over the slight indentation of the words. Raising his eyes, he wipes them with the back of his hand to clear his vision, and can't help smiling as he watches Jade nestled in shadows. Her name stares up at him and he traces it with the pad of his thumb, grabbing the pen off the ground with his other hand.

The Maverick takes a tentative step towards Jade, opens his mouth, closes it again, turns his head to the side a little, thoughtful, scratching his stomach.

"I-" he says, unsteadily, then clears his throat. "I love you too." The way he says it, it's almost as if he's surprised, the realization coming out of nowhere.

James' eyebrows drop, his hand shooting forward reflexively as he stabs his pen into the next few words. Running on instinct now, James is surprised at the fury that flares up in him, as if a fire has been set in his very soul. He hesitates for just a second as Jade coaxes The Maverick back to bed, closing his eyes and writing blind for a moment as she slides across the sheets and tucks herself beneath Nick's arm. Then, thankfully, James is able to move away from them, into the muggy, night-time air of Gutterville, right outside The Maverick's apartment. James takes a moment to glance around, savor the peacefulness of the scene, before a van screeches to a halt in front of The Maverick's building.

The side door opens and three men in ski masks jump out, followed by a fourth man, blurry for a moment in the haze of streetlight. He takes a few steps forward and his face clears, revealing a slightly distraught Devin Will, The Maverick's best friend. Devin looks like he's been knocked around a little, but there's also a gleam of elation in his eyes as he walks around the van and approaches the passenger door, opening it. A sandaled foot drops to the ground, then another, and the Colombian drug lord emerges, surveying the area before setting a complacent eye on The Maverick's apartment.

"You are sure," he says, turning back to Devin Will, who manages to meet the drug lord's eyes but can't hide his shaking fist. "He is here?"

"Yes," Devin says, nodding and scratching his chest nervously. "Now, about my payment. I think—"

"You will get your money, puta," the drug lord interrupts, turning back to the van and pulling out a four foot long rusty machete. He studies it then glances at Devin. "When The Maŕicon's head is nailed to my wall."

Devin looks confused for a moment.

"You mean The Maverick, right?" he asks.

The drug lord gives Devin a wary stare before turning away and nodding at the three masked men who immediately hop into action, whispering commands at each other in Spanish. As soon as they move, another five men emerge from the van, the total eight of them approaching the front door with the drug lord following, strutting with his machete hanging loosely at his side. James can't help smiling at the entire scene, his lips parting into a grin filled with anguish and contempt and pure fucking hatred, coursing through every vein in his facial muscles. And a slight amount of guilt, yes, almost undetectable. He tells himself there's nothing he could do to stop the Colombians now, even if he wanted to. They're on a mission, already in motion. The justification seems to satisfy the tiny voice of morality in his head.

Creeping up the stairs, the group of men move in silence, the only sound the faint rattle of the chain straps on their M-16s, and the steady scratch of James' pen as it flies over the paper.

And James can't help it; he chuckles a little when The Maverick's door explodes inward, eight angry Central Americans storming the entrance with guns blazing. It takes them all of five seconds to burst into The Maverick's bedroom, but The Maverick is quick.

Too quick.

James realizes his error almost immediately, an error born in his own ability to construct the perfect specimen. James created Nick Maverick with a specific skill set in mind, one of these skills being a hair trigger reaction time. Kicking himself for not bringing more men, he watches helplessly as Nick dives off the bed without hesitation, simultaneously reaching up into the top drawer of his bedside dresser and pulling out his most prized possessions: two gold-plated Desert Eagles.

The Maverick kisses each one, clinks them together and grins.

"Thanks for invitin' me to the party, hombres," he says. "Was startin' to get a little quiet 'round here," he adds, before somersaulting across the floor, guns held steady in front of him, barrels bursting with explosive gunfire so loud James spins around for a moment, fully expecting his office to be a disaster scene: torn blinds, broken window, brains on walls, his own body slumped in the corner, bloated with bullets and a single stream of blood trailing from the corner of his mouth. Everything is in order though, and James turns back to the paper just in time to catch the back end of the extravagant gun fight, Nick Maverick's apartment glowing so bright it looks radioactive from the outside.

The last shell casings clatter to the floor, a silence piercing and heavy, sitting on James chest and making it difficult for him to breathe as he searches through the rubble of the aftermath. Eventually, James finds The Maverick crouched in a corner, eyes closed, willing his heart to slow down. Beside him, his guns lay smoking, the barrels sizzling as a drop of sweat falls off Nick's forehead. James studies him, shaking his head in disbelief when he realizes The Maverick is practically unscathed; aside from a small nick on his cheek there's barely a blemish on his entire, unclothed body.

"Motherfu-" James whispers, but is unable to finish as Nick suddenly stands, studying the debris that used to be his apartment. Bodies strewn across the floor, a hole in his wall the size of a car giving him a clear view into the living room, Devin Will and the Colombian drug lord lying with blank eyes and the drug lord's machete draped across both their chests, The Maverick gives it all the same unfazed stare, until he turns and both he and James' faces transform with horror at the scene on the bed itself.

Even in death, Jade's eyes keep the deep, bottomless-ocean blue, her body still wrapped in bed sheets no longer white but almost black. James wonders for a second if there's maybe a mistake, maybe she's not actually dead, because blood shouldn't be that dark. Then James sees her leg, one leg lying exposed, spotted with crimson dots, like bloody freckles.

James drops the pen, hanging his head into his hands and trying in vain to steady breaths that shoot like cannon blasts from his lungs. After a moment he forces himself to take another look at the paper, hoping to see something—anything—different.,But Jade remains motionless, eyes open but still, her lips colorless and slightly parted.

James jumps up suddenly, knocking the lamp off his desk and slapping both hands on the back of his chair. Before he has a moment to think about what he's doing, he picks up the chair and tosses it across the room, the wheels on the bottom slamming into the wall with a tremendous clatter, a piece of plaster dropping onto the carpet and the base of the chair splitting in half as James falls to his knees. Sobbing, he holds his hands in front of his face, shaking and pale.

"What have I done?" he whispers, then his throat tightens and he bends over, grabbing his midsection.

Outside his window, the steady hum of Manhattan reaches James and he tastes bile in the back of his throat at the thought of everybody out there functioning as usual, at the thought of having to rejoin the masses of roaming, zombie-like individuals, constantly seeking happiness and truth that isn't really there, happiness and truth that James finally found and just tossed away with the flick of a pen.

James doesn't know how long he stays in that position, head bowed to the ground with his hands steadily rubbing the sides of his face. It seems like its hours later, though, that he finally raises his eyes, glaring and bloodshot with anger. Grabbing his pen off the floor, James jumps up and stumbles over to his desk, crouching and digging into the paper, forcing Nick Maverick to look at Jade, to look at what he's caused, wishing for just a moment that he could bring Jade back just so Nick could see the blame in her eyes and _know_ that this is all due to his negligence. Force this _imbecile_ of a man to feel everything, every crevice of emotion, all the sadness, remorse, and self-hatred that James himself is feeling at the moment.

But Nick Maverick is Nick Maverick. He didn't get his name by dwelling on the past, and in perfect Maverick fashion, Nick stands over Jade, takes in her entire profile with one sweeping gaze, touches his fingers to his lips and then to hers before getting dressed and walking out of the apartment. He steps over many bodies on the way, and the entire time James wishes The Maverick was lying with them.

Ten minutes later, Nick Maverick has disappeared into the rising sun, and James is left with a single sheet of blank paper. He glares at it, sniffling and wiping his nose with the back of his hand, holding the edge of his desk to steady his convulsing body. The front door to The Maverick's shattered residence closes with a faint click and, in that instant, the apartment becomes a relic, a tomb of dead potential that James will always remember but knows he will never come in contact with again beyond tonight.

Because James knows things now. He knows now that this has always been about more than Jade, more than him, more than The Maverick. It's been about them all, about humanity as a whole, about the end of an era, a step back into the abyss of the unknown. James will never see The Maverick again, and he curses the coward for leaving so hurriedly at the same time he thanks him for allowing James to experience true love, allowing him these last few moments alone with her.

Jade Mourne, everlasting beauty.

James leans away from his desk, grabbing the whiskey bottle and opening the bottom drawer and pulling out a crumpled pack of cigarettes. There's one left, and he places it tentatively between his chapped lips, rummaging through the desk until he finds a matchbook with a single match sitting crooked. Pulling it out, he strikes it and watches the flare up, touching it to the tip of the cigarette then shaking it out. He pulls in deep, lets the smoke sit at the bottom of his lungs for a moment, savoring the burn, before he exhales and directs his attention back to the single blank sheet of paper.

For just a second, James contemplates writing something else—anything to assuage the nightmare. But when he touches the tip of his pen to the paper, the only thing that comes out is "The End," and James drops the pen and paper on the ground, scooting backward towards his futon with the cigarette between his lips, burning bright in the darkness. He gives himself some time to savor the nicotine rush, smoking the thing down to the filter before licking his palm and sticking the lit end of the butt against it with a faint sizzle and a quick, sudden burn. Then James turns, picks up his discarded cell phone and dials Frank. The phone barely rings once before a hyper voice answers.

" _Jimmy_ ," Frank yells. "Buddy, I lost you earlier. Sorry about that, didn't get to fin—"

"It's done," James says quietly, glancing at the papers strewn across his desk, across the floor, and like that the feeling overtakes him, sudden but familiar. The wash of nonchalance that always accompanies the finishing of a novel. James sighs.

"Done?" Frank says, sounding so hopeful it's sickening.

"Yeah, done," James says, glancing out the window again, the Manhattan skyline blazing with streetlights. "Should be on your desk in the morning."

Frank laughs and James can hear him clap in the background.

"Jimmy, always my main man," Franks says. "That's great news. Great, _great_ news. Gotta get Milton on the horn right now, but this should light a fire under their asses. Got 'em on the ropes, Jimmy. On the _ropes_." He pauses and James stares into the darkness of his office, the destruction. He realizes he'll have to get that wall fixed, buy a new lamp, get somebody in here to clean the cigarette ash and spilled whiskey and spittle out of the carpet.

"Everything okay, Jim?" Frank asks suddenly, which kind of catches James off guard. He continues to survey his room while considering Frank's question.

"Yeah," James says finally. "Just a little writing hangover."

Frank chuckles.

"A side effect of genius, my man," he says, and James nods, though he knows nobody can see him doing it.

### The Red Purse

The taxi slows and Ray Jensen lowers his arm, sighing with relief about five seconds before the girl screams and instantly throws him into a moral dilemma.

The first thought that pops into his head is that somebody's always screaming about something in this damn city, side effect of jamming millions of people into a twenty square mile area. But a cab, that's nearly impossible to catch on this side of town, where yellow Crown Vic's are like sparks from a dead lighter: here and gone in a second.

Ray _told_ himself to pay attention to his watch when he stopped at the bagel shop, but the place hooks him every time. Walking out ten minutes later than he planned—his breath foul with onion and garlic—he glanced at his watch and cursed softly under his breath, his hand shooting into the air to signal a cab.

Now, with the echo of the girl's scream still in his ear, Ray pops a piece of gum in his mouth and checks his watch once again, reaching up absently to loosen his tie. When he pulls his hand back he's holding the napkin he had tucked in his collar, which he balls up and throws in the gutter as the cab stops. He doesn't want to look back but he does, turning and seeing the girl in the alley that runs alongside the bagel shop, her face drawn and pale, cheeks scarred with mascara. In front and behind her stand two men, tossing a red purse back and forth to each other over her head. The men cackle, flashing yellowed teeth and eyes.

Ray curses and moves to duck into the taxi, turning his head a second after the girl turns hers so that their eyes just barely meet, like strangers passing on opposite sides of a window. He cringes, halfway in the car, wishing again that he hadn't been late in the first place.

"Buddy, meter's running," the cabbie says. "You getting in?"

Ray turns again, the girl standing between the two men; junkies, he assumes, by their diseased appearance. They continue to play hot potato with the girl's purse but the game is growing listless.

"Hey, guy," the cabbie says.

Ray edges towards the inside of the cab and the girl backs up against the wall behind her. The junkies rummage through her purse, throwing glares at her whenever she moves.

"Don't you see this?" Ray turns and asks the driver.

The cabbie gets a better line of sight and raises a single bushy eyebrow.

"Ain't my problem," he says. "You getting in?"

Ray scoffs, watching one of the junkies tuck the girl's purse into his back pocket. Their faces contort, no longer playful. The girl wears a catholic school uniform, the hem of her skirt stopping an inch below her knees, her white shirt smudged with spots of mud. Her tormenters move in slowly, clenching and unclenching their fists.

"Yo," the driver yells.

"Yeah," Ray says. "Yeah, sorry."

Ray quickly climbs in and slams the door, placing his briefcase next to him and glancing over just in time to see one of the junkies grab the girl's arm and then they're gone, replaced by storefronts and a few oblivious pedestrians. Ray sits back, mystified.

"You don't think we should've helped her?" he asks.

The cabbie glances at him in the rearview mirror.

"Buddy," the man says. "I'm working."

Ray stares absently at the man's face in the mirror then chuckles, shaking his head. The cabbie drives another block before asking Ray where he's going. And by then, Ray's briefcase is sitting on his lap, his necktie retightened.

* * *

Ray waits silently as Morton takes his time eating. They sit in an office at the end of the hallway, the largest office on the Morton & Stanley Firm's floor. Morton swallows his last bite and throws a plastic bag and fork in a trashcan near the front door, pouring himself a glass of water before settling his large frame back into the office chair behind his desk, the chair whining for relief. Ray sits opposite him with his briefcase next to his leg, jiggling wildly though his face is calm. He smiles as Morton opens the folder on his desk.

"So," Morton says in a low, cryptic voice, flipping through the papers in the folder. "Résumé's impressive, Jensen. Real impressive. Good credentials."

Ray thanks him and Morton begins naming off the items that please him the most. Ray keeps a smile pinned between his cheeks, nodding and raising his eyebrows occasionally, as if surprised by his own achievements. When Morton's voice begins to drone, Ray looks away at his own reflection in the large window behind Morton's head. He wonders if the junkies hurt the girl, and his smile disappears.

"Jensen," Morton says loudly. "Eyes over here."

Ray quickly shifts his gaze from the window to Morton's face.

"Sorry," he says. "I—"

"I see a lot of _words_ that describe your background to me, Jensen," Morton says. "A lot of paperwork but nothing _substantial_ to back it up. No sense of _character_."

Morton's the type that likes to emphasize words he sees as key points and, in his eyes, emphasizing is synonymous with yelling. Morton closes the folder in front of him with a faint slap, placing his hands palm down on the desk.

"Why do _you_ think you deserve to work for Morton and Stanley?"

Ray sits with glazed eyes, staring at the window again. Morton clears his throat and Ray jumps.

"Yes, uh..." he says, his voice cracking. He coughs and shifts around in his seat. "I'm sorry. What was the question?"

Morton frowns deeply and grunts.

"I asked you, Jensen," he says. "Why we should make you a part of our staff?"

Ray blinks long and hard.

"Well, sir," he says, feigning thoughtfulness. "I would say that dedication is my ultimate motive in everything I do. And there's nothing I'm more dedicated to than the legal process. I've worked long and hard for a chance to sit in this room and throw you a convincing argument in favor of myself, and I must admit that my... enthusiasm has got me a bit flustered. I am a Morton and Stanley man, sir, always have been."

"Yes," Morton says. "But _why_?"

Ray pauses and, for just a second, panics. He can't remember what he's meant to say, the speech he prepared and practiced for weeks. Morton's face is stoic, expectant, and Ray swallows, takes a deep breath. He is bred for this position, he tells himself, guided since birth through every twist and turn to be dropped here, in this office with this obese man. He opens his mouth to deliver his speech and sees the girl's face floating next to his in the window reflection behind Morton's head, a ghostly apparition with a somber stare.

Ray tries to ignore the image and speak anyways but his words catch somewhere between his chest and his throat and he lurches forward, thrown into a coughing fit. It grips him unexpectedly and viciously and he gasps for control. Morton waits silently for it to pass. In a daze, Ray imagines he's choking to death, and wonders if he did, whether or not Morton would get up from his chair or just page his secretary to call maintenance.

The thought angers him. He manages to catch his breath and face Morton with a glowering expression on his flushed face.

Morton smiles.

"Okay," he says simply. "We'll call you."

The words are so short and impassive that Ray sits and stares at the man for half a minute before he realizes what's just happened. By time he opens his mouth to backpedal though, Morton's already dropped his head, scribbling notes on a legal pad with his right hand and holding out Ray's folder with the other. Ray stares at the man and stands slowly. He takes the folder and Morton's hand retreats back to the desk with whip-like speed. Ray waits, racking his brain for something to shift the mood. Morton refuses to raise his head though and Ray finally sighs, trundling out of the office and down the hallway. In the elevator he takes a single, longing look back as Morton's office door closes with a faint click, the elevator doors following suit and shutting Morton & Stanley away.

* * *

The cab's just passing by the alley next to the bagel shop when Ray jumps forward, grabbing the passenger seat in front of him.

"Stop!" he yells, the taxi's tires screeching to a halt. Ray throws some money at the disgruntled driver and quickly hops out of the car with his briefcase in hand.

Darkness creeps up from various corners as the city prepares for night, but the alley is still visible enough for Ray to see the two junkies sitting by a garbage can, scratching and twitching as they each eat something from separate wads of aluminum foil. Ray steps slowly into the alley and is almost on top of them before they notice they aren't alone."What did you do to her?" Ray asks, his heart racing.

The one closest to Ray, a deeply tanned man with shaggy, disheveled hair licks his fingers and squints up.

"Fuck'd you say?"

"What did you do to her?" Ray repeats, taking a step forward. "The girl?"

The man turns to his partner, a bald pale-skinned man who leans against the brick wall and continues to eat his food as if Ray isn't even there.

"You seen any girls around here, Jerry?" the Hispanic man asks.

The bald one he calls Jerry stirs slowly then sits straight up, crumpling the aluminum foil in his hands and throwing it over his shoulder.

"No girls 'round here," Jerry says. He gives Ray an abrupt nod. "Keep it moving, shitface."

His partner smirks.

"The girl you robbed today," Ray says, gritting his teeth and pushing forward. "Did you hurt her?"

The two men stand slowly next to each other, a few feet in front of Ray. They stretch their shoulders and their necks and Ray hears the cracks of their bones, sees the shape of their lean junkie bodies beneath their ragged clothes. He takes a step back, simultaneously realizing and wondering what he is doing. He remembers getting out of the taxi moments earlier, and he remembers the righteousness he felt as he stomped into the alley. He thinks now, though, that the man who made that move was a stupid man. A very stupid man indeed.

"We said there ain't no girl," the partner says, swaying a little.

"And what you tryin' to say, asshole?" Jerry asks, cracking his knuckles. "We ain't rob nobody."

"C'mon guys," Ray says, chuckling. "This isn't that type of—I'm not a cop."

"What's it to you then?" Jerry says, sneering. "This ain't no superhero comic book, brother."

"I just want to know if you guys hurt her."

"We told you," Jerry growls. "Ain't no girl. Weren't no robbery."

Ray stays silent and tense as Jerry begins to circle around to his right side.

"You know," Jerry says, licking his lips and flashing his yellowed hyena-like teeth. He shifts his weight from one leg to the other. "You got some nerve coming 'round here accusing us a things."

"Yeah," the partner says. "Some nerve."

"Listen, fellas," Ray stammers. "I don't want any trouble." He catches himself taking another step back, away from Jerry's circling footsteps, and stops, forcing himself to stand straight, chest puffed out. "I just want the girl's purse back."

The two men give each other questioning looks.

"You serious?" Jerry asks.

"Yes," Ray answers.

They smile, relaxing noticeably, studying his clothes and his briefcase.

"What you got for it?"

Ray pauses, indecisive. A moment passes where everybody stares at each other, and Ray realizes the longer he stands there without offering something, the closer everything gets to becoming irreversibly hostile. He threw the last of his cash at the cabbie on the way over here though. He shuffles his feet and switches his briefcase to his other hand.

"Alright," Ray says, shrugging, as if giving in. "You guys can have whatever's in the purse. I just want the girl's ID and the purse itself. Nothing else."

Jerry eyes Ray curiously then laughs. His partner joins in a moment later and soon, they're both hysterical. Ray fidgets and peeks at the mouth of the alley and the street beyond.

"You throwing orders around?" Jerry asks, out of breath.

"No," Ray says, holding up a hand. A fine mist of sweat appears on his forehead. "I just—" He pauses. Both men take a step towards him, clenching and unclenching their fists the same way they did before grabbing the girl. "I just really need that purse," he says sheepishly.

"What's in the case?" Jerry asks.

Ray's eyes widen, surprised, and he instinctively puts the briefcase behind his back.

"Nothing," he says. "Papers."

"Looks real expensive," Jerry says.

"Could get a few bills for it over at Ronny's," the partner chimes in. "Looks designer."

Ray searches for a response to put the idea to rest, but feels his already loose grip on the situation fall away completely.

"The purse for the case," Jerry says, less of an offer than a demand.

Ray tightens his hand around the briefcase handle, imagines the girl silently pleading and, for some reason, Morton next to her with the small grin on his face, barking his words and rumbling around in his whining office chair.

"Ok," Ray mumbles.

"What?"

"Ok," he repeats louder. "Just give me the purse."

The two men stay quiet for a while then Jerry turns and walks over to the trash can, pulling out a tattered red purse. He hands it to his partner who walks over to Ray slowly, cautiously handing him the bag and snatching the briefcase from him. The partner examines it then turns to display it to Jerry.

"I'm leaving now," Ray says, backing up slowly.

The men ignore him.

Ray turns and walks out of the alley, taking each step slowly, fully expecting the junkies to jump him from behind, almost wishing they would so he wouldn't have to wait for it anymore. When he reaches the street without incident, he turns to see the men opening his briefcase and throwing his stuff into the trashcan next to them; folders with papers, important papers that he needs for his impending job search. A single renegade sheet floats up from the masses and drifts to the ground, landing in a puddle as the men walk away in the opposite direction, tossing the briefcase between each other. They exit out the other side of the alley and are gone. Ray gazes into the deepening darkness for a moment before a taxi rounds the corner near him and he quickly holds a hand up. The car flies by without slowing and squeals around a corner a block or so down. Tucking the purse beneath his armpit, he ducks his head and starts off in the direction of his apartment.

* * *

Ray drops the purse on his dining room table and grabs a beer from the fridge, eyeing the purse's red fabric, the sequined strap. He takes a large swig from the bottle and approaches the table. Inside, the girl's bag is empty except for a red wallet which Ray pulls out and opens up, laying it in front of him on the table and sitting down. The girl's ID is set in a holder on the front flap, her address typed in bold next to her smiling picture. The ID says she is fifteen; the picture says she is beautiful and naïve. Ray leans back in his chair, taking in the girl's youthful joy, a smile creeping across his face. He wonders whether he should grab the phonebook and search for her parent's number or go personally to the house, return the bag to the girl face to face, feel the momentary high of manufactured heroism as she thanks him.

Ray closes his eyes and sees himself standing on the steps of a courthouse, the girl standing by his side, her mascara expertly reapplied. The reporters stand crowded in front of him, smiling and holding their microphones in outstretched hands. He sees himself explaining to them how it was no big deal. Just doing his duty. Behind him, Morton sits in his office chair, beaming and reaching up to pat him on the back.

The image wavers. When it comes clear again Ray sees the girl, only now her eyes are gleaming with tears as she leans in the doorway of her parent's house with all her weight on one leg, holding an arm across her chest in that youthfully insecure mannerism that Ray himself just broke out of not too long ago. He feels her fake gratitude, her unasked questions for which he has no answer, her memories of standing in the alley fearing for her life as Ray jumped into the cab.

And he imagines his briefcase, in the junkies' groping hands. The new one he'll have to buy. The papers he'll have to replace, the wasted time.

Ray frowns and takes another swill of his beer and the taste nauseates him. He studies the girl's picture until it's burned in his memory—every strand of hair, every tooth in her smile—then stands and throws the beer bottle in the trash, along with the girl's wallet and her red purse.

### The Consumers

"The command 'Be fruitful and multiply' was promulgated, according to our authorities, when the population of the world consisted of two people."

\- William Ralph Inge

Mr. Turner sits in the back of the church and clasps his thin hands together, whispering fiercely towards Mr. Smith. Mr. Turner's fiancée and Mr. Smith's wife sit on either side of their lovers, throwing occasional peeks towards the front of the church.

"Good lord, Smith," Mr. Turner hisses. "So, you're telling me that you've never wondered whether this is right or not?"

Mr. Smith places a hand on Mr. Turner's shoulder.

"Turner," Mr. Smith says, squeezing the younger man's bony collar gently. "I'm not saying it's right or wrong. It just is."

The wooden door near the altar opens suddenly and Mr. Jefferson, the bailiff, steps in, the door thudding closed behind him. The idle chatter in the church ceases abruptly and Mr. Jefferson makes his way to the closest corner, the click of the soles on his shoes beating against the floor. All the men and women in the church peer at Mr. Jefferson with a tense, collective need in their eyes, but none as much as Mark and Sheila Ovapo, seated with their baby at the table to the right of the altar.

Mark sits with his arms crossed tightly beneath his sternum, a stance meant to project strength. Yet, occasionally, his elbow will shake and he'll look down at it, frowning before readjusting his arms even tighter. Sheila, Mark's wife, sits next to him tugging at her blue prison garments and fiddling with their baby—Mark Junior's—outfit. Next to the couple sits a lawyer named Cassius (nobody's ever really known Cassius's last name, nor really cared; the last few years have made him more of a formality than anything else), chewing on his lip restlessly. He studies a stack of papers in a folder in front of him, grumbling every couple of minutes.

To the left of this group is another table, where Mr. Washington sits alone with his hands folded neatly in front of him. A smug grin adorns his face and an open briefcase sits on the chair next to him, a carefully organized stack of legal-length papers visible inside.

A faint knock at the door the bailiff just entered through enlivens him and he takes a step forward, whispers purring through the crowd as he speaks.

"All _rise_ ," he bellows. Mr. Jefferson's voice has a commanding quality, and most of the attendants are on their feet before they even realize what he's said. Mr. Jefferson waits until the last person is standing before continuing.

"This court in and of Richmond County is now in session. Honorable Judge Paul R. Swift presiding."

Behind him, the door opens and a short, crouched old man draped in a black cloak enters. Judge Swift climbs the steps of the altar up front and rounds a chair that stands behind a large desk, facing the crowd. Behind him, a larger-than-life crucifix hangs on the wall, depicting a bronze Christ solemnly hanging his head. A steel pole sits on the ground next to the crucifix, a faded American flag mounted on it with tattered pieces of wire.

"Seated," Judge Swift says curtly.

There is a collective sigh as everybody sits and Judge Swift pulls a pair of bifocals out from a hidden pocket in his cloak, flipping through his notebook. He clears his throat loudly and Mark Ovapo flinches, then retightens his crossed arms beneath his chest.

Judge Swift reads quietly to himself before closing his notebook slowly and removing his glasses, peering at the table directly in front of him: the lip-chewing Cassius next to Mark and Sheila with their child in tow. Judge Swift glances at his watch before turning to the bailiff.

"Bring them in, Mr. Jefferson," he says.

At the command, Mr. Jefferson pokes his head out the door both he and Judge Swift recently entered through, speaking a few words before quickly moving back to his corner.

"All _rise_ ," he yells again.

The crowd rises again from their seats in quick succession as the door opens and twelve people enter—five women and seven men—making their way to their chairs that sit in two rows of six against the wall near the altar.

Everybody in the room remains standing until the twelve jurors are in front of their chairs. Judge Swift raises a hand then lowers it slowly, and there's another exhale of mass seating which ruffles the ends of the judge's cloak.

Judge Swift directs his focus to the juror sitting closest to him, an elderly gentleman named Mr. Jackson.

"Jurors, have you come to a decision?" Judge Swift says tiredly, looking only at Mr. Jackson, who nods. Judge Swift glances at the two tables in front of him, towards Mark and Sheila, who sit up nervously.

"Alright," Judge swift says. "Foreman. May we have the jury's decision?"

Mr. Jackson stands eagerly with a folded sheet of paper held in his hands, straightening his suit jacket. Mark and Sheila tense. Slivers of light peek through the shattered stained glass window near the ceiling and gleam off the drying tears dotting Sheila's cheeks. The sun shifts behind something outside and the church dims as Mr. Jackson silently reads the sheet of paper in his hands over to himself. Mark Ovapo, unable to stand the tension, turns his attention to the church's floor work, to how nicely the new boards have held up, though a visible layer of ash has settled and made the ground seem older than it actually is. The walls aren't as impressively redone; the cheap paint used to cover the scorch marks is beginning to fade. Mark helped lay the boards and roll the paint, along with a lot of the other men in the room. He glances at them, but the whole lot of them avoids his eyes.

Mr. Jackson clears his throat, finishes reviewing the paper, and eyes Mark and Sheila with thinly veiled disdain.

"We, the jury, find the defendants Mark Ovapo _Senior_ and Sheila Ovapo..." Mr. Jackson pauses cruelly, a humorless sneer touching his lips. "...Guilty on both counts of first degree negligence and unlicensed conception."

The church erupts with whispers and Mr. Jackson sits down slowly. Below the clatter of voices, a soft sob drifts from the front as husband and wife hold each other and their baby. The bang of Judge Swift's gavel reverberates through the church and Mark Junior lets out a soft whine, his mother's desperate whispers calming him back into a cooing reverie. The chatter dies off and the judge drops the gavel, peering at the couple in front of him.

"Mr. and Mrs. Ovapo." Judge Swift pauses, thoughtfully. "Before I hand down sentencing, do you have any final words?"

Mark faces his wife, who clutches their child to her chest. His eyes display his fear, his regret, his sorrow, and his anger. He stands quickly and straightens his prison outfit then calls out defiantly.

"Yeah," he says, wringing his hands for a moment before raising his chin. "Yeah! I have some words." He motions towards his wife and child, raising his voice. "This is a godforsaken _outrage_."

Another buzz sweeps through the crowd, a few people shaking their heads and staring at Mark scornfully.

"How so, Mr. Ovapo?" the judge continues. "And may I warn you, I will not overlook such outbursts in my deliberation."

Mark scoffs.

"'How so?'" he repeats. "'Deliberation?' We're being _condemned_ , for... for loving each other?" He looks at his wife. "For wanting each other? For wanting to leave something behind?"

The judge waits patiently and the murmurs from the pews are almost nonexistent now.

"This is archaic," Mark continues adamantly. "There's no other way to say it. My son, bless his soul, cannot be given precedent over a pair of grown adults. Over an already established marriage, over a union under _God_." His wife glares at him and he holds his hands up. "And, neither should we be given precedence over him. Rules are rules, I know. But this wasn't a premeditated move on our part. We didn't _plan this_ ," he says, slamming a fist into his palm. "We didn't plan any of this, it just happened. We're sorry, but it happened, and it should be _our_ responsibility to raise _our_ child. It's unfair, I tell you. And it's... it's... it's _bullshit_."

The crowd gasps and Mark glares at the judge defiantly.

Judge Swift stays quiet for a moment, rubbing his temples and sighing.

"Is that all Mr. Ovapo?"

"No," Sheila says from next to Mark. He focuses on his wife as she stands slowly, her eyes puffy and bright with rage.

"How dare you," she says softly. She turns to the crowd behind her, her voice rising shrilly. "How dare _all_ of you. To punish us for doing what's natural? Who are you to say what's God's plan? Just who the hell do you think you are? My husband and I have done nothing wrong here today, or any day, nothing more than what is natural to us, to you, to all mankind, to every living thing on this planet. No manmade law can take away the fact that we were built to—"

" _Mrs. Ovapo_ ," Judge Swift roars, and Sheila stops immediately. Judge Swift's face is a ghastly shade of bright pink, and he takes a moment to collect himself before speaking in a much lowered voice.

"We, the state, make laws for a reason. And we as a community have agreed to uphold these laws. There is a problem— _we_ have a problem—and we have taken measures to counter it." He shrugs. "And in this case, the penalty is non-negotiable."

He raises his gavel as he speaks, elevating his voice for the entire church to hear.

"For the crime of first degree negligence towards the United Cause to Re-advance the State of New York, and for Unlicensed Conception of a Child in violation of Amendment 96 of the New York State Constitution, Mark Ovapo Sr. and Sheila Ovapo are hereby sentenced to immediate death by consumption." He motions towards the bailiff. "Mr. Jefferson, the child is to be placed in county custody immediately. This court is adjourned."

The bang of the gavel is superseded by a strident shriek. Sheila kicks her seat to the side as she jumps up, the chair flying halfway down the center aisle between the rows of pews and the crowd of onlookers who are instantly on their feet. Clutching her child to her chest and baring her teeth ravenously, Sheila growls at Mr. Jefferson, approaching from the left. Her husband jumps in front of her as Judge Swift exits the church the same way he entered and a flurry of movement comes through the open door behind him. Stone-faced men with batons aid Mr. Jefferson in his approach and Sheila tilts her head back, crying out again, a guttural, primitive sound. She bends her knees a little, readying for combat and Mark stands in front of her and his child, grabbing one of the chairs from behind the table next to him and swinging it wildly.

Behind them the pews jump, people shouting and cajoling. Mr. Washington remains seated at the other table next to his briefcase full of legal-length papers, watching the scene unfold with the same smug grin on his face, his hands now folded on his lap as he leans back in his chair. On the other side of Mark and Sheila, Cassius stands up swiftly, shoveling his folders into a tattered briefcase before turning and walking briskly down a side aisle and out of the church. He ducks his head as he walks, his eyes trained on the ground, his bottom lip still tucked away in his mouth.

Mark continues to swing the chair at Mr. Jefferson, not noticing one of the other baton-wielding men creeping around the wall and coming up on his side. As Mark swings the chair wide and away, the sneaking man blindsides him with a blow to the head. Mark lets out a loud gasp and drops the chair, bringing his hand up. When he looks at it, shades of red streak across his palm and his vision blurs.

In the momentary confusion, Mr. Jefferson grabs Mark and triumphantly kicks the chair from his outstretched hands. A pool of blood collects above Mark's ear and streams down the side of his head, the coppery smell tingeing the air as he struggles and falls to the floor and out of Mr. Jefferson's grip. Clawing at the ground, trying to scramble away, he is promptly seized by three officers who pull him up and tie his hands in front of him, lifting the husband and father with the disheveled beard and the bloody head above them as he flails and screams, cursing and spitting violently.

Once Mark is secured, Mr. Jefferson directs his attention to Sheila, who proves even more of an ordeal with the baby held delicately in her arms, her face painted heavily with pain and rage. She bites and scratches relentlessly, swinging with her free hand and holding Mark Junior away in the other. Yet, despite her efforts, an officer manages to grab her hand and shake her until the baby comes loose. Sheila cries out hoarsely as Mark Junior falls, her bloodshot eyes bulging in their sockets, and for a few long seconds it seems that little Mark Ovapo Junior will meet the ground with a brutal introduction, until Mr. Jefferson falls to his stomach and catches the child, getting his hands underneath just as the infant nears the wooden floor. Mr. Jefferson stands slowly, holding the baby to his chest. Mark Junior smiles up at him, reaching a pair of chubby hands towards Mr. Jefferson's face.

Sheila hangs limp with relief at the sight of her son safe, multiple pairs of hands holding her wrists as three more officer's lift her above their heads like her husband. She stays rigid as they do, her arms outstretched, her legs held tightly together, her sobs barely audible above the excited chatter coursing through the church. Mark continues to kick and flail down the aisle between the church pews, blood flowing freely from his head wound and down one of his captor's arms. The steel-jawed man doesn't seem to notice.

The total of six officers carry the couple towards the back of the room and out the door. Mr. Jefferson follows in stride, holding the giggling baby. With the entertainment moving outside, most of the crowd and the jury clear out, some hopping pews to get ahead in line, others following at a slower pace, most trying desperately to hide the ravenous glimmer in their eyes. A smirk returns to Mr. Smith's face as he stands next to Mr. Turner and plants a firm kiss on his wife's cheek.

"Sheila's thigh for our pantry," he roars.

Mr. Turner hangs his head, and for a second it seems he will resume his argument with Mr. Smith about the morality of the situation. After a moment, though, he glances up at Mr. Smith, a sheepish grin on his face.

"I'll take her breasts, I guess," Mr. Turner says. "For my pantry."

Mr. Turner's fiancée scowls at the remark but stays quiet. Mr. Smith, momentarily taken aback, recovers quickly and slings his arm around Turner's neck.

"Breasts for the best, Mr. Turner," he bellows, then ruffles Mr. Turner's hair and lets out a hearty laugh. "Breasts for the best."

A third man across the church yells that Mr. Turner will have to fight him for them, then whoops and hollers his way out the door. Mr. Turner and Mr. Smith chuckle and pat each other's backs as they walk out, through the open church doors, the drifting scent of burning charcoal creeping up the aisle between the pews and towards the altar of the church to ruffle the flag, the faded fabric barely brushing against the feet of the crucifix.

### Ace of Spades

Hektor's body floats by the window in front of the control panel every four hours. There's an alarm on the watches NASA gave us before we came up here, set to the twenty-four hour UTC time standard. According to the watch, it's 0900 and I have to go now, before Hektor comes and fucks my day up. More than it already is, obviously.

I float back to my cubicle and take a ten minute break from looking out the window, give Hektor time to do his rounds, then come back to the control panel and reset my watch for three hours and fifty five minutes. That's the routine, three hours and fifty five minutes, a ten minute break, then reset.

I can't forget to reset the watch. I can't sleep for more than an hour here or there. I sleep too long and I might not hear the alarm and, resultantly, might forget to take my break, come back and reset the damn thing. Then I'll be all disoriented and not know how much time has passed and will inevitably have to see Hektor float by the window again. The only thing worse than seeing the dead body of your best friend floating by in space is seeing the dead body of your best friend floating in front of the dead body of your home planet.

I think I'm the only person who's ever been able to say that. I'm not proud of that fact.

* * *

I wake to Hektor shaking me and I'm covered in sweat. My chest feels like there's a twenty pound weight on it and I think _It's happened, the airlock's opened, atmosphere's running out, this is it_.

Hektor pinches me below my jawline and it hurts like hell. I struggle, pulling my hand out of my sleeping bag then putting my palm to my neck, where his nails left a small welt. I glare at him.

"What'd you do that for?" I ask.

"You were screaming," he says.

I sober up a little and look around my cubicle. The blinking green lights and netted straps holding everything in place so nothing floats around and bumps into equipment that doesn't need to be bumped into, not if we want to continue living up here.

Hektor is rubbing his face. He doesn't look so good. What used to be bags under his eyes have turned to luggage, and his cheeks are starting to show the imprints of his gumline. I remember very distinctly what he used to look like, it wasn't that long ago that the change took place. Back home, Hektor and I trained together for months before taking off. We were friends before the mission, but that time brought us even closer. And it showed, on his face, the face of his wife when she cooked for us. I was like family to them, which was fun and new, considering I have no family of my own. Hektor looks lost now, though. His hands have a perpetual tremble, and I want to grab them and hold them so they'll stop.

I look ahead of me, into the mirror across from my sleeping bag. I don't look so hot myself. We've had to ration the food. Hektor suggested it. Personally, I don't see the point. We're just prolonging the inevitable. I didn't say this to Hektor, though. Partly because he already knows, partly because words have a way of sticking around up here, as if the pressurized atmosphere of The Box traps _everything_ within, leaving it all to float around with us in zero-gravity, crashing into our minds and driving us even further towards insanity.

And besides, who the hell wants to hear something like that?

* * *

I had my earphones in when the beeping started, so I don't know how long Hektor knew about everything before I did. I just know that everything kind of erupted while I was on my break.

Breaks aren't very long up here. There's always one of two work components to focus on in the ISS, one being the research (which consists mostly of waiting for lab results) and the other being bureaucratic bullshit (which seems to be in endless supply). So I was a little pissed off when Hektor took my concentration away from the game of Spades I was playing on my laptop, _Nirvana_ 's "Aneurysm" blasting in my ears, trying very hard to drown out the constant hums and clicks and whams of the various machinery keeping the space station running. I had just put in a ten hour shift gathering the final statistical evidence for the fourth leg of my DECLIC-HTI experiment, a study of water near its critical point (when it transitions from liquid to vapor), which is extremely interesting to study up here where there is 1) no gravity and 2) no atmosphere outside of this artificial one. If Hektor had come to me with something pertaining to my studies, I would have been pleased, grateful even. But I'd finished up the report before I came over to my cubicle, so I knew it had nothing to do with that. I valued my free time greatly, as did most other astronauts during their six month stint in the ISS. It's a known thing—an unwritten code between us all—that when a cadet is off-duty, save for only the most _critical_ emergencies, they should be left the fuck alone.

So, when Hektor tapped me on the shoulder, I whipped around and gave him a look that would've made most people cringe. I mean, I was knee deep in a dime bid that was going _very_ successfully. I pulled both Jokers from the deck on the deal, plus both high ranking deuce's _and_ the Ace of Spades. That's five guaranteed books, not to mention the aces I had from the other suits. And from what my A.I. partner was bidding, I could tell they were holding too. I had this round in the bag, and with Kurt Cobain screaming in my ear about the cruelty of life, women, and heroin, I felt balanced enough to actually be relaxed up here for once.

You see, The Box (that's what I took to calling the ISS when I got up here) had an effect on me almost immediately when I got in it. The moment that air lock snapped shut and the pressure hit me, my perspective shifted. At first, it wasn't a very good shift. I mean, NASA trained me, fine. Five years to be exact, no problem. Five years to prepare for six months, sounds like overkill doesn't it? No. No amount of training could prepare _anybody_ for being up here. Nothing could prepare me for being resigned to what basically amounts to an air bubble sitting in the middle of a vacuum, for the ever-present threat of that air bubble bursting and releasing me to the vast emptiness of a space that _nobody_ understands. Sure, we hypothesize. We study. We gather samples. But nobody really knows what the hell's out there, the details within the void. It's a shit deal, and I spent my entire life aspiring towards it.

Up here, you rely solely on all this machinery to keep you alive, nothing but two feet of arm space no matter where you go. Without my free time, my laptop and my music, I don't think I could do it. These things clear my mind, keep things in perspective, remind me why I pushed to get this far in the first place. Remind me of where I came from.

Earth.

So, I turned on Hektor when he bothered me, opened my mouth to scream at him and make it a point that this was not acceptable. Not really even recognizing that it was Hektor, not caring. Then I saw his face and all that anger was gone. Hektor's a stocky guy, about six feet tall, pure Russian heritage. American-born but he's got the look, which basically meant he looked like a jock but wasn't. Not in a stereotypical sense, at least. Hektor was one of those guys who played football in college _and_ got straight A's _and_ actually _earned_ them. Did his Marine training in California at Camp Pendleton then hit UCLA, got his Bachelor's in Aeronautical engineering while breaking his own school rushing record three years in a row. Took a break to go to Iraq and kill a few hundred people then came back and got his Master's. Hektor wasn't the type of guy to scare easily. I swear, on our way up here, we were sitting on two SRB's with upwards of Mach 23 capability, 37 million horsepower, which was essentially equivalent to having twenty nukes strapped to our backs. And Hektor laughed. The whole way up, he cackled and wailed like a fraternity guy at a keg party. A real hard ass, thrill artist.

So when I saw the look of terror on his face, I couldn't help feeling instant terror myself. Hektor and I were up there by ourselves, a ship having carried off two of our teammates a few days earlier. We weren't scheduled to be replaced for another two days, a ship with three astronauts shooting off from Kennedy at 0800 EST Friday morning. I thought the lack of bodies up here would have been a welcome respite, more space to move around. Judging by Hektor's face though, this wasn't the case.

"What is it?" I asked, removing my headphones and hearing the beeping for the first time. Two faint tones, close together, barely audible over the cacophony of machinery.

"You might want to see this," Hektor said.

I opened my mouth to respond but Hektor had already floated a 180 and made his way back to the control panel. So, I unstrapped myself from the wall, secured my laptop and IPod in storage and followed him.

When I got in, the first thing I noticed were the blips on the radar screen, the source of the faint beeping. The screen showed a map of Earth overlaid with a red-light detection system that scanned the planetary surface for irregularities in anything from heat signature to abnormal cloud structures. Hektor came to a stop in front of the screen and I stared at it. There were a couple dozen little points of blinking light, four floating above the United States. I got a little closer and saw the exact positions of the U.S. blips: L.A., New York, D.C., Chicago. The rest were scattered across various areas on the planet. Japan. England. Russia. Korea.

"What's the readout?" I asked.

"There is none," Hektor said.

I glanced at him.

"There has to be a readout," I said.

"There isn't."

"Ok," I said, nodding, though I didn't know why. "Ok. Get Control on the—"

"There's more," he said. The way he said it gave my stomach a jerk, like a lump of ice had just been dropped in my small intestine.

"What?" I asked.

Instead of answering, he floated past me towards the window at the other end of the control panel which looked out onto the planet we called home. We were positioned right over the Americas, the U.S. blazing up at us. Blazing. Literally. As in on fire. Staring through the small porthole window, I watched what looked to be a cloud of flames spreading slowly across the eastern and western coasts. Everything on both sides, New York, the Carolinas, California, Utah, all gone. Florida and Kennedy Space Center engulfed. In the center of the country, a blooming cloud spread across the state of llinois, down towards Texas, more specifically the city of Houston. Johnson Space Center. Control.

I turned to Hektor, and I guess my face mirrored his, because all he did was look back at me and nod.

"Yeah," he said. "I know."

* * *

There's no atmosphere out here, therefore no wind. No conditions to change velocity or fluctuate body mass depending on its proximity to gravitational fields. That's why Hektor's peek-a-boos into the control panel are so regular, every four hours, give or take a few seconds. That's why I can set my watch for every three hours and fifty-five minutes and get away from the window in time to avoid his eyes. His eyes are the reason I have to leave every time. He kept them open, and the first time I saw him cross the plain of the control panel window, it seemed he was accusing me. As if this was all my fault.

Part of me wants to cut the rope that keeps Hektor tethered to the station, so I don't have to follow this routine anymore. I see the rope now. It's a constant presence in front of the window. I can hear it rubbing against the outside of the ISS, making this long _scree_ -ing sound, like nails on a chalkboard. I've gotten used to it now, but at first it was unnerving.

I want to cut the rope and push Hektor towards the sun. Make him the first human to be cremated in such a manner. I want to do it out of spite, because I know that's not what he wanted. It was pretty clear what Hektor wanted, even before he did what he did. He wanted to go back home. He wanted his body laid to rest there, in the ashes of our planet. He did not want his body floating aimlessly through space. He wouldn't have tied himself to the ship if that were the case, he would have just jumped. He wanted me to figure out a way to get his body back down there. I haven't. I don't want to. I want to take that away from him; like I said, out of spite. But if he stays attached to the space station, eventually he and it and me will stop orbiting and get sucked into Earth's gravitational field anyways. Then Hektor will get his wish.

I don't want him to, but I can't get rid of him. I need the routine.

Three hours and fifty five minutes, ten minute break, reset.

I don't have the energy to cut him loose anyways. It isn't just a weariness thing either, though I am weary. Weary from staring at what used to be Earth, the gray clouds covering the barren land, glimpses of burning red storms every few hours. It's also an actual lack of energy. Resources are running low. I think Hektor knew that. I think it's part of the reason why he did what he did. For himself and for me. Release himself, give me more time to figure out what I want to do. Both honorable and cowardly if you ask me. And for that, I have spite. But not enough. Not enough.

* * *

I can't find Hektor, which adds to the stifling feeling of this place. There's not much to the space station. It's just a big network of tunnels basically, with us free-floating through them. Nowhere to hide, really. So Hektor has to be around somewhere. I turn a corner and there he is, staring at the boarding/disembarking airlock chamber. He's floating there with his legs crossed and his hands lying flat in his lap, looking like a Zen master or something. I want to approach him but suddenly I'm afraid to. So I just say his name. He looks back and his face is more haggard than ever.

"There's nothing down there anymore, is there?" he asks.

I try to pretend I don't know what he's talking about, but I can't. His eyes are haunted, tearless. He looks worse than sad. He looks like a man that _used_ to be sad, but now he's just given up.

"We don't know what happened," I offer. "There could be—something could be in the works."

He nods and turns back to the airlock, resuming his Zen pose. I stare at him and rack my brain for something else to say.

"Right," he says, the word hanging in the air, oppressive. "We don't know."

* * *

I sat in my cubicle with my earphones on, trying to drown out a lot more than just the machinery now. I couldn't listen to Hektor anymore. He was like a wild animal in the control room, raging, gnashing at the microphone as if it were a taunting hand poking through his cage. He wouldn't put it down. I'd stopped trying to take it from him. His voice mimicked the machineries grinding monotony, every thirty seconds bursting out in a frenzied spat:

" _Control?_ " A deep breath, then " _Control, are you there?_ "

Almost twenty four hours since the first beeps had pierced the artificial air—since the first blips sprang up on the radar screen and exploded across the map like measles—and Hektor hadn't slowed. He hadn't even slept, as far as I knew. I knew I hadn't. I didn't know if I ever would again. I didn't know much of anything actually, which was the worst part of it all.

Hektor popped his head around the corner, holding himself steady against some wiring. He'd pushed himself out of the control panel too quickly and almost floated right into a wall. His eyes were wide, his mouth set in a strained expression, something between a smile and a grimace, his teeth glistening. It was painful to see his face like that, and I averted my eyes as I removed my headphones.

"I think I got Control," he said, breathing hard.

My heart broke into a race and I unstrapped myself, pushing towards the control panel. Hektor pressed a few buttons and spoke into the microphone.

"Control?" he said. "Control, you still there?"

A burst of static came through the speakers and I leaned in closer, straining my ears. Faintly, in between waves of hissing, there was a voice. I put my ear right up to the speaker.

" _Things a(inaudible) political tur(inaudible) cadets somebo(inaudible) abort mission fo(inaudible)_ "

Hektor and I glanced at each other and Hektor quickly grabbed the mic.

"Control, I'm not getting you clearly," he yelled. "Abort what?"

There was nothing for a minute and the tension in the control panel was thick, stifling. Then there was another burst of static, followed by one word that made me wish Hektor hadn't tried to contact Control in the first place.

" _Help_."

Then the line broke, and there was no more.

* * *

I wake up to the alarm on my watch beeping. I turn it off and my heart jumps into my throat. I look up slowly and Hektor is staring at me, his eyes ice blue, his mouth gaping. His hand is frozen in a claw, as if he scratched his way out of this life. The metal rope is tied around his waist, triple-knotted next to his left hip. I haven't seen him in two days. I wish I hadn't fallen asleep.

I look away and close my eyes at the same time, and realize I can't do this anymore. I just can't. I turn and float back into the corridor, to my cubicle, look at my stuff. My laptop, my IPod, my headphones. A second of contemplation and I make a decision. I grab my IPod, leave my computer behind and make my way past the control panel. I can't help it; I glance in and see Hektor as he's moving out of sight. His eyes are the last thing I see before I float past the opening and head towards the airlock.

* * *

I'm sitting in the control panel when the alarm goes off, louder than the tiny blip of the radar screen. This one wails through The Box, jolting me from my reverie. I would jump if I could, but as it is I just float painfully into the machinery behind me as I turn to look at the control board. The "Breach" sensor is blinking and the speaker above my head is screaming, shoving a needle of pain deep into my forehead. I turn to the computer screen, enter the alarm code and push disengage. The sound cuts off, but the sensor is still blinking. I pull up a map of the ISS on the computer screen and it tells me that the airlock disengage controls have been activated. My blood thickens, my skin prickling and I shiver, grabbing the sides of the opening into the hallway next to me and shoving myself towards the opposite side of the station.

I turn the corner and the shield door is down, already locked tightly into place. There's a small window near the top and I peer in at Hektor, without a suit on, holding a length of metal wire in his hand. He's tying one end of it to a metal bar next to the airlock control panel. I bang on the door and Hektor looks up tiredly.

"Hektor," I yell, then chuckle, make sure he can see me smiling. "Buddy, what are you doing?"

He keeps staring at me, silent, eyes droopy. My chuckle turns to a full-blown laugh, a cackle actually, and I try unsuccessfully to remove the insane tint from it.

"Come on, man," I say. "This isn't funny. Not even a _little_ funny, man."

Instead of answering, he returns to securing the wire around the metal bar. I bang on the door some more, look around for a way to open it. The only way though, is to head back to the control panel and do a manual override of the security system. But I don't want to leave Hektor alone over here. And, I think with dismay, if he opens the airlock before I get to the control panel and then I open the shield door, the entire space station will be depressurized in under 15 seconds. I'd be dead in a minute, if I was lucky.

So I float there and watch helplessly as Hektor finishes securing the wire then turns a little to look at me through the window.

"Hektor," I say, and my laugh has transformed into something bordering on sputtering. My vision gets blurry, then damn near incoherent and I swipe at my eyes. "Come on buddy. You don't have to do this."

"Do me a favor," he mouths at me, and I reach over and flick on the radio transmitter, his voice filling the speakers of the space station. It's so faint beneath the whirring and clacking of machinery that I have to move closer to the speaker above my head, near the shield door where I can still see his face. When I do, I hear Hektor perfectly, watching his mouth form the words half a second before they reach my ears. "Make sure I make it back," he says, then pauses and adds "Good luck, friend."

I push back a little, my eyes wide as Hektor turns away and ties the rope around his waist, a triple knot. I slam my hands on the glass, scream, yell, curse. I grab at the door handles and jerk my body around, breaking into a light sweat with the strain of trying to pry the thing open. Hektor keeps his back turned to me, and I watch fearfully as he presses a few buttons on the airlock controls. Then I turn away, grabbing the walls and rushing towards the control panel again, determined to override the shield door before Hektor opens the airlock. He won't open it if I get the shield door open. He wouldn't kill us both.

I reach the control panel and the computer screen. The map of the ISS has a bright red blinking spot where the airlock is and I stare at it until I hear the first _scree_ against the outside of the station. When I look over, Hektor's floating there, hands already frozen in the clawing grip, mouth already gaping. Eyes already an accusing, icy blue.

* * *

We floated in the control panel waiting for Control to contact us again. But we'd both stopped pressing the buttons, and Hektor had long ago lost his voice from screaming into the microphone. Now we just floated there watching the planet consume itself. Glimpses of the ocean were still visible occasionally. They were no longer blue though, but a muddy gray. Hektor was closer to the window than I was and I heard him sniffle every few seconds. It unnerved me to hear that sniffle, mostly because I hadn't shed a tear myself. Not for the planet I'd lost or the few people I'd known. The childhood friends, my estranged parents, my ex-girlfriends, my future girlfriends I'd never met. They were all in my head but my face was like stone, emotionless and cold. I wanted to give Hektor something but I had nothing. I knew the faces he saw in his head were much closer than mine, his wife, his daughter, his dad with the bad hip and obsessive love of golf. So I just floated there and watched him watch what remained of earth.

* * *

I don one of the EMU space suits that are next to the shield door, glancing through the window at the open airlock, the taut wire tied to the metal bar, the other end tied to Hektor's waist. I put my iPod earphones in, turn on a random playlist and shove the contraption in the suit with me. U2's "One" blasts into my ears as I grab the oxygen tank next to the suits and put the mask over my face and turn the valve, feeling the coolness of pure oxygen pouring into my lungs, flushing the nitrogen from my blood so I can put on the rest of the suit and not get the bends. It's kind of like scuba diving in that way; the atmosphere in the space station (a mixture of oxygen and nitrogen) versus the pure oxygen environment of an EMU are too different to just jump from one to the other. My chest rises and falls until my head is light and I feel a bit giddy, then I hold a deep breath, take off the oxygen mask and throw on the EMU helmet, locking it in place. The controls for the EMU are in the arm of the suit and I press the bright red button near my wrist and there's another cool burst against my cheeks, my ears popping as the suit pressurizes and the iPod switches tracks to Radiohead's "Creep". I turn around and shove myself and the bulky outfit down the hall to the control panel. Grabbing hold of the handle above the panel to secure myself, I bring up the atmosphere controls, override the safety protocols and backup security and shut off the ventilation and recycling systems. Then I pull up the airlock chamber controls and type in the disengage code and the alarm goes off above my head. I flinch when it starts wailing but keep pressing buttons anyways, grabbing onto a handle and holding myself steady as a loud whoosh blasts its way into the control panel and the shield door creaks open, exposing the open airlock and releasing the station's artificial atmosphere into space. There's a long minute when I think I won't be able to hold onto the handle for long, when it feels as if my helmet is going to fly off and take my head with it, when it feels like the disorientation of rapid depressurization is going to make me let go of the handrail and shoot into space. Then, in an instant, everything settles, and my iPod switches tracks again. Alice in Chains "Man in the Box." Fitting. I let go of the handle and make my way towards the airlock.

In the chamber, I fumble with the wire that keeps Hektor tethered to the space station, finally get it untied, brace myself against a wall and pull Hektor in, foot by foot, grabbing the wire with each hand and grunting as I bring him closer to me. I avoid looking at his face when he appears and, as he gets within grabbing distance, I hold him around his waist and move carefully towards the airlock opening, peeking out into the deep beyond. The darkness behind me is complete, in front of me the burning earth, too bright to look at directly. The airlock is facing the planet, which makes it a lot easier.

I spread my feet apart and shove them into the little cubby holes on either side of the airlock doorway. Turning Hektor so his face is towards earth, I let out a wail of exertion and despair, using every last ounce of strength I can muster to push Hektor towards our home planet as my iPod switches tracks one final time, Oasis's "Wonderwall." My feet slip as he floats away, the image of his lifeless body and the lifeless body behind him filling my vision as I relax and just let go. The space station is visible in my peripheral, and I glance at it, lights blinking, floating there and waiting to fall back to earth. I move in the opposite direction though, away from earth, towards the unknown, keeping an eye on Hektor as he gets smaller and smaller then bursts into a small bit of flame, becoming once again a part of the place we both called home.

### Nobody Knows, Nola

Rick sighed and ran his fingers through his slick black hair, closing his eyes and grumbling under his breath. Nola watched from across the table, focusing on the throbbing vein in his left temple, pulsing like a leech beneath his skin. She tried to look away, turning her head slightly, but her eyes remained on his face as she sat back in her chair and shivered. The restaurant was unpleasantly cold, and the temperature seemed to be dropping.

Nola rubbed her shoulders and winced as her hand brushed over a bruise hidden beneath the right arm of her sweater. Slowly crossing her legs beneath the table, she squeezed her thighs together. Rick raised his head and Nola quickly leaned forward, staring anxiously at his closed eyes. Rick's forehead creased broodingly.

"Nola," he started, opening his eyes slowly. "I'm not hearing any enthusiasm, Nole. You're not acting like you want this."

He cocked his head to the side, displaying his rugged profile as he glanced at a passing waitress's ass. Nola frowned.

"We've hit a dozen of these spots." Rick continued, looking back at Nola and leaning in further. "All of them, just you and me. I could've got Memphis on the jobs, or Mr. Brown. They wanted it too. They both showed enthusiasm. But I stuck with _you_. Even when you tried to back out, I _still_ stuck with you, coaxed you, taught _you_."

Nola heard the tension in his voice tighten, like an elastic band stretched to just about its breaking point, and her hands began to shake. She clasped her fingers together and quickly dropped her arms under the table.

"I would say it's because I loved your daddy like he was my own. But I didn't. Hated the bastard, tell the truth. Was a little too"— He snickered and readjusted himself in the seat—"Affectionate with you for my taste. You know the real reason why I kept you around, Nole?" he asked.

A squeak above their heads shifted Nola's attention to the ceiling. The bowl-shaped lamp above their table was dimmer than the others that hung around the restaurant. It extended a couple of feet above their heads from a long, thin fixture in the ceiling tile. The lamp swayed gently back and forth, letting out a soft _eek_ with each backswing.

"You know why, Nola?" Rick repeated louder. "I don't trust those assholes as much as I trust you. That's why. You and me, we got a bond I can't share with them knuckleheads. Love's like-"

A chuckle escaped Nola and she quickly stifled it, her hand shooting up to her mouth.

"What the fuck are you laughing at?" Rick growled, his face slowly turning red, his eyes shrinking to a beady glare.

Nola attempted to speak, to apologize for the uncharacteristic outburst, searching for a reason to explain it to her own self. Nothing came though, so she just stayed quiet, avoiding Rick's eyes.

"I'm getting tired of this bullshit, Nola," Rick said with an exasperated, heaving breath.

He had touched the brink and Nola closed her eyes, bracing herself for impact. She sat waiting and hoping it wouldn't hurt too much or draw too much attention. She'd hate to have to explain to somebody that it was for her own good.

When she looked up moments later, untouched, Rick was surveying the restaurant pensively. His eyes settled near the front and a small smirk touched the corners of his lips. Nola raised an eyebrow and turned to see a young hostess staring at them. At Rick. Smiling, actually. Nola shook her head and turned to Rick, immediately feeling the intensity of his eyes.

"You've never complained before," he whispered viciously.

She paused, unsure what he was referring to.

"About what?" she murmured.

"What do you mean 'about what'?"

"Nothing," she said quickly.

"Do you have a problem with all this?" he asked, motioning around the restaurant as if it were theirs to claim, as if it were a kingdom that he, as monarch, offered to Nola in exchange for her allegiance. "You have a problem with the clothes on your back? The fucking life you have now?"

"No," she said quietly.

"No?"

She tried to face him, but her chin felt magnetically drawn downward.

"No, Rick. I love it. All of it."

"You damn well better," he said with an emphatic nod. "Doesn't suit you to be ungrateful. To take all _this_ for granted." He paused and Nola waited patiently. "Your daddy couldn't give you any of this shit. That's for goddamn sure." He chuckled and leaned towards her. "All I'm asking for is your help to keep things the way they are, Nole. That's all."

Nola kept her head down.

"I treat you good." he said, almost questioningly. "Alright, at least. Right?"

Nola's eyes dropped further to her stomach and she was suddenly lost in memories, flashes of pain and free-flowing blood piercing through her mind, out of sync and out of order like a horribly edited film. A moment later, recognition sparked in Rick's eyes and anger reentered his voice.

"I told you to forget about that shit."

"I'm sorry."

"I told you," he repeated, his jaw clenched. "It was for your own good."

"I understand. I'm sorry, Rick."

"No!" Rick slammed his fist into the table and Nola jumped. "You _don't_ fucking understand. Shit like _that_ , like _kids_ , they ain't nothing but trouble in our line of work."

A burning pain hit Nola right then, as suddenly as a heart attack, rising like a hunger in her soul and engulfing her chest. She hadn't felt the emotion in some time and was unsure what it was at first. Even when she figured it out, she still didn't know exactly how to deal with it.

Anger, red hot and fiery.

"I'm sorry, Rick," she said, teeth gritted. "It's just... hard. To forget."

Rick paused and brought his hands together. Nola kept her head down but could still feel the power of his eyes.

"Try harder," he said darkly, gently cracking his knuckles. "For your own sake."

Her anger subsided as quickly as it had appeared, replaced by the ever-present fear. Something caught her attention suddenly, an elderly couple sitting at the table next to them, less than ten feet to Nola's left. The lady closest to Nola, her spoon dipped in a steaming bowl of tomato soup, had seemingly paused to listen in on Nola and Rick's conversation. Nola's face instantly transformed, her eyebrows sinking closer to her eyes, her nose flaring. In an instant, shifting from passive to enraged, her hands flew up from under the table as she braced herself and turned in her seat to fully face the other woman.

"Is there a _problem_?" she asked. The old woman quickly averted her eyes and Nola fixed her defiant stare on the man. He was older as well, though not so much so. Mid-fifties at the most, and oddly familiar. His face was clean-shaven, free of wrinkles with the exception of a line or two in each cheek. His head held a shock of hair, longish and shaggy, coming down just above his neck in jagged gray and white streaks, like millions of tiny electrical extensions protruding from his brain. He wore a crimson-colored shirt, buttoned nearly to the top, with a black vest partially closed over it. His hands sat on the table clenched together and his eyes did not waver. Nola's brief courage quickly subsided and she looked away, turned back to Rick, clasping her hands once again and placing them on the table.

Tapping his finger on the table, Rick's eyes remained on her, as if he hadn't noticed the outburst.

"Nola," Rick sighed. His voice was softer now as he reached across the table to wrap his large hands around hers. She jumped at first and Rick raised his eyebrows for a second. When he had her in his grasp, his fists swallowing hers, she immediately felt small, almost miniscule. It was a pleasant feeling, one she only felt when she was with Rick, when he occasionally held her tenderly. It had been a while and she could slowly feel all the fear and the tiny bits of remaining anger leave her body. She squeezed his hand softly and studied the interlocked maze of fingers.

"I need this, Nole," he said. "We need this, and I need to know you're with me. One hundred percent."

"I am, babe."

"Are you sure?"

Nola hesitated and Rick's hands tensed.

"Yes," she said quickly. "Yes. I'm just..."

"Just what, Nola?"

Nola basked in the warmth of his hands and stared into his eyes. She tried to remove any hostility from her voice as she spoke, pleading with herself not to break the pleasant lull of the moment by saying this in the wrong way.

"I just..." she said. Her voice was too deep. She cleared her throat and spoke in nearly a whisper. "You can't work, I know, with the felony and all. But I can, babe. Just let me get a job, baby. I'll take c—"

"No woman of mine's gonna be working in no goddamn bullshit slave job," Rick exploded, yanking his hands away. Nola jumped and reflexively brought her arms to her chest. "You take care of _us_. Take care of _me_ goddammit." Bits of spittle flew from his mouth and landed on the table.

A multitude of eyes turned in their direction and Nola's face reddened. Rick paused with his eyes closed, breathing slowly and running his fingers through his shining hair once again.

"You and I, we don't need jobs." He opened his eyes and poked his finger at the table. "These are our jobs. Right here. We gotta be on the same page though."

"Rick—"

"Quick and easy," he said, looking at the ceiling. "Like taking candy... like trick or treating."

Nola followed Rick's gaze up to the Halloween decorations strewn across the restaurant like orange and black webs from some enormous and monstrous spiders. She shivered once again as the streamers swung in unison with the still swaying lamp. In the window behind Rick's head, a flickering jack-o-lantern leered in at them.

"I hate trick or treaters," she said, closing her eyes.

"Me too. It'll be like taking candy from them." Rick readjusted himself in the seat, leaning forward. "I need to know you're with me, Nola. This next one's big. Bigger than the others."

Nola nodded slowly.

"I told you to be ready tonight," he said. He paused and Nola waited. "I did, right?"

Nola nodded again.

"Are you ready?"

Nola felt it was a rhetorical question. Rick obviously thought otherwise and waited for her to answer.

"Y-yes," she stuttered. "But... for what?"

"Your test, Nole. Of loyalty." A devilish smirk crossed his face. "Right here. Right now."

"I'm sorry," Nola said, confused. "I don't under-"

"I've been casing this joint all week," he said gleefully. "These bastards won't know what hit 'em. Especially with you, a woman. They ain't expecting it. All you gotta do is stand up." He paused, shrugged. "And do it."

Nola's eyes widened and she started to shake her head slowly.

"Rick—"

"I don't want to hear it, Nola."

Nola closed her mouth and felt the burn in her chest return with added ferocity. It set a precedent, the three bouts of anger in the same night. She couldn't remember the last time she had experienced even one, and she didn't think she'd _ever_ gotten mad at Rick before.

Nola swallowed thickly and grinded her teeth.

"Stand up and make the announcement," Rick said, squinting towards the front checkout counter.

"Rick," Nola said softly, closing her eyes, squeezing them and clenching her fists.

"Watch the doors," Rick said. "Grab everybody's wallet and jewelry. I'll get the register first, the safe, then we—"

"Rick!"

The word exploded from her, rising from her stomach to her throat and out before she could smother it. Rick jumped, startled, as her hand covered her mouth, her eyes wide and terrified.

"What the fuck, Nola?" Rick yelled.

To her left, she barely caught the old woman's gray eyes again as they moved away quickly. Nola's eyes fluttered back to Rick as the voice whispered in her ear, distant at first.

_Go on, Nola_.

Instantly disoriented, Nola looked around, startled. The voice was in her head and, at the same time, not. It sounded like the one that she always heard in there, the voice she associated with her thoughts, the voice that had the same inflections and tone as the one she directed at Rick and any of the few other people she spoke to regularly. The intimate voice of familiarity. But, it wasn't hers. It was deeper, more manly, and the thought had no basis, no reason. The words themselves were so ominous that Nola could do nothing but sit still for a moment, waiting for it to return and imagining what it must feel like to know you're going insane and not be able to do anything about it.

_Nobody will ever know_.

She jumped at the sound. Rick gaped at her, silent, and Nola searched the room for a source. The old woman to her right kept her eyes on her soup. The man across from her, however, had fastened an intent look on Nola. Returning the stare, Nola felt a gradual tightening in her chest. It grew like a tumor in her lungs, much different then the burning anger which had momentarily disappeared, eradicated by the sight of the man's eyes. Blue and gray melted together near his dark pupils and flickered with a light that had no source in the dim atmosphere of the restaurant, as if the man's soul itself were on fire. And as Nola watched, his lips curled back in a sinister sneer, revealing a set of unnaturally white teeth.

_Nobody_.

Nola looked away quickly, back to Rick, his face still shocked. Her heart pounded in her chest and ears, her sweaty palms planted on the edge of the table.

Another glance at the old man showed nothing but an empty seat.

"Nola?" Rick said.

Nola focused on Rick and everything wavered for a moment. His face, the restaurant, the jack-o-lantern behind his head, all shimmered and became cloudy. Putting a hand to her forehead, she stood slowly, gently backing away from the table. Rick watched her rise, his face still passive but his eyes burning.

"Nola," he said. "Sit down."

"I have to use the restroom."

"You can do that after."

Nola paused.

"I really need to go," she said, putting a hand just below her belly for added effect.

Rick sighed exaggeratedly and sat back in his chair, pouting like a spoiled child.

"Hurry up," he said, then dropped his voice to a whisper. "And don't think we're not going to discuss this at home later."

Nola swallowed thickly, feeling queasy. She held her stomach, grimaced as she turned, and froze in place.

Behind her and Rick's table sat a family at a round booth. Two young boys smiled and kicked their legs happily as they smeared spaghetti across their faces. The mother and father—oblivious to their children's lack of table manners—were engaged in what seemed to be an argument. The entire family paid no attention to her or the escalating situation with Rick. As if for emphasis, the father rolled his eyes in Nola's direction as his wife chastised him.

Nola stood in awe, not of the mother or the father but of the messy children and their companion. Dark red, glistening sauce covered the bottom halves of their faces, giving their open mouths and teeth an eerie shine, and Nola imagined twin pit bulls feeding on bloody scraps. In between them, the leering smile frightened her even more than it had moments earlier. The old man sat rigid, hands still clasped together.

_Now, Nola_.

"Nola?" Rick hissed.

Nola jumped and turned as Rick shot a threatening glare at her. She peeked back at the family, wondering what the now empty spot between the two children meant for her. The children's faces had lost the wicked quality, as had the entire scene.

"Forget it," Rick said adamantly. "Fuck the bathroom. Nola, sit the fuck down."

Nola tried to speak through a closed throat, plopping down in the chair exhaustedly. Rick shook his head.

"What the hell is wrong with you?"

"I—" she said, pausing and staring at her hands. "I don't know."

"Get over it, whatever it is. Now. We need to do this shit before anybody else leaves." He glanced at the front door, to her far left, as two men dressed in business attire exited the restaurant. "That's our money walking out right there."

Nola's breathing had accelerated. Her hands swam around her lap, touching her knee, her thigh, the top of her jeans and the small bulge beneath the waist. She felt the pull of change suddenly. Change in herself, change in others, change in something. She didn't know exactly what was going on, and she wanted desperately to ask Rick what she should do. The voice sang in her brain, repeating a mantra of words that had begun to sound unintelligible.

Nobody...go...Nola... knows...

Now...

"Nola?" Rick hissed.

"Rick, I..." Nola said quickly. "...I still have to pee."

"Goddammit!" Rick yelled, a glistening drop of spit appearing at the corner of his mouth. A shadow crossed his face and Nola knew then that she would remember that particular moment forever. It hit her much as the fear always hit her, as the anger had hit her that day, as every other realization and emotion and thought and Rick himself usually hit her: hard, fast, and painful. She knew she'd remember the darkness in Rick's eyes, the feel of the air as it grew heavier and colder in her lungs as she struggled to breathe. The sound of the restaurant's patron chatter would haunt her for years to come. She knew this even as her still shaky hand reached under her sweater, under the waist of her sweat pants, towards the bulge: a slightly aged .44 Magnum Colt Anaconda tucked tight against her warm skin. It had been her father's, his bow and six arrows as he had called it. Take from the rich and give to the poor.

She gripped it firmly in her right hand, fingering the trigger hidden under the table.

Rick leaned in, reaching over and grabbing Nola's free hand quickly, startling her.

"Nola," he said. He chuckled, squeezing her hand painfully. "Nole. Babe," he said, softer.

Rick tried to catch her eye and, for once, she successfully avoided it.

"I'm going to do this," Rick said. He lowered his voice more. " _We're_ going to do this. I'm going to get up, you're going to follow me, and you're going to help. I swear by God you'll help me..." He tightened his grip even more. "...if it kills you."

A heavy tear fell down her cheek and Nola was frozen by its presence. She hadn't cried in front of Rick in years. He didn't like the display, he said. She braced herself as another tear followed the first one, but he remained oblivious. Even as she brought her concealed arm out into the open, still clutching the warmed steel of the revolver, his face still took a moment to register.

She pointed it directly at his face, the barrel less than an inch from his forehead.

She felt a steadiness in her hand and arm that didn't match up with the rest of her body. Her chest convulsed with small, quick heaves as a few more tears fell. Her legs shook under the table and her bottom lip quivered. But her hand remained steady, like a robotic extension incapable of emotion, detached from her nervous system. The light above their heads glinted off the dull steel of the handgun, reflecting in Rick's wide eyes as sweat sprang up on his forehead. He sat back slowly, raising his hands in front of him, wiggling his fingers before placing his palms flat on the table. A strange silence fell over the restaurant.

Rick snickered uneasily, as if the gun were a toy, a bad joke that Nola had made with good intentions.

"Really, Nole?"

"I'm sorry." Her voice shook, cracking at the end like brittle paper.

"Nola." He chuckled again, though his eyes were wilder than ever, flitting from the gun to her and back. Nola couldn't handle the sight for too long. She'd seen it before in him, that same feral emotion, right before he'd pushed her face first down a flight of stairs. Rick guardedly surveyed the restaurant. "Put that thing away, before somebody sees it, and I might just forget this ever happened."

Now

"I can't," she whispered. Above her head the tempo of the swinging lamp quickened, almost matching the beat of her racing heart. "I can't do—"

"What?" Rick snapped. "Can't do what, Nola? Can't _not_ be fucking dramatic for once in your shitty life?"

She slowly raised her head, the tears on her cheeks disappearing almost as quickly as they had come. One last _eeeek_ came from above before all sound ceased. Nola felt her heart slow down, her damp palms quickly drying against the warm butt of the gun.

"I. Just. Can't," she said. The words came out crisp and clear, and Nola's body finally matched the steadiness of her arm.

Rick paused, looking from the gun to Nola and back, indecisive. Nola blinked just long enough for him to jerk towards her and reach for the Magnum. Her gun hand braced against the table, the barrel seemed much longer to her than it had before. As he approached, her eyes opened and met his for a moment. Rick's were light brown, almost hazel, with soft specks of green. There were faint lines on the puffy, aged skin around them, lines she could remember tracing tenderly with her fingers so many nights ago. Time froze on that memory and his face. The gun bucked violently in her hand as she pulled the trigger and a ringing sound sprung into her ears.

A fine red mist gently covered her face as Rick's outstretched hand exploded and his head snapped back, then forward again. His chin fell to his chest and she watched as the light in his eyes gradually faded, the green specks withering away like a dying flashlight. She held his gaze in hers as the hazel turned a dull, dark brown and gravity brought his body down into a slump, his forehead coming to rest on the table with a soft, wet thud. Nola shook herself and turned.

Silent screams crowded her vision. The old lady next to her had received a generous piece of Rick's middle finger in her bowl of tomato soup, standing straight up with the finger nail pointed in her direction. She stood up on rickety knees and backed into a wall behind her, one blood-stained hand held up to her wide open mouth.

Nola stood slowly.

The family of four behind her was in a panic. The mother grabbed both her crying children and crushed them to her bosom, dragging them away. The father stood between them and Nola like a well-paid bodyguard, a mixture of fear and protective anger transforming his face into a nightmare. The other customers had all migrated to the front of the restaurant, opposite Nola. She suddenly found herself alone, casting deep, swaying shadows across the scuffed linoleum floor beneath the dim lamp, which had resumed its steady squeak.

Her gun was dripping, the steel darkened with Rick's blood. Nola turned towards the body, reached over and gently closed his eyes before turning back to the front of the restaurant where everybody stood huddled together like a group of hostages. No sooner had the thought occurred to her, red and blue lights flashed in the windows.

Nola wiped the gun across the sleeve of her sweater, leaving glistening streaks of red across the tan cotton fabric.

The nosy elderly lady who had sat next to Nola now cowered behind a young man and wiped her tears with a handkerchief. The family of arguing parents and messy children huddled together in a corner hugging each other, the father enfolding his wife and two kids like a bird protecting its young. Everybody stared at Nola hatefully and fearfully. All except one.

In the corner, in front of the window that overlooked the street, those fiery blue-gray eyes and open mouth faced her, silently laughing in her direction with arms crossed. Nola knew now where she'd seen them before. Her father's eyes had been blue as well, powerfully so. She remembered saying something about them once, asking him why his eyes looked like icicles. She remembered what her father had said too, lying in bed next to her with a hand on her bare leg.

Nobody knows, Nola. Nobody will ever know. Except

Except what? Nola couldn't quite remember the last part.

The old man's smile grew wider.

Nola's chest tightened again and she turned away, breaking the old man's hold and focusing on Rick once more. A stream of blood had made its way to the edge of the table and—as she watched—it broke the threshold and fell to the floor. A crimson waterfall, majestic and full of purpose. And the answer to the riddle.

Nobody would ever know except...those who'd passed on.

She glanced at her gun, and slowly raised it.

The restaurant door opened and a stream of police officers swarmed in, guns drawn. Her eyes flashed to the old man, whose sneer had nearly consumed the bottom half of his face. He nodded and Nola turned to an approaching officer, lifting the gun up to her right temple. Her lips parted and she smiled, the first genuine smile she'd had in what seemed to be forever.

Nola coughed softly as the young police officer lowered his gun and held up a hand.

"I know," Nola said quietly. The officer cocked his head and she nodded. "I know," she repeated.

Nola pulled the trigger and felt her thoughts fly away, escaping her mind with a rush of displaced air and gunpowder. As she fell back on top of Rick, coming to rest by his side on the table, one of Nola's hands fell on top of his, her smile never wavering.

### Deserted

My mother walks me to the front door with Tom, her new boyfriend, following close behind. She touches my arm as I touch the doorknob and I turn to her and she smiles, her hands flitting nervously around her waist for a moment, searching for a place to fit, finally resting on my shirt collar.

"I'm so glad you're back, baby," she says, pulling me in for a hug. I hug her back, glancing at Tom who stands in the hallway with his arms crossed. His face twitches a little when he notices me staring at him.

"You're, uh, welcome to stay here," he says. "Whenever you need to," and then looks at the floor, like he regrets the offer.

My mother looks from him to me and nods.

"Whatever you need, baby," she says. "Just let me know."

I give a faint shake of my head and turn, and I'm about to walk out when she speaks again.

"I meant to ask," she mumbles, brushing something off the back of my shirt. "How's your father doing?" She asks it as if it's a secret, forbidden question.

I don't respond at first, just stare at her blankly, stupidly. I feel bad too, like I'm giving off the wrong vibes. I'm not trying to be a dick about it, really. I'm not stuck for words or anything either. I just know that my honest answer won't be what she wants to hear. You never really know what you should and shouldn't say in situations like these, but I know _you should be there to ask him yourself_ won't flow smoothly with her or Tom. Tom's still watching me too. He's been staring at me ever since I walked into the apartment, the entire time my mother threw her questions at me like I was a patient at her clinic.

I look my mother in the eye and say:

"I'll ask him when I go back to the house."

My mother smiles forlornly, rubbing my shoulder softly before hugging me again.

"So glad to have you back," she says.

* * *

Outside there's a thin fog covering the manicured grass across from my mother's building. She watches as I walk to my airport rental and I glance back and think about things I don't want to think about. When I pull out of the apartment complex in Kendall and look at the cars on the road, the streetlights, the gas stations and trees, I feel like it's all a mirage. Like beneath it all is the same damn desert, simple and predictable. Only, here I can't lose myself in the orders and missions and agendas and automation of combat. Wasn't a lot of talking over there, not a lot of analysis or wondering about my own actions. I just did shit. And, as I guide the car down 88th street toward 97th avenue and my old high school, I realize that's what I miss right now. Just doing shit. No feelings involved. Things are so much more complex back here, back home. My mother and father were together when I left. They were happy, or so I believed. I should have known though. It was the same happiness they had with each other then that they have with me now, a relieved sort of contentment with life simply because nothing is happening for the most part, good or bad. Things just exist, fixed, stationary, safe. But there was always this sadness in their eyes that I'd never been able to explain when I was a civilian. Obviously, they couldn't either.

I need a drink.

I had one with my father earlier. He tried to hide his gratitude when I showed up at the front door of my old home with my duffel bag and awkward smile. He fingered my military tag and pulled me in for a quick man-hug. There weren't a lot of words, surprisingly and thankfully. My father's usually a social man, but he just smiled when I asked him how he was, offering me a glass of whiskey as his answer. He told me I could stay there as long as I needed, until I got my feet under me. I wanted to tell him he looked like he was the one who needed a little support, but that would have opened a whole box of shit I'd rather keep closed.

* * *

In Army basic, they turn you into a soldier. They don't turn you into an Iraqi.

My first month in the desert I tasted sand in everything. It was in my food, my water, my spit, my blood. It rubbed me raw, rawer than basic had left me. I almost missed it at first, the training. Almost. A month in Iraq and the letters my mom sent me took on a whole new meaning. It's no surprise I didn't catch the hints of her and my dad's separation. It was an occurrence of another reality to me by then, the letters themselves my connection to a life that had become little more than a dream world, where M16's weren't within arm's reach twenty four hours a day, where car bombs and midnight sirens and streets full of people who hated me with a passion because of my uniform just didn't exist. I'd come back from patrolling an area and my abs would still be sore from the constant, reflexive spasms that hit them around every corner, every pulled-over car, every yelled order from a commanding officer. And there would be the mail, dropped in the barracks on my cot like scraps of food, my mother's delicate handwriting spelling my name out with the same care she'd raised me with.

So no, I didn't see this coming. And even if I could have, I would have just denied it like I did everything else.

* * *

I head down Galloway towards Dill's Tavern with the radio off the whole way and buy a pack of Marlboro's at the gas station on the corner of US1. The attendant is young, younger than me, nineteen maybe. A guy named Gustav worked there before I left, an old Russian dude with a heavy accent and an obsession with Hispanic telenovelas. He cried over them, took them really seriously. I can't even count the amount of times I'd pass by to grab a bottle of water and cigarettes after a night of drinking with my boys and there stood Gustav, eyes puffy and red, the television blasting behind the glass wall. Gustav asked me for my ID every time I came, without fail, claiming in his busted-up English _you never know fucking owner watch_. He'd pretend to spit on the ground in his little cubicle behind the register and look up at the security camera. _Like fucking hawk_.

Now, the kid that stands behind the layer of bulletproof glass smiles when he gives me my cigarettes and my change. I ask him for some matches and leave.

In the car, I pack the box of Marlboros against my palm and pull one out. The match is lit and an inch from the tip of the cigarette before I notice the sign, hanging next to the steering wheel from one of the A/C vents. _No Smoking/No Fumar_.

I consider doing it anyways, then sigh and wave out the match, putting the cigarette back in the box.

* * *

Outside Dill's Tavern, I nod towards the man smoking outside the front door. He nods back, talking on his cell phone. I enter Dill's hoping that Jen will be in her usual spot behind the bar. Jen and I were always close in that distant sort of way people are when one meets the other when one is working. She listened to me and served drinks; I talked and got drunk. I figure me and her could have had something at some point, away from Dill's, if we'd gotten to know each other. But you know how that goes. I'll take bar talk right now either way, as long as the alcohol's still flowing and Jen's smile hasn't changed.

Instead, I get Ron. He sees me the moment I come through the door, and I find some solace in this, the kind of comfort you get solely from seeing a familiar face, though Ron's never been a favorite of mine. I shake my head as he lets out a bellow, hollering so loud that everybody turns and looks in my direction. I smile awkwardly through the nostalgia, almost as stifling as the smoke. The place feels transplanted from a memory, as if I can turn to the left and see myself three years earlier with the boys from my old job, sitting in the booths that run along the sidewalls and trying to convince them that the Middle Eastern desert is where I want, need, to be.

I nod at the few people I recognize, a couple of guys standing next to the pool tables. They look no different than they did the last time I saw them, as if they haven't left the tavern since I left the city. Ron rumbles over to me, bald head glistening with sweat, newly formed wrinkles on his face.

"Goddamn, it's good to see you," he says, and there are a few painful slaps on the back. He ushers me to a stool at the bar, which is empty and bare, reflecting the light from the neon signs above. I sit and look around the room, at the slightly torn vinyl seats of the booths, the two tattered American flag dartboards still set up on the back wall near the flat screen that hangs from the ceiling. The pool tables sit in the middle of the room and the guys I recognize nod in my direction and pick their sticks back up.

"We missed you 'round here," Ron says, walking behind the bar and heading towards the mugs. He grabs one and flips on the beer tap in front of him, a gurgling, golden stream filling the glass, foam appearing at the rim. I glance at the sign above the tap, Bud Light. He smiles when he sees me looking at it.

"Bet you missed that too, huh?"

I don't. I don't really drink beer much anymore, actually. What I'd really like is another shot of the same whiskey my father gave me, straight this time, no rocks. But for some reason, the thought of switching from my usual at Dill's gives me a sour feeling in my stomach and mouth, like chewing on bits of sand. So I thank Ron as he slides a few napkins in front of my crossed arms and drops the mug on top.

"Let me look at ya," Ron says, grabbing my shoulders and spreading my arms out, squeezing down on my biceps. "Everything intact. It's good, real good. Heard they blowing y'all fellas up left and right out there."

I raise an eyebrow at him and slowly ease my arms away from his hands. He doesn't seem to notice my discomfort, just studies me then looks up as the guy who was smoking outside comes back in and joins his friends at the pool table.

"Regular American hero right here, George," he yells in his southern drawl. "Kicking Al Qaeda ass and what not."

The familiar ones look over and lift their beers towards me, faint _hell yeah's_ and _fuckin' a's_ drifting over from the rest of the group. Glazed eyes study me then quickly turn back to their games. Ron steps back and gives me an assured nod.

"Hero to me, I'll tell you," he says, grabbing a towel from under the bar. "How ya been? Didn't think we'd see ya so soon. Heard from Steve you was back, figured the family'd have ya cooped up for a while though."

I take a sip of the beer and grunt. Still warm, as always.

"Just stepped out for a little," I say.

"Had to get away, huh?" Ron says, bobbing his head with a sympathetic look on his face as he wipes a wine glass with a dirty towel. "Parent's asking too many questions?"

"No," I say. Part truth. "Just wanted a drink." Part fiction. Ron won't understand anyways. Won't understand what it feels like to come home to a house with a new paint job and only one parent in it, a father that is suddenly a lot more tired than I remember, a gazebo in the backyard that wasn't there before, a mother that's suddenly sprouted a few gray hairs and lives _across_ town, instead of where she lived for twenty-five years before. Ron won't understand, just as he won't understand why I don't drink beer anymore and why the cigarettes in the states taste so much milder straight out of the box than they did in the desert, where menthols were like a blast of icy air in the heat. He looks at me like he understands though, like he knows, and it irks me.

"No explanation needed," he says, nodding. "Kinda crazy being back, ain't it? Can't imagine what they had y'all doing over there, must'a been hotter than hell. Saw that movie a little while ago, the crazy one 'bout Desert Storm. What's the name?"

I shrug and Ron laughs.

"The hell am I talking about, you wouldn't a seen it over there." He thinks for a second then snaps his fingers. " _Jarhead_! That's the name. Ain't that what they call you fellas?"

"What they call Marines," I say. I close my eyes for a moment and sniff the air, savoring the scent. "I'm Army."

"Right, knew that," Ron says, placing a glass down and picking up another. "No offense. Know that pisses y'all off. You fellas all fighting the same fight anyways. My Pa was a Marine, ever tell you that?"

"No," I say, looking around. I missed this place, the smell of pool table chalk and spilled rum, the music sifting through the four nearly blown speakers sitting in each corner of the room. The owner of Dill's had a thing for Nirvana before I left and that hasn't changed either, the spirit of Kurt Cobain softly crooning "Something In the Way".

"Yes sir," Ron says. "Fought in 'Nam. He hated that word too, Jarhead. Why, I remember one time, when I was a kid, he damn near broke his best friend's neck for calling him that. Pa apologized real quick though, real quick. Always apologized for his... attacks." Ron nods to himself. "'Nam fucked Pa's head up real bad, but not too bad. Used to take nothing more'n a penny to set him off 'bout 'the money shits.' That's what he called it, shitting money, like we was flushing dollar bills down the toilet or something."

He bends down to pick something up off the ground and I take another mouthful of beer, breathing in smoke as I swallow. The combination's familiar and not at the same time, as if the texture of the smoke has changed over the past two years. Ron stands back up and sees something in my eyes that stops him.

"You alright?"

"Yeah," I say quickly, taking another swig of the beer and avoiding his eyes. "Where's Jen?"

"Jen?" he says, and the look of stupidity he gives me makes me want to reach over the counter, knock over the beer and throttle him. It's a rush of anger that departs just as quickly as it comes, but in that second I could shoot Ron if I had the chance and not think twice about it. I drop my head, take a deep breath and clear my throat.

"Yeah," I say, nodding. I keep my eyes on the beer. "Jen been around?"

"Been a while since Jen left, brother," Ron says.

"Left?"

"Ran off with some fella from California," he says. "Met him when she went to Vegas with her ma. Ain't that something? Last I heard, they was living in San Francisco."

I open my mouth to speak, then shut it. I'm reminded of my mother's house. I want to tell Ron that I wouldn't have come in if I knew Jen was gone, if I knew that Ron was all this place had to offer. I want to tell him that I wish I never came back to this city at all, tell him that, despite most people's beliefs about the conditions of war, I miss the fucking desert, the heat, the guns, the shit smell, the order.

Instead I nod again. Ron watches me but his face has changed and I think he can see the turmoil on mine. I slide the beer away from me, reach into my pocket and pull out the pack of Marlboro's. I shake one out along with the matches tucked in the plastic wrapping of the carton, putting the cigarette in my mouth slowly, pulling it out, licking my lips, putting it back again. The match blazes between my fingers a second later and I'm about to touch it to the tip of the cigarette when Ron hops over and blows it out. I stare at the burnt match in my hand, clenching my other fist.

"Why would you do that, Ron?"

"Sorry brother," he says, a genuine look of regret on his face. "No can do."

I stare at him blankly and he shrugs.

"Bosses orders. Get fined if we allow it, and you know I would if I could. Especially with you just getting back and all, swear you deserve it, serving our country and making things safe for people like them and they got to go and make laws against your smoking and all." He speaks fast, like a kid making excuses to his parents, and I look around as he continues in a lower voice. "If it was my place, I would let you, believe it for sure. Fuck the fine, I'd light 'em up for you myself."

I notice the guys at the pool tables first, the clear view of the back wall second. The neon signs over there are a little too visible, the normally heavy fog missing. I look down at the bar, bare as ever, think about the guy who was smoking outside, and wonder how I could have missed it.

"The ashtrays, Ron?" I say. "You got rid of them?"

Ron opens his mouth to speak, but just shrugs again instead. I sniff the air and feel my anger turn to rising confusion. It isn't me, not me or the missing ashtrays. The smell is still there.

"Quit playing Ron," I say vehemently and his eyes shift from side to side. "I'm not in the mood."

"Seriously, brother," he says, leaning away from me.

"The smell," I say, gruffly. I cough. "What about the smell? It smells like-"

"New thing the boss started a few weeks ago," Ron says, back to wiping the glasses. "Smoking ban had business down, so he bought these... things, shipped them in from England, like air fresheners but not so fresh." He looks around. "Thought it was stupid at first. Cigarette perfume. How's that sound?" He glances at the pool tables. "But people came back, even the nonsmoking fellas."

The guys look away when I turn to them, back to their game. Ron finishes wiping his glasses and pours himself some water. To sip on until closing time. Like he always used to, but not. Because now my memory of Ron sipping water while my friends and I laughed and chugged our beers and listened to each other's stories is less a memory and more a film reel, as if everyone I imagine is just an actor playing a part. Fiction, not reality. My parents pop into my head, parents I don't know anymore, in separate homes waiting to reacquaint themselves with a son they don't know anymore either.

"I shouldn't've come in here," I whisper.

Ron looks at me as if he's about to say something, nodding mutely instead. I look at my hand still holding the cigarette and the half burnt match. I drop the match in the mug, standing up silently and crumpling the cigarette in my palm. I brush the residue onto the napkin beside the beer and look around the bar, wipe the corners of my mouth and walk out the door. Ron yells for me to come back soon and I ignore him. I stop on the sidewalk outside, looking back at the glass door to the bar and my reflection staring back at me and, on an urge, pull the pack of cigarettes out of my pocket and throw it to the ground.

* * *

Inside the rental, I sit in the driver's seat and stare at the steering wheel, the dashboard, the muted radio. I know what's going to happen before it does, and I sit with my head in my palms, breathing slowly, evenly, waiting. The rush of anger hits like a gag reflex, rising from the pits of my stomach and opening my throat up, lurching, my vocal cords vibrating with a yell that sounds hellish even to my own ears. Everything is in that yell, images flashing like spliced slides in a movie. My mother's face adorned with a lustful smile as she brushes her fingers across the palms of Tom's hands, my father's eyes bloodshot and alcohol glazed, Jen clenching bed sheets in her fists and screaming in ecstasy beneath her faceless man, and it all makes me scream louder and I can't tell if it is out of pleasure or pain or a little of both or a lot of both or no particular reason at all. It doesn't matter one way or the other because it's what I want to do. I punch the dashboard once, twice, and it feels good and I wish it was someone's face, anyone's, a stomach maybe, with soft organs beneath the skin that could take the brunt of my fists, and I imagine that is exactly what it is and it feels good to do that too. I keep punching until I hear something crack and then I stop. My breaths came out in raspy bursts, my vision swimming. Wheezing, hands pulsing, feet numb, face tingling, teeth clenched together painfully.

And, as quickly as it comes, it's gone. The rise and fall of my chest slows until I'm breathing evenly again. I look up then and the world is a blur of colors, the sky a gray mass moving in slow motion. My knuckles hurt bad and so does my head, but I think, for just a moment, that I'll be all right. And that is all I need to start the car and pull out of the parking lot. I wipe my eyes, tasting salt, and turn back onto US1, headed back to where I used to call home.

###

### Credits

"Good Help is Hard to Find" originally published in _Writes for All Magazine_

"Predatory" originally published in _Sex and Murder Magazine_

"Loose" originally published in _Existere Journal of Arts and Literature_

"Welcome to Paradise" originally published in _Ghostlight Magazine_

"The Consumers" originally published in _The Medulla Review_

"Ace of Spades" originally published in _The Washington Pastime_

"Nobody Knows, Nola" originally published in _Prick of the Spindle_

"Deserted" originally published in _The Worcester Review_

### About the Author

Patrick Anderson Jr. received his BA in Creative Writing from Florida State University, and his MFA from University of Central Florida. He has also had short fiction and non-fiction published in _Silverthought Magazine_ , _Miambiance_ , _Midwest Literary Magazine_ , _Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review_ , and _The Bacopa Literary Review_. A native of Miami, Patrick currently teaches English courses at Miami Dade College.

Photograph courtesy of Ashley Inguanta

AshleyInguanta.com

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