 
ApartFrom

Constance A. Dunn

Copyright © 2013 by Constance A. Dunn

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BULGARIA/AFTERNOON

Bettina climbed the lobby steps of her apartment complex. She thought it was strange how the carpet pattern always seemed askew each time she returned home, the brown diamond pattern blended with the dirt to create new shapes: rhombuses, squares, faces and animals. Her living quarters included one spacious room with a tiny kitchen and a bathroom. There was no such thing as a shower stall beyond the border of Romania and Bettina lost count of how many rolls of ruined toilet paper she drenched during a groggy morning bathing; the remnants of them were stuck in-between the moldy tiles, slowly disintegrating. Bettina often examined the shadow under her own jaw in the grimy bathroom mirror. She considered it lucky she had a face that blended well there, she admired anonymity above all else, but there was no doubting her purely American demeanor. She was just a little too warm to strangers, just a little too loud on the phone, she had a man's handshake she learned from her mother, and she'd never seen a war. All in all she was a loose sack of stereotypes that ended up being true.

She placed her key, which felt like an anvil in her fingers, into the keyhole; it stuck when she turned it. Bettina never understood how curious neighbors could peek through a keyhole until Bulgaria. A keyhole in Virginia is just that, a hole, "but here they are standardized to accommodate the arm of a grown woman," she thought while she turned the key again with a loud clang.

The smell of her own body odor, pungent from the residue of sweat greasing the furniture and dirty clothes, hit her in the face. She had a strong scent, an ex-lover once told her it was like a drug that both angered and intoxicated him; likewise, Bettina was both ashamed and proud of it. It appeared after the first few days of sleeping on fresh sheets, and once she had used a mattress long enough the smell never quite faded away. She missed having a partner when she walked into the apartment. It was one of the only moments during the day that she consciously recognized the disadvantages of single life, one of them being an awareness of your own scent. She crossed to the fridge and discovered she was out of tomatoes.

... Late Afternoon...

Bulgaria smoldered in the summer and Bettina was hot walking down the market boulevard. The gypsies were in full-force on the small lawn in the center of the place, they always were. The heat made their faces shine and Bettina stared as she passed. She stood in awe of the culture; these free-wheeling outcasts represented something intrepid to her. She tried to shake her narrow-mindedness when she left Virginia "travel would do it," she conjectured, at least that is what everyone said, but it would take time. But no matter how much time passed she couldn't blind herself to the obvious differences between herself and others. European prejudices aren't much different than the prejudices of the southern U.S., so she fit right into the population of local bigots. She was satisfied that at least she had a justification for her prejudice: assimilation. The few expatriates she associated with still made the jokes and talked the talk despite their worldliness, but so did the locals and with more conviction, so she still blended with the enlightened and unfeeling without having to compromise too much.

She walked the length of the market until she found a firm bunch of tomatoes, firm enough that her fingers didn't pierce holes in the skin with the first touch, and she grabbed as many as her hands could manage. The booth owner kindly offered her a bag, Bettina bobbled her head "Da." The attendant filled Bettina's bag to the brim.

"Blagodarya."Bettina nodded, or bobbled, in thanks then she turned a one eighty to make her way home when she ran right into a small girl. The girl's skin looked like aged copper after the ashy green begins to congregate on the metal. She had a kind of smile on her face, but it was only effective on half the mouth, the other half drooped and snarled. The child's hands were the strangest of all, both held in tightened claws, the skin chapped on the back like a worn washer woman's and the right hand sported a tattoo across the bones; a simple series of lines, nothing intricate or impressively crafted, just three straight lines that traced the bones toward the wrist and up the arm. The girl had deep blue, almost sapphire eyes, indignant and unblinking, peering out from her copper face. She took Bettina in, all of her, every inch, as if to make sure she had the right person. And Bettina watched the girl's tattoo on her right hand and followed the lines to the wrist. The creature's little bones protruded from her arm: two knobs on either side of the wrist and skin stretched over two sticks in the forearm. Bettina's gut lurched and she felt a sob lodged in her throat, some lament for lost opportunities or excessive loneliness. She felt herself start to bleed. A painful contraction of her abdomen and she could feel the fabric between her legs soak through in a most unwelcome way. Bettina had often thought of what it would be like to face one of her own memories head-on and relive it again in full consciousness, but she always knew that in the end she would have done the same thing, this felt like that. She reassured herself that all this meant nothing and she would forget it tomorrow, she was moody that was all. One corner of the girl's mouth rose to form a broader smile. The girl giggled and ran like a hunted gazelle through a throng of stern-faced mothers and the image evaporated. It was only later that Bettina noticed anything missing from her purse, by that time it was long gone.

....Later Afternoon...

At sunset the streets of Sophia glistened with a sheet of rain about as thin as a fly wing and as iridescent. "Now is the time to deal with the practicalities," she braced herself for the police office visit and the mish-mash of emails and phone calls that would alert the world of the possible fraud committed in her name. Cancel the credit cards, check. A quick e-mail back to the States will solve that. Cancel the bank card, check. Bettina placed a call on her way to the police station at eight in evening Bulgarian time, nine in the morning stateside. The market closed at five. A five block walk to the police station lasted three hours. She used a toilet at a fast food chain to clean herself up. She stopped at a café and sat, and sat, and sat. She may have had a coffee, and continued to sit. She waited. She waited as long as she could.

Bettina could waste hours easily, it was a talent of hers, but this was the first time she remembered wasting time with purpose in Sofia. Usually she just whiled away the hours watching people, buildings, views, whatever as long as she could be silent and unobtrusive. She kept thinking of the girl and her tattoo and why anyone would tattoo a child that age. She remembered her decrepit skin, the dryness on the back of the hands and the way the child looked at her with such expectation.

.....Before Closing Time...

"Okay, Miss?" Asked the officer. He chewed the side of his mouth as he spoke.

Bettina blinked to wet her eyes that had dried out from waiting under the fluorescent overheads. The same light made the officer's skin look green and gave him a reptile-like aura, it made Bettina sick. She was disappointed, not that her wallet was taken, but at the banality of the whole thing.

"Yes?" Bettina said.

"You tell me about the wallet, okay?" He said.

"It's a brown, ladies wallet...so long, disorganized inside. It has a brass clasp." She used her fingers to illustrate the size.

"What is this? Clasp?" He interrupted.

"The...um hook, or button? The thing that holds it together." She explained.

"Uh, yes, okay." He said.

"Right. So do you think? I mean its low priority." She was annoyed with his indifference and her own self-deprecating remark.

"Yes, I tell you the truth. This gypsy child, this is not unusual. So I doubt we find. I would call the bank and things. Okay? I am sorry but this is all, it is difficult." He said.

"Yes, yes. I know, of course." She replied.

The officer's red-green cheeks glistened with oily sweat, a precursor to future heart problems thought Bettina. His form was stuck in the chair, rather than sitting in it, wedged between two armrests. The extra flesh draped over the metal frame, he was a paragon of disgruntled former military turned police. He sat sanguine and looked at Bettina as if searching for some kind of congratulations for his exemplary English. The fluorescents flashed above.

"Do you think I could find her, myself?" She asked again.

The officer looked at Bettina in that way only a man disappointed in his own life can look at a woman; as if to say "oh, now that's cute." Bettina swallowed the insult and continued.

"Yes. If I were to try to find her myself. Where would I start?" She asked.

"I do not know. " He smirked again and shouted something to a colleague behind him, they all laughed. Then he got up and left her there without a goodbye, sorry or any other polite formality. He gripped the police report in his fist and the paper crumpled under the pressure.

.....Evening Coming On...

Outside the police station Bettina was greeted by the nonsensical weaving in and out of side streets, the uncomfortable relationship between ancient order and modern chaos, the rag-tag geometry of the pedestrian walkways. Bettina relished the conflict of the city especially the visual conflict of streets in the Balkans; balconies colliding with balconies in the alleyways or Communist blocks cuddling next to Viennese knockoffs with a perishing church right in-between the two. She was humiliated to admit her attachment to the mundane details. She regarded all these things now as she wandered side streets half-searching for the girl, a little distracted and slightly anxious about her wallet and other money troubles. She kept a mental tally of gains, losses, deposits, withdrawals, approximate growth at the present interest rates, possible future investments, employment opportunities and other ways to put herself in numbers. She kicked a crumbled bag of chips out of her path toward a kerchiefed begging woman. She felt ashamed when the woman made eye contact with her afterward, but this subsided into relief that she had the leisure time to ponder investments instead of sitting within kicking range of street garbage.

...Early Evening...

Bettina thought of the girl again but the first thing that appeared in her mind's eye was a section of copper-plated roof she'd seen as a child. This image super-imposed itself atop of an image of copper decor at her wedding then everything got confused.

The girl's eyes were also remarkable so she thought of those instead, something between sinister and sublime. Her eyes stood still as the scenery behind her sped past, evolved and disintegrated; eons of time spit out of a vacuum and brushed past like a stray cat. They were dark blue of deep water where demonic-looking fish hunt for their prey without having to hide. The pupil was open and black, but the whites of the eye were a true white, not yellowed from malnutrition or red from tears, as white as a pageant queen's teeth.

...Evening...

Bettina searched every street she could think of in hopes of catching a second look at the child's coppery skin. She had no hope of finding the wallet. She sat in cafes and waited using her bag as a lure, hanging it out in the open to attract the attention of would-be pickpockets. She completely neglected her work, but she was looking for an excuse to ignore work anyway. She had grown increasingly bored with touting the beauties of a Grecian coastline and giving suggestions for what to bring on a Saharan adventure; one, because she had never been to either of these places and two, because the idea of traveling by guidebook left her numb. Every time she opened her laptop, she felt the sting of her own limitations. Fortunately, Bulgaria's struggling economy allowed her to work less, so she could afford a little side adventure. Despite her pleasure at being alone, she had to admit it was nice to get out of the apartment, to be amongst her own species. This aimless watching had the inadvertent effect of forcing her into awareness, the concentration it took to spot a quick-moving, blue-eyed gypsy girl among a hubbub of people, honed her eyes to other passersby: the high-heeled, over-made-up girls, the men and their stares, the elderly couple walking arm and arm. The old were her favorites, their creases and age marks were more compelling than the fresh faces of the young. The young had been nowhere, so everywhere was possible. This made them unpredictable and she couldn't trust them.

So she sat and watched. She tested the water with the gypsy families in the market, mostly they just laughed at her; but the market is where she spent most of her time. Reason told Bettina that this wasn't the first time the girl had stolen in there; it was very possible that it was her office.

She repeatedly walked a one mile circumference around the area before she planned to find a resting spot where she could wait for the copper girl. She counted each turn around using a tree as a marker. One, two, three...eight turns around: the uneven cobblestones, the holes in the street, the running shoe knock-off guy, the makeshift open-air cafes, the coal-dust covered buildings, the pigeon shit, the covered heads and the platform shoes. Soon her feet pulsed, she could feel the rawness at the bottom of each heel. she could feel the dull thud of her hips as the muscles popped in and out of place. She was just about to sit down at a nearby café and wait for the pain to subside when she saw it.

It was right there on the ground at her feet; a miniature version of her face smirking back at her. It had expired, as of two years ago. She passed this point eight times before not seeing it and she didn't know where it came from. She was afraid to touch it. It was clean, as if it just fell out of her wallet seconds before. She mustered the strength to bend her knees and reach for the I.D., but before she disturbed it she wanted to get a closer look. It was right side up, facing her. She looked around for footprints, nothing. Okay, so she looked for other distinctive markings on the ground: imprints from bike tires, scuffs on the cement, even a hair or a disturbed pile of dog shit. Nothing unusual or traceable as far as she could tell, not that she was expecting there to be, she laughed at her own belief in conspiracy theory.

It was inside the hollow of a tree planter. The cement and stone walkways surrounding the planter made any marks left behind difficult to trace. But as she looked closer, there was something else, nail marks. Someone had dragged their nails across the tree and left three deep gouges. Encouraged by this discovery, Bettina looked closer at the ground and saw a handprint; a very small, very light handprint. Whoever left it had not fallen; it was too gentle, too specific and too clean to be an accident. The nail marks weren't violent, to the contrary, when Bettina looked closely they had the same deliberate characteristics as the handprint and they were completely parallel, perfectly horizontal. Judging by this oddity, Bettina guessed that the girl had stood behind the tree, looped her arm around and scratched with three nails, pulling her arm strong and straight along a parallel plane. Bettina stood on the other side of the tree, staring at the girl. She was there, but not there. One half of the girl's body peeked out from either side of the tree. The trunk divided her face into two unequal sections. Her eyes were fixed on Bettina, ice and deep water, hardness and blackness. The emptiness filled Bettina as she watched the girl drag her nails across the tree. Skin fell from the girl's chapped hand and dusted the ground. The three lines on the girl's hand ran straight like arrows. Bettina noticed she was standing next to the sea, somewhere not in Bulgaria. The next thing she knew the ID was in her hand; when she put the ID in her pocket it all disappeared. She was back on the stone walkway.

The sea always brought tears to her eyes; actually, it made her weep, uncontrollably. A regret came over her; a regret that plummeted down inside her, like the sea rushing in, flowing down her throat into nothing. "It was a weird hallucination was all. Maybe I am losing some reality, but I'll be fine, I know what's real," Bettina tried to calm herself.

She walked on, not looking anyone in the eye, not wanting to interrupt her own thoughts for a moment. Somehow she reached her apartment complex. She looked up at the antiquated door with the brass knocker and didn't recognize where she was for a moment. She walked through the door and found her way to the apartment. She vomited then swallowed the acidic, burning liquid down again.

She felt the air move past her before she actually saw anything. Despite how horrifying the moment was, Bettina felt a bizarre relief at not being alone. But this only lasted for a moment and then she panicked, instinctively flicking on the light switch with a loud click: nothing was there. Nothing disturbed, nothing out of place, absolute nothingness. She was alone, just like before. Who was looking for whom? Her heart fluttered. She went to the bathroom and rinsed her mouth with a handful of water then she spit what was left of the tingling acid back into the sink. She looked at herself in the mirror and thought of a box lined with angled reflective surfaces she had seen once at some exhibit. When she looked inside the box she could see her image repeated back from three sides and continuing on indefinitely, except for the image in front of her, that led down a black hole; doubling, tripling and quadrupling back on itself into eternity.

...Next Morning...

The morning was sunny and Bettina found herself in a church. It was early in the morning and she was alone. She had walked there with coffee cup in hand trailing the morning rush hour crowds. She had been in a church like this before. The arched canopy of the ceiling was familiar looking, as were the stained glass windows and the front altar. She felt strange seeking refuge in a church, particularly one of such majesty. The structure somehow lost its meaning when she thought this way, the same way words lost their meaning when she found she could manipulate them. This made her too casual with sacred words, even when they fell short of defining the idea they are meant to represent, words like refuge and majesty. She didn't know how she found her way here, but there she was; the wooden pew, the draughty aisles, the lit candles burning away in remembrance of some prayer and the morning sun making the dust dance visible. She hadn't stepped foot in a church since the last time she made a promise in one. But this incident with the child, images of copper and eternity, oceans appearing out of nowhere, emptiness was too strong. She was never religious, but she had always thought herself spiritual; still, she felt rituals were showy and provided shallow comfort. The hardness of the pew numbed her legs, she bowed her head and closed her eyes but the domed ceiling seemed to press down on the top of her spine. So she sat in silence and thought the same request, over and over again "forgive me." It was the guilt that always plagued her in these places. The church became dark; it descended slowly. Bettina thought it must be a cloud passing over the sun, only a momentary block, but it kept descending until the church went black. She heard the sound of a match strike and saw a small, dark figure light a prayer candle and kneel. But the figure made a sound, it was very faint at first, but it grew louder until she could hear the metallic laughter of a little girl. Bettina's heart was a piston and she squeezed her eyes tighter trying to force the tremors and the vision to pass.

...A Few Minutes Later...

The brightness outside blinded Bettina and made her dizzy. She saw an unsettling image of herself in a white dress with an indifferent look on her face. She was cold and unfeeling. She stood in a church, similar to the one she just left. She stood facing the altar where a man waited with his back turned toward her, she knew who he was. He patiently waited for her, he always waited and she felt nothing. Two figures entered on either side of the altar: one was the copper girl, dressed for first communion with a long crinoline skirt. The girl was giggling, almost uncontrollably. She ran up and down the aisles and her dress caught the wind like a sail but it didn't slow her down. She ran faster and faster the light reflected off her skin and blinded Bettina every time she passed. The other figure was a dark woman with freckles and the girl's same blue eyes. The woman locked her gaze on Bettina and moved toward her seductively; her smile revealed a gold tooth that made her eyes look like sapphires. She pulled Bettina in, beckoning without weakness. The woman called out to Bettina with the air of answering a question she had heard before many times. The woman moved close enough to smell Bettina's dead breath, but said nothing. Bettina instinctively opened her mouth. She was breathing in and out, filling Bettina's lungs with a heavy sorrow. She said nothing, but Bettina felt a sound escape that made her cells shudder.

"Excuse me, excuse me miss? Where are you going?"

The tourist pointed at his map, squinted his eyes and looked up at Bettina. She stared back and said nothing.

...Late Morning...

She sat in the darkness of her apartment. She sat on a chair and stared at a wall. She turned her head every few minutes to inspect the empty space behind: a framed photo with a landscape of leafless trees, a buzzing fridge, a dirty floor and a multi-colored fabric pinned on the wall were all she saw. She laughed at herself again. "I am still a child," she thought weakly, "afraid of nothing and thinking that ghosts are frightened of a sense of humor."

The woman with the freckles had made a request of her. She contemplated the insanity of following through, but she also contemplated the likelihood of anyone noticing, "If a tree falls in the forest, etcetera," she mused. "To follow the request of a person non-existent is one of the defining characteristics of schizophrenia," she laughed to herself. "But if I am aware of it, is it really uncontrollable? A murderer may be insane but in the end they still killed someone."

...Afternoon...

The tiles were eroding under her feet. The commercial booths were surrounded by flies and lined with the sticky grime that forms when dirt and grease blend together. Pigeons flew in from the open ceiling above the trains and pecked at the crumbs around a food kiosk. A tourist with tawny skin ran into the flock of birds yelling "rats with wings, rats with wings." The scavengers scattered and reconvened at a kiosk on the other side of the terminal.

Bettina was going toward a place that couldn't be reached with a direct train route. The best she could do with the money in her pocket was Austria anyway. She had no employer to notify, no friends to see her off and her family was too far away to care. She purchased a ticket for the six fifteen train then headed back to her apartment to the collect the few things in the world she cared about: a decent pair of pants, boots and a well-made jacket. The bag Bettina carried with her was little and attractive, leather with a double buckle, a bit worn-in, it told strangers she was experienced, that she had been places and survived, and she liked that.

She knew the train bound for Austria would move slowly through Romania and take a long rest in Budapest. She thought of what she might encounter while she sat waiting for the train. She could have sworn she saw the girl's blue eyes reflected in the window of her apartment, but when she turned to look there was nothing. On her way to the station she thought she saw the little imp's skinny legs running alongside her. But when she looked again it was only a crippled woman with a humpback giving her a dumb grin. She struggled to hold still at the train station. She twitched and fidgeted, constantly playing with the straps of her bag, watching over her shoulder walking up and down the platform, kicking garbage over the edge and toying with zippers on her boots. If people weren't so distracted they would have noticed and thought she was on something. "For god's sake, there are teenagers huffing paint fumes out of bags on the steps of this place. I am no kind of spectacle by comparison." On her third pacing rotation she saw the girl. She was standing there, on the tracks, smiling with feigned innocence. "The little demon," Bettina said, barely audible. The girl's crackled skin twisted and writhed over her muscles and her half-smile twitched. Bettina shouted "Move, move." A dignified woman in a floral shirt moved away from her. Bettina shouted again, "Get away from there. " There wasn't a train but the girl wouldn't move. She taunted Bettina. Her eyes flashed. She looked down the tracks and waved. A train appeared out of nowhere and faster than what seemed appropriate for a train pulling into a station. "Get off the tracks--please get off." Blood, white sheets, a scream and his blank face came back to her. She was here and all the regret, the guilt, all that goes with it and that surprise she felt at the relief of being free, all of it hit her as she watched a piece of skin flake off the girl's hand. So she ran out in front of the train—the girl was gone, the train kept coming. Someone yelled something from the platform, the train brakes squealed and Bettina jumped back onto the opposite platform. She didn't know where she was for a moment. People were staring and a security guard was running. Two women joined the security guard in a panicked babble directed toward Bettina, but she didn't understand and didn't care. She mumbled something about seeing a child on the tracks and how she had made a mistake. The security guard responded in broken English.

"Do you need help?" He asked

"No, no. I am very sorry-I thought I saw-its okay, I am okay. I am on my way to see my family, they are in an emergency and I was a little upset. I thought I saw a child there and I thought she might be hurt. But everything is fine, don't worry." Bettina said.

The security guard shook his head and scolded her with something in Bulgarian then walked away. The two women continued to babble to Bettina, but she tuned them out and they became no more important than the buzzing of a couple flies over a garbage bin.

She had thought of him, as if it happened all over again, but she couldn't even remember what he was like before he got hit. She remembered she had feelings for him, he was certainly very much in love with her and that was enough; she wasn't interested in feeling any love herself; she found all the business with romantic love insufferable and not really sustainable, she enjoyed his love-it was simple and sweet, besides he had a sharp mind.

Time passes and now she might be making all those memories up, like some demented version of what he could have been. In any case, it didn't matter, staring out a window with half his brain swirling inside his head and knocking against the sides of his skull, trying to remember who he was. When he couldn't remember her name anymore, she left. There was no point in staying, others would take care of him. There was no responsibility on her part. She thought of all this and didn't shed a tear.; she never shed a tear for him. She did as much as was expected of her, but never shed a tear-she never even felt them waiting behind her eyes, she simply didn't feel. She encouraged herself to grieve, to let the cathartic sensation of a choking sob shake her free and break her reserve so people could see that she was human too, that she felt things profoundly and could weep with the best of them. But it was a lie. She felt nothing but a detached and amused sympathy.

...On the Train...

Hours of nothing, Bettina held a book in her hand but didn't read, on account of the words making her dizzy. The last thing she wanted to do was vomit in a train's toilet and watch her own refuse slosh around with the rhythm of it. She stared out the window at the flat landscape, partially watching the landscape and partially watching her own reflection. She liked the way her reflection looked against the backdrop of the dark countryside, ephemeral and haunting, it bounced around with the oscillations of the car. She sat this way for at least two hours, staring out the window, her neck was stiff and her eyes hurt. A pale man with thick glasses sat across from her for a time, playing some kind of word game in a magazine, cursing occasionally at his own ignorance, then smiling at her as if to say, "sorry, was that out loud?" He left the train two stops before and Bettina was left alone. Two women joined her early in the evening-they were kind and full of good humor, Bettina thought they must be old friends. They gave her apricots and asked where her husband was. Bettina showed them her ringless finger they advised her never to marry and then left the train. Bettina laughed to herself and went back to her window. It was a long ride and the train made frequent stops in the middle of nowhere for who knows what-a smoke break, a coffee, a piss in the open air- a combination of all these things at the same time.

Shadows ran alongside the train, these might have been stray dogs chasing it in hopes of catching one of the coaches between their jaws and letting it take them for a ride, to let their scruffy bodies flap around in the wind. Some of these dogs appeared to be running on two feet and watching her, some of them had skinny legs and dark hair that waved like a flag behind them. In these moments she clung to her journal as a last vestige of sanity-if she wrote these things down somehow they disappeared. She remembered a classic therapy technique she heard about that asked a troubled, angry or heartbroken person to write a letter to the object of their obsession, but never send it. Bettina wondered how many of these letters were floating around in the world-letters that were never meant to be sent, but the writer couldn't bear to destroy for fear some truth that would be lost forever. Bettina thought that the fear of forgetting and being forgotten must outshine so many other fears. She looked down at her hands gripping the journal and her knuckles were white, her fingertips were purple. She loosened her grip and forced herself to breathe again. She closed her eyes and reminded herself that she had hit rock bottom and that she was a coward, there was no doubt about that and that this compulsion was only some symptom of her prolonged isolation, it came from the disappointment of her desire for human touch.

...Two Years Before Bulgaria...

"You seem so satisfied. Are you?" She asked him.

"Yes, I am. I am with you, I work and I don't have any health issues. There is nothing wrong, nothing. I got lucky is all." His brow was free from wrinkles which made him look younger than he was.

"Yes you did." She smiled.

"Why do you ask? Are you not satisfied? I mean, I am not the only one. You have luck too, you do, you know. What is it you don't have? Look at us. I mean the odds of meeting each other, it's incredible, an incredible thing. Don't you think? We could have not met."

"Don't you think we would have just met someone else and gone on the same way? That this really doesn't matter in the long haul? I don't think we're that important really; just another species, a happy accident of evolution. Do you think that as we evolve we will cease to have voices and only communicate with electronic beating or a gas released from our pores?" Bettina could feel her forehead relax too, he always had this effect on her. He was like a child and she loved the feeling of being around an adult who looked forward to old age; he was a rare one. She laughed mischievously.

"No, I think it is a process. There is purpose I am just too idiotic to see it."

"Do you want children?" She pulled him close and immediately regretted she asked the question.

"Yes, I will grow old and give them all my money and a house and let them bring me cups of tea while I tell their kids stories about 'the business.' I will live to be very old I think I have a feeling." He said. "Because some people are different."

Bettina grew distant, like she always did.

"Don't you think so?" He asked again.

"I feel empty inside. I don't think anything lasts long except where we came from. It will last forever and we will go back there just like we left, with nothing."

"That's bleak." He pulled away and looked at her eyes. "Your eyes change color when you say things like that. They get darker, browner or something."

"Maybe the pupil is growing. " They kissed. His tongue reached deeper than hers.

"But do you love me anyway?" He asked like a wide-eyed, ignorant schoolgirl and she hated him for a moment.

"Enough anyway." She teased.

...Dream Over...

When Bettina opened her eyes again everything was back to normal, the dogs were gone and her train cabin empty. Her eyelids were swollen with sleepiness so she got up and pulled the bed down from its attachments on the wall; she secured it to two notches on the side of the cabin, pushing it down until she heard a click. She jumped up and curled up for a sleep, but she left the light on and kept her eyes opened. Instead of begging sleep to come, she was going to let it find her with the clicking of the tracks. It enveloped itself around her as she listened to the repetition of the wheels hitting the spikes.

...Early Morning...

She woke up to Romania. It looked no different from Bulgaria in the south with chaotic, cramped villages spotting the landscape. She saw things as she slept but by the time she was awake enough to see out the window the dreams had faded. Something about a jolly old man and the freckled woman, just memories of people I had seen somewhere filed away. Three more people joined the cabin while she was sleeping. It was always disconcerting waking up amongst strangers; but they didn't seem to mind. A middle-aged woman with white socks and plastic sandals sat reading a magazine; the boy next to her was listening to music on a set of headphones that were each the size of a fist. She could only see the legs of the third person, he was sitting underneath her. His knees were knobby and his pants were to too short for him. She looked out the window and thought they must be nearing Bucharest; things were getting more populated and the air seemed dirtier. The middle-aged woman looked up at her.

"Good morning." She said in Romanian.

"Good morning." Bettina replied in English.

"Ah, English-okay." She said with a smile.

"Yes, I am sorry. I am just passing through." Bettina didn't know why she felt she had to apologize, but it seemed like the right thing to do.

"Okay, no problem. It's a good morning, okay. Come." The woman waved Bettina down from her bed and started riffling around in the grocery bag on the seat next to her.

Bettina hopped down, doing her best to avoid the protruding legs of the man below her, who didn't move to accommodate; he was too engrossed in his reading. The woman retrieved the bag of pretzels she was looking for, opened it and offered some to Bettina. The later accepted and took a handful. It was sweet, the way middle-aged, Balkan women always wanted to take care of you, no matter who you were or where you came from, it was like second nature to them to feed and fawn on the younger generation. Bettina thought maybe this was because now that their children had less travel restrictions they all left the country to live and work, so these women were here preserving traditions and waiting for their babies to come home. In the meantime they filled the void with itinerants who needed the mothering. It also explained why the younger generation of Europeans seemed so spoiled. Bettina smiled at the woman across from her. It seemed brave and desperate to her, "God love them," she thought. Bettina interrupted her thoughts to remind herself to change trains in Bucharest.

"Where are you going?" The woman asked. Her accent was heavy but her English seemed solid enough.

"To Vienna." That was the best Bettina could do under the circumstances. She felt like to reveal more would be a betrayal.

"Ah, yes a beautiful city. Do you know Timișoara? It is Romania's 'Little Vienna' that is what it is called by the tourists." The woman's face beamed with pride. Timișoara was obviously her hometown. "But I live now in Belgrade, yes the Serbs they know better the European way of life. They take long coffees, they eat well and relax and they give everything to their friends. Everything they give, it is true generosity. You wouldn't expect it but it is true. I like it very much, Romania is a bed of lies however, but it is my home." The woman's thoughts were disjointed, but Bettina followed.

"Do you miss your home?" Bettina asked.

"Of course, I miss moments, people sometimes, individuals. Please, eat more snack, please. I miss the color and the money, sometimes I miss the money. We have a good-looking currency. But I miss the passion, yes the passion. Oh my, the love I had, it fills me." The woman smiled to reveal a broad row of white teeth. This distinguished her as someone who had some money in Romania and one of the few non-smokers. She spoke with fervor as if being interviewed by a travel magazine. She smiled, clasped her hands to her chest, lifted her shoulders and pulled her arms in the way a grandmother does when they say "oh, such a cute baby," it was unnatural and intoxicating.

"Do you have children?" Bettina asked.

"Yes, yes a son." The woman's face changed and saddened.

"Does he still live in Romania?"

"No, he left. He lives in Germany now, working there of course. He does not call his mother. He is ashamed of me, of my attentions. But I loved him too much, more than a mother should and I had trouble saying goodbye. For that he will never forgive me. But now time has passed and I smile again. He will come back one day." She answered like a character in a melodrama. "Are you married my dear?"

"No." Bettina gave a short reply, but continued. "Not any more." Bettina sat quietly for a moment but decided it would be best to continue. "Do you remember your dreams?" It was a non-sequitur.

"Sometimes, sometimes. You are sad?" The woman noted. She spoke softly in an attempt to keep the conversation private. Of the other two passengers, one was asleep and the other absorbed in a handheld video game.

Bettina continued in a daze. She felt like the movements of her mouth were something out of control. It was an exciting feeling. She felt her face flush and her body grew hot. She wanted the woman to hold her and coo comforting words to her; she wanted the woman to know everything about her before she left; she wanted to be part of the melodrama and watch the horizon for the woman's son.

"I always remember my dreams vividly, well, not always, but most of the time. In detail and in color I remember them and when I am alone, which is often, I relive them. I search them in hopes of finding some kind of depth revealed or the key to heaven, or hell, some truth long since buried in my subconscious unearthed, but sometimes I am only looking for a connection there, a reason or justification, looking for patterns in the stars. Lately my dreams are alive, I don't need to seek them out, they follow me. I have to admit, it is a pleasant thing to lose control and let someone else. But I have moments of fear, not an external fear, like the fear of arachnid, heights, or people, but fear of something else that I maybe created and that can't be destroyed. I am afraid that maybe there is nothing to be afraid of at all and nothing worth the struggle, that survival is a gamble anyway and we don't have much say in the matter, we have no real self-awareness. I am quite comfortable with death and I don't feel like I must fight for control but I let myself be taken advantage of too often and can't erase the impulse to strive. Let the rest of the world forget me, I want them to, but if I don't make an attempt I have degraded myself beyond saving." Bettina finished and a cold sweat was on her brow.

The woman sat silently.

"I think I have some water in my bag. Ah, here we are and please have more snack."

...Bucharest...

Bettina tossed her bag over her shoulder and inched her way out of the train cabin. She checked the sign board the Budapest train. The board hadn't flipped to show the train's departure time yet and she had enough Lei in her pocket for a small, stale sandwich and a plastic cup half-full of coffee from a kiosk. She ate the sandwich ferociously, taking each bite before she had swallowed the one before, to avoid the taste. She took her last sip of coffee and looked down the platform, she saw the girl there. She was standing with her back to Bettina. Bettina dropped the cup in the garbage can next to her. She approached the girl quietly, the little thing didn't move. Bettina stood behind the girl but didn't touch her; she waited with anticipation, the hairs on the back of her neck stood straight up. The girl turned around, her eyes were wet with tears. The blue sloshed around the pupil like aquarium water during an earthquake. She opened her mouth to speak and Bettina saw missing teeth and smelled a hundred years of rot, she wanted to throw herself in front of a train. For a moment she preferred the fate of her ex to the girl's voice; she knew what a comfort in would be to live in a world of illusions, it enticed her and she took a step toward the tracks. A wisp of air left the girl's mouth, it was a thin cloud of words that was so soft Bettina could barely make it out; she couldn't help but lean in to better hear the child, the rot stench wrapped around her neck and pulled her close. She could feel the wisp of air curl across her cheek and snake into her ear.

She reached out to touch the girl, but lost her courage at the last minute and ran backwards. She turned around just before hitting a post holding up the platform's ceiling. The clicking of the train timetable kept time to the pounding of her feet on the cement and she followed the noise; the Budapest train arrived on time. In one breath, she ran to her platform and sat on a bench, she collapsed with a heavy sigh, her stomach spasmmed with a dry sob. She felt her face contort to express pain but the tears didn't come. She shook herself like a dog shakes off water and repositioned herself to normal hoping normal would return. She looked across the platforms to where she left the girl, but the creature was gone. She tossed her rucksack over her shoulder and boarded the train for Budapest.

...Early Afternoon...

The train travelled through the Carpathians. She was grateful for the mountains, they seemed to have a neutralizing affect on her visions of the little girl. Bettina spent most of her time standing at the window with her arms pressed against the edge of the metal windowsill. The window was cracked open at the top, allowing the air to blow in and hit her face, causing a few strands of hair to whip around and smack the corners of her eyes making them water. She stood there breathing in the mountain air until her arms fell asleep and she could no longer feel the pressure of the windowsill make an imprint on her skin. Budapest came faster than she imagined it would, she was shaken from her stupor by a frantic passenger rushing down the alleyway.

...Moment in Budapest...

Bettina climbed the stairs to the upper level of the station for a coffee. She pulled out what she had left of Florin from a previous trip and bought a cup of coffee then headed back to the platform for the next train. The train cars for the line to Austria were significantly newer and cleaner than the Eastern European cars, so Bettina had no problem curling up on a seat and falling asleep.

...Austrian Train...

The touch of a tiny hand woke her. When she opened her eyes she was in the car alone and the train was in the station. Her first thoughts were "Austria, station." Her heart went into a panic and a wild collection of melodramatic images inside a broken down train car, dehydrated, yelling for help from a window with graffiti-covered, rusty heaps of metal laughing back at her from all sides. She laughed at herself, but her heart was still pounding against her chest when the border guard passed by and asked for her passport. He swung the door open so roughly that it popped back a little making him ridiculous when he had to push it open again. He was tall and well-shaven with an exceedingly ugly face; it was scarred with acne especially on his bulbous nose, but he had an interesting mouth that turned downwards in a forced grimace that threatened to laugh at any moment. However, the uniform gave him authority, "a uniform often gives authority to men like him," she thought. He snatched her passport, flipped the pages, mumbled her name and the number with some instructions in German toward the mouthpiece of a radio receiver clipped to his lapel and disappeared with a soldier's march down the car. The waiting was tedious, the residency visa in her passport always confused them-often because they couldn't fathom why an American citizen would live where she lived. When Bettina confronted this question in her daily life she replied "I am a journalist," this seemed to make sense to people, so they stopped asking questions, sometimes it would throw her into suspicion with the locals, but for the most part they left her alone; they had far better things to do then concern themselves with a lonely spy who seemed a little distracted. The border guard came back and opened the door with the same ridiculous result. He handed the passport back with what was almost a click of his heels.

...Evening at Airport...

Bettina sat at a bar; she hadn't checked her money transfer with her bank, she hadn't bought a ticket, she'd take care of those types of things later. All she knew was a flight time, and the next flight was at nine in the morning, so she would be sleeping in the airport. She would rather stay up all night then cuddle up on a set of seats with her rucksack, so a drink was the only thing on her agenda. She pulled enough money off of an emergency credit card to hold her over for a night of people watching. For all she knew, she could be losing her mind and this might be her last cocktail before some imagined child told her to open the emergency exit and jump out. She saddled up to the nearest bar and ordered a glass of champagne with cranberry juice that cost almost the entirety of her emergency fund. "But if you're going down, go down with the band playing, why not?" She thought to herself and smiled slyly. Next to her sat a large woman, too large for the barstool, who sported a haircut that reminded Bettina of teenage heartthrobs from the 90s with frosted blond tips and a close shave at the nape of the neck. The woman had glasses and an emotionless face. Bettina thought she could see the traces of a beard, but two full, pendulous breasts under the oversized t-shirt rested like unfurled banners denoting the sex of the creature. There was also a softness to her face that suggested femininity and the expression in her eyes was passive, one never sees that on a man unless he is being tortured or publicly humiliated. The woman looked troubled but Bettina's stare jostled her out of her reverie. She made eye contact, Bettina didn't say anything. Bettina became embarrassed at her unabashed judgment of the woman and muttered "Sorry." The woman started at the English but raised the full shot glass in front of her anyway. She looked at Bettina without changing her expression and said "Poison," then she threw back the clear liquid in one gulp and resumed her stare. Bettina looked at the woman in amazement and decided it would be best if she finished her drink as quickly as possible.

...One and Half Years Before Bulgaria...

"Remember what you asked?" He looked at her helplessly.

"Yes." She was cold.

"Well, do you want to or not. You never said." He looked at the edge of the bed toward his feet and watched his toes wiggle.

"I don't know, maybe." She was propped up against the headboard so she could see the top of his head.

"I do, I want a child." He said still looking at his feet.

"I don't know if anyone ever truly wants a child, they just don't want to be alone. You are never alone with a child. Not really anyway." Even she didn't believe what she was saying, but she wanted to provoke him.

He took her in his arms and held her there. He kissed her aggressively on the head over and over again and squeezed her ribs making air escape from her mouth in a squeaky sigh.

...Morning at the Airport...

She boarded the plane in a daze thanks to the booze and the train travel. When she finally found her seat, she nestled up to the window and peered out, she lifted her hand and felt her face, it was oily with stress. She swept her hand across her face beginning with the forehead and moving across her cheeks and chin, she could feel bumps all over, acne sprouting up. Her hand slid down her neck and over her shoulder where she paused over a piece of rough skin. She peeled the skin off. She felt a pinch when the skin separated itself completely but it wasn't enough pain to cringe. She touched it with her finger and brought a blood-soaked tip to her mouth. She held the discarded skin in her hand and inspected the green, coppery sheen. An aged woman glowered at her from across the plane's aisle; Bettina loathed the aisle seats for just this reason. The gypsy mother had been waiting for Bettina to make eye contact and give her an opportunity to chat, show her pictures of her adored grandchildren and stroke Bettina's face. Bettina smiled and nodded at the woman's broken English. The woman smiled back with a familiar glint in her eye winked. Bettina ordered a small bottle of red wine and sat back in expectation of more smiling and nodding.

"Enjoy it, this wine." The woman said with a wink.

"I intend too." Bettina replied.

"It is the live blood, the red wine." She said.

"Lifeblood? Yes, I agree." Bettina replied.

"But no good, no good. Just plane and..." The woman pursed her lips together, stuck her tongue out and blew in place of a descriptive adjective for the wine.

Bettina continued her charming game of smiling and agreeing, this seemed to please people. The plane rattled and shifted altitude; Bettina's stomach followed suit and her eyes went hazy, fortunately the small white bag in the pouch of the seat saved her from making too much of a mess. She sloshed the acidic wine around in her mouth and tried to make a graceful exit to the toilet with the bag hidden underneath her jacket.

...One Hour Later...

She wavered between sleep and non-sleep while the plane glided across the cloud cover below; she watched the lights flicker a few times and only half-listened to an announcement in German about snacks and duty-free. Her eyes opened and closed, creating a slide show of images. She thought of sex to kill the time. She imagined two hands reaching around the back of the seat and grabbing her, while a masculine flight attendant fit his head between her legs. She draped the flight blanket over herself and slid two fingers down her pants to settle her spirits before landing. She put pressure on her clit and slowly moved her index and middle fingers in circles, careful not to get too wound-up and make a spectacle of herself. The anxiety of having an audience and her bleeding prevented her from achieving anything but slight stimulation; still, it helped her relax.

...Two Hours Later...

An announcement about the plane descending roused her. The plane landed with a thud, bounced up once, and landed again smoothly. Bettina unbuckled her safety belt. Dust, the same color as the girl's shiny skin, billowed from the air stirred by the jet's wings, the sand scattered and fractured hurling itself in all directions to get away from the engine's blast. Bettina resisted the instinct to turn away from the onslaught, so she caught a face full as she exited onto the tarmac. A bus took the plane-load of passengers to the airport terminal. She went through customs and continued walking, she decided she wouldn't stop walking until she arrived. So she walked outside the airport, down a busy street lined with beige stucco walls, yellow dust, a derivative of the copper-colored dust but painted an unnatural white, and she kept walking. She walked toward what looked like the center of town. Rugs suspended from shop ceilings and what seemed like thousands of lamps hung from the rafters, absorbing the light from stringed bulbs laced along shop entryways. She walked through the Jewish quarter of town, past the bargaining salesmen and the veiled heads of the women who were trailed by a sea of children. She walked past the walls of the city to the southwest. The inside heel of each boot rubbed the skin on the back of each foot, she could feel it ripping away. She saw the girl's tattoo pointing and the flesh surrounding it falling away, the bones and blood, the meeting point at the wrist, and the tightening of the muscles that wrap around each other like lovers losing themselves. A sharp pain shot up the back of each calf and she winced. She thought of her ex and his vapid face appeared in her mind. The eyes open wide with a child's wonderment, his mouth hanging down one side, the flesh of his face that used to sit taunt now sagging off the skull. He stared at the white hospital floor, the light gave his face a saintly pallor. He was oblivious of the colorful 'get well' cards and flowers well-wishers had dispersed around the room. With the exception of these gifts, the room was as characterless as his face. Mostly she thought about the pain when he looked at her, a look that revealed he had no idea who he was with. He was hooked up to machines now; they sometimes walked him and re-taught him basic skills, like talking and writing. "What a waste," she thought "a terrible waste. But the scales must be balanced; they always are in the end." She said this out loud and tripped over the toe of her boot, forcing a cloud of dust to rise up into her face. She coughed and kept walking with her eyes fixed ahead of her. She had kissed him on the forehead to say goodbye, " what a disgusting place to kiss someone," she thought, "so undignified. I was too arrogant." The buildings began to disappear and gave away to a barren steppe with sparse patches of grass, but she could already see the dunes stacked and hollowed with a veil of sand being discarded with each breeze.

...One Year Before Bulgaria...

"What do you mean emptiness? Like an empty bottle or what?"

"Yes, yes a water bottle." She stared ahead.

"You're not listening." He laughed.

"What?"

"What do you mean emptiness?" He asked it too casually.

"Nothing. Don't worry."

...The Desert...

The sun beat down; it was late afternoon sometime, because she was walking toward its heat. She kept her jacket on so she could feel the satisfying sweat falling down the sides of body. She stopped for a drink of water from the bottle she tucked away in her rucksack. "The scales are always balanced, she thought." The girl was there in the distance shimmering with her rotten skin and the sand half-covering her legs. If he survived he must serve some purpose, he must be part of the grand plan that asks us to look at our own fragility; but, in the end the scales must be balanced. He wasn't conscious enough to balance them himself. "What a complete moron I've been." She thought of pulling the plug and giving him peace, then he would finally know what she was talking about. But she couldn't bring herself to do it, "best not to interfere" she thought; after all, he had been saved from death, not her. She let a trickle of sweat roll down her cheek and into her ear as she tossed back the last drop of water. She turned back toward the dunes where the heat made the air undulate. She saw the girl standing there with her half-grin. Bettina was too much of a coward to choose her own passing but the brightness refracted and reflected off the girl's body blinding her with dust and dead skin, dark eyes. The curve of the undulation sent ripples through the creature's body

...Six Months Before Bulgaria...

"How do you want it be?" He asked.

"Like this, with me alone." She had said.

...The Desert...

The wind picked up and blew the sand into Bettina's back; it pushed her forward. The tops of the dunes where a golden hue with crested black bowls, but the bottom stayed a tawny color that was slowly covering Bettina's boots. The girl's tiny silhouette danced over the dunes up ahead. She skipped this way and that taunting Bettina. Bettina kept walking, because there was nothing left to do. The girl's dancing figure stopped and Bettina ran, she ran toward the girl in an attempt to catch up, but a great cloud of dust hit her in the face and she was blinded. The sand found its way into her ears, eyes and every fold of her clothes. She fell to the ground face first. She rolled over and looked up. There was the little imp, above her, smiling the half-smile with gaps and jagged teeth, her black-blue eyes like bruises but framed by the purest white. The girl buried her charwoman hands in the sand then lifted them out while Bettina opened her mouth; the sand fell into Bettina. It scratched the inside of her throat and she coughed. But she relaxed and accepted it, swallowing mouthfuls submissively, the last grain in the hourglass and all she could think, "it's warm."

SPAIN/EVENING OF SANT JOAN

Cedric had a passion for something, he was sure of it, but it wasn't the beach. The beach is insufferable during the summer; a time when hundreds of lovably drunk Spaniards gather with their accommodating hands all over the accommodating asses: sand, water, filth, toilets, more filth, beer, a smoke rolled tight, a laugh-a good one at no one's expense, could be any night here. In Bordeaux the ground is hard, it wants wooing, it supports the trees with its unforgiving, taciturn solidarity but in Spain the ground is malleable, pliable, yielding and womanly. Cedric was being hit in the back of the head with a mixture of beer and sputum while watching blond foreigners urinate into the Mediterranean and he wanted to get out.

...The Next Morning...

He awoke to find his clothes strewn artfully about the room: t-shirt over a lamp, pants dangling from a doorknob, underwear still intact on his body, but stuffed into every crevice without remorse. Sunlight sliced through a curtain, burning holes in Cedric's tender flesh. Cedric dressed, paying particular attention to the openings in each garment so as not to put his head through an arm or an arm through a leg; it was one of those mornings for him. "The sun along the Mediterranean is always so god damned bright," he mumbled to himself. His skin quivered from the shock of the sudden change from dark to light as he walked out his front door. It is about twelve noon, but it may as well have been six in the morning. He lazily put one foot in front of the other until he stumbled on a protruding piece of curb that catapulted him into a walk. The garbage from the previous night's festivities was already disposed of. It was quiet and Cedric could take his time. He breathed in and thought, "Noon is a good time to be alive in the world. Things move a little slower, workers are at work, schools are busy schooling. And here you are, free, alive, in the sun."

"Bon jour."

He turned to face the voice that greeted him in his native tongue.

"You're French, aren't you? You certainly look it." It said.

Cedric saw no one.

"Over here!" the voice laughed.

Cedric looked down at winking old man covered in newspaper.

"Bon jour!" The man laughed again.

Cedric gave the man what was left of the change in his pocket and turned to go, happy to avoid an awkward encounter.

"Wait, wait." The man rushed after Cedric.

"I don't want this, young friend." He said and placed the money back in Cedric's palm.

"Now, now-I won't rob you. I have no interest, besides you look as if it wouldn't be worth my while." He laughed again.

Cedric was still staring at the change in his hand.

"Do you understand me my young friend? Ça va?" The man asked.

As if reviving from a trance; "Oh, yes. It is strange...that you...forgive me...I...", stammered Cedric.

"There is nothing to forgive my boy. Nothing at all. Come, walk with me," he said as he started out ahead.

"But I must, I am walking to work." Cedric interjected.

"To work, to the ends of the earth, what do I care where we walk." The man replied.

The old gentleman dusted his lapels with dirty hands. He wore a tuxedo jacket with faded, black trousers, workman's boots and a wrinkled, collared shirt with purple stripes. He was not filthy or even un-presentable, merely eccentric and possibly color-blind. He was a living, breathing cliché of a character Cedric had read in books and saw in movies; the wise, old fool character, bumbling but full of good intentions. His pot-belly protruded out of his jacket and he wore his pants buttoned at the navel where they pinched in and folded over themselves. His shoes were in good shape, which meant he hadn't walked much, but Cedric only needed to look at the man's physique to confirm this suspicion.

"Come my fellow wanderer, it is off to work we go." He offered a jolly arm to Cedric.

...A Few Minutes Later...

Cedric's eyes were growing tired from the sunlight. His mouth was dry with dehydration and his hands were swelling. He listened to the humming of his companion with a detached air. They passed the cathedral, the globular spires, putty like columns, the indolence of it always made him smile. "It will never be finished," thought Cedric.

Cedric's belief in god was precarious at best: God, Holy Trinity, tap your chest, etcetera. Perhaps he was god or maybe the man next to him, in either case it didn't matter much. The evidence for random chaos had been stacking up over Cedric's twenty nine years in a very troubling way. Mostly he began his morning as an existentialist, he was a constructionist in the afternoon and an objectivist in the evening, at least that is how he summed himself up in a moment of accidental profundity that accompanied a good high. The man beside Cedric hummed away, completely unaware of his own miserable existence, it was definitely still Cedric's cranky morning hour.

"In reverie old chap?" The man interrupted.

The old man's humming ceased suddenly. He stopped walking and Cedric wondered whether the man could actually read his thoughts. He paused in an effort to find an answer, but he had no idea what the question was. Cedric always had this deer-in-headlights reaction when someone spoke English to him.

"I do not understand." Cedric replied.

"No worries. Now where will we go on your day off?" The man asked.

"Day off?" Said Cedric.

"Yes, of course." The man replied.

"No, I must work..I.." Said Cedric.

"Now, now you aren't seriously considering trapping yourself inside an office on the most perfect of days." Said the man. Cedric thought this man must be some kind of joke, the line was something straight out of a children's story.

"An internet café. No office." He answered truthfully although he didn't think it was any of the man's business.

"You are coming with me. Now, where will we go?" Said the man.

They continued to walk. Cedric said nothing. The man laughed quietly to himself each time they passed a child. It was a small, knowing laugh; a laugh that echoed privately years away, an internal chuckle that only shared what it was impossible to hide, but it wasn't pedophiliac. Cedric turned over the idea of work in his head. He thought of the recovering drug addicts who wandered in with excuses for why they couldn't pay, he thought of the hours of ennui that left him searching the net for who knows what, killing time reading stories of some starlet's experiments with lesbianism or the latest updates on whatever war. His mind wandered to the beach, the peddlers selling cerveza, aqua and Coca Cola repeatedly announcing their wares, bumbling tourists taking advantage of the afternoon by swallowing too much beer and scorching their skin, Cedric began to wonder which was worse. Then he thought of Costa Brava, of the sea, of the cliffs. He thought of what it might be like to disappear, but he had no clue where he was going. He looked at the man next to him "how could I deny such wisdom the pleasure of my company?" It was tempting.

"I am sorry. I must work, this is the only way." Cedric stopped walking.

The old man's face took on a serious air and the brevity of his stare caught Cedric off guard.

"Work, my son, it is essential, don't get me wrong, it is completely essential for the character of a man to reveal itself properly. Work, however, has no value when it puts no faith in the individual. I see in you, friend, the mark of melancholy that comes with a deep distrust of humanity and a profound love for the world. Duality is the basis of human existence, but consistency will carry a great man through troubled waters. Do you hear me my son?" The man said. The speech was stilted the words came with a rehearsed monotone. It was like something a man heard his father say once and then heard repeated years later.

Cedric understood only fifty percent of what the old man said, and he understood nothing about it at all. It dawned on him he did not know the man's name.

"What is your name?" He asked.

"Ah yes, with pleasure. Call me Hardy." The man replied.

He was the man again, the sage retreated back inside somewhere.

"Hardy. I am sorry...I must work." Said Cedric.

Cedric turned around and walked fast in the opposite direction. He maneuvered himself through the afternoon shoppers until he reached a major street, where he turned right, walked for awhile longer and found himself at the door of his workplace. They hadn't walked far from it but Cedric hadn't recognized anything, he blamed the previous night's festivities. The door was glass with a handle facing the street. Some mechanism in the hinges prevented it from swinging toward a person, so a customer had to push, although the outside handle suggested a pull. The one bit of exercise afforded to Cedric each afternoon was helping people with the door. It was an endless source of amusement to watch tourists yanking on it with conviction, scratching their heads and then yanking again, only to have Cedric open it for them while they stumbled inside still grasping the handle. A sticky, honey-like substance made a layer over the door and adjacent window. It was a thin layer, and unless a curious passerby was right next to the window he would not see it, so Cedric never cleaned it.

Cedric caught a glimpse of himself in the door. He was medium height, very slender, particularly his legs. He was not a hairy man. His reddish, brown hair did not see fit to colonize on his chest, or even very much on his arms, but a full head of hair cascaded down his back in the form of dreadlocks. The hair did not fail to neglect his well-curved brow, two thick eyebrows rested atop. His face was as slender as his body, but with a heart shape that denoted sensuality. It was his seductive face that invited interest from the occasional woman. He looked at himself and he could see dark circles, visible even in a grimy glass door, cupping his bottom lids and a curl in his top lip gave him an annoyed look.

The chair behind the desk was set at a height that propped him up just enough for customers to see the crown of his head. Flyaway hairs were dance partners to the air emitted from the air-conditioning vents and made spirals above Cedric's head. The place was quiet, not unusual after a day of festivities. The sharp sun kept people at bay until the evening hours. Cedric had the place to himself, so he began searching. "Hardy" he erased it, then "famous Hardys," no, once again "notorious Hardys." Based on these three searches Cedric was able to gather some background on the name that was completely useless, but helped him kill the time. First off it was traditionally a last name, suggesting that his acquaintance might be using it as a pseudonym. Most of the Hardys were checked off the list immediately: Thomas Hardy, for example; famous writer, born in Dorset in 1840, not possible. Ed Hardy, fashion designer, very unlikely-next. Oliver Hardy of the comic duo Laurel and Hardy, getting closer, the look was certainly right, but that would make his jolly friend over one hundred years old and American. Hardy Rodenstock seemed the best fit. Hardy used as a first name, and a notorious wine purveyor who took the community for a ride with bottles he heralded as part of Thomas Jefferson's private stock. In any case, Cedric really didn't care and was beginning to lose interest.

He looked up from the screen, toward the window, hoping to capture a bit of sunlight for the day. The nebulous outline of Hardy's jaw appeared, foggy at first. The face was distorted with the juxtaposition behind the grime of the glass. Nightmarish with one eye bulging and the lines of the face oscillating between form and non-form. Cedric turned away in disgust. He forced his gaze back to the direction of the window, but the apparition was gone. It was real but so strange. This was the same man he met on the street, the very same. But it wasn't the same person at all. The man in the window was mendacious, not to be trusted, but the man he met on the street was a jolly, old fool. Cedric was ashamed to think it, but he was more attracted to the darker side.

...Eleven Years Before Spain...

As he sat staring, he thought of bacteria. "It floats in the emptiness, devoid of structure, but not without form. It was obligated to sustain itself, but this organism would share its resources with its comrades. It proffered the sulfur stored behind its membrane to contribute to the endless exchange of fuel supplies. The first, and possibly last, functioning commune," Cedric said. He looked at the village lights in the distance and half-shut his eyes until everything was out of focus. The lights began to move and morph into one. His friend exhaled a puff of smoke and grunted in affirmation.

"The idealist may turn to this evidence of cooperation at the beginning of life as a means of hope, but it is static. While life continues, it would never grow without the organism who said 'no,'"

The night air kept them awake and kept them talking this way. They sat in silence and Cedric's heart was full of something he couldn't define. He wanted to call it the love for a brother, that was the closest thing he could think of. He continued on the same nonsensical, monotonous and wonderful line of conversation.

"Your intrepid bacteria, because of this selfish act, we exist."

"God, will you listen to us. We're a comedy." His friend laughed off the profundity.

For a moment Cedric felt the pang of admiration. "Selfishness is a lodestone to the giving because the power of self attracts, especially with the promise of change which is only permitted when confidence gives faith to outcomes," Cedric mused.

"I admire you." His friend said, "You can quote books."

"That's not from a book, I just said it."

"In that case, I despise you." His friend laughed and Cedric joined in.

He always reverted to science when things frightened him. It was a childhood trick that gave him something concrete to hold onto and the power of the man next to him frightened him.

...Evening in Spain...

The sun set awhile ago. This was Cedric's favorite time of day, mostly because of the silence. He liked the quiet, especially quiet in public places, it was so unexpected. He could tell it was silent from the way the laundry was whipping in the wind and people looked up it see what the noise was. But this was also his favorite time of day because he had passed the halfway point of a shift.

"Please, um, this computer, may I...por favor." A student asked.

"Yes, yes, go ahead." Cedric activated the computer for the student. Yes, he would be off soon.

The hours dragged on. Cedric tried to kill some time with a book. Interesting, but it certainly wasn't relaxing him and any human interaction he experienced during the afternoon shift could be summed up in one conversation.

"Perdon, hablas Ingles?" Says a random tourist.

"Yes." Cedric replies without looking up.

"Okay, can I use this computer. I just go right up to it." Says the tourist.

"Yes, I activate for you." Cedric replies.

"Okay, how much?" The tourist asks.

"One Euro for every thirty minutes." Cedric says without emotion.

"Okay, yeah, okay. Should have brought my laptop, haha." Tourist makes an awkward joke.

"Yes, not a bad idea." Cedric replies caustically.

Then a smile for the people. He always gave them a smile. It never failed to win people over; he never understood how something so simple could affect immediate change in the most stoic of persons, but it was his gift and he didn't ask questions of it. His teeth were beginning to yellow from smoking, but the transformation of his whole sensual face is what sold it; the wrinkles around the eyes, how his nose looked a little off center, and the change in his jaw-line.

Two more hours and he would be free. The book was abandoned and he sent a few emails: one to a friend in France- a quick joke, nothing exceptional, one to a girl he had a fling with and kept up a charming, little email exchange, and one to his doting mother who he heard from once a year. She rarely wrote back, but he sent them anyway from force of habit, like keeping a diary. The night faded into blackness and the last customer left, it was time to leave. Cedric shut everything down, put his book in a tattered backpack, slung the bag over his shoulder and left. He always travelled light, not wanting to be burdened by the added weight on his slim frame. It was a quiet night, a recovery night. Only a few tourists and young people wandered the street. The shadows were thick and every movement was cut short by the darkness. The palm trees made giant, black imprints of themselves on the ground where the street lights hit them. Cedric was being followed. So the Englishman had waited for him. He couldn't hear it, or him rather, he knew who it was, but he couldn't see him. Cedric guessed he was about two blocks behind-enough distance to avoid being noticed, but not to lose your target. This would have annoyed him before, but after what he saw in the window it frightened him. He was slight, not a fighter. His best bet was to slip out of its grasp and make himself uncatchable. So he turned left and began weaving inside the labyrinth of streets . Fashionable people were making their way to the next nighttime location. Young people congregated around bar entrances for a smoke. Some passed around what looked like a very satisfying cigarette. Cedric kept moving, he changed direction by trailing large groups and couples, careful not to end up alone in an alleyway. He could feel it just behind a pillar of some antiquated church, or behind the opened door of a restaurant. Cedric started at a normal pace but he was jogging by the time he reached La Rambla. His usual disdain for this street was gone; he had never been so grateful to see the crowds of adolescents and tourists. He all but ran into a crowd watching a group of break dancers. He stood next to a giggling set of girls for a good while until he was assured of his anonymity, but when he looked to his right he saw Hardy. The old man was carrying on a conversation with a be-sweatered businessman; he pretended not to notice Cedric. All his former diabolical characteristics were gone and the only being left was the jovial soul Cedric encountered earlier that day. Cedric couldn't move for a moment; the man didn't have a sheen of sweat on his face. Cedric ran. His dreads lifted off his back, suspended in mid-air and smacked back down again. He feared whatever was chasing him before would grab on and pull him to the ground.

...A Few Minutes Later...

His chest heaved, he regretted his last cigarette and quickened his pace. The sweat slowly ran down the sides of his face and followed the angle of his chin. People hopped out of his way, they cursed at him or laughed at him in turn. He darted past a string of shops and saw the glow from the entryway door making a long rectangular shape on the street in front of the apartment complex. He pushed the door open with his hip and climbed the stairs to the roof. A door leading inside a rooftop structure topped with a metal roof was the only entrance into his apartment. A padlock kept the door secure; it glowed like a beacon for Cedric. He grabbed it in his left hand and tried to steady his right hand to insert the key.

...Seconds Later...

He could feel his diaphragm pounding against the bottom of his lungs. His adrenaline carried him up the stairs of his apartment complex and to the door; he opened it with shaky hands and stepped into the dark. All was silent but he didn't feel alone. It, or rather he, was standing near the window, absolutely still. Its chest projected forward with each inhale, but Cedric couldn't hear it breathing. Cedric didn't blink, he only stared and felt his own breath begin to shortened and tightened. It was Hardy, and it wasn't Hardy. The blue glow from a light on the adjacent rooftop illuminated the old man's torso, but the face was obscured, distorted, like what Cedric had seen in the window of the locoturi. The distortion was obscene and powerful; what Cedric's imagination concocted was twice as fearful as reality. They both held their breath, it was anticipating something.

Hardy, or what was once Hardy; a man living, a breathing man, with the insides of a human and the voice of a god. Cedric observed the change in Hardy as he stood there. He thought of change in a person and how it can be defined in levels. "This is the change that rattles some and settles others," thought Cedric. The last level of change comes on suddenly-an unexpected reflection around the corner and a fear that robs you of yourself. Cedric snapped back when he heard it's voice.

"Don't worry." The thing said.

The voice came through like a brick through a window. It shattered the air and echoed, "worry" the "o's" tumbling one after the other.

"What is it? " Cedric asked.

"Don't worry we'll find each other." It said matter-of-factly.

"Tell me what you mean." Cedric paused and added, "please."

"Not just yet..." it gargled something else too, but Cedric couldn't make it out.

...The Next Morning...

Cedric woke up in a pile of sheets. The sun shone through the same window from the night before, but this time there was nobody to obstruct it. The words resounded in his head "Not just yet." His clothes were folded in on themselves and pressed marks into his skin again. His breath smelled as foul as the putrid stench of a not-so-fresh corpse. He couldn't send the proper "get up" signals to his legs. He was comatose with fear of what may have happened while he slept. From his bed-nothing more than a padded mattress thrown across the floor-he could see out onto a narrow balcony where the sun was bright at the top of the windows. His apartment faced east, so he surmised that the placement of the sun made it was late morning. Once his eyes focused he could see it was definitely late morning, the sun sat in the upper left corner of the window pane. He lay there for about a half hour, staring directly at it and repeated a motivational dictum to himself, "get up," "get up" again and again. Finally his efforts paid off and he was able to lift his right foot and scoot it off the edge of the mattress. This small act of bravery inspired more movement and with one slow scoot he made it off the bed. He sat up and contemplated the journey from the bed to the living room, where he saw the thing the night before. All was still: a secondhand couch with orange flowers sat empty, the crocheted blanket that draped the back of it was folded in exactly the same way as yesterday, even his half-smoked cigarette from the previous morning lay undisturbed. He looked out the same window the thing looked out, he decided he had to find this man, because it was all too strange.

...Ten Years Before Spain...

"But I know. What I am asking is about you. You're alone all the time, I mean without a woman." His friend asked with a bemused and perplexed twist of the eyebrows that made Cedric nervous. He didn't want to begin dissimulating about love and relationships and all the other paltry shit that men his age were expected to participate in.

"I don't know. I just don't know anyone I'm interested in is all. A lay every now and again is fine, but I don't need more." Cedric shrugged.

"Okay, but I recommend you know. It's not so bad. I know it's expected of me to sleep around and enjoy women in all their forms: for my youth, for my manhood. But it's exhausting and having one isn't so bad, the sex is better, exponentially." His friend smiled and looked away. It was more than that; his friend was infatuated with this girl that was clear, he simply enjoyed her company.

"I don't blame you. She is a true woman." Cedric put an arm around his friend instinctively, like he would have done to congratulate him on graduating from secondary school which he hadn't done yet.

"Yes, she is real. She has deposits of fat that make very subtle ripples underneath the skin of her thighs and she has freckles. But it's perfect, because it's absolutely real, nothing to be intimidated by or someone who lords over you with impossible standards. She just accepts and gives, amazing to have a real person there."

Cedric nodded and thought of his friend's woman's thighs, "I don't feel I need it. A person there. I prefer the imagined."

"Yeah."

They leaned on the car and let the silence continue. They both looked at the house. Cedric watched his friend's face and could see that he was imagining what it would be like to live in one of those with a wife, a piece of land, a dog, a child perhaps. His friend was one who took responsibility.

...Spain...

But he had an inexplicable inkling, so he decided to follow his gut. He hadn't bothered to do anything with himself apart from throw on a smelly shirt and tie his dreads back. He mounted his bike and took off down Grand Via. The balconies sped past and formed a black freeway of rod-iron that painted Cedric's peripheral vision with thick, continuous lines. He felt the throbbing get stronger as he got closer to the Arc. The balconies made a tunnel, a vortex that was either sucking him in or spitting him out. He pedalled until the bike couldn't take anymore speed and careened down the boulevards, weaving around other bikers until he reached the Arc and rode under it into the park. The bohemians were in full force, with tight ropes tied between two trees where shirtless hippies took their turns balancing. A very musically inept girl with a multicolored skirt practiced tambourine, while a set of drums pounded away in the distance. The lawns were full which meant it was probably Sunday, it was easy to lose track of time in this city, so Cedric kept track of the days by events and this park burst to life on Sundays with a rumbling that was accompanied by the smell of sweat and pot. He stopped near the entrance of the park next to an attractive, dread-locked girl with a peacock feather tattoo that wrapped around her hip and travelled across her belly down her skirt. The vibrating energy of the park's Sunday population obscured Hardy's draw. But when Cedric looked up the man was there, he stood in the center of the walkway with arms braced behind his back, holding his hands together at the rise of the buttock. "A sinister pose," Cedric thought. The man was smiling and looking straight at Cedric. Cedric hesitated and his mind returned to the girl's tattoo; it slithered across the top of her pelvis and down toward the mound of her pubis then disappeared into the darkness between her legs. Hardy's tongue flapped while he smiled like a clown adorning the outside of a funhouse. His teeth were dark, grooved, disintegrating in the heat of his breath. A foul smell reached Cedric's nose. He winced but kept his eyes glued to Hardy's face which looked like the peacock girl's face, the two became each other and taunted Cedric. The girl's lips parted and out came the voice of an old man, "I'll help you," it said decrepit and mocking.

...Two Hours Later...

The sky grew dark at about nine o'clock this time of year, Cedric sat next to Hardy on a bench near the fountain with only the reflection off the golden angel to illuminate their faces. Cedric responded to Hardy's questions like an automaton, with the lips of the girl, her peacock feather tattoo, the smell of sweat and hot breath playing games in his head.

"You don't have a home?" Cedric asked.

"No, no home. Not for a long time." Hardy replied.

"Where do you sleep?" Asked Cedric. He made a swirl in the dirt with the toe of his shoe, erased it with the sole , then made another.

Hardy's voice changed again; this time it was vulnerable. He had tears in his eyes and the quivering of his bottom lip suggested he would burst into sobs at any moment.

"Different places. Places all over town, depends, my friend. It really depends." Hardy replied with an old man's bone-rattling tremor in his voice.

"Which places?" Asked Cedric.

"On nice days, before tourist season...or after; I sleep in a clearing in the mountain park, for the view in the morning. This is my penthouse, my refuge. The energy is stirred there in the afternoons by people doing Tai Chi, so the air is less evil than other places. But there are other places. I don't always get so lucky; I can't always choose you know, so there are other places." Hardy replied.

The tears were flowing, but Hardy kept his gaze straight ahead. He stared at something and his voice wasn't choked. The tears came as something else; as if someone were placing them there artificially and they weren't coming from his eyes at all.

"What other places?" Cedric asked.

"A tree in this park, knobby and strong. I can roll myself up into a ball and nestle at the base of the trunk. The trunk itself protrudes from the ground in an unnatural way. Wooden boils erupting from its sides are large enough for sitting. The place is secluded, so I am often interrupted by a pair of lovers; more of a shock to them, really. The shade keeps the ground cool enough for sleeping in the summer. It is my summer place. And a nearby grouping of trees encircles a crawlspace just off to the side. I am old but agile." Hardy said.

"Yes, I know." Cedric remembered Hardy's sheen-less face from the crowd the day before.

"I can wedge myself in-between the trunks and keep quiet while the night guard does his rounds." Hardy lifted his finger and made a circle in the air with the time of Cedric's ground swirling.

"I think I know this place." Cedric said, also staring straight ahead.

"Yes?" A wind blew the leaves around and it sounded like crushing plastic. A flock of spooked sparrows flew from a nearby bush.

"Children play on the tree, and it has names and things from vandals on the trunk." Cedric said.

"Don't worry, I don't defecate there, with the children and all." Hardy replied.

"I've climbed this tree." Cedric said.

"Have you?"

"Yes, I have. I was with friends here, just sitting and watching, on a Sunday-like today. We were not feeling well because of too much drink the night before. Everyone was dark and sick, but we came together anyway. I needed a moment alone, because these people, not all of them were friends-I did not know all of them, and sometimes I need to be away from them. I turn around and I saw this tree and I came to it and sat in it, for a long time. It was silent near the tree, even when the park was full of people. A strange place." Cedric said

"Yes, very strange indeed." Hardy replied.

"What is it that won't happen just yet?" Cedric asked.

"It's not important." Hardy said with the detached air of the thing that possessed him before.

"What do you want from me?" Cedric struggled to maintain the flatness in his voice.

"I am old." Hardy began, a man this time. He paused for a long time and let the statement roll around in Cedric's psyche for awhile. Then he began again, with the same stare and monotony.

"I am old. There comes a time when one needs help and now is my time. In the past I never asked anyone for anything, I never did, and until now never have. I was something at a point in time. Time is strange, we are, all of us different people at once-it is only circumstances and time that make a specific self appear. I was once love itself. You could never tell now, but I was once." Hardy was distracted, but his possessed Homeresque story-telling was intoxicating.

"What do you want from me?" Cedric asked in plain terms.

"Love is a kind of madness, that is the only explanation. Sometimes that madness is too much and something breaks, something like a barrier is crossed. It is a type of evil." Hardy went on.

His pupils were large mirrored pools and Cedric completely lost himself.

"Love is a temporary insanity that drives some to murder and others to die. I've had many women, believe me, I have. But there is one, only one that makes a stirring in the soul, and your internal organs declare open war on each other. Heaven forbid that woman treat you cruelly, because that cruelty will eat away at your insides like a cancer, in the same slow, devouring rhythm. As you bend to the will of the disease you'll have these moments of exceptional clarity. In any case, I am cursed." Hardy smiled to himself.

...Ten Years Before Spain...

"Where would you go?" His friend asked.

"I don't know."

"No, really. Where would you go?" His asked again, looking out over a mostly mud-covered field with some patches of bedraggled trees. "I would go south." Cedric looked out over the barren countryside and lifted his foot. The bottom of his shoe was sticky with mud. "I would definitely go south."

"I wouldn't go anywhere." His friend said. He stretched his arms above his head and arched his back while swallowing a mouthful of air. "I would stay here. This land is terrible, hopeless really. But I would stay and try to make do with it. It seems right somehow. I am attached to it."

"Will you stay with her? I mean if you stay here." Cedric asked in a disinterested way.

"I would. I am slave." He laughed with the full force of his body. He threw his head back and laughed.

...Spain. Eleven the Next Morning...

Cedric was good with travel planning. He could search online like a champ, collecting information from one website to the next in a matter of minutes, without a breath in-between. Within a couple of hours he found a decently priced plane ticket. That is where he was supposed to go.

"Excuse me do you speak English?" a voice interrupted him.

"Yes, what can I do?" He asked.

"I need to go online and..." The anxious tourist asked.

"Confirm." Cedric announced to himself as he pushed the purchase button.

"What?"

"Yes, yes. Number four, it's ready for you." Cedric waved the tourist off.

Cedric's hands were shaking; they always shook after he bought a plane ticket. Hardy said the place smelled of monkey shit and spices. He also said that a three day trip to the desert wasn't long enough and if you bury your body underneath the sand at night, it will keep you warm.

...Five and a Half Hours Later...

Hardy promised Cedric he would meet him back in the park at five fifteen in the afternoon, he promised to continue his story. But it was now five thirty and Cedric was losing hope. The park was oddly quiet, with only the breeze tossing the leaves around and the reflective surface of the pond water to keep Cedric company. He could hear the sound of children laughing and yelling to each other in the distance. Some birds where having a chat above his head somewhere, but no hippies or artists congregated on the green to distract him.

Hardy arrived at five forty five, fashionably late, by his own assertion. He proposed a walk, and since the afternoon was fine, Cedric accepted. The sun was still bright in the sky and Cedric hadn't seen Hardy in a bright light since he met him, so he took the opportunity to study the man. He noticed Hardy seemed ageless when he was silent. His face was smooth, a little red from the sun, but relatively wrinkle-free with the exception of small lines around the eyes that indicated years of laughter. But when Hardy spoke his face changed, he was a different man from one moment to the next. His forehead would contract into a pile of deep creases, two lines appeared between his eyebrows, his cheeks inflated and his chin deflated; he aged about two hundred years in an instant. The next moment he would break into a smile and everything would go soft; when this happened he was only a few months old, a laughing baby. His eyes changed too, the pupils contracted and expanded at will, as if Hardy had control over the movement. These constant changes gave the thing a frightening charisma.

"Here we are between knowing and not knowing. I think we've passed by here before?" Hardy pointed to a nondescript block apartment buildings. Cedric shrugged his shoulders and blocked his eyes from the setting sun so he could make it out but he said nothing and kept walking. They continued on through the park into a part of the city Cedric didn't recognize , it looked residential and new.

"Let's talk about women." Hardy said loudly, with the baby-look on his face.

Cedric smiled and nodded in collusion.

"I once had a dream where I was a scientist. A very brilliant and arrogant man, in my dream I vivisected the perfect woman. I did this by collecting the pieces of all the women who left an impression on me in the past and sewing them together with some rudimentary method that was very effective. But what I created was full of fear for me, full of love and fear. Actually the two are very much the same thing, sometimes, don't you think?" Hardy said.

Cedric thought for a long time. "I think the one can change into the other. But maybe they both are the same. But not a woman, no I don't think." He stumbled over the English.

Hardy raised his eyebrows and continued. "The desert is a place where fear subsides. I think this is because you can see everything, nothing to block the way." He looked thoughtful. "We are lost."

Cedric took in his surroundings, modern buildings painted in obscene peaches, pinks and light greens lined either side of the street; a small park was situated between the large street where they walked and a gutter. The park seemed to suggest the gutter was a waterway worth spending some time next to. The freshly planted trees surrounding it were still being held by supports, the benches were graffiti-free and the grass was thick. Two sculptures of simple, contemporary design-one at the entrance of the park, the other further in- gave some character to the place, but Hardy was right, they were lost. Distant laughter rang out from a balcony gathering somewhere, it was followed by a delighted squeal and the clinking of glasses.

"No matter." Hardy said.

"Look there, at that, there." He pointed toward the sky, at the moon. "A good omen I think. When it looks like the moon has been painted for you, a good sign. A message for you, I think." Hardy pointed at the moon with a child's enthusiasm.

Cedric didn't know how to reply. "Yes," he said as if it was completely natural that Hardy should know something so personal. This moon was for him, he thought. He was distressed at the thought of being egocentric, more distressing was the thought that Hardy was aware of it.

"I am thinking of him." Said Cedric.

"Of course you are." Said Hardy, "the way he was lying on the floor, face down, so undignified." Hardy finished Cedric's thought.

Cedric did remember his friend. He was thin and energetic; he had a charm about him. He spoke well and women liked him. He was excitable, but Cedric liked that about him-it complemented his own natural laziness. They had talked a lot about all sorts of things that seemed profound at the time, they were like brothers. Lately the memories were haunting, they surprised him with their clarity and suddenness and there were moments that lasted forever of missing his friend and other moments when he forgot about him completely. When Cedric found him, he was face down next to a toilet. His hands were spread out in front of him, his skin glowed under a blacklight and he was still. It was a kind of stillness that Cedric had never seen his friend successfully execute before. When Cedric touched him he was cold.

"A good friend no doubt, yes? But the woman..." Hardy interrupted again.

But that was long ago and the past is the past, Cedric felt his hands begin to shake. Somehow they continued to walk deeper into the new outskirts of the city, more and more lost. Hardy didn't seem concerned; he walked on toward an unknown destination. His friend's girl was the one that asked Cedric to look for his friend. His girl said "I am worried, where is he? Do you know? Find him." Cedric was annoyed with her at the time; he was in the middle of a party and didn't want to take time away from the blonde he was chatting with, but he went anyway.

...Nine Years Before Spain...

"Do you think of him sometimes?" She asked.

"Yes, always, of course." Cedric replied.

She started crying again, like always. Cedric was used to her tears by this point, he had become numb to them but he thought that was unfortunate. She was sexy when she cried, her face wrinkled under the eyes and a blush would spread over her cheeks that would put her freckles in relief. He thought of the spots on her shoulders that matched the ones on her face and how he wanted to eat them, swallowing some whole and lapping others up with his tongue. Whenever he saw those spots he imagined himself tearing into her flesh with teeth and sucking on the salt. He looked away from her in an attempt to control himself.

"Sorry, I do it a lot I know. I'm here with you because you remember too." She was standing in front of him and looking away, then she faced him. She kissed him on the neck violently revenging herself on him for his brutal desires. Cedric felt a sting but he didn't tease or scold her in that flirty way his friend would've done: she needed to exorcise the rage, he knew that.

"It's alright, it happens." He wanted to change the subject. "Look at the moon. It's full."

"Yeah. Why?" She didn't care. She dug her nails into his chest. She assaulted his neck again.

"Think of me when you see it." He asked.

...Spain One Hour Later...

"Are you still there?" Cedric asked Hardy.

"I would never leave you, my friend." Hardy laughed cruelly.

It was dark and Cedric couldn't differentiate one building from another, or see any people around.

"A nightcap?" Hardy grabbed Cedric's hand and led him inside a dirty little bar. They were alone there and the wall was covered with mirrors that made the already too bright light even more annoying, but the mirrors conceived to give the illusion of a bigger room with more people. They sat at a black table with an uneven leg that made it teeter up and down and waited for service. A smiling woman with red lips and laugh-lines appeared out of nowhere and asked what they wanted in a thick accent; Cedric ordered a beer and Hardy stumbled over an explanation of how to make his version of whiskey soda. The drinks appeared out of nowhere. Hardy never took his eyes off Cedric while he drank, he asked; "So, are we finished talking about her?"

Cedric wanted to be finished but he felt compelled, so he replied "No," then went silent. The woman watched them both from the behind the bar with her heavy lids, not out of suspicion, but from boredom. She wiped down the same counter top four or five times before Cedric spoke up again.

"She was suffering, so I went to her. That is all." He said.

"Nothing more lovable than a vulnerable woman." Hardy winked.

Cedric thought he saw Hardy's eye slip down the side of his face and recover during the wink. The beer, the quiet and the unfamiliarity of the place were making him uneasy. Hardy's stare was unnerving; Cedric couldn't meet his gaze so he looked into his beer. The fluorescents played tricks on his eyes and the flesh on Hardy's hand gathered and changed color; Cedric had the impulse to cover it with a napkin or chop it off, he imagined it would spring back to life and finger its way across the floor, maybe make itself a drink behind the bar. The flight was leaving tomorrow afternoon, so there was time. Cedric thought it was best just to finish his beer. But he should be resting, not staring at this man's hand, transfixed. He hoped the man would start talking and distract Cedric's thoughts away from the blue color of his friend's skin.

"I want you to know I appreciate it." Hardy said.

"I have no choice." Cedric said.

"Clarity is not easy to come by, not even for you my friend, not even for a man who lives in the moment." Hardy smiled and drank at the same time letting the cloudy, rust-colored water trickle out the sides of his mouth.

"No, I know." Cedric said.

"We are citizens of nowhere and of nothing. The world doesn't have us on record, so we can move where we want, when we want and for our own purposes." Hardy began. Cedric looked at his face and saw again the grotesque image in the window of the locoturi, deformed and defiant. He was sure this was the same man, the voice wasn't unkind, but Cedric saw Hardy through the glass again. He wanted to run, he wanted to cry out or laugh or weep or something, but instead he sat there like a dumbfounded fool and let the thing speak with foam frothing at his mouth.

"We can move, that is important. Identity is an illusion. Truly we are, all of us, nobody and nothing." Hardy said.

The word nothing echoed in the vacuous space inside Cedric's chest, it misted his lungs like a ball of recently inhaled smoke and repeated itself. "We are, all of us, nothing," a sagacious set of eyes looked back at him from across the table. Cedric wanted to believe him, that we all pleasantly fell asleep at death and sunk back into a void, but there was a ringing in his ears, they were lost and they needed to find themselves again, so he could pack and just get it over with. Sometimes when the profoundest thoughts hit Cedric, all he wanted to do was something mundane. Touching his clothes and sleeping on his bed, these were real things that reminded him he was still present. He looked at the woman behind the bar, but she wasn't there, in her place stood a young woman with dark skin and freckles. She smiled at Cedric and the fluorescents reflected off a gold tooth. He turned away, toward the opposite wall and looked at the mirror-but the girl's image wasn't there. All Cedric could see was a Petri dish full of bacteria ramming into each other and floating around in search of nothing. "I am getting dark," he thought to himself. Hardy laughed, "let them float," he said. Cedric turned back to the bar and the girl was gone. Something about the girl's gold tooth made his skin crawl.

...One Hour Later...

They were back in a part of the city Cedric recognized, near Poble Nou. Hardy insisted they take a shortcut through a park with landscaped dirt and oppressively playful sculptures. Hardy said he liked it because it was stupidly designed and always empty. It was locked when they got there, but Hardy knew a way in through a break in the wall behind some vines. He scooped the vines aside and both men crawled into the park where the sculptures took on a sinister aspect, with their demented Dr. Seuss designs rising upward like atomic mushrooms.

He had left the bar abruptly because he found he couldn't sit anymore, but here he was back with the old man, breaking into public parks in the middle of the night, but at least they weren't lost anymore. He didn't ask for this man's company, but he couldn't do without it. Hardy had a task for Cedric but even with the creepy stare, the strange morphing face, he was separate and distant from him. They were two beings inside the world with rucksacks on their shoulders whom happened to cross paths, but Cedric felt something else, something climbing the stairs of his vertebra and he couldn't help but call it boredom and another thing he couldn't help but call loneliness, this is ultimately what Spain offered him. But these are just illusions, that is what Hardy would say, Cedric knew somehow. He closed his eyes and before him was an expanse of sand, the sun made golden grains shimmer as they defected from the mass to shine for a moment. A kick of wind picked up and spiralled to make the dust wrap around itself and settle again, all these things were there, but still there was nothing. Cedric thought, "what gives a window purpose is the space where there is nothing." Hardy put his hand on Cedric's, a show of fatherly affection; the touch was as warm as the sand and as expansive. Cedric felt strings of muscles in his arm twang and release in response to the heat. He felt the heat of the sand between his toes, the warmth of a woman, the scalding of the sun. He wiggled his toes to quicken his descent into the sand, he felt cold, gelatinous mud underneath.

"Yes, yes that's right." Hardy said.

Cedric was yearning for the desert. The silence and expansiveness of it was something so different from the city, it was something that couldn't be controlled, managed or sold. "It wasn't a commodity anyone wanted, it was something they feared- the view of the dunes inspired helplessness, it is the thought that soon the whole world would resemble these dunes. His white skin would be scorched, then it would turn patchy and white before flaking off, the skin underneath would appear shining red like the face of a drunk. He was reminded again of his courageously selfish bacteria and what a stroke of luck for the human race. But the sky turned the violet of dawn and it was time to go.

...Twenty Minutes Later...

Cedric left Hardy in the park and found his way back home. Hardy had nodded but made no other effort to say goodbye, his hands were planted firmly on his knees and he stared straight ahead with his spine as erect as a column. The morning had started and the sun was up by the time he got home. He hated packing, but fortunately he could survive with very little, so he grabbed only the essentials and stuffed them into a duffle bag: toothbrush, pair of unwashed pants, sweatshirt, a book he had always intended to finish but never got around to, and a handful of underwear. He zipped up the bag and went out to his narrow balcony. He pulled a rolling paper out of the packet and pinched it between his index finger and thumb then filled it with a mixture of tobacco and pot, licked it and rolled the cigarette closed with two fingers; he watched the apartment balconies across from him. He watched the people begin their days, each one of them different: the young family in the upper left corner balcony always opened the window and played music in the mornings, the single guy in the right corner balcony liked to smoke in his underwear, the middle-aged woman with the bright red hair in the center balcony always had a coffee or two while watering her flowers. Cedric stood and leaned over the edge of the railing to get a view of the street, he sometimes did this to watch his neighbors cleaning up their pet's shit, but today no one was there, only Hardy standing there serenely and looking back up at him.

Hardy looked very small and vulnerable gazing back up at Cedric from below so Cedric had no forebodings about waving him up. He still had time, lots of time, a few hours in fact. He didn't know what possessed him to pack so early; he supposed he wanted to escape the unsettling sensation and avoid sinking as long as he could. He looked forward to the last few hours as a refuge of peace to contemplate the rashness of his decision but then there was a knock. There stood the man in person and a bit anxious, his face contorted into a grimace.

"Yes?" Said Cedric.

"I am a flustered man." Hardy replied.

"I don't know this word." Cedric said.

"Stressed, but in a frustrated way that can't be relieved." He said it like a pedagogue.

"Oh, okay come in." Cedric said, feeling like he just broke a cardinal rule and invited a vampire into his home. "I have a few hours." Cedric said to reassure, assuming that was what was causing Hardy's anxiety.

"It's not that. It is something I can't say, of course. Something I always want to say but can't-we can't apologize for death you know, it just happens like that." Hardy looked down at his hands and froze, he stared into the emptiness between his two palms. "We can't apologize for the inevitable, it is always awkward and invalid. Someone says, oh my so-and-so just died and the first words out of our mouths is 'sorry,' it sounds foolish leaving our mouth and it sounds even more asinine to the ears of the griever, believe me. So, we can't apologize for death. There it is." Hardy flashed a sad grin toward Cedric and moved toward the window.

Cedric sat down on the couch perplexed, he was right, you can't apologize yet we do it all the time in rough and stupid ways. So Cedric said, "I'm sorry." Hardy visibly clenched his hands together behind his back and stayed silent, gazing out the window, just like before. He was far less sinister in daylight, but his present anxiety made him intimidating in another unpredictable way, "after all people do desperate and sometimes insane things under pressure," thought Cedric. Cedric had gotten up to make a coffee when Hardy burst out in a voice that shook the panes of glass.

"I can't stop it you know! I can never stop and won't apologize. This is the lot of some and here I am." Hardy was in a rage but choked tears made his voice unstable. Cedric stopped, saying nothing but with a death-grip on a coffee cup that threatened to cut off circulation in his arm.

Hardy calmed himself, "I won't take anything from you, you don't give willingly."

...A Few Minutes Later...

Cedric didn't know how long they stood there, staring at each other. Hardy's hands held him by the upper arm. Hardy's eyes were the color of snow in the morning and Cedric thought that this man must be on his last legs. Hardy's look was accusatory and Cedric felt his face turn red. He threw Hardy off, shaking his head and with a desire to scream he blurted out "I didn't leave him there....how could I, my friend....I didn't leave him....in the ground. What is it you want from me, I am still alive, I am alive here and I have choice, so I left, its my right, my right." Cedric's voice strained and cracked, but he forced out his fractured logic, the confession didn't lift the weight off his shoulders he expected it to. Hardy stood, his laugh-lines crinkling to their deepest he snarled at Cedric with a menacing doglike sound. At any moment Cedric expected foam to form around his mouth, but he smiled, even though his shoulders were closer to his ears than Cedric remembered. Cedric felt compelled to continue: "What could I do...There was nothing left to do, so I had to follow my own way. What does it matter? We don't need each other like we used too. She didn't need me." He didn't know to what he was referring and he wanted to laugh at himself for assuming some wise stance, as if he had lived longer than he had. If he was honest with himself he would say he knew nothing, that he was a fool and always would be, that the more he learned, the less he knew and he was spinning in the water of a flushed toilet, gulping up as much air as he could before being sucked down.

The sun leaked in through the balcony door and illuminated the dust floating behind Hardy's head. Some bird twittered outside and a child squealed, this was followed by a loud bang that Cedric recognized as a ball being kicked against the wall below his balcony, he went to the window to watch the boys.

...An Hour Later...

Cedric looked at Hardy, who was sitting on the couch now, Hardy's face was bluish and deformed again, but Cedric recognized that this probably had more to do with his own state of mind and less to do with Hardy's face. Cedric instinctively put his duffle bag on the table as a gesture that said "I am ready to go." They still had time before they left, but Cedric suggested they get a coffee somewhere before boarding the bus to the airport. Hardy smiled in agreement and they walked outside to find one. The sun reflected off the metal chairs of a nearby café, making them look extraordinary. Cedric took this as a sign and decided to lead Hardy to the set of chairs that reflected the strongest light. Cedric wanted the power of the sun to dry up the damp, bluish look on Hardy's face, much like it dries an infected pustule. Cedric ordered two espressos, he used both sugars and cream in his, while Hardy just stared at the cup.

"You don't drink coffee?" Cedric asked.

"Never touch the stuff." Hardy smiled in return.

Cedric nodded in reply and looked directly toward the sun with his eyes shut. That is the best he could muster after last night and this morning. He thought of their destination and the need for movement and a change of things. He had settled too long in this brilliant Spanish world of decadence and it numbed him, he wanted some new challenge to shake him free of these nagging feelings of stagnation and purifying guilt, but let the sun soak it up. Cedric leaned back in his chair and looked up toward the sky.

"I knew a man once who was afraid of death." Hardy began in his usual way. He looked down and played with an empty sugar packet, the sugar sat in a tiny pile on the table next to the full espresso cup. "So afraid that he couldn't sleep at night and had trouble eating as he saw everything on his plate as a representative of death, a dead thing that he was consuming. His fear of death was bringing him closer to it, he was wasting away. His face became sallow, dark circles appeared under his eyes and the muscles in his cheeks sagged. He invested in every longevity drug on the market, the combination of which made him ill, further increasing his proximity to death. He ran so far from death that he ran right into it. But when he reached the last moments of his life, his body racked by disease, he said 'Give me death finally, I will meet him like an old friend. Living is too hard work." Hardy kept his eyes closed and a grin appeared on his face. He threw his head back and pressed his lips together to contain a laugh, but it pressed its way out of him anyway.

"Why are you talking to me like this?" Cedric asked.

"I don't know, it just occurred to me." Hardy replied.

They sat with their eyes closed, soaking up the sun and a plane passed overhead; they let the engine sound drown out their conversation.

...Eight Years Before Spain...

"Is it love you're looking for or what?" He asked.

"No, but something, this is so cold and undefined. It's irritating. I'm not angry, just annoyed or something, like ants are on my skin." She itched her arm to highlight the image.

"Women always talk in metaphors." Cedric replied. He finished off the last of his beer and laid the glass back on the table. He watched the foam slide down the side and looked at her face. There were bags under her eyes and a crease had formed between her eyebrows. She had told him she was having trouble sleeping.

"Do you feel guilty? Is that it?" She asked him the question with tears.

"No I don't. I think he's pleased." Cedric lied he not only felt guilty but perfidious. "Anyway I am leaving. I wasn't going to tell anyone, but you will think of me, I know. It's the thing to do. I have to move or I'll kill myself; the flatness of this land is hell." He laughed quietly.

"That's over the top, but no one would blame you." She said without irony.

...Late Afternoon at the Airport...

They arrived at the airport early because the waiting was getting on Cedric's nerves. He bought a bottle of water and sat in a centralized café with Hardy to watch the travelers walk to and away from the boarding gates. Check-in and security was uneventful, except the extra scrutiny the security team always gave Cedric.

Cedric let his mind wander. It wandered all the way to the boarding gate and into the boarding line; it wandered down the gangway and into the plane; it wandered so much that he didn't notice when Hardy disappeared. He laughed, he laughed quietly at first, merely a grin, then a giggle, then an opened-mouth laugh, and after a few seconds he found himself in the middle of a full out guffaw. He threw back his head and laughed loud enough to startle the woman next to him and make the man across the aisle curse to himself. He apologized to the woman and gave some explanation about an inside joke with a friend while he flashed the woman his winning smile.

...A Few Minutes Later...

Cedric's ears popped and he yawned to try and regulate the pressure. He must have slept for at least an hour, possibly more, because they were descending and he didn't hear any announcement. He peered over the woman next to him to try and get a view out the window but the clouds covered everything.

He kept remembering things: pieces of conversation, images, her face and how tired she was before he left, it was all meaningless. Some of the conversations were about something, he never forgot those, but others were completely empty. In any case, his thoughts were in the past and he had always made a point of staying in the present. He closed his eyes and tried to focus on the color black to clear his mind, instead he saw her freckles, her thighs, her tears and his friend's motionless back in a puddle on the bathroom floor.

...A Few Minutes Later...

A blanket of heat enveloped him when he got off the plane. A wind picked up and stirred the dust, it wiped itself into a swirling cloud and descended on the passengers. Cedric boarded a small bus that took him and the others to the terminal. When he entered the airport he pulled his duffle bag over his shoulder and headed for the exit. A group of traditionally dressed musicians sat atop a carpet in the center of a mockup market. A cactus garden and red sand greeted him outside, yellowing stucco walls, cloudless sky and the stillness that goes hand and hand with oppressive heat; he didn't know which way to go, so he approached a security guard. The guard pointed to a bus with the engine running and people standing in line to board. The bus bounced its way through traffic, hitting every pothole and bump on the way and finally stopped at what looked like a main square where the people crowded inside stood up and pushed their way to the exits. Some used their backpacks and grocery bags to make pathways for themselves through the milieu of tourists. Cedric got off too and turned right, careful to avoid the attention of would-be guides and salesmen; ahead of him, walking quickly through the crowd in front of a juice stand, Cedric could see the tails of a tux jacket. The weather was hot, but there he was, trotting up a poorly paved road in front of Cedric, whistling to himself and his tux tails flapping in the breeze next to the draping dress of the locals, but no one seemed to notice him. He walked undisturbed down the road and Cedric followed, nonplussed by the solicitations of the shopkeepers. Hardy didn't look back but led Cedric outside the city walls. Buildings became less dense and Cedric could see clearly between the structures out into the desert beyond. They walked until the sun began to set; the air turned cool and the orange glow cast shadows along the dunes. The sand filled Cedric's shoes but he walked on with Hardy whistling all the while.

"I don't want to go." He said.

Hardy turned around and met Cedric's eyes.

"Go where?" Hardy asked.

"I don't want to go with you." He replied.

Cedric made a fist and thought he felt his friend's cold hand inside it and he thought he felt the warm arms of the girl wrap around his waist. They both clung to him with pleading warmth and held tight while Cedric looked past the transmutation of Hardy's face, serene then forbidding, out over the dunes watching two distant figures climbing the sand.

Cedric didn't feel further explanation was needed. He turned around and walked toward the city. He could still hear the whistling for a little while, but the sound grew weaker and more drawn out, then another sound replaced it and he could hear the moaning and wailing of familiar blended tears.

CANADA

Ricardo loved walking down this portion of Asquith Avenue, when business was done for the day and the city was dim and quiet. There were stirrings down side streets and inside the windows of trendy restaurants. Banners suspended from street-lamps were flapping in the breeze. The festival wasn't for another week but the city was already preparing itself. The evening's spattering of drunken sixteen year-olds and homeless vets was being replaced by yuppies and Australian adventurers. Ricardo looked at his hands and absent-mindedly followed the small crevices back to the crease of each wrist. His hands had become so rough that cliffs of skin jutted out over the cracks making the crevices seem as deep as trenches. Sometimes he would stick toothpicks into these fissures; he was always surprised that he felt no pain.

"Hello, Ricardo!" A voice from across the street interrupted.

Ricardo turned to discover his friend and fellow expatriate, Manuel. Manuel had the ruddy exterior of a South American worker down to a tee; his skin was brown-red, like the hide of a buffalo, his shoulders were about as wide as he was tall, which gave his five foot three-inch stature an imposing power. His wrinkled face suggested experience well beyond his thirty two years, he claimed this was due to a lineage of Sintola cartel in his family, which both disgusted him and inflated him with pride. Manuel's father died in mysterious circumstances a decade ago and his mother soon followed from heartbreak and fear.

"No one dies of fear in Canada." Manuel said once, he said that's why he came.

"You working this year, man?" Manuel asked, as they hadn't seen each other in awhile because Ricardo tended to keep to himself.

Manuel gave Ricardo's arm a friendly tap.

"Yes, every year." Ricardo answered.

"Did you go back to the same?" Asked Manuel.

"Yes, third year. They like me there." Ricardo replied.

"Come on man, I am on my way to meet Jose and his sister." Manuel laid special emphasis on his sister.

The enigma of Jose's sister had invaded conversations between the two men for months, neither man had ever met her. Ricardo accepted the invite, he didn't need to think about it long, and it had been awhile since he had a woman.

...Twenty Minutes Later...

Sweaty Betty's is a perfect dive; perfect in every way: quiet, moody, dark and comfortably inexpensive. Ricardo and Manuel felt at ease there. Jose grabbed a booth under a faux-stag head decorated with Christmas lights. He was a large, handsome man and a loyal friend, but Ricardo and Manuel were always a little intimidated by Jose despite his tenacity as a friend, mostly because they were always a little jealous of him.

Jose had hair on his chest, but not too much. He was slightly taller than most, but not too much and prided himself on a mouth full of white teeth, but not too white. His alpha maleness eclipsed any charm that Ricardo could muster. He had the Latin man thing down to an art, and most women are art lovers by Ricardo's estimation. In the darkest part of the booth sat what looked like a woman, the shadow of the stag made her face barely perceptible.

"Hello, my friends. Always on time my friends, you work too much. You must make us wait, it will intrigue Juliet." Jose smiled slowly and looked at the shadow in the corner.

She must have been smiling too because Ricardo could see the reflection of the table candle bouncing off a gold eye tooth.

"Mystery is good in a man." Jose laughed and winked at the dark corner.

"Yes, good." She laughed at her brother.

"Sit, sit, my friends. But beware, she has clairvoyance." His pointed in the direction of his sister and the light reflected off his teeth when he laughed.

"The heat gave me a gift." It was the voice of a very old woman, a centurion, but the arm that emerged out of the darkness was young, slender and full of freckles.

"I'll get beer." Manuel disappeared toward the bar.

"Juliet, see what you've done." Jose scolded her.

Juliet laughed and the flame flickered off her gold tooth. Her face was in half-darkness, only one eye was visible and it showed a bright white around the iris.

"Ricardo, tonight is a special night, do you know?" Jose asked.

"No, how would I know? Manuel just found me walking on-" Ricardo replied, he was used to Jose's questions.

"We knew you would come." Juliet said.

"What?" Said Ricardo.

"I knew you were coming like my great uncle knows when the rain is coming; a pain in the knees." Juliet said.

She laughed again, lighter now, more knowing and she continued, "my knees are like the hinges on a shutter; creaking in a storm and keeping you awake at night."

"Juliet, right? Ricardo." He put his hand to his chest as if to identify himself in case there was any confusion, the gesture embarrassed him.

"Yes, I heard my brother say it," she said.

Ricardo presented his hand at an awkward angle.

"No", she laughed and wrapped two hands around Ricardo's neck pulling him toward her.

"I am of the old ways." She kissed him on the cheek with her lips parted enough to leave a streak of saliva. Ricardo didn't notice the cigarette in her hand until the heat of the lit end was close to his ear. She exhaled in his ear and he felt the smoke curl up the side of his head.

Ricardo was relieved when Manuel saddled up to him with a large glass of beer.

"Like camel piss on a trek through the Sahara." Jose licked the froth from his top lip.

Manuel was squirming inside the booth, drinking his beer with both hands wrapped around the glass and doing his best to avoid all contact with the corner occupied by Juliet. This was not unusual behavior for Manuel, he typically lost his cool around women, he said their scent drove him crazy. He had a gift for primality, a word that Ricardo coined when accidentally using it in place of brutality, but it fit Manuel to a tee. The man responded to smells and quick movement with the instincts of a wildcat but in an effort to civilize himself Manuel often cloaked his animal instincts with chatter. His lips curled, smiled, opened and closed incessantly while his nervous but expressive eyes struggled to keep up the game. He sucked his beer down with incredible speed and laughed at his own gluttony as his bouncing knee hit the under side of the table.

"Yeah, camel piss. I heard once, it's not so good to drink, I mean in the desert. I heard, actually, that maybe you can drink your own piss, but that is not too good. The ammonia or salt, something, it will kill you actually, you know. You know the best thing to have, the best thing to have in the desert is a mirror. If you're stranded in the desert, the best thing is a mirror, to call for help with the light. The light is reflected, to call a plane. Best thing to have anywhere really there is light. Right?" He laughed uncomfortably and continued on in this way for awhile.

Ricardo should have followed through with his friendship and cut Manuel off, but Juliet made his skin crawl and Manuel's babble gave Ricardo an excuse to ignore the gleam of her tooth.

"Your nerves are getting the better of you." Juliet's voice interrupted each man's thoughts.

"How long are you here? Visiting your brother?" Ricardo mustered his courage and met Juliet's eye.

"I stay for as long as I am needed." She reached toward Jose, who recoiled into the booth.

Jose's sister's extended arm completely deflated his masculine prowess.

Her arm looked elastic, disproportionally large next to Jose's cowered form. The freckles scattered and reconvened, faded and reappeared at will. Ricardo thought he could see faces, like looking in the clouds for shapes, suggestions of fantastical creatures and things.

...One Hour Later...

They took comfort in small talk, with an occasional cryptic remark from Juliet that silenced the banter and forced the men into introspection. Some old jazz tune played while Jose described a scene from one of his recent exploits. Their faces dim and their voices subdued, they tried to overcome the pressure of being watched from the corner. Freckles on brown skin danced around Ricardo's mind like sugar plums before Christmas. Both of the men could feel the evening wearing on in their bodies and an achy sleepiness massaged their muscles, but it was a sleepiness that could at any moment turn into a burst of energy and carry them through the rest of the night; the beer began to do its work. Everyone felt lighter, even Juliet was becoming more human. The bar was a quiet place so the gradual increase in the din of their small talk forced them to think about a move to a nosier location. Manuel was on his feet, shifting weight from one leg to another, swinging his arms around to animate a story about a cousin who had crossed the Canadian border in a makeshift hang glider. "Lies, of course," thought Ricardo, but Manuel's enthusiasm never failed to entertain. The bartender glared at them; a little unsettled by their brownness, their worker's hands, their expressive bodies and their small tips.

They rose from the booth in unison and left single-file . Jose pointed to the right and the ragtag group slowly followed; Ricardo behind Jose, then Manuel and Juliet mingling at the back the one with frightened glances and the other oddly still. Manuel was still prattling on to Juliet about something from his past, a girl or a family legend, possibly a combination of the two, but Juliet maintained her all-knowing grin and kept her eyes locked on Ricardo, he could feel her stare boring through the back of his head. Jose pointed toward a hanging beer sign; a throbbing bass and the chatter of a small crowd emanated from underneath it.

...Five Years Before Canada...

"Are you mine?" Ricardo asked and let the question hang in the air.

"How do you mean?" She asked. He could tell from the tone of her voice that she knew perfectly well what he meant.

"I mean are you only with me, are you mine?" He asked again and felt his body heat up in spite of his conscious effort to stay in control.

"I mean, technically I don't belong to you or anyone." She was smart, really smart, much smarter than him.

"Of course not, that's not what I mean, I hate when you do that. I mean do you belong to me. I need to know is all, that's all. Otherwise it's over, it's nothing, it means nothing." He raised his hands with open palms and let them fall again.

"What is nothing? I told you I want you and I am with you. What is this? Are you insecure or what happened to you to make you like this? Because you've asked me before and I don't know what to answer. It's a question of pride too you know? What if I said yes? What would that mean?" She pleaded.

...Canada Late Evening...

Noise was exactly what they needed. Without the burden of communication, they felt more at ease. Juliet became less mysterious on the dance floor, there she was all woman: hips, waist, curves in all the right places, the places that mystify men and have done since the beginning of time: the small of the back that slopes outward to accommodate an ample ass; the soft flesh of the arms that gives a little when pressed up against the torso; the small hill of a belly in front receding toward the base of the ribcage, and the top of the pubis. Ricardo wanted to cuddle up inside this cozy home for future children. Juliet had this hill, but the aura of strangeness about her prevented any man from following through with his instincts and trying to grab one of her slippery curves. Her blue eyes looked black and the gold tooth sparkled as she defiantly grinned here and there occasionally resting a knowing glance at some bystander, her implacable stare always won out and frightened the spectator away.

The music melted any nervous agitation Manuel felt among the fairer sex, he was at home there with the bass bump and the swaying bodies who didn't ask much from anyone. Juliet teased him, but never got close enough to partner with him never losing her sardonic grin. Everything had a delay, every question Ricardo was asked echoed and pinballed inside his head before he could answer. English became the ugly nonsense it really was; a series of guttural sounds that had no rhyme or reason, totally disorganized and difficult to follow. A few beers was all it took to give him this unearthly buzz.

The bar was dark enough to render the homely attractive and the heinous virtuous. Hot pink lights reflected off the whites in the eyes of photos along the walls, the frames had strange shapes and the pictures inside didn't have any particular theme: one depicted a 1950's surfer, another was the face of Greta Garbo with a mustache drawn in, a framed poster of a Monty hung opposite Greta, a tourist picture of Montreal and a Miles Davis' photo with a forged autograph, all shared the same frame. The pink lights changed to green which gave an evil glow to everything. Everyone looked a little sick and twisted, but it was a late night place and they were all drunk enough to stop caring. The walls vibrated and melted into each other, a haze settled over the remaining crowd and all movement left a trail of itself so what was once a friend's face became a laughing, unrecognizable creature.

"She wants you." Manuel leaned over a railing that separated the dance floor from the sitting area and slurred into Ricardo's ear.

"What?" Ricardo asked.

"She wants to dance with you, man. Take my place, I have to piss." Manuel disappeared in the direction of the toilet. He was swallowed by a faceless mass and replaced with the trembling image of Juliet.

"Come here." It said.

The thing reached out and touched Ricardo on the arm and electricity flooded his body. A lightening-like branch extended from her fingers, cut his skin and good bad clashed inside him; that sense of foggy peace left him violently and what replaced a foreboding that wouldn't take no for an answer. Standing before him was something he couldn't define, a woman or a demon with a gold tooth, so he danced. He was no Manuel on the dance floor but this new power in him carried him through and denied him nothing but in the midst of this strangeness Ricardo had an oddly practical thought. It struck him that the attentions being paid to him by this awful temptress were peculiar and focused, she didn't toy with him the way she did with Manuel and was less pointed than she was with her brother. The fact that she touched him alone made him think that he was the chosen one. His timidity usually kept him in a wingman position and tied him to a barstool while Manuel babbled in the direction of the women and Jose charmed them out of their clothes. He was too sensible to get caught up in the games and too independent to get duped he thought he should put up his defenses.

"You want me?" She asked.

She answered him with audible words as if he said it out loud; as if his thoughts left his mouth fully formed and fashioned as a question. The laugh that followed her words echoed inside his ears and seemed to silence the whole bar; the next thing Ricardo knew they were alone: they were in the street. Juliet stood under the light of a streetlamp. The hum of the club was just behind them, he had somehow walked to the door and left it with no knowledge of doing either.

"Did you hear me? I asked do you want me?" She said plaintively.

"Yes, I heard you. But...I think I drank too much. I am allergic to tequila, it makes my tongue swell." He replied stupidly.

"I have never heard of this allergy. I don't know what you mean." She said.

"I am in the street with you and I don't know how. I was in a bar with other people and now I here?" He stumbled over his words.

"You walked out here. You are very excited." She said.

"Yes, I drank." He said.

He was panicking a little, he was drunk after all. Maybe this whole thing was in his head. He spent too much time alone. Silence and practicality, his two old allies, had played a trick on him and rendered him unfit for society so he couldn't manage the ins and outs of human emotion with the snake-like quality of Jose, or combat it with Manuel's obstinacy, he could only let it silently eat him alive from the inside out and drive him mad.

"I am nobody." She said.

A cool breeze sliced through him and brought him back to reality. He was in Toronto Canada, it was about one thirty in the morning, the moon was three quarters full, it was Friday, he was wearing blue jeans and a green sweatshirt with no logos. His hair was a bit oily, his fingernails dirty and his back a little sore. There was a woman-just a woman now-standing across from him in a light with her arms wrapped around herself to keep warm. She had blue eyes, black hair, dark skin, freckles and a gold tooth, she was magnetic, not traditionally attractive. He had two friends inside, two good friends. They had flaws, but they were loyal and they never asked anything of him except his company. He would do anything for them if they asked, but they never did.

"Do you want me?" She asked again.

"No." He lied.

He turned and walked back inside feeling triumphant. Jose and Manuel were chatting up some semi-attractive white girls at a table. One of the girls was clearly not interested, the other seemed pleased enough that her drinks were being paid for.

"Yeah, I know the neighborhood. Near here, yes? You live alone, you have roommates? Oh, yeah, it's quiet I bet. You like privacy? I do too. Yes, so you can walk around with no clothes, huh? You don't? Sorry, don't be embarrassed. I only say you should try it sometime, you know?" Jose kept his attention focused on his chosen girl. He made her think he had never seen anything like her before, that was the game.

He would go on in this way until she gave in and from the way things looked, he wouldn't have to do it much longer. Ricardo took his standard position off to the side and listened; he smiled passively at both girls who seemed not to notice him, except to give him that untrusting look that most white women gave him on the street.

Jose winked at Ricardo, "Hey man, can you take care of my sister tonight. Take her home and all that?"

"I don't know man, I don't think she'll..." Ricardo spurted out.

"Come on, she puts up a front, but she's cool. You'll see, yeah? Do me this favor. I think you owe me anyway, I think you do." Jose gave Ricardo a look, he was talking about a small loan Ricardo had yet to pay, but really it was a gift. In any case he only used it to pressure Ricardo in situations like this one. Ricardo wasn't in the mood, after all he just told the woman he didn't want her, the thought of spending the evening with someone he rejected was unbearable.

"Don't pull this with me tonight." Ricardo said.

"Where is she?" Jose asked.

"Who?" Said Ricardo.

"My sister." Said Jose.

"I left her outside. We went to get air and I left her outside." Ricardo replied.

Jose gave Ricardo a look, that brotherly look that can only be interpreted as "What the fuck did you just say?"

"Look man, she's fine, she'll come back in soon." Ricardo responded.

"Go get her."

Jose got this way in front of women sometimes. Ricardo understood so he obeyed, he knew it was just an act to bag the mousy-haired girl. So Ricardo walked back out into the night. The breeze was taunting a plastic bag stuck to a tree branch and some crickets were chirping somewhere, but nothing else. No Juliet, no other human person anywhere near. He peered down the street in both directions, careful not to miss the shadows, then he checked the bar again, no Juliet.

"Is she back?" Ricardo asked.

"What do you mean?" Said Jose.

"Did she come back in? Is she in the bathroom, or something?" Asked Ricardo.

"No man, not here." Said Jose.

"Are you sure?" Ricardo reiterated.

Manuel cut in, "We were talking Rick, I didn't see. She's stealth and all, so maybe. It's cool."

Ricardo had no qualms about entering the ladies bathroom, so he tapped at the door. When there was no answer he let himself in.

"Hello, Juliet? Man in here, anyone?" Ricardo called out.

He squatted to peek underneath the stalls, nothing, no feet, nothing at all. He did the same with the men's just in case. He passed the table on his way back to the bar, but the others were too engrossed in their discourse to notice him. A bartender with a long ponytail and manicured goat-t was restocking bottles in a cooler.

"Have you seen a girl up here? She has a gold tooth." Ricardo asked.

"Gold tooth? No, I think I would have noticed." The bartender replied without looking up.

"She came in with us." Ricardo explained.

"With you?" The barmen asked.

"Yeah, with us." Ricardo said.

"I didn't see a girl with you guys." He replied.

"What?" Ricardo was incredulous.

"I didn't see any girl with you guys."

It was a little strange, but in keeping with the evening, so Ricardo didn't think anything of it, not any stranger than freckles making pictures and electric women.

"She's gone." Ricardo reported back to Jose.

"What?" Jose said and fixed his gaze on Ricardo.

"She's gone. I don't know where. I looked. She's gone." Ricardo said.

"Well, find her." Said Jose.

Jose's face was calm. If he felt brotherly concern he didn't show it, his sister's disappearance, which seemed so important to him before, left him cold now. He must have bagged his prey for the evening, so there was no need for show.

"She's a strange girl, Ricardo, very strange." Jose said, calmly.

...Three Hours Later...

The cold was biting Ricardo's flesh and this wasn't worth killing himself over, he thought. Jose was with the mousy-haired girl and Manuel would have passed out on his couch alone leaving Ricardo to wander the night. He wasn't tired, he felt very alive, "but the cold does this to a body, it puts it in a crisis state," he thought. His search was half-assed but he couldn't stop, he was compelled to keep walking and peek down alleys, around corners, in the doorway alcoves of apartment buildings, inside bars; looking for a person he didn't know was next to impossible because he had no clues from her personality to act as a starting point. So he wandered endlessly with instinct as a guide until his feet hurt too much to continue, then he found a bench for a quick break. "Only for a minute" he said to himself; thirty seconds later he was asleep.

The dream began as a series of disjointed images. The images were remembered or reborn from buried memories. At first there was an old man with a laughing face sitting on a worn-out couch. The couch used to be orange and yellow, but had faded to puce and brown. It had holes the size of fists where stuffing was climbing out, literally climbing; loose threads inched their way out of each hole like earthworms after a storm. The man was looking at him and away from him at the same time, he seemed to have that kind of circumspect vision that can watch all corners at once. Even when the old man's eyes were pointed at the floor, Ricardo felt he was under scrutiny. A coffee table blocked Ricardo's view of the man's lower legs. It was an ordinary, wooden coffee table. It looked sturdy, made of good, solid oak, but also dated, something that was once a centerpiece for a living room a couple decades ago. On the table lay three large pocket knives with black handles edged in brass; they looked expensive, clean and sharp but not menacing and he wasn't frightened of them. All of the knives were identical with the exception of distinctive scratches that could have been letters on the handles, the whittling of the letters was amateurish making them illegible. Suddenly the knives started spinning, faster and faster like the hands of an out –of-control clock. All the while the old man watched Ricardo calmly and without comment while he lowered his hand over the spinning knives and grabbed one of the handles. He lifted it off the table and held it aloft . Ricardo saw his reflection in the blade. The old man brought the point of the knife between the spread fingers of his other hand that lay flat on the table. He brought the knife up again and repeated the same morbid action of stabbing the table with Ricardo's distorted image. The tip of the knife cut away at the table and chips of wood flew out at strange angles occasionally hitting Ricardo who sat on a wooden chair opposite the knife dancing man. Still, Ricardo never felt afraid, he felt he wasn't meant to feel afraid, only to watch and listen. The knives stopped suddenly, all pointing in the same direction, to the right of the old man then they disappeared into the table. They didn't disappear all at once-there one minute, gone the next-they were consumed by the table, each knife swallowed sharp point first. Everything went black for a moment, then Ricardo was sitting on the same orange, puce couch in a windowless room. The couch was in better shape, without holes and the colors were more vibrant; the walls of the room were black and the carpet was cheap and rough. Ricardo sat facing a small screen. He looked up to see if he could find a projector, but there was nothing above him. When he looked back down at the screen two actors were standing in front of him, each had one arm lifted in the air and the other pointed toward the empty screen, as if about to begin a private performance. One actor was a small girl dressed as a gypsy, with an ankle-length skirt, a colorful sash, and a white shirt that fell off her boney shoulders. Her feet were extremely dirty, blackened with soot and mud, but the clothes were pristine, ironed even; the contrast annoyed Ricardo. Her eyes were blue and fixed at a point on the wall to the left of Ricardo's head. The other actor struck him with a haunting familiarity. It was the same image from a painting he had seen somewhere: white tights, little shoes with large, fluffy balls sitting atop, alternating diamonds: black, white, red, blue and green made up the top, while the pants were solid black satin. A large, ruffled neck piece sat underneath the chin. The same ruffles were wrapped around the wrists. The cut of the costume revealed it was a woman, but the pose the actor took was very masculine. Black paint covered her face in the shape of a mask, with upside down red triangles around the blue eyes. Her black hair was shaped into a tight bun that rested on the crown of her head; it was Juliet, but she didn't seem to recognize him. She stared at the wall opposite the little girl, her eyes fixed on a point. They were performing for him, instructed to keep this pose with their stiff, irregular arms and legs trembling from the tension of standing without support . Their eyes remained glued to the focal points just past Ricardo's head, they were as intent in their focus as two hawks stalking a distant rodent. They moved backward with short metered steps revealing the screen as if presenting it to him, their arms out like demented Vanna Whites. A projection began and two fast images flashed across the screen in quick succession, he struggled to make them out, but they moved too fast. He got up from the couch and slowly moved toward the screen. An old man's mouth filled the screen with a toothy smile "It all comes around again," it said.

He awoke to a ray of sun in his face, a very unwelcome ray, that blinded him and immediately led to a throb in his head that he knew would last the rest of the morning. He didn't want to forget the dream, he never had dreams or least he never remembered them. This one he remembered exactly, every detail, but he knew that wouldn't last.

...One Hour Later...

Ricardo stared at the napkin in front of him. He managed to borrow a pen from the waitress and write down what he remembered along with two tiny, rough sketches of the girls. By the time he finished the images in his mind were fuzzy, his description was no more than a confused list of words: couch, puce, alive, knives and so on with 'old man's smile' as the last thing on the list. He had found a diner with one other customer sitting at the counter. His sole companion was pouring sugar into his cup after each sip, then stirring the coffee with a weak twist that made the liquid spill over the edge and onto the counter, the spoon clicked against the ceramic keeping a beat with a pop song that played softly in the background. The waitress brought Ricardo a coffee without being asked; apparently she was used to this morning ritual. The watery black liquid was burned, it left a fuzzy, stinging sensation on the top of Ricardo's tongue and the first sip fixed his stare, he retreated into a sitting, sleeping wakefulness that amplified the clicking of the ceramic cup next to him. A pair of hips stepped into his line of sight, he recognized them from the night before. There she stood, strange but well-rested. "God damn her," Ricardo thought. She laughed the laugh.

"It's early." She said.

"Yes, very early." He sipped his coffee and avoided her eyes. She stood and waited.

They both let a moment pass in silent collusion to honor the sacredness of morning.

In the early morning, before the rest of the world wakes up, Ricardo was hyper-sensitive, the drip of a coffeemaker is enough to enliven a response from him, either one of sublimity or rage, but he was free to feel the extreme of both these things, because no spectator was ever around to fetter his basest emotions. A ray of sun hitting a spot of grass that had worked its way through the concrete was enough to send him into a powerful sob. This was the beginning of composition and the beginning of graceful death, both of which made Ricardo feel regret that he hadn't followed through with anything. Someone had told him that eventually he would have to decide on what it was he was doing otherwise he would never stop wandering unsatisfied and disoriented. He was on the verge of one these moments when Juliet walked into the café and he hated her for disturbing it. When he was disrupted, the potential for composition was lost and cannot be regained. Instead Ricardo thought of his own demise and the stench of his own death, because to be alone is to die alone, and a body that dies alone alerts the world of its passing through smell. Ricardo knew that once you know the smell of death, it never leaves you and it was hard to think of dignity again and any dissatisfaction with life was meaningless.

She slid into the booth and sat looking at him. He hated her, but only because he feared her: she knew this. He could tell by the way she sat still with unabashed eye contact and mocked him with her reserve.

"It wouldn't have been extraordinary, no loss to you," she said.

"I don't want extraordinary." Ricardo replied.

"But there is something exceptional in a mind that does not need stimulation from another to inspire itself. Don't you think so?" She asked. Ricardo responded with a look.

"I met a respectable woman who was condemned to die alone because men are animals, but we're all animals. Do you agree?" She asked this as a real question. She sat in her tranquility, and waited.

"With what?" Ricardo gazed out the window-not uninterested, but dazed, she was goading him and he could feel the hairs at the back of his neck raise in defense.

"That I able to visit your dreams." She smiled.

Juliet sat looking innocent, as if nothing had just come out of her mouth. The muscles around her eyes relaxed to reveal more of the white, which gave her an innocent, doe-like look. She sat straight, with her body open and ready to receive. Ricardo had an urge to fuck her and kill her at the same time, but mostly he wanted to possess her, he thought it was a strange something in a man that wants to possess something helpless and make it his own, train and tame it into submission until it behaves as it should. But once this was done Ricardo got bored with them and would discard what he created in favor of another challenge. The process wasn't sustainable, but it was a primal instinct that must have served some purpose. He thought how only the choice to be alone purified these instincts and made him civilized, then he couldn't hurt anyone and no one could hurt him. Only a retreat into the deeper parts of the psyche, where a human person is neither man, nor woman and only thought reigns would save him. In that place there was no fucking and no killing. All the while his hand shook and he reached across the formica table toward Juliet's wrist.

...Five Years Before Canada...

"I'll leave you know." She had said. "I will eventually leave and that's it. I mean I can love you, I will, but I can't promise I won't change. Everyone is always changing."

"But you're making excuses, do you think I'm stupid? I can hear you making excuses. If you don't want me around, you don't want me to have you then be done with it. Why are you here?" Ricardo had asked and he could feel the hot tears on the bottom ridge of his eyelids.

"Stop it. It frightens me. What is this? What do you want, for me to lie to you?" Her voice became shrill and Ricardo was reminded of the sound of a rook squawking in the winter at his bedroom window.

He paced the room and tried to calm himself with images of peaceful water and laughter, the things she had asked him to think of when he was angry. But it didn't work, "you're heartless that is what this is. I give you everything and you feel nothing, you walk away, that's it. Do you owe me something? You ask and I am expected to say no; altruism and love and bullshit. Yes, you owe me. You're a spoiled little girl and you owe me."

She glared at him with a hatred that revealed he had hit the truth of something, but she said nothing.

...Back in Canada...

Juliet and Ricardo walked toward his apartment. She let him take her wrist without resistance and led him outside the diner using her arm as a leash. She told him to get out of this place and she told him where to go. When she spoke to him, that electric fog sensation came back, but he agreed and for some reason he promised, he didn't know why he felt it necessary to promise but she smiled as if a contract had been signed.

She was like no other woman he had ever met, but yet he was reminded of things all the time with her. He kept thinking of the other one, the one from before.

...Two Hours Later...

Ricardo didn't have much money, so his first order of business was to collect enough to buy the fare with Juliet. The thought of seeing the desert again thrilled him. He almost forgot how much he missed the dust, the sun and the rocks. He remembered the rocks in the desert fading from one color into the next; from red into grey then white and back again until the granite sinks beneath the surface to continue its progression of colors underground. It was weird to him, this sensation of knowing and not knowing, a totally new feeling. He was following the explicit instructions of a woman he didn't know or understand, and it didn't sit well with him, somehow, this creature-woman had found her way under his skin.

But he needed money. Fortunately people owed him; nothing underhanded, just former employers and a friend here and there he had helped out with a loan. If he could collect what he was owed then he thought he would be able to purchase a one-way ticket.

The first call was to Manuel, who owed him about four hundred, a sum that had collected over a short period of unemployment.

"Hello man, recovered?" Ricardo asked.

"No, no, no. Never really. No, man, but what? What happened to you last night?" Manuel replied in a gritty voice that meant he just woke up.

"No, nothing. I went to bed. Sorry to wake you up, but I am calling on business." Ricardo said.

"Business in the morning?" Manuel said.

"Sorry man, has to be done. I need to collect." Ricardo said plainly. Otherwise he never would have gotten it out.

"To collect?" Manuel said

"To collect on the loans. I am sorry, time is nothing for friends, I know, but something has come up and you've got work now." Ricardo said, feeling awkward and foolish, "Damn money." He thought to himself.

"Yeah, yeah, you are right of course, of course. I owe you and its fair, yeah. So, what came up?" Manuel said.

"Travel," that was the best way Ricardo knew how to explain.

Ricardo broke the silence first, "Just travel. An opportunity came up and I need to travel for it."

"Yeah, okay," Manuel said. They knew each other long enough that explanations were superfluous and sometimes annoying, so he left at that. Manuel knew if he pressed Ricardo wouldn't answer and the moment of understanding would be ruined and broken forever. The conversation was brief. Manuel was at Ricardo's door in less than two hours with cash in hand. He was as stubborn as a bull and as loyal as a dog; "a good friend to have in a time of need, " Ricardo told him at the door.

Ricardo saved the most difficult money collection for last, the employers. He feared the red tape, the run-arounds and the ignored calls. The anticipation of these obstacles doubled his surprise when he got an answer on the first call. He was even more surprised when the call only took five minutes. He was told he had a check waiting for him and it had been there awhile. Between the two phone calls, which took all of ten minutes, he had the money. These stupid circumstances gave him confidence, in what- he didn't know-but somehow money in his pocket made things real.

Ricardo's relationship to money was a tense one, the question was always how. He hated talking about it, he hated showing it off, he hated having it and hated not having it even more. But it was one of the unfortunate things that he absolutely needed, and his current living situation demanded that he make any sacrifice of dignity to obtain it. Often this sent him into a reverie about how to get it and somehow he always found his way back to organs. What he could live without was always in the forefront of his thoughts. He discovered that the liver can regenerate itself fairly quickly, he only needs one kidney and, were he a woman, he could amass a small fortune by selling off artificially fertilized eggs. But the Chinese believe willpower is stored in the kidneys and Ricardo could not afford to lose his any of that. Assertiveness resides in the liver and Ricardo knew he didn't have enough of that as it was, so he kept his liver; and he wasn't blessed with a set of ovaries so the eggs were a dead end; there was nothing for it, he had to work.

...Five Years Before Canada...

"You're a drug. You're smell is like a drug." He pushed his fingers up through her hair and buried his nose her neck.

"Don't do that," She admonished. He pulled away. "It tickles," her voice emitted a soft whine of an excuse.

She was trying to relieve the tension but it didn't work.

...Canada Back at the Diner...

Ricardo sat on a barstool next to Juliet. The diner was empty and Ricardo distracted himself with watching the grease pop off the flat grill behind the counter. They ordered bacon and scrambled eggs, it came with toast, but he didn't really want it, so he had forgot what he asked for-wheat, white, didn't matter anyway. Brownish red bubbles of grease covered the wall behind the grill and a thick layer of the stuff encased the steel ventilation above the stove, the popping and snapping from the stove made new spurts shoot up and splatter on the steel. Juliet was impatient, she squirmed in her stool. She crossed and uncrossed her legs, her skirt inched up the side of each thigh, she squeezed the top of each shoulder with her long fingers and constantly touched her hair. It was unsettling for Ricardo to see her like that; of the two of them, she should be the one with the self-confidence.

"When the eggs come, hurry with them." She said

"Yeah, okay." He said

"Otherwise we'll be late." She said.

The eggs came and they ate in silence.

...The Night Before...

After Ricardo found the money, she showed up at his door almost on cue. In the midst of their disjointed café conversation he told her where he lived and she came. He remembered her standing in the doorway and waiting with a calm air, like a vampire waiting to be asked into the house. It was tantalizing and Ricardo was surprised at himself because usually the sexual repartee between a man and a woman annoyed him, especially the kind he witnessed between men like Jose and the women Jose used. But this time it seemed right, neither one of them tried to flatter the other, she was there and that was it. So he asked her in and offered her his last beer, apologizing for not having anything else.

"I won't drink it anyway, so don't bother." She said.

"Do you mind if I drink it?" Ricardo asked.

"No. What's yours is yours." She said.

Ricardo cracked open the beer and took a swig. He tried to make it look like he drank more than he did and he felt stupid; he wasn't a drinker, but he wanted to appear a man.

"You don't like beer?" She asked.

"Not really." He said

"So, tomorrow we'll buy a ticket, okay?" She said, matter-of-fact.

"Yeah, okay." He said.

He was getting tired and he knew if they discussed much more he wouldn't have the energy to sleep with her, so he didn't ask questions and didn't argue; "Okay, buy a ticket, okay get some eggs and go on an enigmatic journey, whatever as long as you are in my bed," he thought.

"I can't be alone there you know? I need you to be there with me. Can you understand?" She said.

"What about your brother?" He asked. She smiled but said nothing.

"He can't come with you?" He said.

"No, I didn't come here for him." She said.

"Why do you talk to me like that?" He asked.

"You understand, you just play the fool." She said.

The kiss was painful and glorious, heavy and ephemeral at the same time. Her lips could have been the size of the South American continent or as small as the beak of a pigeon, Ricardo couldn't tell either way. If he analyzed it too much he would lose himself completely, so instead he kneeled in front of her, positioned himself between her legs and put his hands on the small of her back. His pinky finger touched her skin, this sent a rattling sensation up his arm. Her skin was as hot as coals, he felt like he just touched a stovetop and he wanted to pull away, but he didn't. He pulled her hips toward his torso. She held his face in her cupped hands and leaned her head in taking his bottom lip in her teeth and biting hard.

....Back to the Next Morning...

They sat in silence eating eggs. Ricardo was never into hard drugs but he heard the come-downs are rough, he thought this must be what it feels like; to sit civilly with a girl you just fucked and eat eggs in silence as if she is unable to forgive him for what he just did and what he was about to do. She ate her eggs with zeal, taking big forkfuls up to her lips and shoving them down her throat. Her throat curved like the back of a snake that just swallowed a rat as she pushed them down. Her fork clanged against the plate each time she went back for more, she wasn't a dainty woman.

"What are we going to be late for?" Ricardo asked.

Juliet looked at him and ate, Ricardo followed suit. He didn't like to be ordered around, but his curiosity was getting the better of him.

"I need to tell my boss." He said.

"Uh-huh." She said, with her mouth full.

"I haven't called him yet." He said.

"Then do it." She said.

"Later. When I want." He said. It was a weak way to assert himself but he had to do something.

...One Hour Later...

His boss said it was slow and he didn't need him right now anyway. It was good timing, etcetera. This surprised Ricardo, given the time of year; summer was usually the best time for work but it was unseasonably cool. Juliet was getting more and more antsy, wandering to and fro across the apartment floor, picking up things and inspecting them, obviously uninterested, but making an effort to dispel some of her nervous tension. Ricardo didn't know how to help her, so he packed his bag.

He was methodical. He neatly stacked every white undershirt, all of them ironed and folded, then he folded underwear and socks-the underwear was also ironed. He packed one pair of jeans and two pair of loose- fitting pants-one beige and one black. He would regret black pants in the desert but there was no time to shop. He laid all his toiletries out in a row, only after they had been cleaned, then he placed them in individual pockets of a traveling case. Juliet didn't laugh knowingly or tease him. She stopped pacing suddenly.

"Let's leave now."

"Where are we going?" Ricardo asked.

"We are late already." Juliet replied.

"But the flight doesn't leave for another ten hours."He said

"Not the flight. We have to get away now, for the moment is all." She said.

...Fifteen Minutes Later...

Ricardo couldn't see properly because of the sun setting in front of them. It blinded them with its reflection and all he could make out were the outlines of dumpsters, buildings, streetlamps and people-some were fat and some were thin-but the sun blocked out all other distinguishing features. He was shielding his eyes and squinting when he was hit from behind. He couldn't see who his assailant was , but he felt the impact; they hit him on the legs first, then the back. At first he thought it was a lead pipe, but the sound made him change his mind: it was a baseball bat, the dull thud of wood and the lack of vibration gave it away. The pain was like nothing he ever felt before, it radiated through him and shook everything, but the intensity of it cancelled out any effort at sound. After a few seconds he saw a shadow walk away. He was left there, bruised, but not so badly that he couldn't stand, or think, or even cry out for help. They, or he, for it looked like a man, only hit him in places that could take the force: the back, the buttocks, the thicker portion of the legs. No one checked his pockets, insulted him, or said anything. He stared ahead into the sun and things started moving, like out a train window. The world passed him by, open countryside in the dark and he saw a set of blue eyes, childlike with inquiry, the girl from his dream. He held his sides and shut his eyes. The sensation of moving faster and faster, spinning through his mind's eye and making him dizzy with his eyes closed.

Juliet whispered in his ear "Your body twitches, you've swallowed your own bile and the bones clink together, the muscles are loose rubber-bands dangling in deformed shapes around a newspaper , holding the delicate pages together that might otherwise blow away. This is what it feels like, life, life is pain, ache, unspeakable brutality, the desire to hurt, a small violence inside a child. What does it feel like?"

"They're gone. You can get up now." She said

Juliet was still there, watching and everything went black.

...Four Years Earlier...

He thought of the other one.

He threw the lamp toward her hard but it didn't break. It hit the wall with a clump and fell to the ground. Then he threw the mattress and it bounced but landed against the wall at an angle on top of her making a shield. He felt like his strength was boundless and uncontrollable. He didn't hate her, in fact, he loved her so much he hated himself.

She was crying softly. She didn't scream or beg or protest, he wanted to be provoked so he wouldn't feel guilty later, but she didn't do that either. She huddled herself against the wall with her knees to her chest and tried to stifle the sounds that forced their way from her mouth, little whimpers and chokes came from behind the mattress. Ricardo could feel the pangs of regret and resentment for the weak already building inside.

...Canada Four Years Later...

Ricardo stared at the blank wall in front of him, "Hospital waiting rooms must be the same all around the world," he thought. Juliet was calm; she sat smiling at him from the row of chairs on the other side of Ricardo.

"What are you smiling at?" He asked.

"Your face is okay. They didn't hit your face." She said.

"No, why not?" He asked plaintively.

"Wouldn't have been worth it." She said

"Ah." He said.

"Besides, that's not the point." She said.

"Isn't it?" He said.

"No it's not." She said.

She crossed her legs. He could just make out the rippling of cellulite on either side of her thighs, where her legs bulged from underneath her skirt. Her hands were motionless on her lap and her face looked like she was about to tell a joke.

"What?" Ricardo asked.

"Nothing, I am somewhere else, is all." She said.

She got up, abruptly kissed him on the head and waved goodbye.

"See you back at your place." She said.

He didn't ask why, he didn't care, he wanted her gone. He watched her hips shake as she walked down the hall and noticed two doctors who weren't immune to them either. Strange that men who see the worse parts of bodies all day would still be attracted to them, he thought. At the end of the hall a little brown girl ran up to Juliet, grabbed her hand then they both turned the corner.

...Three Hours Later...

They gave him some painkillers, that was all they could do. He got nervous while sitting in the waiting room, the time was slipping away much too fast and he had to finish packing. He hated nothing more than rushing. He had a rule for himself-never run for buses or the phone, both of these things could wait for him, but a plane was a different story. He limped back to the apartment doing his best not to move his bruised back. The door was unlocked and the first thing that greeted him was his packed bag, zipped up and ready at the door. The indomitable bag sat there, austere and immovable, it looked like a piece of architecture Ricardo had seen once in a magazine: tall, straight and black with a menacing presence that reassured the traveler nothing would sneak its way out of it in transit. He was infuriated, "how dare she pack my bag?" He thought, he could feel both fists clench in the anticipation of the throttling her, ripping out that damned tooth and wearing it as a token around his neck. The beating he could take, but he couldn't stand the thought of someone else touching his things. He remembered a feeling like this before. It was an irrational feeling that he couldn't control and that caused a landslide of problems; it was rage, and rage at a woman. Something about their obstinate subtly drove him to it, he thought; but really he knew it had more to do with fear, he didn't want to be left alone and they always left him alone. They were inconsistent and emotionally demanding then they left in a huff without explanation. He hated their baseness and their meddling, he wanted nothing more than to be left alone and not to be left alone and he hated them for never doing either.

"I have prepared your things for the peregrination." She smiled at the ridiculous word and the gold tooth glinted evilly.

"I hate you." He said.

She approached him gently and stood close enough that their noses almost touched. She stood there and waited letting his breath hit her skin again and again.

"Well." She said.

He raised his fist and froze in a pose that called to mind a photograph of a revolutionary, fist high and face red with justified anger. His bruises were throbbing and his ribs ached with every breath.

"Why are you doing this to me?" He asked.

"Because you are like me." She said.

She was so close to his face that her eyes overlapped and became one floating ocular blob, but even with this distorted view Ricardo could recognize sadness. She stood there without touching him and let one tear roll down.

...Three Hours Later...

Ricardo slept for two hours. Sleeping on the plane was out of the question, he could never quite get in the right position. When he woke up Juliet was still curled in a ball next to him with her nose pressed against his back. At some point in the two hours he turned his back to her, but she insisted on pressing up against him. He acted annoyed, but he would have been even more irritated if she pulled away. He woke up before Juliet and paid a visit to the bathroom. When he passed the mirror, he lifted his shirt and turned his back. The bruise stretched the length of one flank, it was red but the center of it was already beginning to purple. He moved his arm up and down to make the muscle twitch and laughed a pained laugh when the bruise changed shape. He pressed it and it was tender, he laughed and pressed it again. Feeling that slight pain reminded him he existed, so he kept pressure on it and smiled. He certainly existed if he could feel and touch this, a physical injury is something that is not an illusion, it is a record of an event and a reminder of life thought Ricardo. So, he pushed the bruise again and thought of the creases in his hands that he often traced with a pencil, he never felt pain then, but here he felt pain, a glorious, living pain.

...Four Years Before Canada...

He had asked the other one if she was hurt. He said he was sorry he scared her. He had confessed that he was scared too. He was scared of her leaving, of forgetting him, of abandoning him, but it wouldn't do any good. The damage was done and there is only so much she could take. He desperately held her and stroked her hair. She rubbed her neck and shook all over, but she was like a doll in his arms and he could do anything with her. He knew she wouldn't resist, her body was lifeless except for the careful side to side rubbing of her hand on her neck. She had built a wall between herself and him already and her line of defense was a passive, unfeeling submission; it was the kind that made Ricardo feel the weight of his mistake.

...Back in Canada...

Ricardo and Juliet waited in silence for a cab. Both sipped coffee, although Juliet seemed completely indifferent to her cup, she held it with both hands as if to keep them warm. Ricardo didn't have the inclination to ask about the beating, he simply accepted it with a reserved gratitude; it was something that had to happen and that's it, no explanations needed, his abuser wasn't merciless and for that he was grateful. Juliet obviously knew something about it, had helped planned it, no doubt, but he didn't care, he put absolutely faith in her and it was a relief to shirk off the responsibility of knowledge, some things just happen and that's it, he reminded himself again; she would have only said some strange thing about karma or retribution anyway. His suitcase waited by the door.

"Did you pack anything?" He asked.

"No." She said.

"Why not? Don't you need something?" He said.

"No, I don't. It's okay, don't worry. I have everything I need. I won't be staying long." She said.

"Then you have a ticket. You are coming?" He asked.

"I have a ticket." She said.

She patted the left side of her jacket. He couldn't see the ticket but, he imagined it resting in the inside pocket of her left lapel. Throughout the conversation she continued to stare out the window at nothing. She didn't blink once, her eyes reflected the light from the window and her pupils contracted. She was thinking hard about something, pondering, and the power of her concentration made the room feel tight. Her well-shaped shoulders curved forward and made the skin stretch across her collar-bone and her feminine belly curl onto itself. Ricardo got up and paced the room, he watched the phone and waited for the cabbie to ring. When it finally did ring, they left without a word.

Juliet laughed when they got in the cab. "Taken for a ride. Isn't that it?" She asked.

"Isn't that what?" He said.

"Isn't that a phrase, or something people say when they are led to believe a lie, taken for a ride?" She said.

"Yeah, I have heard it before." He replied.

Ricardo paid the cabbie at the airport and turned around to fetch his bag from the ground, but Juliet had gone.

He scanned the crowd for her distinctive walk with no success. He didn't have the patience to search, so with determination in his step he picked up his bag and went. He shoved passed a group of smartly dressed Canadian business people all laughing and enjoying the beginning of their conference weekend. The group eyed each other wondering who would be going to bed with whom on this trip and they scowled at Ricardo's rudeness, although they stood directly in-front of a main entrance. Ricardo thought he heard one of them say "Spic, figures." He hadn't been to the airport in years and needed to focus, so he let the slur slide. Families waited in line with luggage carts, trying to keep the children nearby calm, single travellers sat on chairs that were joined to act as a benches and sent text messages to loved ones that probably read something like "I am at the airport, be there in a few hours baby" and "I know, LOL," posh business folk from the financial district of Toronto stood behind the families impatiently afraid that the proximity to children would undermine their intimidating detachment. Ricardo headed off to the check-in line keeping his eyes open for Juliet. He felt like a hunter stalking its prey; he remembered this feeling of searching for someone who didn't want to be found and he had mixed sensations of regret. He had chased after a woman before who had no inclination for him, who ran from him, but who only a few hours, or weeks, before was giving her whole self to him. He couldn't understand all the running. This feeling was all too familiar. Only the woman back then wasn't as powerful, she was frightened and easily overcome. She told him to leave her alone with her pupils shaking while she steadied herself on the side of Ricardo's car; she grasped onto to something made of metal to keep her from submitting. It made him sick to his stomach that someone was so afraid of him, but he couldn't blame her, her fear and her delicate frame were disgusting to him and he could have killed her at the time so she had a right to be afraid. A blinking fluorescent light brought him back to reality. This time he was chasing a woman who was stronger than him, who was teasing him, this was something completely different.

...Fifteen Minutes Later...

Ricardo transferred his weight from one foot to the other while he waited in the security line. It was a long line, and he kept craning his head to see around the older couple in front of him, but to no avail, it didn't look like anyone was moving. Somehow, he knew she was up ahead, was already at the gate, was possibly already there, waiting for him. "The bitch, she has me wrapped around her finger, the cold bitch," he thought. But he couldn't wait to get to her; the blood in his body was going to all the wrong places. To collect himself he focused on the pain in his side and pressed his bruises, this brought him back.

"A nice feeling, isn't it?" She said.

He twirled around and saw her standing there, her gold tooth glittering in the light.

"Where were you?" He asked.

She shrugged her shoulders.

Ricardo looked around, he felt like they were being watched, and it wasn't the security, it was something else. A deep foreboding hit him and he looked toward the pointed, white corner of a set of walls where a dark-skinned girl with a familiar smile stared at them. The line lunged forward and Ricardo followed. When he turned back the girl was gone, but Juliet stood there looking at the same spot with something akin to sorrow in her eyes. The people squeezed closer together as the line pushed toward the metal detectors, smells wafted into Ricardo's face as he stood there: the couple in front of him smelled geriatric like dried lavender and tea-rose; a blond woman behind him emitted a mixture of fruity lotion and perfume. The perfume smelled fresh, like something a teenage girl would wear, but the woman was at least forty. Body odor came from somewhere, Ricardo couldn't place where, it was a pervasive scent that rested in the air below everything else and gave the other smells above it a musky heaviness. Ricardo's senses were overwhelmed and he felt like striking out at something. But he held his ground, he turned to Juliet in the hope she would laugh at him and give him a reason to react, but she wasn't there. Ricardo could hear the clock on a nearby wall counting the seconds, each tick echoing bomb-like in the base of his skull. He felt dizzy, without food, charged by adrenaline, but he pushed forward in line.

...Twenty Minutes Later...

The crowd dispersed in manic chaos after the security lines, some lazily made their way to the duty-free shop while others raced to catch a flight. A man in a frumpy, ill-fitting suit was looking at Ricardo and smiling.

"Where are you off too?" He asked with a Southern American drawl.

"Someplace warmer." Ricardo replied.

"Good idea, snow birds and all that, migrating to Florida. You're young for that, but it's like that, sometimes we need to get someplace warmer. Gonna work on your tan, eh?" The man smiled, which changed his face into something much younger. It was such a vulgar, American thing to say. But Ricardo laughed and accepted the joke.

"So, tell me when you get there what will you do in the heat?" The man asked.

"I don't know. " Ricardo replied.

"Okay, well that is a vacation." The man pressed up against Ricardo as he reached for right side of his belt. He turned his head when it was close to Ricardo's face. Ricardo could smell the man's breath. The man said, "Sorry about that, it's a bit tight for you." Ricardo smiled awkwardly and cringed at to the soreness in his side.

The pressure from the take-off pushed him back against his seat. The pain sent a jolt up one side of his back. He grabbed both armrests and closed his eyes focusing on the rushing sound of the engines as the plane tilted.

...Twelve Hours Later...

They landed roughly, with a skid and an abrupt stop. Ricardo navigated the terminal easily. The airport was small. It housed only one mock-up market where some musicians played. It was a challenge to look for Juliet there because women with dark hair and skin were more abundant and she could blend. He wracked his brain to try and remember what she was wearing, but all he could remember was her hips and eyes. So instead he found his way toward the door. The air was dry and warm; a wind blew the dust through the legs of the women whipping their long skirts. A bus engine ran to his left, he saw a line of people getting on so he joined them, not really caring where it took him. He watched the palm trees speed past and become one. He got off at an un-intimidating stop that wasn't crowded, and that nobody else seemed interested in , then he transferred to another bus without asking about the direction. He pulled the money out of his pocket that he had exchanged at the airport and recounted it for the fifth time. He didn't care about it at all, but it was something real that he could touch and it comforted him. For the first time in his life he was blindly following a gut instinct, he wasn't fighting it, he just followed it and trusted his fate to her. The bus flew past a crowded stop and Ricardo looked out the window. He could make out the edge of a busy square a short distance away where he saw a tiny black figure on a leash that bounced from one person's shoulder to another's. The tops of tents sheltered people who undulated from one side of the square to the other. He was glad he wasn't getting off at this stop. Instead he got off the bus in a less populated business district. He started walking back toward the square. He heard footsteps behind him and turned around. She was there walking along side him as if she never left.

"You don't exist. Do you?" He asked her.

She didn't answer, but continued walking in time with him. "Yes, I do." They walked on in silence past the square and toward the sand. The landscape was flat and interspersed with small sections of the grass. She took his hand and held it tight. The pressure of the flesh made a sweaty layer between the two hands forcing them to grip harder. No one was around them. It was a wasteland of sand that rested just at the border of a city. They walked on until they couldn't hear the cars from the road behind them. They reached the first dune and the ground gave way beneath their feet. Each step became laborious and they struggled to lift their legs, but they kept on. Juliet pulled one foot out of the sand twisted her body toward Ricardo and the inertia pushed both of them to the ground, they slid down the dune on their backs. They held onto each other. Juliet pulled at Ricardo's clothes, removing his shirt from the inside of his pants and quickly unbuttoning his fly like a reflex. The sand stuck to the side of their faces and Ricardo breathed it in; he wanted this, he wanted this to be the last of all things, the very last thing. He thought of the other one and her clammy skin, watery eyes, her walled-in presence that betrayed her fear, her ignoble and powerless whimpering. Then he remembered that he created her and the squirming monster before him was his responsibility, he despised himself, but this was ecstasy and didn't deserve to die so well. He shoved his face deeper into the sand and inhaled while Juliet pulled off his pants. All he could see was darkness and all he could feel was her mouth. He flipped himself back onto his back and pushed her off. In one violent movement he was back on his feet with his pants re-buttoned. He continued to walk, she followed. He wasn't ready just yet and she was impatient. She kicked the sand and grunted; the sounds from her mouth were tortured.

At the next dune she jumped on his back, knocking him to the ground again. She straddled him and held him in place with her legs while she stripped off her own clothes, then they slid down the side of the dune together; the sand scrapped her body and packed itself inside Ricardo's clothes. He took his clothes off and threw them to the side, they were unnecessary. They both stood up and walked toward the next dune, as if they were in Eden, unaware of their nakedness, her watching his every move and him fixated on the dune ahead. The sun pummelled their bodies with its heat, it reflected off the nape of Juliet's neck and the indentation of her spine where the sweat found a causeway to travel to the division of her buttocks. His brownness giving off a dulled light compared to Juliet's golden hue. They walked this way unaware of each other; both marched toward the finality of something. Ricardo was terrified, but he couldn't look back; he knew she would take him and he needed it, this restitution, he deserved every bit of it.

Two dark specks were moving across the sunset ahead of them at a pace that matched his and Juliet's. The gelatinous air engulfed the pair in a clear smoke that moved along the horizon in waves and Ricardo lost himself in the rhythm of the couple's walking, Juliet took the opportunity to pull him back down again. Ricardo let his body go limp and kept his eyes on the couple moving across the horizon-line; there were four now moving like pencil sketches on browned paper with shadow black bridal trains behind each figure. Two of the figures were leading, or at least one, the size of a child was in the lead but the other had lost its charge and was watching his follower walk away. Juliet straddled Ricardo again and he entered her without passion but she let out a moan that shook the earth. One of the figures fell and the small one in front of it ran back. Juliet slammed her hips down again and again, bruising Ricardo and making his injured back scratch against the sand. She continued her assault until Ricardo was breathing heavily and pushing against her sides. She screamed at him and dragged her nails across his chest. Ricardo saw the small figure in the distance walk back alone then scatter into the air as a million flies stuck in a dust devil. Juliet wrapped her hands around Ricardo's neck and squeezed.

