DROP ME IN THE WATER

A Thesis

Presented to

The Graduate Faculty of The University of Akron

In Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Degree

Master of Fine Arts

Tara Kaloz

May, 2011

DROP ME IN THE WATER

Tara Kaloz

Thesis

Approved: Accepted:

______Advisor Dean of the College Imad Rahman Dr. Chand Midha

______Committee Member Dean of the Graduate School Eric Wasserman Dr. George R. Newkome

______Committee Member Date Robert Pope

ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

CHAPTER

PROLOGUE. CARRIE ANNE (AFTERLIFE) ...... iv

I. OLSON ...... 1

II. GEORGE ...... 20

III. CARRIE ANNE ...... 43

IV. TOMMY ...... 64

V. OLSON ...... 82

VI. DANI ...... 102

VII. JOE ...... 116

VIII. OLSON ...... 135

iii

PROLOGUE

CARRIE ANNE (AFTERLIFE)

The water takes me in like breath and I resonate with the saturated inhale-exhale, exist as a hiccup that chokes out the lungs, drowns them. Foam lines the banks of the river, laps at the root systems of trees like the spittle that lines the mouths of newborns and the lips of seizure victims. I am the fragment that gets stuck in the throat, but the whole process lacks the constriction. Instead, I am snuffed, deprived of oxygen until the ability to glow gets extinguished. Then there's just the wick. The charred-up stick figure remains of what was once a viable vessel.

I'm naked. Leaves press themselves slick against my skin. They stick close to my humilities, yet never provide sufficient enough cover. Fact is, I don't care. I don't question how I came to be clothes-less, who did the undressing. Perhaps it was me. I just float. I'm weightless and in love with the feel of the subtle unpredictability of the tiniest waves as they lap and lap and soothe my bluing body.

There's the color of the water. At once, it is blue, brown, black, red. It is green and algae-invested. The mossy tendrils whisper against my skin. They are the dendritic

iv veins that spread out, reaching and reaching for nothing in particular. Maybe they're reaching for me, so I find myself stretching out my fingers and moving past the tips. I am further than my body and am able to wrap myself around and in between the weeds, the roots, the rocks and silt and sand and then the water itself. I am every atom and every bubble on the fuzzy remnants of foam. One second, present, the next, lost to inevitable evaporation.

Then I'm down. There's a hole in my head and the river leaks inside to fill my brain. My skull is lacking a stopper so the stuff just sloshes in and out until I'm full. I feel porous and sponge-like. I gulp the drink and start sinking, plunging down and down to nestle in the mud, among the bones and offal of fish.

When I'm under, I see the sun breaking through and trying to relieve the darkness.

Sometimes there is nothing but the overwhelming light and I become an insect encased in amber. A deep freeze that lacks all cold. The red dilutes to orange then to yellow then white. The whiteness is blinding and smothers the life.

I am once again weightless and the water is warm. My ears hear the plugged throb of pressure, that cottony suffocation that makes everything loud and muted at once.

A muzzled sound like heartbeats slows and slows and lulls me to sleep, a slippery metronome like a pendulum swing. Rocking like the back and forth of an in-motion hammock. The woven roping twisting and twisting tighter and then cinching the skin until the body's completely cocooned. When I come out, I am nothing like I was.

And then it's just me, without the body. A bobber in its up-down effervescing.

Swarms of minnows below nip and tug at the invisible line that's cast. They bite and bite until they sever the cord and free me, allow me to float to the surface, then higher and

v higher until I'm touching the sky with its blue. Until the clouds. Until the sun swallows me like oxygen and there's nothing left behind.

vi

CHAPTER I

OLSON

When the first warming yawns of light stretched over the surface of the river, the blood had already finished drying onto the hardwood floor. It pooled out of Carrie

Anne’s head and, without the splintered-open hole above her left earlobe, she looked to

be lost in a dream.

I dragged my Marlboro down to the filter and snuffed it out in the kitchen sink,

pocketing the soggy nub. I crouched near Carrie Anne’s feet and took out a pen and small

notebook from the inside of my jacket. With the notebook flipped open, I practiced

balancing it in my palm, steadied by the weight of the pen. My eyes outlined the body, a

slow crawl that omitted nothing. I wrote in the notebook and wiped at my face with the

sleeve of my shirt.

The bottoms of her black heels were scuffed from the daily nine to five, the

commute from small river town to city sidewalks, up elevators and onto the soft cushion

of corporate carpet. I imagined how those heels shaped her walk, accentuated every

curve. She wore them well. I placed her at a copy machine, leaning on her elbows with an

1 unbuttoned blouse, teasing everyone away from their computers. This was and wasn't the woman I had known so many years before.

My mouth was dry, I licked my lips. Her legs were parted enough to allow my eyes under her skirt. At the edges, the hem had begun to come loose. A dark green thread rested on her left thigh. Her sweater absorbed some of the bullet's shock, little spots of brownish red freckling the fabric.

“Why did you stay?” I said, knowing there'd never again be an answer.

There was no one there, just the shiver of sound resonating through the air, damp from the open windows and the river outside. The wine glasses clinked together above the bar. The subsequent silence strong enough to demand a shatter. Joe must've cracked the windows in the kitchen to lessen the smell he expected. They were closed when I left

Carrie Anne alone the night before. She could've opened them, but the girl I had known always complained of a chill, even in the middle of summer. Many of my memories had her wrapped in the warmth of a blanket.

Her eyes weren’t fully closed, but looked skyward under the lids. None of that mattered. By squinting, I could see the bright blue of her iris and knew it was losing its color. I wanted to close her lids the rest of the way, but was hesitant to touch her body, especially those fine, delicate features that seemed about ready to break. A slight vibration tugged at my skin, my fingertips. My hand pricked with a tingling numbness like needles. I allowed the sting.

I closed the notebook, shoved it back inside my jacket. My knees cracked when I stood and I made my way around her outline to the untouched puddle under her head. It

2 looked unreal, staged. For a second, I expected her eyes to flutter open, for her to laugh at

me for believing in her death.

My hand was shaking. There was the inability to control myself, something I'd

never experienced in quite the same way since. I pulled out a pair of white latex gloves from another pocket, but resolved to forget procedure and pushed the gloves back inside.

This whole scene was set up as just another job, but there were differences. Joe had been more careless than usual, opting to do the dirty work himself instead of sending his errand murder man George.

I'm no cop.

Though if I was maybe Carrie Anne would still be here. Still walking around without the hole in her head, all her smarts spilling out and staining the hardwood.

Maybe if I had a badge, I would've been able to do some actual good, make a real difference. Instead, I chose the inside route. The tunneling in only got me stuck, trapped between hard rocks and filth. I had to dig, had to get dirt under every nail, and maybe I got so deep I forgot about the light that had been driving me. Enough of this mole-ish metaphor. I fucked up, it's that simple.

I returned to the river town and got a job with Carrie Anne's husband, Joe. I told him I grew up with his wife and needed work. He said he'd get back to me and a couple days later I was in. I told him not to tell her, something I realized he had no intention of doing in the first place.

I wasn't clear what the front was, at first, but I knew Joe worked for a pal of his at a nearby car dealership. Mostly beaters and Buicks. Then I got my employment papers

3 for this fine little establishment known as The River Rat. It was a dive bar at its best,

complete with jukebox, broken table legs, and neon in the window. Apparently, every

member of Joe's crew worked at the bar, including a legit bartender who never failed to

pour a good drink.

Underneath all that, Joe ran the type of business that wasn't advertised in the

yellow pages, that escaped Better Business bureaucracy. He was after what those big

names before him were after and he did it with Scarface-Godfather know-how. He had no

clue what he was doing. It was dangerous work for that fact alone, but I took the risk. I

figured I'd keep an eye on Carrie Anne while making some money on the side. I always

had a suitcase ready, though, just to be safe.

I didn't have to get my hands dirty. Joe already had a man for that. I was part of the clean-up operation which meant anything from ditching cars to delivering packages to hiding bodies. It wasn't the kind of work I ever saw myself doing, but then I never did have a five-year plan let alone one for my life. At one point, I thought I had something like that, but that went the way of many good things.

Something I always wondered was if any of the filth from Joe rubbed off on

Carrie Anne.

I was closer now, my breath moving her hair. I touched her cheek with the back of

my hand. Feeling her coldness, I applied more pressure to her skin, felt the stiffness and

flex of the face. The dried spots on her skin were like scabs, little wounds in themselves,

every pore waiting to be pried open and excavated.

4 Moving past her body and into the living room, I tried to envision myself on the couch, coming home after a day’s-worth of work at a normal job. The beige carpet seemed new. The puddle in the kitchen felt as if it was getting closer to the room. In my mind, I tried placing Carrie Anne back into life, sitting her next to me on the couch.

Feeling her hands warm on my face, slipping under my collar to rub my neck, my back.

Why did I ever leave her all those years ago? How could I leave her alone last night?

After all these years, I've learned nothing. I rubbed the back of my neck, closed my eyes, and breathed heavy before opening them again. I hoped the world would be different then, but, of course, everything remained the same.

I stretched my toes inside my shoes. My socks felt damp. The unworn cushions of the couch had decorative pillows that matched. The whole time I’d been in the house, I didn’t see any photographs. Nothing on the walls, save for a large unidentifiable painting in the foyer. Some abstract piece with reds, greens, and browns. It was like Christmas, plus mud. Usually a place could be profiled just by the photographs people pasted onto every wall, on every flat surface, in every single room. Not Carrie Anne’s place.

I found one. On the end table next to the couch, there was a black frame with a picture of Carrie Anne and her little boy. The boy was holding a fishing pole in one hand and dangled a small fish from the end of the line in the other. Carrie Anne's hair was longer in the picture. I looked at her body, the captured then the real. From this angle, she seemed less dead. The pool under her head seemed to disappear with the same elusiveness as black ice. There one second, gone the next, then it slips you.

Carrie Anne looked so different in the picture, with her huge smile that matched the boy’s. They both wore a pair of rubber boots. Her jeans were torn in several places,

5 covered at the waist by a loose, plaid shirt. She was leaning with her hands on her knees.

The boy was missing one of his front teeth and his eyes were eclipsed by his smile and his cheeks were round and full like his mom's.

I listened, hearing only the movement of the house, the wine glasses touching maybe once to make their chime. I turned the frame over in my hands, careful not to touch the glass, and slid the backing off. There was cursive on the back of the picture. In her handwriting: Tommy and me. The scrawl had more flourish than I remembered. I kept trying to convince myself that this wasn't reality, that I was dreaming again. I always looked for clues, some betrayal of potential falsity. There was nothing. I took the photo out from behind the glass and replaced the backing, leaving the picture-less frame where

I found it. I looked at the image again, closed my eyes on it, and folded it once, pushing it into one of my jacket's pockets.

When I returned to the kitchen, my hands began to shake again. I wondered if they had ever stopped their tremble, remembered holding the picture still when I tucked the image away.

The door to the sunroom was unlocked. There was white wicker everywhere.

Clothes and bed sheets were hanging on a line outside, between a large tree and the house. She must've forgotten to take them down. Maybe she didn't forget, just left them there with no intention of taking them down. The screens blew in and out with the breeze, like sails on a boat. Their steady billow and collapse relaxed my breathing and my hands.

I opened the screen door and stepped onto the concrete patio. In one of the lawn chairs, I meditated with a cigarette. Tiny embers fell onto my jacket and I watched as they created tiny pocks and holes.

6 When the cigarette began to burn my lips, I dusted off and flicked the nub at a

potted tomato plant vining around its cage. One red tomato seemed ready for tasting.

Another was rotting on the bottom. The rot would spread, as everything vibrant must give

in to fading away.

The river was no different. It was once a source of healthy water, clean enough to

bathe in or drink. Clean enough to wash clothes in – hang them on the line to dry. The

water swallowed everything. It took the good, the bad, the sinners and the just alike,

muddied them together.

I got to remembering my father. How he’d sit at the shore’s edge and pray for his

wife to come home. I thought of his mother and how she would talk about the water once

being blue like fresh-cleaned glass. “How it sparkled,” she’d say. I saw nothing but the brackish tinge of dirty water.

The river cut between the backyards of homes like a road, always moving.

Always taking. The dead and fallen limbs from trees pushed along with the flow, always damming up the outlets or against the shores.

I checked my watch. The second hand wasn’t moving so I flicked it back to life.

“Who the hell even knows what time it is?” I said this to no one and laughed.

I lit another cigarette. The lighter's flame was high from the heat, the sun breaking

the branches above and splitting down sideways and into my eyes. The sounds of

children playing and splashing could be heard further down the river. The cling of the

day’s perspiration stuck to my skin. I scratched at the grit on my face, felt down my neck

to my collar, and loosened my shirt by undoing a couple buttons.

7 I moved off the concrete of the patio and got closer to the river. A willow tree sat on the edge of the yard. Its roots pushed out of the earth and the webbing from insects could be seen in their tangle. They sunk themselves into the water, the soft soil underneath. A wall of branches brushed the ground. I touched the leaves, let a branch slip through pinched fingers, and thought of Carrie Anne's hair.

The hum of a car’s engine was on the other side of the house, down the street. I threw the cigarette into the water and watched as it spun in a lazy circle, the water bugs darting around it, maneuvering out of its path.

There was the crunching sound of tires on gravel in the driveway. I went back into the house, wiping the dirt from my shoes on the concrete steps.

The chugging of the motor stopped, there was the slam of the metal door. The hinges needed oil. Must’ve been the black sedan. It was Sam. I could tell by the sound of his steps. He was a small, squat man who walked heavier than he was.

I leaned against the wet bar with my back to the hallway and my eyes on the body and its corners, the shape it made against the dark stain of the wood. The door opened and closed. Sam turned the locks.

“Ollie?” His scratchy whisper reached down the hall. “Ollie, you in there?” The pulse of his steps got closer. “I know you’re there, don’t think I don’t see you.” He cleared his throat, let his voice out of its whisper. “What the hell do you think you’re doing leaving the door open like that? Let the whole damn world in, you know?”

“This place is a dead zone.” I hated myself for saying it.

“Dead zone. Is that supposed to be funny? You’re sick, man.”

8 “No one’s home. Whole street’s deserted. I checked.” I thumbed his lighter in my

pocket, pushed the igniter.

Sam wore a navy baseball hat pulled down over half his face. He sniffled before

he sneezed, suppressing the sound in his hands. “I’ll never get used to that smell.”

I scratched at a sideburn that I had shaved a little higher than the other. “Why the

hell would you want to?”

“I don’t know. You don’t seem to mind much.”

“I guess I don’t have as strong a nose as you.” I closed his eyes, let the Carrie

Anne's face come into view as I once remembered it, with all its elastic color.

“So that’s the body?” Sam crossed his arms, sniffled again.

“Yep.”

“A lot prettier than the picture Joe showed us.”

“Well it’s not like it was done by a professional.”

“I guess not.” Sam stared at the body. He nudged at one of Carrie Anne's feet by the heel of her shoe, widening the part between her legs.

I kicked his foot away. Wanted to keep kicking. “Jesus, Sam. Have some respect.”

“It’s not like we get opportunities like this every day.” He offered a smile.

I went back to leaning against the bar and put my hands in his pockets.

“I thought you were supposed to meet me here at two.” Sam looked at his watch, a silver relic with tarnished spots. It had been his dad’s. I knew a lot about Sam. He was always talking. “It’s one fifty. I’m early. When the hell did you get here?”

“Not too long ago.”

“You’re never early.”

9 I squeezed the lighter in my palm, felt the fabric of the pocket against my knuckles. “First time for everything, I suppose.”

Sam started to undo his belt buckle, still staring at the body. He unbuttoned his pants. “I’m going to hit up the bathroom real quick. Something’s not sittin’ right.”

“Thanks for sharing.”

Sam pushed past me and quick-stepped to the other side of the kitchen. He slammed the door behind him. I let the hum of the bathroom’s fan fill my head.

I took another cigarette out of the soft pack in my pocket and looked at the gold rings around the filter, started weaving it through my fingers. Something my grandfather had taught me.

I heard Sam over the noise of the fan, deciphered muffled grunts.

There was movement just beyond the bathroom door, in the laundry room. From around the washer, a cat appeared and began to saunter into the kitchen. Its body was mostly black with faint stripes visible under the solid color. There was a patch of white

on its chin and chest. As it made its way towards me, I put the cigarette behind my ear.

The cat rubbed its head and body on every corner, capping off the action with a flick of

its tail. It pushed into the cabinets, the kitchen’s island.

The cat stopped to look up with its wide amber eyes like two perfect circles,

blinking before pushing against the toe of my shoe. It moved to Carrie Anne's body. I thought the animal would recognize the presence of death. Instead, the cat rubbed against one of the bent knees, hard enough to make it move. The cat waited for some type of response. It was perhaps then that the animal realized a change and sniffed at the body.

The cat sat for a moment and meowed before padding over to the other side of the dead

10 woman. The side where the face was motionless, the head resting in its own blood. The cat came closer to the edge of the puddle. Fearing the cat would get too close and try to lap at the blood, I grabbed the cat, holding it tight against my chest. The animal meowed, tried to squirm away, but conceded to purring.

I inspected the blood for the first time. There were fragments floating in the pool.

They could be anything: dust, or those tiny bugs that get into everything, food crumbs from an unswept floor, shrapnel from the skull. I leaned closer and the cigarette behind my ear fell into the blood, splashing specks of it outside the spill and onto my jeans. My shoes were too black to tell, but I was sure there was some there, too. The cat panicked and I dropped it into the living room, hoping no blood had made its way into the cat’s white patches.

The cigarette soaked in the dampness of the blood, much like the stain of red wine, flecks of tobacco now visible through the thin veneer of rolled paper.

Sam grunted again and shuffled his feet.

The cigarette was close to the Carrie Anne’s neck. I hesitated only a moment before I plucked it out of the pool. I tried to squeeze the excess liquid out of the cigarette in the palm of my hand and heard a flush from inside the bathroom followed by the sound of running water. I shoved the cigarette into one of my pockets and studied the blood on my hand, how it stained the small creases and cracks. It created small ravines, mapped what I figured was my life line like a river.

The noise of the fan became louder as Sam opened the door. I returned to leaning against the bar. “Feel any better?”

11 “Like you wouldn’t believe, my friend.” Sam slapped me on the shoulder. “The van should be here soon. Any minute now.”

I kept my hand closed, the stain hidden. “Have any idea what’s taking so long?”

“Nothing to be worried about, I’m sure.”

I looked to see if the cat was still in the living room. “Want to go outside and wait? Kind of stuffy in here.”

I led the way out of the house, into the sunroom, and onto the patio. I stopped to light a fresh cigarette, then moved to be closer to the water. Sam followed.

“It’s strange being back in this town.” I ashed into the water and watched the pieces of gray disappear.

“That’s right,” Sam said. “I forgot that you lived out here.”

“Till about ten years ago, yeah. Just down the river.” I nodded down the length of river to the right. It curved away around a bend.

“That explains a lot.” Sam gave a short laugh, followed by a cough. He rubbed his throat.

I stared into the water. “Maybe it does. You know, there’s a lot people around here don’t know. About the land, the history. The river. Or if they do know, they don’t talk about it much.”

“Why do you think that is?”

“Well, it’s not exactly the kind of stuff parents want to tell their kids. Not much of a legacy to be proud of.” I held my cigarette between my lips and breathed out of my nose to push the smoke out of my face, looking at my watch. I tapped on its glass.

12 “For example?” Sam was fidgeting. I offered my pack of cigarettes. Sam pulled

one out and put it in his mouth. I gave him the lighter before he had to pat himself down

and ask. “Thanks,” Sam said, catching the tip with the flame.

“Let’s see. My granddad told me a lot of stories about the river in particular.” I

kicked at a patch of ground where the grass had stopped growing, pushing a small

avalanche of dirt into the water. “So many houses here were built along this river. The

town’s practically wrapped around it. He used to talk about the trees. See how they hang

over the water?” I pointed with my finger, drawing an arch. “I guess there were a few

lynchings here, just random people. Random hate. Drunken crowds with pitchforks. All

that kind of shit.”

“Sounds fun.” Sam smiled. I looked at him, made his smile disappear.

“I bet that’d be loads of fun if your feet were dangling with your neck cracked in half.”

“Christ, man. Lighten up. It’s not like I was serious.” He exhaled a stream of smoke through his nose.

“You wanted to hear about this. Now I’m telling you. If you don’t want to listen, let me know.”

“Keep going. I’m listening.” He was looking at the trees, their branches.

I watched Sam's eyes, their glazy brown. “Even after those hangings stopped, there’d still be bodies above the river. Some people used to talk about how all that water all the time got into your head. Others just thought it seemed an easy way out of a bad situation.”

Sam was still staring at the tops of trees. “What do you mean?”

13 “I’m talking about suicide. They’d get a long stretch of rope and wrap it around

their necks. Drop themselves like rocks.”

“Shit.”

“Sometimes the branches would break or the rope would come undone. After a while though, I guess people got pretty good at tying knots and picking the right branches. Got pretty good at killing themselves, according to my granddad.” I dragged

past the filter again and dropped it to the ground, watched it tumble into the water.

“Why the hell would he tell you about all this shit? How old were you?”

“About ten, I think. I guess he told me ‘cause he knew I wasn’t stupid. I asked a

lot of questions. My dad was away at the time, so his old man kind of filled his shoes for

a while.”

Sam nodded.

“He said that those bodies would sometimes be left up there for a few days.

Nobody wanted to get them down. They all had their reasons, I suppose. Eventually,

someone would just cut the branch they were hanging from, let the bodies go down the

river and become someone else’s problem.” I thought about what a mess that could’ve

been. I imagined the bodies and branches splashing down into the water, floating off and damming up the river. Just piles of these bodies and branches. My granddad explained

that it was all that death that had turned the water brown. How the blue my mother used

to talk about had dulled with all those bodies. Seeing the water again made me believe

every word of it.

14 “Hey, hold on a sec. I think I hear a car. Let me go check who that is.” Sam jogged away and slipped around the side of the house, his footfalls still landing at even intervals despite the quickened pace.

I stood at the edge of the yard. To my right, a small branch landed in the water and I watched the surface ripple. There were parts of the story I never told anyone. Pieces that I saw for myself. I thought about the people who chose to hang themselves from the branches. My mother wasn’t like those people. She dove right in. I watched her do it.

I thought she was playing a game and I hid under the cover of the weeping willow and held my breath, waited for my mom to come get me, knowing I’d win. My granddad found me, hours later, sleeping in the shade of the willow.

By that time, someone had called about the body. My mother had washed up in someone else’s backyard.

Sam was walking back. I rubbed at the blood on his palm.

“It was no one, sorry about that.” Sam faced the other way, looking at the house.

“Who’s supposed to show?”

“Last thing I heard, Dani was gonna be here around the same time as us.”

I began to walk back to the house, stuffed my hands in my pockets. I touched the photograph, smoothed over its glossiness. “Then where the hell is she?”

“I don’t know. I should give her a call.” He rummaged around in his pockets.

“Phone’s in the car, I’ll call from there.” As he was walking to the front of the house, I went inside.

I walked around the body, having memorized its place so I no longer had to look down. In the laundry room, I grabbed two large, white towels, carried them into the

15 kitchen. The cat trailed behind. I knelt by Carrie Anne's head, not caring that the blood

was creeping into my jeans. I felt its coolness on my skin. I slipped off her shoes, placing

them to the side. I held her head as if it was made of the thinnest porcelain and wrapped

the towel around her, allowing a small opening for her face. I cradled her body in my

arms and lifted her as I stood.

Bracing myself, I made sure to root my feet outside the pools under her body. I pushed open the door to the sunroom, the screen door of the porch. The cat followed into the sunroom, only able to go that far, and perched on a wicker chair to watch.

I heard Sam’s car door, with its hinges and slam. I stood above the water, kneeling onto the dirt. I rocked her, pressed her against me. I moved the dark hairs stuck against her skin, kissed her on the head, and lowered her into the water, letting her fall out of the towels.

I watched as she was pushed away by the water.

Sam crashed through the screen door.

I didn’t turn, just watched Carrie Anne slip away.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” He pushed me, but I man was stuck.

“Ollie? Damnit.”

Sam jumped into the water with a splash, wading after the body, which was stopped by the willow’s roots.

He had his arms wrapped around the woman, dragging her with him as he pushed backward through the water to the overhanging yard. He heard kids laughing somewhere nearby. When he looked up, they were wide-eyed and staring at him, silent.

16 He took the woman’s arms and started flailing them around, splashing them in the

water, and made sure to hide her face against his body. “Hey, kids.” He stopped splashing

and shouted at the onlookers. “Mind your own damn business.”

He was trying to push the body onto the ground above his head.

The kids were still staring.

“Damnit, Ollie. Get over here. Help me get her out.” He was careful not to yell.

I noticed the kids, tucked the stained towels under my knees, and bent to help

Sam lift the body out of the water.

Sam was breathing hard, coughing and holding his chest. “What were you thinking? Tell me. What the hell was that just now?”

I stared at the water and shook his head. “I have no idea. It seemed to be the right

thing to do.”

Sam walked away, shaking the water out of his shoes, wringing out his shirt.

The van was making its way up the driveway. The vehicle was heavy on the gravel. Dani's footfalls were softer on the rocks. Sam caught up to her and I heard the low mumble of conversation between them.

I lifted Carrie Anne’s body and carried her to the concrete slab of the patio. I sat and waited.

Sam was first around the side of the house, his face part terrified, part furious.

Dani was a few feet behind him and at least five inches taller in her usual tight jeans and button-down shirt. Her hair shorter each time I saw her.

Sam was looking at me, said, “I think he’s lost his damn mind.”

17 “I can hear you and I’m perfectly lucid.” The cat mewed softly soft in the

sunroom.

Dani was tapping her shoes on the concrete, looking at the dead woman. “Christ,

Ollie. We were supposed to bury the body, not waterlog the bitch.”

I bit his lip. My hand was inside my pocket, rubbing at the blood. “Dani, why do

you hate other women so much? It’s not like you have anyone to compete with here.”

Sam laughed. “Well, I have to tell you, if she wasn’t dead before, she sure as hell

is now.”

I stood, landed a punch to the side of Sam’s nose, hearing a sharp crack under my knuckles. I felt nothing.

Sam sputtered, gasped through the blood on his face. Dani held him by the shoulders and pushed his chin up with her fingers.

“That’s it,” she said. “No more of this bullshit from you.” She guided Sam to the front of the house. The engines started, one after the other. The van accelerated out of the driveway and was tearing away down the street. Sam’s car was hesitant. Idled for a few minutes before moving slow out of the driveway.

I let the cat through the screen door. It meowed again at Carrie Anne's body, then followed me as I carried the body to the river and placed it in the water, pushing it and watching it move away. She was leaving me. I let her go.

The cat rubbed against my legs and made more noise. The two of us sat there in the quiet collapsing of day into dusk, waiting, with eyes closed on images or darting

across the water like bugs.

18 I took out the cigarette I had shoved into my pocket earlier. The blood had dried into a soft brownish tinge. I put the stained tube in my mouth and lit the end, hearing the hiss of the paper’s burn. The cat purred at my side, resting now.

I unfolded the picture from my jacket. In the darkness, I saw the image with my eyes closed.

Distant at first, I heard the clip and squeal of sirens, felt the throb of their red- blue-red-red-blue lights on my back.

I wondered what it would be like to hide in the water.

Then I was gone.

19

CHAPTER II

GEORGE

Tongue on the front of a tooth. Sore again. Every day, same time. George rubbed

the spots on his head that were growing thin. Baldness never ran in his family, but he

knew it coursed through the veins of his career. He laughed and choked on it, rubbing the

Adam's apple in its up and down swallow. Sore again, and scratchy. He lit another

cigarette.

One of the two strangers in the place cleared his throat and whispered to the

scrawny-boned kid next to him. Out-of-towners.

The bartender made his own throaty noise, averting the eyes from George to behind the counter where he tapped loud on a tinny sign. "Private establishment," he echoed the painted words.

The strange eyes dropped down and into the drinks at hand, foamy beers from the tap.

There was little more said between those two, just small talk and the shuffling of a few old jokes. They finished their foam, paid, left.

20 The taller of the two departing men popped his collar and bristled himself against the cold, dark, dampness of the outside drizzle.

George watched the men walk away through the thick-slatted blinds of the front window. He had trained his eyes to watch the slivers of movement, of color and skin, as they either approached or left the building. Sometimes the lines were swift: quicksilver dashes, red. Other lines were unsteady, stumbling, stopping; those men would be scooted into a cab.

The bartender was a thick, sun-soaked leather skin man, cut up along his arms and face, already spotted with patches of gray. The dim lighting caught on the smoothness of his scars. He pushed an ashtray in front of George who snubbed out the long stem of unsmoked white into the glass, breaking the stick at its center, untouched tobacco sprinkling onto the wood of the bar, blending in.

The man behind the bar watched George's face and waited. Time was the easiest thing to share in a place like that. A place with walls and empty seats, clean tables unprepared for the clawing of customers. A room where no one was wanted and the energy of repulsion snuck out through the front door and pushed like a broken-down bouncer.

George looked from the entrance to the bathrooms in the back corner. "Where's

Sam?" he asked.

"He was supposed to be in a couple hours ago." The bartender unstuck his shoes from their spots on the tile. "Never showed."

21 "Figures." He double-checked the windows, making sure the strangers weren't

loitering outside. Nothing. The lines were clear. "Guys like that can really get us into

trouble."

"I'll take care of any problems."

"You did a bang-up job just now." George scratched at a mole on his neck. "And why in the hell did you serve them?"

"Well, I dunno, Georgie. That's not suspect. A bar that won't serve beer or liquor.

Considering." He gestured at the bottles lining the counter behind him, varying degrees of empty and old. He smoothed out the wadded bills from the strangers, pushed them into his pocket. "You ruined any chance of a good tip."

"Not exactly how we make our money."

The man gave George a quarter-mouth grin.

The River Rat was always open like the half-lit neon its red sign promised, but was situated conveniently between nowhere and the spaces no one wanted to be. The only people coming in were those with unwanted invitations and those who provided the

means to command punctuality. There were the nights with the lost and clueless

wanderers from the drier spots of the state, the two strangers who had moments ago been

shown the kind of courtesy that had come to be expected from the bar and its regulars.

Sam was missing tonight. Just another something to take care of, George thought.

"You want it in a glass this time?" The bartender knocked on the wood with his

knuckles.

George shifted his eyes only, looking up at the man while keeping his head low

and shoulder-tucked. "Bottle's fine."

22 The bartender pulled out a thick-necked bottle from the clear-faced fridge behind him. "Busy night?" he asked.

George showed some teeth with his smile. "Aren't they all?"

The bartender snapped off the cap and placed the beer in front of George, the mouth still smoking like a long-barreled gun.

"I got three coming in tonight." George smelled the thickness of hops and drank.

"A pretty healthy lot there. Joe's got your hands full, huh?"

"There's always room for more." The men shared a grin, George tipped the bottle back, then both paused to listen. There was no alarm on their faces, only expectation.

Despite the sounds of the bar - the tremble of peripheral music, the television on near-mute - the sounds of the street were always audible. A metronome pulse of heels moved fast down the sidewalk and a familiar splinter of motion flashed behind the falling-apart blinds. The slithering slink of curves and flickers of olive skin translated into another of the bar's usual suspects as she pushed through the entrance. Programmed footfalls brought her next to George and she hoisted herself onto the barstool, adjusting her body and unsticking the skin of her thighs from the dark green vinyl. She crossed her legs and spun, the seat squeaking on its metal pivot.

The bartender smiled at the woman, humidity bringing an intimate blush to her face. "What'll it be, Dani?"

She rubbed at her forehead, sniffled. "What am I in the mood for?" Her nails clicked over the wood and her hand flattened and flexed like a cat. She looked at George, saw the bottle, then reached across the counter to play with a coaster. "Bring me one of your sangrias, Ben."

23 "Red or white?"

The corners of her mouth pushed into her cheeks. "You know my color." She

winked with her words.

George moved his attention from the wood's grain to Dani's knees, sliding up and

along the fullness of the leg's shape.

"What's the occasion?"

"You mean this old thing?" She twisted on the stool and laughed, showing off the shortness of her thin, static dress. She unzipped a small, shiny black purse in her lap and

George followed the seam of her crossed legs to where they parted at the joint and spread into calves and ankles, wedged into heels.

As she rummaged in her bag, Ben set down a tumbler of translucent burgundy

with grapes, cherries, and wedges of orange and lime. "At last," she said, humming as she

picked up the glass and put the straw to her mouth.

Dani rotated her ankle and stuck out a foot, showing off her red patent-leather

pumps. George had been staring. "Like 'em?" she asked.

"Thought I'd never catch you wearing such a get-up. Those shoes are just the

icing."

"God, I know, aren't they horrible?" She sucked on her straw, biting the end as she

swiveled. "Joe's got me set up with this guy tonight. Says he likes his ladies all dolled-

up."

He held a hand to his hungry stomach. "Does any of that matter if he's gonna wind

up in a bag by the end of it?

24 "No, not this one. Real big shot connection. Joe wants to woo his socks off, show him a good time."

"Some kind of supplier or something?"

"You know I don't like to ask too many questions. I just do my job, get paid, and take my stack all the way home. No stops." She held her hand to her temple and inhaled.

George scanned the place, the grayness of his eyes like heavy-metal monitors. He felt more and more a machine every day, rusty and functioning on the lowest settings.

The bar was deserted, same as every night. Some chairs on the tops of tables, some splayed out at angles on the floor. There were no patches of stickiness, no black scuffs or wear from the traffic of shoes. Just chairs, two empty booths in the corner. If Joe was anywhere, he'd be there, but there was no one. A few loosened threads of webbing floated and undulated beneath an opened vent in the ceiling. The door at the back of the room was shut, quiet.

Three clients were scheduled tonight and he knew the light from inside would soon be showing. He turned back to the front of the place, watched the blinds. "Any idea where Joe is tonight?"

Dani looked at the fruit in her glass. "Joe's out."

"Who's he with?

"Again with the questions." She pulled at the dress to cover more skin. "Not my job to know that either."

He rubbed his balmy hands on the front of his jeans, traces of dirt and mud in the fibers, wrapped in the denim. "Don't suppose he's with that wife of his?"

She choked back some of the burgundy. "You're killing me."

25 "What, he married her. Might as well take advantage." He smiled big and full at

Dani, but was quick to close his mouth. The cold draft winding through the place was needles on his teeth.

"Please, you know he doesn't actually like his women clean." She squeaked a finger around the rim of her glass.

"That explains why he's so awfully fond of you." He moved his eyes slow and deliberate over her body. She didn't squirm, not like the other women.

She kicked him in the shin with the point of her shoe.

George grabbed his leg, almost upsetting his beer with his elbow. "Fuck, Dani!"

"Knew these things were good for something." Her eyes turned up into happy crescents.

He rubbed the spot. "Feeling a little playful tonight, huh?" He put his hand on her thigh to steady himself, squeezed. "Skip the date. Come home with me."

"I can aim higher."

"Be careful, I might like that."

"Didn't your mom ever tell you not to pick up chicks in bars?" She flicked the straw back to her mouth with her tongue.

"Nope, never told me much of anything."

"Poor kid." She pulled out a fresh pack of cigarettes, the usual Marlboro reds, and went through the routine of hitting it against the counter, topside down. The thuds had a rapid-fire rhythm of one-two-three, pause, one-two-three. After repeating this a few times, she stripped the paper box of its cellophane and crinkled the stuff in her hand.

Placed on the bar, the plastic unfolded itself again before Ben grabbed it and tossed it into

26 a bin on his side of the counter. Dani flipped the box open and ripped off the foil,

smashing and disposing of it in the same cellophane fashion.

The cigarettes' tobacco was fragrant. Dani pressed the filtered ends to her noise,

inhaling their richness. She pulled one out and pushed it back into its place, tobacco side

up and packed a good way down. She began to extract the one next to it but stopped, noticed the ashtray, and put the pack down, sliding the tray between her and George.

"This, my friend," she said as she picked up the remaining half of his cigarette. "Where I come from, that's called waste." She pulled a lighter from her purse, placed the filter between her lips, tilted her head back and lit the ragged tip.

"I don't even know why you carry 'em."

"They're always handy if you run out, you know."

"Do I ever run out?"

"Good point."

"Besides, you smoke that crazy menthol shit." She inhaled. "Yep," she said,

blowing the smoke out of her nose and mouth in short, alternating puffs. "I can just feel

the fiberglass."

Reaching the filter and singeing it, she smashed it back into the ashtray.

George smirked. "Where you come from, yeah? I'm sure the women's prison

would be more than happy to have you back."

"Really, George? A little slow on the pick-up with that one." She swiveled on the

stool. "You gotta get off that prison shit with me. I mean, do I look like I've been in jail?"

She twisted in her seat again and then slouched into the bar, picking up her small glass and sipping. The sound of the straw's suck in the emptied glass summoned Ben.

27 He reached for the tumbler and Dani stopped his hand. "You can leave it. I want the fruit."

"Almost forgot. Want another?"

She tilted her head and squinted her eyes at him.

"Need I ask," he said and walked away.

George watched the bartender. He knew the man was as loyal as any local could get and that he didn't mind the business. The man's forehead was full of enough lines to show he had other things to worry about or thought deeply enough to know the reasons not to talk about the kind of people he assisted. George felt confident in his evaluation of the man, ever since he'd screened him for Joe a few years back. He returned to Dani.

"You said Joe's out tonight?"

"Mm hmm."

"Maybe I'll just drop by and see how that wife of his is doing." He feigned contemplation with his hand on his chin, looking at recessed the lights.

"I'm sure Carrie Anne would love that." Dani twirled the straw around the ice of the empty glass, stabbing at the fruit.

"I know you're not her biggest fan," he said.

Dani scoffed.

"But she ain't so bad to look at." He thought about the proper way the other woman's hair sat on her shoulders, how her skin didn't have the pocks of an unhappy life, her face heart-shaped, cherub-round with the perfect amount of asymmetrical sin. He loved the way the right side of her mouth fell lower than the left and respected the fact that she hated her husband and his work. He thought she deserved better, but knew he

28 wouldn't be the one to give her such a change. He said, "I'd take her back there and show

her a good time." He nodded at the room's rear door. "And you know exactly what I mean

by that."

"You better not let Joe hear you talk like that. You know how possessive he can

get."

"Enjoy your date."

"I'm serious. Even if he doesn't want what you're grabbing for, he'll cut those

hands clean off." She made chopping motions at both of his wrists.

He drank in heavy mouthfuls from his bottle. "From the way he's been talking, it

seems he won't have much a reason to be so attached anymore." He picked at his bottle's

gold and green label. "I don't see why I shouldn't be able to get my foot in the door before

it closes."

There was a sliver of movement behind the blinds, fast, then a shadow that paused

at the door. Ben put Dani's new drink down. Followed the focus of attention and wiped

his hands in a towel, moving to his position at the front of the counter.

The shadow moved in, slow, and became a middle-aged man with a beard. He wiped at his face, a mixture of sweat and rain. His brown leather coat speckled with water drops and faded to beige at the pockets and elbows.

George peeled at the edges of the label, easing it from the glass until finally able to slide it fully off.

The man's glassy eyes flickered between George and the floor.

Ben asked, "Can I help you?"

The man cleared his throat. "Yeah, I, um, I got something I gotta drop off."

29 Dani's tensed shoulders drooped back into slouch. She plucked out a cherry and

popped it into her mouth.

George stepped onto the floor, half-standing against his stool. "Hey, pal. Why

don't you come over here." He tapped on the seat next to him.

The man had his hands in his pockets, bulging out the weak spots. He looked at

Ben, then at Dani, then the floor, back to George. He slid onto the stool, air pushing out

of the cushion.

"I hear you have something for me?" George pushed the empty beer bottle out of

the way and twisted to lean on the counter.

Dani watched the man reach into his jacket and pull out an envelope. She rolled

the fruit around her mouth, sucking out its flavor and pushing it against her cheeks as he slid the paper to George.

Picking up the envelope, he kept his eyes on the man and saw the strange eyes shaking as he opened it and felt the money inside. "Feels about right. Let's see what we have here." He counted the bills with his fingertips, then fanned them out and placed them on the counter. Some fresh and flat from the bank, others crumpled from an emptied hiding spot.

The man rubbed his hands together, as if cold. He could see Dani peeking around

George's heavy arms. She swallowed the cherry, took out a cigarette from her fresh pack, lit it, exhaled. The man's eyes got lost in the caterpillar crawl of the curl of smoke in its ascent. George's folding of the envelope brought him back.

"All there," he said and tucked the money away inside his coat.

The two men looked at each other. One waiting, one testing.

30 "You can go now," George said. "Keep it up."

The man bowed his head and made other small, erratic gestures of gratitude as he

slipped off the stool and hurried out the door, never letting his back go unguarded for too long. The others watched him all the way.

Dani rubbed at her short-cropped hair. "Got any more coming in?"

"Two more scheduled."

"Hopefully they're more entertaining."

He checked the blinds. "You never know."

There was another beer in front of George and he drank it. He ran his tongue over his teeth under his lips and felt his gut, heard its grumbling.

"Hungry?" Dani was chewing on a piece of lime rind.

He hummed, nodded, said, "yeah."

She pulled her phone out of her purse and was clicking through her numbers.

"How about some Chen's?"

"Nah, that Chinese shit gives me nightmares."

Dani kept clicking, making decisions in her head without voicing them, but showing them with her nods, shakes, and hums. The phone snapped shut and she was back to her drink.

Ben had been rummaging under the counter, pushing aside the crinkling plastic of bags. He brought out a red popcorn bowl and wiped it out with his tucked-in towel, placing it overhead and on the counter. When he stood, he had a festive-looking bag in

his hand, some generic, mart-brand of pre-opened party mix.

George felt the saliva forming in his cheeks.

31 Ben clattered the mix into the bowl. "Knew there was something down there."

Dani beamed up at Ben as if she somehow shared in his accomplishment. "Ben, you're a life-saver."

The bartender put his bashful chin down and leaned against the back of the bar where all the bottles were lined and doubled in the mirror. There was old gold and black paint on the surface, chipped into obscurity years before the building was purchased by

Joe.

George picked through the numerous pretzels and peanuts, plucking out the waffled squares when finding them and placing them next to his fresh bottle of beer.

Dani was suffocating another cigarette. "You look like a damn ape, picking around in there."

Soon satisfied with his lot, he leaned back and was popping the collection into his mouth, munching and then wincing. He stopped mid-chew, jaw loosened with the trigger of pain. Just like Dani with her cherry, he rolled his tongue through his mouth. He touched his fingers to his face and felt his teeth through his cheek, the ache shooting between the gums and through every nerve. He knew the shock showed on his face and he turned away from the others to pretend to fix his shoe and its laces.

Dani saw George's reaction, grabbed a piece from his pile, and cracked down on the thing with only small apprehension. "Jesus, Ben. How old is this shit?"

The bartender picked up the bag and searched it. "Who knows," he said.

"Could've been here when we moved in." He reached in the bowl and took a pretzel, chewed it. "Well, this is worthless," he said, trashing the bag and the mix on the counter.

32 No one noticed the movement behind the blinds, but they heard the door when it

opened, saw the new silhouette shake his way in. He stood in the room, his navy blue

coat less spotted than the leather of the previous visitor.

The bartender came over, asked him his question.

This man grinned like an idiot, his large teeth showy and white.

George stopped him before he spoke. "Colin, come have a seat." He again tapped

the spot next to him.

"Hey, man, how's it going?" The navy blue coat rubbed against Dani as he passed

and patted George on the back.

"Just sit."

"You got it, man. No problem."

George rotated his bottle, stopping at the label's face. "Bring anything tonight?"

The man shoved a hand in his track pants and brought out a folded envelope, thinner and lighter than the other man's. He pushed it into George's hand.

George wasn't optimistic. He knew there were no hundreds in the concealed stack.

It couldn't be that thin and be right. When he counted the money, he did so twice, said,

"Does this look like math class?"

The man looked around, confused, trying to humor the gruff authority, though ultimately lost to panic. He said, "No?"

George leaned. "Then why are we talking fractions?"

Dani heard him and choked on the smoke of her current cigarette, shaking her head against her unoccupied hand.

33 George pointed at the back door, helped the man get off his stool, and took another tilt of his beer. Arriving at the door, he stepped in front of the man, flicked a switch and squinted against the abrasive florescence that buzzed to life. Before closing the door, he nodded at Dani. She swiveled her attention to Ben and asked for the TV's remote. The channel flipped to college football and the volume raised to its maximum.

There was the unheard sound of a lock clicking into place.

Dani and Ben were placing the man's money on the bar - a series of fives, tens, and twenties, no more - and betting on the game. Dani was screaming and heckling the ref with her cigarette. Ben's mouth was open wide and cackling, tears forming in the creases of his eyes.

The man fell out of the room, the game's racket hovering over everything. His face was a mess and his one hand covered his mouth, the other buried in his pocket with a fistful of his own teeth, the fabric now dark with mottled stains on the blackened blue. On the way out, he tripped, stumbling with his hand still in the pocket, the other hand still over his mouth. Dani watched with her head propped up in one hand, her elbow on the bar, pivoting her chin to follow the man's exit. He was crying, but soundless under the football fans. They roared and yelled and the man was out. George came out in time to notice the man sliver away through the blinds, with his touch of red.

Dani turned off the game, the static crinkling away like plastic.

George walked to the front of the room, a hammer in his hand. He parted the blinds with two fingers and looked to see if the man had fallen over within reach of the bar. No sight of him. Dani squeaked on the chair as she swiveled left to right, left to right.

34 A few feet in front of the door, George noticed a bloody and porcelain mass on the floor

and picked it up. The bivouac of the bar stool stopped and Dani stretched her legs,

nodded at the hammer, said, "Might want to get rid of that."

The weight of the weapon was back in his hands, returned to his conscious mind.

He took it into the room and shut the door. There was the rush of cold water and he rinsed

off the hammer, his hands, and the pulp-covered bit of tooth, which he placed in his pants

pocket. Leaving the room, he flicked off the light.

He sat down, noticing the sharpness of Dani's back, how her spine poked through

the skin before disappearing under the thin sheath of fabric that constantly shifted though

the body remained still.

He leaned the palm against the counter's edge, the sharp-curved wood digging in

its outline as he reached into the other pocket of his jeans, searching. He then rummaged

in one of his coat's interior pockets and pulled out his pill bottle, twisting off the cap and picking out a long, yellow capsule.

"You're still taking those barbies?" Dani scrunched her nose at the little shape.

"They're the only thing keeping me sane." He shook the pill by his ear, listened to the powder shift on the inside. "You should be thankful."

"That shit's gonna get you killed."

He broke the capsule open, the powder's brightness screaming against the dullness

of the counter and nestling into the deeper gouges of the wood. "At least I don't chain-

smoke those cowboy killers. That's some real self-loathing." He poked his finger in the powder, pushing it around. "How many packs a day?"

35 "Just the one." She watched as he drew a face in the dust, with a straight,

horizontal line for the mouth. "The difference is," she said, tapping a long stem of ash

into the tray, "these things don't waste me. If anything, I'd like to call them tools. You

know, like that little hammer of yours sitting all bloody in the back room."

He scribbled out the face.

"Your yellow friends there, those'll mess you up. Take you out of the game for

hours."

He took a drink, used the bottle's perspiration on his fingers to dab into the dust,

sticking it to his skin. "You're starting to sound like a commercial." He rubbed the stuff

on his gums, licked it from the nail.

Dani added her stained filter to the others and grabbed George's forearm, turning

it so she could read his watch. "Time to go."

"Have fun with that."

"I'm sure you'll do the same." She adjusted the elastic strap of her heel. "You

watching the kid anytime soon?"

"This weekend, I think." He drank.

She reached in her purse and pulled out a plastic bag. "Bummer," she said.

"The kid's not so bad. Doesn't get in the way much. Kinda quiet."

"Yeah, you're right." She took a silver-blonde wig from the bag, fitted it over her scalp. "He could be worse."

"Joe keeps wanting me to teach him things." He watched as she leaned over the bar to look in its mirror, adjusting the synthetic strands, the bangs.

"So he tells me."

36 "I don't see why he doesn't want to do it himself." Her reflection was puckering

like a fish. "It's his kid, after all."

She grabbed lipstick from her purse, applying it in heavy layers. "I think guilt might be a factor."

"With Joe? And I thought I was the funny one."

She blew kisses at herself. "He's weird like that. All talk, no touch."

George raised his eyebrows, leaned back and looked at her shoes.

She smiled, scratching her neck where the fake hair itched. "Well, mostly no

touch."

Ben reached for her empty glasses and she snatched out a grape. "You take care

of yourself, Dani," he said.

"The name's Lacey tonight, Benny boy." She pressed her lips together as her heels

chattered out the door. "See you around, Georgie."

She was gone in a flurry of laughter. The blonde of the wig flashed through the

blinds with the light of the moon and the streetlamps above.

George peeled at another bottle's label. The hum of florescence was stuck in his

head, even though those lights were off. He often felt haunted by the sounds of his work,

dabbed his finger in the remaining powder, pushing and gathering more, sucking and

licking and rubbing back and forth to his mouth until there was nothing left but the

yellow-lined grooves in the countertop grain.

It could've been minutes, it might've been an hour.

37 Ben was floating about like an indecisive cirrus, wiping at imaginary spills on and

behind the bar.

There was a sluggish line behind the window pane. The handle turned and the

door pushed open slow as if it carried the world's worry and weight. The guy who walked

in was no stranger to The River Rat and its neon-pulsing sign. He entered knob-kneed

and shaky with a green baseball cap pulled down to hide his face.

George stood and steadied himself against the bar. Ben was asking his question.

The man looked at Ben, knew exactly where George was but didn't face him.

George saw the man's face contorted and frozen in a gargoyle grotesque. The man lifted

the cap off his head to smooth down the hair underneath. There was a lot of it. Fluffed

from being matted down, it was once again forced under the hat.

George consciously felt the sparse hairs on his own head through his scalp. The

days were getting colder and he felt every biting wind on the shiny-smooth skin, always visible beneath the veneer of fading fuzz. He stepped up to the man who only looked at the floor, his muddied-up track shoes. "Anything?" he asked.

The man was still. He shook his head.

George prodded. "You got anything, Vic? Anything at all?" He put a hand on the

man's arm, gripping.

"No," he said. His eyes darted to George in a final, sealing moment. "Nothing."

George gestured to the back door and pushed the man in front of him. The man's

eyes knew the door, knew the room. He scratched at his arms. His knees were failing, but

he moved forward as if in a dream.

38 George folded his coat, left it on the bar. Ben picked up the remote, pushed the

TV into noise. It was overtime and the men in blue and white pressed against the guys in

green. The ball slipped onto the ground, out of the frenzy, the fans screamed, and the

players dove.

The door closed, locked.

From outside the small room, there was only the thin strip of florescent light

under the door, the small movement of a shadow. Inside, there was sterility, a doctor's office ebb and flow of calm and chaos. There were plastic gloves beneath the sink, a fire extinguisher on the wall, a drawer full of syringes and vials. All of these had been used in the past and George catalogued the inventory in his mind. Paper towels above the sink, bed sheets in the closet, matches, gasoline, assorted knives and chains. Thick pieces of rope curled under the large wash basin in the corner. The room was spotless but the answer was sitting on the counter.

The hammer was out, ready. There were no more questions to ask, reasons to

give. Both men knew the final steps to their dance. The man sat in a chair in the center of

the room. George ran water in the sink and splashed his face, bothered by the squeal of

pressure in the pipes. The man took off his hat and stared at its white-stitched emblem,

allowed the loudness of the bar's television to soak in once more before fading into a

numbing and reverberant echo of a pulse. His pulse. George's.

"And no one knows where you are?" There were rules to this routine, a choreography to follow.

39 "There's no one." The man squeezed his hat in his hands, wedged it back on his

head.

George believed him, felt the nub of tooth digging into the skin of his thigh.

He went to the sink, got a glass of water. Held this in front of the man with a pill he had saved in his pocket.

The man pushed his hands away.

"Suit yourself," George said and swallowed the pill. He let his hand go through

the motions of making the sign of the cross, a by-product of smashed-in Catholicism from a childhood George failed to recognize as a contributing factor in any of this.

The room was twisting itself around them, cocooning them in a fog and making time into fire and molasses all at once. The pulls were quick and the pushes were backbreaking. George swung his hammer hard, throwing his whole body into the impact.

The blow tore into the man's neck, and George felt the snapping of sinews once taut, the release of muscles and bone, heard cracks.

The man gaped, he gasped.

George thought of Dani and her puckering mouth, stained red, red, red with lipstick.

The man was pulling off his hat, but his hands lost their hold and it fell to the floor. George let go too and the hammer fell with his body.

It could've been hours, it might've been a minute.

George opened the door and leaned in its frame, his body blocking the florescence from within. "Hey, Benny," he said.

40 The bartender lifted his head, drowsiness bumping into regimented, soldier alertness. He muted the television with the remote in his hand.

"We're closed for the night. Got it?"

Ben nodded, put the remote in front of the rows of organized inebriety, the bottles shining back with warped reflections of color and light. He walked to the front of the place, closed the blinds, locked the door, and flicked off the hum of the neon sign.

In the back room, the red remained. It glistened with the insistence of the bar room's bottles.

He remembered a line from his mother's prayers. "I will see the blood and I will spare you." A passage from his past.

All that obsession with blood, Christ's blood and its mystery, all of that violence made into something clean and pure and right, all of this brought redemption into the swing of his hammer, into the blow of metal on skin that occurred in one microcosmic pocket of reality. At night he'd have dreams of the blood pouring out of all those various men, all their various lives, all sacrifice and offering, all of this blood turning into clarity, into water. He could wash his hands clean with the very sin he'd committed. Every so often he'd have this dream, something of a reassurance though he still had trouble buying into its promise.

Tonight's mess was contained enough. He laid out some paper towels to absorb the majority of the red, watched as it crept into the quilted pattern. He found some bar towels and threw them onto the small flood.

The room had come to smell of death. Of shit and piss and broken bones. Of blood and its iron. There was no scrubbing that reek off the walls. That smell and its

41 permanence. He masked the pungency with a dousing of aerosol air freshener. The floral tones adding only to the sickness in his belly. He needed to eat something or else there'd be more to clean.

He readied the black, plastic bags and stared at the body in the chair, the hat on the floor, now stained. He felt the room collapsing upon him and sat on the floor, leaning against the cabinets, the heel of his shoe so close to the outline of death, but far enough away. Time pushed the edge closer, and George slept, the florescence sneaking into his brain.

42

CHAPTER III

CARRIE ANNE

The black Lincoln stretched like a lazy animal along the street and seemed endless in its reach. Its windows, tinted with the glare of the clouds overhead. The car had been out there for hours.

Carrie Anne could feel its presence like a haunting and scratched at the skin of her arms. The shower was running, and the steam escaped from the open door, into the bedroom, where she stood to the side of the window overlooking the street.

It's nothing; she lied to herself and locked the bathroom door behind her – something she had never done in all her years in the house. She undressed with delicate movements and stepped into the shower, grateful for the door's clouded glass.

Going through the daily motions of soak, scrub, lather, and rinse, she thought about everything a black car could represent – importance, secrecy, and death. The foam of shampoo ebbed around her feet before draining away. She walked back to the window, knotting the towel in her hands to keep it from falling, and felt drops of water sneak their

43 way under the terry cloth, causing a small shiver to reach her fingers as they parted the

blinds.

The car was still there.

It was pointed away from the place, but she could see the house reflected in the

side mirror, the green shutters and pale vinyl siding. Her fingers pulled the towel tighter,

a sharp nail digging into the skin underneath. She tried to remember if the car had been

there the night before and wondered when it had arrived.

A short, loud meow came from the floor and the cat pushed its black and white

body into Carrie Anne’s naked leg. She moved away from the window and patted the animal’s head. “In a minute, Bax.” Opening the closet door, she let the towel fall.

Before her was ordered chaos, most of the built-in shelves presenting neat rows of wrinkled clothes waiting to be pressed. She grabbed a skirt and sweater from the hangers and threw them on the bed, then rummaged in a drawer to pull out a pair of underwear with a matching bra. For a moment, she smiled then saw her body, reflected and bare in the full-length mirror. There would be no one to strip off the day’s mess or comment on the attraction of lace trim. She sighed and slipped into her clothes.

The zipper on her skirt had broken months ago. She took a safety pin from the dresser and eased it into the fabric, careful not to stab her skin as she had done so many times in the past. Her hair was still wet and she squeezed out some of the water onto the carpet before pulling the sweater over her head.

She saw Baxter waiting by the door and spun in a slow circle. “How do I look?”

The cat offered another punctuated sound. Licked its mouth and yawned.

“I know, I know. You want your food.”

44 She went to the dresser and applied a thin layer of crumbling foundation, eyeliner,

and mascara. The mirror gave a dusty reflection, one with brown hair and premature

grays, a canvas of fading elasticity. The longer she stared, the further the corners of her

mouth would fall into acceptance. She slipped a gold band onto her left hand, clasped a

gold link watch onto her wrist, felt the cold metal against her skin.

All of that gold made her feel like her mother. As a child, she was the one

wearing silver while everything gold was stapled to her mom, a woman who always

wanted to appear wealthier than she was.

Baxter led the way and Carrie Anne followed him down the steps, stopping at the

front door. She stood on her toes to peek out the small windows at the top. The Lincoln

hadn’t budged. If anything, she imagined it had gotten closer. Using the doorknob to help

her keep balance, she studied the vehicle. The driver’s side window was cracked open a

sliver, letting out a steady stream of smoke, one cloud after the other, rising like an

ethereal remnant of someone forgotten. She watched the fog dissipate into the air,

thought about smoke signals. Thought about distress. Felt it creep into her lungs and

squeeze.

She remembered her father before and after cancer had caught up with him. When

she used to visit, she could still smell the smoke of his filterless Pall Malls in the house

even after the doctor broke the news. That’s why her mom had left him when he needed

her most. That’s what it always boiled down to. An eighteen-year-old girl couldn’t do much when it came to preventing disaster or recognizing the signs of warning.

Only for a minute did she think her father had somehow returned, despite the impossibility.

45 He was one of the only men she could ever get close to, talk to and feel

understood. When he passed, there was no one there to comfort her.

There was Joe, a different kind of man.

Carrie Anne covered her left hand with her right, pressing against the ring

underneath. Impatience was perhaps the only trait she inherited from her mother. The

marriage was rushed. Joe, being raised in tradition, didn’t want a pregnant wife, or,

worse, a baby crying at his wedding. He promised Carrie Anne an escape she desired, a

push to becoming a different kind of woman, an alternate somebody. A rebirth that he

failed to deliver.

In the first months, she longed for her mother. Her belly growing fuller with her

son. What didn’t help were the conversations she’d overhear from the other women in town when she’d go to the drug store, the grocery, the greenhouse. There was the typical talk of her estranged mother escaping to a foreign country with another man, a reinvention Carrie Anne couldn’t help but admire. Other gossip was less hopeful and spoke of car accidents and dismemberment – these women never skimped on detail – they chatted of rehab centers and suicide over prescription bottles and heads of lettuce.

Carrie Anne’s feet began to ache and she lowered herself onto the hardwood

floor. She traced the walls with her fingertips, walking down the hallway and into the

kitchen. Baxter flicked his tail back and forth near the center island. “I’ll be right there,”

she said and detoured to the adjacent room to turn on the television.

The weather man reported a chance of rain later in the day. She looked through

the windows that connected the interior of the house to the sunroom and then beyond to

the backyard and the sky. The water in the river was more restless than usual and the

46 graying clouds muddied the day’s light. She thought the rain would begin sooner than expected, at least a drizzle.

The house she grew up in for most of her life had been further down the river and was not as big as the one she lived in now. All of the new house’s space instilled a loneliness in her that she had never known growing up. Even when her parents went out for dinner, leaving her alone in their house, the place seemed a presence in itself with its small rooms and pictures on every wall. It was a home. Something she hoped to make a reality for her own child.

The river seemed more welcoming, too, back then, and she’d often play in the water, weaving in and out of fallen branches, capturing worms and striders. There were times when she’d get stuck in the mud underneath, but her dad was always there to pull her out with his large, bear arms. He’d wrap her in a towel and they’d swing their feet over the water until the chill left her body and dusk settled in.

A reflection of the light outside caught in the face of her watch and she noticed the time. It was about ten to eight. She grabbed the remote from a side table and clicked off the blaring commercials. Next to the remote was a framed picture, a favorite snapshot of her and her son, Tommy. One of the boy’s front teeth was missing and she could see his tongue through the gap.

They had been fishing the whole day for bluegills and carp, and had caught next to nothing. Tommy had eaten half of the cheese bait himself. She let a small laugh follow her smile which soon faded. They were both happy then, just the two of them. She had promised to stay until Tommy made a catch and there was a lot of waiting, though neither of them cared.

47 The picture was taken at the end of the day, near dusk when the fish regained an appetite for metal hooks and bait. Carrie Anne was so proud when Tommy reeled in a small carp. She dug in her tackle box for the disposable camera and asked a nearby fisherman to take the picture. She remembered how the man had helped Tommy unhook

the fish and release it back to the water, remembered watching the two laugh together and

talk about their catches, remembered thinking what a real father and son might look like.

Placing the frame back in its place, she saw the ring on her hand and shook her

head. Tommy was a little older now and she worried about him more and more,

especially when they were apart for longer than a day. She knew she couldn’t protect him

forever. He needed a real father, one who could help him with change.

Baxter welcomed her into the kitchen with a rolling chirp. She grabbed an opened

can of cat food from the refrigerator and browsed the shelves for herself, letting the cool

air wrap around her body. She took out a bag of lettuce and a Styrofoam container of the

prior night’s leftovers, a half-eaten hamburger and fries with some remnants of cole-slaw.

She mashed the cat food into a small bowl and refilled the water dish on the floor,

dropping in two ice cubes from the freezer. As Baxter buried his face in the food bowl,

Carrie Anne put a colander in the sink and dumped the bag of lettuce into it.

The cordless phone sat upright in its cradle on the counter. She thought about

Tommy and the picture in the other room. With her thumb, she pushed the ring on her

finger in circles. She could feel the muscles in her face tighten and knew there were

worry lines digging into her face which never used to be there.

She took the phone, pressing a number on speed-dial, and walked to the front of

the house. The phone rang once, twice, as she sat on the carpet and slid into her black

48 heels. On the third ring, someone picked up. The voice on the other end was familiar, but not the one intended.

“Yeah,” it said, a trace of annoyance turning the word into an inquiry. Carrie

Anne knew the woman’s voice on the other side of the line.

“Hi, Dani.” Carrie Anne thumbed at the ring, pushing upward. “Is my husband there?”

The voice paused, casual and goading. “He is.”

“Could you put him on? Now?”

“He’s in the middle of something.”

“Dani, I don’t really have time for games.”

The woman on the other line gave an abbreviated laugh. “I didn’t have to pick up, you know.”

Carrie Anne waited. There was the sound of an engine starting outside. She looked outside the top windows again, this time only having to stretch her neck to see. A neighbor sped down the street in an old Chevy, exhaust pushing out of the tailpipe and holes spotting the paint job near the tires. It rattled past the house.

Past the black car.

She wondered if anyone else had noticed the strange car, imagined the eyes inside the vehicle, staring at the side mirror, beyond the smoke, and waiting.

Another voice coughed into the line. “Hey, you still there?” It was a man’s voice, heavy and rough.

49 Carrie Anne held the phone away from her face as the man coughed another time, jarring and phlegmatic. “Joe, it’s your wife.” Her hands grew clammy around the phone and beneath the ring.

“I know who it is, babe. How the hell are you today?”

She gave a sharp exhale through her nose. “I told you not to call me that.

Especially in front of her.”

She had met Dani once, close to a year ago when she was looking for Joe. He had

forgotten Tommy’s birthday for the second time. Dani was leaning against one of the

buildings where Joe worked, picking at the bricks and smoking a long cigarette, the nubs of others scattered at her feet. She was a woman with a crooked smile and wore a cropped haircut and tight jeans. Her body was as much a threat as her eyes, which were not shy in

their evaluation of Carrie Anne. She thought the way Dani licked her lips seemed

reptilian and felt the coldness of the woman’s hand when it stopped her from entering the

building. She left that day without speaking to Joe.

“Hey, hey,” he said into the phone. “No hard feelings. This is just business. Dani

is merely an associate of mine.”

“And I’m just now beginning to understand what all that entails.”

The voice’s playful tone dropped into one of frustration. “What do you want,

Carrie Anne?”

“I’m calling about Tommy.” She thought about the boy’s face in the photograph.

“I just want to know how he is.”

“You need to stop this overmothering bullshit of yours. You’re smothering the

kid.”

50 “I call a few times a day to check on my son when he’s with his negligent father

and now I’m smothering him?”

“Hey, babe. You really oughtta watch what you say. Someone might get the

wrong idea.”

“Where is he? Is he with you? Of course he’s not.”

“He’s safe, that’s all that matters.” Joe began coughing again.

“Who’s watching him? It better not be George.” Carrie Anne began to put

pressure on her fingernails, moving from pinky to thumb and back.

“That’s not very simpatico. George is a fully capable caretaker.”

Her hand balled into a small fist. “That man is no way fit to take care of another

living being, let alone my son. He can’t even handle himself. I don’t trust him for two

seconds.”

“You’re lucky George isn’t around to hear that shit, babe. He wouldn’t be very

happy about that at all. He likes you, you know? Besides, it’s his day off.” He cleared his throat. “Tommy’s perfectly fine.”

Carrie Anne looked outside again, at the car, saw the smoke slipping from its open window. “And what’s with this surveillance detail you have tagged on me?”

“The what?”

“You know I don’t like being followed.” Carrie Anne’s eyes remained on the

street.

“I don’t have a clue what you could be talking about.”

“This car outside isn’t one of yours?”

51 Joe’s laugh crackled through the phone. “Don’t tell me you’ve finally lost it.

You’re starting to sound like you’ve lost all your marbles.”

“I guess nothing should surprise me anymore.” Carrie Anne inspected the heel of

one of her shoes.

“Jesus, it’s not like you live on the street alone. You do have neighbors.” She

could hear Dani’s voice in the background. “Hey, babe, I gotta get going now. You

straight?”

“Just tell me Tommy’s okay.”

“The boy’s fine. I’ll call if anything changes.”

The other line gave in to silence, then static.

When she looked out the window another time, the black car was gone.

She returned to the kitchen and saw the time on the microwave, double-checking her watch. One last time, she went to the other room and looked at the picture of her and

Tommy. She took the frame and kissed the glass. Moving faster, she grabbed her purse from the center island and the Styrofoam box of leftovers. She dug keys out of her purse, shut the garage door behind her, and left the house.

* * *

The morning’s cool was giving in to the day’s warmth as Carrie Anne drove into the city. Being in the car became a small joy and Carrie Anne often thought of accelerating over state lines and southward. Away. One day, she’d tell Tommy to pack up and they’d be gone to live another, better life. A life with more carp and even bigger fish.

52 The commute was a good twenty minutes out of town and onto the interstate and

another ten after reaching the city and its traffic that still lingered despite the lack of

places to go. Many of the shops were boarded up or empty. Even the taller office and

retail buildings were shutting down floor by floor. Businesses recognized a dying venue

and moved away. Without the proper maintenance, the historic buildings with their

stonework, their curls and trims of decades-old architecture and style, were among the

victims of the city’s shaky financial stability.

There were some people who reaped the benefits of such decay as if they were

vultures, scavengers thriving on the loss of others.

In the city’s center, the illusion of wealth remained and Carrie Anne thought of

her mother. She parked in a nearby lot and walked the two blocks to work.

As the receptionist for one of the city’s carbon-copy law firms, she handled phone

calls and ran messages, made countless copies and replaced toner. She was the only one

who could solve the blinking red lights of error on the monstrous copy machine. The

office was busy, lawyers glutting themselves on the fat of the city’s fallout. These were

men like her husband. Men who only sought to gain for the sole purpose of having more

and winning. They would high-five over ruined lives and divorces, and she’d have to

smile and congratulate, accept their half-hearted winks.

Most of the men knew her husband, perhaps even admired him, would glance at the ring on her finger and move along. She’d sometimes remove the ring when it felt too tight, like a rope with its strangle. Each time, she’d feel a simultaneous tingle of liberation, lightness, as well as a paralyzing pull in her chest. Joe never hesitated to remind her of responsibility and loyalty, never hesitated to disregard his own words.

53 The whole day, Carrie Anne thought about her son, the nice man and Tommy releasing the fish from its hook, the choppy water of the river, Baxter and his swishing tail, the slow-moving clouds, the black car in the street with its smoke, mixing with the gray of the sky, becoming part of every breath.

As she left the office’s tall building, the glass door rattled shut behind her. She combed her fingers through her hair and noticed a large amount of her knotted strands in her hand. She let the hairs catch in the breeze and blow away.

The air had grown more humid in the late afternoon. Carrie Anne wondered if the rain had already come and gone or if it had just started to gain momentum.

A nearby church with large stained-glass panels shook the static alive with its bell peal. It seemed everyone on the sidewalks, even the cars inching in the street, moved against the sound as it repeated six times.

Her mind became absorbed in the pulse of her heels on the concrete. The hard noise carried her all the way to her car in its emptied lot.

There was broken glass by the rear of her rusting Buick. She looked for the origin of the shatter, but found nothing but the shining red of the glass. Careful to avoid slicing her toes that peeked out of her shoes, she kicked the shards away from the path of her tires. She never wanted to be stranded in the city, a place where she felt consumed, where everything was brought to the surface to scab and scar.

She passed over the smooth road of the interstate and moved onto streets in need of repair. The overhead streetlights became fewer and farther between.

54 Her engine was humming as she idled at a red light, waiting what seemed a long

while for the change. Before the light switched to green, the streetlamp above turned off,

touching the once illuminated with darkness.

She found small relief in the fact that she was driving instead of walking, and

drove away from the spot where the streetlamp buzzed overhead.

Driving slow down her street, she switched off her brights before pulling into her

driveway, glad to see that the long black Lincoln hadn’t returned for the night.

Instead of opening the garage door, she stepped out of her idling car and onto the

gravel crunch of her driveway, finding difficulty in walking over the stones in heels. She

moved to the front door and peered inside. She tried the doorknob. Locked.

She sighed from deep inside her lungs and thought about Joe’s words from the

morning. She wondered if she was becoming too paranoid, too suspicious. After pulling into the garage, she entered the house the usual way, and was thankful to slip off her shoes and into nothing. Baxter came padding in from the laundry room. He liked it there, where it was warm and the hum of the washer and dryer lulled him into countless naps.

Carrie Anne smiled when he pushed his warm body against her legs, and she scratched him under his chin. The purr hummed through his whole body.

After flicking on all of the large room’s lights, she opened the refrigerator and pulled out another can of half-emptied cat food and pushed it into the bowl on the floor.

Baxter tried to wedge his way between her and the meal, attempting different angles before growing impatient enough to meow.

She stood, away from the bowl. “There.”

55 He was growing plump with age, but was once a boney kitten. A gift from Joe, one of Tommy’s ideas. Her son was unlike any child she had ever known in that he was always thinking of other people, he was always helping her in some way. Especially when Joe’s overnight jobs became more frequent, they were there for each other.

After rinsing the fork, she tossed it into the dishwasher and threw away the empty can under the sink. She thought about the time Tommy asked her to save all of the empty cans for a class project he’d been assigned, how she smoothed down the sharp edges with a file before letting him have them.

The colander with the greens, now wilted, was still in the sink. She frowned at her forgetfulness and at all the tiny bugs that began to fly around which always accompanied rot. She knew they’d be a pain to get rid of.

She shoved the lettuce down the disposal with a wooden spoon and listened as the blades digested and processed the matter into a clear, noisy rumbling.

Drinking water from a plastic bottle, she watched as the liquid drained into her.

She returned to the refrigerator and pulled out the orange juice, half empty, and put it on the center island. From the cabinet underneath, she fished out an unopened bottle of Stoli.

She grabbed the closest cup from one of the overhead cabinets; it happened to be one of Tommy’s, plastic with cartoon turtles rambling around the circumference.

The orange juice was diluted with the vodka, only a small amount at first, and its color remained strong.

She took a sip. When she swallowed, she felt a tremor move through her body.

The hard bite of the alcohol in her throat evoked the rattling cough of her husband. She

56 looked at her finger and the heavy gold on it, thought about the man who helped her son

release the fish from its hook.

Owing to the humidity and moisture in the air and in her hands, it took some

effort, but Carrie Anne was able to pry off the ring. She studied it and its plainness, the

maker’s mark the only impression left on the inside of the band. There was no engraving,

there was nothing to say.

There was another tip of the cup, another swallow. For the second round, there

was less orange juice.

She took the gold ring and felt its weight in her palm. She was standing over the

sink and looked at the drain, open like a mouth, before turning her hand to let the ring

fall. She drank again as the gold clanged in the sink before finding the center and its

plunge. Running water, she stood away from the sink as she flicked the disposal switch.

The sound was more jarring than Joe’s coughs into the receiver until there was no sound,

just a loud metal clang to silence.

After what seemed a few long minutes, she breathed again.

Above the wine bar, next to the portal to the hallway, she pulled an accordion

folder out from where it was hidden.

She leafed through the legal papers and removed the stack closest to the top. It

was page after page of meticulous planning put into motion. She emptied the cup again

and looked at the turtles. Her eyes became glossy until she blinked a number of times.

She knew Joe would never go along with a paternity test, the last leg of proof she needed to stand on in court, and she thought about what she’d have to do to get close to

him in order to get some of his hair, any form of DNA. There was no longer that pull

57 between them. As she fingered the bare spot where the ring had been, she wondered if there ever had been.

With the folder tucked back in its place above the bar, she lowered the lights to sip her drink in the dimness. She thought of the streetlamp that left her without light.

Her eyes narrowed as she looked into the backyard. The moon was reflected and dissected in the river, still choppy, moving faster.

She dropped the cup into the sink when she noticed a figure in the darkness, near the edge of the concrete patio. There was a vibrant dot of orange and she could make out a stream of smoke caught in its glow.

Ducking, she crawled to the upstairs and into her closet. Her fingers moved along the wall above the top shelf. When she found the right spot, she removed a cut piece of dry wall and brought down a metal lockbox. She lifted the lid and pulled out her father’s old snub-nose revolver, something he had given her when her trips to the city became more frequent, something Joe didn’t know she had. She never carried it on her, but liked how it felt in her hands.

The silver of the gun was dull, but allowed a faint shine to surface. The wood grip had the initials S and W carved in, with some of the diamond pattern chipped away. She held the gun and thumbed the cylinder open, careful to keep the bullets inside as she spun it.

Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness of the house and she slipped down the stairs, looking for shadows on the walls.

She checked to see if the figure was still outside and it seemed unmoved, waiting.

She slid into her shoes and stepped outside through a side door and onto the grass. The

58 earth was damp and soft. Her heels sunk into the ground with every step, like stakes, and she began placing all of her weight on the balls of her feet and she took careful steps towards action.

She had the gun pointed at the figure as it spoke, felt the weight of it in her hand.

“Carrie Anne,” it said.

She couldn’t place the voice, but it came from somewhere buried in her past and the mud of the town.

The confidence in her hands became shaky and she felt the alcohol burning in her stomach. “How do you know me?”

He turned to face her, the barrel of the gun. He inhaled, letting the glow illuminate his features. His cheeks were sharp, the face driven by angles, but there was a familiar softness there, too.

“Ollie?” Her skin spidered with anxiety and excitement at once.

“It’s been a hell of a long time, I know.”

She was wiping her forehead, trying to find a place to put the gun.

Olson held out his hand, nodding at the revolver.

Without hesitation, she handed it to him. “God,” she said, holding her chest. “I thought I saw a ghost.” With her thumb, she smoothed out the small diamonds imprinted on her palm.

Smiling with his cigarette between his teeth, he wedged the gun beneath his jacket and behind his back. “What good’s a revolver going to do you? It’s not even a six-shot.”

“It was my dad’s.”

59 “I’ve seen it before.” He took out the gun and studied it, turning it over in his

hands. “Model thirty-six. Classic thirty-eight Special. Your dad liked this gun. A very old-fashioned guy.”

They both smiled.

She noticed Olson still smoked Marlboros, thought about how her dad would call

him a cowboy.

The cold dampness crept up her legs and into her bones. She said, “You want to

come inside?”

The kitchen was warm and Carrie Anne put the lights on a medium setting.

Baxter walked into the room and meowed. He pushed into Carrie Anne and then

moved to Olson, sniffing at his pant leg and hesitating only briefly before he pressed his

body there.

Olson patted the fuzzy black head, which cooed with approval. “Nice guy.”

“He’s usually not so fond of strangers.”

“I guess he has good taste.” Olson’s teeth were as solid as the rest of his face,

though stained.

“It was you in the car this morning, wasn’t it?”

Olson nodded. “Didn’t mean to spook you.”

“Why are you here?” Carrie Anne pulled at her sweater. “Why did you come

back?”

“I could ask you the same question.” He scratched at the hair at the back of his

neck, felt the gun tucked in his waistband. “Here, before I forget to give it back.” He slid

the gun to Carrie Anne across the center island. “You might be needing that.”

60 “What are you talking about?”

“Let me get right down to it.” He shifted his weight and leaned forward, resting

his hands on the counter. “Someone I work for wants you to go away.”

“What? How do you mean?” Her fingers pulled again at the trim of her sweater.

He rubbed the back of his neck and looked at the floor before he straightened and stared into her eyes. There was a stinging there, but she couldn’t close them. She recognized the deep green of Olson’s, the small tremor in his words. “Someone I work for wants you dead.”

Her mouth became dry. “Who?”

“Listen, I know that much and I know it’s soon. I shouldn’t be here, but I am.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“I’m telling you to leave.”

“They have my son, Ollie.” She moved the plastic cup to the sink. “I can’t go.”

“Who is they?”

“My husband.” Olson looked at her left hand, the smoothed-down skin circling

her finger. “Look, that doesn’t matter. I’m not going anywhere without my boy.”

They looked at each other and Olson clicked his tongue against the roof of his

mouth. He rubbed his hands on the face of his pants, as if to wipe off dirt or some other

impurity. “Suit yourself,” he said and turned away from her, slow and hesitant. “Keep

that gun close. Lock your doors.” She watched him, saying nothing. “Bye, Carrie Anne,”

he said, leaving through the garage. He didn’t turn around.

Carrie Anne put the gun in one of the bar’s empty alcoves.

61 It was after midnight. She didn’t even think about sleeping. She transferred a load

of her and Tommy’s shirts from the washer to the dryer and watched as Baxter hummed to sleep. She thought about her son, how she used to sit up with him until he fell asleep.

How, at times, she’d wake up next to him hours later and then go to her own bedroom.

She took the plastic cup from the sink and realized the orange juice container was

empty. There was no shortage of Stoli.

Breathing, she took another swallow of the drink and heard the small sound of

metal against metal, a key turning in the lock.

Despite the alcohol, she was sober in this moment.

She moved near the mouth of the hallway, slipped her hand around the gun,

pulling it from its spot. A large shadow stepped into the house and she heard the crackle

of plastic with footsteps, knew there was the silence of a leather glove on metal.

The gun was waiting at her side, her pulse throbbing in her fingertips. There was

the trigger, her finger hovering against it, ready to pull. She imagined what it would be

like to shoot the man who had remained a stranger since the day he moved into her life,

wondered how he would fall when the bullet burrowed itself into him, his arm, his legs,

his stomach and chest. His head. Wondered if the effect would feel like fireworks or just

the soft suffocation of pillows.

The mind was raging, but her hand remained still. One weight exchanged for

another, the symbol of a ring shifting into its appropriate shape. Carrie Anne smiled,

closed her eyes a moment then opened them, staring at the shadow.

Her voice was clear now, all tremble numbed by the effects of alcohol and the

inevitable.

62 “Hi, Joe,” she said.

There was a moment of restraint before the voice answered. “Hey, babe.”

63

CHAPTER IV

TOMMY

The water had been running into the tub and down the drain for ten minutes now, but there was no change. Just the same rust-water, like the days-old beer left on the

kitchen counter. The boy stood there, staring at the gush with his shirt off. Waiting, he

lost himself to the cracks in the ceiling where lines branched out like veins and eased into

the gradual peel of wallpaper, the broken tile beneath the tub’s cast-iron feet.

It was cold. The room, the water, the floor.

He ran his fingers over his ribs before turning the faucet, stopping the water with a thud. His eyes followed the pool as it circled the drain and was sucked down. There were drops and streams left on the stained porcelain of the tub. In his staring, he inflated the drops into bubbles, tiny breaths of tiny fish escaping, he moved the bubbles into fish bowls with gold tails swimming in circles.

“Done already?” The voice traveled up the stairs like a snake. It twisted itself around the bend at the landing, through the narrow hallway. Its sound cut into the drywall and bounced around the house.

64 “Yeah,” Tommy answered. His throat was sore and the word cracked at the last moment. He allowed the silence that followed to cover him for what seemed only seconds.

It wasn’t the color of the water that bothered him. If anything, the murkiness welcomed him and made him feel like he was home. Home, the one with the river in the backyard. He would lie in the water and look up into the trees, hanging over the water with their arms as lazy as his own, tips sinking into the liquid fog. It was the cold that got to him. He missed the humid warmth from the river that was always on him like a blanket, even when the weather began to bite into his skin. It had been only days since he’d last been at home with his mom, but those days dragged like months. He felt a change and couldn’t place it.

The voice from down the stairs was at the landing now, louder. “What’s taking so long?”

Tommy could hear the man grumble, the squeak of uneven floorboards. He pulled yesterday's shirt over his head, letting the neck’s cotton get stuck on his nose. For a minute, he stayed with the tee halfway over his head, eyes closed. His mom was there in the darkness of his lids, where he began to see the spotty figments of blue dots. He wanted to go home. He thought about how his mom would tug at the bottom of his shirt and tickle his sides as he squirmed it into place. He smiled.

Then he opened his eyes.

This wasn’t his mom’s house. Just the in-between limbo place where his dad left him while he was out, most times, for days. It would always be George that watched him, never anyone else, though he had always hoped for a stranger.

65 He stepped out of the white-brown staleness of the bathroom and into the dark

hallway. The two other rooms on the second floor were bedrooms. One with the relics of

other people, old picture frames with dead faces, soft-bristled brushes with thin strands of hair. Tommy often wondered what had happened to these people, if they had ever moved away from the small, creaking house. A chill possessed the whole place.

The next bedroom was where he’d try to sleep. It was small, damp. When the room was black and his eyes adjusted to the shadows, the light fixture warped itself into strange faces. A monster with a gaping mouth.

He grabbed the last pair of clean socks from his bag under the bed. They smelled like the sheets on his bed at home. Nothing here was half as nice. Everything was musty or molding - at least it appeared that way - everything torn.

The refrigerator door slammed.

Tommy went down the stairs and sat on the bottom step, pulling the socks over his feet. Paused before pushing into the kitchen.

George was at the counter, pouring dark beer into a glass. “Well look who it is.”

“Did my mom call today?” The question was quiet.

He put the can down, a foreign brand with dots over the Os. “Not today, not yesterday. C’mon, kid, you know this.”

“Where is she, do you think?”

“How would I know?” He drank from the glass. “She’s not here. She’s not calling." The man cringed. "Looks like she ran off without you.”

The boy breathed through his nose and looked at his feet, the gold-toed socks. It wasn’t like his mom not to call. She was always calling anytime she got the chance.

66 George got so annoyed by the constant ringing one time that he disconnected the phone,

but Tommy knew to check for that. The phones were fine, but the fact remained: three

days and no call.

His dad would visit, same as he always did. Would pick him up and take him

places: to the movies, on errands, to lunch, sometimes dinner. To the bar with the locked

back room. He'd buy him toys, playing cards, comic books - everything he thought the

boy should have or want. When Tommy would go back to his mom, she’d return half of

the stuff. Rubber band guns, postcards of girls in lace, The Cosa Nostra Handbook. She’d

tell Tommy to go to his room, and then start yelling into the phone.

Tommy knew kids whose parents had the same arguments and often wondered

why his were still married. Why his mom still wore the wedding band. The two already

lived in separate houses, lived separate lives, tossed the boy back and forth like a custody

battle. Sometimes he’d find his mom crying, would tickle her feet till she smiled again

and everything in their world went back to normal.

“Is my dad coming over today?”

George leaned down to be closer. “Your pop’s a busy man.”

“I know.”

“You got a problem with Uncle George?”

Tommy shook his head. He was grateful knowing that he was in no way related to

this man, something his mom would remind him every time he came home.

“Good. Cause it’ll probably be just you and me tonight.”

He knew George worked for his dad, but that’s about all he knew. He didn’t know what kind of work he did when he wasn’t playing babysitter. He wasn’t sure he wanted to

67 know the kind of work a person like George did. He was a big man, on the taller side and round in the front. Had a perpetual shadow on the bottom half of his face, skin under his eyes that puffed forward. Eyes that seemed more black than brown. A large birthmark on the side of his neck. He was always either stumbling around the house with heavy steps or comatose in the front room where the television was a god.

There were no kids in the neighborhood, so Tommy would be stuck inside next to

George on the couch or roaming the walls, looking for new imperfections. They were everywhere.

Sometimes George would be on the couch for hours. The TV would be blaring and he’d be sound asleep. Tommy decided this was either from the beer or the pills he took. The boy couldn't forget how yellow they were, how much they looked like candy.

Once, he asked George how they tasted, if he could have one. He recalled the man’s initial anger, but then the smile that moved over the man’s face as he looked between the bottle and the boy. “Go ahead,” he said. “Just one, though. These babies are strong.”

Tommy remembered waking up in his mom’s arms. His head cloudy and tired.

He’d been out for twenty some hours.

He didn’t visit his dad for a couple months after that incident and was surprised his mom let him go back at all, with the way she reacted. The way her voice screamed before it broke into sobs, the way she tore at her head and ripped through papers when she thought her son was sleeping.

There were times when George would be asleep on the couch or passed out on the floor, unmoving, though sometimes he’d snore. Tommy knew it was the pills. He hid the bottle once, removed some of the pills. George got angry enough that the result was a

68 hole in the kitchen wall, a broken cupboard, and a raised bruise on the boy’s arm, which

he never did show his mom. He had promised to be brave, after all.

This was after Tommy had tried to wake George for five hours straight with no response. He was late for school and ended up missing the whole day. His dad took responsibility for that. Out of some emotion springing from fear and respect, Tommy went along with the lie. Another time, there was hardly any food in the house, so Tommy wanted to ask if they could run to the grocery store. Again, the man was a lump. The boy tried pinching him, tickling him, and everything he could think of, even water. Even a thumb tack he became so desperate.

There was a sandwich on a plate on the counter, next to the empty beer can.

The boy’s stomach twisted and gave a small groan.

George grabbed the plate in one hand, his glass in the other, and turned. Tommy was still there. George scowled. “You gonna move?” He started to shove at the boy’s leg with his shoe.

“Can I have a sandwich?”

George looked at the plate in his hand. “This has jalapeños.”

“So.”

“So make your own sandwich. You know where the stuff is.”

Tommy didn’t want another kick to the shin so he moved to the side.

The man heaved himself into his place on the couch, complaining with a mouthful of sandwich. The volume in the room got louder and the channels began to flick from laughter to screams to Spanish to cheers.

69 There were only two pieces of ham left in the unzipped deli bag on the counter.

He tried to remember how his mom made sandwiches, how she'd cut the crusts off the bread when Tommy was younger. She still made a smiley face out of mustard before spreading it.

He opened the fridge. There wasn’t much besides the beer and stale bread. It didn’t take any searching to see that the only mustard was the spicy brown kind he didn’t like. He opted for ketchup instead, grabbed a few slices of American cheese, two of the white bread. The bottle was shaken and upside down. He squeezed to make the first eye, but the ketchup came out in a glob with some on the counter, which he licked off. If his mom had seen this, she’d yell at him. Something about being sanitary. He knew George didn’t care. Probably wouldn’t even so much as blink if he fell down the stairs and landed on his head. Might be thankful. Relieved.

Tommy didn’t want to be anyone’s problem. He’d get the idea to run away sometimes, but, after the first try, he found the doors locked from the other side and had to ask to be let out. He felt like a dog without the door flap.

There were bars on the windows, too, but those had been up since before he first came to the house. He wondered more about the former owners. The faces in the pictures, grayer than ghosts. Maybe the molded metal was added later, after George moved in. The boy grew more curious about his captor's other work.

The one time he tried to run away from his mom’s house, he wasn’t scolded or confined afterwards. His mom even helped him pack. He only got about eight houses down the street before running back home to find his mom waiting for him on the front porch with a glass of sweet tea.

70 He opened the fridge again, looking for something to drink. He took a cup from the overhead cabinet and filled it with the discolored water from the sink. Sipping it, there was the taste of pipes and impurities, not like the river water he’d often take into his mouth. Tasting the earth and the dirt before spitting it out like a fountain.

There was the sound of gunfire from the TV. George was laughing. “You got ‘em that time, you motherfucker.”

Tommy wanted to get away from the noise. He walked past the room with George and the TV, felt the man’s eyes following him up the stairs. There was a crucifix nailed to the landing. The plaster Jesus's eyes were crying, looking to heaven. Tommy touched the painted red on the side, pictured the man on the couch, kneeling, and wondered about his prayers.

In his room, Tommy sat on the floor and leaned against the bed, biting into his sandwich. When he thought he saw something shifting in the corner, he moved to the bed. He drank more of the water, let it spill down his chin and onto his shirt.

After he finished the sandwich, he laid back to face the ceiling. He saw the light fixture and its face, somehow tamer in the light. After a few minutes of staring, it became a fish. Eyes wide, mouth gaping. Tommy wondered what it would be like to talk to such a creature and remembered one of the stories his mom had read to him when he was smaller, something about a magic wishing fish. He rolled over onto his stomach and pulled a folded piece of paper out of his pocket. He smoothed out the lines in the unfolded photograph, a picture of him and his mom after that long day of fishing. It was one of his favorite times.

71 In the back of his head he could hear her. “When you cast, watch your fingers.

Don’t hook yourself." She illustrated the motions a few times before sitting on the edge of the dock, her face beaming with the day's light. "You have to wait a while," she'd say.

"These things take time.”

While they waited, she made fish faces at him, sucking in her lips and making her eyes as wide as she could. For a while, they just sat in the boat. He remembered liking it, the stillness with the water all around. The idea of floating away.

He insisted on staying until he made his first catch, until dewy dusk settled in. He remembered the old man who took the picture of him and his mom. Wished he could trade the man downstairs for the man behind the camera.

He turned the picture over to the back. In large letters, it said, Love you forever!!!

Mom. Under the words was her trademark smiley face, complete with one eye bigger than the other and sideways. He felt his toes beginning to tingle with numbness and wiggled them. Then he turned the picture back to the front and kissed his mom’s face. The picture was folded again in the boy’s palm when he rolled to his side and cried.

It was late afternoon when he woke.

George was on the phone, probably with his dad. He inched to the end of the bed by the open door and listened to George’s side of the conversation.

“No, I haven’t told him. Why would I do that?”

He heard the man rise from the couch and move toward the steps.

“I’m sure he’s sleeping. He’s always napping around. Nothing much else to do here.” The steps went back to the couch. “He’s not stupid, Joe. He keeps asking questions

72 and I’m running out of shit to tell him. I can only tell him his mom’s a whore so many times.” The TV was playing low and Tommy could hear the channels switching. “Yeah, don't know why you'd want me to tell him that. Maybe if it was true.” There was a frenzied hum of a news story. “Hey, you know what. If it comes out, it comes out. He’ll find out someday and you better hope that’s sooner than later.” George got up again and walked through the back room to the kitchen. “You know, if you wait too long. Well, you know what they say about time making shit worse and what not.” The fridge opened.

Closed. “I don’t know who says that, but it’s true.” A beer can clicked open. “Just get over here when you can. I need some air.”

Tommy never trusted George. The first time he met him, he knew to keep his distance. There was something in that initial meeting, the way the man looked him over like an animal, when his dad first introduced him to George and the house a couple years ago. Even then, he was young, but George was right about one thing: he wasn’t stupid.

He had that feeling of change creeping into him again. His dad was calling

George more than usual these past several days and stopping over less. The boy wanted to hide, to sit alone and think. He longed for the openness of his mom’s house, where there were countless places to hide, though there was never the need to. Nothing to scare him into a hole, not there. So unlike this place, closed off with walls upon walls making the small rooms even more suffocating. Nowhere to escape to, just walls and narrow closets.

If only he could get outside, get back to the river where he’d often get lost in the solemn water. He’d sometimes imagine monsters, long-necked and big-eyed, never hungry. Not like the night’s twisted face in the bedroom ceiling. He looked up, trying not

73 to squeak the bed. The light of the day still had the fixture looking like a fish. An image

flashed into his head and haunted him. It was his mom's face, blue and flaking, like a fish

left out in the sun. The large bulge of the eyes no longer flicking in panic. The face

overcome with stillness. The muscles, the mouth. The stories fell into silence. He was

holding his breath, felt submerged.

He tried to resurface.

Back home, he’d made himself a pole out of a stick and borrowed the cat’s yarn

ball to make a line. He remembered how Bax would purr on the back porch and watch

through the screen with what Tommy imagined was envy as he cast his line into the water

to sit there and wait. He knew he’d never catch a fish in that river, not with a piece of

yarn anyway. He’d sit there for hours, dip his toes in the water just like the boys in the

stories his mom would read to him before bed. Carefree, all of those storybook boys.

His mother wanted him to be a dreamer, he could tell by the way she’d stare at the sky with him, by the books she’d read from. He didn’t like to leave her and she never wanted to let him go. He always felt they were together, though, connected by an invisible line even when he was cast away. A line that will sometimes exist between a mother and her child that can never be severed.

Feeling aimless, he wandered downstairs. George was still on the couch. Cartoons were on and flashing the screen with vibrant neons. Nothing Tommy was interested in.

He was happy to see that the man’s eyes were closed with his head titled down, nestled on a bag of chips.

It was in moments like this that Tommy saw fractions of something pure and somehow good leaking out of the man, the veil of decay disappearing as the conscious

74 mind gave way to sleep. The one tangible lesson he learned from his dad was that you

sometimes had to dig to find the good in people, something he equated to scrounging in

the ground for worms. He liked to think that his mom and dad once went on fishing trips

together, but knew how little patience his father had. The man used to say, "I have an

empire to build," as he hurried out the door and away from parental obligation.

Tommy walked to the back room where there was a piano, stripped down to its

bones. The cover and the back panel were gone, two of the pedals had been removed, and

most of its keys were missing, save for two blacks and four whites. It was much like the

house, once something perhaps grand, now bare and left to fall apart.

He sat at the bench and touched the remaining keys, forcing them into sound, varying the six notes as he stared through the vertical slits of a nearby window. It was getting darker. That change inside of Tommy grew with each note, manifested into an understanding. A knowledge that the phone wasn’t going to ring for him anytime soon and that some sounds could be lost forever.

The fish-like figment of his mother's face flashed again and the house's chill swept through his body. The woman's soft brown hair was dampened to black and covered her eyes. Perhaps she was sleeping, merely lost to a dream.

There was a banging at the front door that jarred Tommy out of his quiet acceptance. The ringing of the doorbell awakened a hope that he had almost abandoned.

George was already at the door. There was an uncertainty in the way he peeked through the side windows. His slowness adjusted itself into a rigid control. He looked for

Tommy, didn’t see the boy where he stood between the front and back rooms.

75 He let a man in the door. Someone different. He was a few inches shorter than

George and had a similar shadow to his face, but looked clean and seemed a hundred pounds lighter.

“Ollie, what’re you doin’ here?” George sounded softer than usual, his question one of bored surprise.

“I’d like to say Joe sent me here, but I came all by myself.”

“Well he’s not gonna like that very much, is he? You know he doesn’t like to mix this shit up. We handle our own jobs. No questions, no mess.”

“Cool it, George. I came to talk to you is all.”

"You could always call."

"Lost the number." The man took his hands out of his pockets to emphasize his shrug.

As George fumbled around in his pockets and looked at the floor, this new man looked at Tommy. He didn’t waver, just stared at him straight, glanced at George, then back at Tommy and nodded towards the TV. The boy shook his head.

George cleared his throat and stood tall again. The TV clicked off behind him. He spun around, knuckles tight. “Hey.”

Tommy could see his teeth were clenched.

“Who’s this? Been keepin’ more secrets than I thought.” The man elbowed

George in the arm.

“Uh, Ollie. This is my nephew. His mom’s on vacation.”

“I didn’t know you had a sister.”

“Well, I. I do. She just needed a favor big time. And you know me.”

76 “Yeah, I do. Didn’t have you pegged for the kid-lovin’ type.”

“Oh, sure. We have loads of fun, don’t we, kiddo?” Eyes wide and ravenous, he

walked over to Tommy, and ruffled the boy’s hair. Tommy ducked.

The stranger interrupted. “Could I get something to drink? Mouth’s been dry all

day.”

“Here, let me get you something.”

As George walked to the fridge, the stranger took a step toward the boy, passed him an envelope.

“Is beer okay?” George said from the kitchen.

“Sounds great.”

The man watched the kitchen. He motioned for the boy to put the envelope away.

George was gone longer than the boy and the stranger liked, but returned with a

poured beer in one hand and a piece of paper in the other.

“Here’s your beer and here’s my number. Next time, call first.”

“Thanks,” he said, sipping the beer and its foam. His nose wrinkled up. “You

actually drink this crap? What is this anyway?”

“Some cheap German shit I can’t pronounce, but it’s real good if you drink

enough of it. Smooth as water now.”

He pushed the glass into George’s hand. “By all means, keep your fire water.”

“It beats drinking the tap.” George took a long sip. “What was it you wanted?”

He made sure George noticed when he looked at the boy, saying, “Maybe another

time.”

“I can send him to another room.”

77 “Not necessary. Besides, these walls look paper thin.” The man folded the piece

of paper George gave him, held it up in a gesture. “I’ll call you.”

George watched the man through the side window, waited until the Lincoln’s

engine started and he drove away. He turned to the boy. “What the hell was that?”

Tommy didn’t answer.

“Out of sight. You are invisible if that ever happens again. Only people you’re

allowed to exist to are me and your dad.”

Tommy closed his eyes, took himself back to the piano. The romance of the broken notes.

“You hear me?” He grabbed the boy’s shirt collar, pulled it tight in his hand, and pinned him against the wall. “You think this is funny?”

The boy breathed shallow through his nose. The envelope began to inch out from beneath his waistband. He felt the edges scrape against his side, his body stretching upward to match George’s pull.

George let him go, rubbed at his own neck. Tommy ran upstairs.

The TV was on again. George settled on a comedy, Tommy could tell by the intermittent and recorded laughter.

It was dark outside, and the dim light of the nightstand lamp had little effect on the room.

Tommy held his neck. He felt a small abrasion under his right ear. The burn of fingertip to worn skin.

He thought about the rusted water and the river back home. He thought about the piano, about the line that exists between two people no matter how far apart.

78 Tommy opened the envelope and pulled out the familiar picture. He was looking

at his mom again, and himself. He was staring at that moment in time with the rubber

boots. This photograph was smoothed out, only a small bend near the middle. He pulled

his own copy out of his pocket. Unfolded it.

Copies. Two Tommies, two mothers. Identical, though the smiles gained new

meaning in their doubling. The boy understood the message.

That change had found a home in him, settled in like a rock buries itself in the

muck of the river bottom. A line had been severed and folded in on itself at once. That

unbreakable line between mother and child.

There was no possibility of escape now. He’d probably be stuck in that house

until he, too, became a graying face. Some relic left to petrify in a room.

There wasn’t time for tears. The combination of shock and denial numbed him

and frightened his senses into a hole. He needed something to lose himself in. He thought

of the piano and moved down the steps.

On his way, he saw the pill bottle, the light of the television bouncing off its

plastic.

George was lost again, awake but unaware of anything existing outside the curve

of the screen, the tubes pushing false life into half-opened eyes.

Tommy stopped and stared at the man. The face became something new with every flicker of the screen. Sometimes tame, other times monstrous. Every side was exposed.

The house’s chill nestled deeper in the boy’s body, stubborn like a tick.

79 There was a small period of silence, abbreviated by the stale twang of too-sharp piano keys. The notes bouncing off the walls, getting lost in the laugh track.

Tommy thought about his mom. About his real home and the river.

Images flicked across his mind like muted channels.

The front room was illuminated in bursts, a pause of silent darkness between show and commercial. An echo of piano keys could still be heard in those small spaces.

A beer waited on the kitchen counter, foam sinking into the darkness of the stout.

Tommy listened for George, heard only the pockets of noise and silence, each ebbing into the other. He reached into his pocket and grabbed the pills he'd hoarded for so long.

Listening, all nervousness losing itself to intent, he broke open one yellow capsule and poured the powder into the beer.

Noise. Silence. Every hair on the boy's body was alert and alive, sensing, waiting for the creak of floorboards under the weight of the monstrous.

He broke another capsule, dumped the pixie stick powder down, watched it dissolve into the foam and down, diffusing. He broke another capsule. Another. Listened.

Another. He felt around in his pocket. Nothing left.

On his way to the stairs, he saw George's face as it turned. Another gargoyle grotesque, another shade on the face. When he reached the landing at the top of the stairs, he touched the eyes of Jesus, felt the dampness of the house pouring through. He fell into his room, knelt at his bed, and, for the first time since he could remember, he prayed.

There was movement downstairs. George was in the kitchen. Tommy heard the clang of silverware on plastic, the rain-stick sound of cereal pouring. George was at the

80 bottom of the steps. He tapped on the rungs of the banister and they echoed through the

hallway. An apologetic Morse code.

“Hey, kiddo. You, uh, wanna come down here? Got some cereal, that frosted,

flaky kind.” He played the rungs again. “There’s a line-up of all your favorite shows.”

Tommy knew he was being baited, but the effort was taken into consideration.

George didn’t raise his voice this time, he didn’t plow upstairs like some other

days when Tommy refused to answer. He just walked away. This was followed by a

sharp rattle. Familiar.

The boy's senses were predatory, perched on the edge of every sound. He heard the crinkle of foam on the beer, the slide of its glass on the counter.

He waited hours until the station gave way to static, the off-air buzz of neglect.

He pushed his things into his bag and walked away, past the room with its dead faces and down the stairs, his back to the crucifix nailed to the wall. He dropped his stuff by the door and tried the knob, knowing it was locked.

The keys were in the George’s pocket, where the man's cell phone had been humming for hours now, unanswered. He looked up at the face and waited. It didn't move, no snores breathed out through its nose, the rise and fall of the chest was lost, it had sunk down and out of the man, into the floorboards. The boy wanted to reach out, feel for a pulse, but he couldn't bring his hands away from his sides. His body hummed in harmony with an idling car outside.

When Tommy let himself out of the house, he felt like he was floating, felt like he was going home. He moved away from the light fixture faces, into the steady beam of the

Lincoln's headlights, and to the arms of a stranger.

81

CHAPTER V

OLSON

A new kind of life was unfolding, like I'd strapped on the shoes of a different man. Weightless and cement all at once, foreign and familiar. Ancient and alien.

I felt this way a little over a decade ago and find myself lapsing back to those feelings, those flashes of existence like blips on a cinema screen.

Branches and dead leaves soaking in the river reminded me of what I was leaving behind. The water hummed with the movement of insects, of children splashing around the bend, of dammed up willow twigs and thoughts. There were flickers of faces, and, finally, one face. Her face. It was beautiful, even in its distortion.

Her arms on my shoulders chilled me, and I could hardly believe she was there, really behind me, as if that face in the water was merely a dream. Her fingers slipped beneath my collar and pressed into my skin, smoothed out the tension like folds in bed sheets. She had a thing for repair, for fixing what'd been broken, and, just like the water, I hummed, eyes closed, dipping into her calm. She was the confessional somehow promising me the lie of absolution. How could any one person deliver another from sin? I

82 realized I had no desire for such deliverance. It all seemed too easy. Even now.

Especially.

When she bent to my ear to speak, I sensed the hairs on my neck reaching. "You

ready?" she asked.

It never mattered where we were going (and I know it is only with distance that I can claim this), but she always had a destination in mind, even if the place was no place, just the goal of getting lost, winding ourselves into new territory. Her body, too, was like this. She was an awkward arabesque. The lines of her face departing for those of her neck cutting seamless into her collarbone and below. She'd betray the natural grace of her soft, rounding curves with her stilted jag of a walk, the suit coat she had from her father's youth that she stuck over everything.

We stepped through the mugginess of the day and walked to my Jeep parked in the driveway out front. There were mirrors and mirrors of this in our past, where sometimes we ran, sometimes we swung on weeping branches, and sometimes we waited for the passing of one of those quiet moments we'd share.

Today was a time for such stillness. When I turned the ignition, we sat there in the

ebb and choke of idle before she patted her legs and faced me. "Okay," she said. "Let's

go." Destination nowhere, so I just drove.

In the years that led up to that ride, we buzzed with noise and story, complaints

and ponderments. There was always the sense of unendingness that we were both too

foolish to recognize as delusion. We tried to slow the reality of time into stopping. We

tried without knowing we were trying, and without knowing that to push against such an

inescapable force was counterproductive. So much of memory was lost. Remains so.

83 Our neighborhood bled onto parallel worlds where the bodies of homes were

repeated, the streets just as lightless, in the same disrepair. The frame of the machine

rattled over holes, the soft top cracking like tarpaulin, the dull suffocation of a whip; the

loose bits of fabric flapped against the open air. The day's thickness turned thin as we drove further out, away from the river and its trees. The sun dried the sweat on my forehead, so I scratched. Carrie Anne rummaged in my glove compartment until she found my old, wiry aviators, slid them on. She found half a piece of gum in foil and offered to split it with a gesture. This is how she was raised. Courtesy despite the fact that we both knew she wanted all of what was left in the wrapper. She popped it in her mouth, smiled and pushed the wad in her cheek, turned the knob of the radio and searched for

stations. I don't know why she flicked around, she always settled on the same frequency.

The crackle of static disturbed the charm of the classical piano. Carrie Anne knew the piece despite the chatter and fuzz, was able to name the Russian composer, though I couldn't remember which. There were no such names in my mind's catalogue, but I did know how to tie one hell of a Prusik knot. Useless, perhaps.

We would tie each other up as children. Play pirates and make flags and sails out of her mother's floral sheets, use the clothes line for the obligatory prisoner. Cannonballs and plank walks required little imagination with the river always at hand, always willing.

Rachmaninoff, that was the one. I credited such knowledge to her childhood dance lessons, though I knew she loved classical music, her mom's polished baby grand in the corner of her house. I remember falling in love with the fact that she did ballet as a kid, how this was one of her secrets. She hated any influence her mother had on her, would dress in ways that were aimed to annoy the woman, would refuse to brush her

84 inherited russet-soaked waves. All this, more even, but she never could disown the music.

She possessed no pride in her blatant femininity, a feature she couldn't suppress. It was the smallest of movements that gave her away: tucking a strand of loose brunette behind an ear, the rounded dot of pearl pierced into the fleshy lobe, the pleasant sound she made when clearing her throat. Her fingertips had the effect of striking matches when she'd knock into me, press a hand against my skin to steady her fall. The fact that she was careful not to fall all the way was just another.

The music dripped off the keys through stereo sound. She sniffed, popped a spearmint bubble. The sad, sweeping melancholy of her piano music would at times deceive itself with a lightness, some temporary and staccato high that never lasted quite long enough.

Carrie Anne wiped at her face, composed herself. Pulled the sunglasses from her ears and put them away. I said nothing, just let her be. I had become used to her dips and crescendos. My attention was nevertheless on her face. She seemed lost to contemplation, her body rocking in sync with the road, eyelids closing and dimming over the loud blues of her eyes, silencing. Then they widened, mouthing panic as she shouted, "Hey."

There were only fractions left to jam down on the brakes as I did, the back end of the Jeep jolting us forward. The cause was a cat, shabby and gray with stripes, which stopped in its stride. What I will never forget is the way it stared back at us, maybe only at me. There was no fear in the creatures wizened old eyes, no panic in its posture. It sat, wrapped its tail around to its front paws. The whole thing was unsettling. It was as if the creature was challenging me, daring me to press forward, to step on the gas and go, not knowing which why that pliable body would dart.

85 There was a creak from the passenger door and Carrie Anne was stretching her legs to the pavement, her running shoes pressing soundless against the ground. The cat looked over to her, closed its eyes and moved away, slow. Carrie Anne slid back to her seat, attempted quiet when she closed her door, then had to slam it shut.

We sat in idle silence, Carrie Anne's eyes following after the vagrant animal, long since disappeared behind a broken-down house, that mysterious creature I wasn't wholly sure existed. It seemed reasonable enough to believe that it had evaporated into nothing as soon as it left our sight. The music echoed the phantom feeling. Myself ready and able to vanish just like the cat. And it was as though I was already gone. Carrie Anne sensed it, the wordless communication transmitted through the electricity of the air, as mobile as the currents of sound.

I broke the static. "Hungry?" I asked. She nodded.

Her fingers tapped out the fluid melody of the antique piano as we pulled into the parking lot of the old dive we'd frequent in happier times. Times without the tinge of loss and departure; an interesting overlap between the two. There was the loss of physical bodies, the dearly departed. The leaving that resulted from such loss. The bodies that remained disembarking on their own next journeys.

The drive out to the place was the transitory pulse of shifting landscapes. We followed the indistinguishable bends in the road that hugged the river until we were finally released from its control and allowed to wander with freedom, embark into outside cities. Our suffocated neighborhood turned into the thinning of trees. The grand, sweeping willows traded for twiggy afterthoughts and small hills, with all the

86 insignificance of Braille board bumps. The earth plateaued into horizon and regimented rows of narrow pines lining the side of the small state route.

Carrie Anne tongued out three, four more tiny bubbles with her gum before she wadded it into a napkin from the glove box. "Okay," she said and swung her legs in slow- motion out the door, my eyes on the boniness of her kneecaps, the skin spreading like pale elastic over the bend. We walked. I kicked a stone to the entrance.

Stogie's was the kind of joint where a person immediately took on its smell and mood upon entering. The dark wood of the small building's doors was heavy, thick like the layer of perpetual smoke emerging from phantom mouths, the corners always populated by shadows and sounds. The wood and its effects were everywhere, it was the large beams poking out of the ceiling at even intervals like architectural vertebra, it was the tables, stools, and chairs, it was the bar itself with its own lumber columns reaching to the planks overhead.

It was three in the afternoon. We sat at a table away from the others and I ordered

Screwdrivers and a water from the bar. She was fidgeting with the blinds when I set the drinks down.

"Know what you're getting?" I asked.

"Haven't even looked." She pulled a piece of sauce-stained blue paper from its spot between the salt and pepper. After a minute of browsing, I put in the order for cheese sticks and chicken tenders at the food window with the aproned teenager reading a magazine on a plastic milk crate. He stood and brought the page closer to his face, mouthed the last words, then tossed the mag onto his seat - the cover still obscured - and proceeded slowly to work.

87 The bartender was leaning on our table and taking Carrie Anne's glass away, her

water untouched. "That was fast," I said.

She crunched a piece of ice, raised her eyebrows.

I finished my drink in under a minute, realizing the reason she did the same. All

ice. "I remember when this place used to be reliable," I said, shaking the glass between

us.

"Already took care of that." She smiled at the bartender when he set down two

fresh drinks on our table, taking my empty glass and seeming a bit embarrassed under her

stare. "Much better." She clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth.

I had to agree.

We hadn't spoken much the months after her father's funeral. She thought I didn't show and I never did correct her. Our dads died the same year. We even buried them in the same cemetery, the clay-chunked mound of dirt still piled over my dad, tombstone yet to be placed, when another hole opened up in the earth for hers.

The way I figured it, even if it was true that I hadn't showed at her dad's service it would have to be a fraction of understandable due to the fact that I had gone through the same rigmarole so soon before. Thing is, I was there. I was standing against the wall, staring at the back of her head as she sniffled into a box of tissues. I wanted to comfort her, wrap my arms around her frame to stop its shaking, wanted to kiss her forehead and pay my respects to the body in the box, that remainder of her dad. It didn't matter the want, I was stuck to my place. I tried to will her head to turn, to face me and smile through the pain. I remembered being mad at her for not doing so. Remembered how I

88 left before they closed the casket and took the weighted walk to the hearse and over to the

waiting plot.

I had driven there before the caravan of mourners arrived, parked down the hill

and sat next to my dad. I waited until the murmur of procedure turned into the sound of

cars U-turning by the mausoleums and pulling away and out the gates, waiting for

silence, waiting for dusk and then darkness. Waited because I expected Carrie Anne to

know where to find me that day, to come from behind me and place her hand on my back,

force those welcoming chills to course through my body.

In the months between the funeral and her agreeing to see me before I left town,

before this bar, I retraced my thoughts too many times. A person puts too much pressure

on the memory and impurities find their way in. It's no different than the stones I'd polish

in the rock tumbler my grandfather bought me as a bored and curious boy. The striving

for perfection of clarity is what does it. There's a lesson there I seem to miss every time.

There was an element I always omitted in the first reincarnations of that memory - the one with me in my suit jacket, eyes fixed on the sobbing brunette that was Carrie

Anne in the front row. There was a figure there, sitting next to her, dark at first and foggy. I polished and refined it until I could see the figure was the man her father had come to befriend as a business partner of sorts towards the desperate end of his cancer, during the time when he became less and less of himself. Carrie Anne used to cry, she didn't understand how the mind can slip when the body begins to go. Something we both shared was how she never had a good feeling about the newfound ally of her dad's, the charmer named Joe.

89 It was in his closing weeks when her dad started talking to her less about me and more about marriage, and Joe. That figure burned itself clear in my head, red and haunting, as if his hands were on her face and forcing it forward and away from me when at the funeral. They were the devil hands of her father, possessed, the hands of the demon to do it, the strong, clean hands of Joe. It seemed all her dad could see in the delusion of his dying was all the polish and none of the impurities, none of the corrupt stone that rested beneath the surface, waiting to mar the value of everything it touched. Even Carrie

Anne.

The teenaged cook brought our food out with his hair in a greasy backward slick.

He seemed happier and I noticed Carrie Anne's smile now beaming upon this kid. She had this effect on men, always. To be with her was to capture something as fleeting as daylight, the sun poking out of the clouds on an overcast week.

We spoke in smallish talk as she broke apart her chicken tenders, her fingers dancing away from the steam of the white centers. She did the same with my cheese sticks, wrapping the strings of mozzarella around the outside breading.

With her mother long gone since the news of the cancer some years ago, Carrie

Anne was left alone to tidy the home she grew up in, packing away her father's belongings into boxes.

"I never noticed how little my mom left behind," she said. "It's like she never existed." She tested the marinara sauce with a finger, made a little mmm sound. "I mean, after twenty years of living with someone you'd expect there to be some accidental mingling. It's as if she planned on someday separating from him."

90 "Has she tried to call you at all? Any letters?"

"Not since she left."

"Do you plan on telling her about your dad?"

"I don't know where she is. Don't really think she'd care."

I gouged into the sauce with a cheese stick, the center still hot enough to burn.

"She left him with cancer. She knew how bad it was, that even if went away for a while, it was going to come back. She left him to die."

"You'd think she'd be at least a little curious."

"Not that woman."

I looked at her face, studied the softness there. Her eyes remained on the disappearing steam of the meat. "What kind of mother leaves her daughter like that?" I said.

She ignored my question. Perhaps she wasn't even listening. "I think the only thing that kept my dad kicking so long was his stubbornness. Fucking hardhead."

She never swore. Not that word. She drank more. Her face no longer shrank at the taste of alcohol as it had even months ago, before the funeral and our falling out. Our

Screwdrivers turned to Cape Cods, then Long Islands. The colors getting darker as the sun made its way behind more clouds. The subtle happiness and anxiety of reunion merging into a cold acceptance of the present. She rubbed her arms under the loose fabric of the worn suit coat. I had no extra layers to offer her.

I ripped off the corners of my napkin. Hers must've been on her lap. "What else have you been up to?" I asked.

Her eyes darted to me then back to the food.

91 "You can't tell me it's all been shoving old clothes into boxes."

She dipped a chicken tender in the marinara, chased it with a cheese stick before

swallowing, drank from the Long Island. "Honestly, I really haven't done much more

than that. He had a lot of stuff. I guess it's been a slow process."

I tried my question from another angle. "Had any help?"

She looked at me, eyes sober a moment before slipping back into their dizziness.

She took another mouthful of food and followed it with a bigger sip from her drink. "You

know my dad's friend, Joe?"

"Only from what you've told me."

"Well he's been around to help. It's been good to have someone to talk to." Her

eyes spoke judgment, as if I had been the one who kept out of touch since her father's

funeral. She inherited his stubbornness, something I had already known.

"You think that's a good idea?" It was my turn to drink. I wasn't so much hungry.

"My dad talked to me a lot those last weeks. I could tell he was worried. Told me how he didn't want me to be alone, how I needed someone to take care of me."

I remember discussing Carrie Anne the time her old man and I went shooting. The range empty save for the sound of our voices layered over the noise of our shots, the ringing of casings hitting the floor. He prided himself on raising a tough cookie, as he called her. How she never needed anyone because she always had herself. He said if there was anyone for her it was me and what followed was the silence of reloading. He loved that she wasn't like her mom, talked about how he'd been going to the doctor for more tests. I never asked for elaboration, but in the months that followed his diagnosis, felt as though he had wanted me to. I should've sat him down, but there is such a thing as too

92 late.

Carrie Anne dropped a spot of marinara on the table, cleaned it with her napkin,

continued. "I don't think my dad really knew what all he was into. I don't even know, not

really. Even after all the talking. High-risk business, that's what they both called it. All I

see are shitty hours, late-night phone calls, and reasons to leave without excuses."

"Sounds safe."

"My dad said it's good money. Can't have high profit without the risk, he said. He invested a lot of what he had left in Joe and his outfit. Whatever that is."

"Why so secretive? Doesn't sound like your dad."

Her finger circled the rim of her water glass. "He loved you, you know?"

I watched as her finger traced the mouth of her glass. The glass that wasn't glass, but plastic made to look like glass. All these evidences of things pretending to be something they're not, of men who morphed from real into false, fluctuated between the shattering permanence of glass and the plastic that mocks it, that falls without breaking and gives itself away. I realized it's the real men that break, men like her father, men made of glass, not the plastic imitation of power that was embodied in someone like Joe.

There was no resonance in plastic, only in the fragility of glass. There was the water in the glass, tame enough to drink but, when let loose like it was in the river, wild enough to drown.

We finished our food and left the conversation at the table with the tip.

After a good five minutes in the parking lot with the static crushing the piano into submission, she had to run back for the bathroom. I stopped at the liquor store across the

93 road and bought us a large bottle of cheap vodka and two small ones of ginger ale. She

gave me a look in the car, her eyes all melting ice and knowing.

We stopped at a childhood park on the way to nowhere, continued our tour of

memories. I wondered if she noticed. We sat on a wooden swing, tried to keep it

balanced. The vodka slipped down to a quarter past full. I thought about her dad and his

deathbed favoring of Joe, thought about squeezing her hand. Instead I said, "Maybe in

another life."

She coughed out a laugh, said, "Bullshit."

"Excuse me?"

"You and I both know you don't buy that whole reincarnation racket." She swayed the swing too far right and hit the metal pole that held the swing in place, sending a shudder through the chains.

I steadied us. Lit a cigarette. "You know what I mean, sweetheart. Christians don't believe in that shit either." She'd get rattled when I'd call her out, purse her lips when I called her sweetheart.

I wanted to tease her, turn that pucker into a smile, even a laugh, but the

dampness on her eyes stopped me. Her face was in the river again. She became the water.

I wanted to touch her, but that same teary glaze on her red-veined whites froze me to inaction. She blinked away her worry and was back to control. Her hand pulled at mine when I touched the cigarette to my lips and she took the filter into her mouth, staining it further with her kiss.

I watched as she inhaled.

94 Her eyelids tightened and her nostrils flared. She never smoked, but was known to steal drags when stressed. She did this the same way I stole sips from her wine when she took her mom's bottles from her parent's cellar when we were younger and her mom was still around. The bitterness of the burgundy pushing into my lips and onto my tongue, so deep I could taste it even in remembering. Every time I drank the stuff, I thought of all those times, the two of us sharing vices.

When she exhaled her eyes remained closed, but her mouth lingered open as though paralyzed, the top row of teeth showing just enough to make me wonder about her bite. I could tell she was buzzing from the drag, something I hadn't felt since God knows when. Habit ruined that kind of pleasure. I tried to recall that high, but found myself with no recollection. I looked at her face and remembered. She was vibrato, that silent shaking hum. She was the water's surface when touched, rippling outward so much so I can feel it. She held my hand in hers just inches from her face, the throb in her fingertips quickening, the cigarette burning closer to my skin. The passage of time factorless save for the ashes breaking off and the smoke from her mouth long since lost to the air around us.

Then she did what she never allowed herself to do and inhaled again, deep enough to make her cough. She waved at her face to dry her choked-up tears.

"Well, that was dumb," she said.

When I breathed through the filter again, it was mixed with the taste of her lips, the sticky touch of her gloss. The flavor of strawberries made me associate the woman with something to be devoured. She drove me crazy.

95 We walked back to the car through the ball fields as I finished the cigarette and

tossed it to a wire trash can. She looked away from me, hid her face behind her hair, said,

"I'm scared, Ollie" as we got into the Jeep. I finally got to wrap my arms around her. Felt

her pulse against mine. Thought about how the objects in our life could mingle, get

intertwined, how we'd never have a reason to sort through boxes to separate.

There was a fraction of sun to soothe the bumps on her skin back to smoothness

and I was rubbing her arms, her neck, straightening her hair with my fingers. The sky was

blushing into dusk as she pulled her arms from mine and out of her father's old suit coat

before pressing her nose into my neck and inhaling. She made that little mmm noise again

and kissed me. This began the staccato blur of my memory, a scene that became more of

a feeling, the kind that illuminates the darker days of the life that follows.

I remember offering the blanket in the back of the Jeep, suggesting the grass or

the sand of the baseball diamonds, how she maneuvered herself on top of me and leaned

back against the steering wheel as she unzipped my pants and slipped them down, did the

same with hers. I remember how she laughed when she got stuck in her pants and fell on

the horn with her ass before shifting her weight, slow, onto me as she used the roll-bars for balance.

She shared more vodka and another cigarette as we sat there without our pants, the dew collecting on the grass and wiped clean from our faces, my body. We slipped back into our pants, and her into her coat, and drove for so long and to such a stretch of nowhere with both of us numb to the fuel gauge dipping well below empty.

96 The choking sound happened soon enough to catch the downward slope of a hill that led off the road and into an unlit patch of failed industry. The frantic strobe of the hazard lights warned no one as we slowed into the abandoned parking lot of gas station remnants, pumps still erect but bone dry and thirsting for the next boom or bulldozer.

"You go," she said. "I'll stay."

"You sure?" I asked this knowing full well she was.

I will never forget how she smiled at me, her teeth perfect little soldiers of white, tucked in her gums as though she was crafted to be happy. Made to be separate from me.

That smile the same as one of a child in its desperate attempt to be helpful. "Someone's gotta hold down the fort," she said, tapping twice on the roll bar above her head.

She knew how much I loved my Jeep, I only hoped she didn't have the thought that it held more importance than her. I never did turn to look back at her until I was out of eyeshot. This was me being the fool that I was, that I'd more than likely still prove myself to be if she was still around.

I left her there in the passenger seat and walked, footfalls quickening as I imagined her surrounded by a nomadic gang looking for a warm body to finish, to cut through and torment; plucked from the spot by a hovering circle of lights in which I always had trouble believing in until that time of concern. I pictured my expression if she happened to be missing when I returned. I'd wonder if she was discarded in a shallow ditch, her immaculate and porcelain face shining out from the garbage that had for years collected there, the apathy spreading its veins into the social soul.

97 The alternative was her leaving. My acceptance of this possibility grew as my

arms shared in their struggle with the weight of the gas-filled container on my journey back to the Jeep and its too-silent cargo.

I returned to find her still there and intact, sitting on the hood, somehow still buzzing, and staring skyward at the accumulating stars in the dusk turned bluish-black, the whole night a welcome bruise to forever remain on my mind's skin.

I poured the gasoline into the tank and returned the container to its spot in the back of the Jeep. With the blanket unfolded, I settled myself next to her on the hood and spread the fabric across our legs. She had the bottle of vodka and I saw how close to gone she had gotten it.

"I've been thinking," she said. "About things. About how we're going to die. You,

Ollie. You and me."

I pushed in the blanket under her legs and did the same with mine, creating a cocoon. "Come up with anything good?" I asked.

She made her hands into the shape of guns so there were two, aimed them. There was the pull of imagined triggers and the kickback that followed, in sync with the little bang bang noises she made. "That'll be the way we go." She just loved to play, animating everything like a child. She even blew on the muzzles to cool them. The sound of her gunfire with those rounded out Os pulsed my body to prickling.

"Hey," I told her, "at least it's quick."

She gave me a look with her smoking guns still raised.

"Maybe not so painless."

98 "Good," she said, her hands back at her sides. "I think we need a little reminder sometimes, a kind of wake-up call."

I kissed her neck, said, "I'm worried about you."

She fell asleep on the drive back to her place. I flicked the radio until I found the station with the static and its pianos, all those dead composers. I remember seeing a smile hum at the corner of her mouth. The blanket was balled up into a pillow against the door and I held my arm out to keep her from slipping every time we stopped at intermittent signs and traffic lights, few enough not to wake her.

As we neared the river with the air cooling and muggy, she yawned and cleaned her eyes, wrapped the blanket around her shoulders, and stared out at the lights on the passing homes. There was an unfamiliar car in the driveway parked next to her dad's old

Chevy, now hers. It was a long, white sedan and I knew it had to be Joe's. She saw it, too, shifted in her seat, and pushed out the wrinkles in her jeans, shirt, and coat.

When I parked in the street, she said, "Wait a sec, before you go." She turned the keys and silenced the sound of the idle mixing with the static and fading keys, gestured me to follow her as she stepped out of the Jeep. She saw me staring at the white car, told me, "Ignore it," moved us to a place where we couldn't be seen from the windows.

It was her turn to hold me, feel my pulse against her body, beating through the fabric and down to her skin. She tried to calm me, kissed my neck.

When she told me "I love you," it felt hollow and stilted. I looked into her eyes, squeezed her balmy hands. I searched for more meaning, though I found nothing there, just the emptiness I had imbued into the whole scene.

99 I came to realize that the words were meant, they were as genuine as her sticky palms and trembling irises. I was too selfish and proud to know she was still scared, the words wooden due to her unwillingness to let go and the fate that was surging through every fiber of the moment.

I was the one who was leaving.

She was a swarm of emotion and despite her better judgment, despite her desire to scream and tear at me, clawing like a damned and drowning cat, despite this, she gave me the truth. Her truth. The very same truth I shared but refused to admit, denying it with my silent lips, my retreating hands; I shoved them in my pockets, walked away.

I scooped up what little possessions I had and drove miles until the grass gave way to dust and plains. All water that once was river, crackling down into ruts, lost to ditches and sewer drains. Even in the arid world that swallowed me, choked on my shoelaces as I slid to that bottomless belly of landscape, even there I sensed the water.

The stuff enveloped me, but I remained forever thirsty, forever longing. What's hidden can still surround a person. I was reminded of those guerillas, lurking within sight but never seen. There was a presence and I was never quite sure if it was Carrie Anne, that ethereal woman, or something other. The river perhaps. I was still haunted, supposed that's how I'd stay.

I had taken my Jeep and sped away to be alone with my mind. To discover myself. I drove off into the literal and figurative sunset, wound up west surrounded by sand and a variety of cacti. Everything barren and blinding, nothing at all resembling the fertile murk of my home.

100 Within a few months, there was a reminder of mortality, as if I had swept the funerals under the rug of the past and hoped death would stay hidden. My Jeep did several somersaults with me in it and somehow I survived the tin can crash. There was nothing on the road to cause the flip, just the flat terrain I sped across so many nights in that new life. I began to question the forces that surround us without our knowing.

I came back to the river town, came back as someone I thought was worthy of his glass, but when I saw Carrie Anne was pregnant and round enough to burst, I turned and ran. Not because I couldn't handle it, but because of the news that she had married some big shot, some plastic man named Joe. Instead of staying long enough to return those words that I never did say, I got all yellow-tailed and broken, scurried back into the hole that was the desert.

101

CHAPTER VI

DANI

The big man was on the floor, sniffling. An overgrown infant in an expensive suit coat. Dani leaned against the wall, dragged on her Winston. Though her hands didn't shake, she was nervous. She'd never tell Joe. Not in his current state.

She walked over to him, nudged him in the side with the toe of her boot. "Come on, get up. Get some sleep."

Joe stretched out his legs, pushing against the papers and debris from the mess he made hours earlier. He was looking for something. At least that's what he'd told Dani. He emptied cabinets, drawers, threw glasses across the room, plates and silverware. There was a bottle of orange juice surrounded by its spill in the middle of the kitchen floor. A cold draft leaked inside the apartment from a broken window, the lamp's pole still poking through to the outside. She knew what he wanted to find. Nothing tangible. He was looking for solutions that didn't exist.

Some of the ash from her cigarette floated down and landed on Joe's back, dusting the dark cotton of his coat. She bent over and brushed it off and Joe looked up at her with

102 an eager smile, his eyes bloodshot and manic. He was a little boy with a gun in his pocket, always ready to play at something bigger than he was. As for the gun, she'd never seen him fire off more than a few rounds and those were well off their mark. That's why

George was his muscle, but that was a tool he could no longer flex.

"That would've been an easy enough fix," Joe had said. "What makes this messy is the kid."

When the two came back to the apartment after hearing the news, the place was still intact. Joe was pacing around like a bear after a food bag in a tree. Some people liked to paw at the things that would forever remain out of reach, and this was that pivotal moment when Joe realized what had happened. His dream was waning before it ever got a chance to full.

Dani was always the one to remind him of facts. In part, she felt like this was her real job, not the odd little tasks to which she was assigned. "This shit would never have happened if you didn't kill your wife," she said.

Joe gave a half-smile, his teeth polished and white. "It seemed like a good idea at the time."

"You. Only you would say that. She's dead, Joe."

"A lot of people are dead."

"You know what I mean. Why her?"

Joe stopped in front of Dani, dropping his hands into fists. "You wanted her gone more than anyone."

103 "I wasn't particularly fond of the woman, no. She would've left if you asked."

Dani flicked on a few lights in the apartment to chase away the shadows starting to spread. "Gone, Joe. I wanted her gone. I never said dead."

"There was too much at stake."

"A whole lot of good it did." Dani breathed heavy through her nose. "Now look at what we have. George is dead, Ollie skipped town, the kid's gone. You put us in a shit spot."

That's the point when Joe started to lose it, the false face of control slipped and he punched at a wall. Then came the desperate animal searching and throwing of objects. He ripped open cabinets and boxes with no regard for the contents within, just the idea of damage that reflected the mess in his head. When Dani suggested he eat something, Joe moved his frenzy to the kitchen. Pieces of glass fell scattered around the various items that made it from the fridge to the floor. Joe exhausted himself and sat amongst the chaos.

He was crying.

Dani excused herself to the staircase, listened to the man from the steps. When the sobbing shifted to breathless coughs and then to silence, she walked back to send him to bed. He said he didn't feel like moving, so she brought him a pillow. She cleaned while he slept on the floor.

Growing up an army brat taught Dani many lessons, trained her to handle situations many people were strangers to. She learned at an early age how to keep the world in order when it seemed on the verge of collapse. Her dad's drinking fits, her

104 mother's jealousy, the general disturbance that floated in and out of the heads of everyone involved. These were on that laundry list of items she knew well.

She was an only child, instilling in her the simultaneous notions of entitlement and disappointment. The disappointment being herself, leaving her entitled to thoughts of self-loathing which transformed into the loathing of all else - just another way to cope.

She was daddy's girl, but daddy wanted a boy. The daughter of such a man became one who knew how to throw a ball, fix a car, and spit-polish pairs and pairs of worn and faded combat boots. If the beds weren't made to regulation, she got belted. If she put on a little adolescent weight, she was chastised. On the other hand, when she did a job well or superseded the standards, the praise was poured on thick as gravy.

Dani would try to excel at the things that mattered most to her dad and would often bring him to big, toothy grins, which in time lead her mother to an overall sense of inadequacy when pitted against her daughter. It became constant competition. When her dad got riddled with early onset dementia and put in a home specializing in veteran care,

Dani was out the door faster than her mother could kick.

It was the next day and Joe was back to business. Dani walked in twirling a pair of fuzzy red dice around her finger. She tossed them at Joe on the couch. He had file folders stacked on the cushion beside him.

"You took care of the van, right?"

"I got rid of the van, Joe. Just like you told me to." Dani rubbed her calves and her shins. "Sold it to some albino kid."

Joe looked at her, let out a frustrated sigh and shook his head.

105 "I'm telling you, this kid was whiter than white." She cracked her back. "I'm gonna miss that heap."

"Did you walk back here?"

"Why do you think it took me so long. Selling the van was easy. It's a good ride for a steal of a price."

"Take a cab next time."

"Gotta stay in shape." She patted Joe on his belly. "Never know when you might have to run."

"Not funny." He flipped through papers in an open manila folder. "Saw Ben today."

Dani waited, then asked, "And?"

"He said something about bad energy."

"That's it?"

"Yep. Threw a lot of money at him, too. He wouldn't take it."

Dani pressed against her fingernails with her thumbs.

"We'll need to close the River Rat," said Joe.

"I don't like this."

"Now don't you start on me."

"Who's starting? You didn't have to clean this place last night after someone flipped."

Joe looked up at Dani, the bags heavy under his eyes. "That was a misstep. Let's forget about that." He scratched at the hairs on his neck and went back to his files. "It doesn't matter about Ben, we still have Sam."

106 Dani scoffed. "Are you kidding?"

"And I'm looking into getting some protection." He held up a picture of a man.

There were numbers under the name, a mug shot. The man was fat in the face but

muscular, the plastic chart he was holding looked as small as a post-it in the big, meaty hands. The eyes were black and small, his nose bulbous above the thin lips.

Dani felt the hairs on her neck move. "Jesus, Joe. Protection?"

"Someone's up to something. You think Tommy found his way out of that house alone?"

"The kid's smarter than he looks."

Joe bent a corner of the folder and flicked it. "What all do we know about Ollie?"

"Are you suggesting that he's got something to do with all this? Don't waste your time, I don't think he's capable."

"Never underestimate your enemy."

"Oh, he's our enemy now, is he?" She sucked on the inside of her cheek, said, "I bet he got scared like Ben and got the hell outta Dodge."

Joe never fully trusted Olson. Always had a sneaking suspicion that the man was after his money or his place in the racket. Dani knew otherwise. She even lied about Ollie when Joe was looking for fresh hands, made some phony paperwork to go in his file. She felt it best not to muddy things up by telling Joe that his bright new hire had a past with his shiny clean wife. She knew Ollie and Carrie Anne grew up together just a few houses down from each other on the river. The two had a history that was more intimate than Joe would've liked to hear. She liked Ollie so she kept her mouth shut.

107 "Ever since that shit with Carrie Anne, he's been the one to watch. Fuck, Dani.

You were there. You know exactly what I'm talking about."

She knew why Ollie messed up the job with Carrie Anne, but it wasn't what Joe was thinking.

Dani hated leaving Ollie behind with Carrie Anne's body. She trusted him enough not to rat out the whole crew, but it would get the fire a little too close for comfort.

Everything worked out just fine that day, even with the cops. Somehow Ollie pulled a vanishing act so it became a non-matter. "Just a slip," she'd said. When talking to Joe,

Dani excused the mishap that could've landed them all in jail. The initial mistake was

Joe's and she let him know it.

She watched as Joe tore off the weakened corner of the folder, said, "I think you've lost your mind. Even if he took the kid, so what. Let it be." She rubbed her head, palming her hair down to where it curved just below the ear. It was time for a cut. "You were a shit dad anyways. What do you care?"

Joe's eyes flared and hardened. He put the folder aside and stood.

Dani took a small step backwards. "Listen, Joe." She put a hand out to stop him. It worked this time. His shoulders relaxed as she smoothed out the collar of his shirt and slid her hand down to the belt to pull him closer. "I know you're worried. Everything's going to be fine. You'll see. We just have to lie low for a while, maybe find a new city, work our way up. Rebuild."

"Look, this ain't no broken toy we're talking about. This is serious. I'm lucky enough to have gotten out of that mess with Carrie Anne. Forget the cops, that bitch had to go. And just when I think I can sleep easy again, all of this."

108 "Drop it." She eased him back down to the couch while his eyes were distant, focused on the dark spots inside his head. The patches that eluded his logic and ate at him like a disease.

"And George," he said. "How the hell did that happen? Something's not squaring up."

Dani moved some folders to the floor, sat next to Joe. "Makes perfect sense to me.

He had it coming."

Joe shook his head.

"He knew what he was doing. I told him to stop, he didn't listen. Told him those pills would mean an early grave. I was right."

"That all seems too easy. Too clean. There's more to it, I know that much. He wouldn't fuck around with the kid there. I warned him about that."

"No? Well, your little wonder thug didn't listen."

Joe turned to her, his face not more than an inch away. Dani didn't flinch. She almost missed it, but the man's eyes softened, melting the big boss façade to show the little boy from the night before. At times, she hated how he trusted her enough to show his weakness, even if it was only seconds. She was getting tired of being his crutch. His eyes shifted and settled upon the bareness of her thighs, and he leaned to hold her, his breath warm and hungry on her skin. He kissed her neck, said, "Dani." His lips sucking then tilting to her ear. "Find Ollie."

She stared at the broken window pane, the lamp no longer poking through. The sun and the noise from the street filtered in and made the sharp edges sparkle with light and sound. There was the heat of the day against her arm. When she moved out of the

109 warmth and closer to Joe, she was cold. "I'll see what I can do," she said and kept her

eyes on the window pane.

When Ollie first came into the group, Dani watched him like she watched

everyone. She took her notes, did her background checks, ran the important stuff past Joe.

Olson Greene wasn't as brain-dead or clueless as the other guys in the group. Wasn't tied down by a family or addiction. He smoked cigarettes and stayed sober. He was a perfect candidate for the type of work he was asked to do. If he went missing on the job, it was almost certain that no one would be looking. He was like George in that way, though

George was often the one who made people disappear. Ben was good like that too, though that man's past was foggy at best.

About Sam, he had a wife, but they liked to keep work and home life completely separate so there were no real worries there. His wife wasn't the kind to neb or care much at all when it came to what her husband did for money. As long as she was kept comfortable. "A good wife," Joe would say.

Nothing like Carrie Anne, who was always more interested in giving her kid a safe and stable existence than playing the good wife. Dani gave Joe shit about marrying

Carrie Anne when the woman was knocked up. Said he should've pushed her down some stairs cause kids always complicate that kind of work. And here she was, right again.

Though she was never a fan of the kid being around, she felt a simultaneous pang of worry and relief. She knew Ollie had the kid and that it was for the best. She was sorry the kid had to lose the one functional parent in his life, and then she thought about her

110 own childhood. It wasn't the greatest but it was better than the hand that had been dealt to the boy.

Dani didn't want to sniff the tracks to find them and wished Joe would move on.

She was getting tired of the life she found to be increasingly inextricable. If she made any real attempt to find Ollie and Tommy, she'd find them, and she knew she'd want to stay, shed the role of fox and settle into the rabbit hole.

The thing about Ollie was that he made her feel safe. Perhaps it was the fact that she knew more about him than he realized and kept that information to herself. No one else had to know. In this way, she was his protector. There was the idea of responsibility and privilege. She was guarding the secret thread that made him weak.

If Joe found out.

But Joe was getting warmer. All the puzzle pieces were making sense once turned over and now he had this other man in mind to do the tracking. Bloodhounds find everything. They hunt fox and rabbit at once.

This wasn't the only time she felt her control slip. There was one incident that pushed her into rethinking the world she'd been inhabiting. It came to her in flashes.

Joe often sent her to do the kind of coercion of which George wasn't capable. Her role was persuasion and it required short dresses, low cut and tight, high heels, the baited trap of sex which didn't always work as well as Joe would've liked. It didn't happen much, but sometimes George was required to step in afterwards to serve as a reminder to

111 the contract that was made. Sloppy business. Joe was the crackerjack prizefighter in the ring.

He'd say, "Whatever it takes" and rub her shoulders before she left, said he liked to warm her up. Usually it was just dinners or clubs, but sometimes there was more leg work required. She felt at times like she was on strings, with Joe running the show. That's how it seemed with Mr. Blake. He was a big man with his hands in a lot of cookie jars and was just as greedy as Joe. A good match.

She met George at the River Rat before the gig, had a few drinks, loosened up.

Mr. Blake wasn't interested in dinner and took her back to his house, a gated monstrosity sitting on acres and acres of fenced-off land. Once on the property, Dani's skin started to itch with a claustrophobic anxiety.

The room he took her to was padded and black with soft red lights in pockets lining the room. There was a table in the center with straps. Dani had wanted to leave but remembered how important this particular client was to Joe, thought of his words.

"Whatever it takes."

She never told Joe what happened, much of which was lost to that gray area of the mind that swallows unpleasant events. In the days that followed, she dressed to cover the bruises on her wrists and ankles from the straps, the cuts she had to clean with hydrogen peroxide. It hurt to walk and there was blood when she went to the bathroom. She didn't tell Joe because she knew he would dismiss it and she didn't tell George because she knew he'd take a different approach to Mr. Blake, landing them all in a bad spot.

She always hoped time would do the rest of its work in erasing the memory. Joe was right about more than one thing when he said, "There's no one quite like Mr. Blake."

112 Joe admired the man's power and his connections. The contract between the two was set.

In the end, it didn't amount to much, money being as temporary as it was. And now they had to shut everything down.

* * *

Ever since the job with Mr. Blake, Dani became more attuned to the nearness of strangers and bristled at a heavy touch. Joe chalked it up to stress, but didn't change the way he held her. Sometimes she'd take naps to avoid the contact. Run errands just to get out of the apartment. The feelings had dissipated, but would forever linger under the surface of every interaction.

Dani woke up the day after her talk with Joe to the muffled sound of voices. Joe had company. She threw on a long pair of shorts and a button-down, splashed her face with water in the bathroom sink, and flattened the fringe of her hair that had started to curl.

The groan of the bedroom door hushed the conversation between the two men seated in the main room. Joe stood from the couch and the guest got up from the armchair. It was the man from the mug shot. Dani's welcoming smile dropped and her muscles tightened.

"There she is," Joe said. "Dani, I'd like you to meet Red."

She nodded, but didn't move to shake his hand. The man mirrored her reaction, said, "Nice to see you finally. I've heard so much."

113 His face was harder in person, his body bigger, the hands, too. His lips were pale

and his hair was a solid gray. She wondered what Joe had said about her and why the

man's name was Red, but decided not to linger on the thoughts too long. She went to the

kitchen and fixed a plate of leftovers to microwave.

The appliance hummed and Dani watched as the food rotated inside. She thought

about the light in the oven, how it existed so people could watch their meals as they

cooked. There were other such displays. Hot dogs and rotisserie chickens, encased and stripped down from the creatures they once were, exhibited for the passing consumer, just links away on the chain. Her breakfast was nearing the end of its minutes. She counted down in her head.

With the sound of the alarm came a weight on her shoulder, a hard squeeze that made her breathless, her throat dry. Her whole body surged with the push of panic that shot through her veins.

"Dani." It was Joe's voice, but the hand belonged to Red. Joe said, "Red's going to

be leaving now, but he'll be back later in the week. You'll be seeing much more of him."

She heard him turn to Red, his voice changing its direction.

"Again, so glad you're on board."

Red spoke but Dani could feel that he was still facing her. Though his hand had

long left her shoulder, the warmth of his breath was palpable on her skin. "The pleasure is

entirely mine."

Dani watched the two men walk to the door. While Joe undid the locks, Red

returned his stare to Dani and smiled. She looked away. The man's smile was that of a

demon. His teeth were not teeth but fangs, sharp and pointed like a shark's. She imagined

114 rows and rows of the same yellow spikes and stood frozen and numb, novocained to the point of a cottony deafness, only feeling release when she heard the door with its many locks clicking into place.

Red's hand left its mark on Dani and his predatory grin flooded her with nightmares. Feverish sleep kept her awake and in those extra hours she started her search for Ollie and the missing kid that was surely with him.

Like them, she wanted to run but she already felt ensnared.

115

CHAPTER VII

JOE

Joe watched from the cracked-open slit of his doorway as Red picked apart his meal at the flimsy presswood table in the kitchen. The man's shoulders had a permanent hunch, dipping beneath the thick muscles that made up his neck and stretched between his shoulder blades. Joe could hear the man chewing, ripping into the cheap piece of tough meat, gnawing on the gristle. The beans he scooped onto a spoon using the finger of his other hand, which he sucked clean of sauce. The man sniffed, wiped at his nose with the butt of his palm. He turned his head no more than an inch, but the movement made Joe fall back into the room and out of sight.

Dani left a few days ago and didn't come back. Joe understood why. Being alone with Red, he started to feel as squirmy as Dani had been the night she met the new guy.

The past forty-eight or so hours had stirred in Joe the willingness to reminisce. He felt increasingly alone and isolated, with all the familiar touchstones in his life feeling as if evaporated. He began to regret the death of Carrie, began to question his reasons, his ultimate dysfunction as a human being.

116 He found himself sneaking around more, peering around doorframes, checking locks. Joe had given Red the keys to the apartment prematurely and now could not think of one good, logical reason to ask for them back. Maybe that's why Dani left. Perhaps she saw something in Red that Joe was just beginning to discover. He watched the man perform daily habits, how he ate his food, how he walked, his gestures, movements, the way he slept. Too quiet. As if he wasn't breathing at all.

George was dead, Ollie ran off and so did the kid. He had a pretty good idea that

Ollie had the boy with him, which instilled in him a distrust of a man in whom he had put perhaps too much stock. The people were the sign of a bad economy. He shook his head, rubbed his earlobes. Nothing more than a bunch of failed investments. Now Ben was scared and Dani had up and left again without one word. Joe was getting impatient for her return. She was the co-captain. She kept the ship at ease.

Carrie Anne was like that for him before Tommy came along. Steady. Safe. After the kid was born, she got this look in her eyes. Some people called it a mother's glow, but

Joe saw it for what it was. Alienation. Mutiny. The woman was creating a bond with her son and had made no room for his dad. Joe never felt much like a father anyways, especially when looking at the boy. The newborn's nose was too solid, not small like his mother's, not piggish and snubbed like his own.

When Joe would bark about the bills that had recently spiked, Carrie Anne would stare right back - less stare, more scowl - while cradling the boy in her arms. She rocked him and held him close to her chest as if to say, can't you see. Then, she'd actually say,

"Have you not noticed another mouth to feed? Shall my son grow up without any clothes and run naked all through elementary school? Kids cost money, Joe. What'd you think?"

117 The baby would start wailing and Joe would leave the room. As soon as Carrie Anne

cooed the child back down to silence, Joe was back in the room, but switched to

whispers. His wife held his general parental incompetence against him, which he hated.

He wondered where she got it from. If it was instinct or her childhood was that much

better than his own. He started leaving the house, staying out later, working into the

night, and that wedge between the two cemented into permanence.

* * *

There was noise in the kitchen. He could see the light of the morning in the

hallway and heard the whir of the ceiling fan in the main room. Joe listened to the

comforting chop chop of the knife on the cutting board and allowed himself to smile.

First he thought of Carrie Anne, the old house, then remembered Dani. He knew she'd be

back. She always came back before a week was up. He stretched, sticking his toes beyond

the blanket and into the cool air of the apartment. Another heavy chop bounced against the walls. Joe hoped for ham and cheddar omelets.

As he leaned in the doorway and inhaled, he could not detect the burning odor from the stove or the smell of oil in a skillet. Maybe she had picked up some peaches, the soft fuzzy Georgia kind his mom used to buy when he was little. He couldn't smell those either and figured it must've been the lone cucumber that she had left in the fridge.

There was no one at the stove when he turned the corner. Dani wasn't where he'd thought she'd be, in her usual place beside the sink. Instead, he saw the bottom of one of

Red's boot on the floor. The man kneeled and pulled saran wrap out of its box in slow,

118 methodical pulls, tearing the stuff with his teeth. It was left over from last year's

Christmas with little ornaments and gift boxes and candy canes dotting the clear plastic.

The thing he was wrapping was obscured by his wide, bulbous body and the fridge, but

Joe could see the good meat knife of the floor, the one with the circles on the blade to make each cut more precise. There was blood.

Red was probably a retired butcher. He looked the part with his ham hock hands, the cuts and gouges along his fingers and on his face. These small, brownish slivers became the natural topography of his skin. Scars that shined when caught in the light.

There were three crooked lines on his arm that looked fresh, as if the blood was still wet.

Joe stood there, his thoughts plunging him into a deep-freezer chill. Maybe Red felt confined by the too-small countertops and had to work on the floor. Maybe Joe was wrong about a lot of things.

A dark gray tarp reached across the floor and crinkled under Red's weight. The big man paused. When he turned to face him, Joe saw a streak of pale pale white. Red smiled, all his sharp, yellow teeth slick with spit. "Hey there, Joe." The thin lips closed over the teeth, fell once more into focus, into a pink and painted line.

Joe didn't say anything. His throat felt tight and his pulse rattled in his stomach.

Piece by piece, he allowed the picture to take its shape. Red moved what he was working on to the side, next to the knife, and went back to what was still hidden by his bulk. The parts he moved out of the way were wrapped several times in the festive plastic. Small, baby carrot-sized parts, one the size of a stack of cocktail napkins. The biggest piece was longer, but just as thick around.

119 Joe felt sick. It seemed he pushed against water when he tried to take a step onto

the kitchen's linoleum. There was a full-body resistance. A curl of fabric sat nestled in the

corner of the room, discarded. He recognized the soft, gauzy blue material, and finally

submerged himself enough into the kitchen to see what he had not wanted to see. Dani.

The body was still partially clothed, though the shirt was missing as was the majority of the left arm, the upper part freshly separated from the rest of the mass. It was the way the arm sat away from the body, backwards and turned, that made it look like it didn't belong.

Joe felt hit, hard, in the stomach and dry heaved into the sink, spitting. He ran the water and filled his hands to splash his face. This would take more than cold water.

Red pried off Dani's black combat boots and threw them in the corner with the crumpled shirt. He said, "A little help would be nice," as he slipped her out of her jeans.

Joe didn't budge.

The body kept sliding down the tarp and Red would have to pull it up and hold it in place while he shimmied the legs out of the denim. The socks had holes in the heels but were otherwise thick. One cottony toe flopped over the rest of the foot, and Red grabbed the ankle and started there, peeling off the sock. A red thumbprint was left on the ankle and Joe thought of the drumsticks at the grocery store, how there'd sometimes be blood smeared where the chicken was handled before it was placed under plastic.

He looked at the rest of her body for similar marks. The only clothes left were the mismatched underwear. The black panties in contrast to the navy blue bra that kept its molded shape though the tits relaxed well below the cups and against her chest, the ribcage no longer instilled with that calming rise and fall.

120 There were bruises. Navy blue-black to complement the clothes that remained, a touch of purple, some red from the broken capillaries. The bruises were thick and engulfed large portions of the skin. A heavy collar of discoloration impressed into her neck, on the upper and lower of the still-attached arm. Around her waist, above the left kneecap and around the ankle without the imprint of blood.

He had both the impulse to hit Red over the head with a blunt object, perhaps the cast-iron skillet - he knew exactly where it was in the drawer under the oven - and to cower back to his room, to slip under the covers and sleep until the line between truth and dream got muddy enough to move forward.

The next chop shuddered through his body. And the one after that. What could he do? There was nothing.

He noticed Red cutting off the bra with the knife, one strap slipping off the armless shoulder. He threw the remnants in the pile and slipped the underwear off the side that had been chopped past the knee.

How was the work so easy for Red? Joe couldn't even cut through tomatoes without some difficulty. He let himself watch for the next cut. Red also had a cleaver, with which he did most of the work. It wasn't as easy as he made it sound, he had to tear and pull and rip inside and around the bone, moving it left and right and up and down and in circles until it snapped.

Joe left the apartment. Three flights down and at his car door, he realized he had forgotten his keys, but knew he wouldn't be going back for them. So he walked. He could

121 feel the air on his skin, damp and balmy from the nearby river. He wiped his face. Maybe it was sweat.

He hated that river. It was always so dark and brown, nothing like the commercials he coveted of Caribbean blues and Canadian springs. He preferred life like this, existing as an image he could easily adjust, a world he could manipulate.

It was a good place for the business though. River towns always seemed to provide a level of secrecy, a veil of mystery, and this appealed to him. Location, location.

Plus, the place was small. Near enough to a big city to stay in touch with the rest of civilization, but far enough away to function under its radar.

Joe hadn't walked to town in years and it wasn't the best of days to do so. A misty drizzle coated everything it could touch, even the spots covered by awnings or plastic.

Plastic. He wondered if the dampness would creep under the layers and layers of wrapping and speed up the rotting process, if Dani's skin would wither or toughen as it fell into decay. He rubbed the drizzly residue from his forearm, then thought of Dani's arms plastic-wrapped and ready for a clean disposal.

The police station's front light bulb was out. It seemed it often was when he drove by the place, something he didn't tend to do unless he had to. He studied the office from a distance, wedged between office space and a bakery. These were wedged between other stores. A paper supplies store, Smithy's restaurant with the big bar in front, a real estate company with its green and yellow ads boasting generic happy families with their white picket fences and pearls. A lot of storefronts featured "For Rent" signs in the windows.

And now, many miles down the road in a more isolated part of town, the River Rat had the same. Another failure. Another key element in the organization shut down. More and

122 more inconveniences piling and multiplying like a plague. Joe kicked the sidewalk, teetered his shoe on the curb.

The cops, the cops. He couldn't involve the cops. Something inside him spoke, it said, this could be your only chance. He shook it away, continued walking. There was a tug from within as he passed the front door of the station and it took all he could muster to keep from an upward glance. He chalked it up to nerves. Joe hadn't been that close to walking into the lion's den since his late teens. Sure, he'd been questioned, but who in the small town hadn't. When he got to the end of the sidewalk, he had the desire to turn around and run back to the station, bust through the doors with his story ready and his arms outstretched, begging for the cold tightness of cuffs, the sanctuary of prison. He imagined how life could be worse. He thought of Dani. A lot worse.

Poor girl, she didn't deserve what she got. A least it was over, at least now she could rest.

There was something else that spurred Joe into wanting to turn, the sensation of being watched. He felt eyes on him, wondered, who? and took the street corner. He could circle back towards the apartment and wipe the drizzle from his face, change into dry clothes.

On the way back, his thoughts did sprints, shifting through time like a back and forth pendulum swing. Past to present to past to present.

When Tommy was still in the womb, still developing, before he had a name, Joe would smooth his hands over Carrie Anne's growing belly. All he wanted was contact.

That feeling that parents get when they feel the baby move from the inside. When the kicks finally came, Joe wasn't as excited as he thought he'd be. He wasn't excited at all.

123 Instead, he found the movement strange, the idea of a body within a body like a little

nesting doll nightmare. He'd watch his wife from across the room, how she'd rest books

on top of her roundness, how she'd smile and touch the spots where the baby pushed.

This is when he began to feel the separation. He imagined that it matured alongside the fetus, that it was the fetus, though perhaps it was always there, that divide.

Dani was being packaged like holiday leftovers. Joe's stomach whined under the thought, twisted and pushed him against a brick wall. He forced his breaths, made them slow. He couldn't get it out of his head. Her lips were parted and he could see her teeth, the way she looked when she slept except her eyes were partially open this time. Like a doll. The ones with the moveable eyelids that always gave him the chills.

Her face, her whole body was pale, too pale, white as if painted from the inside with an overlay of translucent blue. The skin was splotchy and stiff, he didn't have to touch it to notice the hardness of death. He'd been to enough funerals. Her lips retained some color. She would've looked good in a casket - now she'll never have that chance.

She was naked now, divided and parceled. Joe wondered how Red separated the trickier parts. Would he lop off the ears and nose, scalp the hair from the head? Joe imagined Red's hands on those intimate places and was overtaken by a surging at the surface of his skin like needles on fire, pricking him to action. Of course, he did nothing.

Joe detoured to the liquor store, bought some Jim Beam and worked at the bottle in the park. The drizzle was spitting harder now and Joe sat under a pavilion on the concrete slab next to a rusted-out trash can. He slugged back the whiskey until he couldn't hold it and then spat at the base of trash can with its flaky blue paint. Each time,

124 the punch got worse and he could feel the acid burning his throat, tongued around in his

mouth and spat again. Joe sobbed and then stopped. He looked around.

The baseball diamonds were empty. The whole park, deserted. It was an okay

town for a family, and Joe imagined doing the things he never did with Tommy. He never

took him to this park, never bought him a glove, never played catch or taught him to

throw, never knew how. Joe played with the buttons on his shirt and pouted. There was

the box at the back of the baseball diamond, behind the fence, where the equipment was

kept. Joe focused on the lock, his vision fuzzy then clear because of the wetness, because

of the way he stared. The lock was left open.

An echo clunked inside the metal of the box, something was in there. The lid moved as if that something was trying to get out. The lock still held the lid down, but was losing its grip with each push. The thing inside rattled, it banged and shook. The lid popped and convulsed. When it flew off its hinges, Joe buried his head inside his arms,

said, "No." He said, "No no no no." He sobbed, he was shaking. He waited and when the

cloud of the panic cleared and there was quiet once more, just the gentle percussion of the

rain against the pavilion's metal roof. Joe looked at the metal box, the lid was down, the

lock was closed. The rust and graffiti interrupted the white. Same as it ever was.

Joe threw the empty bottle in the trash, heard it break against the bottom.

Red sat at the kitchen table, eating a sandwich and watching the rain cling to the

window. Joe searched the apartment for any evidence from what he witnessed only hours

ago. The clothes were gone, the tarp was gone, the body. There were no traces of blood,

the knives were back in the drawer. Red watched Joe, his eyes and chewing mouth the

125 only things that moved. "Looking for something," he said with a mouthful of food, the

bread gobbed up on his teeth.

Joe returned to the kitchen all wide-eyed and scouring. He faced Red, said, "Give

me your keys." He stood there, hand out. An awkward authority at best.

Red did that thing with his lips again, where they pulled back to reveal all those

teeth. It was as if the lips disappeared, the mouth just a too-big hole cut out from a paper

face. There was a sound in the man's throat, a kind of click. He said, "I don't quite think

that's necessary."

The two remained in their places, performing a show down of sorts. Without

moving, it seemed Red was getting closer, his presence engulfing as a fog. Joe lowered his hand, let the shaking that began in his ankles and rose to his neck overwhelm. He nearly collapsed.

"Why her? Why Dani?" This felt like an echo. Joe scratched at the nape of his neck.

"You know why." Red put down his sandwich, swallowed. "She knew too much."

"But." Joe looked at the floor. "That was her job. She was supposed to know, she

was . . . that was her job."

Red shook his head, showed his teeth again. "She was keeping things from you,

Joe."

"No, not Dani."

"She thought it was better to keep you in the dark."

Joe exhaled, moved his eyes to Red's boots propped on the chair's rung.

126 Red put his feet on the floor. "You don't want to be in the dark, do you?" He stood.

"Get out," Joe said. He took two steps back and looked up at the man. He felt small.

Red held out his hands. They looked dirty, a permanent stain imbedded into the skin. He said, "You want me to do a job, I'm going to do it right."

"I think you've done enough." Joe allowed his voice to get louder, his shoulders to push back and straighten.

"You asked for my help, you got it."

Joe shook his head, he looked at the ground. "Stop saying the same thing." It came out in a shout, and Joe looked back up to Red, waiting for the man's reaction.

"I'll be gone soon enough, Joe, but I'm not finished. Not yet." Red moved closer to

Joe and put his hands on his shoulders. "Okay?"

He thought about the bruises that covered Dani's body and shrugged out of Red's hands. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah." He went to Dani's room and locked the door. Breathing in the smell of her shampoo that was left on the pillow, he eventually fell into sleep.

And where was Dani now? In the same place as Carrie Anne? They were both good women. Whenever Joe wanted an escape from his work, he could always count on

Carrie Anne. He would find himself wondering what a normal life would entail. Could he have the picket fence, the family dog? There was Baxter, but the cat always hissed at him and slinked away from his touch. He didn't like cats. This one would curl up next to

Carrie Anne and growled every time Joe got close. He'd considered drowning the cat in

127 the river, but soon he found comfort in Dani, and he stopped being around the house as

much. Carrie Anne had Tommy to take care of and Joe felt pushed out. He had no interest

in playing father when there was far more to be gained from other games.

He remembered the way Carrie Anne would sing the kid to sleep, how he would

light up when she was around. When the kid started crying, she knew just what it would

take to shut him up. She was a good mother. It was her way with everything. She was a

warm, free spirited woman and he was proud to call her his. Her dad was a good man,

too. More than his daughter, he trusted to easy. He took her dad's money, placed it into

small businesses and investments and her dad took comfort in his ability to provide,

talked his daughter into considering Joe through his deathbed whispers. She was too nice

and listened.

Joe toyed with an image in his head of Carrie Anne holding her dad's hand as he died. She was beautiful. The way she closed his eyes and cupped his head to kiss him.

The way she cried against his chest while squeezing and squeezing his hands, his arms.

She shook and it seemed as if she gave her father's frail body some extra seconds of life, but when she pulled away, the man was still. She pulled away and straight to Joe. He stood in the doorway and held her, let her sob while he smoothed over her hair, said,

"shhh, shhh," while staring at her father, at the green line against the black of the monitor.

Maybe he should have loved her. Should have burrowed his head into her neck and said, "It's okay." He should have tried to feel what she was feeling, but the fact still remained: he was numb.

* * *

128 Joe read the local newspaper regularly just to check on the goings-on of the town.

Certain items of interest were if someone big just kicked it, if an auction was being held

at the nearby art gallery, if the group's work was getting too much peripheral attention.

Since George OD'd and especially since Ollie took the boy and ran, he'd been reading

more closely, looking for any potential between-the-line details.

Dani was the one who caught all the red flags before they could go off. Joe kept raising his head to call into the other room for her, before memory resurfaced and twitched him back to the emptiness of the place. He was on his own.

Two days and no news. Joe wondered if he should call Dani's mother, if the woman would care, if she was even alive to hear the news. Joe bit into his Pop Tart, looked at the red gel inside. He read through the morning's paper and landed on an article about a recent death.

Local man, Benjamin Williams drowns in the river. No suspicion of foul play reported. The article continued on with some repeat of an old warning. Be safe around the river, don't walk by the water alone at night, slippery patches, mossy rocks, and the like.

Ben was a careful man who rarely strolled by the river for pleasure. He had a place closer to the city and away from the water. It made no sense.

Red was good. He was thorough. And perhaps most alarming was his variety.

Who next? Joe wondered, and how?

The kid, the kid, the kid. What would Red do to the kid?

129 Joe imagined the kid hanging from a tree limb or chopped into pieces like Dani.

He needed to stress something to Red, get through that terrifying thickness and into his head. Tommy was to be kept alive. The boy was to be harmed in no way.

Even with the extra effort to solidify the demand, Joe was unsure if Red would

listen. It seemed the man had his own agenda, his own way of doing things. It was clear

that Joe was no longer in control.

When Carrie Anne went into labor, they were back in the hospital where her

father had died, and Joe wondered if this bothered his wife. He almost had to laugh. His

wife. His wife who was having their baby. He never would have thought, but here he

was. And as he watched this woman breathe - in, in, out - he remembered the sound of

her father's flat line, the image of the neon green on black plateau. Women used to die in

childbirth all the time and even though this was mostly a problem of the past, Joe

envisioned the flat green line after Carrie Anne's final push, could hear that buzzing tone

of the beeeeeeeeeeeeeee--. Thought about what it would mean if the boy that was going

to be named Thomas Joseph belonged to him and him alone. Maybe he would've been a

better dad.

Dani's words came humming back to him. "Why her?"

His words.

He wanted the boy back, and he was going to do this on his terms. He was going

to start raising him like a real dad. Start taking him to the park, show him how to slide in

the dirt, on the grass. Show him how to throw a football. He was going to do it right. The

right way.

130 Red had said something about doing it the right way.

Joe felt the slow tremble creep back into his hands.

Maybe if he had the boy to himself, he could make up for the years and years of shit by making the kid into something more, teaching him how to be better, how to survive. He started to wonder if he knew how to give these lessons, if he was still in the process of learning.

He could be sure of one thing: Red was now the one in the way.

The apartment was empty. Red was out.

Joe locked the door behind him, double-checked the locks. Listened. He went to his room and opened the closet. He lifted the blanket to get to the trunk and went to turn the combination on the first lock. His heart dropped, his chest felt hollow. The locks were undone. He tried to retrace the last time he was in the chest. It was after Carrie Anne. He couldn't have left the locks like this. He didn't.

His arms felt weak and the lid was heavy. He opened it just enough and then dropped it, letting the lid thud and shake the thick wood. They were gone. His Beretta and the 38 Special he took off of Carrie Anne. Gone. The bullets were gone, too, but that didn't seem to matter.

The sound of the deadbolt unlocking traveled through the hallway. The other locks followed. Click. Click. Click. Joe covered the trunk with the blanket, shut his closet door, and rushed into the kitchen. His heart pounded into his head and out his ears, he felt its throb shake down into his stomach, and into his shoes.

131 Red was unphased by Joe's presence in the room. "Hey there, Joe." He smiled, looked at Joe's hand.

Joe realized he was holding one of the combination locks from the trunk, tucked in his fist. He shoved it in his pocket, smoothed the embossed numbers from his palm with his thumb. "We need to talk," he said.

Red fingered the keys he was holding, said, "I respect a man in your position, Joe.

You have to make some tough decisions. Know right from wrong."

When he stepped back, Joe kicked the cabinets with his heel, steadied himself against the countertop. "Exactly," he said. "Which is why--"

"You see, you're a smart man. You understand why I had to get rid of Dani."

Joe blinked, stood straight as Red walked around the table.

"You understand because you had to do the same with Carrie Anne."

"How," Joe stopped himself. "It's not the same."

"Sure, it's the same. We're talking high risk here. We're talking security."

Joe felt the lock in his pocket, against his thigh. "What did you do with my guns?"

He tried to swallow, found only dryness in his mouth, sucked on his cheek.

Red pushed on the table, made it creak under his weight, pushed again. "You don't

need those anymore. That's why I'm here."

"I need those back."

"To do what needs to be done."

"Red."

Red looked at his watch and said, "Here, I want you to see something." He walked

into the main room and flicked on the television. Joe followed. Red flipped the channels

132 and Joe looked at the man's face. His eyes were like oil slicks and covered in black, his lips curled up into two little dents. "There," he said, facing Joe. "Look."

The whole picture was orange. It flickered like one of those pre-recorded log- burning fireplace videos that they sell on infomercials in the colder months. It was fire. A house fire. A reporter stood on the street and gave the details. He knew that street. It was

Sam's street. Joe tried to listen but the woman in the navy blue blazer was done, said,

"Back to you, Mike."

Red flicked off the television, met Joe's twisted expression. "What?" he said. "No good?"

Joe closed his mouth, tried to conjure words. Wasn't Sam's wife pregnant? He pictured the two fast asleep as the flames burned them alive, the smoke dripping into their lungs as they gasped and choked like land-driven fish.

"Come on." Red laughed. "Joe, relax. They weren't home."

"No," Joe said. "This is bad. This is very bad. You can't do this. You can't keep doing this. Someone's going to put it all together."

"It was an electrical fire, didn't you hear? Good thing they were out of town." Red smiled again.

Joe shook his head. "What exactly were you trying to achieve?"

"Let's think of it as a warning. Sam's a smart enough guy."

"This isn't right. Too much attention, too much." Joe thought of next week's headlines, imagined his face on the front page. Local man behind bars. Linked to multiple murders.

"Don't worry. Everything's taken care of." Red walked back to the kitchen.

133 Joe sat on the couch and put his face in his hands. He kept shaking and shaking his head, felt his palms get wet.

"You know what, Joe. I've gotta get back to work." He jingled his keys at his side before clipping them onto his belt. "I'll see you in a week or so."

134

CHAPTER VIII

OLSON

Tommy's hands didn't shake. They were steady and firm on the rifle, as if he was born with the knowledge of guns. How to aim, shoot. How to kill. I couldn't help but feel that uneasy combination of admiration, jealousy, and fear. It came out in the sweat that began to bead and slip along my forehead, around to the sides of my face.

We were in the dirt, the weapon propped on a tree that had nestled itself there. An

hour passed and I was getting antsy, but Tommy seemed to possess the patience of a

stone as well as the stillness. Daylight weakened, dusk was getting darker. Our clothes

dampened and our eyes adjusted, every sense. I heard the insects moving underneath the

leaves and needles, forgot exactly what my friend Carlo told me about coyotes, but knew

they would soon be lurking. The animals had a tendency to travel in packs, and I got the

idea into my head of their teeth sinking into skin and refusing to budge. Would they

attack Tommy or go for the bigger body first? I leaned closer, was quiet when I spoke.

"Now, whenever you're ready . . . "

135 "I know." Tommy shifted on his elbows, making inches between us. "Shh," he said.

That's when I saw the rabbit. It was large and had a fast-slow lope when it moved, its fatty fur gathering then giving, bunching and falling. Its ears tensed when I scratched at my chin, went to adjust my watch.

I knew Tommy must've been annoyed with me, probably wished I wasn't with him. I could've left him there in the woods and moved on with my life, could've let him get swooped up by someone else. All well and good besides the fact that I couldn't have.

Not possible. Then I thought about how Carrie Anne would feel about that, but as far as I knew she wasn't feeling anything anymore, lacked the ability to humanize whatever thoughts might've remained with her in that placeless or nonexistent zone she now inhabited.

The rabbit relaxed once more, allowed its ears to settle, its eyes to remain as black as ever. Something about rabbits gave me the freaks. Something about the way they stare with that all-encompassing blackness that never changes, always shines and seems scared all the time. And why shouldn't they be afraid, why shouldn't they act as if they're waiting for their necks to snap, their bodies to go limp? Maybe that same blackness would inhabit our own eyes if we were wiser.

I jumped when Tommy took the shot. Felt my heart panic and frenzy and refuse to come down. Tommy placed the gun between us.

The shakes from my body rippled out in my voice. "Good," I said.

The rabbit was dead, didn't even make a noise. I was expecting to see it dart away as all the other rabbits had when I was getting used to hunting. I was still getting used to

136 hunting. If I was successful in landing a shot, the thing would be wheezing on the ground,

eyes bigger and blacker than ever. Abysmal and full of a judgment that made me hate the

idea of living just to one day eventually die. Why begin? Sometimes the rabbits would

scream and cry and it sounded like a person was getting eviscerated kink by kink.

Tommy didn't have these feelings. Didn't have the chance to. When he got his

mark, he got it. End of story. Squirrels, doves, rabbits. Dead or out of sight. Mostly dead.

We tromped back to the house. Tommy carried the rabbit, I carried the rifle, both

objects still warm but growing colder. I sent Tommy inside to clean up and get ready for

dinner. Another boxed meal. I'd take the rabbit over to Carlo's in the morning, have him

prep it. Tommy was eager for that lesson.

He walked through the house and slipped out of his long-sleeved shirt. I lit my

Marlboro. I had switched to reds. They hit me harder. The lights from the inside of the house and how they showcased every movement made me think more about curtains.

Tomorrow, I thought. Another day.

My hand fell onto the rabbit where Tommy had left it on the plywood picnic table. I looked at the bullet hole and flipped the body over, surprised by its weight. The shot went clean through. I wiped my hand against my jeans and let it wander back to the rabbit. The skin slipped easily over the bones underneath. I wondered if every body felt so elastic. Wondered about the kind of people who have animals stuffed. Taxidermy wasn't only for the eccentric or the trophy-minded hunter, it was for those who couldn't let go. If people were allowed to stuff their dead children, their deceased lovers, would they do it just like some people preserve their pets? I thought about Carrie Anne and the

137 others before her, then pushed the rabbit into a cardboard box, flicked the cigarette, and

went inside.

I picked up Tommy from George's place a good month before that outing. I had

broken the rules and gone to George's while Tommy was there. When George played

babysitter, he wasn't supposed to be doing the regular business so therefore there was no

need to see Dani, Sam, or myself on those days. The special circumstance as I saw it had to do with the fact that the boy's father had just shot his mother in the skull and left his crew to clean the mess, which turned into an even bigger mess, naturally. I didn't want to underestimate Joe and figured he might put some pieces together and get why I muddied up the job, so I made myself as scarce as could be.

I had slipped Tommy an envelope that had a picture of him and his mom from the house that I hoped he'd recognize along with a note asking him to flick the porch light when George nodded off, telling him I'd be outside and waiting. I circled the block when

I saw George looking out the window, but I was quick to come back, pocketing myself in a patch of shadows across the street. And I waited, half-sure that there'd be no flicker of

light, that Tommy wouldn't trust me anymore than he seemed to trust anyone that his dad

worked with. Carrie Anne's cat waited with me. I figured he might be a source of comfort

for Tommy if Tommy wanted to leave. A half-assed substitution for the idea of home he

no longer had.

Tommy didn't need to flick the lights, he just opened the door and walked out.

There I was waiting for this signal and then I saw the small little shadow approaching the

car and getting bigger. What startled me was the he was halfway to the car before I

138 noticed him - wasn't even sure it was him. That could've been bad news for me if George

had any idea what I was up to.

When Tommy made it to the car, he didn't hesitate, just got inside and buckled

himself in, stared straight through to the front door.

"My name's Olson," I said. "Ollie."

"He's not my uncle. That man in there."

"I know."

Tommy looked at me and I couldn't quite tell what was going on behind his eyes.

"I brought your cat."

Tommy twisted around and kneeled on the seat cushion. "Baxter." He reached his

fingers through the metal door and rubbed the cat's head. It purred.

"Where're your things?"

"Bedroom. Upstairs."

"I'm going to go and grab everything. You have a bag up there."

He nodded.

"Okay. I'll be right back. Just stay put."

I had my Sig tucked into my jeans and made sure my jacket covered it when I left the car. I'd never killed a man, but I knew George was no stranger to the act so I was grateful for the gun. I opened the door, attempting absolute quiet. The house was cold and the TV was still on. I could see George asleep on the couch in the bright blue-white glow.

He didn't even snore and I when I went up to ensure he had been sleeping, I noticed no

movement and checked the pulse which wasn't there. I saw an empty orange bottle stuck

in between two cushions. Must've been the pills. I was glad Tommy left when he did so

139 he didn't have to find George in the morning. I was no longer concerned about the

amount of noise I made. A good thing, too - the stairs would've given me away.

Tommy's few belongings fit into his bright blue book bag with room to spare.

There were some clothes, a notebook, pencils and pens, and a stuffed bear I could tell

was well-loved. That was it.

I threw the bag in the trunk and put the gun under the flap with the spare tire. "We

should get going." I turned the keys in the ignition and drove.

Tommy adjusted in the seat, fixed the belt. "Where's my mom?"

I didn't know what to say, so said nothing.

"Why did you give me her picture?"

"Tommy."

"She's gone, right? Are you going to take me to her?"

At first, I thought he understood, but the second question ruffled me. "She is gone, Tommy. I'm sorry."

"Was it my dad? It was my dad, wasn't it?" He pulled the picture out of his pocket, tried to smooth out the creases.

"We don't need to talk about that now."

He looked at the two pictures for a long time, just held them in his two hands as if he was searching for the differences. A changed pattern, an added feature, a missing boot.

I decided to drive until we got into Indiana. We'd get a place there and then keep going. It was another half hour of quiet with Tommy just staring at the pictures or at the road in front of us. City lights turned to street lamps turned into just the two headlights then got recycled. The landscape shifted, got even flatter.

140 The cat shifted in its carrier and I could hear it humming along with the engine

and the road. Tommy took the cat out and hugged him, held him on his lap.

"I don't want him going by my feet," I tried to soften my voice, to make it less controlling, "so make sure you put him away if you get tired or anything, okay?"

"Okay," he said. He cleared his throat, a tiny sound. "How did you know my mom? You knew her, right? That's how you knew about me?"

"I did some work for your dad, but I knew your mom before all that. We grew up together. Very close to where you lived with your mom. Grew up right along that same river." I wondered how Tommy felt about the river, if it warmed him or had the opposite effect. If somehow he knew that his mother was found floating in the water. "We were good friends."

"She's gone."

"I know," I said.

We listened to the radio for a bit. I asked him what he liked and he shrugged. I needed to stay awake and opted for classic rock, some Zeppelin and other artists whose names I never knew. When we were about an hour away from the motel where I planned on stopping, I turned off the music.

"We're going to have make up a little story," I said.

"What kind of story?"

"I'm going to have to ask you to lie just a bit," I said. "But it'll make things easier this way. If you want to go back, just let me know and I'll turn around anytime. Just let know and that's what we'll do."

141 "I understand." He curled his fingers around Baxter's tail, scratched under the furry chin. "No. I don't want to go back."

"What about Joe? Your dad, I mean?"

He gave me a look that suggested I was not thinking clearly. That made me understand that this kid was no idiot and didn't want to be with the kind of father he suspected of having killed his mother. "No," he said. "This is better."

"You sure?"

I saw him nod. He was looking out his window and petting the cat which had fallen back to sleep. "What's the lie about?"

"Well, here's the thing. It'll be easier if everyone thinks I'm your dad. Just for the time being."

He nodded again.

"I know this might be hard, Tommy, but it's very important."

"I understand. That's fine."

"So for this trip, you're my son. I'm your dad."

"I got it." He returned Baxter to the carrier and curled against the car door to sleep. I made sure the doors were locked and hoped the boy was really resting and not just pretending to sleep. He needed the escape, he looked tired. All kids should have the chance to make dreams. I just hoped his were happy.

We landed in the dry parts of Kansas some days later. I remember my own acclimation being slow and knew I was stubborn when it came to any kind of change.

Tommy seemed to have the same issues.

142 "It's too dry here." Tommy scratched at the skin on his elbows and at the back of his neck.

His movements got me to feeling all itchy as well. I resisted the urge, tried demonstration. "You have to let yourself get acclimated. It takes time."

"How long?" His nails were at his scalp now, pushing through the hair that needed cut. I'd have to take him to a barber shop or one of the five dollar places in town. I wondered if he'd wiggle in the chair like I used to as a child or if he'd have the precocious patience I imagined of him. I pictured him proud on the cracked leather swivel chair, eyes closed, waiting, trusting. Or maybe he'd watch as the scraps fell over his smock and onto the floor.

Ten years back was when I first met Carlo. I needed work and went looking for a relative I thought I had, but now think I had made up in my head. A cousin that I yellow- booked but never found. That was the first time I left Carrie Anne.

A change of scenery, something new. I needed money and the river town and its surrounding communities just weren't making it. What I figured was I'd stay with my cousin, pay low-rate rent, if any, and then return home all rich and proud and ready to begin, hoping that maybe she'd be, too. It seemed all of my dumbest ideas revealed themselves as such only in retrospect. Something that's worried me ever since.

Of course, the jobs weren't any better a few states into the country, but I was a hardhead and decided to stick to my guns all alone and unkempt and wasted. I saw the first "For Rent" sign and my search for a temporary place ended there at Carlo's. His size was on the Samoan side of big, he was tall and built broad with a nose and body like a

143 wedge. He reminded me of Ben, but he was much more vocal, used large sweeping

gestures and gave generous pats on the back.

He ran a one-man landscaping/maintenance/remodeling company and the solo

work took him too long so he was having a piece of trouble himself. We saved each

other. I saved him the embarrassment of having to close the self-started business that his entire family claimed would collapse within months. He saved me that of a man running back home after making a big scene with nothing to show for it.

Work picked up. We made a good team. I learned a lot from Carlo. How to do electrical work, how to manicure a rock garden, how to shoot a variety of guns, some with more success than others.

He handed me a shotgun and said, "Here, this'll take your mind off things."

We got to a field and practiced. He swapped the shotgun for the rifle and took me to the nearby patch of woods.

He would say, "This shit'll get your blood pumping, endorphins up. You'll get stoked. We're talking super happy in-the-zone type shit." Carlo was always talking about

endorphins and ways to get the body and mind in a better place. He was all about shotgun

therapy and whiskey tonics. I bought his method. Shot at pheasants.

When we did handguns back in the field, he switched out snub-nosed for long-

barreled for military grade sidearm. When I got good enough at hitting the flat targets,

which didn't take but a day, he lined up an assortment of cans and busted television sets

and other random trash. Maybe I was intimidated by the familiarity of everyday objects,

something that pushed the action into the real, and I had to reacquaint myself with

accuracy all over again. I got it, though. And damn if those little plink plinks and shatters

144 of glass didn't calm the mess in my head. I began to think more clearly, to really sit down and contemplate my life and the world and the universe. Deep shit like that. I don't think I ever thought a day in my life before those crystallizing months in which I tried to soak up all that Carlo had to offer.

Could've been the absence of the river that had weighed on me my whole life, but

I felt lighter, as if I was hung out on a line to dry. I felt faster, unbound, refreshed.

Hunting the living wasn't as much of a success. It got me anxious and twitchy.

Especially after all the stories Carlo told about his run-ins with coyotes, bears, and the like both here and elsewhere. I got to thinking more and more about being the hunted, heard heavy footsteps and breath. Carlo told me to relax.

He disappeared on me one day, and that undid any progress that I had managed.

We were out in the woods and he went to piss and then an hour went by, easy. I was out there, trekked out to the middle and turned around so many times I didn't know which way to take to go back. I was afraid that if I did try to shoot at something, that my reflexes would mingle too much with my nerves and then there'd be Carlo, with my first bulls-eye right between his eyes, or plopped into his neck or chest or stomach.

Somewhere fatal. Accidents happen, but I don't think I could live with something like that on me. Not Carlo anyway. He was a good man.

There was no one else out there in the woods. Never was. I got to running in circles, even tried marking the trees by chipping off some bark. I imagined having to stay out there in the night and thought about burrowing myself under dirt for protection. My watch was broken all the time so it wasn't even a reliable source of time. I tapped at the face. Damn. It must've been hours.

145 My body got a bit tired and I was hungry, so I sat and propped myself against a

tree. From there, I tried yelling. I called out Carlo's name and then started rambling to

myself about how I hated the stretches and stretches of dirt with only these small swaths

of dense forest. I missed the willow trees back home. Missed a lot more than the trees.

Carlo found me in the middle of my construction of a fort. I was so busy piling up

fallen limbs and branches that I didn't even hear him coming until he was about twenty

feet away.

"Holy she-ite, you're hard to find," he said.

I wiped at my nose and forehead with my sleeve. "Yeah, thanks for that."

"Survival 101, buddy," Carlo said. He patted me extra hard on the back and laughed.

"Where'd you go? You just fucking left."

"Got a call," he said. "I wasn't thinking and just ran back to the house. Figured I'd be back before you knew I was gone, but then - you know Mrs. McGuire, the one with the poodles? - well, she's the one that called. Basement all flooded and her husband's at work and she played all helpless so I helped." He rubbed his hands together and studied my fort. "That's one hell of a place you got there."

Baxter and I ate lunch while Tommy was off at Carlo's friend's place learning for the day. Eileen Small taught home-school kids in her finished basement and Carlo sweet- talked her into taking Tommy well into September.

She had kind eyes and a generous smile, wore flower prints and jeans. I could tell

Carlo had a thing for her and that she shared the interest. He told me about the time he

146 tried to woo her with a bottle of wine he special-ordered from a specialty liquor store two

towns away. When she said she preferred white over red, he ran out to the nearest gas

station, brought back a cheap Chardonnay, and they had a good night. I hoped their

relationship stayed intact while Tommy and I were around, otherwise Eileen could've

caused some trouble, asked too many questions. I paid her in cash, kept mention of my

name to a minimum, just in case.

I pushed around the last of my light cigarettes on the nicked-up faux wood kitchen table, brushed off the crumbs from my sandwich. There were three gold rings on the tube of tobacco and I played with the idea of circles and the possibilities of something so never ending. The concept seemed unrealistic. I held out my hand and imagined a ring on my finger. Carrie Anne often wandered into my head during the lull of lazy afternoons and in the wide-open expanses of night when her son was sleeping.

Years ago, when she was pregnant with Tommy, I had come back to extend my stay with Carlo. The jobs picked up and we had plenty to keep us busy. We'd spend our days working then shoot off the day's steam with bullets and bourbon. I had a lot of dreams back then.

It was always Carrie Anne. Her fingers trailing over the belly grown big from the body inside. The tips of her nails pressed harder, pushing white lines into the pink flush.

The tight skin pulled more and more taut until its final deflation when only the bump would remain, useless and hollow and empty. The belly-button widened and popped

outward, her hair was long and falling in tired threads over the exposed flesh. She'd blow

on her body to cool its warmth, she was cooing lullabies, humming the same verse until

she slept. Sometimes I was there, sometimes Joe, sometimes both. I remember one dream

147 that treaded the fine line between fantasy and nightmare before fully submerging itself into hell.

It was me and her at first, an infant in her arms. She nursed while I kissed her shoulders and the skin along her neck leading to the nape and its fine hair that stuck to my lips. I loved that area of her body, remembered touching one then another then another of the birthmarks there. Then Joe would come in and I'd be behind glass, like a room reserved for observation and interrogation. The picture lost its color, faded to black and white, got all spotted up like a damaged reel of film. Then there was no light, a mental loss of power. When the light returned, Joe was gone, the glass partition, the kid.

It was just Carrie Anne's body lying lifeless in the chair, her still-full abdomen ripped open, split from the neck to the navel. The color came back, had crimson-tinted lenses.

At the table, Tommy off at Eileen's, I looked at my cigarette and its circles, held out my hand and looked at the empty spot where a ring could be. Baxter stretched and rolled over on the linoleum and yawned, letting out a squeak.

He followed me upstairs. I thought about napping, was thankful for the absence of those dust-covered dreams. But now Tommy was the one with the nightmares. He'd been asking more and more if he could stay in my room to sleep. He had the wild look of someone desperate and frightened and I let him stay in my bed. I offered to switch rooms with him, but that wasn't the point. When a person gets spooked, he wants someone there.

Tommy told me he could no longer get to sleep because of the nightmares and that, when he finally began to drift off, there'd be a loud banging, like something big knocking hard at the side of the house. "It's outside," he'd say and then hug me until he got tired again.

148 I got to thinking of the nights when Carrie Anne and I slept in the same bed back

in high school. My dad didn't care and wasn't around the house much. I'd have these

recurrent dreams of the river and its trees. The branches wrapped tight and pulled slowly and stretched out my limbs like some medieval torture device. Carrie Anne would run her fingers through my hair and kiss my forehead. "It's okay," she'd say. "It's okay now. I'm here."

Tommy's nightmares were different. There was a red ball that would be bouncing and bouncing in front of him, constant and repetitive without anyone controlling it. It acted on its own and kept the same rhythm. Bouncing, bouncing, over and over. Thump.

Thump. Thump. When he went to grab it, to make it stop, his hands were gone. They'd been cut off at the wrist. He was glued to the spot, he said, with only his arms able to move. He demonstrated by flailing a little as he sat up in bed. If the hands had been there, his reach would be just enough to grab the ball. He put his arms down again. There was the bouncing, the bouncing. The thump thump thump. He forgot about his hands being gone eventually and watched the ball, wanted to stop the sound. He reached out to grab the ball. His hands were gone and the cycle continued.

Tommy was a different kind of kid at night. He pulled away during the day, seemed quiet and annoyed when he wasn't in the middle of something he found interesting like hunting. His interest in animals increased and he had been studying the way Baxter cleaned himself, how the cat sauntered in and out of rooms, barreled up the steps. When Tommy climbed into bed with me, he made sure Baxter was in the house if his marble-roll of a purr couldn't be heard from the foot of the bed. I had to get out of bed on a few occasions to put Tommy at ease so he could sleep.

149 I came into his room to clean and Baxter was on the bed. He meowed and pushed

his head against mine so I rubbed his neck and flattened out the fur on his back, listened to the lilting purr as it motored out louder and louder. "How're you doing, Bax?" I said.

"What're we gonna do with him, huh? You think he's turning out okay?"

His eyes made crescents and he flipped onto his back and offered his belly. I

began scratching and reached for a lone sock on the floor. There was a fuzzy brown foot

sticking out from under the bed about a foot away. It was Tommy's stuffed bear, but it

was different. The eyes had been ripped out, torn as if with a scissors, maybe a knife or

teeth. I couldn't remember the bear as it had been before, whether its eyes were hard,

black plastic, maybe they were the kind with color. Instead of plastic, maybe the eyes had

been buttons, maybe just thread strung through to make circles.

I tucked the bear back under the bed and left the room. Baxter followed.

I told Carlo about the bear after swapping out some old light fixtures for new ones

at Eileen's. We did the job for free, but Carlo took me out for beers afterwards as

payment for my help.

"Couldn't do this shit without you, man." He said and we clinked our bottles

together. He drank Corona with lime, I opted for Bud.

"Never a problem. I'm glad for the work."

He sat and slid his bottle from one hand to the other before talking. "So I've been

mulling something over in my head," he said.

"What's that?"

150 "Eileen says you got a good boy there, but she doesn't like how he's getting along

with the other kids. She told me not to say anything."

"What's the problem exactly?"

"Nothing serious. I guess he just keeps to himself a lot and I can understand that.

Kid comes in to a new place, it takes some time to adjust to things, you know?"

I nodded at the bartender who kept smiling at me and checking on the progress of

our drinks. She was a good ten years younger than me, I'd guess, with her hair pulled

back in a tight bun which only accentuated the shape of everything else.

Carlo continued. "The thing that's got Eileen worried is how he watches the kid

and keeps drawing pictures of animals all bloody and stuff. One kid called him weird and

he growled."

"You think I should say something to him."

He pulled at the collar of his tee shirt, loosened it. "I don't know about that kid,

Ollie. Something about him seems off."

"I'm starting to see what you mean."

The girl gave us two more.

"Thanks, Mel," he said.

She winked at Carlo and got stuck in a chat with an older man a few stools down.

"Like that thing with the bear you were telling me about," he said. "I shouldn't say anything, you know, and I don't mean nothing by it. He's your kid and maybe you should know."

"It's good to know."

"He's just strange, is all."

151 We both finished our beers and started on the new ones.

Carlo got to sliding the bottle around clockwise then counter, in small then larger rounds. "But I guess you can say that about a lot of kids these days. I just don't get 'em anymore. They're not like how we were as kids. Not how I was at least." He looked at me then down again. "The world's different. Something's missing, I just don't know what it is. Bunch a soulless little hearts out there it seems. I have to admit, though, kid's a natural when it comes to shooting."

I thought about the rabbit, how it fell into nothing with one shot. I decided not to mention how that most recent outing got under my skin the way it had. Carlo didn't need to know.

He said, "It takes more than good aim to kill something."

The next week, I watched Tommy more closely. I noticed the way he brushed his teeth before bed, how he spread strawberry jam on his toast after scooping globs of it out with a butter knife, how he picked up Baxter and hugged him and then just put him back on the floor and walked away, lured by something else, unseen. We went hunting and we got more rabbits with him insisting that we stay out longer and longer each time, into the night. I didn't like it, felt an added pressure from the surroundings, almost claustrophobic.

I wanted to ask Carlo if he ever felt so constricted in a place so big. He'd probably laugh and pat me on the back, dismiss it as a result of readjustment.

Thursday and Tommy was at Eileen's again. Another jobless day for Carlo and me which meant more sitting around with my head.

I took a walk.

152 When I got back to the house, I felt the same smallness that I did in the woods that one day. I knew Baxter could help, but I hadn't seen him since before Tommy left in the morning. He had taken his time getting ready and we left the house in a hurry. I hoped that I hadn't let Baxter slip out. I didn't like him being outside when I wasn't around.

"Baxter." I called for him in the house, then called for him outside. I sat and waited and even made a clinking sound against a dish, knowing he'd come running.

Nothing. No Baxter. No sound. The house felt empty in a way it hadn't the whole time we'd been there.

I went into the garage for a beer, then came outside for a smoke. I saw Baxter's fuzzy body strewn out on the picnic table. "There you are," I said, but he didn't budge. I got hot and my hands got sweaty around the neck of the beer. I put it down. Walked to where the puffed out belly wasn't moving, the head as still as I'd never seen it. He was so much like the rabbit Tommy brought home that one night. I got sick, sat on the bench and breathed heavy.

It was a long time before I turned to look at Baxter. He was stiff. It didn't take touching him to know that. I examined his neck for holes, thinking maybe a coyote had gotten to him, bit him, but I'd imagine he wouldn't have returned from that, wouldn't have been in one piece when I found him if I found him at all. There were no holes, no teeth marks, but when I turned him over, I saw the long slit running down the middle of his belly. That's when I saw all the blood, spilled out and dripping through the slats onto the brick patio. Carrie Anne's cat.

It was about three o'clock. I'd have to pick up Tommy soon. Sometimes he'd walk home.

153 I couldn't move.

When he called, I'd tell him to walk.

154