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a SINGULARITY/MELANIE TEM ......................................................................... 5 THE ONLY BROKEN BLONDE/SIMON AVERY ............................................19 BLESS/STEPHEN VOLK ....................................................................................65 THE SIMPSON FRAMES/ANTONY MANN ...................................................89 CHEAP RENT/JANICE LAW .............................................................................97 BY NIGHT HE COULD NOT SEE/JOEL LANE .............................................110 WHAT GRIEF CAN DO/STEPHEN BACON .................................................119 SCENES FROM COUNTRY LIFE/TIM LEES ................................................127 NIGHT FISHING/JAMES COOPER ...............................................................139 UNFINISHED BUSINESS/CHRISTOPHER PRIEST ....................................168 DODGE COUNTY/DANNY RHODES ............................................................183 THE SPACE THAT RUNS AWAY WITH YOU/STEVEN J. DINES .............196 GATOR MOON/RAY CLULEY ........................................................................220 TRIAL/KRISTINE KATHRYN RUSCH ..........................................................234 THE CONTRIBUTORS .....................................................................................240 a issn 1463 1350 • isbn 978-0-9553683-7-0 • Copyright © 2013 Crimewave on behalf of all contributors • Published in the UK by TTA Press, 5 Martins Lane, Witcham, Ely, Cambs cb6 2lb • Subscribe to Crimewave: four issues for just £36 uk or £40 europe or £44 usa/row, by cheque payable to TTA Press or by credit/debit card sent to the above address, or subscribe securely online at ttapress.com • Thanks to Peter Tennant for his expert proofreading • Cover art by Ben Baldwin (benbaldwin.co.uk) • Edited and typeset by Andy Cox • Printed in the UK hurts 3 a When Roxy first showed up in town she was sixteen and looked a lot younger, skinny with caramel-colored braids and pretty gray eyes her face hadn’t quite grown into yet and a drinking problem bigger than she was. I was not quite thirty-two, plenty old enough in this neck of the woods to be her daddy. But father-daughter wasn’t what we were, nor big brother-little sister, and for sure we have never been lovers in the usual sense of the word. Right from the start, we’ve been friends. Nothing more precious or more strange in this world. I felt sure she had terrible secrets she needed to tell somebody and I wanted to be the one, stuff like what’s all over the news now and in common parlance but you didn’t hear about so much back then, like you wouldn’t hear much about breathing. Turns out nothing terrible had happened to her yet; she was just on her way to it. And Roxy’s more a doer than a teller. By the time I’d been here for a while, realization had seeped over me like fog over the valley. About Teddy McLaren’s fall off the porch between second and third grade that broke his back. About the woman in Ralston Bandy’s barn. About Misty Wilcox having her first baby at twelve and one per year after that till she died in childbirth at twenty- one. About Froggy Fogarty dead in his bed before his time even if he was eighty-one, and that girl who took care of him never seen in these parts again. I’ve learned a lot about what can happen to people and what they think about what happens to them, how the rules don’t always apply. How, in the course of a human life just as in the course of what we think of as the universe, there can come a point where we know so singularity 5 much we don’t know a thing. I believe in the singularity. I’d call it a fact rather than a belief, like everybody does about what they believe. Unless Roxy has kept it from me all these years – and I don’t think she has any secrets from me by now, or suspects that I do from her – her story was what she told me when she first walked into the shop and asked did I need anybody, and I said no, and she kind of reared back and said I ought to hire her anyway, which I did. On the surface she was nothing more or less than a cocky kid full of herself and impatient to take on the world. Her folks were still determined to raise her, and nobody was going to tell Roxanne Dixon what to do. You couldn’t call it running away; she wasn’t fleeing, she was going toward something, some horizon, she had no idea what but she knew it was real and true. Left her parents’ home and their suburb and their world. Stuck out her thumb and went wherever whoever picked her up was going, which could’ve been any of a whole slew of wonderful and terrible places and eventually turned out to be here. She missed her dog. I myself did run from a bigger, noisier town a thousand miles and a lifetime away, and lighted here for no reason other than that I’d understood more than I could possibly understand. It’s a pretty place – green hills, thick woods. People can keep to themselves if they want, or cross paths with just about anybody else. You can hide out. But not from everything, and maybe not forever. “Your name is Goober?” She rolled her big gray eyes and giggled like the kid she was, swigged from the Bud can like a pro. “My mama liked peanuts.” “Whyn’t she call you Peanut, then?” Roxy’s always asking questions that, if there even are answers, I don’t know them. That first five minutes, I started making up answers. “Already had a puppy named Peanut,” I said. “Little brown thing.” Roxy always believes there’s more to know and always wants to know it. This morning over breakfast, for instance, we get to talking about string theory, which I like because it reminds me there are all different ways of thinking about the world. I’m telling how you can think of everything as being made up of strings of subatomic particles. 6 melanie tem Not that everything is like that, at this level scientists don’t talk about reality, only about ways to think about reality. Makes perfect sense to me. Drives Roxy nuts. She wants Truth, and she wants it to stay put. So she’s giving me one of her looks while she pokes another blueberry waffle onto my plate. Her waffles aren’t quite as good as mine were at my peak, but more and more I don’t much care to eat unless Roxy cooks and eats with me. Partway just to devil her, I keep talking. “It’s like a guitar string. You stretch it under pressure and it makes different musical tones. String theory says everything gets stretched in different ways and that creates excitation nodes. Or maybe it’s modes.” I’ll have to look that up. She snorts. Her hair, which she disdains to color because gray’s the truth, falls over her forehead like it does. She’s a beautiful woman, beauty different every day, lovely little lines at the corners of her mouth now as if from a sculptor’s tool, body less supple but more substantial. “So how do these strings, which may or may not actually exist – ” “Depending,” I insert, “on what you mean by ‘actually’ and ‘exist’.” “Oh, please.” Sometimes I love how she rolls her eyes. Sometimes it infuriates me. This morning love’s the truth. She goes on. “So how do they get stretched under pressure? What kind of pressure?” I say what I say to her a lot. “Don’t know yet.” She gives her trademark impatient sigh and goes to get dressed for her hike. “You going by yourself? Take your cell phone?” I fret when she’s out of earshot. Already she looks and smells outdoorsy when she comes back into the room, and I’m reminded of the warm coat she was wearing that bitter November day our paths first crossed. Bright red fleece, knee- length, with a hood. Caught your attention right off. Her parents had bought it for her when she’d told them she was going, because they knew how cold it can get in these mountains and even though she was leaving them they wanted her to be safe and warm. That’s true love, and Roxy knew it. She kisses the top of my head and puts on her backpack with the owl on it that I bought her in a shop in the Atlanta Underground a good twenty years ago. Roxy likes owls. Brahms flops his tail a couple singularity 7 of times. Bubba whines and stands at attention, sure she’s taking him. She calls “have a good day” and I call be careful, and we say “I love you” to each other almost in sync. Life doesn’t get much better than that. Except for Bubba, who settles himself on the floor one piece at a time like a bag of loose change, heaves a long sigh, and prepares for another morning of missing Roxy. Brahms just takes what comes. I’m in the habit of starting my day by looking over the reading material stacked by my chair as if I’m just now discovering it. Print books, books and magazines on tape and CD and on the e-reader Roxy gave me for my birthday. The Gazette on Wednesdays that has more local news in the ads than anywhere else, and The Sunday New York Times. Articles Roxy has clipped or downloaded for me on subjects she thinks I’ll find interesting or ought to. Books I’m led to by other books, strings of books, excitation nodes. Dithering over where to start is half the fun. I’ve been eyeing this article on singularity. Sometimes black holes bother me, the idea of them appropriating and changing the very nature of whatever comes close.