raised by wolves

It’s coming up on four in the morning. My guts are sloshing around inside me, awash with coffee. I feel all twitchy and fatigued. Gracie went home. She told me to call her if I need her, but I think I’ll be able to handle the rest of this weird god damn night on my own.

Von Tier. What the hell kind of name is that?

I remember the files Lusky gave me. Von Tier is—supposedly—the one who sent the thugs after The Boss. But why?

In a few short hours, I’ll find out.

I refer to the files Lusky gave me and look at the faces of the black boys in the photos. They all have dumb names, Pooky, Suga, Greck, Ceelo, Tiny, and Rabbit. Rabbit’s the one I tossed out the window. Tiny’s next on the list. In the photo, he has a big scar sideways under his left eye. I remember him. He was the driver. The one that pointed out The Boss. An impressive sheet on this one. Older than the others, he’s got a military background, specializing in…what’s this? Demolition. Ha.

Five AM I’m through the door, kicking it right to saw dust. I’m counting on the element of surprise here, but it turns out I don’t need it.

Tiny’s here alright, but he’s not exactly in a state where one can be surprised: unconscious on the floor. I notice beer bottles strewn about the place, a half full one within arm’s reach of the collapsed figure. I step on a creaky floorboard and Tiny stirs ever so slightly. I wonder why they call him Tiny. Looks about average size to me. But it doesn’t matter. Everyone’s tiny next to me.

“Tiny,” I whisper, hunching down by his head. “Wake up, Tiny.”

He groans.

“I said, ‘Wake up, Tiny,’ you fucking pipsqueek,” I say through clenched teeth, voice rising to a roar. That gets him. His eyes pop open and he’s going for the beer bottle, but I stop him by dropping all my weight on his outstretched arm. I hear that old familiar bone-snapping sound, like one big kernel of popcorn. He cries out and says, “Alright, alright!” and I shift off of his arm, onto his back. I hold his face against the floor.

“I’m not going to repeat myself here, Tiny. I want answers and I want them now. Where’s Von Tier?”

“Who?” he says, voice quivering ever-so-slightly. I reach over with my free hand and break his other arm. He cries out again, and again with the “Alright alright.”

“Yeah yeah, Von Tier, fuck man, yeah I know him. I don’t know him know him, but shit man who does? He just some crazy old white motherfucker, lives up north on the water. Collects art and shit. What the fuck you want with him?”

“I’m asking the questions here. A few weeks ago, you and a gang of idiots came up on The Crab and started shooting. You remember. You killed a man, Cosmo Marini, my boss and I want to know why.”

“Man, yeah, shit, I remember. Damn, that was you? I thought you got shot in the head. Fuck, man. Them boys fucked up. Greck started the shooting. Pooky got you. I was just the driver, man, I ain’t do shit. We wasn’t even supposed to shoot nobody. Von Tier told us your boy’d have a body guard though, so we packed. He…He just wanted some necklace. Some old antique shit he said your Boss wasn’t selling but he wanted bad enough to take. He paid us large,” he says, gasping for breath. I ask him where up north does this guy live and he tells me. I ask him what the necklace was.

“I don’t know what it was. I don’t know what for. Some art collection or some shit, man, I don’t know nothing else, I swear!”

“Do you swear?” I ask and he stammers, “Sh-shit yeah, I swear!” then I turn, keeping one knee pressed firmly into his back bone and break one of his legs.

I ask again, “Do you swear?” and he screams, “I swear! I swear! Jesus man, get off me! Please! I swear!” he tries to thrash around a bit, but with two broken arms and one broken leg, he doesn’t have much fight left in him. I get up.

“I’m going to leave you alive to tell the other boys their time’s almost up. After I’m done with Von Tier, I’m coming back and I’m going to kill the rest of you. Enjoy what time you have left.”

And then I stomp on his other leg, right up near the hip. Pop, tear, that hip’s definitely dislocated at the least. He cries out and I leave. The sun is just peeking up over the edge of the city, red beams of fire and orange morning haze. The city stinks. It’s going to be another hot one.

The file on Von Tier himself is rather thin. No picture. No aliases. No sheet. The address is an empty storefront downtown, but that’s not what Tiny told me. I flag down a cab, driven by a sleepy-looking unshaven young man with a big metal bar through his nose. I tell him Von Tier’s address and he nods, then yawns and turns up the radio. It’s a relentless barrage of distorted guitars, brutally fast drums and a howling guttural singer.

“Who is this?” I ask the shaggy kid behind the wheel.

“Skullsplitter,” he tells me. “Some band from the east coast.”

Skullsplitter. That gives me an idea that I’ll save for later. And through the music is fast and loud, I find myself drifting off in the red morning light, the warmth magnified on my skin by the cab windows. I feel like baking in an oven, like a cake. I smile and when I wake up, the driver says, “Here we are. $22.35.”

The place looks like you’d expect some rich yuppie art collector fuck’s house to look. Long drive way, big gate out front, three or four floors, a big deck looking over the water of the Pacific ocean. I hop the gate easy as can be. Right after, I hear a distant electrical buzz and the gate opens. They know I’m here, they just didn’t buzz me in soon enough. Cameras probably everywhere. So, there is some security here. It won’t do them any good.

The front door is open. Well, here goes.

It’s dark inside, pale light filtering in through closed expensive drapes, casting long funny shadows all over the room.

“Right, stop right there, chap,” a voice says. My blood goes cold. It’s him.

In an easy chair opposite the front door, the man in the ski mask sits looking at me down the length of that big fucking rifle.

“You don’t scare easy, I’ll give you that,” he says with some kind of accent. “I told him to just let me kill you, but no, he wanted you to stay in the game, see how things panned out. And here you are showing up to shit on our doorstep,” he sucks air through his teeth, tsk-tsk. “Oh well. Always a shame when pawns don’t realize their purpose. Maybe we could’ve worked together, if only you’d signed those papers. You could’ve lived a long happy life, you know? That girl of yours maybe could’ve become your wife, you could’ve had a bunch of kids and the whole lot. Your mother could watch them on the weekends while you two went out for drinks. It could’ve been just swell, old chap.”

He smiles, teeth like white razors behind the ski mask.

“Are you gonna talk all day,” I ask him finally. “Or are you gonna start shooting?”

His smile grows. “I thought you’d never ask.”

Even at this range, the rifle is barely audible. Click-tzing! A bullet rips through the air, and then through me. What a moron this limey fuck is. Bullets from a gun like that just pass through the target at this range. It hurts, but he doesn’t hit anything important. In three long steps I’m on him, him still sitting pretty like the hot shit he thinks he is. I grab the gun by the muzzle and he fires again. My hand burns and the smell of sulfur fills my nose, but he missed that time, too.

“You can’t shoot for shit, man,” I tell him, echoing our last meeting.

“No,” he says as my hand closes on his throat. “But who needs to shoot?”

I hear a knife coming out of a hidden sheath and then a knife plunging into soft flesh between ribs. Imagine a really bad bee sting. I look down and see a black leather handle sticking out of my side. In the next instant there are two. Then three.

I grunt through my teeth and tighten my grip on the man in the ski mask’s throat. His eyes look like they’re going to pop out of his head.

“Poison,” he gurgles. “You fuck,” he gurgles. The knives are poisoned which is why I imagine it’s starting to feel like my blood is being replaced with red ants. God damn it.

Before things go black, I lift the man up and pitch him haphazardly towards the door I came in. I don’t see him land.

Stuck down the mineshaft inside my own head, I see Gracie and all I want to do is tell her how sorry I am for being such a fuck up. But she’s baking me a cake. She smiles at me and I smell chocolate and a gas oven. She stands on her tip toes to kiss me, lips made of sugar and gumdrops. We never touch.

I’m starting to come to. My first instinct is to leap to my feet and start killing, but that’s not going to happen. I’m tied down pretty securely with thick, rough rope that cuts into you when you press against it, but that doesn’t stop me from trying. I can’t see anything. There’s a big white circle of radioactive light above me, burning my eyes, driving me crazy. I scream and strain against the ropes, but it’s no good. I feel awful. I hurt all over, especially in my ribs. I give up and close my eyes. I want to sink down that mineshaft again. I’m tired of fighting now. I want to sleep. I want to see Gracie.

Gracie.

That asshole in the ski mask mentioned her. Is she in trouble? Do they know about her? My strength and itch to kill come rushing back to me, but I’m still tied down. I notice a sound, like air escaping a bike tire, but in short little bursts, tss-tss-tss. Laughing.

“That’s our Legs,” says a voice from somewhere I can’t turn my head to look. “Takes a licking and keeps on ticking.”

I know that voice.

“Been a long time, Legs.”

There she is, brown hair full of gold sparks, dripping down over her face, swooping off to one side, covering one of her eyes. She leans forward, close to my face and smiles. I can’t keep my eyes from flicking over to the top button of her low-cut blouse, that low urge to peep at the soft curve of tits whenever possible, no matter the circumstances.

“Natalia,” is about all I can say. Maybe I’m still dreaming.

“Yes, Legs. I see you’re still up to your same old horseshit, ah? I thought I’d fixed you up for the last time. No such luck, ah?” She shakes her head and stands upright. “Too bad.”

She reaches out and touches my forehead with a single finger where the rope has cut into me. She takes it back with red on the tip.

“Natalia, where am I?”

She smiles. “As if it matters? You’re in the basement. This is where Von Tier has me fix up his men when they come back fucked up. It keeps me very busy. Von Tier has a lot more men than old Marini. Pay’s better, too.” She steps out of sight and is silent. For a moment I think she’s left, but then she speaks again.

“They’re planning to kill you, Legs. Don’t believe a word they tell you. I’m sorry I can’t do more for you.”

And then she really is gone. I fall asleep under that awful light. I don’t remember any dreams.

When I come to again, I’m sitting upright with something tapping me on the end of my nose. It’s a small round bit of what looks like dark red glass, tied and hanging from a black bit of cord.

“So much trouble,” says a raspy voice. “All for a tiny bit of stone.”

My eyes begin to focus on the shape of a bent old man with a big white mustache and short-cropped white hair. His skin is full of wrinkles and pits. He wears round, gold-rimmed spectacles. Behind him is the man in the ski mask, still lounging, slouched in a red chair, legs crossed far out in front of him. His rifle is propped against the wall next to him.

“I suppose you represent the estate of Cosmo Marini,” the old man says and they both laugh. “Or what’s left of it. Arthur McGinnis. Legbreaker. My name is Aldebert Von Tier.”

I want to lunge for him but I know I’m tied with that same cutting rope. Like pressing up against a chainsaw.

“Yeah, great,” I say to him. “Why’d you kill my boss? Why’re you trying to kill me now? Who is that woman?” My voice is getting a little frantic here. I decide to stop talking. One thing at a time.

The smug old fucker just chuckles, his ancient shoulders bobbing up and down. I’m surprised there’s no dust falling off of him.

“Oh you poor small man,” he says. “I mean that-er-figuratively of course. There’s so much you don’t even know. I could have guessed you were just an idiot stumbling around in the dark. With how many of Salvatore’s men you took out, I figured you for a psycho, or maybe one of those agents-er…Where was I? Oh yes. Either an idiot or a maniac. Turns out you’re both! A psychotic idiot,” and this he finds hysterical. Ski-mask laughs too.

After a minute, the tremors of humor fade and he takes a deep breath, followed by a sigh of satisfaction. He stands there looking at me down his nose, over the tops of his glasses. His eyes look like those milky green marbles you had when you were little. Just like them. I imagine them clacking together, that thok! sound.

“I was never trying to kill you. I sent,” he nods, his neck crooked as the bend in your elbow, towards Ski-mask. “him just to try to keep you moving. Away from me. But, somehow that stupid Salvatore got you spinning around in circles. Like throwing change at a ceiling fan. I guess it’s just bad luck you landed in my lap now. Just a bit of bad luck. It’s been Sal all this time, you know. He put his men on you the same reason I did. To keep you moving. To keep you from just going and signing those papers. Ha, you didn’t even know. You never got even part of the whole story!

“First and foremost, I’ll tell you that my involvement in the difficulty you’ve experienced recently is minimal at best. Certainly, I hired the men who—unfortunately—killed your boss, Mr. Marini, but murder was not their goal. They were sent simply to acquire this necklace. This necklace, which I’m certain you never even knew Marini wore, did you? Never noticed it there, dangling ‘bout his collar. Of course not. A psychotic fool.

“After that, by sheer coincidence, Salvatore put his own plan into action. The woman is one of his. But she was a failure and needed to be disposed of. Salvatore put her on you, figuring her con wouldn’t get you, but he, ah…overestimated your ability. He wanted you to kill her, and her to put you out running around all night, until ten this morning when the property deeds would default to his name,”

“Who?” I interrupt. All this talking really makes my head hurt. I have no idea what the hell he’s talking about.

“Salvatore. Lusky, you fool. He was Marini’s partner way back when. They had a contract where Lusky was the silent partner, getting a dividend, but not having any say in how the club was run. That was up to Marini. In the contract it’s stipulated that if anything should happen to one of the partners, full control reverts to the remaining partner after thirty days if a next-of-kin doesn’t step forward. The whole bit about you being next-of-kin was something that woman threw in for added flavor. I bet you didn’t even look at the papers she gave you, the so-called ‘DNA evidence.’” he shakes his head and tsk-tsks at me. “Amateur.”

Like I said, I don’t take well to name-calling. I lunge forward in the chair, feeling the rope dig into me, my wrists and forehead and waist. The chair creaks under the force, but doesn’t move. Nailed to the floor. I feel the warm cascade of blood down my face and close my eyes before everything goes red. I have to get it together. I’m going about this all wrong.

Von Tier is laughing across the room. “You think you can break the ropes before bleeding out? Be my guest.”

The man in the ski mask is reading a newspaper. The picture-in-the-dictionary next to “Indifferent.”

I growl and yell like a wild animal. I start seeing big black blobs behind my eyes. I have to stop.

“All finished, Mr. McGinnis?” Von Tier. You’re going to die.

I open my eyes. The black spots are gone. Everything is clear.

Instead of fighting the ropes, I should be fighting the chair. I throw my weight backwards and get another satisfying moan out of the wood. I pull my shoulder blades together and think of an axe chopping down a tree. The skin on my wrists is shredded, but I can almost pull my hands out. I feel the back of the chair snap free from the seat and suddenly I can stand up. I slide my arms backwards down the arms of the chair so the loops of that awful rope simply unravel. The back of the chair falls off and I can move again. I start laughing. I can’t help it.

Von Tier is already running, but I catch him easy.

“All finished, Mr. Von Tier?” I say, yoking him up by his fancy asshole collar. “Where you going? Where you going, huh?” I pull him around in front of me and hold him between me and the man in the ski mask, who by now is looking me in the eye through the scope on his rifle.

He says: “You know I wasn’t trying to hit you before. At this range one shot will tear both of you in half.”

I say: “Yeah, bullshit.”

He says: “You’re dumber than you look. You don’t even know what game you’re attempting to play.”

Von Tier is flailing his arms in front of him, wrinkled little fucker, whimpering: “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot!”

“You won’t kill him. If you were going to shoot, you would’ve,” I say.

“We were going to let you live, you moron,” he snarls. “You’re out of your depth but you’re too bloody stupid to realize it.”

He won’t shoot. His gun probably isn’t even loaded. I take off running right for him.

His eyes go wide, for a second it looks like they’ll fill the holes of his ski mask entirely. He jumps to his feet, but I’m already swinging Von Tier at him. Von Tier yelps as he collides with the broad side of the humongous rifle, and then again as his face gets ground into the top of the man in the ski mask’s head.

“Wait,” the man in the ski mask says as he drops. Von Tier is out, hanging limply from my outstretched arm. I drop him and pick up the rifle. Then I pick up the man in the ski mask by the front of his shirt. I start to shake him and holler, “Wake up, asshole.”

As his eyes start to open, I rest the rifle against my shoulder, left hand on the trigger, with my right arm holding him out so the barrel rests neatly against his nose.

“Why were you going to let me live? Bringing me here, telling me all this bullshit. This is rotten and I know it. This is just another distraction. And now you’re going to die.”

I pull the trigger and POP no more man in the ski mask, just another stiff without a head. I drop him on the ground next to Von Tier, who is still unconscious. I bend down and grab the necklace, The Boss’s necklace, the hunk of red rock that this whole thing seems to be about. I put it in my pocket and then shoot Von Tier in the head, transforming his brain and skull into a hole in the floor.

It bothers me a little bit that there’s a whole side to this I’ll never understand. But I’m too bloody and sore and tired to care. They’re all dead, and it seems like this whole thing is over without me knowing the truth. The woman—the one who claims she’s my mother—I have no leads on her. I’ll have to wait for her to come to me. If she is a con, her bosses are dead. And Von Tier said Lusky wanted her dead anyway. But Natalia told me not to believe anything they told me. I’ll have to…

Were they lying about having Gracie?

I run out, down the drive and hop the fence. Bloody, my eyes and throat burning, I start running back to town. Luckily, I’m able to flag down an ambulance. They put on their lights and sirens and help me wrap myself in some bandages while we go flying down the country road. Once we’re in the city, I jump out of the back and call “Thanks!” to the two paramedics. They look at me stunned, but before they can react, I’m gone into the mid-day city.

The first payphone I come to, I jam in two quarters and dial Gracie. No answer at her apartment.

Again, I’m off running.

I burst into Gracie’s apartment and find the place trashed. A note conspicuously tacked to the wall opposite the door reads:

5 pm, The Crab.

No sign of Gracie. No sign of anybody. I look at the clock, miraculously still on the wall. 4:24. I can definitely make it to The Crab. In fact, I can get there early.

At 4:49, I’m on the street in front of The Crab. Traffic is heavy this time of day, but there are no cars in the parking lot. I go around back. The husks of the cars I blew up are still there, cordoned off with bright yellow strings of “POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS.” No sign of any bodies. The back door is chained shut and similarly cordoned.

They must not be here yet.

I climb a fire escape up to the roof of the building across the street from the parking lot and wait, lying on my belly, peeking up over the concrete edge. At 4:58 a white sedan pulls into the parking lot and two women get out. The woman and Gracie. The woman has a gun and is dragging Gracie towards the back door of the club. I slide down the fire ladder and right when I hit the bottom, I hear a shot. My blood runs cold until I get across the street and see that the chain holding the back door shut has been shot off. I breathe a sigh of relief and charge in. I see a fire axe on the wall and grab it as I pass. What was that band called?

I find them in the main dining room. They’re screaming hysterically at each other, spastic shrieks like cats in a duffel bag.

“Let her go,” I say too quietly. Neither one hears me over the ruckus they’re making.

“I said, ‘LET HER GO.’” My voice booms over their noise, confounding and silencing them. I think I hear a chandelier rattle.

The woman doesn’t let Gracie go, but instead pulls her closer and shoves the barrel of her gun up under Gracie’s jaw.

“Oh Arthur, why has it come to this?” she pleads. “We could’ve had everything! But you couldn’t even show up in the right place at the right time! We could’ve controlled most of the west coast, Arthur, but you threw it all away. Now Lusky has control and we have nothing,” she sobs.

“Lusky’s dead,” I tell her.

“What?” she gasps, tears drying up. I knew it. I just fucking knew it. And I knew I could do what I’m about to do from the very beginning. I could do it. I will do it.

“Yep. And Von Tier, too. And the guy in the ski mask, and most of their goons, too. Dead as Dillinger.”

I see her face turn red. She bites her bottom lip until she draws blood and begins screaming, “NO! NONONONONO!” and unloading the gun at me, the loudest popcorn kernel exploding you could imagine. Is that a fucking magnum?

“Gracie, hit her!” I yell, overturning and ducking behind a table. Gracie, who’s worked in this city long enough to have picked up a few particularly nasty self-defense moves, whips around and jabs her outstretched fingers into the soft, fleshy front of the woman’s neck. My heart melts a little. The shots stop coming and I stand up, a wide grin on my face.

“Good girl, Gracie! Now duck!”

The woman gasps for air, clutching at her neck with her free hand. The scarf unravels from around her head, her hair falls over her face, and I let the axe fly.

The woman drops, the crescent of the fire axe buried neatly into her forehead, the pointed end protruding from her skull like a backwards shark’s backwards dorsal fin.

Gracie leaps into my arms from halfway across the room. I hold her so tight I worry she might break in half. “You did so well, baby,” I tell her. “You did so well.”

“Legs, I was so scared. I can’t believe you saved me,” she sobs quietly into my neck and I go shhhhh through my teeth and run my grubby fingers through her hair. She inhales sharply and then sighs, slowly regaining her cool. She looks up at me like a baby bird with those big green eyes and we kiss until we hear sirens.

“We need to get gone, baby.”

She nods and closes her eyes. I put her down and she takes one of my hands in two of hers. We hurry out the back and down the street where we hail a cab back to her place. We fall into bed and sleep the next two days away.

Sometime later, I’m sitting at the kitchen table with the remains of breakfast between me and Gracie. Not only is she beautiful and sweet, she is an amazing cook. She knows exactly how to cook the bacon so all the fat turns to delicious bits that crunch but are still juicy. She’s perfect. She sips her coffee, a hollowed out half of a cantaloupe on the table in front of her and smiles at me.

“So it’s over, yeah?” she says, bending over to reach into her purse and grab her cigarettes.

“Yeah, I think it is.”

“What about those other guys? The ones who killed your boss?”

I shrug my shoulders. “I doubt they’ll come after us—I doubt they even know where to look. But I don’t have any plans this week. I still have the files Lusky gave me. I’d almost forgot about them.”

A long moment and then: “Are you going to kill them?” she asks meekly. I think for another long moment about what to tell her. I decide any good relationship must be based on honesty.

“Yes,” I tell her, looking her in the minty oceans of her eyes without flinching.

There is a strange spark there, one I have seen before and remember being confused by, but I can’t recall when. It’s something…

“Can I come with you?” she asks, barely a whisper.

Perfect.

My heart overflows with joy and she is an ocean in which I would not mind drowning.

The End.

Wester’s is an all night diner. A different one on every corner it seems. This town has a lot of night owls. It sits, squat and vaguely ovoid in a dark corner. More neon signs. The walk leaves me sore. Gracie’s already there. Her blonde hair is disheveled and matted but looks as good as anything, just like it always does. She’s all wrapped up in a big black coat and a scarf around her neck. I can’t help but smile when I see her under the fluorescent lights. She looks at me and says, “Legs, you look like hell.”

“I always look like hell,” I tell her and collapse like a building being demolished into the seat across from her in the booth.

She takes a short sharp breath and reaches across the table and takes my hands in hers.

“Legs, what’d they do to you? What’s happened?”

Like flood gates, the whole story comes out. At the end my face is buried in my hands because some of it sounds like the craziest nonsense when you’re telling it out loud. I tell her everything. About my “mother,” about Lusky, about The Boss, my “father,” and even about the disappearing man in the ski mask. At the end she just sits, undoubtedly horrified, mouth slightly agape, eyes wide. The silence becomes a corporeal thing, like a terrible invisible octopus that wraps it’s suckers around your neck and chokes the life out of you, simply because it can. I feel tentacles down my throat. I want to puke.

“I don’t know what to do, Gracie,” I tell her finally. “This is the first time I don’t know an easy solution to a problem.”

Silence, crushing silence. I can’t feel my toes. My hands are freezing.

Eventually I begin to stutter some sort of excuse or apology, but to my great surprise, Gracie cuts me off.

“Von Tier,” she says. “Who is he? A rival of Lusky? Have you ever heard of him before?”

Her hands are pressed flat on the table. Her nails are painted a dark brown that reminds me of dried blood. There is something of an animal in Gracie at times. This is one of them. Her eyes have turned hungry. She’s asking questions. Right. Questions need answers.

“Never. I can only guess…What—why do you ask?”

“He’s the biggest piece of the puzzle. If this woman—this woman who claims to be your mother—works for Von Tier, taking him out will take her out, too. How bad could he be? He was a rival of Lusky and it sounded like you dealt with him pretty handily…”

The hunger in her eyes has bled into her voice. She clears her throat.

“Think about it, Legs…I mean, really. What have you got to lose here? You’ve gone your whole life with nothing but the head on your shoulders. And now, suddenly, you got a family, or part of a family…something you’ve never had before. Who is this guy Von Tier to stand between you and that? If what Lusky said is true, finding Von Tier will solve two of your problems. Von Tier was the name in the files of the men who killed your boss, right? But why would Von Tier want your boss dead? And why would he send a con woman after you to pose as your mother? Who sent the hit squad? Easiest way to find out is to ask the man who knows all the answers. Von Tier.”

There is a glow in her eyes that gives me a warmth in my stomach. She’s holding my hands tighter than a vise-grip. She’s licking her lips. She leans back as far as she can, but doesn’t let go of my hands.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I don’t know…why I was talking like that. This is all crazy, isn’t it? Oh, Legs, I don’t know what to tell you to do. How do I know you aren’t making all this up? I want to believe you. But what about the man in the ski mask? Did you really see him? Are you seeing things because of stress? I can understand…How long has it been since you slept?”

“No,” I tell her. “Don’t be sorry. I am tired. I’m hungry. I might have been seeing things, it’s true. Maybe I am crazy and making it up. But it feels real. The other ones I killed were real. I saw them. I felt them. If it’s not real, it’s not worth telling the difference, because I can’t shake it.”

Once again we lapsed into a long, heavy silence.

“I don’t care if you’re crazy, Legs,” she said at last with a tone of firm finality. Once again I found myself unable to prevent myself from smiling at her.

“Thank you,” I tell her. “This is all I needed. If there’s just one person who doesn’t care if I’m just crazy, it’s all worth it. I’d kiss you if you’d let me.”

I swear it just slipped out.

I feel myself turning red, but she’s smiling.

“Oh Legs,” she says, and I see she’s getting red in the cheeks, too. “You can kiss me any time you please.”

And so I do. I know it’s only for a moment, but I can feel my soul stretching out in every direction, every dimension, turning me into a wavy line in time, a leaf down a stream. Her lips are so small and taste delicious. They remind me of tiny pink orange slices, like those jelly candies from the local markets.

A breath passes between our lips like a gust of wind on an empty ocean.

When I open my eyes, she’s still there.

“I don’t care if you’re crazy,” she whispers, her eyes still closed, her head still tilted back with her candied lips just barely parted. I kiss her again. It might be the best thing I’ve ever felt. Better than pancakes. Better than fast cars. Better than flying. Better than breaking legs. I kiss her again.

We decided on empanadas and milkshakes. It turned out we were both trying to kick the meat habit, and so we only put cheese and vegetables in the crispy flour shells. The milkshakes were made with soymilk and fresh fruit and vanilla ice cream. When Nola arrived, she didn’t bother knocking. I was sitting in a chair reading an old magazine, killing time while I waited for her to show up. She moved silently as a baby’s breath. I didn’t hear her until the very last moment before she bent down and wrapped her skinny arms around my neck. I felt her breath on the back of my ear. It startled me, but I managed not to jump. I reached up and wrapped my arms around her and embraced her in an awkward backwards-hug. She kissed the back of one of my ears and then I pulled her around over the chair and into my lap. She was really as light as a feather. It was no more difficult to lift her up than it is to lift an empty plastic sandwich bag. She fell right into my lap and giggled and kissed me on the cheek. We smiled big dumb smiles at each other and folded our hands together, four hands and twenty fingers forming a long chain of digits and knuckles and we kissed again. Her lips were like rockets that sent sparks shooting off and ricocheting around between my ears and it was like being under a spell. It was like being under water, but not suffocating. Peaceful. Weightless. Free.
I scooped her up in my arms and carried her out to the kitchen. She giggled and playfully demanded that I put her down, and once we were there, I did.
“What did you get for the empanadas?” she asked.
“All sorts of wonderful things,” I told her. “Do you like zucchini?”

We stopped here and there in our preparations, between cutting the vegetables and grating the cheese perhaps, and stole kisses from each other and spent a few tense moments pressing ourselves against one another, each of us unable to decide between finishing preparing the meal and slinking off to the bedroom. Eventually our stomachs won and we had fresh, hot, melted, delicious empanadas for dinner. Afterwards, I shoved all the dishes in the dishwasher and set it running. I told her it was fantastic, and she said it was nothing, that I did all the work. I told her that might be the case, but I certainly never would have made myself empanadas. It was all for her.
I said this as I tossed the dishrag I had used to wipe the counters into the sink. When I turned to catch a glimpse of her pixie smile, she was already on me. She kissed me and I felt volcanoes erupt and comets fall, and she reached for my belt. She pulled me into the bedroom, walking backwards, lips locked as though by electromagnetism. Our stomachs hadn’t won after all, it seemed.

Later when the deed was done, we sat in my bed and looked quietly out the window, smoking cigarettes and touching idly, curiously, wantonly. I felt a shiver go up her spine when my fingertips brushed across the tops of her feet. She smiled sublimely and blew a perfect smoke ring that sailed from her pouting, satisfied lips and clear out the window. I told her I was impressed, and she asked, what? I told her, “Nothing.”
“You blew a smoke ring,” I said. “It went all the way out the window.”
“Oh,” she said and stretched her arms above her head, letting the blanket fall away from her. Her skin was the color of milk, but with freckles in it, if milk could have freckles. The freckles were the same copper color as her hair. She closed her big brown eyes and exhaled smoke through her nose.
“I feel like I might become addicted to you,” she said breathily. I looked at her over my shoulder from the end of the bed and smirked. She stubbed out her cigarette on the bedside ashtray and fell asleep, all in one fluid motion. I stood and stretched and pulled the curtain closed, then laid down next to her. She nestled close to me, and then was back off asleep, breathing silently, almost without moving at all. I put an arm around her and laid on my back and looked at the ceiling and wondered why it felt so strange to be happy.

She sighed and in the other room I could hear my work alarm going off. I told her I had to go, but that she could call me later. She sniffed again and thanked me, then said she loved me and hung up without another word. I couldn’t get the sound of her pixie-sobs out of my head the rest of the night. But at the end of the conversation, her voice sounded lighter, like a weight was off her shoulders. Her voice didn’t sound pinched or stifled when she said she loved me. It felt like I had accomplished something, but I couldn’t tell you what exactly.

It was another boring night at work. Nola didn’t come in, and neither did anyone else. I missed the regulars. I missed the crowd of new faces, too. I missed tips and making people shitty drinks, and the occasional sound of the bells on the door. It felt like the night would never end, but it did eventually and I went home in the quiet hours of the early morning, when even in the big city, you’re lucky to see a car or any sign that there’s other life left on the planet at all. The city is too bright to see any but the brightest stars, but these I looked up at long and hard before I walked through the door to my apartment building. I wondered where the moon was, if it was full and hiding behind a nearby sky rise or if it was new and invisible somewhere out there in all that dim black outer space.
When I walked inside, the phone was ringing. I knew who it was and my heart began to do the old giddy school-boy thing and fluttered around in my chest.
Nola said hello and said she was sorry she didn’t make it out to the bar tonight. I told her it was okay, there was nothing worth seeing there anyway. “That’s not true,” she said. “You’re there.”
I laughed and told her she was too sweet. I asked what she had done all day. She nervously said “nothing” and changed the subject. She asked if I had off anytime soon and if she could come over and make me dinner. I told her I didn’t have to work the next night, and the plans were made. I asked her what she would make and she asked me what I liked. We laughed and talked and flirted unabashedly and acted like dumb kids in love are supposed to act and then eventually the sun was coming up. She didn’t mention Darren once.

That night the phone rang. The sun was still making it’s way down below the horizon, making it easy to see that the days were once again growing longer. The sky was full of orange and red and purple beams of sunset fire. I answered the phone and it was Nola. She asked to talk to Darren.
“There’s so much more I wanted to say to you,” she sobbed. “I’m so sorry…it’s not fair. You were so young and had your whole life ahead of you.” She sniffled into the phone. “I miss you so much sometimes, I just don’t know what to do. I feel like my chest is going to collapse. Do you know what I mean? I wish you were still here. I’m so sorry.”
And I placate her. I try my best to soothe her, to help her. I understand what she’s going through. We’ve all lost people who were important to us, right?
I tell her it’s not her fault. I tell her to say what she needed to say. I tell her I’m listening. I ask her, when was the last time we talked?
There’s a tense moment where I want to apologize. I feel like maybe I’m taking it too far. But then she speaks.
“We were having lunch. We had been fighting, but it was nothing big. We both knew we would be over it in a few days. You were eating a salad with carrots and bleu cheese and hardboiled eggs. I was eating a sandwich with lettuce and tomato and feta. I don’t remember what kind of bread. We were sitting outside of that restaurant downtown, the one that used to hand out the free bread at closing time. I asked if you were enjoying your salad and you didn’t answer. You were off somewhere else in your mind, somewhere far away. I don’t think you were mad at me anymore; just not paying attention was all. I overreacted and stood up and threw my sandwich on the ground when you didn’t answer. I called you an insensitive jerk and stormed off. That was the last time we really talked…”
There was another long, tense silence. There was a pathetic sniffling on the other end of the phone. “I couldn’t have known what would happen,” she squeaked. “I couldn’t have known,”
I decided to change the subject. I told her it’s no good to dwell on the bad things, on what could have been. I told her I would’ve wanted her to remember the good things instead. I asked her how we met. What was her first memory of me?
“We met in high school. Your parents were out of town and you were having a party. I came with my friend Enid, who I don’t remember how you met, but she was the connection. I was upset over a boy who had just broken up with me, and who I saw at the party. I don’t even know if you knew him, or even knew his name. But you saw I was upset, and you came over and asked me what was wrong. I told you my ex was there and he was dancing with another girl, and you asked me if I wanted you to beat him up. I laughed and said it wouldn’t be worth it. You were drunk, but you were charming and you were saying it just to cheer me up. We saw the two of them, my ex and the other girl, walking out to a car and I started crying because I knew they were going to go make out, and it hurt me to be discarded like that, so publicly and unceremoniously. You helped keep my mind off of it though, and soon I was smiling again. You made me a drink and we talked and introduced ourselves. Soon it was like no one else existed. We sat on your deck and laughed and drank for hours, meanwhile everyone else at the party was inside, dancing and being loud and doing their own thing. I forgot all about my ex until him and the girl barged out the back door, arm in arm. You saw the look on my face when I saw the two of them with their hands all over each other and mouthed ‘is that him?’ and I nodded and scowled and tried to hold back the tears. You got this look on your face, such a serious face. You always looked so noble. You always seemed to think whatever you were doing, you had the right reason for it. You downed the rest of your drink and waited until you were certain they weren’t paying any attention. You said you’d be right back, and then you were up and you had my ex by the back of the shirt. He spun around and spilled his drink on your pants and you punched him right in the face. The girl he was with screamed and he went down. You looked at the girl and said, ‘Get this idiot out of here.’ You sounded like a cosmic judge handing down the death sentence to the whole universe. Always so serious. She nodded frantically and helped him to his feet and dragged him towards the door. You stepped in front of her and said, ‘Go around,’ and pointed towards the yard. She nodded again and the two of them scrambled off. ‘And don’t come back, you inconsiderate pieces of shit,’ you yelled after them. Then you came back over to me and smiled and I leapt up and whooped and kissed you on the cheek. I told you that was the most romantic thing anyone had ever done for me, and it was. I guess nothing inflates a girl’s ego than seeing boys punch each other over her. Suddenly I didn’t feel discarded at all. I felt important and wanted. I wasn’t embarrassed to be there any more. I wished that there had been more people there to see what you did, more people to see how important I was to you, having only known you for a few short hours. It was wonderful. You smiled at me and said, ‘It was nothing. I don’t know you that well, but it’s obvious already that anyone who would go out of their way to try and make you feel like shit is not the kind of person I want coming to my party, and certainly not the type of person I’d ever feel bad about knocking out.’”
She laughed. “You were so macho. You acted like you thought you were some hyper-sophisticated version of The Man with No Name. It was wonderful. We went back into the party and danced and drank more and then we wound up sleeping together. The next week you asked me to start dating you. How could I have said no?”