27...

“What guy are you talking about Lou? What did he tell you?”
“This guy showed up yesterday,” Lou whispered down the phone in a tone that was the audio equivalent of an itch. “He was in my house, just sitting at the table in the kitchen, smoking a cigarette.”
“Was he a homeless guy?” Frank asked, his eyes widening, waiting intensely for an answer.
“No,” Lou said as if it were the dumbest question he had ever been asked. “It was a guy in a suit. I asked him what he was doing in my house and he asked me where Alexis was.”
“Where is Alexis?”
There was silence at the other end of the phone. Frank could hear a dry, swirling sound, like the noise of ghosts slowly rubbing their hands together, and something intangible. He could hear silent indecision.
“Lou?”
“How do I know this is you Frank?”
Frank looked up at Bryan with this perfect look of shocked incredulousness. He put his hand up in a questioning gesture and Bryan leaned forward with a face full of worried desire.
“What do you mean, ‘how do you know this is me’?” Frank repeated, more for Bryan’s benefit. Bryan pantomimed a perfect ‘are you fucking kidding me’ look.
“How can I be sure this is Frank?”
Lou’s voice sounded as if it were coming through sand.
“Well, I used to stay at Mary’s place above yours a lot. I would occasionally bum smokes off of Alexis when Mary wasn’t around. Mary squeals every time she sees your dog…”
Frank again looked at Bryan and began snapping his fingers, trying to pull a name from the very air in front of him. Bryan shrugged his shoulders.
“Charlie!” Frank shouted out. He sat back in the chair as if coming up with the name had spent him. “Is that enough Lou?”
There was that ghostly silence once again.
“She killed a guy, Frank.”
Frank felt his stomach fall at the same time that he felt his balls crawl up into his body. Some flailing, prehistoric nerve endings were screaming for him to run and all he could think for some reason, in this calm voice, was ‘we are fucking useless’.
“What do you mean?” Frank finally choked out.
“That’s what the guy told me. That’s what he said, that she butchered this guy like a professional. And I think I had known.” Frank could hear the stretched beginnings of tears reflecting off that damaged voice. “I’m pretty sure that I knew she had done it, but I didn’t want to believe it. She took off months ago, borrowed Danny’s car and just took off. And I gotta tell you Frank, I was relieved, because somewhere inside I knew. I knew she had something to do with the body they found down by the railroad tracks. I had seen blood on her clothes and the story about hitting a deer up on the 32 just didn’t wash, you know? And I heard from somebody else that when they found that guy, there was no face left on him. And I started to get scared, and bad ideas started forming.”
He was talking faster and louder, nearing hysteria with a force that felt like a point pressing into Frank’s temple.
“Okay Lou,” Frank tried out his best calming voice. “Try to settle down man. Do you know where she’s at now?”
“No.”
There was another long interval of expectant silence.
“The guy didn’t seem to know either.”
“Who was this guy Lou?”
Another pregnant pause was formed that pushed out against a mad world.
“I gotta go Frank. Take care, man.”
And that click that speaks of so much finality and dead ends came through the receiver louder than usual.

26...

Bryan jumped at the sound of the shrilly ringing phone, but Frank reached over and answered as if he had expected it to happen all along.
“Hello?” Frank practically sang into the receiver. Something was charging him.
There was a rustling sound on the other end of the phone, then the sound of quick, nearly panting breathing that stopped abruptly.
“Frank?”
The voice was papery, ringed with a spreading panic.
“Yes? Is this Lou?”
“Yeah man.”
Frank sat and let that uncomfortable silence unfold itself exponentially. He could hear Lou’s short and quick breathing and nothing but an ambient buzzing to tell anything about the caller’s surroundings.
“Are you okay Lou? You sound a little… Keyed up?”
A desperate, rattling laughter scratched the inside of Frank’s ear and he winced a little.
“You could say that, I’m keyed up all right. Look Frank, what did you call about?”
“I was actually calling about Alexis…”
A small but very audible moan came from Lou’s end of the world, it ended with something that sounded like ‘alone’.
“What was that Lou?”
“Are you alone?” he hissed.
Frank looked up at Bryan with a questioning face. Bryan saw this and leaned a bit closer towards Frank.
“My roommate Bryan’s here, but other than that I’m alone. What’s going on Lou?”
“No one is listening?”
“No…” Frank slowly shook his head.
Frank was imagining this robust and genial young man locked inside of a dark and dusty apartment. He sounded like a guy at the ass end of a speed bender. These thoughts bounced off too many sores in Frank’s memory and a wave of sadness threatened to pull him in to an undertow of despair. Hadn’t Mary said that she’d just seen him the other day? Why didn’t she mention any craziness, any druggy behavior? She wasn’t the most astute person at picking out subtle changes in people that weren’t her, but still.
“You’re calling about Alexis, right?”
“Actually yeah, I was.”
“Did she call you?”
“I’m not sure Lou. I think she might have. Is something going on man? You sound…” Frank was unsure how to put this delicately. “You sound off man.”
“Oh, bad news travels fast Frankie. Bad news travels fast.”
It could not be a coincidence that Lou just uttered a sentence that belonged in the mouth of another.
“Is something bad happening with Alexis, Lou? With you and Alexis?”
“I think she’s in a bad place man. And I think I’m probably in a bad place because of it.”
Frank could hear Lou’s breathing amping up in rpm’s again.
“Okay Lou, settle down. What’s going on man?”
“Has a guy visited you Frank?” Lou whispered in a way that made his voice feel like small, cold fingers that slowly raked across Frank’s scalp.
“What do you mean? What guy?”
“He told me things, Frank. He told me that she’d done a very bad thing.”

25...

Already, exhaustion was setting in, setting up house, setting Frank up for a fall. He felt it when he sat once more in front of the dreadful telephone. He was suddenly sure that the world’s bad ideas could flow through this contraption, contaminating his already turbulent life.
“Don’t call her!” Bryan sounded panicked. Frank looked up at him standing in the bedroom doorway. His eyes were wide and shiny with worry. “I don’t… It just doesn’t feel right or something.”
“I don’t even know her fucking number Bry.”
Frank put his forehead in his hand and stared at the phone. He could feel Bryan watching him and there was something comfortable in that; safety in numbers. He felt this irrational tug in his brain of this sick and symbiotic desire for some sort of stability in his life, same sort of sameness, and this powerful, violent and sexy need to fuck all that up. Pulling a small pad of paper towards him, Frank picked up the phone.
“Who are you calling then?” Bryan asked, still standing in the doorway and hugging himself a little bit.
“Lou Deeds,” Frank said thoughtfully as he squinted slightly at the numbers on the paper. He slowly and deliberately punched the numbers in, fighting off a sense of destiny clicking in closer with every digit. “I’m just going to get some information.”
Pushing the last number in, Frank sat back and listened to the connection makes it story known. He looked at Bryan standing there and sort of chewing on his lower lip. He thought about how much weird shit, just straight up bullshit he had forced Bryan to put up with in the time they had known each other. Unconsciously mirroring Bryan, Frank began to chew on his own lower lip. He felt a bright, red flash of pain there that woke him to another degree.
“Ow,” he said, distractedly putting his free hand to his mouth.
The phone on the other end began to ring. He could hear it pushing through the clicking wires, like a bad idea being birthed through skeleton insects. His heart began to beat faster and his bowels clenched. He momentarily cursed Bryan for spooking him so badly. The final ring fell away through the sound of a tornado in a sealed jar and Frank realized that he was holding his breath.
A connection was made on the other end and there was a long, dry pause before any reaction.
“Hey, this is Lou,” the voice warbled from the other end, as if from a tape that had seen better days five years ago. There was some hint of accent in Lou’s voice that brought to mind thoughts of farms and integrity and clean, honest living. “I’m not in right now. Please leave a message and I’ll call you back when I can. Thanks.”
There was a beep that sounded made from drunken bees.
“Hey Lou, this is Frank, Mary’s friend. I had… I had a question for you, just looking for a little information. If you could give me a call at…”
Frank trailed off and squint his eyes closed. He always forgot his own phone number. Bryan threw the digits out in his best bemused voice. Bryan always gave Frank the number.
Frank repeated the number into the far away message machine and hung up the phone. He looked up at Bryan with a tired smile.
“Are you going to work today?” Bryan asked with a trace of his own smile.
“What is today? No, I doubt it.”
“Why are you calling? Why are you getting involved in this… whatever this is?” Bryan did not seem terribly worried anymore.
Frank gave him a genuinely huge smile that spoke volumes, but mostly asked why he didn’t already know the answer to his own question.
“Why the hell not?”

24...

“Mary got pissed, of course.”
Bryan rolled his head towards Frank.
“What was she pissed about?”
“You name it,” Frank sighed. “She was pissed that I came in smelling like smoke and tried to pass off some lame excuse. She was pissed that I spent time alone with Alexis. She was pissed that I wasn’t having a good time at the party.”
Bryan got up from the couch and headed towards his room. He called back through a door half open.
“But you didn’t do the dirty deed that night?”
Frank’s eyes were aimed at the ceiling, but he was looking at something else. He was looking at the way the rounded tunnel of the past took the edges off of things. He was looking at the heart’s filter. He was looking straight at his own romantic lies and letting himself get lost in their labyrinthine extravagances; like some glowing spider’s web of Celtic design.
“Nope,” he said dreamily.
Bryan came back to the living room with a smirk on his face and a towel around his waist.
“You talk about her like you love her.”
Frank turned towards him and stared with such seriousness that Bryan’s smile faltered a bit at the edges.
“She does something to me Bryan. I cannot explain it. It’s not love, but this sort of sick compulsion that seems so passionate and alive at first, but then just ends up pulling me into this bad and negative energy.”
Bryan wanted to make some sort of joke, any wisecrack to lighten the mood, but couldn’t. His tongue was stuck in his mouth, wondering what the hell had happened to all the spit in there. His smile had run for cover, sheltering it out until better days.
“And see, I know this. And I got suckered in every time. I thought that I had finally escaped it, that I had removed myself from the process but…”
Frank looked down at the floor with a fierce concentration. This severe seriousness was something that was rarely seen in Frank, and it may be one of the reasons it made Bryan so uncomfortable. When Frank looked back at Bryan’s face though, Bryan was more troubled by what he saw in his eyes. A mixture of things in there combined into a swamp, into quicksand that pulled into and was fed by the darkest parts of ones soul; a destructive cycle that tore and fed on its own energy. Bryan saw misery, loneliness, hopelessness, a deep sense of loss and some spark like primal fire.
“I can feel it starting up again,” Frank said, standing slowly. He stiffly glanced towards his bedroom door and began walking towards it as if in a daze.
“And fucking fates protect me. I’m excited about it.”

23...

As the two of them got closer to the door, the girls hand moved from his forearm to his hand. Frank barely had the time to register the pleasant heat in her grip, had just begun to take in the near electric charge he felt when their fingers touched before they were outside in the near summer air.
It was full blown night into morning, but still oppressively warm outside. Drunks milled about the dying lawn with red plastic cups gripped in their desperate hands. The seedier guests of the party could be found out here and Frank felt immediately at home. The mystery girl led Frank towards the right side of the house and let loose his hand.
“So how do you know Mary?” he asked.
The girl was lighting a cigarette and looking slyly at him over the lighter's flame.
“You don’t recognize me?” she asked through a mouthful of slow moving smoke.
He shook his head with a slight smile while she brought the lighter to the tip of his cigarette.
“Oh that’s right,” she said in a low, sultry tone. “You weren’t invited to Mary’s lesbian sex party.”
“The bitch never invites me to those.”
She laughed easily and took another drag from her smoke. He loved this feeling, this easy flirting and give and take. There was something about her that Frank took an instant liking to, something in the air that danced between them.
“My boyfriend lives downstairs from Mary. Lou?”
“Oh, okay. Yeah, no, I think I’ve seen you around.”
He focused on her fully and she daintily opened herself up in an antique photograph pose. She batted her eyes, and man, that impish smile was going to be the death of him. He carefully reached out, as if afraid to spook her away, and lightly touched her hair.
“It used to be lighter than this? No?”
“Yeah,” she said with an appreciative smile. “I’ve changed to match my darker side.”
Frank nodded as if he knew exactly what she was talking about, as if her words carried some gravity far weightier than any other could appreciate. He glanced down at the cigarette that was nearly gone.
“I’m sorry, what’s your name by the way?”
“Alexis,” she said with a small curtsey.
Frank laughed lightly, turning his head to face the sky.
“What’s so funny?” she asked in a way that was not the least bit self-conscious. Something within him turned on ticklish wheels and tied him tighter to her. He looked back down at her.
“I don’t know. Your name just seems to fit you perfectly.”
She dropped her cigarette to the dry earth and stomped it out with languid movements. She tilted her head up to him and slightly away, some fiery power dancing in her eyes.
“You don’t even know me.”
Her voice was open and even, young and alive. It brought an invisible finger down the length of Frank’s spine.
“I suppose not,” he said with a tilt of his head. “But still.”
She smiled with a brilliance that wanted to crack the sky. And before he even had a chance to take that in, she leaned up and kissed him quickly.
“It was nice finally meeting you,” she said over her shoulder as she skipped back towards the front door of the house.
He watched her go and his eyes went wide when he realized he couldn’t breathe. It was fucking ridiculous, but he couldn’t breathe. That kiss, that simple mere brushing of lips was as chaste as a baby, but it still somehow made him woozy. He suddenly looked around a bit bashfully, actually blushing. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, trying to record forever that brief instant when their lips had touched.

22...

There was this party, this god awful sorority, college party. I mean awful is a given, but this was particularly bad. Cheap bargain rate beer in the keg, generic store brand vodka the only hard alcohol, and veggies and dip as the snack selection. And these were the bonuses of the party.
Frank didn’t have anything against the greeks in general, living with those sort of generalizations was just dumb. But these were Mary’s sorority sisters, ladies he had attempted to meet and be friendly with, people to whom he had assumed the best. However after all of the fake smiles and snide comments that these ladies assumed he was too stupid to get, he was forced, yes forced, to call her sorority the F.B.I. – Fucking Bitch Institute.
At this particular soiree, one was supposed to be dressed in red, or wear shirts with flowers, or some such nonsense. Naturally, Frank had decided to go a different way and wear a black cardigan with no shirt underneath, and shorts.
“Nice outfit,” a woman named Kristen said as she passed. Her sneer could have stripped paint.
Frank had promised Mary that he would be on his better behavior, especially after she had seen him walk in with what he was wearing, but he was far too sober for this shit.
“Thanks Kristen. Your tits almost pop right out of that top!”
The fake enthusiasm dripped down the hallway walls.
Kristen turned and gave him a look like she had just seen a big, fuzzy, cute dog run down by a lawnmower – and then fucked. Frank couldn’t help flashing a toothy grin. Mary was going to hear about that one and would be charging down this hallway any minute.
“I better get a smoke before that,” Frank mumbled to himself.
Beginning to pay attention to the people floating around this hallway for the first time, Frank flagged down a brawny guy walking past.
“Hey man, you gotta smoke?”
The guy gave Frank the incredulous look that he probably reserved for losers. Frank gave him a hearty thumbs up and a “thanks anyway” just to piss him off. Frank looked down at his vodka and cranberry and finished it off with a grimace.
“Here you go,” a voice that resonated with laughter and mystery said.
Frank looked to his left. This mirthful looking, dark-eyed girl glanced at him sideways with just the hint of a smile. She held a cigarette out to him in way that made it seem like the end of a magician’s trick.
“Thanks,” he said, plucking the smoke away. He couldn’t help smiling at this girl, there was some gleam in her eye that made his body tingle. “You’re saving my life.”
“Or putting it in terrible jeopardy,” she looked at him fully and seriously. There was this fullness to her lips that knocked the air out of Frank’s lungs, kicked away his coolness.
“Yeah,” he said lamely, laughing even more so.
“Frank!” he heard Mary shrilly shout.
He glanced over to his right with the wary eyes of a tired gazelle who knows he’s done for. He saw her eyes touch on the girl to the left and narrow to razors. She crossed the remaining ground like a machine. Frank nearly closed his eyes and braced for impact when he saw this woman jump in front of him, right into harm’s way.
“Hey Mary,” this woman said with what seemed a practiced nonchalance. “That blouse looks fantastic!”
“Um, thanks.” Mary was fumbling.
“I was wondering if I could borrow Frank here for a second. He’s got the answer that will solve this heated debate outside. It will only take a minute, and then he’s all yours.”
Frank looked at this girl, whose focus never left Mary, and tried to hide his incredulous smile.
“Seriously, it would just be for a minute.”
“Um, yeah. Okay.”
“Thanks so much!”
The woman grabbed Frank’s arm and charged towards the door.
“What debate?” Frank asked.
“Whether or not you want to have that smoke sometime tonight,” she turned with a mischievous smile and continued on.