Fun with Frank

89...

2007-05-18T17:35:00.000-07:00

Alexis flicked yet another butt out the window of the Cadillac. She moved her head as though she was following the falling arc of the glowing smoke, but she was carefully looking around the parking lot once again. Two cars still remained, but there didn't appear to be anyone in them. She figured that this was the time.
She got out of the car, her knees popping. There was a tense moment when a quick sneaking head rush made her think that she might actually lose the strength to stand, but she closed her eyes and took a slow and deep breath of the salt rimed air. She mock stretched and again scoped the parking lot and the beach just beyond. No one appeared to be too close, still those bonfires a good distance away.
Walking slowly, but not too slowly, around to the back of the Cadillac, Alexis opened the trunk and looked down at the shadowed shape of Matthew's body, lying curled as if in sleep. Somehow, the trunk light had begun to short and it now blinked on and off intermittently. A flash of yellow and there was the sepia toned photograph of violence and a moment of banal evil. A restoration of moon spattered darkness and the calm feeling of smooth night sleeping
She reached behind the corpse and felt around for the sleeping bag. She felt it, grabbed it, and as she brought it forward the trunk flashed again. She caught the staring, dead eye out of the corner of her own and clenched her jaw. She unrolled the bag and began putting it over Matthew's still feet. She lifted his legs up and continued pulling the bag over up to his waist. Continuing to lift the body and pulling the bag, Alexis had him wrapped in about ten minutes. Just as she was pulling the open hole of the sleeping bag over his lolling head, the trunk flashed alight again, just in time to clearly show a scruff of hair disappearing into the dark hole of the bag.
She reached around the filled bag, prying her fingers underneath, and once again stealing herself against the strain, she pulled the impromptu body bag out of the trunk and let it fall to the parking lot's asphalt with a muffled thump. Without looking, she reached up and slammed the trunk closed.
Bending down slowly, and tunelessly humming the theme to TV's "One In The Hand", Alexis wrapped the roll straps around her hands, two or three times and began pulling.
The nylon shell of the bag whispered demonic threats as it dragged along the asphalt. She got it to the lip of the parking lot where the tarmac ended and the slight slope of the beach began and dropped the bag. She hunched over, breathing heavily and flexing her hands over her slightly bent knees. She glared down on the lump at her feet and blew a sigh through her nostrils. Alexis stood up straight and forcefully kicked the bag over the lip of the parking lot. It hit the graceful slope of California giving way to the Pacific and managed to roll a good six feet.
"Better'n nothin'," she sighed before following the bag and body down onto the beach.

88...

2007-05-03T18:21:00.000-07:00

“And what’s keeping you from making the decision?” Alexis asked.
“Well,” Frank began, his eyes narrowed to near sleeping slits and his voice taking on the timbre of a dusty professor. “It’s a long, cold walk home.”
“Did you want company?”
“Are you volunteering?” He barely got that last word out, and his eyes remained closed to slits.
Alexis shrugged her shoulders suggestively.
“I get the feeling that you would lead me to a bad, bad place,” Frank said with a dry chuckle.
“You’re possibly right.”
“I also,” he let his head roll back and took another drag from the nearly done cigarette. “I also have to pee really bad, and that last time I tried that on foot, in this kind of condition, I ended up with a very wet shirt.”
“Charming.”
“Sorry.”
He went to take another hit off of the cigarette, and realizing it was at its end, threw it to the ground with frustration. Alexis reached into the small purse hanging off of her shoulder, pushed past the freshly purchased bottle of hair dye, and grabbed her pack of cigarettes. She opened the box and offered one to Frank.
Frank looked at the choice of cigarettes before him and once again swayed as if his own personal tropical storm were blowing him about. He looked into her eyes, as best he could with his own narrowed so close to closed, and laughed. He plucked a cigarette out of its crowd of brethren and placed it, eventually, into his mouth.
“We have not officially met,” Frank said around his newly gained, unlit cigarette.
“No we have not.”
Frank stuck out his hand. “Frank,” he said, as if he were slightly embarrassed in saying it.
Alexis smiled demurely, took his hand and curtsied slightly. “Alexis.”
“It is truly a pleasure,” he said.
Alexis reached back into her purse and grabbed her lighter. She lit his smoke and one for herself.
“Can I be honest with you Alexis?” he asked.
“Sure,” she smiled through a cloud of exhaled smoke.
“If I were to meet you again, I may not remember it. Part of it would certainly be that I’m fucking drunk as drunk, but a larger part would be this sick shield I carry around. I would convince myself we had not met so that I would not be hurt when someone as beautiful as you didn’t remember me.”
“Wow, I’m unsure how to reply to that.”
“Just take it easy on me when we see each other again.” He pointed his cigarette towards the road that would take him home, and began to move his feet to follow his hand’s lead. “And I hope it’s soon Alexis.”
“Did you want company for that walk?”
“Naw,” he turned his head back towards her. “I’m not sure I’m ready for that. Have a great night.”
Alexis leaned against that stairs and watched him stagger away. Just as he was rounding a corner and moving out of sight, she was finishing her cigarette.

87...

2007-04-26T16:48:00.001-07:00

"Hey there," Frank said with a mirth touched slur. He put a cigarette to his mouth and inhaled as if his very life depended on the smoke getting where it needed to go.
"Hi," Alexis answered back. She tried her best not to smile, trying to adhere to a blank poker face on coming into the first contact with this guy. But she couldn't help it, there was something about the blurry eyed swagger that made her want to count him in a conspirator, something to the sideways smile that spoke of a home of some sort. "You look like you're up to something."
"I am," he said with dry giggle.
"And what are you up to outside of my boyfriend's place?"
Frank pointed with the glowing end of his smoke towards the window beside him, glowing blue with the flicker of a television. His eyes widened comically and questioningly.
"Larry?"
"Lou."
"Right. Well," he began, and then swayed hard enough to set his feet into a shuffling dance step. He righted himself, slapped his cigarette hand on the concrete step just above his head, and took a swig of the concoction in his plastic cup. "I belong to one of the ladies upstairs."
"Not Rachel?"
"I wish," he sad with an exaggerated eye roll. "Mary."
"Oh, she's..."
"A pain?”
“I was going to say nice, actually.”
“You are the one being nice." He took another deep drag, followed quickly by another swig of his drink.
Alexis laughed quietly and he gave her a questioning look.
"It still doesn't really explain what you're doing here underneath the stairs."
"No," he pointed at her with his cigarette. "You're right, absolutely right."
He took a deep breath, held it for a moment, closed his eyes and let out the breath slowly.
"I'm not supposed to be doing this," he said in a stage whisper, waving the cigarette in front of her face.
“And she can’t see you down here?”
“She’s…” He waved his hand distractedly as if that explained what she was and then took another large swallow from the plastic cup.
“She’s what?” Alexis asked with another quiet laugh.
“She’s passed out. So I came down here, to have quick smoke and make a decision.”
“A decision about what?”
“About whether or not I finish this smoke, chug this cocktail, go quietly back upstairs and wash my hands and my face, brush my teeth real good and then slip unnoticed into Mary’s pastel colored bed.”
Alexis waited for a moment. “Or?”
“Or I say screw that routine and walk the mile and a half home.”
Alexis put her arms behind her and leaned against the staircase that would carry him up to Mary. Frank leaned towards her like a conspirator.
“I’m leaning towards the latter,” he said in a whisper.

86...

2007-04-13T12:55:00.001-07:00

Watching the movements of the waves, or more specifically, watching the white foam of brine catch the moon and ambient light as the mad swell of water crested could hypnotize a person. It was possible to drown in that water hundreds of yards from where it met the sand.
Alexis let it happen. If she let those waves overtake her, it would drown out the voices fighting for her attention; voices all full of snarls and sharp edges, voices that refused to let her forget. She cast her mind out onto the blackness, the extent of which made her feel a little dizzy, a little nauseous. She watched white crests birthed from out a seemingly seamless force, curling out and so full of immediate purpose. She saw these as ghostly white fingers, strumming an epic guitar in a heady lullaby. The fingers stretched, webbed out, and after a held breath moment on an edge, crashed to the brutal sand and chased further dreams, someone else’s dreams, until they were fully spent.
Occasionally, Alexis would shake off the tender, self imposed webs to steal a quick glance up and down the beach, a surreptitious look around the parking lot to see if she was in the clear. But all too quickly the seething anger within her would come calling and she fought her way back out through the surf.
She would actually hold her breath as she considered the feeling of falling down below the surging shelf of water, out where it undulated secretly without tell tale sparks of foam to direct the eye on where it all was going. She imagined it crushing around her, going from the comfort of a blanket to something tighter and more primal, but somehow so, so similar to that swaddling blanket. She imagined the continental shelf sliding below her pale, bare feet, falling and falling until it gave up any preconceived notions and simply fell away into an unimaginable abyss.
Her body would sometimes overtake her willful mind and force her to breath. This broke her reverie momentarily, but now instead of a chorus of demons awaiting her return, she would catch a glimpse of Frank's smiling face.
A couple came stumbling up into the parking lot from the beach. The guy had a tartan blanket slung haphazardly over his arm and he was stumbling violently. The young woman did her best to stabilize him, and would flash a patronizing smile when he spoke in what was undoubtedly one big slur, but when she looked up towards the car they were heading towards she had that look of tight lipped anger that could quickly shift to rage. After a few minutes of comic pushing and cajoling, the young women got the guy in the passenger seat of the car and slammed the door. She stormed around to the driver's side, got in and got the car out of there. That left three cars in the parking lot.
Alexis could see two bonfires down on the sand, both a pretty good distance from the parking lot. She would wait a little while longer. She rolled down the window and took a closed eyed moment to fully breathe the salt air. She lit up a cigarette and sent her mind back out to the waves. But try as she might, she could not escape the memory of Frank's smile; that drunken, shyly cocky smile he had on the night she had met him.
He had been standing beneath the stairs in front of Lou’s apartment, the stairs that led up to Mary’s place. He had been swaying slightly as if to a song from within him, a large plastic cup filled with God knows what in his hand, and that non-hesitating and open smile when he noticed her come walking out of the darkness.

85...

2007-03-22T17:30:00.000-07:00

Prior to this, in a life that seemed to be someone else’s all together, Alexis learned the ins and outs of the southern Pacific coast. At one point, the winding line between Oceanside and Long Beach was more familiar to her than the lines in the back of her hand. The knowledge never really left, but as its usefulness became less and less over time, its prominence diminished. Now, riding the curves that the Cadillac seemed to grip like a rough lover, the knowledge slowly trickled back in.
She remembered a wide variety of trips, both north and south and in varying degrees of sobriety and rage, along this long strip of road that could sometimes get so dark. She remembered how the stretch between Dana Point and T Street in San Clemente had begun to feel like the driveway of a commuter must; familiar and safe. She remembered a number of trips cruising the narrow peninsula in Newport, so many of them seeming to end just as the hours cried their dawn tears over the rocky jetty that burst from the end and the water began to magically take on the lightness of the sky.
Alexis remembered beaches that were impossible to see the long hike down to from the highway. Alexis remembered beaches that were marked from the street, but the long trek down still made them unsavory to many visitors. Alexis also remembered many beaches that began with parking lots right off of the god damned highway.
This was what she needed.
But more importantly, she needed one of these that would be fairly deserted. There were beaches that were known as being heavily patrolled by the police. It was a trade off, but possible police activity versus a number a late night beach fucks and bonfires probably worked out a little better.
The Cadillac was taking a rising curve, the asphalt following the graceful shape of the sea. She knew it before she saw it. Just on the other side of the rise, as the road began to fall once again, was a wide expanse of beach. She pulled her foot from the accelerator as she decided.
It sat fairly unaffected by the crowds in Laguna to the south. She was still a good distance from the lights and maddening riches of Corona Del Mar and on into Newport. She could see three or four bonfires scattered along the sands, but these weren't of much concern. There were close to a dozen cars in the asphalt parking lot and this was the problem. She was going to pass the parking lot's entrance in a second.
She made a quick turn in. Alexis figured that after examining the scene, if this was not a place that suited her needs, well later on down the road girlfriend. There were more beaches than this one. She could wait till north of the peninsula if necessary, but then she'd be getting closer to Huntington Beach, to Long Beach and then the LA county beaches and where there just were not the long stretches of dark and deserted. Plus the longer she stayed on the road with what was in her trunk, the greater chance she took.
The Cadillac cruised the lot at a slow speed, moving towards a group of white lines not containing cars. Without the throttled roar of the engine, Alexis could hear the surf pounding on the shore and she smiled slightly, overwhelmed by a dizzying rush of memories all falling to the fore. She pulled into a spot, turned off the engine and sat staring at the black Pacific, her eyes seemingly lost behind that wistful smile.

84...

2007-03-01T17:10:00.000-08:00

Alexis looked out the windshield of the Cadillac, that malice kissed smile there for any of the dozens of people waltzing through the crosswalk to see if they happened to glance over. She and the car sat at a T, the canyon road finally emptying its asphalt river at the threshold of the Pacific, the dark bulk of which could be seen through the crosswalkers and across the street.
The jumble of lights and cars and scantily clad people were disorienting after all the dark emptiness and violence of the canyon. The energy of it all carried an insectile buzz which battered its thin leathery wings against the closed windows of the car. Alexis could feel the difference in pressure, she felt as if the car had been dropped into the deep. She clenched her jaw and mentally pushed out against the battering stress.
She maintained some semblance of calm, was able to keep from pressing down on the gas and mowing over the pedestrians, by focusing on the miles of inky black ahead of her. There was something about the eerie, seemingly infinite nature of it that made it seem easy to drown her anxieties in.
Those fuckers though, they leave corpses that float, corpses that come back and incriminate you.
She tapped aimlessly on the steering wheel, waiting for the light to change. She tried to dive deep into the thoughts of what needed to be done as a way to keep the car from imploding from the pressure.
She was going to have to track down Frank. She was going to have to do something to help protect him from an army she had unwittingly unleashed on him. She knew that she was possibly too late, that she was possibly walking into another trap set for her.
Alexis dropped out of her focused white noise, immediately forgot about the buzzing crush around her. Why would she put her life on the line for Frank? She didn’t have reason, but she just understood that it would happen. The two of them had an odd camaraderie that went beyond friendship, beyond conspirators. There was an understanding with Frank that she had never found elsewhere, and while she wasn’t necessarily prepared to put her life on the line, she would work pretty damn hard to make sure he wouldn’t have to put his on the line for her.
The light was getting ready to change. The automated system was blinking away the pedestrians to allow for a clear shot for cars making their turns onto the mighty coast highway. Alexis once again focused hard on the big stretch of open in front of her, searched her memory for spots along the coast that provided her what she needed.
Green fell down from the traffic signal and Alexis began moving. She honked the horn to scatter the lagging pedestrians to a few shouts and a crop of middle fingers leaping skyward. She hardly cared; she turned the beast to the right, to the north, towards San Francisco and thought about the long drive ahead.
She first had to take care of a small chore though.

83...

2007-02-14T17:34:00.000-08:00

The smell of the Pacific was pouring in through the Cadillac's window. Alexis couldn't see it yet, that infinite stretch of blackened blue, but she was starting to see shops along the side of the canyon road which would multiply until there was a crowded fury of unnecessary boutiques selling unnecessary shit; handcrafted and tacky jewelry, expensive and uncomfortable shoes, clothing that would quickly go out of style.
She ignored the lights that were becoming more garish and again thought back to the early morning in front of Lou's door. She had given Lou a quick kiss and trotted to the staircase that Mary was just beginning to come down.
Mary was dressed in a denim skirt and a navy sweatshirt brightly emblazoned with her sorority letters. Alexis wasn't paying attention to what her high pitched, bordering on shrill, voice was saying into her phone as she was sure it would take her headache and expand it. Alexis waved to Mary. Mary's eyes tried to skim over Alexis and pretend that she wasn't there, but ultimately the manners that had been hammered into her won out and Mary waved back. Alexis tried to signal to her that she wanted to talk, and this time even the etiquette lessons couldn't win over Mary's intense need to roll her eyes.
"I'll call you right back," she said into the phone before folding it closed. "Hello Alexis," she said with a smile that looked like she was trying not to let on that she had just eaten something that tasted like vomit. "What can I do for you?"
Tried patience sounds like something intangible being slowly ripped.
"Sorry to bother you Mary, I was just wondering if it would be possible to borrow that turquoise sweater that you have."
Mary looked down at Alexis as though she had just been asked to French kiss a sibling.
"Right now?"
"Yeah," Alexis said with an amazingly natural embarrassed shrug. "I have a job interview today, and it would just go perfect with this skirt I have. I just love the way it looks on you. If it's not too much trouble."
"Fine," she sighed. Emotion seemed to drain out of Mary's face as she turned away to head back up the stairs. Alexis trotted up the stairs after her. Mary unlocked her apartment door and walked in, again Mary followed.
"You can stay here," Mary pointed to the general vicinity of the living room.
"Oh sure," Alexis put on her best voice of gratitude. "Thanks a bunch Mary, I really appreciate it."
Mary walked down the darkened hallway towards her bedroom and Alexis walked quickly into the living room. She took a quick glance around the room, her eyes finally settling on the couch. Alexis pulled one of the couch cushions off and quickly undid the zipper on the back. She pulled the professor's ID, gym membership and card key out of her pocket and shoved in into the bottom of the cushion before quickly zipping it back up. She was replacing the cushion just as Mary came stomping back into the room.
"I need you to be careful with this," Mary snidely said as she handed over the sweater. "It's one of my favorites."
"Oh of course," Alexis said with mock concern. "Thanks again Mary, you're a life saver."
Mary threw on a smile that was polite enough, but with just a touch of snotty at the corners. She opened the door and let Alexis out in front of her. Alexis, her back to Mary, let a faint smile just touched with malice caress her mouth.

82...

2007-02-07T17:21:00.000-08:00

Alexis remembered wanting to shriek out with a primal scream, stooped over on the railroad tracks and breathing like an animal trying to sick something up. She looked intently at the wet and pummeled pile of ruined flesh that had moments ago been a fairly handsome face. She wanted to drill this sight in, hoping in some way that the horror of seeing what she had done would keep whatever demon had possessed her from coming back.
Slowly becoming aware of the rock still in her hand, her nose wrinkled back with a wave of revulsion. She threw the weapon, hard, into the struggling shrubs and weeds a few yards off the rocks and debris of the railroad tracks. She wiped her hands convulsively on her pants.
Holding her breath, she bent down and removed the man's wallet and quickly shoved it into her own back pocket. She would remove the cash and dispose of the rest later.
Now, sitting on the trunk of a Cadillac in Southern California, Alexis sat up straight, lost in concentration.
Trying to remember quite clearly what she did next, Alexis ran over her memory slowly. Back then, she had been fighting panic, trying to figure out how to cover up what it was she had done. She thought that maybe, just possibly, if she left the body here it would look like another drunken dumb ass hit by a train. She decided to put the wallet back in that case. She was bending down to do that very thing when she reached into the wallet to pull out any sort of ID. She figured she could at least slow down the police if nothing else.
There wasn't much in the wallet; about sixty-five dollars, a driver's license, membership card to a gym...
Alexis gasped, jumping down off the Cadillac's trunk. Was that what Matthew had been talking about? Was that what they were looking for?
Inside the professor's wallet had also been a key card, the sort that are used for hotel room doors. She had taken the three cards, shoved them in her pocket and quickly walked away from the railroad tracks.
Alexis got into the car and started it up. She sat for a moment, looking grimly out the windshield before pulling the vehicle on the canyon street and heading towards the ocean.
After leaving the scene at the railroad, she hadn't gotten back home until close to dawn. Unable to shake off the adrenaline, or cope with the vicious nausea that came at her in waves, she paced her apartment for a couple of hours before heading over to Lou's place. Lou was just getting up and heading off to practice when she got there, the look of concern on his face almost tipped her precariously balanced emotions towards a tearful breakdown.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
"Yeah, I'm fine. I've just been up all night with a couple of the girls."
"What's this?" he asked, peering closely at her pants. "Is that blood?"
Keeping her alarm in check, Alexis looked down at her jeans. There, bright as a stop sign, were drops of spatter.
"Yeah, rough night." She laughed, but it sounded hollow in her own ears. "We hit a fucking deer out on 32. Can you believe it? I was trying to help push it off the road, but I guess we just winged it or something because it jumped up and took off."
She could see skepticism swimming around in Lou's eyes, but he didn't challenge her.
"I'm sorry Lexy, I gotta get going. Do you wanna crash out here?"
At that moment, Alexis heard Frank's girlfriend Mary, leaving the apartment upstairs and chatting away on her cell phone.
"That's alright sweety, I'll see you later. I need to ask Mary something."

81...

2007-01-31T12:02:00.000-08:00

She pushed up off the Cadillac's bumper and felt a wheeling in her stomach for a moment when her body, perfectly balanced, defied gravity for the briefest of seconds. She let that stubborn gravity grab hold and pull her roughly down on the trunk. With her cigarette clenched tightly in her lips, Alexis used her hands to push herself up to the back window. There she leaned back and pulled the smoke from her mouth, twin streams of demon steam curling from her nostrils.
She turned and laughed at the sky. She knew that the sudden tsunami of adrenaline, followed by the unnaturally fast evaporation of it, had left her feeling this giddy, dopey daze. Let it roll, she thought.
"There's nothing for it," she whispered and again laughed.
Alexis softly banged the back of her head against the window three times, and then once more for good measure. She carefully placed the cigarette back in her mouth, took a final drag and pitched it into the darkened street.
She thought back to the Davis job, closed her eyes to help place her back at the moment. She tried to feel that hot air on her skin, tried to remember the dried, chuffing sound of the cinders knocking each other between the ties while she and the professor walked the rails.
Alexis could remember the way her skin had crawled, the intense inward shiver she had when he had placed his hand on her back and the intense fortitude and focus it had taken to stare up at him with a disarming smile. She could see his mouth moving to say something but it was as if her mind her vacuuming away the sound, keeping the words sealed somewhere else.
Performing a sort of instant replay in her mind, Alexis watched again and again the scene of his speaking to her. There was the lascivious smile and the white, slightly crooked teeth. She watched the mouth form the words over and over again, certain of something. She could even remember that the words had come out a bit sluggish from what she had added to his vodka tonic in the restaurant about half a mile away. Then, as though disconnected from the memory, as though coming from somewhere else, she heard his melodious, lecture hall trained voice.
"Who's my pretty, little girl?"
And it was with those words that she had lost control. She felt herself kick him in the balls as his hand caressed her cheek, knew well enough that she was punching him in the throat as he knelt down, choking. She sort of had control of her hands as they went to unclasp her deadly necklace and she looked down at his writhing form on the ground. But it was about that time the she felt as though she were being taken over by someone else, her conscious mind suddenly locked in a pile of red, ragged mess. She barely registered the rock that her own hands picked up.
Alexis was unable to clearly remember the work she actually did on his face and head, but she could remember the gleaming mass that was left as she knelt over him, panting with exertion.
“What the fuck did I just do?”

80...

2006-11-24T15:25:00.000-08:00

When the Malibu had rounded a curve to the east and was out of sight, Alexis removed her face from Matthew's with a grimace. She pulled her hands away and wiped them on herself. Matthew's body slid down the side of the car and fell to the gravel on the side of the road with a boneless thump. Alexis let fly a kick into his ribs.
"Fucker," she said, her mouth all teeth. She moved her tongue around her mouth, collecting saliva in a pile like a broom pulling dust and detritus. She let fly a wad of spit which landed somewhere in Matthew's hair.
She glared over the roof of the Cadillac, her eyes like sparking wires, turning her head left and right in slow, sweeping gestures. No other automobiles were making their appearance.
Man, she wanted another cigarette. This was however not the time for it. She looked down at Matthew’s body on the side of the road. She was breathing hard. Matthew lay in a slump, like a rag doll that had been tossed aside by a petulant girl.
Alexis let out a short bark of a laugh.
Taking a deep breath, Alexis reached down and grabbed hold of Matthew’s belt once again and fastening with a reserve strength she was unaware that she still had, she pulled his body around to the back of the car in one long slide.
She dropped him, none too carefully, and once again looked around the deserted canyon road. She propped open the trunk, the lid of which had succumbed to gravity and drifted slowly down. Her hands were bathed in the trunk’s pale yellow light, a color which made her think of insects. She could see scars, she could see swatches of blood and road dirt, she could see a small tremor starting that would eventually devour her entire body. She curled her large but womanly hands into tight fists.
Alexis let her head drop and her eyes close. She controlled her breathing to a slow, regulated pace. She wore a grimace on her face. She looked like a boxer in a corner, attempting to decide on a reason to enter the match.
She shot her face up, eyes open, and let out a sharp breath of air. She kneeled down beside Matthew one hand under his neck and the other under his thighs. Shaking with strain, she lifted him like a groom stealing a bride over the threshold. With an animal grunt, she dropped his body into the trunk. It landed inside just fine, except for his head which lolled onto the lip where the trunk lid connected with the back of the car.
With a devious smile that she shared for no one, that was hers alone, she brought the trunk down on his head with an almost playful slam. There was a comic ‘thonk’ sound as the lid connected and bounced back up.
“Bitch,” she said.
Alexis grabbed the head by the hair and shoved it fully into the trunk. She once again brought down the lid which managed to latch and close without hindrance. She finally pulled out another cigarette and lit it.
Alexis leaned against the trunk of the Cadillac, mostly hidden the shadows of the canyon walls except when a blaze of red from the tip of her cigarette ignited the passive look on her face. She cocked one foot up on the bumper, let her head fall back and blew smoke up towards the sky.

79...

2006-11-01T17:23:00.000-08:00

The headlights were growing in size, beginning to play their illumination over the driver's side of the car, beginning to shine dully on Alexis' face facing Matthew's face. She sighed heavily.
"Of course."
She looked Matthew in the face, those growing headlights beginning to bring more definition to the glistening hole of his left eye. She held firm on his body pushing it against the passenger side of the car with her hands and with the weight of her own body. She cocked her head, put on her best flirting smile and looked into his blank face.
"Oh Matthew, you say the sweetest things," she said and laughed lightly, part for show and part because she was cracking herself up.
The headlights were intense to the point of hurting her eyes, which had adjusted themselves to the darkness. Matthew's face was washed of all color, the blank look and loose hanging jaw made him look somewhat bewildered. She could hear an engine that obviously needed some work that was a tad louder than it should have been.
Alexis ran her hand down his side and felt a tackiness where he had stuck himself with his own knife.
"Matthew," she said with a smile and small giggle. "You're so silly."
She could hear the pressure come off the engine a tad, as though the driver had taken their foot off of the accelerator.
The flirtatious smile never left her face. Alexis took a deep breath, held it, and pushed her face against Matthew's. She pushed her lips against his upper one. Matthews hanging jaw placed his bottom lip on her chin. Alexis closed her eyes and thought of anything else; of the trip to Yellowstone she took as child on the way to Michigan, of butterflies, of eating popcorn at the movies.
She listened to the car approaching. She could tell it was slowing down, she just wasn't sure what she was dealing with here, a do-gooder or worse. She wished that she had thought to have taken Matthews knife out of the car with her.
Alexis tried not to think about how deep the knife wound she currently had her hand covering actually was. She tried not to think about how she had a dead lip between her own in a stage kiss, about how that lip was already cooling.
The car was upon them, she could hear it on the other side of the Cadillac, moving at what was probably about 15 miles an hour. A normal person wouldn't pull over, seeing what must look like a couple making out, would they? Maybe this was a cop. Alexis could feel her heart beating heavy, she could feel a dizziness coming over her. She was trying to think of what was going to be her next move if a cop pulled over and approached. The car crawled by, tortuously slow.
A howling wolf call filled the surrounding canyon. "Do it!" some male voice called out.
Alexis opened her left eye, and gazing past the staring dead eye of Matthew in the foreground saw what looked like a Chevy Malibu with the leering faces of two teenage boys looking at them lasciviously through open windows. The car finally sped up and moved along.

78...

2006-10-25T17:11:00.000-07:00

Alexis walked around to the back of the car and opened up the trunk. A sickly yellow light illuminated the contents of the space, barely fell out to lightly touch the ground surrounding the rear wheels. In the trunk was a change of shoes, a rolled up sleeping bag, a box of goodies for earthquake preparedness and an ancient tire jack.
She pushed everything to the back except the ratty sleeping bag which she pulled out and tossed to the side of the road. She looked around the small area of the trunk once again for anything that might be useful. Nothing about the contents had changed, just the same shit she had seen.
Moving in an unhurried rush, she grabbed the rolled sleeping bag and made her way around the passenger side of the car. She opened the rear passenger door and tossed the bag in the back. She saw the large, drying pool of blood on the floor and pushed away the memory of Louis' last moments. Less than an hour prior, she had been ready to kill the creepy little guy herself, but now knowing he had only been in the wrong place at the wrong time, she felt a certain sadness for the kid.
She softly closed the door and made her way to the front passenger door. She put her hand on the warm handle and waited. She closed her eyes, dropped her head and took three or four deep breaths.
Alexis was not sorry for Matthew's death, not in the least. Like most other men she had been locked into battle with, he became way too confident of his own power, not near sly enough. What she was upset about was how far this had now come, how far it would have to go. She would spend what was the rest of her life running, looking over her shoulder, always wondering which faceless fuck was on their way to her. She could feel the tension already building in her shoulders.
At the very least, she thought to herself, I now know there's a mark on me.
She slowly lifted the door's handle and let the door fall open under the weight of Matthew. His head lulled out over the seat and into the exterior world. His mouth opened as if breathing in the dusty air, his eye stared out into the chaparral behind her.
Alexis knelt down beside him, put her hands under his arms, took a deep breath and pulled. She managed to drag his body out of the passenger seat up to his waist before the strain was too much. Fucking bodies are always heavier than they should be. She let go and Matthew's head fell to the gravel at the road's shoulder.
Looking quickly east and west down the canyon road, Alexis took another deep breath, grabbed at Matthew’s belt and yanked with everything she had. She managed to get the body out of the car and onto the side of the road. She could feel a burning in her left shoulder, telling her she had pulled a muscle or two.
With a couple of minutes of teeth gritting strain and more sweat than she would have believed she could produce, Alexis got Matthew's body up off the ground and had it leaning against the car. She kicked the passenger door closed with her foot. She was panting, she had one hand pinning his body to the car and was wiping sweat off her face with the other. Matthew began sliding back towards the ground and she latched on with both hands, digging in with her legs to steady him once again.
As sweat stung her eyes, she seemed to notice a change in the light surrounding her. Before she could fathom what it was, she could hear the whine of a car's engine. She looked out to where the canyon let out onto the Pacific Ocean and saw headlights making their way towards her.

77...

2006-10-18T17:05:00.000-07:00

Alexis slipped off of Matthew's body, sliding the steel loop from around his neck at the same time. She fastened it around her own neck and it hung dutifully as an innocuous charm bracelet. She adjusted herself in the driver’s seat. She looked out the windshield and realizing that the car was sitting at a slant across the narrow canyon road she reached over and patted around for the keys she had left somewhere near Matthew.
Alexis was looking at herself from somewhere far away. She could almost hear her mind shrieking red, locked away inside the still cage of her body. Her hand, like a piece of machinery, found the keys to the Cadillac and pulled them to her. Eyes locked forward, she put the keys in the ignition and started the car, moving it only far enough to get it off to the side of the road before stopping the engine once again.
She looked over at Matthew slumped over on the passenger side. His face only lightly lit by the diffuse light coming from over the canyon walls and the silvery light of a moon she couldn't see. His one eye stared softly at nothing.
"Now what?" she asked softly.
Matthew, of course, didn't answer. He merely continued to stare silently.
"I'm pretty much fucked now Matthew. The company's after me, and being you're not going to report back in a couple of days, they're gonna send someone else; Vanessa and Lester more than likely. Lester I couldn't care about it, I can take him easy... But Vanessa wants me something awful."
Alexis found her cigarettes, rolled down the window and lit one up. She leaned her elbow out the window and blew an agitated stream of smoke out into the night.
"Nothing I can do. Huh? I mean I can't just call 'em up and call it off."
The rush of adrenaline suddenly dissipated like the smoke out the window and left her fully awake. She felt the sudden, maddening urge wail and cry a torrent. She let a few tears fall before sniffing loudly and taking another drag of her cigarette.
"Okay Matthew, I'm gonna have to get rid of you. It's certainly not gonna go good if I get pulled over and there you are, just staring at Officer Friendly with your one good eye and with one bad ligature mark around your neck."
She sat quietly for a moment, thinking over her options. She stared forward and took regular drags from her smoke.
"There's bad suburb behind, already with Louis, the mystery death, thank you very much. And the bars and restaurants up ahead at the beach are just gonna be getting ready to start jumping..."
She looked around herself, through the windows of the car and out at the dark dirt towers of the canyon.
"It almost seems perfect. To drag you out here and find some quiet place to lay you down in the dark." She looked back over at Matthew's blank face. "But, with my luck, I wind up putting you into the long driveway of a dog kennel or some such shit."
Alexis sighed, tossing her cigarette butt out the window. She sat silently for a moment before once again yanking the keys out of the ignition. She gave Matthew a sly sort of smile.
"It's risky, but... "
She opened the driver's side door and stepped out onto the road.

76...

2006-10-11T17:10:00.000-07:00

The wailing spin of the Cadillac was coming to a slow finale. The car went up on two wheels for a moment and then came down with a crash. Quicker than most would have thought possible, Alexis yanked the keys out of the ignition, flung her seatbelt away and was across the bench seat in one fluid motion.
She didn't realize it until she was on top of him, but in the thrashing of the car, Matthew had managed to lodge his own knife a good inch and a half into his side. He was grimacing like some sort of rabid and ravaged animal as he tried to remove it. This did not deter Alexis in the least. She held the curving tail of the metal lizard key ring out of her fingers like a pewter claw and went for his face.
Matthew let out a howl as the blunt end of the thing dug into the flesh of his temple. With his right hand, he pawed at the knife sticking out of him, with his left he attempted to land blows on Alexis' face. He was terrible with his left hand so little fell, but it wouldn't have mattered much anyway. Alexis was well within a pulsing red haze, finally riding that wave of bloody instinct, and it would take more than feeble punches to the face to snap her back.
She pulled strongly on the key chain, dragging it slowly across the upper part of his face. She didn't hear his animal shrieking, the flood of high pitched tongues that erupted from his mouth, but she felt the jerk and burst of warm fluid on her hand as the lizard's tail ruined his left eye.
Matthew pulled at the knife with an uncontrolled flailing and managed to dislodge it. He put one hand over his eye socket and brandished the knife, red with his own blood, with the other. He was screaming, muttering, slavering, but Alexis heard none of it. Everything in her ears was a soft static white noise of a radio temporarily between stations. Alexis calmly slipped her necklace from out of her pocket.
The knife hand began a swing, plunging the blade towards Alexis’ neck. She dodged to the right, but the thing was still going to land straight in her back at the end of that arc. When Matthew’s hand snagged on the seat belt though, the knife left his hand, twirling forwards, the handle bouncing lamely off of Alexis’ shoulder. Before Matthew could voice his disappointed growl, that growl was cut off by a chain wrapping around his neck.
Matthew was shocked by just how quickly the air cut off; one moment there was labored breathing, the next nothing coming in. He began to thrash wildly, but Alexis hung on like a seasoned rodeo rider.
Alexis barely felt movement beneath her, she only watched his bulging eye, his face turning a further shade of scarlet as she tightened the steel loop around his throat. She could see him struggling to say something, but she only slowly shook her head with a cold smile laid delicately on her face.
“No,” she said quietly and with a frost just around the edges. It was enough to make him stop thrashing around for a moment and stare at her face.
“I’m past tired of listening to you talk,” she again said softly. “I just want you take this in before that square of darkness overtakes what’s left of your vision and you never see anything again. Your ridiculous life amounted to nothing.”
There was only enough strength in him to make a lame swipe at her straining hands before his gaze looked up over her shoulder, fixed on something and then faded. There was no moment of recognition, no last look of fear, there was just the extinguishing of some indefinable light.

75...

2006-09-27T16:56:00.000-07:00

Alexis felt one hand clench on the Cadillac's steering wheel, the other on the metal lizard key ring. A tremor ran through her tightened muscles like a high voltage charge. She clenched her jaw shut and rode the wave of murderous anger, waiting for that blinding moment of instinctual answers.
"I'm assuming now," Matthew stated all slow and sweet, "that you're still holding onto the pretense of not knowing what I'm talking about."
Alexis continued staring out the windshield, no longer seeing the growing light from the beach, no longer really even seeing the road, and said nothing.
"Yes, I see. You didn't take anything from Professor Westbor? You gave nothing to Frank?"
Alexis slowly turned her head to face Matthew. The engine gave a jump as she pressed the accelerator all the way down. She looked not at the winding road ahead, but full on into Matthew's widening eyes.
"What're you..."
"Matthew, I don't care that you have threatened me. I don't care that you plan on spilling my blood."
The car continued to speed up. It thrashed like a beast with it's hindquarters on fire when the wheels left the paved road and hit a shallow ditch on the side. Without her eyes leaving Matthew's face, Alexis yanked the wheel to the side and put them back on the road with wheels screeching.
"Alexis," Matthew begun.
"I am telling you that I did not give Frank a goddamn thing, that I did not know Professor fuckface had anything worth taking."
The car went off the other side of the road, almost going up on two wheels when it hit the incline of the side of the hill which made one of the canyon walls. Alexis again deftly and blindly pulled the wheel to bring the car back onto the road while Matthew let a small shriek loose.
"Alexis! I’m not…"
"But Matthew," Alexis said without her voice ever leaving that dead calm sound. "For even bringing up Frank, for using his name against me, I'm gonna fucking kill you."
Matthew quickly began to raise his knife.
Alexis brought an amazing amount of force down on the break pedal. The Cadillac lurched alarmingly, attempting in vain to continue the deadly momentum it had been running on. She then quickly pushed down the emergency break pedal and turned the steering wheel into the skid that was just beginning. She could smell the thick, oily stench of burning tires. The screeching of the rubber peeling off onto the asphalt was met with a squealing coming from Matthew's seat.

74...

2006-09-21T17:13:00.000-07:00

"Who?" Alexis' jaw clamped tight.
Matthew let out a slow, honey-soaked laugh.
"Frank."
"I don't..."
"Don't play games with me. We know all about your friend Frank. We even know exactly where he lives."
Alexis felt as if her blood had turned to insects, she could hear them in her ears, going mad, going ravenous. She was dizzy with the crashing culmination of fear and anger; like a wave of hatred crashing itself senseless on a glass beach of dread. She feared for Frank, for the appalling things her associates would do to him. She felt ravenous with desire to kill Matthew where he sat, as brutally as possible.
"He doesn't..."
"It doesn't matter," Matthew stated with a sick grin. Alexis noted that he was slowly fingering the point of his knife. "Nobody cares if he knows a damn thing, he's nobody. He's as much a nobody as Louis back there, he just doesn't realize that he's dead yet."
Alexis made a fist around the keys in the ignition. She felt the tail of the metal lizard key ring dig in to her palm.
"You know who wasn't a nobody Alexis? Your mark in Davis. Your job, psycho, was to subdue him and take him into a field office for them to deal with him. Your job was NOT to wipe his face off with a blunt object. Your job was not to leave his fucking body on the SIDE OF THE TRACKS!"
Alexis let the metal bite in harder. She stared into the darkness of the canyon surrounding the road. She focused on the pale light cast off from stores and bars and restaurants at the beach that was now beginning to throw the surrounding hills into silhouette.
"See, here's the problem Alexis. Not only did this guy have necessary information, he was someone who was definitely going to be missed. Oh, and the cops? They tend to get a little weird about brutal, nonsensical murders; particularly when the victim has a questionable past where nothing can quite be proven. You caused a lot of problems for a lot of people."
"What do you want me to do? Say I'm sorry?" Alexis asked sardonically.
"No. We want you to give back what you took from him."
Alexis focused on the approaching headlights of the only other car she had seen in the canyon. She watched them grow larger, igniting the car's interior in an apocalyptical white of high beams. She watched out of the corner of her eye as they passed and left the world dark once again.
"Matthew," she said slowly. "In all honesty, I have no idea what you're talking about."
"Yeah," he said with a sigh. "We figure you gave it to Frank. Which is why we're going to tear him apart when we find it."
He began to finger the tip of the knife once again and began speaking in a distracted tone.
“In fact, they probably already are.”

73...

2006-09-13T17:38:00.000-07:00

Things were slipping for him, she could feel it, and she was going to have to play this one well. Her life depended on it.
"So Matthew," she said with just the slightest taunt in her voice. "I thought we're gonna have a little talk?"
Matthew continued staring forward, into the canyon ahead.
"Shut up."
"Matthew, that's no way to talk to a lady."
"My name's not really Matthew, as I’m sure you're well aware..."
"I don't give a fuck what your name is!"
The man who posed as someone named Matthew turned his head to quickly face her.
"Excuse..."
"Your little job here is to do me in. Your name is Fudge Tunnel for all I care!"
"Hey!"
"Hey yourself, fuckface! If you have something to tell me before you put one between my eyes, then you fucking tell me! I'm sick of your bullshit, psycho games!"
"I'll tell you what I have to tell you when I'm ready."
"Does your boyfriend get all impressed when you talk all tough like that?"
"I'll slit your throat too bitch. Watch yourself."
"I'm scared jizz chugger."
"You think I won't kill you?" He asked with an intensified, psychotic smile.
"No," she said. "I'm pretty sure you'll try.
"I'll succeed."
"I've had better than you blow their last breath in my face while I looked down on them with my best 'come fuck me' look."
"You have no idea what you're dealing with here," he said, turning back towards the windshield.
The car entered the deep dark of the canyon. Lights like stationary will o' the wisp floated in the distance, up hills and down unseen side roads.
"I don't care what I'm dealing with. If you're gonna kill me here, than you've really not given me an option. Why should I give a fuck who you are or what you have to say."
"Who said I was gonna kill you?"
"You've made it more than clear, asshole."
"Yeah, you're tough." He said in a quiet voice. His face became garishly illuminated in one of the rare canyon street lights now passing the car. "A lot of stupid, tough talk. And while I doubt, I mean really doubt, that you're not afraid of dying, I'll bet I know someone who will scream and cry like a baby when I track him down.”
“And who the hell is that?”
“Your… Friend… Frank…”

72...

2006-09-06T17:15:00.000-07:00

"Drive," Matthew said, tossing the keys to her.
"You're just going to leave Louis in the parking lot?"
"What's another robbery gone wrong to the people down here?" He asked sardonically. "It gives the news something else to harp about for awhile. Drive."
Alexis pushed the keys into the ignition and turned it.
"Where?
"West. Go."
She pulled out of the parking lot quickly, but without causing undue notice, and headed west towards the fading suburban scatter and dark coastal canyons leading to the sea. She kept waiting for him to speak, but there was nothing save the humming of the Cadillac's engine. She cast a quick glance towards him. Matthew sat in the passenger seat, looking out the windshield with a small and sick smile on his face. When a number of minutes passed, with still no communication from him forthcoming, Alexis broke the silence.
"Hey Matthew?"
"Shut up."
"How'd you get there before me? To the bookstore I mean."
He let out a quick snort.
"I didn't, I had you, I was on your tail when you applied. I got in there right after you left and convinced Jeff to hire me. He's an easy, fucking mark." Matthew's face never left the windshield. "Then I slyly convinced him to hire you."
"Is Jeff dead now?"
"Shut up."
The apartment buildings along the road were growing larger and larger gaps between them. There were fewer and fewer street lights. With little competition, the street lights cast out a wider spray of illumination, but once the Cadillac passed out of the arc, it would be plunged into darkness whose intervals grew longer and longer. Alexis could see the dark silhouette of the hills before them, with a dark fissure of the canyon running through the middle. There were small signs of lights within the canyon that looked brittle and cold from there, they looked like some chemical flash meant to lure them into the gaping maw of a beast.
"How's Vanessa?" Alexis finally asked.
Matthew let out a small chuckle.
"Great, I'm sure she's pissed she can't be here herself."
"Maybe she'll get her chance to get at me anyway, some other time."
"Not fucking likely," he said, turning his head towards her and smiling like a death head skull.
She turned to him and flashed one of her disquietingly amorous smiles.
Matthew's intimidator crawled away quickly and he turned to face forward once again.
"Not fucking likely," he said again with quiet force.

71...

2006-08-31T14:37:00.000-07:00

All sound went out of the world. Alexis watched wide eyed as Louis tried to say something, that confused look never leaving his face until his eyes slowly closed as if he were going to sleep. Louis' body slumped over and gravity took the cue and pulled it to the floor of the backseat. Alexis instinctively tightened the grip she had on her necklace, she smelled the air like an animal sniffing for a predator.
She felt the point of what she assumed to be a very sharp knife lightly touching her back. All the sound rushed back like a vaccuum beraking hold.
"Hey Sheryl. Oh sorry, I mean Alexis."
Alexis slowly turned her head and glared. Matthew stood behind her with a matter of fact look on his face. He looked as though he may be washing dishes, cleaning the gutters.
"Matthew..."
"Get in the car, driver's side, front."
Alexis paused, for only a moment, trying quickly and vainly to come up with something. That moment was reason enough for Matthew push the tip of the knife easily through the fabric of her shirt, and slightly into the flesh of her back.
"Fucking do it."
She began moving and he kept right up behind her. As they passed the backseat, Matthew moved with the grace of a dancer, sweeping the keys out of Louis' still hand.
Acting on a well-trained instinct, Alexis swung back with her elbow, already forecasting the feeling of meeting with his nose as he brought his head back up. Unfortunately, he realized what was happening and easily dodged his head back. So, so quickly, he grabbed a fistful of her hair, pulled her head back and put that knife blade right up against her throat.
"I don't want to have to do you right here, but don't think I won't."
Gone was that awkward and shifty-eyed Matthew that she had shelved books with, here was a cool, cool killer with more discipline than she probably had.
"You're gonna do me, just do it and get it over with Matthew."
"Uh-uh. We're gonna have a little talk. Get in the car." He pushed her away, around the trunk.
And just as the thought entered her mind, he said, "If you think you're gonna run, I will make sure you are still alive and breathing when I start removing parts of your body that should never see the light of outside."
He watched her closely as she moved around the far side of the car, hugging the opposite side, slightly warm steel pushing against her clothing. She watched as he reached into the backseat and pulled Louis' body out and threw it to the ground like some sort of morbid prop, watched as he made another of those graceful moves and quickly plucked the young man's wallet out his pocket.
“Get in,” he said with a voice that could chill the air.
The two of them opened the car doors simultaneously. The two of them sat down in the car simultaneously. The two of them closed the doors to the rest of the world simultaneously.

70...

2006-08-24T12:39:00.000-07:00

"What do you think?" Louis asked with a grin.
"Nice," she replied evenly. "Large."
"Yeah. I saved up for a couple of years for this," he was grinning like a child showing off a clay imprint of their hand, complete with incompetently scrawled first name. "A bunch of shitty jobs like fast food and delivering papers."
"Uh-huh."
"I got it used from a guy out by Saddleback. He kept it up real nice, I hardly had to do anything to it. He had just split up with his wife and was selling some stuff off. Sort of desperate, you know? I mean not like it was a total bargain or anything, but I got a pretty decent deal for it."
"Uh-huh."
The words were floating over her, surging through the warm Southern California night. Alexis was focused and watching him warily for any sudden movements. She had her fingers on the charm hanging from her necklace; a necklace that had yet to break. She moved the charm back and forth almost coquettishly.
"And black! It's awesome huh?" Louis asked wildly. He looked at her closely, breaking his revelry. "Do you like the black?"
"Uh-huh."
"Yeah I figured you would," he pulled his keys from his pocket. The keys dangled from what looked to be a metal lizard.
"Hey Louis?" she asked in a low and even voice.
"You should check out what I did with the speakers in the backseat," he opened the back door of the Cadillac. The dome light lit the inside up with a pale yellow of softly forgotten dreams, just out of reach.
"Louis?" she asked once again in that small voice.
Louis had one knee on the backseat of the car. He looked over his shoulder with wide eyes and a smile.
"Seriously, check this out."
Alexis yanked the charm in her fingers. The clasp of the necklace gave with practiced use and the chain fell to dangle on either side of her hand.
"Louis," she said. She used a little more authority in her voice this time.
"Yeah?"
"How's Vanessa?"
"Who?"
She moved closer to him, slowly but with purpose.
"Earlier, you said 'travel my way'. I'm just wondering how Vanessa's doing."
Louis looked confused. He shook his head slowly.
"I don't know a Vanessa. It was something Matthew told me to say to you, said it was an inside joke of some kind."
A large noise erupted from what sounded like the trash area behind the mini mall, behind the bookstore. Alexis, surprised, spun and looked and then quickly remembered the threat before her. When she turned back towards Louis, he was looking up at her from the backseat with sad and confused eyes. It took her a moment to notice the red line that ran below his chin like a ragged smile.
And then that smile began to fill his shirt with an impossible amount of blood.

69...

2006-08-16T17:11:00.000-07:00

The overhead fluorescents were on in the backroom. The radio on the shelf was playing something off of the top 40 charts, and playing it softly. The lamp was turned on at the big desk against the wall, as was the adding machine with a good six and a half inches of paper coming out of the top of it. Alexis could even see the green digits on the face of the machine, reading 7,002.
"I sort of figured that Jeff would be back here," Louis said softly. He walked over to the time clock, grabbed his time card and pushed it in. "I don't have to wait for him or anything, do I?"
Alexis shook her head. She slowly took in the surroundings of the room.
"Cheryl, are you okay?"
"Yeah," Alexis said with a voice that sounded slightly distracted. "Jeff should be back here. Robin too."
"But I can go ahead and go. I mean it's time for me to leave. Legally he can't keep me here longer than I'm supposed to be here."
Alexis narrowed her eyes and pierced him.
"No one is keeping you, go ahead and leave."
"Sweet," he said under his breath and walked out of the room.
Alexis made another sweep of the room. Something was definitely wrong here and she could feel it. She was unsure which way to turn, where to look for an advancement at her back. She quickly punched out, deciding to make everything at least look like it was alright. She grabbed her purse from atop the employee bookshelf and started for the door. She wanted to keep Louis in her sights. She heard the air conditioning come on with a sigh, heard the air push some loose piece of paper on the desk with a whisper. Alexis let the door close behind her on the empty room.
"Ready?" Louis asked.
Louis was about twelve feet from the front door. Alexis quickened her pace towards him, feeling the air slap into her skin.
"Let's hit it."
Louis opened the front door for her. She reached over his head and grabbed the door allowing him to go out first. She followed him out and allowed the door to close itself behind her. Louis was walking across the sidewalk and into the parking lot, which still held a number of cars at an hour that was considered “getting late” in a Southern California suburb. He quickly turned around with a questioning gaze. She instinctively reached into her purse for anything that could be at least damaging if not deadly.
“Shouldn’t you lock up?” he asked with serious concern.
“I’m not a manager,” she said a little baffled. “I don’t have keys to lock up.”
He thought about this for a moment, slowly nodding his head. His face suddenly erupted in a childlike smile.
“Hey, come check out my car!”
He quickened his pace into the parking lot, waving behind him for her to follow. He stopped next to his prized possession, beaming.
The sodium parking lot lights turned the black of that Cadillac into the color of some long forgotten ink shade, the color of liquid night, the color of a curse floating through a revelation.

68...

2006-08-09T15:50:00.000-07:00

Louis spent the rest of the evening jumping around like a dog who had been promised a treat, with a light in his eyes and more excitement than Alexis had thought possible. She would smile warmly at him, trying to keep him excited and unsuspecting. If he was excited, he was more likely to slip up. And if he was unsuspecting, she had the advantage.
Alexis wondered why those who made the decisions at North Creek Sign Company had sent him out here for her. Okay, she was sort of fooling herself when she assumed all would be well coming back down to Southern California after the last job up by Davis. She had fucked up and taken things too far, she had gotten a little overzealous. And while it had crossed her mind that they might call her in, that they might send someone in the night to drop her, she had begun to delude herself into thinking it would be okay. She could have run, but she checked in as was expected. Well, she didn't tell them exactly where she was and what she was doing, but she figured after a few months with no creep showing up, or better yet no Vanessa showing up to take her out that she was in the clear.
"Ready to clock out and go?" Louis asked from behind her.
She turned to look down on his lamely grinning face.
"Yeah let me just shelve this last handful of books and we'll go."
She turned back towards the romance section and placed books. She could feel him staring at her back and to avoid lashing out with the anger that she could feel rising, she thought back to that last job, that night on the railroad tracks.
The guy had been a professor she was pretty sure, that was what he was passing himself off as anyways. She could remember how cold and sharp the rails seemed in the white-blue light of the three quarters moon. She remembered his mumbled pleading, one hand up towards her, one clutching a shining rail, his tongue already thick with the small amount of poison she had slipped him. She remembered beginning to unclasp the chain around her neck, the chain that she would slip around his neck and tighten and tighten and tighten... She remembered, sort of, some sort of switch turning in her head that short circuited rational thought. She remembered re-clasping the necklace and bending down to pick up a large and heavy rock next to the rails.
She slipped the final volume of clichés and sexual synonyms into its place on the bookshelves and turned back towards Louis.
"Let's do it."
The two of them walked to the door of the back room and Alexis punched in the code that would give them access. She opened the door and Louis followed her in. He ran into her back when she stopped suddenly.
The sound of adding machines and banal discussion uttering mostly from Jeff's mouth were what she had expected, but they were met with silence in the back room. Alexis moved aside and let Louis in before her. She looked back over her shoulder and out into the bookstore, quickly checking for anyone, before following him into the empty room.

67...

2006-08-02T17:05:00.000-07:00

Alexis spent the rest of that evening in a shell of panic. She explained the ins and outs of working at Fountain Books with a mouth that seemed unattached from her screaming mind. She delivered a trite monologue to Louis, who she was positive wasn't listening and would never need the information anyway. She no longer saw Louis' open mouthed gaze as creepy and lust filled, but as overloaded with murderous intent.
"So that's pretty much it," she could hear herself saying. She locked her eyes on his and pushed with a frightening focus. "I know you probably didn't get everything, but it just takes a couple of times doing it yourself and you'll be fine."
He turned away from her glance, looking around the counter area and shuffling his feet before looking back up towards her.
"Thanks," he said quietly. "I can probably figure it out."
Alexis smiled and nodded, glancing around the store for the others. She knew Matthew had left about an hour before even if she hadn't seen him go. Robin was floating around somewhere, as was Jeff, but she could not see either one of them right now. Suddenly, something dawned on her that she felt stupid for not thinking about to begin with.
"Jeffrey," she muttered.
"What?" Louis asked, still looking at her intently.
"Oh, I was just wondering where Jeff was. He should be coming around... to give you directions."
Had Jeffrey brought this kid in? How the fuck had he been able to get to her? He was working here at the store before she even arrived, it wasn't possible, he had no way of knowing where she going to end up. Did he get on the payroll though? She remembered that look of dark understanding they had shared earlier.
She looked back through the store towards the door to the back room. She imagined Jeff keeping Robin busy back there while this rat boy did his thing up here. That voice, the one she called her Zen Voice, the one that often spoke up when she was in stress and needed direction, chimed out.
You are paranoid and scared, you are jumping at shadows. Sit still and think this through.
"Hey Sheryl?"
Alexis came back from her inward thinking and stared intently at Louis. "Yes?"
"Do you guys all hang out together? Y'know, all the people that work here? Hang out after work and stuff?"
"Ummm?" Alexis looked at him questioningly.
"'Cause Matthew said that he was gonna go to the Fairweather, up the street? And I was gonna go, and I was wondering if you wanted to come and get a drink with us?"
"Uh sure," she said with a demure smile. "I'll come get a drink."
He probably didn't know yet what she knew, wouldn't be expecting a fight. And it would be a bad idea to take him out here in the store, a really bad idea.
"Can you give me a ride?" she asked.

66...

2006-07-27T09:48:00.000-07:00

"Yeah Louis, let's go ahead and get started," she said with a sigh.
Alexis turned back towards the computer and brought up the program the store used for its daily business. She could feel Louis draw closer to her. She tried to push the grimace away from her face before it manifested itself. She didn't like the way this guy just made her skin crawl.
"Okay," she said, managing to wrangle a bushel of patience from the cosmos. "This is the program we use, it's called Marker. You can use it to check inventory, order status, pretty much anything you need. It's also what we use to ring up sales and count out the drawer."
She looked over at him, checking for the resounding enthusiasm she was sure she was instilling in him with this knowledge. She was looking directly into his eyes. They once again appeared darker than they were due to the fall of shadows. And he had that grin of a child molester, lost in playground dreams. She could see herself quite clearly landing a practiced blow onto that part of his neck where the Adam's apple sat. The thought of him crumpling to the floor and choking on blood made her grin a little bit despite herself.
He grinned a little wider, and somehow a little more lasciviously, in response.
"Got it so far?" she asked. He nodded. "Great."
Alexis turned back to the sun bleached monitor and popped open a screen.
"Okay..."
Louis slyly brought himself closer to her, if clumsy and shambling steps and a theatrically feigned interest in the computer screen were sly. His arm was touching her torso and waist and it somehow made her think of warm seaweed.
Alexis slowly and deliberately turned her head and looked down into his face with scorn that had wilted ardor better than flames did wax. She fully took in that stringy, black and seemingly waxen hair. She looked at the pale skin that seemed to shimmer with the pulsing of the florescent lighting. She looked at the small patch of crust that clung to the corner of his chapped lips.
"Louis, would you mind backing off a little bit."
His smile collapsed momentarily, but he took a step away and brought it back solid as steel.
"Travel my way," he said a bit under his breath.
Alexis froze. She attempted to keep the slightly detached smile on her face, she fought to keep her body still and not rigid. Inside, her wiring had just been charged like a machine set to standby.
"I'm sorry, what did you say?" she asked in what she thought was a calm, steady and somewhat confused voice, but she had honestly lost all perspective on things.
"Nothing," he said with a sadistic little grin.
Alexis turned back towards the computer system. She could see her fingers punching keys, but they seemed to belong to someone else. There was a fierce and blinding white adrenaline charge coursing through her and she was using everything she had to keep the genie in the bottle, to not show her cards.
It couldn't have been a coincidence. 'Travel my way' was what Vanessa said when she was on the trail of someone; when she was so, so close to taking them out.

65...

2006-07-19T17:09:00.000-07:00

She scanned a wide variety of web pages, most of them fakes, most them pages that people would only stumble upon accidentally. She looked at pages that showed lines of clothing that had never been designed by designers that had never been heard of. She looked at pages that chronicled bands that were the fantasies of boys turned to men who had never dared to dream it; including bland songs in MP3 form designed to be forgotten. She looked at a web diary of girl named Susan, knowing full well that Susan was actually three men and a twenty-one year old woman named Vana who had a mad desire for killing through strangulation. She looked at the biography for a figurehead spiritual leader which advertised autographed copies of his book, knowing that the picture of said leader was that of a man that had been engulfed in the flaming wreck of his tampered with car three years ago, and knowing that anyone who happened to try ordering the book would get an apologetic email stating that it was currently out of stock.
She quickly glanced over the HTML code before her, looking for tell-tale messages that would be addressed to her. She saw nothing that had not been there before. She went back to a page advertising forgettable sweaters, looking at the picture of a purple, cashmere, deep scoop, V-neck sweater. She read the description below.

Luxurious 4 season Mediterranean cashmere in a fine 12 gauge knit. Rib trim at neck and cuffs. Three quarter sleeves. Rolled edge at hem. Hits at hip. Import. Dry Clean. Item #3055708-7092653.

She had seen it 2 weeks ago, the coded message that had told her to lay and wait, told her where and what she should most likely do to keep inconspicuous. The advice was unnecessary, but sort of sweet when you thought about it in a certain way. It may be too hot out there for a phone call just yet, but she had hoped that someone would at least toss out a line, anything to keep her from letting her imagination get the worst of her. She felt like a lone sailor, lost at sea.
Alexis was doing her best to not feed that quick and dangerous little paranoia monster busy shaking its cage. If she got twitchy, jumped the gun on something, she could not only wind up dead but could royally fuck things up for other people. But, when you were involved in a business that could get you killed at anytime, the threat of death as a deterrent was a little silly.
But there was the threat of an awful, bloody, prolonged and painful death at the hands of someone who seriously enjoyed inflicting a death of this sort.
She quickly glanced through the sites again, looking for any sign of Vanessa Park. She found what appeared to be the last mention of her on website touting the productions of a theater company in Ukiah, California. A rousing edition of My Fair Lady was set to never arrive in November. From what she could tell, Vanessa was last supposed to be in New York. But Vanessa liked to flaunt procedure and she could be anywhere.
“Sheryl?”
Alexis spun away from the computer, senses jumping and at the ready, alt shifting away from the website automatically. Louis stood there behind the register counter looking up at her with a crooked grin.
“Are you ready for me?” he asked.

64...

2006-07-05T17:07:00.000-07:00

The guy had these eyes that looked black, nothing but black. It was some sort of trick of the light though, he blinked one or two times and Alexis saw the deep brown that must have been there the whole time. He had a nose that came to this strange sort of point, and this snide little smile that did its best to put her off center, but she hung on.
"Hey Louis," she said, adjusting her smile to warmer and putting out her hand.
He didn't say anything. He looked at her hand for a few seconds before shaking it. He looked back at her face with that odd detachment.
"As Jeffrey said, my name's Sheryl. I guess I'll be training you." She could feel her posture aching with forced straightness.
"That's right," Jeff threw out with a mock booming voice. "You and Sheryl are going to get on great! And this is Robin, our whiz with non-fiction and true crime."
The two of them, Robin and Louis, gave a brief nod of affirmation at exactly the same time. Neither said a word.
"I'm going to continue to show our new guy around the store a little bit, the back room, what not. Why don't we start his register training in about twenty?"
Alexis smiled, but the mischievous eyes above that mouth were throwing bad ideas, violent ones. Jeff smiled back that big, empty salesman smile, but she noticed a flicker in those dead eyes she had missed before. He wasn't just oblivious, he was enjoying fucking with her. Alexis genuinely smiled with the realization.
"That will be fine Jeffrey."
"Good," he said. His voice came down a tad and his eyes rested on hers for a few moments longer than they normally would, as if he had found temporarily safe footing on a rough climb. "Well, let me go find Matthew and we'll be up front in 20.”
With his boom back in his voice, Jeff led Louis away. Alexis watched them go and blocked out Jeff's lecture regarding the special interest rack. She noticed Louis' head turn to the left, as if he were about to look over his shoulder and back at she and Robin. He stopped halfway, as if he knew that Alexis was still watching him, and surreptitiously scratched his chin on that shoulder.
"Yeah, short creepy looking guys," Robin muttered in a monotone. "That never gets old."
Alexis smiled, but it was empty. She suddenly felt something shifting within her, outside of her. She suddenly felt dwarfed and contained by the rows upon rows within the store. She felt a pressing desire to run to ground, to hide. She tried to tell herself that she was just jumpy because she hadn't heard from anyone yet, but her right pinky began to twitch, a sign that had always served her well before.
Could she just up and leave this place? Wouldn't that raise unnecessary concern if she were to just walk out of this place and never come back? Hell, people left their crappy jobs all the time. It wasn't like she was working some high powered corporation. It wasn't like she had a lot of people around her worrying, a lot of friends.
Still, the fewer questions always the better. If she were going to go, she should probably at least wait until after the store closed. She was still not completely sold on the paranoia she felt, but she could not mistake that feeling of something closing in on her. Yes, she could possibly leave tonight; slip out quietly with no harm done.

63...

2006-06-28T18:06:00.000-07:00

Alexis nodded her head slowly.
“Yeah, you’re right,” she said. “We don’t need anyone else here.”
She glanced over at Matthew, waiting for more from him. He continued to smoke and stare out at the street. She knew he could feel her stare, but still he would not return it.
“Do you know anything about him? This new guy?”
“No,” he finally glanced back at her for a brief moment. “Jeff had just mentioned that Mr. Blume from the head office was sending this guy here. I just assumed it was someone in his family, or a friend or something.”
Matthew once again faced the shimmering cars out on the street. He took a final, enormous drag off the cigarette and put it out on the soul of his shoe. He looked at her again, lowered lids and shy.
“See ya inside Sheryl.”
He put the cigarette butt in the trashcan near the door and entered. Alexis distantly heard the chime inside as he passed the sensor in the store. She wanted to crack him so bad, find out what it was that had him in such a neurotic twist. She took a large drag of her own cigarette and threw it flaming into the street.
“Look out Matthew,” she murmured with a devious smile. “I’m onto you.”
She walked back into the store and plunged past Jeff at the register with a brief flick of her hand, heading directly back to the section of books she was shelving.
“Romance,” she whispered. “Fucking A.”
Alexis was waiting on a phone call, on contact from a superior. She needed to find out where to go. She was hiding in this strange little bookstore with a new, strange little name, and beginning to grow impatient at the wait. It had been over a week, and she assumed she would have heard something; a ‘move quickly and without notice to somewhere and wait for contact’, or a ‘stay put for the time being’. But there was nothing.
“What’s going on Sheryl?”
Alexis spun and saw Robin regarding the romance section with the same surliness she dished out for everything else in the world.
“Hey Robin, how’s it going?”
“Hear you get to train the new guy,” she said with a derisive grin. She was carrying a handful of true crime towards some other destination.
“Yeah. How come I get the pleasure and not you guys? You and Matthew have been here longer me.”
“I have, yeah, but…”
“Hello Sheryl,” an unwholesome and veneered voice called out. Alexis shivered with distaste at the picture of Jeff that her mind produced.
“Hello Jeffrey,” she said while turning. He stood before her, a short and pale companion to his right.
“This is Louis, our newbie. I know you’ve been looking forward to training him.”
Alexis’ smile was, truth be told, closer to a grimace, the sort of face one makes when you smell something rotting. She attempted to shift it into something friendlier when she faced Louis, but something about the shadow over his eyes, the reptilian features to his glance, froze her mouth moving from grimace to question.

62...

2006-06-21T17:15:00.000-07:00

Alexis stood outside the entrance of Fountain Books, squinting against that aggravating Southern California sun and smoking a cigarette down to the filter. She was pitching the butt out into the parking lot, the asphalt soft with a full day of heat resting on it, when she heard the store's door open.
Without looking, she reached into her purse and grabbed another smoke. She didn't necessarily want another one, but it was easier to ignore a coworker you didn't want to speak with if you were lighting up. She glanced over, eyes still narrowed to slits, and saw Matthew standing on the opposite side of the door lighting a cigarette of his own. He saw her staring at him and gave a quick, furtive wave of his hand.
"Hey Sheryl," he said quietly, quickly looking away out towards the parking lot.
They stood there silent, each looking out towards the cycling traffic, each against the wall and on opposite sides of the door. The plain bookstore logo shone in reflected golden glory off of a window darkened against the damages of the caustic sun. Alexis looked back towards him, at the shoulders hunched up towards his ears.
"Hey Matthew?"
He turned his head toward her as if he were twitching, his eyes wider than they really had any business being. There was a brief flash of sadness within her for this guy, this guy who always seemed to be running from beneath a heavy weight, this guy that seemed to enjoy the sci-fi section a lot. She realized she really didn't know anything about him other than that. But that sadness was muffled and pulled aside by something a little more calculating.
"Yeah?" he asked, taking a shallow hit off his cigarette.
"What'd you do?" she asked with that crooked smile that had charmed many.
Something reminiscent of that first frost of the year blew through his eyes. Most people would have missed it, but Alexis was used to focusing pristinely on people's eyes. They hazed over quickly and narrowed.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean before you started working here, what did you do?"
"Oh." He looked back out towards the traffic, took a deep breath. "Well, I went to school for awhile, but stopped doing that. Did a couple of weird part time jobs... Started working here..."
He glanced at her, almost for confirmation, and then quickly away again towards to parking lot and street beyond. Shame was practically coming off this guy like smoke. Alexis was able to imagine a lot of bad things, but found it hard to imagine this shy young man doing something so miserable to deserve his desire to hide inside his own skin. She stared at him with that same crooked grin, watched him begin to squirm a bit.
“What?” He asked after a moment.
“Nothing,” she finally dropped her gaze, but kept the smile. “I just wonder about you Matthew.”
And before he could quite catch up she finished with, “you heard about the new guy coming in.”
“Yeah,” he said in a drawn out and ponderous tone. “Seems sort of weird. It’s not like we need someone else in a store this size.”

61...

2006-06-14T17:12:00.000-07:00

Alexis tried, fiercely, to focus with pristine attention on the road. She tried to keep her quickly twitching eyes roving to the Honda's mirrors, to those devious small side roads that began to seem more and more like snake holes where some unseen danger sat ready to spring and consume her.
But as much as she attempted this act of supreme focus, she was unable to keep from losing herself in the painful memories of the last couple of days. The memories battered at her tired mind with a sickening clarity. She would never consciously admit to prayer, but some small voice within prayed heartily for the protection of distance. She wished so much for soft focus, for rounding of edges and distortion that time graciously brought to memories. But everything was still too fresh, and too horrific to be banished to some locked door waiting room within.
She could see clearly the hazy and brown view afforded by the bookstore's cashier counter. She could see Robin's drawn face and the anger and desperation that seemed to cling to her like a tailored suit, well kept but lifeless hair, and some black and cancerous anger in her eyes. She saw Matthew’s hunched shouldered slink through the store, his wide eyes belying some heinous thought or deed that Alexis was almost positive she would find pedestrian, but that he himself found reprehensible to the core. And there was Jeff, jolly and bordering on plain old fat, strutting over with so much empty and overdone pomposity.
“Hey Sheryl,” Jeff nodded his dimpled chin towards her.
“Hello Jeffery,” Alexis replied with a sinister and somewhat knowing sneer.
Alexis had adopted a pseudonym and certainly not for the first time. Alexis could find a false identification faster than an alcoholic could find trouble in a distillery. Alexis had never had to deal with the embarrassment of forgetting her ill gotten name.
"Oh Sheryl," Jeff leaned over onto the register counter and rested his chin on his bridged hands. His attempt at casual sexuality came off as subtle as rancid syrup. Jeff had the annoying habit of mistaking Alexis' contempt for desire. "I suppose you've heard."
He actually batted his eyelids a little bit. If it was an overblown, prancing little bit he was doing it wouldn't have been funny, it would be just a little less disturbing than it was already.
"Heard what?" She tried to keep the seething anger out of her voice.
"Corporate’s sending a newbie out here. And I want you to do your training thang."
"Okay first," Alexis began with a sigh. "The use of the word corporate? Probably unnecessary as we are a chain of three stores. And second, why should I train them? Robin and Matthew have been here longer than me. I've only been here for like a week."
Jeff leaned a little closer and dramatically looked over his shoulder. It was all an attempt to make it seem as if they were sharing a conspiracy together, something they could chuckle about later when they were alone.
"Sheryl, you're much brighter than those two. I trust you with my life."
Jeff gave a small wink and slapped his hand down on the counter as a way to indicate that he had spoken, that he was done. As he shuffled away towards the back room, Alexis fantasized about driving a spike into the back of his head.

60...

2006-06-07T18:00:00.000-07:00

In a cracked and oil stained parking spot next to the gas station’s main building, where once sat a dirty and dented, navy blue Honda Civic, you could now find a black, late seventies model Cadillac. The car was empty. It had been quickly wiped down with windshield washing fluid, inside and out. It now sat like a dead thing, absorbing the sunlight that fell in its direction.
The mad whirring of insects in the dried and brown grass around the gas station had taken off again in earnest. The sound echoed slightly off of the odd corners of the building and the pumps; it played for nobody, it played for the tarmac that would burn bare flesh if someone were feeling inclined to put their tender skin there.
The cloudless sky around the station seemed washed out by the sun, a pale and weather-beaten imitation of the rich blues much gentler climates laid claim to. The heat bullied itself around the grasses, entered and made mad love to any exposed surfaces, danced in ephemeral shivers off of the ground.
The building of the gas station was dark in comparison to the blinding white of Central California summer sun. Within the shade, an air conditioner played its sad and monotonous music to nobody. It occasionally managed to ruffle the pages of the free newsprint publications near the register, managing to sound like ghosts quickly exiting an attic that had become too desperate, even for them.
The ancient radio behind the counter continued its soft production of misplaced music; music which seemed content in itself to be just music, audience or no. It played for the candy bars, for the chips and beef jerky, for the small but alarming blood stain on the tiled floor behind the register. Static jumped through the slow sound of the music as the fan in the cooler kicked on.
The stainless steel door to the cooler was barred closed with the roller chair that normally sat behind the register, it was wedged firmly under the door’s handle. Inside the cooler, Randy ‘E’ Lakin lay on the floor, eyes staring emptily at the metal housing in the ceiling that covered the cooler’s fan.
The cold hand that had been laid on his chest felt the effects of gravity and fell to the cooler floor. Randy let out a low, creaky grown. His eyes closed slowly, and even more slowly opened once again.
He was dizzy, he was cold. He reached slowly into the front pocket of his overalls and pulled out a slightly crushed cigarette. He slowly pulled a plastic cigarette lighter from the right, lower pocket of the overalls and lit the cigarette. He blew a contemplative cloud of smoke up towards the fan in the ceiling.
“Fuck,” was all he said.
Some miles away, heading steadily north on an interstate that cut through the fertile fields like an asphalt scar, a beautiful young woman blew smoke out the window of a navy blue Civic. She had picked up the lone cigarette from the counter of a gas station convenience store.
Alexis realized she would have to trade cars once again, more than likely long before she reached San Francisco.

59...

2006-05-26T14:35:00.000-07:00

Randy stuck his head partly into the open driver's side window to get a better view at the floor in the back. Peeking out from underneath the woman's black linen coat like the memory of a bad dream somewhere towards noon, was a wide and vibrant blood stain.
The first thing that came careening out of Randy's mind was that calm and logical voice which wisely advised him that someone losing that much blood probably didn't survive. He stood there staring, unable to move. This same voice tried to grab his attention, to point out that he was standing there dumbly with his face pressed into the window of a stranger's car. It was no use though, his body seemed to be controlled by the rest of his brain that was awash with some faint chemical feedback. He felt pressed in gelatin. His eyes glanced over the back seat where he saw the stains of blood spatter that had been hastily cleaned away.
That got him moving, and he quickly pulled his head away from the window and spun around. He nearly tripped over the concrete island that the gas pump stood on and swayed a bit. He quickly steadied himself and peered again and more intently into those wide windows of the market. The sun bounced back off that window and only allowed faint outlines of what was inside; which did not include the shapely form of the woman from the car.
Randy was suddenly very aware of the screaming whine of insects. It made him grit his teeth.
He took a deep breath and did his best to walk calmly to the building’s doors. He wrapped his fingers into his key ring, forcing keys to protrude from between his fingers. He saw his reflection in the door’s glass and made a quick adjustment to his face to make it appear nonchalant. He opened the door with the hand not imbedded with keys.
The white noise sound of the recycled air inside cradled the low fuzz of the old radio. Randy felt a chill push through him that couldn’t be completely blamed on the air conditioning. He made a calm but thorough look around the small room, but didn’t see her.
The light in the restroom shone from beneath the door. Randy smiled a bit and let out a long, slow breath through his nose.
“Miss, you’re all filled up,” he called. He moved towards the register and where the small metal bat was kept. “Do you want me to check your oil?”
He bent slightly at the waist to grab the weapon, but in its place was something he couldn’t quite recognize at first. He grabbed what appeared to be a pile of fur and twisted it in his hand. It dawned on him that he was holding a blonde wig.
“I’m sorry,” that sultry voice said behind him. That voice that came from the sad side of midnight and sounded like it had spent a good amount of time in a roadhouse on the way here.
The first thing that went through his mind was, ‘I’m always just a little too slow’. A “fa…” was all he managed to get out of his mouth before the swing of that bat drove him to his knees, his body then continuing on without his permission to fall over and lie prone on the tiled floor of the service station.

58...

2006-05-17T17:27:00.000-07:00

“Oh, I’ll get it for you,” Randy said as he continued on towards the car.
“I didn’t realize that this was a full service station.”
“It’s not.”
He tried on his best cool and cocky smile, but it felt all wrong on his face. He knew it would be worse though if he completely changed expressions, so he let it ride for a moment. He turned back towards the car so he could let it fall.
“Well…”
He turned back to her again, waiting for her thought to finish, but she remained silent, her face impassive.
“I’ll just… grab my purse,” she finally said she walked past him and to the car. He could faintly smell her sweat mingled with the musky perfume she was wearing as she passed and felt a little light headed, a little aroused. He watched her open the door and lean into the car. She tossed something into the backseat, looked over the headrest at something, grabbed her purse and stood up.
She clutched her purse to her and closed the car door. She must dye her hair, he thought. The blonde color just didn’t seem to fit her.
“Do you have a restroom I can use?” she asked.
“It’s for employees only actually, but I won’t tell anyone if you don’t.” He could feel that lame smile trying to climb up on his face again, but fought the urge.
“Thanks,” she said. She put her hand lightly on his shoulder again as she passed.
Randy trembled slightly. He watched her enter the building and then slowly turned and went to the car. He used a key on his massive key ring to unlock the gas pump and inserted the hose into the car. He looked out over those bland, rounded hills and felt the pressure of the fluid pump out into the car.
Inserting the gas cap into the handle of the pump so that it could keep going without him standing there, Randy went to check the windshield. Cars coming through this part of the highway tended to have a lot of bugs smashed in the windshield. He figured he would go ahead and wash them off for her.
He pulled a squeegee that was falling apart out of muddy water and began to scrub off the windshield. He had to push down with force to eradicate some of remains that had smashed violently and then baked in that hot sun until they were as stubborn as cement. Randy began to wipe the water away, watching intently as the dark brown rivulets of used water flowed down the side. It was the snap of the pump finishing that awoke him from the self induced daze he was in.
Randy removed the gas hose and noted the total price. He looked back towards the mini market, attempting to peer through the windows for the young lady inside. He squinted against the glare off the window, but could still see nothing.
Randy looked back towards the car and into open window. The car was pretty clean, no junk food wrappers, no fast food bags. There were also no bags that would contain things packed for a trip, things like clothes. The back seat was devoid of travel debris except for the jacket that was now strewn across the floor in the back.
Something caught Randy’s eyes and he once again squinted to verify what he thought he saw. His eyes quickly widened when his thoughts were confirmed.

57...

2006-05-10T17:04:00.000-07:00

Randy pushed through the doors and was immediately hit by the dry heat outside. He was quickly reminded of a factoid he had heard about how moving from the outside into air conditioning and vice versa helped foster colds in most people. He forgot this little fact even quicker.
He looked down at the road leading up to the station and watched the car slowly progress its way up the hill. He could hear a chop in the motor that seemed far from healthy. Just under that he could hear the undulating breathing of the interstate miles away. And surrounding all of it was the white noise buzzing of thousands of hidden insects.
A late seventies model Cadillac, black, pulled slowly up to the outer pumps. Randy leaned against the doors of the market waiting for the engine to drop. He wasn’t sure why, but this was his normal stance, to lean coolly then approach once the engine was off.
The motor was not cutting out however. The car just sat there like a shadow, running. Randy squinted and tried to peer through the open window, but the driver was enveloped within that shadow. There was just a vague shape and he couldn’t tell if they were looking over at him or not.
Disquiet began to fill his mind. The only reasons he could think of for a person to leave their engine running was for a quick escape from something bad that had happened, or from something bad that was about to happen. He began to visualize the small metal bat that was just below the cash register inside. He shifted his weight nervously from one foot to the other.
The Cadillac’s engine quit suddenly and the brief silence was quickly filled in with that maddening clicking and whirring of the bugs like water falling into the wake left by a boat.
Randy still felt a little nervous about approaching the car. The passenger door opened and a tall, blond, young woman stepped out. Randy’s feet began moving before his brain realized it. He focused on the woman’s beautiful and angular face. A fleeting desire to see the eyes now hidden behind dark glasses landed and stuck within him.
“Hi there,” Randy called out as he moved closer to the outer bank of pumps.
There was an awkward silence, much longer than is allowed in polite society after a conversation is struck up. The woman glanced back at her car for a moment then turned back around with a quizzical yet stunning smile.
“Hello.”
That voice was able to raise the small hairs on the back of Randy’s neck.
“Can I help you with something?”
She stepped quickly away from her car and towards him. She placed her hand on his shoulder.
“I just need to fill up,” she said. She began to give him a gentle shove towards the building.

56...

2006-05-03T17:11:00.000-07:00

Randy tugged up on the legs of his overalls and moved his hand airily around the antennae of the radio which must have been pushing forty years old. The radio mostly just produced shimmering and faint lines of Spanish-flecked blues that sounded as if they were flying through layers of air, still thick with time. Depending on how he curved his fingers, these ghost tones would seem to bend on rails of soft static.
He detected a bright flash from the corner of his eye and quickly spun his head to peer out the thick, bulletproof glass. There was nothing out there that wasn't there before; two rows of empty gas pumps, cracked tarmac, a thin ribbon of road that at some point joined the interstate, and all of those low and rounded hills made gold with grass scorched in the heat.
The motor of the fan in the beer and soda cooler kicked on, vibrating the silence and sending the static spikes on the radio swirling. Randy, or 'E' as he had tried to convince his friends to call him, looked slowly at the cooler, focusing behind the bottles. He then looked opposite, again slowly, at the radio. He then took a long, slow look around the small gas station convenience market he sat in. He suddenly felt a little slow and strange. He felt as if he were made aware of something important and had forgotten it, as if he had been imbued with fast and loose knowledge.
Randy had been unable to make the nickname of 'E' stick, and he angrily blamed it on friends and family, people that he had been surrounded by his entire life, attempting to keep him in his place, attempting to keep him stuck inside his tiny, nowhere town. Interestingly enough, this made a good excuse for him never to leave said town, never to attempt going to college, or traveling out of state, or even traveling the four hours north to San Francisco. Ultimately, it made a good excuse to work for just over minimum wage in this gas station that was miles from any other permanent building.
He reached for a cigarette in the jumpsuit pocket that would normally hold pens and a tire pressure gauge. He plucked out the smoke and stared at it for a moment. He had been told before that he was not supposed to smoke inside the shop, that it was in fact against the law. He considered going into the cooler and blowing the smoke through the fan. That sounded pretty good actually, it was already getting pretty stuffy inside and hot and dry outside. He could keep a listen for approaching cars, but honestly he’d had one customer the entire day and that was over three hours ago. Usually people only stopped at this forsaken station if they were desperately low on gas, or if they were looking for directions somewhere.
The tuning of the radio suddenly got stronger and more defined. A slow, bluesy riff that sounded like it had crept out of some neon-soaked, endless night erupted and was quickly swallowed by a harsh squeal of static before the radio numbed down to its usual low volume. Randy turned towards it and was about to lean over and adjust the antennae when he caught that flash again from the corner of his eye.
He peered out again at those empty hills and this time caught the dark spot of a vehicle climbing the windy road up from the interstate. The heavy morning sun caught the windshield at the curves and threw out bright spotlights.
Placing the cigarette on the counter, Randy stood up and quickly brushed off his overalls. He stretched slightly and popped his neck. He prepared to meet this poor person who had apparently become lost.

55...

2006-04-12T16:59:00.000-07:00

Anthony immediately spun around and started following Frank around the narrow back deck. He had a look of concern that would have seemed comical had Frank noticed it.
"What's going on Franky?" his voice cracked a touch. "Is someone after you man?"
Frank spun his head towards Anthony and seeing his own mad, predatory grin bounced back to him in those mirrored glasses not only made him understand the slight gasp that Anthony let out, but boosted his own adrenaline output a little more.
"Anthony, man, it seems like everyone's after me today."
Frank continued on down the cut back staircase that led to the concrete covered back yard of the Victorian. He was almost too pumped up to notice his normal hesitance at descending these precarious steps. He did wince nonetheless when his foot hit that one step that was almost rotted through. The thing gave like a springboard whenever you stepped on it. He glanced back quickly to see if Anthony happened to be following him down.
"Watch that step man," he pointed absently back at the wood.
"I know. Hey dude, seriously... Are you in some kind of trouble?"
Frank felt a mad buzzing in his head, like steel shavings driven in tornado strength winds. He noticed his focus narrowed down to a pulsing spot directly in front of him, all peripheral vision obliterated in a sweet sheen of anger.
He hit the bottom of the stairs at a near run and charged through the wooden tunnel that led alongside the house. The reeking and over-filled garbage cans were not noticed. The decrepit looking energy meters were not noticed. The windows to Anthony’s basement room were not noticed. Frank could only focus on the door ahead, the door getting progressively closer, and that would lead to the front of the house.
Frank hit the door with his arm locked forward. He grabbed the knob which gleamed brassily even in the diminished light and savagely pulled the door open.
The guy stood just outside the door, smiling, as if he knew the whole time how this was going to go down. The sun caught in his short cropped hair and wrapped around to illuminate his smile. Anthony was right, that smile was like looking into the mouth of a tiger.
“Hey Franky, what’s up?”
Frank didn’t even notice the fist coming around, but he felt the connection in his jaw.
If he had a moment to think clearly, he would have thought that this guy would be perfect if someone were casting for a twenty-something Nazi. If he had a moment to think clearly, he would have heard Anthony’s gasp behind him and then the quickly shuffling footsteps away. If he had a moment to think clearly, Frank would have realized that this was the fourth time he was passing out in the last twenty-four hours.
But he didn’t have a moment to think clearly. All Frank noticed was this overwhelming blackness taking over his vision, making the world into a box that got smaller and smaller, until…

54...

2006-04-08T14:03:00.000-07:00

"What guy Anthony? What did he look like?"
Anthony looked up towards the corner of the ceiling as if lost in thought. Or at least it appeared that he was lost in thought since you couldn't see his eyes.
"Well..." Anthony began.
He was generally a good guy. Frank had liked this thin young man with hair that spiked out in all directions when he first met him as he was moving in. He was a musician. He called himself a musician anyway. It was probably closer to the truth that he was an above average guitar player. He had an explosive temper that Frank had heard about, but never personally witnessed. He also smoked enough pot on waking to kill a brood of lab rats.
"Anthony?"
"He was sort of tall... Just kinda... Short hair, button down shirt... Just plain looking. I don't know. I'm not very good with that sort of thing."
"Short hair though? It wasn't curly? Wait, did he have darker hair, kinda intense and creepy looking?"
"Nope. Short, blonde hair. But the thing is, and this is why I came up here to kinda warn you, I didn't trust this guys’ smile."
"What do you mean?"
Anthony's dark glasses leveled on Frank's face.
"He kept smiling, but it wasn't a smile... It was like looking into the mouth of a tiger."
Frank gazed down at the floor, concentrating, attempting to draw a face from the rolling cloud of faces past and present.
"When was this Anthony?"
"About... Ten minutes ago, I think. Not too long ago. He said he was trying to ring your bell, but there wasn't an answer. He came to my door on the side of the house there and asked if I knew you. He asked if you still lived here ‘cause he was trying to find you and had an important message for you. I kinda got the feeling that he was casing my apartment, he kept looking over my shoulder into my place."
"Ten minutes?" Frank asked.
"Yeah, I think so. Do you think it's somone you know?"
"I don't know." Frank had a sudden burst of anger rushing through him as if the dam of societal norms had finally been over run. How many fucking new creeps could he run into in a day?
"I think I saw him checking out the house, like around on the other side."
"Sweet."
Frank once again grabbed the wooden handle of the door from off of the couch and carefully pushed past Anthony and out on to the back deck.

53...

2006-03-29T17:05:00.000-08:00

He could hear someone step right outside the back door. His fist tightened almost to the point of pain around the door handle. He breathed slowly and deeply through his nose. One, he counted silently to himself. Two, he judged the resistance of his feet against the floor with some soft bouncing. Three, he pulled at the door with all his force.
This probably would have been more impressive had the back door not been locked with the dead bolt. Before Frank could completely realize this, he had managed to yank the handle clear off the door. It came away with a squeeling of metal coming loose of wood which had tightened and loosened its vaginal grip with the change of the weather. Frank stood there with a hunk of wood in his hands.
Like a bad actor, Frank stared at the dismembered handle in his hand with theatric frustration. He then turned his blinding hatred on the door itself, most specifically the splintered holes in the door that were now a new addition.
There was a soft but steady knocking from the other side of the door. Frank lifted the handle behind his head and prepared what would come next.
"Franky? You in there?"
Frank stared again at the torn and ragged holes fresh to the door, an impossible question all over his face. He suddenly placed the voice as that of his neighbor from the room downstairs, the room that had once been a garage.
"Anthony?" he asked.
"Yeah man."
Frank undid the deadbolt on the door and waited for a moment. There was no response from the other side of the door, the two stood on opposite sides of this worthless wood.
"Go ahead and push the door open," Frank said with a tinge of annoyance in his voice.
The door swung slowly open and the stony grin on Anthony's face slowly evaporated into concern as he stood there staring at Frank. Well, Frank assumed he was staring at him, but the dark shades that he almost always wore covered his gaze. The two stood still on opposite sides of the threshold, the cold and eucalyptus scented air blowing in from the park. After a few silent moments, Frank began to worry that there was something wrong and took a quick inventory of himself. It was then that he realized he was still holding the door handle like a club. Frank laughed dumbly and tossed the wood onto the couch.
"What's going on man?" Anthony asked with an overly slow tempo.
"Sorry, handle came off when I tried to open the door. What do you need?”
"Did he find you?"
"Did who find me? Was Bryan looking for me?"
"No. Some guy, I assume he rang every bell, but he got to my door. He was looking for you."

52...

2006-03-22T17:14:00.000-08:00

There was an ancient chest of drawers which Bryan used to store his clothes in against the wall. The thing had originally been picked up on a street corner, and where it had been before that was anyone's guess. Small things like guitar picks, fast food receipts and pocket change were always getting lost in the dark hole underneath it. From his floor vantage view, Frank could see something just inside the dark cave under the bureau.
He noticed those telltale, curled frays that meant a piece of paper that had been ripped free from a spiral notebook. They sat there, just covered by shadow beneath the furniture like party favors in hiding, like bad confetti. Frank reached his arm out and snagged the piece of paper.
It was indeed a piece of college ruled, spiral bound notebook paper which had been folded in half twice. Frank wondered who the note was for, or from. He wondered if there was some information that was meant to be distributed but somehow got lost on the way. He felt like an explorer of sorts as he began to unfold the paper.
Suddenly everything in him froze and his eyes opened wide. He held his breath and listened very carefully.
He was sure he had just heard something shuffle around on the back deck. The walls were so thin in the house that you could practically hear movement made anywhere, but the sound of someone on the back deck, on that thin and weather beaten wood, was a very specific sound.
It could easily have been a cat, so Frank continued to lie on the floor and listen. He was already keyed up from the insane events that had already transpired today and he felt ready to pounce.
After what felt like a couple of minutes of silence from out on the deck, Frank started to slowly roll over and get up. But there it was again, definite this time.
There was somebody, seemingly wearing boots, walking slowly across the small wooden deck.
Like a dancer, Frank leapt to his feet, shoved the folded piece of paper in his back pocket and moved quickly and quietly towards the back door. He stared down at the contraption that opened this door. It looked like it had once been the handle of one of those trowel things that construction workers used to smooth over concrete. It had been screwed into the old wood of a door that had not existed at the time when this once grand house had been singularly, a grand house.
Frank wrapped his right hand around the handle and steadied himself with feet planted as if ready to burst off of a race line.
‘Screw all you guys,’ he thought, ‘I’ve got the jump on you this time.’

51...

2006-03-17T17:22:00.000-08:00

Frank's eyes would only focus on fog. It took him a moment to realize that he was leaning against his window, breathing clouds against the glass. He shook his head in frustration and furiously wiped the window with the bottom of his shirt.
He shifted his focus through the glass and scanned the small strip of park, but there was no longer any sign of Tommy or his friend. He blew out a forced breath through his nostrils and managed to cloud the window once again. He thought about wiping it off and taking another look, but he knew in his gut that no matter how much he craned his neck to look, they were not going to be there.
Pushing away from the worn wood of the window frame, Frank noticed a minimalist replica of his face stained to the cold window. He stared at it for a moment and began to feel a little embarrassed by his own desperate behavior. He closed his eyes, forced himself to lengthen out the shallow breaths he was taking and thought.
"Just a guy, a friendly guy by the way, playing Frisbee in the park."
He was about to ask himself why he invented this enormous shadow conspiracy when there was no need for it, but he shook his head soundly as if letting it go.
"Seriously dude!" he said, laughing at himself. That laughter fed part of his overwrought soul and caused harder laughter.
He turned away from the window, intending to get himself a snack from the fridge. In his revelry, he managed to miss the fact that the phone cord was stretched out across the hardwood floor. He caught the cord with his foot, and every part of his body managed to leave the ground.
Frank hit the wood with the sort of insanely loud crash that knocks your jaws together and shits the air out of your lungs in a fevered stream. Frank actually saw his breath leave as it pushed a cloud of dust, hair and sloughed off skin cells before it like a ski chalet moved down a hill by an avalanche.
He lay there for a moment, just sort of mentally checking if he had seriously hurt anything. Everything hurt slightly, and his heart was beating as if he had just run a mile at breakneck speed, but he was pretty sure he was okay.
Rubbing his forehead against the soft grain of the wood floor, he began laughing again. He felt lame, he felt like he was going to be amazingly sore tomorrow, but it felt good to just lay there and laugh for minute. He turned his face to lay his cheek on the floor and just wrapped himself up in this abandon at accepting how ridiculous he was.
He was about to push himself up from the floor when something caught his eye.

50...

2006-03-08T17:09:00.000-08:00

The kitchen had so much chrome in it that it felt like a room-sized machine. It gave off the ambience of starting to life and thrashing all in the vicinity with jagged, shiny edges. Frank was sure that it cost a fortune, but it seemed corpse cold. Others must have had this same sort of feeling for, even though it was home to the keg and various liquor bottles, the room was nearly empty.
There were two guys sort of huddled up in the corner. They gave Bryan and Frank wary glances when they entered and then quickly went back to their intense conversation. From what Frank could gather, one was talking the other down from a bad trip; Frank could relate.
Bryan pumped the keg and poured himself a foamy cup of beer. Frank grabbed one of the red plastic cups and went for a bottle of sitting on the counter. He had to reach around the two guys in the corner and muttered a soft "’scuse me". Frank believed he heard one of them say something about 'all that greasepaint', but thought it better to let it go. He poured himself a good eight ounces of rum and drank it down like it was water. He pushed out a rush of air and saw Bryan watching him over the rim of his cup.
"Good?" Bryan asked.
Frank put a splash of beer in his cup, swirled it around and drank it down. He made another grab at the rum, with another hushed apology to the guys, and filled his cup halfway to full.
"I am now."
They headed out of the kitchen and towards the front door. They passed milling party goers in groups of twos and threes. To Frank they appeared almost as is they were those human statue figures. These people seemed posed in place and complete with party masks filled with glass eyes that merely reflected the colored light bulbs soft light back out into the room. He then had one of those moments where it feel like your flexes around a notion, like looking at an optical illusion and suddenly seeing the other picture that had been hidden there the whole time. He felt as if his determined walk through was actually a flash to everyone else, that he was walking through a lane separate from all others here and he saw there movements as a hummingbird must see ours.
Frank felt a little dizzy. He and Bryan made it to the front porch and took a seat on the steps, Frank immediately lit up a smoke.
“Why did you want to come here?” Bryan asked. “You can’t stand parties.”
Frank looked at him through smoke, giving him his best incredulous look.
“I thought you wanted to come here.”
“No man, you seemed like you were hoping to find someone here, so I entertained you. Were you looking for someone?”
Frank thought about this for a moment. He appreciated Bryan’s no bullshit approach. Frank noticed a cop car come around the corner at Broderick and quickly downed his rum. Bryan did the same with his beverage and the two turned their to-go cups upside down to indicate emptiness if the cop happened to look over their way.
“I don’t know,” Frank said slowly, trying to formulate his thoughts into words. “I think I was looking for a last chance some sort of connection with them.”
“With Evelyn and that group?” Bryan asked. “Or with everybody?”
Frank shrugged and pitched his cigarette over the side of the stairs.

49...

2006-03-01T17:00:00.000-08:00

Bryan led the charge back towards the stairs, gracefully maneuvering his way through the rush. Frank saw the table loaded up with snack foods and gave Bryan a tug and the back of his shirt to have him hang up a minute. Bryan saw the fat laden bounty and nodded, eyes wide and smiling.
Diving his fist into a bowl of tortilla chips, Bryan said something apparently witty and not the least bit inappropriate to the polo shirt clad gentleman standing next to him. Frank was annoyed at the self conscious streak that flew through him at the thought of gathering a plate of food in front of others; one of the hundreds of friendly neurosis his mother had seen fit to pass on.
The babble of loud and varying conversations, mixed ungraciously with inane and vaguely hip-hop flavored popular music, was grating on Frank’s nerves. It made him think taking a couple of those satay skewers and pushing them through his ears. Seriously, he wondered to himself, why do you even come to these things?
He reached a cubed piece of sourdough into the spinach dip shoveled into a hollowed out loaf of said bread when a voice broke through the wall of distorted noise like a small, affirming rub on the back in the midst of flailing punches.
Frank turned towards the voice. This truly lovely young lady stood there smiling at him, a shine of sincere clarity in her eyes. She looked as if she belonged here with these people in that she appeared to be well bred, obviously took care of herself, but somehow yet stood out from this crowd. There was nothing in particular he could point to, but somehow the word honesty floated up to him.
“I’m sorry?” he said with a confused smile.
“I said, I’d advise against that spinach dip. It tastes like it was made with low fat yogurt or something.”
Frank laughed slightly, not as a social convention, but by the idea that she would decide to share this information with him. She began laughing as well, and man her eyes sparkled.
“Thanks. I’d be really bummed out by a mouthful of bad spinach dip.”
She suddenly threw her small hand to her mouth and a look of shock and embarrassment crept in to her features.
“You didn’t make it or anything did you?” she asked with a tentative smile.
“No,” Frank said, laughing again.
Suddenly this bulk of a man, this wavy-haired minstrel of the inane walked in front of Frank, his back giving off a definite posture of wanting nothing to do with Frank. In fact, he immediately acted as though Frank was never there.
“Hey, where do you work out?” he asked in exactly the sort of dumb ass voice you might expect.
Really, Frank wanted to ask him, you’re going to approach quite possibly the only interesting person in this whole place with, “where do you work out”? Fucking nimrod!
The woman smiled apologetically at Frank. Frank gave a little wave, trying to impart the knowledge that he was happy to have had that slight moment of connection with her with vague and clumsy movements of his fingers. Before he turned completely for the stairs, he noticed a placid look come to her face, a small death sheen in her compelling eyes as she began to address this pile of flesh disguised as a man.
Frank felt his heart break a little bit.

48...

2006-02-16T17:27:00.000-08:00

“Frank, I honestly didn’t think that you would come,” Evelyn said with this special voice she had; it seemed completely engaged, yet committed to nothing. Frank had always wondered just how she managed that.
“Well, you know, I don’t like to miss out on free booze.”
She laughed a light, glass-like laugh that may have seemed legitimate to a very young child. She was completely back in her element now, no longer slumming it. Frank felt a sad smile touch his lips and wanted nothing more than to hold onto it like some sort of life raft.
“You haven’t changed at all since the days back at Monte Video,” she said with a smile. Yet again that dreaded dichotomy was all over her as her eyes admonished him there in front of everyone.
Frank was suddenly reminded of the idea that there is no light without shadow, that there are no rich without a structure of poor to keep them up and contrast them. He suddenly knew his job as entertainment, as clown.
“Evelyn, this is my roommate Bryan.”
Bryan, able to snap into pristine social graces with an amazing speed and agility, threw on his best smile and shook Evelyn’s hand warmly.
“And this is Vanessa, I actually just met her, but she was just telling me the most fascinating story,” Evelyn said turning to the tall and slender woman standing beside her.
Frank shook her hand and looked at her with brows deeply furrowed. She noticed this as she slightly jerked her hand away, a look of alarm creeping into her eyes.
“Sorry,” Frank said quickly. “You just really remind me of someone and I can’t quite place it.”
Frank looked at Bryan for help and he merely shrugged.
“I get that a lot,” she said with a smile, turning back towards Evelyn. “I’ll let you go Evelyn, I just wanted to say hello.”
“Oh,” Evelyn looked mildly confused. “Okay. I’ll talk to you later.”
Evelyn and Frank looked at each other for a moment. Frank searched for something to talk about and Evelyn appeared as uncomfortable as her stiff new façade would allow.
“Well,” Frank started.
“Well, I better go finish making the rounds,” she said with a small smile. “It’s nice to meet you Bryan. You guys help yourself to the keg and punch, it’s downstairs in the kitchen area.”
With that, she was off with a squeal of pleasure at seeing a woman she knew.
“Were we just dismissed?” Frank asked Bryan.
“You’re way overanalyzing. Let’s get a drink.”

47...

2006-02-08T17:37:00.000-08:00

There were a couple of drunks milling about on the steep stairs up to the attic apartment, nuisances to most trying to gain access what with their wobbly drinks and slowly widening circles that made up their version of standing still. But this was a delight the likes of a boat cruise to blow job heaven compared to the sheer blast of humanity to be met at the landing.
What had probably been designed as a “quaint” version of an attic had been turned into a loft bedroom. The bedroom was the central party room, revelers naturally spilling out into other rooms of the flat, and it was filled with well-dressed individuals. Frank mentally pictured his thrift store button down and torn jeans and put on a fortifying, and slightly contentious, smile.
A wave of heat and a variety of colognes slapped Frank in the face as he entered the room. He looked back behind him at Bryan as if for affirmation that he really had to go through with this. Bryan smiled, certainly knowing how much Frank hated this sort of thing. Frank pushed on though, Evelyn was up here somewhere and he needed to make his appearance.
Frank carefully pushed past a variety of attractive people who ignored him as much as he had wanted them to. He looked around the room and noticed that it was done in a lot of peaches and lavenders.
“Where do you work out?”
The voice sounded nearly as lame as the come on line. Frank thought it might be joke when he’d heard the first time, but now he saw the guy. Lascivious eyes and a tight, short sleeved and collared pullover roamed the room. Those eyes would rarely rise above the breast line of his attempted conquests.
“Wherever I can press 270, man,” Bryan said in the same deep and thick tongued tone as the nimrod who asked the question to begin with.
Frank threw out a quick snort of surprised laughter and looked back at Bryan with genuine gratitude. When he brought his eyes forward again, he spied Evelyn towards the back of room. She spoke to another young woman and her hands flailed about like delicate and frightened birds.
Evelyn had dated this cat Scotty that Frank had worked with at the video store when he first moved to the city. She had never said it, but Frank got the feeling that she was slumming it, that she was dating bad boy Scotty for the rebel factor, for story fodder after the breakup, to piss off certain friends as well as her parents.
They got to know each other when the three of them would hang out at The Foxhole, the local dive bar, and he and Evelyn became closer when she would use his ear to complain about Scotty. He was fine with that, Scotty was an asshole.
Scotty was one of those guys that still looked and acted like the bully from third grade. He had small, angry eyes and his idea of a good time was drinking a large number of tall boys in a parking lot and starting an argument with anyone who looked like a challenge. If you looked closely, you could see that anger and emptiness carving out a larger hold within him. One night, Scotty took a pocket knife to the throat outside The Foxhole and died on the sidewalk.
Evelyn looked over and caught Frank’s eye with a surprised little smile that was somehow both completely endearing and completely false. She gave him a small wave over.

46...

2006-02-01T17:04:00.000-08:00

Frank refused to look back again until he had reached Oak Street, one of the two major streets that bordered the panhandle of Golden Gate Park. When he did look behind him, pretending to scratch his chin on his shoulder, Tommy and his friend had gone back to playing the game.
How long could you play Frisbee for, for fuck’s sake?
Waiting for a break in the traffic, Frank dashed across the road and hopped up on the curb. He marched up the hill towards the house. He was aware that he would look like he was walking quickly if the two of them happened to look over at him, so he attempted to walk a little slower, a little more in control. But the promise of the safe haven of home was too much and he pressed on at the same rate.
Charging the front steps two at a time, he threw open the front door with a well-practiced, one-handed move. Once inside, he again took the stairs one at a time.
Did he remember that guy from Evelyn’s party? No. And he had spent a lot of time mocking the others that were there.
There were a lot of people there though, and how could the guy pull out the name Evelyn and the location of the party on Fulton as a fluke?
Frank opened the apartment door, and dropping the keys on the table per usual, stormed into the bedroom.
He would know the names and places if he had been watching Frank for awhile.
“Calm the fuck down man,” Frank muttered to himself. “You are freaking out.”
Nonetheless, he pressed himself against the window that just marginally looked out over the park and slowly drew the hand me down curtain back. He had to contort himself around the dresser just to get a slight view of the park. He then had to stretch his neck to a nearly impossible angle to see the section of the park that he needed.
He could see Tommy make another fantastic throw, his stance a picture of beauty. His target and partner in crime were hidden behind a eucalyptus tree at this angle. Frank sat with the side of his face pressed against that cold window and continued to watch. At no point did Tommy turn to look up at the small window, but after a number of minutes his friend came back into view and approached him. They talked for a minute before Tommy gestured him back out into the field and fired another one at him.
Feeling the outside air attempting to press its way through the glass, Frank stood there, closed his eyes and tried to remember Evelyn’s party. He could imagine that packed, fake Victorian flat as if he were looking directly at it.

45...

2006-01-18T17:08:00.000-08:00

As Frank was clenching his jaw, he was also slowly clenching the fist in his free hand. He had never really punched somebody, and he was quickly trying to focus his need and desire to land one square in this Tommy guy’s nose.
Tommy’s Frisbee partner began slowly walking towards them. Frank could feel fear foaming over like a head on a beer, scrambling around his brain like a platoon of fire ants. He certainly wasn’t positive he could do anything to Tommy, the kid was athletic and tall, wore an invisible banner that read, “I will never be hurt by anything in this life”. Frank was pretty damn positive he didn’t stand a chance against two.
There was something about the older guy’s walk that made Frank choke a little on his drying spit. The guy walked with a purpose, and Frank could smell all kinds of bad things wafting off of that purpose.
Frank looked back at Tommy, at that predatory smile, and tried to hide the fact that his fist was cocking back for swing. He knew his only chance was to take his best shot at Tommy before his back up got here.
Smiling even wider, Tommy suddenly had a look of recognition on his face.
“Didn’t I see you at Evelyn’s party the other night?”
He was unprepared for this question. The seemingly random nature of the question was enough to stop him short, like a screw driver jammed into the wires of a machine. Frank slumped a little bit in Tommy’s grip and screwed up his face into a mass of confusion.
“Wha?” He asked, unintelligibly.
“Yeah, weren’t you at Evelyn’s party out on Fulton Street last weekend?”
“Evelyn?” Frank asked, still a little bewildered. “Yeah, I was there.”
“Yeah,” Tommy laughed and slowly let go of Frank’s arm. “I totally remember seeing you now.”
“You’re a friend of Evelyn’s?”
“Friend of a friend.”
Tommy’s game partner was standing behind Tommy’s shoulder and looking at Frank with rather placid eyes, eyes that were difficult to read.
“Cool,” Frank tried his best ‘sounding relaxed’ voice. “Maybe I’ll see you around sometime.”
Tommy smiled.
“Probably,” he put out his hand. “My name’s Tommy.”
“Frank,” Frank said, giving his hand and walking away quickly; but trying not to look like he was quickly walking away.
Tommy turned back towards his friend, playfully smacking the Frisbee against the guy’s chest. Frank could feel those stranger’s eyes piercing into him as he walked away. He slowly turned his head back to take a surreptitious look and was almost positive that the guy once again quickly looked away.

44...

2005-12-28T17:09:00.000-08:00

Frank blinked rapidly, trying as quickly as possible to place where he was. He realized it was the park, but he was confused, and more than a little frightened, at how he had come to wake up there. He looked up at this guy staring down at him.
“What?” he asked.
“Sorry,” the guy said. “Looks like the Frisbee got away from us there.”
Frank quickly straightened up. He looked around himself and realized that he was exactly where he had sat down to think things out. He had just been so tired that he had fallen asleep where he sat.
“No. No it’s all good,” Frank started to lean forward on the bench. “I sort of just dozed off there. I’m glad you woke me up.”
“Oh good,” the young man said, and as if realizing how lame he probably sounded, he let out a short laugh that felt warm.
Smiling, Frank quickly rubbed his eyes. “Enjoy your game,” Frank said. He put his hands down on the bench to push himself away when he spotted the other Frisbee player. Something about the guy’s stance and watchfulness worried Frank’s mind.
The younger man made a quick turn towards his partner and cleared his throat.
“Sorry about my friend there, he starts to lack the social graces when I hold up his game; forgets that it’s impolite to stare.”
Something about this young man’s tone seemed almost hurtful. Frank slowly turned to face him, feeling just a short, raw nerves feel of danger on the air. The guy’s smile seemed predatory at a side glance, but by the time Frank got all the way around, he had been won over.
“No worries, I’ll let you guys get back to it.”
“Tommy!” the older guy yelled as if on cue. “C’mon!”
Frank couldn’t see the guy’s eyes, they were pits of shadow in the high sunlight, and this made him nervous.
“Yeah,” Tommy said, slightly rolling his eyes. “I’d better.”
Frank grinned uneasily and began walking away.
“Hey man,” Tommy said in a clipped tone.
Frank turned towards him, his jaw tightening. Tommy stared at him intently. The older guy took a step towards the two.
“Do I know you from somewhere?” Tommy asked.
Frank took a heavy look at the guy, he wasn’t sure if he was being played here. Frankly, he felt menace on the air as if it were a precursor of some mad season. Every time he focused hard enough on this Tommy, the imagined menace disappeared. There was this cute guy with an erstwhile smile.
“Nope,” Frank laughed a little nervously. “I don’t think so.”
He began walking again. His breath caught when Tommy reached out a strong hand and grabbed his elbow.
“Hang on,” Tommy said with a smile. There were a lot of teeth in that smile.

43...

2005-12-21T16:59:00.000-08:00

Tommy put his arms over his head and stretched. His thin, muscled stomach crept out from beneath a retreating T-shirt. It was a nice day, a good day, almost a shame to have to work today.
He liked the park and that medicinal smell of eucalyptus trees. He had always really been more of a West Coast guy and he kinda hoped he might be able to hang around here for awhile.
He reached down, grabbed the Frisbee and gave it a good toss back to Lester, who caught it with that same sort of uptight efficiency that he always did. Lester was okay, but he always walked around with this psychological stick up his ass. Tommy had been tempted to try to get him drunk and to get him laid this trip, but Lester was too much of a control freak for any of that.
Lester took a quick look at the bench again and then back to Tommy. Lester stood there for a minute with the Frisbee in his hands, looking blankly at Tommy. It was times like this that Tommy wanted to dredge up some kind of hatred for the guy. He wanted to hate him for dragging him into this ridiculous shadow world, but couldn’t. Up till this point in his life, Tommy knew his employment with the North Creek Sign Company was the best thing that could have happened to him.
Tommy clapped his hands together and pantomimed catching the Frisbee. Lester gave a quick jerk of his head towards the park bench. Tommy feigned tying a shoe and took a surreptitious look over.
The guy was still passed out on the bench, mouth hanging wide open. A bike sped past on the trail which sat between them.
Tommy nodded to Lester and Lester threw the Frisbee; he made it look like he was doing taxes. Tommy jumped up and caught it one handed behind his back, spinning on the way down so that he faced the man on the bench when he landed. He stared for half a moment.
Gauging the weight of the disc and the resistance of the air by slowly swinging the Frisbee back and forth, Tommy took a deep breath and held it. He lightly flung the object and it flew short, but beautifully. It landed with a soft bounce on the bike path and skidded to a rest at the tip of Frank’s shoe.
Tommy began jogging over, his loose curls bouncing around his head. He reached the Frisbee and found that the guy was still passed out, still breathing like an allergy plagued dragon. He gave the Frisbee a light kick against the sleeping man’s shoes and noticed, quite quickly, the jerk up to wakefulness.
“Sorry about that man,” Tommy said to Frank with a smile that was glorious.

42...

2005-12-14T16:59:00.000-08:00

“I’m not really interested man,” Tommy said. He began rising from the park bench, but curiosity stayed him. “And how the hell do you know my name?”
“We know a lot about you,” Lester looked up at him, squinting his eyes against the late spring sun. He stood up from the bench quite easily. “C’mon. Let’s go get a drink.”
“What do you mean, ‘We’?” Tommy stammered. Lester was enjoying his shock on some level. Unfortunately for Lester, this would be one of the last times he would ever be able to shake Tommy’s cool. “And frankly, I gotta tell you man, I’m really not interested in working for a sign company.”
“It’s just the name of the place,” Lester sighed. “It’s not really a sign company. C’mon, let me buy you a drink. Nothing unsavory, I promise you.”
Lester took them to a small and empty bar a couple of blocks away. The place seemed just that much darker in comparison to the battering sunlight outside. Lester nursed a beer and told Tommy about how he had been watching him for weeks, about how his every move and conversation had been scoped, about how he had the right sort of morality that this group of his was looking for.
“And what sort of morality is that?” Tommy asked with a smirk.
“Ambiguous,” Lester answered as if he had answered the same question a hundred times.
“And how do you know that?”
Lester told him about the testing. Apparently the Pornography in Society class (or Dirty 230 as the students called it) was a set up, and the weekly tests given throughout were used to gauge students’ personalities against some shadow criteria.
“Seriously?” Tommy asked.
“C’mon, university credit for watching porn? We have the same sort of sexuality classes set up in a lot of other majors as well”
“So what about me fit your so called criteria?”
“Your anti-social, creative, you border on being a sociopath, you like blunt honesty… a lot of things Tommy. Frankly, we’ve gotten pretty good at spotting the right kind of people from a mile away.”
“What if I say no?”
“I drink this beer, pay the check and we never see each other again. But if you ever try to bring this conversation to the light of day, you will find your life in a mess you cannot even imagine. Well, maybe you can imagine.”
They sat and talked for another hour and a half. Tommy asked if he could think about it, and by that Friday afternoon he had walked off the university grounds, never to return.
To this day, he would be unable to graduate without both returning, and paying a hefty fine on, a copy of Lansing, Store Bought.

41...

2005-12-07T17:09:00.000-08:00

Spring was about ready to burst open and toss summer out, flailing and burning, into the streets of New York. You could feel it in the air, this sense of excited anticipation, this moist and warm feeling in the air like the breath of lover that will eventually gut you and leave you for dead.
Thinking on it later, Tommy Williams (as he was known then) was sure he knew something life changing was going to happen that day. The feeling rolled in on that breeze of impending summer.
He walked out of the Bobst Library and began to head across the street to Washington Square Park. He looked around at the white light bouncing off of the buildings, off of the cars, off of the people. He removed his lightweight windbreaker and sat down on a bench in the park. There was the usual gaggle of skateboarders, junkies, tourists and students scattered around the place, but something seemed to be vibrating through all of them just slightly. Tommy could feel it himself, this tangible excitement, but he did his best to ignore it.
Glancing down at the back of the book he had just checked out, Tommy was looking at the black and white picture of Lawrence Lee McDonald. The author appeared to be looking at the viewer with a sense of strange sexual attraction and murderous desire. Tommy flipped the book over and stared at the cover that entranced him so much.
The cover of Lansing, Store Bought, was a deep blue with this sort of scratchy, yellow, impressionistic drawing of a dilapidated house in a field.
He couldn’t explain it, and frankly didn’t want to try, but something about this book had irrationally attracted him. He was glancing over the shelves and first the title hit him. Something about it just rang of comfort for him. He pulled it from the shelf and was immediately drawn to the cover. When he finally shook himself from a druggy daze, he realized he had been standing in the aisle and staring raptly at this book for several minutes. Without seeing what it was about, or even what genre of book it was, Tommy went downstairs and checked it out of the library.
Beginning to crack open this book that had only been loaned out twice before in its history with the library, Tommy sensed a man sitting next to him on the bench, staring intently. Tommy was shocked that the guy could get that close without him sensing it. Something about the guy made Tommy think to himself that showing any surprise would be a bad idea.
Tommy turned his head slowly to face the guy and gave him a sort of terse, ‘can I help you’ look.
“Tommy Williams?” the guy asked.
Heavy surprise crept in and Tommy failed to keep it at bay this time.
“Yeah?”
“My name is Lester Sparks. I’d like to talk to you about a job at North Creek Sign Company.”

40...

2005-11-30T17:02:00.000-08:00

Lester closed his phone with a slight grimace on his face. He was pissed that Vanessa had no information and yet had this… this attitude. He was also pissed that he had to be teamed up with her to begin with. They’d been having the same philosophical argument for nearly ten years now and the only thing that kept them from coming to an amiable solution was that they were both horribly stubborn in different ways.
He wanted to throw the ridiculously small phone to the ground and stomp it to pieces. He realized this was not a good idea. He realized it was not the phone that he was angry at. He realized that he was letting his anger get away from him. He closed his eyes and concentrated on breathing slowly and through his nose.
Lester supposed that The Big Guy had an action plan, that that was why he had probably been put on assignment with Vanessa again. Then again, it could be that The Big Guy just liked to torture his employees and that he knew the more Lester and Vanessa were lumped together, the greater the chances of a ballet-like knife fight breaking out. The fucker probably has odds laid out with the rest of the company.
And then Tommy had been thrown into the mix this time.
He realized he was being a little egotistical in assuming The Big Guy’s decisions had anything to do with his feelings. He realized that he and Vanessa had been involved with this case for a number of years and they were simply the best for the job.
But why Tommy? Tommy was younger, cuter, and more athletic. He had longish, curly blond hair and these sad puppy eyes that drove most women crazy. Quite a few men as well, truth be told. Lester hadn’t really thought that Tommy was terribly bright, but there was a viciousness in his smile that was palpable.
Lester had, at the behest of the company, recruited Tommy. He hadn’t been in charge of Tommy’s training however. That was left to the really devious fuckers on the ninth floor. Lester’s own trainer had been ambushed by a former student and fed alive to a pit full of infant crocodiles. Lester wasn’t a big fan of Tommy from the get go, didn’t really understand why he would have been a valuable member of the team, but he was smart enough to know that there were reasons for actions beyond his shallow understanding.
He realized that most of the dislike directed at Tommy was jealousy. He realized that he was envious of Tommy’s youth and good looks. He realized that if he brought this up in one of his sessions with Dr. Cooper, the company appointed head shrinker, Dr. Cooper was likely to accuse him of being gay for Tommy.
Bullshit.
Whatever the reasons for putting Tommy on this leg of the case, it felt to Lester like a jab at his abilities. True or not, it felt like The Big Guy was telling him that he hadn’t gotten the job done yet and this one obviously needed someone younger, someone a little fresher.
Lester looked down towards Tommy who was about forty yards away and showboating for some passing joggers. Lester narrowed his eyes in an annoyed glare. The kid really hadn’t changed since the day he pulled him out of his former life at NYU.

39...

2005-11-23T11:47:00.000-08:00

Fat, nearly to the point of jiggling, a tight and drum-like stomach filled with ivy and poison oak, a large rat trundled its way through the underbrush. There was a huge rat population in the city, just as in any other city, but you didn’t really see them too often in the park. It could be that there were more predators hiding in the weeds. Maybe the rats just got more brazen when there were less shadows to cover them.
This rat in particular was doing its best to scoot out of the park and into the Outer Sunset. It dashed across a nearly empty street, scurrying near the wheels of parked cars, and dove into the thick and damp underbrush.
It’s nearly a cliché, the idea that our sense of smell is directly connected to the oldest parts of our memories. It might be remnants from the day when we had to nose the air for the musky smell of mates, or coming predators; a powerful sense hardwired to a near clinical center of survival. It wasn’t only smell that drove this rat to run a far circle around Uncle Eddie’s den, it was a sharp jab to a number of instincts in the survival center, a gift we all had before our predators became ourselves.
The rat could sense wrongness in the bushes around it, and twitched with each quick step to get out. It was almost something the rat could see, a blackness in the air that it nearly had to fight through like tight bands of paper.
If rats breath sighs of relief, this one certainly would have as it burst from the bushes and on to the curb at Lincoln. Its nose twitched, whiskers flailing, and quickly dove into a storm drain right below it. It trudged through city silt and rotting leaves, skittering beneath the street and exiting from another storm drain on the other side.
Scampering past rows of houses, driven on by the smell of the waste of a number of Asian markets, the rat nearly had its head kicked in by a white, stiletto heeled boot. The rat let out a high-pitched squeal and bolted south, following a zigzagging track through brush and gutter. The wearer of the boot looked after it with a scowl of disgust.
Vanessa Park turned from the sight of the retreating rat and once again headed East along Lincoln. If she hadn’t been wearing the heels, she would have nailed that fucker. But she couldn’t help herself, she loved her boots with heels.
She wore a skirt that only went down to the top of her thighs and boots that went nearly to her knees. Her self-assured strut belied just how cold she was, she walked with a purpose, she walked as if something hurt.
Digitally shrill notes from the opening of the song “I Will Survive” drifted out of her hip pocket. She snatched the phone out and opened it with a flick, answering with a demure yet pointed, “hello”.
She looked at the houses around her, her normally pretty face distorted by contempt. She hated the Sunset. She hated San Francisco. As a matter of fact, she wasn’t a big fan of California period.
“Um-humm,” she murmured into the phone. “Yes, I know. I know. You’re going to have to trust me on this one. Listen Lester, I know she’s on her way here.”
Vanessa stopped walking. She tilted her head to the side and smirked while Lester’s nasal voice dripped out all small and tinny.
“Because I can smell her,” she said and began walking again.

38...

2005-11-16T17:06:00.000-08:00

Way back in a close den, within the dense branches of a stunted cypress tree, in a matted hole in the plant life that smelled of cheap liquor and piss, a large and thin man lay on dried fir needles with one sickly green eye open.
Many homeless people had used this hole before, as had many junkies. It carried a sense of desperation that drove back any feeling of nurturing that the plant life vainly attempted to throw out. The very air within was a thick and dank, fetid affair that birthed tumors of sadness, hopelessness and lost ways; it drove away images of purity like a cold wind eradicating smoke. In many ways it was the perfect place for Uncle Eddie to catch a few winks.
Uncle Eddie lay on his left side, curled with his knees towards his chest so his body made a spindly G. That one open eye turned slowly in its socket as though it were a machine, a quick, reptilian blink however, broke that illusion.
He had sensed the biker’s anger from a mile away, literally. He could feel it coming through the air, vibrating his body like a rabbity and spastic bass beat. He could smell it, like a strong and long wisp of burned toast. He had tasted it as this foul air fell in over his teeth and it had been the flavor of steel and chlorine, and something sweet; the taste of untouchable desires.
That is what had snapped him awake like an alarm bell ringing, this pulsing and delicious anger. He didn’t move, he had much better control than that. He sat and determined just where this beacon was coming from and after a moment, he slowly opened his eye.
At that same moment, Uncle Eddie felt that knot of anger ramp up into a snapping fear. This was something even more fabulous than the anger that had preceded it. Fear was the properly aged Bordeaux to anger’s piss bottled wino wine. Fear made Uncle Eddie’s cock stand up and take notice.
Once the biker was away, Uncle Eddie flared his nostrils, trying to pull up all that the biker gave. He lost the scent somewhere about the time the biker reached the ocean.
He closed that murky eye and turned his mind to dark fantasies that pulsed with an almost reptilian consciousness. Down in that moaning darkness there writhed beasts never named. These were fantasies that, visited on a normal man, would break minds like a hammer through dinnerware.
Uncle Eddie faded back into sleep, his wiry arm wrapped around the mangled carcass of a large raccoon as though it were a teddy bear.

37...

2005-11-09T17:01:00.000-08:00

Joel Coiler was an intense rider of bikes. There was no such thing as a quick and leisurely ride in the world of Joel Coiler; he rode hard and he rode with a purpose. Normally, his mind would be a cool blank, nothing in focus, nothing absorbed. In fact, his speed rides through the park were rarely remembered when he returned home to his Castro apartment.
Today he couldn’t quit thinking about stupid drama, and it was distracting him, and nothing pissed him off faster than not being able to lose himself in a ride. He had already turned his head to look back at that guy that seemed to be nodding off on the park bench. This was such an abnormality of behavior for him that he felt the need to hit himself to try and shake himself out of it. Where most people, feeling a similar inclination, would have smacked the handlebars of the bike, Joel punched himself upside his helmet.
Anger was a familiar emotion to Joel, but it was one that he did his best to hide from the outside world, just like his dad. However, just like his dad, anger often thrived in the warm culture of his home. This was not something Joel was willing to look at fully, even though the idea sang to him like some annoying song stuck in his memory. He was also not willing to accept that this was a reason for Jerry’s leaving.
Yeah Joel and Jerry, everybody had always thought that was so cute. But what were his friends going to think when they found out Jerry was leaving him for some other guy. And how long had he been fucking this guy? Joel clamped his jaws together, grinding his teeth and with a look of fury, he pushed on the peddles even harder.
Jerry was a painter that was truly great in the mind of Jerry, but merely decent in the minds of most others. Joel had put up with his “artistic” nonsense for years, paying all of the rent and bills so that he could paint and not be fettered by society’s unrealistic expectations of a job. Jerry had always talked down him, as if being a painter was well above being an account exec. Jerry had always flirted voraciously with other artists, and wrote it off that Joel wouldn’t understand because he wasn’t a painter. Jerry had a secret hatred of his own gayness that made Joel consider him weak.
His mom would be happy, she’d never really liked Jerry. Joel just felt played. He resented having put up with Jerry’s slacker, artist bullshit just to have him run off with some art fag on Telegraph Hill.
Joel let out a rough little bark, something he sometimes did at home when he needed to relieve some internal pressure. He was already mostly through the park, back closer to the ocean where the cypress trees and various plants seemed to feed on the briny fog and grow thicker, more wild.
He suddenly felt his heart pick up speed. It was a feeling he was familiar with for sure, but it was not from the exercising, it was adrenaline flooding his system. There was a fierce flicker of fear riding his spine.
Stopping so suddenly that he nearly went over the handlebars, Joel began shaking. Some uncontrollable sense of dread was climbing over him like a living shadow. He could feel something watching nearby and he began whipping his head around to try and see anything through the overgrown brush. Only the sense of watching and waiting was there, the sense that this was no ordinary raccoon or possum in the park, but something big.
Joel jumped quickly back on his bike and peddled faster than he had known he could.

36...

2005-11-02T17:41:00.000-08:00

Frank stared down the bike path, towards the deep depths of the park, as if he were still watching Mike walk away. He scanned through his memory of what Mike had said, trying to make sense of it, trying to form a more manageable shape for it in his mind. He was trying to figure the importance of it. Somewhere in the deep wiring of his head, where instinct curled itself on a moth eaten rug and napped, a spark was firing and trying to get his attention.
Every time that Frank felt that rush of sudden discovery, his mind would suddenly become unfocused and he would lose what he had just glommed onto. It was like hearing the song he had in his mind disintegrating under the power and volume of a pop tune blaring from a stereo.
He heard the shuffling staccato beat of a runner coming up the path and turned warily to look. He felt his heart suddenly freeze in his chest and a mad voice charging his body to bolt. This runner had no face, no features, just a plain white field that shown back the pale sunlight.
Various reasons flooded through his mind at once; a ghost, a seriously deformed person, a hallucination. When the runner got up close, Frank realized he was wearing some sort of cloth over his face, below his eyes. He assumed this was to keep the runner warm in the fog-tinged air. The guy’s cap had shadowed the top half of his face, making the illusion whole. The guy saw Frank staring gaped mouth and he slowly turned his head to give him a wary look as he passed.
Frank sat back on the bench, breathing deep and trying to calm down.
“Seriously, man,” he said to himself.
He thought of Alexis and couldn’t help smiling. He closed his eyes and could clearly see that devil-may-care grin coming back at him, the sparkle in her eyes that gave absolutely nothing away. Somehow he knew she was in some sort of trouble, so far he had a series of random clues, but no proof. All the same, he knew it with a certainty.
Frank began to develop fantasies of rescuing her from her troubles, of defending her against faceless enemies with force he did not have. He imagined picking her up at her weakest, finally, and carrying her and having her lavish him with her affections for being there. Frank would remain stoic and proud, of course accepting her passionate accolades, but never showing that they were affecting him in any way. He would take her hand, strongly and firmly, and lead her through the dark forest.
Realizing that he was beginning to drift off, Frank shook his head to wake himself. He slowly, dopily, lifted his eyes open.
Yet another speeding bike shot past him like lightening, flying away towards the heart of the park.

35...

2005-10-26T16:59:00.000-07:00

Frank was remembering the night before, standing in front of a movie theater on Van Ness with his hands pushed down into his pockets against the damp cold. The street was near deserted of both car and person, and you could occasionally hear somebody nearby, loudly making a point.
Mike had that soft grin that spoke of intoxication. His hands were in his pockets as well, and he shifted from one foot to the other as if he were doing a little shuffle, a little jig on that sidewalk.
“There are special places in the world, Frankie,” he said with a sly grin, referring to a line from the film they had just seen. He gently nudged Frank with his shoulder, attempting to knock him off balance.
“Yeah, one of them is my ass,” Frank said with a dry, sardonic tone.
Mike began laughing in the weezy sort of way he had when he smoked too much.
“Hey! Let’s go get a quick last call!” Mike’s exuberance bounced off the plate glass windows of the car showroom-cum-movie house they stood in front of.
“I think we missed last call, brother,” Frank said, checking his watch. “Yup, it’s 2:12. The movie didn’t start till like 12:30.”
“Damn it!”
Mike looked legitimately crushed, almost near tears, but it was just a quickly moving cloud in an otherwise unmarred sky.
“How you gettin’ home? Did you drive?” He asked with that soft grin once again in place.
“Naw, cabbin’ it.”
Mike looked around this little stretch of the city with that irrepressible smile just shining out there to the empty streets.
“You know what Frankie?” He asked with a pronounced drawl that didn’t show up under normal circumstances.
“Nope.”
“Purple,” he said. Just as if the word justified itself and needed no further information.
“Purple?”
“Purple is somehow cold, even with all that royalty by association, and all those reds. Purple’s the color of the final jump off spot, the last thing before the end. It’s somehow passions coalescing before winking out… Maybe becoming something else? You know?”
Frank laughed, assuming that Mike was just drunk.
“No,” he said.
Mike nodded, he had a thoughtful look on his face. He gave Frank a hug, none of that typical guy, pat three times on the back hug, but a steady, strong and warm one. He released him, looked at Frank with that same thoughtful expression, then quickly turned and walked away towards the water.

34...

2005-10-19T17:01:00.000-07:00

There was a damp chill outside, as if the pieces of air were made of cold and would only be tricked into warming for bare moments, but would always fall loosely back into their chilled states.
To Frank it felt magnificent, it felt metallic. It was a blessing on his overheated flesh. Frank felt feverish, like his blood was too thick. Frank felt the onset of plague, and real or imagined, it didn’t typically matter.
The park was usually fairly deserted at this time of day during the week, and today was no exception. There was a thin, half-naked guy doing yoga positions on a blanket. There were two guys throwing a Frisbee around. Occasionally a runner or bike rider would pass him on the path, and that was it.
Frank sat down on a bench usually reserved for one of the many homeless people who would not-so-surreptitiously sleep on them at all hours of the day. He stared down at his near blown-out shoes and began thinking of the crazy homeless guy from earlier in the morning.
How the hell had the guy gotten into the house to begin with? The folks in the other rooms of the house were usually so good about not letting just anyone in through the locked front door. And seriously, the guy didn’t try to take anything, he wasn’t hunkered down looking for a place to stop and fix, he just walked in and started rambling. How many people out there in the world were just plain crazy?
A biked buzzed as it passed in front of him with speed.
Frank looked up and noticed one of the Frisbee guys quickly looking away. Had he been talking out loud? He rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand feeling an uncomfortable heat.
And that sex in the club’s restroom story, he was sure that Jeffery’s friend Shawn had told him a remarkably similar one. They had laughed at the ridiculous lengths Shawn would take the story, what with the parrot, and then a waitress with a wooden leg. Frank remembered that night, how they had sat around that filthy kitchen table, drinking Jack and Cokes and laughing till they cried.
So what? So Shawn had told this story to Chuck what’s-his-name and old Chuckles had sold it as his own to Wank. But something…
Frank felt those tickling fingers that signaled someone watching him. He raised his eyes up to look at the Frisbee players without moving his head. Sure enough, that same guy seemed to be looking at him again.
Raising his head up to face the Frisbee guy fully, Frank saw him quickly jerk his head away. Frank looked at the other one, but he was too busy trying to catch the Frisbee between his legs. Frank watched the first guy for a minute or so to see if would look over again, but he seemed fully engaged in his tossing a plastic disc back and forth.
Something was tugging inside of Frank’s head, trying to get him to remember something. He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. He could hear snatches of voices bouncing around in his memory; people he had known made incomprehensible noises back there. Mike’s voice popped up, nearly saying an actual word, and Frank sat up suddenly.
A guy in dayglo yellow crackled before him on a speeding bike.
Something Mike had said the night before, what was it? Frank was almost certain that’s what his mind was trying to remind him of. Something about…

33 1/3...

2005-10-12T17:04:00.000-07:00

Bright pastels, but tasteful, mixed with earth tones.
An announcer you couldn’t see, but you could imagine him somehow all round with an unfaltering smile and a voice that was excited, yet somehow low and soothing.
A nice stately man, with an earnest face and a little age just beginning to show.
A young woman, built like a doll and with similar colors.
These two would never insult you, would never say anything remotely off color that would make you feel icky or think about things that aren’t nice; things that would really just ruin your whole day.
They were sharing a joke these two, a nice and carefully crafted joke, as pleasant as cheddar cheese. They were sharing a laugh that was not too loud, but would go really well with a nice cup of tea.
They began talking to a screen that showed the immaculate face of a handsome young man that was currently drawing a large amount of people to spend a large amount of money funding film production companies.
The three of them spoke of some deed the handsome young man had performed. Apparently it was something to be celebrated, emulated, something that he should perhaps be canonized for.
Bryan was smiling. He wasn’t necessarily watching, but was attempting to peel away at the corners.
He could see the glint of sexual depravity in the eyes of the older, stately man. He could see the look that spoke of dark and sweaty fantasies of sodomizing his co-host while strangling her with one of his wives handkerchiefs.
He could see the sneer that lay trembling just below the dollish woman’s vacuous smile. A sneer that spoke volumes about rending the flesh of every underling near this stage with her own teeth if they dared even look at her, of vomiting that flesh up – both to keep up her socially perfect waistline and as further insult to those mewling minions.
He could hear between the lines of the actor’s well prepared interview: how well he was able to spout his public relations person’s words, how he didn’t give a fuck for the poor people he had helped and did it as it was good for his reputation, how he had no personality and was forced into an endless hell of reading other people’s words to make him seem like someone, like anyone, how if he didn’t believe his own hype, he would end up swallowing a gun.
He could hear the shrewish laughter of the studio audience, and could almost make out the desperate screams somewhere in there.
Bryan laughed.

33...

2005-10-05T16:57:00.000-07:00

“Don’t worry about it,” Bryan looked a little uncomfortable, a little ashamed. “I don’t take you seriously.”
Frank let out a short, dry laugh. He finished putting on his shoes and stood up.
“Thanks man.”
“If you’re tired, why don’t you crash out for awhile? I mean you’re not going to work today are you?” Bryan was taking on his tender, motherly tones.
Frank, who hated Bryan’s tender, motherly tones, curled his fingers into his palms and squeezed. He did not want to jump all over Bryan again, none of this was Bryan’s issue, so he squeezed until he felt pain, until he could calmly respond.
“I feel like I need to get for a little bit, try to clear my head,” Frank nearly whispered. “I’ll probably just go down to the park and wander for a little bit.”
“Do you want me to come down with you?” Bryan asked.
Frank felt a fingernail puncture the skin in his palm.
“No,” he sighed, and then softly, “I just want to be alone for a bit. Thank you though.”
Frank began walking towards the front door of the apartment. He could feel Bryan following languidly behind him. He could also feel the last of his patience rushing out in an impossible torrent through a tiny pin prick hole in his forehead. Frank began to hold his breath in hopes of passing out before he punched Bryan right in the face. He reached the door and spun around slowly, letting his breath out in a low gust. Bryan looked at him with worried eyes. He nodded firmly and turned towards the television set. Frank felt a small pang of guilt sucker punch him in the stomach.
“Are you heading into the coffee shop today?”
Bryan was stretching out on the couch with still only a towel around his waist. He was beginning to fiddle with the televisions remote.
“Yeah, later this afternoon,” Bryan flipped through a few channels and then focused on Frank again. “We can talk for a bit, later, if you want.”
“Thanks man. Look, I’m sorry…”
Bryan waved him off with remote in hand and Frank opened the door to leave. He walked slowly down the stairs, suddenly feeling dizzy at being outside the apartment. His brain was fighting itself; arguing over things to tell Bryan and over things not tell him, arguing over what to do next with the Alexis debacle and what not to do, arguing over whether or not that stupid, fucking cheesy porn story was actually something he had heard before.
“Seriously,” Frank whispered to himself. “Janitor with the pet parrot and all.”
He was certain that he did not know a Chuck Peevesly, and was fairly sure he remembered who had told him a story so remarkably similar… But his memories were mixing with stories and becoming hybrids that no longer belonged to him. And if his own history no longer belonged to him, was in fact changing in his mind with every stair he took down through this decrepit Victorian house, who was he now with his very foundation of being unrecognizable?
“C’mon,” he harshly whispered to himself as he threw the front door open and stepped into bright, morning sunlight.

32...

2005-09-28T18:08:00.000-07:00

Bryan slowly and quietly followed Frank back in to the bedroom. Frank found a pair of jeans on the floor and quickly put them on over his striped boxers. He began to tuck in his Sonic Youth T-shirt before thinking better of it and pulled it back out again. He went to the milk crate in his closet and pulled out a pair of socks. He moved back to that chair at his desk, fully aware that Bryan was watching him, but ignoring him all the same. He forcefully straightened out his socks by slapping them on his thighs and then roughly put them on.
“Frank, man.” Bryan tried in a calm voice.
“What?” Frank looked up with anger pounding from his eyes.
“What’s really the problem? I mean you’re not really pissed about the stupid porn story are you?”
Frank got up and began rummaging around for his shoes. He found one, picked it up and began spinning in a small circle, attempting to sniff out the other. After about forty-five seconds of this, Frank threw the one shoe down on the floor and sat down again.
“I don’t know Bryan,” Frank said, his voice lightly marked with faraway tears. “I’m fucking beat. I’ve been on this crazy roller coaster morning and I think I’m starting to lose it a little. I feel completely out of control, and the fact that I try to hold it together and act like my life has some semblance of normalcy makes me feel like driving a spike through my head.”
Bryan had found Frank’s lost shoes sticking out of a pile of laundry. He grabbed it and the thrown one and gently handed them to Frank.
“And yeah, the stupid bathroom fuck story was just the last straw. I know it’s not a big deal, and I know it’s supposed to be cheesy, stupid, raunchy porn for sad suck suckers to rub one out to, but… I don’t know…”
Frank was looking out the dusty and encrusted window high up on the bedroom wall. Bryan could see his mouth fighting with the words trying to come out, as if he were tasting them before serving.
“For a second there it represented abject fucking failure in a way that… I could see this round window set in a stucco wall that was somehow the embodiment of expectation…”
Bryan was sort of waiting for the joke, but realized it wasn’t coming. He didn’t think that Frank was talking to him anymore, and frankly he couldn’t understand what he was trying to get across anyway.
“…I knew that desire will destroy you, but at the same time, in a very real way, desire is the only thing that will keep you going. It’s like this beast that eats itself and survives. No, it’s like this flower that just keeps opening up on itself and you keep seeing these rows of paper-like petals, in glorious colors and you keep thinking, there can’t possibly be more coming. But it just keeps opening out… And I realized that man, I can rationalize my way out of anything, and where does it fucking stop? Where do I stop it? I just kept seeing this hall of mirrors… No, this endlessly opening flower, and I flipped out a little bit.”
He looked up at Bryan as if he were lost and shook his head a bit. Slowly his eyes cleared and he looked down at the shoes in his lap. He began to put them on.
“Sorry man, I didn’t mean to snap at you,” he said, as he slowly laced up.

31...

2005-09-21T17:32:00.000-07:00

Frank leapt from his chair and stormed off towards the bathroom. He stepped inside, spun to look at Bryan’s giggling face, and firmly closed the door.
“What’s wrong man?” Bryan asked with a smile. “Getting wood?”
“Hardly,” came Frank’s muffled reply from the bathroom.
“But it’s just getting to the good part,” Bryan said as he rattled the paper and scanned the newsprint, still grinning like a hunter who’s just caught something particularly wily. “The janitor comes in with his pet parrot.”
“Seriously, Bryan, enough!”
Bryan closed the paper, careful to keep his finger tucked inside, marking his place. He leaned against the bathroom door and listened for a moment. He tried the knob, found it wasn’t locked and opened the door. Frank was sitting on the toilet, giving Bryan his patented impatient look.
“Do you fucking mind?”
“What’s wrong man? This shit is funny.”
“I’m gonna wipe, do you wanna watch?”
Bryan, still grinning, turned his back towards Frank and leaned against the bathroom doorway.
“Seriously, what’s got you all worked up?”
Upon hearing the toilet flush Bryan turned back around. Frank was leaning against the sink and staring at himself in the mirror. The only light was coming through the window and that in itself was the only available light reflected off the building next door. The bathroom was a square of shadows.
“It pisses me off that somebody got paid to write that,” Frank finally said. He grabbed his toothbrush from the chipped coffee mug on the sink and added a little bit of toothpaste.
Bryan again opened the paper at the spot he had marked with his finger.
“Yeah… Chuck Peevesly,” Bryan said.
“Wha?” Frank asked around a mouthful of foam.
“Chuck Peevesly wrote it; probably got a couple hundred. What’s the big deal? It’s cheesy porn.”
Frank spit out a healthy wad of saliva and toothpaste.
“Exactly, it’s cheesy porn. At least be original about it, push the boundaries a little. ‘Oooh, you are being a dirty girl…’ Please.”
“Maybe Chuck couldn’t get published anywhere else. I don’t know, the way I look at it is, at least he’s writing.”
Frank rinsed the toothbrush, tapped it hard against the basin and tossed it back into the coffee mug. He walked towards Bryan stiffly. Bryan shrunk against the doorjamb, holding the Wank issue against his chest to let Frank go by.

30...

2005-09-16T17:56:00.000-07:00

“I was out on the town, partying it up with my girlfriends at a swanky, downtown bar. After a couple of cosmo’s, I went into the ladies room to freshen up. As I walked in I nearly ran right into a man standing right in the middle of the ladies room!
“I double checked the door, embarrassed that I may have walked into the wrong room, but no, he was the one who was wrong. He immediately realized what had happened and looked at me sheepishly.
“‘Am I in the wrong bathroom?’ His shy smile was gorgeous. I could see his muscles under his tight shirt and the bulge in his pants.
“‘That’s okay,’ I said with a giggle. ‘Mistakes happen.’
“As he started walking out, he accidentally brushed against me with his hot, hard arms. I don’t know what happened, but it was like a spark shot between us, and before I could react I realized we were kissing each other and hard.
“He was shy at first, just rubbing his big hands all over me, but I couldn’t help myself, I immediately reached down, unzipped his pants and grabbed his enormous c*ck. He gasped with delight, and quicker than I was expecting, he reached up my tight dress, into my panties and put two fingers in my p*ssy.
“‘It’s so wet,’ he said as he started rubbing my cl*t with his thumb.
“‘Take me into the stall,’ I whispered in his ear, I was close to c*ming. He picked me up and gently, but quickly, put his throbbing c*ck inside me and carried me into the stall.
“No sooner had he closed the stall door than I started to c*m. I could feel my hot c*nt grabbing onto that pulsating d*ck. I nearly passed out. Just then I heard the bathroom door open and the unmistakable sound of my roommate Heather’s voice asking where I was.
“‘I’m being a dirty girl,’ I said as this stud f*cked me hard.
“Heather opened the door and smiled her naughtiest smile.
“‘You are being a dirty girl,’ she said as she came in and closed the stall door.
“Heather was always a take charge sort of girl. She asked his name.
“‘Tommy,’ he said, gasping.
“‘Tommy,’ Heather said with a smile, ‘I want to s*ck your c*ck until you f*cking c*m.’
“Before I knew it, Tommy’s enormous tool was out of me and deep into Heather’s hungry mouth. Tommy lifted my up with those bulging arms, put me on the toilet and began tongue f*cking my hot, wet c*nt.
“Just then…

“Enough Bryan!” Frank yelled.

29...

2005-09-08T17:08:00.000-07:00

“Obviously. I can read on the cover here that it’s a copy of Wank. What are you doing with it? I didn’t think you were into porn.”
Bryan began thumbing through the issue. Lipsticked and half naked cover girls did a spastic dance as he shook the paper, laughing.
“Oh no, I’m heavy into porn,” Frank replied with a smile. “I was just bemoaning the fact last night that that isn’t dirty enough for me.”
“All the bad words are starred out!” Bryan was laughing to the point of tears.
“I know!” Frank was nodding emphatically and laughing. “What kind of porn censors the words even?”
“The kind of porn you get out of vending machines on the sidewalk I guess.”
Bryan’s eyes were wide as he peered through the paper. It couldn’t have been the barely mildly titillating pictures that were keeping him interested.
“Ha,” Bryan uttered, but he didn’t sound that amused.
Frank looked around his desk for a moment. He saw the card that the Wank guy had handed him and picked it up. The card was remarkably plain; just white with only the name Tad Winslow and a phone number underneath that. There wasn’t even the mention of Wank. Did delivery guy Tad Winslow make up his own cards? Frank was suddenly very intrigued by the guy. He remembered the vaguely creepy feeling that the guy had given him the previous night. He felt something snag inside his brain, this invisible little hook that would not let go. Frank also grabbed his wallet from the desk and slowly placed Tad’s card inside it.
“Hey, listen to this! This is an actual quote/unquote story in here,” Bryan was loving this. By the tone of his voice he was also a little ashamed that he was loving it. “’I’m a bad girl. I used to peek through their door and watch Mommy ride Daddy just like I always wanted to ride a horse.’ Are you fucking kidding me?”
Frank sat back and got comfortable; it was fun to see Bryan get so excited about something.
“It goes on to tell about her encounter with a painter who uses his quote/unquote brush in a naughty way. She ends up with the handle of a roller brush in her p-star-s-s-y. Man, oh man. I can’t believe how cheesy this is.”
“Bryan, weren’t you a featured player in a little video movie called Randy Ranch Hands, where you used your cock to bitch slap a midget in a Little Bo Peep costume?”
“Yeah,” he said, looking at Frank for a moment above the paper. “It paid a thousand bucks.”
Bryan went back eagerly to the Wank issue and Frank shook his head.
“Oh!” Bryan exclaimed with glee. “Check this out…”

28...

2005-09-01T11:14:00.000-07:00

Frank dropped the telephone receiver back onto the phone with cold frustration. He stared at the machine intently, cocking his head slightly to the left, and then with a violent rush pushed the whole thing off the desk and onto the floor. He smiled slightly at the loud clang it produced. Lighting a cigarette and leaning back in his chair, Frank stared at the ceiling while Bryan came around the other side of the desk and picked the phone up off the ground. Frank knew somehow that he was going to do that.
“What’s going on?” Bryan asked with a barely perceptible smile at the corners that he just couldn’t bring himself to hide. To Bryan, this would probably beat the hell out of any soap opera out there.
“The guy sounded like a god damn speed freak!” Frank muttered, spitting smoke at the sky. “He sounded like Jeffery did in the end.”
“What’d he say?” Bryan was leaning on the desk, leaning in closer.
“He said that some guy showed up in his apartment one day looking for Alexis, and that this guy said that Alexis had killed someone.”
“But you don’t think it’s true? You think it’s just tweaker ramble?”
“Sure, it’s probably true. Why not?” Frank began to smile as he took another drag. “I wouldn’t put it past her.”
“Then why are you smiling?”
“Because if you knew this guy, if you new Lou…” Frank leaned forward and looked into Bryan’s eyes with a fiery, red intensity. “This guy was Joe Fucking America, the perfect guy, right? He was good looking, nice body, athletic, smart enough, really nice… I mean really nice, you just wanted to slap him around a little bit he was so nice. Essentially, you just wanted to find a weakness in this guy, you know? Find that one thing that would bring him down closer to your level. I wanted to find out the guy was a drunk driver, or hit like a girl or ate puppies; anything. But he was just a nice guy.”
“That’s hateful.”
“Bullshit, that’s human.”
“And so hooray, you finally found his weakness.”
“I finally found his weakness,” Frank repeated in a monotone.
“He’s a speed freak,” Bryan was quickly losing interest and was glancing around the artifact site that was Frank’s desk.
“No!” Frank practically gleefully shouted. “Alexis is his weakness. His involvement with that vixen left the man broken. Me, still kicking and looking for more.”
Bryan looked quickly back up towards Frank with a look of theatrical disbelief and feigned annoyance before setting his fingers to randomly rummage through a stack of papers on the floor.
“I’m stronger than Lou Deeds.” Frank said proudly as he stamped out his cigarette.
“Hey Superman,” Bryan asked with a smile painting his voice a bright blue. “What is this?”
He held up a rumpled mass of newsprint triumphantly. With a matter-of-fact voice that showed no hint of the embarrassment Bryan was hoping for, Frank replied:
“That, my dear Bryan, is a copy of Wank.”

27...

2005-08-23T16:58:00.000-07:00

“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...

2005-08-17T17:34:00.000-07:00

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...

2005-08-13T23:30:00.000-07:00

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...

2005-08-09T16:44:00.000-07:00

“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...

2005-08-04T17:33:00.000-07:00

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...

2005-08-02T17:09:00.000-07:00

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.

21...

2005-07-21T17:54:00.000-07:00

Frank stumbled to the couch and sat hard. He lightly rubbed one eye and watched the blue sparks tumble into black. Bryan stood with the refrigerator door open, feeling the coolness click to his clammy skin.
“What else has been weird this morning?” He grabbed a beer and sat next to Frank.
“You smell, man.” Frank said with a yawn.
“Yeah, I just ran seven miles.” Bryan took a swig of the beer and handed it off to Frank.
The bottle tilted back and beer began to disappear in giant gulps. Frank closed his eyes and felt that cold goodness fall on down. He smiled with a simple contentment that was near angelic.
“What else has been weird this morning?” Bryan pressed a little harder.
“The phone kept ringing…”
“Oooh, creepy.”
Bryan stood and walked through his own sarcasm. He put his hands on his hips and began stretching from side to side.
“No, I mean it kept ringing until I finally picked it up. And when I picked it up it was someone laughing. Laughing or crying, I’m not positive.”
Frank stared ahead carefully, focusing on nothing and lost in something that felt like a bruise somehow. He took a slow and full inhale of breath, looked down at the beer bottle in his hand and finished it off. He tried to look Bryan in the face, but Bryan was currently bent over at the waist and touching his feet.
“I think it was Alexis. On the phone.”
Bryan stopped the small bouncing motion he had been involved in and began to slowly stand up straight. A sly smile bloomed on his smooth, tan face.
“You’re little chippy called?”
“She’s not my little chippy!” Frank snapped, tossing the beer bottle at Bryan.
Bryan caught the bottle like a zen master, minor league right fielder; all young show and power with absolute grace and focus. He put it on the table without the slightest attention.
“Didn’t she blow you while her boyfriend was passed out two feet away?
“Yeah, but…” Frank stammered.
“Did the two of you not fuck while you were wearing rollerblades?”
“We did, but…”
“While both of you were wearing rollerblades?”
Frank couldn’t help a prideful little smile at that particular memory. The smile faltered and broke almost as soon as it surfaced.
“I don’t know man, I don’t… Something doesn’t feel right.”
“What do you mean?” Bryan asked.
“I think there’s trouble with her. That she’s in trouble.”
“How can you even know that? I mean how long have you known her?”
Frank turned his eyes away from Bryan and thought about it for a moment.
“A few years I guess.”
“How’d you even meet her?”
Frank’s fragile smile began to reform itself.
“Well…”

20...

2005-07-08T11:12:00.000-07:00

A hand, nice and comforting at first, rubbed lightly on his shoulder. That hand then became a little more excitable and shook his whole body. Frank continued to ignore it, attempting to turn distraction to dream. A slightly nasal voice calling his name was more than his sleepy brain could handle.
Frank opened his eyes to see a worried looking Bryan at an odd angle. Frank felt the coolness of the floor on his face, and wishing to revel in it a moment more, closed his eyes again.
“Dude, c’mon, get up. What the hell is going on?”
Frank once again opened his sleepy eyes and smiled sweetly.
“What’s up Bry?”
“What’s up? You’re passed out, naked, on our floor!”
Frank sat up groggily. He looked down at himself and then slowly around the living room/kitchen.
“Some guy came in, some crazy guy.”
Bryan stood up with his hand extended to help Frank get to his feet.
“Are you alright?” Bryan asked with an edge of panic in his voice. “Did he hit you or something?”
Frank grabbed on to Bryan’s hand and stood. He rubbed his hands through his hair and looked around again as if waking from a heavy sleep.
“No, he didn’t hit me.”
Frank walked into his bedroom and called out over his shoulder.
“Some freaking homeless guy just walked in here. He started going into some kind of convulsion and, and, and saying this crazy shit. Then he just walked out.”
“What kind of crazy shit?”
Frank came back into the room in striped boxers and a Sonic Youth t-shirt. He looked deeply into Bryan’s eyes as if trying to pull a question from within them.
“I don’t remember exactly, I was pretty freaked out. I just remember he said ‘purple lotus’ a couple of times.”
“Purple lotus?”
“Yeah.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know Bryan.” Frank sat down heavily on the couch. “In case you didn’t hear before, freaking homeless guy.”
Frank covered his face with his hands and breathed deeply.
“Are you okay?” Bryan asked, legitimately worried.
“It’s already been a weird and tough morning. I’m a little worried about what the rest of the day holds.”

19...

2005-06-29T21:43:00.000-07:00

“No I don’t know you!”
“Are you sure?” The guy looked like central casting sent down a homeless guy, too perfectly grotesque. He began shaking just slightly as Frank stared at him.
“Yes, I’m sure. Get out of here before I brain you with this ashtray!”
The man began to shake harder. His head snapped and his eyes appeared to be rolled back into his head. His right hand flew to his face and looked as if it were attempting to send a message via morse code through his cheek.
“Dude?” Frank lowered the ashtray just a little bit. He gripped it just a little tighter though, not sure if this was some sort of psychotic trick.
The man’s head began to roll from side to side and spittle flew from his mouth in wholesale chunks. A low, stuttering grunt began to issue from his throat.
“I do not want to fucking deal with this!” Frank practically whined. What do I do? Shove a wallet in his mouth or something right? Frank lowered the ashtray completely and looked fervently around the room for something he could use to keep this freak from biting off his own tongue.
“Mairn...” Frank heard the man moan. He winced as if seeing somebody break a bone. “Honey post orange!”
The man’s head was no longer lolling about, but he was still shaking fiercely.
“Surprised eye tree and falling gone eternity!”
Frank felt like crying. He was stuck in a mire of frustration, confusion and fear.
“Saving you. Purple lotus board are five... Rounded... Bare light...”
The man opened his mouth in a great, silent chasm.
“Purple lotus...”
His shaking quickly slowed to a nervous shuffle, his eyes opened and focused on Frank. Frank stared with gaping mouthed amazement, slowly moving his head back and forth as if timing the movements of a cobra.
The man took a deep breath and let loose an ugly, choking laugh that hurt; a long and wicked laugh.
Frank hurled the ashtray at the man and missed by a good foot and a half.
“Get the fuck out of here!”
The man stopped laughing abruptly and nodded his head.
“I’ll go.”
And as if it were all a put on, the man in the ragged and reeking clothes, the man who smelled of piss and rancid sweat opened up Frank’s front door and walked out.
Frank fell to his knees without ceremony and laid his head on the floor.

18...

2005-06-23T16:25:00.000-07:00

The man was dirty. And I mean not your standard out rolling around on the ground dirty, not even your typical homeless guy dirty, this guy was his own freaking element.
“Hey man! Nice place,” he said with a voice that sounded like it came through cracking gravel. “Yeah, yeah, niiiice place.”
He smiled with gums that were brown and cracking. The lines of his skin were caked in grime like some experimental art project. Hair that resembled the pelt of a long dead animal stuck up in mangy forts of resistance against gravity. His clothes were almost comically dirty if it wasn’t so sad; so oiled and stained that it was impossible to tell the original color without the aid of machines.
Frank watched with wild, disbelieving eyes as this man stood in the doorway and examined the walls of the living room. He pointed at a framed picture of Bryan and his sister with a fingernail that was a color not usually seen in daylight, and tittered.
“What the fuck are you doing in my house?” Frank bellowed.
The man turned to look at him as if noticing him for the first time.
“Don’t play games with me, man.”
“Seriously!” Frank yelled, hoping to attract a little attention from elsewhere in the building. “Get the fuck out of here!”
The man moved a little closer with a shambling, sliding step. Frank was physically hit by the smell coming off of the guy; an acrid reek of urine and human musk left to bake in sweat and alcohol. He gagged and slapped a hand over his nose and mouth, a dull pain exploded from his lip.
“Are you scared?” the man asked.
Frank quickly searched the kitchen table for some sort of weapon to grab onto. He frantically wrapped his fingers around a glass ashtray that Bryan had stolen from a Hotel 12 during one of his film shoots.
“You’re scared, huh? Your little balls done crawled up into your body and your prick is almost hard.” The man said with a seriousness that seemed to have some sort of physicality.
Frank looked down at himself in bewilderment. The white flash shock of realizing he was naked was overtaken by the understanding that he was almost half mast, adrenaline playing havoc with his cock. He lifted high the ashtray in one hand and covered his protruding package with the other.
“I’m not gonna tell you again pig fucker! Get out of my house!”
“Don’t you know me?” the man asked with a smile.
Frank looked deeply and purposefully into this wreck’s eyes and saw nothing but a dancing and mirthful danger.

17...

2005-06-14T22:03:00.000-07:00

Frank hung up the phone quickly and with an unmistakable sense of relief. His hand hung limply over the dead contraption for a moment before going to his forehead. He stood quietly for a minute or two with his eyes closed, slowly rubbing his forehead.
“What the fuck?”
He looked up at the bedroom door as if he expected someone to enter; someone with an answer for him. He imagined some sort of falling apart clown with clumped and cracking make up, fourth hand clothes barely holding together and a comically high voice warbling, ‘wrong number, that’s all’.
“Seriously dude, what the fuck?”
Frank sat back on his bed with a hard luck thump. His heart was beating way too fast for him to go back to sleep right now. A deep and rattling cough struck him and shook him. He half-stood, leaning over to grab the smokes out of his desk drawer and light one. He let out another cough; short, sharp and dry.
Brushing ash off of his thigh, Frank gave a perfunctory exam of his naked body. Not bad, he thought, I could do with some exercise. His unit looked a little ridiculous, as it always did, just sitting there. And, as if his mouth ran via a different brain:
“Seriously! Are you going to do anything about that phone call?”
He looked at the door once again. Did he really want to deal with this? Where did he even start?
“Why is this my fucking issue?”
He stood with a rapid fury and stamped out the cigarette on the empty coke can on the way to the telephone. He yanked up the receiver and began to automatically dial. As if performing a comic routine only he could see, his left hand reached over and pushed the right one down, receiver and all.
“If I call Mary, I’ll never get back to bed.”
He once again picked up the telephone and began dialing. There were a series of hollow clicks that seemed to get a little further away with each...
“City and state?” A horrendously, nasal voice bleated.
“Davis, California.” Frank could hear is voice as if it were coming from somewhere else.
“Listing?”
“Lou Deeds,” he said with a certain finality.
“Here’s that number.”
Frank wrote the number down and hung up the phone. He was about to dial when he heard the front door to the apartment open. He suddenly felt sure that he wanted Bryan’s take on this action.
“Hey Bry?” Frank was asking as he charged out of the bedroom, but his voice suddenly all but dried up.
The shambles of a man standing at the front door of the apartment was certainly not Bryan

16...

2005-06-01T21:16:00.000-07:00

“Hello?” Frank’s voice creaked and dropped out. He cleared his throat, painfully.
"Hello?” He tried again.
That low laughter continued like a transmission from some other time, so seemingly incongruous with everything else in Frank’s world that it was difficult to accept as real. The sound was held below waves of static, ghosts of other voices and conversations floated across like flashes of light on water.
Frank listened to that distant laughter and felt his balls crawl up inside his body. It made him feel rubbery. Something was not right. He was reminded of his Uncle Hutchence and the forced visits to the county asylum; the smell of industrial cleansers and piss, the hollow sound of dripping water.
An involuntary shudder passed through Frank.
“Who is this?” he managed to get out. He felt like he was going to vomit.
The static on the line took on the sounds of conspiratorial whispers. Frank could not hang up some reason, compelled despite his irrational fear. At any moment there would be the voice behind that grating laughter that would let out some gem of wisdom that would turn Frank’s life around.
Something suddenly snapped slightly in his mind and he sat frozen in concentration. He could no longer tell if it was laughter he was hearing, or crying.
And then just as suddenly he knew it was the sound of tears.
“Alexis?” he asked carefully.
The line clicked dead.

15...

2005-05-24T20:02:00.000-07:00

“What,” Frank mumbled.
The bell continued to ring despite Frank’s questioning. The fourth ring died off in the middle somewhere. The machinery inside the phone, shocked into inactivity, couldn’t help a little jittery sound. Frank listened to the room settle back into relative silence.
Voicemail. He wasn’t sure if he actually said that out loud, and frankly didn’t care. Somewhere, he was blessing the invention of voicemail as he tumbled back into the dark.
With the ringing of the bell, his eyes snapped open completely this time.
“Are you kidding me?” His tongue was still thick from sleep, he sounded a little drunk.
The phone again ignored all questioning and kept ringing out to the room. Frank could almost see it shaking like a cartoon with each brittle ring. Again, somewhere amid the fourth ring, the monster was snuffed out. God in voicemail yanking the call out of this life.
The imaginary voices he thought of speaking into the voicemail void became thicker and somewhat bluish, they whispered soothingly down a lengthening pass. They suddenly shifted to screams with the ringing of the phone.
“NO!”
Frank, for nobody’s benefit in particular, dramatically threw a pillow over his head in a halfhearted attempt to block out the sound. And yeah, the ringing now sounded like asylum laughter.
“Leave a voicemail!”
Again after the fourth ring, it stopped. Frank didn’t even bother to close his eyes this time. He held his breath and stared, listening to his heart beat, waiting. He could feel that dull anger throbbing in his head, and he was ready to pounce.
Silence, broken by the occasional sound of motorcycles on the street outside, held sway. Frank could feel sleep coming at him again, but he wasn’t quite ready to quit his watch on the phone. Three times, the magic number, the number of times the devil is asked before he enters. Of course, somebody tried three times and when they couldn’t reach somebody, they gave up.
“Quitters,” he mumbled as he slowly closed his eyes.
The telephone jumped to life again. Frank threw back the covers and ran his naked form to the telephone.
“Who the fuck is it?” he screamed into the receiver.
He heard nothing and we would swear on it that he could feel his eyes about to pop.
Then there was a low laughter that shut everything down.

14...

2005-05-11T20:54:00.000-07:00

Bryan considered waking up Frank when he left for his run; it was going on eleven, and Frank got all out of sorts if he slept too late. But there was that test of facing a freshly waken Frank, he was liable to punch you in the balls before you even realized what was happening. Being he hadn’t seen him in almost two days, it was probably a good thing to go ahead and let him sleep it off.
He could hear the deep bass buzzing of Frank’s snoring as he walked past the bedroom and towards the back door. Opening the back door, Bryan took a deep breath of the morning city air. It was cooled from the fog the night before and the smell of damp grass came across from the park. The sky was one of those amazing blues that you had better take advantage of while it was still there. Bryan grabbed his left foot and held it back, stretching his leg.
“Shit yeah, what a beautiful morning.”
The cool breeze blowing in seemed to push him with a purpose towards the front door. He grabbed his walkman off of the kitchen table. As he opened the front door he thought once again of waking Frank.
“Fuck it,” was the piece of wisdom he left for the ages as he dramatically jogged out the front door.
For a moment you could hear a fuzzy Halo Benders song coming all tinny and small from Bryan’s walkman. Then you could hear the front door of the Victorian open and close. Then you could hear the near silent sounds of the house settling around itself.
Frank was in the void, somewhere else all together, and he probably would have remained there for a few more hours if the phone hadn’t suddenly begun ringing. It’s shrill tone forged cracks in the air, pushed onto Frank’s ear.
The void was broken, and Frank’s head swept slowly off the pillow, trailing a fragile bridge of drool.

13...

2005-05-03T21:00:00.000-07:00

A thick shroud of fog poured in over the city from the ocean, carrying with it the faint smell of ghosts. When the sky hung that low, it threw back the city’s sodium arc lamps and bathed the streets in an orange glow like sickness, like bad memories.
Uncle Eddie charged the streets of the Mission without fear, the clicking of his low-healed boots a steady staccato as they bounced off the dirty walls. The few people wandering the sidewalks gave him room and forgot him as soon as they passed.
At the corner of 18th Street he stopped dead still. He stood there for a full minute and a half before removing his hat and holding it to his chest. He turned his face towards the cold mass that floated above and it would almost appear that he were trying to divine what this fog was made of if you didn’t notice that his pale eyes were closed. He stretched his neck out towards the hill and sniffed the air; quick, almost delicate pulls at first, then long intakes that made his body shake.
He dropped his head and smiled. His mouth seemed to hold far too many teeth.
As he turned away from Mission Street, walking his assured steps right up the filthy sidewalks of 18th, a cab driver roving the narrow streets of North Beach suddenly jerked the wheel to the right. His old time metal bumper made a quick mess of a Jetta’s rear panel and he nearly gave himself a neck injury quickly looking around for witnesses before squealing away.
Frank twitched in his twin bed, biting his lip with such sudden ferocity that he awoke with a cry. The lack of sleep caught up with him soon enough though and he was asleep again before noticing the blood running down his chin.
Somewhere near the corner of Turk and Van Ness, a mess of woman sat in the mess of her car and held herself, shaking. She glared out the caked windshield, focusing on nothing, her eyes suddenly narrowing. She punched the steering wheel. She punched it again with a banshee’s wail. She punched it again, chipping off a piece of decorative plastic and breaking her hand in four places.
And in a car speeding away from a mess and into the brilliant haze of the unknown, a girl sometimes known as Alexis suddenly burst into tears.

12...

2005-04-27T21:17:00.000-07:00

The buzzing sound that emanates from Frank’s sleeping head vibrates the air and sets up waves forcing life where we cannot see it. The sound is absorbed by more brazen sounds of traffic and shouting and sirens, and yet it lives just beneath them and floats on. That buzzing is swallowed by the walls, and yet like a virus takes hold within and barely turns those walls to it’s simple vibration.
The sound breezes through the living room and just past Bryan, practically asleep himself. As Bryan expels heavy and dank smoke pulled from a pipe through the barely open window, the buzz makes a break to mix and mingle with the noises outside.
High above the Victorian house in the Upper Haight, the sound of Frank’s head, now thin and practically expended, floats. About to give up the ghost, that ephemeral buzz picks up on another, deeper more insectile buzz. This sound rides currents not seen nor heard, sometimes only felt. This noise frightens a sleeping dog into a bout of barking and then immediately shuts him up.
This sound has ridden hidden waves through the city, past dark houses where sleepers moan, past narrow streets where the awake shiver suddenly. This sound began it’s searching, probing life from somewhere in the downtown bus terminal where it shuffled past the seemingly unflappable denizens and left them unknowingly shaking for lack of humanity.
If Frank could see the person strolling out from the heart of the bus station, he wouldn’t understand. If he were told who this person was, he wouldn’t believe it. You see, as far as Frank knows at this point, this person was somebody that he and Alexis had made up as a bit, as a joke.
It should be impossible for Uncle Eddie to be walking the streets of the city.

11...

2005-04-25T19:13:00.000-07:00

Girls! Girls! Girls! For all of that seemingly hot, pink flesh, for those well manicured nails that lingered seductively over the G-string, for all of that super glossy pink lipstick on wet and parted lips, Wank was kind of a bust. After turning that first cover page and feeling unreasonably embarrassed at that pulp paper rattle, Frank saw lots of little black squares covering all the good parts. And it wasn’t the first time he had felt that they were the bane of his existence, little black squares covering all the good parts...
Frank needed his pornography a little dirty, a little raunchy. Just plain naked women wasn’t enough even without black squares, he needed insertion. Frank might feel weird about this if he spent a lot of time in adult bookstores and maxing out what was left of his credit limit on spank books. Frank didn’t look at a lot of pornography. Even though the movies definitely gave him wood, he spent way too much time judging the ridiculous dialogue and awful acting.
He flipped through a few more pages, glancing at ads for Spanish Fly and Anal Lube. There were actual newspaper type articles going on here, and they even starred out “bad” words, even ass. When they pointed out that the fake v*gina slipped right on over your p*nis, Frank nearly laughed out loud. These were the proper names of parts of our anatomy for fuck’s sake.
About three pages in, the rest of the magazine was taken up by ads... Good time girls and hot Asian sluts, big t*ts and tight p*ssy, and almost all of them in Southern California area codes. He wondered what was up with that. Before he could come up with a scenario, he was remembering sex in the back seat of a Honda Prelude in Orange County. Those memories melted into those of a beach party where he later got busted by his mother for drinking wine coolers. Frank was beginning to realize that he was falling asleep and he let it roll. The Wank issue drifted to the floor, and as Frank was falling his last wakeful thought was a glimmer of recognition.

10...

2005-04-18T14:32:00.000-07:00

He was beat. Frank had been up for at least thirty-six hours and was starting to feel overheated, starting to feel like his wiring was sparking. There was this odd sort of whine in his ears and he really couldn’t remember what he had been doing up for so long.
“Jesus Christ,” he said to himself. “Go to sleep then!”
He needed sleep but the problem was he knew that he wouldn’t get to sleep for some time, he was too wound up.
He began emptying his pockets, slamming the items down on the bedroom desk, as if it were his wallet’s fault that he wouldn’t drop off to sleep without a little work, as if his keys had kept him up for a day and a half. He brushed the breast pocket of his shirt not expecting to find anything. He felt resistance and suddenly remembering, gingerly withdrew the business card of the Wank guy with two fingers. As he tossed it onto the desk he saw the name Tad Winslow flutter through the air.
Frank undressed quickly and threw himself onto his bed. As always when he knew he couldn’t sleep, his old roommate Rafael came to mind. Rafael had left him with advice that he had never forgotten.
“Whenever you cannot sleep,” Rafael had said with a slightly theatrical Latin accent. “You need to rub one out. And then, this is the important part, if you don’t fall asleep immediately, rub one out a couple minutes later. You’ll pass right out.”
How can you argue with the wisdom of Rafael?
Frank began to run through the back catalogue of masturbation fantasies he had in his head. Each one of them was so detailed with a back story that he had to go through the reasons why he was where he was, and how he was going to run into the people there. Frank needed immediate help.
He suddenly smiled a slightly mischievous smile.
“Ah yes,” he said. “The Wank issue.”

9...

2005-04-14T19:38:00.000-07:00

Sitting quietly in his room, phone on his lap, head in his history, Frank realized that thinking about Alexis was giving him a bit of a chub. This was a girl who was not afraid to bring leather into the bedroom, a girl who had taught Frank not to be afraid of leather in a bedroom. He could remember with a twinge in his stomach how she had managed to remove any kind of fear from sex and had infused an absolute abandon into him, making him a daredevil gymnast who gladly fell off the edge, mangling his memories into flickering super 8 snippets and bleary photographs so that he was forced to ask himself if he had really done those things. She managed to make sex feel like the beginnings of a bad habit; dashing, dangerous and feeling so fucking good, something that you knew full well may just end up tearing you apart. Sometimes the barely remembered moments of incredible sexual liberty was enough to make you change your life.
Frank lit another cigarette and watched the clouds float towards the cracked ceiling. He thought about going out and telling Bryan about Alexis disappearing. He hadn’t known her, but had heard lascivious stories about her. Plus he was a sucker for what could be a mystery. Frank listened for signs that Bryan was still up. He could hear a Tones On Tail album seeping in from the other bedroom, a little dark and narcotic.
He realized that he wanted a little time to himself, a little time to sit in hazy memory. Something lurched in his head, a malignant thought that detached itself from the history flow and attempted to surface. Frank shivered in spite of himself and catching the reflection of his pale face in the bedroom window closed his eyes.

8...

2005-04-12T18:20:00.000-07:00

“And how’s Mike?” She asked with a tone that betrayed her disdain.
“He’s fine,” Frank said with a sigh and a cloud of smoke. “What did you need Mary?”
“Nothing really. I ran into Lou Deeds the other day. Remember he was that really nice guy with the Dalmatian puppy who lived downstairs from me?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And remember his girlfriend Alexis?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Lou said she just up and left one day. Got in her car and never came back.”
Frank closed his eyes and tilted forward a little bit. He was dizzy with what felt like new fluid coursing through channels in his head. He was left grasping for whatever emotion would come floating by first, and wouldn’t you know it, here comes that typical feeling of annoyance.
“What does that have to do with me?” Frank asked with what felt like calm.
“Nothing. Isn’t it weird though?”
“Yeah, it’s fucking freaky.” He said with staged emotion.
Mary went silent and Frank took a surreptitious hit off of his cigarette. He remembered a time that he had walked into Mary’s room and found her standing in the center, staring at nothing and crying as Automatic For The People by R.E.M. played in her CD player. He felt bad for losing his cool.
“Alexis never really seemed too stable to me. Is Lou doing okay?”
“Yeah,” Mary sort of mumbled. “I guess it happened about five months ago, so he’s all right.”
She seemed mollified enough, and continued talking for about another forty-five minutes. Stories of shopping for clothes and what her old sorority sisters are up to issued out of the telephone receiver and Frank threw in a “yup” or a “you betcha’” when it seemed like it was needed. He went through four cigarettes and pantomimed an entire conversation with his roommate Bryan. Frank finally told her that he had to get up early tomorrow and that he needed some sleep, and after promising that he would call soon he hung up the phone.
He did sort of wonder about Alexis. She was, as he had said, not necessarily stable, but he hoped that she was at least doing okay. Frank had tried to listen to signs in Mary’s voice to see if she might know something, but he didn’t think she knew even now that about a year and a half ago Frank and Alexis had had a sordid little affair.

7...

2005-04-05T20:03:00.000-07:00

He could hear the phone ringing on the other end and his heart was beating faster than it should be. He looked around to make sure his cigarettes were nearby and almost panicked when he didn’t see them at first in the desk drawer.
“Hello?”
Frank was busy lighting his smoke and missed the window of opportunity in answering quick enough.
“Yo, hello? Is anybody fucking there?”
“Hey Teresa, is Mary there?”
He could hear the phone drop to the table on the other end. Teresa couldn’t stand Frank, which was fine with him actually. When Frank used to stay over, Teresa would play a Heart’s greatest hits CD very loudly while he and Mary were having sex. She also had a habit of not cleaning up the crap that her pet ferret left all over the apartment.
“Hello?”
Mary acted like she didn’t know who was on the phone even though she did. He couldn’t explain why, but this drove Frank crazy.
“Hey Mary, Bryan said you called.”
“I’m beginning to think you’re ignoring me,” she said with that fucking baby voice. “It’s been like two weeks since I’ve heard from you.”
“Sorry, I’ve been running around like crazy lately.”
“Where were you at when I called earlier?”
It’s none of your business, we’re not together anymore; doing everything that drives you crazy; smoking, drinking and touching loose women in inappropriate places. Any of these answers would have been great, but...
“I went to see a movie with Mike.”
“Oh,” she said like she’d just touched something thick and sticky. She hated Mike and it made her crazy that Frank didn’t hate him too.
He smiled as he tapped ash into an empty Coke can.

6...

2005-03-31T20:51:00.000-08:00

Mary was Frank’s ex-girlfriend, but he didn’t think that she was quite getting the “ex” part of it. Granted, the breakup was still pretty recent, but Mary insisted on calling almost every day. She babbled on and on about her daily business, which was mostly mind-numbing sorority business, and didn’t seem to notice when he almost never spoke. It was Frank’s job to throw in a “uh-huh” at random intervals and to hide the sound of his smoking, a habit which Mary chose not to know that he had.
The breakup had been all right, not too messy. Frank had driven all the way out to Davis to see her personally, he thought it was the ultimate asshole maneuver to breakup with somebody on the phone and he still wanted to be thought of as a nice guy. He told her that they were bad for each other, that they wanted completely different things out of life, that there was no longer love between them but habit and that was just slow death. He told her that this breakup had been a long time coming and she must see that. She had apparently not seen it and had cried for hours, literally hours. He had stayed the night trying to be a comfort, but ultimately would rather have chewed his own foot off. He remembered they had played Monopoly at one point.
He picked up the phone and began slowly pushing buttons. He felt that most dread in his life came just after dialing the 916 area code.

5...

2005-03-26T10:18:00.000-08:00

Home was an old victorian, slowly rotting itself into the ground. Frank walked up to the small apartment on the second floor and through the dingy used-to-be-white door. His roommate, Bryan, was standing in the kitchen/living room eating vegetables straight out of a can.
“Didya even heat that shit up?” Frank asked.
“Do I ever?”
Bryan worked at a coffee shop for steady income. The perks were that the apartment was always filled with decent coffee, half full cartons of milk and day old bagels and pastries. To earn extra money, Bryan occasionally did gay porno films. He wasn’t necessarily gay, but said that the shoots were cleaner, nicer and run better than their hetero counterparts.
Frank threw the copy of Wank down on the kitchen table and sifted through the layers of trash already there.
“Did I get any mail?” Frank asked.
“Nope,” Bryan replied around a mouthful of corn and lima beans.
Frank tossed his coat on the hand me down couch and started heading for his bedroom.
“Oh,” Bryan swallowed and cleared his throat. “Mary called.”
Franks shoulders sagged as he shuffled off to his bedroom

4...

2005-03-23T18:36:00.000-08:00

The cab made a quick left turn, the back tires skidding across asphalt and leaving black lines that smelled like death, brought the high note sound of broken glass to mind. Frank grabbed the handle above the door and slammed his other hand down on the copy of Wank that was sliding away. The bleached blonde on the cover looked up with a narcotic haze, lips painted all red and slick.
“You can stop here.”
The cab screeched to a halt five houses up the street from Frank’s place. Frank flew from the back seat hitting the front.
“Six thirty-five,” the driver said, momentarily turning the thumping music down.
Frank handed him a twenty and watched as the driver made change with nothing but ones. As the driver turned to give him the change, Frank could see some bit of black food hanging from his front tooth, his breath smelled like metal.
“Thanks,” Frank mumbled, handing the driver a couple of bucks.
He stepped out of the car and started closing the door when he realized that he’d left the Wank sitting on the back seat. He almost left it, he almost just closed the door and left it, but something made him reach back in and grab it.

3...

2005-03-21T18:53:00.001-08:00

The cab sped away from the curb with a squeal, the smell of burned break pads and scorched transmission lingering on the air. The driver turned his head to ask “where to” in a confusing accent.
“Upper Haight,” Frank said.
The cabby pulled the car over to the curb with such fierce speed that Frank was thrown against the door.
“Are you aware, smart guy, that I cannot make a left on Van Ness?”
Not really wanting to press the point that there were actually a number of places to turn left on Van Ness, Frank said, “Dude, then make a right, a right, and a right.”
Frank rubbed the elbow he had banged on the window crank dealy. The cabby mumbled something incoherently and began driving once again. He turned up his radio, which was playing some sort of rave party disco, very loudly. As he squealed around three right turns, the driver began to sing along with the music. Frank thought he might be singing about feeding cheese to a dog, and then there was something about licking feet.
Frank began to think that the driver was faking his accent. That disturbed him more than dog/cheese lyrics.

2...

2005-03-19T15:38:00.000-08:00

There was something about the smile on the Wank guys face, like he was sharing a conspiracy. Frank walked over to him.
“I didn’t know you could get a subscription to Wank.”
“Oh yeah! Great deal! Plus you get special Wank mailings.”
Words spoken like the truest, most positive affirmation uttered to that point in time.
“Yeah, well, I’ve never really actually seen an issue of Wank.”
The dispenser guy kept smiling in a way that was now feeling a little too close, a little too personal.
“Have one for free,” he said.
He handed over an issue, his hand lingering in thin air for a moment after Frank took the issue. He then reached into his breast pocket and handed Frank a card.
“In case you decide you want a subscription,” the guy said. “Or for anything else you might need.”
Frank, feeling suddenly shaky, quickly hailed a cab coming up the street. As he climbed into the back seat he could hear the Wank guy behind him:

“For anything...”

1...

2005-03-17T19:59:00.000-08:00

She looked all crack-whored up, and she wasn’t presenting it well. While Frank waited on the corner, looking up the street for a cab, she continued to pester him.
“You looking for a cab?”
“Yeah,” he finally said. “I’m looking for a cab.”
She shook a little bit when she talked, like something that crawled from the water, something close to death.
“Why don’t you come with me, I gotta drivers license, I can show you. I’ll drive you where you wanna go.”
He imagined himself slit up three ways from Sunday and left bleeding in the Tenderloin.
“No, that’s okay. I’ll just wait for a cab.”
She went on rambling about how safe a driver she was and how the car was clean. To avoid looking her in the face he peered over her shoulder. He could see the guy filling up the sidewalk dispenser for that seemingly really sleazy porno magazine. The cute, little, paperboy satchel ran a tad counter to the middle-aged guy with a beard shoving smut into a metal box that smelled strongly of urine. The guy must have noticed Frank’s glance because he looked him right in the eye. He grabbed a copy of Wank and held it up with a smile.
“You want a subscription?”