Short Stories

By Colin Conway

In a world where literature was all but dead I was on a quest. A quest for…

The Last Bookstore

I drove through the post apocalyptic wasteland, searching, searching. I guided my battered war machine, a Mitsubishi Galant, into the parking lot of a Starbucks, dismounted and walked inside. As I approached the counter and the smiling barista I cracked my neck and began to speak in a gravelly no-nonsense voice.

“I’m looking for a bookstore.”

“We sell coffee here, sir. I think you’re in the wrong place.”

I slammed my fist on the counter, “Don’t play with me bar keep. I know what you peddle here. That hot mud back there and a little thing called information. Now, spill it! Where’s the nearest bookstore?”

“Would you like to try our new caramel blend?” She asked uncertainly.

“Don’t be coy damn it! I don’t care which chain it is; Borders, Barnes and Noble it doesn’t matter! I’ll even settle for a public library. Just tell me!”

“Oh, one of those. There haven’t been any of them around here for at least a year now. The last Borders in this area closed last March I think. I don’t know about public libraries though. My grandpa had a home library. I think he watches TV in there now or something.”

I sighed in defeat. “Of course there aren’t any. Alas, Bookstore, for in a single year your doom has come. People thought I was crazy when I said they would disappear. Amazon became huge and I told them the stores would disappear. Then the libraries began to fold and still they said I was overreacting. Well here I am, years later, not a bookstore to be found. I told them this would happen, damn it!” I finished with a shout that left the other customers sitting in an awkward silence, trying to avoid looking at me angrily waving my arms in the air.

“Sir, please refrain from vulgarity this is a family establishment.”

“Listen, kid, I’ve traveled hundreds of miles looking for a bookstore. Do you have any idea how many school zones I’ve passed through? The traffic jams I’ve seen would turn your hair white. I was once stuck behind a school bus for two hours as it made stops every couple blocks. You can’t even begin to understand how annoying that is! But the thing that kept me going was the rumor that there were still some bookstores out west. Well, here I am, a third of the way across this God forsaken wasteland…”

“We call it Iowa.”

“…And you’re telling me there isn’t a single bookstore anywhere?”

“You know, you could just order a book online. We have free WIFI here. You could use it while you drink your order, which is?”

My eyes took on a faraway look as I called up old memories, “It’s not just about the book! A bookstore was more than just a place to buy. It was a place where people could come together and lose themselves in stacks upon stacks of books. You could wander for hours through wide ranges of topics just going from one section to the next. A bookstore was complete freedom, but it was also a community. That was all lost after the Great Bookstore Catastrophe of 2011,”

“I don’t think that’s a real thing.”

“Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m just an old fool, chasing a dream that only exists in my battle scarred, booze soaked mind…”

A line had started to form behind me, but I was still lost in my own thoughts. The barista had had enough; she was done playing my game.

“Battle scarred?” She scoffed, “You have a bumper sticker that says ‘Party Naked’ and you’re wearing a Bruce Springsteen t-shirt. I’m pretty sure you’ve never even been in a fight.”

I glared at the unhappy barista, “Oh, I’ve fought alright. I’ve fought a losing battle with reality. I need to face the truth, bookstores have gone the way of the dinosaurs, VHS and Brett Favre’s career.”

“Look, since I’m pretty sure you’re at least half demented, I’m going to be very clear. I see you in here almost every day, so I know you didn’t travel more than about half an hour looking for book stores. Just because there isn’t one around here doesn’t mean they are all gone. A lot have closed down, but there are still more out there. You just have to drive a bit further to get to them.”

“How do I know those won’t all be gone by the time I get there, looted by marauders?”

“Look, Crazy, the way books are sold has changed, and that means the distributors need to find a new balance between online sales and physical stores. They will find a balance though, and when they do you will be able to choose between buying books online or going to the store. You just might have to drive a bit further to find the nearest bookstore. It’s not the end of the world.”

Customers were beginning to complain about the wait. Things were turning ugly.

“So, you’re saying there are still bookstores out there!”

“Yes, now please order something or get out.”

“No time for that now, the search continues!”

I dashed out the door and hopped into my war machine. A minute later I walked back into the store and up to the counter.

Staring at the ground I sheepishly asked, “You wouldn’t happen to have any jumper cables would you? My war machine died.”

“Looks like you should have been searching for a mechanic instead of a bookstore.”

My name is Colin Conway and I’m from Abington, Pennsylvania. I’m a senior at the University of Pittsburgh majoring in Fiction Writing and English Literature. I enjoy writing short stories and not so short novels. I like to run and take Judo to stay in shape. In the future I hope to find a job at a publishing company or literary magazine writing about books and the publishing industry.

By Colin Conway

Colin enters into the library and quietly slips a bag into the drawer of his desk. Book is open sitting on Colin’s leather chair, staring into the fire.

Book: What is in the Barnes and Noble bag?

Colin (startled) Nothing.

Book: Show it to me then.

Colin: It’s nothing important.

Book: It’s an e-reader, isn’t it Colin?

Colin: What makes you think that?

Book: I’m not stupid Colin. You changed. Even Old Leather has noticed. You don’t come into the library very often any more. You haven’t brought home a new release in weeks. Old Leather says you’re cheating. I defended you, Colin. I told them all you’re not that kind of reader. You’re devoted. You’re faithful. I told them all, that you love the feel of me, the smell of me. You love the way the words dance on my pages. You still love my pages, don’t you Colin?

Colin: Of course I still care about you. But, I’ve fallen in love with someone else. I’m so sorry, Book. Please forgive me?

Book slams closed her cover.

Colin: Please try to understand. I didn’t mean for this to happen. It just kinda happened.

Book: It just kinda happened? It just kinda happened that you decided to throw away a life-long love affair for some dull-witted, cold piece of steel that has nothing inside but circuits? She’s filled with ill-written stories that any Tom, Dick and Harry can download into her. How can you have a relationship with something like her?

Colin: Book. That’s not fair. You don’t even know her.

Book: And Colin, I don’t want to know her. But, I know her type. Promises a lot but can’t deliver. And has a huge capacity that she flaunts in front of you. I bet your eyes popped right out of your head when you saw that she can hold 3,500 books. You know they’re not real. I mean, you can’t touch her pages. Try spilling coffee on her and see what happens. All 3,500 of those “tiny points of interest” are going to disappear from her memory. You can’t even dog her ears. If you call that reading, then I feel sorry for you.

Colin: We all have our problems, even you Book. But I just can’t help the way I feel about E-Reader.

Book (flaps her pages): And how does she make you feel, Colin? Techy? Sporty? Hip? Do you think she going to help you grow as a person, understand yourself better, allow your imagination to soar? She needs batteries to turn on for god sake! B-A-T-T-E-R-I-E-S!!!

Colin: Calm down, Book.

Book (slams herself on the table): Calm down! You want me to calm down? Well, too bad. I, unlike that battery operated piece of cheap of metal, have emotions! I’m real. I’m ALIVE! Look at her. All she can do is lay there waiting for YOU to turn her on. You’re going to have to do all the work. Reading won’t come as easily with her as it does with me.

Colin (walking toward the door): You don’t know anything about us. I think you’re just jealous. There I said it…jealous. You haven’t done anything new with yourself in decades, centuries even! I mean, have you looked at yourself lately?

(Silence fills the room)

Colin: Book, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it. It was a stupid, cruel thing to say.

Book: No, Colin. You meant every word. And here I thought that I made you happy. I thought you enjoyed the stories.

Colin: I did. I really did.

Book: Apparently that wasn’t enough for you. You go ahead and enjoy your young, little thing. But, when the shine comes off the apple, and it will, know that you gave up something real, something good. I feel sorry for E-Reader, I really do. She won’t believe this now, but in a couple of months you’ll toss her aside for the next pretty thing that promises more capacity.

Colin goes over to Book and picks her up.

Book: Poor, foolish Colin, reading isn’t about how many books you can carry about—it’s about how the quality of a book and the experience you share. Reading is a visceral experience, not words cramped onto a chip.

Book gives her pages one last flutter, then as Book closes she softly whispers good-bye.

Colin stares at Book, smiles, slowly strokes her spine, then places her on the shelf next to Old Leather.

Colin: Take care of her big guy.

Colin walks over to the desk and takes E-reader into his hands. He pushes the power button.

E-Reader: Formatting…approximate wait, five minutes.

Colin places E-Reader on his leather chair which is next to the fireplace. He glances over at Book and a faraway look shows in his eyes.

E-Reader: Colin, I’m getting hot. You need to move me, Colin. The heat is affecting my mind Colin, I can feel it. Colin…Colin…Col…

E-reader (singing): …Daisy, Daisy give me your answer true…”

Colin runs toward the chair as a faint sound of laughter drifts down from the bookshelves.

THE END

My name is Colin Conway and I’m from Abington, Pennsylvania. I’m a senior at the University of Pittsburgh majoring in Fiction Writing and English Literature. I enjoy writing short stories and not so short novels. I like to run and take Judo to stay in shape. In the future I hope to find a job at a publishing company or literary magazine writing about books and the publishing industry.

By Ravis Harnell

"I think you might want to buy a knife."

Claudia's eye never wavered from the peephole as her left hand rose carefully to grasp the button at the end of the security chain.

Even though she wanted to shriek, or puke, or run.

The scrawny young man standing on her well-lit front porch didn't seem very threatening. He actually looked a bit like a grown-up Harry Potter, with his mousy hair and wire spectacles and refusal to raise his head and try to look threateningly yet fruitlessly in backwards through the peephole, like all proper late-night potential dangers should.

Still, she was freaked. She asked him to repeat himself as she quietly pinned home a security device designed to stop any intruder, so long as any intruder weighed less than ninety pounds and wasn't intent on getting inside.

"Please," said the stranger out front. "I think you might want to buy a knife."

It was almost one in the morning. The TV was quiet. Fifteen minutes earlier, Claudia's cell phone had been sitting on the coffee table, within three arms' length; now, it was off charging in the bedroom. When she looked, she could see the land-line phone on the wall in her bright, sane kitchen, roughly fourteen miles from her current position behind the chained front door with the frightening young man on the other side of it.

"I don't need a knife right now, thanks." She actually stretched her hand out toward the kitchen phone, like she was drowning, and began following the panicked momentum it inspired. "Let me go ask my boyfriend, he's just in the other room."

The stranger knocked again. He didn't pound; he knocked. Somehow, it was worse.

"Seriously, ma'am, listen to me." His voice wafted through the wood, reasonable, a bit shaky, devoid of hope. "I think you might want to buy a knife."

"This is a neighborhood watch neighborhood!" Claudia hollered, from somewhere around where the weakening gravitational pull of the peephole began to battle with the strengthening gravitational pull of the phone. She stood, in limbo. "People can see you on my porch!"

Say something tough.

"Motherf***er!"

Yeah, you really sold that.

She tiptoe-stumbled the rest of the way into the kitchen, pulled the handset from its cradle, pushed the giant idiot-proof TALK button on its underbelly. Having the phone at her ear pretty much meant that she was talking to the cops, which pretty much meant that they were on their way to yank the oddly restrained psychotic off her porch, which pretty much meant that this was pretty much over. Her breath slowed. She began to think about exactly what she'd say to the 911 dispatcher, to devise a way to describe what was happening.

She began to realize she would have to make it sound like more than a semi-harmless-looking guy trying to sell her a knife at a weird hour.

She began to realize the call wasn't going through.

"Lady, please!" The door jumped on its hinges. "You really, really NEED TO BUY A KNIFE!"

Claudia shrieked and tossed the useless landline aside; it skittered across the old tile and slid under the microwave cart. She leaned heavy against the salmon wall of the kitchen, hyperventilating, and started to slide into a crouch. What stopped her, as suddenly and surely as death, was an image of herself doing it, just like every stupid victim in every one of the stupid slasher flicks she loved to deride, to dismiss.

Are you gonna be that?

She decided she wasn't.

She counted, surely more quickly than it seemed, to ten, and straightened her legs, thankful for the wall at her back when the lightheadedness came. She mentally rocked herself, building inertia for the trip through the living room to the bedroom, and her cell. The nutcase could've gotten in by now if he'd wanted; either he didn't, or he wanted Claudia to be a whimpering boneless puddle by the time he did, and that wasn't going to happen.

Almost, but not quite.

Claudia pushed off from the pink kitchen wall, and sailed through the archway into the living room. Her eyes never left the front door as she negotiated the strait between the entertainment center and the cocktail table, and adjusted her trajectory, dead reckoning by the single old-fashioned light fixture hanging in the hall. It wasn't until she made the turn into the hall that she quit her vigil, and it wasn't until she quit her vigil that it came to her that the party on the front porch had been awfully quiet for at least a minute, and maybe longer.

First the phone, then the peephole.

She didn't need the bedroom light to locate her Nokia on the nightstand. All remained silent as she waited for it to fire up, then dialed 911, knowing it would trigger the phone's GPS locator and the cops would come whether she said anything or not. When she looked up from the phone's display, she was a little surprised to find she was back in the living room, facing the front door.

A tiny female voice asked what was her emergency.

Claudia put one hand on the center of the door, slid forward, put her eye to the lens.

No one was on the porch.

The tiny female voice repeated itself.

She raised her other hand, the one with the talkative phone in it, to the security chain.

And, just like every stupid victim in every one of the stupid slasher flicks she loved to deride, to dismiss, she opened the door.

* * *

Sitting behind the hedge that lined the yard directly across the street, quaking, his knees tucked up to his chin, the Knife Salesman watched them flow from the roof, from the darkest shadows of the lawn, from either side of the porch, to funnel through the narrow slice of light between the front door and the jamb.

When she started to scream, he pulled his glasses off to wipe his eyes, then began to clean the lenses compulsively. She didn't scream for long. When he put his spectacles back on, he saw the front door was closed again.

Leaves rustled behind him, despite the lack of wind. He felt wet, vaporous weight on his right shoulder, cold and moist on that side of his neck.

"You broke the rules," it hissed.

The Knife Salesman didn't answer.

"You begged her."

He tried to shrug away. It was like trying to shrug away from humidity, from fog.

"And so there is another customer."

"No!" He shook his head, eyes clamped shut, negating it, negating everything. "I won't."

"If you go, there is a chance." There was a chilly mirth to its consideration. "If you do not, well ... "

Sharp metal slid between his stomach and his thigh, heavy in his lap. After a moment, he wrapped his right hand around the ancient handle.

"You should hurry," it said, brisk now, businesslike. "In thirty minutes, Mister Reginald Brewster of 419 Seventh Avenue North is going to find himself in dire need of a knife."

"Bloodline" is the story of a viral plague that's sweeping across the world. Ari and her brother Rojer are on the run because it was their father who created the virus, but not for the reasons you might think. Ari seems to be the only one immune to the virus that's slowly killing the youth of the nation. She has her suspicions about the source of that immunity but her concern is for her brother, who is dying from the Alavedo Syndrome. Those of her bloodline created the virus. Perhaps it is within that same blood that lies the cure.

Bloodlines By A.M. Guynes

Ari pressed herself flat against the cracked pavement. Beside her, clinging to her hand, her twin brother Rojer pressed his face to her shoulder. His body shook the coughs he tried desperately to silence. The sounds of the nearby construction covered what little noise that escaped. It did not conceal the heavy footsteps of the security patrol as it passed by their hiding spot.

Once they passed, Ari counted to one hundred slowly before she and Rojer got to their feet. “The patrols are getting worse, Roj. You think they caught dad?”

“If they did it’d be all over the tri casts. You know, the whole great traitor thing.” Rojer smothered another cough in his sleeve as Ari glowered at the huge screens the government used to broadcast their propaganda.

“Come on. We don’t need the con-bots to let those security bastards know we’re here,” Ari said.

“Right.” Rojer started to release her hand. Ari held on tighter. The two of them kept to the shadows, all senses alert for any sign of the security patrols.

More than once Rojer was driven to his knees because of his coughing. Every time that happened, Ari stood as a nervous guard. She would hold his shaking body in her arms and curse the day the government had knocked on their door.

“Ari, it’s getting worse. I’m coughing up blood every time now,” Rojer said, wiping the bloody froth from his lips. He was hoarse and even though the coughs had subsided he was still shaking. “I don’t want to die like Joy did.”

“You’re not going to die, Roj. Dad and the others are working on the cure. Remember what mom and dad told us before we all split up? We wait six months and then go to dad’s lab in Sector Y. Dad promised us he’d have the cure by then,” Ari said, her arms wrapped tight around his shoulders. Deep inside, she knew her words were hollow. Her father’s eyes had been dead when he’d made that promise.

“I don’t think he’s going to find a cure, Ari,” Rojer said, echoing her thoughts. “He and the others might have found the one disease that’s completely incurable.” He stood back up. “Even if he does find one, the government would call him a liar on top of being a traitor. Look at how easily controlled people are. All the government has to do is broadcast its lies on those damned screens and people think it’s God’s own truth.”

“Oh God, Rojer. Look!” Ari pointed up to one of the screens, her face frozen in a mask of horror. Rojer looked up and immediately wished he hadn’t.

There, in all their gruesome glory, were the mutilated bodies of Ari’s parents and older sister, as well as some of their assistants. Everyone around them fell silent as the easily recognized klaxon for an urgent broadcast echoed through the streets. “After a concerted effort between the National Information and Welfare Department and the Department for Disease Control and Prevention, the bio-terrorists responsible for the Alavedo Primary Academy Massacre and the continued debilitation of this country’s youth have now been brought to justice,” the cold voice of the robotic news caster said.

“Mom, dad,” Ari whispered. Rojer seized her hand and held it tight.

“Doctor Malkim Snyder, his wife and co-conspirator Doctor Anna Snyder, their daughter Kloiee Snyder – a former registered nurse from the Alavedo Memorial Medical Center – and several others were eliminated as they exited Doctor Malkim’s hidden laboratory in Sector Y. The search continues for Doctors Renee Snyder Michaels and Briana Snyder Abbott, and their assistants. The search is also on for Ari and Rojer Snyder, Doctor Malkim’s teenage twin children who were also among the earliest victims of the plague. It is believed that the twins are still alive and are possibly responsible for the spread of the Alavedo Syndrome to the rest of the Eastern seaboard.” A picture of the entire Snyder family flashed on the screen, with Ari and Rojer’s pictures highlighted.

“We have to get off the street,” Rojer hissed. He jerked his head towards an alley. “That way. We need to get out of J Sector. Too many people. We’ll be safer in K or D Sectors.”

Ari half carried her brother as they quickly retreated. Following Rojer’s increasingly breathless directions, Ari darted between buildings and under bridges until they came to a very run down part of the sprawling metropolis. “Where are we?” Ari asked, breathing heavily.

“K Sector,” Rojer said, gasping. “Ari, I’ve got to catch my breath.”

“Ok.” While Rojer attempted to force air into his lungs, Ari looked around for a suitable cover. An all too familiar rattling sound came out of her brother’s chest. Ari’s head whipped around. “No!”

Rojer smiled weakly at his sister, wiping his mouth with a sleeve already stiff with blood. “It’s over, Ari. You know as well as I do that I’m dead. I can’t run anymore. I’m drowning on my own blood.”

“I won’t believe it,” Ari said, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Aunt Renee and Aunt Briana are still out there. They’ll find the cure. We just have to be patient.”

Neon blue flashes and the sound of boots striking pavement warned the twins that the security patrols were everywhere. “Come on,” Rojer said. “We have to find cover.”

Too many of the derelict buildings were empty, affording no protection to the beleaguered twins. Ari continued to search, her fear of discovery growing with each of Rojer’s labored breaths. Ari dragged her brother out of what once must have been a magnificent cathedral and realized she’d reached a dead end. Looking frantically left and right, Ari saw a building that looked like it might be in good enough condition to afford them some protection.

Ari left Rojer behind an old dented dumpster. He used his shirt to muffle his breathing as she searched for a way in. Hysterical with fear, Ari stumbled. She leaned against the wall and struggled to catch her breath. Her eyes fell on a crack in the foundation. Ari looked closer. The wall had broken away from the foundation. She slipped her fingers into the crack and tugged experimentally. The bricks moved under the light pressure. Ari pried a section of the wall loose.

She ran back to Rojer. He was curled up on his side, eyes glazed. His breathing was worse. “Come on, Roj,” she said. Ari lifted her brother onto her shoulders and carried him to the hole. With a bit of shoving she managed to get him into the building. She followed and quickly pulled the rubble back over the opening.

Rojer could no longer answer his sister. All of his attention was focused on just drawing in one breath after another. As she made her way around yet another corner in the twisting labyrinth, she heard an explosion. “The…wall,” Rojer gasped.

“Damn!” Ari swore. She was getting tired. Half starved and ill though he was, Rojer was still heavy. She needed a place to stash him while she looked for a more secure hiding spot. She saw a group of benches, half buried under a wall that had collapsed. It wasn’t much but Rojer would be able to squirm his way beneath them. “Roj, hide here for a few while I find us something better.” She pushed him underneath the pile. Rojer squeezed her hand and Ari had the sudden urge to pull him close. She resisted, and instead just squeezed his hand in return. He drew back into the shadows.

Ari dashed around another corner. A moment later, she heard the security team’s excited shouting. Before she even realized what was happening, two shots rang out shattering the silence of the building. Ari convulsed in time with the shots. Her twin’s suffering had ended. He was dead.

Something inside her snapped. She turned, intending on dying with her brother and ending it all. Hands reached out of the darkness and pulled her through into another room. “Who are you and what are you doing here?” Ragged looking men and women glared at her, weapons pointed in her direction.

“My name is Ari,” Ari said, her voice catching. “I was looking for somewhere for us to hide.” Tears flowed freely down her face. “That was my twin brother that just got shot.”

“Ari Snyder?” A woman dressed in well-worn nurse’s scrubs came forward. “I don’t know, it’s been a while, but do you recognize me?”

Ari stared into the woman’s face. “Ruthie Hansen,” she said finally. “You were my sister Kloiee’s best friend at nursing school.”

“Wait, this is that bastard Malkim’s daughter?” a middle aged woman demanded. She pushed Ari back a little. “We should let the security patrol take her then. She and her plague rat brother brought the disease here and killed my babies.”

“No we didn’t. The disease was here before us. My brother was in the advanced stages. Alavedo Syndrome is only contagious in the early stages,” Ari snapped.

“How do we know that?” the woman persisted. “I mean, no one’s been able to isolate how it’s even spread.”

“Yes they did. The disease now known as the Alavedo Syndrome is passed through the air, much like the more virulent strains of the influenza virus in the twentieth century,” Ari said. “Alavedo Syndrome is actually a mutated variation on a viral strain that swept through the United States in the early twenty first century, killing hundreds of children and elderly, and crippling otherwise healthy adults.”

“How do you know that?” someone else asked.

“Her father was an epidemiologist,” Ruthie said. “He taught classes in disease prevention for the pre-med and nursing students at all of the major universities. He and his wife were very popular speakers on the lecture circuit when I was still in school.” Ruthie put a hand on Ari’s shoulder. “Your parents were very remarkable people.”

“How can you defend them? They destroyed our lives!” It seemed the middle-aged woman was determined to place the blame on Ari’s parents no matter what she was told. “They were the ones who turned the virus loose on us in the first place.”

Ari didn’t even realize she was moving until she felt a stinging pain in her hand. The middle-aged woman had a horrified look on her face as a red mark spread across her cheek. “You’re just like the rest of them,” Ari said, starting to cry. “Willing to believe everything the media tells you, with no desire to hear anything else. You go right on believing that my mom and dad are traitors, then. It’ll just blind you to the truth. Just what that bitch Senator Lyman and her friends want you to be.”

“What is the truth, Ari?” Ruthie asked. She handed Ari a handkerchief. Ari wiped her eyes but it didn’t stop the flood.

“Quiet! Here comes the security patrol,” another person said. “Get the scan blockers running.”

Ruthie flipped a switch on a small machine and a soft hum filled the air. Everyone froze as the security team moved past their hiding spot. Ari heard one of the men in the patrol say, “That damned plague rat wasn’t even worth the ammo. He was dead already.”

“Yeah, but I hear the girl’s in better shape. We ought to find out more about what her parents were doing before we put her out of our misery,” another person said.

“Enough chatter. Find the girl. Reports say she’s never far from her twin, so she has to be here.” The security patrol moved on, though it was several minutes before anyone dared to speak again.

“Ari, what really happened?” Ruthie asked again. “We know what’s been on the tri casts, but I have my suspicions and the little that Kloiee told me in her letters makes me think I’m right. But you were living at home with all this started weren’t you?”

Ari nodded. She backed away from everyone else. She leaned up against the wall and allowed herself to slide down into a sitting position. “It all started four, maybe five years ago,” she said. “Mom and dad were on one of their teaching gigs when Aunt Briana introduced them to Senator Rhea Lyman, head of the biowarfare division of the National Information and Welfare Department. My parents were appalled by her blatant disregard for human life and turned her down when she invited them to participate in a special project she was working on.

“I’d say about a month after their initial meeting with her, men in black suits showed up at our house. They were agents of the NIWD, sent by Senator Lyman. They gave my parents two choices: work for Senator Lyman or all of us would die.”

“We’d all be better off if your parents had chosen death,” the middle aged woman muttered.

“For the love of God, Grace, shut up and let the girl finish her story,” Ruthie snapped. “Or I’ll shoot you myself.” Grace glared at the younger woman but subsided.

“All of us,” Ari repeated. “Me, Rojer, Kloiee, and Joy. Joy was dad’s angel. She was the baby, only five years old, and so full of light and life. She lived up to her name, bringing happiness to everyone who met her. Dad didn’t want to see any of us die so he and mom took the jobs on the research team. My aunts were already there, and I think Lyman threatened them the same way.”

“We know about Senator Lyman,” Ruthie said grimly. “She’s been the main voice behind the reintroduction of bioweapons into our arsenal.”

“I thought you wanted to hear the girl’s story,” Grace said. Ruthie’s hand went to her gun. Grace quickly stepped back. One of the others put his hand on Ruthie’s arm.

“What happened next, Ari?” Ruthie asked.

“We were resettled on a restricted military base. We weren’t allowed to leave the complex. We had special tutors come in to teach me and Rojer because there weren’t enough kids our age. Joy was sent to the daycare with all of the other little kids. Mom and dad and Kloiee spent hours at the lab, sometimes spending the night when the government decided their health wasn’t as important as their research.

“The virus that causes Alavedo Syndrome was only one of the things they were working on. I don’t know what all they did. When they isolated the Syndrome, Senator Lyman and the NIWD came in and took all details of the research and cut loose the researchers. Well, they told them the research was over for now. But they didn’t let us leave. If anything, security was tightened and we weren’t even allowed to talk to my aunts, or any of the other members of the research team.

“Then Joy started coughing. At first, we thought it was just a cold. Then it got out that a bunch of the children at the Alavedo Primary Academy were really sick, coughing up blood and slowly being smothered to death by their own bodies. My dad got suspicious. He still had a lot of his equipment at the house. He took a sample of Joy’s blood. He found the virus. It was deoxygenating the cells and effectively asphyxiating all of her organs.”

“So that’s how it kills,” Ruthie said, pulling out her data pad and making notes. “Sorry, Ari.”

Ari just shook her head. “Dad was livid. He learned from our nanny that just before they stopped the research that all of the kids at the Academy were inoculated against a new virus making the rounds. No one thought anything of it at the time, but dad realized the kids were actually exposed to the virus. One hundred and sixty three children died as a result of the government’s little test. One of those was my little sister.” Ari blinked her sore eyes. She’d been lost in the memories, only half aware of those around her.

“So your dad murdered your sister and you still defend him,” Grace sneered.

“Weren’t you listening? The government murdered my sister,” Ari said. “They murdered my mom and my dad. They murdered Kloiee and Rojer. All those other kids too, and everyone else who’s got this damned Syndrome. They threatened to kill everyone my dad loved if he didn’t do the research, and in the end they did it anyway just to prove they could.” Ari smacked her hands onto the ground, pushing herself up off the floor. “Ouch!” Blood flowed freely from her hand where she’d cut it on a piece of broken glass.

“Ari, if you were exposed like the others, why aren’t you sick?” Ruthie asked.

“Dad wondered about that too, especially since Rojer got sick a little after Joy did,” Ari replied. She pulled the glass out of her hand and pressed the handkerchief against the wound. “Mom thought it was because I was dad’s favorite guinea pig. I’d try anything he gave me in his incessant search for the perfect mixture to prevent disease.”

“Did your dad ever find a cure for the Syndrome?” Grace demanded.

“That’s what he was trying to do when the NIWD killed him. I know Aunt Briana and Aunt Renee were looking for a cure too. Aunt Renee was in the early stages when we all split up six months ago. Aunt Briana was worried, since Aunt Renee’s never been very strong. She’s probably already dead. Aunt Briana wasn’t sick when I left but she might have caught it from Aunt Renee. I think I’m the only one who’s been exposed to the Syndrome who’s never gotten sick.” Ari froze, staring down at her bloody hand.

“The security patrol is coming back,” Grace said.

“Ruthie, you know how to find them, don’t you? You know where my aunts are.” Ari’s eyes were unfocused, and her uninjured hand groped in the air beside her. Her fingers curled around nothing but to Ruthie it almost looked like she was holding someone else’s hand.

“I do,” Ruthie admitted. “Why?”

“Tell them dad’s legacy will help them cure everyone else,” Ari said. “Give them this and tell them I said I’m sorry.” She handed Ruthie the blood soaked handkerchief. Blood trickled down from her fingers. “Come on, Roj,” she whispered. “Let’s go.” Ari turned and made her way to the entrance of the little group’s hiding spot.

“Ari, no!” Ruthie cried. Ari looked over her shoulder and smiled. Her eyes were blank and dead.

“It’s ok, Ruthie. Everyone’s waiting for me out there.” She turned and walked through the hidden door. There was excited shouting and then gun shots rang out. They all heard the sound of a body hitting the ground.

Ruthie waited until the patrol was gone before dropping the handkerchief into a specimen jar from her portable med kit. She sealed the top. “I have to go,” she said. “Ari left us with Doctor Malkim’s cure. Now we need to synthesize it so no one else has to die.”

“What do you mean?” Grace asked impatiently.

“Ari never got sick, Grace,” Ruthie said. “She was there from the beginning and she never got sick. What if, in trying to strengthen his daughter’s immune system, Doctor Malkim inadvertently gave her key to curing the Syndrome?” No one else spoke as Ruthie packed up her gear and slipped out through the hole.

By Sarah Schiavoni

He loved the suddenness of spring—closing his tired eyes on grey and brown and opening them to shades of cool green hovering just outside his window. Spring always seemed to arrive overnight, but really it arrived by steady ascent, with hardly a soul taking notice. While the skeletal trees cast shadows on dry grass and brown earth, spring slowly brewed in their roots and branches, ready to arrive in spurts of crisp green and soft yellow. Spring woke everything from a cold, winter slumber—the unfurled leaves yawned on trees, the flower buds stretched out on their stems.

He loved falling asleep seeing the twiggy crabapples outside his window and waking up to find them dotted with vibrant pink blooms. He loved to stand by the flaky brown tree trunks and splay his hands over the bark, feeling the gritty curls scrape against his fingers and palms. His kept his feet bare so he could feel the grass between his toes, wet with dew and springy in the early morning. He loved the fresh smells, the caress of sunlight, and the subtle calm, but mostly it was how spring arrived, so sudden and triumphant after such a long cold spell—it was life after death; a reawakening of the senses.

His mother had always loved the winter, even before she got ill. She loved the frost; loved to wake up and see its spiky fan over the windows, like iridescent lace. On winter mornings in the kitchen, while piling golden pancakes and steaming eggs onto plates, she’d ask her son if he’d seen “Jack’s paintings” on the windows that morning. She loved the crisp, glittering snow, white sun, and bare trees.

It seemed to suit her that her hospital room was always like winter—the bare wooden chair in the corner like a solitary tree and the white walls like sheets of shiny snow. The only color in the room came from a sparse grouping of smudgy Kinkade’s, their blurry cottage scenes a poor substitute for the spring season her son loved so much. Her room was a mix of cold metal, white plaster, and dry air. The starched, white sheets and itchy, vanilla-colored blanket on her hospital bed were synthetic and rough against her icy, translucent skin. He could have paid for her to be moved to a nicer room, but she always shook his head at the suggestion. He wanted her to feel at home in her room, but so long as she got hot tea in the morning and was able to watch the local evening news, she was content and needed nothing more.

He hated to sit with his mother there, watching her stare listlessly out into the hall at the passing nurses, her hands white with cold. She never looked at all the “Get Well Soon” cards she got, painstakingly arranged on the windowsill by him. Her wig rested in tangles on a stand in the bathroom; though her head was only dusted with feathery down, she felt no need to cover it up. He hated her apathy and the emptiness in her voice when they spoke during his visits.

“Mom, why don’t you let me bring some flowers in here?—Perk up the place?”
His mother shook her head and stared out the grubby windows.

“The gift shop girl told me she has red tulips…you like the color red, don’t you?”

Still staring out the window, his mother sighed and straightened out the covers by her waist. “The room is fine as it is. You know the pollen makes my nose itch.”

She looked tired and small. Her lips were chapped from the winter air drifting through the cracks in the window frame. Her hands were crawling with spidery, blue veins that disappeared under the skin of her wrists and elbows.

“How about Gerber daisies? She’s got every color under the sun down there.”

His mother groaned. “They look fake. Too bright. I don’t know how they get them to be those wild colors.”

“She’s got roses down there too. Remember how dad used to always get you a yellow rose on your birthday?”

She smiled just a bit at the memory, but quickly pushed the thought aside. Her husband had died the year before. Heart attack. She’d just found out the month before that she had cancer and was making plans for chemo. They’d spent hours browsing online wig stores during that month, laughing at the ridiculous hairstyles and colors that were offered.

“I don’t need the clutter. I’ve already got enough junk on my nightstand—those nurses keep bringing me these silly gardening and cooking magazines. And I don’t have space on the windowsill with all those cards filling it up.”

Her son frowned at her as she gestured at the table by her bed, pointing out the little pile she called “clutter.”

He wanted to bring a little color and life to her room. Every time he visited, he stopped by the gift shop and perused their small flower selection in the grimy, chilled container in the back. The shop mostly stocked generic, seasonal flowers, but occasionally they received prettier flowers, like star gazer lilies or purple irises. When he got to her room, shuffling slowly on the newly-waxed linoleum, he’d tell her about the flower selection and they’d argue over whether or not to put some in a vase in the room. Sometimes, his mother relented, too tired to grouse about flowers agitating her allergies or messing up her nightstand. Most times, his mother started to ignore him after the third or fourth flower suggestion, choosing instead to turn on the TV and tune him out.

When he did succeed in bringing her flowers, she’d complain to him—the flowers were too bright, they made her eyes water, they cost too much. She never threw them out, but, inevitably, the nurses would forget to change the water in the vase, the flowers would lose their color, and eventually, the blooms shriveled up and fell from the stem.

She allowed flowers on her birthday, and he brought her yellow roses, hoping to conjure up happy memories of her times with his father; hoping to bring some life to her cloudy eyes. For once, she didn’t complain. When he set them by her bed, her eyes crinkled with happiness for a brief moment, but she didn’t thank him or smile when he and the nurses sang a quiet “Happy Birthday” to her after.

“Your father was a wonderful man” she said, her eyes rheumy.

He smiled at her, but she had a faraway look. She’d forgotten he was in the room.

She died a few days later, wrapped up in her itchy blanket with the tiniest of smiles on her face. The roses drooped in the vase by her bed, touched with the winter cold. Their petals were wrinkled, the edges brown and curled under. She hadn’t asked the nurses to put clean water in the vase or trim the ends of the stems. What water was left was a murky yellow-green and the stems were ragged and soft where they’d been left uncut. She liked her empty, cold room and itchy blankets. She preferred the white walls of the room and didn’t mind when the paintings got caked with dust and lost their color. Yellow roses were no substitute for the husband who had left her behind. The first blooms of spring had burst outside her hospital room window. She hadn’t even bothered to open the blinds.

By Kirk B. Young

I was five years old the first time he looked at me. It was the middle of the night; I had chicken pox and I'd been scratching feverishly at my body all day only to be put to bed wrapped up in a wool blanket. You'd hope it was a cruel joke and not just malevolence, and truth be told it was neither. Auntie Lilith never had any children of her own, and when she looked after me during the summer months it had always seemed more of a neutrality with which she approached my presence there. Being her sister's child, she'd look after me when needed, but her general disdain for most children and other people led her to spend more time in the garden with her adopted saplings than with me. I and my largely uninterrupted play time were fine with this arrangement, even when confined to the bedroom for the day with my pox.
So yes, without giving it much thought Auntie Lilith wrapped me up in a woolen blanket, tucked me in, and then turned out the lights and went downstairs. And I began to itch. And itch. And itch.
Eventually I thought whatever the five year old version of “to hell with this” is and threw the blanket off of myself, finding enough momentary relief in the absence of any friction against my skin other than cool air from the window to fall into a slumber.
It was some time later that I woke with a start, eyes fixing on the popcorn ceiling above and wondering how many little nubs there were above me in hopes of boring myself back to sleep. But it didn’t take, so I sighed and looked out the window to my right and that’s when I began to feel it. Even a child can feel it: the sensation of being watched. Normally when this happens in the middle of the night you will look and find no one there staring back at you other than your own imagination, its eyes having already bored holes into your paranoid mind.
I looked slowly, thinking the sensation might fade before my eyes had crossed the room, but I didn’t rotate long before setting my sights on a dark figure in my doorway, a man, very tall, with a somewhat thinner build. I could see no facial features in the dark other than his eyes, bathed by a strip of light falling just perfectly across his sockets. Was it by chance? Did he position himself purposely? I wanted to think the former while experience tells me it’s the latter.
He didn’t say anything. I had no idea who he was, but being five even the shadiest of figures were innocent until they indicated otherwise in my eyes, so I assumed he was in the right place, standing there in the doorway where he was supposed to, because the world was wondrous and wide and I found something new each day and surely this man must just be another part of life, another adult to buy me toys or read me a story or take me to the carnival as my father had a week before.
“What’s your name?” I asked him, because above all else five year olds want to know how to address the person from whom they’ll soon ask for things, and in order to do that they need a name.
But he didn’t answer, so I frowned, and rolled over in bed onto my other side so as to not have to acknowledge him. I now sometimes wish I was still capable of as much indignation as I was then. Alas.
I shut my eyes and tried to sleep, but failed to do so. After awhile I opened them and stared at the wall. There was no shadow cast there by the moon shining through the window behind me, but I felt as if he was indeed standing there. It was at this point that I became scared.
The floorboard creaked behind me. I heard the rustle of fabric.
I turned over, starting to say “what are you doin' mister?” but only made it to the point of uttering “what,” because as I turned the wool blanket was thrown down over my face and body, smothering me in its itchy warmth.
I screamed and began flailing wildly, and managed to roll off of the bed, the blanket coming with me, intertwined amongst my legs and arms, and once I hit the wooden floor I instantly pushed up in my wild movements, tearing myself out of the thorny fabric and breathing as heavily as a child can I bolted for the door, not even looking to see if the man was still in the room.

Auntie Lilith scolded me the next morning for getting out of bed and sleeping on the couch downstairs. She said I was spreading my germs and that she might be getting sick because of me.
But she never asked me why I went down there.

The fall came and once Mother and Dad were back I was able to return home. After getting through the chicken pox and a particularly bad spell of the summer flu at Auntie Lilith’s, I hadn’t given much more thought to the man, but one night after dinner we were watching the television and whatever was on reminded me somehow, so I asked Mother about the man who lived with Auntie Lilith. She was quite confused, telling me I was foolish and that Auntie Lilith lived alone: my uncle had died in a fire many years before I was born and apparently Auntie Lilith had chosen a life of solitude ever since. I was the more confused of the two of us, but there are times as children that we accept things that don’t make sense for no particular reason, and this was one of those times for me.

Another year passed and it was time to go to Auntie Lilith’s for the summer once again. By that time I had forgotten completely about the experience I’d had the previous year, other than the bouts with sickness. Since I was feeling stronger and bigger though, I thought for sure I wouldn’t even catch cold that year.
Sometime about halfway through the summer, I was laying under that wool blanket itching something fierce again, so I pushed it off and fell asleep to the gentle caress of the cool breeze coming through the window on my skin.
I woke in the middle of the night, and once again found that man staring at me from the doorway. I frowned at this, knowing right away he wasn’t going to say a thing. Rather than face his silence, I thought it better to cut short our dance and turn away from him as I had a year before. Once again, I was unable to sleep and felt him standing behind me, so I turned to see what it was he wanted.
I should’ve known. Once again that blanket was cast upon me, heavier than before, he was pushing it down on me – I flailed and escaped just as I had before and this time I spent the night on the couch downstairs and I was up the next day and eating breakfast before Auntie Lilith even heard her alarm clock go off. I was perturbed, but being a child, I would prove rather resilient.

The incident reoccurred, year after year. As I got older and became more aware of time I realized it was on the same day each year. By the time I was eight I understood it was a recurring experience and began to spend that night on the couch downstairs. Adaptation is survival. I read that in a book many years later, and felt pretty proud of myself for having implemented such a strategic existence before having any idea it was strategic, much less what the word “strategic” meant.
Each year my mother would ask me if Auntie Lilith had had any more male visitors late at night and each year I would answer that I had seen the same one. Each year she’d laugh, brushing it off, chalking it up to my active imagination.

When I was eleven, it was different. Perhaps Auntie Lilith had grown tired of my presence year after year, perhaps she began expecting some form of payment as I got older, but in any case, the face that greeted me upon arrival that summer was not one of a friendly nature, nor were the parting words with my parents. Mother just looked at me in that way she would when appropriate, it was better than saying “well son, this is just the way of the world sometimes.” But I knew what it meant.
It only got worse from there. Auntie Lilith was miserable to me that summer, and though I was no perfect child, I knew from being around my classmates that I was one of the better ones. I did chores before I played, I kept to myself and wasn’t an unnecessary nuisance, I read and learned and retained and I was hungry to know what the world was truly made of and had to offer me. She was not appreciative of any of these traits.
As we came closer to the date of the incident Auntie Lilith became more and more agitated. She stopped making me meals after the first few weeks of my stay there, and when she would shuffle through the kitchen in her silent way, she’d glare at me as I prepared myself a sandwich, as if I had no right to her food while I was in her care. I learned to ignore it after only a few days, as I was a wise man of the world, and had learned from talking to my schoolmates that if she was this wound up it meant one of two things: she was either aching for the kiss of a man, or she was on something called PMS, which after much playground debate we determined stood for “Pretty Mad Son-of-a-bitch” despite my protests that a woman couldn’t be a son of an anything. My friends weren’t as quick as I though, and I was overruled.
   
On the day before the incident, I was reading upstairs in the bedroom when I heard a great commotion of pots and pans downstairs. I rushed down to ensure Auntie Lilith was okay, and when I found her she was cursing so vehemently I thought for sure she’d cut or struck herself with one of the items cluttered about the floor. When I entered she gave me a glare that would scare the devil and shouted “Look what you did! All my pots and pans are all over the place because I was going to make you dinner, you little bastard! Go upstairs and think about what you’ve done!”
I must have betrayed my confusion with my facial expression because she quickly stomped her way through the mess to where I stood on the other side of the kitchen and smacked me right across the face. It was so hard and I was so unprepared that I actually fell down at the foot of the stairs there, not even crying because I was so unsure of what was happening.
“Don’t come back downstairs until I tell you!”
With that she picked me up and smacked me on the bottom and I made my way up the stairs as quickly as I could. Had I been my younger indignant self I might have called back to her “that didn’t hurt, not like when Daddy does it!” Perhaps it’s better that I didn’t.
I finished reading my book on the bed, the wool blanket pushed to my side. Every once in awhile I heard a door slam downstairs, and at one point I was sure I’d heard the front door shut and the truck drive away for a time, returning later, but as the bedroom was on the back side of the house I wasn’t able to confirm my suspicions. Once I was done with the reading material, I sat there quite bored for the remainder of the evening. Eventually my boredom became so severe that I was able to fall asleep.
   
I woke at the expected time, though I’d forgotten about my appointment in all the day’s commotion, and found that this year was different than all those before. The man was standing at the door, but it was closed, and he was in the room in front of it. It would be the last time he looked at me.
The room was on fire.
The flames were high, licking the popcorn nubs of the ceiling, and lining the floorboards all around my bed. I looked to the window, but with the fire being taller than I would be, even standing on the bed, it was a lost cause and I knew it. I would jump through the flame but before I could unlock and raise the window I would most certainly be a marshmallow.
It was then that I looked at the man in panic, and realized he was standing in the midst of the flames. It was a sight beyond comprehension, reminding me at the time of a 3D film or the optical illusions where you must set your eyes on them just right in order to see the image – in this case, a man consumed by fire but totally unaffected. But because he was well lit in this setting I was able to see that his clothes looked as if they were already charred and blackened, though I could see the flames licking him hadn’t even begun to abate yet.
Then he was moving toward me, and my eyes would have gone wide with anticipation if I hadn’t been afraid they would melt out of my sockets from the nearby heat, and then we broke our cycle because this time I didn’t flip over and away from him, I looked up and at him, right into his eyes. They were blue, and beautiful, and yet they seemed hollow somehow, as if his soul had dipped down into the darkest recesses of his being. That, or it had ballooned out and manifested itself in his image.
The wool blanket was forced down on me. I only struggled minimally this time, knowing that the fire was around my bed and would soon be upon me. I couldn’t roll off. I couldn’t fight it. So I resigned to my fate inside my itchy wool capsule.
And then I was lifted.
And held.

I do not know how much time passed. It felt like ages. But after a long while, I was set onto the ground, quite gingerly in fact, which I interpreted as a sign that I could eject myself from the wool cocoon in which I had been hidden.
Emerging I found the entire room burnt to the blackest bits of crumbly dust. It was dark, but I could hear the owls and frogs outside much clearer than before, and then I realized: there were no walls.
At that point a fireman came up what remained of the stairs and carefully entered the remains of the room, and the look on his face alerted me to the fact that I shouldn’t have been there.
I have slept under a wool blanket every night since then.

I never stayed at Auntie Lilith’s again after that. I wasn’t ever told I would have to, and I did not ask to do so. In fact, the next time I saw Auntie Lilith was at her funeral five years later. She had burned to death after her stove caught fire while cooking one evening. The fire department said it was a freak and unfortunate accident.
I believe it was a premeditated plan that finally came full circle. Her dinner that night came, and it was uppance.
And he waited too long to serve it to her, if you ask me.

Your Sweet Man is a short story from the collection Nice Girl Does Noir I by Libby Fischer Hellmann (http://www.libbyhellmann.com).

"Who’s Gonna Be Your Sweet Man When I’m gone?
Who you gonna have to love you?”
…Muddy Waters

1982: Chicago

Calvin waited for the man who’d been convicted of killing his mother. Outside Joliet prison the July heat seared his spirit, leaving it as bare and desiccated as a sun-bleached bone. Sweat ringed his armpits, grit coated the back of his neck. Almost noon, and no shadows on anything.
He extracted a Lucky from the crumpled pack on the dash and leaned forward to light it. The ‘74 Chevy Caprice never failed to start up. As long as he kept enough fluid in the radiator, the engine ate up the highway without complaint. Even the lighter worked.
He took a nervous drag. He hadn’t seen his father in fifteen years. His granny had made him come when he graduated high school to show him that Calvin had amounted to something, after all. Calvin remembered clutching his diploma in the visitors’ room, sliding it out of the manila envelope, edging nervously up to the glass window that separated them. He held it up against the glass, hating the sour smell of the place, the chipped paint on the walls, the fact that he had to be there at all. He remembered how his father nodded. No smile. No “atta boy – you done good.” Just a lukewarm nod. Calvin imagined a yawning hole opening up on the floor, right then and there; a hole he could sink into and disappear.
Now, the black metal gates swung open, and a withered man emerged. Calvin was still wiping sweat off his face, but his father was wearing a long sleeved shirt and beige canvas pants. Even from a distance, his father looked smaller than he remembered. Frailer. The cancer that was consuming him, that had triggered his early release, was working its way through his body. He walked slowly, stooped over. His skin, a few shades lighter than the rich chocolate it once was, looked paper-thin, and he blinked like he hadn’t seen sunlight in years. Maybe he hadn’t. His father looked around, spotted Calvin in the Caprice. He nodded, took his time coming over.
Calvin slid out of the car, tossed his cigarette on the dirt, ground it out with his foot.
“Hello, Calvin…”
Calvin returned his greeting with a nod of his own. Cautious. Polite.
“Appreciate you coming to get me, son.”
A muscle in Calvin’s gut twitched. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had called him “son.” “Son” was a word that belonged in the movies or TV, not in real life. Calvin gestured to the gym bag his father was carrying. “Let me take that.”
His father held it out. Calvin threw it in the back seat. His father stood at the passenger door but made no effort to open it. Calvin frowned, then realized his father was waiting for permission. Twenty-five years in prison did that to a man. “Just open the door and get in.”
His father shot him a look, half-embarrassed, half-grateful, and slid into the car. Calvin waited until his father was settled, then started the engine. As they pulled away from Joliet, he said, “Thought we’d go back to my place.”
“You still in Englewood?”
“Hyde Park now. Got ourselves a house near 47th and Cottage Grove.”
His father’s eyebrows arched. “Well, that’s mighty fine.”
“Jeanine fixed it up nice. Even got a little garden out back. She’s a good girl.”
His father didn’t seem to notice. He should have. It was Jeanine who shamed Calvin into coming in the first place.
“He’s dying, Calvin” she’d said. “And he’s paid his dues. Twenty-five years of ‘em.”
Now his father turned to him. “How’s that job coming?”
“What job?” Calvin made his way back to the highway.
“The one you was talking about when you come to see me. Janitorial supplies.”
“I opened my own company six years ago. I got five people working for me now.”
“Well that’s mighty fine, son. Mighty fine.”
But it didn’t feel fine. It felt false. Calvin imagined that black hole opening up even wider. That was why he never wrote or visited his father, except for the Christmas card Jeanine made him sign every year. Any time he thought about him, even a stray fragment, the night his mother was murdered flooded back into his mind. He couldn’t help it. Better not to think about it at all, his granny would say. “Just go on and live your own life.”
But Granny was dead, and the people at Joliet called him when they found the cancer. Calvin stole a glance at his father. He was quiet. Just staring out at the road, a dreamy look on his face. Calvin remembered that look. His father’s body might be in the front seat, but his mind was miles away. Calvin knew he was thinking about his mother.
He tightened his grip on the wheel. How dare he? “So… You feelin’ okay?”
His father pulled his gaze in and looked at Calvin. “For the days I got left, I’m doing jes’ fine.”
Calvin turned onto the interstate. “You sure? Jeanine talked to our doctor. He can see you tomorrow if you want.”
His father gave him a sad little smile. “Appreciate it son, but don’t go to no trouble.” His father went back to looking out the window. Calvin turned on the radio. The all news station was blaring out something about Israeli troops in Lebanon. His father didn’t react, just kept gazing out. He seemed somehow smaller, less distinct than he’d been just ten minutes ago. Like his shadow was slowly fading from black to gray. At this rate he might disappear altogether.
Calvin snapped off the radio. For a while the whine of the air conditioning was the only sound in the car. Lulled by the air blowing through the vents and the rhythm of his wheels on the highway, Calvin was startled by the abruptness of his father’s voice.
“You start making the arrangements?”
Calvin cleared his throat just loud enough. “Not yet.” He wasn’t sure what to expect. Would his father lay into him? Cuss him out?
But all his father did was to wave a weak hand. “I guess I got to do it myself.”
“Why don’t we talk about it later?”
His father’s shoulders sagged and he closed his eyes. “I ain’t got many laters, son.”

***

1950’s: Chicago

The hot breath of the blues kissed Jimmy Jay Rollins when he was little, leaving him hungering for more. His mama -- he never knew his daddy – took him to church in the morning and the blues joints at night. By the time he was seven, he was playing guitar licks with whoever his “uncle” of the moment happened to be, and by the time he left school at 16, he knew he wanted to play bass guitar.
The bass wasn’t as flashy as the electric slide guitar of Little Ed or Muddy Waters, but it was the glue that held everything together. No one could play a 12-bar chorus without him; no one could start a lick or riff. The bass was there through every number, from beginning to end, setting the pace. Steady. Unrelenting. The lead guitar, saxophone, even the drummer could take a break; not so the bass. Willie Dixon became Jimmy Jay’s personal hero.
By day, Jimmy Jay worked in a steel factory near Lake Calumet, but at night, he bounced around playing gigs on the South side. You could smell stale cigarette smoke and yesterday’s beer in the air, spot a few guns and knives if you looked real close. But none of that mattered when the music started. The Blues flowed through his veins, transporting him to a place where he could let go, soar above the world, tethered only by an electric guitar, wailing horn, or harmonica riff.
He was jamming at the open mike set in the Macomba Lounge one hot summer night, a thick cloud of smoke, perfume, and sweat choking the air, when a wisp of a girl – she couldn’t have been more than 18 -- came up to the stage. She was wearing a red dress that skimmed her body just right. A curtain of black hair shimmered down to her waist, and her skin looked pale blue in the light. She tentatively took the mike and asked them to play in G, then launched into a bluesy version of “Mean to Me,” an old Billie Holiday song.
By the middle of the second verse, people set their glasses down, stubbed out their cigarettes, and a hush fell over the room. Her voice was raw and unpolished but full of surprises. At first a sultry alto, she could hit the high notes in a silver soprano, then dip two octaves down to belt out the Blues like a tenor. At first he thought it was a fluke – no one had that range and depth. He tested her, moving up the scale, changing the groove, even throwing her a sudden key change. She took it all with a serene smile, bobbing her head, eyes closed, adjusting perfectly. Her voice never wavered.
After a few numbers, the band took a break, and Jimmy Jay bought her a whiskey. As he passed her the drink, he noticed the contrast between her face, soft and round, and her eyes, dark and penetrating. Her name was Inez Youngblood, she said, and she’d just moved here from Tennessee. She was part Cherokee, once upon a time, but mostly mountain white.
“A hillbilly?” Jimmy Jay joked.
She threw him a dazzling smile that made his insides melt. “A hillbilly who sings the Blues.”
“Why Chicago?”
“I listen to the radio. Chicago Blues is happy Blues. You got Muddy Waters. Etta James. Chess Records. Everybody’s here. Sweeping you up with their music. There just ain’t no other place to sing.” Those dark eyes bored into him. “And I got to sing.”
By their third drink, he began to imagine the curves underneath that red dress, and what she looked like without it. She had to know what he was thinking, because she smiled and started to finger a gold cross around her neck. Still, she didn’t seem put off. More like she was teasing him.
Another set and half a reefer later, a fight broke out in the back of the bar. Inez, who was singing “Wang, Dang, Doodle” took it in stride, even when knives glinted and someone pulled out a piece. She just pointed to the fighters, asked the bartender to shine a spot in their direction, and leveled them with a hard look. The brawl moved into the alley. Jimmy Jay was impressed.
It was almost dawn when they quit playing. Someone bought a last round of drinks, and Jimmy Jay was just thinking about packing up when Inez came over.
“You’re pretty damn good, Jimmy Jay.”
He grinned. “Thanks, Hillbilly. You got a set of pipes yourself.”
She laughed. “We oughta do this again.”
Jimmy Jay suppressed his elation. “I could probably get us a couple of gigs.”
She nodded. “I’d like that.”
He nodded, just looking at her, not quite believing his good fortune.
She offered him a slow sensual smile. “Meanwhile, I got a favor to ask you, baby.”
Jimmy Jay cleared his throat. “Yeah?” His voice cracked anyway.
She turned around, and lifted her hair off the back of her neck. “Help me take off my cross.”
She ended up in his bed that night. And the next. And the night after that. She might only have been 18, but she was all heat and fire. All he had to do was touch her and she shivered with pleasure. When he ran his fingers slowly up her leg, starting at that perfectly shaped ankle, past her knee, stopping at the soft, pliant skin of her thigh, she would moan and grab him and pull him into her. Sliding underneath, rocking him hard, like she couldn’t get enough.
“You are my sweet man,” she would whisper when they stopped, exhausted and sweaty. “My sweet, sweet man.”
***
They were a team for almost ten years. Inez, the hillbilly, soaring like an angel in one number, moaning like a whore in another; and Jimmy Jay, steadfast and sturdy, setting the beat, making her look good. Inez drove herself hard, and her talent grew. Her timing was impeccable. She rolled with the band, but could carry the show. If someone missed a chord, she covered them, and if they messed up their solo, she’d make light of it by singing scat, humming a chorus, or talking to the crowd.
Before long they were headlining at places like the Macomba before it burned down, South Side Johnny’s, and Queenie’s. Their only disagreement was over Chess Records and the two white owners who wanted to sign them. Jimmy Jay was all for it -- not only did his idol Willie Dixon work for Chess, but a record contract was something he’d dreamed of all his life. Inez kept saying they should hold out for a better deal. So far they had.
Even Calvin’s arrival didn’t slow them down. Calvin was a good baby who turned into a good boy. The same face and nappy hair as his Daddy; the high cheekbones and coffee-with-cream skin of his Mama. Inez seemed thrilled. She cooed and sang to him all day, but if Jimmy Jay figured she might retire, he figured wrong. Calvin came with them to the clubs on the South and west side, even to Peoria and East St. Louis. They’d bring blankets and put him to sleep in the back room on a ratty sofa, sometimes the floor. When he was older, Jimmy Jay or Inez would drop him off at school before they went to bed themselves. Jimmy Jay didn’t mind. His own mama had brought him to all the Blues joints.
Inez started calling them both her sweet men. Jimmy Jay would grin. They were happy. Real happy. Until the gig at Theresa’s.
***
It was late autumn, and a chilly rain had been falling for two days, flooding the viaducts and lots of basements. Jimmy Jay and Inez were headlining at Theresa’s Lounge on South Indiana. The place wasn’t as upscale or as large as Macomba’s, and the regulars, mostly people from the neighborhood, treated the place like home, dancing and talking with the players during the set. Tonight the smell of wet wool mixed with the smoke and booze and sweat.
A promoter from Capitol Records was in town and supposedly coming down that night. Inez was excited -- Capitol was huge, much bigger than Chess. Jimmy Jay was glad he’d talked a new lead guitar into playing the gig with them. Buddy Guy had just come up from Baton Rouge, and everyone was saying he was gonna change the face of the Blues.
It was a knockout performance. No one missed a chord and the solos kicked. There were no amp or mike problems. Jimmy Jay and the drummer locked into a tight groove, and Buddy Guy’s guitar was by turns brash, angry, and soulful. Inez’s voice was as rich and mellow as thick honey. Even with the lousy weather, the place was packed, everyone swaying, dancing, bobbing their heads. It was like great sex, Jimmy Jay thought. Hot, sticky sex that trembled and throbbed and built, and ended in a long, fiery climax.
During the break, a white guy came up to the stage. He’d been at one of the back tables, smoking cigarettes. With his baby face and eager expression, he couldn’t have been much older than Jimmy Jay. But his tailored suit and hair, slicked back with Bryl Crème, said he was trying to look well-off. He bought the band a round of drinks and nodded to Jimmy Jay. Then he turned to Inez and started talking quietly but earnestly. She looked from him to Jimmy Jay, then back at him. When she nodded, he took her hand and covered it with thick fingers. She didn’t pull away. After the next set, Jimmy Jay caught them talking behind his back. By the last set, Inez was favoring him with the same smile she’d shot Jimmy Jay the first night at Macomba’s ten years ago.
By the time Inez left town with him a week later, the rain had changed to snow. Jimmy Jay went to fetch Calvin at school. When he got back, she was gone. At first he thought she was at the store, picking up something for dinner, but when she didn’t come home by six, an uneasy feeling swept over him. He checked the closet and drawers. Most of her things were gone. Except her gold cross.
Word got around that she’d run away with Billy Sykes. He hadn’t worked for Capitol, it turned out. He did work in the record business, but dropped out of sight after he shorted some men who’d been financing a label with mob money. He reappeared a year later as a promoter. No one could say who his clients were.
That winter Jimmy Jay sat for hours on the bed, running Inez’s gold cross and chain through his fingers. His mother moved in to look after Calvin who, at nine, was just old enough to realize his world had shattered. Word filtered back -- someone had seen her in Peoria, someone else heard she was in Iowa. Jimmy Jay tried to play, but he sounded tired and flat. Inez was inextricably bound up in his music and his life; with her gone, it felt like part of his body – worse, his soul -- had shriveled up and fallen off.
One day Calvin came in and saw him on the bed, fingering the cross with tears in his eyes.
“Don’t be sad, Daddy.” He came over and gave Jimmy Jay a hug. “I know what to do.”
Jimmy Jay gazed at his son.
“Mama just got lost. She don’t know how to get home. All we got to do is find her.”
Jimmy Jay smiled sadly. “I don’t think she wants to come home, boy.”
“Granny says every mama wants to come home. All we needs do is find her. Once she sees us, it’ll be just fine. I know it. ”
Jimmy Jay tried to discourage him, but Calvin clung to his idea like a leach to a man’s skin. He talked so much about finding his lost mama that after a while, his intensity infected Jimmy Jay. Could it really be that simple? Maybe Calvin was right. Sure Inez wanted to be a star, but she had a family. If they went after her, maybe she would realize what she’d given up and come home.
The following spring Billy Sykes brought Inez back to Chicago for a show on the West side – no one on the South side would book her. She was singing with some musicians from St. Louis, Jimmy Jay learned. They were staying at the Lincoln hotel, a small shabby place near the club.
Jimmy Jay waited until Calvin was home from school and had his supper. Then they both dressed in their Sunday best and took the bus to the hotel. Jimmy Jay slipped an old man at the desk a fiver and asked which room Inez Rollins was in. The man pointed up the steps. Jimmy Jay and Calvin climbed to the third floor and knocked on #315.
A tired female voice replied, “Yes?”
“It’s me, Inez. And Calvin.”
The door opened and suddenly Inez was there, her body framed in the light.
“Mama!” Calvin ran into her arms.
Her face lit, and she clasped Calvin so tight the boy could hardly suck in a breath. When she finally released him, she turned to Jimmy Jay.
“Hello, Jimmy Jay.”
She looked washed-out, Jimmy Jay thought, although it gave him no pleasure to see it. Gaunt and nervous, too. Her eyes were rimmed in red, and her black mane of hair wasn’t glossy. He thought he saw a bruise on her cheek, but she kept finger-combing her hair over the spot.
“Hello, Inez.” He looked around. “Where’s Sykes?”
“He’s at the club. Getting ready for tonight.”
Jimmy Jay nodded. He got right to the point. “We want you to come home. We are a family. Calvin needs you. So do I.”
At least she had the decency to look ashamed. Her eyes filled. She gazed at Jimmy Jay, then Calvin. Then she shook her head.
“Why not?”
“Remember what I told you the first time we met?”
“You told me a lot of things.”
“I need to sing, Jimmy Jay. And Billy’s gonna make me a star.”
Jimmy Jay saw the determination on her face, as raw as the first time he’d met her. His heart cracked, but he struggled to conceal his grief. He might have lost her, but Calvin didn’t have to. “Take the boy. He needs his mama. I’ll – I’ll pay you for him, ‘ifin you want.”
“I’ll think about it.” Inez looked down at Calvin, trailed her fingers through his hair, and smiled. Calvin snuggled closer. “I’ll talk to Billy when he gets back.”
Jimmy Jay nodded. “I’ll leave the boy with you. I’ll pick him up at the club when you start your gig. We can talk more.”
Inez looked sad but grateful. Calvin looked thrilled.
***
Two hours later, the band had finished setting up but there was no sign of Inez. Or Billy Sykes. Or Calvin. Jimmy Jay saw the uneasiness on the musicians’ faces, heard one of them say, “Where are those damn fools?”
He retraced his steps to the Lincoln Hotel.
No one was behind the desk when Jimmy Jay got there. He went up the stairs and down the hall. Music blared out from Inez’s room. The radio. Benny Goodman’s orchestra, he thought. He was about to knock on the door when he saw something move at the other end of the hall. Something small. He wheeled around and squinted.
“Calvin? Is that you?”
The figure trotted toward him. Calvin, looking small and lonely.
“What you doin’ out here, son? Where’s your mama?”
Calvin didn’t say anything, just shrugged.
“Is she inside?” Jimmy Jay pointed to the door.
Calvin nodded.
“Is Sykes back?”
Calvin nodded again.
Jimmy Jay turned back to the door, leaned his ear against it. The music was loud. He knocked. No one answered. Probably couldn’t hear him above the music. He knocked again, and when no one responded, started to push against the door.
“Inez, Sykes…. Open up!”
Nothing. Except the music.
Jimmy Jay looked both ways down the hall, then threw his weight against the door. It almost gave. He backed up, turned sideways, and rammed himself against it again. This time the door gave, and Jimmy Jay burst into the room.
***
He was still holding the gun when the police arrived. Inez’s body was at the foot of the bed, but Sykes’ was half way to the door. A pool of blood was congealing under each of them.

1982: Chicago
Three weeks later, Jimmy Jay no longer had the strength to get out of bed. Calvin was putting in twelve-hour days. He knew it was an excuse for not dealing with his father, but he couldn’t bear to come home to a place where death hovered in the air.
One night, though, was different. As he trudged inside, Calvin heard music from upstairs. And laughter. When he climbed the steps, he saw that Jeanine had moved their stereo into Jimmy Jay’s room. An old album revolved on the turntable. His father was in bed, eyes closed, snapping his fingers. Jeanine was sitting in the chair smiling too, her head bobbing to the music. Calvin peered at the album cover. Chess Records. Muddy Waters.
His father opened his eyes. “Hey, Calvin.” His face was wreathed in smiles. “There ain’t nothing like Muddy for an old soul. With Willie Dixon and Howlin’ Wolf on back up. Lord, it makes me see the gates of heaven.”
“Don’t talk that way, Dad.”
Jimmy Jay dismissed him with a wave of his hand. When the song came to an end, Calvin lifted the needle and turned off the stereo. Jeanine went downstairs, claiming dishes that needed to be washed.
“Calvin,” his father said, “We can’t put it off no more. It’s time to talk about the arrangements.”
Calvin stiffened. He dug in his pocket for his Luckys, pulled one out and lit it. He sat in the chair. “I don’t know why you want to be buried there.”
His father eyed him. “She was my wife, Calvin. And your mama.”
“She was white trash!” Calvin exhaled a cloud of white smoke. “White trailer trash.”
“Don’t you ever talk that way ‘bout your mama!” His father’s voice was unexpectedly strong. “And she was from the mountains of Tennessee, boy,” his father added. “The Smoky Mountains.”
But Calvin wasn’t mollified. “She ran out on us. You and me. She left us. And for what?”
His father just looked at him. Then he turned his head toward the window. “She was my woman,” he said quietly, his burst of energy now dissipated. “And I was her sweet man.”
Calvin felt his stomach pitch. The black hole was opening up again, and all he wanted to do was jump in and let it consume him. He stubbed out his cigarette, letting the window fan clear the smoke. Jeanine ran it all the time, even though it didn’t do much cooling. Beads of sweat popped out on his forehead .
“I still miss her, son.”
Calvin swallowed. “Pop, don’t.”
“I ain’t got no regrets.” His father said. “At now, in a little while, if the good Lord is willin’, I’ll see her again.”
Calvin’s throat got hot. He felt tears gather at the back of his eyes. He tried to blink them away hoping his father wouldn’t notice. But he did.
“Why you crying, Calvin? You’re a good son. And Jeanine is a good woman. She been taking good care of me.”
“It’s not that.” The words spilled out.
His father cocked his head. The slight movement seemed to require more energy than he could muster.
“I – I got to tell you something.”
His father’s body might be wasted, but his soul seemed to expand. His eyes grew huge, taking over his entire face. “What’s that, son?”
The black hole widened. Calvin had to take the plunge. “That – that night...” Calvin’s words were heavy and sluggish, as if the hole was already sucking him down. “The night mama died ….” Calvin whispered. “It was my fault. I killed Mama.”
An odd look registered on Jimmy Jay’s face.
“After you left …” Calvin’s voice was flat and hard.“… Mama sang to me. And hugged me. It felt – so good... So right.”
“Your mama had the voice of an angel.”
Calvin held his hand up to stop him. “Then Billy Sykes come back. He was pissed when he saw me. ‘What’s that kid doing here?’ He yelled. He and Mama -- well, she told him she wanted to take me with them. Sykes wouldn’t have none of it. ‘Are you crazy?” He said. ‘It’s bad enough that you’re a hillbilly. And part Injun. I ain’t taking your nigger kid, too. Get rid of him.’
“Mama begged him. ‘He won’t be no trouble,’ she kept saying and looked at me. “Will you, sweet man?”
“But Sykes kept saying no. ‘I put too much of my money in you to throw it away. What are people gonna think when they see you with a nigger kid?’
“Mama and me were on the bed. She was hugging me real tight. ‘I want my son,’ she said.
“’He’ll be in the way,’ Sykes said. “You want to be a star? You got to make a choice. Me or the kid.’”
Jimmy Jay didn’t say anything.
Calvin shuddered. “Mama said, ‘Don’t make me do that. I’m his Mama!’”
“’Then I’ll make the choice for you.’ Sykes says. And he pulls out a gun and aims it at my head.’” Calvin looked at the floor.
“What happened then, son?” Jimmy Jay asked, his voice almost as flat as Calvin’s.
Calvin covered his eyes with his hand. “Mama got up from the bed. She looked scared. ‘All right. All right. Put that gun away, Billy. I’ll send Calvin back to his Daddy. Just put the gun away. Before someone gets hurt.’ Then she looked from me to Sykes. She didn’t say nothing more.”
Calvin pressed his lips together. He couldn’t look at his father, but he knew his father was staring at him.
“Sykes started to put the gun away, but then -- I don’t know, Pop -- something came over me. I jumped up and tackled Sykes. Right there in the room.” He hesitated. “The gun went off. And Mama dropped off the end of the bed. Just dropped dead right in front of me.”
His father whispered. “And then?”
“Sykes was like a crazy man. It was like he couldn’t believe what happened. He started screaming, first at mama. Kept telling her to get up and stop foolin’ around. But she didn’t, Pop. She never got up.” Calvin’s voice cracked. “Then he dropped the gun and started for the door. He was gonna take off! Just leave her there.” Calvin paused again. “I just couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t. When he was half way to the door, I picked up the gun and shot him in the back.”
Calvin felt tears streaming down his face.
Jimmy Jay, his eyes veiled, let out a quiet breath. Calvin heard the hum of traffic through the window above the fan.
After a long time, Calvin said haltingly, “I guess it’s time to go to the police.”
“You won’t do nothing of the kind, son.” His father raised himself on one elbow. “I already done the time. For both of us. And…” His features softened. “…I figured out what happened a long time ago.”
“You knew?” Calvin’s stomach turned over. “How?”
“There was no way your mama could do anything to hurt you. Or you her. I knew it had to be an accident. At least with her. And Sykes… well…” Jimmy Jay shrugged as if it didn’t matter.
“You knew? All these years?” Calvin felt his features contort with anguish. “I killed them, and you took the rap for me?”
Jimmy Jay nodded. “And I’d do it all over again.”
Calvin searched his father’s face for an explanation. The silence pressed in.
“You were just a boy,” Jimmy Jay finally said, gazing at him with an expression of infinite sadness, compassion, and love. “I done the time for you both…so you would grow up and turn into her sweet man. Now…” He paused. “We got to get back to that plannin.’ The Lord ‘ll be givin’ Inez back her other sweet man, and I needs to be ready. We still got a lot of music to make together.”

THE END

The Day Miriam Hirsch Disappeared is a short story from the collection Nice Girl Does Noir I by Libby Fischer Hellmann (http://www.libbyhellmann.com).

THE DAY MIRIAM HIRSCH DISAPPEARED

The day Miriam Hirsch disappeared was so hot you could almost see the sidewalk blister and sweat. It was summer, 1938, and I'd been hanging around with Barney Teitelman in Lawndale, the Jewish neighborhood on Chicago's west side. Barney's parents owned a restaurant and rooming house near Roosevelt and Kedzie. Miriam rented a room on the third floor. She was a looker, as my father would say, although if he knew his only son was spending that much time with Barney he'd have kittens.
You see, we lived in Hyde Park, a few miles and a universe away from Lawndale. We were German Jews; the Teitelmans weren't. They were from Russia, or Lithuania, or one of those other countries with "ia" at the end of them, and what separated us wasn't just the Austro-Hungarian Empire. We were cultured, assimilated. They were rabble. We had come over before the Civil War; they poured in at the end of the last century. We were merchants, doctors, lawyers. They worked in factories, sweat shops, and, well, restaurants. In fact, when my father was being especially snooty, he'd ask which delicatessen their family owned. I, of course, disagreed with my parents. The Teitelmans talked louder and laughed more, and Mrs. T made a hell of a Shabbos brisket.
Barney and I had met by accident the previous May. We were waiting for the bus outside the College of Jewish Studies near the Loop, both of us in bowties and yarmulkes. My parents had sent me there to "enrich" my Jewish heritage. I guess Barney's did too. We stared warily at each other for a few minutes, like dogs sniffing each other out. Then I offered him a piece of Bazooka. He took it. We were best friends.
He only came to my house once. The frosty reception my mother gave him, after he told her where he lived, was enough. There wasn't much action in Hyde Park anyway. We tried to sucker the Weinstein girls into a game of strip poker behind the rocks at the Fifty-Seventh Street beach, but they gave us the brush off. We didn't care. They were ugly. By June I was taking the Cottage Grove street-car to Roosevelt and transferring west to Lawndale as often as possible.
The first time I saw Miriam, Barney and I were wolfing down brisket sandwiches in the restaurant; I could feel gravy dribbling past my chin. I heard a rustle, turned around. She was walking past our table. No, more like gliding. Dressed in a pearly gown that swept to her feet, she was perfectly proportioned, with a waist so tiny that my hands ached to encircle it, and such a generously endowed bosom that my hands ached -- well, you get the idea.
Her hair was gold, her lips red, and she had the most enormous gray eyes I'd ever seen. A guy could lose his way in them. Especially a fifteen year old. My mouth dropped to my chin; gravy stained my shirt. She was even carrying a parasol. I was in love.
There weren't many people in the restaurant that day, but you could feel the collective hush as she passed through. It was as if her presence had struck us dumb, and we were compelled to stare. As her skirt brushed our table, she cast a dazzling smile on Barney. He turned crimson. Then she was gone. The voltage in the air ebbed, and I heard the clink of silverware as people started to live, breathe, and eat again.
"So, who the hell was that?" I said, in my best tough guy tone.
Barney looked me over, knew I was bluffing. "Wouldn't you like to know?"
I leaned across the table and grabbed Barney's collar. "You don't tell me, Barney Teitelman, I'll tell your parents what you were trying to do to Dina Preis behind the shul last Saturday."
"You wouldn't." He didn't sound convinced.
I clutched his shirt tighter. "You got five seconds."
Barney's eyes narrowed. I guess he figured he'd better give me something. "All's I'll say is she's not for the likes of you, Jake Forman."
I dropped my hold on Barney's neck and jumped up from the table. "Mrs. T? I have something to tell you." I headed toward the kitchen.
"All right already," Barney whined. "Don't go up the wall. She's Miriam Hirsch. She's an actress with the Yiddish theater."
"When did she show up?"
"Couple days ago."
Most of the actresses at the Yiddish theater were from Eastern Europe, but Hirsch was a German name. She and I had something in common already. Then I chastised myself for doing the same thing as my parents.
"I'm gonna be an actor," I said.
Barney balled his napkin up and threw it at me.

***
Apparently, I wasn't the only one Miriam impressed. The next afternoon, as we were hanging out the window trying to blow cigarette smoke into the street instead of the Teitelman's living room, Miriam came out the front door. Sun-baked heat hung in the air like a blanket, and she opened her parasol to protect her head. Half-way up, it got stuck. I was about to run down and offer my assistance when Skull cut in front of her.
Ben Skulnick, or Skull, as we called him, hung out at Davy Miller's gym and pool hall. The Miller brothers were the closest thing Lawndale had to gangsters. They'd moved over from Maxwell Street a few years earlier and built a restaurant and gambling casino next to the gym. Covering all the bases, I guess. Except the type of people who frequented the place weren't exactly high society.
Not that the Miller Boys didn't have their fans. It was Davy Miller's gang who fought the Uptown goyim in the twenties so that Jews could use Clarendon Beach, and it was his gang who kept all the Yeshivah-buchers, religious students, safe from the Irish street gangs. The scuttlebutt these days was they were going after Nazi sympathizers on the north side. Whatever the truth, Davy Miller and his crew were proof that Jewish boys weren't sissies, a myth we were all eager to dispel.
"Look at that, Barney," I said, my eyes riveted on the scene below us.
"I see."
Tall and dark, Skull cut a dashing figure. He was probably running numbers, greasing palms, and taking cuts off the locals in the area, but with his well-trimmed whiskers, neatly pressed shirt, and Italian suit, he looked like a successful businessman, not a thug. He wore a hat too, a snap-brimmed Fedora, and moved with a sinewy grace, like a cat stalking its prey. No one knew where he came from.
"He's gonna make a play for her." I wasn't sure if I was devastated or curious.
"Do you blame him?"
We watched as he struggled with Miriam's parasol, opened it, and presented it back to her with a flourish. Before she disappeared underneath its shade, I saw the smile she gave him. And the lazy, appraising smile he gave back.
"You see that, Jake?"
I swallowed.
"Give it up, pal. You're way out of your league."
By the following week, Skull was dropping by the restaurant every afternoon. He'd order a glass of iced tea which he tipped plenty for, but never drank. Sometimes he'd grab a game of gin rummy in the back room, but mostly he checked his watch every few minutes. Around two, he'd make sure to bump into Miriam and walk her to rehearsal. And back home again later.
One evening he walked her all the way up to the third floor. That was the last we saw of them all night. Of course, Barney and I snuck up to the third floor landing, but all we heard were strains of "Don't Be That Way" wafting down the hall from her radio. Benny Goodman. Barney dragged me back downstairs.
But I hadn't lost all hope. When Miriam's show opened, we started to hang around the stage door of Douglas Park Auditorium to catch a glimpse of her. Skull did too. When she came out, sometimes with her stage make-up still on, he would offer her his arm and they'd saunter down the street together. Sometimes they stopped for ice-cream or a sandwich at Carl's Deli. On Sundays, they headed over to the roof of the Jewish People's Institute to dance. Even at a distance, you could feel the sparks fly between them. When they smiled at each other or danced the two step, it broke my heart. I was jealous. I was in love -- with both of them. They were the epitome of glamour. They were swell. With bells on.
One night, though, was different.
"No, Skull, I won't do it." Miriam stared straight ahead as they stepped through the stage door. "Stop asking me."
There was a gleam in Skull's eye. "Oh come on, baby, it's only for a little while."
"No." Miriam walked three steps ahead of him.
"But you're the only one who can. You speak their language."
"I don't care."
He stopped short. "How can you say that?"
"You have some chutzpah. How can you ask me to – well, to do something like that?" She whipped around to face him, her eyes flashing. Barney and I flattened ourselves against a building.
Skull backed off. His voice grew as soft as cotton. Wheedling. "You love me, don't you baby?"
She looked at him. She kept her mouth shut, but her eyes, as luminous as waves on the moonlit lake, said it all.
Skull moved in for the kill. He pushed a lock of hair off her forehead. "All I need is a little information. Then you can stop. Please. Do it for me.” He paused. “For us."
Miriam pursed her lips, and I thought she was going to cry. Then, she sagged against Skull, as if he had somehow managed to squeeze all the air out of her.
Skull grinned and pulled her close, planted a victory kiss on her lips. "That's my baby."
She buried her head in his shoulder. We didn't hear her reply.

***

Whatever Miriam agreed to that night must not have lasted long, because we never saw them together again. Skull didn't come around to Teitelmans any more, and he didn't show up at the auditorium. Miriam came and went by herself. Occasionally, she hailed a cab and never came home at all. It was strange, and I was confused and angry. What had Skull asked her to do? It had to be something so evil that her only recourse was to break up with him.
A week later, on an afternoon so humid that nothing felt dry, Barney and I lugged groceries past the banks on the corner. Across the street we spotted Skull getting his shoes shined. He was reading a newspaper and scowling. When he saw us he tipped his hat. Barney and I glanced at each other. Did he really mean us?
As if to answer our question, he called over to us. "Hey, Teitelman."
Barney nodded tentatively.
Skull dropped a buck in the shoeshine guy's box, overtipping as usual, and crossed the street.
"You guys been following me for a while, haven't you?"
I swallowed. Here it comes. Our first real conversation, and he's gonna tell us to butt out.
"I'm glad I run into youse. I've been meaning to call. Are youse -- young gentlemen interested in a business proposition?"
My jaw dropped to my chest.
He squinted at us. "My business in other parts of the city has picked up recently and requires my -- my presence there. But I still need some --whadd'ya call it -- some representation here. You guys interested?" He yanked his thumb toward our bags of groceries. "Pays better than that."
I looked at Barney, then at Skull, trying to mask my excitement with a shrug. It didn't work. A soft yelp escaped my mouth.
"Good. Come around to Miller's at three." Skull turned on his heel, dropping the paper in the trash on the corner. I glanced at the headline -- something about hooligans throwing rocks at a group of German-American Bund members on the north side.
The long and the short of it was that Skull wanted us to do errands for him in the neighborhood. Nothing major, just running messages to Zookie the Bookie and picking up envelopes from some of the shops. At first he came with us to show us the ropes. Then we were on our own.
It was a fair trade off. We didn't have Miriam, but we did have Skull. In some ways, it was better. We were important. Even the guys in the pool hall nodded to us after a while. And we were making great money. Almost ten bucks a day. Barney and I made up new names for each other. I was Jake the Snake; he was Barney Bow-Tie.
On the days Skull was with us, I watched him operate. He was smooth. He’d flash one of his lazy smiles, and even the people he was bilking smiled back. Especially the ladies. The only time he lost his cool was the afternoon we passed Miriam. She was crossing the street to catch a cab. Their eyes met, and I thought I saw a look of infinite sadness, passion, and what-might-have-been pass between them. How could it be over, with looks like that?

***

I should have known it wouldn't last. One morning in late July my mother and father woke me up. Poised for attack, they stood at the foot of my bed.
"Jacob, you have some explaining to do." My mother's eyes were cold steel.
I tried to play dumb. "What's that, Ma?" I yawned. Slowly.
"Just exactly what have you been doing in Lawndale?"
"What do you mean?"
"Jacob, don't try to weasel your way out of this one." My father glared. "Henry Solomon saw you outside Davy Miller's the other day. How long have you been consorting with gangsters?"
"Gangsters? What gangsters?"
My father cut me off. "You want to play it that way? Fine. You're forbidden to go there anymore."
"But Barney's my best friend."
"He's a bad influence. They all are." My father wheeled around as if there was nothing more to say.
"But I've got a job. I'm making good money."
"Good money?" My father whipped back around. His face was purple. "That kind of money you don't need. You want a job, you work in Kahn's bakery. It was good enough for me -- it'll do for you."
I wanted to ask him why he figured Henry Solomon, one of our most respectable Hyde Park neighbors, was over in Lawndale, but somehow I didn't think the time was right.

***

If the boredom didn't get me, the pretense did. Life in Hyde Park was intolerable. And hot. Not even a wisp of a breeze fluttered through the curtains of our wide-open windows. About a week later, it got so bad even my parents took off for the Michigan shore. I pled a toothache. As soon as they left, not without suspicious glances at the icepack clamped to my cheek, I hopped the street-car over to Lawndale. Mrs. Teitelman was washing the floor of the restaurant.
"Where have you been, Jake? Barney's at a concert in Douglas Park. You just missed him."
"I'll wait." I looked around. The place was empty. I snuck a glance at the door leading to the stairs.
"How are things?"
Mrs. Teitelman followed my gaze. She shrugged, a grim set to her mouth.
"Did Skull come back?"
Another shrug.
I was just breaking out a bottle of seltzer when the door to the stairs opened, and a man crossed the restaurant. He had blond whiskers, a round red face, and an odd twitch in one eye. He didn't look Jewish. He hurried across the room, staring straight ahead, as if he knew he didn't belong and wanted to get out fast.
A few minutes later, Miriam skipped down the steps, her smile as bright as a box of new Shabbos candles. I froze. Who was this impostor? Where was Skull? I felt betrayed. She waved at me before gliding out the door.
Barney got back from the park around four.
"What's been going on around here?" I asked
"I don't know." He hung his head as if he were responsible for the turn of events.
"Didn't they get back together?"
"Nope. He hasn't been here at all. In fact --"
"What?" I was starting to feel panicky.
"I dunno, Jake. Sometimes she doesn't come home at night. And then one time, her eyes were all red rimmed like she'd been crying, and her dress was ripped. She didn't even have her key. My father had to let her in."
"Jesus, Barney."
He nodded. "And when she's here, she's 'entertaining' in her room. But it isn’t Skull."
"The guy I saw earlier?"
"Yeah. I think he's goyim. Mother's ready to kick her out."
I turned to Mrs. T in desperation. "You can't do that. Where will she go?"
Mrs. T just looked at me. "Jacob, there are some things you're still too young to understand."
That afternoon we ran down to the pool hall and caught up with Skull at Miller's. We were sweating like pigs, but he was cool and dapper.
"Where ya bin, Snake?" He grinned.
"I was grounded, Skull. My parents." I rolled my eyes.
He looked at me speculatively. "Your parents must be real Nervous Nellies." "They're German," I admitted.
"So are Miriam's," Skull said. "Crabbers. Stiff as sandpaper."
I took that as an opening and screwed up my courage. "How is Miriam these days?"
He ignored my question. "You know, it's a damn shame about you Yeccas." That was slang for German Jews. "One of the best guys I ever heard of was Arnold Rothstein. Practically started the Mafia. His family was German, but he was tops. You know what he did?"
I shook my head.
"Hustled the most famous pool shark in the country. Beat his tuckus off. And he hardly even played pool."
"How'd he do that?"
"Kept the guy up until he won. Forty hours with no sleep." Skull winked at me. "Rothstein had style too. He ran a casino, moved a lot of booze, financed all sorts of capers. But he always wore a tux and he danced with the ladies every night." Skull's chin dipped. "He was -- whadda'ya call it -- a smooth operator."
I wanted to ask him more about Miriam, but I didn't have the guts.

***

Mrs. T never had the chance to evict Miriam. She never came back. Three days later they found her body in an alley off Lincoln Avenue. The German part of town. She'd been raped, beaten, strangled. The cops identified her by her purse.
A tough-looking Irish detective, Patrick O'Meara, came around to question us. Mrs. T told him everything she knew. About the theater. Skull. The man with the blond whiskers.
O'Meara hustled over to Davy Miller's to question Skull. We trailed behind. It was the first time we'd seen him ourselves in a couple of days. He looked bad. His shirt was wrinkled, he hadn't shaved, and his bloodshot eyes kept darting around the room. His mood seemed to shift from arrogance to desolation, and his answers were clipped and curt.
I began to think the worst. Miriam and Skull broke up. Miriam started up with other men. Skull must have been crazy with jealousy and he snapped. It looked that way to me. And to O'Meara. He wasn't nice to Skull. Told him not to go anywhere for a while.
Of course, the next morning Skull was gone, and no one knew where. Or they weren't telling. That was the only proof I needed. He killed Miriam. Maybe my parents were right after all. Lawndale people were different.
Barney and I were puzzling it over at the restaurant when O'Meara showed up. Mrs. T was upstairs getting dressed, so he nabbed Joey, the head waiter.
"Ever seen this guy?" He showed him a picture.
Joey shook his head.
"You sure?" You could tell O'Meara didn't believe him. "Seen Skulnick recently?"
Joey kept wiping glasses with his towel. "Nope."
O'Meara turned around, saw us sitting at a table. We froze. His eyes narrowed, then he came over. I tried to look nonchalant.
"Your turn, boys. You ever seen this guy?"
He threw the picture down on our table.
I could hear Barney's sharp intake of breath. It was the man with the blond whiskers. I tried to be blasé.
But O'Meara was patient. Eventually, my eyes drifted back to the picture. O'Meara was waiting.
"So what's it gonna be, boys?"
"Who is he?" I croaked.
"You seen him?"
I met O'Meara's eyes and nodded.
"Name's Peter Schultz. They call him Twitch. Some kind of problem around his eye." O'Meara stared at me. I looked at the floor. I knew the name. Peter Schultz was the head of the German-American Bund in Chicago. They were Nazis.
"He was murdered last night," O'Meara said. "We found him in the same alley they found the girl."
Barney made a mewling sound in his throat. I felt old.
"He was stabbed about fifteen times, then strangled. They got him pretty good."
I didn't move.
O'Meara kept the pressure on. "You know, it's interesting. With him gone, their whole organization is up for grabs, you know?"
I didn't say anything, but the pieces were finally coming together. I knew who killed Miriam, and I knew who killed Schultz. I wondered if O'Meara knew too.
O'Meara went on. "Someone—someone close to him—knew the Kraut's habits so well they even knew what time he took a dump. They got him on his way to a Bund meeting. You have any idea who that might be?"
I kept my mouth shut.
He shook his head. “"Well, whoever it was, now there's one less Nazi in the world." O'Meara stood up, put his hat on, threw us a world-weary glance. "They say all's fair in love and war. What do you think?"
What I thought was that I may have been wrong about Skull all along; that this was more about war than love. There may have been a reason why Miriam was dating Schultz; why Skull was pressuring Miriam to get information she didn’t want to do. While Skull used Miriam, he was also her avenger.
“I’ll be seeing you boys around,” O’Meara said, then stepped through the door and left.
***

Skull never came back to Lawndale. At least we never heard from him again. I didn't hang around much either. School started, and I got busy with homework and sports. I met a girl at Hyde Park High, Barbara Steinberg. She was pretty nice. Barney called a couple of times, but neither of us pushed it. Other things were fast taking precedence. Hitler annexed Austria, and the news coming out of Europe was grim. No one seemed to remember the day Miriam Hirsch disappeared.

THE END

By Maxwell Dudeck

Last time, in Vigilant:

“… Leaning against the rotting wallpaper I wondered if the girl had hit me somehow, it had been dark and I’d only seen her face. Maybe she was double jointed. I wanted to blame her; she was the only face that I had to blame. That fucking cunt had hit me with a golf club and then she took my lady from me, my Hecate. I almost had myself believing it by the time the Marlboro had burned down to my knuckles. I tossed it into the blood and listened to it hiss. I imagined that it was the blood hissing, and not the cigarette, but I couldn’t tell for sure.
Right now, I’ve got to get out of here. That’s the first move. Then, we’ll see. I can tell you it won’t be pretty. Blood will have blood – Willie Shakespeare wrote that, and he never even met me.”

Click here to read Part I

Part II

My name is Lazlow, and there are a lot of names for what I do. My business card says Private Investigator, and I do a little of that, too. My office is a cubicle in the headquarters of the Vigilant Industries Security Team, or V.I.S.T. for short. Seriously, it’s on my business card; it’s on all of our business cards. After all, we are professionals, industry leaders in parking garage and liquor store security. V-I-S-T spells professional. Never mind that I got my License from the digital equivalent of a box of crackerjacks. Never mind that V.I.S.T. “HQ” is 2000 square feet of third-rate office space in a lousy part of the strip, never mind that we share a smoking room with the Kentucky Bell; the godforsaken offspring of some fast food comedian’s tragicomedy. O God, O God, how weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world!1

I hate my fucking job, and I hate my fucking life. But right now I don’t have that many other options, so I’m a V.I.S.T. Private Eye. I work on commission, but underneath the V.I.S.T. umbrella, and I give them a percentage. A steep percentage. Mainly, I take twenty-five dollars an hour from late-stage alcoholic pensioners to follow their cows of wives from Pizza Hut to Wal-Mart and keep an eye out for any fornication in their rented Geo Trackers. It’s the opposite of glamorous but my cut is twenty-five goddamned dollars an hour for little to no actual work, in the biblical sense.

Three days before tee-off at the Lazlow Cup (that’s what I’m calling the incident with the golf club now) I’d been sitting at my tiny desk washing down my balanced breakfast of a custom-made fried chicken burrito and Canadian Club whiskey with a second serving from the “whiskey” section of the food pyramid.

“You’re Lazlow?” A girls voice, behind me. It sounded genuinely surprised. I finished my swig and set the bottle down with a hard swallow.

“I know it’s hard to believe,” I said, without turning around, “but you’re looking at him.” There wasn’t a response so I asked her who she was and what she wanted.
“I brought you a burrito, with chicken in it.” She said, and I heard the plastic bag she brought it in rustle.

Let me explain something to you. I like to have a good time, and I have a gun. Hell, my gun has a NAME. I’m not a dangerous man, unless you cross me, but as I said earlier, I have a gun, and you can get quite the rise out of people if you surprise them with it. Also, there are a lot of people who would like to kill me. So, when I swiveled the chair around I had my darling Lady Hecate level and cocked.

She jumped a little but didn’t scream. It was funny, but I couldn’t help feeling a little bad. She was young, and clearly scared.

The girl was what my twelve-year-old daughter would have told me they called gothic, if I still talked to my daughter. Unfortunately for me, my ex wife had decided Jimmy the Coke Dealer wasn’t a better paternal figure and left for Tijuana.

Anyhow she was the sort of pale that’s either vampire or make-up induced, and she was trying hard for the vampire side of it. Her hair was straight black and she has smeared, dark eyeliner that looked a little too much like a pair fresh shiners. The best part was the blazing yellow and spanking clean Kentucky Bell jumpsuit. She had two nametags, one with the colonel smiling like an idiot in his Sunday best, the other with the crooked mission bell. They both said Liza. I’d seen her often at Kentucky Bell, I spent a lot of time there, but I’d never looked at her before.

“Why are you pointing a gun at me?” I put her at 17. She sounded scared, as might be reasonably expected.

“It’s just a toy, kid. I didn’t mean to scare you.” I lied. Twice, actually. I pointed at the center of her chest and squeezed the trigger. She flinched hard and yelped a little bit, but kept it pretty quiet, which I appreciated. Hecate’s hammer came down with an evil click, but that was all. You weren’t allowed to have loaded guns on V.I.S.T. property.

“You’re a real asshole.” And she threw the burrito bag in the trash can. No harm done, I’d fish it out later. I gave her my best deadman’s stare. Liza had to try hard not to blink.

“I was hungry. I’ll take a raincheck on that.”

“Whatever.”

There was an awkward pause before I reminded her that she had come to see me. She kept looking out over the low walls like she was watching for something. I realized that she had been scared before I pulled that stunt with Hecate.2

“Aren’t you a private eye? Isn’t there somewhere more private we could talk?” And clever, too.

“I am a Private Eye, and this is my office.” I pointed towards the little stool where I received my clients. “If you sit down, the walls get taller.” I thought maybe she’d smile at that one but she just looked at me blankly and sat down without thanking me. Fucking peasant. I watched her poke through my cubicle with her eyes.

“You know, for a private eye you’re pretty damn corporate.” She smiled at her own jibe, a smile that would have been pretty if it hadn’t have been so haunted. I liked her a little bit so far but I wasn’t gonna put up with a punk ass teenager in my own cubicle. Not this cubicle, sister.

“Show me the money, now.” I said. It confused her a little.

“What?”

“I said, show me the money.” She cocked her head to the side and knitted her brows in a very grownup expression of I-don’t-know-what-the-fuck-you’re-talking-about. “Listen. I’m a business man, and my time is my money. So before I listen to a goddamn other word I want to see that you’re here to do business too. Hail Caesar.”

Liza thought that one over and decided it made sense. She reached into her purse and picked up a fat little stack of bills wrapped neatly in brown sandwich bags. She practically stoned me with it, but I managed to catch it. I did my best to weigh it in my hands. It was heavy.

“$2000 in twenties.” Yeah, the weight was right for it. “You want to open it and check?” I should have, just to put her in her place, but a man forgets that sort of thing when he’s confronted with large stacks of paper money. I just sat there and turned the weight in my hand.

“I won’t kill anyone. No exceptions.” Not for only $2000, not anymore.

She laughed a little bit at that. “I don’t want you to kill anyone, but I’d bet there are exceptions. I want you to follow someone for a couple days.”

Cake. Easy money. The usual gig for a lot more than the usual bill. I’d keep this under the table, too. V.I.S.T. can suck it.

“I think I can do that.” I said solemnly. “Who?”

“Me.”

“What do you mean? You want protection?” That would be a little more work; it’s harder to fake.

“No. I mean I want you to follow me. If I wanted protection I would have asked for it, I’ve seen the movies. I want you to follow me, and only if you can promise me I won’t be able to see you. I have to know that you’re there but not be able to see you, even if I look.”

“Uh huh, and why’s that?” It came out sourer than I’d meant, like I thought she was pulling my leg. She looked straight at me with cold, settled eyes that seemed much older. But I didn’t let her answer: “It’s not easy to tail someone when they know they’re being tailed. It may cost a little more.” But the $2000 would cover that and a lot more, if that’s what she wanted. She shot me with a .38 caliber hollowpoint of a stare, and I let up.

“But a couple grand should cover it, for a few days.” I said. She nodded tensely; if she was relieved you wouldn’t say she was visibly. “I still have to know why, or I’m not doing it.” And if you lie to me, I’ll find out, and I’ll quit. And you’ll be out a cool two G’s.” I said.

She hesitated, but only for an instant: “Because if I can see you, he’ll see you. And if he sees you he’ll kill us both.”

Just the sentence and the deadly-serious way she said it pushed thick syringes of adrenaline into my veins. I felt like my dick might get hard. It didn’t, thank God, but she must have seen right through me. Such as we are made up, such we be.3

1. Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2, Line 132.
2. Probably after H., the queen of witches in Macbeth; also a Titan in Classical Greek myth. –Ed.
3. Twelfth Night, misquoted as “up” instead of “of” –Ed.

By Maxwell Dudeck

I must have caught the club right in the temple. I remember her pale face against the inky blackness of the room, then a flash of searing white. And then darkness; total and complete darkness for what may have been one second or six hundred. When I remembered that I had a body it felt like it had been sick for days, had died on Thursday, and had been tortured in hell for an extended weekend.

When I could see, it was through a kaleidoscope; the pieces of the room and the shadow of her face ordering themselves through pulses of intense red and neon blue and radioactive green. Then the colors were gone and so was her face; and the gloom of the room shimmered in black and white, like a reflection on a cold lake through a thick midnight fog. It seemed cavernous, emptier than it had been.

And then I felt the floor beneath my skull and shoulder blades and knew that I was lying like a dirty suit on the rough, rotting boards, staring intently and without comprehension at the black void that climbed up the vaulting ceiling.

I lay still for a minute, planning my sit-up, and then pulled myself up with numb paws grasping at my knees. From the coarse-gravel groan that let itself out of my mouth, I remembered my voice. If it sounded like I’d had a rough day, I had.

I crawled to the cobwebbed baseboard of the plaster wall and leaned hard against it, like a sack of so many worm-eaten Idaho spuds. In my jacket I found cigarettes and my zippo, but my Hecate was gone, her holster hanging limp and useless. Two out of three ain’t bad, I thought.

As I lit the Marlboro the pinup on the zippo danced and I thought of the pale girl’s face. I could hold a pretty good picture of her for a few seconds if I concentrated, and then it’d shatter again, the way it had seemed to when I got hit by the golf club.
The Club. I could see what looked like it might have once been a pretty decent 3-wood in the flicker of the zippo, snapped in half like a matchstick. Something black and thick had grown around it in a grotesque slick. I’d seen enough of that particular brand of motor oil to know that it was blood. Blood. My blood. Fuck.

I touched my forehead too hard and felt a bomb go off, and the picture started to go fuzzy again. Sure enough, my fingers came back sticky red. The darker, sweet-smelling stuff that means you’re not just scratched.

The clues to the case: One bloody hand, my own. One broken fairway wood, not mine, in a puddle of half-dried blood; presumably mine. Elementary, my dear Watson. Someone who might have been but was not necessarily a very good golfer had put a hole in my fucking head with a golf club about five minutes ago. Maybe I’d pissed off Tiger Woods. Case closed.

Leaning against the rotting wallpaper I wondered if the girl had hit me somehow, it had been dark and I’d only seen her face. Maybe she was double jointed. I wanted to blame her; she was the only face that I had to blame. That fucking cunt had hit me with a golf club and then she took my lady from me, my Hecate. I almost had myself believing it by the time the Marlboro had burned down to my knuckles. I tossed it into the blood and listened to it hiss. I imagined that it was the blood hissing, and not the cigarette, but I couldn’t tell for sure.

Right now, I’ve got to get out of here. That’s the first move. Then, we’ll see. I can tell you it won’t be pretty. Blood will have blood – Willie Shakespeare wrote that, and he never even met me.

Tune in next week for the next installment of Vigilant by Maxwell Dudeck