Boink for Biodiversity

“Thank you for coming, Mr. Pillbottle.” Elizabeth Huffington-Huffington was thin as a Pocky Stick and had hair wispy as cotton candy. They say inbreeding caused the Habsburg chin. If that was the case, her forebears must have engaged in a lot of it because Elizabeth Huffington-Huffington had two of them. “Care for a sherry?”

“Sure.”

She motioned to the butler who brought two glasses. The sherry was sweet and cloying as Ms. Huffington-Huffington’s perfume.

“A sex cult took my niece and I want her back.” Ms. Huffington-Huffington sipped her ghastly sherry. “It’s called Boink for Biodiversity. They make porn and donate the proceeds to save the planet or some such nonsense.”

“Shouldn’t she make her own choices?” I looked for someplace to ditch my drink but setting it on the eucalyptus-wood desk would leave a ring so I downed it in one gulp just to get rid of it.

“Oh, want another?” Elizabeth Huffington-Huffington snapped her fingers for the butler to bring me a refill. “Amanda’s been in and out of sanitariums for years. Despite the best medical care, she still suffers from delusions. In three months, she’ll be twenty-five. Then the trust fund will revert to her and we won’t be able to help her. How does a thousand dollars a day sound?”

“Better than ten-percent off at Denny’s.” I set down the sherry glass by the foot of my wingback chair.

“That depends, of course, on how much you order at Denny’s. Here are your plane tickets to Wyoming.” She handed me an envelope. “Our local contact will meet you at the airport.”

***

I spotted a Great Pyrenees Mountain Dog holding a placard with my name on it in the arrival hall at the Jackson airport. His coat was white and he had floppy ears and a long, broad muzzle. From his warm, brown eyes, I could tell he was gentle with children and devoted to his family but due to his size and strength would need lots of training and socialization. 

“You Morris Pillbottle?” he asked.

I nodded. “What’s your name, big fellow?”

“Grantham Snooterbox.”

“Who’s a good boy? Who’s a good boy?” I scratched him behind the ears.  “Are you related to the Snooterboxes of Penobscot, Maine?”

“No, those are New England Snooterboxes. I hail from the Rocky Mountain Snooterboxes,” he said with pride bordering on arrogance as if no canines who lived below five-thousand feet had the right to call themselves mountain dogs.

Tail wagging, he led me to a white Jeep Cherokee in the parking lot and got behind the wheel. I tossed my bag in the back seat and climbed in beside him. This raised several questions like how did his paws reach the gas pedal and how did a dog get a driver’s license in the first place? I wasn’t here to enforce Wyoming’s traffic laws so I sat back and gazed at the mountains that rose from the horizon like scores of high-rises made of Precambrian metamorphic rock. Snooterbox drove well for a dog except for his habit of sticking his head out the window.

When we turned onto the Belvedere’s access road, I was looking forward to a hot shower, a steak, and a little cable TV. Imagine my disappointment when Snooterbox passed the lobby and parked in by a doghouse in back. It was a wooden structure with a sloped roof and covered patio. Being built for a massive dog, there was plenty of room for an elephant or a blue whale but with Snooterbox inside it was too cramped for the two of us.

“We need to set out while we still have daylight left.” He saddled up with a backpack and pointed to mine.

I swapped my rubber-soled shoes for a pair of hiking boots and shouldered my pack.

“Better take this.” Snooterbox handed me a 10 mm Smith and Wesson. “That lentil shooter of yours will only make the bears angry.”

I holstered the pistol even though its recoil would make it impossible to hit the broad side of a zeppelin hanger even from the inside. At least, the noise might scare the bears away.

After a thirty-minute drive, we parked at the trailhead for Mt. Dagger. As soon as we stepped out, a group of sage grouse surrounded us

“Guard your car, mister?” the largest knucklehead asked. “Be a shame if your windshield wipers were gone when you came back.”

“Thanks for looking out for us.” Even though I hated getting shaken down, I handed him half a granola bar. “You’ll get the other half when we return.”

Not long after we started walking, we approached a chipmunk sitting by the path.

“Spare some cornflakes, mister?” When I shook my head and walked past, he said, “God bless.”

My hiking boot started chafing my heel. I sat on a rock, took my boot off, and covered the blister with a band aid. Wyoming had pretty scenery if you go for that kind of thing. Dogwoods and sagebrush had proliferated as ruthlessly as burger franchises. Only the aroma of bacon, eggs, and coffee could make the clean air smell better. Snooterbox rested his chin on my thigh and I scratched him behind the ears. When I stopped, he batted me with his big paw demanding more.

“See that?” I pointed to a turkey vulture circling like a police helicopter. 

“Yeah. He’s been tailing us for the past half hour. Nothing to do for now but keep going.” Snooterbox set off at a quick pace.

The trail grew steeper and sweat soaked my shirt under the backpack. The dry air was thinner than I was used to and I stopped frequently to drink water and catch my breath. I heard a godawful racket.

“My name is Zeke and my beak is orange. My voice it squeaks like a rusty door hinge.”

I looked up at a Steller’s jay beatboxing in a lodgepole pine. He wore blue, had his feathers cut in a mohawk, and had pierced his wing with a safety pin. 

“Better get your asses out of here. This is Sky Reapers’ turf. Yeah, I’m talking to you! Don’t you walk away from me!” the jay yelled at my back. “Hey, 1946 called! They want their trench coat back! Squawk! Squawk!”

Squadrons of jays leapt from the trees and commenced their bombing runs. Each dove at eighty degrees from the horizontal and pulled up with feet to spare as if Snooterbox and I were the aircraft carriers Akagi and Soryu. We had no choice but to retreat. By the time we made it back to cover, I looked like a statue covered with pigeon droppings.  

“If we can get past that clearing and into the tree line, we’d be okay,” Snooterbox said. “But we’re going to need help.” 

***

A dozen bald eagles turned and a lone osprey dropped a trout fillet onto the campfire’s embers when we approached.

“You boys look like you fell into a vat of organic fertilizer,” the biggest eagle said.

“Smell like it, too,” the osprey added.

“Maybe you’d better head off somewhere downwind,” the biggest added.

“Sorry.” Snooterbox lowered his head. “We were just trying to defend the reputation of America’s national bird. The jays said that you couldn’t stop a French grandmother with one leg from cooking you in orange sauce only you wouldn’t taste as good as a duck.” 

“Yeah!” I responded to Snooterbox’s cue. “They said they want to ban pickup trucks, serve vegan burgers in school, rename the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan after Nancy Pelosi, change the national anthem to ‘Born This Way,’ and put RuPaul’s picture on the twenty-dollar bill.”

The eagles’ white feathers turned crimson with rage.

“Let’s go!” The leader and the others took off.

Snooterbox gobbled the abandoned trout and we followed.

The eagles were powerful birds that could overpower anything in a dive but they were big and slow. At low altitudes, the jays outmaneuvered them, pecked them on the backs, and sent them fleeing like Huey helicopters from the U.S. embassy in Saigon. This was no concern to Snooterbox and me. The distraction was all we needed to slip past and continue on our way.

***

“Now Jade, I’m going over your performance review.” The bull elk examined the document he held in his hooves. “Appearance – good. Grooming – good. Customer satisfaction – poor. You know what I want you to do now, honey?” He waited for the cow to shake her head. “Get your ass out there and don’t come back until you earn me some tree bark!” The cows in the bull’s harem cowered while he threatened Jade with a diamond-tipped cane.

The bull called himself Hundred-Point Slim but he was neither slim nor had he a hundred points. He wore sunglasses, gold chains, platform shoes, and a purple, ankle-length coat made of velour. A homburg with a leopard-skin hatband perched between his antlers. 

“Snooterbox! Haven’t seen you since we ate those fermented gooseberries. Passed out in some camper’s tent. She scared me as much as I scared her.” Slim scratched Snooterbox under the chin. “Who’s your friend?”

“This is Morris Pillbottle. He’s a private detective.”

“Any friend of yours is a friend of mine. Need a little female company? It’s on the house.” Slim motioned to a cow in shorts and a bustier. “Hey, Cocoa! Come over here and show my friends a good time!”

 “Lovely though she is, we have other business.” I showed Slim Amanda’s picture. “Have you seen this woman?”

“Oh, yeah. She and a bunch of hippies camped out about a year ago.” Slim lit a cigar and exhaled the smoke. “Couldn’t stand the winter, though. After the first snowfall, they headed home.”

“Thanks,” Snooterbox said. “We’d better check it out, anyway.”

“Much obliged.” I touched my hat brim and followed Snooterbox up the trail. 

After hiking for fifteen minutes, I heard a rustling in the bushes.

“Psst. Over here.” Jade called from between black hawthorns. “Slim’s lying. I saw that girl just days ago.”

“Where?” I asked.

“I’ll tell you if you make it worth my while.”

Snooterbox clawed some bark off a maple and returned with it in his jaws.

“Slim sent me and the others to their camp about a day’s walk up the trail. That girl and her friends made us do things, terrible things.” A branch cracked close by and Jade sprinted away.

***

Startled out of a dream, I sat up in my sleeping bag. We’d camped by a stream and dined on cowboy coffee and a trout that Snooterbox had caught in his jaws. I unzipped the tent flap and looked outside. The Milky Way gleamed like a Las Vegas casino in the crisp, cool air and our campfire had burned to embers. More disturbing were the yellow eyes gleaming from the shadows. Hackles raised, Snooterbox stood and let out an earthshaking bark. A gray wolf stepped forward to challenge him.

 “I like those backpacks.” The alpha wolf snarled showing a gang tattoo on his gums. “Give them to me and I might let you live.”

I reached into tent for the pistol.

“Leave it, Pillbottle.” Snooterbox snarled. “I got this.”

A half-dozen wolves emerged from the dogwoods to back up their ringleader.

“Stay out of this. He’s mine,” the alpha said.

“So, we meet again, Drool Follower.” Snooterbox circled the alpha. “Haven’t seen you since I sent you crying from your momma in Bozeman.”

“You don’t have a posse of ranchers to help you this time.” Drool Follower juked left and went for Snooterbox’s neck.

The big dog dodged and Drool Follower’s three-inch fangs closed on empty air. This gave Snooterbox an opening to snap the wolf’s spine by clamping his jaws behind Drool Follower’s neck. The wolf sidestepped but not before Snooterbox tore off one of his ears. Howling in rage the wolfpack advanced toward Snooterbox.

“I wouldn’t!” I leveled the pistol at the wolves and they cowered.

By now, both combatants were wounded. Blood smeared Snooterbox’s white fur and he limped on his left foreleg. He turned as if in agony. Sensing an easy kill, Drool Follower rushed in. Snooterbox evaded, knocked Drool Follower to the ground, and snarled, fangs ready to tear the alpha wolf’s throat.

“All right. All right. You beat me.” As Drool Follower and his crew slunk away, he muttered, “Next time, Snooterbox.”

***

“Give it to me, baby!” a woman moaned up ahead. “Give it to me!” 

Snooterbox and I crept forward and peered around the bend at the porn set in the clearing. A guy in overalls hitched his thumbs through his toolbelt as two naked women rolled around on a zebra-skin rug. 

“Somebody here have a clogged drain?” He dropped his toolbelt and then his pants but his pipe wrench was not up to spec. “Sorry, I need to understand my character’s motivation.”

“Cut!” eco-activist, Junichi Radler, yelled in a voice that would be at home in Berlin’s Little Tokyo. He had a nose like a schnitzel and skin the texture of vegetable tempura. “Your sadness about the plastics in the ocean causes you to seek comfort in women’s bodies.” He sighed. “Get the fluffer.”

Snooterbox and I stepped into the clearing and a half-dozen porn stars, Amanda among them, turned.

“Is this a bad time?” I asked. 

“We’re not auditioning right now,” a red fox holding a clipboard said before regrading Snooterbox. “Although I could make a personal exception for you, big boy.”

“We’re not here to audition.” Snooterbox hunched his shoulders and looked at his feet.

“That’s right.” Figuring the honest approach would get us nowhere, I put a hand on Snooterbox’s head to keep him quiet. “You’re not auditioning but I am. Let me introduce myself. My name is Pugsley Vauxhall and I produced such films as The French Erection, Sound of Pubic, and The Importance of Being Harnessed. I’m a fan, a big fan. Like you, I want to save the planet so I’m starting a venture in the Southern Hemisphere. It will be a reality show where the challenges are sexual in nature. We have local contestants lined up but a few cameos by your performers would give us major street cred. The lucky few will leave the winter cold to spend the southern summer on a tropical island by the Great Barrier Reef. Of course, we will compensate Boink for Biodiversity with a generous share of our profits. If there’s someplace to meet privately, we’d like to hear each of your reasons why you should appear Eco Porn Island.”

Radler escorted us to a set of camping chairs by some spindly tomato vines and a few emaciated corn stalks. The sound man brought some water and a bowl of kibble for Snooterbox. The first interviews were unimpressive. Male talent with stage names like Rod Cox and Dick Long bragged about their prowess. The women weren’t much better. While my erotic tastes ran vanilla, they described sex that brought chicken sashimi and sauerkraut ice cream to mind. After nine of these, it was Amanda’s turn.

“So, what’s the prize?” Amanda asked. She was short with wide hips and wore a sleeveless sweatshirt that gave generous glimpses of her tiny breasts. Acne decorated her cheeks, a nose ring pierced one nostril, and her dirty-blonde dreadlocks hung a little below her ears.

“The prize?” I replied.

“Yeah, what does the winner of your reality show get?”

“We haven’t decided between a Tesla or installing solar panels on the winner’s home,” I said. “I’m going to let you in on a secret but don’t tell anyone else. The real reason I’m here is that Quentin is making a movie about an eco-activist’s trial for torching a bunch of SUVs. Brad and Leonardo are already on board. Anyway, the casting director wants real activists for authenticity and your name came up. Maybe you could recite a few factoids about the climate crisis off the top of your head so we hear how you sound.”

“There will be more plastic than fish in the oceans by 2050. A third of arable land has been lost in the pat forty years. Ninety percent of large, predator fish are gone.”

“Convincing.” I looked at Snooterbox. “What do you think?”

“She might work,” he said.

“Here’s the thing.” I turned back to Amanda. “Quentin wants to get this project moving so we need to fly you out to Hollywood right away. There will be lots of preparation but don’t worry, Helmut is the best acting coach in the business. Now, this is just a supporting role but it will be a great stepping stone for a film career.”

“I don’t know,” Amanda said.

“I suppose we could try Greenpeace.” I sighed.

“Or Earth Liberation Front,” Snooterbox added.

“Well, thanks for your time.” I stood.

“All right. I’ll do it,” Amanda said. “But first you have to shoot a porn scene with me to prove you’re not a narc.”

***

“Honey, I’m home.” I let the elk carcass slip off my shoulder. Unfortunately, it belonged to Jade, the underperforming cow from Slim’s harem. “I brought us some meat.”

“I’m more interested in this meat.” Amanda stripped off her deerskin robe and reached between my legs. 

A typical amount of grunting, orifices, and fluids followed until Junichi Radler yelled, “Cut! It’s a wrap.”

The Boinkers roasted poor Jade over a campfire as a farewell feast for Amanda. The smell of wood smoke and barbecue in the clean, mountain air convinced all who’d known the elk to abandon their qualms about consuming the leftovers from a bestiality snuff flick. Claiming post-coital depression, I retired to my tent and ate a few saltines to settle my stomach.

***

The trip down the mountain beat up my knees up more than climbing it, probably due to using my legs to brake against gravity. In any case, Snooterbox led, Amanda followed, and I took up the rear.

“How does Quentin come up with such great dialog?” Amanda asked.

“Sounds like a bunch of stoners sitting around smoking dope. Doesn’t it?” I replied. “I think he comes up with a goofy idea and bats it around.”

“Like what?” she asked.

“Like, I once dated a girl named Anne Hedonia.”

“What did you two do for fun?”

“I drank beer and watched her do my taxes.”

“That’s enough!” Snooterbox shouted.

I looked up from my hiking boots and saw the .44 magnum revolver in his paw.

“What gives, Snooterbox?” I inched away Amanda to make shooting both of us harder.

“It’s the end of the line for you and little, miss heiress. Here’s how it’s gonna go down. Washed-up detective Morris Pillbottle murders Amanda in a fit of rage after learning she taped their sexual encounter and then kills himself out of shame.” Snooterbox turned to Amanda. “That’s right, honey. Morris isn’t a bigshot producer. He’s a private eye your aunt hired to take you back to the looney bin. Only, with both of you dead, she doesn’t have to worry about a sympathetic shrink letting you out some day.”

“But why, Snooterbox? I thought you were my buddy.”

“I’m nobody’s buddy. Sure, I liked humans once. I even put up with the doggy booties and sweaters. Then my owner had the vet replace my manhood with a pair of Ping-Pong balls as if I wouldn’t notice them clicking together when I ran. Since then, I’ve been out for revenge. Once the rich lady pays me off, I’ll hire a human to sleep on the floor and eat kibble while I dine on filet mignon. Say your prayers, Morris Pillbottle.” Snooterbox aimed his revolver at me.

I drew the 10 mm pistol and squeezed the trigger. It went click.

“Replaced the gunpowder in your bullets with jeweler’s rouge.” Snooterbox chuckled.

A howl came from the trees. Snooterbox turned as Drool Follower lunged. The revolver dropped from Snooterbox’s paw as wolf and dog merged into a flurry of fangs, fur, and blood. I scooped up the revolver, aimed, and fired. The bang startled birds out of the trees and I could feel the concussion of the .44 magnum’s blast wave in my chest. Snooterbox didn’t feel anything after the slug tore a fist-sized hole through his heart and lungs. Staring at his corpse I questioned my life choices. I was weary of trolling society’s seedy underbelly where even a dog can betray you. Drool Follower wiped Snooterbox’s blood off his muzzle, licked his paw, and loped away.

“He was right. Your aunt hired me to find you but I consider trying to murder me a breach of contract,” I said. “The way I see, all you have to do is stay out of sight for a few months until you get your inheritance. You can either go back to the Boinkers or hide out with a librarian, I know.” 

“If you don’t mind me saying so, I don’t find you very trustworthy.”

“Fair enough.” I handed her the revolver. “This will persuade anyone else who comes for you to go away. Good luck.”

***

The wind buffeted my office window and I poured the last of the rye whiskey into my coffee. As usual, my bank account was empty as the bottle. Elizabeth Huffington-Huffington had refused to pay because I hadn’t fulfilled my task of dying in a fake murder-suicide. I’d sued her small-claims court but she’d spent several times my fee on lawyers to defend the principle that the rich shouldn’t have to pay their employees. The mail slot rattled. 

I picked up the buff envelope addressed to Morris Pillbottle and slit it open. Inside I found a check for twenty-thousand dollars from Amanda.

Stud

They’d been pestering me a lot lately, badgering was probably more the right word, and I got to where I couldn’t take it anymore, so I finally said yes, yes go ahead and operate on me. It couldn’t be any worse than the misery and worry I’d experienced after losing all that money, money there was no way I could pay back. 

So Pasternak and Igor took me to what was supposed to be a hospital. It was in the warehouse district.

“It doesn’t look like a hospital,” I said as they led me in past some forklifts, some pallets and pallet jacks, empty offices with an empty echo.

“Well, we made it into one,” Pasternak said. Igor just nodded. We stopped in an open area where the late afternoon sun came in through one of those louvered things that has a fan in it, a fan to blow out all the old, stale air. The blades hardly moved.

That’s how it starts, doesn’t it? It starts small, maybe with a small bet here and there, or maybe it’s not bets at all, maybe it’s pills or whiskey or anything addictive. And gradually it builds so that you are hooked and they know it. Then you give in, maybe just a little, and one thing leads to another without you knowing where this is all going. Suddenly you’re in way over your head and there’s no getting out.

I was in way over my head.

“We’ve all been losing lately,” Pasternak said, “So we had to skimp a little, cut a few corners to pull this thing off. It won’t be that bad. But the thing we had to cut back on was – the anesthesia.”

“Now, wait a minute,” I said, trying to get up off the table they put me on. But Igor helped Pasternak push me back down and strap me in. I looked at the tape they used. It wasn’t even duct tape. It was the cheap kind you get at the Dollar Store. They lost big, too. That thought, and the tape cutting into my wrists, unnerved me.

“It’s not like we’re going to slice you open without anything,” Pasternak said. “Bring me that Pepcid.” 

“Pepcid!” I shouted, “That’s for an upset stomach, for nausea!”

“We don’t want you nauseous and all, you know, like throwing up.”

“Pepcid is no good!” I shouted louder.

“OK, pipe down. What else we got?” Igor had a plastic bag that rattled and finally pulled out some Ibruprofen. “That should do it.”

Ibruprofen was not going to do it. I knew it, but took four of them.

“What does that book say?” asked Pasternak.

Igor said, “First you break the ribs. Then wait.”

“I remember that part,” Pasternak nodded. “Let’s get that parking bumper.” They went outside and came back, lugging a concrete bumper from the parking lot. They hoisted it up and then Pasternak said, “One, two three!”

They dropped it. I heard a loud, cracking sound. That was my ribs.

“I think we broke them, boss.”

“OK, now what?”

“It says spread them apart and uh, remove it.”

“How?”

“It doesn’t say. Look, boss. This book sort of assumes you’re a doctor. It doesn’t go into detail. It just has the steps.”

That’s pretty much it. It’s about control, or not having any control. You get behind the eight-ball, and then they got you. You make pleas, deals, concessions, One thing leads to another and pretty soon they are running your life. You don’t know what the next step is. In this case, though, it meant removing my heart.

So they did it. They pulled it out, just yanked on it till it came loose. Blood spurted everywhere from veins and arteries flopping around like a half dead trout.  I was frantic. Then they put some more of that cheap tape over my mouth so I couldn’t put up a fuss.

“Get that fucking ventilator over here. We’re going to lose him!” Pasternak shouted. I’m glad he was at least shouting. That meant he appreciated the gravity of the situation.

“Ventilator?” Igor yelled. “I thought you said ‘compressor’!” In the corner I saw a Gardner Denver 300 cfm compressor. With something that big, they would blow my insides out to kingdom come.

“You big dummy,” Pasternak snarled. “I said ventilator!”

“What do we do now?”

“I’ll tell you what,” Pasternak said. “You’re going to give him the Heimlich maneuver until we get the replacement installed.”

“Heimlich?”

“Just lean over his chest was and start blowing.”

It seemed to work, though. Pasternak brought in the ‘replacement.’ The Ibruprofen kicked in and I started to relax. Maybe this was all going to work out. Pasternak said it would. Maybe he actually knew what he was doing. I went to sleep.

In post-op (same place as op, with the fan whose blades didn’t turn, with the 300 cfm compressor that might have worked, had I not got the Heimlich maneuver), I finally woke up. I was dizzy and smelled oats.

“How ya doin’?” asked Pasternak.

“Groggy.”

“Groggy he says,” mocked Pasternak. “You’ve been asleep for over two hours. “Come on, pal. We got work to do.” They hoisted me off the table out onto the street, where it was dusk. “Sort of reminds me of Sportsmans Park. They run the trotters at night, or they used to. Casinos killed the tracks, even with the OTB. Nothing like live action. Nothing like our new hero. You ready?”

I wasn’t ready, but I was ready, ready to pay off my bills. Here we go.

“Now, just to be sure, Igor, let me ask you – it’s six furlongs around the block, right?” He waved his hand in a circle that was supposed to cover the block of warehouses in this neighborhood. I looked at the pavement with a mixture of angst and anticipation and wonder. 

“Six, boss,” Igor said, holding up six fingers.

Pasternak pulled out a stopwatch. “Good.” Then he pulled out a gun. “Starter gun,” he explained. “It shoots blanks. It could shoot bullets but, hey, we struck a deal, didn’t we?” he slapped me on my hindquarters. I almost kicked him in return.

He held up the gun. ’Bang!’ it went.

“Anything below 1:08,” I heard him say as I started to trot. I broke into a gallop  past two warehouses and into a very sharp turn, hoping that they would never be this sharp, then another, then more warehouses and shops, sharp turn, then the last one you come spinning out of into the homestretch. I saw Pasternak up ahead, waving at me and decided to really show them something. I kicked in the afterburners and really sprinted, flying past them as Pasternak held up his stopwatch and hollered as he put it in front of his eyes.

“Holy Cow!” he said. “1:09. You have heart, my friend. You have heart. Heart like Native Dancer.”

Igor spoke up. “You sure this is gonna be legal, boss? I dunno if the Board will allow –“

“Screw the board. I told you. We’re not going to Gulfstream or Pimlico or Arlington Park. Think smaller, local tracks, maybe just some guy’s pasture down in Kentucky. Some guy with a wad of money and the heart of a skeptic. Think ‘chump’.”

I stood in front of them, breathing hard. The operation had been a success. It was over for now. 

“Just win three races. That’s all. Then we’re all squared up.”

Igor held up six fingers.

I nodded that I understood. I didn’t understand. We’d gone over this, but I was groggy. “What?”

“Ignore him.” Pasternak was holding up three fingers. “Three, that’s all, you understand?”

We shook hands. My hand was square and lumpy. I needed new shoes. It was over.

“And guess what?” Pasternak said. “After those three races, you know what the standard protocol is? You know what’s in store for you?”

A chill went through me. You mean there’s more? I shook my head no.

“Well, my friend, when a thoroughbred like you passes a certain milestone in his career, he is put out to pasture. You know the pasture?”

I shook my head no. They both laughed.

“The pasture is where the ladies are, my friend – the damsels, the fillies, the mares.” Pasternak and Igor all went big-eyed, laughing at some sort of joke I was supposed to get, but hadn’t gotten. It hadn’t sunk in. “No capiche? Let me put it bluntly – we’re going to put you out to stud.” All got quiet. 

They were going to put me out to stud.

“One slight problem, though,” Pasternak said. “In your current state, you are not uh equipped to perform your macho responsibilities. So just get us through these next three races and we’ll pay the hospital here one last visit so that you’re outfitted for success. That’s in the book too, right?” Igor howled. Pasternak howled.

“That’s where the real money is, the stud fees. We’ll get you patented or copyrighted or something and make a damn fortune. No one will believe till they see it. They’ll happily bet against the kinkiness of you beating a thoroughbred in a fair and square race. ” Pasternak’s head went up and down. “Then Igor and me will be all squared up too.” He held up one finger. “Just one more.”

Igor still held up six fingers. Whose fingers was I supposed to listen to?

“We’ll even get you a stepladder,” Pasternak said. This brought on more convulsions of laughter.  A stepladder. A stepladder for the next step where they replace the part of me that is nearer and dearer than even my heart.

The streetlights came on. Their yellow luminescence camouflaged the grim look of this area. That’s how they get you. They get you to laugh, go along with it. The stud fees were what it was all about. Pasternak didn’t even share that with Igor. Not with me, of course. My cut? Zilch. There is always one last hurdle that is hidden. Now Pasternak could pay back all he lost at that last fiasco at Gulfstream.  That’s how it’s done. First you trot. Then you gallop. Then you sprint, all the way. The thing is – there is no finish line anywhere – not even when you’re sent out to pasture.

EMP // 254 pages

subpace, a collection of kinky tales and stories, dares to explore the deepest, darkest desires of the human psyche.

from the power dynamics of dominance and submission to the tantalizing allure of kleptomania and the raw exposure of exhibitionism, each story is sensually crafted in a high literary style.

encounter characters who surrender to their most forbidden fantasies and fetishes, who pursue gratification at any expense, and who venture into uncharted realms of passion, yearning, and redemption.

sometimes playful, sometimes poetic, always provocative, subspace embarks on a journey where kink intertwines with romance in a rich tapestry of tales which defy convention, and keep you begging for more.

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An Undertaking

Mose lay upon the earthen bed beneath the house, where he’d been interred. The soil was moist and redolent with earthy scents. It was quiet as death. But he was not dead. It’s true, he had two bullets in his head, thankfully not near enough to his brain to be fatal. His assailants had shot him and, taking him for dead, pulled up the floorboards of the old country estate and deposited him beneath the house and then rather haphazardly pounded the boards back in place. Mose had been only dimly aware that this was all going on, preoccupied as he was with getting shot and all. The November air was chilly and he longed for his warm bed.

“Vic is going to meet us at Midland,” Julie Gold told Mose, her husband of eight years, referencing Mose’s family estate outside town. “He has to work a little late tonight, but he’ll be there around six.”

“Great,” remarked Mose, who was a funeral director and married to the woman of his dreams. Vic Taylor, Julie and Mose’s best friend, and an employee at the mortuary, often spent intimate evenings with the pair. They had been close for years. “Julie, you don’t have to cook, you know,” Mose told her.

“I want to. This is your birthday, this is special. It’s something I want to do for you. You usually do most of the cooking or else we get take-out, and I want to fix everything you like.”

Mose licked his lips. “Fried chicken?” he speculated.

Julie grinned. “All you can eat!”

“I hope the cops caught the hooligans who’ve been vandalizing the property out at Midland,” said Mose with feeling. Midland was all he had to remember his parents by; that and a thriving, $3 million business.

At dinner that evening, Mose had a vague inkling that something was up, but he just couldn’t put his finger on it. Julie and Vic were acting strangely, Maybe they were going to surprise him with a special gift? They knew he liked to save money; perhaps it was a new safe? These were the two most important people in his life. An often-expressed sentiment between the trio was that “I’d give my right arm for you, man; nothing’s too much.” The sentiment went all three ways.

“Eat up, Mose,” enjoined Julie. “I fixed all your favorites in honor of your birthday.” She smiled, but her expression was strained. Julie hated cooking, Mose knew, even for a special occasion. Which made him love her all the more. The three best friends had gathered round the dinner table at the estate. Vic reached for a piece of chicken, but Julie wordlessly shook her head and he withdrew his fingers. “I know you like BBQ ribs, Vic, so I made them special for you,” she said.

Vic helped himself. “Don’t you like ribs, anymore, Mose?” he asked, looking at his friend.

Mose shook his head no. “Lately, I have a problem digesting pork,” he explained, and helped himself to the chicken.

Vic started to spoon up a helping of potato salad, but again Julie frowned, shook her head no. “Here, Mose,” she said, “have some potato salad. Just the way you like it, with double mustard.”

“Do I have the best girl or what?” Mose asked Vic, grinning.

Vic grinned back at him. “You said it! You know I’m gonna steal her away.” They all laughed.

The meal proceeded apace. Mose was hungry, and ate no less than six pieces of fried chicken. Vic demolished most of a side of ribs, and together the three of them drank a 12-pack of beer. Julie seemed to have little appetite.

“I dunno, babe,” murmured Mose afterward, patting his lips with a napkin. “The mayo in the potato salad might be a little off.”

“What do you mean?” squeaked Julie excitedly, her eyes grown wide.

“It tastes a little metallic is all,” he said apologetically. “I’m sure it’s okay,” he assured his wife. He didn’t want to alarm her for nothing. “But the chicken,” he went on. Her head snapped up again. “It was delicious, babe,” he told her. She sighed with apparent relief. What was on her mind? wondered Mose. He shrugged it away. This was his birthday, after all. Today he turned 40, and he was on top of the world.

After dinner, the three friends sat around the living room of the old manor house, smoking reefer and getting gloriously high. The beer kept flowing, too. After they had gone through several powerful bowls, Mose noticed that Julie and Vic, sitting across from him on a sofa, kept staring at him inquisitively. Wow, he thought. That dope was powerful; he was getting paranoid. Mose felt very mellow, nearly nodded off to sleep, while Julie and Vic kept vigil, staring expectantly at him. Finally, he’d had it.

“What’s up, guys?” he asked seriously, but with a goofy grin. They became instantly alert.

“What do you mean?” demanded Julie, frowning anxiously.

“You feel okay, man?” asked his friend Vic, leaning forward solicitously.

“Yeah,” gushed Mose. “Super. Just higher than usual, you know what I mean? Hey, maybe there was some Paraquat in that pot, huh?” He grinned stupidly. Slowly, Mose nodded off to sleep.

In the next room, Vic and Julie took one another’s counsel.

“Shit, Julie, did you put enough poison in his food?” Vic asked.

“Of course,” she snapped irritably. “Besides, he ate practically the whole bowl of potato salad, plus a half dozen pieces of chicken. It was laced with the arsenic and the other stuff,” she said. “What could have gone wrong, Vic?” she asked tearfully. “We planned this out to the nanosecond.”

“Maybe Mose has a super tolerance to toxins,” suggested her co-conspirator. “You know, when the Russkies poisoned Rasputin, they used enough poison to kill an army, and it had no effect. Maybe he’s just a physical freak.”

“What’ll we do?” she asked in a frightened voice.

“Look,” said Vic with renewed fortitude. “We got him to sign over the funeral home franchise to you for tax purposes, so we’re going to go through with this, no matter what!” Julie nodded silently.

When Mose awoke in his chair, he was confused. His stomach hurt and he felt queasy. The room smelled like beer and stale pot. Vic was suddenly standing over him with a prodigious knife. Mose shook his head. What was happening? Suddenly Vic’s extended arm slashed down viciously, slicing through Mose’s shirt and into his chest. At that very moment, Mose threw up his arms, which deflected and dislocated the knife, and Vic scrambed for the weapon.

“Why, you sonofabitch!” shouted Mose through the red wave of pain. He grappled for the big knife as well, but soon Julie was standing over him, his father’s .38 police special clutched in her tiny hands. “Julie,” he yelled, “kill the bastard.”

She swore, and put two bullets into Mose’s skull. He collapsed like a sack of potatoes.

So, Mose found himself lying on his back, two feet beneath the floorboards of the old family home, no longer wondering, how did I get here? He remembered, in vivid detail. Now, he faced a choice: bleed out below ground or fight his way out. He chose to fight. Suddenly, the trapped man vomited. At the odious smell, he retched anew. Then he thought; I smell mint, the mint that was in the brand of embalming fluid used at the funeral home. Those bozos, thought Mose angrily. They’d tried to poison him with formaldehyde.

Mose’s head felt like a gourd which had ruptured. Blood oozed from the wounds levied by his loving wife; he thanked God she was such a poor shot. But still, it hurt like the very devil. He peeped through the cracks between the planks of the floor; they’d left the lights on, he noted. That’ll run up the light bill, he thought critically, always mindful of a dollar, but then shook himself to clear his mind. How would he get out of here?

Mose placed his hands against the unfinished boards enclosing him from above, and felt a pang of agony from the knife wound in his chest. He withdrew his hands and then slowly, painfully, drew his hips back until the soles of his shoes were flat against the planks. Through another escalating wave of pain, Mose flexed his thighs and pushed. With a shriek, the boards gave way; the attempted murderers hadn’t replaced all the nails they’d torn out. Why would they? he reasoned. They thought Mose was dead.

Julie and Vic lay in what they now considered as “their” bed, in the McMansion that Mose and Julie had occupied for years. They were making furious, desperate love. Soon they climaxed together. They always did so together, or so Julie led Vic to believe, a habit of long-standing that she’d developed with Mose. Duplicity in personal relationships just seemed to come naturally to Julie. With a satisfied grunt, Vic rolled off his lover and said, “This was a long time in coming, baby. I worked for that skinflint for years, but it finally paid off. No more, ‘turn down the AC, cut your lunch to twenty minutes, flip off the lights…'”

“Couldn’t happen too soon for me, Vic,” murmured Julie, nuzzling his neck. Suddenly she sobered. “Are you sure we’re in the clear? Are you positive that – the body – won’t be discovered?”

“We’ll go back in a few days or so and take proper care of – the body,” Vic told her. “We’ve already got the grave dug. The Midland property is in your name. No one else has a reason to go out there. Nobody’s going to discover anything; trust me.”

“I do, baby,” she whispered, and nuzzled him again.

Mose finally gained his feet and stumbled into the bathroom, took stock in the mirror over the sink, and nearly threw up again. His front was covered with vomit and blood, but the wounds in his skull were, curiously, both in the back of his head. Staring at his reflection, he couldn’t even tell that he’d been shot. There was surprisingly little blood. He felt behind his head, detected two deep creases in his skull. Huh! he thought. She had only grazed him. Was that lucky, or what? He smiled. Then he had a reckoning with reality. His wife, whom he’d loved more than life itself, and his best friend, had conspired to murder him. That put a bit of a damper on things, he thought.

Abruptly, the front door slammed open and shut again. Were the killers returning to the scene of the crime? Moving stealthily, he crept back towards the living room. Hiding behind a doorway, he peeped into the room and beheld there two nondescript teenagers, who were busily sifting through the dregs of the marijuana that the three friends had incinerated mere hours before.

“I tol’ you I smelled shit,” cackled one of the two, lifting a half-smoked doobie from an overflowing ashtray.

“Right on, Elliott,” agreed the other young heathen, taking out a disposable lighter and striking it to life.

“Hey!” growled Mose malevolently, feeling rather put out by this intrusion, all things considered.

“Shit!” gasped Elliott, dropping the lighted joint to the carpet.

“Whut happen’ to you, man?” squawked the other boy.

Mose frowned thoughtfully, drew his hand to his face. “Cut myself shaving,” he explained.

“Whoa,” breathed Elliott. “D’you need, like some help, man?”

A little light bulb could be seen to virtually flame over Mose’s head and he asked the two teens, “You guys wanna make five hundred bucks – apiece?” The two boys smiled.

Later that morning, Mose showered and dressed in clean clothes, and inveigled Elliott and the other boy, who went by the moniker “Diesel”, to ferry him in their ’64 GTO into town, where Mose purchased supplies. As always, in order to get the best deals, he directed them to first one retail store and then the next.

First, they stopped at home furnishing stores, and then at a pawn shop. Mose entered the stores and did the shopping, while the boys maintained their level of inebriation in the car. At length, supplies in hand, the trio journeyed back to the estate, where Mose went upstairs, to the fourth floor A-frame attic, and went to work. Down in the living room, drinking beers they’d discovered in the fridge, the teens could hear Mose whistling a merry tune. Looking at each other, they shrugged. After a couple of hours, Mose returned to the living room, where he gave the boys their final instructions. Next, it was off to the city.

What, wondered Mose more than once, would be Vic and Julie’s explanation for Mose’s sudden absence? At length, after sneaking around the lovebirds’ new home to eavesdrop, he discovered their plan.

“We’re lucky Mose didn’t have any family,” remarked Vic, churning up a smoothie in the blender. “Do you think people will believe he went to the Bahamas to ‘find himself’?”

“We were his only friends,” agreed Julie, with an unexpected wave of guilt. “He always said he didn’t need anyone else in his life, just you and me.”

“I told him I’d give my right arm for him,” smirked Vic. Julie said nothing. “I guess we should go out to Midland on Saturday,” Vic suggested. “Take care of things.”

Julie stiffened for a moment at the grisly prospect, then nodded. “Okay.”

Mose was in readiness when his wife and best friend next visited the manor house. Their arrival was expected. Hidden in the kitchen, he heard the door open with a creak and then slam shut. Julie’s was the first voice he heard.

“Oh, my God!” she cried. “He’s gone!” She was swiftly followed into the living room by Vic, who drew up short.

“Someone dug him up!” he exclaimed excitedly.

“Maybe it was a bear?” ventured Julie.

“A bear wouldn’t have shut the door behind him,” advised Vic, pulling back a protruding board and peering into the hole.

Suddenly Mose made his appearance. They didn’t notice him at first, till he cleared his throat theatrically; they jumped and then froze.

“Mose,” squeaked Julie, with a grotesque smile. “Thank God you’re okay.” Mose made no reply but to wave the revolver he clutched in his hand. Silently they obeyed his tacit instructions, preceding him up three flights of stairs to the fourth floor. At the top of the stairs, they halted before a tiny aperture, wide enough to permit just one person to enter the attic at a time.

“You first, Vic,” invited Mose, and his friend of twenty years climbed through the slot, with difficulty. “You next, babe,” said Mose, waving the gun for emphasis. “Now, both of you back up against the wall.” They did so, and then Mose squeezed his larger frame through the tiny door. The captives’ eyes remained fixed on Mose, who then said, “Look around. I’ve outfitted this room with all the comforts of home.”

They looked around, saw there two pairs of handcuffs, a bottle of water and a battery-powered circular saw. “What are you going to do to us, Mose?” Julie had the nerve to ask.

“Remember how we always used to say, ‘I’d give my right arm for you?'” asked Mose. They said nothing. “Well, I’m going to give you the opportunity to prove your words. Put the cuffs on: Julie’s left arm to Vic’s right, and then the opposite.” He waited, but not for long. Taking aim, he put a bullet within an inch of Vic’s head. The smell of cordite was thick in the air.

Moving rapidly now, they manipulated the manacles and were soon bound together, facing one another. Together, they presented much too large an item to pass through the aperture to the attic.

Julie said, “What if we have to go to the bathroom?” Mose laughed aloud, a harsh and ugly cackle.

“There aren’t any facilities beneath the floorboards in the living room, either,” he pointed out. “Should you find you need to get out in a hurry,” remarked Mose conversationally, “you can avail yourself of the circular saw.” Together, they both glanced at the red plastic saw. “And don’t worry, the charge isn’t enough to do much damage to your prison.” He tittered, then slowly withdrew through the small doorway, back the way they’d come.

“Mose, wait,” called out his wife. “Don’t leave us here.”

Mose shook his head. “That ship has sailed, Julie,” he said with finality, and backed away.

As Mose placed a boot on the landing, the loose carpet tripped him up and he plummeted the length of the stairs, landing hard and rendering himself unconscious.

Vic and Julie tried, but they couldn’t see what had become of their nemesis.

“Maybe we can tear the panels from the doorway,” Julie suggested. They regarded the boards composing the reduced aperture: it was all two-inch lumber, secured by long, thick nails. Vic depressed the button on the saw and it buzzed weakly. Clearly it was not powerful enough to make a dent in the fortress that Mose had constructed. He replaced the saw on the hardwood floor. “I wonder what he has planned?” he said aloud.

Down at the foot of the stairs, Mose moved not a muscle, though his eyes were open and staring. He was aware that all his plans had suddenly gone awry. His neck was broken.

The living room door banged open yet again, and Elliott and Diesel entered, bearing a five gallon can of gasoline. “This is what I call easy money, Dude,” remarked Diesel like the stoner he was.

“Hey, we woulda’ burned down the joint for free,” said Elliott, who loved fires, “but five hundo apiece, that’s gravy, bro. Old man Gold is righteous! Maybe he’ll have some more jobs for us later on?”

Spreading the fuel over the furniture, the floors and walls, they stood in the doorway and ignited a book of matches, waited a moment, and then tossed it into the room.

W H O O M P F!

On the third-floor landing, as well as in the attic, they all thought at the same precise moment, “Is that smoke?”

Fantasy Baseball

My older woman fantasy became reality after meeting Maria at a Royals game. I was holding a hot dog drowned in mustard, just the way I like it. She was holding weak, stadium Budweiser. There were two empty seats between us, but I could hear each slurp of her beer. I could smell each burp, and determined she too had enjoyed a hot dog with plenty of mustard.

One of the players on the opposing team got his barrel on a fastball and sent it flying up and over the diamond, beyond the outfield, just inside the right field foul pole. Maria stood first, her beer sloshing over the rim of its plastic cup to splash across the front of her Metallica tank top. I watched Maria watch the ball, its unlikely trajectory to the limited space between us. With her free hand, she clawed the air, projecting where the baseball would travel, hoping to seize it for herself.

Maria edged closer, her beer precariously tilted in the direction of my lap. I scoffed the last bite of my hot dog, stood up, and prepared for a collision, which seemed inevitable at this late stage in Maria’s laser focus for that home run heading right between us. I could feel mustard clinging to my mustache, which I have worn for over a year, deciding to keep since trying it out during last Movember. I saw its imprint, a golden crescent, stamped on Maria’s shoulder when she barreled into my face, when she stumbled over my Crocs, my foot within, and I felt the full weight of my fantasy crush my metatarsals in a series of hairline fractures.

Naturally, I shouted in pain, which the jumbotron displayed for the humble, daytime attendance. My agony came across as fevered excitement, rabid fandom. On sports news, they showed the debacle, calling me a super fan who buckled under the pressure, buckled under Maria, who caught the ball, as she knew she was fated to do. Me, I caught the bug –the big, bad love bug– my face lost in the ample burden behind that soft, cotton layer of the Metallica logo.

Maria got to her feet first, then raised up her ball to show the world. She helped me up, and the kiss cam gave us no warning at all. Without reservation, we kissed with our tongues, escalating to heavy petting with a mixed reception of boos and cheers.

We sat back down, no longer two seats between us. We sat side by side, hand in hand, Maria’s plump, stubby fingers intertwined in mine, the summer sweat collecting on our palms, trickling down our wrists. The Royals lost the game, but I did not care. Baseball was far from my mind, replaced by baseball innuendo, the prospect of getting to third base with an older woman, finally, after all these years.

That night, as we did, in fact, get to third base, I thought about baseball. I paged through baseball phrases in the library of my mind: well known expressions, like “getting to third base,”or “out of left field.” I did this as a means of distraction, a tactic to keep me from reaching climax too quickly. It worked, too, until I realized that meeting Maria the way I had came out of left field, even if we had been sitting in right field, and I was, at that present moment, getting beyond third base with an older woman. I showed signs of climax, so Maria choked up on the bat. She put some barrel on the ball and sent it flying. Together, we hit a home run. As a team, we won big, champions of fantasy baseball.

I know it was the wrong thing to do, but in the morning I snuck out of bed. I watched Maria breathe, the sheets rise and fall in great mountains, and almost crawled back in for a doubleheader. But my broken foot was swelling, purple and large, and no longer fit into my Crocs, which I had to carry with me as I snuck out the door, walking out onto the street with an ugly shoe in one hand, a home run ball in the other.

Franco’s Grand Finale

Tonight’s show promised much. He needed it to be special because he had to entice as many of those jaded appetites as possible to his grand finale in Costa Rica. He’d already spent money in preparation and had a team on call. Thank God for narcotraffickers. Their genetic mix of Aztec cruelty and Spanish conquistador bloodlines made for some of his most imaginative episodes. Acid eyedroppers, dismemberments, but the best of the collage were definitely his acquisitions from his contact in Jalisco, one of the more infamous of the cartel los polozeros or stewmakers, who dissolved victims in fifty-five-gallon barrels of acid. He’d added a short strip of film from the seventies featuring Iran’s SAVAK police torturing victims by impalement with a rotating screw. Grainy but still serviceable. The nineties stuff from the Serbia conflict was less in vogue but was plentiful, if one searched hard enough or paid the right people, such as that gem from the Chetniks or maybe Arkan’s Tigers. Two Muslim men stripped, tied in the 69 position, and ordered to snap with teeth at each other’s testicles—or be shot immediately.  He had a new sequence from Burkina Faso that promised to please even those barely twitched a muscle during showings. 

His fat sociology professor’s forehead would be a sheen of sweat after that one, no doubt. He should quote Goethe to him, watch his reaction: “There is no crime of which I do not deem myself capable.”    

His problem was the relentless competition of the dark web. Garden-variety executions in Africa weren’t good enough nowadays. Every teenager with access to Tor or any number of anonymizing browsers could get his glut of executions, murders, impalements, torture porn, and whatever human beings can do to one another that qualified as bestial, although that was both inaccurate and dishonest regarding the animal kingdom. 

One day he predicted he’d have to contend with AI’s prowess. The computer-generated pixel definition of modern filmmaking was no match for the real thing as yet. One could always detect slippage in the seams between background and the action on screen. An impaled victim being carried by men over rough terrain required a synchronicity of millions of photons to duplicate; and the application of quantum mechanics to this art was just on the horizon. He would branch out eventually if he wanted to demand the fees he asked. There were always going to be yachts in the world from Monte Carlo through Charlotte Amalie to Oranjestad where the rich gathered to imbibe and savor delicacies not meant for the common palate. He had provided those culinary delights at the highest possible cost in denominations that made him as knowledgeable about world currencies as any senior forex trader in Manhattan.

* * *

The kudos filtered to him as each checked out. The heiress from Brussels was especially fulsome over the Taliban stoning in Afghanistan. She wore Sock’s mask, the complement to Buskin’s tragedy. 

Culling from Middle East for newer selections had not gone well lately. His German muttered something about Chop-Chop Square being as dull as dishwater if he translated correctly. He did, however, express his hope that next month’s grand finale would prove a “showstopper.” He used the odd word Publikumshit, which made the ignoramus from NYU giggle. 

On the upside, he knew he’d never run short of victims. The world had wars going on every day all over the place. Civil wars, drug wars, terrorist insurgencies. Violence bloomed on the planet in every direction like poison sumac in an abandoned orchard. He wondered what they’d think if they knew that their favorite stylist Franco in their swanky shop in the UES was the ringmaster of a decadent carnival of horrors. If it weren’t for bitcoin, he’d never be able to pull it off. How could he have acquired or paid for those exquisite screenings for his other clientele at night? Death and murder were commodities nowadays. 

Having flunked out of Cardoza Law his second year when he left Dullsville, Indiana for New York, he roamed the streets looking for opportunities. Growing up in his mother’s beauty shop back in Terre Haute, he was familiar with the techniques and terminology of cutting hair. He hated the stink of the place. It lingered in his dreams. By the time he was a senior, his mother dragooned him into working as an apprentice. By year’s end, he was doing elaborate styles for her pickiest customers and facing a gauntlet of bullies who called him “fag” and “homo” and tried to make his life miserable. Being tall and possessed of wiry strength for his age, he ended the torment by confronting the biggest boy after school. He wore an Ace bandage over his right hand all week despite having no injury. On the day he confronted the biggest of the bullies, he wore junk rings on each finger beneath the bandage. He broke the kid’s jaw and immediately discarded the rings before the cops arrived. He earned a ten-day suspension but had the respect of the others.  

A crash course in the newest trends in women’s hair styling, paid for by the sale of his law school texts and taught by a girl with pink hair he met in a Soho club, he called himself Franco when he interviewed with the flirty owner. A recent vacancy and his moxie did the rest. Besides gossip, he picked up psychology in the three years he plied the despised trade, always smiling and greeting his clients, the lonely, middle-aged women whose husbands neglected them for their high-powered work in the skyscrapers. They were devoted to him despite the rough start and some botched cuts the owner scolded him for: “Your ladies saved you, Franco,” he sputtered. “That last one left looking like Daryl Hannah in Bladerunner.” 

He paid for the truck, camera, film equipment, camping equipment, every item required for the production to be carried out to meticulous specifications, not to mention the mordida or the baksheesh—all the words in all the languages for the bribes and payoffs of officials. He didn’t stint. Twenty-two percent of his proceeds went into the upcoming Big Show down in Costa Rica. His black book of names and call phone numbers was a 5-by-7-inch leatherbound file of hell.

Did he think about the victims? They might not have deserved their horrible ends in every instance, but they were born to their destinies as surely as he was born to his. As Arabs love to say, Inshallah: If Allah wills it. 

And who racks up a bigger body count than God?

* * *

Every single one of his clientele paid in full. He knew that many of them would get so sexually aroused at these screenings that masturbation was impossible to resist. He had to block out an image of his professor grunting and briefly exposing his cockhead as he pleasured himself. The man was on thin ice. One more violation and he would tap him into oblivion from his keyboard.

Meanwhile, this, his latest obra de arte. He had four men working for him: a Bahamian, a Russian émigré, an American expat—a fugitive from Dallas, actually—currently living in Costa Rica, and a young Spaniard, who used to be a bellhop.  

He assembled his team in the capital San José and drilled them on their duties. He handed each man a fat envelope and spoke the cliché of thriller films he watched as a youth: “Half now, half later.” He promised a bonus if the “job” went beyond day five. All they knew was that “a bad man who molested children” was going to die and that he was ordered to film it for the narco boss back in Tamaulipas, who ordered the man’s execution in a precise but peculiar way. “He has all our names, by the way,” Franco said, using his stylist alias. 

He found his expat Curtis there, drunk in a bar wearing a weathered cowboy hat; his bare arms sported Special Forces tattoos. La Carpio, the city’s most dangerous slum, was another recruiting center, which produced Charles Williams, his Bahamian fleeing from a rape charge in Aruba. Thirty thousand desperate citizens crammed between a reeking landfill of raw sewage and a pair of polluted rivers. Curtis led him to the Russian deserter Evgeni and the young Spaniard Mario, a slim boy with doe eyes, who stabbed a staff member in his hotel in Mallorca to death with a flick knife.  

Costa Rica’s central interior met the most important criteria in his months-long search. It was far away from the coastal tourist traps, its interior was ideal for both isolation and the presence of secluded mangrove swamps born of extinct volcanoes millions of years ago. The Pan-American highway was another bonus, for it met his criterion for an easy and anonymous means of transporting goods and equipment without arousing suspicion. He adopted the guise of a film crew doing a documentary of the country’s wildlife among the native grasses, cane, and marshlands north of Limomal and Highway 21. His crew was issued identification cards and passports that said that was who they were. He paid royally for the paperwork from his Amsterdam forger, knowing it needed to stand up to close inspection.

Caño Negro was his number-one choice for its aquatic life and insect populations dwelling in hidden pockets of marshland. Tropical forests teemed with shrieking monkeys and striped, ant-eating tamanduas. The mud banks crawled with Spectacled Caimans, black river turtles, and jesus christ lizards. The trouble there was that it was also frequented by tourists taking a swamp safari near the Nicaraguan border at Los Chiles. For what he filmed, privacy was the sine qua non.

His extensive and esoteric reading in a narrow field yielded methods of execution humanity had relegated to compartments in the lizard brain of the human species, never to be resurrected. The one he envisioned for his swan song before retirement was a variation of the classic medieval Wheel. The breaking of bones and crushing of internal organs was viscerally appealing but one had to project a certain amount of imagination to gain the full effects. Witnessing limbs rendered pliant through breaking and woven into the giant wheel’s spokes like a daisy chain was dramatic, to be sure, but still a mere tour de force in contrast to this one. Nothing could approach this year’s spectacle, a horror known as scaphism—literally, “anything hollowed out.” 

Found in Plutarch’s biography of King Artaxerxes II and known colloquially as “the boats,” it’s really death by bugs. As a method of execution, it was horrifically intense and the victim suffered beyond measure, often for days. You had it all—the visual, the auditory, and not least, the olfactory rolled into one. The pungent marsh odors mixed with the festering rot of gaping wounds.

For his magnum opus, he envisioned a four- to six-day fiesta unless silence issuing form the boats suggested the screams had either stopped for good or the occupant was lingering in a cocoon of madness beyond reach. At the end of the fourth day, he would assume his clients were sated. Curtis would be handed a Smith & Wesson .460 Magnum with silver Glaser slugs with No. 12 birdshot and polymer tips to blast the boat and its contents to smithereens, a grand finale of sorts. 

The man who was to star in the performance came from Matamoros and would arrive by helicopter courtesy of the Gulf cartel. It would be guided by satellite GPS to a spot prepared by his team in advance. All he knew was that the man had run afoul of someone in that organization and didn’t ask many questions when he offered to buy him. He thought it pathetic that human life was cheap, but he knew that a man’s life in some of the world’s worst prisons was far less expensive than what he had paid his contact for this wretched soul. Mercifully, he would not know his fate until he was nailed into his floating coffin. Alas, he could not offer the man the solace of numbing drugs on his final journey to oblivion because his demanding clientele would expect to hear the full-throated screams echoing around the secluded mangrove and rainforest.

The second part of the trip off the Pan-American Highway wound through miles of jungle hilltop and ended a mile from the spot where they would set up for satellite internet, uneventful. The problems were manageable in that remote region but latency was a factor he hoped to circumvent with filler. Nothing he could do about the lag in real-time transmission. Clarity of pixel definition wad all and it was ninety-five percent of anything he sent from San José. His crew riding in back was silent except for Mario, a loquacious lad who chattered like one of the monkeys in the canopy. The truck disturbed the silence of the jungle. 

Only Mario refused to be filmed for the B-roll filler once they were masked. He gave each a different mask so that he could issue the right orders to the right man. Hand gestures would do for most of it but out here in the jungle, he couldn’t plan for every contingency. A jaguar might wander into camp. Several dozens of species of poisonous arachnid abounded, many aggressive. Pretty Poison Dart Frogs looked like ceramic gewgaws in a curio shop in Chelsea but touch one and see what happens to your bloodstream. His biggest fear was the deadly Fer de Lance, a snake so common to the jungle and so good at camouflage in the foliage that you’d see it at the same time it had already buried its fangs in you. But as Curtis said in his awful twang, “You gotta risk it to get the biscuit.” Of his four-man team, he had least trust in his fellow American despite the paycheck he offered for a week’s work. 

Nothing he could do about the slower browsing speed of satellite internet as data traveled between their data and the overhead satellite. He’d paid a king’s ransom for the set-up and equipment, only the best. His Sony FX6 was a tough one to handle and unforgiving of novice mistakes, not even intermediate friendly. He needed a camera with excellent post-production options for those sales that would come later. He smiled. Just like the Met offering a disk of Swan Lake after the show. Knowing how his clients relished his shows, he regretted not including this “bonus offer” years ago.        

Once the tents were set up and the internet established and working, he told them to take a case of honey and spring water out of the truck. The rest of the food and supplies would remain stored under the canvas cover along with his gun safe. 

He had to time giving out passwords with the international time zones affecting the order of the  give-outs. He wasn’t a charity. No freebies.

Evgeni, his twenty-year-old deserter from the Ukraine War, was unloading the last of the supplies and the two boats he’d purchased in from fishermen in Puntarenas for Day One. The midday heat and humidity was stifling. By mid-afternoon, it would be a sweat-soaked endeavor to do even small tasks. Busy, busy. Keep busy. You know the order, he told himself. He had mapped out every detail for weeks working alone in his apartment.

Finally, every one of his clients acknowledged the password and time to check in. They knew nothing other than that Franco’s event was to be spectacular, unforgettable, and satisfying to the deepest cockles of every viewer’s being. His one regret was that he allowed the fat professor to subscribe for the password at the last second. The man had scraped up the ten-thousand-dollar admission fee somehow and was irate that he was almost shut out because of the “exorbitant fee being demanded.” 

He and Curtis left to meet the helicopter bringing them their man. Hot-road mirages of water appeared and disappeared every ten miles. Curtis carried the big revolver in a side holster and had been instructed where to stand throughout the handoff. He’d dealt with narcotraffickers and their minions many times through intermediaries, rarely in person. He didn’t want to be surprised.

The small black chopper landed in the glade twenty minutes late, its blades beating back the thick undergrowth of ferns. The man facing the rarest of deaths was led out by two men in camouflage carrying AR-15s while the pilot kept the rotors in motion. The man wore a black hood and belly shackles. Franco handed the man another envelope fat with currency. His jefe already had the down payment in bitcoin. Hobbled by his shackles, the man stumbled beside Curtis who shook him by the shoulder and slapped the back of his head. He led him, groaning to the truck where he and Franco hoisted him into the bed. Curtis tied him down to the eyebolts he’d welded into the truck. 

“What’s his name?” Curtis asked when he had him secured.

“Call him Pablo,” Franco said. “I don’t give a shit.”

“God damn it, the assholes doped him,” Franco muttered. He’d insisted to his contact in Matamoros that the man be alert and responsive. “We might have to delay the feeding.” Stupid thugs.

Back in camp, they lifted him down gently and walked him over to the boats where Evgeni and Charles stood by with claw hammers and nails. Their shirts were soaked in front and under their arms from the intense heat. Charles used his bandanna to swat mosquitoes which showed for the unexpected feast of warm bipeds offering blood for their babies.

“Not yet,” Franco said. “We have to film this part, too. Get your masks on.”

Idiots. He had to repeat every order ten times . . . 

The slow-motion dullness of moving through the waves of jungle heat and blinding glare was maddening with flies and mosquitoes drawn to warm blood. Franco applied his ND filter to the lens to obviate glare, adjusted his f/stop for normal shutter speed. Charles and Mario were administering the first dose of water mixed with Caro syrup and honey to Pablo’s mouth, held open by a Jennings mouth gag. 

Then the gods who love the surreal stepped in; time warped into a slow-motion French farce. Three birders in boonie hats, toting binoculars, and notebooks, blundered out of the jungle chatting excitedly among themselves. They stopped in their tracks when the spotted the camp. They simply appeared from a path no one noticed before because of the dense foliage. Curtis, wary of Interpol’s red alert to the point of paranoia, thought they were policia, unholstered his weapon and began firing at the trio before Franco could open his mouth.

The foremost birder took a torso hit. A Glaser slug, being a fragmentation bullet, doesn’t go far up a ballistics gelatin block but the round won’t penetrate the wall to kill an occupant in the next room. There’s no such thing as a nick or a graze. The expanding shot inside removes whole limbs on contact and implodes intestines and internal organs. The middle-aged birder with his white beard and pot belly died on impact. The other male birder to his right dropped his backpack and tried to flee back into the jungle. Curtis’ shot took him in the back of the head and removed the upper portion, revealing the white cap of his skull while his legs were still churning. 

The third birder, a thin, middle-aged woman with glasses and knobby knees in safari shorts, was too terrified to run. She emitted a keening noise like nails pulled out of boards and fell backward in a dead faint, unhit by the five shots ringing out from the big revolver.

“Curtis, wait! No! Stop!”

The antic farce became a medieval tableau mutated into a Bosch depiction of Pandemonium; no one moved: Curtis held his weapon rigid in the Weaver stance; Mario and Charles remained frozen, bent over Pablo administering the first dosage of the water mix through his mouth opened by the dental gag. Evgeni in his horror clown mask held his own mouth open in a pear-shaped, silent O. The camera rolled on.

Mario was the first to unfreeze. He raced to the truck, hopped into the driver’s seat, and started the engine, gears the grinding in his panic to escape.

Curtis rotated the gun one-hundred-eighty degrees in a robotic swing of his gun arm and fired at him: Snick, snick. Dry fire. The drum empty of rounds.

Evgeni dropped the tripod he was carrying down to the waterline and scooped up his machete. He ran after the truck and disappeared into the flattened grass track made by the truck.

Curtis flipped off his mask and headed for the woman. He reversed the gun in his hand converting it into a club. He hit her in the forehead splitting the meat open to the frontal skull plate. Before he could raise the gun to beat her brains out of her head, Charles intercepted him, driven by whatever impulse worked in his own feverish brain. He plunged his knife into Curtis’ neck. The severed carotid was a brilliant, spouting red geyser spraying green jungle. Charles’ crazed sawing motion left the shocked killer unable to strike back. In minutes, he was  exsanguinated. His hands locked fingers with Charles. Two deranged dancers. Curtis died on his knees cursing the man who nearly decapitated him.

Franco’s camera swung on its axis and caught the deadly pas de dieux. Like a signal going out on a different bandwidth, one by one, Franco’s audience caught up with the short time delay to hear and finally comprehend what was happening. Franco heard his name called from dozens of screens simultaneously, all demanding an explanation. 

Half-numbed  by events, Franco picked up the Sony, did a slow arc to reveal the landscape of bodies and zoomed on Charles glistening face and bulging eyes. Evgeni returned, gasping, his machete dangling from his hand.

“Ischez. Gone,” he blurted, bent over from exertion. “No truck.”

His audience’s screens went dark, blinking out like fireflies one after the other as each realized what had happened and logged off in a frenzy to avoid leaving any electronic footprints to the disaster behind. Franco’s dream of a golden retirement had collapsed around his ears. 

“Evgeni, Charles,” Franco commanded. “Throw everything into the water. Now!”

The men gathered up tents, equipment, the cases of water and honey, and took them down to the water’s edge and threw everything in. The stagnant water plopped with the sounds of thousands of dollars of equipment going into it.  

“Not the water, you moron!” Franco screamed, watching Evgeni about to swing their only case of the water. “Charles, push the boats into the water.”

“What about him?”

“Never mind him.”

Charles lifted the top boat off Pablo and shoved it in the water.

Evgeni, in water up to his knees, was about to retrieve a floating plastic bottle of water when the  caiman abandoned her nest and slid on her belly into the brackish water. Bigger and more aggressive than the male, she hurled her body at the invader and clamped Evgeni behind the knee, pulling him into the water. He half-rose, fell backward. She twisted his leg breaking the tibia in her powerful jaw. Using her tail for leverage, she dragged him screaming into deeper water.

“Charles, help him!”

“Not me, man!”

Charles was hunched over Curtis but mesmerized by the horror going on in the swamp. He turned his head to watch Evgeni’s struggle. Going over to Pablo, he didn’t see Pablo’s hand close over a framing nail with a wide, thick head dropped in the boat. He said a silent prayer to Our Lady of Guadalupe. With the head centered in his palm, he thrust upward and backward as soon as Charles leaned over him to shove the boat into the mangrove. The point went into through Charles’ eyeball but stopped short of penetrating his brain.  

It was all going to hell so fast—

Charles fell atop Pablo, blood pouring into the prone man’s opened mouth. Franco made an immediate decision:  assisting a wounded man, half-blind man through the jungle meant tying a boat anchor to his need to get out of the area as fast as possible. Languishing for years in a filthy prison in San José was not an option. He spotted Evgeni’s machete by the water.  

“Charles, hang on, I’ll get first-aid kit.”

Like everything else, the first-aid kit was gone in the truck. Fetching the machete, he stepped behind the rocking, weeping Charles. He brought it down on Charles’ head cleaving scalp to the coronal suture where it stuck fast in bone. Charles’s arms flailed, then they flopped to his sides, and he seemed to fold in on himself like a jumper’s neck folding into the sidewalk. Blood burbled from his dead lips and a drool of bloody sputum flowed from his mouth like sticky taffy.

Franco barely heard the whispered plea from the supine Pablo: “Ayudame, por favor.”  

He looked from Pablo to the roiling water to see it finally close over Evgeni’s astonished face. He blew out his last breath before submerging before she took him under to be drowned where she’d haul him under the surface to find a fallen log to pin him under to rot. She would return weeks later to consume the soft flesh and some bones. Her excreta would leave nothing recognizable in the swamp muck other than Evgeni’s watch, a gift from his father on his sixteenth birthday.

Ayudame, ayudame, ayudame . . . por . . . favor.

Franco stood over the man with his machete and contemplated his options. Lethargy, shock, horror mixed in his psyche. He lifted the machete and lowered it at once. He couldn’t bring himself to do it. With no witnesses, and Pablo’s condition, Franco was confident he’d be the only one walking out of the jungle.

Rolling Charles into the water took seconds. Pushing Pablo’s boat into the water took a little longer. The boat slowly drifted toward the spot where Evgeni’s head went under.  

“Every man for himself, hombre,” he mumbled.

Franco dragged the two mutilated birders and their female companion by their heels. He sailed their boonies in after them and watched the tiny ripples spreading outward. 

Two bottles of water drifted toward him. He put one in each pocket, picked up the machete, and headed in the direction the truck had taken a lifetime ago.

* * *

By nightfall, Franco believed he had gone at least five miles. He reckoned he had another five to go to hit the major asphalt highway, and from there he could flag down a car or semi and tell the driver his story of being lost while cataloguing insects for a sabbatical project. His clothing had been wet with his perspiration for so long that he wasn’t aware he had stopped sweating. He was saving one bottled water for the tomorrow’s hike. The trouble was, the damned jungle was a green wall that extended the same in all directions. He climbed a short tree to get his bearings, but that didn’t work because the harsh light slanted off leaves and splintered into his eyes, confusing him as to directions. He would have to wait for the sun to descend. With all his electronics, he never thought of bringing along a compass.

Night fell fast in the jungle. One second, he was trudging through fern or cane, slashing away with his machete, the next he was wading through swamp muck that threatened to suck his boots off his feet. His belly growled from hunger. The truck held a two-week’s supply of canned goods and an ice locker of fresh meat, including some nonperishable delicacies from shops on Mercado Central.

While he walked, he thought of ways to recoup his losses. A giant Wheel for crushing organs and breaking bones. That’ll get the estrus flowing in his stoic lady from Brussels. Another Pablos stood about on every street corner . . . 

By sunset the next day, he was in trouble. He’d surely traveled more than the five miles that should have brought him to the big highway. The truck’s tracks were so wide that a child could have followed them. He didn’t recall seeing a second pair of tracks, narrower, when he scouted the region or when they set up camp. He did not remember certain features of the landscape. The tracks that split off were made by government surveyors and wound into the higher terrain where they ended at the same government highway twenty miles farther on. 

The fat professor, convinced he’d been scammed with the rest on Franco’s subscription list, sent an anonymous but convincingly detailed note to Manhattan authorities, who promptly contacted Interpol, albeit some details were embellished or invented. He wasn’t quite sure what exactly he had witnessed from his laptop in his office. Interpol subsequently relayed the information to Costa Rica’s Fuerza Pública. 

A search party was sent out two weeks later at the approximate locale indicated from the anonymous source’s note. The searchers did come upon the remote area in the lagoon but found nothing amiss. Nature had restored everything to its pristine order. Had Franco’s camera remained operating, it would have witnessed the subtle savagery of sex, eating, and death that restored the lagoon to its equilibrium before Franco’s truck disturbed the peace. 

Three months more passed before botanists from the National University found Franco’s skeletal remains leaning against a Kapok tree, one of the tallest in the rainforest. Its cottony seeds attract fauna, especially monkeys. He was in advanced decomposition by then, one leg missing, the corpse a mass of scratches and bites. Sepsis had played a part as well as dehydration and third-degree sunburn. His fingers were consumed down to the second knuckle by bullet ants covering the jungle floor. A golden silk orb weaver, very poisonous, had linked her web to an earhole from which her babies would come clambering out into the world. The late afternoon sun made it shimmer like spun gold.

One of the researchers shooed away a Brazilian Wandering Spider with a stick, one of the deadliest and most aggressive spiders on the planet. Rearing up for further height from its seven-inch leg span, it prepared to attack and was known to kill even small dogs. A female, too, she had lain her eggs behind Franco’s empty eye sockets, the fibrous tunic and inner layers composing the soft vascular material long since eaten away by the myriad flying insects rising and falling like a ragged curtain over the ruined head. Every time someone tried to disperse them, they flew up and descended back over his head like a ragged veil. The group speculated a jaguar must have removed the leg and carried it off. One member inferred from the ridge of crusted blood on the torn pants near the groin that he—they were sure it was a man—had been alive during the attack. 

Maggot worms had filled the interior cavity from his thorax to his lower abdomen; generations had nestled and writhed in that nursery. 

Most perplexing to the onlookers, however, was the fact that the highway was a mere fifty meters from where he had taken his final position against the tree, so lovely in the falling daylight with its delicate white flowers. 

Mario and the truck were never seen again. Pablo recovered, stayed in Costa Rica but worked his way steadily north. When he showed up in Matamoros eighteen months later, no one recognized him as the man who had been abducted by narcotraffickers. He left town in the morning for el norte.

Matriculation

Sadie glanced up at the clock over the hearth and checked her appearance: her tight jeans and her halter top, which  fitted her like a second skin. She inhaled her own scent, decided it was just right. Suddenly there was a rap on the apartment door. The clock chimed 8pm. Good, she thought, right on time. Pulling open the door, she greeted her lover with a pink-lipped smile and a sultry, “Hello there!”

At 10pm, Stan unlocked the door and entered the apartment. There he found Sadie, freshly showered and waiting expectantly for his return. “How’s it going, Sade?” he asked with obvious affection.

She smiled welcomingly and walked up to enfold him in a warm embrace. “It’s fine, now, baby,” she murmured as she kissed him with passion.

“What are you plans for tomorrow night?” Stan asked his wife.

“I’ve got to work on my thesis again, Stan, until about eleven this time,” replied Sadie.

Stan frowned slightly. “Then I’ll have an hour to kill before I come home,” he observed. 

“Why don’t you take in a late movie, sweetheart?” said Sadie. “The time,” she promised, “will just breeze by.”

Stan smiled. “I’ll do that,” he decided. The next afternoon, at two p.m., Stan, after making tender love with his wife of three years, embarked for his job at a Knoxville Walmart, where he worked as an assistant manager.

 At 10 p.m. that evening, Sadie sat at her computer desk, working on her PC. She wore a business suit, but was nude from the waist down. Her breathing came in rapid bursts and a thin trickle of perspiration streamed down her throat and onto her starched white shirt.

“How’s it comng?” he asked.

“Is that a pun?” she asked breathlessly.

He only chuckled.

Stan sat across the table from Sadie in the breakfast nook. She was pecking away on her iPad. He asked, “So how long till graduation, baby?”

She didn’t bother to look up. “17 days,” she replied, tap-tap-tapping on the virtual keyboard.

“It’s taken a while,” he commented.

“MBAs don’t grow on trees, Stan. You have to work for them.”

He nodded. “I know.” After a few minutes of companionable silence, he asked, “Have you seen your faculty advisor lately; is everything on track?”

She looked up. “I saw him last night. Everything’s on schedule. I graduate at the end of the semester, provided I complete my thesis.” At Stan’s unspoken question, she said, “And he’s still helping me with it.” Stan nodded.

Sadie lay upon her king-sized bed, her wrists bound to the bedposts, and squirmed furiously.

“Don’t come yet, honey,” purred the man with the really big cock. “I’m going to fuck you all night.”

“You…you can’t,” she said breathlessly. “My husband will be home by eleven.”

The man grabbed one of Sadie’s ass checks and squeezed evocatively. “I got news for you honey; it’s quarter past already.” He chuckled, the way he always did.

Sadie regained her equanimity and told him, “Get off me; I can’t have Stan walk in on us!”

“What do I care what the cuckold walks in on?” asked the man, who was pumping away rhythmically in and out of Sadie’s vagina.

“Because, he’ll kill you!” she told him sharply. “Stan’s twice your size!”

The man immediately stopped, pulled out of Sadie and ejaculated on her midriff. Hurriedly he began getting dressed.

“Untie me!” implored Sadie, struggling against her bonds. He only smiled his oily smile and exited the bedroom, leaving her bound and the door open. Sadie heard the door open and slam shut. “Shit!” she said helplessly.

Two days later found Sadie before her faculty advisor’s administrative assistant. The MBA student had received her summons by email. Ms. Kohler, who had worked for Dr. Stern for decades, smiled up at the striking young woman. Just the way that Justin liked them, she thought with a sad shake of her head.

“I hope I’m not late,” apologized Sadie, peering over the venerable Ms. Kohler’s desk.

“No, dear, you’re on time,” said Kohler with a soft smile. “But you know what they say?” Sadie cocked her head in a quizzical manner. “It may be later than you think,” remarked the white haired woman.

Sadie frowned thoughtfully, but offered no reply. “I could come back later, Ms. Kohler, if it’s inconven…”

“No,” the older woman said. “I’ll tell Dr. Stern you’re here. Go on back.”

Sadie travelled down the corridor, past the rabbit’s warren of faculty offices, coming at last to a thin, hollow wooden door with a small sign emblazoned with: “Prof. J. Stern, MBA Advisor.” She knocked.

“Come in!” snapped a harsh voice.

Sadie passed through the portal. “You wanted to see me, Dr. Stern?” she said.

Stern looked up with a neutral gaze and said, “Yes, come in, Miss Devereaux.” Sadie took a seat. “I want to discuss your final project,” he began.

“My thesis?” she asked. What was this all about? she wondered. She’d already received approval from the committee the week before. All that remained was for her faculty advisor to sign off on it.

“I’m afraid that your thesis, if we dare it that, is not acceptable.” Sadie’s mouth fell open. “It’s totally inadequate per the parameters of the department,” he elaborated. “I’m afraid you’ll have to start over; develop a new thesis, conduct new research, and write it over. I will, of course, be there with you all the way.” He chuckled darkly.

“I…don’t understand,” she said, but she felt she was beginning to. Stern had a good thing going, and he intended to hold onto it. He was a horny old bastard, she thought crossly.

“Nothing to understand,” he said shortly. “Start over, do it again.” He stood, thereby ending the conversation and dismissing her. “And next time,” he said icily, “don’t threaten me with your Neanderthal of a husband.” Sadie automatically bristled defensively. “I’ve easily got 50 I.Q. points on that sonofabitch. And don’t you forget it!” Sadie stared at him. “Let yourself out,” he said, and sat back down. “Oh,” Stern addressed her retreating back, “I’ll see you on Wednesday, as usual.” Sadie continued walking.

“What,” cried Stan the next Wednesday, as they sat for lunch in the breakfast nook, “you have to work again tonight? I thought your Wednesday nights were over with. What gives?” he asked unhappily.

“This is the last time, I promise,” replied Sadie, crossing her heart with her fingers. “We have to go over the final chapter of the thesis. Then it’s over,” she promised.

Grumpily, Stan accepted her explanation. After all, Sadie had never lied to him before. “Gotta get to work, babe,” he said, rising to his feet. ” ‘Ol Sam Walton won’t take any excuses.” He smiled at his wife and soon departed with a twinkle in his eye. He thought, not for the first time, how lucky he was to be married to such a sweet girl.

Eight o’clock that evening found Sadie back in her bedroom with the indefatiguable Dr. Stern, who appeared to have overmedicated on Viagra. He had Sadie face down on the mattress and was enthusiastically thrusting his large cock into her vagina, from the rear position this time. “Sadie,” he muttered pointedly, “I wanna be your back door man,” and he cackled like he always did when he thought he’d been clever. At length, he finished his business and thrust his first two fingers up her butt. She jumped, full of revulsion. Again he laughed hoarsely. “Don’t bother to get up,” he told her mockingly, “I’ll see my own way out.” And he was gone.

Finally, Sadie arose from the scene of the crime and gathered her robe about her. She glanced at her cell phone: 9:30. She would have time to shower and rinse the filth from her body before Stan got home, but she’d have to hurry. Padding across the bedroom, she opened a dresser drawer and fussed for a moment with the micro-camera that had been humming away. She flipped it off. She briefly tested the audio component. Stern’s ragged cackle emanated from the tiny speaker. There could be no mistaking the faculty advisor’s ugly laugh. Tomorrow, she would have another meeting with the professor. She held the small tape in her hand and glared determinedly into her dresser mirror.

Six weeks later, Sadie opened a manila envelope affixed with the university’s return address. Making something of a ritual of opening the letter–she had foregone the traditional graduation ceremony at the college– and extracted her diploma and displayed it proudly for her husband. He congratulated her wholeheartedly on her accomplishment. “Look, babe, I don’t want to rain on your parade, but getting a degree is one thing; finding just the right job is something else again. Know what I mean?” he asked.

“I thought of that too,” she told him, “but hard work is the way you get anything. Just like with the MBA–I’ve got a plan.”

Buried Swords

Bethany shuddered. She knew some of these men. How was she supposed to respond if she encountered them at the grocery store or Wal-Mart after this?

“Hey, hey, Lady!” Another came in punching a fistful of crumpled bills at her. When she took them she found they were unaccountably wet. The man pulled his mask off and threw it over the counter. She had to duck to avoid it. 

More and more men showed up. They just kept coming. The gray security box she’d brought was overflowing with cash. She’d never seen the library this crowded before. There were people everywhere but no one was reading. 

“Is this…the place from the ad?” Another had approached the counter. Crestfallen, Bethany nodded and took his fifty dollars. The man first removed his mask, then his long overcoat. He was completely nude underneath. He ran in to join the others. 

Bethany had never heard such sounds before. It sounded like fifty mothers furiously scrubbing their hands with dish soap or maybe an army of bored children squeezing their palms down in their armpits to create suction and the flatulent sound that goes with it. But these weren’t mothers and they weren’t children. They were all gross and hairy men. 

There was no way to open the windows after hours but the odor had become overpowering. The funk of an uncountable number of men, naked and fucking each other, spread across the two stories of the library. 

She’d never seen anything like this before, never wanted to. A pudgy man wearing only a black vest, nothing else, had allowed himself to be strung up in the air, face-up, his knees tied to his elbows. He was bald on top but had wiry silver hair sprouting out of the sides, like some aged clown. He was being violently thrust into the crotch of another man, while yet one more pushed him by the shoulders to add force. It sounded like they were killing him. It looked like he might die. But Bethany stayed away. She’d made this horrible bargain and was now bound by its precepts. 

“Don’t interfere.” Gilbert had commanded. He was the one who’d set this all up.

“Yes sir.” She’d said. Since Covid things had been bad. Her husband had lost his job. Every other day the city was threatening to lay her off. Someone had overheard the mayor asking what was the point of paying librarians to work from home because it wasn’t like they could stack book shelves from home. Six years of college for a master’s in library studies and everyone still thought her job entirely consisted of stacking books all day. 

“Look, these folks know and accept their risks. Despite what you may see, do not ever interfere. Do you understand?” 

“I understand.” She’d said the words but really had no idea what it all meant. The way Gilbert had been explaining it, these were just people who wanted to be around others. They needed a place where they could gather and not have someone bothering them about masks and social distancing. 

“We just want a little normalcy.” He’d said and it seemed like an okay deal at the time. She’d keep the library open after hours and for fifty bucks a head these people could use the facility. 

People. He’d used the word “people” but these were all men. Throughout the night only one woman showed up. She was a gussied-up blonde whose mink coat and sheer party dress must have cost a lot of money to make her look so cheap. 

She was drunk and stumbled in seemingly unable to walk in her own high heels without draping herself over the little guy with the thinning shoulder length hair who held her up. They were both giggling and laughing. She had one of those high-pitched chortles that one’s never supposed to hear in a library. 

At first the couple made their way to Bethany. As they got closer, near enough to see the “party” going on inside, the woman stopped in her tracks and gasped.

“C’mon baby, this is what we talked about.” He cajoled.

“I’m not….I’m not going in there.” The woman held her hand up to her mouth and her many diamond rings and silver bracelets shown in the light. 

“We came all this way!” The guy had all the charm of an impatient boss. Bethany was only three feet away but she didn’t even pretend not to be watching the fight go down. Anything was preferable to the horror show behind her.

“No!” The blonde wanted no part of what she saw in there. Kinky coked up key parties were one thing. Maybe even the occasional Anything-Goes-Party-Bus but this couple had just peered into the abyss of male sexuality run completely amok and she didn’t like it one bit. The woman turned and hobbled away like a damsel in distress as her knight in Drakkar Noir and artificial tanner chased out after her. 

It sounded as if the building was filled with ghosts and MMA fighters. Bethany could hear nothing but a symphony of moans amidst the ubiquitous slap of skin hitting skin at high velocity. 

No one considers themself a prude, Bethany no exception. She’d read Fifty Shades of Gray with one hand. Her husband liked to tease her whenever she brought home a romance novel with a hunk on the cover. As an avid book lover she prided herself on the fact that she’d even read a gay romance novel or two. But nothing had prepared her for this. First off there was no romance, at all. The only kissing she witnessed seemed violent acts of aggression. There was no tenderness, not even smiles. At best, the men performed their acts like disinterested masseuses and at worst, they seemed hateful. It was as if the other man’s body had done them a great dishonor and they were now exacting revenge. 

A dead bird being picked at by insects. A fat person dancing. A dog with his face caught in a jar. These are things you just can’t look away from.  Well it turned out, so was a library full of middle-aged men lubricated in oils and one another’s juices, congealing their bodies together in arrays that seemed to defy the understood limits of human anatomy. 

The intensity and extremity only increased as the night wore on, accelerated by a series of unspoken dares. You could have told her that these men were possessed by devils or under the influence of alien mind rays or even an elaborate hallucination brought on by stress and Bethany would have eaten it up. She’d have loved an excuse, any excuse, other than the horrible truth that was so vividly being displayed before her. These were just men. Behind every smile, every suit and tie, everyone’s grandpa, their fathers, all men, were just like this on the inside or if given the opportunity. Willing to turn it all over, to let themselves digress into heedless, wanton lust.

Bethany wept until she had no tears left. Her water bottle had gone missing and she did not want it back. She felt robbed of her energy and her smile too. Her body sat there numb and empty while the minutes on the clock mercifully ticked down to two o’clock. The deal was that everyone would go home at two. 

There were no complaints, like when a bar closes. There was no talking. Just a crescendo of moans topped off with each man apparently doing an impression of the sound he’d make if murdered.  

Then they shuffled out, putting back on their clothes and masks. The businessmen went back to being businessmen. The homeless piled on their rags and left. Nobody looked anyone else in the eye, especially not Bethany. 

None of this had gone how she’d expected. She looked out over the library and gasped at the mess the men had left behind. 

“Hey, don’t worry, most of that will dry off by morning.” Gilbert was the last one out. He was fastening the buttons on his shirt. 

Bethany looked down at the floor, unable to reply. 

“I can tell you’re a little shell shocked. But you gotta understand…”

She looked up at him.

“This is the fucking apocalypse.” He put on his face mask. “It’s not like we expected. No fiery comets and no angels with trumpets but this is it. Maybe it’ll take five years, maybe even fifty but we’ve all felt it. We’ve lost something and we’re not ever getting it back. 

“Locked inside. We’re cut off from our friends, our family, our coworkers. That cute new thing at the office who you’re now never going to get to know any better. The friend you’ve been meaning to get around to visiting, you won’t. You’re not going to bump heads with your soul mate reaching for the same book at a bookstore. That gravy train of human progress has derailed. It’s all downhill from here.”

“How does any of that explain…this?!” 

“They took sports. We’re not supposed to play basketball or wrestle. We can’t watch a game and cheer together. Just like a woman needs affection and emotional support, men need to feel one another. Competing with him, fight him, fuck him. Bury your sword in him, figuratively. Half those guys aren’t even gay. We just need to taste his sweat and press our bodies against his. We need to breath heavy, work together or maybe against one another.  Women need affection, men need this. People need food, water and some sort of physical reassurance from another human being to know that we still exist.” 

Bethany hadn’t thought she could get any more depressed tonight. 

“So are we set for Tuesday night too?” 

Bethany wanted to throw up. Then she looked down at the gray box that sprung open like a jack-in-the-box made of cash whenever she opened it. She looked at what she could see of Gilbert’s face behind his face mask and then out to the mess in her library. The defenseless books so fouled that she’d have to pick them up with a grabber and drop them into the incinerator. She didn’t know if Gilbert was right, if this was in fact the apocalypse. The emotional roller coaster she’d just taken for the last four hours, the sights she’d seen, had left her without the energy to care one way or the other. 

“Fuckit.” She consented. “Just next time, if they want to use books for their little props, they need to bring their own from home!”

“Yes ma’am.” Gilbert gave mock salute and escaped back into the night. Bethany affixed her own mask, turned out the lights and said goodbye to all the lonely books. Her husband was still awake when she got home. He had nowhere to be in the morning. They cuddled up together and watched some TV. Happy to have one another in the face of a possibly ending world.

George and the Winged Woman

What’s to be done? It’s all gas fumes and highway. George Sudsby looked at the tip of his pinky finger as he drove. It was melting, leaking a purple liquid down what remained of his finger. This was not a good sign. His father and grandfather had both melted away like this, disintegrated into a puddle of purple liquid. Now George was dissolving, and he was only thirty-three years old. His father was in his fifties when this happened to him. So was his grandfather. But you never knew about these things.

He thought he had time. He was in love. Didn’t that count for anything? When he died, a little bit of passion would be gone from the world, too. He had Celeste, a winged woman. She wasn’t always there, disappearing and living her mysterious other lives for weeks, even a month at a time. She didn’t belong to him. She didn’t belong to anyone. But she always came back to him, and George always welcomed her. 

There was no physical pain, so that was something at least. 

The thick purple liquid foamed as it ran down his pinky finger. George gave the car as much gas as it could take. Maybe he could outrun his own destruction. 

Ring ‘em up. Ring ‘em all up. The woman whose groceries he was scanning smiled and said, “I have a coupon for that.” A coupon? Of course she had a coupon. George’s pinky finger had fully dissolved down to the knuckle. He had a bandage over it, but how long could the illusion hold? It didn’t hurt, and George wondered if the process would be completely without pain. He recalled that his father seemed to take it all in stride. He even made jokes about the situation.

The woman whose groceries he was ringing up smiled at him and said, “I have a coupon for that.” A coupon? Of course she had a coupon. George wanted to jump up on the conveyor belt, kick off all the groceries, tear his Walbeens shirt off and say, “Your coupons are only good in Hell!” Instead, he only nodded, and looked at his missing finger. He hoped he didn’t dissolve too much at work. He didn’t want to have to bother with cleaning up his own spill. And he knew they wouldn’t let him go home. Not as long as he could still ring up groceries. And he would have to lose both arms and at least one leg for that to happen. 

He wondered if he was in the winged woman’s thoughts at all. 

The whiskey in the soda can underneath the register felt so good every time he took a nice swig. Fuck it, and so what if he was caught? He would be dead soon, anyway. That had to count for something. 

Fully drunk when he stumbled and bumbled off work that night, swaying from one side to another, George found himself in the alley by his apartment building. His right hand had only started melting a little, so it was possible to hold his dick steady as he took a long and satisfying piss. What a fucking relief it was. Could he have made it to his apartment? Possibly, but he mostly just wanted to feel like he was pissing on the planet itself. The guts of it.

A voice from behind: “Spare a coin or two?”

George shook and replaced. He turned around and standing pretty close to his face was a very disheveled man. His eyes were yellow and his pupils were vertical slits, like a cat. George dug through his pockets and came up with a couple of coins. He put them in the man’s hand.

“Say,” the man said, “do you know the winged woman?”

A sudden surge of jealousy. But, no, she would never associate with a man like that. And yet…

“What do you know about her?” George said, a little more aggressively than he’d intended. 

“I sometimes see her at that window.” He pointed at a tenth story window in a building across the street. His building. Relief. It was George’s own apartment. 

“I know her,” George said.

“Quite a spectacle,” the man said. 

In his apartment, George turned on the lights and sat on the recliner. He turned on the TV. The rebels had taken over Tulip Zone. It bordered Tranquility Zone II, which was where George lived. He wondered if they’d make their way over and try to liberate his zone. The rebels were militantly pro labor union, and George figured that might make things easier for him at Walbeens. 

If he made it that long. There was purple all over his pants. The rest of his right hand was melting away, and rapidly. Okay, not much time now. At least it didn’t hurt. But George was still terrified. What would death be like? Would it just be a turning off and then nothingness? Or was there something beyond?

The hand was gone now, melted away. 

A gentle tap at his window. It was Lucy, the winged woman. She hovered, smiling at him. He waved her in with his good hand. She opened the window and flew in. 

“I’m not doing so good,” George said. 

She let her wings rest on her back and walked over to him. She stood in front of him and started to cry.

“How long?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” George said. “But it doesn’t hurt. It should hurt, right?”

“I’m glad it doesn’t hurt,” she said. 

Now both hands had melted to the wrists. 

“I don’t think I have long now,” George said. “I’m scared. I’m really scared. I don’t know what’s next.”

She squatted down and ran her finger over his forehead. “Peace is next,” she said. 

“It was always hard sharing you with other people,” George said. “With the world. I was always happy for your success, but jealous.”

“What can I do for you?” she said.

“One more flight. Please.”

She stood up and scooped him up into her arms. She cradled him like a baby as both of his arms started to melt away. It was happening fast now. 

Out the window and into the air. He couldn’t really see anything because there was purple in his eyes. Everything was melting now. 

The last thing he heard was the winged woman’s piercing wail, the saddest cry of mourning that he’d ever heard. My god, he was going to miss her. 

Tandi, Sweeter Than Candy

The car pulled over on the side of the road was of no interest to Drew until he drove closer. Next to it stood a dark-skinned, slender woman, wearing a sundress. He watched her kick the rear tire. Then she put one hand on her hip, made a fist with the other, and shook it at the sky. A young child stood next to her. 

Drew pulled up behind them. The trunk of the woman’s car was popped open. A cooler, with NY Yankees emblazoned on its side, a beach umbrella, and a guitar case was spread across the side of the road. A car jack lay on the ground.

He got out of his car, and the boy took his mother’s hand and hid his face in her dress. She took a step back. Drew hesitated. In the brief moment before he spoke, he admired her high cheekbones and long slender legs. Her bosom looked like it would burst out of her dress. The dreadlocks she wore were not the thick, traditional type you sometimes see. These were thin strands of hair, tightly wound. Her features were just as delicate as her hair.  

“Need some help?” he asked, approaching her.

She started to cry and took another step back. 

“I’ll be okay. It’s just a flat.” 

“Then why you crying?” he asked.

A truck speeding down the road drove past them. The rush of air it created caused her dress to fly up, covering her face and she pushed it down, but not before Drew caught a glimpse of her panties. Pink they were, and she may have realized what he saw because she turned her back to him, and covered her face with both hands.  

The boy stepped forward and said, “Momma don’t know how to change a flat.”

“You be quiet Trevor,” she said. “Go sit in the car.”

“My name’s Drew. Let me help.” 

Reluctant, but desperate for help, she nodded her approval.

Andrew reached into the trunk and pulled the spare out. 

“Damn. Your spare’s flat.” He stopped himself from using a few choice words he had known since boyhood.  

“Now what do we do?” The woman asked.

“There’s a gas station down the road. “I’ll get your spare fixed and bring it back. You can come with me, or wait here.” 

“If you don’t mind, I’ll wait here.”

“What’s your name?” he asked her.

“Tandi.”

***

Fixing the spare took longer than Drew would have liked. He was anxious to get back. It wasn’t leaving her alone on the side of the road that concerned him. No, he wanted to spend more time with her. 

He returned to find the woman sitting in the car with the boy. She looked in the rearview mirror and fixed her hair before climbing out. 

Tandi watched him change the tire. Drew wore a tee shirt, and she admired the muscles in his arms, his broad shoulders straining to loosen the tire lugs. Occasionally he wiped his forehead with the back of his hand to get the sweat and blond hair out of his eyes. His face was rugged and manly.  

Once finished he said to her, “You need to keep a good spare with you.” 

She thanked him and then noticed his hands.   

“Oh, look at how dirty you are,” she said.  

Tandi took some wet wipes from her car and smiled as she took his hand. First, she wrapped the pinky with a wet wipe, then moved on to the ring finger. Tandi pulled a bit on his gold wedding band and stared into his eyes. She moved to the middle finger and lingered on it before proceeding to the others. He turned his hand over and let her clean his palm. Tandi then did the same with his other hand.  

“How can I ever thank you,” she asked.  

“You could meet me for a drink.” Drew reached into his wallet and offered his business card.  

Tandi read the info on the card. Andrew Previn Esq. He had an office on Madison Ave.  

***

Tandi expected Drew to arrive in about an hour. She bustled about straightening her apartment. It needed to look better than the last time he visited. 

That last visit was his first, and although she couldn’t prevent Drew from seeing the hopelessness of her neighborhood, and the squalor of her building, she could have done something about the mess her apartment was in.  

This time would be different. She picked up Trevor’s toys that littered the living room and put them in his room. After cleaning up the kitchen, she straightened out her bedroom. The laundry basket, full of dirty clothes, the pile of magazines she wanted to read, it all went into Trevor’s room. She put clean sheets on her bed and lit a scented candle. Last, Tandi took a shower and put on a skirt and a tight top, but not before she slipped on a new bra and a pair of thong underwear.   

The doorbell rang, right on time, and she buzzed him in.  

Drew wasted no time with idle chit-chat. He took her hand and led her to the couch. Sitting down, with Tandi standing in front of him, he put his hands on her hips, then slid them under her skirt and slowly pulled her underwear down. 

“A thong,” he said sounding surprised. He held them up. “Maybe I should have left those on for a bit,” he laughed.

“Your loss,” she replied. She tugged at his shirt. 

He picked her up and carried her into the bedroom. Drew lay on top of her and said, “I want to eat you like candy.” 

***

They tried hard to satisfy their carnal lust for each other. After about an hour, their cravings not satisfied, but too exhausted to continue any longer, they stopped. 

Tandi slipped on a robe and went to take a shower.

Drew sat at her kitchen table in his shorts and lit a cigarette. He reached for an ashtray that sat on top of a stack of mail. When he pulled the ashtray closer, the envelopes shifted, and one stuck out from the pile, exposing a message in bold type. The words “FINAL NOTICE” were visible to him. 

“You call me about next week, ok handsome,” Tandi shouted from her bedroom. She came into the kitchen wearing a robe. He pulled her close to him. Tandi ended up sitting on his lap, with her back to him.

He reached around her and cupped her breasts with both hands, his head resting against her back. “Maybe next time we can meet at that hotel again,” he said. “It is our anniversary.”

“That’s convenient for you but a hassle for me. Takes me ‘bout an hour to get there. No. Let’s meet here.”

“Okay, you’re the boss.”

Tandi felt something pushing against her butt.  “Is that you knocking on my back door?” 

“Little Drew wants some more.” He kissed the back of her neck. 

She stood and gave him a playful slap. “Little Drew ain’t got time for anymore. And Daddy Drew needs to get back to where he’s supposed to be.”  

Drew dressed and hugged her goodbye. Then he took his wallet out and offered her some money. 

Tandi squinted her eyes at him. “Why you doing that?”

Using one finger, Drew pushed the envelope with the bold message on it out from under the pile. He tapped it a few times. “I thought you could use a bit of help.”

“I ain’t doing this for money.”

“I know. Don’t be offended okay?”

Drew put the money on the table and left.

***

A few weeks later, they celebrated their anniversary, as planned but at her apartment. Drew stayed a bit too long, and when Tandi realized the time, she said, “Better get your ass outa here. I gotta pick up Trevor.” 

She took a quick shower after he left, and ran down the steps from her apartment in a hurry. With her hair still wet, no makeup, and wearing an old sweatsuit, she walked as quickly as possible. Despite her lack of preparation to go outside, a man in a passing car whistled at her. Tandi turned a corner and saw Trevor. Her friend Jervaise held him with one hand, and with the other, her little girl Juanita. Jervaise frowned and shook her head from left to right as Tandi came up to her.  

Tandi ignored her. “You all right Trevor? Mommy’s sorry she’s late.” She kneeled and hugged her son. 

“You’re lucky I was on time. What if I wasn’t?” Jervaise said in a stern voice. She stood with her hands on her hips, chin thrust out and her brow riddled with lines.  

Tandi stood up. “I swear that school bus is early.”

Jervaise gave her a ‘humph,’ as she turned and walked away. Tandi followed her, making excuses as to why she was late.

“You mean you were spending time with that sugar daddy of yours.”

Tandi shushed her. “Trevor don’t need to hear none of that.”

“Well? Admit it. You ashamed or something?”

Tandi didn’t respond.  She looked at the donut shop across the street and had an idea.  

“Let me treat you to something for helping me with Trevor.” Tandi grabbed her friend’s sleeve and tugged at it. “Come on. We’ve got time.” 

“Maybe you got time but I got me a husband I got to cook for.”

Tandi laughed. “You probably got dinner just about ready. You kids want a donut before we go home?” Tandi said as they crossed over. “C’mon.” 

She didn’t wait for an answer and walked to the shop, opened the door and waited. Jervaise gave her a half smile and led the kids in. The air in the store smelled of coffee, vanilla, and cinnamon. Most of the tables were occupied. 

“You all grab a seat,” Tandi told them.  

She bought hot chocolate and a variety of donuts and then joined them at the table. The kids were excited and fought over the donuts as soon as she put the tray down. 

“Mind your manners,” Jervaise scolded them. 

Without touching the money that was on the tray, Jervaise counted a twenty, a ten-dollar bill, and some singles. 

“Sugar bring you some Christmas cheer?” Jervaise asked.

“You could say Santa paid a visit.” 

Jervaise gave her a smug smile and shook her head from left to right.  

“You kids eat up now,” Tandi said. 

The kids finished their donuts and Tandi gave Trevor a few singles and sent him and Juanita to play the arcade games in the back.  

Jervaise’s eyes went back and forth between the kids and Tandi. When they were out of earshot, she grilled her.

“Okay, so how long you gonna let this go on?”

“Girl, I ain’t hurting nobody.”

“You’re a married woman, and he’s a married man. Never mind a white man. You taking care not to get pregnant?”

Tandi nodded her head yes.  

“You’re just setting yourself up to get hurt.” 

“I know he ain’t gonna leave his wife and kid for me.”

“He say that to you?”

“No, but he say he loves me.”

“How ‘bout you? You in love too?”

“No. I just see him ‘cause the sex is good, and he helps with the bills.”

“So now you’re a whore. What does Trevor’s father say?”

“Oscar? He don’t know nothing. He’s playing with that band in Paris. Says they appreciate a black man, not like here. He sends what he can, but a musician don’t make much.”

Trevor came to the table and asked for more money. Tandi gave him two more singles and told him that was all he would get. The boy went back to the arcade game. 

“Remind me, how did you meet this fella? Drew, right? What kinda name is that?” 

“That’s short for Andrew. Says no one calls him that. He fixed my flat. Remember? I told you. I know I told you.”  

“Well, good luck is all I can say.” Jervaise stood. “Time for me to head back to the kitchen. C’mon there Juanita, say goodbye. Say thanks for the donuts.”

Tandi headed home with Travis. They walked past a group of young men who were shooting dice against the side of a building. One of them, an older fella winked at her but she paid him no mind. Tandi stopped at a street light. Close by, two men were leaning on a car. One of them discreetly showed her a small clear plastic bag with a white powdery substance in it. She turned away. 

Tandi hurried across the street to her building, The lobby smelled of cleaners and marijuana. There were flyers for a Chinese restaurant littering the vestibule. She stopped at her mailbox and retrieved her mail. There was a letter from Oscar. Tandi’s emotions went from joy at receiving his letter to consternation as to what it might say. She waited until she was in the elevator to read it.

Oscar said his gig in Paris would soon be over, and he’d be home in a few days. Tandi felt no excitement at the thought of him coming back.

Later that evening, back in her apartment, she spoke with Drew and told him how much she loved him. It weren’t no lie.