White Wisps Of Smoke

I watched him making the concoction there that night. While the world outside was in darkness and most slept in their beds preparing for the work day ahead, we sat in the yellow light of the studio. 
We called it the studio, supposedly it was a space to make art and create things that existed in our souls, but he just cooked and shot up and got high and imagined he was an artist.
I had stopped drawing years before- right when school began and thoughts and words and self doubt clogged my mind and amputated my hands. I could no longer hold a pen and let the lines come. He was an artist when he wasn’t using or trying to find a vein or scheming and manipulating to get another bag, another hit, to end the sickness- but addiction was a full time job and art came in rare moments- mostly a thing of the past now, a memory he held onto, an image he projected of himself on himself. 
I hoped too for a day my artist would return- the thick chested, tattooed man who had drawn me erotic mermaids. All I saw in front of me in that yellow lit room was a man much too skinny for his frame.  A man with pale green and black bruises over his arms and legs and a paranoid glaze obscuring his bright blue eyes. 
He had taken to wearing the dark blue suit I had bought him years ago for his first court date- only now he looked like an emaciated teenager in his father’s clothes, playing dress up in the middle of the night when the rest of the world outside slept in their beds. 
I sat with him now in the yellow lit studio. With clear and focused attention he mixed a small amount of white powdered cocaine with baking soda and water in a metal spoon. He lit the spoon from below, the same way he cooked his sticky tar heroin. He let it all melt together and bubble around the edges and in a few moments the watery mixture evaporated, leaving a few hard little white ‘rocks.’  He picked them up tenderly and placed them in a four inch narrow glass vial. On one end of the vial was a piece of steel wool which created a filter.  He tilted his head back a little and lit the filter/rock end and sucked on the tube like a straw. 
I watched as thick whips of white smoke traveled up the vial and towards his mouth.  He inhaled for as long as he possibly could, filled his chest with all that smoke and then held it inside even longer. He closed his eyes and then leaned in towards me. I opened my mouth and he breathed into me, giving me all those white wisps.
“Hold it in” he said. 
I looked at him and waited until my body screamed for air, but then I couldn’t even hear it. The room was ringing. 

I wanted more. 

I took a shower and called for him to bring me a ‘hit’ in the shower. I sat on the ground, hot water pouring over my stomach and legs.  He came in and pushed the shower curtain aside.  I opened my mouth and he lit the filtered end. Inhaling, inhaling, inhaling, holding, holding, holding, release and riiiinnnnnnggggggggggg. 
I could feel each droplet tapping my skin.  Slapping my breasts and pink nipples, my hips and arms. 

I wanted more.

Then he miraculously fell asleep.  He never slept anymore but in those early morning hours I found myself alone in the yellow lit studio. I watched him for a moment on the bed which we hardly shared, awash with the neon glow of our television (which he needed like soothing lullabies).
The small plastic baggie of cocaine was half full and on the coffee table. I had not paid attention to the exact amounts he had used to cook- so I added a little of this and that. I tried several different batches, adding various amounts of cocaine to baking soda ratios and smoked all of them.
Then the light started to creep through the edges of the thick drapes.  The baggie was empty and I started looked for crumbs that had scattered over the table and carpet. I picked up what I could find carefully and cooked it too. 
I went into the windowless bathroom sometime around six.  The face in the mirror startled me. It was dead and pale green and the eyes looked both shocked and dull at the same time. 
Was this me? 
“This is me,” I realized. 
I looked into those eyes- brown, absolutely lifeless. I stared and had no words for this woman.

And then I remembered him on the bed.  My addict.  My once-lover. My child, my burden, my chain. My dealer, my demise. What would he say?  What would he do when he discovered the empty baggie?  He had never hit me, had never ever come close, but that morning I wondered.  Would be kick my ass?
I sat on the couch, each minute pushing harder and harder on my shoulders. Every moment like another rock on my chest as the sun rose and I waited for his body to ache, for the pain of reality to shock him into wakefulness. Then he would open his eyes and remember himself and his life and his veins and the itch and the sickness and he would know that it was time for a fix. 
And when he did open those paranoid blue eyes he saw me on the couch, pale green and full of terror. 
“I cooked it all last night. All the coke is gone.” 
“All of it?” 
I nodded and he looked at me in disbelief.  He didn’t touch me, but made me drive to the bank and get $80.  Then he took the car and drove to the beach flats and looked for the short Latin guys on the corner.  I stayed at home but I could imagine it all.  It was a mechanical script and I knew all the players, each actor- what they said and how they moved and where they would be.  I had taken that drive a thousand times. I had done this play each day for years.
Only this morning, I had joined them. In those few dark hours alone in the yellow room, I had inhaled something of them and now I knew what it was like, that dark pulling, pulling, ringing and pulling. It had my ankles. Like that ridiculous foot deep riptide which had almost taken me into the surf fifteen years before, I knew the haunting power of those white wisps of smoke. I knew what it could do. I knew it was too strong and I told myself I would never touch it again.

That day I went to school.  When I came home I found what I expected.  He was in the yellow studio.  I could feel him mixing up a batch.  He didn’t come out to greet me and I stayed in the living room, but I could feel the bubbles on the outside of the spoon, could smell it through the door, could almost hear the riiinggg.
I knew it was back there and it was calling to me. Like thick thorny vines that had wrapped themselves around my arms and legs and heart, I could feel its pull. 
IT wanted me back there. IT was singing, so lovely. 
I stayed in bed, I kept the door closed. I opened my books and read through the soft thudding in the back of my chest, part of me wanted to answer.
By the next day the singing was lighter and then the day after it was gone. I never touched it again, but that was the day I teetered on the edge.  A few more puffs and I might buried myself in the WANT- in that dark hole I had lost him to. 
Just a few more puffs- I might have never emerged.

Dancing Inside

Julie and Isa walked up to the glass and metal door at the far end of the lobby.  Visiting hours were over at the Santa Cruz county jail and the rows of chairs in the waiting area were empty. The large female officer behind a Plexiglas window at the receptionist counter had directed them to the metal doors in the far corner just past the metal detector. Isa reached out and pressed the cold silver button on the right side of the door.
“Yes?’ asked a deep and husky voice that rode the edge between displeasure and curiosity.
“Hi!”  Julie said with exaggerated enthusiasm that seemed to drip with false friendliness, “we’re here to teach the ‘exercising your power’ class. It starts at six." 
There was a momentary pause as they waited for his response and Isa imagined him shuffling through papers and looking at the list of scheduled visitors.
“We’ll send a guard to escort you in. It’ll be a little while.”
“OK! Thanks!” Julie said into the metal speaker embedded in the wall.
Isa turned to Julie, “Why are you so friendly with them? I hate the people working here, I hate cops.”
Julie shrugged, “They’ll do what we want if we’re nice to them.”
Somewhere inside Isa understood that to be true, but she was too angry to let it resonate and inform her behavior. She held the people there responsible for her own unhappiness, thinking each one of them had somehow contributed to Ray’s felony conviction, sentence and continuing drug and legal problems.
They waited in front of the thick reinforced doors for a while, it was one of the few portals to the cells behind the cinderblock walls where the humans in orange jumpsuits were kept locked away from sunlight.
Isa felt a loathing for every one of the people in dark blue uniforms. She thought they personally benefited from the containment and detention of people and could not contain her dislike when confronted by one of them. 
When a large male guard showed up and opened the door for them Julie once again used her most enthusiastic voice, it was high pitched and seemed to clash with the cold metal and whitish-gray walls of the interior.
“Hi!  How are you?”  she asked.
“Fine,” the man responded quickly, “follow me.”
To Isa, it seemed like he had been sent from a casting agency, fitting every cop stereotype she had ever seen on tv: round stomach, pale face, cropped hair, cold manner. Isa responded in kind, she stood there with a straight face as well, not a glimmer of warmth or friendliness towards the man. 
They followed him through the sterile hallway, the architecture screaming, “INSTITUTION.”  The space was all hard edges, angles, Plexiglas, metal, cold walls, thick doors, light paint that felt devoid of human emotion and compassion. It was the opposite of home, the opposite of love and warmth and rehabilitation.
The halls were well-lit with overheard florescent bulbs, the floors were shiny. On each side of the hallway were rooms with Plexiglas windows. They were unused at the moment and the lights were off, looking to Isa like dark portals.
They passed an inmate in an orange jumpsuit. He was holding a mop, a large trashcan on wheels was close beside him. He stared at them as they passed. Isa smiled faintly.
Julie spoke, “This is our first time here, we’ll need to tell the women what the class is about.”
“OK, I’ll bring you to the women’s dorm first.” 
They turned a corner and entered a darker space which was a very large central room. There were no lights on. Along the edges of the room were the various ‘dorms’ divided by sex. It was like looking into many fishbowls, they could look in and see the inmates. 
In the center of the main room was an unmanned desk. On the left was the room where the men were kept.  It was crowded with triple bunk beds. The room was teeming, men sat on bunks on the floor, men were walking and standing close to the window.
Some men took notice of Isa and Julie as they were led past the room to the women’s cell. Just a few more feet down, past the view of the men’s window was the women’s dorms.  They wore the same style of jumpsuit only in a dark maroon color.
The guard led them into the room and yelled out, “Listen up!  These girls want to tell you about a new class.”
The dorm housed one hundred women and all eyes turned to Isa and Julie. It was the first time Isa had smiled since entering the doors from the parking lot. She smiled, somewhat embarrassed to be the focus of such attention. 
“Hi,” she said a little shyly, “I’m Isa and this is Julie and we’re starting a class tonight called ‘exercising your power.’ It will be a combination of dance, exercise, journaling, writing and music.  If you want to check it out, we’ll be starting in about 10 minutes.”
Isa and Julie left and were escorted to the recreation room.  Isa plugged in the boom box she had brought and Julie lay out the journals and old magazines and glue sticks. The guards had confiscated the scissors. 
Then the women arrived. Isa watched them enter through the door, all of them shuffling in their county issued white socks and plastic sandals.
The single file group of women continued and seem to never end. Isa looked at Julie with amazement. When the last one had entered the room was crowded, there were at least forty women in front of her, almost all of them older than her. They looked to Isa and Julie, waiting for instruction.
Julie started, “So this is going to be a really loosely structured class. We brought music for the women that want to dance, we brought journals and art supplies for those of you who want to write. We want for this to be a creative space, so tell us what you’re into and what we can do more of.” 
Isa turned on the music, a cassette of disco/techno music she had gotten in Italy years before. She and Julie led the women in a free dance, exercise session. Many of the women suggested different moves and Isa looked around at one point and saw that everyone was smiling. 
Together, she thought, they could make it seem like home for a moment, maybe an hour.

The Wanderer

He expects nothing of anyone.
He looks out into the dust of the world, scorching fallen bones to white stones.  Water is perhaps days away and he does not expect to find it.  The desert floor is scattered with the fallen, both man and beast have succumbed to their thirst in this vast yellow wasteland, all of them left there uncovered as food for the scavengers. 
He expects nothing and gives nothing.
He takes what he finds, what he needs. Men have died beside him and he has stepped sideways as they fell. It is by chance that bullets and arrows have all but missed the target. 
He continues on, his face cracked and blistered and burning, an unrelenting sun high above that has no mercy for the weak. Sucking on stones as he stumbles over the few patches of withered grass, he has not lost the desire to live, just the expectation that life somehow belongs to him. 
There is no god above to save his soul, to pluck him from this dry bed of dust and wind. There is nothing, no one beyond his own skin, nothing but the determination to keep moving and follow the stars. Perhaps he will stumble upon a watering hole. 
He does not pray for rescue or grace, does not hope to find some other man along the path with a full canteen and dried meat. There are no friends in this place, not in this desert or in any town he has ever been. There is no sweet smelling woman that does not hold her hand out for coin or gift, no act of mercy ever granted without expectation of consequence. 
The men out here come as vultures and thieves and even those he has ridden side by side with watch him with suspicion, as he does with them. 
He expects nothing of them and he gives them nothing. Each man rides until he is unable to do so any longer. Then he is left and forgotten, stripped and left to the sun and rain, to the vultures and time.
Scanning the ridges of far away mountains for signs of smoke and silhouette, for enemies and arrows and bullets aimed at his chest, he walks on, his mouth dry as the desert sand and cracked earth.
The wasteland is for the solitary drifter, each man experiencing the earth with eyes colored by his path and choice.

Gray Hounds

We are like dogs. All we can do is try to hump each other in the street, or sniff each other at the bar, or beg for our masters in the gray suits to throw us another scrap from the top of the gray buildings.
“Come with us to Café Van Kleef?” Alice asks as I board the elevator, already loosening my tie.
“We?” I sigh as I ask. Is it because I’m tired? Because I’m bored? Because my sphincter is releasing the death clinch it has maintained all day while I stayed out of the biting range of the Alpha dogs and the master’s whip?
“Sue might meet us there. Andrew. You met him, I think. He’s Rob's cousin.”
“Yeah, I know him.” as if it matters to me at all who might be there, where there is, or whether I ever manage to crawl back out. “I’ll go.” I say as one more skinny blond in high heels joins us in the elevator. She has a name, but I forgot it long ago. I see her making coffee thick as mud in the break room. We never speak, not a word, even though we once fucked at a Christmas party, and even then we didn’t make a sound and hardly looked at each other, just as we now ignore one another, not out of any sense of malice, but from a mutual indifference which may accumulate into passion by next December. Or not.
“Andrew’s fat.” I remark as the elevator doors shut us in.
“My eye itches.” is all Alice has to say and we descend with the blonde standing in front of us, texting away.
Café’ Van Kleef. It’s not as fancy as it sounds. There is a giant bust mounted to the rail behind the stage and some red metallic streamers shimmer over the hall that leads to the john. It is a long narrow bar full of dogs like us, tired desperate dogs ordering greyhounds because they put a fat slice of fresh grapefruit in each one, and we like that.
We like fresh grapefruit. As long as it comes floating in hard alcohol. We like fresh grapefruit. As long as we can’t remember who we are or where we came from. We like fresh grapefruit. As long as fat Andrew stops putting his arm around my shoulders like we're good chums while sticking his other hand up Alice’s skirt. We like fresh grapefruit until we’ve knocked the glasses over and Andrew is rolling in a puddle on the floor like an inexperienced puppy trying to get back to his feet because I forcefully pushed him off of his barstool.
“I said knock it off!” I snarl, and not even I know whether I’m talking about his arm around my shoulder or his hand up Alice’s skirt or that damned nasal laugh he’s been serving up at all the wrong moments.
On the stage some poor little poet is reading about her struggles with a disability that I can’t pin point from within the haze that has enveloped my mind. She is trying to read over the commotion, her audience of friends and family gathered up around the stage are looking back over their shoulders at Andrew. Someone- the bartender? A bouncer?- is inquiring about the state of affairs, but I’m eating the grapefruit off of the high table and Alice is explaining that Andrew lost his balance because the stool had a wobbly leg.
And Andrew? He seems to believe Alice as only dogs can believe, accepting her version of reality instead of his own, because that is how dogs are wired. We're built to please, to observe the subtle gestures of others and try to give them what they want so that they’ll toss us a bone later.
Is that what Andrew hopes? That Alice will give him a bone later if he co-operates with her version of reality? Her version which is now his version, is now the version accepted by the inquirer and the other patrons of Café Van Kleef, and is swiftly coming to replace my own. I’m innocent. Fat Andrew fell off of his barstool. We like fresh grapefruit. Another greyhound for me please.
It is a straight shot from the front door to the stage where these soft strange creatures are trying to read poetry over the cacophonous roar of drunken conversation and laughter. The bar lies in between, to the left, and it is mobbed by glee desperate pound puppies in their white collar shirts and dark slacks or pencil line skirts. It is now nearly impossible to get in or out of the front door. Where the bar ends lies a tall table surrounded by stools where I sit ignoring Andrew’s stupid attempts at humor and social reparations, even though he does not now quite believe I did him any violence. He smiles apologetically at everyone, especially me, and is careful to keep his arm away from my shoulders. Between us and the stage there are more smaller tables and chairs.
I watch a woman who sits on the stool at the end of our table, her back turned to us as she tries desperately to hear and understand the poets. Her shoulders are stooped as if she were crumpling in on herself, as if she were a giant rolly polly intent on folding into a perfect armored ball. As my attention focuses on her, she becomes the only real object in the room, the rest are all ghosts drifting in the vapors of spilled alcohol. I see her with perfect clarity, I see her like a houseplant trapped in a dark room reaching desperately towards a small far away window, her body bending visibly towards the poets, towards the light that will give her life and prevent her from joining the rest of us here in the ghost world.
Then I hear Alice saying:
“Sue and them are going to the Conga Lounge. Want to go?”
I snap back, back to the reality created by Alice, and shake my head.
“Not yet.” I say.
“You want to stay here?” she asks and I nod. I realize that Andrew is no longer with us when I see him walking towards us, returning from the can.
“Ready?” I hear him asking Alice. His face wilts a little as Alice explains we’ll catch up with them later. Then he’s carried away by the bustling tide of bodies abandoning our table with its high stools in favor of the wicker seats of the Conga Lounge.
The table is suddenly empty except for myself and Alice and the strange woman sitting with her back to us. She could easily turn and suddenly speak to us, except for the fact that she is no longer real. She is a ghost now and Alice and I are real, the bar and the noisy pound puppies are real. She vanishes from my sight and my mind and only a place marker in the form of a human body hunched on the high stool at the end of our table remains. I forget her, and I forget that I have forgotten her.
“Alice,” I say, “You’re still here.” She has taken Andrew's seat beside me and I let my leg rest against hers.
“These shoes squeeze my feet.” is all she has to say. Someone picks up our empty glasses as fresh bodies squeeze through the door, crowd around the bar and find their way to our table.
“Let’s go then.” I say, ready now to seize Andrew's bone.
“To the Conga Lounge?” she asks glancing at her phone.
“No. To the streets.” I tell her as I stand up and she follows.

The Angel Of Death

He winked at me.
I winked back.
He e-mailed me.
I e-mailed back.
He called.
We talked for two hours.
The next night we agreed to meet at Jack's Bar and Grill.

It seemed like a simple conversation at a normal bar and grill with a few flashing neon signs on the windows and the pungent smell of French fries and stale beer mixed with diluted chlorine bleach. I knew differently. This wasn’t just normal. This was the place. The eternal chamber. The loud murmur of dozens of conversations, the waitresses in matching black uniforms that resembled casual wear. The smell, that left-out-all-night smell. The thin red carpets. The dark space lit by the glow of many small lamps above our wooden tables. Amid the diners, there were others that came and went. Stopping for a quick beer before heading home. A couple on their first date. It was clean. It was comfortable with its soft booths and relentless drone of plates that meet utensils and muffled conversation. It was comfortable. A little too easy, like slipping into a warm pool. Like climbing into a warm bed.

Michael was very charming. His eyes seemed to sparkle with mischief and sexual thoughts. I looked at him with desire. With heat that came up rapidly from my core. It spilled out of my eyes, into his. He seemed to catch my wishes with his eyes, he held them there, saving them for later. He sat across from me, a mug of chill beer gathered a small pool of condensation where it met the table. Shadows from the soft overhead lamp danced on his well-worn cheeks. We laughed and talked. We joked. I watched a few tears make their way across the long landscape of his face. He lost his son, sister, dad, mom and 27 brothers in 'Nam. He said:
“In 'Nam I was just a kid, and the other kids are laying in your arms, dying, crying, pleading ‘Don't let me die, Michael. Don't let me die!!!’ But there was nothing I could do. They died.”

When his father was sick in the hospital, he walked into the white walled room, into the white light of an early afternoon that found its way through the window. His father was in bed, the old man looked at him and said:
"Are you an Angel?"
Michael replied, "Dad! It's me, Michael, your son!"
And with that, his father passed.

Michael served in Vietnam in 1972. He was in the Army Special Forces. Their motto, "De Oppresso Liber.” To liberate the oppressed. He did reconnaissance missions to rescue POWs. He had 38 confirmed kills. The child he once was never left the jungle. He went with those 38 bullets. He went with every bullet. He went with every curse, every insult. He went with every young white face he saw fade to blue.

We met at Jack's several days in a row. We got along wonderfully. We had the same twisted sense of humor. I found him innocent and childlike at times. Then, like clockwork, after an almost pre-determined number of beers, he would relay his story. He lost his son, sister, dad, mom and 27 brothers in 'Nam. He said:
“In 'Nam I was just a kid, and the other kids are laying in your arms, dying, crying, pleading ‘Don't let me die, Michael. Don't let me die!!!’ But there was nothing I could do. They died.”

After the fourth night his charm took me to bed. We drove to my place. The kids were asleep and we snuck upstairs to my room. I felt alive. I felt giddy. We played on my sheets. We bounced on the bed. We kissed. He gave me what I had been craving. We made love all night. Surprisingly, he had talented hands. He knew where to touch me. How hard. How long. How deep. He moved with rhythm and force. He knew exactly what to do. I wriggled and squirmed under his touch. My body wanted this. My body needed this. And then he was inside me, inside me for hours. We shared ourselves until the sun finally broke free of the black cloth that defines night. This was our pattern several nights in a row until he stood me up when he was supposed to meet two of my sisters and their husbands. Later when I talked to him, he said he had afraid. I knew he was.

One night he did meet my little sister and her husband and my son. He was still very, very afraid. His jokes sprinkled out of him less frequently. His charm was muted by a spattering of self conscious movement and quick nervous gestures.

We met every night. He drank every night. Then, like clockwork, after an almost pre-determined number of beers, he would relay his story. He lost his son, sister, dad, mom and 27 brothers in 'Nam. He said:
“In 'Nam I was just a kid, and the other kids are laying in your arms, dying, crying, pleading ‘Don't let me die, Michael. Don't let me die!!!’ But there was nothing I could do. They died.”

We made love almost every night.

Then I went to San Francisco for a short weekend. I had been gone for less than 24 hours when I got his call, then his text. I don’t remember his exact words, but it was something like:
“I knew this would happen, good luck.”
My heart plunged. My stomach hurt. I tried to call him back. I wanted to understand the severity, the finality of his words. I didn’t understand it. It hurt. It hurt like a dull knife, so unexpected, so deep. The air between me and my friends fizzled as my mind skipped 2,500 miles away. My smiles were stained with uncertainty. My jokes could not hide the deep pain that moved up and down, creating a halo of worry around my head.
I knew he was trying to give me an "out.” I knew he had been cheated on. I knew he worried that he could not trust me. He had told me all his problems. He had had cancer. His young boy had died. He was an alcoholic. He had PTSD. He had obsessive tendencies. I thought he had told me everything. He wondered if he had revealed too much. I talked to him early Sunday morning, while my friend and her two little girls slept in the other room. I flew back a few hours later and we met at Jack's that same night. He sat with his hand on his glass, he looked at me.
“I have to go to the VA hospital tomorrow morning for some tests. I’m afraid my pancreatic cancer came back.”
It turned out to be anemia. We met at Jack's Monday night.

When I stepped off the plane I had been eager to see him, eager to settle my queasy stomach. From that moment on I watched my once disciplined habit of exercises and daily activities go by the wayside. I watched it happen. I watched in paralysis as my will slipped through my fingers like a quickly fading dream. I didn't want it to happen, but I watched it all the same. It was like watching a movie. I saw myself, I wanted to shout at her:
“No, don’t go that way…don’t do that!!”
I wanted to warn her, but I was too tired. My limbs were sore from all the positions I was being bent into. I wanted to yell at her, but my voice was hoarse after all the moaning. I wanted to whisper, but I was asleep.

On Thursday we met again at Jack's. Then, like clockwork, after an almost pre-determined number of beers, he would relay his story. He lost his son, sister, dad, mom and 27 brothers in 'Nam. He said”
“In 'Nam I was just a kid, and the other kids are laying in your arms, dying, crying, pleading ‘Don't let me die, Michael. Don't let me die!!!’ But there was nothing I could do. They died.”

He asked me who Popeye's nemesis was.
“Brutus.”
“No,” he said, “it’s Bluto.”
He used his cell phone to connect to the internet. It said, “Popeye's nemesis = Bluto.” I could have sworn it was Brutus. I would have bet money on it!

I had to pick up my daughter at 8pm. Michael suggested I bring her back to Jack's to meet him. I agreed. I picked her up and brought her to Jack's. Her friend was going to pick her up from there. She was not friendly to him and made some snide comments. Michael was disappointed that she did not like him, I could see it on his face. I was going to say something to her but he grabbed my arm quickly and said:
"Not now, it's not the right time. Talk to her about it later."
When my daughter left she texted me and said that she didn't like him and that she thinks he'll abuse me because of the way he grabbed my arm. I went out to the parking lot to call her so that I could explain why he grabbed my arm. When she picked up, she started going on a rampage. I went back inside. Michael was extremely disappointed. He was sad. He was angry. His feelings had been hurt. He looked into his glass as his body trembled and his teeth clenched and gritted.
“I finally meet someone I get along with so well and some 21 year old snotty brat is going to ruin it for me? The plot next to your father is empty, right?"
"Yes" I replied, caught off guard.
"Well, you let me know if you want me to take care of your daughter and fill that plot," he said sternly.

What the fuck? Wow! He became very strange at that moment. I felt the energy both drain and fill the room. I felt fear. I watched speechless as the twinkle in his eye became a spark of sheer violence. He wanted to hurt someone. He wanted to destroy something. I was fearful, but I was calm. This was survival. For a moment I realized I knew nothing about this man. What sat before me was a lifetime of grief and sadness that needed an explosion and I did not want my family to understand the true nature of his pain. Right then I talked to him very slowly, very calmly and rationally. We went outside into the still-warm night air. We talked for a little while. I became angry that he actually thought he could kill my daughter.
“You know,” I said, “this whole evening is extremely unacceptable and we should call it a night and talk tomorrow.”
He kissed me and hugged me and told me to call him when I got home so he knew I made it home safe. I called him when I got home. By this time, my body had finally caught up with me. The calm, cool, collectedness came out in a sudden bout of diarrhea, nausea and the shakes. I told Michael what I was feeling. I told him the last time I experienced these sensations was after an initiation. He told me the initiation I might be feeling right now is the initiation of the Trinity: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. He suggested I read the New Testament. I held my tongue and we hung up after what seemed like ages.

The next day I looked up Popeye's nemesis. In the earlier version, it was Bluto. In the later versions, it was Brutus. We were both correct.

I talked to my friend that morning, then I called Michael and told him I was not trained or equipped to deal with what had transpired the night before. He said:
"I was expecting this. Good luck."
I replied "Michael, I hope you find what you are looking for. At this point, I don't think it is a woman. I think it is something far bigger than that." We hung up.

That was Michael, the Angel of Death.

Like clockwork, after an almost pre-determined number of beers, he would relay his story. He lost his son, sister, dad, mom and 27 brothers in 'Nam. He said, “in 'Nam I was just a kid, and the other kids are laying in your arms, dying, crying, pleading ‘Don't let me die, Michael. Don't let me die!!!’ But there was nothing I could do. They died.”

A Moment of Difference

The apartment’s living room was a wide rectangle. Across one of the wide sides was an equally long single pane window which looked into the shabby courtyard one floor below. In the courtyard, the circular fountain had stopped flowing many years before, the grass had turned yellow and just the hearty oaks continued to thrive. Daylight was beginning to break into an electric spectacle of brilliant blue. It came in through the unobstructed window and added a tint of dim light to the room.
He sat on the tall wooden backed chair stolen from the kitchen. It was the only bit of furniture in the room. He sat nearly straight, but for the small hunch in his upper back. An unfiltered cigarette hung from his lip, just as they had hung from the bristly upper lip of his father. He took a long drag, holding the cigarette with his thumb and index finger, his eyes rolled across his loot, they rolled across it like a pilot surveying the curvy hillsides far below.
It had been a good night, a productive night. There were a few TVs, one old VCR and three nearly new DVD players. In addition, there were a handful of CDs and a few necklaces. One of them had some pearls on it and he made a mental note to check their worth.
This was what he liked about his job, the tangibility of it all. The rock solid possession. There was no abstraction, no maybes, just good solid atoms that came together to form recognizable shapes. He would sit on the same chair every morning, when the light was just cracking through the horizon, he would sit back with a swirl of smoke and ash about him and survey the bounty.
He likened it to being a hunter and having something tangible at the end of the day, having something to show for the effort, something earthly and real and solid, something he could pound his fist on or throw across the room. It was real and he liked it.
He avoided numbers on a check and their abstractions. He didn’t play around with banks that promised money on little slips of paper. They were all promises, and above all, he hated promises. Promises depended on someone to fulfill them, they implied vulnerability and trust and patience. He dealt only in the real as much as he could help it.
The TVs were real. He could plug them in and watch them or sell them or, as he sometimes did, throw them from the window in a fit of madness. He would watch them splinter and send their screams through the courtyard and he would know they were real.
He had no time for the objectless, for the illusion of accumulation and wealth. The world would not provide for him, the world would not keep its promises, so he made sure to take what he needed. He never asked, he just took.
When he found he needed something, he went out and got it. He took it. He made it happen. The night shadowed his intent and he moved through it like an animal, sniffing out what he needed, finding a way to shift past the obstacles unnoticed and then, as the light changed to blue, he would slink back into his cave, bringing with him the prey he had killed.
He needed… he took. He wanted… he took. There was no need for patience, no need to slave away as a salesman or beneath the hood of a car. If he needed it, he would get it. It was simple. There just wasn’t time for patience, a gentle finesse, or even a polite “please.” It was now or never and he never waited an extra day.
The light came through the window in a brilliant mess of blue, it caught the smooth glass of the TV set and he saw his reflection. There he was, in his chair, in his white T-shirt and rumpled blue jeans and short brown hair.
He saw himself and remembered another. The man he had seen walking past the bookstore two nights before. It was so dark that night, but the man’s white hair was shining in the darkness like a gleaming orb of promise and knowledge. He himself was hidden behind a car on the other side of the street, hidden in the dark shadows of the city, waiting for the perfect moment to take what was about to be his.
But for a moment, he forgot his intent. He watched as the old man walked slowly past the dim illumination of the store’s window. Walking as though there was nothing else to do, nowhere else to be, nothing more important than the one step he was taking at that exact moment. The long white hair fluttered slightly with each step and each one was taken with a deliberate slowness. It was a slower gait than any he had ever seen, almost like a dance of liquid.
For a moment that seemed to continue forever, the man walked, trailed by little specks of white light and a blue trail of dust. The man took the world like a drop of water smoothing a stone. It took more than a moment for him, more than a lifetime perhaps, but the man could ultimately bend the world into the shape he envisioned. It was not now or never, but just a matter of time.

Temperance

Those who passed by only glanced at the spotted old man seated on the bench in front of the barber shop. It was not his age which caused them to swiftly avert their eyes and pretend utter absorption in their private conversations. It was something about the man, about his hard dark little eyes and erect posture. Even in the throngs of old age, he looked as though he would be a formidable opponent, an old dog you wouldn’t want to scrap with. These were the lingering vestiges of his past and youth; the piercing hawks eyes and tightly drawn mouth. It was not a smile or a frown, but something else; an omission. From behind that face he might be thinking that you were a true friend or he might be thinking that he should bust your knee caps. Now he would never bust anyone’s knee caps, but in his youth he would have, and his adversary would not have known what he was thinking until it was too late. Despite the fact that his only present wish was to sit quietly by the slowly spiraling barber pole and watch the comings and goings of Main Street, his face still wore the harsh mask of his youth. He had grown so accustomed to wearing it that few other options remained.
Most days were sunny. Even in the winter, the air would be cold but clear and the sun would dazzle in the blue sky, refusing to give up its place on the throne. It was rarely so cold that one should do more than wear a jacket and put ones hands in the pockets. The idyllic lampposts were adorned with red ribbons and faux pine wreaths and little banners welcoming tourists to The City of Lake Elsinore. The old man on his bench could watch the people marching up the sidewalk to the popular Mexican restaurant on the corner for lunch or for dinner. Other restaurants had come and gone along this street and other little shops were stocked with antiques and curios. Only the barber shop and the Mexican restaurant had withstood time along with the tanned old man and his crisp bowling shirts. The Mexican restaurant had begun as a tiny hole in the wall and over time had expanded and swallowed up neighboring units thanks to its success, and though they still displayed the old pieces of folk art that first graced their walls, they now included glittering suns of hammered copper and shiny mirrors and a fancy lighted sign outside.
The barber shop had remained as it always had been, and it had been there nearly as long as there had been a town. The old man, watching the life of the Main Street trickle down the black vein, was the owner. His daughter ran the business now, still occasionally coming in and cutting hair, but for the most part she had been swept up in the stream of life that flowed around the barber shop but rarely trickled in. There were a few old men who were regular customers, old men who had learned that behind the stony face of the man on the bench they were regarded as friends. With them he would let that mask go and wear an occasional smile, a face he had only learned as he had aged. A few of them had been there in the days when he would break another man’s knees or drive a car off the Ortega highway and point out to the owner that it was only by his grace that they had not been inside the vehicle during the accident. Like him, all these old men had children that picked them up to come over on Christmas day and gave them photos of grand children and great grandchildren to hang over their television sets. Like him they had once thought of themselves as business men that knew how to get things done. Like him they now watched the world rushing by and wondered what the hurry was. If anyone would have asked, they could have told them that there was no hurry, that everyone was heading the same place. These old men had invoked death on a few occasions, accidentally and not so accidentally, and the taste of it had tempered them.
Sitting on the bench in front of the window with the words BARBER SHOP painted in gold, the old man regarded the old sun blazing in the sky and was glad that it would not rain today. In his youth he had been a rainmaker. Now he was content to let the sun shine on.

The Lion's Face

His name was Tad which was short for Thaddeus. Thaddeus was his father’s name. He was sixteen years old and unusually tall and lean. His hair was the color of straw and tended to be a mess. No one had ever taught him a way of combing it and he had cut it himself just to keep it out of his eyes since he was six years old. That was after his mother had run away to California.
He sometimes got a postcard or letter from her. He had received three to be exact, two postcards and one letter in the ten years since her departure. Her name was Helen. She had married Thaddeus Sr. when she was only fifteen. She ran away to be with a traveling vacuum salesman and get away from the town of Bethlehem where she had lived her whole life up till then.
Tad was in the high school marching band. When he wore his white uniform and bright red cap he resembled a matchstick. He played trombone. That was until the day that Pauly, Cash, and Steve pried the case out of his hands after school. Pauly was the shortest, with a mean square jaw and a buzz cut. What he lacked in height he made up for with pure aggression. He was the ring leader. Cash was the lumbering giant. Big and dumb with a perpetually bruised eye. At home he was the punching bag, but at school he did all the punching. Steve was of average build, not too lean and not too hefty, neither short nor tall. He wore a leather jacket and sold ecstasy, acid, and reefer to other kids, all of which he obtained from his older brother Stan. While Pauly was the brains, and Cash the muscle, Steve just struggled to keep up and laughed no matter what was happening, encouraging the other two with his enthusiasm.
Tad tailed after them begging to get his trombone back. Whenever he got close enough to make a grab for it, Cash just gave him a rough shove back while Pauly continued mixing insults and abuses with the occasional taunt and Steve trailed behind the other three, doubling over with laughter now and then when the abuses were particularly amusing. In this way, they paraded all the way down to the river where Pauly flung open the case, made a few more quips, and dumped the instrument into the brown water. Now Tad made his greatest effort to reach the trombone, but Cash threw him down on the muddy bank and pressed his cheek into the wet earth. Pauly kneeled and tilted his head to face his victim.
“What’s the matter? I’m doin’ you a favor. Your never gonna get any girls if you spend all your time fiddling with your trombone.” Steve erupted into a fresh burst of chortles and flopped down onto his rear trying to catch his breath.
“Yeah.” Pauly said, “Have you heard from your mom lately?’
When Tad’s answer was to try and struggle with Cash, Pauly continued, “Aw. That’s too bad. She stopped by my place last night.”
And so it went until the trombone was long gone and Tad’s uniform was soaked and stained with mud. Cash then let go of him and the three tormentors strolled away. Tad lay in the muck waiting for their voices to fade into the distance. Laying there studying the mud he noticed something shiny protruding about two feet from his face. He reached out with his hand and plucked it was of the moist grime and brushed its surface clean with his fingertips. At first he thought it was a coin, but then he noticed that it had a loop to run a chain through. There was a lion engraved on one surface, and on the back, “For my Katie.” was inscribed in a flowery script. Tad clutched the amulet in his hand and stood up. He spent the evening searching the banks down stream for his trombone but all he found was the case.

Tad could not tell his father about the trombone since it had cost a great deal of money. Neither could he bear to explain the manner in which it had been lost. In the weeks following the event, he carried the empty trombone case away from the house to keep up appearances. He often didn’t make it to the school at all. Instead he strolled along the river bed, musing over his treasure, wondering who Katie was, imagining that he might meet her one day, looking for her medallion among the reeds. He imagined she would be so pleased that he had found it, that they would agree it was fate that had brought them together. Katie might have long brown hair and green eyes. She might be someone from the school that he had never seen before, or somebody’s cousin just visiting, or even an older woman, a college student come home to care for ailing parents. They would fall in love and she would beg him to come with her, away from Bethlehem to New York, or California, or wherever she went to school.
Soon he no longer debated whether he should go to school or take another walk. The river seemed to be calling him, Katie was waiting for him. Each day, he left the house a little earlier and he came home a little later.
He wandered farther afield than he had ever gone as a boy, following the river upstream, under bridges, through pastures. Breathing the fresh air, stretching his legs, examining the amulet, he dreamed up pleasant conversations with Katie, picnics and swimming in the river, first kisses and second kisses and more and more and more.
On one particular Friday afternoon, he passed the point at which he usually turned back home. His father would go to the bar after work and he would be home late. Tad would be home late too. He pressed on and caught sight of a distant orchard. The sun was poised in the center of a blue sky beaming warmth down on his straw colored hair. He whistled and ate a sandwich and drank a root beer he had packed. On the opposite bank he caught sight of the ruins of a burned out house. The whole bank surrounding it was charred black. The remains of a few trees jutted up out of the ground mournfully. Tad put away the uneaten remains of his sandwich. He stripped off his shirt, socks and shoes and put them in his backpack. The medallion, which he wore on a bit of twine around his neck, gleamed in the noonday sun. He sat the back pack down in the grass out of the river’s reach and waded in. The cool water felt good after a morning of walking. The current was gentle and he waded until he had to swim and soon, he made it to the opposite bank.
He approached the charred ruins carefully, watching for broken glass or anything that might injure his bare feet. There was very little to see. A wall stood with a bit of sooty wallpaper still intact. He had almost satisfied his curiosity and made up his mind to swim back when he noticed something glittering beneath a mound of ash. Walking on the balls of his feet he approached gingerly and brushed away the soot. He caught his breath. It was a lion’s face, like the one on Katie’s medallion, gazing at him from the lid of a pewter jewelry box. The box lay open, it’s hinges fully extended. He lifted it, but there was nothing underneath. His hand drifted to the amulet at his throat.

Saturday morning, Tad mowed the lawn for his father. Thaddeus Sr. sat under the shade of the porch drinking bottles of cool beer one by one. When the lawn was finished, Tad left his father dozing on the porch and stormed the garage. Every Sunday for the last three years the Nors County Tribune had been left on the porch. Tad’s father read the funnies and the sports section and then deposited the paper in the garage to be recycled someday. There, in the stuffy darkness of the dusty garage, the young man searched around for the most recent papers, carefully reading dates and arranging a stack that spanned over the last 12 Sundays. Then he retired with them to his own room and began a systematic search starting with last Sunday’s paper. In the third paper, he found what he was looking for. A fire in east Nors county had killed 82 year old Kathleen Sims in her home. She had no children to survive her. Her ex-husband Ralph Sims still lived in Florida with his second wife.

On Sunday, Tad walked the length of the river only as far as Old Pete’s bridge. He stood in its center, watching the water rush by, disappearing under his feet. He remembered that his mother had brought him here to Play Pooh sticks when he was small. It was a game she picked up from an old children’s movie which she played for him every morning while she did the housekeeping. The game involved each player dropping a stick into the water at one side of the bridge and then rushing to the other side to see whose stick came out in the lead. She’d had to hold him up so that he could drop his stick over the side at the same time that she dropped hers. Then she would rush with him in her arms so that they could see whose stick had won the race.
He thought about his Katie, the way he had imagined her, and of the picture of the wrinkled little woman from the newspaper photograph. If they had met while she was alive, she might have baked him cookies and he would have done her yard work. If he had been born 66 years sooner, then maybe she would have been his green eyed black haired Katie. She would have married him instead of Ralph Sims and they would have died together in the fire. He turned the lion faced amulet in his fingers and watched the sunlight reflect from its golden surface. He heard them coming long before he looked up to face them. They were practically on top of him before he acknowledged them with a glance.
“Where you been Tad?” Pauly sneered. “Haven’t seen you around school lately. You been here looking for your trombone this whole time?” Steve snickered.
Pauly caught sight of the amulet pressed between Tads thumb and forefinger, “What’s that? Was it your whore Mommy’s? You missing your Mommy Tady wad?”
Pauly’s hand darted out to snatch the amulet but Tad was a hair quicker, jerking his own hand out of reach. In an instant, Cash was behind Tad pinning his arms behind his back.
“Throw this moron into the river.” Pauly laughed at his own suggestion because Steve was too occupied with slumping against the railing as if he were falling asleep.
Tad struggled while Cash endeavored to heave him over the rail. He wiggled and kicked and his head was slammed against the rail just as the bigger boy managed to flop him over the side. Katie’s medallion fell ahead of him glistening in the sun as it went. It hit the water just seconds before Tad’s inert body came crashing down over it, forcing it down to the river bed escorted by tiny green bubbles. Cash and Pauly hung over the rail waiting for Tad to resurface so they could throw in a few more abuses. When he did, he was face down in the water and completely motionless, drifting slowly downstream.
“Shit.” Pauly said after a few moments of stunned silence. “Shit! You banged his head on the rail!”
“I didn’t do nothin’,” Cash protested.
“Fuck.” Pauly said. “Fuck. I think you killed him.”
“I did what you told me to do.” Cash puffed out his pudgy chest.
“Oh shit.” Pauly said looking around to see if they had been observed. “C’mon, lets go.” He didn’t have to tell Cash twice, but Steve didn’t move.
“Steve,” Pauly said, “C’mon, we’re going!” He pulled on the leather jacket but Steve was out cold now, sitting with his back propped up against the rail and his mouth draped open. Pauly pulled him until he fell over on his side and murmured something indistinct.
“Whatever. Forget him. Let’s go,” Pauly commanded and he and Cash hurried away with shoulders hunched.
Katie’s amulet followed Tad’s dead body downstream for a while until he drifted up onto the bank not far from where they’d met. Then it kept going on it’s own, carried along by the current, until the lions face was once again shining in the sun, miles away from the town of Bethlehem.