Soft Apocalypse

Chapter 3 ROCK STAR

Pulaski Square was uncharacteristically crowded with teens and tweens and early twenty-somethings. They reminded me of pigeons, the way they milled aimlessly on the lawns and brick walkways, as if hoping to happen upon something interesting—a pizza crust or an errant cheese doodle. “Think she’s coming?” an acne-stricken kid said to his friend through a neon purple virus mask.

His friend, who had stripes of lamp black above and below his eyes to match his black mask (who could keep up with the pointless shit that passed for current teen fashion?), shrugged.

“Who’s supposed to come?” I asked.

“Deirdre,” the kid with the lamp black said. He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his sleeve pocket.

“Who’s Deirdre?” “Flash singer. The best.” He lit the cigarette, pulled his mask up to his forehead, took a puff, blew smoke into the Spanish Moss hanging overhead in an “Ain’t I so cool” way. “It’s going around there’s gonna be a flash concert here.”

“Oh,” I said. That I could probably do without. I nodded, the cool dudes nodded back, and I continued through the crowd.

“Jasper!”

I turned. “Cortez!” I pushed through the crowd to get to him, grabbed him in a bear hug. “Shit, I can’t believe it! I didn’t know you were back in the city.”

“Yeah, about six months now,” Cortez said, clapping me on the shoulder. He was dressed in a black t-shirt, black puffed pants. His head was shaved.

He was living with his dad, working security jobs when he could get them—mostly temp bodyguard stuff for semi-rich guys trying to impress their dates. Turned out he was on a job now—security for the flash concert that was indeed happening.

The rumble of the crowd on the west end of the square rose in pitch.

“Gotta go!” Cortez said. “Stick around, let’s have a beer after.”

So I stuck around.

A scrum of kids began chanting “Deirdre.” It spread, rising in volume. The crowd parted on the other end of the park, and there she was, surrounded by guys in black. Everyone cheered.

Deirdre was small, almost childlike. She was wearing six or seven pink neck rings that accentuated an ostrich-neck, and a black skintight leotard that accentuated enormous breasts. Her eyes bulged a little, her meaty lips formed an eager “o.” She was one of those women who was extremely sexy without being particularly pretty.

The stage was a bunch of two-by-fours on milk crates, hauled in by her roadies, along with amps, portable spotlights, and a generator. Deirdre paced, staring at the ground as they set up.

There was no introduction or anything. The amps squealed to life, there was scattered cheering, and Deirdre hopped onto the little stage and came to life.

Shit, did she come to life.

It wasn’t that she was a great singer—she had a decent voice, sure, but it was her energy that hooked you. Her voice was so loud; there was so much raw force behind it that you kept expecting those bulging eyes to explode. She flew around the stage, leaping, spinning, dancing, seeming to defy gravity on her tiny fuel-injected frame.

Her songs were angry and violent. Lots of things blowing up, lots of fucking, lots of death and despair and infidelity. She was a perfect voice for the times.

After every few songs, roadies circulated with plastic buckets, collecting money. Cortez stood beside the stage with the other men in black, his arms folded across his chest, looking all tough. It was strange reconciling this Cortez with the one who’d been part of my homeless band, my tribe, five years ago. He’d put on a good twenty pounds of muscle; though part of that was probably because he was eating more regularly now, and wasn’t walking miles every day.

After Deirdre’s final song, she bowed primly and left the stage to roaring applause. One of the bodyguards pulled off his t-shirt and handed it to her, and she put it on over her leotard. It came down to her knees. They headed off as the roadies gathered the stage and equipment.

Cortez said something to Deirdre as they walked. She nodded, and Cortez broke off and headed toward me, grinning.

“Come on,” he said, “we’re gonna meet them at the after party.”

The after party was at a bar called The Dirty Martini. At least it used to be called The Dirty Martini, before it went out of business. The front picture window was boarded up; the olive green bar, thick with dust and grime, was the only piece of furniture. Kerosene lamps hung from the rafters.

We got ourselves drinks and set up near the bar. Cortez asked if I’d seen Ange around, and I told him we were still in touch from time to time. I hated bending the truth like that, but what would be the point of telling him we’d had a friends-with-occasional-sex thing going for over a year? He might still have feelings for her. I caught him up on Ange’s progress on her Ph.D.

“She ever mention me?” Cortez asked. He saw me hesitate, waved off my answer. “Never mind. She probably still hates me like running pus.”

Their breakup had been about a bunch of little things, though the tipping point had come when Ange was accepted into the biotech doctoral program on a full scholarship, and Cortez didn’t fully embrace the idea. Ange’s take was that Cortez was threatened by it. Cortez said she used an offhanded comment he made about it not seeming practical as an excuse to break up with him. In any case, it hadn’t been the sort where you keep in touch. I knew how that was, and, given that no punches had been thrown in either direction, I didn’t feel a need to take sides. As far as I was concerned there were no bad guys when it came to breakups. Bad guys had guns, and forced you to eat things. I’d tell Ange I bumped into him. I doubted she would care much if Cortez and I became friends again. Ange didn’t seem to care who I was dating, let alone who my friends were. It amazed me how well she could handle the friends-with-sex thing; she never expected anything more from me than a good friend could expect, and she never gave any more, either.

Cortez and I talked about the tribe, about the days when we were even poorer then we were now, about how humiliating it’d been to be homeless, and, finally, about that day, when the tribe had been forced to kill. It had been almost seven years, but I still rode a black wave at the mention of that day.

That’s when Deirdre made her entrance.

She’d changed clothes: from upper thigh to just below her armpits she was wrapped in a continuous strip of black leather. It must have been fifty feet long when it was unraveled. I thought for a moment about what it would be like to unravel it, then allowed reality to kick in. She was out of my league. I’m strictly minor league—double-A, maybe triple-A if I stretch. Deirdre was playing in the majors.

A cadre of fifteen-year-olds circled her, sputtering about how she was pure poison, brilliant, vascular. She passed through them like they were gypsies asking for a handout and made her way to the bar, stopping right near me and Cortez. My stomach did a little somersault, the way it does when you’re near someone famous, which made me feel a little stupid, given that she was a chick who performed on two-by-fours in the park for handouts.

An older guy, kind of short, with shiny shoes that announced he was a rich guy stepping outside the gates to slum, handed Deirdre a plastic cup of the home brew they were serving before she could ask for one.

“She’s okay,” Cortez said, gesturing toward Deirdre. “Pays on time,” he held up his cup, “lets you party when you’re working for her as long as you don’t overdo it. She’s a little wild, but she’s okay.”

Deirdre was asking Mister Shiny Shoes if he had any blow. The guy answered that he didn’t, but he had cash if Deirdre had connections.

Cortez said something to me.

“Good, good,” I answered, trying to listen to Deirdre’s conversation. The guy said that he thought Deirdre was very sexy, and that he wanted to fuck her, and handed her his business card. She took it like it was a dead rat.

“She’s a good singer,” I said to Cortez. When your cognitive capacity is taken up by another task, the words that come out of your mouth tend to border on the inane. The guy was saying how he was good friends with Mayor Addams.

Deirdre ran her tongue along the inside of her cheek as if she was trying to dislodge something trapped between her back teeth, then suggested he go find the mayor and fuck him instead.

“Deirdre!” Cortez said as she broke off from the dumbfounded friend of the mayor. “I want you to meet my good friend Jasper. Jasper saved my ex-girlfriend from being raped by three war vets with rifles. Stabbed them to death with a kitchen knife.”

“Now, that’s interesting,” she said, looking me up and down languidly, hands on hips. “You don’t look like a killer. Is Cortez bullshitting me?”

“I wish he was,” I said. “I’m not particularly proud of it. And it wasn’t just me—there were five of us. And the vets with rifles had their pants around their ankles, and their rifles were leaned up against a china cabinet out of reach.”

“Were they? How brave of you.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Maybe I can work as a bodyguard at your shows, in case someone unconscious looks like they may eventually wake up and get out of hand.”

Deirdre burst out laughing. She looked straight into my eyes for a long moment, her eyes sort of sparkling. I struggled not to break eye contact, feeling like it was some sort of test. “I think I’m going to like you.”

My legs had turned to jelly. I was grinning like an idiot and couldn’t think of anything to say.

Music started up, heavy on bass. “Deirdre!” someone called.

“Stick around,” Deirdre said over her shoulder, “I’d like to hear more about you stabbing people.” With her back to us, it was safe to stare.

Cortez and I drank, and bonded, and drank more. Our eyes burned in the blue smoke of hand-rolled cigarettes.

“I should have looked you up before this,” I said. “Funny how you just lose touch with good friends.” “Good friends” was probably a stretch, but the drinks were making me feel all warm and nostalgic.

“Don’t worry about it,” Cortez said, “I could’ve looked you up too. We get caught up in things.”

“Hey! Cortez’s friend!” Deirdre shouted from across the room. “Come party with me!” She waved me over. Cortez gave me a shove in her direction. As soon as I reached her she slid her arm under mine. Suddenly I felt eleven feet tall.

“So what do you do?” Deirdre asked me.

“I manage a convenience store,” I said. It was sort of true.

“Did you keep stabbing the rapists until they were all dead, or did you stop once they couldn’t fight back?”

“They kept fighting back until they were dead. Although I guess at some point they switched from fighting for advantage to fighting not to die.”

Deirdre’s eyes narrowed. “I like that. Do you have a pen?”

“No, I don’t.”

A woman interrupted us. She was tall, with a way-short blue skirt and long, bright magenta hair.

“You know those rings I was telling you about?”

“Yeah?” Deirdre said, extracting her arm from mine.

“Chetty’s found a connection.”

“Oh really?”

Suddenly I was on the outside of the conversation looking in—an all-too-familiar situation for me. Evidently my moment in the sun had ended. I’d had enough booze that I was willing to take one last stab, though. I touched Deirdre’s shoulder. She turned.

“Do you have a phone?”

She nodded absently, pulled a business card out of an unseen pocket and handed it to me. It was a nice card, with an electronic window that scrolled photos of Deirdre performing. I waved an unseen goodbye and left her to her talk of rings, clutching the card tight.

“Can’t I just text her?” I asked.

“No,” Ange groaned. “Call her.” Somehow she was following the conversation while simultaneously reading a microbiology textbook, one leg draped over the arm of the folding chair.

“Call her,” Jeannie agreed.

I’d spent an hour on my front porch composing and deleting text messages before Ange and Jeannie showed up. Now I wished I’d sent one of those messages before they got here. “But it’s awkward, and scary,” I said. “She’s a little scary.”

“That’s part of the reason you do it. Look,” Ange closed her book, craned her neck to look at me, “if a man doesn’t have the courage to walk up and ask me out without a lot of tap dancing, I know there’s no way it’s going to work. He’s got to have a backbone.”

“So it’s like a hoop I’m supposed to jump through,” I said, while mentally filing away what Ange had just said. Was that why she never let things escalate between us? Was I not confident enough for her?

“It’s a bar you have to be able to jump over,” Ange countered.

“Jasper, it sounds like she’s a pretty confident woman,” Jeannie said.

“Yes. She’s incredible,” I said. She was the most dynamic, cool, confident, ballsy, exciting woman I’d ever met; it made me dizzy to imagine being with her.

“Then you’ve got to call,” Jeannie said. “You know how much men like breasts? Women like confidence as much as men like breasts. Especially confident women.”

“Oh,” I said. I was clearly a little autistic when it came to the nuances of love and dating.

Out in the street, two twelve-or thirteen-year-old boys, one carrying a syringe filled with red fluid—blood, or more likely food dye—approached a third, younger boy in a mask playing in an abandoned truck.

“Hey, c’mere a minute,” the boy with the syringe said, leaning in the broken driver’s side window, “you got a dollar I can borrow?”

“Hey,” I yelled over. “Get lost, leave him alone.”

The kid pulled his head out of the window. All three of them looked my way. “What’s it to you?” Needle boy said.

I reached for a baseball bat propped by the door. They moved on.

“Thanks, mister,” the kid in the truck said when they were out of earshot.

“No problem,” I said, looking down at my phone.

“Do women like Deirdre even date?” I asked. “It’s hard to imagine walking her to the door and kissing her goodnight.”

“Only one way to find out, sweetie,”Ange said. She was back reading her book. How could this not bother her? I’d been eager to tell Ange about Deirdre, hoping she would be at least a little jealous.

“Crap,” I said. I climbed down the creaky porch stairs and went into the narrow alley beside our house to have some privacy, then paced a while, memorizing the first couple of things I would say to get the conversation going.

I dialed her number. My heart was rocketing—I was going to stumble all over my words.

The phone rang, then again. It clicked; my sinuses cleared from the rush of adrenaline before I realized it was her voice mail.

“This is Deirdre.” The phone beeped. It took me a second to realize that was the whole message.

“Hi, Deirdre,” I said, “this is Jasper, we met last night at the bar. I was wondering if you might want to go out sometime—”

“No!” Ange shouted from the porch. “Not ‘sometime.’ Name a day.” I didn’t think she could hear me.

“So, just call me if you get this, and maybe we can go out Friday?”

“Not maybe!” Ange called.

“Bye,” I said into the phone and disconnected. “Thanks!” I shouted at Ange. “Now I sound like a complete idiot, and there’s a woman in the background critiquing my message as I leave it. That ought to go over well!”

Ange burst out laughing. “Aw, honey, I couldn’t make it too much worse than it was going to be anyway.”

Deirdre didn’t call back. I waited three days, my stomach somersaulting every time the phone rang. I decided to send a text. Screw Ange and Jeannie’s advice. There was nothing wrong with texting.

Does your non-reply mean “fuck off,” or is there a possibility I could still convince you to go out with me?

Her lack of a reply was a reply in itself—I knew that—but I was so wound up in fantasies of me and Deirdre that I couldn’t let it go, couldn’t just walk away without trying. I paced the porch. I had a meeting in two hours with a woman who was interested in selling her fruit preserves in Ruplu’s store. I would probably spend the two hours wearing down the wood on the porch. I couldn’t concentrate on anything else. I sat on the moldy weight bench and stared down the alley, at the rusty grill tangled in chest-high weeds next to a rotting outbuilding, a small stack of two-by-fours leaned against it, some do-it-yourselfer’s long-forgotten ambition.

My phone jingled. My palms sweated as I read the reply:

Ok. Friday at 6. Don’t be boring.

I leapt to my feet, threw my fists in the air. I had a date with Deirdre. Me—she was going out with me. Not shiny-shoed I-know-the mayor, but me. And she’d answered my text message, not my phone message. Ange and Jeannie did not know as much as they thought about dating.

I got to work immediately—I sat on the porch and mentally rehearsed interesting things to say, imagining what Deirdre would say back, as the sun sank behind the DeSoto Hilton, its sign emblazoned at the top of the building, just visible over the houses across the street.

The first thing Deirdre said after opening the door was “What’s your name again?”

I told her. She nodded. We started walking. I had no idea what to do with my hands; they suddenly felt all wrong just dangling there.

“I was thinking we could go to the Firefly Café,” I said, stuffing them into my back pockets.

“I don’t want to go to a restaurant,” Deirdre said.

I was speechless for a moment. “Well, what would you like to do then?” I finally asked.

Deirdre thought about it. “Let’s get some apples and some Lucky Charms, and find a way up to the roof of the Hilton and watch the city from up there.”

I hoped the vast confusion I felt didn’t register on my face. Apples and Lucky Charms? “You’re a woman with very precise tastes,” I said.

“Yes, I am.”

I was already feeling in over my head with this woman. I needed to relax, to play along with her. “I’ve got to admit, your plan sounds more fun than mine.”

Deirdre grinned, and looked at me for the first time. “Good.”

We headed toward Wal-Mart on the east side of town, winding around camped-out tribes of homeless, stepping over people sleeping in filthy clothes.

“Scary stuff, what’s going on between Russia and China, huh?”

Deirdre looked at me blankly. “What?”

“You didn’t hear?” I said. “Russia dropped a nuke on Chinese troops massed at their border.”

“A nuke? That seems excessive.”

“Hey, honey, kill the loser and come marvel with a real man,” a dude with gang scars on his neck called. He was sitting on a porch swing hung under stark steel fire escape stairs. I cringed as Deirdre gave him the finger without even looking. Mercifully, he stayed put, and we kept moving.

Wal-Mart was packed, probably because of the nuclear exchange between China and Russia. Every time there was a disaster, no matter how far removed, people flocked to the Wal-Mart to buy stuff. And not just water and flashlights, but Barbies and bath mats, tube socks and dental floss as well.

I thought that was a fairly entertaining observation, so I mentally rehearsed it a few times, then said it to Deirdre.

“People are pretty fucking stupid. Especially in the south,” she said as she yanked a plastic produce bag from the dispenser and dug her delicious little fingers into the apples.

A little Hispanic guy eyed Deirdre up and down as he went by. Guys had been gawking since I picked her up. Each time it happened I felt a childish swell of pride at being with her.

There was a buzzing in the crowd over by the broccoli and bell peppers, so I went over to investigate. A Wal-Mart employee was crossing out prices and writing in new ones by hand with a black marker. Higher prices—like twice as high. A security guy hovered close to her, a pistol holstered in his red Wal-Mart belt.

The buzzing got louder.

“What the fuck?” I said. Normally I would say “What the hell?” but I was trying to keep up with Deirdre.

Over in the bread area a group of angry shoppers had surrounded an employee who was also shadowed by a security guard. This guy was middle-aged and male, so I figured he must be management. I went over to listen.

“Hey, I’m very sorry,” he said, “the new viral crisis has caused disruptions in shipping, and we can’t predict when distribution and delivery will return to normal. Prices will be higher until then. It’s not under our control.”

I ran back to Deirdre, who was picking out apples. I yanked the plastic price rectangle out of its holder and handed it to her. “I’ll get the Lucky Charms—don’t let the bitch with the marker get this.”

No one had gotten to the cereal aisle yet. I ran up and down, looking for Lucky Charms, certain that Cocoa Puffs or Gummy Grabbers would not be acceptable. I spotted them low on the shelf, grabbed two boxes and the price rectangle, and met Deirdre up at the register.

“Twenty-four sixty,” the girl at the register said. It should have been about fifteen bucks.

“No,” I said. I showed her the price labels. “See—they haven’t raised the prices on these yet.”

“They haven’t posted them, but they’re already in the system,” she said.

“That’s bullshit!” I said. “You can’t raise the prices at the register without posting them first!”

“I just work here,” she said, just as loudly. “You think I like this? How am I going to feed my little boy?”

We stared at each other for a moment. She was chewing gum— probably her last piece for a while, because it was now about three bucks a pack, and she had her little boy to think about.

“This is bullshit!” I repeated.

Deirdre fished an apple out of the bag, reared back and fired it toward the produce department. “Bullshit!” she shouted.

She had a good arm. The apple sailed over the management guy’s head and nailed a shelf of bread, sending loaves scattering. She grabbed two more apples. A security guy ran toward us, fumbling with the clasp on his holster.

Deirdre threw an apple at him. He ducked.

“Bullshit!” a young guy in surgeon’s scrubs two registers down screamed. With his shoulder-length white hair, he was clearly not a surgeon—he was a Jumpy-Jump. He hurled a can of soup at the security guard. It hit the guard above the eye. The guard doubled over, clutching his face while the Jumpy-Jump reached for another can.

Deirdre threw more apples, rapid-fire, toward the back of the store, laughing with delight.

Over in produce, the Hispanic guy threw a pear at the security guy, who was still doubled over. Blood was dripping onto the linoleum from between his fingers. The Hispanic guy grabbed another pear from an enormous pyramid of them and hurled it toward the registers. He grabbed another and took a bite.

The Jumpy-Jump whipped items from his cart at the checkout girl behind his register. She was ducked down, hands covering her face, screaming.

There were things flying everywhere.

A shot rang out, then screams, then angry shouts and more shots. The Jumpy-Jump ducked behind a rack of impulse items, pulled a pistol with a silencer, and squeezed off a shot.

A security guard ran from the back of the store, his gun pointed in the air. A fat guy threw a TV, box and all, at him. It missed, crashed into a clothing rack, and spewed ugly v-necked shirts into the aisle. The Jumpy-Jump shot the guard in the chest.

“Let’s go!” I said to Deirdre.

“Are you kidding?” she said. She was laughing like this was a Three Stooges film.

The management guy was down; four or five people stood over him, their fists rising and falling. The price-change girl was down too. At first I thought her head was splattered with pink bits of brain, then I realized it was watermelon.

It occurred to me that the mob might kill all of the employees.

“Stay here,” I said to Deirdre.

She shrugged. “Whatever.” She licked at the white creme center of an Oreo she’d pulled from the shelf of impulse items.

I crawled along the front of the checkout aisle. “Hey,” I said to the checkout girl huddled on the floor below her register, “lose the vest!” I pantomimed pulling it over her head. She nodded, pulled off the blue employee vest and flung it toward the rest rooms. I ran along the registers and told the other checkout people.

By the time I got back to Deirdre, the shooting was over—people were either looting or smashing things, and no authority types were around to stop them. A beer-bellied guy in hunting fatigues, running toward the sporting goods department, slipped in a puddle of blood and fell on his ass.

The big crane game by the entrance crashed to the floor, spilling stuffed animals and cheap watches. The tweenaged girls who’d tipped it dove to retrieve their prizes. There were old people, mothers with kids, you name it, all filling shopping carts.

“Come on,” Deirdre said, tugging me toward the free stuff. I ran to get a shopping cart.

We took our ill-gotten booty to Deirdre’s place—a penthouse condo in one of the historic houses on Gaston, with high ceilings and a big old chandelier. High on the adrenaline of having started a riot, she wasted no time in introducing me to the world of sex with Deirdre.

She liked it fast, furious, and violent, just like her music, just like her life. It was filthy, and I loved it, because she loved it, and I was with a rock star that hundreds of guys wanted to be with, and that was so cool.

Yes, she had started the riot, and yes, people had died. But (I reasoned as I ran my hands over her body) she’d only thrown apples, which was playful, really. Others had turned it violent.

Afterward, I lay there panting, one arm wrapped across Deirdre’s lightly freckled shoulders.

“Go home,” Deirdre muttered into her pillow. “I hate sleeping with someone in the bed.” The sweat on her pale white neck hadn’t even dried yet.

I gathered up my wrinkled clothes and pulled them on (except my socks, because I could only find one and didn’t dare dig around in the blankets), took a long last look at Deirdre—one leg straight, one bent, her back rising and falling with easy, even breaths—and headed home.

“Put the damned phone away,” Colin said, shouting from the roof. “This is gonna turn into Sophia all over again.”

“Deirdre’s not married,” I called up to him, but I stuffed the phone into my jeans pocket, and picked up the shovel.

She hadn’t returned my call. I could barely see the dirt in front of me, what with flashbacks of the night before last dancing before me.

I heard Jeannie shout something to Colin.

“Jeannie heard on the radio that Wal-Mart isn’t reopening for weeks,” Colin said. “People are squatting in the building, and the company has to fly in a security force to take the store back before it can restock.”

“Maybe this will boost business at the convenience store,” I said. “We may actually profit from Deirdre’s stunt.” I finished filling the big plastic bucket, motioned to Colin. He hauled it up, grunting with the effort as the bucket danced and swung at the end of the rope.

It was getting dark; a couple more bucketsful and we’d have to call it quits.

“Oh. That’s just lovely. And here I thought the Jumpy-Jumps were responsible for digging all the holes I keep tripping in.”

Deirdre was leaned up against a light post. Her outfit was reminiscent of an S&M dominatrix: black and red, plenty of leather, plenty of straps. No mask. Deirdre never wore a mask. She strutted over on spiked heels, took in the excavation with hands on hips.

Suddenly I felt all filthy and sweaty. I’m not a macho enough guy for manual labor to make me seem manly. Clean and scrubbed is a much better look for me.

“Now, you’ve just got to be Deirdre,” Colin called down.

Deirdre looked up, shielding her eyes. “And you’ve got to be someone I don’t know.”

Colin laughed.

“What are you doing up there?”

“We’re making a vegetable garden,” Colin said. “Some young hoodlums went and ruined the Wal-Mart, so now we have to grow our own food, someplace where others can’t get at it.” Although that meant no longer spreading the solar blanket up there to offset our energy bills.

Deirdre pressed a finger to her lips and grinned. She turned to me. “You want to come out and play, or do you want to stay in your sandbox?”

“Give me five minutes,” I said, leaning the shovel against the porch railing.

“You kids have a good time, but don’t stay out too late,” Colin called after me as I trotted into the house.

I pulled off my clothes and jumped into the shower. The icy water made me gasp. I was busting inside. Deirdre had come to find me! I wasn’t boring!

I was dried and dressed in moments, knowing that Deirdre probably wasn’t good at waiting.

“I’ve got a show at midnight,” she said as we started walking. “We’ve got—”

We both gawked at what had come around the corner.

It was a stripped-down car, little more than seats on an axle, pulled by a whining, barking pack of dogs. A cardboard “Taxi” sign was taped to the front.

“No way,” Deirdre said.

It made sense, really. There were plenty of dogs. Hell, they were all over, like big rats. We watched as the taxi rolled out of sight.

“You walked over here alone?” I asked.

Deirdre looked at me like I was an idiot.

“It’s just that the streets are so dangerous,” I said.

“Yeah? And?”

I shrugged. She had a point. People seemed way more willing to take risks now than when I was a kid. Maybe it was because we didn’t expect to live as long as our parents did.

Was that it? Did we think: Why not risk it, I’ll probably be dead soon anyway? Yeah, we did. When I was a kid I was sure I’d live to ninety, maybe a hundred. I’d been adjusting that estimate downward ever since. Now I figured that unless things got better, I’d be lucky to reach fifty.

“What do you want to do?” I asked.

Deirdre shrugged. “Surprise me.”

Surprise Deirdre? Shit. Maybe we could walk a tight-rope between the Hilton and the Saint John the Baptist Church belfry. Or dynamite the Savannah Bridge and watch it crash into the river. She’d like that. I was tempted to suggest a restaurant.

I glanced at Deirdre: she had an eager, hyper look on her face. It was becoming apparent that Deirdre was a woman of many moods, and that they cycled through her quickly and unexpectedly.

Surprise Deirdre. I took her hand, headed down East Jones and through Troup Square, trying to think.

Someone had wrapped a length of electrical cord down a busted out lamppost in the square, like Christmas garland only colorless. I’d almost forgotten about Christmas. It was soon; I wasn’t sure exactly what the date was. Somewhere in the teens. In keeping with the Christmas theme, the big marble statue of John Wesley that sat atop his tomb in the center of the square had been spray painted red and green, except for his face, which was painted black. At least I thought it was his tomb. I’d never actually read the brass plaque embedded in the concrete below the statue.

Tombs. Now, that was something Deirdre might like.

“Come on.” I took Deirdre’s hand and drew her down Abercorn.

“Hmmm,” Deirdre cooed as we crossed Liberty and walked toward the locked gates of Colonial Park Cemetery.

She ignored my attempt to boost her and scrabbled over the fence. I gripped the rough, rusty iron and climbed in after her. White headstones glowed vaguely in the tree-canopied darkness, chipped and crooked like giant teeth. Crepe myrtle, barkless and shiny, twisted toward the sky.

Deirdre stepped over a fallen lamppost, headed toward the concrete wall that marked the far end of the cemetery. I followed, wrapped my hands around her waist when I caught up to her. She was staring up at the rows of lost tombstones, mounted along the wall.

“What’re those doing up there?” she asked.

“Soldiers came through here during the Civil War, pulled them out of the ground and tossed them around. The residents didn’t know which went where, so they couldn’t put them back.”

“I don’t know why people care so much about dead bodies anyway. What’s the difference where someone is once they’re dead?”

I slid my palms up her sides, wrapped them over her breasts. She looked back at me over her shoulders, smiling. “You want to fuck me in a graveyard?” She scanned the graveyard as I slid my hands under her shirt.

“This way,” she said, taking my hand and leading me over a low fence enclosing two rows of concrete tombs that looked like coffins set aside to be buried later. There were eight of them in the little family plot. One of them was much smaller than the rest—suitable for a four-or five-year-old child. Deirdre chose that one.

I strolled down York Street toward Deirdre’s condo, enjoying the cool weather, my hand in my pocket holding my pay. I loved the feel of the thickish wad of cash in my pocket. Six hundred forty dollars—not a bad week’s pay. I wouldn’t be moving into the gated district any time soon, and Deirdre probably made ten times what I did, but still, it was nice to be making enough that I could buy a newspaper if I wanted.

I wanted to think that my improved fortunes were part of a larger economic recovery, but it was hard to tell. To me, things seemed a little better, but there were still plenty of homeless, and the stock market just kept sinking. If the government knew what the unemployment rate was, they weren’t saying, but on the news an economist had estimated it was close to sixty percent. Angling my face toward the sun, I decided I would stop fretting and be glad I wasn’t one of them. Things were going well, all things considered, and I should appreciate it. Deirdre and I were at a point in our relationship that it was assumed we’d see each other every day, and I was catching glimpses of a softer woman underneath the edgy, intense exterior.

I paused beside a huge Sanitation Department dumpster that sat abandoned on the corner, shaded by a live oak. There were two guys staring up at Deirdre’s condo from across the street—a short old guy with the remnant of what must have been a prodigious beer gut when French fries were cheap, and a short younger guy who looked disturbingly like a gnome.

The gnome spotted me approaching, gestured me over.

“Feast your eyes,” he whispered.

Deirdre was gardening on her terrace, completely naked. Her nipples brushed the dark soil as she filled in a hole, patting the earth vigorously, her immense satisfaction easy to read on her face.

“Yeah, I’ve seen her naked before,” I said.

The gnome looked at me, confused. “She’s done this before?”

“No, that’s my girlfriend.”

“Shiiit,” he said, grinning. “You’re lucky.”

“I know,” I said. I got a better grip on the plastic bag that contained my photo album and headed for the door, fishing Deirdre’s key out of my pocket.

“Honey, I’m home,” I called.

Deirdre lifted her head, peered at me through the sliding glass door. She got up, brushed her knees and ass, opened the door. “No you’re not. Your home is on Jones Street.” She pressed up against me, gave me a tongue-first kiss.

“You must have missed the tone I was going for. It was meant to be ironic. Well, not exactly ironic, or sarcastic exactly. But it was meant to have a tone.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” she said, smiling.

“I don’t know,” I said. I headed toward the terrace. The two guys were still standing across the street. The gnome waved. I waved back. “So what are you planting?”

“Peppers. Hot ones—all sorts. I love peppers.”

“Ah. No tomatoes? No spinach?”

“Nope. Just peppers. I don’t like all those other vegetables.” She curled her lip as if eating vegetables was comparable to licking mold off the shower curtain. “Who were you waving to?”

“The two guys who were watching you from across the street. Nice guys. They weren’t jerking off or anything. Very polite about it.”

“Really?” Deirdre said, moving to the glass door to see. She laughed. “They were watching me? I didn’t even notice.”

The gnome waved again, tentatively. Deirdre waved back. We moved away from the window.

“You coming to the concert tonight?” Deirdre asked.

“Wouldn’t miss it,” I said.

“Cool.” She turned on her 3-D TV, threw herself onto the couch, propped one leg on the coffee table, the other on the couch.

“You don’t have a concert tomorrow, right? Everyone’s planning to go to the beach.”

“Right. Who’s everyone?”

“Colin, Jeannie, Ange, Cortez,” I ticked off. “You up for it?”

“Sure,” she said, though she didn’t sound enthused. Deirdre didn’t seem to like hanging out with my friends, and, though she knew lots of people, she didn’t seem to have many friends of her own.

I held up the plastic bag. “Remember when I said I’d show you my childhood photos? Want to see?”

Deirdre took one of the albums, started flipping through the pages. I was excited about showing them to her. To me it was like catching someone up on where you’d been, who you were.

“Do you have any?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Nope.”

I waited for her to elaborate, but that was evidently her answer in its entirety. “How come?”

She sighed impatiently. “Because I don’t want to remember my god damned fucking childhood.” She closed the album. “Maybe I’ll look at these later?” She retrieved the remote, flipped through the channels.

“Okay. No problem.” Deirdre hadn’t told me anything about her childhood; now it was clear why. I stashed my albums under the couch, adding one more item to my mental list of things I should be grateful for.

At the concert that night tingles ran down my spine as I watched Deirdre perform her dark magic. Afterward people surrounded her, asked her to hang out.

“Nah,” Deirdre said, pressing close to me. The sensation was exquisite. “Come on.” She splayed her fingers low for me. I laced mine between hers. Her palm was cool and soft and full of promises.

We headed toward her apartment.

“Razors, Deirdre! You cut to the bone,” a kid called out as we passed. It was the kid with the lamp black around his eyes. He didn’t recognize me.

Most of Deirdre’s audience was so young. Most weren’t even old enough to remember what the parking meters lining the street were for, or what the rusty signs meant.

No Parking this side

Saturday 12:01 -4:00 a.m.

Sweep Zone

The street surely could use a good sweep.

We climbed the steps to Deirdre’s apartment. I stood behind her, my arms wrapped around her waist, looking down on the top of her head as she unlocked the door.

“Want to hear something?” Deirdre said, kicking off her shoes and pulling a CD from a long shelf.

“Sure. Is it a new song?”

“Nope.” She popped it into the player.

“Savannah 911: What’s your emergency?” said a woman’s voice.

“Is that real?” I asked. Deirdre shushed me, nodding.

“Someone just broke in here… they stabbed me and my kids, my little boys,” another woman said. It was real. No one could fake the anguish and adrenaline in that tone.

“Who? Who did it?” the 911 operator said.

“My little boy is dying.”

“Hang on, hang on, hang on,” the operator said.

“I have a whole collection of them,” Deirdre said. A vein in her neck, running over a stretched tendon, pulsed. “They’re not easy to get.”

“Oh my god, my babies are dying.”

I should have told her to turn it off. I should have sprung from the bed, stabbed at the buttons on the CD player until the voices went silent, but I didn’t want Deirdre to think I was… what? Weak. Uncool.

Deirdre unbuttoned her shirt. I leaned in and kissed the soft skin plumping at her cleavage.

“He’s dead. Oh, no. Oh, no. My babies are dead,” said the woman.

Deirdre’s lip was curled. “I don’t ride bikes.”

“Well, we can’t walk,” I said. “The beach is ten miles; everyone else would be heading home by the time we got there.”

Her fists were clenched on her hips, one knee bent. “Then go, I don’t care.” Of course she didn’t mean it. If I left her and went with my friends, she wouldn’t talk to me for days. I looked up into the branches overhead, feeling trapped. It was so rare that we did anything fun. I didn’t want to miss it.

“Well, how else can we get there?” I asked.

Deirdre didn’t answer. A woman with a cane who was way too young to have a cane struggled along the opposite sidewalk. Her legs were twisted, looking as if they might come out from under her at any minute. She paused to admire a small pack of dogs tied to a parking meter. They yipped and barked and wagged their tails, eager for the attention. It was the dog taxi—the owner was sitting on the curb, fanning himself with a piece of cardboard. He said something to the woman that I couldn’t hear.

“Ooh!” Deirdre said, pointing. “That’s how.” Before I could protest she had crossed the street.

She used her charms (lots of “pleeease?” while standing closer to him than was technically necessary for the negotiation to take place) to whittle the guy’s price down to $20. That wasn’t bad. Not as cheap as the nothing it would cost to bike there, but not bad.

I texted Ange to alert the gang that we’d meet them there, then climbed into the hollowed-out Mustang convertible as the driver hitched the team.

The dogs were pretty hilarious. They weren’t like a dogsled team, all lined up and pulling in a disciplined manner—more like the keystone cops, bumping into each other, biting ears, pulling at the wrong angle. They didn’t seem to mind the work, probably because they were getting fed, and had someone telling them they were good dogs.

Occasional traffic passed us on the single-lane causeway out to Tybee Island. Refugee tents were set up alongside the road, beside the golden marsh that stretched for miles.

“This was a good idea,” I said. “It’s a great way to see the marsh.”

Deirdre nodded. “Told you.” A car beeped behind us, then roared past. Deirdre gave them the finger as they passed, with a sweet smile on her face.

The gang was lounging outside Chu’s Beach Supplies when we arrived. Ange went right up to Deirdre like they were old friends. Cortez patted me on the shoulder and called me “bro.” Ange had almost backed out when I told her I’d invited Cortez, but he was a friend, so I didn’t think he should be left out.

The beach was packed with homeless people, leaving no space for us to spread the towels we’d brought. Strung out in a line, we stepped from one meager spot of white sand to the next and made our way to the ocean. Ange had a bottle of home brew that passed hands as we ran in the surf, splashing, laughing.

Deirdre and I swam out a few hundred yards and fooled around. The roar of the waves was distant; sea gulls screeched overhead.

“I almost expect to hear a lifeguard’s whistle, see him waving us in because we’re too far out.”

Deirdre just laughed. She pulled off her t-shirt, pressed against me. A big wave lifted us up, dropped us down.

“This kicks ass,” she said. She looked back toward shore. “Let’s go get more of Ange’s juice before it’s all gone.”

Ange was sitting on the shore, talking to Jeannie, not noticing me at all, but I still felt a little guilty about cozying up with Deirdre in front of her. Christ, we’d slept together on and off for, what, three years? It felt weird.

We rode the waves to shore. Deirdre pulled her t-shirt back on at the last possible minute, not that it helped much, given how wet it was. She made no attempt to tug it loose so it was less revealing.

I liberated Ange’s jug from Cortez and took a long swig, then went off with Colin down the beach.

“So you really like her, huh?” Colin asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “She’s high maintenance, but it’s never boring.” I thought of her collection of 911 recordings, and felt an uneasy twinge that had been nagging me since that night. “Why?”

“I’m just asking,” he said.

“You don’t sound like you’re just asking.”

“Well, that’s as may be. I’m still just asking.”

We stopped, looked out toward the tiny cargo ships dotting the horizon.

“A lot of my attraction to her is the excitement of her being so dark and edgy and hot, I admit.”

“I’m not saying anything,” Colin said.

The sand sucked at my feet as we stood. I let them get buried until they were completely covered by the surf, then pulled them out.

“It’s nice being with someone, even if it’s not your soul mate. It sucks being single sometimes,” I said.

“There are pluses and minuses to both.”

I watched a seagull drift on the wind overhead, barely moving, like it was running in place. “What are the minuses to finding your soul mate?” I asked.

“You worry. I worry about Jeannie all the time. I probably average two nightmares a week about Jeannie dying.”

“I never thought of that,” I said.

“There are so many ways people can die now. If she died, I’d never get over it.” He shook his head emphatically. “Never. You could bury me with her.”

“Yeah.” We watched little white birds dart in and out of the surf, plucking whatever it was they ate out of the sand. “We’ve been really lucky, you know? Nothing awful’s happened to any of us.”

“Jasper?” a woman called. I turned. She was standing at a distance, uncertain. I recognized her, but I couldn’t place where I knew her. She was slim and pretty, tall, curly red hair.

“Hi,” I said. Who was she?

She came over, smiling. “I don’t know if you remember me. Phoebe. Our tribes crossed paths outside Metter four or five years ago, and we hung out one evening.”

“Of course, yes, I remember,” I said. Colin wandered off, wading into the water while Phoebe and I talked. She was here with a friend, looking for work in the beachfront restaurants. She’d had a job at Wal-Mart until it closed. Hearing that made me feel guilty, given the role I’d played in Wal-Mart’s demise. Phoebe looked great—the last time I’d seen her she’d been half-starved and probably had lice, and had still looked good. Now, she looked almost elegant.

“I tried to call you, a few months after, but the number you gave me was disconnected,” I said.

“Crystal died. My friend with the phone.” She kicked at the wet sand with her toes.

“Sorry to hear it.

Deirdre, head down, was making her way toward us. I panicked, feeling like I was being caught doing something wrong.

“So what are you up to?” Phoebe asked.

“I got a job in a convenience store.” I waved to Deirdre, as if I’d just noticed her. “Here comes my friend Deirdre.”

I introduced them, still feeling like I’d done something terribly wrong. Phoebe asked Deirdre what she was up to, which was the polite way to ask what sort of work she did, if any, given that so many people didn’t actually have jobs.

“I’m a rock star,” Deirdre replied.

Jeannie was flagging us. I used it as an opportunity to say a quick goodbye to Phoebe. I stole a glance back as we walked away. Phoebe was looking out at the ocean.

“Who was that?” Deirdre asked as we headed back to our party.

“I met her once when we were nomads,” I said. We caught up to Jeannie and Colin.

“We’re hungry. We were thinking of going to that burger stand,” Jeannie said. In fact Ange and Cortez were already on their way, winding through the maze of people. The rest of us headed after them.

“Do you realize,” I said as we caught up to Ange and Cortez, “that this will be the first time we’ve eaten in a restaurant since before our tribe days?”

Jeannie laughed. “Did you take a good look at the place when we passed it? There are no seats—you stand over the table and eat microwaved French fries.”

“Still, it’s technically a restaurant. We’re moving up in the world.”

Ange put her arm around my neck and held the bottle up. “To moving up in the world.” She took a swig, handed it to me. She was completely toasted. Good for her.

Cortez came up close behind us. “Keep your eyes open,” he said under his breath. “There are some guys who I think followed us off the beach.”

I glanced over Cortez’s shoulder. Two scruffy guys were lounging outside the rest rooms. They didn’t seem to be looking our way.

A dog ruckus erupted in the other direction: the taxi’s dogs were barking angrily and snarling. A terrified yelping cut through the rest of the commotion. We hurried over.

Three of the taxi dogs were mauling a much smaller dog—not much more than a puppy. The taxi guy was trying to control them, pulling on one harness only to have the two other dogs fill the gap. Ange raced right into the melee, screaming at the dogs to stop. She grabbed a big pit bull by both ears; it spun around and snapped at her. She jerked her hand away. I grabbed one of the loose leads and yanked a shaggy black mutt out of the pile. Cortez and Jeannie jumped in, and a second later we had them all away from the puppy.

Ange lifted the puppy gently and cradled it. “Poor little guy. Are you okay?” It was whimpering pathetically, but it didn’t look badly hurt—just some chew marks on its ears.

“I tried to stop them,” the taxi driver said. “I was feeding them and the little one tried to get at their food.”

“He’s starving,” Ange said, taking a closer look at the little black pup. She took one of the puppy’s paws and shook it. “You want some French fries? Hm?” The puppy’s ears went down and it licked her hand.

It was getting dark. We asked the taxi guy if he would mind sticking around for a while longer, and he said he would, for an extra five. Seemed fair enough.

We cut over to the next street, where the burger joint was.

My mind kept wandering back to my chance encounter with Phoebe. If I wasn’t dating Deirdre, I would have asked for her number. I’d had a great time with her that night. I was regretting that I was with Deirdre, and that made me feel like a complete flake, given how I’d dreamed of being with Deirdre just six weeks ago. I felt childish for being so fickle. I was damned lucky to be with Deirdre—a lot of guys would give their souls to be with her.

Still, that bad feeling nagged me.

“Watch it. Stay close.” Cortez had come up right behind us.

I glanced around, not sure what he was talking about. Then I spotted the two guys from outside the rest room. They were heading in our direction, laughing and goofing around. One of them had had a run-in with the flesh-eating virus—one side of his face was all but missing. As we reached them they walked up to us.

“Hey, you got a light?” the one with the mauled face said. He had a red rebel handkerchief tied around his head, and couldn’t have been more than five-six.

“Sorry, bro, none of us smoke,” Cortez said.

“How about a dollar and I can buy a lighter?”

Cortez fished in his pocket and pulled out a dollar. He held it out.

“How about twenty, so I can buy a couple of packs too?” His companion chuckled.

“Sorry, that’s all we got. We ain’t rich people,” Cortez said.

“You got more than a buck,” the lead guy said. He reached into his back pocket and pulled a knife. “Empty out your pockets.”

“Bullshit,” Deirdre said. I gave her a look, trying to shut her up, but she went on cursing as the rest of us dug into our pockets. Jeannie reached to hand over her money.

Cortez blocked her hand with his. “Put it away.”

The guy glared at Cortez. “You want to die? Is that it?”

“Back away,” Cortez said to us.

Colin and I exchanged a startled look—what the hell was Cortez getting us into? “Let’s just give them the money,” I suggested.

“Relax, everything’s copacetic,” Cortez said. “Just move back. Give me your shirt first.”

I wasn’t going to argue. I pulled off my shirt and pushed it into Cortez’s hand. He never took his eyes off the guys, who looked more eager for a fight than for the money. We backed up as Cortez wrapped my shirt around his left hand.

Cortez struck an impressive karate pose—hands out front, squatting slightly—and floated toward the lead guy, who was grinning and waving his knife like it was a snake with a mind of its own.

Back in the peanut gallery, Deirdre was shouting for Cortez to kick their asses. I told her to shut up, but she ignored me.

Cortez lunged, his wrapped left arm leading. The guy slashed at Cortez and missed. Cortez kicked him in the knee. The guy went down. Immediately. Cortez did a stunning 360-degree spin and kicked the second guy in the chest, then reversed his spin and hit the guy in the throat with the edge of his hand.

The guy he’d kicked in the knee had gotten up. Cortez dropped, spun, swept the guy’s legs out from under him, then stomped on the hand holding the knife as soon as he hit the pavement. The guy screamed; the knife clattered onto the sidewalk.

“Let’s go,” Cortez said, arms wide, corralling us away. We ran.

“Man, Cortez, I didn’t know you were that good,” I said as we reached the taxi guy.

Cortez stifled a grin, shook his head. “I been practicing. What else do I have to do?”

“Watch it,” Colin said, steering Jeannie around bricks and glass.

It was unsettling to watch your city die. My mom had once bought a painting from the art gallery that used to be in the building we were passing—the one that had spit the bricks and shards of glass onto the sidewalk. Was the city dying, or just resting before it rose and dusted itself off? Surely one day it would come back. Soon, I hoped. I missed fresh paint. Only the trees kept their color. I tried to soak it in, letting my eyes linger on the leaves. Bright color was like a vitamin I was deficient in.

“Oh, jeez,” Colin said, turning his head pointedly away from a homeless guy sitting in the eave of a stairway. At first I didn’t understand, then realized the guy was masturbating into a rolled up newspaper.

“Charming,” Jeannie said.

A guitar riff started up in the distance. “Hurry, it’s starting,” I said, picking up the pace. Above the wall of overgrown azalea ringing Chippewa Square, smoke wafted into the Spanish moss.

We made it to the square just as Deirdre’s voice split the night:

“So sorry about the wheelchair,

But why should I clean my carpet

For a man who can’t even fuck me

When there’s always more dogs than bones?”

She reached down with her free hand and stroked the long mike. The crowd whistled and cheered. Deirdre grinned lasciviously.

“That’s just beautiful. I’m getting all teary-eyed,” Colin said. Jeannie laughed, wrapped an arm around his waist as we settled into a spot inside the square. The crowd was huge. The daylight was beginning to fade; Deirdre was bathed in the light of a lamppost, her eyes closed.

“What’s that you say?

There can still be sex after Polio-X?

Then walk on over and spread my legs,

Cause I ain’t carrying you.

“If you can’t come to bed

Wheel your crippled ass home.

Cause there’s studs lined up to take your place

There’s always more dogs than bones.”

The crowd ate it up. Except for the kids in wheelchairs.

But that was Deirdre’s appeal, I think—she called it like she saw it. You got her unfiltered thoughts.

She launched into the next song. I didn’t recognize it, and given that I was now Deirdre’s biggest fan, I knew it must be a new one. It opened with a recording—a 911 call. The woman Deirdre had played for me, screaming into the phone. Then Deirdre began a ballad of sorts, a story about a group of gypsies walking a street in a suburban neighborhood.

No, she wouldn’t, I thought.

She did, though.

“Oh, my god,” Jeannie said as Deirdre described Jeannie holding out the knives and each of us taking one. She didn’t use our names, but she described it all just as it had happened. Just as I’d described it to her. She’d set a collage of 911 recordings in the background to accompany her, a chorus of frantic souls screaming for help.

Jeannie sobbed, buried her face in Colin’s chest.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know about this,” I said.

Jeannie looked at me. “What do you mean, you didn’t know about it? Where’d she get all of those details?”

“Well,” I said, swallowing, “I told her about it, but not to use in a song.”

“Well, what did you think was going to happen when you told her? She doesn’t care about us, she only cares about her career.”

Colin leaned in close to Jeannie’s ear. “You want to go?” he whispered. Jeannie nodded.

“I’m really sorry,” I said as Colin led Jeannie away.

I watched Deirdre gyrate onstage, my heart pounding with anger. She’d used me. The thing was, it didn’t even surprise me that she’d used me, and why should it? That was Deirdre; she didn’t even pretend she wasn’t self-centered. The question was, what was I doing with her? She didn’t relate to people in the normal way—showing interest in what they did, offering something of herself… she didn’t do any of that.

The knot that had been in my stomach for weeks unclenched. I was done with her, I realized, and I was relieved.

“Did you hear my new song?” Deirdre asked after the concert.

“Yeah, I heard it.” I started walking. I wanted to get away from the adoring crowds. “That was an awful thing for us. I don’t appreciate you capitalizing on our suffering.”

Deirdre’s mouth fell open. “I thought you’d like it,” she said.

“No,” I said, stopping to face her. “I didn’t like it. And I may have lost my best friends over you.”

Deirdre glared razors. “That’s right, your friends.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You think I don’t see the expression on their faces when they’re talking to me?”

“What expression?” I said.

She balled her fists on her hips and got right in my face. “The one that says there’s an inside joke that I’m not getting, because I’m it. ‘Look at the stupid little whore, she thinks she’s our friend.’”

I looked at Deirdre, at her bulging, furious eyes and marveled at how utterly mismatched we were. How had I missed that before?

I hadn’t missed it, I’d just ignored it. I loved the idea of Deirdre so much that I’d blocked out the actuality of Deirdre. It wasn’t just Deirdre’s music that was perfect for the times; Deirdre herself was perfect for the times. Dark and violent. Unpredictable. Infused with primordial energy. I, on the other hand, was not of these times. I was a great water beast, trying to dance the Watusi on fins. There seemed no better time to end things—Deirdre was furious at me anyway. She’d probably thank me at this point.

“I think it might be best if we stopped seeing each other,” I said.

Deirdre’s eyes opened wide with surprise. “What? We’re just having a fucking argument.”

“It’s more than that,” I said, feeling self-conscious about having this conversation in public. I paused while two girls with dyed white hair passed. “We’re just very different. We like different things. We see things differently.”

“Different, huh?”

I nodded.

She stood with her arms folded, staring at the sidewalk. “Fine. Get your skinny ass out of my sight before I cut your throat.”

“No problem,” I said. I turned to go.

“For once I try to do the right thing,” she called after me. “I pick the stable guy, not the bomber dude. And what happens?” It sounded like she was crying, but I didn’t turn to look. I just kept walking.

You’ll overlook a great many flaws in a woman if she’s famous, and has a great body. Actually, either quality alone might lead you to overlook a great many flaws, but together… together she could be a complete psychopath and you might overlook it. Which is what I’d done, and those were my excuses.

“Don’t worry about it. It wasn’t your fault. She was a nut,” Colin said.

“It was my fault, because she was a nut from the beginning. I knew that, and I still shot off my mouth to get her to go out with me.”

A siren screamed in the distance.

“Okay, it is your fault,” Colin said. “But it’s not like you poisoned our dog or something. Lots of people out there are hurting people on purpose.”

“There is that, I guess. I don’t poison people’s dogs.”

“Indeed. A dog-poisoner you’re not,” Colin agreed.

The chains holding the porch swing creaked as I dragged my foot back and forth.

It hadn’t really been about Deirdre’s body, or her fame. It was because she was cool, and the cool girls never liked me. If I had my photos, I could flip to one where I’m in Forsyth Park sitting on my bike. Completely by chance, Minnie Jameson is in the background, sunning herself on a towel. Minnie had been cool. The only time she’d ever talked to me was to ask me to try to buy her cigarettes at Kroger, and when I’d refused, she’d turned up her lip (much the way Deirdre did) and called me pathetic.

“I left all my photos in her apartment,” I said. “If I give you a key, will you go over and get them for me?”

“What if she’s there?”

“That’s why I want you to go. She’d stab me if I knocked on her door and asked for those photos.”

“She’d stab me, too.”

He had a point. I was sick about my photos, though. There was no telling what she’d do with them, and they were the only photos I had from my childhood, from a time when life was normal and everyone had a place to live and an Xbox.

We sat in silence, staring out into the street, listening to the creak of the porch swing, the crickets, and the occasional gunshot.