Lone Star Noir

MONTGOMERY CLIFT by SARAH CORTEZ

Houston

Every time I looked at him I saw Rosalie’s first husband. The same thin shoulders. Pupils too dark to read their meaning. He felt me staring at him as I asked the same question every morning before I walked to work.

“What you doing today, son?”

“My lesson’s at two.”

Another one of Rosalie’s dreams. That her son Monty would be a singer. She had found a man to tutor him at the small Catholic college in the neighborhood. Her son loved voice lessons and we found the money. Sometimes Nichols, the voice teacher, came into the hardware store I’d worked at since arriving to Houston in the late ’40s after the war. I knew his face from a concert program Monty’d brought home and left in the kitchen. The man, about forty-five years old, was well fed, but only talked in a raspy whisper. The potential of his strong body was not borne out in his oily muttering.

I drained the last bit of coffee. “What else you doing today?”

Monty pulled his eyes up to meet my face for the first time that morning. “Practice. I have a piano studio reserved beginning at ten.”

“Make sure you do your chores first.” You’d think I wouldn’t have to remind a boy fixing to begin college about his responsibilities. But this one-her son-had as much common sense as a domestic rabbit. All ears and big teeth. He was as useless as the movie star she’d named him after-that little shrimp, Montgomery Clift, with the dreamboat mug he sold for money so he’d never have to work a day in his life. Just pace around decked out in fancy suits and leather dress shoes while getting smooched by a beautiful actress. Montgomery, no kind of name for a man.

I glanced at the few keepsakes I displayed as decoration in my repair space at Southland’s. A black-and-white photo of our squad before getting shipped out to the Pacific, all smiles and bravado. A keychain doodad of tubular, see-through plastic, about three inches long. Three red rings floated in the clear fluid. The game was to place all three thin rings onto a woman’s lone leg extended in the liquid. Rosalie’s gams had looked like that when I married her. The long line of perfect white skin extending up and up from her dainty knees. With her illness, the blood got throttled in her legs’ thick blue veins and splotched her thin skin with a thousand red lines like smashed spiders. Just looking at them gave me the heebie-jeebies.

I had just put out the nut driver and wire cutters for the first job I had to tackle when Officer Linehan came in through the back entrance off the parking lot. His usual entrance for his usual coffee. Today, he was rushing.

“Morning, officer.”

“Hey, Otto. I need some D-cell batteries. Five of them. Quick. They got a dead body under that railroad trestle on the bayou near the rice silos.”

I handed him a pack. “Pay us tomorrow.”

“Thanks. These damn runaways. You’d think they could get themselves killed somewhere else. You know, like Dallas. This girl’s supposed to be young-maybe fifteen. They’ll never find out who she is.”

I watched him scuttle back to his patrol car. Not even eight a.m. and we were all sweating.

Later that day, Linehan shook his head back and forth. “That poor kid. She was as scrawny as a half-starved pullet. Whoever killed her did it good-back of the skull crushed.”

“What did they use?” I asked, setting out a screwdriver to take apart a clock radio.

“Who knows? Who cares? Looks like she ran off to be a free-love hippie. Dripping with love beads and peace symbols. What a bunch of crap.” He smiled into his afternoon coffee. “The only good thing about this flower-power B.S. is that none of them hippie chicks wear bras. Makes for some good visuals when they ain’t dead.”

My younger sister Lilly had run away to follow that handsome city dude. Before she left she had tried to confide in me. But I’d refused to listen, angry with her for always causing problems. Why couldn’t she follow the rules of the household, like I did? I had enough problems of my own; I didn’t want to listen to hers. She wasn’t out of high school yet, although none of us were a book-learning family. It broke my momma’s heart that we never knew for sure what Lilly did or where she went.

“Lost,” Momma would murmur, eyes tearing. “My daughter’s lost.”

That evening when I got home from work, I went into Rosalie’s bedroom first, as I always did. She lay under the faded yellow bedspread with pillows propping up her head.

Her dark eyes flickered open. “Hello, Otto.”

“Hello, Rosalie. How you feeling today?”

“All right. Nothing better; nothing worse.”

“I’ll get your dinner after a while. Where’s Monty?”

“Montgomery.”

“Where’s your son?”

“Practicing at St. Thomas.”

“Okay.” No point in continuing. The little strength she had, she used for her son-like all those phone calls to find a voice teacher, whose lessons I had to pay for. “Did he do his chores today?”

A small smile lit her thin lips. “I told him to go ahead on to practice. He couldn’t wait to get out of the house.”

I patted her hand and made sure my voice didn’t show the anger I felt. “I guess I’ll rustle up some dinner.”

Monty came home after I’d fed Rosalie and me, washed dishes, and was sitting on the screened-in front porch waiting for the July evening to cool off.

He sidled in the screen door.

“You missed dinner.”

“I… I ate already.”

“Where?”

“At Mr. Nichols’s house. He… he had extra and he invited me.”

“You need permission to eat dinner elsewhere. You know that. Why didn’t you call?”

“I forgot.”

“Don’t forget again.”

He sucked in air through his wide-spaced front teeth, a childhood habit never broken, “Yes, sir.”

The next day, Monty’s voice teacher Nichols came into Southland’s while I was waiting on customers up front. I knew who he was, but the man didn’t know me from Adam and barely glanced in my direction as I asked him what he needed.

“Pipe wrench.”

“For what size pipe?”

“Residential work. One-inch pipe.”

“Follow me.”

Walking down the aisles made me happy. Boxes neatly arranged on top of one another, edges as precise as finely honed knives. Nichols was whistling between his teeth, following me. When we got to the pipe wrenches, he picked a big one up and held it, balancing the weight in his hand. The clean angles of his blond crew cut meant he had a good barber. The hippie fever for girlie curls on men hadn’t got ahold of him. But I’d bet those hands were soft on the palm side-not the hard-working hands of a real man.

A few weeks later, Linehan came in later than usual. I almost missed him because I was caught up on repairs and he was near the front register. He was angry at missing his early-morning coffee with us. “Man, we got another homicide last night. They sent me to hold the scene. White female, about sixteen, ice pick. She had more holes than a sponge. Homicide had better get busy and find the S.O.B.”

That evening Monty came home late. I’d left him a Pyrex pie plate of food covered in tinfoil, warming in the oven.

“You’re late, son.”

“I lost track of the time.”

“What were you doing?”

At that question, he raised his eyes just for a piece of a second. If he had said it was none of my business or even looked like he’d say it, I’d have backhanded him. But he didn’t.

“I’m learning a new piece of music. I lost track of time.”

“What’s the phone number of that teacher of yours?”

His slouch turned into an alert posture. “Why?”

“I don’t have a mind to keep wasting hard-earned money on someone who’s late for dinner.”

His dark eyes found me immediately and he almost wrung his pale hands. “Oh no, I got to keep going to voice lessons. They’re… they’re… the only thing I got.”

This was the most he’d said to me at once in recent memory.

“I want to get my money’s worth. Your mother’s medicine costs plenty. I don’t earn a lot of money.”

He looked like he was going to cry-something no man should ever do. Hell, I’d made it through island after stinking island fighting Japs in the Pacific without crying, as my platoon was killed one by one. On some days, we were killed in vast numbers. None of us cried, not one single damn time. Not even the seventeen-year-olds who’d lied about their age to enlist. Or me, the oldest, balding even then and nicknamed “Pops.”

Later that evening I sat on the front porch. The cicadas’ latesummer droning had started this first week of August, like every other year.

I thought about that voice teacher. He made my skin crawl. What was it? His haircut was sharp. He had clean nails. Each time he was in the store, his shoes were fully shined, his jawline a little red from razor burn. All these should have added up to a regular Joe. But I didn’t trust him. His slacks fresh from the cleaners, his dress shirts starched and new, long-sleeved even in Houston’s humid heat. And the wicker picnic set the voice teacher had bought today? It carried an ice pick. Standard item, along with forks and knives.

Before I went to bed to sink into the deep sleep I’d been fortunate enough to have since childhood, I peeked in to see if Rosalie was awake. A board in the hallway must’ve creaked because she opened her eyes. I entered and sat on the bed.

“Good night, dear,” she said, looking worn, as she always did.

“Listen, Rose, I’ve decided. Monty can’t keep going to voice lessons.”

“Montgomery.”

“I’ve decided.”

She lifted her pale hand to mine. “Dear, you have to let him. It’s his biggest dream. Ever since he and I listened to the opera broadcasts on Saturday afternoons from the big radio in the hallway. You remember? For my sake… please.” A tear trickled down from one eye.

I didn’t want tears; I didn’t want a scene. “That’s it. I’ll tell him tomorrow.” She probably kept looking at me with those sad eyes as I left her room, but I didn’t hear any more words from her.

In the morning Monty didn’t come to breakfast. I knocked on his bedroom door and he yelled out that he felt sick. I left for work with my first headache in a long time.

Linehan didn’t come in until around noon. “Hell. It’s a Houston-humid version of hell-standing in a back alley in Montrose for six hours swatting at mosquitoes because some runaway gets herself bludgeoned over there off Avondale.”

“Yeah?”

“Same old, same old. Back of the head. Only this time he left it behind. Looks brand new-except for the brains, bone, and blood. Twenty-four-inch pipe wrench.”

I flashed back to the day voice teacher Nichols had bought his wrench. Residential work, he’d said. One-inch pipe. But the first one he’d picked up had a scratch in the handle’s finish. He’d picked out another one, saying he liked his tools perfect. What kind of man says something like that about household tools?

When I got home I went to my tool room in a sectionedoff part of the garage. All my tools were arranged on pegboard by type and size. Cleaned, oiled, ready to go. I picked up the hammer I’d tried to teach Monty how to use, the circular saw he couldn’t control. He’d never been able to learn to rewire sockets or even a table lamp, what was positive and what was negative. How a ground worked. He hated it all.

At the breakfast table the next morning, Monty chewed slowly, his large Adam’s apple bobbing an unreasonable amount. I couldn’t put it off any longer. “Son, you’re not going to voice lessons anymore.”

“What??” His Adam’s apple pumped furiously.

“That’s sir to you.”

“What did you say, sir?”

“I can’t afford to pay for your lessons. Call that guy and tell him.”

“But… but… I love my voice lessons. Dave-Mr. Nichols-says I have the voice of an angel. It’s the only time…” his voice trailed off.

“The only time what?”

“Nothing. Nothing. I just… just…” The air whistled through his front teeth.

“Your mother isn’t getting any better. I don’t see you working to help support the family. By the time I was your age, I had me one job in town, and helped Dad with the farm before the sun was up, and I had to go to school.”

He ran from the table, slamming the front door, then across the yard. I wondered where he’d go. Growing up, I’d had a place in the three-part junction of a huge oak tree’s branches out by the slaughtering tables. It had been good to get away from everyone and look from afar on the dogs and cattle. I hadn’t shown it to Lilly, who was too little to climb it by herself.

As I spread the white slices of bread with French’s mustard to make my lunch for work, I dreaded the moment when Rosalie’s door might open and I’d see the accusation in her sunken eyes. The slab of bologna smelled faintly in the early-morning heat. But her door didn’t open, and I hoped she hadn’t heard the jarring anger in Monty’s slammed front door.

I waited all morning for Voice Teacher to show up, straining my ears for his girlie whisper. For the first time in my life, I hoped I was wrong.

Just before six, when we closed, he came in. I didn’t wait on him; I disappeared to the back, so I wouldn’t queer the deal. As soon as I saw his huge shoulders disappear into a sporty white Corvair, I asked the guy up front what he’d bought. Pipe wrench, twenty-four-inch. A strong man like him wouldn’t need the leverage of the longest pipe wrench we carried. No, not a strong man like him.

That night Rosalie was up. To my surprise she had halfway cooked me dinner. She even sat at the kitchen table with me.

“Otto, Montgomery told me what you said.”

I kept chewing on the fish sticks. There was no hurry. “I’m listening.”

“He needs to sing. It’s his only happiness.”

“We can’t afford it any longer.”

“Why not to the end of summer? It’s coming up soon. He’ll start college. He’ll meet young people his own age.”

“There’s plenty of young folks around Montrose. Look at all them hippies. Our neighborhood used to be respectable. Look at what it’s become now. Love beads, hip-huggers. Long hair on girls and boys. You can’t even tell for sure which is which most of the time. Rock concert posters glued to every storefront at night.”

She sighed. “His only friend is Mr. Nichols. They have a lot in common.”

“Like what?” I didn’t like the suspicion suddenly forming in my mind.

“They both love music. They’ve learned some duets. Montgomery has something to be proud of-for the first time in years. He says their souls join when they sing together. He could be an opera singer. He’s that good…”

“I’ll think about it. That’s all I can say for now, Rose.”

She smiled her exhausted half-smile. “I promised him I’d ask you. You sleep so hard, Otto. He can’t wake you to talk at night.”

After dinner, I sat in the glider on the front porch as the evening darkened and I waited for Monty to get home. I searched my memory for what Linehan had said about the killings. All were teenage girls. All untraceable. No one cared if they disappeared. Linehan said no one at HPD was trying to solve the murders because no one cared about little whore-runaway hippie chicks. Was that why my sister Lilly never even sent a three-penny postcard? Had her body decomposed somewhere we’d never heard of, with no police officer caring enough to bring her killer to justice?

I must’ve fallen asleep sitting up because the noise of the screen door opening at Monty’s touch woke me up from a bad dream of 1943 in the Pacific.

“What you doing coming home late, son?” I hadn’t turned on the porch light earlier, so I could only see the outline of his head and the thin body that Rose called “elegant” against the screen.

He lifted his shoulders before replying, “I didn’t know you were waiting up for me.”

“Where you been?”

“Just walking.”

“Didn’t I tell you not to come home late again?”

“I needed to think.”

I was beat, too beat to put up with someone living in my house and not paying me any mind. Before I even knew what I was doing, I backhanded him. Hard. He didn’t stand up any straighter; he didn’t move at all. He stood a hunched black silhouette against the humid glow from the streetlight half a block down. “Go to sleep,” I told him, and he walked silently into the house.

I too finally walked into my bedroom, not even pulling down the bedspread. If I closed my eyes, the dream might return. The dream that had begun after that first time, and the pounding I’d given the nameless other Marine in late 1943. My unit was going island to island, taking them from the Japs one bloody inch at a time. We were on a nameless atoll, at night, after a day of fighting. The area secure and half of us cleared for shut-eye by the sergeant. Me, in a foxhole alone, sleeping. The dream was of the little honey I’d had back home. I felt her light touch on my crotch, and felt blood rushing to respond to her caress. Half-asleep, I drifted into the warmblooded excitement of it. Suddenly, I remembered where I was and woke up. I saw his face close to mine. I pushed him away and went crazy. I pounded his face until it was a bloody pulp and hightailed it out of there, almost getting shot for a Jap by Morrison over in another foxhole. Sometimes, like tonight, in a dream he comes for me again, with his soft touch and softer lips, and I awake sweaty but chilled, with an erection so hard I think I’ll die, just like the one he coaxed out of me in my sleep. Sometimes, too, I thought that maybe I had those dreams because… well, Rosalie had been sick for so long. I couldn’t ask her for what she couldn’t give.

The forbidden images of the dream lingered the next morning as I drank coffee. Voice Teacher’s face and clean, manicured hands flashed in my head. And I knew what had gotten under my skin about him all along. He was one of them. And he was after my son.

Linehan’s uniform was already drenched with sweat when he came in for his early coffee. “How’s the old man today?” he laughed, slapping me on the shoulder.

“Fair to middling.” No point reminding him that I’d lost my hair but not too much else.

“Man, we got number four last night. This guy is bad news. I can’t believe homicide hasn’t found him.”

“Where was this one?”

“At least it wasn’t in Montrose. It was downtown near Allen’s Landing. That place Love Street Light Circus. Used to be an old warehouse. The freaks pay to go in there, flop on cushions, and listen to music. I’d kill my daughter myself if she ever set foot in there.”

“The weapon?”

“Baseball bat to the back of the head. Even left the bat, it’s a good ’un.”

“Any chance they’ll find who did it?”

“Naw. There’s no prints on any of the weapons he’s left behind. With all the front-page ruckus in the papers, the whole department is catching grief because we haven’t found the killer.” He lowered his voice, “I’d like to find him myself,” and I could see his large hand on the butt of his revolver. “All of night shift is itching to put him away.”

Sure enough, Voice Teacher came into the store that afternoon. But he didn’t come to buy a baseball bat. When I looked up from a repair, he was staring at the needle-nose pliers in my right hand. His posture was erect and the creases in his pale blue dress shirt were impeccable.

“I’m hoping you can repair this toaster,” he said, removing the early-’50s stainless beauty from under his elbow.

“What’s wrong with it?”

“The slide won’t stay down. Can’t toast the toast.”

“Show me exactly what you do with it.”

He gently rested a strong pink hand on the curving body of the toaster. Then he placed a powerful thumb from his other hand on the slide and pushed it down.

“You always do it like that?”

“Yes. I guess my thumb is too strong.”

“No problem. I can replace the catch. Real simple, if you can spare it for a few days.”

“Sure can.”

I nodded and reached for the Sunbeam and placed it on a shelf behind me. When I turned back around, he was still standing at the counter.

“Do I need a claim ticket?”

“Nope. I’ll remember you. I don’t get too many vintage toasters in.”

He looked like he wanted to argue, but changed his mind. He flipped out a card from a breast pocket and wrote something on it. “Here’s my phone. Call me when it’s done.”

“Yessir. Be glad to.”

That night Monty ate dinner with me, so I scrambled more eggs and set out two plates.

“What you do today, son?”

“Nothing much.”

“Where’d you do nothing much?”

“I went to tell Mr. Nichols I had to stop lessons.”

“What’d he say?”

“Nothing much.” He darted his eyes back and forth across the faded green linoleum Rosalie was always too tired to mop.

“What else you do today?”

“I helped him run some errands. Just to sorta say goodbye.”

“That was nice, son. I’m proud of you.”

His eyes flashed upward to my face, and I saw something hard in them. Something that reminded me of the D.I.s in boot camp in the early ’40s. The look of not giving a damn, not caring one measly iota. I got up from the table and walked to the refrigerator behind him to get the catsup.

“He took me to lunch afterward at one of those new restaurants in the 400 block of Westheimer. After that I helped him carry everything upstairs.”

I sat back down and shook the catsup bottle, then poured. “He’s a grown man, isn’t he? Why didn’t he carry them himself?”

Monty stared at the red layers on my eggs, then looked away.

“He’s coaching the intramural program this year. He had to replace some equipment. You know, basketballs, baseballs, mitts, volleyballs.”

I passed the bottle to Monty. “I bet it was hard carrying those long packages with the heavy baseball bats.”

He shook his head before answering. “I was careful with them. He doesn’t like his paint scratched.”

I forked the hot eggs into my mouth before asking the last thing I needed to know. “I bet you were, son. Wasn’t there anyone else to help y’all carry the stuff into his house?”

“Nope. He lives alone.”

Working on Voice Teacher’s toaster was easy-like I’d told him. I replaced the bimetallic catch, reconnected the wires, switched out the original plastic push-down knob with a metal replica I’d painted the same glossy black. I also disconnected the ground to the stainless housing. Everything would go smoothly. He would plug it in, insert the bread, adjust the small dial for darkness, place his left hand on the elegant metal body, then push the knob down and his heart would know what it was like to burn in hell. I put on my work gloves and wiped it real good with a rag. Put it in a box and set them on the counter ready for him. His influence over Rosalie and my son would evaporate as quickly as it had come-like a rainstorm through the Panhandle. Then the dreams of soft lips and caressing fingers would be washed away too. We could go back to the way things were before, all of us.

When he came for the toaster, I took his cash payment and didn’t write out a receipt. He took it out of the box and left with it cradled under his pale pink starched shirtsleeve.

About five days later, I saw the obituary in the Houston Post. Brilliant voice teacher, beloved professor of music. Graduate of the University of Indiana at Bloomington.

Monty looked paler than I’d ever seen him. He stomped into his bedroom without speaking to me as he came through the front screen porch that evening.

I went into Rosalie’s room after my dinner alone. I could hear the sounds of opera coming through the walls from Monty’s room. He’d been playing the same record over and over for hours.

“Montgomery is devastated,” she said.

“I noticed he looked peaked.”

“His friend is dead.”

“I saw the obituary.”

“He was in the prime of his life. What a terrible accident.”

“Monty’ll get over it. He starts college in a couple more weeks.”

“I don’t know that he’ll ever get over it.”

“That guy was just his voice teacher. There’s plenty more teachers around.”

She looked at me all of a sudden, dark eyes focused and hard with emotion. “You don’t have the slightest clue, do you? They were in love. Do you understand me? They had a passionate, wonderfully exciting life together, and now it’s all over.”

“Your son is a queer?”

“He’s your son too.”

“No, he’s not. He’s yours by your first husband, not by me. I haven’t been able to touch you for years because of the illness. Besides, how much of a so-called life together could they have in a weekly voice lesson?”

She laughed, keeping her lips tight. “You sleep real heavy-remember? I let Montgomery meet Dave at night all the time. I wanted him to be happy and in love the way I was with his dad. His handsome, handsome dad.” Her mouth settled into a thin, hard line. “They were made for each other.”

I rose and walked out of the house into the August earlyevening heat to get away from her gaunt face and accusing eyes. I walked for hours through the neighborhood, darkness finally coming around eight p.m. and sleep barely coming at all.

Going to work was a comfort the next day-just as it had been for the last twenty-odd years. The bins of nails reflecting the morning light cleanly, as if they’d never bite wood. The tree trimmer blades shining like crescent moons above the Pacific all those years back.

Linehan came in, but this morning he was excited and talking fast. “We got a great one last night. The body chopped up into so many pieces it looked like an explosion at a sausage factory.”

My face went numb. It couldn’t be. He was dead-I’d read it in the morning paper.

“The guy is one angry son of a bitch. He went to town-hacked off everything, even the nose.”

I didn’t want to ask it, but I’d asked every other time: “What kind of weapon?”

“Probably a hatchet, or a cleaver.”

At lunch I walked home. Rosalie would be sleeping, but I didn’t intend to talk to her or Monty. I pulled my key ring out of my pocket and unlocked the side door to the garage. I flipped the light on, and looked for the first time in many weeks at my beloved tools. On the pegboard, they rested on metal supports, just as I’d left them, except for one. Except for the one I figured would be missing-the hatchet.

A small sound behind me caught my attention. I turned and saw Monty, fresh from the shower, hair glistening wet as he stepped inside the narrow room.

He looked me directly in the eye. As always, his pupils were too dark to read meaning there. In his right hand, he carried my small hatchet.

“I’ve cleaned and oiled your hatchet, and I’ve brought it back.” He lifted it to its resting place, the keen blade beautiful against the brown pegboard. “I told Dave he should take the toaster to Southland’s because it’s the best for repairs. You did your best on it, didn’t you?”

His eyes never left my face and the small bit of stoniness I’d seen in them earlier this summer had taken over completely.

“You know, Dave taught me to appreciate tools. How to keep them perfect. How to use them and how to clean them. He taught me a lot, actually. Now, you’re going to continue teaching me. Daddy, you know how.”

“How did you get a key for my tool room?”

“Mom gave it to me. She knew I needed a particular kind of quiet place.” He smiled with the hardness of a man who knows his business.

“What growed you up?”

“Mr. Nichols taught me how to follow them at night and pick one out. How to talk pretty. He’d offer them drugs, food-whatever they wanted. Then we got one who kept trying to unzip his trousers with her dirty little freckled hands. I couldn’t let her do that, could I? It was so easy to do the rest, and even he couldn’t stop me.

“Yes, you’re going to teach me a lot now, Daddy. No more sneaking out at night. No more worries at all.”

MORAL HAZARD by JESSE SUBLETT

Austin

The game warden, first through the door, threw up at the sight of it. The rookie deputy almost laughed, thinking it was a joke by neighborhood punks or looters scavenging the suburbs after the storm. The first thing that caught their eyes was the charred remains of a large chair with some junk piled in it. At the foot of the chair was a pair of latex zombie feet, like something from a costume shop. By some miracle, the only other thing seriously damaged in the room was the TV, blackened and half-melted, like the Salvador Dali painting of the clocks. The other strange part was how everything was coated with a nasty-looking pink dust. Plus the horrible smell. Hell of a weird joke.

Crossing the den, the rookie touched the door frame. The pink stuff had a greasy feel to it. He could see now that the burnt debris in the chair had once been a man, that the zombie feet weren’t from a costume shop at all. As he stared, openmouthed, at the blackened skull, one of the teeth dropped out.

The vomit appeared so suddenly it could’ve been the hand of God down his throat. Realizing that some kind of terrible miracle had taken place there, he ran out the front door, praising God and promising that he’d never again download pornography from the Internet or stare lustfully at the young blond clerk with the nose ring at the corner store.

Owned by a former state legislator turned lobbyist, the three-story brick home spread its bulk around a cul-de-sac in an upscale, unincorporated community called Wildcat Oaks just west of Austin. It was one of the areas that had suffered the most in the previous night’s storms, yet the destruction seemed random. Two blocks away, an SUV had been blown apart by lightning, yet in the same driveway a child’s bicycle leaned against a plastic wagon. On the cul-de-sac, a tornado had erased one home down to the foundation and bypassed another next door, zigzagged across the street to obliterate two more, hooked left to make a cloud of splinters of three in a row.

From the street, the brick home on the cul-de-sac appeared untouched, even serene. In the cobbled drive was a black Ford Excursion, its backside sporting two cheerful yellow Support Our Troops magnets. On the patio were painting supplies and a bright-orange extension ladder. The two men violently vomiting in the monkey grass made the only sound.

On this hectic day for police, cleanup crews, and the media, the TV news van arrived ahead of the sheriff’s department and other officials. In the interim, the petite blond reporter interviewed the game warden, who explained how he came to discover the dead man’s body.

The homeowner’s wife, he said, was in Mexico, and because she knew the game warden from their Bible study class, the dead man’s wife had phoned him at home that morning. She had seen footage of the destruction on CNN and was concerned about the condition of her home. Her husband, who traveled a good deal for business, had not answered her calls or e-mails for the past two days, and their only child, a student at the University of Texas, was “off the reservation,” whatever that was supposed to mean. The game warden told the wife that he’d be happy to go by and check things out. In fact, he called her as soon as he arrived there and reported that everything seemed just fine, that she and her husband were very lucky.

The game warden had already given the reporter far more information than he would have liked. A month shy of his sixty-seventh birthday, the game warden was ready to retire next year and retreat to the two-bedroom cottage he shared with an aging, three-legged golden retriever.

He knew that fortune had not always smiled upon the owner of the giant brick home. Raised on a small egg farm on the other side of Dripping Springs. Both parents killed in a car wreck when he was twelve. Worked two jobs to pay his way through college and law school. Elected to the state senate in 1972 or somewhere around there, defeated for reelection. Went into the lobbying business and apparently did pretty well for himself. After all that time, most people still referred to him as “Senator.” He traveled a lot, all over the world. Sometimes with the wife, but most times on business.

Approaching the property from the left side, the game warden told the reporter, he could see the collapsed back quarter of the home. Possibly caused by lightning strike. The heavy oak front door was unlocked, the huge brass knob warm to the touch. Going inside, he saw the thing in the den.

“But what would you say was the cause of death?” asked the reporter.

The game warden shook his head. He said he did not want to speculate.

The reporter was insistent. “Would you say it appears be a homicide?”

No comment. What he wanted to say was, I’m not even sure that thing in there is human, but I guess it is. Fire can do some strange things to a body.

When she came close enough to look inside, the smell was as revolting as what she saw. She wanted to describe the scene to her viewers as “what appears to be a savage and shocking crime,” but she was a professional, so she carefully chose her words to convey a sense of that same conclusion, by stating questions she believed were surely on the mind of every viewer: “How could such a tragic death happen in this peaceful, picturesque neighborhood? And to a man like the victim, a friend of orphans and starving multitudes, whose brother was a prominent evangelical minister?” Of course, the reporter knew that the man was noted for his strident ultraconservative views on politics and society. There had also been rumors, watercooler talk, and political blogs about his lobbying firm’s use of prostitutes, bribes, and strong-arm tactics-including blackmail and complex money laundering schemes-on behalf of its clients.

The dead man had a famous friend, a preacher known to his followers as “the Brother.” The Brother was an evangelist from Houston whose Sunday services were attended by tens of thousands. A vast media empire delivered his thoughts to millions more. Years ago, the Brother and his religious retreat, called Revelation Gardens, had been ensnared in a financial scandal. He had founded the retreat on a 5,000-acre plot near Houston in the 1980s. During the chaos of an election year, when the dead man was expanding his client list through prayer groups which were attended mostly by drillers, speculators, and executives in the then-depressed oil and gas business, the charges had been quietly and mysteriously withdrawn. The retreat thrived and grew, doubling in size in the past fifteen years.

The reporter had seen secret video footage from Revelation Gardens showing the former state senator and the preacher cavorting in a golf cart like a pair of thirteen-yearolds. She had watched with a sickly fascination as the grayhaired men swilled vodka and raced the golf cart across the greens, tossing their empties on the ground, betting money on a pissing contest, giggling when they farted. After the video was over, the reporter felt a little sick to her stomach without knowing exactly why. Maybe it was a premonition.

But so what if the dead lobbyist and his preacher friend acted like adolescent assholes when they got drunk? The real question was, What kind of person could tie someone to a chair and set him on fire? What kind of person could do that?

He sat motionless on the edge of the steel cot, listening to the constant racket of the jail. He had the entire cell block to himself, as per orders from the top. The light was bright and he noticed that his body cast a narrow, crooked shadow on the wall. It resembled a letter of the alphabet, he thought, but couldn’t decide which letter it would be.

Even now that he wasn’t quite as thin as he once was, everyone still used the old nickname, Slim. He remembered what a bitter woman had once said about the name. “It makes sense,” she said. “Because there’s not enough of anything inside there to add up. You’re slim on one side and hollow on the other.”

He had a lean face and dark eyes. He might have had the chipped tooth in his smile fixed long ago except for the fact that it seemed to have a disarming effect on people. Accidents and tricks of nature now and then work in your favor.

When he thought back to the night of the storm, he remembered how the thunder rolled in before the rain and wind like a ham-fisted omen from a B movie. Sitting in his car on a steep hill above Austin, waiting for Teo and Ric to show up. Nature was putting on quite a light show. The lightning would flash silver on the surface of the car and the trees and the ground, but the hillside below remained a pool of darkness, untouched. A few seconds later thunder would rattle the ground, as if the lightning had fallen down there and died.

Replaying the memory now, retracing his steps. Flash, boom, nothing. He didn’t believe that before you die, your life flashes before your eyes. Whenever he’d been close to death, time went into fast-forward, not reverse, and he fought back, treaded water, or ran like hell, whatever it took.

Flash, boom, nothing. Thinking about the mountains in Mexico, where he and some drug-smuggling buddies used to fly across the border at Falcon Lake. Those mountains had claimed a lot more smugglers he knew than the DEA ever did. He didn’t believe in hell or heaven.

Flash, boom, nothing. Teo and Ric never showed up. A total of four of them had been directly involved in the heist. Teo and Ric were with him when they pulled the job. Afterward, Teo took the briefcase to Tom, the money man, who knew the guy who would launder it for them.

But Tom got pinched on Tuesday, the day after the heist. They knew he’d already dropped the money off with the laundry. Question was, what did he tell the cops, if anything?

Maybe Teo and Ric got themselves tagged too, copped a plea and snitched on him. Can’t fight human nature. That three musketeers crap was for fairy tales.

Any successful thief knows when it’s time to split. Hang around too long anywhere, even when things are going great, and your luck runs out. His exit strategy: head to Houston, pick up his money stash and a new ID. He would contact no one, leave no tracks. Fade to black.

But instead of heading east to Houston, he drove west, down the back roads on the edge of town, dodging the frightened deer and debris scattering ahead of the storms. Now and then the city would come into view, with the pink granite dome of the Capitol building, and behind it the UT tower, which Charles Whitman used as a sniper’s perch on August 1, 1966, killing fourteen. As a UT student, Whitman had once gotten in trouble for gutting a poached deer in a shower stall in his dormitory.

Flash, boom, nothing. The lightning seemed to follow him as he pushed the coupe hard on the sharp curves. Lightning does strike twice in the same place, he knew that for a fact. Take the Kid, for example, he’d been struck three times in his life. He had to wonder if that had anything to do with the Kid’s talent.

The Kid was a phenomenal guitar player. With the kind of talent he had, the Kid could’ve written his own ticket. He just needed a lucky break here and there, but now the Kid was dead.

According to the statement from the police department, being hit by a Taser during his arrest was only incidental to his death and the Kid suffered from a type of cardiac arrhythmia “typically found to be endemic in hard-core drug abusers.” Never mind that the Kid wasn’t a druggie, that he only got high on playing guitar.

The Kid was pulled over on a traffic violation when he supposedly “became violent.” Extra units were called to the scene, and at some point a Taser was used to subdue him. EMS was called but he was DOA.

Slim had a guy inside the department, told him it was four Taser hits, not one. All four were special order, paid for with cool, green, in-God-we-trust U.S. dollars.

Rain fell. What was the last thing the guy said?

But I wouldn’t trust anybody. Know what I mean?

Cell door clang, stench of vomit and disinfectant, darkness. When you came right down to it, Monday night’s heist was a briefcase job: you got two guys-a guy with heavy government connections and a preacher-with a briefcase containing $300,000. Maybe they were barracudas in the suit-and-tie world, but they sure weren’t streetwise. Taking the money away from these stiffs was a cakewalk.

But somewhere, the job had gone sour. Real sour, real fast.

Slim had already spoken with Tom’s lawyer. No charges had been filed yet, but the feds might be involved. Forty-eight hours later, still no word. They can’t hold you for longer than that without pressing charges. Except when Homeland Security is involved. Or just because they want to.

By Friday night, still nothing, no arraignment, no anything. Tom’s in jail, the Kid is dead. Teo and Rick don’t show up with the money.

Nothing. Zip.

The thieves assigned code names to the two guys with the briefcase. The preacher was Church, the lobbyist was State. Some of the info the thieves had on the stiffs was public record, the rest was thanks to the hacking expertise of Slim’s friend, the Kid. State was the guy who had his tentacles inside the machinery of government. He had been inside, right at top of the food chain. He loved that power and the money that came with it. Ambition and vanity were Church’s addictions. God was talking in his ear. That’s what he said. Then, in the late 1990s, he found himself in the crosshairs of a grand jury, with Revelation Gardens on the verge of bankruptcy. He gave State a call asking for help. State flew to Houston to meet with Brother Church at Revelation Gardens. The place had a five-million-dollar chapel, where daily prayer meetings were led by the Brother himself, two four-star restaurants, three spas, a golf course, and other luxury amenities. State saw the place immediately for what it was: a great place to move money around, make it seem fresh and clean. “Think of it as salvation for dirty money,” said State to Brother Church.

With his contacts in the oil industry and foreign governments, State was in a unique position to help Church. After 9/11, the federal government had begun distributing large amounts of aid to the rulers of impoverished populations in Muslim countries, basically paying people in foreign countries not to hate and resent Americans more than they already did. Representatives from oil companies and other industries with interests in the region said they wanted to help too. They knew State as a skilled facilitator in this area. State could coordinate not only the U.S. funds going overseas but the bribes coming in from his corporate contacts. With the help of State, Church opened a laundry. The laundered cash was then dispersed to the respective business lobbyists, as well as certain right-wing conservative causes, with a skim off the top split two ways between Church and State. A special allotment was set aside for Church to use on improvements to the resort, and if any was left over, he could tithe to a real charity, like the Salvation Army or something.

Slim laughed when he found out about the scam. He didn’t give a shit what they did with the money. The world was corrupt and rotten and most people were thieves and liars at heart, even the amateurs. The pros just get paid more for it. He belonged to no political party, had never voted. In his profession, you couldn’t afford to leave tracks like that. Even if he happened to give a fuck.

The Kid had dropped the whole job in Slim’s lap. Besides being a virtuoso on the electric guitar, the Kid was a blazingly talented hacker. Using a hot-rodded laptop and a broadband connection, the Kid had hacked his way into Church and State’s money laundering scheme. The beauty of the thing was that the four thieves would be stealing money that Church and State had stolen from the federal government.

By hacking his way into their accounting program, the Kid was even able to predict, within a day, when the skim had to be withdrawn from the money laundry, which meant that Church and State would meet and divide the money. Stealing it would be easy.

But that wasn’t what the Kid wanted to do. He wasn’t a crook. He was a do-gooder, an artist, an idealist. The Kid told Slim he wanted to stop these men, “to take these assholes down and expose them to the public.”

Slim told him wait, he had a better way. He told the Kid to be cool. “Leave it alone for a while,” he said. “These dudes are well connected, and they might fuck you up.”

But the Kid kept hacking the system, building more of a case, finding more dirty secrets. He rarely slept.

Meanwhile, Slim got the crew together. Ric, Teo, and Tom were up for the takedown. The Kid told them the skim would be withdrawn Friday afternoon. Not because he wanted to help rob Church and State, but because it was a matter of pride. He was a hacker. He had to tell somebody.

The job was on. Teo and Ric kept a tail on Church, who rode in a black Lincoln Town Car. Slim followed State’s black Ford Excursion.

The meeting happened on Monday at a restaurant in the suburbs. State lifted the briefcase from the trunk of the Town Car in the parking lot. The two men froze when they saw the guys with guns. The thieves took the briefcase and split.

Nothing to it. Except for what came next.

It was a little over a week ago the last time Slim went to see the Kid play. The Kid was on fire. Making ungodly sounds with his guitar. Sometimes, facing the teeth-rattling wall of noise pouring out of the Kid’s amp, time and space seemed to fall away like a broken curtain. Slim realized it was a kind of insanity to feel that way, but he didn’t care.

He couldn’t play a lick of music himself. He didn’t buy many CDs and usually listened to whatever was on the radio or whatever came with the environment he happened to be in. But he supposed that the Kid was the main reason he had stuck around Austin longer than other places. Six months or so. He enjoyed the Kid’s company. You could say they’d been friends.

The Kid, the idealist, had left a message on Slim’s cell phone Saturday after midnight. “This will bring their whole fantasy kingdom tumbling down.” Sounding nervous, as if he thought someone might be listening, the Kid spoke a sequence of three letters followed by a string of numbers. He repeated the sequence once more and added, “I’d say guard it with your life, but I know you don’t value anything that highly.” There was a laugh at the end.

Slim memorized the sequence and deleted the message. Obviously it was some kind of code or identification.

That was the last time he heard from the Kid.

“Some people here to see you,” said the jailer. “Supposed to be your parents.”

“Why not?” said Slim, his chipped tooth a hole in his smile.

A few minutes later, they were as close to him as a sheet of bulletproof glass. The man supposed to be his father said, “The D.A. seems very intent on the death penalty.”

The woman supposed to be his mother kept staring at a spot in space just above and to the left of his head. “I want to pray with you,” she said.

“Try it and I’ll tell the guard you smuggled in plastic explosives by sticking them up your ass,” he said.

That shut them up for a minute or so.

He couldn’t remember just when, but at an early age he’d become convinced that these two people were not who they said they were. Fake parents, maybe even fake people. Or maybe he was the imposter. The physical resemblance was slight at best. He felt nothing for them.

The man supposed to be his father said he would like for him to consider donating his body to science. That way, he said, something positive might come out of this someday.

He told them he’d already put in a request to be torn apart by wild dogs.

The woman supposed to be his mother wanted to know how could anyone pour lighter fluid on another person and set him on fire? And just watch them burn alive? How could one human do that to another?

“Didn’t you hear?” he said. “It was spontaneous human combustion. The guy was so rotten with corruption he just blew up.”

Her upper lip twitched to the side, giving her the appearance of a cleft palate.

“The D.A. didn’t like that story any more than I do,” said the man supposed to be his father. After a long pause, he continued, “Wouldn’t you like to know you did one good thing before you died?”

Slim laughed and for some reason felt obligated to explain. “That’s the same thing the old fart said.”

Twitching, the woman said, “You mean, the man you…?”

The man tugged at her arm and said, “Let’s go.”

The rain was still heavy Friday night when Slim arrived on the cul-de-sac. He parked a block away and walked back. State had company. A little Saturn with Mardi Gras beads hanging from the rearview. The kitchen window proved to be the easiest way in. As he entered he could hear groans of faked ecstasy upstairs. Seventeen-years-old, with braces and fake boobs and a shaved package, Jennifer charged five hundred dollars an hour for house calls.

Slim had known her since she was twelve. There was no connection between her presence and his being here, just one of those coincidences that happen in a community of pirates and thieves. Small world. No telling how long he had to look around, so he got busy. Checked the garage first. A white Lexus, power tools, guns. A ladder, painting supplies, and other stray items were stored on the patio.

In a downstairs bedroom closet, he found some diamond rings, and in a locked hideaway drawer that took him all of two minutes to jimmy, he found a bag of stones, a few emeralds, some diamonds, and eighteen gold coins. He also found $800 in cash-about $250 in a money clip in a man’s overcoat and the rest in one of the wife’s designer purses.

Plus a safe-deposit box key.

There would be more loot upstairs. He settled into an overstuffed leather chair in a corner of the den and waited. They were still going at it, Jennifer shrieking every few seconds, followed by a low grunt like a dog barking. Sometimes the timing worked out so that Jennifer’s shrieks followed a thunderclap. Flash, boom, shriek, bark. Flash, boom, shriek, bark.

And then it was over. It was quiet upstairs but the storm still raged outside. He settled into a comfortable chair and waited. The.380 automatic in his lap kept him company.

On the wall were signed photos of former U.S. presidents: Reagan, Bush, Bush. There were other photos on the mantel. In one of them, a man in a clergy collar, Church, stood in a dusty village surrounded by dark-skinned children staring up at him as though they thought he might be lost. A mangy-looking dog warily sniffed the man’s pants leg. In another photo, State was shaking hands with an Arab man wearing an expensive suit and a headscarf. There was one photo of State with his wife and daughter. The daughter was good-looking in an anorexic way. A flap of skin on the wife’s left eyelid was the only sign of relief on an otherwise hard, tight countenance. State was broad and jowly and tanned the color of roast ham.

On a side table next to the chair was a leather portfolio, and atop that, a hardcover novel in a red dust jacket. Keeping one eye on the staircase, he flipped open the portfolio and leafed through the contents. Corporate documents and memos, the jargon so dense and odd it could have been from an alternate universe. There was a handwritten note from someone named Eric. Bob, it said, we need to run through all this with a fine-tooth comb. Need to check the precedents on moral hazard because it will probably come up.

Leafing through the rest of the document, he found the words moral hazard, punctuated with a question mark, scribbled in the margins of almost every other page. The handwriting appeared to be the same as the guy who had scrawled the note.

He tossed the portfolio aside and picked up the novel in the red dust jacket. The title was No Country for Old Men. Post-it flags jutted out like yellow teeth. Flipping through, he saw that lengthy passages had been underscored with a red felt-tip pen. Weird.

A creak on the stairs. Jennifer, not exactly tiptoeing but carrying her high-heeled boots under her arm. Tucking some folded currency into her purse.

“Hey,” she said.

He still hadn’t replied when she reached the last step.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “He’s out. He sleeps hard.”

Slim nodded. “I’m not here.”

A quick glance around the room, her eyes coming to rest on the.380. She swallowed hard. “Baby, I’m so not here, either.”

“Right.”

She paused to slip on the boots and zip them up, then left. He locked behind her.

He started for the stairs, then decided to give her more time to get down the road.

He went back to the chair and picked up the novel, using the gun barrel to hold it open. The book started out with a drug deal gone sour out in Big Bend. Bodies piled up quickly. The killer had some of the best lines, but the real pontificator was the old Texas sheriff. Gruff and as reactionary as the Old Testament, the old fart seemed to believe that all the violence and decay in the world today is our own fault, because we’ve been too liberal and permissive and have lost our faith in God. The passages expressing these sentiments were the most frequently bookmarked and underlined.

Almost half an hour passed before State came down. White-haired and wearing a sweat suit, as if he was going out for a jog. Smoking a cigarette.

The old man made a sour face when he saw the.380 automatic pointed at his midsection. “My God, what in hell do you want now?” he said, recognizing Slim from Monday night. “You’re gonna be one sorry son of a bitch.”

The thief smashed him in the face with the gun, then dragged him by his collar to the leather recliner and strapped him in tight with duct tape.

“You made a call about the Kid, right?”

The old man glared at him. Both the upper and lower lips were split, causing blood to cover his teeth and pool in the creases on either side of his mouth. “What do you think you’re going to accomplish here? You want money?”

Usually, the person staring at the goodbye end of the gun did not ask questions that sounded like demands. Incontinence is common, along with profuse sweating and shaking. The old man displayed none of these symptoms.

“No,” said Slim. “I want answers.”

“You’re a son of a bitch, coming in here like this.”

“Yeah, I am. What’s moral hazard?”

“Huh? What the fuck you want to talk about that for?”

“Moral hazard, you tub of lard. What is it?”

“It’s a legal concept,” he said, his face distorted by an ugly scowl. “It’s a little fuzzy and subject to interpretation, but say you have a business where people end up taking advantage of you, cheating you out of money or breaking the law some other way. If your business is set up so that it tempts people to cheat or break the law, it’s called a moral hazard and a court can hold you liable for it.”

“Is that like saying the devil made you do it, or you did it because you ate too many Twinkies?”

The old man shrugged. “Well, like I say, it’s kind of a fuzzy area.”

The windows rattled as thunder rolled through. Rain peppered the roof.

“You’re a corrupt piece of shit,” said Slim, “but I don’t care about that.” He faltered for a moment, surprised at the sound of his own voice. “I came here because you and your people killed the Kid. You shouldn’t have done that.”

“He was a criminal just like you and the other three.”

“You’re a bigger criminal than me and my crew ever dreamed about being. And the Kid was no criminal, he was an idealist. Stealing the money, that was my idea.”

“I’m sure these are all fine distinctions,” said the old man, turning his head to spit blood. “I could use a cigarette, though. How about it?”

“Kill yourself on your own time, not mine.”

“What the hell do you really want?”

Slim picked up the novel and thumbed it open. “You really believe the things this sheriff character says?”

“I surely do,” he said. “That’s a wise man wrote that book. He’s one of us for sure. A true believer.”

“You can’t go to war without God. You put a big red star next to that line in the book. You believe that?”

“Absolutely.”

“I guess that’s why the war we got now is going so well.”

“You’ve turned away from God’s love,” said the old man. “That’s the one unforgivable sin, you know. God can’t help you if you don’t accept His grace.”

“You hired some dirty cops to kill a twenty-six-year-old musician who had a naïve idea of saving the world from guys like you. And you’re upstairs banging a seventeen-year-old girl. What’s that shit?”

Color rose in the puffy folds of flesh in the old man’s face as he grinned. “Let me ask you, son, have you ever committed a worthwhile deed in your whole, sorry life?”

“Not unless it was by accident.”

“Look here, I can get you a half million and change. But you’d have to work with me on it.”

“I’m listening.”

“Tomorrow we’ll go to a certain bank. You wait in the car or somewhere you can keep an eye on me because you could be recognized and arrested. You’ll have to trust me, but I know you won’t do that. I suppose you could hold someone hostage-”

“You mean like a family member?” Slim interrupted with a smile. “Like your wife or daughter? A preacher, like your brother?”

“I’d rather not go that route.”

“But you didn’t say absolutely not, no way. How about telling me the box number?”

“It would serve no purpose. You can’t do anything without me.”

“Let’s see if I can trust you.”

Reluctantly, State recited the number. It was the same sequence the Kid had left on his machine, except the last three digits were transposed.

“Try again,” said the thief.

Color drained from the old man’s face. He recited the number again. This time it was exactly the same as the message from the Kid.

“Good boy,” he said.

“We have a deal?”

“So what’s in the box besides cash?” asked the thief. “A little black book? Some disks with names and dates and figures showing how your scam works, and if you ever find yourself behind the eight ball, you can extort your way out?”

The old man wouldn’t answer.

“But it would be trouble for you if the stuff came out now, without any control on your part, right?”

“You can’t get in the box without me,” said the old man. “You need me.”

“Actually, I don’t, I know a guy,” he said, placing the muzzle of the.380 against the old fart’s forehead and then watching him squirm as he wet his pants, like they always do.

You could be in the life a long time without ever having to kill anyone. Maybe there was nothing he’d ever wanted badly enough.

“You don’t need to expose me,” said the old man. “You’ll have the money, there’d be no purpose in it. You say you don’t give a hoot about morals and hypocrisy. If you’ve got a shred of humanity at all, you’ll do me a favor and destroy those disks in that box. You’d just end up hurting a lot of innocent people.”

Slim made no promises. What he did was loosen the tape binding the old man’s right hand just enough to allow him to light a cigarette. He removed the pack from the old man’s robe, grabbed a lighter from the side table, put both items in the old man’s palm, and walked out the door.

He was halfway to his car when he visualized himself being pulled over, cuffed, jailed. Getting caught was always a possibility, but he hated the idea of it happening at this moment, the way things stood. The old man, sitting in his big fucking house, smoking his cigarettes. That superior look on his face.

The rain had let up but the wind stung his cheeks and there was a low howling coming from the east. Something in the tone of it made him think of one of the Kid’s best songs, the one that seemed to turn time and space inside out.

He went back for one last thing.

Two months later, three young men were scarfing candy and energy drinks in the break room on the tenth floor of a highrise overlooking Lake Austin. They’d been working overtime for several weeks processing insurance claims from the storm. All three looked haggard and stoned. Sometimes their topic of conversation was pornographic, more often it was a gruesome joke at the expense of a policyholder.

The rich old fart who burned alive in his recliner, for example.

“What do you think?” said Carney. “Coulda been lightning. The house did get hit, no doubt about that. We don’t have a lot of ‘Act of God’ cases anyway. What’ll the boss say?”

“Bullshit,” said Willet. “I’d rather chalk it up to spontaneous human combustion. I’d love to see the look on old Rickstein’s face when he reads that.”

“Sorry, dude,” Carney said. “People don’t just up and bust into flames. I can’t go for that.”

“Too bad that guy got shivved to death in jail,” said Lamont. “He could’ve told us how he did it.”

“You mean the asshole they caught with booty from the old guy’s house?” said Willet. “The murder charge against him was bullshit, purely circumstantial. I say the guy just exploded.”

“Question is,” Lamont said, “did the old bastard climb up on his roof and paint that message there before he exploded, or did somebody else do it?”

Lamont still had the aerial photo in his hands. His girlfriend, the television reporter, had given it to him. Taken by the pilot of a traffic helicopter, it showed a sea of ravaged roofs, uprooted trees, and crap blown all over hell. In the exact center was the old man’s house. Someone had painted the words MORAL HAZARD in huge block letters on the roof, and below that, a sequence of letters and numbers. Lamont didn’t know what they signified, but his girlfriend was working on it. A veteran investigative reporter from Fort Worth was helping her out. They were calling it “The Church and State Case.”

“Fuck it,” said Willet. “Wouldn’t spontaneous human combustion be covered under the ‘Act of God’ clause?”

“Obviously you’re joking, but it sure as hell isn’t moral hazard, either,” said Carney. “Who files for homeowner’s damage and claims it was moral hazard? We didn’t force them to take out a policy. I didn’t shove an M-80 up that dude’s ass. Maybe the wife did it.”

“She was in Mexico,” said Lamont. “And you’re a little too stoned for this time of day.”

“You’re right,” said Carney. “I need a couple weeks off. Somewhere good, where the sun shines all day and there’s no thunderstorms or tornados. They say Bali is nice.”

“Two words,” said Willet. “Tidal waves.”

“One word,” said Lamont. “Suicide. Can you imagine a guy so full of self-hate and loathing that he’d douse himself with lighter fluid and torch himself? And why didn’t anything else in the room burn? Why didn’t his feet burn up?”

“Fuck, man, it’s just the dynamics of fire,” said Carney. “The body burns up like a candle because of the fat content. When the fire uses up all the oxygen in the room, it goes out. In this case, there was just enough for it to burn down to the feet. Air currents in the room cause the heat to rise to the ceiling and melt the TV. No mystery to it. What about Isla Mujeres?”

“My girlfriend and I went there,” said Willet. “We loved the place. But you might as well forget all about it, Carney.”

“Why?”

“Because with this kind of backlog and the hiring freeze, we’re still gonna be wading through cases by the time hurricane season hits. We’ll be working like dogs till we’re wrinkled and gray, like old Rickstein.”

“Frankly, Willet,” said Carney, “I’d rather burst into flames.”

They howled and giggled for several minutes. As they passed around the crime scene photos of the incinerated executive, their mirth gradually faded. Finally, Lamont put the photos back in the file and they quieted down and the color began to leave their inflamed cheeks and they went back to work.

They worked quietly and semidiligently until deep in the night. Even when Willet accidentally set the timer on the microwave oven for two extra minutes and the bag of popcorn burned until the stench stung their noses, no one said anything.

BOTTOMED OUT by DEAN JAMES

Dallas

Jared Lakewood opened the door to his new walk-in humidor and smiled. He had maxed out his last two credit cards and cratered his savings account to have it built and to stock it properly, but his holiday bonus would probably cover it all. Two months to sweat out the payments, and then he’d be clear.

He surveyed the shelves of cigars. Twelve hundred, numerous varieties, minus the five he had smoked over the past couple of days. At the rate he smoked-usually five a day-he would burn through them in less than a year. He would restock long before he reached that point though.

He selected one of his favorites, a La Gloria Cubana Serie R No. 7 Maduro, and took it with him back into the living room. He clipped and lighted the cigar before pouring a double shot of Talisker single malt. The contents of his liquor cabinet were another hefty expense, but worth it, he reflected as he sipped the Talisker and smoked his cigar.

Jared went to the window and gazed down Turtle Creek Boulevard at nighttime. He loved the view of Dallas from here, and he was only a few blocks from work.

He thought about his father. Today would have been the old man’s sixty-fifth birthday. He had died seven years ago while Jared was in college, working two jobs to pay his own way through school.

Jared raised the glass of Scotch at the window. “Hope you’re still roasting in hell, you bastard.” He took another drink before drawing on his cigar. He watched smoke swirl into the air.

The old man would shit his pants if he could see his only son now. Andrew Lakewood had barely scratched out a living on his Georgia farm. His disowned faggot son brought down more money a year than Andrew probably had made in twenty years of backbreaking, soul-destroying labor.

Living well was the best revenge, Jared thought. If his dad were alive, he’d rub the asshole’s face in it. Especially if the old man needed money. Jared could laugh at him and tell him to fuck off.

Thoughts of his father invariably brought back the memories he wished he could erase. The beatings started when he was seven. They didn’t stop until Jared, at seventeen, told his father he was gay. After that Andrew wouldn’t touch him, afraid of the blood.

He had no contact with his parents once he left for college in Houston. His father never wanted to see him again. His mother was too worn down to object.

Jared’s head throbbed. The images burned into his brain, taunted him until he wanted to smash his hand through the glass of the window before him.

Instead he gulped down the rest of the Scotch in his glass and went back to the liquor cabinet for a refill.

Sometime later, thanks to the liquor and the cigar, Jared would feel calmer. Now, however, his thoughts turned to sex. He had no time for hookups during the week, but on Friday night he was more than ready to find a partner for the evening.

He changed into his leathers, feeling his adrenaline surge a bit. Tall, muscular, handsome, he always had plenty of guys hitting on him. In the elevator, he frowned at a young couple who got on a couple of floors after him. They eyed his leathers and didn’t look too thrilled to be cooped up with him.

Fuck you, he thought. He didn’t apologize to anyone about being gay. Nor about liking his sex rough. Fuck them if they can’t handle it.

Down in the garage he slid into his Porsche Boxster. Only ten payments to go, and it was all his. He guided the Boxster out of the garage and down the street. Destination: the Eagle, his favorite leather bar.

When he awoke around one on Saturday afternoon, Jared smiled. He felt great. Sessions like the five-hour one last night always put him in a good mood. The guy he brought home from the bar-Marcus? No, Martin, funny accent, maybe German?-had been an amazing bottom, willing to take all the pain Jared could inflict. He’d like to get his hands on Martin for another round, but the pig would need some time to heal before he could play like that again.

After some lunch he fired up a cigar, poured a little Scotch, and sat down to look over his bills. By the time he finished, he had a roaring headache. Dealing with his finances always affected him this way. In a couple more months, though, he could ease things up with his bonus. No sweat.

On Monday morning as Jared drove through the garage to the street exit, he glanced over at the elevator where a tall man was stepping out. The glimpse he had was only a brief one, but Jared could have sworn the guy was Martin, his trick from Friday night.

He had to be seeing things. He’d kept the guy blindfolded on the drive home, until they were safely inside his apartment. Same procedure when he drove the guy back to the bar afterward. There was no way the trick could have figured out where he lived. Jared shrugged. Couldn’t be the same guy.

He pulled into the street and drove the few blocks to work. He could have walked, but he took the car whenever he could.

He exited the elevator on his floor at work at eight-thirty. As he passed the break room on the way to his office, he glanced inside. Peter was there, chatting away with Amy Conover, executive assistant to the CEO.

Jared shook his head. He never had to indulge in gossip himself to find out what was going on in the firm. Peter always did it for him.

A few minutes later, Jared looked up from his computer to see Peter advancing with a cup of coffee. His assistant set it down on the desk in front of him before taking a seat nearby.

Jared sipped at the coffee while Peter launched into the day’s schedule. Peter was efficient; Jared had to give him that. Hardworking too, though inclined to whine a bit when Jared asked him to do personal errands for him. But Peter didn’t dare refuse outright. He knew Jared would find a way to make him pay for it if he did.

The schedule finished, Peter sat there staring at Jared, obviously bursting with gossip.

“Okay, what’s the big news?” Jared leaned back in his chair and drank his coffee. If he didn’t let Peter yammer away about whatever it was, he’d be sulky all day long.

“Some guy from the European division is here. Big corporate honcho, some kind of troubleshooter,” Peter said, eyebrows arching. “They’re saying that McCallister”-the CEO of the Dallas division of the energy company-“brought him in especially to shake things up. Amy says the board isn’t happy with the Dallas office, and there are going to be some changes.”

“Big whoop,” Jared replied, unimpressed. “They’re always complaining about something.” He was one of the top performers in his division. And one of the youngest. They’d be making him an executive VP soon, he figured.

“I don’t know,” Peter said with the know-it-all grin that irritated the fuck out of Jared. “I wouldn’t be too sure about that.”

Jared stood to pull some keys from his pocket. He threw them across the desk at Peter, who caught them deftly. “Sometime this morning I need you to pick up my dry cleaning. You can drop it off at my place on the way back.”

Peter rolled his eyes, and Jared ignored him. Jingling the keys for a moment, Peter sat there. Abruptly, he stood. “I wouldn’t get too complacent if I were you, Mr. Lakewood, sir. After all, your numbers have been down for two quarters now.”

With that he flounced out of Jared’s office.

“Bitch.” Jared flung the word after his assistant, but Peter didn’t respond. The door shut firmly behind him.

Jared turned back to his computer. He tried to shrug off Peter’s barb, but it had found its target. His numbers had been down, despite his best efforts, and for a moment he felt uneasy. But then his usual confidence reasserted itself, and he dismissed the thought. Peter was needling him because Jared was making him pick up his clothes.

Jared focused on his work. He had a meeting at ten he needed to be ready for. That was far more important than his prissy queen of an assistant.

Peter lingered over lunch at his favorite restaurant a few blocks from work. If the arrogant prick sent him on personal errands, then he shouldn’t complain if his assistant spent over an hour to eat his midday meal. Besides, Peter enjoyed the growing anticipation. He grinned as he walked to his car. Now he couldn’t wait to get to Jared’s apartment.

Picking up the dry cleaning didn’t take long. Peter parked on the street in front of Jared’s building and lugged the clothes to the elevator. He should handle them more carefully-he was probably toting about fifteen thousand dollars’ worth of suits. How on earth did the jerk afford them? Peter knew his boss’s salary, and he was pretty sure Jared spent every dime he made, and more.

Inside the apartment Peter stowed his burden carefully in the master bedroom closet. Then he took a stroll around, ending up in the bedroom that Jared had turned into a sexual playground. He examined the new humidor in the closet, trying to add up the cost. He was tempted to help himself to a couple of the cigars, but Jared probably counted them every day and would figure out who swiped them.

He slowly closed the door to the humidor behind him and leaned against it. Jared had that look about him this morning when he walked into the office-the look that told Peter he had scored in a big way over the weekend. Peter couldn’t wait to see the video.

Two weeks ago, with Jared safely in the Big Easy, Peter installed a video camera in the playroom. He congratulated himself on his clever work in placing it so that Jared would have a hard time ever spotting it. He mounted it under one of the shelves of sex toys, figuring that in the dim lighting of the playroom Jared would easily overlook it. He had reset it Thursday morning when he had to retrieve some papers Jared left at home that morning.

He detached the camera, an expensive device that fit in the palm of his hand. He figured the investment was worth it though. He’d soon give the asshole a taste of his own medicine and get a better job out of it at the same time.

Back in his car again, he turned on the camera to watch some of the video. There were some scenes of Jared going into the humidor for cigars. Peter fast-forwarded to get to the good stuff.

A few minutes later, Peter knew he had hit the jackpot big time. Jared had royally fucked himself with his choice of sex partner. When Jared found out about the tape, Peter would enjoy every second of it.

Jared frowned at the clock. It was nearly a quarter past two. Where the hell was Peter? He should have been back by now. He buzzed again.

“You rang, boss?” Peter stuck his head in.

“Where the fuck have you been all this time?” Jared stood. “I expected you back by one-thirty at the latest. I need you to finish putting together that report for the three o’clock meeting.”

Peter rolled his eyes. “Had to wait in line at the cleaners. Relax. The report’s almost done. It won’t take me ten minutes to finish it.” He stepped back and shut the door.

If Peter wasn’t so good at his job, Jared reflected, he’d have already fired his tight little ass. He was a pushy bottom, no doubt about that. Jared grinned, thinking of the couple of times he had Peter in his playroom-before he hired him as his assistant, of course. It didn’t pay to fuck around with coworkers.

Ten minutes later Jared walked out of his office to Peter’s desk. Peter looked up with an I-told-you-so grin.

“All done. Just sent the job to the big printer, and it’ll be ready in a few minutes.”

“I’ll go.” Jared headed down the hall to the printer and copy room. He needed to stretch his legs anyway, work off a little tension before the meeting.

As he neared the printer room, he glimpsed a tall blond man entering an office at the end of the corridor. Jared paused, frowning. There was something familiar about that head and back.

He was waiting for the collated and stapled copies of the report to spit out when it hit him. That back and head belonged to Martin, the guy he had tricked with on Friday.

Fuck it, this was getting nuts. Was he on some kind of weird trip? Was he really seeing this guy?

First at his high-rise, now at work.

What the hell was he doing here?

The report forgotten for the moment, Jared walked back to his office. Peter was on the phone, big surprise. He hung up as Jared approached.

“Not finished yet,” Jared said, stopping by Peter’s desk and looking down at his assistant.

Peter shrugged. “Shouldn’t take that long, unless someone else is running a big job.”

“Go check on it for me.” Jared turned away to step into his office, but turned back as if an afterthought had struck him. “By the way, I spotted a really tall blond guy going into Treadwell’s office. Somebody I haven’t seen around before. You have any idea who he is?”

Peter coughed suddenly and put his hand over his mouth. It took him a moment to speak. “Oh, it’s probably the hatchet man from London. You know-the one I told you about this morning.”

Jared frowned, his unease growing. “What’s his name?”

“He’s German. Name is Martin Leitner.” Peter raised an eyebrow. “Supposed to be hard as nails, especially when it comes to firing people. Or so Amy says.” He stood. “Well, I’d better go check that report, boss. Back in a few.” He scurried down the hall, coughing again.

Jared barely heard him as he went into his office and shut the door.

Shit, shit, shit. For a moment, that was the only word he could form in his mind. Shit, shit, shit.

He had really screwed himself this time. The man he tricked with Friday night-the man whose back and ass he had practically beaten until they were bloody-had it in his power to fire him.

He began to sweat.

Jared spent the week terrified. He had yet to encounter Martin Leitner face-to-face in the office. What the hell should he do when he finally met the man? Pretend the weekend never happened? Or give him a knowing glance and be cool about their shared sexual tastes?

If Leitner tried to fire him, Jared could threaten him with the details of their time together.

Then he realized the stupidity of that. Exposing Leitner would screw his chances even further. He would definitely get fired then.

The axe fell on Friday morning. Around noon, a security guard showed up with a pink slip. He gave Jared an hour to box up any personal stuff and then escorted him out of the building. Peter had disappeared, and other coworkers looked away as Jared walked past their desks on the way to the elevator.

Lunch that day consisted of two-thirds of a bottle of Talisker and a couple of cigars. When Jared awoke from a Scotch-induced nap, it was nearly five. Though his tongue felt furry and his head ached, he finished the bottle of Scotch and smoked another cigar. All he could think about was paying Leitner back for firing him.

But how?

When the doorbell rang around five-thirty Jared stumbled to the door. He peered out the peephole and couldn’t believe it. Martin Leitner was standing there.

What the fuck?

His head suddenly clearer, Jared opened the door and stepped back. Leitner walked into the room and turned, waiting for Jared to shut the door.

“Good evening, sir,” Leitner said, staring down at his feet. “I trust you will overlook this intrusion, sir, but I think we must talk.”

“You’re damn right we should talk, you fucking German pig.” Jared felt his blood pressure rising.

“Yes, sir,” Leitner said, his head still down. “I understand your anger, sir, but I will do my best to explain.”

Jared walked into the living room to his leather armchair. He pointed to the sofa as he sat. “You can sit there, pig.”

“Thank you, sir.” Leitner sat. For the first time he raised his eyes to meet Jared’s.

Jared tried to read the man’s expression but failed. His words were submissive, but something about that gaze wasn’t.

A memory from earlier in the week surfaced. “I saw you in the garage here on Monday morning. What were you doing here?”

“I have rented a flat in this building, sir. Before we met on Friday, of course. I did not know you lived here too, sir, until today.” Leitner smiled. “Purely a coincidence-but perhaps a convenient one.”

Convenient for me to beat the hell out of your ass again, Jared thought.

“Why the fuck did you fire me?” Jared had to keep control, show the German who was master here.

“I regret, sir, I had no choice.” Leitner regarded his host coolly.

“What does that mean? You fired me because we had sex.”

Leitner shrugged. “In a way, yes, sir. But it is more complicated than that.”

“How so?” How could it be more complicated? “Explain it to me, asswipe.”

“Yes, sir, I will. Your assistant, Peter, he has betrayed you, but I am sure you were not aware of this.”

“That little cock-sucking queen.” Jared thought for a moment the top of his head would come off. Then he realized he still didn’t quite understand. “Betrayed me? How?”

“He has a video of the two of us and the time we spent together last weekend.”

“So he hid a camera in the playroom.” Jared felt stupid. He never should have trusted Peter, let him come into the apartment on his own. “I fucked myself.”

The German nodded. “It was all rather easy, I gather, sir. He came to me on Thursday with the video. He said he is prepared to send it to the entire board of directors and the CEOs of all the divisional offices.”

“He wants my job, doesn’t he?” Jared stared hard at his guest.

“I suppose so, sir. His main intention seemed to be to make you lose your job. He hates you, sir.” Leitner regarded him, his expression blank.

“He’ll hate me even more when I get through with him,” Jared said.

“Just so. Sir.” Leitner smiled, and Jared felt a chill along his spine. “I have arranged for Peter to arrive here in about thirty minutes. He thinks that he is going to help me overpower you so that we can take you into your playroom and treat you the way you treat your bottoms. He is quite excited by the thought of this.”

“But that’s not going to happen.” Jared was going to beat Peter raw and bloody.

“No, sir, it is not.” Leitner gave that cold smile again. “Peter is the one who will suffer.” He pulled a palm-sized camera from one of his pockets. “I will record it all, and Peter will be neutralized.”

“Why are you willing to go along with this?”

“I will submit to men such as you. It is my choice, and I would do it again. But no one blackmails me.” The flat tone was menacing.

“You think there’s any chance of me getting my job back after all this?” Jared didn’t dare hope, but perhaps Leitner could make it happen with Peter out of the way.

“We shall see, sir.” Leitner rubbed his crotch while staring right into Jared’s eyes. Jared could see the outline of the German’s cock through his tight jeans. “I am sure you can convince me somehow.”

Did Leitner expect him to be the bottom next time?

Fuck that.

Jared had two more shots of Scotch. Leitner turned down any offer of drink. Jared left him alone in the living room for a few minutes while he changed into his leather gear.

By the time a smirking Peter arrived shortly after six, Jared felt like he was vibrating with rage. The moment Peter was inside the apartment, Jared grabbed him around the neck and twisted his right arm behind his back. Peter squealed loudly. Then he yelled at Leitner to help him.

Leitner didn’t respond.

Jared picked Peter up and carried him, kicking and protesting, into the playroom. Leitner followed.

Inside the playroom Jared threw Peter on the floor and kicked him twice in the side. Peter screamed and appealed again to Leitner for help.

Leitner stood over Peter. “You are getting what you deserve, you fucking little cunt.” He reached down and slapped Peter hard across the face.

Peter stopped making noise. He lay mute, terrified.

Jared, with Leitner’s help, stripped a now-docile Peter and put him in the sling. They slid restraints on his wrists and ankles, and Jared forced a ball gag into his mouth. A big one that would make it difficult for Peter to do more than grunt. Leitner suggested a hood. Jared found a latex one with holes only for the nostrils. He forced Peter’s head into it.

Jared stood back and gloated at the sight of his former assistant, now completely helpless. This was going to be one fucking awesome scene. By the time he and Leitner finished with Peter, the little bitch would be lucky if he could crawl out of Jared’s apartment.

“Be right back,” Jared said in a low voice to Leitner.

The German nodded. He was doing something with his camera, and Jared left him to it.

Jared opened a new bottle of Scotch and took it back to the playroom. He also helped himself to a fresh cigar. After three swigs of Scotch, he set the bottle out of the way. He was ready.

Exhaling smoke, he set to work. Soon he was flying high. The more Peter writhed in pain, grunting like the pig he was, the harder Jared played him.

Jared was dimly aware that Leitner was always nearby, moving around the room as he filmed. But little else intruded into his concentration on Peter.

Finally Jared had to take a break. He needed a fresh cigar, for one thing, and water. He had sweat so much he was dehydrated.

“Back in a minute.”

Peter lay mute in the sling, one leg twitching a little. Faint moans came through the latex hood.

Jared stumbled into the kitchen as he came down from the extended high. His hand trembled while he filled a glass with water. He gulped down two of them and felt a little better.

Back in the playroom he decided he wasn’t ready for another cigar yet. His mouth tasted like ash. Feeling his energy coming back, he wanted to go another round with Peter. He had more to do to him. A lot more.

But first he wanted another Scotch. Might as well finish off the bottle. Leitner stood by, camera poised and ready.

Jared grabbed the bottle, about a third full, and chugged it down.

Tastes a bit odd, he thought. I’ve been smoking too much.

He dropped the empty bottle on the floor and moved back to the sling. Glancing down at Peter, he realized something was wrong.

The latex hood was twisted. The holes for the nostrils were in the wrong place. Peter’s nose was completely covered.

His hands shaking now, Jared adjusted the hood, moving the holes back to their proper place.

Jared shook Peter’s leg. “Peter. Wake up. Peter.”

There was no response.

Jared shook the whole sling. Peter’s body bounced around, but it lay still when Jared let go of the sling.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” Jared turned to find Leitner regarding him, that cold smile back on his face. “I think he’s dead.”

“I believe you are correct. Sir.” Leitner laughed.

Jared glanced at the German’s hands.

Why was Leitner wearing latex gloves? He hadn’t been wearing them before.

Had he?

Jared shook his head. He was having difficulty remembering. Thinking.

Getting a little hard to breathe.

He reached out toward Leitner.

Stumbled to his knees.

Stared up at the German.

Leitner smiled down at him. “It will end soon. You will go to sleep. Sir.” He held something out to Jared. A bottle.

Though his hand and arm felt too heavy to lift, Jared grasped the bottle.

What was happening to him?

“Thank you. I needed your fingerprints on the pill bottle. You Texans are arrogant, yet you are most helpful. It is quite an amusing paradox.” Leitner laughed, and the sound made Jared want to cry.

Leitner walked away.

Jared tried to crawl after him, but his limbs were too heavy. He passed out on the floor, the bottle still in his hand.

CRANK by ITO ROMO

San Antonio

He was fucking scared. No shit. Really scared. Although he was in his mid-thirties, he’d never done such a thing before-picked up a woman at a bar, driven her crosstown to the west side to buy cocaine. Never. Never even done coke himself. But he did what she wanted him to. He was horny. Hadn’t had a girlfriend for over a year now, and had been with the last one for twelve years. And he wasn’t lucky with the ladies, always told his friends, “No, you don’t understand, I have to chat them up first. I have to charm them.”

But that night he didn’t have much of a choice; testosterone had taken over, and although there were slim pickins, he made his move to the end of the bar where she was standing. She had a thumb hooked into the pocket of her jeans, and in her other hand she held a cigarette over the ashtray on the bar. It was late, closing time. The barkeep announced last call. And rather quickly-it had been easier than he’d thought it would be-they left the bar together, and he found himself driving his truck farther and farther away from familiar territory. She asked him to get money for the dope. He drove to the closest bank and withdrew forty bucks, guaranteeing, he thought, he’d get laid.

“Lights off,” she said softly. “Turn your lights off and pull over. Yeah, right there, man. I see him. Ahí esta. Good. We lucked out.”

He coasted to a stop. “Where?”

“Over there. Shhh… I’ll be right back.”

She opened the door, slipped out, then closed it really carefully and walked over to a car parked on the other side of the street, a little behind where they had rolled to a stop. Through the rearview mirror, he saw the car’s door open slowly. A man stepped out, a gun stuck into his pants right above a big silver belt buckle, like a rodeo champion. The revolver sparkled in what little light shone from the moon shrouded in silvery clouds.

The windows fogged up quickly, the air hot with alcohol and adrenaline. Inside the cab of the truck, it smelled like a bedroom after two very drunk people had sex.

He was scared. “And all for pussy, all for pussy,” he whispered, eyes darting from the rearview to the mirror on the driver’s-side door, then ahead of him.

Suddenly she tapped at the window as he zoned, drunk, focusing on what he thought was someone inside a car two vehicles ahead. He twitched, then adjusted his vision, squinted to make out her face through the clouded window, had to double-check; the streetlamp had been shot out. Her earring clinked against the glass.

He rolled down the window. Even in this dark craziness, she looked beautiful, like a movie star, like a young Sophia Loren. Thumb hooked into her jeans pocket again. She had sad eyes, he thought, pleading and lost.

“Give me the money, man.”

“What? How much, how much?”

“Twenty, thirty, whatever. C’mon, man. He’s waiting.”

“Well, I’m a little uncomfortable-”

“Shhh… just gimme the money, man, come on.” She placed her hand on his mouth, pressed down hard like she meant business. It hurt a little. “Shhh… just gimme the money, man. He’s waiting. I gotta give him some money now or he’s gonna get mad at the both of us. C’mon.”

Her teeth clenched tight.

The urgency in her voice scared him. He fumbled through his shirt pocket, into which he had shoved the bills, and pulled out the two twenties, crisp, folded in half, fresh out of the ATM.

I’m gonna die. Dear Jesus, I’m gonna die, he thought, his upper jaw still smarting from her forceful grip.

She quickly counted the money he gave her and went back to the car across the street.

“Thank you, God. Gracias, Jesus Christo Redentor.” She was jonesing, jonesing really bad.

“Here, babe, two big rocks. Smoke ’em, man. Break ’em up a little, then smoke ’em. You’ll get the most mileage that way. It’s good stuff. Promise. Good stuff.”

“Thanks, Johnny Boy. You’re my man. You always got my back. Thanks, man.”

“Hey, Sonia, do me a favor. Don’t bring that dude back here no more.”

“No, Johnny Boy. He’s cool. Promise. He’s cool. He’s all square, man. He works at a bank. Don’t worry.”

“Don’t bring ’im here no more. Okay, mi morenita?”

“Okay, papacito. Love you, man.”

She put two fingers to her lips to flick him a kiss and went back to the truck. He would’ve hurt her if she had come here with no money-not badly, but he would have slapped her a couple of times. She knew it. She’d seen him do it.

But she was beautiful, and this had always helped her.

He acts all nice and all, but he’d hurt me, just like that, she thought as she walked back to the truck.

In one hand she held the dope in a tight fist-tight, tight fist; the thumb of her other hand was hooked into her jeans pocket.

“Thank you, Jesus.” She made the sign of the cross, and at the end, right at the end of the sign of the cross, right when she usually kissed her thumb as if holding the cross hanging at the end of a rosary, just as her mother had taught her to do, she kissed the sweet little plastic pouch and jumped back into the truck.

Once in, she put her face to her shoulder, sniffed her underarm. “Damn, I still smell like fish,” she said. “I gotta quit that job, I swear. Let’s get the hell outta here.” She leaned over, kissed him, slipped him some tongue, let him know she was grateful for the money, for the ride, for bringing her all the way across town, and sat back. The dope was in her hands. She could feel it there. It reassured her. Made her happy.

He put the truck in gear and drove off slowly, didn’t turn the lights on until the end of the block. He’d gotten the picture. He wasn’t stupid.

She checked her underarm again. “Do I smell like fish? You know, fried fish. You know, like my work. Do I smell like Long John Silver’s?”

He wrung the steering wheel. “No, you don’t smell like fish.”

“I told you I work at Long John Silver’s, right?”

He nodded yes, kept his eyes on the road, afraid to get stopped. He thought, Not only am I drunk, but there’s speed in the car now too. Fuck.

He had just wanted to loosen her up. Never thought it would be this dangerous. He could’ve gotten held up, hurt, the truck stolen. But no, had to go along with it, didn’t I? he thought. I gotta get home. Gotta get home. Gotta get home. Gotta get home.

“I have a degree, you know. Aha, an associate’s degree in food management. That’s right, from City College on the east side. You know, right? You know St. Philip’s, right?”

“Yes.”

“I graduated in May. My grades weren’t so hot. But I finished, didn’t I?”

“Yes.”

“What bank you work at?”

He thought up a lie, afraid now of the guy back there in the car, of her ilk.

“I work in real estate at the bank. Don’t really have anything to do with money.”

“Ooh, good. Yeah, me, I’m a home owner. That’s what you mean by real estate, right?”

She pulled a cigarette out of her bag and lit up.

She didn’t even ask me, he thought. He wanted to tell her not to smoke in his truck. Decided not to.

Be careful. Slow down, he thought. They got to a busy intersection. Slow down, slow down, he kept thinking.

“Take 35. Take the expressway,” she said. “I really gotta pee.”

“I can’t get on the expressway right now, like this. I’m drunk. Too many cops. Can you hold it for ten minutes? We’ll be at my house in ten minutes.”

“Can’t you pull over and let me pee? Just over there. Look, it’s dark. Pull over, man. I gotta pee.”

“I promise. We’re five minutes from my house now. Okay? You okay with that?”

“Okay. Okay.”

She really didn’t have to pee, just wanted to get to his house and smoke the crank. He knew it and started getting angry, feeling upset, used. But just then, just as he turned the corner, her purse rolled over and popped open. He saw it in there, clear as day, a knife, a big one, a switchblade. So he shut up.

She looked at him as she grabbed her purse, put it back in order. Leered at him. Hated him for not pulling over. For such a smart man, banker, real-estater, whatever, he’s a fucking idiot, she thought. Look at him, such a sissy, all scared and all. I ain’t gonna hurt you, honey. I just wanna smoke a little of this shit, man. I just wanna get out and smoke a little of this shit. Fuck him. Like he can’t pull over for just a minute? How much longer? How much longer?

“Hey, how much longer?”

“See that white house over there… on the right? That’s my house.” They pulled into the driveway. “Relax, we’re here, we’re here.”

Yeah, shit, you relax with these little candies in your hand, motherfucker, she thought, you fucking relax. She was turning into a fiend, a monster, someone he had not recognized in that dark bar.

She jumped out of the truck and waited for him at the door. “Come on, man, I gotta pee, please hurry.”

“I’m coming, I’m coming. Don’t make so much noise. It’s late. The neighbors-”

“You wanna fucking commotion? You wanna see what a commotion really is?” she said loudly.

He got the picture, hurried and unlocked the door, switched on the light.

She slipped in. “Where’s your toilet?”

“Straight ahead, straight ahead. You’ll see the door.”

Just take the damn stuff and then I’m going to get you out of here, he thought. I promise, Jesus, get me out of this one and I’ll never do it again, never, promise.

She came out of the bathroom rather quickly. He didn’t even hear the toilet flush. “Do you have foil? Tin foil? I need some foil.”

“What for?”

“To smoke this stuff. Come on. Get the foil.”

“You smoke it? I thought you were supposed to snort that stuff?”

“Can you get the foil, please?”

He went to the kitchen. He wanted to find it, was desperate to find it, take it back to her, let her smoke her damn stuff, then get her the hell out of the house. He grabbed the box of foil and rushed back to the dining room where she was sitting at the table.

“Hey, get me a little plate, okay, like a coffee plate, you know, like for under a cup of coffee.”

He ran back to the kitchen, pulled a saucer out of the dishwasher, ran back to the dining room.

She opened her hand. The little plastic baggie was stuck to her palm. She peeled it off, struggled with the tiny seal, finally opened it, and carefully poured the two crystals onto the plate.

“Give me the foil.”

He handed her the box.

She reached for her purse, which she had set on the chair next to the one she was sitting in. Pulled out the switchblade.

He jumped back.

She giggled. “Hey, man, don’t worry. I’m just gonna break this shit up, man. What’d you think? I was gonna slice you up, man? C’mon, man. You’re silly, silly, real silly.” She stared at him, pressed the button, and the blade switched open. She broke one of the crystals in two-clink.

“Fuck the foil,” she said, and went back into her purse for her pack of cigarettes. She pushed the little piece of crystal that looked like rock salt into the tip of the cigarette. Lit up. Her eyes rolled back into her head. They were solid white for a while, almost pearlescent, almost beautiful.

“Take a hit,” she said. “Let me load it for you. Here. Look…”

“No, not really. Don’t do that. Thanks. You do it all.”

She pressed hard on the second piece to break it up into smaller bits, the blade flat on it this time, and when she did so, a few grains spilled off the plate onto the floor.

“Oh my God! What did I do? How much fell?” She pushed off the table and fell immediately to her hands and knees, touching the ground as if blind. Then she looked up at him suddenly, crazed, and asked, “Is somebody back there? Are the cops back there?”

Damnit, she’s wigging out, he thought. “No, there’s nobody back there. Promise.”

“Let’s go see.”

“Okay.” He took her to the back of the house, past the bathroom. Pulled her into both bedrooms. Showed her the closets. Pulled up the dust ruffle from around each bed. Made her look underneath. “See, no one’s in here. I promise. No one’s in here.”

“What about outside? They’re waiting outside, aren’t they, the police?”

“No,” he said loudly, almost yelling, exasperated. “Come and see for yourself.” He pulled the curtain aside, yanked up the blind. Nothing there. She saw. Just a backyard. Plain backyard. Not even a dog.

Then she looked at him, dazed, stoned, and slurred, “I thought your house was bigger, you know, being a banker and all.”

She turned away from him and started walking, slowly, headed back to the dining room, almost as if she were floating, sat down at the table, but in the chair opposite the one she’d been sitting in.

“So I can look back there,” she said, pointing to the back of the house. “Wanna make sure no one’s back there. You sure no one’s back there?”

He stared at her. Started hating her.

She smoked the rest of the crank. With every hit, her eyes rolled back into her head. Smoked it all except for two crystals still on the saucer.

He started wondering if she’d been casing the house, acting wasted, paranoid, looking for vulnerable places, entries, windows her gun-toting friend could break in through in the middle of the night, kill him. For what? he thought, my TV, my VCR, my computer, my DVD player, my poor, dead mother’s silver? He thought Johnny Boy might even be on his way over already, right now. He trembled, barely, but visibly now, visibly, at least to him-angry, truly afraid for his life. She puffed away.

“Positive,” he said. “You saw yourself. No one’s back there.”

He was now beginning to think that she was going to overdose. She’d smoked so much. It seemed too much. He’d never done it, but he knew what speed could do to a person. He’d seen the movies. Seen the special report on Nightline, “The Meth Crisis.” He imagined her heart pumping faster and faster, harder and harder, then stopping. Just like that. He closed his eyes. Should I call an ambulance? What’ll I do if she ODs? How do I explain it to the police? Jesus, help me, he thought.

“Haven’t you smoked enough of that stuff?”

She looked at him, one eye closed. “What? You pay for this shit?” Then she giggled, remembering that he had. “Just kidding, amigo, just kidding. Sit down with me.” Stoned. Wasted. Gone. Here. Come. “Sit right here, my sweet papaya. Close to me.” She patted her hand on the seat of the chair next to hers, then pulled another cigarette from her purse, pushed the last two pieces of rock into the tip.

He sat down.

She caressed the inside of his thigh, made her way up to his crotch. Smiled sweetly. Lit up.

“Oh, sweet little jewel,” she said.

“Why are you so quiet?” she asked him, coming out of her stupor, as she had done a few times during the ride to get her home, enough to let him know where to take her. Back to the same neighborhood they’d been the night before. He thought about dropping her off at a bus stop, dumping her. It would’ve been easy enough, she seemed so lifeless, wasted. But he couldn’t do it. He’d take her home even if it meant going back to that part of town. He’d take her home. Get rid of her. Anything to get rid of her.

“I’m tired, that’s all,” he answered. No interest in talking with her, angry, really angry now that the sun was out, now that it was light, now that he felt safe.

“Hey, don’t worry. I know lots of guys who can’t get it up sometimes. No big deal. Get some Viagra,” she said to him rather lucidly, giggling. This made him even angrier.

He pulled down the visor-the strong, early morning, South Texas sun blinding him. He could barely see where he was going. Even now, still a little drunk. In shock. Still nervous. Edgy. Knew he wouldn’t be all right until she was out of the truck. Away from him. His life. His home.

She nodded off again.

“Hey, wake up,” he said to her a few blocks later, shaking her rather severely, a little too hard. “You have to tell me where we’re going. Wake up. Don’t fall asleep.”

She opened her eyes slightly, dazed. “Where are we? Oh, yeah, up there. I see. Up there. Take a left on Zarzamora. Just up there. Yeah, right up there. Up there,” she repeated, pointing in no particular direction. “Yeah, one more block. Right here. Turn. Right there. Yeah, just right there on the left. Yeah, drop me off right there. That’s my momma’s house. She’s dead now. Dead. She left it to me. The house, that house, the white one with the red roof. Que pretty, right? Yeah, that one. Right here.”

She leaned over, tried to kiss him. He turned away. She laughed, got out slowly, slammed the door shut.

THE DEAD MAN’S WIFE by BOBBY BYRD

El Paso

Alex opened his eyes. The sunlight was creeping from around the heavy motel curtains. He shut his eyes and opened them again. Same thing. He was on the edge of a king-sized bed. He was naked and uncovered. Curled up like a dead baby. He could feel her warmth pushing up against him. He stuck a thumb in his eye and rubbed. Six hours before, the two of them had begun their postorgasm journey on the other side of the bed next to the night table, she asleep in his sweaty arms. But during the night they had migrated eight feet, him inching away from her, her tracking his warmth. A long nighttime journey.

As if, Alex thought, she was stalking me in her sleep.

But he didn’t feel happy with himself. He wasn’t even satisfied, whatever that meant. Maybe Alex considered satisfaction some form of forgiveness. Some form of hope.

He pushed himself up and sat on the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees. He cradled his head in his hands like it was a foreign thing-an egg in the wrong nest. Or the bloody head of Danton harvested from the basket behind the guillotine. Poor Danton. Robespierre was such an asshole. These were his strange thoughts. He stood up in the semidarkness and walked the narrow path to the bathroom. He grabbed his black boxer shorts. He didn’t shut the door. He used his left hand to pee. The right hand scratched his chest.

Twice during the night he had gotten up to pee, and each time upon his return the woman had pulled him back again in her arms. Alex had drunk a lot of beer. They had gone to sleep around two and now it was seven or eight. So getting up twice to pee wasn’t bad.

There were two plastic liters of water next to the sink. He took one and went to the table and sat down next to the window. The table was round with two uncomfortable chairs. Mexican chairs were always uncomfortable. He peeked around the curtain and looked at the morning. The desert sunlight made him shut his eyes. A few women walked with their children toward a church that must have been hiding behind storefronts-pottery, bathroom fixtures, tile, a bar named Café Soul. The street was filthy with Saturday-night garbage. There was a drunk asleep on the ragged grass in the median. Cars came and went in the freedom that Sunday morning brings. He was the dead man again. He wished he were north of the river. He wished he were home on his front porch drinking coffee.

But he wasn’t. He had come across last night because it was the time of the month to get fucked. It was his ritual. The third Thursday of every month, nine p.m. Six months after his wife died, he started coming across. First, it was every few months. But after a while he made it a monthly ritual. A ceremony of my confusion, he called it. He knew two cab drivers. He was their friend. Or, more aptly, their “business acquaintance.” He had met them through a friend of a friend. He wanted to be safe on the other side. And he had been hearing about the women disappearing. They were raped and killed and dumped in the desert or in vacant lots. No one was ever arrested. Sometimes the police didn’t even find out who the woman was and where she came from. Nobody seemed to care. The victims were forgotten. Alex didn’t want to think about those women. He wanted to come across and conduct his personal ceremony. He wanted to resolve this thing he called confusion in his body. So, thanks to the friend of the friend, he had searched out the two cab drivers. One was named Tony and the other was named Pete, and they were partners. Together they owned a beat-up green cab. A Plymouth four-door. Tony or Pete, one or the other, would be sitting in the No. 107 cab when Alex walked across the bridge. They would smile at each other and shake hands. Alex would get in the front seat and they’d go shopping. Alex was a two-hundred-dollar man, so Tony or Pete would take him to a two-hundred-dollar club and together they would choose a two-hundred-dollar whore and Tony or Pete would negotiate while Alex listened and then Tony or Pete would take Alex and his two-hundred-dollar whore to the Best Western on the Avenida de las Americas. The whole night would cost Alex maybe four hundred dollars. It was in his monthly budget. It was part of his life.

The two-hundred-dollar whore on the bed was Arcia, and she was feeling around in the dark for the man she had stalked in her sleep. She groaned. The man was no longer there. She didn’t understand that the man was dead and that the dead man was sitting on a chair looking at her. She was naked and lying on her belly like she was swimming. She pushed herself high enough up to look around, her eyes blinking. She saw Alex and sighed, then fell facedown into the sheets again. Alex watched her turn over to look at him but he wasn’t thinking about her.

He was thinking about a night ten years before. Maybe it was fifteen years before. He didn’t care which. His wife was still alive, and they were holding hands. They were driving home on the old road between Las Cruces and El Paso. They had been to a dance party. They never went to dance parties. But this had been a special occasion. Some sort of fundraiser with an old-time C &W band. They had promised themselves that they would dance, and they had wandered around the floor with their stiff-legged waltz and clumsy two-step like they were driving bumper cars. The band had a very fat guy yodeling funky old songs. The fat man sat on the stool and sang with a wonderful tenor voice. The flaps under his chin trembled. The whole night the fat man never got up to pee. Alex and his wife loved the fat guy. On the way home they laughed and made up stories about the fat guy who had sung “Danny Boy” like he was Pavarotti. Alex had wanted to cry.

His wife said: “Let’s take the old road. The freeway puts me to sleep.” She usually wanted to get straight home.

“Sure,” Alex said.

It was a beautiful black night with stars flickering. The old road was a two-lane blacktop that followed along the banks of the Rio Grande and swung back and forth through little farming towns. They came to the place where the road enters a huge pecan grove that stretches for miles. It was early summer, so the trees were fully clothed with leaves. The starry sky disappeared and they were driving through a cool and damp cavern. Alex slowed down to forty and rolled down his window. His wife did the same thing. They were quiet.

Halfway through the grove Alex pulled the car over to the gravelly shoulder and drove until he found a dirt road that ducked even deeper into the canopy of trees. He turned into the road. He turned off his headlights, but kept the parking lights on.

She said, “What are you doing?”

“I need to pee,” he said.

“You and the fat guy,” she said.

They laughed together, and he said: “Yeah, me and the fat guy.”

He was quiet for a few seconds while he navigated the darkness. The road was mostly dry, but the groves where the trees stood were wet from irrigation a few days before.

He said: “Besides, it looks like a good place to pee.” Alex was the kind of guy who took pride in pissing outdoors.

“Sure,” she said.

He stopped the car and turned off the lights and the engine. He opened his door and got out and went searching for a good tree to lean against. He found one that seemed perfect to him. In the dark night it had a thick fleshy trunk and a bowl of dark leaves where the pecans and the stars hid themselves. While he listened to the sound of the pee falling into the dirt, he looked around. There was not much to see, just more darkness and the apparitions of rows and rows of pecan trees going about their business growing pecans. He felt like he was in a church. He was zipping back up when he heard her door open and shut.

She said: “Where are you?”

“Right here,” he said.

Both of them were almost whispering. He could hardly see her. Her face and neck and the half-moon of her shoulders were riding above her black dress. They met halfway between the car and the perfect tree. They wrapped their arms around each other.

She asked him: “Was it nice?”

“Very nice.”

She said: “I took my shoes off. The ground is wonderful. Here, let me take off yours.”

And she kneeled down in the mud and pulled off one shoe and sock and then the other shoe and sock. He put his hand on her head for balance. Yes, she was right-the muddy earth felt wonderful to his feet. She stood up and kissed him. He loved the taste of her lipstick. They walked down the corridor between two rows of trees. They held hands, they kissed each other, they stopped, and he felt her breasts. She had already taken off her bra and panties. She must have left them in the car. Standing up against the rough bark of a pecan tree, they made love in the pecan grove.

The drive home was quiet. They each had their own thoughts. As they turned up their street for the last few blocks before home, she reached over and grabbed his hand. She asked him: “When a man has an orgasm, where does that man go? It’s like he’s dead and somebody else takes his place. Sooner or later the dead man reappears, and he says hello to me. I see the dead man, and I’m glad he’s come home.”

That seemed like so long ago, and now Arcia, who was a young girl, probably younger than his very own daughter, was asking him: “¿Prenda las luces?”

“Por supuesto.” And he asked her, “¿Como amaneciste?” His Spanish was formal and clumsy.

“Bien, bien,” she said.

He reached over and flicked on the light on the table. It was a sixty-watt bulb, but it sprayed off enough light so that her nakedness embarrassed her. She reached up and covered her breasts with her small hands. But then she realized that her crotch with its finely trimmed tuft of hair was also uncovered. She sat up with a start and thrashed around for the sheets. She found them and pulled them up to her chin.

Alex smiled at her confusion. She was like a little girl. She was a little girl. He said: “¿Cuantos años tienes?”

“None of tu beezness!” she said.

“¿Veinte? ¿Dieciocho?”

“Bah! None of tu beezness!” She pulled the sheets over her head.

“¿Tienes hijos?”

“No, no, no, no!” She threw a pillow at him and he ducked, laughing.

She was laughing now too. She said: “¡Cierra tus ojos!”

He grinned at his bashful prostitute and pretended to shut his eyes. But he didn’t. He watched her jump out of bed and scurry around picking up articles of clothing and her purse. Her blouse was on a chair, her bra and black skirt were on the floor, her panties and stockings and shoes were under the bed. Everything was black. She had to get down on her hands and knees to look under the bed. Her buttocks bobbed up and down. He had enjoyed Arcia. They had talked for a while afterward. She told him not to ask her if she was in school. She said that all gringos asked her if she was in school. So they talked about her family. About her mother who worked as a maid on the other side. She didn’t know her father. He went away to Gringolandia and he never came back. Then she had gone to sleep. Or maybe it was he who had fallen asleep. He couldn’t remember.

After she had collected her possessions, she disappeared into the bathroom. He heard the bathtub filling up. He heard the toilet flush. He listened to her bathing herself. She was singing a song in Spanish. She was a little girl. She was his two-hundred-dollar whore. He pulled the drawstring on the curtains, and the sunlight poured into the room. He felt old and mean.

Once, after they had made love, this time in their bedroom, his wife had said to him: “I want to see the face of God.” She had a warm washcloth in her hand and she was cleaning their crotches-first his, then hers. Back and forth. Her green eyes were ecstatic.

“The face of God?” He had reached up and touched her breast. Then he said: “Where is the face of God?”

“I don’t know,” his wife said. “But I think the face of God is right here in this room. I think we’re staring at the face of God.”

“How can that be?” he said.

“I don’t know,” she said, and she continued cleaning his genitalia with the damp, warm cloth.

The bathroom door opened, and Arcia stood there staring at him. She was barefooted. She was wearing only her bra and slip. Her hair was wet and her face was scrubbed clean. She let him look at her but she didn’t say a word. She simply turned and faced the mirror. She studied herself and Alex watched her from his chair across the room. He knew Arcia also wore the face of God. This is what his wife would have understood. His wife had always been wiser than him. Arcia bent down over the hot running water and scrubbed her face some more with a scrub brush that magically appeared. Then she went to work with powder and mascara and eye shadow and lipstick. She carried all of the required tools and ingredients in her large leather purse. He picked up his chair and moved closer to her so that he could watch. She ignored him, but that was okay by him. He just wanted to watch. She worked for twenty minutes crafting her face.

When she was done, she turned and looked at him. She looked ten years older, she looked like a veterana. Her lips twisted into a smile. Or maybe it was a sneer.

She said: “¿Quieres más?”

“No,” he said. He was lying. He could feel warmth in his face and he knew he was blushing. She was beautiful. But she was not the young girl he watched wake up in the darkness only an hour or so ago. “Maybe next month. En el mes que viene. The dead man is dead. You killed him last night. Remember? Pero estás muy guapa. Muy beautiful.”

She screwed up her face. She knew what the word “dead” meant. This worried her. She didn’t want him to be one of the strange men. She knew the stories about the dead women. But she knew he had more money. She always needed more money. She stepped into her black skirt and pulled it over her hips. She watched him while she did this. It was her performance. Then she put on her black blouse. She left all the buttons except one undone.

He looked at her. He could feel his sex moving inside him. And he felt ashamed.

He said: “Hay que tener cuidado. You must be careful.”

“¿Cuidado?” she asked. She was sneering at him. “Soy cuidado. Todo el tiempo.” And she shut the door in his face. He could hear her pissing into the toilet. It flushed, and she washed her hands. She was very careful. She opened the door. She was ready to go. The night was over.

He said: “¿Tienes hambre? ¿Quieres algo para comer?”

“¿Porque no?” she said with a little laugh. “Pero no estas listo. Ponga tu ropa, viejo.” He still had on only his boxer shorts. His stomach was hanging over his legs. The hair on his chest was gray.

He said: “Okay. Okay. Dame un momento.”

He started searching around for his clothes. She opened the door, and let the heat and light fill the room. He looked out the door and he wanted to go home. A man his own age with a belly protruding over his belt walked slowly past the window and by the door. He was wearing a cowboy hat and boots and a clean white shirt with gold cuff links. He looked at Arcia who was leaning against the doorjamb in her black clothes and high heels. The man peered inside the room like he was looking inside a refrigerator. He saw Alex in his boxers.

The man turned back for his wife who followed behind him. At least Alex assumed it was his wife. She was wearing slacks and a shirt. A straw hat was perched on her head to protect her from the sun. The man in the cowboy hat said: “Come on, honey. Hurry yourself along.” He grabbed the woman’s hand. The two women looked at each other, they were looking across a distance they couldn’t comprehend, and then the man pulled his wife away.

Alex said: “Go on downstairs. Wait for me outside. Baja. Baja. El taxi está in the parking lot.” He had lost all of his words and his jaw hurt. He was tired. Arcia glanced at him over her shoulder and moved outside to the railing of the concrete overhang. He pulled on his pants. He walked out the door where she was standing. He was barefooted and with only his pants on. He was very white. His hair was gray. The green taxi was downstairs in the parking lot. Number 107. Pete waved at him, and Alex waved back. He had known either Pete or Tony would be there because he owed them fifty dollars. That was part of the deal. Arcia saw the taxi too. She hung her purse on her shoulder and walked toward the stairs, her hips casually moving back and forth. She was very young and very beautiful in the desert’s morning light.