Santa Cruz Noir

To Live and Die in Santa Cruz by Calvin McMillin

UCSC

Maybe it’s just misplaced nostalgia, but I’m one of those people who still buys the newspaper. When I was little, my dad would leave our trailer every Sunday morning and come back with a box of donuts and three different newspapers cradled in his arm like a football. All these years later, I’m still not sure why our household needed so much news coverage. I always reached for the comics. Unfortunately, there was nothing comical about this Sunday’s edition of the Santa Cruz Sentinel.

That last line hit me hard. I didn’t cry; I just stared at that sentence, wondering why bad things happen to good people, as if I were the first person in the world to ever ask the question. I killed the engine and swung the car door open.

Composed of a trio of buildings, graduate student housing was billed on its official website as “a friendly neighborhood consisting of eighty-eight scholars hailing from different countries across the globe.” I couldn’t care less. I just needed to talk to two of those eighty-eight. Not coincidentally, they shared an apartment on the fourth floor of Building 3.

After knocking on the door, I stood back from the peephole so whoever was inside could get a good look. A redhead with soft bangs wearing a Banana Slug hoodie answered the door. I must’ve looked respectable.

“Can I help you?”

“I called yesterday. I’m Elizabeth’s sister.”

Elizabeth’s room was clean and well-lit, but otherwise unremarkable: a bed, a nightstand, a desk, a swivel chair, and a bulletin board without a single note. All standard issue from the university. No posters. No photographs. Aside from a trio of succulents on the windowsill, it was as if Elizabeth hadn’t made herself at home. At the foot of her bed stood a bookcase filled with literary classics, trashy best sellers, and phone book — sized anthologies, many of them stacked artfully, others shoved haphazardly into every available nook. If there had ever been an earthquake in the middle of the night, the looming bookcase could have easily crushed Elizabeth in her sleep. She didn’t have to worry about that anymore.

On the top shelf stood a little plastic doll — a woman in a frilly bonnet wearing an old-fashioned blue dress. She held a book in one hand and a quill in the other. I’d never seen it out of the package. I couldn’t help myself; I had to pick it up.

“That’s Jane Austen,” said Alice, the redhead. “Don’t feel bad. I didn’t know who it was either. I thought it was an Amish woman!”

I smiled and put the figure down carefully.

“I should probably give you some privacy,” Alice said.

“Actually, do you mind chatting with me for a bit?”

“Not at all.” Alice sat across from me on Elizabeth’s bed.

“I’d like to learn more about my sister’s life here in Santa Cruz before she...” I let the sentence trail off and put my head in my hands. The tears came easily.

“Lizzy was a great person!” Alice exclaimed, as if enthusiasm alone could mute my feelings. “She was super nice. Polite. Always kept the common areas clean. I never had any problems with her.”

Nice? Polite? Clean? Obviously, Alice barely knew Elizabeth.

“And Lizzy was such a go-getter!” she added. “Always attending some conference or taking a research trip. She even taught her own class!”

“What about her social life? Did she have any friends? I mean, besides you.”

Alice looked embarrassed; clearly, she didn’t count herself as a friend.

“Was she seeing anyone? The police didn’t say.”

“Yeah, she was... His name was Chet, I think.”

“Chet?” I laughed. “What do you know about him?”

“Not much. He’s handsome. Oh, and he’s in the creative writing program.”

“Does he live in student housing too?”

“No, Lizzy said he lives near the Boardwalk. In that old apartment complex with the bell tower. God, he must be devastated.”

“You think so?”

“Yeah, he had it bad. He sent her bouquets of flowers, one after the other, right up until the, until the—” Alice tried to catch herself.

“Until the end?”

“Yeah, sorry.” She averted her eyes.

“Don’t worry about it. When’s the last time you saw Chet?”

“Maybe a month back. I came home late. To be honest, it kinda freaked me out seeing a guy come out of our bathroom in the middle of the night.” Alice pointed to the hallway. “The funny thing is, he looked twice as scared as me and super embarrassed.”

“I see.” An uncomfortable silence hung in the air.

“It must’ve been an accident, right?” Alice said. “I know grad school is stressful, but I didn’t think she’d commit suicide.”

“She’s not the type. Believe me, I’d know.”

“Of course, you’re sisters.”

We exchanged polite smiles.

“Y’know,” Alice said, grinning like she’d just thought of the perfect joke, “I sort of forgot that Elizabeth was adopted.”

“Adopted? What makes you say that?”

“Uh, well, I—” Her smile faded.

“You don’t detect a family resemblance?”

“Um...”

Before I could let Alice off the hook, I heard the front door open.

“That must be Natalie,” Alice said. “You should talk to her. She and Lizzy were in the same department.”

We stared at the open door until Natalie came into view. A black Bettie Page bob framed a pair of deep blue eyes and a delicate face. In one hand, she clutched a large soft drink and in the other, a bag of takeout that was sweating with grease.

“Natalie,” Alice called out, “come here and meet Lizzy’s sister.”

I stood up, but Natalie’s hands were full, so instead of offering my hand to shake, I gave her a little wave and sat back down.

The sound of crickets chirping punctuated the awkward moment, as Alice scrambled to silence her phone. “Sorry, that’s my cue to leave. I have a meeting with my advisor.”

We exchanged pleasantries, and I remained seated as Alice left the apartment.

“So, why are you here again?” Natalie asked between sips of soda.

“To learn more about Elizabeth.” I made a gesture inviting her to take a seat. She refused, towering over me.

“Liz was a slut,” she announced, the smell of french fries on her breath.

“Excuse me?”

“I said, Liz. Was. A. Slut.”

I jumped to my feet. “How could you even say that to me?”

“Easy. Liz didn’t have a sister. So you better tell me who the hell you are before I call the cops.”

I felt numb. Instead of offering a quick denial, I smiled to suggest that Natalie’s accusation hadn’t rankled me one bit. “Okay, you caught me. I’m not Elizabeth’s sister. No relation at all. I’m Stephanie Williams of the Santa Cruz Sentinel, and I’m doing a story on Elizabeth’s death.”

“So you pretended to be her sister?”

“Sorry. I didn’t think anyone would talk to me if I told the truth.”

“Sounds a little unethical to me.” Natalie sat on the bed, suddenly interested.

“There’s a story here. I’m sure of it. Elizabeth was intelligent, beautiful, and in the prime of her life — and then, suddenly, she ends up at the bottom of a ravine? Why kill herself?”

“Have the police confirmed it was a suicide?” Natalie asked.

“Not yet. But depression is a big problem among graduate students. I thought I could shed some light on Elizabeth’s story.”

“Of course.”

“So, is it true?”

“Is what true?” Natalie asked.

“You called her a slut.”

“Well, I don’t like to speak ill of the dead, but Liz didn’t exactly play hard to get, if you know what I mean.”

“Alice didn’t mention anything like that.”

“Her room is on the other end of the apartment. She couldn’t hear a peep.”

“But you could.”

“Hard to miss. I’m right next door.”

“And what exactly did you hear?”

She rolled her eyes. “Well, if you must know, she and her... boyfriend made so much freakin’ noise.” Something about the way Natalie said “boyfriend” made it sound illegitimate. “I teach a discussion section at nine in the morning. Hard to get any sleep with her going at it all night.”

“Has your relationship with Elizabeth always been so strained?”

“Actually, no. We were close the first year. That’s how I know about her family. But we drifted apart.”

“Aren’t you both in the same department?”

“Yeah, but I do postcolonial studies. Liz isn’t exactly a serious scholar. She’s into Jane Austen. I mean, can you think of anything fluffier than that? And my god, have you ever read Mansfield Park? Complete garbage.”

“So, you had a falling out over... Jane Austen?”

“No, it was over the bathroom. She wanted things spotless. No matter how much I cleaned, it was never enough. And don’t get me started on all her little passive-aggressive comments.”

“Such as?”

“Liz was a strict vegetarian.” Natalie held up the bag in her hand. “If I want to eat Jack in the Box, I’ll eat Jack in the Box. It’s none of her business.” She reached into the bag and popped a soggy french fry in her mouth.

“So her vegetarianism became an annoyance?”

“That’s putting it mildly,” Natalie replied. “You know who else was a vegetarian? Hitler. And Pol Pot.”

“I guess that’s what happens when you love animals too much — genocide.”

Natalie giggled. My little joke seemed to have won her over.

“So, just to make sure I’m understanding you correctly, the reason you called Elizabeth a slut was because she had loud sex with her boyfriend? Is that all?”

“N-no, that’s just part of it. Elizabeth stole Chet away from another girl, and then turned around and cheated on him. Did Alice tell you about the flowers?”

I nodded.

“Chet didn’t send them. He put up with all her whiny bullshit, and this is how she rewards him?”

“A potential love triangle. Interesting.” I took out my smartphone and began typing up notes. Natalie didn’t know I’d already started recording her.

“Don’t quote me on that!” she said, only half-serious.

“I’ll keep your name out of the article. But tell me this: who else was Elizabeth seeing?”

“Not sure. Someone older, I think.”

“What do you know about Chet?”

“Nothing, really. I’ve never spoken to him.”

I handed Natalie a business card. She inspected it like a cashier examining a suspiciously crisp hundred-dollar bill. “If you think of anything, my cell number is on the back. Don’t call the office. That’s not a direct line. I don’t want anyone getting my messages and poaching the story, okay?”

“Sure,” Natalie said, “but I gotta eat my lunch now. My tacos are getting cold.”

Elizabeth’s social media accounts offered few clues. Highlights included a couple of gorgeous West Cliff Drive sunsets and a handful of perfectly composed selfies highlighting Elizabeth’s natural beauty. She’d crafted her online persona to suggest her life was incredibly fun — and conspicuously solitary. Her last post had been the previous summer.

I’d brought a box to pack up some of Elizabeth’s things, but to my disappointment, the police took almost everything of value. No laptop. No tablet. Not even a stapler. Her desk drawers were all empty too. I thumbed through every book on her shelf, hoping to find some sort of clue — a diary, a scrap of paper, something.

Back in the Mustang, I stared at the only thing of value I retrieved: a photograph of a little Korean girl, probably five or six years old, smiling between two adoring Caucasian parents — Gregory and Susan White. The couple had difficulty conceiving, but with the help of an international adoption agency, they found and fell in love with a baby girl named Jae-Hee Kim, soon to be renamed Elizabeth Jane White.

While it’s true that Elizabeth’s parents were initially childless, her roommate Natalie didn’t know half the story. The first twelve years of Elizabeth’s life were relatively happy, though when her parents divorced, things took an ugly turn. Her father had only agreed to the adoption for the sake of his wife, so once the divorce was finalized, he cut off contact with Elizabeth, never to be heard from again.

Elizabeth’s mother retained custody, yet when she remarried two years later, her new husband wasn’t fond of a teenager in the house, especially one so obviously not his. Having to explain the existence of this Korean child, a constant reminder of his wife’s previous marriage, made him deeply uncomfortable. Elizabeth’s stepfather wanted children of his own, and he got his wish when her mother became pregnant with twins through the miracle of in vitro fertilization.

When Elizabeth completed high school, her stepfather accepted a job in Boston, taking her mother and her half-siblings out of state. Elizabeth’s weekly phone calls from college to her mother slowly turned into an annual call and then into no calls at all. By the time she graduated from Michigan State, the family had ceased all contact. Thankfully, she’d been accepted into graduate school at Santa Cruz, a place where she could begin again — or so she thought.

Perhaps there was more to the story. But with Elizabeth gone, it was unlikely that I would ever discover the full truth.

My thoughts returned to the happy little girl in the photograph. Her adoptive parents looked happy too, no clue of the misery they would cause in the years to come. After drying my eyes, I put the photograph down and reached under the seat. To my relief, my pistol — a Ruger 9mm — was still there. I popped the magazine and checked the bullets. All seven rounds were ready for use.

At first glance, Chet Crawford was something of a disappointment. Despite Elizabeth’s interest in all things Jane Austen, I’m sorry to report that Chet was no Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice. If anything, I suspected he had more in common with Mr. Wickham, Darcy’s charming but deceitful foil.

Chet’s apartment wasn’t difficult to find. Boasting Spanish Colonial Revival architecture and an iconic bell tower, the Beach Street Villa must have been breathtaking during its 1930s heyday. Eighty-five years later, the place was considerably less impressive. I suppose “crack house” might be a more apt description. Still, the appeal lay mainly in its location: to visit the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, all you had to do was walk across the street.

For some reason, I expected Chet to be taller, but we were at eye level when he answered the door. He was alone, accompanied only by the distinct stench of alcohol. When I identified myself as a reporter, I figured Chet would slam the door in my face, but instead he invited me inside without protest.

If the villa’s exterior looked bad, the interior of Chet’s apartment was worse: dirty clothes draped everywhere, empty cans of beer stacked on the dresser, even a couple fast-food wrappers crumpled on the floor. Chez Chet had all the charm of an indoor landfill. Adorning his yellowed cracked walls were the markers of a cultured man: a framed poster for Wong Kar-Wai’s Days of Being Wild, a reproduction of Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss, and Yousuf Karsh’s iconic photograph of Bogart.

“Beth was always so sensitive,” he told me later, his handsome face blotchy with an alcoholic’s sunburn. “I mean, being sensitive is fine if it means you’re sensitive to other people’s feelings, but it was a one-way street with her. She was so thin-skinned. Actually, it was like she was missing a layer of skin.”

“Why didn’t you break up with her?”

“Because she beat me to the punch. We hooked up at the end of spring quarter, and she wanted to keep seeing me through summer break. I was planning a cross-country road trip with my buddies — y’know, do the whole Kerouac thing — but I ended up canceling because of her. At the time, I didn’t mind. I thought things were going well. But then, out of the blue, she breaks up with me and starts sleeping with somebody else. It’s crazy!”

“And by somebody else, do you mean the mystery man sending her flowers?”

“How did you know about that?”

“I have my sources. But I don’t know his name.”

“He’s a professor...”

“Which professor?”

“My advisor, Christian Malory. He’s teaching this huge lecture course, two hundred people. It’s called ‘The Fantastic,’ but believe me, it’s anything but. Anyway, me, Beth, and two other grad students were assigned as his teaching assistants. At first, I admired him. Of course, I didn’t realize Malory was such a fucking creep. He’s always hitting on his students, even though he’s got a fiancée in Los Angeles. It’s like they always say, Never meet your heroes.”

“So what happened?”

“Last month, I met up with Malory and his grad school groupies at the Rush Inn, a dive bar on Knight Street. Beth, on the other hand, never came to these drink nights.”

“Why not?”

“Well, she’s a real bookworm, homebody type. Unless we did something together, she was always in her room studying. But this one fucking time, Beth shows up. This is like a day after breaking up with me! And she’s acting flirty — with Professor Malory. Like, at one point, she’s sitting on his lap. She just wanted to make me jealous.”

“What did you do?”

“What could I do? Beth never drinks, but she got pretty wasted that night. I tried to stick around to make sure she got home safely, but her behavior with Malory was tough to watch.”

“So you left the bar early?”

“Yeah, though I actually stayed up waiting for her.”

“Where did you wait?”

“What do you mean?” Chet seemed truly puzzled.

“Where specifically did you wait? Outside her apartment? Or inside?”

“Oh, inside. I have a key. Ended up sleeping there. When she didn’t come home in the morning, I left.”

“Did something happen between Elizabeth and Dr. Malory?”

“Why don’t you ask him yourself?” Chet turned his back to me and cracked another beer. “He’ll be at the Rush Inn tonight.”

After meeting with Chet, I drove downtown and bought a tight red dress that accentuated my curves and a pair of knee-high boots with stiletto heels. With a dusting of glittery eye shadow, my outfit came together nicely.

That night, at the Rush Inn, I found Professor Malory with his coterie of hangers-on, just as Chet described. He was an imposing sight: well over six feet tall, muscular, with a supremely confident smirk.

I introduced myself as an undergrad looking for guidance on whether to switch my major. I expressed my admiration for his body of work, peppering my compliments with information I’d gleaned from a cursory reading of his campus bio. Malory was so pleased, I suspect he asked me back to his place on that reason alone.

When we crossed the threshold of his vintage Eichler home, I expected to be offered a drink, but Malory had other ideas — he lunged at me. His lips were pressed against mine, his tongue forcing my mouth open and flopping inside like a fish on a riverbank. Before I knew it, his hands were around my neck — and not in a tender caress. He was choking me. When I realized he had no intention of letting go, I cuffed him. Literally.

“What’s this?”

I’d solidly clipped a pair of handcuffs to his left wrist.

“Let’s play a game,” I commanded, in the most seductive voice I could muster.

Christian Malory was a Berkeley-educated scholar, a man who spent the majority of his adult life dedicated to the pursuit of social justice, and a self-described activist who positioned himself as a feminist ally. And yet here, in his own home, he behaved like a horny teenager — and a willing captive.

Thus, he happily complied with my order to remove his clothes and lie on the bed. He owned a metal headboard, so I snaked the handcuffs around one of the bars and closed the open cuff around his other wrist. Eager to participate, he directed me to a dresser where he kept his neckties, so I secured his ankles to the two newel posts at the foot of the bed. Malory loved every second of it — that is, until I grabbed my purse and drew out my pistol.

“You’re kidding, right?” he asked, almost amused.

I shook my head.

“Look, I’m all for games, but this is crazy.”

I pointed the Ruger at his head.

“Don’t shoot! You can take anything you want!”

“I only want one thing.” I placed the tip of the barrel between his eyebrows.

“It’s yours! Name it!”

“The truth about Elizabeth White.”

“There’s nothing to tell. She was my TA.”

“Oh, I think she was more than that.” I aimed the gun at his crotch.

“Okay! We slept together. Just once, I swear!”

I shook my head. “She was intoxicated. She couldn’t possibly have consented. That’s rape.”

“You’re crazy! She was into it!”

“Then why no second date? Why were you sending her flowers?”

“What? How do you—? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Enough lying.” I grabbed one of Malory’s argyle socks from the floor and stuffed it in his mouth. “Let me tell you a secret. I had an appointment at the student health center last Friday. I saw Elizabeth there. I wanted to say hello, but she didn’t acknowledge me. It’s understandable. Nobody wants to talk about why they’re seeing the doctor. I was still in the waiting room when she came out. She looked horrible. But why am I even telling you this? You were there.”

Malory’s eyes widened, but he didn’t make a sound.

“I followed her outside. I don’t know why. I probably should’ve respected her privacy. But then I saw you waiting for her in the parking lot. And I saw the look on your face when she spoke to you. I didn’t know your name. I had no idea how to find you. But now I have.”

Malory grunted, so I took the sock out of his mouth.

“You’ve got it all wrong!” he screamed, gasping for air. “Let me explain!”

“What’s there to explain? You raped her, you probably got her pregnant,” I said, almost crying, “and then you killed her to shut her up.”

“I didn’t kill her! That was the last time I saw her. She texted me later that night, but I didn’t reply. She needed a ride. The cops already questioned me about all this! I wasn’t even in Santa Cruz! I was in LA with my girlfriend!”

“I don’t believe you,” I hissed. “You’re a liar. And a rapist.”

“It wasn’t rape! If she didn’t want it, she shouldn’t have thrown herself at me.”

“Your behavior put her in an emotional state that resulted in her death. You’re responsible.”

“Actually, I disagree,” he began, as if he were lecturing a student. “I think—”

“I don’t care what you think.”

I put a pillow over his face and pulled the trigger.

The following afternoon, I awoke to the sound of a text message. I’d forgotten I’d even given Natalie my number.

I called Natalie. She suggested meeting up near one of the campus bridges. Not that bridge, she giggled, but one located at the far end of Kresge College deep in the redwoods. There was a park bench near the entrance of the bridge, making it the perfect place for a clandestine meeting. She actually used the word “clandestine.” Obviously she’d seen one too many spy movies. I wanted the diary, so I agreed to meet her that night at eight.

“Take her legs,” a voice said. I couldn’t tell who was speaking, and I had a hard time opening my eyes. Two arms were shoved under my armpits, dragging me through wet leaves.

“Think we can carry her to the bridge?” asked a different voice.

“Yeah, I think so.”

“What if someone sees us?”

“Don’t worry. No one’s out here but us.”

How could I be so stupid? If I hadn’t been curious about Elizabeth’s diary, I never would’ve agreed to meet Natalie in the first place. I’d gotten sloppy. If I’d been quicker to react, she wouldn’t have been holding my feet.

“Are you sure we should do this?” Natalie asked the man clutching me. “We don’t even know who she is.”

“Check her driver’s license when we get to the middle of the bridge.”

When did Natalie figure out I wasn’t Stephanie Williams of the Santa Cruz Sentinel? I’d pocketed a couple of business cards from the real Stephanie’s office on Monday. Even with my phone number written on the back, I knew passing her card off as mine would be a risk. I just didn’t think it could cost me my life.

When Natalie showed up a half hour late, the first thing I asked for was the diary, no small talk. I should have run away the moment she started grinning like an idiot.

But all that planning had made me overconfident. During our meeting, I clutched the Ruger hidden in my jacket pocket, knowing full well that if things spiraled out of control, all I’d have to do is squeeze the trigger and the bullet would do the work. But Natalie had an accomplice. That realization came too late, all thanks to a sharp blow to the back of my head. Chet Crawford was the last thing I saw before losing consciousness.

“Switch with me, babe,” Chet ordered. “Prop her up. I’ll grab her legs and throw her over.”

“What about her head?” asked Natalie, as she changed positions. “You hit her hard. She’s bleeding.”

“They’ll think she got it in the fall.”

“Fuck, she’s heavier than Lizzy.”

The mere mention of Elizabeth finally woke me up. I could feel Natalie’s bony hands digging into my armpits. Chet’s face loomed large in front of me. They were taking a breather. Hauling my limp body from the park bench all the way to the bridge must’ve been exhausting.

This was my chance.

I reached into my jacket pocket and fired four shots from my Ruger, striking Chet in the chest. He careened backward over the opposite guardrail and plummeted seventy feet to his death.

Unlike the other bridge where Elizabeth died, the guardrails here were only four feet high. They were next on the university’s list to be replaced.

“Chet!” Natalie screamed.

I slammed the back of my head into Natalie’s nose and heard a distinct crunch. She shrieked in pain, releasing me as she fell to the ground.

“Please don’t!” she screamed, her face covered in blood. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen!”

I grabbed her by the collar with my gloved hands and dragged her back to where Chet went over. Natalie tried to fight back, but every arm-flail in her defense proved useless. When I reached the middle of the bridge, I let go of her collar and pointed my gun at her face. “Tell me what you did to Elizabeth.”

“It was an accident,” she said.

“You already said that. Explain.”

“After her doctor’s appointment, Elizabeth wandered around campus in a daze. That night, she texted me to come pick her up. She was too exhausted to walk back. I ignored her message, but Chet said we should go anyway. Chet and I — we’d started seeing each other again.”

“And then?”

“She was in a pretty fucked-up state of mind when we found her. She said some nasty things. I said some things. Chet got involved and then...”

“And then what?”

“She slipped. Like I said, it was an accident.”

“And yet, you and your boyfriend were perfectly willing to kill me tonight.”

She turned her head away from me. “We thought you were going to expose us! We just went a little crazy.”

“Me too.” I placed the muzzle of the Ruger to Natalie’s temple and fired. Her body slumped awkwardly against the guardrail.

I took my cell phone, a burner I’d bought at Target in Watsonville, and tossed it over the railing in Chet’s general direction. After placing the gun near Natalie’s body, I removed my leather gloves, revealing vinyl ones underneath, and put them on her hands. My right glove was likely coated in gunshot residue, and I’d already filed off the Ruger’s serial number. It was the perfect crime, although honestly, I didn’t care about getting caught. In fact, I’d never felt so alive.

On Sunday, I discovered that the pedestrian bridge where Elizabeth died had become a memorial — flowers, cards, and numerous trinkets had been left in her honor. Not being family, I didn’t know when her body would be laid to rest or where, so I brought a bag of donuts, a chocolate milk, and a Sunday newspaper for the both of us.

I couldn’t read another line. Elizabeth was more than just a teaching assistant to me. She was my mentor, my friend, and my one true love.

I was such a mess when I signed up for her discussion section in Professor Yamamura’s Pacific literature course. I’d escaped to UCSC after fleeing an abusive relationship back home. When I told her one of the novels had triggered my PTSD, Elizabeth was sympathetic. She represented everything that was kind and decent and wonderful about the world. When I heard she’d be teaching “Jane Austen and Popular Culture,” a course she’d designed herself, I immediately signed up the following semester. A few days before the final exam, Elizabeth invited me to her office to discuss my clunky, overlong term paper on the homoerotic overtones of Emma, Pride and Prejudice, and my all-time favorite, Mansfield Park. After she submitted final grades, we began spending more time together, although always in secret.

Over the Christmas holiday, we were inseparable. I told her about being a lonely, depressed teen, plagued by self-destructive impulses and suicidal ideation. She told me about being adopted and abandoned. About the racism she encountered — from colleagues, from professors, from people she’d dated.

“We can’t let them win,” she said. “We won’t let them win.”

Of course, all good things must come to an end. Elizabeth broke up with me a few months later. Even though there was little disparity in our ages, she was adamant in her reasoning: I was a student; she was a teacher. It was simply inappropriate.

The breakup drove me into a deep depression. That’s why I was at the health center that day. To get treatment. That’s why I wanted to talk to her so bad. Sure, Elizabeth didn’t say hello that day, but I figured we’d see each other again.

And then I read the Sunday paper.

In front of her memorial, I fumbled through my purse and pulled out the Jane Austen figure I’d swiped from her apartment. It would look nice next to a framed photo that had been taken from her graduate student profile page. No one knew that I was the one who’d bought that figure for Elizabeth as a token of gratitude for all her help. For all her love. Frankly, I was amazed that she’d kept it.

“I didn’t let them win,” I said aloud through my tears, confessing all I’d done.

Treasure Island by Micah Perks

Grant Park

I’m a seventy-two-year-old retired middle school assistant principal who has lived in Grant Park for forty years. Since the Emeline Street “needle exchange” invaded our neighborhood, we’ve seen our streets taken over by crack addicts, tweekers, panhandlers — the whole basket of deplorables, to borrow a phrase. How many of us have posted about bicycle theft? Stolen mail? Keyed cars? Garbage rifled through? Dirty needles?

I’m going to post each day for the next month a record of the incidents I witness in our neighborhood. I will present my log at the next city council meeting on December 15. I urge you to do the same. We’re in this together!

11:00 a.m. — Apparently white male, medium height/build, UC Santa Cruz Banana Slug sweatshirt, yelling obscenities in park across street, per usual. FU**, COC* SUCKER, etcetera. You’ve heard it. Pacing across entrance, per usual. For the hearing impaired, this apparently strung-out individual hollers in the park approximately three times a week. You know him as the Screamer. I go out on my second-floor balcony to document.

The Screamer screams, “I see you, sir! Yeah, you, there on the balcony! Staring is very rude! It’s rude to take photos of strangers!” I continue to take photos [attached here], though blurry because, distance. Screamer then screams, “Fu** you! Go ahead — call the cops again!”

11:05 a.m. — I call the cops.

11:35 a.m. — Cops arrive (surprise, surprise)! Talk to Screamer. Screamer leaves park, heading toward McDonald’s, as is his habit. Does he scream at McDonald’s? Anybody know?

2:30 p.m. — School bus drops pupils off in front of park, per usual. Three apparently Hispanic males, ages approximately eight or nine years old, stuff candy wrappers into neighbor’s “Little Library.” I go to balcony, take photos of them. Yell down, “Pick up those wrappers!” They scream, “El diablo viejo!” (Google translation: little old devil man) and run toward Button Street.

2:35 p.m. — I call the cops, report incident.

3:00 p.m. — Cops have not responded, per usual.

3:15 p.m. — I descend, which takes some time due to bum hip, retrieve plastic bag and “trash grabber” ($6.47, Amazon Prime, you can read my review, three stars because the sharp tongs are dangerous), exit house, open gate, cross street to neighbor’s “Little Library” (a glassed-in cabinet painted a glaring aqua, plunked onto a post).

I grab candy wrappers, deposit in bag. Open neighbor’s gate, covered in multiple strings of bells, so jingle jingle jingle. Knock on door of this neighbor, a “writer” who “works” from home. (“Writer” always takes morning tea on his porch in his pajamas and at five p.m., takes cocktail on porch, still in his pajamas. You’ve probably seen him on your way to and from actual work.)

Conversation:

Me: (holding out trash bag) “Three juvenile delinquents stuffed this trash in your ‘Little Library’ again.”

“Writer”: (apparently Asian male, apparently in his thirties, in pajamas, per usual): “Okay.”

Me: “I’ve warned you before that your so-called ‘Little Library’ attracts vagrants.”

“Writer”: “Books attract vagrants?”

Me: “Have you been to the downtown library? It’s basically a homeless shelter.”

“Writer”: (taking bag) “Thanks, Mr. Nowicki, I’ll take care of it.”

(NOTE: “Writer” is not on Good Neighbor!™ even though I have invited him by e-mail multiple times.)

I have looked “Writer” up on Amazon and he has one book of short stories published seven years ago, titled: Miraculous Escapes. Only two reviews, both three stars, #3,053,049 in Books. He has placed two copies of his own book in his “Little Library,” but apparently no one has ever taken it out. Apparently, no one has ever taken a book out of the “Little Library” at all, although he checks it daily. Am I right? Have any of you taken advantage of the “Little Library” or is it just a receptacle for trash?

5:00 p.m.: “Writer,” still in pajamas, exits house, puts on rubber boots he always leaves by door (despite my warnings that it will attract thieves), nails my plastic bag to fence beside “Little Library” with cardboard sign, “Put Trash Here.” Drinks cocktail on porch.

5:45 a.m. — Woken by bells on gate of “Writer’s” house. Jingle jingle jingle. I open curtain. Individual in hoodie, apparently young adolescent male, caught in act of stealing “Writer’s” rubber boots. I run downstairs (really gimp downstairs because of bum hip), take up trash-grabber by door, exit house. Thief still in “Writer’s” yard. I brandish trash-grabber aloft from across street, yelling: “Drop those boots!”

Thief does not drop boots. I limp across street, open gate, hit boots out of perp’s hands with trash-grabber. I yell “Writer’s” name because in rush forgot phone to call cops.

Thief makes to attack me, but trips on fallen rubber boot, grabs onto trash-grabber on way down. Why? No idea. I yell for “Writer” again.

“Writer” (exiting house, in pajamas, long hair loose like wild man of Borneo): “What’s going on?”

Me: “Call the cops!”

“Writer” looks down. I look down. Thief’s hood has fallen back, revealing an apparently mixed-race female, late teens or early twenties, short dark hair, multiple piercings and whatnots in ears and nose, one big brown eye, holding other eye with both hands. Blood seeping through fingers. Apparently Thief hit trash-grabber with eye.

Thief: “My eye, my eye! This old man attacked me.”

Me: “I apprehended this criminal stealing your rubber boots.”

“Writer”: (ignoring me, to Thief) “Are you okay?”

Thief: “Something’s wrong with my eye.” (Blood dripping down face onto sweatshirt, will definitely stain if not washed immediately.)

“Writer”: (dialing 911 on his phone) “We need an ambulance.”

Me: “Are you crazy? She’s probably faking. Do you know how much an ambulance costs? Over a thousand dollars. Do you have insurance?”

“Writer”: (finally paying attention, hangs up). “I’ll drive you to the emergency room. My car’s just right here.”

“Writer” helps Thief to feet. Half-carries Thief to car (Prius, keyed on both sides). Drives away, silently, because: Prius. Leaves rubber boots on sidewalk. I gather them up, line them back up on his porch, all ready to be stolen again.

10:00 a.m. — Prius returns. “Writer” goes around to passenger-side door. Helps out Thief, who is wearing eyepatch like pirate. “Writer” and Thief enter “Writer’s” house.

11:10 a.m. — I am questioned by police. Officers P. and S. accuse me of assault with a weapon on private property. Say I’m lucky the “victim” is not pressing charges. I express outrage.

Officer P., apparently Hispanic, bald, says, “Maybe you should choose your battles, sir. You’ve called 911 twenty-two times in the past month.” P. and S. smirk at each other.

I express outrage that the neighborhood has been allowed to become like the movie Falling Down. Question officers if they have even seen the movie Falling Down with Michael Douglas. (You should rent it on Amazon Prime, $3.99, I gave it five stars — story of regular man fighting back against falling-down neighborhood like ours.)

Officer S. asks me if I’ve seen Rear Window, his favorite movie. I ask officers if they are arresting Thief. Officer S. says, “You mean the female victim?”

Are there any witnesses to what actually occurred at 5:45 a.m.? Private message me.

9:00 a.m. — “Writer” and Thief taking tea on front porch. Thief still wearing eyepatch. Thief is pale, likely tweeker, with bruise on cheek. Bruises easily due to drug use?

There is 98 percent likelihood Thief will rob “Writer” blind, kill him in his sleep, etcetera. I am predicting this now.

(I suggest some of you walk by and take some photos for evidence of this future crime. I don’t want to reveal house number, but I’m sure you all know the residence. The one with the overgrown front yard, jasmine and morning glories, etcetera, choking everything, weeds growing onto sidewalk through the white fence which is broken off and tilting in places, front porch painted purple, that “Little Library” hammered onto a post by that gate with those bells all over it.)

This “Writer” not your typical Santa Cruz hippie, though, because Asian. “Writer” bought house fifteen months ago. At first I thought he would help us save the neighborhood, because Asian. At my middle school, Asian children were always best behaved, neatest handwriting, etcetera, but this “Writer” has long, shaggy hair that looks like birds could make nest in it.

To describe “Writer,” hard, because he doesn’t look like actor I can think of, because so few Asian actors. Maybe like Bruce Lee if Bruce Lee wore a woman’s wig to play a washed-up “Writer.” More like pre — washed up, because never famous. I wish Bruce Lee lived in neighborhood, he’d keep everyone in line with his karate chops.

Imagine he’s mooching off his family — the “Writer” — not Bruce Lee. Probably his parents are immigrants who worked all their lives running a small business, a souvenir shop in Chinatown, to put him through the best schools, and this is how he repays them, living off their money pretending to write. Parents never visit, as far as I can see. Probably better for them not to observe how he’s living, probably give them heart attack.

10:00 a.m. — Thief, still with eyepatch, wearing “Writer’s” large rubber boots, is weeding “Writer’s” overgrown yard. So she nabbed the rubber boots after all.

11:00 a.m. — Still weeding. Has filled three trash bags with green waste (Thief looks like that actress with short hair, good face, what’s her name? Just Googled it: Audrey Hepburn. Like Audrey Hepburn playing thief/tweeker. I wish Audrey Hepburn lived next door, but just crazy dream because she would have moved out long ago due to crack addicts, etcetera).

12:00 p.m. — Thief examines “Little Library.” Takes out a Babysitters Club Mystery. Makes me think! Either this book is much too young for Thief or Thief is much younger than I first thought.

Is Thief a runaway? Situation suddenly takes on new, ugly light. Perhaps it is Thief who is in danger from “Writer,” not other way round.

Did “Writer” put a Babysitters Club Mystery in “Little Library” to lure underage girl? Possibility of statutory rape raises its depraved head. Consider calling cops, but will gather proof first.

1:00 p.m. — With my copy of Treasure Island I make my way to front gate of “Writer’s” house. Shake gate with bells to get her attention. Call to Thief, “If you’re going to read, which may strain your one eye and cause blindness, at least don’t read trash. Here’s a classic.”

She comes down off purple porch. Stands on other side of gate. Undernourished in ratty T-shirt, though no apparent needle marks on arms or signs of that popular cutting hobby either. Close up, she is not so much Audrey Hepburn, more like very pretty lollipop with long neck and round face with huge eyes.

Thief: “You’re a tough old geezer. You remind me of my grandpa.”

Me: “Where is your grandfather?”

Thief: “Dead.”

Me: “What about your parents?”

Thief: “Same.”

Me: “How old are you?”

Thief: “How old are you?”

Me: “Seventy-two.”

Thief: “You don’t look a day older than seventy-one, ha-ha. Seriously, I could give you a makeover. I have about two-thirds of a degree in cosmetology.”

Me: “Very funny. What is your name?”

Thief: “Jim.”

Me: “Jim?”

Thief: “Jim. It’s my nickname. Jim Hawkins.”

Me: “Why were you reading that Babysitter book?

Thief: “I put it under the leg of a rickety chair.”

(Alert: See attached photo of “Jim Hawkins” that I took from second-floor balcony. Runaway in danger? If anyone recognizes her, private message me.)

1:45 p.m. — Correction: Jim is an alias. I realize from googling that girl gave me the name of the main character in Treasure Island, “Jim Hawkins.” Perhaps secret message. Jim Hawkins taken captive by pirates. This person is clearly educated. Have strong feeling family is not all dead, and may be looking for her. This young person may be being taken advantage of by lecherous older man.

1:50 p.m. — Decide to call cops. Express my concerns re: runaway, statutory rape, etcetera.

3:11 p.m. — Officer P. knocks on “Writer’s” door. “Jim” answers. Officer P. speaks. “Jim” takes out what appears to be an ID. Officer examines briefly and returns (could be fake). Officer P. and “Jim” look over at my house and laugh. I drop curtain.

5:00 p.m. — “Jim” and “Writer” taking cocktails on purple porch. More laughter.

9:00 a.m. — “Jim” is weeding again. Must admit Jim is busy bee. Good work ethic. Perhaps of Hispanic origin?

10:00 a.m. — Now “Jim” is fixing fence. Nailing loose pickets.

2:15 p.m. — Now “Jim” is weeding sidewalk in front. Looks up, waves to me (on my second-floor balcony).

“Jim”: “How are you this morning, Mr. Nowicki?”

She is clearly exhausted from hard work. Where is that “Writer”? Probably snoozing away the day on his couch in his pajamas. Has gotten himself good deal. Beautiful young handyman/servant. Hot day, even though November always pretty hot. I make glass of Lipton iced tea and bring it to her. She thanks me.

While we are both in yard, school bus stops in front of park, down street, per usual. Same three miscreants exit, backpacks bumping on their backs as they chase each other down street. We can see them easily because “Jim” has clipped the hedge back.

They see me. “El diablo!” they scream — and throw their wrappers in “Writer’s” yard, laughing, running away.

“Jim” hands me iced tea. Vaults the fence like superhero (maybe gymnastics?) and runs down the street after them. Next thing I know she is dragging two of them by the shirt back down the street.

“Jim”: (giving them a shove) “Pick it up.”

They gather up wrappers.

“Jim”: “Apologize to Mr. Nowicki.”

They apologize. One is crying (younger one, maybe seven years old).

“Jim”: “Do you accept their apology?”

Me: “Yes.”

“Jim”: “If I ever see wrappers in my yard again I am going to hunt you little fu**ers down and kill you. Get it?”

They nod. She lets them leave.

“Jim” takes glass of tea back from me and finishes it.

3:30 p.m. — Note: Not sure what to think about this turn of events. What is your opinion?

4:00 p.m. — Note: “Jim” said “my” yard.

5:00 p.m. — “Jim” on porch drinking cocktail. “Writer” nowhere to be seen. Yard is spick ’n’ span, fence is fixed, but where is “Writer”? Not drinking tea this morning, not checking his “Little Library” and having his cocktail at five, per usual.

9:00 a.m. — “Jim” chops up “Little Library” with axe. “Jim” is expert with axe.

“Jim”: (noticing me watch from balcony) “Hey, Mr. Nowicki, I know you hate this ‘Little Library.’ It attracts scumbags, am I right?”

Me: (I don’t know what to say, so just take photo [attached here].)

“Jim”: “Got any more of that Lipton?”

9:30 a.m. — I bring tea out (excuse to gather info).

Me: “What does the ‘Writer’ think of you getting rid of the ‘Little Library’?”

“Jim”: “I’m taking care of things now.”

Me: “But he checked that ‘Little Library’ every day.”

“Jim”: “Exactly. He needs to focus.”

Me: “I’d like a word with him.”

“Jim”: (repeating herself) “I’m taking care of everything now.”

Me: (not knowing what to say) “That’s nice of you.”

Jim: “I’m not nice. I’m family.”

Me: “What do you mean?”

“Jim” sits down on purple porch, drinks tea, proceeds to tell me long story. I can’t quote the exact words. But here’s a summary:

— She’s “Writer’s” sister! Half-sister.

— She comes from the first wife. (Means “Jim” must be in thirties, has that Asian thing where never seem to age.)

— The father called “Jim’s” mother “The Mistake.”

— Father abandoned them, father became fancy head librarian at research university, married second wife, had a kid, a bookworm: the “Writer.”

—“Jim” grew up in the library. Mother couldn’t afford babysitter so she would hide “Jim” in the stacks when she went to work.

— Both kids bookworms, but “Writer” became a “writer,” “Jim” became a dropout from Fresno School of Cosmetology.

—“Jim’s” mother died two years ago, “Jim” tried to see father. He rebuffed her.

Me: (after long story) “But why are you chopping down the ‘Little Library’ then? If your mother loved libraries? If you’re a bookworm?”

“Jim”: “I never said I loved libraries. I said I grew up in libraries. Books are bullsh**. Books are just a way not to see. You and me, Mr. Nowicki, we see. I know you know what I mean.”

Me: “But... you were stealing his boots.”

“Jim”: “It’s a joke we like to play on each other.”

Me: “But—”

“Jim”: “I like you, Mr. Nowicki. You keep your eye on things, make sure everything is on the up and up. Don’t even need to buy a security cam with you around. If I didn’t have that lemon tree in front of the window, you could see right into my house, couldn’t you?

9:00 a.m. — “Jim” is power-washing the Prius. No sign of “Writer.”

11:00 a.m. — Screamer in park again. “Jim” marches out of house, carrying something. Walks into park, right up to Screamer, says something.

Screamer: “Fu** you, ma’am.”

“Jim” holds up something to his face. Screamer screams in a different way, holds eyes. Must have been mace. “Jim” says something else. Screamer stumbles out of park, hands over eyes, not toward McDonald’s, toward Emeline Public Health Services. “Jim” walks back into house.

I haven’t seen “Writer” in four days, not in the morning, not in the evening. No tea, no cocktail. Has anyone seen writer? Private message me if you have.

I’ve been doing some Internet research. Found an interview of “Writer” in Catamaran Literary Reader. Interviewer asks “Writer” about origin of his story “Rubber Boots.” “Writer” said parents died in a fire two years ago. Suspected arson, but no one ever caught. All that was left: father’s rubber boots on doorstep. Everything else burned. “Writer” used inheritance to buy house in Santa Cruz, etcetera. “Writer” says he is only child.

6:00 p.m. — First time I’ve been able to post since I got home from the hospital. I see someone has made Good Neighbor!™ take down all my posts. Please read this now before they take this post down too.

I am not a pervert. If you have been reading my log, you know I was and still am concerned for the well-being of my neighbor, the writer who lives (or lived) opposite me, because said writer has been missing since November 18. I documented all of this, before it was erased. Did anyone take a screenshot? Private message me.

On the night of November 23 at approximately eleven p.m. I donned black pants. Didn’t have black turtleneck but wore green.

I made my way downstairs, took long time because hip, per usual. Nobody on street as far as I could see. Forty-two degrees, cloudy. You remember. Very dark because city refuses to put more lights on our street to deter criminals. Cross street to gate of “Writer’s” house. Open gate very slowly, little jingle jingle jingle, but not much.

I freeze, wait.

Nothing.

Light is on downstairs at “Writer’s” house. I hold onto branch of lemon tree. It sways. I freeze again, nothing. With help of branch I duck down, behind lemon tree, right against front window. Living room is lined with bookshelves, but bookshelves almost all empty! “Jim” is boxing up all the books. Drinking wine. And by back door? Four heavy-duty green trash bags. Next to them, leaning against back door: the axe.

I continue to watch (I realize now that “Jim” was in underwear, no bra, black panties, thong-type, but at the time I didn’t notice because too busy documenting evidence).

Then “Jim” looks up. Seems to stare right at me.

I freeze.

She goes back to packing up books, humming and drinking wine. I am spooked. I grab branch, whole tree sways, don’t even care because, slightly panicked, duck under, come out from tree.

There’s “Jim.” Just standing there in hoodie, waiting for me. I scream. “Jim” maces me.

It hurts so much, like hot sauce in my eyes. I stumble around, can’t see, trip over tree root, crash to ground. My hip on fire. Scream for help. Some of you came out, I’m sure, but I couldn’t see.

Did any of you film this?

Next thing I know, ambulance. I’m screaming, “No, no ambulance!” even though I have insurance, waste of money. I’m screaming, “She murdered him! She murdered him! Just look in the house!”

Some of you must have heard me. I hear “Jim” telling the cops I was peeping in her window.

That’s all I remember, must have passed out.

Hip broken, surgery. Hazy, because drugged. Wake up at one point and there is Officer P., looming over me.

Me: “Did you search the house? Did you see the trash bags?”

Officer P.: “You’re a lucky man, Mr. Nowicki.”

Me: “Lucky? I broke my hip.”

Officer P.: “Lucky because once again your neighbor is not pressing charges. You need to leave this young woman alone.”

Me: “She’s not my neighbor. That’s not her house. You have to listen to me. Read my posts on Good Neighbor!™ It’s all there!”

Officer P.: “Mr. Nowicki, your neighbor is at a writer’s colony in Upstate New York. He’s left his house in care of his sister. We’ve received an e-mail from him.”

Me: “But then, why is she throwing out all his books? What about the trash bags? Did you look inside?”

Officer P.: “Mr. Nowicki, that’s not your business. You’re going to be laid up for a while, but after that, why don’t you go on down to the Market Street Senior Center. They have folk dancing, ukulele lessons, wood carving. Great rehab for your hip. Or you could take up tai chi in the park. Something to do, meet people. Keep you out of trouble.”

Now I’m stuck in a hospital bed in my own living room. Had a day-nurse come in. I asked her to help me get to the window but she refused. “No more peeping, Mr. Nowicki.”

12:00 a.m.: Alone, can’t sleep, stuck in hospital bed. Hip hurts. Spooked. Keep hearing strange noises, but may be the drugs.

Whoever is reading this before it’s taken down, please help.

Take screen shot. Call police. I will say this now: “Jim” murdered her brother. Find the trash bags. Find the axe. We need “Writer’s” disappearance investigated. I can’t do this alone.

Hi, everyone, I just joined Good Neighbor!™ My name is Dave Nguyen. I’m writing from the East Coast, where I heard the sad news that my next door neighbor Mr. Nowicki has passed. We’re all sorry to lose a respected neighbor and member of the community. I wasn’t able to go to the services, but my sister went and told me two of his former students attended.

First off, I think we all need to thank the SCFD for keeping the fire from spreading to other houses. I don’t know what they are planning to do with the remains of Mr. Nowicki’s house, but I know you’ll all agree with me that it’s an unsightly mess (my sister says) and a sad reminder. I hope his relatives or the city takes care of this soon.

I have a teaching opportunity here, so will be relocating, but my sister will take care of everything at my house. She’s helping me get rid of some extra things, books, some knickknacks, CDs, a few paintings — so if you want anything, they will be in boxes outside the house before she goes to Goodwill on Monday. Feel free to stop by and pick up some of the loot. She’ll be watching for you.

Flaming Arrows by Wallace Baine

Soquel Hills

My wife died.

That’s what I’d tell you if I sensed you wondering why I lived alone in this big house in the California hills, overlooking the Monterey Bay.

It’s true. Just not the whole truth. Two years ago, she left me — after seventeen years. She called from a La Quinta in Irvine. At some horribly early hour. Told me she wasn’t coming back.

“What about your things?” I said, a golf ball in my throat.

She sighed. “I have my things.”

She’d been gone for three days, and it wasn’t until after that phone call that I noticed she’d cleared out her clothes, her books — everything that belonged to her.

Then, a couple of months later, she died, right after our last meal together. Car accident.

We had met at Dharma’s, a hippie cafeteria she liked. I bought her a hot chai.

She wanted to talk about divorce. I was pleased to learn that she hadn’t yet contacted a lawyer. We were both civil. I felt so, anyway. Then she had to leave. Get over to Palo Alto for something. I didn’t know where she was staying. Didn’t ask.

Less than an hour later, she lost control of her Acura near the Summit on Highway 17. We had bought that car new. Couldn’t have had more than three or four thousand miles on it.

She nodded off at the wheel. Apparently. There was no autopsy and no one else was killed, thank God.

I had a few sleepless nights after that. To say the least.

It was the worst thing to ever happen to me. And the best thing too.

I choose to think of myself as a “mourning husband” rather than a chump. And prefer it if you thought that way too. It’s easier for everybody.

I love my house, the views, the aroma of eucalyptus when it’s hot out. I smoke weed whenever I want, watch porn on the flat-screen, eat at midnight, scream obscenities from the stationary bike at NBA players who take stupid shots. When I leave something on the kitchen table, it stays there.

Everything is perfect. But one thing.

The dog.

It’s not my dog. It’s the neighbors’. It barks. All the fucking time.

It’s not like the dog is right next to me. In this neighborhood, we prize our elbow room. But the barking reverberates through the canyon, arousing more distant dogs to bark, filling the air with mindless, assaultive bursts of aggression, each one landing somewhere in my chest. Morning. Noon. And night.

I used to complain about it to Amy. She’d stop what she was doing and tilt her head, as if to make an effort to hear the barking. “Oh, yeah. That’s kind of annoying.”

How could I have shared my life with someone like that? Who could willfully ignore the equivalent of flaming arrows shot at our house every hour of every day?

It’s not annoying, darling. Running out of toothpaste is annoying. This is the kind of casual everyday brutalization that turns decent men into... well, people like me.

I’m not going to kill the dog. Sure, I want to. I’ve fantasized about it. Even aimed my rifle at it a couple of times. Wouldn’t be a gimme. I’d need a scope. But maybe with a little practice, it could be done.

It’s not the dog’s fault. I know that. I don’t hate dogs. It’s the people. Whoever the fuck they are.

They’ve lived in this neighborhood for years. Ten? Fifteen? I don’t know. Did Amy know their names? I doubt it. All I know is that it’s gotten worse since...

Nobody knows their neighbors around here. It’s not done that way. You might pick up fragments about their habits, their aggressions, their neglects. You make judgments, usually negative ones. You’ll see faces occasionally, through a windshield. Give a wave maybe. We get to know each other in personal shorthand: There’s leaf-blower guy. There’s Giants-fan lady. Maybe I’m wife-died guy. I don’t know.

But at the post office, or the Safeway in town, you don’t look up. Being neighborly means one thing back in Illinois where I grew up. Here, it means the opposite. You respect your neighbors by not acknowledging them. People want space, physically, psychically. You should give it to them.

The dog ruins all that.

I sit on my deck in the mornings with my coffee and nurse my rage. It’s what I do. I don’t let it slide. I don’t act out. I just absorb. The barking — sharp, high-pitched, weirdly metallic — comes in clusters. Sometimes it turns into a yelp, as if the dog is in a bear trap. Those are the bad days. I actually tracked it a few months back. Kept a log on a legal pad; did it for a couple of weeks. Saw no pattern, other than its daily relentlessness.

Sure, I can play loud music, and I do. Sonny Rollins. Dexter Gordon. Whatever. I use white-noise apps. I got them all. But the dog outlasts everything.

It’s a Thursday morning. Foggy. I’m stuck. Can’t find the flow. The barking swarms my ears.

Peering into my binoculars at the neighbors’ backyard across the canyon, I see the dog. Short legs, brown, medium-sized. I don’t know what kind of dog it is. I don’t know dogs.

I put on my sneakers and ball cap and step down into the canyon toward the dog. It’s all my land. I’m on three acres. Eucalyptus, poison oak, a creek bed that hasn’t been wet for ten years. I almost never come down here — only in the fall to clear out stuff — and not since Amy left.

I move my way back up the other side and reach the chain-link fence that separates my property from the other guy’s. The dog is inside a second fenced-in enclosure. It sees me now. The barking reaches fever pitch. Like my pulse. I look for some sign that someone is home. Nothing.

“A watchdog is only effective when it doesn’t bark all the goddamn time, you little bastard.” I’m talking to the stupid dog now.

I climb back up along the property line until I get to the road. I walk to the front of the house, rehearsing my appeal. Keep your cool. Try to be friendly. Don’t demand anything. Tell them you don’t expect the dog to be quiet all the time. But don’t be a pussy. Put it on them to take action. Remember that you hate these people for being oblivious. Make sure they don’t forget this encounter.

I stride to the door with certainty, in case someone is watching from the window. I ring the bell. Again. One more time. No answer.

When I was a kid — eleven, twelve, something like that — I went on a spree of breaking and entering. Actually, not breaking. There was always something open or unlocked back then. I would sneak into people’s houses just to sit in their chairs, poke around their kitchens. I never stole anything. Didn’t feel the need. But now I’m a fifty-two-year-old man.

I slide around the far side of the house and end up behind the garage, the dog barking the whole time. No security system. No cameras. You can see the road but no other houses in my line of sight. The back door of the garage is unlocked and so is the door to the kitchen inside the garage. How can this be so fucking easy?

Nice house. New living room furniture. No IKEA shit here. Pictures of grandkids (and someone’s new Harley) on the refrigerator. Dave and Marilyn Kittle. Funny name, sounds like cat food. They pay a lot more to PG&E than I do. They still have a landline. Marilyn’s going to the dentist next Friday. Someone named Sandra was supposed to arrive on the twenty-third, but it’s scratched out.

I open the fridge — sparkling water, hummus, a sealed package of organic chicken breasts, a wedge of that expensive cheese they sell at Deluxe Market. I dig out a couple of grapes and pop them in my mouth. Take the cheese out of its wrapping. Rub my fingers across it. Did I touch poison oak down in the canyon? Maybe. Hard to say.

I copy down the Kittles’ phone number (could come in handy). Explore the junk drawer. I resist the temptation to scribble Quiet your dog! on the empty space on the calendar beside Sandra’s cancelled visit. I take down a steak knife from a magnetic strip near the fridge and run my tongue up and down it. Juvenile, yes. The last time I did this, I was a juvenile. Maybe I’ll come back tomorrow. Bring a few props this time. Hide a ripe banana in the linen closet. Slide a disgusting photo into a coat pocket. Drop a dead fly into their chardonnay.

I go upstairs and enjoy perspectives of my own house that I’ve never seen before. Peer into the first bedroom — a guest room? A child’s bedroom? Is this where Sandra spent her childhood? Nice master bath. Might be your best selling point, if and when you decide to sell.

I take a pee surrounded by gleaming mirrors. It’s a well-earned pee, a post-coffee pee. I reach to flush, then stop myself. No flush. Why not sow a tiny seedling of discord between Dave and Marilyn? She’ll blame him for being a pig. He’ll have no clue why she’s in a rotten mood.

From my wallet, I dig out the neon business card of a divorce lawyer that I picked up after Amy left. What kind of crass business ploy is that anyway? He wasn’t worth a red nickel. I leave it facedown on the carpet just beside the small waste basket in the bedroom. Why not have a little fun with Mr. and Mrs. Wonderful?

I’m not sure if the dog still knows there’s someone in the house. Its barking has returned to its normal rhythms, though it sounds different not echoing around the canyon. Up close, the cheese-grater effect on my nerves is intensified. I feel the cortisol flowing in my blood. I feel like I could pick up this refrigerator.

How can you live with this, Dave and Marilyn? How can you be so deaf? It’s possible you could both be deaf, but that shelf of CDs — the Three Tenors, The Brandenburg Concerto — says otherwise.

I’ve been putting up with this for months — fuck that, years. And I’ve never once — not once, not early in the morning, not late at night — heard either of you scream for the dog to shut up. That would be something in your favor. But I don’t even get that. From certain angles — say, from my house to yours — indifference and hostility look pretty much identical.

So, what am I to conclude here? You must know the damn dog is destroying the peace and quiet of the neighborhood, but it means nothing to you. It never once occurred to you that someone in the house across the way might be bothered, might feel violated, trapped, might come to see that his own house is no escape from the rudeness and ignorance of other people.

And here, of all places. In the golden Soquel Hills, every home a seven-figure valuation. You and I, we’re not uneducated burger-flippers living in some shitty apartment complex. I’d expect noise pollution at a place like that. We should know better.

I could’ve retaliated. I could’ve dragged out some speakers as big as your sofa and aimed them at your house, blasted out Whitesnake and Zappa every time your dog got out of control. I’d kind of enjoy that.

But even after years of your assaults, I’ve never succumbed to tit-for-tat, because that’s not who we are. At least, that’s not who I am.

I don’t expect you to look over at my house and worry about me, send over bran muffins and a cheese plate. I don’t want your friendship. I don’t want to be invited to barbecues. I just want the slightest sliver of humanity, that impulse to think about what your beloved little monster might be doing to your neighbors’ peace of mind, the sense to know that someone close to you is suffering even if you’re not. This house tells me that you’re capable of that.

Now, I just want it to stop. For good. It’s gone too far.

I slip out the kitchen door into the garage, and then out the back door of the garage, just as I came in.

When I get home, I take a long shower, do a load of wash, and make it to Zelda’s at the beach just in time for happy hour. For about an hour, I’m happy too.

Friday morning is clear and sunny. I feel inspired, determined to make some progress on my work. The coffee has a brightness to it. It tastes alive, a tad fruity. I’m twenty minutes into writing code before I notice it. No barking.

Through the binoculars, I see no sign of the dog. Did they get rid of it? Did they somehow come to their senses and flash on how rude they were being to the neighbors by keeping that poor thing locked up all day?

The back door to the house is open. A figure in yellow plastic coveralls appears at the door, holding a garbage bag. Man, I can’t be this lucky. They probably just took the dog for a walk while the house cleaners were working.

Might as well enjoy the quiet while it lasts. I turn back to my work. I find myself in the zone much quicker than usual. See, it makes a difference, the quiet. A man needs quiet.

And yet, another interruption. This time, the doorbell. I glance out my second-floor window to see a car in the driveway.

Santa Cruz County Sheriff. What the fuck is this? Nobody saw me go into the Kittles’ house, or leave it. I’m sure of it. This must be about something else.

It’s a man and a woman. Both in uniform. I smile, invite them inside. They decline. So I go outside, and stand in my front yard with the two deputies.

They’re not unpleasant — very cordial, in fact. They tell me they’re investigating a break-in in the neighborhood. They ask my name, who else lives in the house, how long I’ve lived here. I cooperate.

“Do you the know the Kittles, sir?” says the woman deputy.

“No, I...”

“They’re your neighbors just across the way in the back over on Bobcat Lane.”

“Oh, yes. Were they burgled?”

“Not really.” The woman looks warily to the male deputy. “Were you at home yesterday, sir?”

“In the morning. Spent the afternoon at Zelda’s in Capitola. Much of the evening too, actually.”

“Did you see or hear anything unusual?”

“Unusual, how do you mean?”

The female deputy purses her lips. The man sighs. He looks very young, like a high school kid almost. I can see his jaw clenching. He speaks for the first time: “Look, there was a pretty serious crime committed over there. You might want to consider—”

“Did you see anything unusual?” she repeats, interrupting.

“No, nothing. Don’t I have a right to know what’s happened here?”

“The Kittles’ dog was butchered sometime yesterday,” says the boy deputy.

“Butchered? What do you mean ‘butchered’?”

The female deputy shakes her head and gives him a look. Not a happy one. “Wyatt,” she says. “Don’t—”

“Killed with a steak knife,” says the male deputy, ignoring his partner. “Its blood and entrails spread all over the interior of the house, the walls, upstairs and downstairs. Things drawn on mirrors and surfaces in blood. Food thrown all over the place, broken glass, dishes. Whoever it was must have been over there for a long time, working up a pretty good rage.”

“Deputy, that’s enough,” says the woman. She approaches me with a business card in her hand. “Sir, if you see or hear anything out of the ordinary, anything at all, please call us. This is my personal cell phone number. We’ll be patrolling the neighborhood for a while.”

“Yes, of course, I will.” My mouth is so dry I can barely get out the words.

“You have a good day, sir.” The deputies walk back to their car. I need some water and I need to sit down. I step back into the house, pour a glass of water, and gulp it down. I sit at the kitchen table for I don’t know how long, listening back in my head to what the deputy said. Things drawn on mirrors? What the fuck was he talking about? I need to get out of here. Take a run. Maybe along the beach at New Brighton. Maybe take the bike to Nisene Marks. Burn off this anxiety.

As I move to go down to the garage, I pass by the window. To my shock, the sheriff’s car is still there. The two deputies talking to each other. Suddenly, another car appears. Another sheriff’s car. It parks right behind the first one.

The original officers get out of their car again. The two new boys flank out to opposite sides of my house. One reaches over to put his hand on his gun, like you and I would pat down our pocket to make sure we had our phone. The other one is carrying something bright yellow, like a Post-it note, in a plastic bag.

The doorbell chimes again. I can’t believe it. Somewhere deep in the canyon to the east, I swear I can hear another dog barking.

The Big Creep by Elizabeth McKenzie

The Circles

I met Ronald Hill at the frozen yogurt place on Mission Street. It was a late afternoon in January, raining, near dark, the road clogged with pissed-off commuters, but he made it on time.

I took off my yellow anorak as soon as I came inside. My hair was frizzy and pulled to the side with a clip and I looked about as respectable as possible for meeting a new client in that weather. He wanted the corner, as far from the college girl at the counter as we could get. We could only find a table that hadn’t been bussed. I wiped off some pink sprinkles with the back of my hand while he got rid of somebody’s mug smudged with coffee all around the lip, like they’d been sucking on it.

He told me his name. Ronald was probably in his forties, overdressed for Santa Cruz, in a gray sharkskin suit. He had a thin neck rattling around in his shirt collar, reddish-brown hair shaved close on the sides, a tight, square jaw, and small blue eyes with thin eyebrows that made it easy to picture him as a needy baby.

“Can I get you anything?” he asked, before taking a seat.

To be honest, I always choose the frozen yogurt place with the hope the client will get me something. I agreed to a large vanilla, with cookie dough and fresh strawberries. I calculated how much money I’d just saved me and my dad in calories.

“So, it sounds like you know Teddy?” he asked.

“We’re in a class together, that’s all.”

“I hope it’s not necessary to say that everything I’m about to tell you is confidential?”

“Yep, it’s not necessary.”

“I wasn’t too thrilled about hiring a fifteen-year-old girl as my PI, but Joe Fernandez told me a few of your success stories and says I can trust you.” He challenged me with his childish blue eyes.

I shrugged. “I don’t care if you trust me or not. I have enough stuff to do.”

“Don’t take it the wrong way.” He sighed and leaned in closer to the table. “Teddy’s mother and I divorced a little over a year ago. I live about a mile away now and I try to see Teddy as much as I can. It’s been working out okay, but about five months ago, she started seeing a guy named Kyle Wilkins.”

His fingernails were manicured, I noticed, and he was noticing too. He was staring at his own fingernails, which looked as if they had a coat of polish.

“And?”

“So it looks like Kyle is making it his life’s mission to be Teddy’s best friend. Believe me, I wouldn’t want Teddy to have to be around someone who’s indifferent to him or treated him badly. But it’s getting to the point that Teddy would rather hang around with him all the time — even when it’s my weekend. And Kyle’s doing things with him that I don’t approve of. He has a pilot’s license and he’ll just take Teddy out of school, go to Tahoe with him for the day. I mean, geez, I can’t compete with that.”

“What makes you think it’s a competition?”

“In case you don’t know, it’s very easy for divorced fathers to get sidelined.”

“Have you talked to your ex-wife about stuff like the trips to Tahoe?”

“Yes. She thinks I’m jealous, that I’m not thinking of Teddy.”

Ronald Hill looked at his perfect fingernails again. They must have made him feel important. Even though I have to work around it all the time, I have problems with well-dressed people in fancy jobs who are ostentatiously concerned about their children. He was probably the kind of jerk who, when Teddy was born, had a Baby on Board sign in the window of whatever air-bagged, super-safe SUV they’d picked up to tote their spawn.

“So what do you want exactly?”

“I guess I’m afraid he’s using Teddy to get to Ariel, and who knows how long that’s going to last. Teddy’s going to get hurt if they break up. Anyway, I feel like there’s something not right about him.”

“Why?”

“That’s why I came to you.” He looked like he was holding back, trying to decide what else to tell me. “Ariel is from a wealthy family. She has a lot of money and she’s going to inherit a lot more. Who knows who Kyle Wilkins is! Google him, you’ll see. There’s nothing. He’s a nobody!”

This put me firmly on the side of Kyle Wilkins. Nobodies were somebodies in my world. Every time I saw someone treating my dad like a nobody, I understood the origins of violence. “So let’s say I get something on Kyle Wilkins. How are you going to use it?”

“I’m going to make sure Ariel knows, without involving my son. She’s very protective of what’s hers. If the guy’s trying to enrich himself at her expense, she’ll pull away.”

“Like she did with you?” I blurted out. I don’t know where that came from. I’d read too many detective stories not to suspect the client of having some personal agenda. And some guy who wanted to discredit his ex-wife’s new boyfriend automatically looked bad.

He pushed away from the table. “We had differences about raising Teddy, is what it comes down to. If we’d never had a child, who knows, we’d probably still be married. But Teddy’s all that matters now.”

What a big creep. If they’d never had Teddy, he and his wife would still be married? Like he’d spent time imagining his life without his kid? I’d like to hope most parents are too superstitious to do that.

He forked over a clean fifty-dollar bill to start me off, and we stepped outside. It had gotten dark and traffic had loosened up, but the rain was still coming down, and passing cars were sending explosions of grimy water into the air when they hit the rushing gutters. I said I’d start looking into it, and be in touch in a few days. He walked away and started to sprint across Van Ness to his car as if getting wet would kill him. A white van coming north on Mission took the corner, brakes screeching, fishtailing — I’d end up describing it way too many times. I saw the whole thing. I saw the van smash into Ronald Hill and go right over him.

There was this eerie quiet for a second. The van stopped, while the traffic kept passing on Mission. I should have known no one survives an impact like that, but I ran to Hill, his body lying in a pool of blood mixed with the rain. I kneeled to lift his head, to look into his little blue eyes — nobody’d say he looked like a baby now. All this hot liquid was running out the back of his head.

In no time, three cop cars showed up, and I could hear the ambulance and fire truck on the way. I saw an older guy with a white beard in a blue denim work shirt getting out of the van and talking to a cop, gesturing wildly. I crouched in front of the yogurt shop to wipe my hands in the wet grass. Then I was standing in the rain shaking. One of the uniforms peeled away from the scene and came my way. It was Joe.

“Into the car,” he said. “Come on.” He wrapped his jacket around me. “What the hell happened?”

“That’s Hill,” I choked out.

“I know who it is,” Joe said.

He and my dad have been best friends since they were kids, locals who hauled their surfboards down to the beach every day. He’s stocky, with a bristly crew cut that’s fun to run your hands over. There are pictures of him holding me when I was a baby, so I guess he’s like my uncle or something. At first he had misgivings about showing me the ropes of detective work, but I guess I drove him crazy about it and by now I’ve helped him on so many cases I don’t think he feels much regret. He left me in the car and went on talking with the other officers.

His car smelled clean, like not a speck of garbage or mold was in it. It was practically a spa in there, and it relaxed me. The rain pelted the roof of the car, and the police radio crackled and hissed with other dramas unfolding all over town. A robbery near the Boardwalk. Domestic dispute on Ocean Street. Naked man walking on West Cliff. After a while it became white noise, until Joe got back in and said he’d drive me home.

“I said goodbye to Ronald Hill and then he was dead,” I said flatly.

“Sorry, kiddo. You didn’t need this. People don’t know how to drive for shit in this weather.”

“It rains and someone has to die?” My voice sounded shrill.

“So it goes.”

“What did you find out about the driver?”

Joe took out his pad. “Name’s Allan Lundgren, looks like he checks out by Santa Cruz standards. No record of any kind. Doesn’t have an address, lives in the van. Breath check was clean. According to his statement, by the time he saw Hill, who was not in the crosswalk, it was too late.”

“How’d you know Hill?” I asked.

Joe sniffed. “Kind of embarrassing. Sold me some vitamins a few years ago. Not vitamins exactly, but this blue-green algae stuff. Supposed to give you energy.”

“Whoa. I thought he was a totally different type, not some bogus supplement pusher.”

“He wasn’t very good at it. A good salesman is usually a little more fun. Makes you think you’ll have fun too if you buy whatever he’s selling.” Then he said, “Let’s just say that I didn’t buy his algae because of some great sales pitch.”

I told him I’d need a great sales pitch to buy algae. “He must’ve had a different job by now. He looked well-off.”

“Trust fund, probably,” Joe said. I can’t count how many times he and my dad have muttered about trust-fund kids who showed up to go to college and were able to lead charmed lives around here without having to work their butts off.

We left the scene. His big fat police car barreled down the grassy alley where me and my dad lived. In the rain there wouldn’t likely be anybody back there, rummaging through the garbage cans or curling up next to a shopping cart in a dirty sleeping bag.

He pulled up behind our place, which was not one to be appearing in House Beautiful anytime soon. It was a converted garage. Our door looked makeshift, like it had been hastily screwed onto the hinges after a home invasion, and there were mangy gray bushes growing around the windows, filled with cobwebs and feathers that we never bothered to clean out. Let me add that we were lucky to have it — after our last eviction, my dad made the whole thing happen by befriending Connie, the owner, a one-legged widow who’s the bookkeeper at the Pick ’n Save in Watsonville. This was the fifth or sixth rental we’d had since my mother died, which goes to show that we were either a pretty undesirable duo or that the world is cruel. Probably both.

Joe said he had to take my official witness statement, but I needed a shower and told him to wait. I went inside, turned on the wall heater and the lights, then ripped off my damp clothes in the bathroom and stood under the hot water in the narrow stall, shivering. Coming off the back of my arm, a streak of blood went down the drain.

Eventually I waved Joe in, and he made me describe what I’d seen while he took notes. My meeting with Ronald Hill was off the record. Joe, who’s been a detective for almost ten years, regular cop for ten before, didn’t want to raise eyebrows in the department for sending work to me. Anyway, he always says it’s the spirit of the law that counts, not the letter of it.

“You’re worried about something, aren’t you?” Joe said.

“Yeah, I guess. Something seems strange. Like, sure, it could be a coincidence that this paranoid guy gets run over right after he’d decided to take action on his paranoia, but maybe not.”

He looked at me, I’d like to think, with a small bit of respect. “Anything solid to base that on? Because this looks strictly like an accident at this point.”

“I don’t have anything yet. Maybe it’s nothing,” I told him.

“Let me know if anything strikes you. I’ll call your dad for you, let him know what happened,” Joe said, getting up to go.

“No, don’t.”

“Why?”

“I don’t want him driving upset.”

“You sure? You gonna be okay here till he gets home?”

“I’m gonna be okay. Listen, Joe, could you run a check on Kyle Wilkins?”

“The boyfriend?”

“Yeah.”

“Seriously? You think it matters?”

“It’s what Hill came to talk to me about, in the last minutes of his life. So yeah, I think it matters.”

“Okay, okay,” Joe said. “Let me see what I can do.”

After he left, I sat for a while. Didn’t move a muscle. I was lost in a bunch of random, jumping thoughts and didn’t feel very good, so I did what I usually do at night before my dad gets home: I poured about half a cup of vodka into a glass of orange juice, drank that down, felt the heat move through my shoulders and neck, started to relax a little. And then I started to sob.

I guess I was sobbing about seeing a person get run over, but there was self-pity, no denying it. My dad used to be a long-distance truck driver before my mom died, and now he’s a short-distance truck driver so he can be around. The work’s hard, delivering boxes and pallets of stuff, climbing in and out, clattering down on the lift gate with his dolly, up and down stairs. He has big callouses on his hands from clutching the wheel and I’m always seeing hemorrhoid ointment boxes in the trash. He has one of those antigravity machines in the corner that he’ll get on first thing when he gets home to stretch out his back before having a huge vodka and tonic and sitting in front of the TV. He takes about ten ibuprofen a day. As long as I read books at home, he could care less how I do in school; he just wants me to grow up to be a cynic.

It must have been around nine before he called to let me know how messed up his day had been, and that he wouldn’t be coming home because of a five a.m. start the next day. No big deal. I never complain because it’s nothing as bad for me as it is for him.

Tonight I wanted to tell him, By the way, today I saw a guy get run over and killed. But I couldn’t, because then he’d for sure kill himself driving home to be with me.

Instead, I made another drink and fell onto my mattress in the corner. All I could think of was poor Teddy hearing the news about his father. Now that Ronald Hill was a dead blue-green algae salesman, he didn’t seem so fancy. Little did he know while we were sitting there talking that he was about to be dead. There he was, watching me guzzle down my yogurt, worrying about some guy showing his kid and his ex a good time and feeling all left out and stuff. Two minutes later, dead.

No more worries. No more feeling left out.

Case closed.

Just after two a.m., I got up from the floor, ran to the bathroom, and barfed. It happens. I washed my face with cold water, rinsed out my mouth, brushed my hair, and thought, There’s no way I’m going to sleep tonight, so why even try? The rain had stopped. I’m not sure what was driving me to get dressed and go outside and pull out my bike and take off down the alley and through the wet streets, except maybe the fifty-dollar bill that was still stuffed in my pocket.

Compensation is a strange thing. I’ve seen it firsthand, how in the absence of someone, others will start filling in to make up for what’s lost. I saw my dad change after my mom was gone. I saw him try to learn how to cook and even start filling in forms from my school with his big clumsy hands. I saw him start to worry about me in a way he never used to when my mom was around to worry. Now that Ronald Hill was no longer around to worry about Teddy, I was starting to.

I had the address Hill had given me of Teddy’s place — where, these days, Kyle Wilkins was also living. The sky was clear and bright, stars blazing, the streets extra quiet. It could give a person a superior feeling to be out on a night like this, the world to yourself while everybody else is snoring away. My mood picked up, and I cycled to Bay, turned at King, then climbed the steep hills to Teddy’s neighborhood, where, just a few years ago, street repair workers found an Indian burial ground. Maybe that’s why I’ve always had the feeling the neighborhood’s cursed. The bluff is crowded with ranch-style houses, roads to nowhere, cul-de-sacs. It’s the kind of neighborhood where people keep their dirty laundry inside, and there’s plenty of it. I’ve helped Joe uncover a few scary “family” men, suicides, ODs, and one time, a psycho housewife who was poisoning cats.

The address was on one of those cul-de-sacs with a freestanding basketball hoop on the curb that looked like it’d come straight out of the box. I hid my bike in some shrubs a few houses down. Even in the dark, Teddy’s home was tidy and respectable, with a landscaped front yard filled with birds of paradise, mallow, and Mexican sage — the kind of place I usually insult but secretly wish for. No cars in front. Looked pretty quiet.

I slipped around the side, and discovered dim lights turned on in a back room. It was there, through a sliding-glass door, that I could see Teddy, alone under a blanket, watching a movie. It was a black-and-white Western. A stampede of cattle was mounting a grassy knoll and descending onto the wide-open plains, while picture-perfect cowboys in their chaps and spurs and boots kicked their stallions and rode alongside.

I could see the side of Teddy’s face. He’d been crying. Of course he’d been crying!

What was he doing alone? Where the fuck was his mother?

The scene just about broke me. I don’t remember what my dad and I did the day my mother died, but I have a memory of him driving us, soon after, to Disneyland.

I began to shiver and decided to get the hell out of there and go back to bed like a normal person. Just as I was drawing away into the darkness, Teddy jumped up from the couch and ran toward the front of the house. I stole around the side. A Ford Mustang had pulled into the driveway, and a man and woman got out.

They started unloading bags and boxes from the car. In the starlight I saw a tall man in a T-shirt, jeans, black canvas shoes, and bleached surfer hair — likely the one and only Kyle Wilkins. The woman had blond hair, on the young side, pretty. Teddy opened the front door and they started carrying the bags and boxes in, making several trips. I waited in the shadows until they disappeared inside.

I saw a lump on the ground by the car as I scuttled away. I had one of those primal shudders, like maybe it was an animal about to pounce on me in the dark. I snapped my fingers and the lump didn’t move. I ran over, grabbed it, and ran off.

It was a coat. Still warm, a few wet spots on it, but heavy and soft. I put it on as I jumped on my bike and rolled away. It was luxurious. It seemed like a raincoat on the outside, but there was fleece on the inside and I had this sudden thought that this was a mother’s coat. A mother’s coat would have to be this way, unlike the cold shells my dad wore over his work clothes.

When I got home, I hung it up to admire. It was chocolate brown and looked brand-new. Why did I take it? What a creepy thing to do.

The next day, Teddy Hill wasn’t at school, and my head wasn’t either. But I got through the day. You can have the worst thing in the world happen, and a second later there’s a bird singing on a wire, there are leaves rustling in the breeze. Life goes on.

All I could think about was the life and death of Ronald Hill. Why had I been chosen as witness? What was I supposed to do with it? Joe’d gotten me the background check on Kyle Wilkins, which confirmed he was the bleach-haired guy I’d seen at Teddy’s house. He had nothing more than a couple of bounced checks and speeding tickets. Not exactly Charles Manson but not Boy Scouts either. I don’t like people who bounce checks.

Wilkins was new to the area, he’d lived in Tahoe before. Here’s the good and bad thing about Santa Cruz: it’s not a place where everybody’s lived here forever and a newcomer gets the once-over. No, it’s a city where anybody can come fit in for a while, and move away before you’ve even had a chance to say hello. It’s a city full of transients, and I don’t mean the ones on the streets. I mean, you don’t always know your neighbors and you don’t ask questions. Kyle Wilkins shows up, moves in, replaces Ronald Hill, the neighbors nod or don’t nod. For that matter, a chubby truck driver and his alcoholic daughter move into a garage, nobody notices that either.

After school that day, I thought I’d ride past Ronald Hill’s former residence near the Circles. And then, what do you know. There was that same Mustang parked in front, the one I’d seen in front of Teddy’s. I jumped off my bike and walked through the open door.

Inside, Kyle Wilkins was leaning over a desk, leafing energetically through a stack of papers in a file. There was a pile of boxes in one corner, a few bulging garbage bags in another. New theory: Kyle Wilkins was the big creep, not Ronald Hill. I didn’t like how happy Kyle looked rifling through the papers of a dead man. He was like a pirate on a treasure hunt. It looked like more of the same stuff I’d seen them lugging home in the middle of the night after the accident, leaving Teddy alone. Hill wasn’t even cold and they’d already been over here, prowling around?

“Hey, what’s going on?”

Wilkins startled, but seeing a teenage girl in a Totoro sweatshirt put him at ease. “Uh, hello?” he said, revealing some extra-big teeth. “You are...?”

“Neighbor — who’re you?”

“I’m Kyle, friend of the family. Not sure if you’ve heard, but Ted’s father was in a fatal accident yesterday,” he said. “And I’m helping out.”

“Helping out doing what exactly?”

Just then, a toilet flushed. Teddy came around from the hallway. He’s tall and skinny, with black hair that hangs in his eyes. He was wearing sagging black pants and a gray hoodie with a picture of a skateboard on it.

“Uh, hey,” Teddy said.

“Hi, Teddy. I’m really sorry about your dad.”

“Thanks,” he mumbled.

“We got a big mess here,” Kyle Wilkins said, by way of his oversized teeth. “Not very nice to leave behind a shitload of unpaid bills for people to clean up.” He smoothed back his hair.

“It’s not very nice to talk about it,” I said.

Wilkins turned away from me. “Teddy, maybe you could do your social life later?” He sounded like a bully.

I moved toward the door. “Think you’ll be back at school soon?”

“I don’t know.” Teddy followed me out, carrying a box of the papers Wilkins had been pawing. I could see a bunch of bills and bank statements on top, including an invoice from something called Life Bonanza for eight hundred dollars’ worth of fish oil pills. There might be something worth finding in Ronald Hill’s papers. Teddy threw the box onto the backseat of the Mustang. “There’s a thing later this afternoon at Peace United, if you’re interested.”

I said, trying to sound casual, “You know, my pretty-much uncle’s with the Santa Cruz PD. He’s really cool. I mean, if you ever need anything.”

Teddy looked totally weirded out. “Why would I need anything from the police?”

“I mean, if anything... feels wrong.”

“A lot of things feel wrong. My father just got run over by some asshole who’s probably forgotten all about it by now.”

I played my ace: “My mother died when I was eight, so I sort of know what it’s like.”

“Oh fuck! That sucks.”

“Bye, Teddy,” I said, and gave him a hug. For all my calculated moves, that part came spontaneously. And he hugged back, which made me feel good.

When I got home I slammed the ugly door and threw down my backpack. I couldn’t even look at the coat for a while, though it was right there, on a hall hanger. I didn’t look at it while I made myself a vodka and orange juice and watched a rerun of The Gilmore Girls. I didn’t look at it while I cleaned up my dad’s pile of oily rags and empty oil cans by the door that our landlady Connie recently complained about. She was always asking my dad to help her do stuff, and sometimes he even helped her put on her artificial leg. I didn’t want to think about it.

But there I was, thinking about that and every other bad thing. About some leg that went on a stump that my dad had to look at, all because my mother died from a freak stroke that she never should’ve died from. I could hardly remember her. I could hardly remember what it was like to be near her. My throat closed like a fist.

I heard the low rumble of my dad’s truck trundling down the alley. A distinct throttling sound, like the engine was held together by a bunch of loose bolts. It rattled and knocked until he turned it off and then it blew a huge hiss, like a giant dog settling down for a nap. The presence of my dad, in the afternoon, in the truck, could only mean one thing: he was bringing home an overage.

I jumped up wobbly and ran outside. He had the emergency lights flashing, and he was already rolling up the door in back. “Get ready,” he said.

“What now?”

“Take a look at this,” he said, and I peered into the back of the truck. Whatever it was, there was a lot of it. Case upon case of—

“Toilet paper?”

“You can’t have enough.”

“We’re keeping all of that?”

“Seventeen cases,” he said, with unmistakable satisfaction.

“Inside?”

“We’ll figure it out,” he said, and started stacking the cases on his dolly and wheeling it toward our door. He went inside first and moved his antigravity rack out of the way, then rolled the dolly in and started stacking the cases in the corner. I noticed the figures were printed on the box. Ninety-six. 96 x 17 = 1,632 rolls.

“Dad, we don’t need this much toilet paper!”

“We’ll give it to people. It’s something everybody wants.”

“I’m not taking it to school!”

“Stop complaining.”

Overages were his pride and joy. People on loading docks often didn’t know how to count, it seemed. About every other month, my dad would find himself with an extra pallet of some junk. One time, we had five cases of Mr. T — head piggy banks. They were super tacky but he made me take them to school and give one to everybody in my grade. That was embarrassing, though some kids liked them. Another time, he had a bunch of cases of potato chips, which kept us going for months, not to mention all the bags we gave away.

“We need to go do something,” I told him. “Right now.”

“Okay.”

That was a good thing about Dad: he perked up at any reasonable request.

I ran back inside and grabbed the hanging coat before I climbed into the truck. I hadn’t been inside my dad’s “office” in a while. It was full of the crumbs of hundreds of sandwiches, cookies, and chips he ate while exercising his daily duties — a thousand cigarettes and a legion of old rancid coffee cups. He liked to horde brochures, so there were a bunch of those from anywhere brochures could be found, stuffed into the door pouch and the crack of the seat, advertising hot tubs and wild animal safari parks and colon cleansers.

I told him which way to drive, and I liked how he didn’t asked me a single question. It’s like he knew he owed me somehow.

We pulled up at the church on High Street. Peace United. I decided to wear the brown coat. My dad followed me in and sat in back while I went through the line where they were greeting people. When I got to Teddy we hugged again, like it was starting to become normal. When I came to his mother, she stared at me for a second, then said, “I just lost a coat like that.”

It was hard to tell where the creep meter was finally going to land. I shrugged. “Huh,” I said to her, “I guess it’s hard to think about a missing coat right now, when there’s so much to think about for Teddy.”

She frowned, and I moved on to sit in the back.

I couldn’t help wishing Joe had never gotten me involved with this one. I couldn’t let go of it. For weeks after, I’d see Teddy slouching around school, and stupid fear would nag at me, that something wasn’t going right for him.

But what was I supposed to do, worry about him the rest of my life? Run around hugging him every second? And anyway, no matter what you do, what could ever be right?

Death and Taxes by Jill Wolfson

Mission Street

This is Cody’s first day as a sign dancer. He pops a tab of Adderall at the beginning of his shift and stands at the corner of Mission and Swift in a Statue of Liberty costume, urging people driving by to get their taxes done by this outfit called Liberty Taxes. The spiky plastic crown on his forehead leaves an indentation, but the crown adds inches to his height, which he’s touchy about, always wanting to be taller, at least 5'11", like Tyler, Stepfather #3, who Cody doesn’t chill with that much anymore, due to Tyler’s my-shit-don’t-stink attitude and their whole family situation being fucked up.

This Liberty gig has got to be the best job ever. Smell the ocean air, throw your head back, and pound your chest like a surfer dude. Open your arms wide and feel the sun on your face. The flowing green fabric of Cody’s gown catches the early-spring wind and for a second it holds the sleeves out stiff.

Does Tyler, that lazy dickhead Mr. Stepdad of the Year, get to work all afternoon in the great outdoors? No, he doesn’t.

Red light turns green and cars rev up. Here they come: Ford, Chevy, Toyota.

Sure, Cody’s kind of nervous, being just seventeen and his first day on the job and all. But he’s ready.

Ready for what?

Ready to blow the drivers’ minds with extraordinary feats of sign-twirling never before seen anywhere. Not even if there are sign twirlers on a planet in a whole other universe. And yes, human-type beings ARE up there with all those stars, and people who think otherwise, dickwads like Tyler, should get their fat heads out of their dumb asses and do the math.

Showtime!

Spin that tax sign clockwise like it’s a Boardwalk ride. Toss it in the air, hurl your body around in a one-footed, tiptoed 360, and catch the sign behind your back. Ta-da.

Holy crap on a strap! He actually caught it! Thumbs-up from a Prius driver.

Another Prius, another Prius. Is there a fuckin’ sale on Priuses or what?

Yesterday, this corner was just another place. Cody must’ve eaten a million slices of pepperoni at Upper Crust. Carved his initials into the oak by the U-Wash-It car place. Felt up that hippie chick Sequoia by the dumpster behind the Chinese place.

But now? Cody owns this corner.

Cranks up the death-metal drum solo playing in his head: Ba-dum-bum-CHING ba-dum-pump chsh-ba-dump-dump-chshshshshshshsh-Ba-dun-DUN.

His mind switches channels to an outstanding game he invented. Yes, he invented it himself even though Tyler says the game’s too sick, that a stupid kid like Cody must’ve ripped it off from someone else.

Did not!

Here’s the game: add the word “anal” before the name of each car passing by.

Anal Probe! Anal Hummer! Anal Rover!

Cracks himself up.

Is this a lame job like Tyler said it was? Is this a job that only a kid right out of juvie would take? Could anyone stand on a street corner and get total strangers to go see Mr. Liberty — check it, that’s his real name, Frank Liberty — who does taxes fast and cheap?

First day on the job and Cody’s already learning stuff. Important info you need. Like how taxes are one of only two things in life you can’t avoid, the other one being death. Words of wisdom from the best fuckin’ boss ever, Frank Liberty.

Cody’s feet do a happy, crazy tap dance for an Anal Fit with a dent in one of its back doors.

So today is Saturday and in six more days, it’s payday. Best day ever!

Is Cody gonna spend his big fat paycheck on weed? That’s what Tyler thinks, ’cause he said, “You’re just gonna go down to the levee and get wasted, little dude. Get caught with a dirty pee test by your PO ’cause you always get caught at everything.”

No! Cody is not going to blow his money on weed! ’Cause he’s not a selfish douchebag asshole who only thinks about himself anymore.

He thinks about his mother. How her birthday’s coming up. He thinks about what he did for her birthday last year.

Busted. Vandalism. Went apeshit in the middle of the night at Santa Cruz High. Expelled for life.

He looks down at his kicks. No wind in his sleeves now. That one night earned him six months in Hotel California, which is what the guys call juvie up there on Graham Hill Road.

But this birthday? He’s a new Cody, a mature Cody who thinks about what mothers like for their special day.

Chocolate. Not from the drugstore but the expensive kind from Marini’s on the Boardwalk. A big red box with a red bow.

No, a glittery gold bow!

One thing, though. His mom’s got this problem. When he goes up to her place and hands her the box, she’s gonna get all mental about her weight and lift her shirt and pinch about ten inches of blubber around her belly and he’ll have to look at how the flesh is white with a little pink, like a bloated earthworm.

So he’ll say, Oh, Ma. You’re fine the way you are. Eat a chocolate.

And she’ll eat half the box in like ten seconds and say, The only thing I ever got from my mother were these fatty-fat genes.

Shit!

A Nissan Versa with a mattress tied to the top whizzes by too close and forces Cody to jump back on the curb.

Anal Versa Asshole!

He hikes up his pants under the costume. Clothes always slip over Cody’s skinny hips. Burns calories just standing still. At least he didn’t get the family pork genes.

And the family bad-luck genes are gonna stop with him too. He’s got X-factors going for him. Like the Cody smile, which females of all ages go crazy for because his teeth are straight and white, not like Tyler whose teeth are ugly black Jujubes from all the meth.

A minivan honks and he sees like a hundred kids cheering him, their faces pressed against the window. Bet most of them have shithead stepfathers too.

Do it, Cody. Brighten their day.

Triple-pumping motion with the arrow-shaped sign and fancies it up with high karate kicks.

“Anal Excursion!” Cody yells.

“Anal Prowler!”

A mom-type lady in a silver Camry flips her signal and turns into the Liberty Taxes parking lot.

Fist pump! Success! A customer. His first!

He pretends to fish and hook the Camry. Reel it in.

Driver laughs. With him, not at him like Tyler does.

He leaps in the air, a cheerleader split with bent legs. Drops the sign and flips into a wobbly, rubber-legged handstand just for her.

Liberty crown hits the pavement. Green gown hikes up to show size-ten sneakers, one of them untied, laces dangling. And flashing something — his good luck charm, insurance — tucked into the waistband of Cody’s jeans.

A few minutes after Cody starts his gig at Liberty Taxes, another seventeen-year-old arrives for his shift, right up the street at Ferrell’s Donuts.

Milo, small-boned and on the shorter side for a high school junior, exits the front passenger door of his mother’s silver Camry. Runs his fingers through the lock of hair that flops over his forehead, popular-boy-band style. Milo is not especially popular nor in a band, but he does have great affection for music, mostly classical.

He studies the Camry and, hit by inspiration, flips on his video phone.

Slow zoom, tight close-up of subject in driver’s seat. Uber-cinematic. But not too artsy. Milo abhors anything too artsy. Hates it even more than he hates being derivative.

Is he being insensitive for casting his mother’s face in what’s shaping up to be a genre-breaking art-house horror film? If Mom could get inside his head right now — and sometimes Milo thinks that she can actually do that, a two-member support team ever since Dad died — Milo and Mom, Mom and Milo — her feelings would be uber-hurt.

So yes, he is definitely being an insensitive person.

Milo presses the delete button.

He hears the hum of the driver’s window rolling down.

Mom and Milo are eyeball to eyeball now. “My workingman,” she says, then orders: “Head bump!”

He leans in even closer. Their foreheads gently connect. Her face, full-screen, huge. Like this dream he had — keeps having, the same dream ever since Dad died — where their foreheads, Mom’s and Milo’s, have magnets in them and no matter where he goes, their faces lock, her north to his south, blocking his view of everything but her.

Milo moves back a few steps to the curb. Mom pulls out into traffic, heading off to get her taxes done.

Behind him, a voice-over fading in, meow-y and sexy.

No, the opposite of that.

His coworker Melissa. Black polyester pants, white shirt tucked in, donut-shaped name tag, a dot of red jelly on her upper lip. He remembers her from back in Bayview Elementary, a tiny, quiet girl who he imagined having a river of deep thought running through her.

“Jesus, Mylar, you gonna stand out here all day?” Melissa says. “I wanna clock my ass out of here.”

The camera in his head clicks on.

He follows, recording her walk in those unattractive pants.

The buzzer sounds as the Ferrell’s door opens.

Quick montage. The glistening sludge of the classic glazed, the perfect doughy circles with their centers missing.

“Symbols,” Milo says under his breath. “The emptiness of human existence that hungers for connection.”

Fade out.

Reel ’em in, boy! Show ’em how it’s done!

Two more customers. Then Mr. Liberty, the man himself, pats Cody on the back, tells him, “Great job; break time, buddy.”

Cody feels so proud and so full his heart wants to burst out and leave a valentine-shaped hole smack in the middle of the Statue of Liberty.

The next twenty minutes are all his. A Man with a Plan. Dash over to Ferrell’s and see if that girl Melissa from last night’s party works there like she said. If Melissa’s there, whip out the charm. Flash his smile. Turn down the free maple bar she promised him. Pay for it himself ’cause he’s a workingman now. Wink as he drops a gigunda tip into the jar.

The buzzer sounds as Cody enters the shop. Smell the sweet grease.

Nope, no Melissa. Figures. Fuck Melissa. Whatevs.

Hey, check out the geeky nerd behind the register, bent over a book. Kid doesn’t look up. What? Is he deaf?

Hold on. Cody knows this kid. Same grade at SC High. Before the apeshit incident.

Hold on again. Time warp. Fourth grade. Bayview. Yeah, he sat in back of this dude all year. Damn, he’s still got the same LEGO hair like back in the day. What’s with that? Man up, get a buzz or something.

Miss Merlotti’s class.

What’s his name? Silo? J-Lo?

Milo. Yeah, that’s it.

He’s in Drama Club, something faggy like that. Only don’t use faggy, Cody. Not cool. Not mature. Not worthy of the New You. Live and let live.

But there’s something else about this Milo.

Tap tap, Cody’s heel of his hand against his forehead.

Oh yeah. Kid’s got a dead dad. Cancer or something mega-fuckin’ depressing. ’Bout a year ago. Weird how much you know about someone’s shit you don’t even talk to. Bad news gets in the air like a fart.

Dead dad. That’s gotta suck.

Sure, plenty of times Cody prayed Tyler croaked in some gruesome way, like choking on a ham sandwich while also being chewed up to his nuts by a pit bull. But Tyler did get him his first BB gun — taught him to roll a joint the very best way.

Cody’s eyes turn up to heaven in prayer. Tells God he wants to take back the Tyler death wish. Really! A psycho dad is better than a dead one.

This sudden appreciation of the good things in his own life does something to Cody’s insides. A melting sensation all through his chest.

What’s with him today, opening and expanding with such tender feelings?

Here’s what he should do: Say something nice to this Milo. Reach out dude to dude. Milo’s one of those sensitive types, for Chrissakes. Those people feel. What do you say to someone whose dad is RIP?

He rehearses in his mind: Milo, may I take the occasion of my work break from Liberty Taxes to offer my sincere condolences on the loss of your most beloved father?

Nice.

Cody raps on the counter to get the kid to look up from his book.

Milo looks up.

Milo’s mind-aperture clicks open. Master shot.

Some guy in a dress? Yes, in a polyester gown, with a crown, who — no polite way to say this — reeks really bad.

Oh, it’s the sign-dancing guy from down the street. That must be the worst job ever. Only not the same guy as yesterday because this one has close-cropped blond hair. Yesterday’s Liberty had stringy dirty-brown hair.

Zoom in. They’re multiplying! Cloning themselves in a plot to repopulate the world with Statue of Liberty look-alikes!

Statue’s lips are moving. He is not saying: Give me your tired, your poor. He’s saying: “May I take the occasion to...”

No way!

He knows this guy.

Crazy Cody! His nemesis from Miss Merlotti’s class. Made Milo’s life a living hell. Spent the entire year behind Milo flicking his ears. Went into his backpack. Stole money and pencils. Singled him out every dodgeball game and smacked him so hard that Milo nearly peed himself one day.

Okay, he did pee himself. In front of the whole class.

Does Cody still have that problem where his eyeballs vibrate in their sockets?

Milo sneaks a quick look. Yes, he does.

Be careful. Tread lightly.

Be uber-polite: “Can I help you? Is there a particular donut that catches your fancy?”

Holy crap in a sack!

Cody just screwed open his heart and poured out every pity thing he could think to say to a fag kid with a dead dad, and does he get a thank you?

No, he does not.

Milo with his stupid-ass haircut. What the hell?

Ba-dum-bum-ba-donk-a-donk-dum-chssk.

Something else. Tap tap on his forehead. It all comes back to him. Fourth grade. Who ratted on Cody? What little shit was all Teacher, teacher, Cody stole from me? Who turned Miss Merlotti and every kid in the class against him? Whose fault was it that the principal called and Tyler beat the shit of Cody to teach him a lesson?

Cody takes five giant steps down the length of the counter. A blur of donuts. Apple-filled. Custard-filled. Special of the day: pink frosting and sprinkles. Ew.

Cody asks: “Donut dude, how much for six of the ones that cost the most?”

“The most?” the kid asks.

Like he can’t believe Cody can afford a half-dozen donuts. Like Cody doesn’t have a real job. Like he’s a piece of trash who just got out of juvie and sponges off other people’s donuts.

Cody reaches for his waistband. Tap tap, pat pat on his good luck charm. He imagines the heft of it. The sound of it. Assurance against unwanted surprises. He straightens his crown.

Face to face with Mr. Donut. “Only two things in life are unavoidable. Guess what they are. Guess!”

Milo’s face is all twitchy.

“Taxes,” Cody says. “And death.”

Don’t say it, Milo orders himself. “I beg to differ,” he says.

Do not add any more dialogue to this scene with Crazy Cody. Do not say: What about defecating? We all have to poop.

No, too late. Milo said it all out loud.

He puts his hand over his mouth. He notices: Cody’s fist hardening into a ball. His feet doing this strange agitated shuffle, then coming to a pigeon-toed stop.

What’s Cody asking? Come on, Milo! Focus. Attention.

“... I need to take a whizz. A piss palace?”

Oh, thank goodness.

Milo points to the bathroom.

Fuck a duck. Fuck a big, quacking duck!

Palm slap against his forehead.

Cody takes a piss and rezips.

This Milo must think he’s stupid. Must think he’s a loser, like Tyler does. Like everyone does, right?

Yeah, even Frank Liberty. Cody imagines Frank laughing his ass off, telling Mrs. Liberty — Yeah, dumb juvie kid believed me. Ha-ha. Little loser even said he was gonna get a tat: Death and Taxes.

Cody’s face flushes. An embarrassment so familiar, like a second beating heart.

His mind goes all wrecking ball.

Fuck you, Milo. Little know-it-all.

He reaches down and touches his good luck charm. Nice and heavy, there when he needs it.

Time for a demo.

Cody steps out of the bathroom.

Zero in on Milo.

Why is the kid just standing there like an idiot by the cash register? Why’s he got his hands in the air?

Oh, shit on a shingle. Dump on a bump. Some dickhead with a flowered cloth tied over his nose and mouth, pointing a gun at Milo.

Cody ducks low behind the cold drink case for a better look.

The dickhead with the gun? No fuckin’ way.

Yes fuckin’ way!

He knows the thickness of that neck, the bend in the arm from where it broke. Hell, he even recognizes the yellow floral print of the scarf.

Tyler.

Asshole cut up Mom’s favorite scarf to rob Ferrell’s Donuts.

And what’s this? No! Flamin’ poo on a shoe! There’s a long wet stain spreading down the front of Milo’s pants.

Little Milo, with the dead dad and no homies and a crap donut job where he pays taxes, just went and pissed himself. All because dickhead Tyler stuck a gun in his face.

He should do something about this.

And before Cody has another thought, he is doing something.

Milo’s mind camera — tracking shot:

Ninja Statue of Liberty, legs akimbo, a soldier yell of outrage. Whips out a set of nunchucks, whirls them in a ferocious figure eight. Whoosh.

Dialogue:

“Thanks for telling me about this place, Code-ster.”

“Not why I told you, Tyler.”

“Easy, boy. Looks like you were planning this job yourself.”

“Naw, just a demo of my skill. Was gonna mess up some fritters big time. Send them to the trash can.”

“You want in then? Father/son action?”

“Don’t get all flesh-and-blood-ish with me, dickhead.”

“Put down the numbnuts, Cody.”

“Pay your taxes, Tyler!”

“Huh?”

“Don’t mess with my homie Milo!”

At the sound of his own name, zoom in.

Cody’s nunchucks moving fast, snapping from shoulder to shoulder, like the Statue of Liberty patting himself on the back.

Back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and—

Oh no!

Disaster.

The ’chucks hit the countertop, drop, hit the floor, bounce.

A lunge. A stumble.

Too much too fast for Milo’s head to record.

A shout.

An explosion.

The bakery case glass shatters.

The smell of gunpowder. And apple fritters.

Then Milo watches. The symbol of our entire country slumps on the floor. Green fabric billowing out. A red stain spreading across his chest.

No! Not a symbol.

Not dialogue.

Not a fake scene.

Milo’s knees go wobbly.

Camera off off off!

Shit! What the fuck!

Wave the gun in the air. Slam fist on the counter.

Think, Tyler. Think!

Don’t look at the mess on the floor.

Stupid little Cody. Couldn’t control the numbnuts! Trying to be a hero. What am I always telling him? Wrong place, wrong time. Again.

Tell the other one to open the cash register.

“Now! Pronto!”

Stuff bills in pockets. Leave the coins. Fifty dollars, maybe sixty. That’s it?

Donut kid looking at him too hard. “Take a picture, why don’t ya?”

Fuckin’ jacked up now. Kick the white plastic table set.

Got a big, big problem on my hands.

The old lady. Cody’s mom. Got a soft spot for the kid.

This whole mess is her fault, spoiling him, not smacking him when he gets out of line. And now she’s going be all fucked up and crying and shit and he’s gonna have to smack her and that means more crying and who’s gonna to have to live with that drama?

Him, Tyler, that’s who!

Throw the coffee creamer against the wall. Use the butt of the gun to spider another donut case.

Plus, her birthday’s coming up. Cody once again wrecking it, three years in a row. Coulda won money on that bet.

Hold on! Ding ding ding. Got an idea.

Donuts. That’ll make her feel better. Always does.

That’s the kind of guy Tyler is. When tragedy hits, always right there with something thoughtful.

Order the donut kid: “Get me one of those pink boxes. Start fillin’.”

Two jelly, two blueberry, two old-fashioned, two cinnamon crunch. No, make it three cinnamon crunch. She really likes those. Two chocolate. One apple-filled. What do you mean one more? Oh, baker’s dozen special. Nice.

Seems like an okay dude, this donut kid. Thoughtful. Not a loser like Cody.

Too bad.

Point the gun. Pull the trigger. Feel the kick.

Wipe off the prints. Put the gun in the donut kid’s hand.

Naw. Move it to Cody’s hand.

Doesn’t totally add up. But it’s the best Tyler can do given the circumstances. Cops’ll be scratching their heads over this one.

Open the door. Hear the buzzer. Don’t tilt the donut box. Take one last look at the scene.

Fuckin’ Cody. Look what he made me do.