by Arthur O'KEEFE

I open my eyes, and for a brief eter­ni­ty all that ex­ists is a black ex­panse speck­led with small cir­cles of light. 

Then I re­al­ize that the black ex­panse is just a ceil­ing, and not so ex­pan­sive. The cir­cles of light come from scope fix­tures in the ceil­ing, per­haps a dozen. 

There is pain as I lift my head: the re­sult of con­tin­u­ous in­dul­gence in Mai Tais, Sin­ga­pore slings, and Sing­ha beer from the mo­ment I hit the beach un­til I blacked out. There is the vague mem­o­ry of walk­ing along an un­paved road in dark­ness, the lights of open-air beach bars in the dis­tance. And now I am here, the small spat­ter­ing of dried vom­it on the front of my shirt a con­trast of brown, tan, and yel­low against black. It is like an ab­stract ex­pres­sion­ist paint­ing: Bruno Flana­gan, Puke in Pat­taya, 1988. Vom­it on cot­ton and polyester. 

I am ly­ing on a floor. It is hard and cool and some­how com­fort­ing. Three faces stare down at me, one fa­mil­iar, two not. All three own­ers of the three faces are seat­ed at a bar at the op­po­site wall. There are no win­dows, and the whole place is black ex­cept the floor, which is black and white tile in a checker­board pat­tern. There is a small, low stage with am­pli­fiers and a piano. 

“Hey, Broon,” says own­er of the fa­mil­iar face. “En­joy­ing lib­er­ty?” It is Max Jenk­ins, my Di­vi­sion Chief Pet­ty Of­fi­cer, touristy-ca­su­al in T‑shirt, car­go shorts, and san­dals. That he does not ad­dress me as Pet­ty Of­fi­cer Sec­ond Class Flana­gan is an en­cour­ag­ing sign.

I look at my watch. Near­ly 4:30 a.m. I stand up. The room cir­cles a bit be­fore set­tling in. 

“How’d I get here?”

“I car­ried you.” 

“Oh. Thanks. Sorry.”

“Don’t make it a habit,” he says, though we both know I al­ready have.

I am far from the on­ly sailor in the fleet with a liv­er just over two decades old and an ea­ger­ness to test its lim­its, and at times I ra­tio­nal­ize my ex­cess­es by ar­gu­ing that if the US Navy had not dis­con­tin­ued dai­ly ship­board rum ra­tions in 1914, there would be far less in­cen­tive to overindulge up­on mak­ing port. Max, my se­nior in both rank and age, is hav­ing none of it, and re­cent­ly I have sensed his eye up­on me. He rarely drinks and takes a dark view of in­tox­i­ca­tion, which to me sim­ply means he has a mild pu­ri­tan­i­cal streak. But I al­so feel bad for him be­cause, like many au­thor­i­ty fig­ures in a mil­i­tary set­ting, he is sub­ject to ridicule be­hind his back. He is tall and bald­ing and wears a crew­cut, much clos­er-cropped than re­quired by reg­u­la­tions, and tends to slouch, so his nick­name in the di­vi­sion is The Con­dor. He is nev­er called this to his face, of course, and while I am as bad as any­one in com­plain­ing about the chiefs and of­fi­cers, I have a soft spot for Max. Tonight I could eas­i­ly have got­ten my wal­let lift­ed, or worse, but he has saved me.

“Would you like a drink?” asks one of the two peo­ple I do not know: a pale, slen­der woman with short blonde hair cut in­to a bob. She is beau­ti­ful, and to look up­on her brings me in­to fo­cus, mit­i­gat­ing my post-black­out con­fu­sion. Her voice is a husky Eng­lish con­tral­to, and she smiles with a hint of mis­chief and cyn­i­cism. I guess she is about 35, and I imag­ine her as a slight­ly old­er, naugh­ti­er ver­sion of Princess Di­ana. She is an in­ter­est­ing person.

“Thank you very much,” I an­swer. “A Coke, please.”

“No rum in it?” Her smile broad­ens to a grin.

It hurts my head to laugh. “No, thanks. I’m not a hair-of-the-dog guy.”

The oth­er per­son I do not know, a man, goes be­hind the bar and scoops ice in­to a glass. He pours in the co­la and places it on the counter. “Here you go. On the house,” he says with a shy smile, and I thank him. He is Thai, some­what younger than the woman, with a clear brown com­plex­ion and a thin, neat­ly trimmed mus­tache. As I drink, grate­ful­ly feel­ing the re­me­di­al ef­fects of caf­feine and sug­ar, I read be­tween what lines there are to see that they are mar­ried, co-own­ers of the nightclub. 

“I’m Janet,” says the Eng­lish­woman. “This is Tom, my hus­band.” I as­sume Tom is a nick­name, per­haps a diminu­tive of a Thai name.

“I’m Bruno. Thank you for help­ing me.”

“Don’t men­tion it. It was lucky Max brought you here just as we were clos­ing up.”

“I’m sor­ry to keep you awake.”

“Not at all. This is a night job. We usu­al­ly stay here to un­wind a bit af­ter clos­ing, so it’s nice to have some company.”

So we sit and talk, with the greater part of the con­ver­sa­tion be­tween Janet and Max, each of whom nurs­es a high­ball pre­pared by Tom. De­spite the re­silience of my 22 years, I am too deep with­in the twi­light be­tween in­tox­i­ca­tion and hang­over to con­tribute much, and Tom seems nat­u­ral­ly la­con­ic. He stays be­hind the counter, sur­round­ed by all the tools of the bar­tender, kept in per­fect or­der. He ad­justs the po­si­tion of a glass or bot­tle now and then, keeps me well-sup­plied with cola.

When asked, Max and I are cir­cum­spect about our jobs, which in­volve a cer­tain amount of clas­si­fied in­for­ma­tion. As­signed to a de­stroy­er, we keep track of what goes on around the ship, elec­tro­mag­net­i­cal­ly speak­ing. What­ev­er is emit­ted, we in­ter­cept, an­a­lyze, and iden­ti­fy. It is all in­ter­est­ing in the ab­stract, but I dis­like both the metic­u­lous plan­ning and un­pre­dictable events it in­volves. It is more fun to drink, sort of. 

Janet gra­cious­ly takes our hint of ret­i­cence, and in any case seems more in­ter­est­ed in steer­ing the con­ver­sa­tion to­ward sex­u­al top­ics. She seems fas­ci­nat­ed by the fact that the crews of com­bat­ant ships are ex­clu­sive­ly male. Hav­ing broached the sub­ject of how com­mon mas­tur­ba­tion must be aboard ship, she as­serts with con­vic­tion that men have no choice but to do so, to pre­vent an in­def­i­nite buildup of un­e­jac­u­lat­ed se­men. Max replies that men can ab­stain if they so choose. In the haze of my grad­ual re­turn to so­bri­ety, I of­fer no view on the mat­ter but can sense Tom’s discomfort.

The top­ic of nat­ur­al con­tra­cep­tive meth­ods comes up. “Tit-fuck­ing works,” says Janet, who then turns to her hus­band and asks, “Do you like tit-fuck­ing, Tom?”

“Some­times,” he replies, voice low, gaze down­ward. It is an awk­ward mo­ment for every­one but Janet. It is not that Max and I are shocked by such talk (we are sailors). We just feel sor­ry for Tom, who is ob­vi­ous­ly not com­fort­able with his wife pon­tif­i­cat­ing up­on mas­tur­ba­tion and mam­ma­ry in­ter­course to a cou­ple of strange men. 

Per­haps it is the sur­re­al­i­ty of feel­ing trans­port­ed from the beach to the floor of this club, and my re­cov­ery from a drunk­en black­out. As Janet speaks, I see the de­struc­tion of a bal­ance: I do not know how else to say it. There is the or­der, the pre­dictabil­i­ty of Tom’s ac­cou­trements and ac­tions be­hind the bar. There is the spon­tane­ity, the un­pre­dictabil­i­ty of Janet’s mus­ings up­on the se­mi-taboo. I feel the latter’s as­cen­dance, and this club as the cen­ter of a silent, brief ex­plo­sion of a chaos which on­ly I can per­ceive. To con­tain the blast, I wrench through the fog of my half-drunk brain to broach a new topic. 

I ask about the laws on for­eign­ers set­ting up bars, and whether hav­ing a Thai spouse makes it eas­i­er. It does, says Janet, launch­ing in­to an anec­dote about her deal­ings with im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials. For the briefest in­stant, Tom shoots me a grate­ful look.

What I can catch of Janet’s sto­ry would be in­ter­est­ing were I able to fo­cus up­on it, but I am dis­tract­ed; I man­age to nod thought­ful­ly at the right mo­ments. This is not be­cause I am still part­ly in­tox­i­cat­ed, but rather a strange half-epiphany I am hav­ing: There is some­thing I need to un­der­stand, but I am too thick to learn it with­out every­thing that has oc­curred with­in the past twelve hours or so. What is it? I am not sure, but I de­cide nev­er to get this drunk again, a pledge I am sure to keep at least as long as my hang­over lasts. 

For an ir­ra­tional mo­ment, I be­lieve I am dead, un­able to leave the room, like a char­ac­ter in Sartre’s play No Ex­it: trapped for eter­ni­ty with my strait-laced di­vi­sion chief, naughty Princess Di, and her shy, silent con­sort. A part of me hopes it is true: to nev­er fall vic­tim to a ran­dom in­ci­dent, to nev­er have to de­cide any­thing. A nev­er-end­ing chat in the club af­ter hours. I want this, and fear it, and I am fright­ened that I can wish for such a thing.

When 7 o’clock comes, Max and I say our thanks and good­byes. Janet won’t let us pay for our drinks. We walk out the door and in­to the morn­ing sun­light, the sea breeze waft­ing over us. In the dis­tance our ship sits at an­chor, a sleek grey con­tour against the end­less blue of sea and sky. I am alive, able to re­lin­quish nei­ther chance nor de­sign for an eter­ni­ty in a closed-up nightclub. 

“Well, that was weird,” says Max.“It was nice of them to give us free drinks,” I re­ply as we trudge along the beach to­ward our re­spec­tive bun­ga­lows to sleep through the rest of the morning.

Filed under Fiction on August 30th, 2024

—

Care to Share?

by Salvatore DIFALCO

I want­ed peo­ple to vis­it and leave slight­ly changed, you know. Didn’t al­ways go how I’d hoped. Can­dace said she want­ed a chai tea and I pro­vid­ed. Hon­ey, too. We talked about phi­los­o­phy. She’d just been in­tro­duced to the Ex­is­ten­tial­ists. “Do you know Sartre?” she asked. I told her I did, but didn’t en­joy his writ­ings that much. “Frankly, I think he’s a bit dat­ed,” I of­fered. “Ca­mus still works for me,” I added, “at least his fic­tion.” She seemed dis­ap­point­ed, as though she were hop­ing I looked up­on Sartre fa­vor­ably. “But why the Ex­is­ten­tial­ists now?” I asked. She wouldn’t an­swer at first, but fi­nal­ly she ad­mit­ted that she was hop­ing to im­press a phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor she’d met at a mix­er a few weeks be­fore. “Oh re­al­ly,” I said. “In­ter­est­ing.” She smiled un­easi­ly. “What do you mean by that?” she asked. “Noth­ing,” I said. “I just find it in­ter­est­ing that you came to me to puff your­self up a lit­tle, prime your­self for this pro­fes­sor fel­low.” I searched for an ex­pres­sion I’d heard in the past that would score a few points be­fore she left. “What am I, chopped liv­er?” I blurt­ed, but the door had al­ready closed be­hind her. 

Filed under Fiction on August 16th, 2024

—

Care to Share?

by Amy JONES SEDIVY

Janet texted: Miguel might not show up, And I have rehearsal.

Kit texted: Text me back. I’m a lit­tle drunk. ttyl.

…

Car­olyn clos­es her lap­top, fin­ish­es off her Tecate, and turns the lights off. She goes out on her bal­cony and eas­es on­to the chaise lounge. So much for the cel­e­bra­tion she planned to have, for get­ting a raise and a pro­mo­tion; three friends and none of them com­ing over. Across the court­yard, past the arched en­trance to her com­plex, she sees Vine Street, be­low Hol­ly­wood Boule­vard. Wish­ing she still smoked, Car­olyn bit her fin­ger­tip. Smok­ing would ease her frustration.

Miguel al­ways had an ex­cuse for not com­ing to her apart­ment and late­ly, he just didn’t both­er with ex­cus­es. If she want­ed to see him, she would go to his place or meet at some restau­rant. Maybe she should call him and sug­gest his fa­vorite taqueria. 

He is sup­posed to be her boyfriend, but Miguel is as fussy about la­bel­ing their psy­cho­log­i­cal dra­ma as he is about align­ing the forks and knives and spoons at the ta­ble. At every restau­rant. Every time they go out to eat. Things need to be straight and par­al­lel and just so, and some­how their re­la­tion­ship needs to be just as ex­act. Kit tells her that Miguel is not the one for her, that he is in­ca­pable of hu­man in­ter­ac­tion, pre­fer­ring the com­pa­ny of his vi­o­lin. But then Kit has been see­ing a bassist for an ob­scure LA band who is a hero­in addict. 

A po­lice car races past the en­trance and she lis­tens to the siren, fol­low­ing its whine as the car turns east on Hol­ly­wood Boule­vard, and comes to a stop. Great, she thinks. An­oth­er one of those cos­tumed id­iots caus­ing trou­ble. She hears voic­es, yelling. Star­ing out past the arch, she sees some­one elud­ing the se­cu­ri­ty lights. A move­ment in the bush­es, some­one sidling along the front build­ing and duck­ing through the arch. A vil­lain, she thinks. A bad guy has come to her courtyard. 

When she moved to this apart­ment, her fa­ther helped bring a bed. He hat­ed the place, said it wasn’t safe. He of­fered her a hand­gun. “Keep it near­by,” he said, but she re­fused. It had been years since she shot a gun at a shoot­ing range. She was on­ly four­teen the last time she went with him to prac­tice gun safe­ty. What would she do if she had that gun now?

She watch­es the sup­posed bad guy as­sess his sur­round­ings. Where will he hide? Where can he go? He looks up and sees her watch­ing. She al­most waves. He dash­es across the court­yard and opens her door down be­low her bal­cony. Of course, she re­mem­bers, she hadn’t locked it. She rarely did. The court­yard of­fered her false se­cu­ri­ty, as if the arch­way had an in­vis­i­ble shield to keep out the Hol­ly­wood riff-raff.

…

“Come in here,” says a voice from her liv­ing room. She obeys and leaves the bal­cony. She does not close the slid­ing glass door. Briefly, she hears Miguel’s voice nag­ging her to close it.

Her vil­lain is a short, stocky white guy who could be in his for­ties. He’s in jeans and a den­im shirt, and a t‑shirt un­der­neath for some heavy met­al band. As far as she can tell, he does not have a gun. He tells her to sit down. He asks where her phone is.

“It’s on the ta­ble.” She nods to the cof­fee ta­ble and he takes it. Puts it in his pocket.

“I would like that back when you leave,” she says. “I have my life on there.”

He snorts and she thinks it is a dis­gust­ing sound. 

“You can hide here un­til they are gone,” she of­fers. “But I want my phone back when you leave.”

He goes to the open slid­ing door and peers out. They can hear more po­lice sirens, and they can hear squawk­ing ra­dio voic­es in stac­ca­to bursts. When he leans over to check the court­yard, she sees he has a gun in the back of his pants. 

She won­ders, what would Janet do? Janet — Miguel’s clever sis­ter — has a great deal of self-de­fense train­ing. She was at­tacked once, near­ly raped, and she is de­ter­mined nev­er to let that hap­pen again. Mar­tial arts. Gun lessons. Mace. If this was Janet’s apart­ment, she would have the guy sprawled face down on the ground by now, cry­ing from the mace and the dis­lo­cat­ed shoul­der Janet would have in­flict­ed on him.

Car­olyn has no such train­ing. She wish­es for a cig­a­rette. She asks the in­trud­er if he wants a beer. He comes in and looks at her.

“You some crazy cat lady?”

“Do you see any cats?” She gets up and goes to the re­frig­er­a­tor, takes out two Tecates. Pops the tops off and hands him one. He takes it. She sees he is re­luc­tant. She won­ders if she can hit him over the head with her bot­tle. She de­cides she is not strong enough nor is the bot­tle, so she drinks from it instead. 

“Any­one else live here?”

“No. Just me.” Oh, she thinks. She should sug­gest that a man is com­ing home any minute. Too late. But even if Miguel did live with her, what would he do? The man would prob­a­bly just shoot him as he came in the door. Be­sides, Miguel would nev­er live here; there are too many things that need re­ar­rang­ing or straight­en­ing or just need to be tossed. 

She set­tles in­to her couch and watch­es him pace the small liv­ing room, go­ing to the bal­cony and com­ing back again. He drinks his beer. She finds some odd sat­is­fac­tion in that.

“What did you do?” she asks.

“Noth­ing. Shut up.” He paces. She bites her fin­ger and fin­ish­es her beer.

“I’ve al­ways won­dered what it is like to be a crim­i­nal,” she says. He ig­nores her. “I’ve al­ways fol­lowed rules. What is it like to toss all those rules away? Is there free­dom in that?”

He keeps pac­ing and looks more ag­i­tat­ed. That might not be a good thing. 

“It’s like I used to think about be­ing a hobo. Just trav­el­ing the coun­try. Rid­ing the rails. Maybe get a lit­tle work here and there, get some mon­ey to buy a hot meal. And mov­ing on. Seems like you could see a lot of the coun­try that way. Meet a lot of peo­ple.” She feels her body start to quiver. “My grand­fa­ther did that when he was young. He told all these sto­ries about be­ing a hobo. It sounds ro­man­tic. But I think I wouldn’t like it re­al­ly. You get dirty, can’t take a show­er every day. Be­sides, I don’t think there are ho­bos any­more. Just home­less peo­ple.” She rests her bot­tle on her leg to steady it as her hand shakes too much.

“Shut up. I’m tryin’ to hear.” He stands with his head at the edge of the door, lis­ten­ing to the ra­dio voices.

She waits. He has his back turned. She could walk up be­hind him and hit him with some­thing. She looks around her room. Noth­ing is hard or heavy. She has pil­lows. She has pa­per­back books. She has one of Miguel’s less­er valu­able vi­o­lins that he loaned her to use for an il­lus­tra­tion. In the kitchen, she has a big cast iron pan. That would do it. But the kitchen means she would have to walk past him, draw his at­ten­tion to her. She could be get­ting an­oth­er beer. 

“An­oth­er one?” she says, stand­ing up. She sees he has on­ly had about half of his. “Well I want an­oth­er one.”

He steps far­ther out on­to the bal­cony. Car­olyn makes out a few words from the ra­dio: Armed. Last seen. 

Last seen right here, she men­tal­ly telegraphs the po­lice. Come around the cor­ner, she tells them. Check our court­yard. Look up at my balcony.

He comes in.

“Go sit down,” he says.

“I was get­ting an­oth­er beer.”

“Now you’re not.”

“Did you kill someone?”

He snorts again.

“Well, did you?”

“You’re one fuck­ing odd chick.”

“My boyfriend says so.”

“Where is he? Is he com­ing here?”

She won­ders what the best an­swer is. But ly­ing seems wrong, it is wrong to lie to a man with a gun. “No. He hates com­ing here.”

“Sounds like a re­al win­ner.” The man sits down on the edge of a chair. His leg is pump­ing up and down with his nerves and he keeps look­ing out the slid­ing door.

“So. Why are they af­ter you? The police?”

“Yeah. I killed some­one. A to­tal ass­hole. A los­er. Guy would kill me if I didn’t kill him first.”

“Wow. You did kill some­one. Have you ever done that before?”

“What are you, se­cret po­lice? A lawyer? What?”

“No, I’m a graph­ic artist.” She wants to tell him that she just got a raise, that she is an ex­cel­lent graph­ic artist; she wants some­one to hear about her raise and promotion.

“I’ve killed sev­en peo­ple. Went to jail for one of them. Manslaugh­ter. They was all mur­der though. I mur­dered them be­cause I need­ed to. They all need­ed to be dead.”

“Oh. Do I need to be dead?” She leans back in­to the couch.

“Not if you shut up.”

By now Janet would have the po­lice hand­cuff­ing this guy and tak­ing him to the hos­pi­tal. By now Janet would have called her, Car­olyn, and told her in a tri­umphant­ly shak­ing voice that she foiled a would-be rapist. Car­olyn did not think this man was a rapist. Are mur­der­ers al­so rapists? Or are they two dif­fer­ent things, like two dif­fer­ent call­ings or ca­reers? She won­ders what Kit would do. Then she re­mem­bers. She is sup­posed to text Kit. In fact, that an­noy­ing lit­tle ping­ing noise she keeps hear­ing is her cell­phone, send­ing out tiny vi­bra­tions in­to the room from the man’s pock­et. Kit. And if Kit doesn’t get an an­swer, Kit — who lives two blocks away — will show up at her door.

“My friend might come over,” she says. “If I don’t text her back, she might come here.”

The man looks at her. “Then I have to kill you.”

“Oh no,” she says. “No, no, no. If you let me text her, she won’t come.”

The man pulls his gun and points it at her. “You have a car?”

“Yes. In the alley.”

“Let’s go.”

She picks up the keys. “Here,” she says, “it’s a red Honda.”

“You’re dri­ving.”

Janet said, nev­er get in a car with a stranger. Fight back, yell or scream, lie down on the ground but nev­er get in a car. Sta­tis­tics are grim, she said. Once a vic­tim gets in the car, she’s pret­ty much dead.

“I can’t get in the car,” says Car­olyn. His gun is now pressed against her stomach.

“Re­al­ly?”

“Okay.” They walk down the back stairs to the al­ley. Her car, fresh­ly washed, shines in the light of the mo­tion de­tec­tor. This brings tears to her eyes.

…

With the man crouched down in the pas­sen­ger seat and his gun point­ed at her, Car­olyn dri­ves the car out of the al­ley and on­to Vine Street. She turns north. She turns east. She pass­es the po­lice cars. She wants to wave to them but there’s the gun. Maybe she could crash the car. She con­tin­ues driving.

“East L.A.” he says. “Drop down to Sun­set and head east.”

“Okay.” She dri­ves. “So tell me. Just tell me be­cause I want to know. How does it feel to be free of rules? To not fol­low them. To do what you want.”

He does his snort. “Fuck­ing great. That’s what it feels like. Ex­cept for when the cops are af­ter you. Oth­er­wise. I do what I want. Make my own world, you know? Make it my way. I don’t like some­body, I re­move them. I do like some­body, I take care of them.”

“You do? Like, you have a girl­friend? Or a wife? How do you take care of them?” Car­olyn makes a care­ful left on­to Sun­set, wish­ing that some­one would run the red light and hit her car. On the pas­sen­ger side.

“My chick, she’s in jail now. Shit’s bad, I tried to take care of her, but she blew it. But she didn’t bust me. That’s good, you know. Good she didn’t bust me.”

“I just want to un­der­stand. What do you mean, you take care of them?”

“I buy her shit. I spend mon­ey on her. She want­ed a Lexus, I stole some shit from this id­iot deal­er I know, caught the mon­ey and bought her the Lexus. Paid for like every­thing is le­gal. Didn’t have to steal a car for her. Just bought it.”

“You are proud of that.” She thinks, but doesn’t say, that he was fol­low­ing the rules by ac­tu­al­ly buy­ing the car and he was proud of that. Prob­a­bly if he was rich and could do what­ev­er he want­ed, he would fol­low more rules; or maybe he would just be bet­ter at killing peo­ple and not get­ting caught.

“Damn right.”

“Would you re­al­ly kill me?”

“Just dri­ve. I haven’t made up my mind yet.”

Car­olyn dri­ves. She won­ders, what will make up his mind? Should she keep talk­ing to him? She thinks she re­mem­bers some­thing Janet once told her, about mak­ing your­self more hu­man and re­al to your at­tack­er, so he feels like he knows you and can’t hurt you. What else can she ask this man? 

“What’s it like to kill a per­son, watch him die?”

“You talk too much. Shut up and drive.”

“My boyfriend says I talk too much.” She thinks of Miguel. If she dies, how will he feel? Will he be up­set? Will he cry? Or will he very con­sci­en­tious­ly make arrange­ments for her fu­ner­al, in­vite her friends, ex­press sym­pa­thy to her fa­ther, play the ap­pro­pri­ate mu­sic at her ser­vice, and re­mem­ber that she wants to be cre­mat­ed not buried?

“Where are we?”

“We’re al­most to Alvarado.”

“Echo Park Lake?”

“Yes. It’s up ahead.”

“Pull over there.”

She parks. They get out and walk down to the edge of the lake. Car­olyn sighs. I’m go­ing to be shot and drowned, she thinks. And my body will sink and no one will know where I am. 

“This is not right,” she says to the man. “I don’t want to be in the lake.”

“Not your choice, is it?” He takes the keys from her, drops them in his pock­et with her cell phone. Then he draws his hand back and whacks her on the side of her head with his gun. She falls down on the wet grass, clutch­ing her head, the pain shoot­ing stars across her eyes. He yanks her by her arms and hauls her in­to the lake, hold­ing her head underwater. 

She has a brief mo­ment of clar­i­ty: the wa­ter makes the pain on the side of her head feel bet­ter. Re­lief. Un­til she pass­es out.

…

Car­olyn wakes and there are lights and peo­ple all around her. The man is not far from her. He is on the ground. Blood trick­les out of his mouth and his eyes are wide open as if he has seen the scari­est sight of his life. Po­lice ra­dios squawk. Kit leans over her, as para­medics clean her temple.

“What are you do­ing here?” she asks Kit.

“You didn’t an­swer my texts. I saw you get in your car with that man. Po­lice were every­where. I told them. They fol­lowed your car. But they weren’t fast enough — ass­holes,” she looked around at the cops who paid her no at­ten­tion, “to stop him from hurt­ing you.”

“You’re amaz­ing,” Car­olyn says. “Like Sher­lock Holmes or NCIS or something.”

They lift Car­olyn on­to a stretch­er and start mov­ing her across the rough grass, up a hill to a wait­ing am­bu­lance. Kit walks along­side, hold­ing her hand. 

“Car­olyn!” they hear. A voice, a man’s voice, shouting.

“It’s Miguel,” says Kit, and she points. 

Car­olyn turns her head and sees Miguel run­ning to her with a look of ter­ror on his face. Yel­low light­ning bolts shoot pain through her eye­balls when she laughs at his mis­matched shoes.

Filed under Fiction on August 2nd, 2024

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