EPISODE FOUR: MORTAL COMBAT

Learning How to Kill

It doesn’t dawn on me that the Twin is paying homage to “Giallo” films until I read the direct message sent by Flip.

If you haven’t heard of the word giallo (Giallo—being a type of genre in Italian literature or film—which means “yellow,” is based off a series of mystery novels called II Giallo Mondadori, published with a trademark “yellow” background on the cover whereas, in film, giallo has come to be known as murder mysteries, or what most people call “whodunits,” which was popularized during the mid 1960’s through the 1970’s), more than likely, you’ve probably seen its influence in American slashers such as Friday the 13^th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, basically, any film where some hottie is being chased around by some mask-wearing stalker with a knife or some other sharp object.

Every Saturday night, the orderlies used to play giallo films at Red Pines—bizarre, I know—but the crazies really got a kick out of them. There was this one crazy, a local. Buttons was his name. He was admitted to Red Pines three months before I arrived. The story goes that his mother walked in on him while he was making a smoothie out of their two-year-old Chihuahua, Lupe. So his mother claimed. After she scraped whatever was left of Lupe from the blender, the only thing she could recognize was the button on his collar. Poor Lupe. Buttons kept the button as a souvenir. Earned his name Buttons because he carried around these buttons. All types of buttons, too: shirt buttons, stud buttons, shank buttons. The kid liked buttons and, not to mention, giallo films, one in particular, The Man with Icy Eyes. Buttons wouldn’t shut up about the film. I don’t know why he was drawn to that one film in particular. He just was. Maybe he liked the story. Or, maybe he could somewhat relate to the icy-eyed man in the film. Who knows? You see, at Red Pines, you leave your questions at the door and your reason to the professionals.

At least that was the way they wanted the system to work.

I decide to minimize clubhopper69*_*’s Twitter page for the time being.

I check Flip’s Instagram page, which seems to be getting the most activity lately. He recently posted several pics, one being posted an hour ago. The other two posted the other night: one, I notice, was taken at the Palace. What do you know? I catch a glimpse of Moses standing among the group of clubbers. What the hell was he doing there? I can hardly recognize Moses. His face looks like a withered piece of fruit. He’s holding up a glass of what looks like ice in one hand, and he’s been moving about like a blind man from the way he stands sideways, as if the floor was made of quicksand or something wobbly.

I lean even closer to the monitor and see Nico standing in the background.

A momentary feeling of relief cleans my consciousness and for a moment, I feel as if I’m Baron Frankenstein shouting out, “He’s alive!”

Flip was actually the one who sneaked up on me when I first introduced myself to Nico. My left hand was reaching for something—I think it was my switchblade—then I was ready to slice and dice. None of the slicing or dicing part happened, only the stabbing late to come that night. Flip slapped me on the shoulder, chirping like a finch, “What’s good, Philly Blunt!”

I find another pic on Flip’s page, the most recent one. Flip’s feet are erected upright, his stubby toes curled inward like the legs of a dead spider. He’s lounging on a crummy couch in his crummy apartment, watching an episode of Seinfeld. The one about the Soup Nazi. Flip’s comment below describes exactly what he’s doing in the pic, laying on the couch with a hangover, watching reruns of Seinfeld.

I reopen clubhopper69*_*’s Twitter page and reread Flip’s gibberish that he sent not me, I mean, “Penelope.” Apparently, he wrote the message when he was seeing double. To sum it up in one sentence: Flip likes Penelope a lot—I mean, a lot—as if he didn’t get his point across by sending her another dick pic.

I insert the USB flash drive into the back of the computer and scroll through each pic inside the folder named penelope until I come across one that I haven’t used yet: Penelope posing in front of a standing mirror in her cramped dorm room, flashing her fake, rubbery tits for the phone’s camera. I send the tit pic to Flip. That should tie him over for the time being.

Then, I check out Yogi’s Instagram page. I wouldn’t call him a social butterfly like Flip or even Yolanda, Yogi’s older sister, but there’s no doubt that he shares the traits of a sheep. Occasionally, he’ll post a pic of himself scuttling around town. He’s part of Nico’s circle, I learn. Nico can be seen in several of his pics, hanging, chilling, cruising. Yogi doesn’t seem like a threat, though. According to Yogi’s posts, he’s a real softy. He actually got his name from the legendary baseball player, Yogi Bear. A soft bear, you can imagine. Like the one you want to cradle in your arms when you’re still shitting in your diapers. His recent post is a pic of a strange device called the PleasureSaber^TM.

The comment below: “Got my lady a brand new present for her birthday!!!”

I type the words Pleasure and Saber in the search engine and find a business website at the top of the page.

The circles, I remember, on Nico’s wall, each one depicting an orifice of the female body: mouth, genitals, you get the point. Nico and I were having a conversation about the circular paintings of the sex toys while hanging out on his raised deck, drinking skunky beer from a red cup, smoking cigarettes down to the filter. Huh? How about that?

I pull my thoughts away from the other night and remove the USB flash drive from the computer and smash it with the ball of the chair’s leg. I brush the crushed remains into my palm and flush them down the toilet.

II

Putting aside what happened at Nico’s house, I concentrate on Jazz and pull up her Facebook page.

The movie starts in less than two hours or so, which gives me plenty of time to get to know Jazz a little better—in person, that is. I’m not sure if I should tell her the real reason why I’m visiting Topside. She’ll probably want to know what I plan on doing while I’m here, if I plan on kicking back and enjoying the beach vibes or if I plan on getting a job like a normal person would do. I can tell her that I’m on indefinite vacation. Playing it by ear. Day to day—

—Why don’t you just finish what you’ve started?

I know Moses is right on the nose, as much as I don’t agree with him. I should finish what I’ve started. Now that Flip is out of the picture for good, I should call the number on the piece of paper. I should pursue a friendship with Nico—if he’s still alive, which, I’m certain he is—in order to acquire more information on the whereabouts of his father. And now with Anthony Foster out of the picture as well, I should investigate the other suspects involved in the shooting, the current owner of Crystal Palace, Luther Bishop, and the mysterious Smoker Man. I should be doing a lot of things, like straightening up my act or fulfilling Moses’ “small” favor.

I should be doing all of these things yet somehow I always find an excuse.

I leave Cyber Jaxx’s and walk to the boardwalk where I kill a good twenty minutes by roaming around a head shop. I arrive about ten minutes early at the Amazing Pretzel. Jazz is smoking a cigarette and staring at a sinking sun at the now reopened pier, Main Pier. The sight of the red sky brings me relief, and I can’t help but think about Jimmy, again. I see that Jazz has changed clothes, which is a good sign. She’s wearing a glittery sequined top with gold and black stripes and a pair of tight black pants, not leggings but tight enough to pass as leggings.

I play it casual and sneak up behind her without her knowing and give her a tap on her right shoulder. She turns to her right and finds an empty space next to her; then she turns to her left, wide-eyed and defensive, and finds me standing there with both of my hands open. Grinning like a goon.

“Hey there,” she says and gives me a hug.

I embrace the hug.

She smells so good, like cotton candy.

When I ask Jazz about the smell, she tells me that it’s coming from the perfume she’s wearing.

“I like it,” I tell her.

“Thanks,” she replies.

As she leans back against the railing, she pulls out a pack of menthols and offers me one.

I pull out one of mine and smoke with her.

“Cool lighter,” she says.

I hold up the lighter for her.

“You like it?”

“Yeah,” she says.

“Didn’t know you smoked,” I say, pointing at her smoke.

“I don’t,” Jazz responds with a typical shrug. “More of a social smoker. I went through a phase where I smoked like a pack a day. I know it’s terrible. It’s like a double-edged sword. My nana smoked ever since she was like sixteen, and she smoked all the way up to eighty-four before she passed away.”

“She died from smoking?”

“No,” Jazz says shortly. “She fell down the stairs. Broke her hip. Never recovered.”

“Sorry to hear.”

“It’s okay,” Jazz says playfully. “That was a really long time ago. Anyway, I don’t smoke that much anymore. Why? Does that bother you?”

“Nah,” I reply and take a drag. “I’m not one to judge.”

Silence. Again. I try to think of something to say, but I have nothing. Maybe it’s okay that I have nothing. Jazz doesn’t have anything to say either, which is okay, I guess. I look Jazz over; and she’s cool with me not having anything to say. I think she enjoys my company. I enjoy hers. I’m glad I came out.

She interrupts the silence with a sharp exhale.

“So, what do you wanna do?” she asks.

I pull out the two tickets from my pocket.

“I was thinking about catching a movie…”

I show the ticket to Jazz.

“And you just so happen to have two tickets?”

“What do you say?”

She leans closer and reads the movie title on the ticket.

“I’m down,” she says with a smile.

III

Since the movie doesn’t start until an hour and a half, we decide to kill time by hitting up the store Jazz works at, Lassie’s, which isn’t too far from the theatre. We spend a good twenty minutes or so hanging around the place, shuffling through clothes, trying on clothes from the different eras and whatnot. The place is dead. Except for the zombie playing on her phone behind the cash register—a twenty-something who, by the way, doesn’t get along with Jazz, despite them being colleagues—it’s pretty much just Jazz and me and it feels as if we’re the only two survivors left after a fallout. I like the feeling with Jazz and me having the entire world at our fingertips. We’d make it a little less cruel. We’d make that our first obligation. Then, we’d kill all of the leftover zombies. Get them out of our hair. Then, from there, we’d make the world as big as we wanted.

A gang of hipsters and skater kids loiters outside the thrift shop, but they mostly keep to themselves—like the Lost Boy kids dressed in black, the ones playing billiards in the back of Galatia. Wanderers of the Free World, my world, our world. Jazz keeps prodding at me, insisting I try on these absurd outfits, one being an outfit from the Sixties: corduroy jacket, bell bottoms, a silky collar shirt that looks like the floral wallpaper in Grandma Backer’s house, a neglected wooden box of house built in the wake of the Great Depression. The house reminded me of an animal that was tranquilized with a dart, then dumped off at the outskirts of an unnatural captivity filled with these cheap, low-income houses surrounded by corporate restaurants, cafés, and shopping malls. Last I’ve heard the house was scheduled to be demolished. I’m glad someone mustered enough courage to put the poor house out of its misery, but whatever.

I try on the outfits in the dressing room, then, with my “new” look, exit like some bashful four-year-old walking into a room filled with a bunch of unknown relatives. I shrug, as if I’m seeking approval, her approval. I make eye contact with Jazz, who’s shaking her head not in disgust but more like disdain; yet, she seems almost amused from the permanent smile on her face. I think she gets a kick out of watching me make a fool of myself the same way a child laughs at a grown man being punched or kicked or hurt. I like the way her laugh sounds, a boisterous cry out to the world without any regard of her surroundings.

I swallow my pride and change into yet another outfit, like the one before, as quickly as I can, and then, like the one before, undress as quickly as I can. Jazz’s hand grazes my shoulder as she helps me adjust the outfit. My eyes make contact with hers, both of them shrinking in curiosity as they fall onto both of my shoulders. She pinches the muscle along my neck, the trapezius muscle. Then, she squeezes. Really hard.

“You’re strong,” she tells me.

“I used to workout.”

“Why’d you stop?”

I shrug one of my shoulders, a half-shrug.

“Don’t have time,” I tell Jazz as I drift in a trance.

I can’t help but think about the time Jimmy came home from Rehab, as well as the long hours I spent building myself up into a perfect beast—shoulders and back, especially. I had Thomas’s shoulders, like a sturdy beam running across my upper back. I felt like I was building myself into a piece of property, a structure that would be able to withstand an infinite number of natural disasters; and if it ever came down to me carrying Jimmy on my back, I had two finely chiseled shoulders to support him.

I hear Jazz’s voice from a distance.

I suddenly snap from my daze.

Again, Jazz asks, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” I mumble, unsure whether or not Jazz heard my answer.

We make our way to the checkout counter.

Jazz flicks her head into a nod toward the zombie, a Janis Joplin look-alike chilling behind the counter—according to Jazz, that “spoiled bitch,” Melanie—and uses the money that she received earlier from the Russian to purchase a black jacket made of faux leather.

While she’s waiting for Melanie to ring her up, she puts on a pair of bronze earrings of a lanceolate leaf and models them in the rotating mirror on the counter. In a way, Jazz reminds me of Patria, her carefree attitude similar to the kids from the Galatia; yet, at the same time, she’s absolutely nothing like Patria or any other girl I’ve dated. She reads the same books as me, watches the same shows as me—according to her Facebook page, Lost happens to be one of her favorite TV shows of all time—which one would think that she would think the same way as me.

I decide to buy the earrings for Jazz, even though I know it’s way too soon to be buying things for a girl whom I hardly know yet—that is, in person.

“Really?” she says, bordering rapture.

I nod yes.

She flaunts them in front of me, smiling from ear to ear. She doesn’t even have to tell me that she likes the earrings. Her face speaks for itself.

“They look great on you,” I say.

“You think?”

“Yeah.”

I can afford to buy Jazz the earrings. I have the money, although I could’ve found other ways to acquire them.

IV

Jazz and I are passing hipsters or skater kids—whatever they call themselves nowadays—when all of a sudden a guy wearing a red and black Los Dementes Red Devils baseball shirt stops me. He has the look of a person blindsided by nostalgia: dropped jaw, starry, swelled eyes. I can imagine a memory somewhere behind his eyes, blossoming. The guy claims that he knows me, that I look familiar—an old friend? Old classmate? Old lover?

Jazz remains speechless when I tell the guy that I don’t know him and that he has me mistaken for someone else.

“No.” The guy leans in closer, inspects my face as if I’m wall art. “Jimmy,” he suddenly broadcasts. “It’s me. Raúl.” The guy holds out his hands as if he’s inviting me into an awkward hug. “From West Harleton. Remember?”

His arms remain open. My eyes track the gold, chunky ring on his left index finger, which looks like a pimped-out Ringpop. The front of the ring reads, “national champions.”

Raúl Suárez, center fielder for WHU. The guy had an arm made of rubber. They used to call him Magnum, like the pistol. I don’t know him, personally. Raúl was a freshman at Richport High the same year Jimmy was shot. I remember Jimmy spoke fondly of the Dominican, his potential, his skills, his overbearing “swag”—Raúl was a cocky son of a bitch who thought he was the greatest ball player to step on the field. Not sure if he still carries the same attitude. Not too long after the shooting, the West Harleton Salamanders won the National Championship. Without Jimmy.

“Raúl Suárez?” he says, as if he’s interrogating his own self.

“You got the wrong person, pal,” I tell Raúl.

“Come on,” he says. “It’s me. Raúl.”

“I don’t know you.”

“Jimmy—”

He touches me on the arm.

I push his hand away.

He holds out his hands again, but this time in surrender.

Jazz and I walk away.

I glance over my shoulder at Raúl. I overhear him say to his girlfriend, “I swear, he looks just like a guy I used to play ball with.”

As we walk away, Jazz says closely, “Who was that?”

“I have no clue,” I tell her.

Jazz doesn’t need to know what Raúl Suárez has been up to these days.

Neither do I, really.

V

When we arrive at the Twin, I buy the largest bucket of popcorn for Jazz.

“No butter please,” she emphasizes to me, not the server.

I hand the server the money and tell him exactly what Jazz told me just as he’s about to smother her popcorn in butter.

As we leave the refreshment area, Jazz asks me if I want any popcorn. I tell her no thanks yet she insists that I take a handful. After some convincing, I take a couple of bites and think of something else besides throwing up all over my date. The last thing she wants to take away from the date is her clothes stained with my puke. I desperately think about her earrings and how I have good taste in fashion, how they compliment Jazz’s bumblebee-patterned shirt. I think about how good the earrings look on her as I breathe carefully, inhaling through my nose and then exhaling through my mouth without drawing too much attention to myself.

We walk down a long stretch of hallway covered in old movie posters. Jazz points out one in particular, a movie poster from the original Terminator movie.

The sign below says, “Next Thursday.”

My stomach settles a bit. If everything goes smoothly, maybe I can take her next week.

“My favorite,” she tells me.

“Yeah,” I say. “Mine too.”

“Not too long ago, I did a movie poster for one of their ‘tbt’ nights.”

“Tbt?”

“Throwback Thursday.”

Right. Throwback Thursday. I forgot. Silly me.

She scoops another handful of popcorn into her mouth.

“What kind of posters do you do?” I ask her after she finishes chewing, then swallows.

“Depends,” she says casually. “I once did a poster for Mad Max.”

“Which one?”

“Beyond Thunderdome.”

Makes sense.

“So, you’re an artist, like an artist-artist?”

“On the side—yeah,” she says clearly for me. “I’d love to do it full time, but the competition is fierce.”

“They don’t call it ‘starving artist’ for no reason.”

“Not me,” Jazz says and takes another bite of popcorn. She says from the corner of her mouth, “A girl’s gotta eat.”

She goes on to say—after she finishes chewing—that the Mad Max poster was on display for about two weeks. The Twin paid her two-fifty for a copy of the print. They unveiled the poster at one of their “TBT” Nights. She says that the manager in charge of the theatre made it into a big deal. The whole staff was there. They made Jazz give a presentation, as well as a speech before she unveiled the poster. She tells me that she “hated” talking in front of crowds.

“There were only like ten people,” she says, “but still, I was so nervous.”

“I hate talking in front of crowds.”

“I used to,” she says. “I once took a public speaking course at HPCC. It was okay, I guess.”

“Not me,” I reply.

“Really?”

I shake my head no.

She shrugs.

“Maybe you hated giving speeches in a past life.”

“Maybe,” I say.

We arrive at our theatre. My stomach begins to tighten with nervousness. I hold the door open for Jazz, who, in return, says cutely, “Thank you.” We walk through a narrow tunnel as dark as the night until we arrive at a dimly lit theatre, which is nearly full of people who are staring at us. Or, are they staring at me? I want them to stop looking at us. I want them stop looking, in general. I want them to mind their own business. That’s when more tightness comes back, that relentless fist, starting with my throat and then my chest. I turn my focus to the sea, the serenity, the feel of each grain of sand between my toes as the tide rushes toward the shore. Tomorrow, I tell myself, I’ll take a walk on the beach. I’ll say my goodbyes to Jimmy. Maybe Jazz can join us, but then again…I’ve already spent enough time on her. And money. She has a job. She can afford these things. What has she done for me? What can she offer me? What does she get out of all of this? I don’t need her. I’ll get some action tonight. Then, I’ll scrape her off my heel and be done with her. I have Jimmy. I have more important things to do.

And, Jazz doesn’t involve any of them.

Suddenly, I feel a hand grab me by the forearm, but I close my eyes and I realize it’s just my arm grazing the side of the railing—did you say something?

I look up and Jazz is staring at me.

“What is it?” she asks again.

I tense up for a moment.

“Huh?” I say.

“Never mind,” she says and proceeds up the steps.

I nudge Jazz on the shoulder and tell her in a flat, mechanical voice, “I’ll be back.” She giggles, but it’s not until I make it to the men’s restroom that I realize why Jazz was laughing.

I switch on the faucet and splash my face with cool water and practice breathing from my belly. My breath is like some kind of magical housefly disappearing from one passageway to another. I make the water warmer and dam all ten of my fingers underneath the water: a method I learned from a Chinese holistic doctor.

As the nausea begins to wear off, I turn my eyes toward the mirror.

The door opens behind me and I stop what I’m doing. In the reflection of the mirror, I see a man dressed in a gray suit walking to the urinal. I locate this pale scar on the back of his neck. I know that scar, which means I know the man.

What the hell are you doing here?

He doesn’t respond. Instead, he starts to whistle something merry like “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” I know the sound is coming from the faucet, the whistling. Go back to the theatre. Ignore him.

Moses finishes urinating, shakes it twice, and then turns his shoulder. Somewhere over his shadowy face, I witness a smirk. I look down at my pants to see that water has splashed over my groin. Shit. I dry my pants with a towel.

—You already know exactly where your relationship with this girl is going. Moses squares himself to me, and he’s two shades beyond angry. The outcome isn’t going to be pleasant. I’m going to ask you again. Why are you wasting your time on her?

You’re jealous.

Do you hear yourself right now?

Do you?

All Moses cares about is himself and I voice my complaint to him, but he drowns out my voice by flushing the urinal.

Just as Moses takes another step closer, the bathroom door opens again.

An older man walks inside and nods a civil hello as he walks to the closest urinal.

I finish washing up and then head back to the theatre.

I’ve gotten this far into the night. I don’t need him. I don’t need a fix. It’s all in my head. He’s all in my head…

I’m back in the theatre, searching for Jazz. An arm suddenly stretches above the seats and waves at me. I track down the face underneath the hand. Jazz. I nod back. Somehow, she’s found two seats in the middle—or, what I like to call the “sweet spot.” She’s smarter than smart. She knows her theatres. Either it’s a coincidence that she found the sweet spot, or she is fully aware of the sweet spot. Very few know about the sweet spot. Not too close to the screen but not too far back. The sound is perfect in the sweet spot.

I find my way back to Jazz and sit down next to her.

More relieved.

“Good seats,” I tell her.

“Yeah,” she says. “The sweet spot.”

I nod my head.

“Right,” I parrot. “The sweet spot.”

The lights darken and I quit thinking about all of the wrongs and focus on all of the rights. Right here. This is my right. Me. Right here. Sitting in a movie theatre with a sweet girl in the sweet spot. Forget about last night and the night before and the night before that. Forget about everything. This is as real as it is right.

Jazz pokes me on the arm with her elbow and offers me more popcorn.

I reach into the bucket, grab a handful of popcorn, shove the popcorn into my mouth, then chew and swallow before I can hold a thought in my head.

I calm myself as soon as I hear the drum roll of the film playing, a pale blue cloud billowing over the screen with the words Gloria Film pushing toward us.

The reel is old, from all the dust and scratches on the film. I like the way it looks: blemished with age, like an antiquity that only increases in value over time. Just like the Spider Man comic book: an investment. The Twin doesn’t play any coming attractions. I don’t expect the theatre to play any, especially from a film that was released decades ago.

Has it really been that long?

Jazz lifts the armrest and places the bucket between the two seats, and together we munch on popcorn.

Every now and then, our hands graze one another as we dig through the mound of popcorn and pull out handfuls at a time.

This is what normal people do.

It feels good to be normal, if only for a while.

VI

By the time Inspector Sylvester closes in on the masked killer, I’m watching another film, not Blood and Black Lace. I turn away from the screen and peek over at Jazz, her slack face as still as a painting as it basks in the glow of the silver screen. I’m confused—at first—as to why Jazz’s gawking at the film; then, every thought I carry inside my head becomes as lucid as the lines on the palm I hold before me. Jazz is not gawking, not watching. She’s motionless, too. A body stuck on pause. A freeze frame. I look around and notice that the theatre is deserted, that only Jazz and I are sitting in the sweet spot of the last locale remaining on Earth, a solitary fortress of both amnesty and amusement to protect us from the beasts that roam the scorched wasteland.

Once more, I glance down at the palm of my hand and then at the other—my left one—which is locked with Jazz’s hand.

Blood and Black Lace is still playing; however, it looks much different in quality. The film doesn’t look as old as it did when it first started. I wonder if they’re playing an extended cut or an alternate edition.

On the screen, the masked killer is pushing a woman’s face into flames, her hands clawing at the sides of a furnace, screaming, fighting. She reaches around in a last moment of desperation, grabs hold of the killer’s mask, and rips it off, revealing a face, Moses’ face. Moses strikes her in the back of the head with a club—dazing her—then he tosses the woman into the blazing furnace and closes the door behind her.

The person being burned, I notice, isn’t the woman from the movie. It’s not even a woman at all. It’s a man. The man, I realize, is Jimmy and he’s trapped inside a box about the size of a coffin. We see the inside of the box, Jimmy hopelessly kicking and punching at the walls around him, trying to claw himself to freedom. During the attempt, his nails don’t break off his fingertips. Yet, each one easily peels away like a stickie note. The flames rise from beneath Jimmy’s naked body and cut through his blackened flesh, slowly turning it to ash. I can even feel the heat of the flames tightly pressed against my face. I’m sweating bullets. Godly sounds of thunder rumbling above, then the ceiling gives way to a night sky. I turn back around. The screen is gone. The theatre, gone. I’m back on the same bridge from my nightmares. Strobe lights of lightning flash all around me.

I’m dying again.

Besides me, two men are holding my body upright. One of them is holding my hand—my left one. I recognize his face, Anthony’s pale, lifeless face. Strings of blood are gushing from his neck; yet, his grip around my arm is as tight as death. In front of me stands another man, not Nico. He looks like Nico yet he is much older than Nico. He is Nico’s father, Conrad. I know this movie. This is it. Jimmy’s movie. Jimmy’s ending. Jimmy’s beginning. I release my slippery hand from Anthony’s hand and pull myself from Jimmy’s body. Now, I’m standing on the outside. I’m no longer the victim of a crime. Now, I’m the sole observer. The shadow watching the fate of my brother. Flashes of lightning cut across the black sky, bringing out parts of Conrad’s unhealthy face. A smirk, I see, as he raises the Glock and points the barrel at Jimmy’s head. He speaks to him in a foreign dialect. Italian, I believe. I recognize the one word from his language: Dio, meaning God. When you meet God, Conrad says in Italian, ask Him to forgive me. A bolt of lightning flickers across my eyes! Then, I hear a gunshot!

I feel another hand shaking me on my shoulder…

My eyes flicker open!

Confused again, I look around and see people standing from their seats and then walking toward the exits of the theatre.

I turn to Jazz, still in a state of utter confusion, then I turn to the screen, the ending credits.

“Were you sleeping?” she asks me.

I look around the theatre once more.

“I must’ve dozed off…”

“It happens,” she says with a shrug, “I guess.”

She looks at me with that same look the cute waitress from the Cove was giving me the other day.

I hate that look.

“I know exactly what you need right now,” Jazz says.

“You do?”

Jazz nods yes.

She does.

“What?”

She holds out her hand.

I grab it.

“Let’s go,” she says.

Hand in hand, I follow Jazz’s lead.

We leave the Twin behind us.

VII

South of the Point is New Town, a snug city on the “other” side of the tracks. Jazz instructs me to park next to Ron’s boat shop. I do as she tells me to. I park the car. She steps out of the car without saying a word. I follow suit, wondering what Jazz is up to, considering she’s been acting strange ever since we left the movie theatre.

We walk through the edge of town for about a quarter of a mile until we reach the coastline. Each house looks like the silhouette of a baby mountain, alive in its own peculiar way with its windows like the eyes of a subterranean creature, so many of them and so bright.

(I once read an article in Gossip about a lot of actors and celebrities having houses in New Town)

It’s one thing to read about it and another to see it.

Finally, after not being able to hold out much longer, I ask Jazz, “Where are we going?”

“It’s a surprise,” Jazz says as she leads me across a desolate street. “If I were to tell you, then that would cease to make it a surprise. Now, wouldn’t it?”

I keep up with Jazz the best I can as she races down a steep pathway, which runs into a narrow strip of sand. The nerves are like a web of hot wires tightly laced across my body. My stomach, like the beach mansions, alive as it makes all sorts of peculiar sounds. I focus on William’s words, as well as my breathing, and chase Jazz to the beach.

After I catch my breath, Jazz tells me that we’re here, as she points to a massive edifice perched on a natural overhang. She acts as if she knows the layout of the house, as if she’s been here before. I never ask Jazz if she has. Yet, I take it—more or less—as a sign that she’s being spontaneous. We make it to the edge of the property. The lights are off, except for the pool lights, which cast a golden haze over the foggy ridge of the bluff.

I keep my mouth shut and follow her up a wooden pathway, which leads to the pool behind the house.

Jazz removes her new jacket and strips down to her undies.

“Jazz,” I say suddenly, “what are you doing?”

With a shrug, she says calmly, “It’s better than coffee. Plus, it saves money on utilities. And, not only that, it beats going to the public pool.”

“Seriously?”

“Do I look serious?” she asks me.

She sets her clothes, as well as her phone, aside and doesn’t waste any time jumping into the pool.

I scope out the place, make sure nobody is home. Last thing I need right now is being busted for trespassing.

Jazz surfaces from the water after several tense moments of ole me frantically scanning the area. She tells me the water feels great.

I tell Jazz to get out of the pool.

Her eyes sharpen, seductive.

“What are you…”

Then, the word rolls right off her tongue.

“…yellow?”

I remove my shirt, then my pants, then my socks, then toss my clothes behind an azalea.

I clear all of my thoughts and stiffen up my body into a board as I step into the pool. Once I hit the water, it feels like a shot of adrenaline. The water is surprisingly cold, but it feels better than great. I make sure to tell Jazz that it feels amazing.

Her only response, “Told you.”

We don’t say much as we tread water. I swim closer to Jazz, shivering from the coldness of the water. I notice her makeup has washed off, which makes her look even more attractive. The nerves are gone as well, the nausea. I feel just right. Everything about the night feels right.

As I advance closer to Jazz—preparing my lips for a kiss—the lights inside the house suddenly turn on!

A nicely dressed man with a Herculean-like frame steps from the backdoor.

Jazz grabs me by the arm and ducks into the water before I can embrace one last deep breath before going under. We swim to the side of the wall closest to the house and keep out of sight. I keep my eyes open under the water and study Jazz’s face. Her eyes are shut, both of them tightly closed as if she’s bracing herself for impact. That’s when my mind ventures to darker places: me placing my hand over Jazz’s mouth, then slipping my other hand around her throat. Squeeze. Then, abracadabra! She’ll be no more, dissolved in the water like an Alka-Seltzer tablet. It’ll be as if God plucked her from existence. All that would remain of her is a memory, fading like a photograph over time. By then, it’ll be as if she never existed at all. Her parents will miss her. Relatives or other distant family members. Who else? She says she “knows” guys, but I know that she’s lying. What about her art, the movie posters? Will they be thrown away? Will they be tossed aside in storage, left to age ungraciously on the dusty shelves of an ancient world? Or, even worse, will they somehow smuggle their way into the vast wilderness of the Internet until finally being found by a desperate artist who’ll photoshop Jazz’s name and pass her art off as his or her own?

I shake the thought from my head and gently touch Jazz on the arm. She cracks open her eyes. Both of them. Her eyes are like a cat, peering at me; and for a moment, she barely tilts her head, like a cat does whenever it’s confused or intrigued or flabbergasted or whatever it is cats do—even dogs do for that matter—when they tilt their head to the side like that.

Again, my devious mind travels to dark places and I’m thinking about what she sees when she stares at me. I want to rip her eyes from the sockets of her skull and replace them with mine. I wonder what she would see. Then, I want to remove her brain from her head and replace it with mine. I wonder exactly what she would think. Would she love me?

     I swim closer and the blood rushes down my body and I’m excited. I feel Jazz getting warmer as well. She stops shaking, squeezes me on the arm, as if she’s about to run out of oxygen and she’s ready to surface.

The lights suddenly shut off above us.

I draw my eyes upward and I surface.

Jazz surfaces shortly after.

I crane my head above the pool and watch the nicely dressed man walking back inside the house. I turn to Jazz, and what do you know, she’s smiling at me.

VIII

After we get out of the pool, we take our clothes and scurry back down to the beach. Jazz asks me to hold her things while she washes the chlorine from her hair. She can’t remove the smile from her face as she rinses off. Neither can I. She cuts off the shower, shivering from the coldness of the water. I hand her things back to her, including her smartphone.

During the exchange, my hand touches a photo protruding from her purse. I can’t help but glance at the girl in the photo. The girl is overweight, borderline obsessed, unattractive.

As I move my eyes from the photo, I find Jazz’s eyes attached to mine as well. I don’t ask about the girl in the photo. Instead, she tells me bluntly that it’s her. I look closer at the photo.

“That’s you?” I say in surprise.

She wrings the water from her hair, wags both of her hands, then dries them.

“Was me,” she says, her voice deflated.

I don’t have any words to say.

Jazz tells me, “I know what you’re thinking…”

“So, what?” I shrug, as she would do. “You used to be fat. No big deal.”

Her mood suddenly changes from carefree to uncaring.

“It was to me,” she says sharply.

I’ve offended her.

Not only am I the idiot, but I’m also the asshole.

Despite being wet, Jazz dresses—struggling somewhat as she slips into her pants.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” I say, as I too quickly put on my clothes.

Jazz doesn’t respond. Don’t expect her to, really. Now fully dressed, she walks away without me. I don’t bother washing the chlorine from my hair. Instead, I follow Jazz. We keep our distance as we walk along the beach. I hurry my way closer to Jazz and decide to break the tension between us.

“I’m sorry,” I say closely. “I really am…”

“There’s no need to be sorry,” she says, her voice short and bitter as she curls her arms into her chest.

She sniffs the phlegm from her nose and it sounds as if she’s been crying during our distance apart, but I can’t tell whether she’s insecure about herself or she’s just plain cold.

“You didn’t know,” she says, her voice now more vacant.

“But I want to know,” I tell her and stop in front of her.

With her head held down, Jazz takes a step around me, but I cut her off again. She stops. I face Jazz, and she slowly lifts her head.

“I want to know everything about you.”

“You do?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” I say without giving any thought to my answer.

Wrong words, I know, but they’re the right words.

She appears as if she’s in shock. I don’t know why.

“I know it’s none of my business…”

I pause for a second.

What am I doing?

Stay out of her business.

Then, I ask Jazz, “I want to know why you hold onto something that makes you so upset?”

She uncrosses her arms, thinks for a moment as she stares at the dark sea, and then answers, “You got it all wrong, Jimmy. I don’t hold onto it because it makes me upset.”

The sound of the name punches me in the gut, but I hold my ground.

I focus on Jazz.

“Then, why do you hold onto it?” I ask her.

“I hold onto it because it reminds me.”

“Reminds you of what?”

“It reminds me of who I was,” Jazz tells me. She looks away, struggling to look me in the eyes; and each time she peeks over at me, her eyes are lowered as if the sight of me repels her. “I have regrets. I’m ashamed of who I…” she tears up for a moment, “…who I once was.” She turns her gaze to the sea again and then turns to me with the same steely gaze on her face, as if she’s ready to charge into battle, an animal ready to pounce, pupils swollen with blackness. “I need to remember as much as I need air in my lungs,” she says, her voice raised with hostility. “It gives me strength. Purpose. Who are you to judge?”

“Jazz, I’m not judging,” I tell her.

She gives me that same look again, not the one I’m used to, the one I hate, but one that sends me into a state of me wanting to know more about her. She cracks open her mouth as if she wants to tell me something personal, but she can’t find the right words to say. I can see pain behind her eyes.

Right then and there, I know she’s holding onto a secret as dark as my own.

IX

Jazz doesn’t say a single word to me as we leave the beach. I’ve only been on one date with this girl—technically, two, if you’re counting the walk on the boardwalk—and now, I’m in the doghouse.

As I’m walking toward the car, I notice Jazz is walking in the other direction, as if she doesn’t want to ride with me. Since I insist on driving her home without coming off as a dick, she finally caves in.

Her apartment is located in a rundown area between Topside and the Point, and most of the people who live around here, I notice, are either illegals or poor retirees who have fallen victim to the last recession. That’s our wonderful government for you: one day, they’re taking a thick cut from your paycheck or jacking up the cost of your premiums in order to pay for freeloaders or, as Susannah would say, “lazy people,” and then, the next forty-some years later, they’re sending you a check in the mail with not even half of what they originally took out. You wind up living your final years with just enough money to buy pet food. All of the time you spent feeding the system for nothing. The government had their lubricated hand up your ass the entire time and they turned out to be the greatest ventriloquist of all time.

I continue to receive the silent treatment as I park in front of her apartment.

“This is it,” she says as she turns to me in a somewhat fragile state. “Don’t get me wrong. I had a great time tonight—”

“—Despite me falling asleep and then insulting you?”

“Yes,” she drawls. A smile scrambles free on her face. The silence worked out in my favor.

I feel relieved from Jazz’s smile.

“I had a great time too.” I switch off the ignition and pause and think carefully about my next words. “Listen, Jazz, I understand why you were upset. I really do—”

“—Forget it,” she says before I have a chance to finish my sentence.

She places her hand over mine on the gear. I turn my eyes to Jazz’s. Then, she leans forward and kisses me on the cheek. No tongue. Just lips. Like her own little signature. She opens the door and looks back at me and says, “Who’s Lamar?”

“What do you mean?” I ask as she steps outside and closes the door behind her. She leans through the open window.

Then follows, “I tried calling you earlier to tell you that I was going to be getting off work much sooner.”

Technically, Jazz doesn’t catch me in a lie. As before, saying something as vague as “not having one on me” could pass as the truth, which is true. I don’t have a phone on me, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that I don’t own a phone. I tell Jazz the truth about the payphone, about me not owning a phone—not even a landline—then I tell her about Lamar. I didn’t exactly know the man’s name at the time, but I remember him sitting there next to the payphone. Each line or wrinkle on his aged face was like a depressing story and his breath smelled of an ulcer. Another victim of a failed economy. I bought three tacos from Pollo Picante, gave the guy one of my tacos, and I remember he couldn’t thank me enough.

I expect Jazz to turn around, walk to her apartment, and be gone from my life for good, but…

She asks me if I’m some kind of alien in a joking kind of way.

“Not that I’m aware of,” I tell her.

She smiles, again, as if me not having a phone doesn’t bother her.

On the contrary, she finds it just as intriguing as me not being on social media.

“Well,” she says, “I work tomorrow afternoon.” She leans farther through the passenger side window. “Feel free to swing by, if you’re not too busy.”

“Yeah,” I tell her through the window. “I might do that.”

“And thanks for the earrings,” she says.

“You’re welcome.”

They got her name written all over it. She was born to wear them.

“I’ll talk to you soon then.”

I tell her good night.

She repeats and strolls away.

As she disappears into her apartment, I pull out Nico’s number from my pocket and hold it in my hand.

Decisions, decisions.

Sick Day

I decide to go fancier, as in a slightly nicer room than the one at Lucky’s. I have plenty enough money to stay at the Foreshore Hotel for at least a couple of nights. The room is decent with a decent view of the Pacific—and by the way, much cleaner than where I’ve been staying for the past few days. It has your ordinary good coastal vibrations: powder baby boy blue walls, white wicker chairs, twin beds with a comforter patterned with palm springs, and not to mention, a kitchen.

My appetite is something fierce after spending a night with Jazz. So, I grab a half-eaten cheeseburger and a plate of french fries, which have barely been touched, from a room service tray across the hallway and take it back to my room. The burger is as cold as the plate itself, but I’ve eaten much worse.

I kick off my shoes and socks and curl my toes into the shag carpet and watch a little TV.

I flip through the channels, but there’s nothing on.

At least nothing that catches my interest.

From the nightstand, I grab the TV Guide with a current picture of Clint Eastwood.

I skim through a list of channels until I come across the pay-per view channels—the naughty ones that cost money.

II

For about ten minutes, I pace around the hotel room and contemplate jerking off.

After another ten minutes fly by, and then another, I finally give in. I grab the issue of Busties from my bookbag and just as I remove the magazine, I come across a tube of red lipstick that I picked from Jazz’s purse. I twist open the tube and take a whiff of the lipstick. The feeling comes back like a furious fleet charging directly south. I give in to the feeling and start to touch myself until I can’t take it any longer.

I suddenly rush to my office, thinking about every inch of me being inside Jazz. I finish doing my business. Then, once the guilt phase passes, I lie down on the bed and close my eyes.

III

The nightmares are gone.

I wake up to the sound of the angry sea by my side. I grab a cup of coffee from a continental breakfast downstairs and then I head back to my room. I drink about half a cup until the sweating starts and the coffee inches back up my throat. I rush to the bathroom and vomit and the vomiting is violent, too, as if I’m giving birth to ungrateful demon through my mouth. I end up vomiting whatever I put inside me, like orange juice or the apple Danish I pocketed while I was snooping around the lounge area downstairs, then dry heaving every thirty minutes for the next three hours, then lying in bed, unable to keep still, then sweating, then waiting around to vomit some more, then lying in the cool bed sheets before they turn all hot and wet again. I try to go back to sleep, to surrender myself to the black, but I feel feverish. I make sure to stay hydrated by drinking water, but even water is hard to hold down.

IV

I wake up to the sound of a gunshot.

I jolt upright from the bed and check the door where I see a stubby-looking maid standing behind the peephole, both of her eyes bug-eyed and her head freakishly blown out of proportion like an image behind a fish lens frame. She knocks three times, then presses her ear against the door, listening carefully, waiting whether or not she should come in. No. Please don’t come in. I check the time. It’s already ten o’clock. Checkout was at nine.

Through the door, I tell the maid to pass as I try to pull myself together. I buy another night’s stay; then, I go back to the room and sleep for the remainder of the morning.

V

I dream about spiders of all shapes and sizes crawling on the walls, creeping on my bed, on my pillow, and cramming themselves inside every orifice of my body.

VI

It’s already a quarter past four o’clock and Jazz is probably still at work.

I recognize that it’s vital to eat, even though I have no desire to eat. If it comes down to forcing myself to eat, then I will. I guess. I used to get like this when I was younger, but that was so long ago. I’d lay, sit, or mope around my room all day, sicker than a squirrel with nut allergies, unable to play with the other kids outside, unable to eat, unable to do anything, really, but just lay, sit, or mope. Not in any particular order. Sometimes Jimmy and I would pretend to be sick, as in take a hot shower or run around the house like madmen before Susannah took our temperature, just so we didn’t have to go to school. On those days when I didn’t pretend, I felt like dying, like this was it, this is how I go, not fighting or, as I always imagined going out, in a blaze of glory, but shriveling away in my bed like some kind of neglected plant. At times, I felt like giving up. I threw up a lot, as if nothing was ever good enough for my spoiled stomach. I couldn’t stand the physical strain of throwing up, yet I used to feel much better afterwards. Susannah used to call them bugs. I used to get a lot of them. A lot. I was a sex magnet for bugs. Jimmy, never. Of all the members of our family, he was the one person who never got sick. Never. For the longest time, I felt as if he wasn’t human, as if he was made from some kind of material that hadn’t yet been discovered by scientists, as if he was some kind of new organism or something like that, as if not getting sick was Jimmy’s superpower. I remember I went a stretch for about four years where I didn’t throw up at all. No bugs. Like Jimmy. I didn’t even get sick in that stretch. Not even a cold during the winter.

If I don’t eat, I’ll be a sloth for the rest of the day. I need to eat without getting high, too.

I decide to stop at the nearest Burger Inn. I order the number four combo, chicken sandwich and waffle fries with a large Sprite, and I take the food back to my room and watch an episode of Law and Order while I nibble from the greasy fast food. I eat most of my food and manage to hold it down. I feel a little better now that I have food in my stomach.

After I finish eating, I relax on the balcony for about an hour and smoke cigarettes and watch the clouds pass by as the kids play in the sea below.

Another grueling hour passes and I get bored.

Most of the day has been a complete wash, so I make something positive out of it by stopping by Prehistoric Cave. I drive twenty minutes to Long Pointe, a small beach town outside Hillside. I walk around artificially damp caves and dwellings, which smell of fresh paint, and check out the waxed sculptors of cavemen and cavewomen and cavechidren. The whole time, I think about Jazz walking by my side. What would I say to her? What would we talk about? How would she react to the cavemen? If so, would she comment on them? I know she’d say something cute like: What if cavemen have smartphones? Would they use text or emojis? When I think about Jazz, all that comes to mind is her smile and that’s what really keeps me going. I stop at one display of mammoths and sabertooths, both posed in positions that would suggest that these creatures about to tear into something living with their tusks and fangs. It’s hard to believe that they actually existed. I’ve read all about these mammals in magazines and books such as Modern Ice Age by Kurt Van Burns, a prolific author who’s right up there with greats like Steinbeck or Dickens. I’ve read about the violence of Mother Nature, the savagery when faced with survival. I can only imagine what it’d be like if these creatures weren’t extinct. What if they were alive today? I can only imagine.

VII

When I get back to the Foreshore after driving around for a couple of hours, it’s already night and I’m feeling frisky.

I pull out two numbers, one being Nico’s and the other being Jazz’s, and lay them out on the nightstand.

I pocket one of the numbers, then dial the other on the hotel phone.

“Hello?”

I say hey.

Jazz’s voice suddenly climbs over the phone.

“Hey, Jimmy,” she says. “What are you up to?”

“Oh nothing much,” I tell her. “I was meaning to stop by and visit you at work, but I’ve been under the weather all day.”

“Is everything okay?” she asks.

“Yeah,” I tell her. “Must’ve been something I ate.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” I say, “but I think I’m fine now.”

I lie down on the bed and make myself comfortable and talk to Jazz on the phone.

VIII

We’re about two hours in when sex enters the conversation.

Jazz was talking about an old high school boyfriend whom she ran into the other day on the boardwalk. She told me that he used to belittle her—he was even rough with her, not in bed, just in general, like in public or in the car. She asked me about the girls I’ve dated, and I only told her about the decent ones, which lasted past the normal month-ish fling. Basically, ones who were worth bringing home to Susannah. There were only a few of them. Maybe one or two whom I could’ve settled down with, if I put in the time and effort because that’s what it really takes to be with someone, time and effort—not like I’m an expert on dating or anything. I decided to throw in a couple of other girls in the mix just to bump up my résumé. I didn’t want to give Jazz the impression that I’m “inexperienced” or “ not confident” when it comes to a person of the opposite sex. Yet, I’ve done this relationship thing before. Many times. Hell, I consider myself to be pretty good at relationships. Not to brag and all, but I think I’ve mastered the art and all of my breakups have been mutual—and not to mention, I’m still friends with the very same girls that I stopped dating. That sort of thing. Most importantly, though, I had to give Jazz the impression that I’m boyfriend material and not just some guy who sleeps around. This is the most important feature: self-control. The bells and whistles of a boyfriend. He has to be sensual and romantic and cuddly and a “good listener” and all of that other mushy crap girls like without coming off as some slutty dude-whore. Basically, he has to know when to keep his dick in his pants. I believe I’ve proved to Jazz that I could be that guy, the compassionate, sensitive, caring guy. One white lie won’t hurt Jazz. I turned the question back to her and then she answered by listing off unusual encounters from previous relationships. For instance: “I once dated a guy who could turn his eyelids inside out”; or “I once dated a guy who had a pot-bellied pig as a pet”; or “I once dated a guy who drank his own urine”; or “I once dated a guy who collected cereal boxes”; or “I once dated a guy who went to Cosplay ever year dressed up as Tingle from Legend of Zelda.”

I couldn’t help but wonder what she’ll be saying about me to another guy once she really gets to know me: “I once dated a guy who was a full-on psychopath.”

That was when things took an abrupt turn; and before I can even control myself, I’m sweating in unusual areas of my body.

Again, Jazz asks me about my sexual positions—doggystyle, missionary, reverse cowgirl?

Before I can answer, Jazz tells me her preferences.

My breath grows tight and labored and I find myself playing with myself yet again as Jazz starts to talk about how she likes it when the guy kisses her on her neck, just an inch or so below the ear—softly, she says, her voice soft as well, as if it’s wearing a wool-knitted toboggan—then she says that she likes it when the guy slowly runs his fingers down her back, around the curves of her hips, and her words are slow as well, as if they’re meant to draw arousal. And that’s when I find myself growing, just when she’s about to round second base.

Jazz says over the phone, “What are you doing?”

“Nuttin’,” I say and quickly roll out of bed. “Nothing. Uh. I just spilled a drink on myself—”

“—Say, what are you doing right now besides spilling drinks on yourself?”

“Ah…nothing,” I say again. “I’m doing nothing…”

“Do you want to do Facetime with me, if it’s not too late?”

“Facetime?”

“Yeah,” she says. “Facetime.”

“I don’t—”

“—That’s right. I forgot.” Deflation in her voice as she trails off, “Sorry…”

“No,” I say without hesitation. “Don’t be. What are you doing tomorrow? Let’s hang out.”

“I work again in the afternoon, but that’s it.”

“Say, why don’t we get together tomorrow after you get off work?”

“Yeah,” Jazz says. “I’d like that.”

I feel Jazz smile over the other end of the phone and I find myself getting hard again.

Electric Eyes

I piddle around for most of the day until Jazz gets off work. I give her a call with a burner phone that I bought at the electronics store off Park Central and tell her that I’ll meet her at the same place we met the other night—near the Amazing Pretzel.

I drive back to the Foreshore and wash up; and it’s by far the gayest shower I’ve ever taken—gay, as in carefree. I’m laughing, too, and singing the oldie song “Book of Love” by The Monotones while I’m scrubbing the shampoo from my hair. For a while, I mean, for a minute or so, I’m not thinking about a damn thing and my voice sounds golden, as if I’m in a sound booth singing into a soap of a microphone as a well-groomed producer on the other side of the glass gives me a thumbs up. I sound as good as Sam Cooke—if not, ten times better—all thanks to the acoustics of the shower and halfway through singing the song, I hear two thuds against the wall from the guest next door. I just laugh it off. For a while, it almost feels like Fourth of July all over again. If only for a while.

I dress into fresh clothes and stop at Spirits to grab a drink. I take a step inside the store when all of a sudden I have a tough time picking out what I want to drink. So many to chose from. So many decisions. What kind of buzz do I want to feel tonight? Horny liquor buzz or laid back beer buzz? I stand in front of the whiskey aisle, still flustered on what to buy. The doubts start to swirl inside my mind. Each thought is telling me to turn around and leave and meet up with Jazz. Hang out with her sober, not drunk. I don’t need a drink. My chest isn’t that tight. Neither is my throat. My head isn’t as foggy as it’s been lately. I haven’t touched a drink in a couple of days and I’m feeling like I’m at the beginning stages of that crucial process where I’m starting to get my shit together. I haven’t felt like this in—honestly, I can’t even remember how long.

I decide to leave the store and walk back to my car.

On the way, I witness a couple of lanky shadows slide across the pavement below my feet.

In the reflection of the door’s window, two dark figures rise over my shoulder.

I hear a click; then I feel a barrel pressing against the backside of my head.

“Give me your fuckin’ money, bitch,” a bullet of a voice says from behind.

I turn my shoulder, but a black gloved hand suddenly forces my head the other way.

“Did I say ‘turn around,’ muthafucka?” the voice says.

I don’t have a blade on me. I don’t have my revolver either. I have nothing. Just my two fists.

This can’t be how I die, shot in the back by some punk.

As I plan out my next angle of attack, I feel a rush of air over my ear.

Suddenly, the blood charges to my head. I stumble forward and ram my shoulder into the side of my car. I look up and see two faces underneath white bandanas with black paisley print. I can only see their eyes for they wear the bandanas like lawless bandits, and their eyes, from what I gather, have no color or life in them. The punks don’t waste any time kicking me in the ribs. I defensively curl my body inward, tightening all of the muscles in my body, and shield my face. One punk is wearing this white cast, which runs from his elbow to his hand. He manages to get a good lick across my nose with the backside of the cast. I think I have a broken nose. I taste the tartness of metal on the back of my tongue and I know my nose is possibly fucked up. Maybe not entirely broken—I’m being rather dramatic—but it’s bleeding badly. The other punk is tugging at my wrist, trying to grab the Rolex. I retract my arm and in return, I receive a swift boot across the face. Blood rushes away from the impact, sending a streak of pain throughout my body. Pellets of pain perforate my body. One jab after another. I feel like some lame character in a comic book with each exaggerated blow to my body letting a bold, italicized CRRRK or KRRFPH! The sounds of pain. In the midst of the pain, I feel Thomas’s watch being yanked from my wrist as the winder scrapes along my skin and I try to find it but it’s already in his gloved hand. As I make one last ditch effort to grab the Rolex, my head jerks back from another kick to the face. The blow hurts something awful. A mouthful of blood violently sprays from my mouth and hits the side of my car like a crushed egg. My world goes black for a moment and then a pale blue light shines over my eyes. I realize it’s not the Light from Heaven—as so many of those survivors talk about on the TV or in the books—but the flash of a smartphone. Somewhere below the blinding light, one of the punks is pouring a smelly liquid over my face. The liquid is strangely warm and yellow, too, as it pours over my face; and I don’t realize what the liquid is until I get a better whiff of it.

Muthafucka.

I hear the snap of a camera!

Say cheese!

At the last second, I fight through the ache and raise both of my hands and block my face from the camera.

One of the punks sneaks in another kick to my exposed ribs, which are possibly broken.

I take note of his shoe and the feel of it pressed against my body, but the thought alone dissolves inside the gray haze.

The next sounds I hear are the footsteps of two punks running away followed by hooting and hollering.

II

The two punks who jacked me ended up scoring two hundred and ninety-one dollars, not including the Rolex, which is probably worth triple of what they scored. Split all of that between two people and that’s just over a hundred and forty-five dollars apiece, not including the price of the Rolex.

When I get back to the Foreshore, I’m more pissed at myself than at the punks who jumped me from behind. I don’t have any life-threatening injuries. Just a few cuts and bruises on my face and a banged-up nose and possibly a broken rib or two, but I’ll live.

I wash the blood and urine from my face, put a handful of ice in a plastic garbage bag, and press the bag against my face. I lie down on the bed and relax; and as I’m replaying the past events in my head, I’m wondering what I could’ve done differently. It doesn’t dawn on me that I’m supposed to meet up with Jazz until the thought of Jazz enters my thought—shit!

I pull the burner from my pocket, but I don’t dial her number. I just stare at the burner, contemplating.

What do I even tell her?

Tell me.

III

I open the sliding door to the balcony and concentrate on the sound of waves crashing along the shore. The repetitive sound helps me relax and makes it easier for me to retrace my thoughts to the initial point of impact—CRRRK!

     I visualize the punk striking down at me, his dark eyes meeting with mine. Relax. Focus. Then, it suddenly hits me! Not the cast or his eyes. Instead, it’s a moment of clarity.

That scumbag, that weasel, that lousy piece of shit, that goddamn coward. No wonder he jumped me from behind when I wasn’t looking. No wonder he was wearing a mask to cover up his stupid face. Only superheroes with superpowers wear masks to hide their face in order to protect the ones they love, superheroes who stand against the tyranny of evil. He’s no superhero nor is his weaselly friend. They’re cowards. That’s exactly what they are.

I hobble from one side of the room to the other, a constant back and forth, back and forth, contemplating my next move.

Why didn’t I pick up on it sooner?

I’m extremely sore, but I clean myself up and throw on some clothes anyway. I drive straight to Cyber Jaxx’s and log onto the first computer I see. If I know him like I think I do, the pic will already be posted. Sure enough, there it is. Posted exactly one hour ago on Flip’s Instagram page. In the pic, I’m lying on the ground, my hands covering my bloody, urine-soaked face. The caption below: “See what happens when you mess with the Crazy Cru.” He’s already received forty-three likes. The comments are divisive, to say the least. Some of the kids egg on Flip (What a lil’ bitch) or point out the obvious (Golden shower lol). Flip replies to one of his many followers’ questions: “Yup yup,” Flip writes. “That’s me taking a piss on sum lil’ punk ass bitch who fucked with Dru Dog.” Some comments are followed by emojis. One troll comments on how much Flip is screwed up in the head. Then, Flip and the resilient troll go back and forth, talking shit to one another, a back and forth, like I’ll kill you, then Flip’s followers joins in by bashing the troll; then they start making jokes about each other’s moms, and this and that.

I leave Cyber Jaxx’s and make a stop at Spirits and pick up a bottle of Jose Cuervo. I pay the Haitian clerk. He doesn’t say a word to me. Neither me to him.

I leave Spirits and drive to Drew’s apartment. I find Flip’s hatchback parked crookedly and taking up two parking spaces in front of Drew’s apartment. Just as I’m about to open the bottle of Cuervo, I hear a tap-tap on the passenger window. I unlock the door. Moses steps inside the car with a grunt.

You following me—

—What are you doing?

With his posture weak, Moses sits in the passenger seat and waits for an answer.

What does it look like I’m doing?

You’re not thinking clearly, Moses tells me. If you do this, you won’t be the same. You hear me?

I hear him, but I don’t answer him.

Are you willing to risk your life over some stupid watch—

—I know what I’m doing.

Do you?

I ignore Moses, open the Cuervo, and I drink until the light inside Drew’s apartment goes off.

Repercussions

The next morning I wake up without a single memory of how I ended up back in my hotel room. In one hand, I’m holding a sticky bottle of Cuervo, which is bone-dry. My other hand remains curled inward like the arm of T-Rex next to my shoulder and when I finally uncurl it, a combination of pain and soreness runs through my knuckles. My ribs are extremely sore to touch, like buttons of pain scattered over my torso from just the slightest of body turns. I pop an aspirin from the bathroom, chase it down with some gulps from the faucet; afterwards, I splash my face with cold water. Even bending forward hurts like no other, the blood pounding throughout my head, like a vengeful driver making sharp turns after being detoured from one road to another. I sit on the edge of my bed and try to muster a thought from last, any thought, whatever, give me something. The fragmented memory of last night comes back to me as if my mind is a VHS tape on rewind (first, guzzling away the rest of the Cuervo in my hotel room, then taking a hot shower, then paying the desk clerk for another night’s stay from the wad of cash in my hand, then driving through the echoes of night, then leaving Drew’s apartment, then drifting through the speckles of violence and grotesquery, then, lastly, towering over Flip as he sleeps on a couch with the glow of the TV flickering over the Rolex on his wrist). I saunter my way to the table; and the memory starts to piece together as soon as I check out the score from last night: a 14 karat gold flat herringbone chain, which I can later pawn away for about two hundred dollars, give or take a few (I’ve seen them go for about two-fifty on the Internet, the real kind, not the fake-ass junk that makes your skin turn green); an antique ukulele, which, according to Drew, Mr. All-Talk, once belonged to his grandfather, which, at the time I grabbed it, looked as if it was worth some bones, but now that I look at it right now with much different eyes, I don’t really understand why I grabbed it in the first place; three hundred and thirteen dollars both from Drew and Flip combined (which isn’t really a score since most of the money belongs to me); and, finally, the Rolex, the glass covering partially cracked in half as a result of Flip banging it against the coffee table (again, not really a score).

II

I take another shower and wipe away the blood that I missed last night—mainly, scrubbing the cracks between my fingernails and the areas behind my ear with a Brillo pad.

After I get out of the shower, I dress into something comfortable and drag myself to the Russian, who ends up giving me four hundred dollars even for both the chain and the ukulele.

After I leave the pawnshop, I stop by Lassie’s and search for Jazz, but her boss, Eric, a petite man, very feminine like in his posts, definitely not into Jazz, as I assumed, says she’s not working today. He says she called in sick.

I know it has something to with me, with her not showing up to work. I need to tell her what happened to me last night, but I can’t let her see me like this.

I head back to my hotel room and rest until my injuries are fully healed.

III

Two days pass and I can’t stop thinking about Jazz.

The nightmares are back.

I can’t stop thinking about my fix.

IV

On the third day, I run out of money for another night’s stay at the Foreshore.

I pick up enough money from an older lady who needed help loading a bucket of cat litter into the back of her off-white Ford Taurus since the lot attendant was too busy texting or chasing around some imaginary pixie or whatever kids are doing on their smartphones. I use the money to buy a much cheaper room off Sunrise Boulevard.

V

I wake up bright and early from a vivid yet strange dream about partying at Crystal Palace and decide to hit up the Square, hoping to score some money.

As I step inside the car, I hear the click of my revolver right next to my ear!

You don’t listen, Moses says. Do you?

I glance in the rear view mirror to find Moses sitting in the backseat with a sling around his left arm.

What the hell happened to you?

Fell, he says.

Moses flicks the barrel toward the front of the car.

Drive.

I put the gear in drive.

Where are we going? I ask Moses as I pull out of the parking lot.

You mean, where are you going?

For a moment, I don’t know where I’m going. Just that I’m going somewhere. Right. The Square.

You have somewhere you should be right now, Moses says. Instead, you’re off trick or treating with a girl you barely even know. He points the barrel to the right. Take a right here.

Right takes me to Main Street, which will take me straight to Topside Boardwalk.

So, why are you following me?

We share an icy glare in the mirror; then Moses turns to the window, gazes outside.

How many times have I covered your ass?

You know, I was doing just fine before you showed up.

Really? His voice sounds almost comical, as if I amuse him. Tied down to a bed at night? Forced to take medication. That’s you doing ‘just fine’? Moses points at Topside Boardwalk, not too far away. Turn left at the stoplight.

I stop behind a car at the stoplight.

If I didn’t break you out of that hellhole, he says, you’d still be there rotting away. That’s the truth.

I glance at his knuckles, both bruised and swollen.

Sooner or later, you’re gonna have to learn how to accept the truth for what it is.

The light turns green.

I turn into the boardwalk’s parking lot.

Let me ask you something, I say. Why do you care so much about my business?

The sooner you find the rest of the suspects responsible for Jimmy’s death, the sooner you can do me my favor.

So, what is this favor?

Moses tells me to park the car. I do. Then, he puts down the revolver.

He tells me I need a baseball cap, a pair of cheap sunglasses, and a bottle of makeup.

Clearly, he says, he can’t see you the way you are. Otherwise, your cover will be blown.

He, Moses says, as in Nico.

Then, the thought comes to me, and I know where I need to be.

Was that a dream?

Or, did it really happen?

I leave Moses behind in the car like an unwanted child and order a vanilla ice cream cone from the lively parlor, Sherbet’s, where Sherbet himself perches outside. He’s a seven-foot tall statue of a chubby fellow as jovial as a jester who’s dressed like a pimp with colorful Mardi Gras beads around the fatty layers of his neck.

I distance myself from Sherbet’s.

Before the ice cream melts, I search for a woman carrying the largest purse and I act as if I’m eating when, in fact, I’m only pretending to eat.

I spot a flower child walking a rat-like dog, which nearly gets stepped on twice by bystanders. She’s carrying a massive hemp purse around her shoulder, which looks more like a satchel. I realize the dog will make for good distraction; however, the girl doesn’t seem like someone who wears a lot of makeup. More of the free spirit type. All natural. That sort of thing.

Next, I spot a shapeless woman with a purse. Lots of product in her blonde hair. Face like a clown. Let the magic begin.

I play the idiot and aimlessly wander closer toward her path and just as she’s about to walk past me, I backpedal toward her direction and spin around…

Bam!

Her purse goes flying first. Then, next to fly is my ice cream cone…

Splat!

“Shit!” I hiss.

“Oh my god,” the woman cries out as all of the personal contents inside her purse spill out onto the ground. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t see you…”

“It’s okay,” I say bitterly as the woman glances down at the crime scene around the ice cream cone.

“I’m so, so sorry,” she repeats as she redirects her attention toward the bruises on my face.

“It’s okay,” I repeat and kneel downward. “Really.”

I help her with the things (wallet, ID, etc.) and hand them to her. My hand comes across a tampon. We share eye contact for a moment. I never touch the thing. It’s like guy code or something: never touch a woman’s tampon. Never. Her cheeks fill with the color of embarrassment as she kneels down on both of her knees and snatches the tampon from the ground and stuffs it in her purse.

“It’s my fault,” I say. “I wasn’t paying attention…”

“No,” she says, combing the hair from her face. “Don’t worry about it. Lemme buy you another one of those.”

“It’s fine,” I say, the bitterness lessening in my voice.

She asks one more time. She’s not going to take “no” for an answer.

“How much did it cost?” she asks.

“Around three dollars,” I guess.

She reaches in her wallet and hands me a five.

“Thanks,” I say.

“My pleasure,” she says. “Again, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

She gathers the rest of her things and walks away. I pull out the case of makeup from my pocket.

Bump and grab: first, it starts with an innocent bump or tap followed by a distraction (in this case, an ice cream cone).

Before I leave the boardwalk, I stop at Sweet Tee’s and while I’m picking up a black Red Devils baseball hat and an off brand of sunglasses, I stop and think about what just went down. For some reason, I can’t help but think about Jazz and the first time we met. No way. It can’t. Really? Get out of here. I shake the absurd thought from my head before it can gather any more attention and focus on the mission at hand.

When I get to the softball field off McDowell Park, I spot Nico playing cheerleader with the rest of the team. The Dragons are dressed in carmine red while the other team, the Hairy, Hairy Scorpions, is dressed in desert orange. Most of their fans look like—shall I say—porn stars and I start to wonder how Nico is able to pull these types of women. I mean, seriously, I think I’ve actually seen one of these women before and I’m not talking about in person. I mean, on the Internet. Her name is Lady Spitz, I think, or something like that. All I remember is that her name had a Spitz in it. Like most porn stars, it wasn’t really her birth name. Just a play on words. Something suggestive. Like Jack Meoph or Mime Cumming or something absurd like that. Not too long ago, Lady was one of the most popular porn stars in the industry. Starred in all kinds of parodies of TV shows or movies or whatever was currently trending at the time. She was best known as a squirter, as in she squirted a lot during sexual intercourse. If it is “the” Ms. Spitz, I wonder what the hell she’s doing here?

Nico tracks me down on the bleachers, breaks free from the other Dragons, and runs over for a quick chat. We slap hands and he says that he’s glad I came out.

I shrug, as Jazz would do, and tell him, “I had nothing else going on.”

He points at my hat and looks at me strangely.

“What’s with the whole ‘Stalker’ look?”

I grab the bill of my hat. Raise it.

“Oh,” I say. “This? Me and the sun don’t get along.”

“You take any acne medicine?”

I shake my head.

“No,” I say. “Why?”

“I once had terrible acne when I was younger,” Nico tells me. “Dermatologist put me on this medicine that made my skin extremely sensitive. Couldn’t go out in the sun without lotion or a hat.” He points at the Devils hat—this ridiculous thing. “That was a long time ago, though.”

“Fair skin, I guess.”

“Well,” Nico sighs, “shit man, if you wanna ball, just grab a glove. I think Alfonso might have a spare. If not, you’re free to watch.”

“I’ll just watch.”

“You sure?”

I wave it off.

“Yeah,” I tell Nico. “Besides, I twisted my ankle the other day when I was getting out of the shower.”

He points to a cooler next to the dugout.

“Whatever makes you comfortable, man,” he says. “We got some beer, if you want. Don’t be a stranger. Seriously, feel free to help yourself.”

“Will do,” I say.

Nico runs back to the team who is tossing around the ball in the outfield.

I grab a beer from the cooler and talk to a couple of the girls. I remember a couple of the names from the Dragons; and when the game’s over, I head straight to Cyber Jaxx’s and look up the ballplayers on their linkedin pages. Most of the ballplayers for the Dragons are software developers and programmers. According to a couple of their social media websites, they play for the company’s team called the Dragons. I start making the connections. I dig a little deeper.

I research the company, Version Developers.

I click on the company’s main website and scroll down their client list.

There, I find Nico’s company.

It all makes sense.

VI

The next night, I step out of my room for a minute and finally, after spending what feels like forever, decide to give Nico a call. He’s glad I called. He asks me what I’m doing tonight, and as he’s speaking, I pick up an obvious slur in his voice, each word soaked in booze, or what I like to call swollen-tongue syndrome. He’s not drunk—possibly tipsy—but there’s no doubt that he’s a couple of drinks away from being there. He tells me to stop by his place later. Says he’s having a “few” friends over.

Nothing big.

Before he hangs up, he tells me that Bishop will be there.

Bishop?

“He’s a friend,” Nico says. “He’s be wanting to meet you?”

Meet me?

Shit.

My cover is blown.

TO BE CONTINUED