Dwight isn’t as happy at Jim’s goodbye party as he thought he’d be. Now that he has a guaranteed spot as Michael’s number two man, it isn’t as fulfilling as he’d thought. Morosely, he downs two cups of punch before realizing that someone has spiked it. Then he tries to close off the punch bowl, but no one’s having that. Michael tells him to stop being such a party pooper; Stanley gives him a scowl and pushes past him unceremoniously. No one has respect for the law; they’re all going to slide off the road and die. Idiots.

It’s just another excuse to get mostly drunk and say stupid things to one another. Darryl tells Jim to have fun on his trip to Austria. Angela makes her excuses and leaves early, and Bob Vance comes to take Phyllis out to dinner. Most of the time, Jim stands off in a corner pretending not to stare at Pam, who is pretending not to stare at him. This party, thinks Dwight, is worse than the Saint Patrick’s Day party when Creed threw up green beer. Everyone seems to sense it eventually and finally, when the punch bowl is empty, even Meredith staggers outside. Michael takes one look at the mess and disappears. No one’s left but the cameramen, and they do not help. Dwight begins to clean everything up, and is surprised to see Jim picking up the decorations.

“I thought you were already gone,” he says, snatching crepe paper out of Jim’s hands.

“It’s my party,” says Jim. “I’ll clean up if I want to.” Dwight eyes him to see if that’s a joke, but Jim just stares at him with a perfectly innocent face. So he stuffs the crepe paper in the trash and goes into the break room to rinse off the punch bowl. After that there’s not much to do but bag the leftovers (Michael will eat them for lunch tomorrow) and return the chairs to where they were supposed to be. Jim even helps with that, and then he picks up his bag and looks around the office.

“See you later, Dunder-Mifflin Scranton,” he says, and Dwight can’t tell if he’s sad about it or not. He can’t leave Jim with the last word, though. Schrute rule #2: Never let your enemy have the last word.

“I hope they like your little tricks up in Stamford.”

Jim smirks at him. “And I hope you and Angela consummate the love that dare not speak its name.” And then he mugs some idiotic face at the cameras as Dwight feels his mouth drop open.

“How — did you –”

“I saw you pull her behind your car one time after Poor Richards. And what you were doing… it was either some kind of tongue war, or….”

“Oh, very funny. Very funny.”

“Hey, man. To each his own.” Jim makes another stupid face and throws his bag over his shoulder and heads for the stairwell. He doesn’t look drunk at all; not even tipsy. What a jerk. What a double creep. What an enemy.

“Have a nice life, Dwight.”

Don’t let him get the last word. Don’t let him — “Make sure you check your shoes for scorpions!”

“What?”

“In Australia! Scorpions get in your shoes and then they bite your toes!”

“Uh … okay.” Jim waves at him. “Scorpions. Yep.”

As Dwight closes up the office and double-checks the locks, Jim’s stupid car peels out of the lot. “Just kidding!” Dwight says to the office doors. “I hope a scorpion crawls up your pants and bites you on the ass.” Last word, sucker.

two.

Jim sends Dwight a postcard from Australia. To be fair, everyone in the office gets one; but Pam’s is a pretty beach scene and Angela’s has a koala bear dressed up in a little outfit. Dwight’s is a funny color of off-white, and a piece of it is coming off… when he looks closer, he sees that it’s a square of toilet paper pasted onto a notecard. On the other side it says, “You were right! Toilets do flush counterclockwise down here!”

Furious, Dwight makes sure to take it over and shred it, as slowly as possible, as if he’s shredding Jim in the process. He tries to make Angela shred hers too, but she hangs onto it with a deathgrip. “Take your hands off my koala bear,” she says expressionlessly, so he finally gives up. He refuses to speak to her for the rest of the day, but it only hurts him when she ignores him back.

Damn Jim. Damn him and his Australian beaches and his toilet paper squares. But he isn’t going to have the last word. Dwight vows to send a postcard of his own; he just has to figure out what to say on it. Something just as good. Something that will knock Jim flat. But the chance doesn’t come and doesn’t come and weeks pass, and Jim has probably come back from Australia with a tan and a blonde on each arm. He is in Stamford now, and probably making himself indispensable to Josh Porter. Probably Josh Porter is sitting in his fabulous cushy office saying to himself right now, “I don’t know how I ever lived without Jim.” Bastard. Dwight calls up the personnel department in New York and finagles Jim’s new address, just in case. Schrute charm always works on underlings.

And then one day in July, Pam doesn’t come in to work. For three days, she is out sick. Michael wanders around doing whatever he wants and commenting vaguely about the bumps in the path of true love. After three days, Pam comes back to work and tells everyone quietly that the wedding is off, that she won’t be marrying Roy after all.

“But *why*?” asks Kelly repeatedly. She can’t believe, obviously, that there are people in the world that don’t jump at the first chance to get married that comes their way.

“I just –” Pam fiddles with her hair, looks down at her keyboard and then up and then down at her sweater. “I didn’t feel like it was the — the right thing to do right now. I want to take art lessons and I’m — not ready for… I’m just not ready to take that step.”

Later in the morning, Dwight happens to glance up from his desk over at her. She is just hanging up the phone, and although her voice sounds perfectly calm, Dwight is horrified to see that she is crying. When she sees him looking, she looks away immediately, and Dwight looks down at his sales orders and scribbles something meaningless with his pen.

That afternoon he goes out and buys a postcard from the newsstand. It says, “Welcome to Scranton” in white swirly letters. Sitting on a bench in the strong Pennsylvania sunlight, Dwight addresses it to Jim and then stops, chewing absently on his pen. Could this be seen as doing Jim a favor? Will it do something gross like bring Jim and Pam together forever, pledging eternal love?

Dwight smiles, an evil Grinchly smile. No, it’s too late for that. But oh, how he wants to make sure Jim knows what he’s missing. On the postcard’s blank back, he scribbles in capital letters, SHE DIDN’T GO THROUGH WITH IT. He underlines “DIDN’T” three times and then studies the sentence. Too cryptic? Perhaps. Underneath, where he might have signed his name, except Jim will know exactly who sent it after seeing six years of Dwight’s handwriting on reports, he draws a scorpion with a huge stinger. “I told you to watch out for scorpions,” he says. Schrute strikes again, and where you least expect it.

Jim will get this postcard on a sunny summer day, when he’s gotten home from work in his wonderful new office, and it will strike him in the heart. Which is where you want to strike your enemy if you can’t reach his eyeballs. And Jim will wonder whether he did the right thing, and wish he’d waited until the end of the summer to move to Stamford. And his sales calls will be half distracted, and his mind will be one big ball of regret, but the best part of all is, he won’t call Pam. He’ll talk himself out of it while he’s eating his stupid bagel at his stupid desk. He’ll think about giving her time to get over Roy. He’ll never make his move because he’s a coward, and cowards never learn Schrute Rule #1, which is, always go in for the kill.

Dwight puts the postcard in his trenchcoat pocket to wait for a stamp and then he walks back to the office, whistling the Star Wars theme song. When he comes out of the elevator and sees Angela, he can’t help the huge smile that crosses his face. She’s gonna get some tonight, whether she realizes it or not. He slaps a stamp on the postcard and puts it in the outgoing mail. Company resources well allocated! What a sweet feeling: it’s good to be enemies again.

This is how it might go:

James Bond adjusts his bow tie as he stands outside the casino. Cars whiz by on the road and expensively dressed people pass him on the left and right, seemingly unaware that they might get run over.

James looks at the casino and its bright lights. He remembers Solange, dead in the hammock, covered in sand, eyes open and staring. All her money and beauty hadn’t stopped her death. Death can’t be stopped. Perhaps the only alternative is to delay it awhile. Or to stop thinking about it.

“Sod it,” says James, pulls off his bowtie, and disappears. No one ever sees him again. Le Chiffre wins the poker game and Vesper Lynd lives. And that’s how it might have gone. If James had known the future, he might have given up $100 million to terrorists in order to save Vesper’s life. Or he might have tried something else. Like crawling onto Le Chiffre’s yacht and opening his guts out onto the deck. Then the whole point would have been moot. Death can’t be stopped. But if you’re James Bond, and you have your armor on, you can at least delay your own.

So this is how it goes. James comes back to England. He has dispatched his enemies and those who work with him sense a change in persona, as if James is bent on constructing himself a legend. In ten years or twenty, will his name be whispered with awe and wonder in the back rooms of Langley and the Kremlin? Everyone in the office ventures their opinion; places bets on what high-tech gadget will keep him alive the longest. No one mentions the imploded building in Venice that is Vesper Lynd’s grave. No one quite meets his eyes anymore.

One late night he breaks into M’s house again. If he had thought to give himself a reason, it would probably be because she told him not to. He prowls in her refrigerator (not much); her liquor cabinet (quite a bit, all expensive); and her bathroom cabinet (migraine medication, estrogen, face creams with exotic names). He looks for, but does not find, the weapons cache he is quite sure she has somewhere.

He lounging in her leather armchair, working on his fourth Scotch and rocks, when she walks in, fighting on the phone with someone, arguing about funds and he hears her utter the most boring words in the world — “expense report.”

“I wouldn’t have your job for the world,” he says as she catches sight of him, puffs out an exasperated breath, and disconnects the bureaucrat with a snapped, “I’ll call you back.” She starts to say something, probably something like, I told you not to — but then she gives up, the words unspoken.

James holds out a Scotch he has poured for her. She has six bottles of it — he has guessed that she might like it.

“I was saving that,” she says, but she takes it and sinks into a chair opposite him. She is wearing a smartly tailored pantsuit and some torturous-looking heels, which she kicks off. She does not sigh in relief, but he sees it in her eyes.

“For what?”

“What?” She looks puzzled, a little nonplussed. Her hair is not perfect as it is in the office; it is scuffed a bit. It looks punk. He smiles.

“What are you saving the Scotch for?” He tips back the glass and lets all the liquor slide down his throat, then crunches on some ice chips.

“Oh … I don’t know. A party or something. A special occasion.”

“This is a special occasion.” He reaches for the cut-glass bottle again and then watches her drink hers neat, still watching him round the glass.

“No it’s not. It’s not the first time, or, one assumes, the last time you’ve disobeyed me.”

“Do celebrate with me, M,” he says, smiling still. “I’ve overcome my loss aversion.”

She puts down her glass and uncrosses her legs, leaning forward a little bit. Her eyes are so blue that he imagines them to be the heart of a gas flame, ready to send everything up.

“Bond,” she says, “That’s not a good thing.”

“Oh yes it is. It means I can go to any lengths to get what I want.”

“That’s what the bad guys say.”

“Ah yes,” he says, “But I’m doing it for Queen and Country. Doesn’t that make everything all right?”

“I thought so once.” She stands up and goes over to her big picture window. She stands so rigidly upright, even in her stocking feet, stands like a soldier. Was she ever a soldier? Before he quite realizes, he is standing up too, watching the lights of London through the glass, watching the long line of her back and the straight square of her shoulders.

“But I was wrong,” she continues. “Sometimes there are things that one must do anything not to lose.”

“It’s too late,” he whispers softly to the window, to the lights, to the back of her neck. “I’ve already lost them.”

“Yes.” She sounds sad, as if she hadn’t set him up as the sacrificial lamb in the first place. “I know.”

He puts one hand on the cool glass and one on her shoulder, touching the white line of her neck with his thumb. She shivers but stands still. He pulls the collar of her white starched shirt a bit to the side and he kisses her where his thumb has been. Her hand finds his in the silence; her breath quickens. In spite of all the cameras in the world, and all the eyes of the city, no one is watching them.

–end–

1. An introductory event, performance, or action preceding something more important.
2. A musical section, overture, etc. serving as introduction to the main composition, opera, play, etc.

verb tr., intr.

To serve as an introduction to something.

[From Medieval Latin praeludium, from Latin praeludere (to play beforehand), from prae- (pre-) + ludere (to play). Ultimately from Indo-European root leid- (to play) that is also the ancestor of words such as allude, collude, delude, elude, illusion, and ludicrous.]

Since Brooke was old enough to understand it, the sex has been prelude to the leaving. Priorities being what they are, sex is nothing but nerve endings, but the leaving proves something: she could never have held onto Lucas.

Peyton would laugh at her for saying it. Peyton is one of those people who believes in forever, in a frothy white wedding dress and her smiling dad giving her away. In the wedding march and the ever, ever after. Fidelity.
Monogamy. All those Oprah cliches. And is it ever so? Brooke knows of no one — no one — who has lasted like that. Every force in life is arrayed against fidelity. Every force — and Brooke is a force.

Sitting on a stool at some anonymous bar, she will nurse her drink and look for the shy ones, the ones that know they shouldn’t be there. And she will choose one, a good-looking one that looks self-consciously down at his hand too many times, or twists for a ring that isn’t there. She will catch his eye and smile at him, and she will move over to him eventually.

And there will be the time of negotiation, and the time when she leads him outside, and the time when the motel room is paid for and she can unwrap him like it was her birthday every day. And oh! How grateful and guilty he will look, hands pinned up above their heads, watching her rise above them and fall, rise and fall.

Sometimes she picks one that makes her think of Lucas. And then she leaves him, over and over, leaves without payment or goodbye, stops outside the door and adjusts her heels and smiles, because there’s no such thing as fidelity, she can show Peyton that any day of the week without half trying.

Present Day.

They wake Alec up every hour on the hour for at least a week. Just as some kind of merciless clock in his brain calculates that it has been two weeks since he was captured, the same clock ticks off the minutes as he dozes – 58, 59, 60 – and then a guard rattles the bars or shoves a stick in his ribs and he stumbles to his feet. Sometimes they take him out for questioning – sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they shove a plate of food in under the bars. He gobbles it and then slumps back against the wall, trying to sleep, praying to God or Sandeman or whoever’s out there –

Please let Max come save me. Please.

He’s past pride, past embarrassment, past anything but a fervent wish to get out, to see a familiar face, maybe even to die if they’d let him have a bedsheet to hang himself with. They took his clothes ages ago, giving him a pair of basketball shorts and a t-shirt and a pair of socks and a blanket. The socks and the blanket are too short, and won’t hold his weight; he has already tried. He choked for a bit and then they gave way and he fell, and a guard came, and then they hit him again.

Two weeks. That’s a lot of hours, broken down into minutes, unbroken by any sound other than his own ragged breathing, the guards’ derisive comments, and the endless questioning in the square concrete room by a man he does not recognize. The man does not seem to be a snake cultist; Alec thinks perhaps he is with the government. A government. Or maybe not.

For the first week, he had been cheeky, cocky, leaning back in his chair and smugly refusing to answer questions. He’d still had his clothes then, most of them. He’d wanted to know what happened to his fellow Manticoreans, who were taken with him but whom he hadn’t seen since. The man gave him no answers. In fact it’s one of the few times since he left Manticore that someone has resisted his legendary charm – resisted it, and resented it. Alec considers wearily that his legendary charm had probably led him to this point. It seems to have backfired in a major way.

Please, Max. Please. He can’t help it, but at least he says it in his head.

* * *

As weak daylight filters through his high, barred window, they drag him out to the information room. The guards are mostly impersonal – one man in particular seems to have a little pity in his eyes, but he does his job – though some of them really hate him and go out of their way to humiliate him. At first he pretended more humiliation than he really felt – going around naked with a bag on your head? whatever – but after awhile it did start to get old. Being treated like an animal, even for a genetically altered supersoldier, begins to wear down on your humanity. And Alec doesn’t have that much to begin with. He imagines that one day he’ll just revert and go, snarling and raking his claws, for his captors’ throats. Of course, they’d have to take the chains off first.

“Tell me more about your assignments in the ‘field,’” says the government man, who Alec has dubbed (mentally and in honor of Max) Dick. Alec used to not answer these questions, but after two days of sitting up to his neck in a latrine, he decided to answer any question about Manticore, because who cared, those people were out of his life. That’s what Dick seems to have the most interest in – not Eyes Only, or Freak Nation, or the genetics question – no. Manticore was number one on the list. Dick had not yet asked about 452, either, which was good, because Alec does not intend to answer any questions about her.

Nine Months Ago

The first time Alec realized he was in trouble about Max was when she gave him a name instead of a number. The second time, much later, he watched her watch Joshua as the dog-man howled over Isaac’s corpse. She was propped up against a wall, looking ruffled and tender, her dark eyes full of that infinite sadness, as if she was holding the grief of everyone in Manticore, and Alec felt his heart lurch in his chest, really take a jump, like it was skipping rope at the playground.

But Max doesn’t ever seem to notice. In fact she wasn’t noticing much except how she had a viral restraining order out against Logan. She needed to get laid, stat, but Alec knew better than to offer. She’d bitten his head off about coming in late to work — if she’d known he had kind of half a thing for her, well. Normal would probably have had a new decoration (Alec’s head) for the Jam Pony offices.

And he would have offered, even if it meant perhaps some kind of relationship, which he knew he would be very bad at (having had no practice). Max was beautiful, it went without saying, but she was also kind. And it was that kindness that really got to Alec, because in his experience, kindness was never unselfish, except with Max and some of the people around her. Alec was selfish. He was the first to admit it. But Max taught him to think first, and to think first of others. Sometimes, sitting at the piano under Joshua’s house (he misses that piano), he played the Max music that was in his head, filling the air with Maxness, with sound.

It wasn’t like he was googly-eyed in love with her. Nah, love was for suckers. Love was staring sadly into a television screen and not telling your googly-eyed Eyes Only that he was the one for you. No thanks. What he felt for Max was … respect. Respect and lust and a sharp sort of tenderness that got him into trouble more often than not.

When she finally confessed that she made him part of an unwitting love triangle, he told her to knock it off. Secretly it was a little flattering — though who else was a viable candidate? Sketchy? — but he wanted her for herself, not so that she could bounce off him back to Logan when the mood struck her. And after they established Freak Nation, with attendant flag, it seemed like she and Logan were back on for good — at least that’s what the latex-gloved handholding meant to Alec.

So the third time he realized how in trouble he was, was when he accepted her offer to stay and help run Freak Nation. Honestly, he’d planned out his whole career post-Ames-White. It involved riding down and seeing what kinds of parties they were having in New Orleans, in New York, in New Anywhere That Wasn’t Seattle. It involved many girls, all of whom were completely un-transgenic (but found barcodes sexy), did not work at messenger services, and did not ride hot-ass motorcycles dressed in black leather. These girls wouldn’t have asked for his life story. Would only have wanted to see what was in his pants. And definitely wouldn’t have asked him to help gather lost and runaway transgenics up and herd them to the Freak Nation like so many poor little puppies. But that’s what Max asked.

“I know you were planning on taking off,” she’d started, shifting uncomfortably from leg to leg, as if she knew what he was going to say next, so he obliged her.

“Like you did? Ran off? Is that what you mean?”

“But I came back,” she said, “when people needed me.” Right there he could see it in her eyes, the sadness, and he knew she too wished herself anywhere else.

“No rest for the wicked, huh?” he said, and since he could not deny her, he chucked her under the chin with two fingers, winked, and told her that it was no problem, he could ride around in a van with Joshua all day, he could borrow her motorcycle and gather up strays, he could stop into her favorite sandwich place and pull his hood up to hide his neck and order a chicken club (hold the mayo) just to see her smile when he handed her the bag.

If he’d known where it would lead – if he’d known. He would have taken off for New Orleans that night. Right? Wouldn’t he have been able to leave her? Even if he knew it might mean his death?

Present Day

“So the types of X7s they created were animal derivates,” says Dick. Alec confirms it, shivering in the clammy cold radiating off the cellblock walls. By his sense of timing, they are perhaps four hours outside of Seattle, but in what direction he does not know. He thinks maybe they went north, because he has not been warm in forever. Dick doesn’t seem to notice his shivers, and continues the questions.

“How many combinations would you say that they created?”

“I don’t know,” says Alec. “When I was there I only went down to the X7 block once or twice.”

“What derivates did you see there?”

“Dog … cat … lizard. Badger.”

“And later?” says Dick. “You met more of them?” Alec, who has been staring at the floor, lifts his head up to see Dick smiling gently at him, probably like Torquemada smiled at his hapless Jews as he exhorted them to convert.

“What?”

“In the poison city, 494. You met more of the derivations. You helped gather them up and bring them to your leader.”

“I –”

“Don’t deny it. We had you under surveillance for four months. While we were orchestrating the Exodus.”

“You fuckers,” says Alec without heat. “You knew they’d fall for the Exodus because you were watching us.”

“Oh, we knew,” Dick smiles. “And you walked into it like the dogs you are, heeling to your master’s whistle. Tell me what kinds of derivates you met in the Freak Nation.”

“Don’t you already know?” mutters Alec. “You took almost every X7 living in Seattle.”

“I know what I know,” says Dick. “Now I want to know what you know. Don’t make us go through this all again.”

Six months ago

The TVs were constantly tuned to the news, and the Freak Nation factions fought every day on what to do vis a vis the normals. Alec took to humming the old classic, “Should I Stay Or Should I Go?” as he went about his business, watching the X5s and 6s argue with the X7s about whether they should move to their own enclave (perhaps someplace like Chernobyl? thought Alec derisively) or stay and try to integrate with the population.

Mostly it was the X7s who wanted to go. They wanted safe passage out and to find a place that no one else wanted, where they could live in peace. The X5s, obviously, wanted to stay. They were happy to hide their barcodes and pass; they didn’t have to go all survivalist and so they didn’t want to.

Max hadn’t heard anything from the cult since White … disappeared, regrouped, or whatever. No one was quite sure what happened to him. Alec was pretty sure he wasn’t dead. He was pretty sure that those snake cult folks were still hanging around, waiting to make their move. It was a stalemate all around, but it wasn’t going to last forever. In the last few months he’d seen wanted posters go up, some with Max’s blurry image on them, some with weird line-drawings of Joshua, even some with his own face, which made for strange times at the sandwich shop, staring a paper mirror pasted up above the cash register. Luckily no one ever seemed that interested, because when you get right down to it, Alec didn’t have a dog face, and he was a paying customer. Money talked louder than the news, he guessed.

Alec continued to ride with Joshua and Mole, picking up transgenics wherever he could (his sector pass had been revoked, so mostly they had to jump the barriers, which was a pain). Even more often he ended up half doubled over in some stinky sewer, calling out Manticore catchphrases, trying to calm down some panicked dude with a snout where his nose rightfully shoulda been. Not his idea of good clean fun. He tried bringing it up with Max but she just looked harassed and said, “Alec, I need you down there,” and that was the end of that.

Max had appointed a council to deal with housing needs, and a council to deal with getting food, but people still bothered her 24/7. Many X5s were out there, working like normal people and sending most of their money back to Manticore. Some of the more normal X7s sold the shit they found in Terminal City on the black market – electronics and the like. Some of them went out and stole stuff, probably, which fueled the news channels even more. Alec saw more than one flaming X merrily combusting on someone’s lawn.

All of this left Max with exactly zero time for a personal life. Alec hadn’t even been sure when was the last time she saw OC, let alone the Manly Love Interest. She didn’t even have time for a drink. She was besieged on all sides, and it was fraying her. When she went and lay down for an infrequent nap, Alec took to sitting outside her door and scaring off potential botherers. Sometimes, when he had time to think about it, he laughed at how stupid he was being. Max didn’t need a knight in shining armor or a bodyguard or any of those cliched stereotypes. She didn’t thank him –- she didn’t know about it – and he wanted to keep it that way.

As the summer heat began to wane and the chilly mornings crept back into Seattle, Alec took to early morning runs. Terminal City had a main boulevard, framed in creepy dead office buildings, that was relatively clear, and Alec pounded down it as fast as he could, trying to outrun his thoughts and lose himself in pure adrenaline. And then it was back to the grind, go here Alec, take this package to the old bus station, Alec, we need formula for the new babies, Alec, you need to help me out, you need to do something. It started feeling like a crisis situation, and no one was trying to avert the crisis – everyone just hurried it along. Oh, how they hurried it along.

Present Day

As the guard drags him out of the questioning room, he doesn’t seem to be able to control his legs. Probably the fault of the tasers; he sags and has to be supported at the armpits. He has given them almost everything he knows — pretty soon he’s going to have to start lying. It isn’t like he was in on anyone’s confidences or had secret clearance at Manticore. He’d told them about the missions he ran; the deaths he had seen and caused; and many of the things that had happened to him since he escaped Manticore and ended up in Seattle. But he had not told them how to get into the Freak Nation, and he hadn’t given up Max.

Dick had been pretty angry. Alec tests the edge of his lip with his tongue and winces. Luckily X5s healed pretty fast. This might leave a scar. He looks up at the sound of other footsteps – they are leading an X7 past him into the room. The X7, a badger model, looks much the worse for wear. He snuffles tiredly and barely turns his head as Alec (neverminding the split lip) hisses at him.

“Hey! Hey buddy! How you doing?” An inane question, but Alec can’t think of anything better. His brain isn’t working so well. The X7, looking thoroughly beat, just looks at him with sad eyes and whines, deep in his throat. And Alec’s guard drags him along more roughly.

“No talking between prisoners,” he says. “I could pistolwhip your ass for that.”

“Oh, please don’t,” says Alec. It’s not even a snappy comeback, just a plea. The guard seems to sense it.

“I won’t as long as you’re quiet. Just be quiet.”

And Alec is quiet, until the guard puts him in his cell and takes away his piss bucket and checks the bars on the high window to make sure they are still intact.

“Hey buddy,” he says, “how’d a nice guard like you end up in a place like this?”

The guard looks at him, face pokered up but a smidge of sympathy in his eyes. “They pay good money.”

“Ah,” says Alec. “Got a family, do you?”

“Yep.” The guard is about to close the door and Alec puts up a hand.

“Please. If you know a – a lizard-faced man named Mole – tell him I’m all right. Tell him not to worry about me, okay? He’s – my family.”

The guard stays expressionless, but looks at Alec for a minute, then gives the smallest of nods and closes the door. Alec hears the lock turn and leans his head back on his blanket. In his half-sleep he can almost hear music playing; his fingers twitch to sound the right notes.

Three Months Ago

In September, the X7s and the X5s finally come to blows. The X7s actually outnumbered the X5s and 6s living in TC, and everyone was touchy because they were hungry, and someone said something stupid, and an ice warrior beaned one of the 43s with a handy timber. Alec wasn’t there at the time – he was out finding parts for a camera that failed – but he heard about it later, at length, from Joshua.

“And then and then, waPOW! And kawham!” Joshua was dancing all around with the excitement of it, and Alec grinned.

“Did you take anyone out, big fella?”

Joshua’s face creased up, and he shook his head. “No way. I’m a painter, I don’t fight. Plus I had to protect the little fella.”

Alec felt his whole body tense up suddenly. “Someone tried to hurt little fella?”

Joshua’s face creased up even more. “Ummmmm,” was all he said, and Alec barreled around him and up to Max’s ‘office,’ which was a little space with a bed and an electric lamp and some candy bars stashed under a whole lot of papers. Max was sitting there reading something, totally unharmed, and when she looked up, he saw annoyance in her eyes and felt a wave of relief.

“I heard there was a little scrimmage today,” he said, propping a shoulder up on the doorjamb and fighting the urge to go to her. Man, he sure had it bad.

“Those idiots,” she said, “they took shots at each other. As if we don’t have enough shit to deal with.”

“Did you get in the middle of it?” She glanced down at her papers and fiddled with them, and it was enough of an answer. “You got between a bunch of transgenics with murder on their minds. Do you know –”

She stood up, the annoyance burning into righteous ire. “I’ve done it before and survived,” she hissed. “I can save my own ass. Thanks very much.”

“You’re right,” he said, throwing up his hands. Not really knowing why he was bothering. She was right. He knew it. So why the rush of protectiveness? “You’re right. Sorry for caring.”

“Alec,” she said, and then stopped. Sat back down on the bed again. Shoved a piece of paper at him. “Here’s your schedule for the next couple days. Some pickups down at the docks. I hope you don’t mind.”

“The docks’re my favorite place,” he said. “I love the smell of garbage rotting in the water. Love getting slimy crap on my boots. I love being your errand boy, Max.”

“I’m sorry, Alec, I didn’t mean it,” she said, but she didn’t look up from her papers. “I just haven’t – I’m just getting used to being alone again. Okay?”

“Did he even call you to say goodbye?” That stupid bastard had dumped her; Alec couldn’t keep the sneer out of his voice. “Or did he just fade out and now his number’s always busy? Off saving the world, one scrambled communication at a time.”

“Please, Alec,” she said. “Please don’t.”

“Fine, I’m done. But if I ever see him, he’s gonna get a punch in the face, and that’s a guarantee.”

“You’ll have to stand in line,” she said, so low-voiced only a transgenic could hear her, and he took the piece of paper and grinned his way down the hall.

Present Day

In the middle of the night it is so still that Alec can hear trucks grinding up and down a gravel road; the squeak of a gate as it opens; even sometimes the muted salutations of the guards. He has entered a state of half-awareness so profound that he loses time; he will sit down and then a guard will bang on the bars and he will realize it is two hours later. His infallible clock is getting fucked up but good.

Gravel crunches – changing of the guard. Muted hellos, how are yous, everything’s great, don’t worry, we’re breaking him slowly but surely. Alec feels a laugh welling up inside him, a really big one, but he stops himself because to laugh right now would alert the guards that something was really wrong with him and Alec doesn’t want them to know it even though he is in a very bad way.

Suddenly up above him something pings off the window bars and then Alec hears it fall to the floor. Then silence – no hissing that could be gas or a cherry bomb fuse or anything else. No whispers. No rescue. The crickets start chirping again.

Eventually he starts scrabbling around on the floor and he finds a pebble with a little piece of paper around it. There is not enough light to read the paper. The rock is too small for a weapon. Alec closes his eyes in frustration and opens them in daylight. For some reason the guards hadn’t rattled his cage; for some reason they had let him sleep. He is not sure he trusts such a benevolent change in routine.

When he remembers the paper in his pocket, he uncrumples it. Its message is printed in tiny copperplate: “Your friend Mole is dead. Most beast people are. You will be transported within the week. I am sorry.”

Mole. Help of the helpless, teller of bawdy jokes, smoker of vile-smelling cigars. Mole, who had believed in a new day and a new place, who had started this journey with his head stuck out the transport window singing “Viva Las Vegas” and doing a terrible Elvis impression. Inside, Alec wants to start kicking things, start screaming cuss words, start blowing stuff sky high. Outside, he is too beat down, and can barely put his arm over his face before the tears come.

Two Months Ago

It was Mole who first saw the TV news and ran shouting out to the truck where Alec was unloading medical supplies (Eyes Only, aka That Bastard, sometimes silently came through).

“Alec! You won’t believe this!”

“Believe what?” But Mole didn’t answer, just grabbed him and pulled him into where the main TV feeds were. Everyone was crowded around them, just staring, and Alec had to thread his way up to the front. Once there, he stood with his mouth open too, just like everyone else.

“TRANSGENICS TO GAIN AN EXODUS?” read the caption. A black-suited man Alec did not recognize was giving a press release with some kind of official seal behind him.

“– prepared to offer the transgenics a home site of their own. As you know, the Las Vegas nuclear power plant suffered a disastrous breakdown after the Pulse, and though it didn’t explode, the area still had to be evacuated. Experts estimate that it will be two to three hundred years until the place is stable enough for human habitation. But as we have seen in Seattle, transgenics can habitate in places that humans can’t.

“Therefore the government de facto of the United States is prepared to offer transport vehicles for any transgenic who wishes to move to the Las Vegas area within the next month. The government will set up supply routes and in return, the transgenics can make the place habitable and trade any items they find in the city that can still be used.

“That’s all. No questions.” He then stepped down from the podium, and the spellbound viewers in the room erupted into a roar of questions. It became so deafening that Alec climbed on a table and pounded on it with a pipe until people shut up.

“All right, people, all right!” As he calmed everyone down, Max climbed up on the table with him, grabbing his arm to help her steady on the wobbly legs.

“People,” she said in her Max way, “this is big news, okay? So let’s not go crazy. We have to think about this.”

“What’s there to think about?” yelled Mole. “It’s Las Vegas. Prolly a hundred degrees there right now.” Everyone laughs.

“It’s a government conspiracy,” said Dix sourly, “like what they did to the Indians. Keep ‘em where you can see ‘em, right? Rounded up in a place where you can grab ‘em if you want ‘em.”

“We’re already in a place like that,” shouted someone else, and then it went back into a general fight until Alec pounded the table again.

“Look,” said Max. “We have a month to decide. And I’m not gonna keep anyone here. If you want to go – you should go. Think of yourselves, think of your friends. It won’t hurt my feelings if you go.”

“But what about you, Max?” said Joshua. His face was worried and creased and his eyes were drooping.

“I don’t know, buddy,” said Max. “I just don’t know.”

After that everyone kind of turned back to the TVs and watched the news some more and Max got down off the table. Alec saw her threading her way out and knew where she was going — the place she always went when it gets bad. He knew he should let her be alone, but after watching the press release one more time, he slipped out too and headed over to the Space Needle.

She sat on the edge looking pensive, hair blowing back in the high winds that presaged rain. But she didn’t look surprised to see him.

“Lot of them are going to want to go,” she said. “Probably all the X7s. Maybe even some X5s. Freak Nation isn’t big enough to hold us all.”

“I know,” Alec said. “They’ve been itching for it and now they’ve got an excuse. Maybe it’ll be better down there. Maybe they’ll be … content.”

“If they go,” she said, and paused, and looked down into the distance, and he sighed, knowing what was coming. “When they go, I’m going to ask you a very big favor.”

“I will,” he said.

“You don’t know what I’m going to ask,” she said back, and smiled that lit up Max smile. For the first time in his life Alec wanted to kiss a woman but didn’t even try. Was afraid to try – didn’t want to ruin what he had.

“You want me to go with them and make sure they’re safe.”

“Yes,” she said. “And then come back to Seattle.”

“Come back?” He blinked — what a startling thing to hear.

“Come back,” she said, but she didn’t look at him, and they sat there until the rain really did start.

Present Day

There are five of them left, he sees as the guards push him out into the frozen cloudy evening in his tattered jeans and undershirt (all that is left of what he wore out of Seattle). Five left out of how many hundred? How many got away during those first few minutes, jumping out of the trucks and fleeing for their lives? How many went to ground, and how many were captured? Who was deported off to a lab, put back behind bars? Who died on a dirty concrete floor?

The guards chain him up five ways to Sunday: legs, arms, neck. He sees the other captives – two X5s, a fish-woman with a badly rigged breathing apparatus (she is gulping for breath) and a guy with a weird eyepiece who looks surprisingly well fed and comfortable. He’s not in chains – he’s walking around. Alec remembers him vaguely from the TC control room. He did something with TVs or something. Now he’s walking around like the teacher’s pet. Alec supposes he is – Dick’s pet. There’s something so poetic about it.

He saunters up to Alec and smirks. “I’d put extra chains on him,” he says to the guard. “I saw him jump a twenty foot fence once.”

“Liar,” says Alec mildly, shuddering in the cold but smiling all the same. “Like I’d take a little pissant like you on a mission.” It’s the first non-insane laugh he’s had in forever as the little jackass puffs up furiously.

“I hope you like your lab experience,” he hisses, drooling a little in fury. “I’ll tell ‘em to cut you extra slow.”

“Fuck you, you little sellout fucking freak.”

“I’m going to tell her once they let me go!” shouts the jackass. “I’m going to tell Max that you’re dead!”

“Whatever.” Alec turns his head as far as the chains allow and doesn’t respond to any more taunts. So the little freak goes over to insult the poor fish woman, who can’t even reply back because of the pipes. Alec hopes to heaven that they throw him off a handy bridge when they’re done with him, because it would be a favor to the world.

It’s goodbye to the facility then, and no chance to give Dick a big old hug, because the guards load them into black Hummers, two captives to a car. Alec finds himself in with another X5 whom he doesn’t recognize. He thought he knew everyone in Seattle, so this girl must have been from out of town. The guards allow a little talking and in whispers they exchange names – she is Sarah, from Canada.

“I was just passing through,” she said, her face as sad as his probably looks. “My boyfriend – I think maybe he got away, but probably not. He was just a normal.”

“I’m sorry,” Alec says, and then they are silent. Darkness falls early and all he can see out the window is forest and the taillights of the Hummer in front of him. At least he is warm. He begins to speculate miserably on what lies ahead for him and Sarah. Probably this will be the end of the line – they will either figure out how to reprogram him, or they will cut him up to see how he works. He is really not looking forward to either future.

He is half asleep and lolling against the seat when he hears a massive thump and the Hummer brakes screeching. The guards are cursing and he and Sarah take one look at each other and throw themselves down into the well between the front and back seats. There is a smash as the Hummer hits the one in front of it, a dizzying twirl, and they come to a halt on the side of the road.

“I think it was a tree,” one guard says to another, “or something came down in front of the cars – Mack, Mack, are you all right? *Shit.*”

Mack obviously wasn’t all right and as Alec is about to say something there is another thump, this one on the roof, and then the door is yanked open and the remaining guard seems to fly right out of the Hummer as if by magic. Alec’s not sure if he’s awake – maybe this is a dream, or worse – when the back doors are yanked open too and there is Max, staring down at him like some kind of furious angel.

“Am I dead?” he asks her, because he can’t turn his head far enough to look at Sarah. He can only stare up at her – her hair is a bit longer, he thinks inanely. But she’s wearing her usual black combat gear. He clambers back up onto the seat as best he can in chains (doing a kind of modified dolphin twist). “Is this hell or heaven?”

“We’re transgenics, Alec,” she says dryly. “We don’t believe in that stuff.” And then she does a totally un-Max-like thing, or maybe it’s totally Max-like — she crouches down and puts her hand out and touches his cheek. A month of scruff, it’s not all that pretty, but she stays right there and her eyes are big and brown and as full of sorrow as he remembers.

“Alec, I’m so sorry,” she begins, and then stops, and says, “I should have gone myself,” and then stops, and he’s just looking at her, because she did come to save him, so maybe prayers get answered, so maybe he does believe in that kind of stuff, and then nothing matters anymore at all because she leans in and kisses him as hard as she can, scruff and all, kisses the hell out of him, so beautifully that he forgets the last few thoughts in his head. When they finally come up for air he’s panting and on fire and his wrists feel like they’re broken.

“I loved that,” he says. “I really really did. But could you get these chains off me now?”

“Alec,” she says, and then behind her there’s Joshua, who lifts him bodily out of the truck and holds him like a baby while Max undoes his chains and then moves on to Sarah and the fish woman and the other X5.

“There’s an X7 with some kind of eye implant – an informer – he’s not on our side,” he says tiredly, and Max nods and she touches his cheek and then she actually picks up his hand and kisses it in front of Joshua and everyone and it kind of makes him embarrassed but happy too. And then they put him back in the Hummer, but an X7 is driving it this time and he has the whole backseat, so he sleeps all the way back to Seattle and wakes up in the Freak Nation. Things look the same but not the same, and Alec is not sure how he feels being back — being alive when so many others are dead. He’s feeling fuzzy and weird and guilty and his body clock has given up the ghost because it is not working.

So the first thing he does is have a bath – a really good long one, and damn the hot water – and then he finds some clothes that do not smell like piss and blood and concrete. And then he goes back to sleep for as long as he wants to. When he comes to and opens his door to find something to eat, Max is sitting outside reading a book. He looks at her and he can’t help it, he smiles a big goofy smile, and she raises her eyebrow at him.

“What?”

“What are you doing?”

“Just paying you back for all those times you protected me so I could sleep.” She smiles and closes her book. “So how about I take you out to lunch and you tell me all about your big adventure? We got a lot from the people that escaped the transports, but it took us a damn long time to find you. I’m sorry we didn’t find you sooner.”

“I know you did your best,” he replies, because none of it was her fault and he wants her to stop apologizing. He puts out a hand to help her up; she takes it, and it just occurs naturally – uh huh – that he pulls her up against him and kisses her some more. And when they do finally get to lunch, she’s got kind of a goofy smile going too.

–end–

*title is from a song by Low Millions called, “Nikki Don’t Stop.”

Are we all wrapped up? Wrapped up together?
Are we all wrapped up, fit for the kill?
Ruby. Paraffin.

She looks at him with eyes that are, strangely, not blank, but electric. Over the table where he’s sprawled himself in a chair on one side and she’s leaned against the counter on the other. She has not bothered to put on any clothes — it is hotter than a lava pool in hell, and what does she have to be afraid of anyway? He’s seen it all. He put the bruises there.

He reaches for the half-empty bottle of Jim Beam, but does nothing but fondle the glass. She watches his long, capable fingers. Imagines him writing his will on her. The room smells overpoweringly of sex and the curry, now cold, he had been eating before she walked in uninvited. She watches him with electric eyes, and still, he says nothing.

She wants there to be something to say. Anything. Are you okay, maybe. Did you get a splinter from the wall. Do your knees feel disjointed, like mine, like mine.

“Do your arms hurt?” she asks. She hates that she is always the first to ask. But she always is. She’s the one to beg, she’s the one to come to him. For him. Always.

“From what,” he says flatly. He has told her that he hates the way his voice sounds now, raspy and inelegant, but it lights a fire in her that she has to beat down constantly. Now, low in her belly, it whooshes into flame again.

“From holding me up. I know I’m not all light and airy. Not like Fred would be.” His head comes up slowly and she can see the danger in his eyes, and she curses herself for starting it up again. She hadn’t meant to. Not really.

“I’m warning you, Lilah.”

“You’re warning me? That’s rich.” She laughs, her bitchiest laugh. “As if you don’t think of her every moment we’re together. As if you don’t wish I was her.” The words bitter across her tongue.

“I –” For a moment he seems confused, not angry. He leans back in the chair again and laces his arms behind his head. It showcases the sleek lines of his pectorals, but for once she is barely interested. She watches his eyes, and they tell her something surprising. He says, almost so softly that she cannot hear him, “I didn’t think of her.”

—-

He’s telling the truth. He’d thrown it in her face before that he was thinking of Fred, even called out her name once or twice, at first. Back when they really hated each other and all he wanted to do was hurt her. But even then, Lilah had driven the thought of Fred quite out of his mind with her white nipping teeth and the way she used her hands. Fred could never do what she was doing now - stand there, very naked, and be as poised as if she were wearing a power suit.

She cocks her head at him, flipping her hair out of her face unconsciously. “Didn’t you?”

He shakes his head - in for a penny, in for a pound. “I can’t.”

Her eyes narrow slightly. “She’s too pure for our dirty fucks? Is that it?”

Before he can help himself, he’s blurted it out - he doesn’t want to give her an advantage, but there is something behind the anger, something he has to assuage - “I mean I can’t. When we’re together - there isn’t anything else.”

She blinks, and when she looks at him again, the electricity there could probably power the whole of LA. The current of it strikes him in waves, and he suddenly wants her so badly he aches with it. She crawls onto the table and assaults him, and he assaults her back. It’s brief and uncomfortable, but he had told the truth, and for several long, slow moments, there is nothing but her in the whole of this unforgiving world.

When his breathing has finally stopped hitching he turns his head to look at her. Surprisingly, the table has held up with both of them balanced on it. She is looking back, and there is muted triumph in her eyes. He’s given her the advantage - but he was bound to give it up sooner or later. He’ll just have to take it back, is all.

“Wesley - ” Her lipstick has all been kissed off, and her chin is red and raw from his whiskers. He feels a kind of male possessiveness, which is wiped away completely by her next words.

“Come work with me. At Wolfram and Hart.”

“We’ve had this discussion, Lilah.” He rolls off the table and roots around for the whiskey bottle. He finds it on the floor. It had not broken, but the liquor has all puddled out onto the floor. Dammit.

“Please. I need -” He thinks she had probably been going to say, “I need you,” but she amends it quickly to “I need a scholar to help me take down - .” She stops again, and he mentally finishes the sentence that she is too tactful to say. Angel. Take down Angel.

There isn’t any more whiskey in the house, and now he has to go down to the store, where they know him by name. Anger wells up in him again, raw and fierce, and he wheels on her. “I can’t. I won’t. Stop asking me.”

Her eyes spark up again, and she is off the table as suddenly, reaching for her purse and digging out her panties. “We could use your knowledge. The Powers That Be don’t even know as much as you! It’s imperative that we get a step ahead of him!”

She’s thinking like a lawyer again and he suddenly feels old and stupid and tired. “Shut up, Lilah. That road is closed to me.”

“It isn’t! It’s wide open!”

“Like your hole of a mouth, Lilah. Close it.” It doesn’t sound like him saying those words. It sounds like a drunken wastrel who has no class, no manners, and nothing to live for.

“Fuck you, Wesley.” She sounds choked, like she might cry, but when he looks at her, she meets his furious gaze clearly. She drags on her shirt without bothering to put on a bra, and his mouth dries out again, but this time he stamps it down heavily.

“The same to you. Now get out.”

She puts on her shoes and grabs her purse and opens the door wide, obviously not caring that he is completely starkers. As she saunters out the door, he can’t help the parting jab -

“I was lying, before. I do think about her.”

She pauses, hand on the doorknob, and gives him a wide, joyful smile that makes him wonder what she might have looked like as a girl.

“No you weren’t.” And quietly, sliding across the threshhold, she is gone.

–the end–

One girl was called Jean Marie
Another little girl was called Felicity
Another little girl was Sally Joy
The other was me, and I’m a boy.
–The Who

“Hey Ryan, did you see?” Jim calls Ryan over to look at his Firefox. “NME says the Who is going on tour again! It’s their first world tour in 20 years.”

“What?” Ryan looks confused. “Half of that band is dead or something, right?”

“O ye of little faith,” grins Jim. “They’re replacing Keith Moon with the drummer from Oasis –”

“Oasis?” Ryan makes a barfing noise.

“I know! And some new bassist, and Pete Townshend’s brother on guitar! And they’re playing Madison Square Gardens. And it’s going to rock hard! I’m definitely going.”

“I don’t think I’d drive two and a half hours, plus New York traffic, to see the drummer from Oasis,” says Ryan. “I think to get the Who experience, you had to see them back in the day with a pound of pot in your backpack.”

“I saw them in 1970,” says Creed, from behind them, and the cameras swing away from Ryan and towards him where he is rocking back in his chair by the window. “In Amsterdam.”

Ryan looks away, bored, but Jim swings around again to face him. “What were you doing there?”

“Backpacking with my buddies. We went all over the place that year, but man, we loved Amsterdam.” Creed laughs loudly. “All the drugs you could handle, and the women! Dutch chicks hanging all over you. They’d do things with each other that — well. And one day the Who happened to be in town. It was January, I think, and it was so fuh –” quick look at the cameras — “very, very cold. We about froze, waiting outside, but they were righteous. They did ‘I’m A Boy.’ That was my favorite. And I met this gal — what was her name — oh well, it doesn’t matter. Took her home. Saw Led Zeppelin the next month, too.”

Jim looks Creed up and down, smiling. “You’re cooler than I thought you were, Sally Joy.”

Creed smiles back at him and flips him the bird. “And you’re not terribly uncool, for someone whose idea of great music is probably that Stevens kid who wrote about Iowa or whatever.” Jim cracks up, looking helplessly at Pam, who makes a face like, what? What are you even talking about?

“Illinois.” The cameras swing back over to Ryan, who isn’t laughing. “*Sufjan* Stevens’ album was called Illinoise.”

“Yeah, whatever, kid. When that Stevens guy writes himself a rock opera, you let me know.” That makes Jim start laughing again, pounding the desk helplessly and making Dwight squeal in irritation.

“Let’s get tickets, Creed,” he says. “Hey Pam, you want to go see the Who?”

“Who?” says Pam.

–end–
07.19.06

Vielen, vielen Dank to ETo’J, who beta-read this and grinned knowingly. There’s a sociopath sitting on your couch, Evil Twin — and he’s got on leather gloves. I’ll get out the ice cream, shall I?

Wake up
Somethings you can’t get around
I’m in you
More so when they put me in the ground.
U2. Dirty Day.

Telephone, three a.m. It wakes me from my half-drunk slumber, and I sit bolt upright on the bed. Stale alcohol reeks from my body.

Drunk again, the fourth time this week. Am I trying to forget something? I can’t remember.

Telephone. Ringing. Again.

I fumble for it, trying at the same time to stay under the covers. It’s rather freezing in here. Drunk people apparently don’t know about thermostats. Damn me. It may be the middle of summer, but when you have extra ventilation, by which I mean all the windows open….

Okay. Okay. I’m answering already.

“Hello.” I try not to sound as drunk as I feel and it’s a blessing when I hear her clear voice on the phone like a mountain river. Her icy tone cuts me right through.

“You did it. You did it, didn’t you? You aren’t ever satisfied, are you?”

It’s difficult to answer her. She sounds as if I have broken her heart. I suppose I have.

“Sc — Da — I’m — ”

“Motherfucker.”

“Hey, I never did that,” I said, trying for insouciance. I run my hands through my hair. Over my left ear, I find a bump and a new scab. Last night is a black hole. And the night before that.

Her voice cracks a tiny bit, and slivers of it run in my bloodstream. “You just aren’t satisfied.”

“I’m the fucking Elephant’s Child, Dana.”

She chokes out a laugh. It sounds as if her lung is coming up with it. “Insatiable.”

“You know that, don’t you.”

Her voice is only a thread now. “Tell me you were following orders.”

“I was following orders.” My legs swing over the side of the bed. “Does that make you feel better?”

Her voice sounds clogged, so thick with emotion that I could eat it on toast. “I should have shot you while I had the chance. I should have fucking shot you.”

That’s patently true. “Yeah. You should’ve.”

Silence hangs on the line, hissing in my ear, and then she hangs up. I wonder what to do next, where to go. Not that I could hide from her. Not that I would want to. I should feel right, justified. And I do. But I also feel like my head is full of dirt.

Oh Dana. I love you. If only you had died.

* * *

She’s got a naturally suspicious nature. In conversation, it reveals itself more fully. She suspects everyone. I’m sure she suspected me. Of something. Who knows what it was. Did I have a hair out of place, a nervous tic, something she could put her finger on later and say, “That was it! I knew there was something about him!”?

I bet she comforted herself with that very statement, later. Brushing her hair, maybe, she’d pace the bathroom and mutter that she knew it all along. That I was too slick and pretty to be real.

I only hope that she can forget the spectre of me sliding my arms around her and telling her that she has the most beautiful hair, that she’s like a fire in my brain. Because I can’t forget it.

* * *

That summer, I was being legit at Quantico. Well, not really legit. But I established my pretty-boy credentials well enough when I was there. By the time I hit Skinner’s department, I had seven letters of recommendation, and three of them were real. I met Mulder face-to-face for the first time with Skinner. But the first time I met Scully was in a class on gunshot trajectories. She was attending for the fun of it. I was seeing if the lectures would prove useful in future jobs.

I started off by asking to copy her notes from last time. Soon enough, I was helpless, bound up in her smile, confiding in her everything that wasn’t real, that wasn’t me, but that I wanted to be me because it pleased her. That summer, I didn’t do much at Quantico except try to please her. Ask her to dinner. Bring her books. Ply her with small talk. Admire her spoken word. Her hands. Her ass. Her mouth.

Her mouth tasted like smoke the first time I hollowed it out. She had been smoking, and she begged me not to tell Mulder. I promised not to. I couldn’t have anyway. I could never tell him anything.

No matter that the first time we kissed was in an autopsy bay. She smoked sometimes because she didn’t like to teach, because it calmed her nerves. Because she wanted to. Autopsy bay, Quantico, with her hair tied up and her cutting smock still on.

We kissed up against a silver rack of freezers, each holding a dead body that might be us someday. She had been catching up on grades, down there in death’s dominion, and I came looking for her. Sometimes only the sight of her kept me from putting my hand, my head, through the nearest wall. This is still true.

She smiled when she saw me and she asked what ever was I doing down there in death’s dark. I said I couldn’t stand it any more and truly, I couldn’t. My assignment that day had been slightly gruesome, not that I could tell her that, and then Mr. Spender had patted me on the head and told me good job and my paycheck was in the Swiss bank, no matter that a man was dead in his bed, because money can buy you everything but love.

I wanted to tell her all this, but I was constrained by her clear eyes and her unravaged face. I felt ravaged, in there where no one could see, and it hurt, that was one of the last times it hurt to kill a man. Later, I stopped minding. It’s easier not to mind. No matter who it is you’re killing.

She said, hard day in class? I think I’d told her I was a chem student or something. She thought it was great, really noble. That I’d win the Nobel Prize or something. And I said you have no idea, and she said come here and I’ll rub your back, and I did mean to have her rub my back, I did. But at the first touch of her hands I lost it a little and I twisted around at her touch and I said Dana do you mind if I kiss you and she smiled a little wider and she said no, Alex, I don’t, and that throaty no was my undoing and I picked her up, right out of her chair, she was light as a feather, and I set her against the silver racks of frozen corpses and I kissed her like world’s end.

She is fine, good and fine, and I like to think I didn’t leave that much of a mark on her, but maybe that sometimes when she’s in the bathroom and the stainless steel of her cabinets reflects her face, that she will remember one day when her legs went around my waist and I held all her weight for a glorious frightening moment that was too short.

* * *

Minutiae.

Stumble out of bed. Into the shower.

Leave the lights off. I don’t want to look in the mirror.

Shower in the dark.

Remember her hands.

Shut off the shower. Bite my lip, hard.

Try to stop thinking about her hands.

Get out of the shower and hunt around for a towel.

Dry off. Shave by touch, in the dark.

Leave the bathroom. Flip on the lights in the apartment.

Remember how she used to wrinkle her nose at the couch and say how ugly it was, how it didn’t complement her bra.

And remember how stupid me just gaped at her and then, shocked into understanding, took a seat on the floor as she unbuttoned her blouse.

Pull on underwear and pants and a shirt and boots and find my sunglasses and my wallet and keys.

Try to forget her hands. Try to forget that she shot Mulder to save you; to save him, yeah. But to save you, too.

Try to forget her absolute anguish over the telephone.

Grab an apple out of the fridge. Try to stop imagining her eyes, staring red-rimmed hell at me, and her swollen mouth, calling me a fucking bastard.

Close the window. Remember instead how she looked in the rain, in the sun, underneath lowering clouds.

Finish the apple. Get a banana and peel it. Make sure I have memorized the address to my meeting place. Eat the banana.

Buckle on my Ruger P90. Leave the apartment. Lock the door behind me. Stomp down the stairs and out into the bright, bright sunlight.

Put on my sunglasses and keep my chin up and try so very hard to stop thinking about her, how she used to say my name so it had at least seven Xes on the end.

Alexxxxxxx.

* * *

I’m no Romeo. I drink too much, for one thing. I hate Mulder too. She did anything for him, anything he wanted, and she went to Puerto fucking Rico for him, and she did his autopsies and she spat in the face of anyone that said anything. Oh, she was a problem to the Group: I told them she would be. For her sake and for mine, sometimes I wished she wasn’t on the X-Files. What a bunch of crap those files are, even if they do give me employment.

I hated when she wasted her mind like that. If I came over and she had a folder with X on it, she’d shut it right away and look guilty, but she wouldn’t deny that she was working on some damn thing like a guy that saw weird messages in his postal coder. What the hell kind of job was that for her, with her exquisite mind?

Looking back on it, of course I was jealous. She’d head off someplace with a “Bye, Alex,” and a cheerful wave, and it would be somber hell in my apartment till she got back. I’d do my job of course and I’d kill the person I was supposed to kill and I’d get back home and get drunk. It’s only without her that I become an alcoholic. When I have her mouth to drink, booze tastes like puke.

She confessed to me once, only once, that she sometimes got tired of Mulder asking her to do stuff. By this time I was sleeping over, had a toothbrush in the bathroom, spare T-shirt in the drawer, the whole works. I didn’t come over as much as I’d have liked. Mulder might find out, she said, and like her smoking, I guess, he wouldn’t go for it. It turned out to be a bit of a blessing, that paranoia. Later. The two halves of her life collided when she and I “met” over the body of a dead Marine. She walked right by me when I offered my hand. Nice to meet you, she said. And with Mulder standing there looking at her, all I could do was pretend, while her awfully young face tried its best to lie. Oh, she couldn’t keep her feelings hidden. Not at all.

I was the one who heard her frustrations about the job. About her superiors and how she was supposed to be a patsy for them. She told me when she didn’t feel up to the job. She took out her rage on me. She had it, believe me. That rage made me happy, made me think that she might stick with me no matter what. She certainly stuck to me, like pollen on a bee.

She came to me at odd hours of the night and she called me and begged me to visit her. And when I arrived at her door it would be open just a bit, and I would push it open and go in and she would be perched on the kitchen table. The line of her arched back would glimmer white in the dim space of domesticity and her hair would cascade down over her shoulder blades. It hurts my cold cold heart to think about how soft her skin was, how she put bite marks in my shoulders.

People call me a soulless bastard. People call me a whore. All I know is, I’m hers. Hers till the day I die, or the day she does. And at this rate it’ll be her before me. My life is awfully weird, and fate deals me a rotten hand, but nothing has been quite as bad as when I was ordered to kill her.

* * *

No one would understand this, so I don’t tell anyone. If anyone asks, I just say: they told me to do it and I did.

Makes sense, doesn’t it? They told me to do it and I did. I’m a terribly good soldier. I take orders with a smile on my face. I have been a soldier since I could walk. My first words were, “Yes Sir.” I speak four languages and curse fluently in six. And I cursed in all six of them when Mr. Spender gave me the assignment.

It’s true that I didn’t protest. It’s true that when he said “You and Luis are going to go take care of Dana Scully,” I didn’t believe it for one long minute. Then I said “Yes sir,” and I left and I went halfway down the staircase of that big office building and then I sank down on a dirty step with my knees shaking.

It’s true that the rest of that time consisted of my being continuously drunk. At the time of Mr. Spender’s order, Dana and I hadn’t spoken in months. After she came back from her experience on Skyland Mountain, she called me one time. I came over one time. And then I left and she threw herself into work with Mulder and the phone stayed silent and she never came over again. She and I were barely acquaintances anymore, in spite of my being able to finish her sentences.

She didn’t blame me for Skyland Mountain, I’m sure of that. But Mulder suspected me, and so she did too after awhile. I’m sure he told Scully all about Alex Krycek, cold-blooded killer, amoral savage to his, Mulder’s, shining white knight. Maybe she didn’t believe him at first, but he kept at her, kept badmouthing me with all the petulance of a hurt child, until she finally took him at his word.

Consequently, she just turned herself away from me, quit talking to me, quit seeing me. If she’d passed me on the street, she’d have dropped her eyes. Cut me dead, I’m sure. But I’d still wake out of dreams gasping her name. I’d still find pieces of her in my apartment — red hairs by the mirror, a fingerprint in the butter. Still.

So it’s true that I spent that humid summer week making my way through bottles of Glenfiddich. One good thing about my paycheck — no skimping out for me. I sobered up, barely, the day before my assignment. Luis thought, and said, that I was a damn fool. He said he wanted a new partner. I wanted to give one to him. But I think Mr. Spender knew something and he wanted to test me. I was determined to pass.

It’s also true that Luis took the shot. I would have done it if I’d been asked. I would have squeezed my eyes shut and I would have done it. But he didn’t ask me to.

No one would understand this. Very few people understand the idea of total obedience. Luis doesn’t even understand it — he badmouths our superiors on a regular basis. I haven’t met more than a handful of people that could nod when I say that I was sent to kill the fire in my life. And yet, she is not dead. It would probably be easier for me if she were.

We shot her sister instead. It should have been her, and it would have been if I’d been more attentive, more sober. I saw red hair and before the length registered, I’d nodded and Luis had put a small black hole in her forehead.

I suppose it’s hard to think of killing someone you love. I just did what I was supposed to, and my rotten luck sold me out. I can’t stop thinking about what she would say if she saw me, what look she would give me. There aren’t any excuses I have for her. I’m glad she hung up — I’m sorry. I’m glad.

I head up the elevator of the Hotel America. My mouth tastes like the inside of a whiskey bottle. I have to report to Mr. Spender. He’s expecting me. I have to atone to him for making the mistake of killing Melissa Scully instead of Dana. To him, this is monumental. To him, I have failed. He doesn’t know how much effort this took in the first place.

* * *

We are in room 417 of the Hotel America. He sits in a hardwood chair, back straight, mouth puckered prissily. “I want my money back” is the first thing he says to me. The second is, “Cretin.” I’m standing at attention in front of him, hands curled at my sides, eyes forward. I really want to hit something, but it pays not to let Mr. Spender know things like that.

“I’m sorry, sir,” I say, and I mean sorry that he isn’t ever getting his money back, sorry that I messed up but no exchanges, no refunds. Mercenaries don’t give store credit. His mouth puckers even more. He and the Group are out a lot of money for this, and he knows damn well he isn’t ever going to see a cent of it again. I keep my eyes fixed at a point right over his forehead, so he can’t get me for insubordination. Even so, I can see his eyes narrow angrily.

“You fucked up, Alex. Big time. What do you have to say for yourself?”

What, indeed. I want to sink into a chair, tell him everything like he’s my shrink. But you don’t admit your weaknesses to your boss. You don’t admit any more than is necessary. Like that you’ve slept with the person he wants you to kill, curled up and cocooned, nose buried in her skin. Like that you would do anything but die instead of her. Like, sometimes you wonder if you’re a coward or the bravest person ever. Like that you can’t get her out of your head and oh how you have tried. But I don’t tell him any of those things. I don’t speak, I don’t move, until he finally gets up out of his chair and begins to pace the room furiously.

“We can pin most of this on Cardinale,” he says. “But you were the one that was supposed to ID her. What the hell were you thinking? The sister doesn’t look anything like her!”

I begin to say that they both have red hair and then realise that he’s looking at me like a vulture eyes a dead armadillo and I know that he’s just waiting for me to admit that I messed up. He wants to hear me say it. So I don’t say anything. What’s done is done anyway and he doesn’t really care, but the money galls him more than anything. It’s the money that really bakes his noodle.

“You drunken bastard,” he says finally. “You alcoholic bastard.” I ignore this slur on my parentage. I’m crying all the way to the bank, you withered hag. He paces across the room one last time and then he looks at me narrowly and says, “I’m going to take this up with the Group, Alex. This isn’t going to go unnoticed.” And most of the crap’s gonna fall on him. I smile inwardly, because I’m just a flunky. He’s the one who’s gonna get lambasted. That probably bakes his noodle too.

He slams out of the room with a snide comment about not ordering room service, and I wonder why I came over here at all. I thought maybe he’d have a guy named Muscles try to put my head through a wall or something. This wasn’t exactly profitable. Hell, it wasn’t even fun.

I swipe a couple bottles of whiskey out of the bar, and head down the elevator to the lobby. As I walk across the plush velvet carpet, I slip on my sunglasses so the clerk won’t be able to see my eyes if he’s looking. And someone is looking — I feel a prickle at the back of my neck, the hair standing up straight. So I stop dead and look around, and that’s the only reason I see her.

* * *

I think my heart thumps into stone for five seconds or so. I know my body does. Her presence strikes me, as it always does, with a tangible thud. She makes the classy surroundings look tacky and cheap. Everything looks dingy compared to her. And she’s staring straight at me.

I have to keep cool. Keep cool, I remind myself. I feel my hands shaking. I feel sick — stage fright.

Keep it together.

It’s pretty obvious that I’ve seen her, so she walks up to me with her casual saunter, her leather jacket flaring out over her jeans.

“Only dorks wear sunglasses inside,” she tells me offhandedly. I can see that her eyes aren’t matching her social smile.

“It’s the only disguise I have,” I offer. She isn’t taking the bait. Instead, she smiles at me like we’re old friends. “I am going to kill you, but not here,” she says. “I know you were in a meeting. I want you to take me up to the room where they were.”

This is slightly surprising. I don’t stop myself from sounding confused. “Wha — Scully, I don’t understand — ” I thought she was just gonna cap me.

Her grin slips, gets tacked back up on her face. “Take me up there. Are you fucking stupid?”

“No one’s there anymore.”

“You’re lying. And if you’re telling the truth, you’re lying anyway. So move.” She pats her pocket to let me know she’s packing, but I am going to do whatever she says, I have made up my mind. I turn around, move back toward the elevator, and she follows me, slipping her arm in mine and smiling up at me. I tip my head down to look at her and see the frenzy in her eyes. This could go badly.

Once in the elevator, she lets go and steps back again, glaring narrowly at me. “Take off those fucking glasses.”

I let myself grin. “People say my eyes are very expressive. I don’t want to give away everything I’m thinking.”

“Your eyes are as transparent as six inches of obsidian. Take them off.”

I don’t move and she huffs a breath and the elevator stops. Back on floor 4. She practically shoves me out of the elevator and down the hall. Dammit, this is not the way to keep a low profile. I search the hall for maids, but there’s no one in the hall. As we stop in front of 417, I keep my voice pitched low and say, “Now what? I don’t have a key.”

“Pick the lock.” Her voice is barely a breath in my ear.

This might be getting out of hand, so I decide to fake fright. “Dana, geez, that’s dangerous. I don’t understand what this is abou–”

“I don’t care what you have to do. Kick it open if you have to.” Her mouth is so very close to my ear and I must be losing it again, because I simply slide my hand into her back pocket and pick her wallet out of it. I can’t resist letting my hand stay a minute longer, maybe too long.

She takes a deep breath and maybe she’s going to scream so I hiss, “I need your fucking credit card.” What, does she think I carry around a Visa Gold with my name on it? She closes her mouth again and eyes me narrowly as I slide out her American Express. The lock isn’t difficult to spring and I have her inside in under fifteen seconds.

She jumps into the room like she’s expecting the whole Group to be sitting at a conference table waiting for her, but no one’s around. I shrug and shut the door behind us. I tried to tell her.

She begins to toss the room pretty professionally: if she wanted, I could teach her some tricks, but she’s doing pretty well on her own. I lean against the door and watch her rummage through the drawers and under the bed and in the little bathroom. At last she stomps out of the bathroom, covered in dust, and faces me again with a couple of frustrated tears glimmering in the corners of her eyes and her gun sitting sweet in her left hand. She slowly brings it up to point at me.

This isn’t a situation that I want to be in. I should have just left her here alone. It’s like some kind of fatal flaw, that I can’t leave her alone.

“He was here,” she says tonelessly. “You met with him, right?”

“Yeah,” I say. No use lying now. “I met with him.”

“What did he want?”

“He wanted his money back,” I say slowly. I really, really, don’t want to go here, but she’s not letting me lie; I think she can see right through me.

“And what did he pay you for?” she asks, and her voice breaks, and I know I will never be able to explain to her, never in a million years, that I was doing my job. Maybe, I think suddenly, it’s not a good excuse anymore.

“Dana — ”

“Why don’t you just fucking say it,” her tired voice grates at me. “Because she died and now you have lots of money to pay for whatever you fucking well want, now you have lots of money to buy you a heart because you’ve broken mine and my mother’s and my brothers’ and now we are all lying in pieces right in front of you and Alex, I have nothing left but the memory of a fight we had when I was sixteen. She wanted to wear a dress of mine and I wouldn’t let her, and my mom made me share with her, and I was so mad that I wouldn’t talk to her for a week, and then finally we hugged and made it up, she smiled at me and said it was great to be my sister, that I was a great girl, oh, Alex, oh, you never even met her.” Tears have begun to streak her, but she still hasn’t moved the gun.

I want to tell her it wasn’t me. I have nothing against her sister. I’d have been glad to meet her sister. I just follow orders. But I’m slowly realising that nothing I say is going to make any difference to her, that she is probably tired of hearing what my mouth has to say to her.

“You’re such a good soldier, you bastard, you stupid motherfucking insatiable bastard. You always do what’s best for you.” It’s almost love, the way she says it. Or maybe I’m imagining that.

“I didn’t take the shot, Dana,” I say, what a lousy excuse.

“But you would’ve,” she says, and the tears are streaking her now, “You would have. I hate you.”

I guess no one can love a man that sticks to his convictions like I do. I don’t have anything to say, no way to fix her hurt, so I just walk over there, slowly so I don’t scare her, I let her push the gun right up into my chest, I hope it leaves a bruise, and then I lean down and kiss her, because I still love her and it’s not right anymore to talk.

* * *

My mouth is wet from her crying as I straighten up. It’s unbearable to watch her cry like this, so I turn around to head for the door, maybe stand outside for a minute, let her get it together. But she makes a sudden strangled noise, like she’s trying to puke up her heart, and I can’t stand it one more minute without touching her, so I pick her up in my arms and set her on the bed and hold her while she tells me what a stupid bastard I am.

She asks over and over whether I would have shot her and every time, I answer “Yes.” I’d lie if it would help, but she doesn’t want lies. She wants to know my motivation, and like I said, very few people understand what I’m actually saying. So I just don’t deny it, no matter how much I wish I could.

“You’re evil,” she finally sniffles. It’s her basic premise. It’s been that way since she was returned. I’m evil and Mulder’s good and never the twain shall meet without her having to shoot one of us. “You’re evil, that’s all.” I shrug: I know from experience, and she should too, that quantifying people is like catching a quark. It can’t really be done, no matter how many people say it can.

“I’m not evil,” I reply. “Very few people really are. I’m just trying to get along in a difficult business.”

She pushes up against me, trying to get away, but I hold her down, wanting this moment to stay. It’s one desperate, awful attempt to keep her with me. She looks at me with a mix of impatience and grief and whispers, “Everything’s business to you.”

That’s about true.

“Remember that time I took you out to the creek?” I ask. “The one in Maryland?” It’s important for me that she remembers this. I’m not sure why.

The tips of her ears turn red as she nods. She certainly remembers what we did at the creek, if nothing else.

“And we went wading and I brought that innertube and we laughed and we drank all that natural apple juice stuff?”

“Yeah.” She sounds less sniffly, but it’ll start up again.

“After I left you at your place, I went home and there was a message on my machine. So I went to the meeting place — it was kind of like this — and I got my orders and I went to a guy’s house in Fairfax — ” I’m getting less and less sure I want to tell her this — “And I shot him through a pillow with a silenced Ruger, kind of like this one.” I slip her hand around to the small of my back, where I keep my gun.

Her delicate fingers feel the lump through my shirt and kind of rest there, settling. She stays silent. My hand has slipped under her shirt again and it’s pushing the soft cotton up inch by inch, showing up her ice cream skin.

“Did he deserve it?” she finally asks. Predictably, Agent Scully is wondering about justice and truth and the American Way.

“I don’t know,” I say. “I only knew his name, his description, his address. It doesn’t matter. I do what I’m told.”

She arches her back a little under my touch and that movement spikes right through me, the way she twists up to hold my eyes with hers.

“Did I deserve it?” she whispers. Her blue eyes are like electricity, a thousand volts raw.

I whisper, “No,” and I lean down and cover her body with mine. I wind my hands in her hair and we kiss again with enough force, it seems, to cause an earthquake.

I tear my mouth away just enough to whisper that I’m miserable without her, to pull her jacket off of her arms, and to ruck her shirt up over her head.

* * *

By this point, all I can think about is her skin and her smell and the way she’s letting her legs lie partway open. So it’s a surprise when I can drag my eyes past her push-up bra to her face. Her eyes are closed and there is absolutely no expression on her face. From the way she kissed me, I thought . . . but now I think I’m raping her.

“Dana?” I whisper. My throat seems clogged up.

She opens her eyes and they are unfocussed, she looks like she’s stoned and she brings up one hand to trace the line of my jaw. The feel of her against two days’ beard is exquisite. I try not to get distracted.

“You’re so beautiful, Alex. I wish I didn’t love you,” she says. Her eyes clear up a little. “But you can’t turn that stuff on and off. Sure, my head says, ‘He just tried to kill you. He offed your sister, or he helped do it. Don’t you understand that, Dana?’ But whatever that thing is in my chest that people call a heart, well, that thing hurts like hell and it just wants you, Alex, you to make it all better. It says, ‘He is the one that you call for in the night. This one, this one with all his flaws and his faults.’ What do you think I should listen to?”

By now, I realise how this is going to end, and I get one last look at her beautiful body before I answer her. I run my hand one last time down over her stomach, her hips.

“What do you always listen to, Dana?”

If you love something . . . What a damn trite sentiment.

She looks at me and suddenly she’s crying again, my love with her steel spine, and I know that this time I’ve broken her heart well and true. So I help her slip her shirt back on and I hold her until the sobs have died away, and then I whisper that if she doesn’t watch out, the maid’s gonna think we had a fight, and she chokes out a little bit of a laugh, and then I send her into the bathroom to wash her face.

She pauses at the entrance to the bathroom and looks back at me. Her face is all swollen with tears and her mouth looks bruised. The Unbreakable Dana Scully. She asks will I be there when she gets out of the bathroom, and I shake my head, and she stands there for one tiny, eternal moment, and then she goes in and shuts the door behind her. And I betake my battered body and my bruised heart somewhere else.

I never lie to Scully. Or, at least, I try not to.

* * *

The bar’s dark and the music pulses the tables. I order whiskey, neat. Nothing’s neat except whiskey anymore.

Fuck.

* * *

Mr. Spender has left five phone messages. When I call him, he asks where I’ve been. I evade the question. He wants me to get a disk from Skinner, right away. I say yes. What else? But I notice a strange tone in his voice, a strange new tone. This doesn’t bode well for yours truly.

I hear Scully’s in New Mexico. Gone after Mulder. It makes me smile a little, bitterly. I don’t think she’d go after me like that. But she knows I can take care of myself, unlike that poor sap of an agent. He’s never in the right place.

Or maybe he is in the right place. He has Scully, after all.

I suppose it wasn’t meant to be. I suppose I’m maybe meant to drink myself to death. She’s meant to hare off after Mulder till maybe she can’t walk anymore. We’re meant to cut each other dead, meant to walk in opposite directions. That hurts me more than killing ever did.

The job is all I have left, really, and I’m not sure how much job security I have; I’d better check my finances too. Scully’s right. I did get a lot of money to break her heart. But it wasn’t as much money as she thinks, and cash isn’t something I really enjoy.

I head out to the meetingplace where I can punch Skinner and knock his bald head against a wall or something. The thought holds a lot of appeal. I feel tense; strung. Struggling. Motivations unclear. But I’m done talking. Let it be warfare, then; let it be how it is.

–*the end*–

Author’s Notes: Many thanks to Jenna for the idea. Groovy, baby, yeah!
The U2 quote is from “Zooropa.”
The title is from “Anna Town,” a poem by Anne Carson:

What an anxious existence I led.
And it went on for years it was years.
Before I noticed the life of objects one day.
Anna gazed down at her.
Sword I saw the sword yield up.
To her all that had been accumulated.
Within it all that strange.
World where an apple weighs more.
Than a mountain then.
We set off.
For bitter warfare.
Is dear to us.

05.28.00 (appx)

Muchas gracias to my beta, Nancy Floyd-Finch, also known as “Evil Mistress of Betas.” If this story has any merit, it’s because of her beta, and her re-beta, and her re-re-re-beta.

“It must be understood that neither by word nor deed
had I given Fortunato cause to doubt my good will.
I continued, as was my wont, to smile in his face,
and he did not perceive that my smile NOW was at
the thought of his immolation.”
–E.A. Poe

- - -

Prologue: Baby light my way

- - -

The dark tunnel. He wakes up, cold-sweating, shivering. Panic — is she still there?

She lies on his chest, curled up against his sweat-matted T-shirt. In sleep, she does not move, rock-heavy, one hand curled under his chin. Her corduroy overalls are heavy and damp from where her training pants have overflowed in the night. Her curly brown hair tickles his nose; her little feet are tucked into his waistband.

She is three years old. She has not cried yet. And, lying over his heart, she keeps that organ from its final frozenness.

It is July fifth.

It is dawn.

Morning.

Day.

- - -

One: The thousand injuries of Fortunato

- - -

“I don’t go in for that patriotic crap anymore,” I say airily. I wave my hand in the air again. Really, I don’t care one way or the other, but I’m trying to get Frohike angry enough that he won’t ask me to attend any July Fourth celebrations with him. But pushing Frohike’s buttons is like stealing candy from a baby: it sounds easy, but when you really try it, you don’t do as well as you think you will.

Frohike is tacking a flag, a beautiful (handmade) Stars and Stripes, into the front window of the Lone Gunman offices. Afternoon sunlight pales through the cloth, striping purity and justice across the monitors, one of which is currently engaged in cracking the access code of a major foreign petroleum company. He is mad enough, currently, to spit tacks. But he finishes pinning the flag into place before he replies.

“Langly, it’s two stupid hours. Two hours that I ask you to go with me and honor the dead.”

“It’s brainwashing,” I smirk, hating myself and loving the patness of this answer. If nothing else, I still have my silver tongue. “They get you all worked up over a ‘war’ and ’saving democracy for other nations,’ when really it’s a territorial dispute, or someone makes Tricky Dick mad, so he decides to continue instead of capitulating. Damn, Frohike, it’s like you take this seriously or something. I mean, the dead are dead. They don’t care. No one cared enough to keep them alive in the first place.” I know what Frohike’s going to say next, and he doesn’t disappoint me.

“Have I shown you nothing?” he hisses, hair practically standing on end. “It doesn’t matter why we did it. The fact is, we *did* do it. We went over there while you were still kicking around in your momma, and we — ”

*trampled through the jungles and we killed boys, killed men, till we were rotten with it, till we cried,* I finish in my head. I’ve only heard this about a thousand times. Shut up, Frohike! Damn but you’re boring. My gut twists and knots. The air reeks of wonderful liquor. My skin shivers.

“Till we cried!” finishes up predictable Frohike. “And my friends died in that conflict and I’m going to the Memorial to remember them. And since you, sir, cannot be trusted, you are coming with me willy-nilly. Now get your damn shoes on before I kick your ass.” And he stomps into the other room.

“Bite me,” I say weakly as he leaves, but I’ve lost the argument once again. Dammit!

Oh, and I cannot be *trusted*. Well, that hurts, coming from a short frazzled man who once voluntarily spent four years on and off in a psychiatric ward. Frohike has spent a lot of time watching me like a babysitter while I try, once again, to detox myself. Frohike attends AA meetings with me. He even hugged me once as I stammered about my problem. I think that right then, I’d reached the very height of embarrassment. Looking back on it, I feel like a virgin after her wedding night — happy about finally getting through it, but heartily embarrassed to have had someone else there to share the experience.

Especially, I amend, someone as ugly and unloveable as Frohike essentially is. I have begun to hate Frohike, and the power of it is poisoning me. Hate’s so easy, you know? It’s easier than a two dollar hooker. Sure, I hate Frohike. It’s less work than loving him.

Most of this is my fault; I know that on some level. I’ve known it since I picked up that bottle at the New Year’s party. I tried, I made the effort, I really did. I just have a weak constitution — I have no willpower — and I’m full of excuses. It’s my fault that Frohike has spent every waking hour with me for three weeks. My fault.

I lean the chair back, eye the flag. Think about where the matches are.

- - -

I’m surprised at my control. Langly makes me wild, these days. I suppose it’s because we spend so much time together now. Like brother lions confined to the same cage, we maul each other instead of turning on our Daniel.

Still, as I go into my bedroom and shut my door, I congratulate myself. I didn’t kick that whining, pansy-ass creature in the kneecaps. That isn’t Langly. Since Becca’s New Years party, his spine has disintegrated and his bones have turned to pure pisswater. He sits and watches TV all day, and when he’s forced outside, he whines to beat the band.

I don’t know this man anymore. I could say that we’ve been friends for ten years. I could say that I’ve held him when he cried. I could say that he’s held me. But I won’t say any of it, because a red tide of resentment smothers me. What gives him the right to ruin his own life, when I’ve worked so hard to protect him from harm?

Sometimes I think of myself as a ninja, a stealth warrior in black, keeping my friends out of trouble, rescuing Mulder from whatever hole he crawls into, coding my way out of trouble time and again. But as good as I am with the language of ones and zeros, I still have failed miserably in my job of keeping Langly, my younger brother lion, from sliding into one of those holes with the spikes on the bottom and the smooth, slippery sides.

The big bust came three weeks ago. Picture this: Langly had disappeared for one and one half days. We were frantic, but not really surprised. Langly’d been working up to it for ages, and I don’t think he’d been sober for more than four hours at a stretch. We half-heartedly searched for him. Guess how many bars there are just on our *block*.

Byers and I pretty much ended up sitting around at the office until we got a call from the police, who’d arrested Ree for starting a legendary bar fight. Later, when I asked him what he was fighting about, he said he didn’t remember. I asked him if someone’d asked him to play drums for their band, but he just gave me a sour look and said nothing.

Anyway. Arrested, and he called me, but all I could feel for him was anger. I’d been building it up for months, ever since we couldn’t find him after the New Years party, and my cup had run over since then. Between the sullen aftermath of the New Year’s party and the way he’d been stonewalling me for months, I’d pretty much had it with his belligerence.

The gist of it was that I refused to pick him up. I cussed him out pretty well and I’d have hung up if Byers hadn’t grabbed the receiver. That man has the soul of a saint, and he picked Langly up out of the drunk tank and took him to Becca’s. Grateful, Langly promised never to drink again.

Exactly four hours later, he emptied the contents of one liquor cabinet belonging to Byers’ girlfriend. I say emptied, because there was only one bottle of peach Schnapps in there. I expect that if there’d been more, he would’ve taken that for the road. Langly staggered to the Lone Gunman office and slept there, reeking of peach. I found him there the next morning, still clutching the bottlecap.

I don’t really excuse my actions at this point. What I did was wrong. Understand, though, that I was so very angry. When I shook him the first time, he opened his eyes but I could tell he didn’t see me. The whites of his eyes were redder than a baboon’s ass, and there wasn’t anything behind the huge, dark pupils. I distinctly remember thinking, Oh, Langly. You fool. And that was it. I dragged him into the bathroom, and I dumped him into the bathtub with his clothes on. Turned the water to ‘cold’–wish there’d been a ‘Tahoe in January’ setting. And I turned that sucker on to full blast. That was so satisfying that it took half my anger with it. I could feel myself grinning. Not nice, but satisfying.

At first he didn’t really move. And he didn’t jump straight up in the air like I wished he had. He just sort of grunted and flopped up toward me.

“Dead man swimming,” I said, and aimed the spray directly at his now upturned face. It did my heart good to see his lips turn blue and his pale face turn even paler as the warmth leached out of it.

He said nothing, but the emptiness had gone from his eyes. This was not in vain after all. He was angry now; angrier than I’d seen him in ages. So I hitched up my courage and said it.

“Langly, listen up. Here’s the thing: stay and stop drinking or don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. Understand?”

Langly, dripping freezing water from his tresses, seemed to freeze up himself. To me, it looked like his brain had turned to ice. I could see that he wanted a drink, with the sodden desperation of a man in denial. If I could’ve, if it were safe, I’d have given him a drink, just for the look in his eyes. I’d have given him a sea.

Now picture this: Langly has spent ten years associating with us. We have lived together, puked together, built each other up, and torn one another right back down. Langly, princess of the Hacker Age, has nowhere else to go. But for ten frightening seconds, in the dingy bathtub of the Lone Gunman HQ, he considered leaving. As the seconds ticked to capitulation, he almost opened his mouth to say, Fine. I’m gone, Wayne. Gone. But he didn’t say it, and eventually he bowed his head, sending cascades of H2O down his pallid hacker’s face.

“I can’t,” he said. “I can’t do it. I can’t stop. You know it best, man. You know I have no choice but to drink myself to death. Just let me do it. Why can’t you just let me go.” His voice had all the animation of a hooker on barbiturates. And I just felt like screaming in his face: Because I have no choice but to hold on to you. Because my choice was taken from me years ago when I decided I loved you.

Brother lion. Brother mine.

So I didn’t say anything. Not one damn word of consolation or one helpful smile. I handed Langly a towel and I took the hardnosed route again.

“This isn’t One Life to Live. And I won’t come after you if you go this time. I’m sick of your soap-opera whining. Look at Byers. He’s finally getting a real life, finally living through Susanne, who tore his heart out and ate it. Ate it, man. Look at him, driving down to pick up his friend, who’s wasting his life away in the drunk tank. Look at him, moving on. You’re a stone. You’re dragging him down.”

At the mention of Byers, Langly looked up with animal hatred in his eyes. As well he should, for that man has taken gentle care of Langly through many thicks and many thins.

“Fuck all this noise,” he spat. At this point, goosebumps had formed all over his milk-white skin. “You can shove it –” and he began to climb out of the tub. Incidental profanity doesn’t bother me, but I was sure that at this point, he’d go find another drink. So I pinned him to the porcelain instead. I don’t weigh all that much, but since he’s a shadow, I managed pretty well.

Then, I did the thing that I’m sorry for now . . . but again, you must understand that I was a little mad. In both senses of the word. I had been thinking for a few short minutes about how I could keep him in the house for awhile, short of superglue. What did he prize most? What could I blackmail him with? Desperate times, yadda yadda. What were Langly’s family jewels? Besides the obvious, thank you.

So I grabbed his hair, right? And I started saying, “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your long golden hair.” I got one glimpse of his utterly terrified eyes and then I began to cut off his hair. I used those little nail scissors, cause they were the only ones in reach, but I did an extremely thorough job. And every piece of thin, blond hair that came off was like a weight coming off my heart. Revenge is sweet. I told you, I shouldn’t have done it. But it was sweet.

Halfway through, Langly began to scream, a high, wide scream that took in most of the upper register. But I’d nailed him as surely as a butterfly in a display case; and soon, all of his hair was detatched from his head and lying, scattered, limply scattered all over the bathroom. He retained only inch-long patches of fine blond hair.

Picture this: Rapunzel, shorn.

- - -

Two: The rheum of intoxication

- - -

For three weeks, I have not left the HQ. I have been in Frohike’s sight every waking moment. When I sleep, it’s on his bed and he handcuffs us together. I can’t sleep that way, so I spend most of my time lying, thinking, in the dark.

At first, I merely thought about beating him up, taking his money, upending a case of Coors on his head. Lately, I have thought about killing him. I think of leading him into a dark tunnel, and my slimy-wet imagination conjures images for me like a street magician. As that handcuff pulls on my wrist, I think of handcuffing him to an old barrel of wine and bricking him up behind a wall. I think of strangling him with the handcuff chain. Even now it makes me shiver, makes my eyes tear up behind their thick glasses. I have thought so hard of Frohike’s murder that if I were telepathic, it would have happened already.

I lean back in my chair. My hands lie unclasped in my lap. My eyes close. I think of drinking; wine, beer, gin, whatever is at hand. Frohike has thrown all the liquor in the house out. My hands clench as I think of a bottle of vodka. It is clear and square; it refracts light in rainbow dazzles. I think of luring Frohike into a tunnel and then whirling, insubstantial as cloud, and cleaving his skull with an axe. Never mind why I’m carrying an axe. Absolut murder.

I open my eyes. The flag casts stripes over me; I am covered in liberty and justice for all. Suddenly and without warning, I’m so ashamed of myself. I want to cry, just sit and wail. I want to say, “This isn’t how it was supposed to be! I’m not supposed to be lost here! This isn’t me — this isn’t me.” But what good would wailing do? It would just bring Frohike out here, and he’d. . . .

The hatred is back, as I run my hands across my raggedy scalp. When last I looked in the mirror, I saw a straggly remnant of the punk age. I can almost feel cool red and white stripes, like candy, coating my head.

This isn’t me.

I push myself out of my chair and head for the kitchen. It’s not too well stocked; Byers used to do it, but he doesn’t live here anymore. I don’t eat all that often, and Frohike likes to order in. I search the freezer, but it’s only got some old frozen broccoli. The fridge has some V-8, ketchup, and the six kinds of hot sauce that Frohike puts on his takeout. The cupboards contain some old spices and a bag of chocolate chips. I take them out and there, behind the bag, is the old bottle of real vanilla. Byers used to have a thing for cookies. Made ‘em all the time; horrendous things, they were. He had no flair for baking. Plus, he stopped using real vanilla. He looked at me once, face full of righteous wrath, and he said, “Can you believe this stuff is 70 proof?”

I take the lid off, run my finger around the rim of the bottle, put my finger in my mouth. Sweet, sick-sweet, dream-sweet. Oh, I cannot stand it. I move toward the sink. I’ll pour it down the drain, and I won’t think about it any more. I don’t want it. I’ll just pour it down the drain. . . .

A third of the bottle goes down the drain. The rest of it I drink, huddled in the corner of the kitchen, crying, shaking, trying not to spill. When I finish drinking (and crying), I stand up and drop the bottle, smashing it to bits on the linoleum. Frohike comes running to see what the matter is: my faithful nursemaid, my faithful dog. I grin at him, wondering if he can see stains on my teeth, and tell him that I was reaching for the chocolate chips and knocked the bottle onto the floor.

“Lucky thing it was practically empty,” I say. A thin breeze from the air conditioner blows onto my shorn head. My head pimples into tiny goose-bumps, but I feel depressingly sober. I expect the chocolate chips would give me more of a caffeine buzz than two-thirds of a bottle of 70 proof vanilla has. Frohike looks at me narrowly.

“Take a shower, you stink.” he says. “And get something decent on. We’re leaving in half an hour.”

I nod, meekly, and step off to the bathroom, trying not to think of ways to kill him, trying instead to control my hands, which want to tear out my own stomach, my own liver, my own heart.

Two hours later, I’m standing at the Vietnam Memorial, bored to death. Have I mentioned that I hate holidays? Remembering the dead, my ass. It’s nothing but an excuse to get a day off work. In Frohike’s case, I’ll make a tiny exception. He doesn’t work, so he has nothing to take off from, and yet we are here at the Wall, as the muggy heat seeps into our lungs and Frohike traces the names of comrades etched into black granite.

I’m sweating like a pig, and I’m so thirsty. Oddly, I long for a margarita. Girly drinks, margaritas, but I see the chilly glass right in front of me, sitting . . . right . . . there. A bead of water condenses on it as I watch, and I can smell it, can smell the lime and Triple Sec. Aw, hell, I think, glassy-eyed. Forget the margarita. Just leave the bottle.

My fingers touch cold stone. Unwittingly, I have reached out and touched the memorial. RICHARD LEE ADAMS, my fingers read. I don’t believe in God. What did Richard Lee Adams believe in? Why did he die, fine upstanding man that he must have been, while I live? I would rather flee to Canada under cover of night than ever fight in a war.

Beside me, I hear Frohike uttering the Lord’s Prayer. He has leaned his head against the cool wall and his hands are splayed out against the names, covering them in benediction.

“And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

Defenseless as he is, I long for something sharp. I’m sure he wouldn’t notice me, between his closed eyes and his quiet speech. Now, right now, as my fingers leave Richard Lee Adams, a vision hits me with LSD clarity. Me, spinning Frohike around with my weakling arms, spinning him flat up against that wall, and ripping his throat out with my teeth. I can feel the warm splash of blood against my own face, and I have to touch myself to make sure that I haven’t actually killed Frohike. I may have vanilla in my bloodstream, and Frohike moans through a second (third? fourth?) recitation of the holy litany. De Liv Er Us From E Vil For Th Ine Is The Kin Gdom And The P Ower And The Glor Y Fo Rev Er Amen Amen Amen

The long, black wall starts seeming like a mountain, something I can’t get around. Everything looms as I set one foot in front of the other. Trees seem higher, and grass lower. I hear the wind and the river calling one another. Someone or something is calling my name, saying “Patrick,” but no one calls me that except my sister, but today she is is just as dead to me. I see her hands in front of me, hands I’ve held numerous times, taking her to a park like this very park, but suddenly I’m not in the park anymore, I’ve gone beyond its boundaries and broken a bond, some kind of bond, some kind of promise. Thy King Dom Come.

Cars whiz around me because I’m running down the block. I smell blood and gunpowder and cherries. My arms seem to rise of themselves, wings that won’t ever work. I keep running. My lungs begin to hitch and my body, used only to the wastrel life of a drunk, begins to tense and cramp. The baseball cap with which I’d covered my baldness flies off to the side. I feel the wind of passing blow over my streamlined skull, leaving no wake. The noise is astounding to one who’s always been used to having his hair cover his ears. I hear my heels drum against the concrete, swish through the grass, and suddenly, my shoes fill up with water. I have waded, seeing and unseeing, knee-deep into the Potomac River.

The coolness of it stops me from screaming. Evening sunlight reflects orange lace paths. The current runs strongly. I can feel it pulling on my legs, urging me farther into the stream. I go with it. Why not? I have a sudden confused fantasy of floating on the Potomac, just laying down and floating all the way to the Chesapeake. Nothing but the tip of my nose showing; only the ends of my hair trailing out behind me, like the Lady of Shalott with no boat. My long, blond hair. . . .

Damn and blast. Hell and damn and blast. That’s it. I’m going back there and I’m going to tell him exactly what I think of him and his thrice-damned nail scissors and his high-horse attitude. Then I’m going to . . . then I’m going to. . . .

Imagination fails, or quails, and I snatch my glasses off and dive into the Potomac to try and escape it. It’s cold, but I knew that and I don’t mind. Underwater, everything narrows down to the green blur that fills my gaze. Mud swirls up around me and I try not to hit the bottom with my hands — you never know what you could cut yourself on. But I let myself float, like in the fantasy, for a while before I drag myself up, beaching on the other side of the river.

Oops. The sun is going down quick and the wind’s blowing. It’s a summer wind, but suddenly I’m Iced Langly and I feel a need to get somewhere dry. Home would be nice. I have dry clothes at home. But bars are nice and dry too, they don’t ask questions, and there’s probably a baseball game on. And Frohike, the perpetrator of the Washington Inquisition (no one expects it), is nowhere to be seen. I wonder, idly, if he even bothered to look for me. But no. He probably got back up on his high horse and told Byers to look for a new partner. Holier-than-thou jerk.

I head down the street, mixing with tourists on the wrong side of the river and people who are going home from church and goths and businesspeople who stay open all week and are just now closing. Searching for a bar like this makes me feel vaguely guilty. I mean, damn, I’ve been dry three weeks. I’ve had the shakes, the confessional experiences, the screaming heebie-jeebies. Many times I’ve gone through this same thing. Up. Down. Up, down, up, down, and here I am about to do it again. Something funny about that. Really, it’s funny. If I weren’t shivering so hard, I think sourly, I might even laugh.

No bar looks good to me, though. Oddly, I find myself reluctant to go into any of the sleazy holes in the wall that I know would take a drowned rat like me. Neon signs fizzle and pop in the windows: Coors. Busch. Baileys. Absolut. They’re all my buddies in arms. We can skip down the yellow brick road together, looking for the gentle good witch of oblivion.

Ahead, I see a guy selling sparklers and suddenly I want some, though I have no matches, and I head over there. But when he tries to charge me, I realize one more bad thing has happened to me. I had my glasses clutched in my hand when I swam, so I can still see. My wallet, however, seems to have been taken tribute by the hungry river. I apologize to the guy for wasting his time and head off again, broke and tired and freezing.

Buck up, Langly, I tell myself. You’ve been in worse situations than this. What about the time that you were up in Wyoming and you got lost in one of those damn national forests? You got rescued that time and you’d broken your wrist. I mean, geez, this is DC. You live here.

But I’m not comforted. It’s getting darker and darker, the crowds are thinning out and I’m stuck in the murder capital of the U.S. And oh, the thought of taking a taxi and then getting Frohike to pay for it galls me to the extreme. So I set myself to walk and I’m headed for who knows where when I hear the fireworks.

- - -

Three: To your vaults

- - -

I mean, I see them too, but hearing them makes me look up. They have a special ‘pop’ that is uniquely theirs, and every American knows that sound. I see them arc up over my head, red and blue and white and green, and instinctively I head over to where I think they’re coming from. Where there’re fireworks, there’re people. It’s an American axiom, almost more than baseball or the Pledge of Allegiance. Some people don’t watch baseball, and some people disagree with the Pledge, but everyone turns out for fireworks.

I begin to jog, suddenly overcome with the fear that they might stop and I’d be left alone. The jogging warms me up a little and I think, why didn’t I try this before? I used to like to run, a lot, though you wouldn’t think it to look at me: ten years ago, I came in fourth in a half-marathon. But now I’m winded after three blocks and I slow down, panting, and begin to see the people. It’s a park, and they’re cramming it, and music is playing and everyone’s having fun. I know that I can’t exactly go and join in, but it makes me feel a little happier to know that the human race isn’t all made up of Frohikes and Langlys.

“Someone, somewhere, is having a normal life,” I say out loud. “They got up and had a Fourth of July breakfast with their aunts and uncles and cousins, and they went to a parade, and then they had a big old lunch. Then they went and played softball — what’s more American than softball? Then they went out and had a water fight, and then they had steak for dinner and now they’re watching the fireworks. I can’t believe it.”

Suddenly I think of my sister. She would like something like that. She’s probably out on her balcony, right now, watching fireworks and wishing I was a better brother so she could ask me over for pie or something. I want to call Moire. I really, really want to hear my sister’s voice and know that she still likes me, cause I’m her brother and she has to.

I don’t have any money, but I do have Byers’ phone card number memorized. He knows I’m good for the cash and besides, he won’t care. I head over to the phone booth, full of ideas. And something moves in the shadows, hurtling at me.

I jump into a defensive stance. Is it some kind of rabid dog? But no, it’s making a noise, like “Mamamamamama.” I look down, surprised and flustered, at the curly head of a small girl. She’s clutching me around the knees and she’s crying in gulps, like it’s been awhile since she started. I try to move my leg away, but she’s got a grip like a warrior princess. I mentally dub her Xena as I do the obvious thing and pick her up. At once, she quits crying.

She’s wearing corduroy overalls, patterned in red, white, and blue. Someone took obvious care to dress her: little matching barrettes are hanging half out of her curly ‘do. And ew — she’s a little wet. I tighten my hold as she takes a good look into my face and says: “You not my mama.”

Way to go, Captain Obvious. I look right back at her, seriously, and say “No, I’m not.”

She replies, “Where my mama?”

I say, “I don’t know. We’re gonna try to find her, okay?” Poor little lost thing. But honestly, I don’t see how we’re ever gonna find her mama in that huge crowd of people. I look around in the half-dark to see if anyone’s hunting for her. I listen for calls, but all I hear is the bang of fireworks and the sizzle of conversation. She squirms around in my arms to get a look at the fireworks, and I sit on nearby bench and plump her down on my thighs to give her a better look. No point in spoiling her whole night. She’s stopped crying completely, and seems at ease with me, pointing up into the sky and saying, “Green!” and “Blue!” when the appropriate colors rain down on us. Everyone loves fireworks.

We watch them all the way through to the end. Every last bang and boom, with her craning her little neck up with her head on my shoulder. At the end of it, she sighs a little and drops her whole weight on to me. Boy, is she a heavy critter. My legs begin to go numb. We gotta get on the move.

I scoop her up and say to her, “Let’s go find your mom,” and she sighs again and then I think she’s asleep, because her weight goes even deader and she drops her head to my breastbone with a thonk! The crowd is dispersing, and there’s even more of them than I thought. No one seems to pay attention to a ragged, wet, skinny-ass man carrying a little girl. This is DC after all. We wander around the park a little with me having no idea what to do, and then I decide to just take her to the nearest police station. So I start to walk in the direction of home and hope that there’s some kind of precinct house on the way. You’d think I’d know, for how many times I’d been in one, but usually I don’t exactly remember how I got there.

Xena’s so heavy that I have to stop and rest my aching arms once every couple blocks. I don’t really complain though — where would she be if I hadn’t found her? I can just imagine her gripping the knees of a drug dealer or a pimp, saying “Mamamama.” You can bet they’d find a use for her.

But there’s no station house in my vicinity, so I reluctantly decide to go into a bar and ask for directions. What else is open this time of night? I head for one that’s above ground and clutch Xena tightly as we enter the dark arena. The bass is thumpin and the girlies are hot, but she never wakes. Kids. They can sleep through anything.

The place is pretty crowded, and the bar is packed. I get as close to the barkeep as I can and yell over the noise. “Hey!”

He looks around and I raise my eyebrows, indicating Xena. His eyebrows twin mine, rising to his hairline as he quickly turns someone out of a barstool. It turns out that he only emptied it so he can yell at me, but that’s just as well.

“You can’t bring kids in here!” He’s a small, dark man, reminds me a little of Frohike but with even less hair.

“She’s lost. I just need directions to the police station so I can bring her back.” His expression changes to one that mine probably reflects: an “aww, isn’t she cute.” He draws me a quick map on a napkin, it’s about five blocks away. Then he gives me a sidelong look with no small amount of sympathy. Hairless men are instant buds.

“What happened to your hair, man?”

I grimace. “Roommate. Uh . . . I was drunk, he was mad. . . .” Whereupon he grins slyly at me and begins recounting this really funny story about his boyfriend and an electric razor. I listen, fascinated in spite of myself. And I thought my life was weird. When he finishes, I thank him and he turns away. I start to get up and someone puts a hand on my arm. A heavy guy in overalls is sitting next to me and he has the funniest look of pity on his face.

“You’re a good man,” he says. Runs his hands through his thinning brown hair. And pushes his shot glass toward me.

Fuck.

I am in the middle of refusing when the whiskey hits my stomach. I realize that I’ve snatched the drink and downed it. In the middle of rationalizing and before I can even move, I’ve slurped down a shot of Jim Beam. The pity on his face increases. He looks like a basset hound who’s just killed his master.

“Needed that, huh?”

“Yeah,” I say as I get up unsteadily. No. No, you idiot, I sure’s hell didn’t need that. I can already feel a little buzz as my empty stomach absorbs the alcohol. Whoo. He turns toward the bar, presumably to order another, and I snatch my kid up and get out as fast as I can.

Halfway down the block, I realize that I’ve forgotten the map, but I can remember his general direction. I hitch Xena up again, sigh, say something that I’m shocked to recognize as a prayer, and head to the right. Another half-block, and I realize that I’m not going to be able to do this. My head feels like it’s full of helium and my arms feel like lead pipes. I’m afraid I’m going to retch on Xena, or drop her, so I have to find someplace to hole up, to sleep this off. I can’t even make it another block. Not even ten more steps.

I’m walking by railroad tracks and the place is mostly deserted. I thank my lucky stars, for I spot an unused railroad tunnel. Grass grows over the tracks and a tree has sprung up outside the mouth, partly obscuring it. I stagger over there, and my luck is holding because no one else is occupying it. I collapse with a huge sigh and prop myself up against the tunnel wall. Xena sort of slides down onto my thighs and she’s putting them to sleep, so I lie down full-length and shove her up onto my chest. I can feel a railroad tie digging into my back but I can’t even think any more, can’t remember what’s important. Something about Frohike, how I should maybe call and let them know I’m not dead, nah, why would he care, he doesn’t care about me, oh, hold onto her, she’s so heavy, she’s gonna crush me, crush me with the sweet and sour taste of whiskey on my tongue.

- - -

Four: NOT the cry of a drunken man

- - -

He’d never believe me if I said I waited for him all night. I was in the middle of saying the Lord’s Prayer for some buddies of mine, and next thing I know he’s gone. First, I cursed myself for six kinds of fool, and next I started asking around. Some kid said he saw a “funky-haired guy in glasses” go off toward the river.

The first thing I thought is that I’d finally pushed him too far. It’d be like a maudlin country song: “I went to the river but the water’s too cold.” Great. I got a flash of them fishing his bloated body out of the river, and I shuddered. I shouldn’t have taken him out, shouldn’t have brought him here.

But after a minute or so, I calmed down about him drowning. Langly has an awful lot of self-preservation. He might want to die, but he wouldn’t be able to bring himself to do it. If he could, I think he’d have done it already. He’s hit so many bottoms that by rights, he should be in China. Langly’s a survivor, and a good man, and a good friend.

He put his life on the line for us when we were being hunted in Las Vegas. Without hesitation, and though he wasn’t in the best shape of his life, he volunteered to help save our asses. And though he went down to the bar later and drank himself to stupefaction, I can’t forget the look on his face when Susanne told him that he was programmed to kill. Desolation doesn’t even begin to describe it. He looked like everything he’d ever believed in had been taken away. But since he has handled a gun, even in play, I think he’s developed a taste for the power of the firearm. I think he’s discovered that power, killing power, can make up for a lot of things.

I see murder in my friend’s eyes sometimes. Murder, reflected in his glasses or his too-often-blank pupils. You can’t live so long with a man and not know when he’s thinking about killing you. At least, I can’t, not since the war. But I’ve been living with it. Mostly because he’s a shadow and I’m not frightened of him. But sometimes, I wish he would try. If he did, maybe he’d discover that it isn’t as much fun as playacting at death. He doesn’t know the difference between killing and killing. There’s killing, where you know that the man will get up and shake your hand afterwards, and killing, where nothing will stand between the bullet and God.

So I walked for blocks and spotted neither hide nor hair, ha ha. I must have walked for three hours. Then I came to myself and took a cab home, because how would I be able to find him in a city that size? And I called Byers and he came over with Becca and we waited and waited and I don’t think I felt anything. I didn’t, like, sit around and blame myself. It wasn’t my fault. Langly fell into the bottle without my help and he sure didn’t want my help getting out of it. The feeling was more like a vague sort of uneasiness, a sense that he was out there somewhere, needing help, maybe asking for me in his sleep. An itch at the back of my neck, a pricking in my thumbs.

When the call finally came, I didn’t have the strength to get the phone. I’d been jumping at every call for hours, from the AT&T guy to Mulder. It drained me, and Byers was the one who hung up and said vaguely, “He’s at the jail.”

At first, I heard “He’s *in* jail,” but that didn’t even faze me. I was so glad to hear that it wasn’t the morgue that was calling, or someone from the river. Without a word, we went and hopped in the van and Becca drove. There, Byers told me that he hadn’t been arrested, he was involved in the case of a lost child. As we were walking up to the doors, Byers said, “He found a little girl and he’s waiting till her parents get here. If they do.”

- - -

It’s unreal to walk into the building and see him sitting in a plastic chair, his scalp looking like a furry egg and his clothes dirtier than a pig in a puddle, holding onto a little girl for dear life. On closer inspection, it turns out she’s holding on to him. He greets us with a languid “Hey,” and I am relieved to see his eyes are clear, if tired.

“Meet Xena,” he says, and smiles the old Langly smile. She’s sittin on his lap, half leaning on him, her dark curly hair all over the place. “Xena, meet my friends.” She looks up at us then, her inscrutable face split by a smile. “This is Frohike, and Byers and Becca.”

“Hey, honey,” says Becca, bending down to pick her up. “Aren’t you just cute?” She must be responding to some sort of female instinct, but Xena isn’t having any of it and hides her face in Langly’s shirt again. Becca simply smiles and takes a plastic chair. I sit down too, but Byers remains standing. His face wears a vaguely perplexed look.

“Have they found the parents yet?” he asks.

Langly sighs and shakes his head. “There were seventy-one missing children reported last night because of the festivities. They’re just getting started on it.” Byers still looks uncomfortable. He’s always hated being stuck in police stations for more than thirty seconds.

Becca, seeing his trapped expression, takes the initiative. “Hows about we go get some breakfast, John? They must have a good bakery somewhere around here.”

Langly’s expression approaches Nirvana. “Crullers. Hot crullers and tea.”

“Cullers,” pipes up Xena. Becca laughs.

“Crullers it is, and for you, Frohike?”

I’m ravenous, to tell the truth. “Two cinnamon buns, no raisins, and a cup of coffee with a dash of sugar.”

She laughs again, the delighted sound hitting my ear just right. “All righty then. Let’s go, John, before I forget and add raisins.” She wouldn’t. She never did. They make their way out of the police station and I feel uncomfortable sitting there with Langly. For once, we aren’t handcuffed together and he’s free to make his own choices. As, I suppose, he has been all along.

I notice that Xena’s looking at me with frank curiosity in her eyes. I reach out a finger and tangle one of her curls. “Hey, Xena,” I said.

She pouts a little and bats me away. “Not my name. I’m Sophie.”

Langly looks at me with a new light in his eyes. “That’s the first time she’s said that. I couldn’t get her to say her name.”

I laugh lightly. “I’ve got a way with kids.” Then I turn my attention to her again, trying to get her to tell me her last name. But she just buries her head in Langly’s chest and refuses to look at me. Langly absently strokes her curly head as she burrows. Then he looks at me. I realize that the new light in his eyes is love, or something approaching it. He’s fallen hard for this little thing, this little girl.

I leave them there and go over to tell the desk officer that we’ve finally gotten a first name out of her. His grateful smile echoes his relieved voice as he says, “Thank you, sir. I’ll look on the list and give her folks a call right away.”

When I return to Langly, he’s staring at Xena like her brown eyes hold the secret of the universe. “I don’t know if I want to let her go, man,” he says. One palm strokes her plump little elbow, and she curls her arm around him in response. For the first time in months, he is lit from within, like a house with candles in the windows. Someone, finally, lives in Langly’s head. I smile in commiseration.

“They can really wiggle into your heart, can’t they?” I ask. “I love little kids.” Langly looks at me in real surprise. The smile broadens, and I explain that when I was younger and nicer-looking, I helped run a daycare. His surprise deepens into shock as I describe the place.

“I’ve driven by there! You mean, you ran that place?”

“Helped run it. For a couple years. I loved those kids, I did. It was after I got back from the war. I wasn’t quite convinced of the . . . the rightness of the world, you know? That it was still spinning the way it was supposed to. So when Jenny asked me to help with the place, I said sure. And those kids helped me immensely. They still had faith that the world would turn out okay. Even the ones who came to school with bruises, sometimes, they could still look at you and trust you. They didn’t see any enemies.”

“Yet,” Langly interjects bitterly.

“Yet. But still, they helped me get my own faith back.”

“And you kept it,” he says almost inaudibly, burying his nose into Xena’s full head of hair. His own patches and spots mock me. I wince a little. The damage is pretty bad.

“Um. . . .” I start, unsure how to apologize for taking something he loves. “It’ll grow back, I bet. You’ve always had quick-growing hair.”

“Mmhmm,” he says noncommittally. “It’ll grow back.” His eyes, clear and dear, meet mine and I read it in his expression: I’ll forgive you if you forgive me.

But I already had. I’d forgiven him when we’d been handcuffed together in the deep night. I just hadn’t realized it.

I lean back in the plastic chair and sigh. Xena echoes me with a tiny sigh of her own. And we wait. Byers and Becca don’t come back, and the ticking hands of the station wend their way over half an hour. Langly is talking softly to Xena, who seems to be answering back in a mix of baby talk and English.

Suddenly, a dark, curly-haired man and his wife rush toward us. He’s wearing jeans and a t-shirt, but she is obviously Indian, judging from the blue sari that she’s wearing. She is crying, pressing the back of her hand to her mouth, and he’s got relief written all over his face.

“Sophie!” The woman cries, holding out her arms. I see Langly tighten his own arms for a moment, his expression tightening and his eyes narrowing, but Xena wriggles her way out of his hold, crying “Mamma, mamma, mamma.” The woman scoops her up and begins to hug her, speaking in a language that I have never heard before.

The man sits down by Langly and begins to thank him profusely. Langly doesn’t seem to know what to say. He looks at me, but I shrug, it’s his call. “You’re welcome,” he says uncomfortably in the face of parental volubility, looking like he regrets the whole affair. The man begins to take out his wallet and Langly stops him, his face changing to shock with a hint of a smile.

“Don’t bother,” he says, in a very un-Langly-like gesture. “I don’t want the money. She saved me.” And he pats the man on the hand, gets up, and beckons to me. As we are walking to the door of the precinct house, we hear Xena, yelling shrilly after him: “Bye, Ree! Bye, Ree! Bye!”

He turns around, fully smiling now, and waves to her. He walks backwards out the door, still waving, and I hold his elbow as we back down the stairs, craning for one last glimpse of her curly dark head.

- - -

Epilogue: Can’t always be strong

- - -

When I wake up in the back of the van, I have burrowed into Frohike’s shoulder. I don’t even remember falling asleep, and I must be pretty heavy, but he doesn’t complain.

Every emotion has drained out of me while I was sleeping and left me with a sense of completeness, like I have done something impossible and lived to tell about it. I sit up, yawning, and Frohike turns his head to smile at me, and just like that, he is beautiful again, with his halo of frizzy grey hair shot through by daylight. Just like that, I don’t mind him anymore. Just like that, I’m sober and I don’t need anything.

Surprised, I smile. Smile at all of them. Becca twists in her seat and tells me that she knows a girl who could do wonders to even out my hair. Byers says that I can have the rest of his biscotti. And Frohike doesn’t say anything, but I know what he’s telling me.

-+- the end -+-

Notes:
This is a general sequel to “Auld Langly Syne” by Gizzie & is placed in the Messenger/Time/Tercet Universe. If’n you want to read it, it’s at: Gizzie’s Page

prologue & epilogue lyrics are U2’s “Ultraviolet (Light My Way).”
Quote, parts 1-5 quote is Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado.”
“The bass was pumping and the girlies were hot” is from a Beastie Boys song.
“Runs his hands through his thinning brown hair” is from Paul Simon.
Richard Lee Adams died in Kontum, South Vietnam 2/16/67 at 20 years old. http://www.thewall-usa.com/ remembers the dead. Oh, and that Fourth of July ritual? The breakfast, the parade, the baseball, the barbecue? My in-laws do that every single solitary summer. And you thought tradition was dead. :S

Weiss tries and fails, upon getting out of the taxi in front of the Radisson Hotel, to balance three bottles of wine and a plate of weird assorted deli cheeses. “Crap,” he grunts as the cheeses begin the inevitable slide onto the sidewalk.

Luckily Sydney is there to help. “Are you my official cheese-catcher?” he asks as she slides lightly out of the seat behind him and grabs the platter. She smiles.

“We can’t have a party without weird cheeses.” She is wearing a red leather dress with silver sparkly stockings. Five inch red patent leather heels. And a Santa hat. She looks freaking hot. Weiss has not told her this, but he suspects that she knew what he was thinking all the way across Los Angeles: freaking hot, freaking hot, freaking hot hot hot. It’s hard to share a cab with someone so freaking hot and not jump them right there. But Weiss managed. Nice guys finish last. Duh.

He pays the cab driver, who has not stopped staring at Syd, even when he was supposed to be looking at the road. Weiss can’t even find it in his heart to blame the guy. Then they make their way up the walkway under the glow of Christmas lights festooning the palm trees. Sydney looks like a waitress from a porn video carrying that cheese. Hot hot hot hot. Quit thinking about it. Can’t. Sorry, but can’t.

Music blares from the ballroom: the Vandals singing “Oi To the World.” Weiss, LA born and bred, can identify the Vandals within five bars. There are more weird festive lights strung up randomly and someone has tacked up glittery Christmas posters: Santa in his sleigh, some reindeer, and a huge promo poster of Tim Allen in “The Santa Clause 2″ right up above the punch bowl. Weiss winces at the decor.

“Note to self: never put Marshall on the decorating committee ever again,” he says, getting a laugh from Sydney. As they walk in the ballroom, a garishly dressed Santa with a giant white beard throws tinsel around their necks. “Merry Christmas, y’all!” he says in a weird squeaky Western accent that is almost falsetto: Weiss wonders where they hired the guy. “Have a rootin’ tootin’ New Year!”

“This is awful! It’s Christmas in a can!” Syd says, fingering her tinsel. They try to move past but the Santa intervenes. “Y’all see the misseltoe, right?” he drawls, pointing to his hat. It’s pinned on the end. “Y’all have to do a little kissin’ tonight!”

Weiss is suddenly grateful for the Christmas season. He leans forward and gives Syd a nice kiss on the mouth, and she bends down to let him do it. When she straightens up, she has a little half-smile that makes Weiss very happy with himself.

But then she sees Marshall waving at her and her smile turns social and she wafts over his way. In spite of his disappointment, Weiss loves those things about her: that she always puts up with Marshall’s weirdness, and that she wafts in five-inch heels.

He places the wine bottles over on the buffet table. They look pretty insignificant surrounded by all the other liquor, but Weiss knows from experience that they will all get drunk or poured on someone’s head. He really doesn’t care that much.

Across the table Maureen Sanchez is placing a crock- pot of nacho cheese dip carefully in the middle of a lovely artistic tray of chips. Maureen’s nacho dip is ace, and she only makes it once a year. He sidles around the table and sniffs over her shoulder.

“Baby, let’s you and me take that dip and go to my place,” he says in her ear. She chortles.

“Eric, I’d just be a fifth wheel. Why don’t I leave you and the dip alone together?”

“You knoowww what I like,” he says like the Big Bopper, and helps her position the crock pot just right. One time the table was kind of rickety and collapsed and nacho cheese went everywhere. What a waste.

Ten or twelve chips later, he realizes that Sydney is still trapped by Marshall’s arm-waving diatribe on something probably technical. He looks for her dad, but Jack hasn’t shown up yet. And Vaughn and Lauren are on the dance floor, swaying into each other as Warren Fitzgerald screams, “On the roof with the nunchucks Trevor broke a lot of bones, but Haji had a sword like that guy in Indiana Jones.”

Of course Syd has a sweet smile on her face and she isn’t looking desperate at all, except a little around the eyes. Weiss grabs a plastic cup of something unidentifiable and saunters over there.

“So I programmed it to walk across the roof, see, like Santa? So he would get the real Santa Claus experience. And they had a chimney and everything, um, you know, most people don’t have a chimney these days, but my parents are suckers for Old Victorianism, um . . . oh yeah, so I’m laying there and I hear it tapping across the roof and my brother is going, “It’s Santa!” and then we hear it sort of go down the chimney and Ronny jumps up out of bed to go to the living room and we both hear this BLAMMO!”

Marshall mimes an explosion, sending his drink flying, and Sydney barely keeps her smile on as it splashes her dress. “My dad’d heard it on the roof and he’d gone down there and blown hell out of it with a shotgun. And that was my last foray into robotics, um, at least Christmas robotics, because, you know, the CIA is always asking for stuff, and, um, I made this one robot that does this thing, you know ….”

Weiss waltzes in suavely (at least he thinks he does) and says to Sydney, “How about a dance?”

“I’d love to,” she says quickly and takes his arm. Marshall waves his drink around some more. “Cheers, you two!” The Vandals segue into “Thanx for Nothing.”

Weiss isn’t the greatest dancer — goes with the “being Jewish” territory — but Syd makes up for it and they do some kind of modified swing dance and both avoid looking over at Vaughn and Lauren’s corner.

“Who the hell is the DJ?” asks Sydney when she finally twigs to the lyrics. Fitzgerald is now yelling, “Come next year I’m getting you what you got me … fucking nothing. See how you like it.” Weiss grins and dares to take her around the waist, dipping her low, feeling intoxicated without a sip of booze.

“It’s the Vandals Christmas album. Wait until they get to the one about ‘Christmas Time For My Penis.’”

“No!” she gasps, blushing. “Are you kidding?” He loves that about her too, that she’s just a little Puritan.

“Not really,” he says. “Unfortunately.” And they both collapse in giggles. Then her dad shows up and wants to talk to her, so he has to let her go and watch her waft off toward some dark corner to talk business probably. Jack isn’t exactly the partying type — usually walks through the Christmas party exactly once, gets some nacho dip, of course, and then leaves. Weiss figures eventually he’ll get Syd back for himself. So now he’s free to go say hi to Lauren and Vaughn, who from the looks of it are half in the bag already.

They are still dancing obliviously as the song continues. Leaning on each other. Vaughn is smiling dreamily. Bleah. They don’t notice him and he listens to them for a minute, trying to figure out what to say. “Hi Vaughn, I hate you because two hot chicks are totally digging on you and everyone thinks that I’m, like, some kind of best friend figure?” Nah.

“You wouldn’t believe — once when I was in Portland,” says Lauren, “I was so drunk at a karaoke place that I sang ‘Melt With You’ as ‘Melt On You.’ Seems like most of my post-college pre-CIA experience was spent singing things wrong while intoxi — toxicktated — drunk.”

Vaughn giggles. “‘I’ll stop the world and melt on you?’ It sounds like a slogan for Baskin Robbins.” Then they both start laughing and Vaughn falls over, landing on his back on the parquet flooring.

“Hey Eric,” he says. “Did you know that Lauren is going to write Baskin Robbins’s new campaign?”

“I heard,” Weiss says. “What the hell are you drinking?”

“Fruit punch,” says Vaughn and giggles some more. Lauren sits down by him and they just sit there in the middle of the dance floor and laugh. Weiss feels left out. At previous Christmas parties it had been him and Vaughn getting toasted together. Well, whatever. At least the nacho dip still loves him.

There are other hot chicks on the dance floor, but Vaughn knows them all and doesn’t want to have to talk to them on Monday. And he sees Marshall coming toward him. So he beats a retreat over to the corner and starts talking to Dixon in self-defense.

Dixon isn’t too happy. He isn’t drunk but he’s still maudlin. Weiss likes the guy but he doesn’t want to be his shrink. It’s like, sorry you lost your wife, man, can you just not mention it tonight? Weiss hopes the DJ doesn’t play “Hang Myself From the Tree,” because Dixon just might consider it. He makes some kind of excuse and sidles away. The stage area behind the buffet isn’t being used because of the lack of real band, so he hops up onto it and sits with a plate of nachos and a cup of suicide booze.

He’s never felt so alone at a Christmas party before. When he was young he’d just schmoozed; then he’d had Vaughn for solidarity. They’d done parties together. But now Vaughn was married. Stupid marriage. Damn it.

He can’t see Sydney, but then he spots her down on the dance floor with her dad. She’s wearing that schmoopy smile that she gets with Jack, sort of “O mein Papa, to me you are so beautiful.” Makes Weiss uncomfortable to watch. He switches his attention to the nachos and the pair of red boots that are poking out from behind the closed stage curtains.

Waitaminute, what? Weiss stares and then says, “oof” as something yanks him into the dark space behind the green velvet curtain.

Everything is muted and kind of dusty back here. Weiss sneezes a bit and rubs his nose. He gets yanked up by his shirt, his back gets pressed up against a wooden wall, and someone else shoves up against him in front, someone wearing … a fake beard?

“Who the what now?” he says stupidly.

“Have y’all been a good boy this year?” says the fake country-western voice of the Santa from the entryway. It isn’t falsetto now, it’s low and as velvet as the curtains. And it sounds awfully familiar in spite of the Garth Brooks imitation. Weiss begins to smile.

“You know, I believed in you all my life,” he says slowly. “Why are you picking on me now?” Soft and far away behind the curtain, the Vandals segue into “Nothing Is Going To Ruin My Holiday.”

“Because I know who-all was naughty and who-all was nice,” says Sark, dropping the accent and leaning into Weiss like he was nacho dip. “And you, my friend, were very naughty.”

“Was not. I’m a nice guy. The perfect friend. Haven’t you noticed?”

“But secretly you lust for her . . .” Sark’s hand twines around the back of his neck and the other one tickles up under his shirt. “You want to peel her out of that red dress like Christmas candy.”

Weiss pulls at the fake beard and manages to get it down. His eyes are adjusting and he sees white: Sark has taken off the Santa suit jacket and is wearing only an undershirt. He hisses in Sark’s ear, “So do you.”

“Naughty. Like I said.” He grabs Weiss’s hair, forces his head back, bites his neck hard. Weiss hisses again, but not in pain.

“Did — did you assassinate a Salvation Army bell- ringer to get that horrible fake beard?”

“Yep. And I killed a lot of little elf buggers too. All in the Christmas spirit.” Sark puts his hands on Weiss’s hips and cocks his head. “This the Spanish Inquisition? I’ve got mistletoe on my hat. That’s reason enough.” Those clever fingers find his buckle and start on it.

“I just want to know what you’re doing at — oh — at the fucking CIA Christmas party. Did you hear about the nacho dip?” Weiss can’t believe how much he’s babbling: he wants himself to shut up right now.

“I’m bringing presents to the naughty boys of the world.” Sark forestalls any further conversation by sticking his tongue down Weiss’s throat. Sark’s heart is beating like a the little drummer boy is in his chest. Everything recedes and he focuses on Sark’s rough breathing, the feel of skin under his hands and — oh yes — velvet drawstring pants.

“Oi to the world,” pants Weiss when Sark finally lets him come up for air. “And everybody wins.”

–end–

Notes: This is for Celli, who wanted Syd/Weiss and Sark/Weiss and a reference to Portland and Marshall making a mechanical Christmas contraption that went terribly wrong. She also wanted me to have Sark shoot a Salvation Army bell-ringer. Shocking! I couldn’t do it for real. Happy Yuletide, celli. All the songs are from the Vandals’s Christmas album. Including “Christmas time for my penis,” which is very touching (so to speak).

12.03

“Now keep good watch!” and they kissed her.
She heard the dead man say-
Look for me by moonlight;
Watch for me by moonlight;
I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way!

–Alfred Noyes

Veronica stopped sleeping somewhere around Arizona. Somewhere before she threatened a man with a handgun; and somewhere after she started seeing Cassidy Casablancas everywhere. In the dark watches she lies awake and stares out into the moonlight. Lately the moon has been full. If not for Mac, Veronica would be out there howling at it, she is sure.

If not for Mac. If not for the one person left who knew the old Veronica, the Veronica who had a pretty great life. Who loved a lot of people that were alive. Who drove a shiny car around and snapped pictures of cheating husbands. That Veronica is as dead as Cassidy — as dead as Logan — as dead as –

As dead as sleep.

They drive and drive.

“You know, I always wanted to see America, but this isn’t exactly how I pictured it,” Mac says wryly, and Veronica smiles at that. It’s amazing that sometimes she still feels like smiling. Only with Mac, only with Mac.

* * *

Outside of Las Vegas, Mac pulls over at the Hoover Dam. In a light drizzle, Veronica and Mac hold hands. They don’t say anything much about it, just smile at each other.

Across from them, standing on the precarious dam spillway, Veronica sees Cassidy standing, staring out at her, calling something out. Her mind tells her that Cassidy is dead — at that range, how could she have missed? But she can’t stop watching the blood that stains his shirt and the hand he holds out to her, pleadingly.

At least she isn’t seeing Logan or — at least there’s that.

They drive and drive. In a diner in heat-soaked Jackpot, NV, she leans forward and looks at Mac across the table. Mac is making her way through a buffet-style plate of fruits and vegetables, the only thing vegan she could find in all the mess of old chicken wings and stolid mashed potatoes.

“Mac, I didn’t know what else to do,” she says.

“I know,” replies Mac, and she lays her hand on top of Veronica’s, right there in the cheap red polyvinyl booth. Veronica feels absurdly like lying down on the table and putting her cheek down on Mac’s hand.

The check comes and Mac pays in cash. “We don’t have a lot left,” she says. “We have to get more somehow.”

Veronica feels her mouth stretch into something like a smile. “Don’t worry. We’ll figure something out.” That night she leaves Mac sleeping on a ratty comforter in a motel 6 and walks the streets. She holds up two drunken frat boys, who seem more amused than anything, and a man coming out of an alley with his pants half-undone. He has $300 in small bills in a fussy leather wallet. Veronica leaves the wallet and takes the cash.

“Didn’t your mother ever tell you that bad things come out at night?” she says to the man, who is backed up against a brick wall, bleeding from the side of the mouth, eyes full of fear and anger.

“Take the money, bitch,” he says. “Just take it and go to hell.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” says Veronica. “I’m going.”

Mac doesn’t ask where the money came from. She goes and buys them some bagels and coffee. “You keep me sane,” Veronica says to her, taking a cup. Cassidy walks past the window, carrying the taser and gun that he had used to take Logan’s life.

“Me, or Starbucks?” says Mac.

“You.”

* * *

Highway 93 is good and deserted. Driving north into a sky full of clouds, sometimes Mac sings along with the radio. Veronica just leans her chair back a little and watches Mac’s dark hair blow back in the wind from the air conditioner. Mac likes indie music, stuff with angsty guys singing clever things about love, but sometimes she surprises Veronica, like when she belts out a rousing chorus of “I Think We’re Alone Now.”

“I hadn’t figured you for a sugar-coated pop lover,” Veronica says lazily, and smiles when she sees Mac grin.

“My mom had this on a cassette tape when I was a kid.”

“So did mine.”

Mac’s hand finds hers and they hold hands like small children as the concrete ribbon unrolls in front of them. The beating of their hearts is the only sound.

* * *

In Idaho, it storms loudly for an entire night. Lying in their scummy hotel room, Veronica listens to the thunder and watches lightning arc across the sky. There is very little rain, but the lightning flashes are enormous and the wind is strong enough to knock you over. She wonders if maybe they are in danger, but there’s not much to do about it. You don’t think to check a lightning rod on a crappy motel.

Over on the bed, Mac writhes around. She is not really a calm sleeper anyway, Veronica has noticed, but tonight she is worse. She kicks her legs and moans and crunches her pillow with her hands. Veronica can even hear her, quietly, saying, “Help. Help.”

Veronica had planned to go out and see what cash she could pick up, but there is no point in a storm like this. She changes into a t-shirt and shorts, goes over instead and slides into bed with Mac.

“Hey,” she says. “Hey, Mac.”

Mac wakes up with a great shudder, not sitting up straight like on the movies but just going still, staring at the ceiling.

“I was dreaming,” she says.

“Yes.”

“I don’t want to say what it was about.”

“That’s good,” says Veronica. “I don’t want to hear.” Which makes Mac laugh a little and her hands unclench from the covers. The door rattles in the wind. It sounds like someone’s trying to get in. Mac begins to shiver again.

“3 a.m. is when I think he’s coming after me,” she says flatly and quietly. “He’s going to walk in the door and he’s going to finish what he started.”

“Not with me around,” Veronica says, just as flatly. She is lying on her side, head propped on her elbow, and Mac looks over at the door, and then looks over at Veronica, and her eyes are wide and fathomless.

“You’re my guardian angel?” she says.

“No,” says Veronica, and gives in, and leans over and puts one hand flat on Mac’s shoulder, and the other arm elbow-down in the mattress, and kisses Mac with her eyes open. She can feel heat on her legs where Mac’s t-shirt ends, and her feet are touching Mac’s feet, and the storm is battering the window. The way it ends up is that they’re holding hands and they’re nose to nose, smiling at one another and breathing each others’ breath. And they go to sleep like that, in Idaho, and in the morning they wake up and fog is covering the ground, so that when Veronica goes out to the car, she’s in mist up to her knees.

When she looks back, Mac is spinning around, trying to make a fog whirlpool. She’s smiling. Mac’s beautiful when she smiles.

“Could you stop being such a morning person?” asks Veronica, taking the sting out by smiling too.

“Someone needs to be,” says Mac, and the mist flies up around her.

* * *

In Missoula they stop and just get out of the car and kind of sit there on a bench. Behind them is a strip mall with a cut-rate pawnshop and a salon and whatever else cheap people like to buy. In front of them, a street divider tries to break the monotony with a few trees. Mac asks Veronica if they are going over the border. Veronica stares at her palms, wondering that they don’t have a pattern on them from the steering wheel.

“I don’t know, Mac.” It comes out harsher than she means it, and she feels Mac stiffen up, hears the angry intake of breath. For a few minutes they just sit silent, and then Mac stands up and walks away.

Veronica can hear her footsteps recede, but the sun is shining down on the highway divider and Cassidy is standing there next to a scraggly aspen tree. For once, she notes, he isn’t holding anything in his hands. He doesn’t look angry; his clothes have no bloodstains. The sunlight isn’t warm, but it lights up his face.

Veronica leans forward, resisting the urge to get up and walk to him. “We all try too hard,” she says to Cassidy. “You tried too hard with Mac. But you shouldn’t have made her your girlfriend just to fix whatever was broken with you.”

Cassidy holds his hands out, palms up. He doesn’t speak. This isn’t the way it was with Lilly, where she sat and chatted like an old friend. Cassidy was never a friend. He is a liar and a rapist and makes a lousy ghost.

“Go away,” she says. “I won’t forgive you. Go find Logan and apologize to him, if you’re in the mood to apologize.” She looks down at her hands, her knees, her beat-up shoes and her dirty jeans, and when she looks up, Cassidy is gone and so is the sun.

–end–

04.22.07