Phoenix felt like too open a city, too flat. There was too much room, too much visibility. The roads were wide in the heart of downtown, an area that, in most cities, would be filled with a million suited businesspeople, packed together as tightly as the premium real estate would bear and spinning the wheel of industry together. And because of the unrestricted terrain of the open Arizona desert allowed Phoenix to the luxury to grow as far to the horizon as the free enterprise system would take it, Reid felt exposed and conspicuous.

He almost lost Noel’s car three times, only to find her for the last time parked in front of the Dial building on Central Avenue.

The building had many tenants. Reid would never know which one Noel intended to visit unless he got closer.
He entered then immediately crossed the lobby, stopping at a directory in front of the elevator banks, trying to find any company name that made sense when he saw her, right in the lobby standing with her back to him through the tall glass doors of Pacific National Bank.

She was in calm conversation with the teller and seemed to be signing something. On the Formica countertop in front of her she had set a small stack of papers. Or envelopes -- he couldn’t tell.

Reid leaned against the table and tried to look as casual as possible. He strained his neck around to see Noel, paper and what looked like a small jewelry box in her hands.

Personal items?

Momentos?

The one conversation Reid and Noel never seem to have is the one where she tells him about her past, about growing up, about her family. The most of a life story he’d ever received was ‘I grew up in South America until my father brought us to the States’ and the more recent short story about leaving her mistake of a husband. Then she’d always turn the conversation away from the past.

The teller led Noel across the bank through a thigh-high gate and into the vault. Safety deposit box?
He briefly thought about going into the bank again and trying to see the box number. Then maybe he could con the bank into giving him access; say he was a relative, a lawyer. Draft up some phony legal document. But he couldn’t risk her knowing he’d followed her, not until he knew what was going on. What would she need to keep such a secret? What was going on in her life that she had to keep secrets? Was it her past?

He looked up to see the guard staring his way. He smiled back and walked out of the building. There was one possible reason he could think of why she would be hiding some part of life from him. Was she in contact with Christian Jones? Was she running some kind of game on him?

* * * * *

He’d been working on a new program. A role-playing game this time. He called it ‘Natural Elements.’ A player was presented with fictional scenarios involving some form of drastic, natural disaster. In one, the player started in a small mountainside village above which a volcano has erupted. The player then has thirty minutes before a wave of pyroclastic flow envelops the ground they stand on. The player has tools at his disposal and must create shelter or a means to escape in enough time to avoid death. The object of the game was to survive. And think survival through. If, for example, a player chose to create a shelter but neglected to store food and water, they would die of dehydration and starvation even if their shelter withstood the volcano’s flow.

Doing the work wasn’t necessary. Creating the software had little to do with gaming or selling it commercially. Reid just wanted the mental exercise of being able to figure out how to make a computer do his bidding, to try new lines of code, new programming tools, deeper threads of code.

He could hear Noel move in the room above the den as he leaned back in his chair to pull all the liquid he could from the bottom of a can of Diet Coke. He was satisfied with the subroutine he had just coded. It looked spectacular on the screen, aesthetic and tight, just as code should. He would compile and debug the routine later; hearing Noel reminded him of something he needed to do.

He reached for the house phone to call for food but changed plans as soon as he heard the stuttered dial tone. The voice mail box had a message. Unusual, he thought. Almost no one had the number. Clients called though a forwarded line he’d set up that rang to a pager he carried. His very narrow personal sphere of friends and family only had his cell phone number. He had never given this number to anyone.

He dialed his voice mail access number and listened:

“Ms. Brantly. This is Constance Widowmaker at American National in Grand Cayman. I’m calling as a matter of courtesy, a security measure really. It’s standard policy to inform all account holders of unauthorized inquires into their accounts. I just received a phone call from a Christian Jones about your account. Said he was your husband but since no-one is listed on your account, he was given no information or access to the account of course so you need not worry. And if you have any questions at all you can feel free to call me at our toll-free service number and ask for me by name or ask for extension three three two nine. I’ll be on shift until nine Pacific Time. Thank you.”

Christian Jones was the man Noel had run away from; the abusive ex husband. Son of a bitch, Reid thought. How did this happen? He racked his brain. According to Noel she hadn’t had contact with Christian Jones in almost a year. They had been careful together to not leave a public trace of her in any legal document. She wasn’t on the lease, his bank account, registration of the car, utility billing records. Nothing. Reid was sure there was no trace to lead Christian back to them.

Or was there? Was it a coincidence that Noel’s speech about their non-future together and this voice mail had come within forty-eight hours of each other?

He could sense her more than hear Noel come into the room behind him. He deleted the message and set the phone gently back into its cradle.

“Good morning,” she said softly.

He turned, pretending to be just then noticing. “Hey, you’re up.”

She smiled and leaned against the door frame. “Don’t let me bother you at your work. I’m heading out for some air and to run some errands.”

“No problem.” He listened to her walk through the house to their garage.

*****

Reid ripped the dust and rain streaked tarp off his motorcycle. It hadn’t been ridden in more than four months. He hadn’t needed it. And since Noel had paid no real attention to it, he figured it would be the most inconspicuous way to follow her.

He grabbed the helmet that was hanging off the right rear view mirror and pulled it over his head. He choked on the dust and hoped to God that a scorpion or black widow spider hadn’t decided his helmet would make a nice condominium for her next three thousand children.

He slid the key was in the ignition and when he pressed the starter, the engine purred to life immediately.

He rocked the bike back then forward off the kickstand. It jumped a little quicker than he’d expected as he let the clutch out and he jammed the brake as he nudged it through the gate and rolled down the driveway.

When she left a few moments before, he saw that she went west. Running a red light, he rode on to the next intersection, a stop sign, and paused. Which way now? To the right lay the easiest way to the freeways that led North to Scottsdale. A turn to the left would take her downtown.

Then he saw the flash of familiar brake lights in the distance directly ahead.

He rode closer and saw that she had pulled into a strip mall parking lot. She was fussing with something in the car. She ran a hand through her hair, pushing strands of it out of her face. Her head was down. She seemed to be focused on something in her lap. Or maybe writing. Or maybe digging in a bag.
What was she doing?

When she dared to move again, Reid could see that there was something different about her hair. It was tighter and darker than when she’d left the house moments before.

He pulled into traffic several cars behind her.

* * * * *

Reid stared through the windshield as detail began to take shape in the world outside the car.

"Fine. You can sit there like a child. It won't change anything.”

He spoke softly, not looking at her. "You almost fucked us back there."

“I just wanted to make sure the housekeeper was under control,” she said. “Whether you pout or not, no harm was done."

And she was gone.

* * * * *

Reid sat in the car for a long moment, listening to the garage door close, letting her get ahead of him, letting the heat of his rage dissipate.

From experience, he knew he needed to give her an hour or so to seethe. Then he'd go to her and apologize; whether or not he had anything to apologize for.

* * * * *

Two hours later, the sky full of morning sun, Reid watched the back of the house from an old lawn chair. Years of blazing sun had left the chair tired and brittle. Eventually, he supposed, it would crumble to dust. It had been there when they rented the house as had had the frame to the waterbed he slept on and a comfortable and carefully worn brown leather chair that even though he knew he would have to walk away from this house and everything in it one day, he'd grown especially attached to.

The grass at his feet was wet; the sprinklers had run just before dawn. The air was still. The smoke from his cigarette rose up from his hand in a straight line like a jetliner vapor trail.

Noel didn't approve of smoking in their rented house. He didn't mind being relegated to the backyard. He knew it was a dirty habit. He should quit. And he would. Some day.

He let a long lung-full of smoke escape and looked up to Noel’s bedroom window. He pictured her as he had left her, sleeping up there, laying on her left side, part of the comforter tucked between her legs, her bare back facing away from the door. There were days when he loved the relationship they had, where it could consume most of his thoughts – days like this; when she let it be physical, or the days when they clicked professionally, working together on some project or job where they would move in unison -- one of them would think to do something and the other would instinctively move. Those were good days.

But not all days were good days.

He shifted his weight in brittle chair and pulled hard on the cigarette, filling himself again. He threw the butt to the ground. It sizzled briefly on the damp grass.
He needed to reign in the chatter in his head. He went back in to the house, into his dimly lit den. What he needed now was time on his computer.

*****

The light breeze felt good against his face.

“Okay. You’re up,” he said.

Noel swung the gate open and stopped at the other side; alert, watching, listening. Reid crouched behind her, his hand on her back.

“The housekeeper will be asleep. She’s fifty five feet from the den. The vet will have the dogs for three more days. Newspaper delivery’s not due until dawn. The old man is still in Chicago at an investor meeting.” She checked her watch. “As long as the rest of the keys and the alarm code work, I figure we have three hours.”

“Okay.” Reid tightened the chest strap on his backpack. “I’ll follow you in.”

* * * * *

Noel had the door open in a few seconds. Reid moved past her to disable the alarm. They then waited a few moments, to be sure the alarm had not been triggered inadvertently and to allow their eyes and ears to adjust to the house.

They moved through the cavernous kitchen – Italian butchers block and marble floors and rows of copper pots hanging by their necks in regimental order.

Noel motioned and they made their way quickly up a carpeted staircase, keeping to the outside of each step; where the nails were.

Noel pointed to the study door and pressed a key into Reid’s hand. She held it there a moment and moved close to his ear so she could speak softly. “You’re sure there’s not another alarm, one just for this room?”

“Don’t worry,” he whispered, “I’m as thorough as you. Unless he had a system installed after I checked the alarm company dispatch computers at midnight, we’re in perfect shape.”

The small home office was organized and uncluttered. The personal computer was a model so powerful and updated that the owner was either a technophile and demanded the latest toys or completely technology illiterate and was sold the latest toys by his computer support staff. Probably the latter.

Reid booted the desktop computer using an operating system loaded on a two megabyte flash drive that he paid $9,000 to get from a fellow hacker.

Noel pushed a fiber-optic camera under the door. The handheld video monitor also included a row a LED’s that flashed to indicate noise levels outside the room. Half of the LED’s lit up for a moment and quickly died down – the scratching of the overgrown tree branch swiping at the hallway window.

Reid connected a cable between his laptop and the desktop. It would take a little time to transfer the files their employer was paying to see.

* * * * *

“Don’t think I didn’t notice that Vegas comment,” she said, breaking the painful silence.

He tapped on the laptop’s keys. “What Vegas comment?”

“Yesterday. You were talking about the future. You wanted to live in Vegas.” The dB indicator registered for a moment. “You kept saying ‘we’.” The video monitor showed no movement. “You have a false sense of the future. Just because we’ve partnered up, doesn’t mean we’re a couple.”

He smirked.

“Laugh if you want but I’m serious Reid. We work well together because we have compatible talents and goals that mesh. We both want to the kind of total freedom that only cash can buy. Just for different reasons.”

He stopped typing. “And what are your reasons again?” He turned to face her. “Oh, that’s right. You’ve never told me what your big plan for retirement is.”

“Her face flushed a little and she fiddled with the monitor. “That’s not the point. The point is that you’ve always known our futures were a separate deal. Nothing about that has changed. Holding on to some idea that we are stop our work one day and go on together like Mary Joe and Billy Bob from the suburbs is a sure way to get distracted. And distraction leads to failure. And failure means never reaching to our goals.” She checked the door once more. “Or worse.”

He lowered his head then hammered a few commands into the laptop. “Thanks for the pep talk.”

“I’m not trying to make a huge deal out of it,” she said. “I just wanted to make sure you and I are on the same page.”
She pulled the camera back from under the door and packed the monitor in her backpack.

Reid closed the laptop. “Let’s get out of here. We still have work to do.”

* * * * *

There was a sudden thump out in the house and they both froze in the den’s doorway. “Housekeeper,” Noel whispered. “Down.”

Reid snapped off his pen light and crouched behind her. Through the fabric of her jacket she could sense his heartbeat, ragged and fast. He was breathing too loud. He would give them away.

“Stay here.” Noel ordered and stepped through the open door onto the landing. She peered over the edge of the stairway railing to the hallway below. She could see the housekeeper’s shadow moving past the open kitchen doorway. She looked back at Reid and flashed him the utility knife she palmed in her right hand. He looked pale, as if he would drop at any moment and she couldn’t hide her smile; he did most of his work safely hidden behind a computer monitor, tripping through the hallways of a company’s protected databases using only the telephone network and a modem.

She stepped onto the top stair. She listened closely for movement downstairs then stepped to the middle of the staircase. The thought that the housekeeper could come through the kitchen door at any moment was exhilarating.
She could hear the housekeeper pour a drink and she edged further down the staircase.

Noel was only five steps from the kitchen door when she heard the glass bang down to the counter and fast footsteps, loud as alarm bells. She froze. The housekeeper stomped across the hallway and through the entry to her bedroom suite.

The power in Noel’s heartbeat overwhelmed her.

Exhilarating.

* * * * *

Today’s project started innocently enough, with a small idea and a basic outline for a program. Then the features grew and he punched out code for hours; debugging, refining, and following all the threads of the program through to their ends. Everything had to be not only functionally correct, but pretty to read in raw form, flawless, and as short as possible.

Someone moved about the room directly above Reid’s den. He heard the upstairs shower come on.

His stomach growled. Had he forgotten to eat again?

He pulled a light sweater over his head and stretched it down across his shoulders. It fit tight, not because it was too small a size, but he had bulked up in the months the woman had been away on her last job and he had kept it up since her return. He like being fit, he liked the freedom of movement he had, the precise control it seemed to give his body.

She would be down soon, so he maneuvered to catch his reflection in a picture hanging behind the couch in the living room, checking to see if he looked okay. And felt a little silly for doing it. He’d been six foot four since high school and his athletic build and combination of dark hair with blue eyes had always earned more female attention than he’d ever needed. But he sometimes felt insecure with this woman, like at any moment he might screw up so monumentally that she would leave and it would be a loss he couldn’t live beyond.

He reached for a bagel from a bag on top of the fridge just as he heard the shower stop. He figured they had about ten minutes before they would leave.

He cursed himself for not sleeping, feeling the pull of tiredness. One thing he didn’t want to be on a night like this one was tired, there was so much that could go wrong, too many small slips that could cost them both greatly. And he had come too far to take unnecessary risks.

Maybe he would suggest they skip tonight, he thought as he bit into the bagel and opened the refrigerator, scanning for liquids. But he knew they couldn’t put off the job. They had spent too much time on it already. It was an investment. You don’t make and investment and then walk away from the payoff.

He smelled the milk jug before taking a long drink before setting it back on the shelf and bumping the refrigerator door closed with his hip.

He had faith that he would be able to overcome his fatigue and perform. How many times had a computer been enough stimulation to keep him on edge at four in the morning? Too many to count. And the high he got from doing his paying work was more powerful, more seductive, more intoxicating and addictive than even the most glorious session playing God with the computer.

He heard the toilet flush above him.

He eyed his carrying case, doing a mental once-over to make sure he had packed everything they would need tonight. He moved back quickly to the den; he had just enough time to try out his new program. He selected Run from the Compiler menu and the program he had spent thirteen hours wrestling from his imagination came to life in front of his eyes.

He selected a few commands and brought up a bar graph that mapped his financial portfolio. He clicked on the empty space above and beyond the graph and a question box appeared. He typed a command, asking the program to estimate the money needed to hit his goal. He entered the amount he would receive from tonight’s job. A date calculated at the bottom corner of the screen. Seventeen years. It would take seventeen years to reach his goal at this pace.

He needed to move faster. The woman wouldn’t wait that long for him.

He clicked on another menu option and asked his program to calculate a faster way to his destination. A number appeared. It was large, yes, but not impossible. He’d heard of people in their secretive and fringe society getting that much even for a single job. That’s what they needed. A single job. That big.

He leaned back on the chair and heard her come up behind him. She set her hand gently on his shoulder.

“You ready to go, Noel?” he asked.

* * * * *

And she wasn’t about to let that happen.

That the customer would have to wait, couldn’t be helped really. She had been practically forced to take the early lunch because of a new single mother that worked on the other side of her small, tidy cubicle. Because of the new employee’s situation – of her having to run her pair of no-doubt illegitimate children to or from day care – Constance had to change her lunch hour. Because she had chosen to not marry, to avoid the inconvenience and pain of motherhood, she was being punished. Was that fair?

The front-line operators should know better than to transfer calls to her. She obviously couldn’t be blamed if the customer didn’t get helped.

She was almost ready to work but it was too cold in the cavernous call center for her. They probably kept it cold because some survey somewhere told them that workers performed better when cold or uncomfortable or something. So she wrapped her cardigan around her shoulders and surveyed her booth. The phone started ringing again.

She groaned, unhooked her headset from its cradle and slowly snuggled it into place over her heavily hairsprayed coif. There was no hurry.

Third ring. She paused once more before answering and wiggled her mouse to bring her computer terminal to life. How could she be expected to be a help anyone without the computer up and running?
Fourth ring. Voice mail would pick up the call before the phone rang once more. She was tempted to let it go because she wasn’t one hundred percent ready and because the smell of other people’s microwaved lunches was overwhelming and nauseous (why can’t those suck ups take it to the lunch room instead of eating at their desks – that’s the reason there was a lunch room?) but decided to grace the caller anyway.

“American National, can I help…”

The caller cut her off. “Finally. Yes.” Bad start.

“Can I help you sir?”

“Yes. I need some information about an account at your bank.”

“The account number please?”

“Actually, I just have a question about…”

“I can’t help you without the account number sir.” She heard the breath, deep and long, on the other end of the connection.

“Zero four four, nine nine seven, eight seven six six, one zero zero zero.”

The keys rattled on her keyboard rattled as she typed. “And your name sir.”

“Christian Jones.” She heard him grunt. “No. Wait. Noel Jones. I’m sorry, no.” He read the statement holder’s name again. “Anna Noel Brantly.”

“Well which is it?”

“Noel. The account is in the name Anna Noel. It’s my wife’s name.”

“Hmmm.” The keys rattled again. “Are you a signer on the account sir?”

“No. I never knew about the account until today.”

“Well then, I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can help you with.” She smiled to herself. She would enjoy this.

“Well I don’t want to access the account or anything I just need to ask a couple of questions. Like, when was the last activity on…”

“Like I said sir, if you’re not a signer on the account, I can’t help you.”

“Listen, I just need to know…”

“I’m sorry sir. At American National, we have strict confidentiality rules.”

“Can you confirm that the account exists? That it has a balance? That it has recent activity?

“Oh, no sir, that would go against our confidentiality policy.”

“Confidentiality from who? I’m her husband.”

“And you are not a signer on the account, is that correct?”

“Yes, but don’t I have rights as a husband? Aren’t there laws in this country regarding the finances of husbands and wives?”

“Not in the country of our charter.”

“Charter?”

“Oh, yes sir. Here in the Grand Cayman Islands, the laws protecting the privacy of individuals who place their trust in the banking system override any rights you think you might have. No person but the account signer has access to any account entrusted to this institution. It is a bond not even the government can break. It is specifically why people put their money here. What that means to you sir, is that you have no rights to any account in this bank. Unless you are a signer.” She pressed the mute button on her headset, stifling a rising laugh. To think, she almost missed this call.

“So you’re saying you can release no information to me about this account?”

“Correct.” She could sense the glorious frustration in her caller, the near explosion of energy.

“Lady, you don’t understand how big of a deal this is. This account belongs to my wife and I never knew about it. I haven’t seen her in six months. You might be able to confirm whether she’s even alive.”

“And your wife obviously wanted her privacy sir. It is my duty, to my customers, to protect that privacy.”

He sighed again. “And what if I call pretending to be her.”

She grew serious. “You could try that. But you wouldn’t know her password and the account would be locked.” She could hear the deflation in her caller. The letdown. It made her day.

“Is there anything else I can do for you sir?”

All she heard next was the click of her caller’s handset being replaced in its cradle.

* * * * *

Christian slammed the phone back into its cradle and punched the wall next to the phone. He winced in pain as his hand slipped right through the thin plasterboard.

So close.

All he could think as he sunk to the floor, tears of frustration streaking down his face, was that his wife, his love, was out there in the world somewhere, waiting to be reunited with him.

* * * * *

The joy of the moment had not ended for Constance Widowmaker. She stood above the sight line of her booths walls and looked around the call center. There was no supervisor walking the floor in her section.

Good.

She pressed the ‘9’ key dialed nine to secure an outside line then dialed the West Virginia telephone number listed in the account’s contacts and notes section.

Her eyes sparkled. He heart raced with the pleasure of being able to strike back a little at a world that seemed to hold nothing but shit for her. She listened as the long distance connection clicked through a network of fiber optic lines and telephone switch rooms, snaking its way through the digital world to reach out and ring the phone of her customer.

The ring came suddenly, loudly and more clear than normal. Or maybe her perception was heightened by euphoria.

Her mood began to deflate at the third ring. Wasn’t her customer home? The fourth ring found her spirit sinking further. “Damn,” she said, disappointed, as a voice mail system answered and an electronic voice read back the number she had called and invited her, politely to leave a message.

“Ms. Jones,” she said at the tone. “This is Constance Widowmaker at American National in Grand Cayman. I’m calling as a matter of courtesy. A security measure really. Its standard policy to inform all account holders of unauthorized inquires into their accounts. I just received a phone call from a man posing as your husband, said his name was Christopher Jones or something. Anyway, he was given no information or access to the account of course so you need not worry. And if you have any questions at all, please call me at our toll-free service number and ask for me by name or ask for extension three three two nine. I’ll be on shift until four p.m. Pacific Standard Time. Thank you.”

She disconnected the call, satisfied that the message was clear and reassured that allowed someone out in the world know that she had done something of value.

Her phone rang again. She took the call immediately and put the last one out of her mind.

* * * * *

Is it possible that someone who has a real (not imagined) talent for writing could lose it over the course of a few inactive years? Does natural ability fester, rot, and decompose beyond the point of resuscitation?

I should write every day. I should also eat healthier and work out; lose this weight that makes me slower than I could be. Although I realize that there are limitations to what I could do even if I was a slim as Sean Yates, I know I could be faster, I could be healthier; Just as sure as I could call myself a writer today if I had just eaten writing properly over the same years that I left it unfed and unwatered, conscious that I risked killing whatever gift I started with..

So is that it? Is that the conversation that goes on in a person’s head a thousand times a day that stops them from really doing the little things that could lead to the future they would have for themselves if you could predetermine such a thing?

Even if it was known to us, even if it we knew life would play out exactly as we wanted, I can imagine that we would still find ways to sabotage it. Because that’s the human element isn’t it? Choice. Choice is the great gift for humanity from our ultimate source. Choice is a brick that we can use to build a castle for ourselves. Or a fortress.

Back to the conversation that derails the supposed futures we want to build for ourselves. That’s a choice too right; we chose to talk ourselves out of doing seemingly simple and innocuous things that could put us on these great human paths? I understand that I make these choices out of habit or for fucked up reasons (like fear of the accountability to the world actual success might carry with it) but why does knowing that not stop me at the time?

But am I making a choice or simply avoiding a choice? Can a choice be to not do something, to not act? Isn’t choice really about positive action?

For me, the choices (or avoidance of choice) I have been making about writing (or the food for that matter) bad choices lead to guilt. Guilt paralyzes creativity, kills the ability to believe that my future is interwoven with these noble and romantic occupation. My choices are deliberate stalls that go against what I say I want for myself.

I want to slim down – for a dozen reasons not the least of what it would do for my cycling and my ability to pass a mirror and not feel slightly ashamed that doing better with my body is not such a great accomplishment and aren’t I smarter than my outcome after al? Every day, I think out loud that the path to trimming down is relatively simple; modify my eating (type of foods and amount of food) yet everyday I choose the same sweet or heavy foods the fattest Americans choose for themselves.

Just the same, it hurts me to flip through the directory on my computer’s hard drive where I keep the fiction I have written in my life. There are two of the three novels there (the third, actually the first, exists on paper only and I gave it to my wife and have no idea where she keeps it presently). There are short stories there. There are outlines and beginnings of novels and fractions of poems. It’s a great collection of unfinished restarts of a pursuit that seems likely never to be finished.

How sad and stupid is that.

So why not make the choices that would achieve the goals I carry in the back of my mind and refuse to let go in the face of all evidence that I am an unworthy steward; to write every day? Why not start each morning with fruit and end with vegetables and some time stringing together sentences?

I could stare at this cursor all day and not come up with an answer that is not total bullshit.

Should I not try any more because the odds are hugely stacked against me ever turning out something that would be published? Bah! I see complete and total but published crap all the time; even catch my wife reading some horribly written yet legitimately produced novels (and I’m not just saying that from the bitter space of one who has not spitting on the efforts of one who has).

Should I not try because there’s little chance I could turn out work as good or as popular as the stuff I admire most – the John Sandford novels that get me through the numb routine of airline travel? Surely that’s too much too ask of myself. Calling my cycling a failure and unworthy of effort because at forty and with comparatively limited cardiovascular capacity I have not yet chased this year’s version of Lance Armstrong up a European col would be silly and childish delusion, then isn’t making the same comparison in writing novels an equal egotistical masturbation?

Should I not try because I don’t have the time? I know, I can even hear you laughing at that one. How much time in life is freely given to our friends in the television business? How much time allocated to the enterprise of work in the name of making a living for my family is actually frittered on tasks and distractions as useful to me and my enterprise as ass scratching?

So it really boils back down to choice, to making a choice to overwhelm the self-defeating conversation at the top of this piece. I’m not talking about whipping myself into a frenzy of positive affirmation and blind faith that if I just work, I will achieve that superstardom, that fame and fortune that corrupts the edges of my reason for doing the work. I understand that one of my motivations for writing is recognition on any level beyond myself and that need is a sickness in and of itself but the choice it to override the self-doubt that questioning my motivation always brings (the beginning of the spiral). But what I choose for myself is that since I am going to occupy twenty four hours of every day I have left in this existence doing something with the body and mind I have at my disposal, I will simply rotate in writing from now on.

What possible harm could come?

He had promised his sister he would try and return to his old life today so he dragged into the bathroom and turned on the shower. He found a brand new toothbrush, razors and shaving cream under the counter.

At the mirror, he took stock of the bloodiness of his eyes and the pallor of his jowls. He thought about what he would do that day, summoning the motivation to move.

He spit out the toothpaste, adjusted the tap for hot water and lathered his face with shaving cream. He wiped the steam from the mirror and slowly stroked the razor down his face, peeling back the overgrowth.

* * * * *

Christian answered on the first ring..

“Are you up?”

“Yes mother.”

Gabrielle laughed. “You need a mother.”

“Touché.”

“You sound better.”

“I just got out of the shower. I feel better.”

“Good.” He heard his sister sigh. “I had your car picked up – it’s in the garage. There’s mail of yours on the table by the front door.”

“Thanks.”

“There’s some cereal and other stuff in the kitchen. Will you eat?”

“If I do, will you stop babying me?”

“Maybe,” she said, more seriously than he had expected.

“I’ll figure something out.”

“So what’s your plan for today? You have more wallowing to do?”

“I thought I might come in.”

“That would be the best thing you could possibly do. Especially for all the freaks at the office that seem to have nothing better to do than obsess over you.”

“It’s nice to be wanted.”

“Worshipped, you mean?”

“That to.”

“You must be feeling better – the old modesty is back.”

“Even the pope has an ego.”

“All right. Enough already. Manager’s meeting at eleven if you can make it.”

“See you then.”

'And Christian…”

He cut her off. He could tell she was about to get sentimental “I’ll see you later, mother.”

He heard her laughing as he hung up.

*****

Christian grabbed the stack of mail Gabrielle had left for him; a flood of envelopes and a large box.

He sorted the letters - junk, junk, junk, bill, bill, junk. Important stuff went in his back pocket. The junk he tossed into a trash can under the hallway table.

Soon, all that was left was the box. It was addressed to Noel. He opened the front door and sat on the stoop, the box at his side. He touched it gingerly at first, his fingers tracing the contours and textures of the package as if by touching it he was touching her. For a moment, he let his eyes close and breathed deeply, trying to find her among the smell of cardboard and tape and the flowering Oleanders bordering the walk.

The label was handwritten and post-marked Seattle, Washington, the return name and address unfamiliar to him.

He used his ignition key to rip the tape sealing the top of the box.

Inside, he found a suitcase; airline carry-on size. A note on yellow legal pad paper had been taped to the front cover of the suitcase. He carefully unfolded it. The paper was dry to the touch, crisp. A shipping receipt was stapled to the back of it, dated two months prior.

The handwritten note read:

“Dear Ms. Jones:

“My name is Reverend Tucker Huard. I run a small homeless shelter in the Fremont district in downtown Seattle. The people we help are mostly good but sometimes the desperation of their situation brings them to the wrong side of the law. Unfortunately, I fear that you may have fallen victim to such desperation; your suitcase was taken from one of the men in our mission. It appears that it has been rifled and I am sorry if anything is missing.

“The man denies taking the bag himself, saying he found it abandoned at a nearby park. He has repented and accepted Jesus Christ as his savior so, and I hope this is all right with you, I would rather not disclose his name.

“I apologize also because the sending of this package was delayed as we are unfortunately lean on resources. But I felt it important to return the item directly to you and would rather not involve the police.

“I hope that you can find it in your heart to extend the Christian gesture of forgiveness and that you were not severely inconvenienced by this loss.

“Sincerely,

“Rvd. Tucker Huard.

“P.S. Sorry to ask, but, since times are tight, could I please be reimbursed for our shipping expenses? I have attached the receipt. The center, of course, also welcomes and appreciates any charitable donation you would see fit to give. Thanks. T.H.”

Christian flipped the case on its end and found a handwritten tag with her name and their address. He then remembered the bag; he'd bought it for Noel to accompany him on a business trip. The tag had been mounted as a courtesy by the store’s clerk.

But what was one of his wife’s suitcases doing in Seattle two months ago? Noel disappeared in May, almost five months ago.

He unzipped the front flap, pulled everything from the bag and spread it across his sister’s front steps. Inside, he found clothes, new, some with store tags still attached - jeans, a sweatshirt, tee shirts, underwear, socks, a pair of Nike tennis shoes; all Noel’s size. None of it was familiar to him.

He rifled the exterior pockets of the case. Deep in one, he found a cache of paper slips; store receipts and a blue printed card with a bank name, account numbers and a handwritten four-digit number all unfamiliar to him.

He scanned the first of three total receipts. It was from Kohl’s department store. The descriptions of some of the items matched clothes and the shoes he had found in the case.

He wiped the sweat from his forehead and closed his eyes a moment before reading the date on the receipts. August seventeenth.

Noel disappeared May twelfth.

She was out there.

* * * * *

His eyes followed the unplugged cord to the lifeless telephone on his computer hutch. On the top shelf of the hutch, a cartoon desk calendar reminded him of the day she disappeared -- he hadn’t turned the page since. He hadn’t done much of anything since.

The house smelled like a long neglected basement. A film of dust had settled on any surface that greeted it. There were dishes in the kitchen waiting to be tended to and a smell like death from beneath the sink where a small trash can was overstuffed with half eaten TV dinners and empty beer bottles. The toilet in the upstairs bathroom ran continuously.

He didn’t go upstairs any more.

Christian reached down and brought the bottle back up to his lips. The liquor stung his chapped lips. Tears rose in his eyes.

He had no idea what time it was.

He closed his eyes and tried to force himself to sleep.

* * * * *

Gabrielle swerved the Humvee angrily around a slow driver and shifted the phone to her left ear.

“Mother, I know. For God’s sake, please.” She pulled the phone away long enough to flick a loose curl of her sandy blond hair out of the way of her ear.

“I’m on my way to his house right now.” The streetlight in front of her was suddenly red. She braked hard, the huge tires barked at the asphalt as she jerked to a stop. She sighed. “Hang on, mother.” She dropped the phone to the console between the front seats, signaled, and turned into a convenience store parking lot.

She paused before picking up the phone. “Okay,” she said. “I know it’s been four months. You can’t expect him to just get over it.” She shifted the Humvee into Park. “You and I both know Christian. He’s a fighter. You’ve seen what he’s done with his life. Look at EmCom. He built that company single handed.”

“I am not being modest. I’m only part of it because he gave me a part to play. But that’s not the point. The point is that he’s strong. And I know him well enough to know that he doesn’t need us to ignore his pain. And I know you want to come to Phoenix but babying him is not going to help. You’ll just be frustrated and in the way.”

Gabrielle lowered her head. She was tired. Worn out. These battles of will with her controlling mother always drained her. “He loves you Mother. I love you. He just needs to work through this. Don’t worry, I’m going to give him a nudge and try to get him going again. I’ll keep you in the loop.”

“Okay. I’ll talk to you later. Bye.”

She disconnected the call but didn’t pull out of the parking lot right away. She wasn’t sure what she was going to say when she got to her brother’s house. She had planned a couple of speeches. One had been funny, meant to draw him out, to make him crack a smile and realize that life couldn’t’ be all that bad if he could still laugh with his sister. Another was aggressive, more like her famous sales meetings; a blasting attack on performance followed by a rousing, motivational call to arms. But this wasn’t a sales team. This wasn’t an employee. This was her brother; the person she was closest to in the world.

All through life, Christian had been the stronger of the two, always the leader. Gabrielle didn’t resist it. She accepted it. Although he was only two years older and her female friends were quick to call her relationship a characteristic example of male dominance, she preferred it. She saw such strength in him. Strength she wasn’t sure she saw in herself.

But now Gabrielle had been called upon to be the strong one. Christian was broken and she took it as her responsibility to fix him.

She sighed again, shifted the Humvee into reverse, and looked over her shoulder. She would go to his house and just wing it. She hoped she would say just what he needed to hear.

* * * * *

“Christian. Open up you shit. I know you’re in there.” Gabrielle banged on his front door again. It rattled against its frame.

She was a tall woman - five foot eleven - but she still had to stand up on her toes to look through the small, stained-glass window. “Christian. We need to talk.”

She thought she heard a noise inside, a rustle. Or the hollow thud of a drinking glass falling onto carpet-covered wood floor.

“Fuck it. I’m coming in,” she said and back up ten steps down the walkway. She had never broken down a door before but felt like she’d seen enough movies to know the drill. She dropped her backpack that passed for her purse on the ground and set her feet, right shoulder facing the door.

She hit the door square, her shoulder bearing most of the weight, and bounced backward off the door.

“Ow, goddammit,” she said as she sat on the walk.

The door swung open. She saw her brother walking away; a silhouette retreating into the darkness of the cave he had built for himself.

* * * * *

“Do you think this is healthy?” Gabrielle said as she pulled the curtains back to let sunlight stream into the living room. Christian winced at the sudden light and sat back on the couch.

Gabrielle sat in the recliner across from the couch and took stock of her brother. He was dressed in sweats and looked as if he hadn’t shaved in a few days. His hair was hidden under an Arizona Diamondbacks baseball cap. “We haven’t seen you at the office for a while. Everyone’s asking about you. They want to know how you’re holding up.”

Christian lowered his head, deflecting the attention.

“If you’re not going to talk to me that’s fine,” she said. “You can just listen. There are a lot of people who care about you whether you hide from them or not.

“Whatever happened to Noel…”

A sound escaped Christian’s lips, a pained, restrained intake of breath.

“…happened. There isn’t anything you can do to change the past.” She leaned forward and placed her hand gently on his leg. “And hiding in this pit is the last thing that’s going to help you feel any better?”

She could see a thought float across his eyes.

“What?”

“Maybe I don’t want to feel better?”

She cupped his chin. “I know honey. But what good is this? You feel guilty but you did nothing wrong. No one knows what happened to Noel. So how can you possibly be responsible?”

His head came up.

“I know you have pain,” she said. “This pain is not your life. It’s only a part of it. Let’s draw a line between your pain and the rest of your life.” She pulled him up to him, her hands on his shoulders. “I love you Christian. Let me help you.”

She wrapped her arms around him. She felt him give into the embrace, melting everywhere their bodies touched.

Then he spoke, one simple word that said everything she needed to know. He was reaching out.
“Okay.”

She could feel his tears on her cheek. “Besides,” she said “Mother won’t leave me alone until I prove to her you still exist.”

He laughed softly.

She stepped back. “Now, pack your stuff, you’re moving in with me.”

* * * * *

Gabrielle had the car phone to her ear, talking to her personal assistant. “Hi Sandy, this is Gabby. Can you call that handyman service we used at the rental on Campbell and send them to Christian’s house to replace the back door? Be sure they replace it and not just patch it. And ask Shimmel Landscaping to take care of the yards. Christian always did that work himself and they look a little rough right now.” She looked over at her brother who had fallen asleep as soon as they pulled away from his house. It was a good sign.

“I’ll be in first thing in the morning. Call a managers meeting will you, and pull together all the project reports on the latest beta testing.” She pressed a switch clipped to her visor to open her building’s garage door.

“He might be there. If he feels better.”

He woke with a snap and bolted upright, his first thought on the emptiness of Noel’s side of the bed. He looked at the alarm clock on his bedside table; 3:10am. He tuned his ears to the house. Silence.

He rolled out of bed and checked the bathroom “Noel,” he called. No response. He looked into the upstairs guestroom. Empty.

Downstairs, he moved from room to room, turning on every light and calling her name, terrified of what he might find.

The kitchen looked the same as when Noel cleared the dinner dishes the night before. The living room was as it had been, in order except for the handful of his and her clothes thrown around after dinner.

Six hours before, they had been watching television. He’d caught her staring at him. He pushed her away playfully and she’d come back with an aggressive kiss, pinning him to the couch. They fell off to sleep two hours later, too exhausted to shower away the stink of sex. He’d slept deeply; joint-creaking, bone-weary, asleep-before-you’re-aware-of-it deep.

He finished walking the downstairs; the dining room, hallway closet, even through the laundry room and into the garage. As he stepped back over a pile of waiting laundry something in his sense memory clicked. He raced back up the stairs and flipped on the lamp and froze.

A stain the size of an open fist formed a black hole in the deep green of their satin bed sheet. Tentative, he felt the stain with his fingers, exploring its edges. When he brought his fingertips up to his eyes, he stopped breathing.
Blood.

A dog barking on the street snapped him back to the moment. He bolted back down the stairs and through the kitchen.

In bare feet still, he slid to a stop on the linoleum floor. The back door was open a foot wide, the jam split into shards.

Slowly, he swung the door open...

…To find nothing but a fresh night time breeze and the still-life of a suburban back yard.

The breeze raised Goosebumps on his arms. For a moment, he closed his eyes and tried to will himself to believe that everything was okay, that there was an explanation that would soothe the burning in his stomach. But it didn’t work. He reached for the phone and fell against the wall with the weight of his guilt. He slid to the floor, clutching the heavy receiver.

She was gone. And, unforgivably, he had slept through it.

* * * *

He sat on the wooden porch in front of the trailer, his head buzzing, with his back to the door. The television in the room behind him was left too loud as usual. It was tuned to a re-run of a five-year old Saturday Night Live. Two actors playing semi-retarded children are annoying a group of adults at a dinner party.

The exhale felt like a sigh and he let his head dropped with the weight of the past few moments. He wiped a three-dot spatter of blood from the inside of his right calf with his thumb then wiped the thumb on the back of his shorts.

He looked up again. The cool fall air cut through his faded tee shirt and chilled his knees and he realized he hadn't felt anything in the last few minutes. His eyes filled with this new awareness of his surroundings, awareness that this one great moment was over.

Christopher knew his life had just changed in an irreversible way. He knew it as certain as he knew that the cigarette in his hand was one of the many ways you could be killed. He knew that his fourteen years of living before this one moment of fatal violence had been one of his lives and everything from this moment forward would be his second life. But his life had needed to change, he was certain of it. What was done had to be done. It was inevitable. And it couldn't have been avoided from the moment he figured out who he really was and what had been done to him, the day he figured out the difference between the existence he was living and the existence he was supposed to live.

"Hon, are you okay?" He recognized the voice from the park, a hunched, overweight, chain-smoking old lady who always wore flowered housecoats and looked after most of the toddlers from the park that had parents who worked during the week. Her trailer sat cat-corner to his. She was in her doorway, silhouetted by her sharp porch light.

He took another pull on the cigarette. He couldn't bring himself to answer.

He heard her lumber across the road and hesitate at the bottom step of the porch, her eyes looking over him. He looked up. Her eyes were wide, nervous but wise. But they softened when she read the expression in his face and she looked past him to the partly open door of his trailer.

"Son," she said. "Is everything okay in there? I heard shouting. Do you need help?"

The old woman touched the top of his head as she walked past him in and stepped into the small living room of his trailer. He knew what she would see in there and he knew he should spare her from the sight of it but again, every part of his body felt weighted and sodden, too thick and heavy to follow his will to do anything but sit there and stare and his shoes, his cigarette burning to the nub in his pinched fingers.

He followed her footsteps across the front room. With a solid click, she turned off the television and the night fell more silent than he had ever remembered. The park was usually full of hubbub, even this late at night, even this time of year. But gone was the chatter of his drunken neighbors, the children, the annoying buzz of the mosquitoes that built up when the pond that collects runoff rain from horseshoe-shaped road that runs through the park stand stagnant. It's like every living thing in the park came to a standstill the moment he fired the shots that ended the man he called Father's life.

He heard the old woman pick up the phone in his kitchen then three short tones. Her voice shook as she spoke. "Hello. I'm at Desert Ridge mobile park. There's a dead body in one of the trailers here." Christopher flicked the long ash from the end of his cigarette while she paused. "I'm sorry, I don't know but yes, I am sure," she said. "I’m a nurse. He looks shot."

*****

He knew it was an odd thing to think even as it came into his mind but he was impressed with the old lady; she was keeping her voice low and even, had surprising cool for the fact that she was looking at a dead man not twenty feet from her own front door and had ruffled the hair of a murderer.

He heard her speak the address into the phone. "There's a young man sitting outside. I think the dead guy is his father. I mean, I've seen him in the trailer park but I don't know him. Jamie. I’m sure his father called him Jamie. He's not talking much. He looks scared. And I heard fighting. Just before."

She must have moved or turned away from the front door because her voice dimmed. Christopher lifted and turned his head. "There is a gun in the trailer. No, he doesn't. He's just sitting there. No, I didn't. I won't."

*****

The first siren broke the night's silence, distant. He could see a few more sets of eyes at the windows and doors of the aluminum neighborhood.

"He may not be," the woman said. "I hear them, yes. Do you want me to move the..." she was cutoff. "Okay. Listen, I think I need to see after the boy. Can I wait out there? I will. I will. Yes. Thank you."

Christopher heard her footsteps come out of his trailer and onto the porch with him. He could feel her standing at the threshold, watching him. “Shoo,” she said to a pair of twenty-something’s from the trailer directly across from Christopher who had come out onto the porch to stare at him. “Go on. Get back.” They stepped back into their home.
The buzzing in his body had turned into a tremor and he could no longer hold on to the cigarette so he wrestled a final drag out of it and dropped it onto the bottom step of the porch.

The woman sat beside him on the step. The touch of her hand on his arm was light. Maternal. Not that he really knew how maternal would feel thanks to Father.

“Honey. Did you do that? Inside?”

All he could manage was a nod.

The siren grew stronger. A second could be heard a bit further off, coming from a different direction. The woman’s voice softened. She slipped her arm around his shoulder. “The police will be here soon,” she said and pulled him to her. “Do you want to talk about it yet?”

Christopher did want to talk about it. And a thousand things to say rattled around in his head - stories of pain and punishment, stories of his numb existence, the story of how he woke up to the reality of the life that Father had fabricated around him, the story of how he figured out how to use the internet on Father’s phone and learned about school and family and real food and all the other things everyone else in the world his age had in their lives. But the images and impressions were like dollar bills in a tornado – enticing but impossible to catch.

“Maisy,” he said, his voice shaky. The woman’s grip tightened on his shoulder.

“Maisy?,” she said. “What’s Maisy dear.

“Maisy Stephenson.”

“What does that mean dear?” The old woman lifted his chin with her hand. “You aren’t making sense, son. The police are going to be here soon.” She pinched his chin a little and he lifted his eyes to hers. The first siren grew stronger still. “Don’t think I don’t know what’s been going on,” she said. “I’ve been living in this park a long time and I see everything that happens here. I know you’ve been living here a while even if I have never seen you play out in the street or wait at the school bus with the other kids. I know that man (she pointed a thumb over her shoulder to the trailer) ain’t one to get along with people. He’s barked at me once or twice. But I’ve kept my mouth shut.”

She let her hand fall from his chin and rest on Christopher’s shoulder. “I can see the bruises on your wrist.” She rubbed her thumb against his cheek. “I know what a black eye looks and feels like even if it is almost gone. You’ve got to get it straight in your head what happened in that house before the first policeman gets here. If what I saw is the only way things could have worked out for you, you’ve got to be ready to say it. Do you understand?”

He could see pleading in her eyes. He didn’t know her. He didn’t know anything about her. But he could see that there was something personal in her words. He wanted to tell her, to give her the satisfaction that he was a victim here, that he had to pull the trigger that put Father down in a puddle of his own stinking blood, that he shot his abusive Father our of fear and in self-defense, but her couldn’t lie to her, couldn’t tell her that he hadn’t done for himself at all.

“Maisy Stephenson. Please, Maisy Stephenson.”

“Oh poor dear,” she said and pulled Christopher into an hug as the first patrol car rolled to a stop about twenty yards down the road from Christopher’s trailer.

*****

A Deputy Sheriff popped out of the driver’s door, his hand resting on the butt of his pistol, and quickly scanned the trailer park. The old woman raised her hand and waved him over.

“Did you call Ma’am?”

“Aye. In there. A man’s been shot.”

The young cop unholstered his sidearm and lifted it toward the door. He looked back at the woman. “Up there.”

“Go on,” she reassured.

He hesitated but stepped past her, mumbling something into a radio microphone strapped to the collar of his uniform shirt. A second squad car pulled in behind the first. An older deputy fumbled with a baton, trying to slip it into a sleeve on his belt once he was free of the car but missing twice until he looked down to guide it properly instead of up to the trailer.

“Up here Charlie,” the first cop said. The second officer looked at Christopher and the old woman as well but she nodded and he went past and followed his younger colleague into the trailer. Christopher could hear panicked mumbling from inside the trailer. The cops were trying to put it together. He could almost feel head scratching. A new siren popped up in the night. And another. He needed to get across to them soon but the palsy was getting worse. His teeth chattered.

The two deputies came out onto the porch. There was caution in the older man’s voice. “Ma’am. Did you…”
Christopher looked at the old woman. She turned to the cops, her eyes furrowed. “No.”
The older cop looked at Christopher.

“Look,” the old woman said, “don’t go rushing to any conclusion. I have no more idea what went on here than you did.”

“All the same ma’am,” the younger cop said and reached for Christopher’s right wrist, lifting him from the step.
Christopher didn’t resist but it was hard for him to get up, like he had been poured of cement when he sat down after the shooting. “Relax,” he said. “I’m just going to sit you in the back of my car until we can get this all sorted out.” To the old woman, he said, “Stay right here ma’am. The detectives are on their way. We’ll need to get a statement from you as well.”

Christopher looked at the old woman as he was being led across the road to the first squad car. ‘Tell them you were forced to do it,’ she said with her eyes.

“Maisy Stephenson,” was all he could manage.

“Wait for the detectives,” the cop said and sat Christopher gently in the back of his car.

“Maisy Stephenson,” he croaked as the car door closed, his voice at half the power he could normally manage.

‘Who is Maisy Stephenson?,’ he could hear the cop asking the old woman and the world went silent and abstract for Christopher again.

*****

Christopher pressed himself as far into the stiff rear seat of the patrol car as he could, melting into the pre-formed plastic curves. The shaking had subsided and he felt nothing but tired now, as if the whole ordeal had taken place days ago and he had yet to sleep off the experience.

The entire car smelled of oranges. Not the natural, drink-yours-with-the-pulp-left-in kind. The slightly chemical orange of the gritty hand cleaners you find in the working bathroom at an off-the-main-street service station.
He let his head lie against the back of the seat and watched the trailer. Scores of uniformed cops had come out to the little park. Most of them seemed to have no real purpose there. They were around for the experience of looking at a body, it seemed. He took in their body language, tried to read their lips. It was a lark for some. They were excited. As keyed up as he was numb. All he could do was lay there and keep his mind working. He couldn’t risk falling asleep yet. Not until he talked to Maisy Stephenson.

Maisy Stephenson. The name sounded so foreign to him when he played it over in his mind. Maisy Stephenson. It washed over him with sadness that he didn’t have the connection he should have with the name. But even he, at such a young age, was wise enough to know that even the strongest connection could be polluted by the evil of the world. He was also wise enough to know that the bond he shared with Maisy Stephenson should mean something even if he couldn’t feel it. In fact, he had just gambled his whole life on the promise of that tenuous bond.

He could see the detectives the first young officer had spoken of. The lookey-lou crowd of uniforms tensed as a mid-fifties black woman with a boxer’s shoulders and demeanor stepped up the porch steps, a white man three inches shorter than her in a thick denim jacket, the kind a rancher would wear, trailing behind. The black detective spoke with authority to the young officers and several set off in the direction of other trailer, the intention of purpose in their eyes.

The detective’s eyes were sharp. She looked back at the car, at Christopher, leaving her stare on him while the first officer on the scene read to her from a small notepad. Christopher could feel his face heating up as she watched him. She was driving the numbness out of him from fifty yards and through a steel door and a solid glass window. He could see strong thoughts on her face. She suddenly turned back to the young man. He looked puzzled then flipped one page back in his notebook and spoke two words for what was obviously the second time. Christopher could read the words easily. “Maisy Stephenson,” he said. The detective motioned with her hands and the young officer repeated the name. The detective looked back at Christopher and he knew she was the one. She was the one person out of this whole night who the name meant something to. He could see it in the way her face had changed. The stern mechanics of working the puzzle of the dead man in the trailer and the emaciated and bruised young man in the back of the squad car was gone. Her mouth was the tiniest bit open. Her eyes had livened. She was deciding what to do about a connection she had just made. He saw her make a decision; she spun to her partner, grabbed his arm and pulled him away from the trailer, away from Christopher’s view.

*****

Christopher smiled and closed his eyes. He tried to bring a picture of Maisy to his mind but could only manage a silhouetted face looking down at him from above, framed in long curls that tickled his face. Frustration of not being able to fill in the details in her face nudged into his consciousness and before he could control it, the man who demanded to be called Father was in her place. This face he saw clearly; every ingrown follicle, every smudge of filth, every contour of the ridge of his eyelids.

A rasp on the window opened his eyes. The white detective looked in at him, contempt on his face. Christopher straightened himself as best as he could. The man looked over his shoulder and was shaking his head. Christopher followed his gaze. The black detective was standing back at the foot of the porch to his trailer and was speaking. She held a white plastic three-ring binder in one hand, her thumb marking a page, and urged the white detective to move as she instructed. The spine of the binder was as thick as a big-city telephone book.

The white detective turned back to Christopher and continued to stare until the first officer that had arrived on the scene ran over to the car and unlocked the rear door of the car.

“You. Come with me,” the white detective said and pulled Christopher off the back seat roughly and onto his feet.
Christopher was marched to the trailer. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” the white detective said to his partner. She ignored him. She had opened the book to the page she had marked with her thumb and was lifting a cell phone to her ear with her other hand. Christopher could see the photograph of the face of a four-year old boy he no longer recognized on the page and the words ‘Missing since October 1997’ across the top.

The detective spoke softly into the phone, turning away from Christopher. Christopher stood tall when he was lurched to a stop, arms length from the black detective. The shaking was gone. The malaise was gone. His heart raced and he could feel rushes of blood warm his face and tingle through his arms.

The black detective said “okay, if you’re sure” into the phone.” Christopher heard the person on the other end of the phone speak. He couldn’t make out any of the words but the sound, the timbre of the voice, seemed to vibrate the air around him on a frequency that seemed synchronized with every cell in his body.

The white detective tightened his protective grip on Christopher’s arm. The partner closed the gap between them and lifted Christopher’s chin so she could see straight into his eyes. “There’s someone on the phone who wants to speak to you.” She held the phone to his ear.

“Maisy Stephenson?,” he said weakly. He heard breathing on the other end of the connection. A dog barked in the background.

“Yes,” she said gently, carefully; pained but hopeful.

Christopher’s legs weakened and he felt the weight of his body fall onto the white detective’s arm. “Mom?,” he said.

“Oh my god.”

“Mom.” He was crying now.

“Christopher?” She was crying.

“Can I come home now?”

"Is Dad stinkalicious because he stinks and you love him?"

A perfectly wise and funny thing to say. I so want to have tee shirts made with that word.

a.k.a. Why Southwest Airlines' policy of not assigning seats is not fun for people who travel regularly; bored, tired, annoyed people who have to act like ten hungry children at a breakfast buffet which has five plates of smiley pancakes and five plates of corned-beef hash.

05:42 (92)
Pumping up the tires.

05:45 (119)
Rolling for the ride with Scott.

06:00 (132)
I am wiping the sleep out of my eyes.

06:22 (160)
We're running late to meet the rest of the group. I get on Scott's wheel.

06:29 (135)
We make it to the meeting spot.

06:30 (129)
The group ride rolls.

06:42 (159)
Someone drops the hammer. I tuck in and draft at the back.

06:47 (160)
Guys roll off the front. I'm moving up.

06:52 (166)
I'm second wheel. Behind Tall Paul.

07:03 (168)
Someone jumps at the bottom of Estrella Mountain.

07:04 (172)
Why am I still on first wheel?

07:05 (179)
I... will... stay... on... this... wheel...

07:05 (189)
He gets out of the saddle over the top of the climb. I stay with him.

07:06 (185)
The group rides around me.

07:07 (176)
I hold on to the last wheel.

07:08 (168)
The elastic snaps and I am dropped.

07:10 (146)
I know when I'm popped. I drop down three gears and ride alone.

07:14 (153)
Two riders who were also dropped pass me. I latch onto the back.

07:15 to 08:20 (129 to 160)
We ride together at a reasonable pace the rest of the way.