Too Many Cooks

Previously.

The first shot missed him and went into the old plaster wall. The gun had not been oiled in forever and her aim was not great, in spite of the large target. He continued to laugh at her. He was so sure she was more frightened than angry that he didn’t even bother to move. When the second bullet tore into his right side, he looked genuinely surprised. Patty was shaking like a leaf but chuckled in spite of herself. “Crazy prick, that’ll show you.” she muttered.

Scar man took a couple of wobbly steps while paling, started to say something unintelligible and crashed to the floor. It felt to Patty like the entire house shook, but she was thrilled to see him unconscious. His breathing was loud and his chest movement was wrong, but she didn’t care. She jumped over him and into the kitchen, where she looked for her phone.

Before Patty could call anyone, the sound of distant sirens reached her. She had been so intent on her struggle that she forgot how quiet the neighborhood surely was thanks to the cold. She threw cold water on her face. The adrenaline rush make all her discomforts fade and she found herself looking down to be sure her clothes were on straight before the police arrived. There was a knock at the back door.

Her neighbor Rick came crashing through the door before she could answer. He was middle-aged with a paunch, always pleasant if a little creepy. Patty could count on Rick to bring the dogs home if they got out or accept a package delivery if she would not be around. He had this way of noticing her a little more often than she liked, but he seemed harmless.

“What the hell, Patty? I heard gunshots!”

“I can’t believe you came in, Rick. You could have gotten yourself killed.” Patty still had the gun in her shaking hand, and she started to sit down but her captor’s breathing suddenly got louder, reminding her that he was in the next room. “Some crazy man attacked me.” Her voice was tremulous, as the enormity of what she had been through started to seep into her consciousness.

“Holy shit. I can see that. Are you okay? You look awful. Are you in pain? What can I do? Is he still here?” Rick was panicky and fired off all his questions in rapid succession.

“I think I’m okay. I mean, I don’t really know, but I’m standing and he isn’t so I guess so. I shot the guy.”

“Holy shit. Holy shit.” Rick couldn’t wrap his head around the situation. “Patty, maybe you should put the gun down before you drop it.”

She hadn’t realized the gun was still in her hand. Rick helped her set it on the table because she couldn’t let go of it on her own. She had gripped it so tight her fingers were stuck. As she turned to go look at the man on her floor, the front door blasted open with a bang and shouting officers swarmed Patty’s little living area. She nearly leaped into Rick’s arms at the commotion.

Rick gently touched Patty’s elbow and led her to the doorway. Scar man was still on the floor a few feet away but paramedics were working on him. Police shouted at them to get their hands in the air. While they put their hands up, Rick told the police that the gun was on the kitchen table.

By the time the cab brought her home from the ER, Patty was dead on her feet. Her fingers had been splinted and her wounds tended to, and she had some good drugs for pain, sleep and infection. She refused to stay in the hospital, promising to call 911 if she had a problem. But where were her dogs? She would never be able to rest until she figured out what happened to them, even if it just meant burying their bodies in the garden.

She walked around the yard, looking for tracks in the snow and hoarsely calling their names. She saw a ton of footprints thanks to the law enforcement swarm that had been there earlier, but no fresh paw prints. She walked the perimeter of the yard, and then started down the alley. Wait. Was that barking? She listened and thought she heard muffled barking. Hers weren’t the only dogs in the neighborhood, but she was desperate so she followed the sound and found herself standing at Rick’s back door.

Patty was staring through the cracked basement window at her dogs, who were frantically running around, illuminated by a single hanging bulb. They must have heard her calling as she got closer. Why were they Rick’s basement? Unless he found them while she was out and was keeping them safe until she came home? That must be it. She knocked on the door, and he answered so fast she jumped back. Man, she hated being this jumpy. The doctor and nurse had warned her she might be easily startled for a while, but it didn’t make it any easier to tolerate.

“Hey, Rick? Do you have my dogs?”

“Yeah, I saw them in the alley, so I brought them in for safe keeping. I was going to bring them over once I saw you were home.”

“That’s really sweet. Thank you so much.”

“Would you like a cup of tea or coffee? I bet you’re just spent.”

“That would be great, thank you. How about tea?” They chatted while Rick made the tea. He asked about her injuries and treatment and they talked about how bizarre the whole ordeal how been, and how lucky she was that it was over.

“Did you know the guy? Why did he attack you?” Rick was gentle, but persistent in his questioning. “I don’t understand how he even found you!”

“Neither do I. I don’t know if he was the guy outside the window, or not. I only know he followed me not long after I left the Brook’s house. It’s crazy, really. He kept calling me by the wrong name, and asking for some key. I have no idea what the hell he was talking about.” Patty stiffly shook her head. She was starting to relax a bit in spite of herself, and she felt bad for thinking Rick was creepy when he was clearly so kind.

“Well, I should probably get the dogs and get going. I need some sleep.”

Rick stood and motioned for her to come along to the basement door. He opened it, and the dogs were overjoyed to see Patty. She hugged them and talked to them a bit, then called them and turned to leave. Rick was standing at the back door.

“What’s the rush, Diana?” Rick smiled and turned the deadbolt.

Previously

“We need to stop this,” she said, her head not moving on his naked chest. Her left index finger twirled around his belly button, drawing aimless patterns in his drying sweat. “Danny will kill both of us if he finds out.”

“Danny Vitelli doesn’t scare me,” Paul replied through a yawn.

At that, she rolled her head around to stare up at him. “Then you’re the stupidest man I’ve ever met. Seriously Paul, you don’t know what he’s capable of.”

“Some ratfuck-crazy Joe Pesci wannabe doesn’t concern me,” he replied.

“That’s just it,” Allison replied. “He’s not crazy. He’s the smartest, craftiest, most cold-blooded son of a bitch you’re ever going to meet in your life. Paul, there’s a reason that man runs the Famiglia, and it’s the same reason nobody’s tried to challenge his leadership for ten years. He’s a criminal, but he’s a brilliant one. I’ve seen him play chess with grandmasters and beat them. He’s always thinking ten moves ahead, and then thinking ahead twenty more just to be safe. He’s not crazy, he’s no pushover, and if he even thought you and I were sleeping together we’d be fish food. Not because he was crazy with jealousy, but to reinforce a lesson he’s always trying to teach: You don’t fuck with Danny Vitelli.”

“Things never change,” Paul said, and reached over to the endtable for his pack of cigarettes. “The guy before him used to do exactly the same thing. That guy didn’t scare me either.”

Allison shook her head. “You are the stupidest man I’ve ever met. and I must be the stupidest woman for falling for you.”

He dropped the cigarette pack unopened. “Shut up and kiss me.”

She did.

***

She stood up and looked down. The fish was dead. She wasn’t sure if that was an omen or a coincidence. Then she decided it didn’t matter, and flushed the toilet. She watched it spin around in the bowl and then disappear. Then she washed her hands and started thinking desperately about how the hell she was going to get out of here, and whether Danny would let her.

Her hand reached back and brushed strands of blonde hair out of her face as she quietly turned the doorknob. Maybe she could—

“Babe? Willya come in here for a minute please? I need to ask you something.”

Fuck.

“Be right there,” she said.

Allison tucked her blouse into her pants, took a deep breath, and walked towards the blank white door to Danny’s office.

***

“I have a job for you,” Danny said to him.

“Not interested,” Paul replied. “I’m out. I’m staying out.”

“If you wanted to stay out, you shouldn’t have put your dick in my girlfriend,” Danny said, his face betraying not a whit of emotion.

Vitelli was medium height, broad in the chest, light skinned for a Sicilian. His features were unprepossessing, and he didn’t dress to the nines like other dons and capos. His theory was that this was how you called attention to yourself, and the more visible you made yourself, the more likely you were to attract the notice of people you maybe should be studiously avoiding. He ran the Famiglia on the same assumption, and it had worked very well for him so far. The worst thing the cops had done to him in ten years was give him a parking ticket for leaving the Beemer too close to a hydrant. It had all added up to giving him a rep as being untouchable—so when someone got inside and fucked him over, even in a small way, Vitelli made sure that individual was taught a lesson.

Paul D’Amato lowered his head. At least he knew better than to deny it. “Who told you?”

“What would you do to him if I gave you his name?”

“Nothing. I just want to know.”

“Then I won’t tell you,” Vitelli replied. “If you said you were gonna rip his balls off and feed them to him for squealing, I might’ve. But since all you want to do is satisfy your morbid curiosity, fuck you. You don’t need to know. Now, about the job—”

“I don’t want it,” Paul repeated. “I’ll leave her alone and get out of town. You won’t see me again, and neither will Allison.”

He started to get up—then froze as he saw Vitelli reach into his coat and draw out a nine.

“Not that easy, Paulie,” Danny told him. “Sit down.”

He didn’t have to be told twice. Paul slumped back into the chair across the desk from him.

Vitelli almost smiled, but his eyes held no mirth. “Good. Now I’m gonna tell you some of the facts of life—at least as I see them. You may or may not know it, but I pride myself on being the one man in this city nobody dares screw around with. It’s good for my reputation. It gets me a lot of business. And then you … you come in here with your used-to-be-streetwise ass, and you have the nerve to fuck my girlfriend? And to be seen with her in public? What do you think that does for my reputation? I’ll tell you, pally: Not … fucking … much. ‘Look, Danny’s woman is steppin’ out on him. He must be losing control or something. Maybe he can’t handle the life anymore. Maybe he needs to retire.’ And then the next thing you know, some up-and-coming goombah with an ego and a collection of Al Pacino DVDs tries to pop a cap in my ass because he thinks he sees a weak point. And I am not about to let that happen. I worked too hard for this to let some punk-ass Romeo come in and fuck it all up for me.

“So this is what we’re gonna do: We’re gonna make it look like you were using her to get to me. To get yourself a place in the Famiglia. It’s been done before. You work for me, neither of you has to worry about consequences. And this way you get to keep your wandering dick attached to the rest of you, while I get to save face … and I don’t have to worry about how I’m gonna clean your blood off my floor.”

Paul didn’t speak. He was afraid to. He was also afraid not to.  He let the fears wrestle each other for a minute while he wondered what the fuck he could do.

Danny smiled, and the smile was cold, cold. “I would take this deal, Paulie. The alternative is not worth considering. Besides, I just had this carpet put in here. I’d like to keep it a while. What do you say?”

Paul looked down. “All right. All right, goddammit. You win.”

“I know,” Danny said. “I knew it before you walked in the door.”

He slid a folded piece of paper across the desk. “Go to this address and wait for the boys. I have a problem with Mr Không not paying his debts. And he is about to learn the error of his ways. You are the bag man. Bring me back the money Mr. Không owes me. Do this, and we’re even.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I don’t give a shit. You thought you could fuck me over, and you got proved wrong. I decided you were a cowardly piece of shit who would take the easy way out … and I was proved right. So ask me why I should care what the fuck you believe, Paulie.

“Get the fuck out of here.”

Paul took the paper and left.

***

It was a set-up, Paul realized now. Of course it was. He’d been late, and the “boys” had been in full swing by the time he got there, beating the Vietnamese shopkeeper senseless until he got in the door. And then Amos had seen him, and said his name … and one of the other boys had leveled the twelve at him and blown him to hell.

And then Không’s wife had started to scream, and a siren began to howl, and the boys realized they had overstayed their welcome. And then the world had gone out from under him. and Amos had bailed on him, like always.

Ya can’t just go pissing him off, Paul.

You thought you could fuck me over, and you got proved wrong.

You don’t know what he’s capable of.

Now he knew. And now he was stuck in a sickbed run through with tubes, wondering when the button man was going to come for him. At least Allison had gotten away in time. He hoped.

Previously.

Two feet, six inches. Such a small gap and yet to Patty it felt like a chasm. She had to get past the living room doorway but if seen it would probably mean losing her last chance of freedom. She edges slowly forward, pausing every step to listen, wishing her heart would stop beating so loudly, convinced its pounding would betray her.

Patty stops at the edge of the doorway. Opposite her, the stairs to the upper floor disappear into darkness. She can still hear him, scar-face, arguing with himself and can make out a stream of profanity. Little else of his slurred ranting makes any sense.

In two paces she can be on the stairs. But which way is he facing? It doesn’t sound like he’s moving about. From the direction of his voice she guesses he must be sitting in the beat up old armchair, the one that has its back to the kitchen.

She holds her breath and moves swiftly and silently to the staircase, flicking her head to the side briefly as she does so. She doesn’t see him and knows that if he is in the armchair that he won’t have seen her.

Patty stops on the first step and reminds herself to start breathing. She moves haltingly up the stairs, avoiding the squeaky third and fifth steps, and allows herself the luxury of a deep breath when she reaches the landing. She rests a moment to give her eyes the chance to adjust to the darkness and then makes her way to the bedroom.

There’s just enough light from the street lamp to illuminate the room. He’s clearly been in here. Her wardrobe is opened and her belongings scattered over the floor. She moves to her nightstand and nearly slips on a book. She laughs at the title, “The World Is Yours”, a book on Eastern spirituality and meditation techniques. “All the mantras and visualizations aren’t going to help you now Patty.”

She reaches toward the nightstand and realizes she’s still tightly clutching the knife she used to cut the ropes. She places it on the bed and flexes her stiff fingers. Her hand looks so small. A sense of utter aloneness washes over her. She wishes she’d stayed at Ms. Brooks’ place but then wonders if it would actually have made a difference. And what has happened to her dogs? She doesn’t dare think about what he might have done to them.

Patty finds herself fighting back tears as she opens the hidden compartment in the nightstand and takes out the gun her father gave her. She has never liked guns but for the first time is grateful that her Dad showed her how to use one and insisted she have it when she left home. She hears his voice guiding her as she loads the bullets and steels herself for what is to come.

She makes her way cautiously back to the stairs and descends, stepping awkwardly over the creaky steps. She stops at the bottom and listens.

Silence.

Is it to much to hope that he’s passed out drunk? She forces herself to stand in the doorway and look into the living room. She enters and sees that he’s not there. The quiet is unnerving. The nearly finished whiskey bottle lies on its side at the base of the armchair next to an empty glass.

She moves quickly to the door which leads to the entrance hall and presses her ear against it. Nothing. She steps back and reaches for the handle.

“Going somewhere?” His voice turns her blood to ice. She turns her head to one side and sees his hulking frame filling the kitchen doorway. “I want that fucking key.”

Patty turns to face him and he roars with laughter when he notices the gun. “You haven’t got the fucking guts, you stupid bitch. You always were a useless piece of shit, Diana.”

“My name.” She raises the gun and cocks the hammer. “Is Patty.”

A momentary look of doubt crosses his face. Then he laughs again and begins to walk towards her, an evil grin distorting his mess of a face even further.

Patty slowly pulls on the trigger and simply says, “Namaste, motherfucker.”

Previously.

He wakes up screaming.

His heart racing, he fumbles for a handhold but finds none. The dark pours in his nose and mouth, choking him. The tentacles of the hungry beast twist and tighten about him, dragging him down to finally join his mates. Soaked to the bone, clammy, gasping, he lunges - this is just a nightmare, it must be a nightmare - and falls off the bed - not a bed, really, you can’t call a single thin pallet on the floor a bed. In the midst of the inky deep a gash opens, blinding and white-hot, the maw of the leviathan. He tries to swim free but can’t. It widens.

“Did I wake you? What are you doing on the floor?”

She touches a switch on the wall and the lamp in the corner of the small bedroom casts a dim glow over the room. He looks down at himself and sees the sheets coiled around and between his legs, discolored with his sweat. He opens his mouth but thinks of nothing to say. She stands naked in the door, backlit by the brighter light of the bathroom. He’s blinded looking at her and raises his arm to shield his eyes.

She throws her head back; her hair shimmers and bounces as she laughs, “You weren’t embarrassed to look at me an hour ago.”

Now it’s his turn to laugh. He remembers.

He remembers her shy smile on the bus, her eyes peeking out beneath her fringe as he walked down the aisle holding her notebook out like a talisman. He remembers the spark of electricity as their fingers touched and how they both pulled back their fingers to suck the shock away in unison. He remembers losing balance and lurching into her when the bus started up, his hand bracing against her chest, the soft jersey of her sweatshirt warm against his fingertips. He remembers the hot flush on his face as he pulled his hand back and straightened up, grasping the overhead rail. He remembers her sliding close and whispering, “It’s okay.”

She remembers, too. She remembers watching him sprint from his bus to her stop and wondering why. She remembers the feeling of warmth and pride when she saw him retrieve her notebook. She remembers the smile - the first real smile in months - smoothing out the creases on her forehead as her mouth widened so far it pulled the rest of her face along with it. She remembers the way his coat flapped in the wind like a cape. She remembers his insistent knock on the bus’s glass doors, a knight errant come to the aid of his lady. She remembers laughing at herself for being girly.

Mostly, she remembers his soft lips and sad eyes.

She stood close to him on the bus, inching closer still as it filled on its way to campus. They didn’t speak but stole glances at each other until her stop. She thought about getting off for just a second but stayed by his side, their clothes rubbing ever so slightly as the bus accelerated around corners. As the last of the crowd got off, they stayed standing right next to each other and he finally asked her name. “Dani,” she said. He smiled, the crow’s feet around his eyes crinkling in a way she found strangely attractive.

“Mine, too.” he told her, “Danny Symons.”

Previously

“Something doesn’t add up here,” Richard said. “She goes on and on about having to clean up after Pope’s father, yet he’s an ex military man who’s always neat as a pin? Sounds to me like someone has issues.”

“Maybe,” James said. “I noticed that too. I’m ex-Army myself. And I can tell you that unless you’re so PTSD’d from combat you just can’t function, you don’t leave the military not knowing how to fold clothes and wash dishes. Period. There’s less here than meets the eye.”

“You mean more.”

“I mean less. I think LuAnn has an axe or two to grind with her former husband, and is doing so by implicating Mason.”

“We need to pull the case files on the original fire,” Richard pointed out.

“I agree. If there is a connection, that’s the only way we’re going to find it.”

“Assuming Mason Pope isn’t the connection.”

James shook his head. “We’re talking about a former seminary student who was still attending mass three days a week. Aside from the fire that killed his sister, there’s no history of him being a firebug. None.”

“And yet we have residue of gasoline on his clothes,” Richard pointed out. “And the threats he made.”

”Alleged threats. Somehow a devout Christian telling people they’re going to burn in hell strikes me more as zealotry than as a threat.”

“And yet … ”

James sighed. “Yeah. And yet. We got a shitload of ‘and yets’ on this one, Richard. More than I like. Case like this, it should be cut and dried. But we have no priors on the suspect, not one indication at school or at home that he was prone to violence or acts of passion. All we have is one bit of physical evidence that can be explained away by Pope getting ten bucks’ worth of gas on the way back to the dorm. Everything else is circumstantial.”

“But it’s compelling circumstantial,” Richard argued. “And there are no other suspects. And Pope did leave the seminary under a cloud.”

“We don’t know that,” James replied. “All anyone knows is that the media is saying the seminary is refusing to comment on why Pope left. Someone’s spinning that into it being a ‘cloud’—maybe our grieving Senator, maybe someone else. Mason Pope has a lot of enemies all of a sudden. And I can’t help having this nagging feeling that maybe he doesn’t deserve them.”

The D. A. shrugged. “So … maybe he needs a friend.”

***

“You’re not going anywhere near my son,” Allen Pope said. “Not without a lawyer in the room. I shouldn’t even be talking to you without a lawyer in the room.”

“I’m not here in any official capacity, Mr. Pope—”

“All the more reason not to talk to you,” Pope said. “Get the fuck out of here before I have you thrown out.”

James sighed, and stepped back so an orderly could walk between them, wheeling an empty IV stand. “Look, Mr. Pope. Your son could conceivably be in a lot of trouble here. I may be able to help him, if you’ll let me.”

“It’s Colonel,” Pope said. “And there’s no conceivably about it, Officer … James, was it?”

“Detective James. Formerly Sergeant James, 235th Infantry.”

Pope eyed him with slightly more respect. “Regardless, I don’t see the benefit of letting you question my son in any capacity.”

“I’m in charge of investigating your son’s involvement in this matter, Colonel. And the evidence I’m looking at doesn’t add up. I think there’s something rotten here.”

Pope gave him a long, hard look. “What do you want to know?”

“More than Mason is probably capable of telling me right now, probably,” James replied. “But I’d like the chance to ask him about anything he does remember. And I’d like to ask him about the other fire.”

“You son of a bitch,” Pope snarled, “you’re trying to tie the two of them togeth—”

“No,” James said. The vehemence in his voice startled the former military man. “I had a look at the case files and I’m convinced Mason had nothing to do with it. He had no motive, in fact he had every motive not to do it. And if the timeline the investigators pieced together is right he was on the phone with you at around the time the fire started in the basement. There was no way he could have been responsible, even remotely.”

Pope’s eyes took on a watery quality, but his voice betrayed no emotion when he spoke. “LuAnn …  LuAnn was always convinced it was him. She never saw what it did to Mason. Or to me. I know Lynda was her daughter but we loved her too. LuAnn could never see that. Or if she did she could never understand it.”

“She’ll make a compelling witness for the prosecution unless I can talk to Mason.”

“All right,” Pope said. “All right, I’m convinced. But you talk to him officially, with our lawyer in the room. I may trust you a little more, but my mother didn’t raise any fools, Detective.”

“Deal,” James said as Pope reached for his cell phone. Finally he was getting somewhere with this investigation.

Previously

The smooth walls shined mutely under soft light as the Watcher’s appendages rolled deeper into the mountain. An access panel opened with a gentle hiss as they passed and three small machines floated into the corridor. Hovering on thin layers of their own exhaust, the scrubber units crisscrossed the floor, sucking up the dusts and fines that had blown in with the child. Ever vigilant, the Watcher kept a small sample for chemical and radiological analysis later.

The path through the mountain marked out a flattened helix, chambers and corridors branching off its side at regular intervals. A subsonic hum vibrated through the rocks and metal from deep within the earth, harmonizing with the soft whir of the transport. The temperature was cool and regular, the air dry. The fine, fair hairs on the baby’s arm shimmered in the barely perceptible eddies and currents from the Keep’s circulatory system. As the baby circled deeper into the Keep, lights in the corridor ahead of the rolling appendages turned on while the path behind returned to complete darkness. The Watcher hoped to minimize the psychic shock on the child sure to occur if he rolled through eternal darkness.

There were occasional flashes of light from the chambers off the main path, sometimes accompanied by clicks and buzzes. The Watcher kept dozens of labs, cold rooms, and incubation chambers running at all times in addition to the machine shops, water purification plants, power plants, and myriad other facilities needed to maintain the Keep over the millennia. Amidst all this metal and machinery, a sudden oasis appeared. Rounding a curve in the helix, the corridor was suffused with a golden-green glow. The corridor widened, doubling its width and height, until the walls and ceiling separated from the floor and quickly curved off out of sight as the path turned into a bridge bisecting an enormous chamber filled with the smells and sounds of life.

Bringing the child into the mountain is not the first time the Watcher has uniquely determined the intent of its programming. Although it continues its eternal vigil, the Watcher does more than its creators intended. Whether a cosmic ray or stray gamma emission from one of the hundreds of nuclear batteries deep within the mountain caused a bit to flip, or a bug in its original programming manifested and was magnified, the Watcher has spent the last millennium systematically testing the biome startup procedures documented by its creators, annotating the documentation where the experimental results it observed over multiple decades differed from the short-term and theoretical results expected by the long-dead scientists. The Watcher has concluded that this is in the spirit of its creators’ intent and well within its program parameters. However, the Watcher has maintained this current biome - a lush and moist bayou inside the mountain - for twice as long as any other. The Watcher has many times begun preparations for shutting down the bayou and starting up the next biome on the list - a western chaparral - and has found reasons to delay each time, though the Watcher is not sure they have all been completely logical.

Intense sunlight bouncing through thousands of fiber optic cables was augmented by full-spectrum lamps on the ceiling of the cavern. Nesting birds were visible in the canopy of trees, thick and lush in the humid air. The child stirred, some primal force awakening him to the rich vegetable smells rising on thermals from below. The Watcher’s appendages rolled on, unaffected by the scene.

In the infirmary, a half-dozen cold, delicate tendrils extended from the wall and lifted the child from the arms of the rolling carts, placing him on a bed. The humble rollers quietly retreated to return to their usual tasks while the Watcher began its examination. His bony frame was restrained as the tendrils caressed and poked at him, taking samples and readings and inserting an IV. The Watcher had prepared a solution of warm saline, glucose, sedatives, and nutrients which now dripped slowly, a lento beat beneath the music of the machines. The child was hypothermic and undernourished; those issues required immediate attention. Blood was drawn and analyzed, some of it reserved and cultured. The boy’s DNA was cataloged and his genes compared to the thousands of samples in the Keep’s files for mutation and drift. Detecting mutations on chromosome 15 in the HEXA gene consistent with the excess ganglioside, GM2, measured by a deep neural scan, the Watcher commenced synthesizing sialidase for short-term treatment. It also selected an unmutated HEXA sample from the cryo-library and injected it into a lentivirus. Once the GM2 levels were low enough and the baby stable, the Watcher would have enough modified virus available to begin gene therapy.

All of these tasks were performed in parallel with the hundreds of other tasks the Watcher needed to perform each day to maintain itself and the Keep. Entropy and decay were the greatest threats to the Keep’s mission and each day, thousands of data records were checked for internal integrity and re-recorded on fresh storage media. The most fundamental of the Keep’s records were kept on etched stone and brass plates deep in the mountain; secondary copies were kept on more transient media. In the constant effort to retain the knowledge of its creators, the Watcher compared checksums of the secondary copies on a regular basis and, where appropriate, compared them to the original copies on rotating cycles. Additionally, the Watcher ran toolshops and manufactories to produce replacement parts for the entire infrastructure of the mountain and itself.

After the effects of the sedative began to wear off, the baby began to cry. The Watcher added a mild anxiolytic cocktail to the IV but that wasn’t enough to keep the baby’s crying in check. Examining records, the Watcher found that music was a traditional way to soothe a crying child; the Watcher played a simple, repetitive melody over the speakers in the infirmary. When that proved to be not enough, the Watcher recited poetry in a low volume over white noise.

And so it was that the Watcher was reading Elizabeth Barrett Browning to the baby late the next night when Jacinta stumbled up the access road under the Watcher’s attentive gaze.

Jacinta spied a bundle collapsed before the metal gate and rushed forward, tears leaving tracks in the caked-on dirt embedded in her pores. An eye extended from beside the gate but Jacinta’s vision had narrowed to sharp focus on her mother’s body. She reached her mother and wrapped her arms around her stiff, cold body, still oddly untouched by the carrion birds. Jacinta wept.

After some time, she realized her brother was missing. She raised her head, glared at the unblinking eye, and spat out a question like a curse, “Where is my brother? What have you done to my mother?”

The Watcher sat mute.

“Give me back my brother!” she screeched like an owl that had spied a small rodent. She picked up a clod of dirt and hurled it at the eye and ran to the gate, sobbing. She pounded on the gate with her tiny fists, pleading for her brother, demanding justice and retribution.

As the Watcher prepared to respond, a party of women came within sensor range. The Watcher waited as they approached, Jacinta’s wailing growing fainter and less forceful with each passing second.

The women arrived at the gate and Jacinta turned to them. “He’s taken Mikel. He’s killed our mother and taken him. Help me, please.”

The Watcher responded, “The woman died of exposure and starvation. I did nothing to harm her and could do nothing to help her. The child she carried was near death. I took him within and have begun to restore him.

“This is a storehouse held in trust for the future. It holds grain seed, books of knowledge, and laboratories. My masters have bid me watch over it until human beings come to reclaim their heritage. Everything within this Keep is to be protected. The child is within the Keep.” With these words, Jacinta’s wailing was renewed in earnest.

Several silver columns ascended from the ground near the gate and began to glow white. One of the women grabbed Jacinta and tried to drag her away from the gate; Jacinta resisted and threw the woman to the ground where she fell, hitting her head hard against a boulder. Her body crumpled. The other women in the party stared, silently. Jacinta bent down and shook the woman but her spirit had left the husk of a body.

Jacinta stood. She faced one of the women who quickly turned her back to Jacinta. In turn, each woman spun away from Jacinta until all had their backs to her, their arms crossed. The gravest of crimes to her tribe received the gravest of punishments: Meidung. No one could survive long alone in this harsh, dying, desert world. No one could survive without kin and clan. Jacinta looked back at the gate a final time, taking one step toward it. The light on the columns grew brighter and she turned away, walking out into the desert. The women backed away from the gate as the Watcher powered down the defensive battery.

Deep within the mountain, the baby cried.

High on the shore sat the great god Pan
While turbidly flowed the river;
And hacked and hewed as a great god can,
With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed,
Till there was not a sign of the leaf indeed
To prove it fresh from the river.

He cut it short, did the great god Pan,
(How tall it stood in the river!)
Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man,
Steadily from the outside ring,
And notched the poor dry empty thing
In holes, as he sat by the river.
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “A Musical Instrument”

Well it was high drama last week - and that’s just in the lives of the contributors! Anyway, here’s the summary of last week’s chapters:

Here At The End Of All Things

Due to problems with the time continuum our story of the future has drifted out of synch. Fear not though gentle readers! We’re working on getting the flux capacitor back up and running so expect things to get caught up. Sometime.

Paul’s Wound’s

Cary keeps the past and present continuing on their collision course. What will happen to the fish?

Gasoline

Jay seems to think that being hospitalised is a valid reason for not getting his chapter done last week. Some people just have no commitment.

The Girl At The Bus Stop

Marleymarley brings our tale of buses passing in the day and night to a potentially life-changing moment. The penultimate chapter this week will be very interesting indeed.

Knowing

Richard builds the tension as the victim of mistaken identity prepares to fight back. Will we see a table-turning confrontation?

Previously

It’s 6 AM and, as if on cue, he once more sits bolt upright in bed from a dead sleep and screams. The dreams are a constant, and always bring him back to the day back in 1989 when he did the unthinkable and survived when almost all of his fellow marines onboard ship drowned. He shakes as he lies back down, practicing the breathing exercises that help him escape the horrors of the dream world and come back to the reality of his one-bedroom flat in 2010.

Padding out to the kitchen in his bare feet five minutes later, he notices the moon low in the horizon beyond the rooftops across the street. Somewhere in the eastern sky behind him, the sun is beginning to inject the inky night with a clear vibrance that grows steadily as the orb begins to make its way across the sky.

Once again he is reminded that life goes on.

The first cup of coffee goes down smoothly while he checks his online account with MateFinder. In the three months he’s been on the site, he has received twelve positive responses from women who, like him, hope against hope that another soul will fill in the gaps where the loneliness lives. He wants to meet these women, lay down beside them, and erase his mind with skin and the elation of sex. But he never responds. And he always chastises himself. The clock on his screen tells him it is time for the second cup and a shave. He goes through the motions.

If a straight line is drawn beginning at his apartment complex in City Heights and ending at the bus-stop girl’s flat behind the Korean bakery six miles away, the line will encounter two liquor stores, the corner of a high-school parking lot (‘GO DEVILS!’), and the direct center of the Mercy Women and Children’s Medical Center. She hears two ambulance sirens scream by a block away as she pulls the kettle from over the flame and stirs the coffee powder up into the boiling water. She is muttering to herself the formulae on the index cards in her pocket and doesn’t notice when she pours the spoonful of sugar onto the table next to the mug. The analog clock on her rickety stove tells her its time to take a shower already. She wanders towards her bathroom.

He winces at the flickering fluorescent panels at the front of the bus and holds his newspaper higher to block out the painful strobe-light effect until he is almost crouching behind it. He doesn’t see the white-haired widow four rows ahead of him smile and snicker gently in his direction. Just then the driver makes a barely audible announcement that there is something wrong with the bus. “Everyone who needs to continue on this route will need to get off this bus. The next stop is Mercy Medical Center. Another bus is on its way to pick you up and continue the route.”

He lowers his newspaper and stares wide-eyed out the window. As they round the corner of the hospital now, he searches for her on the bench and cannot decide if his desire to breathe the same airspace with her is greater than his need to disappear into the seat below him. He sees a figure dressed in black hunched over a book, and immediately averts his eyes to look straight ahead. ‘She won’t even know I’m there,’ he tells himself, and holds onto the seat-back in front of him as the bus comes to a shaky stop. He notices that the curb is empty along the transfer stop when the driver announces that the replacement bus should be arriving momentarily. The passengers fidget, some stand, and a few step outside the bus to smoke a cigarette along with the driver. He is thankful that he won’t be forced outside after all.

Hovering over her textbook and cramming for her test today, she notices the number 29 bus come to a stop much further down the curb that is usual and spies the same man in the back of the bus. She decides to try to smile at him again today as she had done the day before, she feels the need to engage with him this way again, but he isn’t looking at her. She shrugs her shoulders, and goes back to poring over the highlighted sections of the book in her lap, stuffing her cold fingers further into her pockets.

As one, then two, then three minutes pass by, she becomes aware that the bus is still there and looks up again to see a group of three passengers and the bus driver standing around chatting and smoking in the doorway of the stopped bus. A quizzical expression flashes across her face momentarily, and she then turns her head to see her number 56 bus to College Station arriving on schedule. She casts another glance at the other bus and the smokers outside and quickly gathers her bag and her textbook.

The number 29 bus’ occupants begin to stir, grabbing bags and coats, standing and making their way towards the front of the bus. During the hubbub, the driver pokes his head in the door and announces that the bus which has just arrived behind them is not their replacement bus. The people on the bus make grumbling, commiserative noises to each other and each finds their way to a seat once more. From where he is sitting, his line of sight to the bus stop behind him is obstructed by the corner of the bus’ frame, so he cranes his neck around to the back window to glimpse the girl standing up and walking towards her bus. However, she’s left her notebook on the bench and he panics a moment, wondering if she’ll remember it. She doesn’t appear to, and lines up as the passengers there climb the steps and pay their fares to the driver.

Perplexed, he stares at the notebook on the bench. He thinks of all the hard work she must be putting into her classes and all the important notes that she’s taken and which she probably really needs in that notebook; he imagines her looking frantically about herself on the way to the university once she realizes it’s missing; he imagines her crestfallen face when she realizes that she’s left it behind. He looks up again to find her and sees that she and the other people are now all on their bus. He begins to imagine the homework or projects that she will have to do over again. He stands up without thinking and darts towards the front of his own bus, bounds down the steps, and scoops up the notebook. Just then he hears both her bus start up its engine and another bus approaching bearing the number 29 on its front LCD screen. He doesn’t even hesitate. He has no idea what he will say to her when he hands the notebook to her, but proceeds to rap quickly at the glass panes on the doors to her bus as they close in his face and then open again to let him in. He feels himself fly up the stairs effortlessly, notebook in hand, and searches for her face among the seated passengers.

Previously.

Patty worried her loose front tooth and sucked at her swollen lip, salty and sweet from blood mixed with whiskey, and listened to her captor mumbling in the living room.

The punch had knocked her to the floor, sending her and the old tubular dinette chair skidding toward the refrigerator. Her face was raw where his rough knuckles had torn her skin. And as if the bruises and scrapes hadn’t been enough, he’d dumped his glass of whiskey on her and that still burned. Of course wasting perfectly good booze had just made him madder. “Who the fuck is ‘Patty?’ I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing Diana but get this straight: you’re going to tell me where the key is.”

That was the last thing her captor had said before storming out of the kitchen. Patty had lain on the floor for an hour or more since, wondering if she’d live to see the morning. Her shoulder was numb from supporting all her weight and she was pretty sure she’d broken a couple of fingers when she hit the floor but she choked back the tears and remained as still and silent as the night outside. The only sounds were her captor’s ongoing conversation with himself and the occasional clink of an ice cube. Patty tried to hear what he was saying but couldn’t pick out any words, just the rhythm of his mumbling. It sounded like he was debating with himself but the pace kept getting slower with each glass he poured. “Great,” thought Patty. “He’s an unstable, violent drunk. It’s like I’ve been kidnapped by dear old dad.”

The compressor on the old refrigerator kicked on with a thud, shocking Patty and causing her to lurch. When she did, she felt the left leg of the chair bend. The old welds must have been weakened when she toppled to the floor. Seeing her chance, Patty tried moving her leg but couldn’t get enough leverage. Trying a different approach, she started rocking back and forth and got more torque against the chair leg. She felt it give a bit more and rocked faster. Then she noticed how much noise she was making and stopped. She held her breath and shut her eyes to focus but couldn’t hear anything over the whine of the refrigerator. She could wait for it to shut back off or risk it. She told herself if she couldn’t hear him over the motor, he wouldn’t be able to hear her either and started rocking again.

Patty didn’t immediately notice when the leg came loose. One second it was attached and bending freely and the next it was separated from the seat. She still wasn’t free but was one leg closer and quickly and quietly rolled over to work the other chair leg. The second one went much more quickly and she was able to stand but her arms were still securely tied to the chair and she was bent over at the waist. The mumbling from the living room got louder and more insistent as though his debate with himself was turning violent. Patty knew she had to get out before he came back to the kitchen or - she didn’t even want to consider that alternative - but she couldn’t run, couldn’t use the phone to call for help, and couldn’t do anything with her hands bound to the chair. She’d have to get free.

She couldn’t reach the knife block on the counter but standing on tiptoe she could just open the silverware drawer and reach inside. She felt around behind her back with her fingertips, balancing as best she could, until she found the wooden handle of the steak knife she’d stashed in her purse the last time she’d eaten at Murphy’s. She clawed at it, pulled at it, and finally gained purchase between two of her fingers. She lifted it out of the drawer and dropped to her knees. If she could get out of the chair, she might just make it.

The refrigerator kicked on again and the knife slipped out of her grip and clattered on the linoleum.

She held her breath for half a minute, waiting for the hulking presence to fill the doorway but he didn’t come. She exhaled and grabbed the knife again. He’d obviously grabbed the old rope from the garage and it didn’t take long for the knife to saw through the dry fibers. She got her injured hand free and made quick work of the loops holding her good hand. Her left hand throbbed and the ring finger was an ugly deep purple but she was free. “Now what?” she thought.

“If I open that door, he’ll be on me before I get to the street. I guess the only way out is up.”

Patty took a few deep, calming breaths and prepared to creep past her tormentor and to her nightstand.

Previously.

“How in hell did I end up here?” Allison questioned herself aloud while she rushed around the room. She grabbed a gym bag. She only knew a couple of things right now: she needed to get away as soon as possible and she had to travel light.

———————————————————-

Paul hoped Allison understood the coded message the nurse delivered for him. She was street smart, so he thought she would. He was afraid she would try to be a hero or a martyr, though, and he didn’t need that on his conscience. When could he get out of this damned hospital?

His recovery was going pretty well until he decided he wanted to be clear-minded and started refusing pain meds. Paul knew he could handle pain; he had plenty of chances in the past to get used to it. The problem was the longer he tried to stay off the pain meds, the less deeply he was breathing. He was developing pneumonia. He would be stuck in the hospital even longer if the pneumonia got worse, so he was forced to give in and take the pain meds. Once again, Paul was sleeping more than he was awake.

The hospital chaplain was sitting quietly next to the bed when he woke. Paul glanced at him suspiciously, but he was just too tired to fight when the priest asked if he could pray with him. While he quietly recited the prayer, Paul mouthed the words silently out of habit more than belief. He declined communion, but told the priest he could stay a bit.

Father Bleaker didn’t have to ask to know he was ministering to yet another lapsed Catholic. It often seemed as though more Catholics were lapsed these days than had ever been observant. It didn’t make him happy, but he understood. People were people, and despite their feelings toward the formal church, they would always be part of his flock while they were in the hospital. There was something about this fellow that touched his mind in a faraway spot. He had clearly had a difficult life so far, what with all the scars and then this gunshot wound.

Was it his name or his face that rang familiar? Father Bleaker could not figure it out. Not wanting to pry during his first visit, he asked Paul if he could visit again the next morning. That would give him time to figure out if he really did know him from somewhere, or if it was just that the tough guys all started to look the same after a while.

Once the priest left the room Paul knitted his brows. He knew that priest from somewhere. He was at least twenty years older than Paul was, so he must not have gone to school with him. Did he know him somehow, or was it just the drugs and the confusing wake up every few hours cycle of the hospital that made everyone seem familiar and strange at the same time?

————————————————————-

Allison heard a car door slam. She grabbed the bag she had nearly finished packing, shoved it back in her closet in the usual spot, and ran downstairs. Danny came through the door with another man. She stayed out of the way. Danny had this way of quietly thundering into a space. His steps were silent, but he had perfected a silent menace that cleared a room.  She knew to meet him at the door, but not to say anything if he wasn’t alone.

“Hey babe. Make some coffee, willya. We’ll be in there.” He tossed his head toward his office and kept walking. Willya was Danny’s way of pretending he wasn’t giving a direct order, and it meant he either didn’t know what was going on with her, or wanted her to think he didn’t.  Allison smiled and said, “Sure, baby.” Both of their voices were carefully devoid of emotion.

She heard the office door close as she walked into the kitchen. Allison made the coffee, put it on a tray, and carried it to the office door. As she balanced the tray on her hip to knock, she heard her name spoken by a muffled voice. She almost dropped the tray, but pulled herself together, knocked, and walked in after Danny called to her. She put the tray on the table, smiled, and left.

Allison went straight to the bathroom. She hadn’t realized she was so anxious she ignored the urge to urinate, and now that Danny was behind the office door it hit her full force. She lifted the lid and as she was turning something caught her eye. It was that damned fish. He had been dying all day, and she couldn’t watch any longer so while he still flipped his tail every little while, she flushed him anyway. Or so she thought. “Story of my life.” Allison sighed aloud, apologized to the fish, and sat down.

Previously

Patty squeezed her eyes shut tightly as she became aware of a piercing light invading the darkness of her unconscious mind. Then the sudden, sickening pain centered on her left temple and shooting down her neck into her spine brought her to full, painful consciousness with a yelp. She was slumped over in a chair, and was restrained with her hands behind her. As sudden panic and dread set in, she fluttered her eyes open several times, but found that she could not keep them open for long as the light was just too bright. It must be just overhead, she thought. And she wondered where she was – where her assailant had taken her. Her assailant. This thought brought her breathing to a stop. She now forced her eyes open against the blinding light as she realized that she was in deep trouble.

Though it felt like every part of her head from the shoulders up was broken, she was able to turn her head away, slowly and painfully, to see a familiar sight: she was in her kitchen. She was sitting at her kitchen table, and there were her mismatched chairs. The light in her eyes was the overhead lamp that hung from the ceiling. She’d always hated the bare bulb sticking out of the bottom of that lamp. Closing her eyes again, she now saw the image of her assailant as she remembered him, hulking and dark, with a monstrous face. Wave after wave of panic swept over her as she struggled to move and found that her feet were roped down, and her upper body as well. She wanted to scream but feared that the man in the duster would be back and who knew what he meant to do to her. Quickly, she gained some composure and tried to think of a possible plan for escape. She was shaking from head to toe. The house was eerily quiet. The thought suddenly occurred to her – “Where are my dogs?”

Just then she heard the front door slam, and several stomp-drag sounds coming from the living room. The swinging kitchen door opened and in limped the stranger in the long jacket carrying a grocery bag that very clearly contained a bottle of liquor. The smells of snow, damp wool, sweat, and stale cigarettes exhaled off of him and flooded Patty’s nostrils. Pulling the bottle of Bushmills out and crushing the bag in his other hand, he growled, “Good, you’re alive. I can’t believe what a teetotaler you are. Had to run to the store to get this.” Patty squirmed trying to break free of her ties as the man with an ogre’s face spoke to her. She couldn’t keep from staring: the knobby, melted skin on the left half dragged his features down several inches from their original locations, and his eyelid drooped open to expose the red membranes beneath.

The man lobbed the bag in the direction of her trashcan but missed, and opened the cabinet to retrieve a glass. He seemed to know his way around her kitchen pretty well. Patty wondered how long he must have been peeking inside her window to know where everything was kept. He helped himself to a few ice cubes from the freezer and cracked the seal on the bottle of whiskey. Pouring a hefty three fingers into the glass he said, “No, you’re not going anywhere this time. Did you think I wouldn’t come back? You did, didn’t you? You hoped I’d just crawl away and die.” His voice was raspy, and the harshness of his words as he spat them out amplified the hissing sound from the back of his throat. “Well I’m back, you stupid whore. Now what did you do with it?”

Patty had been squirming in terror since the man had walked in the door, but now she found herself paralyzed: what was he talking about?

“Listen, Diana, I let you use me, and you had your fun,” he said, knocking his head back and taking a sizeable gulp from the glass, “yeah, have your fun with the gimp at his expense. But fuck you if you think I’m going to let you take credit for that thing. Now where did you put it?”

Patty’s eyes widened and her jaw dropped. Now she really didn’t know what to do.

Due to scheduling conflicts, the role of Anaïs in this round’s performance of Too Many Cooks will be played by an understudy.

Please be patient with the poor boy as he stuffs himself into his Anaïs costume and catches up.

She wakes up crying.

The pillow is damp with sweat and tears. She tastes salt on her tongue. She tastes copper. Her nerves are on fire, and she wants a cigarette. She wants a drink. She wants anything that will ease her mind and chase away the blues. Chase away the dreams.

She rolls off the mattress—not a bed, really, you can’t call a single thin pallet on the floor a bed—and kneels there a moment. The dream is still draining out of her, slowly, like brackish swamp water. Her mind is still full of its poison. She feels the tears drying on her cheeks but makes no effort to wipe them away. Not yet. Something in her wants to preserve them for a moment, to mark the cold feel of them as they slowly evaporate, to savor the sensation. It’s a link to the reason she came to this filthy, soul-eating bitch of a city in the first place.

Eventually the sluggish swampwater dream leaves her and she can function. She throws the cast-aside sheet back over the lumpy pallet. Somehow it looks more depressing that way, not less. She shrugs, stands, and strides the length of her narrow studio apartment to the kitchenette near the window. A million dust motes dance waltzes in the early morning light, spinning and whirling to music unheard. She likes that idea, likes it so much that she wants to find her moleskine and write it down. But it’s back across the room, hiding somewhere in the uncharted depths of her bookbag. It’s too early in the day for that particular safari to take place. Instead she reaches out and flips on the electric teakettle. There’s still enough water in it from last night to be worthwhile.

Breakfast is a cup of instant coffee and a cigarette she rolls by hand while the water is heating. Later she’ll check her purse, find a couple of dollars, and splurge on a bagel with cream cheese at the bakery. But for now she sits and sips and smokes, and tries not to think about the midterms she’s desperately afraid she’s failing, or how the air is getting colder and she has no winter coat, or how she can’t buy one because the grant money for the semester is down to just enough to keep her in a state of extreme poverty. And it’s actually fairly easy not to think about these things. All she has to do is to consider the alternative.

Later she sits at the bus stop, stomach growling, trying not to think about the half-a-bagel sitting at the top of the clutter in her bag. That’s for after class. Instead she waits on the bench, idly watching the hospital entrance across the street. There’s a small half-circle roundabout at the front of the building. She observes the cars as they pull in and out. Most are taxis, not unusual for a neighborhood where everyone takes public transportation. As she watches a couple makes their way out of the sliding doors, the woman stepping gingerly and holding the arm of the man, who holds the handle of a a baby carrier, keeping it and its precious cargo close to his body. Even across the street and over the sound of the morning traffic, she hears the infant’s hearty wail. Good luck little one, she thinks, then reaches into her bag. She ignores the paper sack with the half-eaten bagel in it—though just barely—and pulls out her poly sci book and moleskine instead. She ignores the early winter chill trying to cripple her hands, pushes the hair out of her eyes, and bends to review chapters and notes. A bus goes by, the garish colors of the advertisement plastered on its side dancing at the periphery of her vision. She ignores it.

He sees her this morning, alone again, and wants to cry. He’s been close to tears all morning, sleep having eluded him and teased him for most of the night, as it has on and off for most of the last week. His dreams have been full of nightmares, his bed full of nails. The nightmares themselves he does not remember—or chooses not to remember, and really it amounts to the same thing. All he recalls is closing his eyes and thinking of the young girl’s face, and then his memory goes mercifully blank. What he does remember is sleeping fitfully, waking fitfully, and screaming often. His mind is aching for sleep, his thoughts are aching for peace. And his heart … his heart aches too. Foolish ache. Foolish heart.

He scrubs at his eyes as the bus pulls up to the stop for the driver’s usual cigarette break. He looks out the rear window and sees the girl, hunched over her books. All he can see of her is the top of her  head, a mop of unruly chocolate-dark hair, and a flash of pale cheek. she’s under-dressed for the time of year, wearing blue jeans, sneakers, and a denim jacket over a red hooded sweatshirt. her breath plumes in the chill morning air. Her legs are crossed; he notes how thin she appears. It’s been a decade (closer to two actually), but he recalls what college was like, and how existence was frequently hand to mouth for students. He hadn’t ever had that problem—for which he blessed his parents—but he’d had friends who did. He’d frequently stood them to a beer or a burger when they needed it. He wonders if this girl has someone to stand her to a meal when she needs one. He wonders if he would have the courage to offer to buy her lunch if he was a decade (or two) younger. Then he wonders why he doesn’t have the courage to make the offer now.

She glances up and watches the driver flick his cigarette away, and he stops wondering. All the treadmill sweating in the world won’t change the eighteen years or so between them, or stop his hair from thinning. He can fantasize all he wants about libraries and stolen glances and even just getting off the bus to be close to her. None of it will change anything. None of it will cause her to give a man almost twice her age a second glance. Or even a first.

The driver turns and re-enters the bus. As the doors close with a pneumatic thump-hiss, the girl glances over the side of the bus. And her gaze meets his.

She nods, smiles a little, then bends back down to her studies.

The bus pulls away. For the first time since seeing her all those months ago, he is filled with the urge to look back.

Previously.

Ms. Price was happy to share everything she knew about Mason with the police, along with things she had long suspected of that ungrateful boy. He had never really accepted her as his mother. God knows she had done enough of his laundry and cooking to have earned the title. His father could have gotten the boy to respect her, but he was such a liberal parent it was pathetic. They were lucky she was there to take up the slack.

He was always uncooperative, but once her daughter died and he decided to go to seminary, Mason was always on his high horse like he was holier than everyone just because he planned to wear a collar. He may not have said it, but she could see it in his eyes. The disapproval oozed out of them and washed over her like a cold, oily wave. She didn’t even want to look at him after that.

Her sweet, sweet Lynda. She had been such a bright, obedient child until they moved into that house. She should never have married Allen Pope. He had his charms, and he was so good with Lynda, but she should have known that easy-going attitude would mean that he was incapable of proper parenting. Especially where a willful boy was concerned.

Everything was fine at first. They dated carefully, both of them scrupulously protecting the children from an attachment that might not last. After six months, they brought the children on occasional outings, and Mason and Lynda bonded instantly. They were both lonely children who had lost a parent, so they instinctively read each other and had a comfort level that was lovely from any point of view.

Mason and Lynda spent time together so well, it took the pressure off of both LuAnn and Allen to be constant companions to them, allowing their romance to blossom. It felt like they all finally had the family they dreamed of within reach. Once they moved into Allen’s house, though, everything changed.

LuAnn couldn’t believe Allen’s lack of attention to detail. She was forever cleaning up after Mason and Allen, and it took its toll on their relationships. Neither had ever learned how to properly fold a towel or clean a floor. There was no order to their lives. Sometimes she would find a dirty bowl or fork after Mason washed the dishes, and even after he re-washed all of them she might still find another. It was unbelievable. Thank goodness Lynda had been trained before they married. She knew how to keep a place orderly.

Allen had been in the military for 25 years before he retired and began working in the private sector. One of the things LuAnn most liked about him was that crisp, respectful military demeanor. He was always neat, his clothes ironed, and his manners impeccable. After all those years, he wasn’t even trying, it was just who he was. LuAnn was sweet and loved cooking, cleaning, and generally making a home that would be welcoming to anyone. She always had coffee on and baked from scratch cookies in the cookie jar. She seemed to be the perfect mother, and Lynda was sweet, delightful proof.

Living together taught Allen why LuAnn seemed to be the perfect mother; she was perfectly compulsive. Towels had to be folded a certain way, clothes hung, dishes washed, floors scrubbed; everything had to be her way. She would completely freak out if even one towel were not folded correctly. It was frustrating, but he also felt sorry for her because it seemed to cause her near physical distress. With two guys in the house, her ability to play her fury at imperfection off as no big deal was failing. He told her maybe she should see someone about it.

Then the fire happened, and everything was turned inside out. LuAnn was just not able to function. Lynda was all she had left after her husband died and left them with nothing. Lynda was her everything, and losing her in that fire broke her. LuAnn was like a zombie. She would just sit in Lynda’s room on her bed in a daze. She wouldn’t acknowledge Mason’s existence. It was obvious she blamed him for the fire because he had been the only one home with Lynda, but the source of the blaze had never been found, and everyone knew Mason adored his little step-sister. He would do anything for her, and he was as heartbroken as LuAnn in his way.

Mason was so upset that he started going to church nearly every day after school. He would often just sit there, staring at the imported stained glass windows or the statues in silence. The smooth, worn wood of the pews and the quiet of the empty church gave him a sense of peace he could no longer find at home. The priest talked to him kindly, without questioning him. He just sat with him sometimes and let Mason lead the conversation on others. After a few months, Mason decided he would enter the priesthood and began researching where he could go to seminary.

Previously

Paul was woken from a fitful sleep by a gentle shaking. He winced at the light as he forced his eyes open and saw a middle-aged nurse by the side of his bed. She was wearing a professional smile but Paul could see a mixture of pity and distrust in her eyes.

“Sorry to wake you, Paul, but it’s time for your medication.”

The nurse helped him prop himself up in the bed and then handed him some pills and a glass of water. She started to leave the room to continue her rounds but stopped and looked back at Paul.

“You were talking in your sleep.”

“I…I was?”

“Most of it didn’t make any sense but you did keep repeating the same name – Allison.”

Allison! A rush of anxiety coursed through him.

“I need to get a message to her.” The effort of speaking caused him to cough and pain ran through his body. “Could you get me some paper and a pen?”

“Certainly. I need to finish my rounds first though.”

“No!” shouted Paul. “It’s urgent.”

Her smile faded away.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to raise my voice. Please, it’s very important.” The effort of speaking left him feeling shaky and nauseous.

“Alright. Give me a minute.”

Paul composed a brief note in his mind, being careful not to reveal anything which would incriminate him or cause problems for Allison. When the nurse returned he hastily scribbled his short message. “I’ve put her phone number on the bottom. Would you please ring her for me?”

“I will. Now you need to rest.”

———————————————————

Against his better judgement Paul had agreed to go to with Amos to Michaelangelo’s, a new nightclub in the fashionable part of town.

“Fuck, Amos. Look at the queue.”

“Relax, Paul. Follow me.”

Amos lead him past the throng of well-dressed hopefuls standing in line and strode purposefully up to the bouncer.

“He’s with me,” said Amos gesturing at Paul with a lazy flick of the wrist. The bouncer, a man as wide as he was tall, gave Amos a perfunctory nod and let the two twenty-somethings enter.

Paul raised an eyebrow at Amos who responded by laughing.

“I know the owner, Danny Vitelli.”

To the two friends the faux-renaissance stylings of the club seemed highly sophisticated but a more discerning eye would have dismissed them as Hollywood cliché.

They grabbed a couple of beers and found a booth overlooking the dance floor. A few moments later a young woman approached Amos, lent over and whispered to him, then turned and left without acknowledging Paul.

“Wow,” said Paul. “She’s stunning. Who is she?”

“That’s Allison, Danny’s girl, so if I were you I wouldn’t even look!” he laughed. “Anyway, I have some business to attend to.” Despite smiling as he got up to leave Paul sensed that Amos was suddenly ill at ease.

———————————————————

Her hand shook as she put the phone down and she felt the apprehension rising, the little remaining color draining out of her already pale skin. Grabbing a bag, Allison began frantically packing.