AMDG

“My child, do not forsake your mother’s teaching,”
Proverbs 6:20

          Ramon Mercader cannot remember any time when the hair of his mother Caridad wasn’t completely gray. At some point, when he was six or seven, his grandmother Lola had explained to him that his mother’s hair had changed color soon after the death of his infant sister Cristina, whom Ramon had never known. Such was his mother’s pain that from that day forward she dressed entirely in black and refused to dye her hair. She maintained her daughter’s room just as it had been on the day she died, never rearranging the furniture or allowing anyone to use it. For most people, grief diminishes with the passage of time, but not for Caridad. It did not help that her husband Fernando was a brutal man, often slapping her or pulling her by the hair, just like he often struck Ramon’s bare buttocks with his leather belt. “La letra entra con sangre[1],” he used to say to explain his abuse. Caridad was in an endless period of mourning, and were it not for her participation in politics she would probably have died by suicide years before. It was that blind devotion to Communism which also made her increasingly distant from Ramon, especially after his father’s disappearance. The more time she devoted to politics, the less time she had for him.

Caridad loved Ramon a su manera[2], as they say in Spain, never loving him too much for she remembered how abruptly Cristina had been taken from her and feared that she might lose him too. So she gave herself entirely to the cause of Communism and spent most of her time participating in party congresses or delivering speeches to the workers, eventually becoming head of the Communist Party of Spain as well as a deputy of the Republican Parliament. She was known as an impressive orator and pulled no punches when it came to criticizing her colleagues on the right during speeches on the floor of Parliament and beyond. The people of Spain began to call her la Mama Grande, for she treated the workers and the peasants like her children, passionately defending their interests. The moniker stuck after the Asturian uprising where hundreds of miners’ children were left orphaned and she took on the task of sending more than five-hundred of them to the Soviet Union. Since she could not love Cristina given her death and was lukewarm in her relationship with Ramon, Caridad Mercader was to become the “great mother” of the Spanish people instead.

In May of 1925, la Mama Grande visited the Soviet Union for the first time, along with her ten-year-old son and a group of Spanish Communists. Ramon would eventually spend five years in the Soviet Union against his will, learning not only to speak Russian but also French and American English. But he never forgot his first time in Moscow, even in old age.  To a child, the Soviet capital was simply breathtaking:  the vast Red Square, reputed to be more beautiful than any other plaza in all of Christendom; the enormous Kremlin on the banks of the Moskva River; Saint Basil’s Cathedral with its nine lovely domes, its corbel arches and its vivid colors; the Armoury Chamber preserving ancient state regalia and ornamental works of art; the site of Lenin’s Mausoleum which looked like a church built of marble, porphyry and graphite; the remnants of the Christ the Savior Cathedral left after Joseph Stalin attempted to destroy it. What Ramon found most awe-inspiring, however, was the people’s apparent devotion to Stalin, the multitudinous May Day parade where thousands of soldiers marched in his honor while hundreds of tanks advanced on the streets and planes flew overhead. The military carried enormous banners of the face of Joseph Stalin in front of a red hammer-and-sickle flag, venerating him as if he were a god. In fact, the parade reminded Ramon of nothing so much as the Corpus Christi religious processions in his native Barcelona, except that Stalin’s crowds were much larger, perhaps a million strong, all of them expressing an almost religious faith in Father Stalin. La Mama Grande told Ramon that Stalin was the protector of the Soviet state and all its children, the first country in the world with a Communist government, and that she hoped someday Spain too would be ruled by a man like Stalin.

            “Wouldn’t you want to live in a country like the Soviet Union where there is no rich or poor?” she asked her son as they walked along the silent Moskva River. “What could be better than a country with no hungry children, a place where all children are well-fed and educated? You’ve seen the banners and the posters of the Young Pioneers surrounding Comrade Stalin with bouquets of flowers in their hands. ‘Thank you, Comrade Stalin, for our happy childhood,’ the children say. And they have good reason to say it. Joseph Stalin rules the nation with magnanimity as a representative of the peasants and the workers. He guards the children’s well-being above all.”

            La Mama Grande did not forget that she was the daughter of an Andalusian miner who had barely been able to feed his children nor that an accident took his life when she was barely eight.

            And it was true there were posters and banners of Comrade Stalin with children everywhere: Stalin holding a blond-haired toddler up in the air; Stalin handing a rose to a little girl; Stalin among a group of six-year-olds beneath a slogan stating, “Mommy loves you, daddy loves you, but father Stalin loves you most of all.” Ramon had also seen photographs of Stalin with children in the museums, always smiling faces, never a complaint.

            “Is he like the King of Spain?” Ramon asked his mother.

            “Absolutely not,” responded la Mama Grande. “King Alfonso XIII rules for himself alone while the great Stalin rules strictly as the embodiment of the working class.”

            “Why do you think he is so great?  I’ve heard he imposes his will through use of force.”

            “Stalin fought a great war on behalf of the working people of Russia and beyond. He risked his life because he believed that a government ruled by the workers would lead to equality for all. That’s what I want to do in Spain, to establish a government run by the campesinos[3], directed by the working class.”

            “Why do you say Russia is governed by the peasants? To me it seems like it’s governed by the army. Yes, there are a lot of peasants in the May Day parade, but the ones with all the guns and the tanks are the soldiers.”

The ten-year-old Ramon realized la Mama Grande was irritated by his line of reasoning.

“You sound like the capitalists and the champions of the bourgeoisie,” la Mama Grande cried. “I’m going to teach you something about the revolution. Of course the Soviet Union has to have a vast military force, to protect the interests of the working people. The ruling classes didn’t give up their power without a great war and you can’t fight a war without an army. Soldiers are needed to prevent the old-time despots from rising back to power. Sometimes military violence is necessary to defend the people’s project.”

“Father Agustin says Stalin is a dictator and a thug,” replied Ramon matter-of-factly. “He says that he even tortures and kills priests. There’s a word the old priest uses if I can remember well. He accuses Stalin of being anticlerical.”

Suddenly la Mama Grande could not contain herself. She slapped Ramon hard across the face.

“Don’t you ever disparage Comrade Stalin again,” she ordered, her face reddened by anger. “Do you understand me? If that’s what you’re learning in church, perhaps I should forbid your grandmother from taking you to Mass. Stalin’s Soviet Union is the country that promotes liberty more than any other.”

The following week, la Mama Grande and Ramon, along with the rest of the Spanish delegation, were invited to a private session with Comrade Stalin. The leader of the Soviet Union was at the center of a very long table with a bright red tablecloth, and the visiting Spaniards were seated all around him. Ramon noticed that he was much smaller than he had seemed on the images on all the posters , but he could not deny that Stalin spoke in the voice of a man with a habit of command.  La Mama Grande had brought a bouquet of crimson roses which she had told Ramon to take to the mustachioed leader at an appropriate opportunity.

“Spanish guests,” began Stalin, speaking through an interpreter, “welcome to the people’s paradise. We thank you for supporting the Soviet Union from afar. Please know that you will always find a home and a shelter in the people’s republics. Here you will find a place to teach your children how to live in liberty. I know I have the reputation of not believing that Communism should be spread to other countries, but that is a lie. I shall always support the Communists in Spain and throughout the world in their quest to achieve an egalitarian and socialist society.”

Comrade Stalin spoke for more than three hours without cease, only pausing every now and then to give the Spanish delegation the opportunity to applaud. Whenever he made an important point, he was loudly cheered by his Iberian visitors. “¡Viva  Stalin! “¡Viva la Union Sovietica! “Long live the future Spanish Soviet!” Ramon found it very hard to understand the Soviet leader’s words despite the presence of the interpreter. He did understand, however, what Stalin meant by an egalitarian society, a way of living where everybody would be equal. But Ramon, despite his young age, still questioned how such a reality could be achieved through Stalin’s methods. It seemed that Stalin hated the merchants, the clergy and the rich but Ramon could not comprehend how eliminating all of them, particularly the priests, could result in a more just society.  And he could not help but think of the homilies of Father Agustin in church. He remembered the story of a young Soviet girl whose image was plastered all over the walls of the Soviet Union, with Stalin’s arms around her and the slogan “the children’s best friend” above the great leader’s figure. Father Agustin had said in Mass that the little girl’s parents were eventually assassinated by Stalin and the poster of the girl in Stalin’s arms had disappeared overnight. What Ramon heard from the dictator did not accord with what he had heard from the priest.

At the end of the Soviet leader’s remarks, Mama Grande told Ramon to take the bouquet of flowers to him. Ramon made his way around the table and delivered the roses to the supreme leader. Although Ramon was already ten, Stalin invited him to sit on his lap.

“Are you a young Communist?” asked Stalin in a mirthful voice. “Do you love Father Stalin and the Revolution?”

Ramon looked at the man with the moustache and wasn’t quite sure how to answer. So he opted to tell the truth, like the child in the fairytale about the emperor with no clothes.

“I’m still not quite sure what a Communist is,” replied Ramon. “And I don’t know that I love Father Stalin or the Revolution.”

“He’s lucky he’s a kid,” joked Stalin. “If he was an adult and didn’t love Father Stalin he’d be off to the firing squad.”

The dictator then broke into boisterous laughter and Mama Grande fidgeted nervously on her seat as she waited for the night to end.

***

Jacques Mornard was introduced to Sylvia Ageloff in Paris by their common friend Ruby Weil while they were all sitting at a café called Les Deux Magots. He was around twenty-five years old, somewhat swarthy for a Belgian and uncommonly handsome. He had vivacious dark eyes and a square, masculine jaw, spoke English and French with ease, and smoked on his pipe constantly as he told them about his business writing sports articles for several Parisian magazines. He also had the build of an athlete, with broad shoulders and well-muscled arms. He confessed to the two American women that he did not earn much money from his writing, but that his father had left him a significant sum when he died. The virginal Sylvia would never have expected such a man to show any interest in her, for she was a plain, mousy type with thick cat eye glasses and the slightest of humpbacks, no taller than four feet ten and with virtually no breasts. Nevertheless, Jacques dedicated most of the night speaking to Sylvia and ignoring Ruby, who was much more attractive than her friend.

“What brings you to Paris?” he asked Sylvia after the initial introduction. “Are you here for business or pleasure?” 

 She wasn’t sure how to respond. She averted her eyes from those of Jacques and looked at Ruby instead. Should she tell him the real reason she was in Paris or conceal it?

“You can tell Jacques all about it,” counseled Ruby, who understood her friend’s hesitation. “He’s not a political type.”

“I am here,” she said timidly, “to attend the founding meeting of the Fourth International on the outskirts of Paris.”

“The Fourth International,” echoed Jacques. “Does that have anything to do with La Internationale, the Communist song?”

“In a way,” answered Sylvia in a voice full of hesitation, “but it’s actually a meeting of worldwide Trotskyites.”

“The assassination of Trotsky’s son was all over the newspapers not too long ago,” responded Jacques as he smoked his pipe. “They say he was killed in a clinic. I also read about another Trotskyite whose body washed up on the shores of the River Seine with its head and limbs chopped off. But I prefer not to busy myself with politics or religion. I’d rather talk about sports.”

 “Those men were killed by Stalin,” responded Sylvia.” The body had belonged to Rudolf Klement, secretary of the Fourth International. And Lev Sedov was definitely poisoned at the orders of Stalin. As a result, we are all very concerned about the safety of the delegates attending the conference. It seems that the Stalinists can kill Trotskyites anywhere they find them, even so far from Mother Russia.”

“Where will the meeting be convened?  I can drive you there. I can wait for you in the car while you go to the conference. That way you’d know you’d have a means of escape if anything happened.”

“The conference will take place at Saint-Germain-en-Laye. But it will take all day. I wouldn’t want to importune you with such a long wait.”

“I can take a novel. What better way to spend the day than rereading Madame Bovary or one of the Russian masters?”

“My parents happen to be Russian Jews. I too love Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy.”

“What about Gorky? Have you read ‘The Mother’? The man died not too long ago.”

“Gorky has a mixed record in my view. Even shortly before his death he continued to write propagandist articles in Pravda and glorified Stalin. Of course he may have been killed by Stalin himself for near the end of his life Gorky was hardly a party stalwart.”

“I don’t read novels through a political prism,” Jacques replied. “I mainly read them for the plot.”

“Who is your favorite French novelist?” asked Sylvia, not wanting to engage Jacques in a political discussion since she was afraid that might ruin a night that was going so well.

“I love Zola,” responded Jacques. “And you may be surprised, but I like Proust as well.”

“Kudos for Zola,” said Sylvia in approval. “He was a champion of the working class. But Proust is a writer for the haute bourgeoisie. All his characters are rich men and women obsessed with their intimate lives.”

“Are you a student of literature in the United States?”

“No, I majored in psychology at New York University. I wrote my thesis on ‘susceptibility.’ It’s about how people can be seduced to do things against their will by those whom they admire, love or respect.”

“That can happen,” said Jacques as he caressed her hand. “I find I’m susceptible to women I admire and respect. And of course you’re always susceptible to the woman who raised you.”

After Jacques left, Sylvia had no doubt about it. She and Jacques had a certain chemistry between them. Perhaps, she thought, he was that rare type of man who falls in love with a woman’s intelligence rather than her looks. Her friend Ruby encouraged her in such divagations after he left.

“I see romance on the horizon,” Ruby said with a picaresque smile.

“Do you really think so?” asked Sylvia. “He’s such a charming man. “Why would he turn his attention to someone like me?”

“As to tastes and colors,” responded Ruby, “much has to be said.”

 On the appointed day, Jacques appeared at Sylvia’s hotel and drove her to the inaugural meeting of Trotsky’s Fourth International at Saint-Germain-en-Laye. When they arrived, she suggested he accompany her, but he resisted. When Sylvia insisted, he shouted out in his baritone voice, “Let it go! Just let it go! Please, Sylvia, let it go!”

Sylvia realized Jacques had no interest in spending the day with a hall full of Trotskyites but could not understand the extent of his anger. She had the uncanny sense that he was somehow afraid. And her suspicions were not far off the mark. Jacques was in deathly fear that one of the foreign Trotskyites might recognize him among the crowds from his days in Spain.

***

Frank Jacson parked his red convertible on the Avenida Viena next to the house where Leon Trotsky was living in Coyoacan. The Mexican policemen recognized him instantly and gave him the go-ahead. They were used to sharing a cigarette with him when his supposed wife came to see the old man. When he banged on the knocker, Otto Schussler, one of Trotsky’s American bodyguards, opened the door. Seeing Frank alone, the American asked him, “You didn’t bring your wife today? Usually you just wait for her in the car while she visits.”

“She’s indisposed today,” answered Frank. “But I wanted to show Trotsky something I’ve written. It’s about the Trotskyites in New York. I did a little research when I was in the States and would like to publish it when I return.”

“You brought a raincoat,” Otto observed. “But the skies are clear this afternoon.” 

“Yes,” responded Frank. “But I heard on the news that it might rain.”

“Well, come in,” said Otto. “The old man is in the garden, tending to his rabbits.”

Frank made a mental note. They wouldn’t frisk him even if he brought a raincoat on a sunny day. That was good to know. Nobody would realize it if the next time he came, he hid a weapon under his coat. The plan could work. He had gone over it with Eitingon time and again. He would come back within a week, under the pretext that he had a revision of the article for Trotsky to correct. Ideally Trotsky would take Frank to his study and Frank would do the deed in perfect silence, giving him the opportunity to escape.

“Well, hello,” said Trotsky in English when he saw Frank appear. Trotsky had been working in the garden and so his clothes were muddy. “Where’s your wife? This must be the first time you’ve come without her.”

“I’m afraid she has a bit of a catarrh. But there’s an article I want to show you.”

“You’ve written an article? I thought you were a businessman and not a journalist.”

“Well, I dabble in it. I had a chance to meet with many of your faithful Trotskyites when I was in New York City with my lady. They’re truly a wonderful bunch, so devoted to you and the Fourth International. I just had to write an article about them. I think you’re so misunderstood in America. I was hoping my article might help you in your efforts to get a visa.”

“Your countrymen will never understand. They think that Communism and Stalinism are one and the same.”

“I’m not an American, Mr. Trotsky. You know I’m a Canadian. But what you say is true. The Americans are terrified of the Communist bogeyman.”

“Let’s go to my study. Give me a second while I wash my hands.”

Trotsky’s study was a large room, with a large desk in the center and boxes of archives all about.

“Now, let’s see,” said Trotsky. “What is this? About twenty pages?”

“Something like that,” responded Frank. Of course he had written none of it. Eitingon had done all of the writing, aided by Frank’s American girlfriend, who didn’t know its purpose.

“It’s not bad,” Trotsky opined as he took off his reading glasses. “But you’re letting the Americans off the hook too easily. Had they aided Spain’s Republicans from the outset, they would not be facing an emboldened Germany today. The Spanish Civil War – at least at the beginning – did not mean a choice between fascism and Communism. But if there is another great war in Europe, that will be the choice. Either that monstrous Hitler will take over Europe or that monstrous Stalin will. The best the Americans can expect is for Europe to be partitioned after Hitler is defeated. Stalin’s tanks will take over Eastern Europe – and they will not leave.”

“Well,” Frank responded, “that would be the subject for a book. I was just focusing on New York’s Trotskyite community.”

“The problem is they’ve been infiltrated too,” said Trotsky. “I don’t think the Siqueiros’ attack two months ago could have happened without an insider.”

“Are you referring to Robert Sheldon Harte? I’ve heard some of the Mexican police think he voluntarily let the Stalinist saboteurs into your house.”

“I tend to disbelieve he was involved. That’s not how Stalin works. People are saying Bob was the one who allowed the Stalinist enemies into my compound. Why would Stalin have ordered the execution of somebody who had supposedly helped him so much?”

“So you’re basically saying Stalin takes care of his own?”

Frank was hoping Trotsky’s response would be yes. The old man probably knew Stalin better than anybody.

“Stalin is loyal to nobody,” said the old man. “But he won’t kill someone who is loyal to him until it suits his needs. And if Bob had helped Siqueiros’ men, there would be no reason to assassinate him.”

***

Even at a distance of thousands of kilometers, Caridad Mercader – la Mama Grande – continued to be a forbidding person for her son Ramon. He spent his teenage years in Moscow, at an academy for the children of foreign Communists, but la Mama Grande would often visit. In truth, Ramon didn’t know if she traveled to the Soviet Union to see him or see her lover, a Georgian man who often visited Spain. He was in the upper echelons of Stalin’s government and – as far as Ramon could understand – he was in charge of maintaining contacts with Communists throughout Europe, Asia and the Americas. La Mama Grande, head of Spain’s Communist Party, frequently recruited young Spaniards to work as spies for the NKVD. While she was doing so, she had frequent contact with the Georgian and a relationship ensued. Ramon did not altogether dislike him for he was kinder than his mother and often took him on hunting and fishing trips. His mother, on the other hand, only cared about Ramon’s progress in school. At first, he did well on his courses on foreign languages but didn’t get good marks in Marxist philosophy or Soviet history. La Mama Grande was incensed. Her main purpose in sending him to study in Moscow was to make sure he learned about the proletariats’ ongoing class war with the bourgeoisie, as well as Comrade Stalin’s incomparable role in that endeavor. Of course she also sent Ramon to Moscow because the struggle in Spain did not give her the time to take care of him.

“If you don’t want to apply yourself, then we can send you to the camps where the workers toil, fervently devoted to the cause of Stalin. You can help them meet the quotas of the great leader’s Five-Year Plan. There you’ll learn to be a man – and a Communist man at that. You’ll discover the meanings of the works of Marx, Lenin and Stalin without even having to read them. As you observe the peasants’ courage and their commitment to Communism, you’ll also understand comrade Stalin’s glorious efforts to help them and achieve authentic Communism in the Soviet Union.”

“I’ll try to devote more time to my studies,” Ramon meekly responded.

“You’re losing a great opportunity in your lackadaisical approach to your courses. As father Stalin said, ‘education is a weapon whose effect depends on who holds it in his hand and at whom it is aimed.’ If you’re telling me that no matter what education is aimed at you, you won’t accept it properly, then perhaps you need to be educated in a different way.”

“No, Mama Grande,” Ramon said. “I’ll dedicate myself wholeheartedly to my studies. I’ll make you proud and comrade Stalin as well.”

“I hope you do,” responded the gray-haired woman, dressed in black as always.” I’ll have Eitingon routinely check on your progress with your studies. You don’t want to cross me, Ramon. I’m capable of doing everything I say.”

Gradually, imperceptibly, Ramon came to believe the lessons he was being taught. Gradually, imperceptibly, he accepted the glory of the Soviet Revolution and above all else the greatness of Stalin. Without father Stalin the great Communist quest would collapse and the workers would once again be little more than slaves. And Ramon was warned that Stalin had many enemies throughout the Soviet Union and beyond. That was the purpose of the academy, to prepare the students to return to their countries of origin and aid in the protection of Stalin and the Soviet State. Ramon’s classroom was filled with future cadres from all over the world, from Munich to Buenos Aires, from Manila to New York City.

At Ramon’s graduation ceremony, he was the student with the best marks and was asked to give a farewell speech. From beginning to end, Ramon’s valedictory address was a paean to Joseph Stalin. And the truth is that he meant everything he said, for it was engraved in his mind, embedded in his soul. His speech was not exactly original – he repeated everything he had heard about Stalin’s greatness during five years of schooling – but original or not the speech was very well-received.

Mama Grande was present, but didn’t hug her son or congratulate him for his stellar marks. Instead she gave him a two-sentence admonition and left it at that.

“You have learned all you can from books, Ramon. Now you must put all theories into practice through the crucible of the Spanish Civil War.”         

***

Jacques Mornard still had something of a conscience, although he did not always heed it. He felt deeply remorseful about the way he was treating Sylvia Ageloff, but it had to be done. She was so naïve, so trusting, so needy. Jacques knew he had made her feel desired for the first time in her life.  It had been so easy to seduce her, not so easy to consummate the act, for he found her physically repugnant. Undressed, she was even less attractive than with her clothes on and Jacques thought of making love to her as an unwelcome chore.  In truth, she had the body of a prepubescent boy with the smallest of breasts and narrow hips. Sometimes he felt that he was the one who was repugnant – not physically but morally – for exciting the girl’s passions when he felt nothing for her and she felt everything for him. And yet he continued with the seduction, for it was necessary.

Every time he saw her, he brought her candy or flowers, or would invite her to sail on the River Seine on a bateau mouche. Sometimes he would buy her a book of poems and read them to her out loud – Pablo Neruda’s Twenty Poems of Love or Love and Honey by Victor Hugo. Jacques realized that when he was unable to perform in the bedroom at night, Sylvia did not guess that the reason was that he found her profoundly unattractive. Instead, she tried to be gentle with him, telling him not to be embarrassed for occasional impotence afflicts all men. She explained that she had learned it in one of her courses on sexual psychology at New York University.

Sylvia gave herself to Jacques with relentless abandon – physical passion as well as a deep, spiritual love – and once told Jacques she had begun to write poetry about him. When he asked her to show it to him, she desisted, thinking it was too mediocre for him to read it. But she did the next best thing and once gave him a framed copy of the first of The Song of Songs, which she had read as a Jewish schoolgirl with a mix of curiosity and awe. The Song of Songs exemplified a pure eroticism, a celebration of sexual love.

“Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth,” Sylvia read, somewhat embarrassed, as Jacques sat cross-armed on the bed, “for your love is more delightful than wine. Pleasing is the fragrance of your perfumes; your name is like perfume poured out. No wonder the young women love you! Take me away with you – let us hurry. Let the king bring me into his chambers. My beloved is to me a sachet of myrrh resting between my breasts. My beloved is for me a cluster of henna blossoms…”

If only you were beautiful, thought Jacques Mornard, then we could share so much, yet a woman who loves beautiful things is not necessarily beautiful herself. But he knew that even if she had been lovely their relationship would have been impossible. There were so many things he hadn’t told her, so many things she could never understand. She was intensely political, as Ruby Weil had told him, but hers was a different politics than his.  Sometimes Jacques had to hold his tongue when he did not agree with what she said. She was a fierce Trotskyite and detested Stalin, whom she blamed for the loss of Spain. What a ridiculous notion, thought Jacques, as he puffed on his ever present pipe. He felt that it was the Trotskyites who had weakened the Spanish Communists at Catalonia and thus led to the victory of Generalissimo Francisco Franco. But he never mentioned any of this to Sylvia, just like he never told about the existence of Africa de las Heras, a woman who had been his companion for years. Jacques had told Sylvia never to expect him on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday, but had never told her the reason why. Sylvia was cautious enough not to inquire, but instead enjoyed the nights they spent together. After all, in a month she would be returning to New York City and the relationship was doomed to end. If Jacques had another paramour, Sylvia didn’t want to force him to choose between the two, for she was satisfied with a little of his love, whatever crumbs of tenderness remained.

Africa accepted the new modus vivendi as best she could, but one night she exploded in anger when Jacques rejected her suggestion that he see Sylvia only on the weekends. Africa was the opposite of Sylvia in every way. Where Sylvia was short, Africa was tall. Where Sylvia’s eyes were hidden by thick glasses, Africa had green penetrating eyes. Where Sylvia’s body had something of a boy about it, Africa was womanhood itself, with large breasts and the rounded buttocks of a sevillana.

“Don’t tell me you’re jealous of the little runt,” Jacques said. “I don’t want her to terminate the relationship now that everything is working out perfectly. Don’t forget the idea is for her to think I want to marry her. Indeed, I may need to marry her at some point.”

“I know and understand the plans, but don’t like the fact you seem to be spending every waking minute with her. And now I’ll have to wait in Paris as you spend your ‘holiday’ in New York City and beyond. Ruby told me that they mean to go back to the United States within a month. For how long will I have to wait for your return?”

“You know well that it is no holiday, and I’m not even sure if I ever will return. I still haven’t told her I’m planning to go with her to the United States. But I’m sure when I tell her she will be ecstatic. Why risk everything by telling her I will see her only on the weekends now? She has to be absolutely convinced that I want to marry her. Otherwise Operation Mother will never succeed.”  

“Yes, yes, I’ve understood ever since I met with Ruby Weil. She’s been right all along, like when she suggested it would be easy for you to seduce Sylvia Ageloff. Now let see if Ruby’s right about the other part of the plan. A lot of pieces have to fall into place.  One thing is to earn the love of a lonely woman. It’s quite another to somehow use her as a vehicle to get into the house of Stalin’s implacable foe. Don’t forget our enemy lives thousands of kilometers away from New York City.”

***

Once in Spain, Ramon became a soldier for the Republican cause, prodded by Mama Grande and her lover, the Soviet Eitingon. At that time, he realized that his mother had developed a cult among the masses, that some tried to touch la Mama Grande as if she were a saint. There were also a million leaflets with her image and the words “¡No pasaran!”[4]

It was during the battle between the Communists and the Trotskyite Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification that Ramon learned to hate the Trotskyites himself. In the Soviet Union, Ramon had acquired an understanding of Trotsky’s betrayal of Stalin’s cause, but it was merely theoretical and abstract. It was only during the Barcelona May Days of 1937 when he witnessed how his fellow Communists were felled by Trotskyite bullets that he learned to detest Trotsky with all his might. In their rejection of Stalin, the Trotskyites were opposing the Soviet Union, the only country in the world which had given substantial aid to the Spanish Communist cause. And rather than fighting against Franco’s army, the Trotskyites were fighting against their own Communist brethren, making it easier for the fascists to prevail.

At any event, the Trotskyites were swiftly crushed by the Communists aligned with Stalin and soon Ramon witnessed the examination of the Trotskyite leader Andres Nin by his mother and Eitingon. Since Mama Grande was the head of the Communist Party and Eitingon was the top man in the NKVD in Spain, the Trotskyite leader was turned over to them so they could perform his interrogation. At the beginning, Eitingon had questioned why Ramon had to be present at such a dire scene but Mama Grande had insisted that Ramon take part in the process. She wanted to teach her son that there were no half-measures in the grand Stalinist cause. So Ramon  sat silently as he saw his mother inflict the most extreme punishments against the doomed Trotskyite, demanding he disclose the names of all the other Trotskyites in a position of power within the Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification. When Nin refused to provide any names, Mama Grande subjected him to more brutal methods. She lashed his back, burnt his face with a cigarette, crushed his testicles. Ramon had never seen such conduct on the part of his mother and was initially repelled. But Eitingon attempted to reassure him, quoting Stalin himself. “To choose one’s victims, to prepare one’s plan minutely, to slake an implacable vengeance, and then to go to bed . . . there is nothing sweeter in the world.

Ramon didn’t think he would sleep in peace if he had done what his mother and Eitingon had done to Andres Nin. Even though he was merely a witness to the man’s torture, it quickly became the stuff of his nightmares. He could never participate in such a crime although he realized his gray-haired mother was trying to teach him how to do it.

Near the end of the war, when all hope seemed lost, when Franco’s forces were close to occupying Madrid, Mama Grande told her son that he needed to meet with her and Eitingon about a very important matter. It was not a mission an ordinary mother would give to her son, but then again Mama Grande was not an ordinary mother. Like the breasts of Lady Macbeth, her breasts were filled with gall rather than milk. So as they met in the apartment where they were hiding, shortly before they escaped from Spain, Mama Grande told her son he should make plans to murder Leon Trotsky.  

“You will be a hero for the cause of Stalin, by bringing death to our leader’s implacable enemy. Leon Trotsky has secretly aided Franco’s Nationalist forces and as a result has brought about the failure of the Republic.”

“We shall get you the needed passports,” said Eitingon. “You are the perfect man for the job, given that you master French, English and Spanish.”

“And Russian as well as Catalan,” added Mama Grande with a grim pride.

“How do you propose I murder Trotsky?” asked Ramon. “He’s ensconced in a little fortress in Mexico City.”

“We have it all planned out,” said Eitingon. “He routinely allows American Trotskyites into his compound. We have a secret agent among the New York Trotskyites, a woman named Ruby Weil, who says she can introduce you to another American Trotskyite by the name of Sylvia Ageloff. The idea is for you to seduce her, gain her confidence, and convince her to take you to Trotsky’s home in Coyoacan.”

“And then you can use an ice pick to kill the man,” added Mama Grande in a stern voice.

“I don’t quite understand,” responded Ramon. “It sounds like a suicide mission. Even assuming I can seduce the girl and persuade her to take me to Trotsky’s home, what do I do after the assassination? I’ve heard he’s surrounded by Mexican police and American bodyguards. Once I kill Trotsky in his own home, how can I possibly avoid being captured or killed myself? And wouldn’t it be an unspeakable crime?”

“Better to die on your feet than live on your knees,” opined Mama Grande, repeating the mantra she had often used when addressing Spain’s Republican troops. “I think if everything goes right, you’ll manage to escape. An ice pick makes no sound and nobody will realize what you’ve done. But just in case, you should take a revolver with you. If Trotsky’s guards prevent you from escaping, you’ll die by your own hands. And it is not a crime to protect Stalin from his enemies.”

“Well, I won’t do it,” Ramon replied. “I don’t even see the point. The war is lost. What benefit could be derived from murdering Trotsky now?”

“Vengeance for one,” said Eitingon. “And the old man is still a threat. Have you ever considered that Trotsky might order Stalin’s murder first and destroy everything accomplished by the October Revolution? The return of Russia to capitalism is not an empty fear.”

“Doesn’t the NKVD have hundreds of expert assassins at its disposal? Surely one of Stalin’s spies can perform the feat much better than I can.”

“Do it for your mother,” said Mama Grande in a gentle voice. “We are thinking of giving the mission the name Operation Mother.”

“Listen,” said Eitingon. “You don’t have to decide right away. Meet the Trotskyite woman, court her, see what happens. If at the end you can’t go through with it, then so be it.” 

“Stalin will be so proud of you,” said Mama Grande. “I’m sure you’ll be awarded the Order of Lenin for your service to the grand Communist cause.”

***

After what happened with his American girlfriend, Frank Jacson knew he had to act quickly with his plan to murder Trotsky, lest everything get unraveled. She had known for a while that he had come to Mexico City to get into the old man’s home, but he had assured her that his only intention was to steal some archives. This morning, however, he was careless and she had found the ice pick, the dagger and the gun in the pockets of his raincoat.  The woman promptly became hysterical, for he had told her he intended to visit Trotsky in the afternoon and, naïve as she was, she could put two and two together. She already knew he was an agent of the NKVD and the purpose of the gun and the ice pick could only be to murder the old man.

“If you reveal this,” he warned her, “you’ll be signing my death warrant. If you inform the police, I’ll be put in a jail for years. But much worse, if the operation fails or if I don’t go forward with it, the NKVD will murder me on the orders of Stalin. He doesn’t allow his spies to have consciences. If you warn Trotsky, I’ll be blamed by Stalin for the failure of the mission and he’ll send another assassin to kill me. So you have to choose. Do you truly love me – love me to the point of death as you have told me so many times – or are you a slave to your bourgeois scruples?”

“Aagh!” she cried out. “You are trying to make me complicit in a murder. I can’t! I can’t! I’ll call him on the telephone.”

Then she ran and picked up the receiver. Frank ripped the phone away from her.

“Don’t you understand what will happen? They’ll kill my mother too. Stalin was furious when the first assassination attempt failed and won’t tolerate another failure. Please keep silent. Do it for my mother.”

 “What does your mother have to do with it?”

“I can’t explain it to you right now. She’s been an agent of the NKVD for years. She will be blamed if the operation fails.”

“So has this been a charade from day one? Did you seduce me just to achieve this monstrous plan? Has our love always been a lie?”

“We can talk about all this later. For now, just lie down and keep calm.”

“I won’t. Do you understand that, Jacques?  Or Frank or whatever your name is. I won’t let you do this.”

“Don’t force me to kill you,” Frank said in an even voice. “I’d rather have you die than my mother. There’s no rope to tie you up so you’re leaving me with no other option.”

“Would you really do it?”

“My love for Stalin is greater than my love for any woman except my mother. If Stalin doesn’t murder Trotsky, it is Trotsky who shall kill Stalin. Trotsky has his own spies and assassins. It’s either Trotsky’s death or that of the grand leader of the Soviet Union. And I won’t let anything get in my way.”

Sylvia bolted for the door, screaming she would not allow Trotsky’s murder, and Frank reflexively stabbed her in the back with his dagger. He didn’t have time to repent or to attempt to save her, for she lost her life instantaneously. Frank threw himself on the ground and cradled her in his arms, begging her not to die although she was already dead..

“There was no other way,” Jacques said grimly to himself as he wiped her blood off his shirt.  Suddenly he felt sick to his stomach and suffered a strong instinct to retch. His girlfriend’s murder had never been part of the plan.

He immediately changed his clothes, left the apartment and drove his red convertible to Trotsky’s home. He noticed that the vehicle with Eitingon and his mother were already waiting close by, ready to disappear with him after he committed the crime. He parked his car two blocks away, for he needed time to think. He had just murdered a woman who loved him so it shouldn’t be hard to kill Trotsky too. But it wasn’t easy. Her death had happened suddenly, without any premeditation.  But the death of Trotsky was planned and he wasn’t sure if he could bring himself to do it. He walked restlessly through the cobblestone streets of Coyoacan, trying to muster the necessary courage for the feat he was sworn to accomplish for Comrade Stalin and above all his mother. 

Frank walked through the Plaza Hidalgo and the Plaza del Centenario, both filled with Indian laurel trees, as well as mimes, clowns, organ grinders, and musicians. It seemed like an ordinary day – the children tugging at their mothers’ hands, enamored couples walking arm in arm, the organ grinder’s monkey doing pirouettes – but Frank knew it was no ordinary day. It was the day when he was to put into practice what he had been taught during all his years in the Soviet Union, everything he had learned when he had been groomed for just this purpose. He smoked one cigarette after another and put a few coins in the organ grinder’s jar. But he was wasting time and knew it. There was no sense in delaying the inevitable. So he steeled his nerves and walked back to his car, where he found the raincoat and the weapons in the trunk. Then he slowly ambled to Trotsky’s home on the Avenida Viena. He was in no hurry to get there, but even walking slowly he arrived at the house in no more than thirty minutes.

He glanced at the policemen guarding the home and was suddenly worried. What if this time they decided to frisk him? What would happen to his mother if the plot was discovered by the police? Frank knew what Stalin did to his followers when they fell out of favor. When he walked nervously past the police kiosk, he barely looked at the guards and waved his hand in the air in a quick salutation. They told him, “Walk right ahead, Mr. Jacson,” and suddenly he knew the prize was in sight. Otto Schussler let him inside the house and commented on the raincoat, just like he had the last time Frank had visited. The assassin repeated what he had said before and told Otto he had heard on the radio that it would rain. Otto ushered Frank into Trotsky’s study, where the old man was sitting at his desk with the Dictaphone.

“What brings you back, Frank? Again without the wife?”

Frank noticed that Otto wasn’t leaving. That would make Operation Mother impossible.

“I just revised my little article,” said Frank. “You must be working on your biography of Joseph Stalin.”

Otto remained in the room, sitting on an armchair, seemingly with no intention to leave the study.

“I’m always working on the Stalin biography. It’s called The Revolution Betrayed. The world must learn the truth. It’s like I have a sword of Damocles over my head as I write. I have to finish the book before that son-of-a-bitch gets to me. When are you and your wife leaving for New York?”

Everyone in the Trotsky compound thought Sylvia was his wife.

“We’re planning to leave tonight. Yes, we’ll be gone by tomorrow.” Otto didn’t move. He even chimed in, “I love New York City in the summer.”    

Frank was amazed he had the sangfroid to continue the conversation and was sure he was visibly sweating. If Otto didn’t leave the room, the operation would have to be aborted. And it couldn’t be left for another day. He had to disappear before anyone discovered the corpse of Sylvia Ageloff.

“I’m surprised you didn’t bring Sylvia with you,” said Otto. “I was thinking she’d come and say goodbye to the old man.”

Frank knew he had to think on his feet. He had been trained to do so.

“Well. You know how women are,” he said matter-of-factly. “It takes them the whole day to prepare a piece of luggage.”

“All right,” said Trotsky. “I’m done for now. Let me see the revised article you’ve brought.”

Otto rose from his chair.

“Well, I guess I’ll say goodbye. Send my regards to all the Trotskyites in New York City.”

Frank had to put his raincoat on a chair as he hugged Otto. He was terrified that the weapons would fall from the coat pocket. But Otto left and nothing happened. Trotsky began to read Frank’s article and Frank prepared for the estocada – the moment when the bull is pierced by the sword of the matador.

As Trotsky perused the article, Frank pretended he was standing behind him in order to read the text as the old man commented on it. Finally, the old man exclaimed, “This is much better than the prior version,” whereupon he saw the ice pick in Frank’s hands.

Trotsky reached for the revolver in one of the drawers of his desk, but was unable to reach it. Frank stabbed him in the head with his weapon. The old man did not collapse, but screamed a Heaven-rending cry and then began to struggle for the weapon with his assailant. Suddenly a group of Trotsky’s American bodyguards appeared inside the study. They quickly started to beat him, but the old man instructed his men not to kill him.

“He can’t be killed,” said Trotsky. “We have to make him speak so the whole world knows what Stalin did.”

“Kill me, kill me!” cried out Frank. “I can’t believe I’ve done this. But first take me to my mother. I need to nestle in her arms.”

***

As Jaime Lopez Pablovich lay on his deathbed in Havana, surrounded by his Mexican wife, two sons and three grandchildren, he suddenly asked for a visit from a priest. His wife Roquelia was not particularly surprised, for after receiving the diagnosis of lung cancer, he had started going to Mass from time to time. But he never went to Confession, for he found his crimes too grueling to confess and he could not bring himself to talk to anyone about them. Jaime had not even discussed his crimes with his own wife after more than twenty-five years of marriage. Now he knew he was dying and wanted to make his peace with God.

The priest arrived at Jaime’s apartment within a half hour of Roquelia’s call and asked his family members to leave him alone with the dying man. Father Armando pulled a chair close to the bed and began by putting both hands on Jaime’s head and pronouncing the Our Father. The priest asked Jaime, “When was your last Confession?”

Jaime struggled to breathe but was able to respond.

“I don’t know, Father. I last received the sacrament when I was a kid. Maybe fifty, fifty-five years ago.”

“Better late than never, Jaime. You can talk to me as if I was an old friend.”

“For starters, my name is not Jaime. It is Ramon. My family calls me Monchito. The Soviets gave me the alias Jaime Lopez Pablovich when I got out of prison about twenty years ago. My crime had become a public scandal and everyone had heard of my acts. The Soviets feared a retaliatory assassination and so felt it was better if I lived my life with my true identity concealed.”

“When you got out of prison? What crime did you commit?”

“I’ll get to that, Father. But let me give you the background. I don’t want to justify my crimes – they have no justification – but I think I should give you the context.”

“By all means,” said the priest. “We can do this anyway you’d like.”

“It all began when I was a child. My father was a tyrant and he even took my mother to brothels in order to commit unspeakable sins. He regularly beat me and my mother as well. So my mother – her name was Caridad – became a very hard woman. My mother’s father had been a Cuban and she was named after the Cuban Virgen de la Caridad.  But by the time I was born I think she must already have been an atheist. Or maybe she stopped believing in God a few years later, after suffering through my father’s mistreatment or my sister’s death.”

Jaime paused. It was more difficult to do this than he had imagined. But after taking a deep breath he continued.

“At all events, I’m not sure if my mother ever loved me. Perhaps she saw something of my father in me and detested me for it. Or perhaps that’s the wrong word. Perhaps it was merely a deep-seated apathy. At all events, after my sister Cristina died, my mother became increasingly distant from me. She would feed me, dress me, take me to school, but there was no tenderness in her, only a sternness that made me feel like an unwelcome obligation. Do you understand me, Father? Do you understand how painful it is for a child to be rejected by his mother after having been abandoned by his father?”

“I can try to understand, Ramon. I am fortunate in that I never had to go through such an experience. And I gather that you’ve kept these feelings repressed for years.”

“A whole lifetime, Father Armando.”

And then Jaime began to sob uncontrollably.

“Do you want to take a break?” the priest inquired. “We don’t have to hurry.”

“No, that’s all right,” said Jaime, regaining his composure. “Where was I? I was telling you about my mother.”

“Yes,” the priest responded.

“Well, after my father left, her love was Joseph Stalin. His cause became the North Star of her life. For most of her life she lived without a lover and in some strange way Stalin filled that void. Only when I was in my teenage years did she fall in love with a man again, if you can call it love. His name was Eitingon, an ethnic Jew from the Soviet Union. I think she was drawn to him because he was a representative of the government of Stalin. Without that link to Stalin, I’m certain my mother would not have become his mistress.”

“So she was a Communist?”

“I would say she was the staunchest of Stalinists. It was the man himself she venerated, even more than his ideology. Stalin could do no wrong. When she heard about the purge of the Trotskyites Kamenev and Sinoviev, she applauded their show trials and their executions. And eventually she developed a fierce hatred for Leon Trotsky, especially after the loss of Spain to General Francisco Franco. It was because of my mother that I, too, learned to hate Trotsky.”

“Are you Ramon Mercader?” asked the priest abruptly. “Are you Trotsky’s assassin?”

“I am,” replied Jaime. “I was just getting to that. I’ve been living in Cuba for years.” 

            “Why did you do it?”

            “That’s why I told you about my childhood and adolescence. That’s why I told you about my mother’s desamor.[5] When I was in my early twenties, my mother gave me an opportunity to finally earn her love. All I had to do was murder Leon Trotsky and for the first time in my life she would be pleased with me. She was asking me to sacrifice my life for the cause of Joseph Stalin, the purpose of her entire being. How could I refuse?” 

            “You don’t have to tell me all the details if it makes you uncomfortable. All you need for a valid Confession is to simply confess your crimes.”

“The ironic thing is that my mother finally fell out of love with Joseph Stalin. Her lover Eitingon was accused by Stalin of plotting to poison high-ranking Soviet leaders and tortured to confess. His rank and medals were all taken from him – medals earned through more than twenty years of loyal service to Stalin – and my mother could not forget that it was Stalin himself who had brought such disgrace upon her lover.  Her raison d’etre – support of Stalin’s cause – had proved to be built on quicksand.”

“Did she go back to religion?” asked the priest.

“No, she didn’t, Father. But she was left completely unmoored. Suddenly she noticed her god had feet of clay. All the rumors about Stalin’s purges of innocent people which my mother explained away over the years had turned out to be a reality. Her longtime lover had been destroyed on trumped-up charges and there was no one to accuse of his destruction other than her beloved Stalin. In what, then, would she believe?  Not surprising that after Eitingon’s incarceration she tried to die by suicide more than once.”

            “She didn’t despair after you were jailed?”

            “She did not. You have to understand that Eitingon’s incarceration didn’t trouble her merely because of the fact he had been imprisoned. If he had been convicted of a common crime, she wouldn’t have worried. But what cut to the quick was that he had been jailed at Stalin’s orders for an imaginary crime.”

Jaime started coughing and for a moment was unable to speak.

“Are you all right?” asked the priest. “Do you need something to drink?”

“No, I’m fine. Let me finish telling you this macabre story. The thing is I was lucky – if you can use such a word for the accomplishment of a monstrous crime. I met a young Trotskyite woman in Paris through another NKVD spy who had infiltrated the Trotskyites in New York. She was a very homely, melancholy girl and I seduced her according to plan. Once we were in New York, I urged her to go with me to Mexico City where I supposedly had some business. She agreed and that sealed my plan. Her sister worked as a secretary to Trotsky and slowly I became a regular presence at his home. But the poor girl discovered my intentions on the morning of the attack. She protested vociferously.  Rather than disappoint my mother by aborting the plan, I plunged a knife into the girl’s back and made my way to Trotsky’s home.”

At that moment, Jaime paused and desperately clutched the priest’s hand.

“You must think I’m a monster,” he said under his breath. “That there is nothing to redeem.”

“Not a monster,” the priest replied as he held onto Jaime’s hand. “Just a sinner who is finally making his way home.”

“Well, you know the rest of it,” said Jaime. “You know of the great crime perpetrated by Ramon Mercader.  I can never forget the way Trotsky wailed as I punctured his head with the ice pick. Even forty years later, I cannot forget that scream.  I hear it always. I hear that scream when I’m unable to sleep. I know he’s waiting for me on the other side.”

“No,” answered the priest. “He’s not waiting for you. It is the Lord expectantly waiting for you on the other side when you awake. I declare you righteous, forgiven. The multitude of your offenses does not surpass the Great Physician’s skill.”

 “I hope so,” said Ramon Mercader as he expired.

---

[1] “La letra entra con sangre” literally means “the letter enters by blood.” It implies that hard lessons must be taught by violence.

[2] A su manera means in her own way, implying in an unusual or incomplete way.

[3] “Campesinos” means peasants.

[4] “No pasaran” means they shall not pass, referring to Franco’s forces.

[5] Desamor means indifference and lack of love.

Sandro Francisco Piedrahita is an American writer of Ecuadorian and Peruvian descent, with a degree in Comparative Literature from Yale College. His stories have been accepted for publication by The Acentos Review, The Ganga Review, Synchronized Chaos, The Write Launch, Hive Avenue Literary Journal, Carmina Magazine, Peauxdunque Review, Sundial Magazine, Label Me Latina/o, Limit Experience Journal. and Foreshadow Magazine.

The bruise on Holly’s thigh was the color of a sunset, thought Jenna, dark purple ringed by a greenish yellow. She glanced over from the next stool at Berlitz’s, a dockside bar on Canandaigua in the Finger Lakes. They’d just shrieked Hi and hugged. Jenna hadn’t seen Holly in five years, since high school, when Jenna came up to her family cottage for July. Holly was a townie.

      Jenna nodded downward. “What happened?”

      “Oh nothing. Just clumsy getting onto Freddy’s boat.” She pointed at a motorboat rocking among a dozen others at the dock. Across the lake the sun was dropping, and red flares were sparking along the shore to mark the 4th.

     “Who’s Freddy?”

      Holly pushed back a strand of her red hair and swiveled. “See for yourself.”

     Freddy sidled in next to Holly and wrapped his arm around her shoulder. “Sorry, babe, a guy I used to know kidnapped me.” Jenna thought he had to be in his 50s, with a Navy buzz cut that was gray bristle. His white polo bunched around his middle.

     “Freddy, this is Jenna,” said Holly. “An old pal from my high school days.”

     Freddy let a smile form. “Oh yeah?”

     “Her family had a summer place on the lake.”

     “Must have been some wild times.” His breath smelled like booze.

     “If you count diving from the top of the Glen,” said Jenna, “down into that tiny pool.”

     “Oh my god,” laughed Holly, “I totally forgot about that. We were insane back then.”

      Jenna caught the eye of the bartender with blond dreads. “Cape Codder, please.”

     “Whass that?” He had on a t-shirt whose front blared “Get Blitzed!” framed by lightning bolts.

      “This ain’t the Cape, sweetheart,” said Freddy.

      “Right,” said Jenna. “Vodka and cranberry juice.”

     “That sounds yummy,” said Holly. “Make that two.”

     “Right away, ladies. I’m Brad, by the way.” He bowed and backed away.

     Freddy took a swig of his Corona. “So what brings you back to our little town?”

     “My aunt Catherine died this spring, so I came back to sell the cottage.”

     “Sorry,” said Freddy, “that’s tough.”

     “I liked her,” said Holly. “Even though your cottage was old and a little creepy, I always thought it was kind of cool. I loved those warm nights sleeping out on the porch, with the bats knocking against the roof.”

      “Me too.”

      Under the blue awning at the other end of the deck, the house band kicked in. They were old dudes, sitting on stools. The bass drum said The Retreads, the lime-green letters wrapped around a deep violet circle. They were snarling their way through the Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil”: “Please allow me to introduce myself, I’m a man of wealth and taste.”

     Freddy grabbed Holly’s hand and they sashayed to the dance floor. It was packed and noisy. Some sparkly teen-aged girls were jumping around, and ragged boat people with dyed blond streaks and tropical shirts were lurching back and forth. Everybody seemed to know each other, exchanging nods and high fives.

     Jenna smiled to herself; it had been a while.

     She wondered where Holly had gone at the end of their last summer. They had a spat over nothing, and Holly had just vanished. She stopped answering her texts. Jenna knew Holly had started to see some mysterious older guy—could it have been Freddy?

     “Cape Codder for the stranger,” said Brad, setting her glass down. Jenna started. Below his short sleeve, she could make out the half circle of an identical bruise: a sickly yellow with a dark maroon core. How freaky is that, she thought.

     “What happened to your arm?”

     “Oh nothing.” He tugged his sleeve down. “A little run-in with Freddy’s boat.”

     A splash of red and blue lit up the sky, cheered by hoots and whistles. Some lake-people were starting early. Motorboats with running lights purred along the dark lake, and the echo of a party ricocheted from the far shore.

     Jenna took a big breath; she had to get some distance.

     “Be right back,” she said, hopping down. “Which way’s the restroom?”

     “Down the back stairs. Be careful, it’s dark.”

     Jenna made her way down the steep steps, holding onto the handrail. At the bottom she couldn’t tell which way to go down the hallway, lit by a single bulb. Both sides were stacked with cardboard boxes: lettuce, napkins, ketchup. The metal door to her right was locked, and it was icy to her touch. She thought it must be the freezer.

     She felt her way along the left wall. From further down she heard something like a goat, braying in distress. Must be a dog tied up outside, she decided. Over her head, she could hear the band’s music thumping. She tried a wooden door, locked too. She started to panic.

     Someone bounded down the stairs behind her in the shadows. Jenna flattened herself against the wall and sank down.

     “Jenna, Jenna!” called Holly in a whisper.

     Jenna stood up. “Thank god it’s you.”
     Holly ran over and grabbed her by the elbows.  “I only have a minute before they look for me,” she said. “You have to get out, now.”

     “What’s going on?”

     “There’s no time. It’s complicated. But I can’t stop them.” She dragged Jenna down the hall. There was a high window giving off a faint light.

      Holly pried it open and boosted Jenna up. “Swim out to where the boats are docked and keep your head down. Run for your car when you have a chance and keep going. Forget everything you saw tonight.”

     “Thanks,” gasped Jenna, hauling her legs through the opening. “You gonna be alright?”

     Holly gave her a ragged grin that took Jenna right back to their summers together. “Sure, I’ll be fine. You know me.”

     Jenna plunged into the chilly water and bobbed back up. She swam toward the dark boats bumping together. Overhead there were brilliant starbursts of fireworks, with glittery trails arcing down toward the water, followed by muffled booms.

     She grabbed onto a rope under the dock. Her arms shivered but she held on. A reverberation thrummed through the water, and a humming noise like cicadas filled the air. She stopped paddling and looked around, spooked.

      In the middle of the lake a concave indentation appeared, purplish in the flash of fireworks, tinged chartreuse around the edge. From the center an enormous radiant disc arose, illuminated by tiny lights racing around its rim. Behind her, the band had stopped. She thought she heard a chant swell up from the deck, a guttural utterance that was primal, half human. She thought of Jenna, trapped at Berlitz’s, but knew she had to silently drift to shore, climb the bank and turn the key of her Civic; she would leave the sale of the cottage to local agents and drive half the night to get back East, letting the highway roll under her in a steady gray stream, the night punctuated by the ghostly luminescence of gas stations and all-night diners.

Gary Duehr has taught creative writing for institutions including Boston University, Lesley University, and Tufts University. His MFA is from the University of Iowa Writers Workshop. In 2001 he received an NEA Fellowship, and he has also received grants and fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the LEF Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation.

Journals in which his writing has appeared include Agni, American Literary Review, Chiron Review, Cottonwood, Hawaii Review, Hotel Amerika, Iowa Review, North American Review, and Southern Poetry Review.
His books include Winter Light (Four Way Books) and Where Everyone Is Going To (St. Andrews College Press).

It was late afternoon and the restaurant was nearly empty. Two men in navy-blue suits dined in the back. These men were very much the same, though one was elderly and crumpled in the chair and the other was a clean-shaven man about forty. They sat by a great window that faced the quaint, cobblestone lane. There were many cafes and small store on this block.

The restaurant’s captain watched two beautiful women cross the street holding small shopping bags and whispering into each other’s ears. How beautiful they are, he thought, as he walked the bottle of cava across to the table. The captain placed the bottle in a tin pail of ice and took an order of steak tartare and stuffed mushrooms.

“Thank you, Mr. Brice,” the captain said as he departed.

“To go childless?” Henry took a drink. He scraped back his thin, white hair. “Your life will be pointless.”

“Dad, it’s not necessary to start –”

“No, I’m telling the truth.”

“I think it’s best if we have a nice, peaceful lunch. Don’t you?”

“I want to say exactly what I think of you to you. I have the right.”

“Yes, but this isn’t a good way –”

“You can sit there and say nothing for a while, can’t you?”

James said nothing. His hands were folded under the table and he was careful to not show expression. His father had ordered the cava, brioche with butter, and a charcuterie board of various cheeses, hams, and jellies.

“If it were me, I would be a suicide,” his dad said. “I’m certain. That’s what I know. You don’t know anything because you can’t see any further past tomorrow or the day after. Right?”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t understand.”

“I don’t apologize for telling you what I think. Please, take what you want.”

“I’m not hungry at the moment.”

“Not hungry? I bought all this and – anyways,” Henry went on with a curt shrug. “I don’t apologize for being so open with you. Nobody else but me knows you like I do. I remember when you were born, your heart beating, your face pulsating, when you saw the world for the first time. It was unbelievable. I couldn’t believe I’d pulled it off. So, I’ll say what I wish. You will listen to me, as you’re obligated to.”

“I understand, Dad.” James swallowed. “I’m not hungry.”

“Take some tartare. I’m telling you to.”

“No, thank you.”

“The cava – why won’t you have a drink?”

“I’m going back to the office after this.”

“The office? Why?” Henry laughed as he ate. “What could be so important?”

“There is a little bit of work I need to return to.”

“I don’t understand that.” Henry’s sea-green eyeballs and thin, rigid mustache, over-touched with black ink, appeared to dissolve into autumn’s wearying dusk. “You don’t understand me. You screamed. I cried. I’m not ashamed to admit it.”

The captain served to them from the bottle of cava. The headwaiter arrived with mussels and frites and nodded pleasantly.

“You screamed. All red,” Henry continued. “Now you sit, noiseless and grey.” His lips were wet with olive oil. “Incomplete. I haven’t any other word for it. The word I want to use I won’t use. I don’t want to make you cry. But I expected certain things out of you.”

“I’m only saying, Dad, that –”

“Please, stop. You say nothing, you’ve never had, and – it’s settled.” Henry took a long drink of the cava. The wine spilled in rivers down the lines of his face and onto his clean shirt. “You don’t understand that nothing is ever settled. It can’t be. This is wrong. You’re to blame. You, only you, more than your wife. Yes, a man is more at fault than a woman especially when it comes to this and you know this and you can’t do anything, can you?”

“It was a shared decision.”

“No, she had only the upper hand.”

“I’m sorry, but we’ve made our decision.”

“No, no.” Henry struck the table. “Don’t interrupt me anymore or I’ll say something you won’t like. I won’t have any choice. Because it’s what you need to hear. Isn’t that right?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Stop apologizing.”

“I’m only saying that the decision has been made and that is all,” James said. “I don’t have anything else to say. This is our decision.”

“You better get out of it before it rots your insides. That’s my instruction to you.”

“Dad, I don’t believe that –”

“No future for you … you’re not eating. And you’ve gotten puffy in the last year.” He grinned and then was deathly grim. “Without you, I would’ve been a suicide. I’m not a liar. Stopped lying a long time ago. I would’ve killed myself. How about that?”

“Dad, I don’t think –”

“My life would’ve been worthless. I was younger than you are now and I still thought that way. It would’ve been a gunshot in the head. I had it planned, back deep in the woods across from the Audubon, the gun and my head wrapped in wet towels. Nobody would’ve heard it. The mess wouldn’t have been so bad. Nobody would’ve found me for a long while.” Henry nodded. “You sit like an idiot. Do you think I enjoy this rigmarole with you?”

“It’s something we’ve decided on together.”

“It can’t be. You must come up with a different lie.”

“I’m sorry, Dad, but there isn’t –”

“It’s unbelievable, isn’t it?”

“We’ve made our decisions and we’re both happy.”

“Dammit, how about some toast and mussels and I bought all this, dammit.”

“We’ve been over this, Dad. I thought you understood and agreed to it.”

“It didn’t agree. Don’t give me that bullshit. I’m not stupid.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m going to order another bottle of this cava.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Dad. Remember, that I’m going to the office.”

“I don’t understand that!” Henry chuckled as scraped the mussel-shells of their insides. “How could your possible care? Don’t much know why you even go to work. I knew why I did. But what do you have?” He rested back in his chair. “This is a pricey place. And you won’t eat a thing.” He trembled. “They used to crowd me in this restaurant with the rest. They tried to pull that old trick. Once, I had some millionaires come to see me on business. They supported some forgotten politician – I’ve also forgotten who it was. However, every captain was at attention. After that, I was in front with the kings and rulers.” He grinned. “That taught them.” He sniffled and straightened himself. “Anyways, what do you mean by saying you’ve ‘settled on something’? Please, I don’t understand. Explain it.”

“Something we’ve talked over.” James said. He didn’t know how else to explain it.

“I don’t understand it. Together? What does that mean?” Henry asked, his face quickly beamed – he looked like a child on Christmas morning. “I never liked and never trusted her. I knew her right from the very beginning. I know those types.”

“No, you’re wrong, Dad, she’s a wonderful –”

“You should have the nerve to not ruin your life – don’t squirm there – you squirm because you know you’re in the wrong and I’m just – Look, you must understand that’s a difficult thing for me to accept.”

“This is a decision that we’re both made,” James tried.

“I’ll be dead soon. Goody for me. For you? I hope so. That girlish, over-educated … Shameful, frankly, that you put up with her. Thinking on suicide maybe? You know, all it takes is a gun. Won’t you go and do it? I promise I won’t be so sad.”

“Please, it’s not right to talk like this.”

“Don’t tell me what to do.”

“I’m only saying that it makes for bad lunch conversation.”

“And what do you care? Lunch? You’re not eating – thinking on your precious office.”

“There’s something that I –”

“I don’t understand why you need to work so hard. What’s the point?”

James didn’t answer. He wasn’t going to the office. But when the nervousness was too great, when he heard the noisy clattering in his brain, he went for a long and meandering walk around town. He drank a peppermint latte and smoked many cigarettes as he went around the knolls in the eastern districts and then down to the sea before returning home.

“Drifted off, huh?”

“I’m sorry. What did you say?”

Henry stared. “There’s no point without the future intact, is there?”

“Alright.”

Out on the street, a harsh wind-blow upturned trash from a receptable. A pretty woman shuffled by, trying to keep her dress held down. The captain shook his head as he went to serve a platter of oysters. He desired a lovely, beautiful girlfriend very much.

Henry shook his head as he took an oyster from the plate. “The wine is ninety-five dollars a bottle and you won’t touch it. These oysters are as valuable as diamonds.” He chuckled.

“I’m sorry, Dad. I have work I will need to get to soon.”

“You need to stop apologizing.” Henry snuffled into his sleeve. Mussel-shells were strewn all over the table. Their innards stained the tablecloth with browns and reds. “What was the point with you? I don’t much know why I brought you into the firm. That was my obligation. What is yours? No, you don’t care. Too selfish in the end.”

“I don’t know. I understand what you –”

“You can’t even give me that, can you?” Henry chuckled. “Do you think I liked doing it? Stabbing my friends in the back as I made money hand over fist? For you. You never understood what you were given. What was made from you before you even had the inkling to begin to try for yourself. Your grandfather advised me to make it that way. So, I did so.”

“It’s not up to me.”

“Yes, it is – she doesn’t respect you.”

“No, Dad, we’re happy.”

“A weakling. You’re a puny man. It makes me want to slap you.”

“She understands –”

“Stupid girlish notions that she’ll regret. I feel worse for her. It’s not like her job is impressive, fine for a woman, but meaningless in the long run. Maybe poverty and some old-fashioned stress would grow you up and – hey, when was the last time you stood about depressed on a perfectly lovely warm day and wondered what the hell was making you so miserable? That’s what I want to know. It’s a bit absurd. But you’ll get used to it. She’s lying to you. Because she hates you, and her own self too. She doesn’t respect you.”

The captain brought escargots, salmon meuniere upon arugula, liver pate, and toast. The maître ‘d assisted in setting the plates cleanly upon the table.

“You patronize her by supporting her. That’s the most disgusting part of it. Doesn’t it embarrass you? She despises you.” Henry spread liver on the brioche. “We got the same blood inside of us. Blood.” He patted his chest. “I guess it doesn’t mean anything to you. Maybe I’m the stupid one. I thought it did. I’ve been under the belief that it means something. What for? I see people who do what they wish without caring what people think and all I say is what the hell was I doing my whole life working at the stupid job until old age, eating what I –”

“Dad, it’s not so much like that. Please, I’m happy.”

“You have no right to be. James, believe me, you have no right.”

James looked about the dining room. He tried to believe that he and his father were passing strangers on park-benches, engaged in a casual conversation about the weather or ducks or baseball or whatever else people talked about under casual, ordinary circumstances. And that this random passer-by was just filling the air with barren, trivial lies.

“That wife of yours … you know what I think of her. Don’t you? Please, I’m begging you, tell me you at least know that. You can’t figure that out and I might – well, I don’t know what the hell I would do.”

“I’m only trying to follow.”

“I hope you’re enjoying everything?” the maître ‘d asked as he poured the last of the cava. “Is everything delicious, Mr. Brice?”

“It’s fine,” Henry answered coldly. His eyes were affixed onto his son.

James decided to eat a few escargots, to please his father. But they were to have salmon and saffron rice for dinner. He could see them together, exchanging funny stories as they sweated together in the warm, pristine kitchen. It was beautiful. He loved her very much, more than anyone knew. It wasn’t fair for him to be abused, and James felt his mind wandering to the hostile and unforgivable image of his father’s eventual death.

“If I were you, I would find myself a nice, homely girl who will raise children and want nothing else. I wouldn’t mess around with a stuck-up girl.” Henry struck the table. “A child. I’ve said it. And you – you won’t do anything about that, will you? A girl.”

“Please, Dad. Please.”

“It feels good to say it aloud. I hope you agree.” Henry gave him a long look. “You can’t stand up for yourself, can you? If my father called your mother that, I would’ve put him in the hospital in one second flat. But you sit there …Your grandpa and I fought once. I swung at him. I don’t remember why. Things were different back then. He hit me and I hit him … A bitch. Am I offending you? I’ll call her a bitch if I want to. That’s what she is.”

“She’s my wife. I love her very much.”

“No, you don’t. She doesn’t love you. If she did, she would act differently.”

“I don’t know what you mean by that.”

“No, you don’t – you’re not the brightest man.”

“I love her very –”

“Love hasn’t anything to do with it.” Henry considered. “Love is fine if you were a plumber and had nothing to live for. If there was nothing expected of you then you could fall in love. But look at you. Look at what I provided. Look at what I did. Let me tell you, I’ve forgotten more people than I screwed. All in the game. Well, it paid for your college and the meal you’re eating.”

The headwaiter served steak flambe, trumpet mushroom salad, fondant potatoes, and asparagus in mustard sauce. There were too many plates and the headwaiter and the maître ‘d tried to sensibly arrange them so that the table wouldn’t be so cluttered. They worked quietly and tried to assume indifference and dumbness.

“Hope you enjoy yourself now. You won’t.” Henry waived at the food. His expression was cynical and self-satisfied. “You won’t be mourned when you die. There won’t be anybody there. Everyone dies or leaves. Because you’re worthless. How will you feel when you’re useless and mute. You provide no help or guidance. You’ll have yourself to blame.”

James shook his head. “I love her very much.”

“What’s to be done?” Henry chortled as he took up his knife. “Well, nothing. Of course, I’m speaking sarcastically. There’s nothing to be done.”

James took the plate from his father and cut the steak into small pieces. He returned the place with a slow and steady nod.

“Yes, life will be joyless for you both,” Henry said as he ate. “Does she know it? The director of an art museum her entire life, her money that she will never very much need. Fine. Stupid job, but fine if she were ugly and bored. Fine, if she hadn’t greater responsibilities. Because you have enough. Isn’t that a superficial job? I think so. Do you? It’s a little embarrassing that she should plan her whole life about it.”

James took an oyster. Bitterness settled deep within him. He couldn’t shake how lovely and warm she would be back home, how hard she worked and how proud he was for her to have succeeded in her own way and without his help. He loved her. There wasn’t any mistake. He would go to the little fish shop down by the pier and buy a lobster for a special treat. Lobster, chocolate truffles, a bottle of resiling and cannabis lollipops.

“Strong and tough and mean as a man.” Henry sniffed. “She’s a baby, like you. You indulge her. You’re worse. You’re a failure. I am too, I suppose.” He chewed vigorously. “A performer. She likes to believe she’s against the world. Women are like that now. I don’t know why. Perhaps they have too much. Of course, when spoiled people are treated like the rest, they can get horribly indignant. Yes. But you indulge her. That’s what gets me to thinking that it’s a good thing in the end. You shouldn’t be any sort of father. And for her? She doesn’t know the gifts and opportunities her family provided for her, as I did for you too. You’re children. Both of you. You’ve no sense of obligation to our generation. I’m happy you won’t have them. I couldn’t be more thrilled. It would be a mistake, for you – I see that now.”

“Dad, all I’m saying –”

“Shut up for a minute. If I didn’t love you like I did, you would’ve been nothing.” Henry smacked the table with an open palm. The dishes jumped. “A man bows to her and ends up with nothing. Morons have twelve children, feed them a biscuit a day, and send none to college. They go to heaven. It’s absurd, even sidesplittingly so, that she and you will end up in Hell, being useless nonsense things. I hate God. I wish you would have some steak. Why can’t you? Have one tiny piece for me, for your old man.” Henry began to laugh, high-pitched and fiendishly. “Won’t you? One tiny piece? Can’t you? You can’t? No? No!”

“I’m not hungry, Dad. I’m sorry.”

“You should eat because I have bought this large, perfect meal. This meal is perfect. I cannot believe such a chef could’ve pulled it off.”

“Please, Dad –”

“I don’t understand what you’re thinking doing this. If I were you, I wouldn’t waste five seconds. I would tell her to take a hike!”

James shivered. “Would you like me to order the car for you, Dad?”

“Not even some bread with the tartare? Huh?” Henry shrugged. A black-purplish flush spotted his cheeks, chin, and the bridge of his nose. “Where do you think the ghost is? The ghost inside of all of us.” He laughed. “The soul. The ghost. We care so much for the skin and brains and forget on the ghost.”

James smiled as warmly and submissively as he could as he stood and made eyes with the captain. The captain went to speak with the maître ‘d and the two men split.

“You haven’t any answer and you must like it that way. A whole life of taking things that aren’t yours and aren’t we all fools to put up with it? Not like women, with their things paid for, so they live like children. That responsibility means nothing in the end. Why does anyone want it? It forced upon people. Nobody wants it. It’s something that’s difficult to figure out. I don’t have an answer. Men are children too now. That’s what we’ve done. Haven’t we? How about you make something up. Please. Won’t you?” Henry fell to his knees besides the table and clasped his hands as a beggar would. “Won’t you? Won’t you? For Daddy?”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

“Fine, have it your way.”

“I’m only trying – well, Dad, it’s a hard question.”

“Shouldn’t be. Any answer will do.”

Henry scrunched up his face. “I’m sorry, Dad.” He shook his head. “Why don’t we call your car now, Dad – I must get back to the office.”

“Yes, you have nothing. Nothing at all.”

 There was a shiny pallor in his father’s face. James left the table and walked towards the door. As he did so, his father laughed. The teeny, snarky whinnying accelerated into a dirty, sinister holler that stung like a bad odor in the empty room. The maître ‘d walked towards the table. James met the maître ‘d in the middle of the room and they exchanged words. James nodded at the end and returned to the table. He kept his hands hidden below the table and he tried to keep himself occupied. Each second was long. James felt for his old, worthless father. He saw Henry drink the cava in silence and shook his head as the faint confusion came over those small green eyes. He wished he could do something reassuring and kind for him. He’d never cared so much about keeping up his dignity. For he had the upper hand and mustn’t forget it.

Hunter Prichard is a writer born and raised in Portland, Maine. Follow him on Twitter at @huntermprichard.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. “
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Only this, and nothing more.”

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore—
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating, “
“’Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door—
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;—
This it is, and nothing more.”

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
“Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you”—here I opened wide the door;—
Darkness there, and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore!”
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!”—
Merely this, and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
“Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice,
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore—
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;—
‘Tis the wind and nothing more.”

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore.
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door—
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door—
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore.
“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore—
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning—little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blest with seeing bird above his chamber door—
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as “Nevermore.”

But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered—not a feather then he fluttered—
Till I scarcely more than muttered, “other friends have flown before—
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.”
Then the bird said, “Nevermore.”

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
“Doubtless,” said I, “what it utters is its only stock and store,
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore—
Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore,
Of ‘Never—nevermore’.”

But the Raven still beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and door;
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore—
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking “Nevermore.”

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom’s core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion’s velvet lining that the lamplight gloated o’er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamplight gloating o’er,
She shall press, ah, nevermore!

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose footfalls tinkled on the tufted floor.
“Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee—by these angels he hath sent thee
Respite—respite and nepenthe, from thy memories of Lenore;
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!”
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!—
Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted—
On this home by horror haunted—tell me truly, I implore—
Is there—is there balm in Gilead?—tell me—tell me, I implore!”
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us—by that God we both adore—
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.”
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

“Be that word our sign in parting, bird or fiend!” I shrieked, upstarting—
“Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,
And the lamplight o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted—nevermore!

First published in 1845 by Edgar Allan Poe by the Grandfather of the American Short Story, “The Raven” remains Poe’s best known work and is always worth another reading.

“In the bleak midwinter…”

Peaky Blinders reintroduced us to this poem by Christina Rossetti.

I won’t quote the entire poem, but it is worth reading and I am reminded of this first line as I stare out onto an otherwise grey day. Very Sherlock Holmes-like if you ask me.

But, we need some great words, lines, and stories to get out blood moving and so here they are.

We hope you enjoy the read.

Ronin

T-Minus 10 Days

            My commander ordered that I journal as self-therapy. I’m worried about the jump. First attempt in a hundred years, who isn’t?

            There are three of us. Alex, young and ambitious, is the best pilot we have. Kameko is our navigator. They think her being Japanese will help in the event we meet people.

            It took five generations to recover. The first did what they had to to survive. My grandfather said it was ignorance that allowed it to get as bad as it did. It was the same ignorance that led people to hate him over the color of his skin.

            It’s for the best that the first generation is gone. Remembering the old-world would be torture. Alex has never even seen an infected. He has no idea of what was lost.

            Talking to Kameko’s parents has set me on edge. Her father yelled, “We named her Kameko for a reason!” She told me later her name meant “long-life”. They think she’s going to die. They think we all are.

            If my family were living, what would they think?   

T-Minus 9 Days

            When I asked Kameko to back off the mission, she reminded me she was the only one of us who spoke Japanese.

“Diamond, you are a ronin, always ready for battle. You need me because you trust me. You’ve got to trust someone. I bet you even think they’re reading our journals too!”

            The second generation sought to solidify survival. They looted libraries instead of grocery stores. Rather than plunder the old world, they sought areas to protect and began farming.

Jiro Shino invented the ship. He calls it a ship not a plane. Teasing space? He hypothesized we should be able to fly into the jet streams and turn off the fuel gauges and drift on the wind currents. Haven’t tried drifting yet, but the flight went well today.

We flew low into the fog and saw the red top peaks of the Golden Gate Bridge. Like arms spreading wide, the fog separated, revealing the city and bay. Alex took advantage and flew closer. It was completely empty, a relic of another time.

“We still lock our doors at night! What if something happens?” Alex cried to me after the flight.  

T-Minus 7 Days

            Yesterday’s mission was 7 hours. We’re told we should expect to travel at least three times that to Japan. Alex needed a break halfway though, so I took over while he stood and stretched. It would be easy to just go and explore the whole world.

            Jiro is proud of his little ship. We hardly used any fuel. He asked a lot of questions and took a lot of measurements. He seems confident we could leave today and be fine. 

            The third generation after the outbreak began the population boomn. As a community we grew from 300 to thousands. People appeared, new families formed, and small communities merged into a larger one.

            Most of the infected were weak at this point. Years of decay making them almost hardly worth the effort. Our territories expanded. Our group grew.

We know of three major groups nearby. Houston, Virginia, and Montana know us as the PCG (Pacific Coastline Group). Communication is difficult and rare between the groups.

            The third generation also began to establish laws. Dissidents were excommunication. Excommunication by tattoo on the forehead. Democracy became a thing of the past as we followed leaders who sought the good of our survival.

T-Minus 5 Days

            Yesterday we flew over what used to be LA. Still uninhabitable from the nuclear fallout. Desperate decisions scorched the earth forever. We landed back at base still talking about the rest of the world. What will we see?

            Hearing the discussion, they put us on anxiety meds. We’ve been moved away from our families into the facility. They tell us we should have less distractions. We’re making history.

            The fourth generation, our parent’s generation, began to develop into doctors and engineers.

Chaos, my grandfather warned, was inevitable. He told us to embrace it. Hanging himself, he allowed his body to transform into what he had spent so much of his life fighting. I guess it was the best way to warn us. Out of order, chaos must come.

T-Minus 4 Days

            I dreamt that I was being kidnapped. I woke and grabbed for my journal. It was moved. Or was it? We all seem mellowed out. Maybe too much for making the jump? Is paranoia a side effect? Carelessness maybe another? Maybe I moved the journal myself.

            Since living in the compound, we don’t talk like we had. Maybe it’s just all the change in the last day or two.

T-Minus 3 Days

            The fifth generation, my generation, is reclaiming the world.

            There’s a quote stuck in my head. “Be careful of those who stare into the void.” I don’t know what the other half is, but I had decided to lie on my cot for the day and think about it. “Be careful to stare into the void.” I don’t know.

            Kameko asked me what I was doing before pulling out her pad to search it. The Internet is still full of useful and useless information. Trends and mishaps forever plastered across the microcosm reaching like a grim reminder of a world forgotten. She tried to tell me, but I wouldn’t let her.

            Begrudgingly I searched the quote and found it easily. Is nothing left to mystery anymore?

T-Minus 2 Days

            We are happy to be a part of this jump. Everyone has been good to us. I can be quite a curmudgeon when the anxiety takes hold. I feel good. We are ready what is ahead.

T-Minus 0 Days

            We launch today. I’m up before the others. Our sleep schedules had been slowly scattered so that we won’t overlap once in the air.

            The journal isn’t leaving my side until I get on the ship. They’re watching and reading everything.

            Alex joined me at breakfast, I couldn’t stop staring at him eat. He was biting into a hard piece of bread. He tore at it mercilessly, hungrily consuming every bite. I can’t eat. Kameko joined us a few minutes after. So much for sleep schedules. We agreed to go off the anxiety meds after we launch.

Later—

            When we launched, I didn’t do the turn around to fly over the base like they wanted. We need the boost in morale not the city. We flew straight towards the Pacific. I held my breath as the sun glistened off the blue waters before we lifted higher. Once we found the jet stream, our engines clicked audibly to auxiliary power, and we drifted. Success.

T-Minus -1 Days

            I wasn’t prepared for the sound of rushing as the air circulated in and out of the engine. Stalling a few times, it was relatively smooth as we travelled along the haunted paths of ancient airliners.

            We ditched the meds. Kameko and I at first, then Alex. Kameko seems eager. Her family told her she looks as far from Japanese as her fellow passengers. She carries herself differently. They tried to warn her.

The leading theory was a bacterium had attached itself to humans. The bacteria would reanimate the dead host. The belts strapped against our chest would hold us in place but put us within arm’s reach of grabbing the others. If one of us dies, it could jeopardize the others.

T-Minus -2 Days

            Jets flew toward us as we approached Japan. Kameko spoke to them in Japanese through the radio, laughing in between transmissions. We followed them back to an airfield where we landed and were met by a group of soldiers and diplomats.

            Japan did well during the outbreak. They adapted quickly listening to their government’s orders. Being an island helped.

            Awkward talk as Kameko translated. On the tarmac, a car pulled up and a man in a suit hurried out. Cho Haru is the diplomat assigned to us. He speaks English but seems hesitant to use it even when translating.

            They’ve shown us how to interface with some of their satellites when we return. Already anticipating a long-term relationship, we discovered we were using an isolated disconnected internet. They told us it would be good to begin relations with England too who is trying to take back most of Europe but when asked how it was going, Cho frowned.

            They emptied a hotel for us. Probably more for them than for us. I cannot help the suspicion inside as Alex muttered, “too good to be true”.

            Most people walk around with swords attached to their belts and they’ve given us each a sword as a gift. Diplomacy or necessity, I’m not sure. They’ve offered for us to stay for a week, but we’ve graciously said 3 days.

            Cho, who has become favored by our little group, when no one else is around, is very talkative. He has started calling Alex, kauboi (cowboy). Kameko is more reserved. Her family was right. She is an outsider even here. Eyes are on us constantly. Feels like home.

T-Minus -3 Days

            There is a picture frame above my head when I sleep. It bounces every time there’s a gush of wind from the vent. Tap. Tap. Tap. It isn’t regular and happens periodically throughout the night. It keeps me from sleeping deeply.

            With blurry eyes, I thought I saw people in the room. I tried to rise but couldn’t.  

Later—

            We were planning on leaving today. There was an outbreak near the hanger. An older man driving a cart had a heart attack. Transformation was almost instant. Alex screamed showing his innocence. Someone got bitten. Kameko reacted swiftly, pulling out her sword and running toward them when a man shouted at her. He called her, “Gaijin”.

            I had to press Kameko for what the word meant.

“I thought it would be my body language, but it wasn’t. I’m too much of a Gaijin based on my looks. My blood is not pure. I thought maybe my grandfather was wrong. I thought my hair, my skin seemed to look Japanese enough. For them, I’m like the infected. I’m worse than a regular Gaijin…” seeing my expression, “Foreigner. But instead, I’m like the infected where I was once like them but am no longer.”

She stared resolutely while men in swords put down the outbreak. We’re not leaving. They need to inspect the whole area just to be safe. Lies?

Later –

            People stared as we were walked through the city. They’re improvising – not sure what to do with us. Outbreaks happen, but something must have set them off. Kameko disagrees thinking the outbreak, although small, looked like weakness and they don’t want to seem weak. Fair enough.

            Cho apologized, “They’re not used to seeing outsiders.” That’s better than them judging me for being black. I hadn’t thought to ask about tourism when the outbreak happened, something that doesn’t exist today, but Kameko did.

            “Most left.” Cho said. “Some remain, but not much. Japan has always thrived in isolation. Storms would keep out invaders. After the outbreak, it did that as well as keep out many refugees.”

T-Minus -4 Days

            I fear what is to become of us. We can’t shake the escorts. They don’t want us near our ship.  After what happened last night, I’m pretty sure we’re never going home again.

            They threw a banquet for us. We ate happily with more dignitaries. We took it as one last show of their strength and dominance before we left. Let us leave on that note rather than on blood.

            Alex drank hard. Kameko and Cho helped with translating conversation. Alex rose, holding a bottle of Sake, and flirted with a waitress. When the waitress giggled, you could hear a pin drop. Everything happened quickly after.

            “Dog,” someone shouted.

            Alex grinned at the dignitary before turning to the waitress whose head was turned away. With his finger, he moved her chin over and up for a kiss. The guards rushed Alex whether on orders or not, I don’t know. Alex ducked a blow with a sword that hit home with the waitress who crumbled to the floor.

            Kameko and I rose in our seats, but Cho pressed himself in front of us. Before we could do anything, not that there was much we could do, Alex was swinging a sword at the guards. It was mercifully quick for him. The guards had training; Alex was just a cowboy.

            We watched Alex transform, his milky white eyes opening to a new life. The guards used their swords to pin him to the wall while others dispatched the waitress and then another guard whose injuries looked serious, but maybe not lethal.

            I was handed a sword and knew my duty without translation. I dispatched Alex myself.   

T-Minus -5 Days

            Whispers woke me in the middle of the night. I could not move my arms against the restraints. Barely making out Alex and Kameko in nearby beds. I fear it was a dream, but I don’t know. It felt real. An IV hung above me with a label, “Z-243”.  I had to write this before I forget.

Later—

            I don’t understand what’s going on. Kameko seems resigned in her silence. We’ve asked to see Cho, but we’ve seen only the guards who won’t let us leave the hotel. I wonder if they will smile before they kill us.

Later—

            Good meeting in the evening. They seem as apologetic as we do. Cho spoke eloquently about our nations building a relationship together. Maybe they assume we’ve been in contact with the PCG. Either way, it looks hopeful.

T-Minus -7 Days

            Yesterday they took us sightseeing. We met more dignitaries and some of mixed race. Overall, it was uneventful. They seemed hell-bent on trying to make up for the last few days.

            Kameko began to warm a little. She laughed and I felt like there’s a good chance we’re going to be leaving soon.

Gaijin

1.

            Staring at the different light fixtures in her room, Kameko wondered how she was being watched. Diamond wandered in appearing like a ghost and leaving as suddenly. She stared at the wooden framed sliding doors with an image of a woman holding a red dress against her chest with a deep blue backdrop when it slid open again.

            “You, okay?” Diamond asked.

            “Yes.” Surely he knew they could not speak freely. “I am filled with emotion.”

            “Alex?”

            Kameko nodded.

 “Everything has changed.”  

             “You’re still my ronin.” Kameko grabbed his hand pulling him to sit with her on the bed.

            “Do you know why my parents named me Diamond?”  He didn’t wait for her reply. “Diamonds are forged by pressure and time and come out beautiful for it. My father named me Diamond because he wanted me to always remember that beauty would emerge from my trials.”

            “That’s lovely. Diamond Winters.”

             “I dropped the ‘s’ when my family passed. Winter.”

            Their hands tightened. Another man, Kameko considered, would’ve kissed her by now.

            “What happened to your family?” Then seeing his face, her mouth tightened, “I mean, I’ve heard….”

“One parent attacked the other. I don’t know how or what killed them, but one passed and spread the death to the other and then my sisters. I ran not understanding everything but knowing to run. I barricaded my bedroom door. Days passed while I listened to them clawing to get into my room before someone found me.”

Kameko, not wanting to wait any longer, kissed him. She felt his hands tense and then relax as the kiss turned to more. He went to pull back, if only just to look at her face when she whispered to keep kissing.

            “Maybe this is the only way we can truly speak freely here.” She said as Diamond kissed her neck. “They’re watching us.”

            “Of course.” Diamond said breathily as his hands gravitated from hers to her body.

            “I fear they won’t let us leave.”

2.

            “I saw Cho last night.” Diamond said looking at the frowning portrait of a samurai. A man resolute in duty with his blue and orange armor.

            “You met with Cho.”

            “He came while you were sleeping.”

            “Why didn’t you wake me?”  

            “He wanted to talk.”

            “You know, I wa….”

            “He wanted just me.”  

            “And?”  

             “I don’t think we’re leaving anytime soon.”

            “You needed Cho to tell you?”

Diamond smiled and shook his head, “Cho said we were free to wander the city.”

Kameko lowered her head. All the things she wanted to say but couldn’t flooded her heart. Wandering the city might be good, she consoled herself. Maybe they could speak freely.

3.

            “Wandering the city?” Cho asked walking up behind them.

            “Where did you come from?” Diamond said jumping.

            “I happen to be walking by.”

            Kameko looked down hearing the obvious lie. She focused on a small piece of wrapper spinning in the breeze. The red and blue colors blurred together as the wind picked up.

            “These are you escorts, Master Diamond.” Cho said holding his hand up to the two men who stood in the street with arms dangling at their sides. “They will keep a safe distance.”

            “Thank you.”

            “May you have an uneventful day.” Cho said as Diamond grasped his hand.

            Kameko stared at the guards as Cho disappeared into the crowd. Diamond’s hand found Kameko’s as he pulled her back in the direction they had been headed. Kameko turned to see the guards keeping pace.

            “Do you suppose they are the only ones following us?” Diamond asked.

            “No. They’re probably tracking us by twenty different means.”

            “Then let’s make it boring for them.”

            “And fun for us?”

4.

            Behind the podium, a dark blue curtain hung blocking the building behind them. A man rose and waved at the small crowd. Cameras angled at him as took the podium and began to sing.

            “May your reign continue for….”

            “I’ve heard their anthem already.” Diamond whispered to Kameko to stop her from translating.

“You’re too disillusioned, Ronin.”

Diamond smiled as turned from the gathering. His hand naturally touching the handle of his sword. Thunder rumbled in the distance.

“Such a loud burst of thunder for so little clouds.” Kameko said as they headed away from the group of people.

“Some would say that’s you.”

Kameko laughed and they drew in closer as they walked along the road until the buildings grew smaller. Diamond noted the only other people on the road were their escorts.

5.

Trees were scattered around with pink flowers budding on every branch. Kameko and Diamond’s eyes drifted from the trees to a small decorative bridge stretching over the still blue water that had dozens of orange koi rushing below. As the wind picked up, pink flowers lifted into the air, its petals flapping like butterfly wings as they landed and floated in the water.

            “What are those trees called?” Diamond asked turning toward one of the escorts.

            “Plum Blossom.”

            Thunder roared above them and as they stood, hand in hand, dozens of jagged streaks of lighting began racing across the sky parallel to each other. The sky became a gigantic dome imprisoning them.

            Diamond felt the beauty fill his heart as the hairs on his arm began to rise. More of the Plum Blossom flowers fluttered off tree and Kameko stepped forward grabbing at them.

A jagged piece of lightning broke away from the others and landed in Diamond’s chest. Noise exploded into a silence as Kameko was pushed to the ground by its force.

6.

            Rain began to fall as Kameko rose as slowly as Diamond. The escorts reacted slowly. Kameko, sword in hand, approached Diamond. Already a monster, she swung unable to meet his eyes as he met his rebirth with death.

            The rain merged with her tears as she lowered her head and fell to her knees. One hand still holding the small flower from the Plum Blossoms. She let it fall to the ground as she collected herself to rise and see the escorts had run to get help.

            Opportunity was short in coming. Kameko sheathed the sword and turned to run. With Alex and Diamond gone, she would surely be killed.

            When the four men had found her, she had a good idea where she was. Swords already drawn, they stood ready for an attack.

7.  

            One man charged her as her hand rested on the handle of the sword. She stepped to the side, pulling out the sword out before moving to the man’s other side and slicing into his stomach. Another was almost on top of her, she moved making a lethal slash across his face causing the blood to spray upward making her see the pink flowers instead of the blood as she dug the sword into the man’s stomach for a final strike.

            The first man rose, trying to collect his entrails, already his jaw opening and closing as the transformation began. The other men ran for help. Kameko rushed toward them before seeing a door and kicking it in, she ran into a small food store.

            She had thought the training a waste of time when she was a child. If she could, she would thank her father for teaching her how to use the sword. Not seeing it as a foreign object, but as an extension of herself. She rushed out of the front door, sheathing the sword again. She pushed into a crowd of people as she heard someone shout.

            “I’m going to get you out of here!”

8.

            If she hadn’t recognized the voice, she might’ve turned to look. But she had, so she pressed to ignore it as it reverberated inside.

            “I’m going to get you out of here!” Alex shouted from some distant place.

            Thunder rumbled above as Kameko pushed through the crowd of people. It had to be a hallucination. Alex was dead. Diamond was dead. She would fight even her own failing mind to get out of here.

            She rounded a corner to a street that led to the hanger when she heard another familiar voice.

“Are you aware of what seppuku is?” Cho’s voice was harsh.

Kameko eyed the two guards standing on either side of him. Her hand rested on the handle of her sword.

“Seppuku is ritual suicide. This is, you understand, the bland foreign word. To us, it is so much more but I’d like to offer you a chance to do so. You are gaijin. You know we will not let you leave. Even if you make it to your ship, we will shoot you down.”

Kameko pulled the sword out slowly and held it in her hands. Cho showed his teeth. Alex still called out inside her head. When Kameko whirled the blade slashing through one of Cho’s guards into his neck causing crimson fountains to erupt, she had made her decision. It was more surprise than skill, she reasoned as she dispatched the three easily.

As she ran for her ship, she heard Cho as he began to groan.

9.

            The engines started and the ship lifted. Out the window, she saw people being attacked.

As she headed toward open water, bright vivid yellow burst across the sky as the thunder rumbled from her insides. A storm approached. The world was a dome that ensnared her.

Kauboi

1.

            The dead don’t move. Shouldn’t be able to think either, but well, let’s face it, I’m here. I’m moving slowly and I wonder if there aren’t invisible chains tethering me to the underworld even now. Voices move on unseen currents around me.

            Diamond, the ever-serious man of duty, did what he had to do. The first blow was weak. I, not in my right mind, should have laughed at his ineptitude. Instead, I was too busy being killed as my body was pinned against a wall just for some harmless flirting. I hope he cried.

2.

            I’m aware of the necessity of swords; I just don’t like them. Give me a gun.

The current shifts. The voices, noises, become closer to language and then discernable words. Am I still lying on the restaurant floor? Are these the last synapses to fire before I drift into forever dark?

            I think I know everything when I see Jiro Shino standing above me wearing a lab coat. I want to ask him how he got to Japan. Admittedly, sometimes I’m slow. When I move my arms, I feel the straps keeping me restrained.

            I open my mouth to speak. Nothing serious, but with one word, I lose my audience, “Brains!”

3.

            Death is the true infection; we’re just catching colds.

            I reach my hand over to the nurse and gently touch hers. She pulls away.

            “It was just a joke, darlin’. Forgive my impertinence. Do me a favor, huh? Let me out of this?”

            The nurse shakes her head no before turning and messing with an IV bag with the label “Z-243” on it. I feel my head lull as I’m able to say one more slurred sentence.

            “Hard to get, I like it.”

4.

            “How are you holding up today?”  Jiro Shino smiles as my eyes find focus.

            “Wrists.” I whisper before tugging at my restraints.

            “I’m not going to do that Alex.”

            I open my mouth and let out a yawn. The yawn wasn’t intentional but comes out stretching violently. It hurts my jaw. I’m careful to look befuddled, trying to hide my playfulness.

            “How you Japan?”

“We’ve talked about this, Alex. You never left.” Then turning to someone out of my sight, “Maybe this is a side effect of 243?”

“243.” I say slowly. “What?”

“Z-243 – Part of the bacteria of the virus. It’s helped us discover a little bit more about you and the others.” Jiro stepped back and I saw the others laying in their beds. “We’ve learned quite a lot about you.”

“No ship?” I talk in short bursts. I want him thinking I’m more incapacitated than I am.

“No, there is a ship. But I doubt we will trust you to fly it. Not after what we saw. We need to know we can trust you. We need to know you will be responsible. We expect you to carry yourself as a proper citizen of PCG. Frankly, there’s much to be desired after seeing how the events have played out.”

5.

            My eyes open and I look around the room. It’s quiet. There are wires sticking out of Diamond and Kameko attached to the wall. It’s as if they’re part of a machine now.

            “Don’t move.” The nurse from before whispers.

            I feel a warm sponge on me. My body tingles.

            “They’re watching. Camera in the corner.

            “Unplug it. Get me out of here.”

            “Play it cool, cowboy.”

            “Kameko?”

            “No, her sister, Kiyoko.”

            “Kiyoko.” I say and reach for her just a little. I can’t help myself.

            “Oh dear,” she says and shoves the IV back into my arm. As my eyes grow heavy, she whispers, “I told you, don’t move, cowboy. Learn your lesson and we can talk longer next time.”

6.

            “Frankly, I don’t care if he rots here.” Jiro is speaking to someone in the room. They think I’m unconscious. “He’s the liability. The other two have stayed on mission. Frankly, we can find a new pilot. Hell, we can find a new team! I don’t like that those two have a budding relationship either!”

            “Should we pull them out?”

            “No. Let them linger in uncertainty more. I want to see how they handle it.”

            My eyes meet Kiyoko’s. She’s brought me out to hear this.

            When the room goes silent, she whispers to me, “The drug should be out of your system in an hour. Rest. Gather your strength.” Then smiling, “Don’t speak. You’re not going to get out of this, and I fear what they’re going to do to my sister.”

7.

            “Nurse.” Jiro says. “Bring him up.”

            “Yes, Master Shino.” Kiyoko says, “Diamond’s arm is going to need attention sir.”

            She loosens only one restraint. I think it might be all the time she has. Jiro paces waiting for me to revive. It’s been close to an hour, and I feel my body ready.  

            “Alex,” Jiro says.

            I groan. I don’t really know what else to do. I lift my head but allow it to lull to the side looking him up and down. A small gun in a holster is easily reachable.

            The punch exuded more shock than pain as Jiro stumbles back. I reach for the gun. I whirl across the room, not seeing Kiyoko but seeing a man in the doorway, I shoot. As I turn back to Jiro, Kiyoko pulls out a syringe from his neck. His eyes glaze over as he falls to the floor.

            I reach for the other restraints as Kiyoko pulls the plugs first from Diamond and begins removing the IV. By the time I get different electrodes and plugs off my own body, she’s begun pulling Kameko’s.

8.

             “I’m going to get you out of here.” I whisper to Kameko.

            Diamond groans and Kiyoko rushes over to him as I keep unplugging Kameko and talking to her.

            “It’s time to wake up. We have to get out of here.”

            “Switch.” Kiyoko shouts.

            I rush to Diamond who stares at me. I smile. He’s confused.

9.

            “Where do we go?” I ask Kiyoko as I help Diamond walk.

            Kiyoko pants. Kameko’s arm is around her. She turns to me. I think she doesn’t have a plan as my grip on the gun tightens.

            “The hanger.”

            “The hanger?”

            Kiyoko smiles as Diamond clears his throat and tries to stand on his own.

            “I want to see what has happened, really happened to the world.”

Kris Green lives in Florida with his wife, two-year old son, and little new baby daughter. His first story was published in 2018 through Morpheus Tales. Last year, three more short stories were published. This past year, he has published six short stories as well as two poems.

And so
this frosty morning
a little
Je ne sais quoi
in the air, to blare
like a loudspeaker
fastened to the top
of an old Chevrolet:
the month’s name
(lest there be
any cold confusion).
It is February.
The month
that offers
neither promise
nor apology.
Not even
in a leap year.

Linda McCullough Moore is the author of two story collections, a novel, an essay collection and more than 350 shorter published works. She is the winner of the Pushcart Prize, as well as winner and finalist for numerous national awards. Her first story collection was endorsed by Alice Munro, and equally as joyous, she frequently hears from readers who write to say her work makes a difference in their lives. For many years she has mentored award-winning writers of fiction, poetry, and memoir. She is currently completing a novel, Time Out of Mind, and a collection of her poetry. www.lindamcculloughmoore.com

In waking hours, Lindsay was willowy and graceful, carrying herself with an almost regal bearing and an aura of understated elegance.  Her finely chiseled features and impeccable skin belonged in a European luxury car commercial.  But despite this, she had never been an angelic, or even particularly attractive sleeper.  Lindsay rolled her face grudgingly across the pillow when Heath burst into the dark bedroom.  Her hair was matted, mouth hanging open like a salmon on ice at the butcher shop, heavy slumber weighing her eyes.  “Lindsay!”  Heath yelled.  “Linds we’ve got to get out of here.  They’re coming for us!”

She smiled slowly, as if thickly beginning to comprehend that a joke was being pulled, but not quite sure she wanted to play.  “Who is…” she sighed, wiping at a strand of sweaty hair.

“I’ll tell you.  Just.  There’s no time!  Lindsay, come with me.  Please!  Now!”

Heath wasn’t real sure who was after him – Sciron corporate security, the regular cops, or maybe a mob of geeks like himself in flannel and Pearl Jam t-shirts, bloodthirsty over his betrayal.  They knew where he lived, of course, would look for him here first, and were likely close behind.  But he had thought it imperative to grab Lindsay, and hoped there was enough time.  Though Lindsay wasn’t innocent – her second-biggest mistake having been simply sticking with him – Heath knew this wasn’t her mess and felt a panicky guilt about dragging her in.  It was him they chased through the cold night, but he couldn’t just run away and leave her to be found.  Maybe she deserved to be dragged out of bed by goons, and then have to stammer and plead with them to believe that she knew nothing about her husband’s secret life.  But tonight wasn’t her fault.  And it wouldn’t be right to just leave her.  If they hurried, they might survive together.

            Heath felt a curious remorse at having disturbed her, but that was quickly smothered by his anger, coursing adrenaline, and the stark urgency of survival.  Lindsay slipped from the bed, her muddled confusion hardening fast into anxious, fractured purpose.  Without protest she jerked herself into sweats, frantically stuffing the hem of the little silk camisole she slept in down the waistband.  Heath threw her one of his hoodies from the floor as he gathered a ball of clothes.  With an efficient poise that Heath admired since she could have no idea why she was doing any of this, Lindsay had filled a backpack with clothes and toiletries in under a minute.  After zipping the pack, Lindsay clawed for her wedding ring on the nightstand with an urgency and relief implying that the ring was the final, crucial survival tool she had almost forgotten.  Heath watched her slide the glittering diamond and gold band down her slim finger with a mix of pride and pain.  He glanced out the window, then seethed: “sorry, Linds, it’s time.  We’ve got to go!”

            Heath took hold of his wife’s slender wrist as she tugged on her second Ked, hopping as he pulled her behind him.  “I got you into this,” he panted, “I’ll get you out.”

            He had left the car running.  The suburban street of low-slung 1960’s mid-century ranches near the bay that had once sheltered the solid, middle-class families whose dads worked in San Francisco and San Jose, but now sell to disruptors, visionaries and angel investors for two million dollars, was quiet, but Heath feared his pursuers could be waiting anywhere.  Lindsay said nothing as they got in the car; curious, Heath thought, for a woman who took a generally dim view of spontaneity.  He admired her in the sallow dome light against the cold, black, night sky, tenderness swelling in the heart that had pounded non-stop since just before midnight.  He switched the headlights off, rolling cautiously down the silent street.  “Keep an eye out,” he told her.  He was glad to have an ally, but quickly became seized by an icy dread that he should not trust his striking wife either.  Heath cursed the paranoia that was biting him from one side, pinching from the other, and choking from behind.  They threaded stealthily through side streets, past darkened strip malls and empty parking lots, to slip finally on to the freeway. 

            Heath turned the headlights on, but had no idea where he was going.  “They killed Moto,” he told Lindsay finally.  He was still unsure who “they” were, but quite sure that his wife had no idea who Moto was.

***

            Whoever killed Moto earlier that night had staged the scene with deliberate care.  Heath found the thin old man dangling from a rope strung to an exposed beam in his eclectic corner of Sciron’s high-tech glass and steel Silicon Valley workspace.  On the surface it was meant to look like a suicide, Heath figured.  But they had left clumsy, childish, maddeningly simple clues meant to tell Moto’s followers that this tragedy was intentional.  His battered bicycle helmet, festooned with scarred Ramones and Buzzcocks stickers, and recognizable to anyone on the Sciron campus, was crammed backwards on his head.  The desk of the well-known neat-freak was strewn with trash.  Most chilling of all was Moto’s whiteboard; there in an approximation of the old man’s jittery, stilted penmanship was scrawled: Net Riders Meeting Tonight.  The Net Riders were exposed, Heath realized as he stared at Moto’s lifeless frame, his gut twisting.  Someone knew what Moto was doing, and wanted it stopped.  This was both a murder, and a message.

            Fuyuki “Moto” Yamamoto was said to have written greenscreen code in many Palo Alto garages with the vanguard of the digital revolution back in the day.  His intuition about consumer behaviors in the dawn of Big Tech was revered as prescient.  Silicon Valley lore said that it was Moto who told Steve Jobs to keep his logo simple, and his wise counsel that guided socially awkward prodigies to evolve dial-up chatrooms and forum threads into social networks.  Moto’s association with Sciron in the early days helped secure millions in venture capital, solidifying the foundation for its current dominance of the digital space.

The business card that the old man had once handed Heath, then a dorky and obscure company coder simply said: 

Moto

Vision Proselytizer & Chief Agitator

 “Mind if I join you?” Moto smiled then, seeming to know the answer, when he sat down out of the blue with Heath one day at Sciron’s outdoor cafeteria on the company’s sprawling, sun-dappled campus.  His long ponytail, equally black and pewter, the snowy Vandyke beard elongating his face, and the little round specs shielding heavy-lidded eyes gave Moto the look of a tired revolutionary.

            That this legend knew Heath’s work at Sciron, and even claimed to admire it, dumfounded the young engineer.  “I’d like to mentor you,” Moto told him.  Heath couldn’t believe his luck; simply sharing a single lunch with one of big tech’s founding fathers was an experience any wonk in Silicon Valley would tweet about for years, but Moto had inexplicably offered Heath friendship and patronage.  “I may need a favor from you sometime, too,” Moto chuckled without further explanation.  Word spread about the old icon’s interest in Heath, and he quickly found himself the fastest-rising programmer at the world’s fastest-rising tech giant, culminating a year later in a leadership role on Sciron’s ground-breaking social media app, Confab.  He and Lindsay were able to move from their one-bedroom in San Jose to the outrageously-priced mid-century ranch in the suburbs, add a retreat in Tahoe, score VIP passes to Bonnaroo and Coachella, and enjoy many other excesses that billions of Confab clicks and likes paid for.  All courtesy of a whispered-about connection to a funky, cerebral old Asian man he would meet only infrequently.

            The night he found Moto murdered, Heath had stayed late at Sciron headquarters.  He did this often since landing on the Confab team, much to Lindsay’s consternation, though she hardly mentioned it anymore.  Sick from committing corporate sabotage, and stunned by a betrayal he never saw coming, Heath wandered the deserted office hoping for Moto’s calming reassurance, but instead found him dead.  A shadow on the open catwalk above evaporated with a clomping of footsteps the instant Heath turned in horror from Moto’s lifeless form.  He heard a burst of urgent footsteps draining down the stairwell towards him.  Instinctively he retreated, charging through vacant cubicles, over couches and beanbags, around whiteboards and video towers, foosball and pool tables.  Sciron’s techy, collaborative, democratic workspace was empty except for cleaning crews who shoved vacuums across the floors, their piercing, unbroken drone hollowing out his skull, and intensifying his panic. 

“Hey! Stop!” yelled a security guard from the end of a hallway.  Heath couldn’t chance trusting him, or slowing down, so skidded out an emergency exit, careening into the chilly darkness and tripping the exigent howl of the security alarm.  He ran through the parking lot, crouching for cover behind the few cars interspersed on the yawning concrete expanse.  Under the yellow fluorescent dome, he made out two figures sprinting madly after him.  Instinct propelled him toward his car.  Chopping footsteps ricocheted off the pavement as grunts and labored breaths came louder in the chilly dark.  Heath found his car and dove into it, a gunshot tearing open the night as he slammed the door.

***

            “So who are these ‘Net Riders’?” Lindsay asked.

            “Actually, I’m one,” Heath mumbled, eyes glued to the rearview mirror.  The same two headlight pinpricks had been burning in the glass for the last few miles.  He sped up to ninety, then slowed to fifty, the car behind maintaining the same trailing distance of about twenty yards.  Impulsively, he jerked the wheel to veer off the interstate and onto an eastbound four-lane state highway.  His pursuer took the same exit, only more smoothly.  Lindsay slapped Heath’s arm in reflexive rebuke at being jerked around in her seat, then noticed his cold eyes on the rearview mirror. 

            “Are we being followed?” she asked with a sick-sounding resignation.

            “Maybe.” 

            The road ahead was wide open given that it was close to two AM.  Heath floored it.

            “My god,” Lindsay squealed, clutching her throat and stomping her Keds to the floorboard, pumping hard on an imaginary brake.

            The other car accelerated, pulling within feet of their rear bumper.  It was a Camaro, Heath noted with defeat, darting glances from the snarling grille filling his mirror to the road ahead.  Much stronger and faster than his chunky four-door, high-roofed gas-sipper, the kind favored by tech-heads like him, with an engine no bigger than a Fitbit.  He weaved wildly through the sparse traffic, hoping to be noticed by the Highway Patrol.  But then he regretted this idea, remembering Sciron’s clout, and chumminess with politicians.  He grimaced again at his inability to distinguish friends from enemies.

            “Heath I can’t do this,” wheezed Lindsay.

            “Hold on Linds,” Heath soothed.  A mile up, he saw the silver tube of a tanker truck glistening in the illuminated reflections of gas station and fast food signs near an upcoming exit ramp.  He remembered a scene from a Michael Bay movie and headed at full speed toward the truck, the Camaro glued to him.  Just before the imminent rear-end collision, Heath swerved into the left lane, around the tanker, the Camaro following.  Pulling just even with the truck, he punched the gas and jerked the wheel right, throwing them in front of it, Lindsay’s guttural shriek twinning with the tanker’s screeching brakes and the throaty death wail of its bleating horn.  With the enormous, angry tanker nearly mounting them, close enough to smell its acrid diesel fumes and have its headlights fill up the car like someone had flicked on strobe lights, Heath hit his brakes and whipped them onto the last few feet of exit ramp, fishtailing on the sharp, banked curve as the Camaro shot by in the left lane, going too fast, blocked by the lumbering truck.

            Shaken and numbed, Heath and Lindsay moved down the ramp and through the canopy of glowing roadside neon, past the slumbering In-N-Out and tranquil Texaco, eventually snaking into a neighborhood.  He knew the Camaro would double-back at the next exit, or report their location, so drove briskly, but had no idea where to go.  Eventually they came to a darkened laundromat tucked up on a hill, with a commanding view of the road.  Heath parked in back and shut off the engine, slumping finally in his seat with a cathartic sigh.

            “I think I peed myself a little bit,” Lindsay confided.

            “Glad I packed clean drawers,” said Heath, as he considered how to explain this all to her.

***

            On one hand, it all started with twenty minutes of X-rated cellphone video of a thirtyish former child TV star posted online by her ex-boyfriend.  Amelia Kinsley had starred for years on a cable sitcom for teens called Taylor’s Big Secret.  She played Taylor, an ordinary high school band geek who was also a math prodigy frequently called on to decipher high-stakes algorithms for the government.  Taylor lived, evidently unencumbered by parents, in a Brooklyn loft with Miss Feeney, the ditzy housekeeper whose absentmindedness and frequent zany schemes to woo Matt Hardiman, Taylor’s government handler, left the girl and her sassy best friend free to get into crazy hijinks.  For reasons clear to everyone but the viewer, Taylor had to keep her two lives secret, and this duality led to weekly mix-ups, mistaken identities, and brouhahas that always ended with Taylor crossing her eyes in befuddled comic campiness and uttering her catchphrase: “so I’m a genius, but I never saw that coming!” 

            The release of the sextape was a sensation, especially among Heath and Lindsay’s generation of now-adult former fans of Amelia’s show who remembered adolescent crushes or fantasy friendships with the ingénue actress.  Celebrity schadenfreude and raw, carnal, nostalgia-fueled fascination had driven Heath to find the video on a site called Sketchy Jerry’s Basement deep in the web’s unseemly bowels.  He and Lindsay had been drifting a bit, and he thought the naughty thrill might help them re-connect, or even light a spark.  Lindsay was dismissive at first, but after a bottle of wine expressed curiosity about whether the now mature Amelia Kinsley, once always described as “fresh-faced,” “pert,” or “perky,” had “hagged out” or “gotten saggy” since her Taylor years.  With tipsy impulsivity, they watched the video one Friday night on Lindsay’s tablet.  Heath had noticed then, but quickly forgot, the User Agreement preceding the video.  To his IT-structured mind, the User Agreement was lengthy and onerous, but also cleverly offered-up.  The wiseguy who programmed it had arrayed the agreement as blocks of text obscuring the image of a nude Amelia in an awkward freeze-frame from the sextape where her eyes fluttered and seemed to cross, mocking her former, wholesome campy image.  Twelve individual tiles packed with miniature text dissolved when checked and agreed-to, revealing the full image beneath, the last block uncovering the start button to the video.

            Lindsay folded her arms across her chest and frowned.  “So we are going to get killed because you wanted to see some stupid actress naked?”

            “You wanted to see if she sagged!” he hissed.  “I was just along for the ride.”  They sat in the darkened car, both staring at the white wedge of light washing the laundromat’s dirty concrete wall just beyond the windshield.  Heath took his wife’s silence as acquiescence to moral equivalency, if not middling superiority.  “It was on your tablet, remember?”

            She rolled her eyes and huffed mightily, shrinking and huddling tight against the car door.

***

            Whenever Moto dropped by Heath’s cubicle, it was always unannounced, and frequently awkward.  Heath still harbored geeky fanboy reverence for the tech legend, and there was always a lingering apprehension that Moto might call in the favor he was owed for making Heath rich. 

            “So, I see Confab is now the most-used social networking app in the world,” Moto said with an edge of sadness that implied this was actually a bad thing.

            “So they tell me,” Heath laughed, unsure why the ultimate tech insider was stating something that everyone in the industry knew, and had been celebrated at Sciron headquarters last month with a lavish, all-employee open-bar celebration headlined by Jack White.

            “Have you looked at the User Agreement for your Confab app?” Moto asked. 

            “Not really.  I have a guy who handles all that.”

            “Do you trust him?”

            Heath thought it an odd question, but Moto smiled as if he already knew the answer.  “I guess,” said Heath.

            “Read it thoroughly,” Moto said.  “Then give me a shout.  I want to talk it over with you.”

            Heath stayed late that night to read the User Agreement for the social networking app he had programmed.  He knew that Lindsay would be furious – again – not only that he had left her home alone, but more because he dodged her dramatic sighs and wounded lectures by not calling to tell her he would be late.  He had abandoned her too often since his promotion, to write badass code and boss around dorks from across the globe, but his preoccupation with work, and her disappointment, were both by now uninterestingly predictable.  Space had compounded between them.  The couple found themselves sometimes sitting in the same room, but not talking, each barely aware of the other, sometimes watching the same movie, but one thinking they had seen a slasher flick, the other a rom-com.  By 10 PM he was already deep into the weeds of the Confab User Agreement, and a few more minutes was not likely to change the stony silence he would come home to.

The Confab User Agreement was boilerplate except for:

• 14U.1.13 granting Sciron permission to monitor any and all content created or shared by User on any device that had ever accessed the Sciron architecture
• 29S.4.31 allowing Sciron to notify User of content flagged “suspicious, concerning, or otherwise problematic (as defined by Sciron)”
• 32K.11.2  making content so-flagged per 29S.4.31 the sole property of Sciron upon notification
• 35C.7.19 stipulating User Privacy was subject to the laws of the sovereign nation of Aquillos (a Polynesian island-state wholly owned by one of Sciron’s founders)

Before Moto could get his bike helmet off the next morning, Heath was waiting.  They strolled the verdant Sciron campus, Moto telling Heath what he knew.  Sciron had begun placing the Agreement in front of popular apps like Confab, confident that it would be glossed over.  “Accepting the agreement triggers the spying program to run,” Moto explained.  “It looks at everything the user has ever done, on any device.  It’s the first link in a dirty daisy-chain.”

“But I wrote the Confab code,” Heath protested.

“Your own company hacked your app – in order to blackmail their users.”

 The duped but consenting user’s data was combed for their compromising activity, their cringe-y, sordid, or shameful not-my-finest-moments.  Then came a discreet but dunning e-mail about all this regrettable stuff, a few of the seamier items included as examples.  An emissary reached out to soothe the panicked user with an offer to expunge their digital footprint of these bad decisions and poor choices – for a fee.  No one had to know.

Heath had a sick hunch.  He rushed back to his cube, tapped keys to enter a digital backdoor in the Confab architecture, added his Network Administrator credential, and stared dejectedly at a few rows of digits, backslashes, and lowercase letters glowing emerald against his black screen.  Sketchy Jerry’s Basement was a thinly-disguised Sciron beta site.  Download of the Amelia Kinsley sextape was governed by the same User Agreement.  All his wife’s personal data was now the property of his employer.

***

            “Oh god,” Lindsay gagged, covering her mouth while her torso convulsed, as if about to retch.

            Heath watched a car meander down the street, following its taillights, wondering if it was the Camaro. 

            “Can’t you just erase it?” she cried, her tone somewhere between a plea and an order.  “You’re the best coder ever,” she added more softly.  “Can’t you just…”

            Heath inhaled, his stomach tightening, doubts about what he should, or should not say next swirling in his mind like the flies swarming the fluorescent light on the side of the building in front of them.  “I did erase it,” he said evenly, despite a tripping heart.   

            He watched her relax, then cleared his throat.  “Tonight was a tough night for me, Linds.  Moto got killed.  I got shot at.  Was in a car chase.  I sabotaged Sciron’s blackmail scheme and got a lot of greedy billionaires pissed off.  And I destroyed the digital evidence of my wife’s affair.”    

            Lindsay had beautiful eyes, lively, sparkly pools that he once imagined floating in before diving deep to tickle her soul.  She had a little bullet for a chin, and a jaw that shot back hard and straight right to her ears, as if shaped by a sculptor’s chisel.  But when she heard what he had said, Lindsay’s clear eyes drained to cloudy silt and her sharp, taut jaw fell open like an errant mailbox door.

            Three sharp raps came at the window, their menacing ricochet strident and paralyzing.  In the elongated shadow, all Heath and Lindsay could see were two thick hands cased in black gloves.

***

            “I’ve got a little group of guys who know everything,” Moto had told him.  “Couple VPs, a Board member, marketing guys, programmers like you.  Honest, decent, cyber vigilantes.  We’re not idealists, we know the internet only exists to make a buck, but we can’t bear to see what we built turned into a criminal enterprise.  I call us the Net Riders.  Kind of like that old show Knight Rider.  I don’t know, it just sounds cool,” he chuckled.  “Sciron’s leaders – guys I’ve known for years and thought I trusted, aren’t satisfied with just being number one.  They figured out how easy it would be to make billions off their user’s little embarrassments – posts people regret, 3 AM drunken texts, dirty pics, websites they shouldn’t have clicked.  You could see the greed taking over and things got dark fast.  That’s when I’d had enough.  I like money, don’t get me wrong, but this isn’t what I signed up for.  And I don’t think you did either.  My guys – the Net Riders – tried to stop it internally, but couldn’t.  We have no choice now but to expose it before a lot of people get hurt.  Here’s the favor I need, Heath: re-write your Confab code to bypass the User Agreement.  Re-hack your app.  That stops the whole blackmail train dead, and keeps the users safe until I can spill to the media.  Now, understand – if you do this, Sciron will figure it out and come after you hard.  But your fellow Net Riders will protect you.  Are you in?”

The night Heath became a Net Rider, he sat late in his cube debating whether to go home and tell Lindsay what he had learned.  That sharing this secret with her had been his first inclination gave him some hope that they were still partners.  But sitting alone and obsessing about the depth of the valley that had grown between them quickly turned his yearning for her into despair.  Re-opening the digital backdoor to put a voyeuristic eye on her personal data, to look at the photos she took, the emojis she plastered on her texts, and the soft but indelible footprint she left on her browser was a pathetic geek’s way of feeling intimacy with his own wife, but it seemed like all he had.  He thought he might be reminded of their shared good times, but instead discovered how she spent the many nights he left her alone.  The guy’s name was Liam, and he had abs of steel and rocked a manbun.  Lindsay seemed quite charmed by him, and in the photos Heath saw she appeared spontaneous as hell.  Heath knew he had carelessly granted consent. 

***

            A policeman stood at the car window.  In the man’s thick face, ruddy from the nighttime chill, Heath saw either deliverance or a death sentence.  The cop shined his flashlight around the car, lingering, Heath thought angrily, a little too long on Lindsay.  He mumbled into his shoulder, and asked for IDs.  “Mind telling me what you’re doing in a parking lot at this hour?” he asked.

            Heath’s instinct was to tell the officer everything, to seek shelter in his cruiser.  But it was impossible to know who was on Sciron’s payroll.  “My wife and I were just having a disagreement,” Heath said evenly.  “We were driving, and I guess we just needed to stop and talk.”

            The policeman looked to Lindsay.  “Ma’am?”

            She nodded.  Her cheeks flushed and face crinkled in a way Heath remembered, when love was fierce and every argument or misunderstanding that came between them had seemed like life or death, before they both went numb.  A tear dripped from Lindsay’s eye.  “I’m sorry,” she sniffled.  “It’s just that… I want this all to go away.  I made mistakes.  We both made mistakes.  I want my old life back.”

            The policeman frowned, looking uncomfortable, then retreated to his squad car with their licenses.

            Heath thought bitterly that as a pretty woman, Lindsay knew her power to disarm cops with a few manufactured tears, and was simply using one of her old tricks.  But he wondered achingly if her words were really meant for him.  There was a reason, he supposed, why he had gone back for her, despite what he knew.  Just as there was a reason Moto had recruited him.  Just as there was a reason Lindsay had slid on her wedding ring and followed him tonight.

He started to sweat, agonizing about the cop, a sick dread roiling in his gut that their position was being radioed to the Camaro, or Sciron at this very moment.  He considered starting the car to roar away, but knew that would only make things worse.  He looked at Lindsay and in his swirl of panic and confusion came a clarity that despite everything this was not her fault, and an aching wish that she be safe.

            Heath put his hand on the door latch to begin his surrender, hoping the policeman would understand that it was only him Sciron wanted and would pay for, and that the cop might be convinced to let the lady drive away.  But the policeman was already at the window.  Absent a better plan, Heath resignedly rolled the window down, then dumbly accepted the return of his and Lindsay’s licenses into his shaking hands.  “Everything checks out,” the officer said.  “So, goodnight folks.  This isn’t the safest neighborhood, so you should probably move along.”

            “And Heath…” The policeman hesitated, seemingly unconvinced about whether to continue.  “Corporate security at Sciron radioed us.  Must have been monitoring our channel when I called-in your licenses.  The guy asked me to tell you to head toward Sacramento, and watch for a text in a couple hours.  Says the Net Riders will find you.”  He shrugged, grinning sheepishly.  “Whatever that means.” 

            They sat quietly after the policeman left, the pink-orange of dawn filtering through the car windows.  Lindsay touched Heath’s hand, gently lacing her fingers between his.  She sighed and crossed her eyes comically, the slightest curl at the corner of her mouth.  “So I’m a genius,” she said.  “But I never saw that coming.”

Tim Jones is a fiction writer living in Northern California. Having grown up in the Detroit area, he is a big admirer of Southeast Michigan’s favorite literary son, Elmore Leonard. “User Agreement” is a tribute to both Leonard’s Detroit and his current home in Silicon Valley.