Contest of September 15, 2006

First Prize Winner

"Kristallnacht"

by Sonja Herbert

       Margot hid a yawn behind her hand. She was getting hungry and wished she was home. She could almost smell her mother's bratwurst on the stove. I hope it's bratwurst, she thought and busied herself replacing a few scarves and belts behind the glass  counter of the store.

       That was when she heard a distant, faintly musical tinkling, like water rushing down a dam, accompanied by a barely audible grating or rasping.

       Her hunger forgotten, Margot searched the store. It was empty, except for the employees. Karin, the first year apprentice, swept almost non-existent dust from behind the racks by the display window. The soft swishing of her broom mingled with the humming from the sewing machines in the back room, the ticking of the clock, and the unusual sound Margot still couldnt identify.

       Her unease intensified. The skin on her forearms puckered and she hugged herself.

       Karin stopped sweeping. "I hear something funny," she said, and turned to the display window.

       Margot dropped the scarf in her hand into the glass case and hurried after Karin. She turned to the large display window and searched the street from between the mannequins.

       Outside, Kurfrstendamm, the busiest street of Berlin, even of all of Germany, lay empty, as if all of mankind had suddenly disappeared. She listened, her hunger forgotten. There that sound was again, this time louder. Maybe it was voices mixed with music. She stared out the window, wrinkling her forehead in concentration.

       The linden trees along the lone sidewalk swayed in the wind, losing an occasional late leaf. Everything seemed peaceful, but a shiver sped down Margot's spine.

       Why was the street so deserted? This time of the afternoon, crowds should be hurrying to the stores, admiring the new fashions, getting ready to visit the bars and cafes that were interspersed with the stores. The conviction that something terrible and unexpected soon would change her life, forever and for the worse, made Margot sick to her stomach. She swallowed and squinted at the road, searching for the origin of the steadily swelling noise.

       "It sounds like squealing," Karin, next to her, said. She stared at Margot with big eyes.

       "I hear it, too," Margot said. She pushed the woolen dress on a mannequin out of her line of sight, but the thick trunks of the linden obscured her vision further down the street. Now the sounds separated into faint screams and yells, accented with a musical jingling.

       "Hey, everybody!" Karin called. "Something strange is going on out here."

       The whirring of the sewing machines stopped. Two girls from the back room joined them, and soon everybody in the store huddled around the display window.

       "What could it be?" Karin asked.

       Outside, a single black Opel sedan made its way down the street. A scrap of paper, dancing a minuet with a few brown linden leaves, fluttered against a lamppost.

       The sound increased. Margot made out drunken laughter, screams, barked commands, and over it all, a musical tinkling. She tried to find some explanation for these noises, but couldnt come up with anything. The only thing she was sure of was that this wasnt a happy sound. She crossed her arms, hugged herself, and shivered. For the second time this day, but for a completely different reason, she wished she were home.

       The voices became clearer.

        "Heil! Heil! Heil! Jews get out!"

        A dark mass beyond the trunks of the linden separated into a screaming and yelling mob of people.  

       Margot's hand flew to her mouth. She suddenly realized she had known it all along. This was an attack aimed at the Jews. In a flash she realized this assault would be directed at the Jewish-owned stores as much as at the owners. Those undereducated sub-humans aren't just out for blood, they want to rob and steal, she thought, her face tight.

       This shouldn't be happening. Her step-father Max and her mother had said it over and over again, things would get better for Jews, not worse.

       "I don't believe this!" she cried. She wanted to say more, tell everybody around her what she thought of these upstart Nazis, but held herself back with an effort.

       "This is bad." Frau Busch, the owner, hurried toward the knot of girls by the window. The knuckles on her balled hands shone white and her voice rose. "Girls, our business day is over. Gather your things and go home. I need to lock the doors. Schnell, schnell!"

       The girls stared at her, frozen like the mannequins in the window. This was the first time Frau Busch ever let them go home early.

       Together with the others, Margot ran to get her coat and hat. She plopped the hat onto her head, not worrying if it sat right, and searched the rack above the coat hangers. Where was her purse? She must have left it on the chair in the dressing room.

       While the other girls rushed past her out the back door, she turned and raced to the dressing room. There it was, on the bench. She grabbed her purse and glanced into the mirror to set her hat right onto her black curls. Satisfied, she darted back to the coat rack where she struggled into her coat.

       A glance at the window froze her. In front of the store two large trucks stopped, loaded to bursting with men in brown uniforms. A mob hurried after them, screaming and yelling. A short, skinny youth with glasses jumped from a truck.

       Margot blinked. This man looked familiar. She squinted to see clearer. Yes, it was Hans. In fourth grade, Hans had a crush on her. During recess, he used to pick buttercups for her. And now he destroyed Jewish stores.

       What was he thinking? Margot stepped from the shadow of the coat rack and balled her fists. But this wasn't grammar school anymore, and she'd be better off not to let the crowd outside see her. Heart racing with a mix of anger and fear, she shrank back into the shadows of the coat rack.

       Hans lugged a fence post. He looked like an overgrown monkey, struggling with something too big for him. Three older men followed, one after the other, like circus clowns. But instead of hoops and balls they carried strange paraphernalia. One grabbed a carpet beater with both hands, another, instead of a balancing pole, wielded a heavy walking stick. The last one clutched a metal rod. Other men in uniform jumped from the trucks, and the vision of a circus parade vanished from Margot's mind. The Nazis waved bats, stick, canes, anything that could destroy. With harsh voices they shouted, "Jewish Pigs leave! Heil Hitler! Heil, heil, heil!"  

       Her old grade school friend, Hans, with uniform cap askew, swung his fence post right through the window. The glass exploded in tiny, glittering shards. Margot winced, as if the blow had hit her. She needed to leave. But her limbs didn't obey. She stood, horrified, and watched with wide eyes. She felt the scowl on her face dissolve into beads of perspiration.

       Her stomach balled up like a fist as shattered glass rained to the ground, sounding like thousands of small chimes. The hoarse laughter of the crazed men gave a chilling counterpoint to the delicate sound.

       Margot shivered. If Hans and his cohorts saw her, they might do more than merely hit and kick her. The downy hair on her neck stiffened and she gulped, but still her feet stood frozen to the ground. All she could do was squeeze deeper into the welcoming shadows. With shaking hands she struggled to button her coat.

       The other girls had disappeared. Next to the coat rack and the back door, Frau Busch dug frantically in her purse.

       A thought for Frau Busch's safety washed away Margot's panic. What would they do to her boss if they found her? Frau Busch was always fair, never lost her temper, and treated everybody with dignity. She was a thousand times better than these so-called Aryans out there, behaving like animals.

       "Will you be all right?" Margot asked her in a whisper.

       "I don't know." A quaver distorted Frau Busch's voice. "Go, go. We need to get out of here." She tugged out her keys and dropped them.

       Margot's attention returned to the display window. Her heart beat so hard she thought her chest might explode. Her hands around her purse shook.

       On the sidewalks of Kurfrstendamm, the greatest, most elegant street of Germany, a ghoulish dance of stupidity, ugliness, and hate, orchestrated by the Nazis, played itself out. Men and women trampled over the glass shards on the sidewalk, pressed through the shattered window, tore the dresses from the mannequins.

       A young brunette, her face distorted by greed, pulled a French, fur-collared dress over her head. Buttons popped off, flying in every direction, as she squeezed into the too small dress.

       An old, gray-haired woman wrenched a sky-blue silk blouse out of the hands of a skinny boy. "It's mine, mine," she screamed.

       The expensive blouse ripped. It almost sounded like a cry of despair. Margot shuddered. They couldn't even loot successfully. This undereducated, Hitler-loving mob could only destroy. Nothing but greed and hate motivated them.

       A movement at the corner of her eyes caught her attention. Hans pushed through the display window and gaped into the store.

       Hans eyes fastened on her. "Margot?" He said, uncertainty in his voice.

       Margot returned his stare. He used to be such a nice boy. And look at him now! "What do you think you're doing?" she demanded, fists balled as if to hit him.

       Before he could answer, Frau Busch grabbed Margot by the arm and pushed her toward the rear door.

       Margot exhaled and followed her. She should have kept her big mouth shut. This boy, who once confessed his love to her, would now call the others' attention to her, and her fate would be sealed. She shied away from a sudden image of her lifeless body lying curled up on the spotless showroom floor. Breathlessly, she ran after Frau Busch.

       She rushed out the back door and gasped when the cold air hit her.

       Screams of, "Heil, heil, heil! Jews get out! Jews out!" echoed through the streets and followed her for several minutes, sending chills of fear and disgust down her spine. Not knowing whether Frau Busch followed, she flew down the back street, only slowing down when she smelled the unmistakable scent of smoke wafting toward her.

       Margot wrapped her coat tighter around herself and bent her head. Screams and the crunch of broken glass from the front of the store pursued her.

       Her mother and stepfather were wrong. She'd never quite believed them when they said things would improve for Jews. In spite of what they told her, she wasn't safe. She was part Jewish and everyone could see that. What could she do? How could she get herself out of this situation? She tensed and her breath caught in her throat. She told herself to simmer down. Things were never as bad as they seemed.

       The acrid smell of smoke in the frigid air intensified and distracted her from her frantic thoughts. She slowed and searched for the source of the smoke.

       The street ahead lay deserted in the waning afternoon light. The asphalt looked dark and wet, like a deep, still river. The sidewalk stretched ahead of her, lonely and forlorn. Margot searched the other side of the street, and noticed a commotion in the distance. People milled around a column of rising smoke. She squinted. A red fire engine sped past her, horns blaring. She craned her neck, trying to see the fire. She considered changing to the other sidewalk but then decided against it.

       As she got closer, she recognized what was burning. It was the synagogue.

       Margot drew even with the smoldering house of God and slowed. Herr Leven's grocery next to the synagogue was also damaged, but it wasn't on fire. The store window gaped like an open wound, its glass shattered on the ground, reflecting the fire in thousands of tiny yellow pinpricks.

       Margot backed into the shadow of an entrance, not able to shift her gaze from the spectacle across the street. In the thickening twilight, flames and shadows danced an eerie jig with each other. The flickering light illuminated another truck speeding toward the burning building. But this one wasn't a fire engine. Teenage boys in brown uniforms crowded in the back, calling, "Heil Hitler, Heil Hitler," and, "Death to the Jews!"

       The fire engine that had passed her before was now parked in front of the synagogue. Four firemen leaned against it, smoking cigarettes, telling jokes, and laughing. They did everything but put out the fire. Two policemen idly twirled their nightsticks. Onlookers milled around, watching the burning synagogue. A short, fat man in a black hat yelled, "Let it burn!"

       Others joined in, and soon many voices repeated, "Let it burn! Juden raus! Jews out!"

       Bitterness rose in Margot's throat. She swallowed. She had to keep going, had to get out of here. Instead, she ducked deeper into the darkness, not able to stop watching the spectacle across the street.

       Herr Leven hurried toward the fire, yarmulke on his head. His long dark coat flapped around him like the shadow of death.

       When she was seven or eight she often bought bread for her Mutti, her mother, at Herr Leven's store. He used to fold a zuckersteinchen, a candy, into her hand while giving her a warm smile, his eyes bright behind his thick glasses. "A sweet for a sweet young lady," he'd say and pat her head.

       Now the firemen loitered around the trucks and Herr Leven yelled and pointed an accusing finger at them. Margot wanted to reach out toward him, wanted to make him keep quiet, with all her heart. But the power of her emotions couldn't reach across the street.

       Her eyes wide, she watched two uniformed boys close in on Herr Leven. One of them grabbed his arm and struck his face. His glasses fell and shattered, the pieces joining the broken glass of his store window. A satiny line of red flowed from his nose. He stumbled and went down. His old man's body writhed on the ground, trying in vain to avoid the kicks from four shiny jackboots. The crowd cheered.

       Hot tears ran down Margot's cold cheeks. She wanted to cross the street and shake these dumb kids, make them stop with the force of her anger, but she knew it wouldn't do any good. She'd just be joining Herr Leven. She wiped at the tears on her face with the back of her gloved hand and forced herself to move. Hunching her shoulders, she rushed past on the opposite sidewalk. The jeering crowd drowned out the wavering cries of the old man. Why did Herr Leven have to come out? He could have stayed hidden.

       A hand fell onto her shoulder. Margot jumped and turned to face Herr Meyer, the doorman of her apartment building.

       "I thought so. It's you. Another Jewish swine." He sneered and grabbed her shoulder tighter.

       A wave of fear plummeted from Margot's heart to her knees. She was caught. Meyer would pull her across the street as more sport for the riled up mob gathered by the fire. Her hands shook and her lips quivered.

       She shook her head and twisted away from Meyer's touch. She couldn't allow panic to dictate her actions. Meyer was a spiteful, jealous man, but obedience to his superiors was part of his daily life. She told herself to take advantage of that. With an effort, Margot stood tall and forced herself to stare straight into his eyes.

       "You know who I am." She made her voice as strong as her shaking body allowed it to be. "I'm Frau Markus' daughter, and I'm half Aryan, as you well know. You have no right to accost me like this. I will notify your superiors of your behavior. Good day."

       She turned and holding herself straight like a queen, strode from him.

       A small voice in her head gibbered at her to turn around, or she'd be doomed. Margot swallowed and forced the voice into submission. Meyer didn't need to see the tiniest bit of fear in her demeanor. Her back itched as if Meyer's look were an acid eating through her coat. An intense desire to hunch her shoulders coursed through her body, but she kept walking, not too hurriedly and with her head held high. She knew her composure would crumble the moment she caught the sound of his footsteps and felt his filthy hand on her again.

       But no one touched her and she made it home safely. But what now? Did she dare return to work tomorrow? Margot knew her life was changed irrevocably and forever.

Copyright 2006 by Sonja Herbert

Second Prize

"Broken"

by J. Matthew Nespoli

May 18, 2003 (Skye, 24 years old)

     The comedown is the worst part.

      My body was fatigued, but my brain was wired. I wouldn't sleep until the sun came up and then started back down again.

      When I came home yesterday I was out of smack; luckily, I had plenty of blow. The first powdery line was raw adrenaline filling my mouth with words that needed to be let out. I called my best friend Flora, but she wasn't home. So, to entertain myself, I called the suicide hotline and made up a story. I told them my boyfriend got my mother pregnant. I said I wanted to kill myself, and for whatever reason, saying that out loud gave me some sense of freedom.

      After a couple hours my high began to close in on me. I did line after line, chasing the high, but I was spinning my wheels. I'm not sure how much time passed: nine hours, six hours, fifteen hours, whatever. Time was immeasurable, bleeding into inanimate things like the walls, the carpeting and the air in the room. Eventually, gray morning light came in through the blinds and made the cocaine on the glass coffee table sparkle like snowflakes. I cried... 

      I picked up my guitar but felt too dead to make music. I popped a few valiums to numb my inner deadness enough to sleep. Still sleepless, I snorted another line, which intensified my depression.

      So, I mixed the coke with baking soda, cooked it, and smoked it. Impromptu crack. I felt great, but it didn't last for even a full moment. I smoked more, then more. I smoked until there was nothing left to smoke.

      There was no stopping me. I put a line of glue on my upper lip and took in a deep breath. I did this repeatedly, until everything became nothing.  I became physically lost while sitting in the middle of my living room. Hallucinating and paranoid, I was scared of people, but more scared of being alone. I knew the spiders crawling on my wall weren't really there. So, I closed my eyes, but I could hear them. I rolled myself into a tight ball on the floor. My kitchen was out to get me, the pots and pans, the oven, the refrigerator, all of them were making noise, and helping the spiders to steal my sanity. I needed something... Then, a little tiny miracle happened, I remembered my emergency stash of coke. I dug it up and tried to get right.

      That's the point I was at when Troy knocked on my door.

      Yesterday, I used up all my strength when I told Troy I loved him. Part of me died there in Santa Monica, when those naked words left my mouth. I needed Troy to tell me he loved me too, it wouldn't have mattered if he was lying. But he didn't, he said he wasn't ready, and now, paranoid, I couldn't face him. To calm myself. I tried to think about the day he and I met. But my head was too congested with anger and regret to focus.

      I wanted to go back in time and stop my father from whoring me out for drug money.

      And I wanted my unborn child back in my belly.

      I promise, God, that I'll get straight if you let that baby live again.

      "Open up, Skye..."  

      I began frantically cleaning up all drug evidence even though I had no intention of opening the door.

      Breakdown the door, Troy. Rescue me from my hell.

      "Open up!"  He yelled.

       I peered at him through a sliver of space between the blinds.

       "Open up, Skye!" 

       I let the blinds snap closed. I picked up my pipe, and hit it hard.

       "Just forget it!"  Troy yelled.

      Troy peeled out of my driveway. The hum of Troy's voice resonated in my crowded head.

May 22, 2003

       Flora had been over about three different times in the past two days, and every time I'd sent her home.

       "I'm too tired for company, right now," I'd say.

       Flora would leave and I'd slam more dope.

       My body finally crashed sometime yesterday. I slept hard, but I'm not sure for how long. I couldn't decipher hallucination from dream.

      Pain in my leg eventually woke me. My leg was blue. It felt like bees were living inside it. It was throbbing and burning and freezing and there were thousands of bees attacking me with their painful little stingers. I shook my limb until the color began to return to normal. Fifteen minutes later the stinging had calmed enough that I was able to limp to the kitchen and feed my starving body. After which, I fell back asleep.

      The next time I woke my body needed smack. I had no money, so I pawned my stereo. I scored a gram in Venice. I cooked a small shot, just enough to take the edge off. I wanted to be at home for my big blast, so that I could kick back and listen to the sounds of the planets in orbit. Once home, I slammed a huge shot, and drifted for a while, then found the courage to go visit Troy.

      "Hi, Skye," Troy said. He was alone. "Skye, I want to say something about the other night."

      "Shh-" I said, pressing my finger to his lips.

      At some point during my drug binge I wrote a love song for Troy. I wanted to sing it for him, but at the moment I didn't have it in me to do it. Eventually, I would,  I'd sing it everyday, as loud as I could, with as much heart as I could, and when my voice blew out I'd use my last breath to tell Troy how much I loved him, and it wouldn't matter if he said it back.

       "Don't say a word, Troy. I'm sorry for everything and I'm going to get clean."

      And I meant it. I would quit. I had enough heroin to get me through the day and then I'd be done. I'd said it a thousand times before, but this time I meant it.

June 2, 2003 

       In the next ten days, the longest I stayed straight was forty-eight hours. Once withdrawal kicked in, when the goose bumps and skin crawls began, when my stomach began to turn, getting high was the only logical solution.  

      Yesterday, Flora recommended I go to rehab. Fuck Rehab. The therapists will crack my head open and spill out the ugly crap all over the examination table. They'll run my brain through their mental strainer to try to take out the painful parts, and then they'll cram what's left back inside me. Rehab is bullshit!  My pain can't be taken out of me, and even if it could be, where the hell would that leave me?  Who would I be without my pain and anger? 

      "We should go to rehab... together," Troy offered.

      "I don't need rehab," I said. The twelve steps don't work. The meetings are just an excuse for addicts to whine about their pathetic lives. If anything, the meetings themselves become an addiction, replacing the drug dependence. Fuck rehab. There's no cure for addiction. Once an addict, always an addict; either a practicing addict, or a recovering addict.  "Rehab can't help me." 

      "Maybe it will surprise you," Troy argued.

      "Fuck rehab."

      "I want you to quit," Troy said. He knew I was still using... My pin-prick sized pupils gave away that I was blasted out of my mind.

      "... Troy, I desperately want to quit, but I can't do rehab."

      "Then you'll detox at home. I'll help you."

       "I don't think you can help."

       "Well, I'm willing to try...  Are you?"

       "I don't know... I guess so."

      "Great. I know you can do this," Troy said. Then hugged me  After, he kissed me, pulled away, looked at me and smiled. "Did I give you this skirt?" he asked.

      "No, you've never given me a skirt."

      "Oh... well, you look beautiful in it."

      "I love you, Troy."

      "I love you too," Troy replied, casually, as if he had said it a thousand times before. He hadn't, this was the first time. Those words were a sledge hammer to the barrier I'd built around my emotions. I hugged Troy and felt compelled to open my closet and bare all; Troy's arms shielded me from the skeletons.

      "I want to try to get sober, for you... and for me... but I'm scared," I said.

      "I know."

      We made love. Troy told me he loved me, repeatedly, the entire time.

June 5, 2003

       I was two days into detox; I felt like I'd have welcomed an accidental death to escape my pain. My skin crawled anytime anything touched me. When I tried to shower the water felt like tiny razor blades all over my body. In bed, I felt bugs all over me. My sweat pooled on the mattress. I was on fire, but my hands and feet were frozen. The slightest whiff of food made me vomit, and every sound was amplified a thousand fold inside my head.

Troy came in to give me more Valium. He tried to hug me. I pushed him away.

       "Why'd you do that?" Troy asked.

       "My skin is crawling like fuck. Dont touch me right now."

       "Okay."

       "Why don't you make yourself useful and go score me some smack."

       "You're joking... right?"

       "... Yeah, sure. Whatever... Thanks for the Valium."

       "It's going to be okay, Skye."

       "I failed every time I tried to quit, Troy. I don't think I can do this."

       "You can."  Troy said. He handed me some Doloxene to take after I swallowed the Valium...

       I wanted to sleep, but my body wouldn't let me. I was hot, then cold, sweaty, shaking, bugs crawling all over me. Bugs everywhere. My clothes felt wrong so I took them off. Eventually, the Valium took over enough that I was able to fall asleep. Three hours later, my shivering body was trying to wake me. I tried desperately to hold onto sleep. I wouldn't open my eyes. I wouldn't let my body become fully conscious. My stomach started to violently rumble. I was in trouble. Naked, I jumped out of bed, ran as far as I could make it, and began dry heaving in Troy's laundry basket.

       Troy burst into the room. "Are you okay?" His question must have been rhetorical. "Get some clothes on, Skye, your body is shivering."

       Troy put my t-shirt over my shoulders. The shirt was coated with my smelly wet sweat and it felt cold on my skin. More dry heaves. This continued through the night. I didn't sleep again.

June 6, 2003

       I was slumped over the basin in the corner of the room throwing up the Saltines I downed earlier. Troy got out of bed to wipe the sweat from my back with a dry towel. It felt good.

       "Skye, I'm proud of you...  A couple more days and this should all be over." 

       "I want a whack so badly."

       "Your body wants it, not you." 

       "Oh, fuck off... Sorry..."

       "You're going to make it, Skye."

       "Troy, last night, I dreamt that I was in a warehouse full of smack and picks. I ran around grabbing smack and hitting up every vein I could find. It was the first time in the past week that I felt decent."

       "It's going to get better."

       At that exact moment, I threw up. Then, I knew it was about to come out the other end. I spent the next ninety minutes hours shitting blood, pissing fire, vomiting blood, sweating acid, and wishing for death.

       Later, when Troy went to the bathroom, I snuck a few extra Valium, chasing them with two shots of 151. I still couldn't sleep, but the alcohol and Valium eased my pain. But a few hours later a horrible current of electricity started pumping through my head. My brain went sideways on me. I began hallucinating and was convinced that some microscopic alien life form was breeding in my brain.

       "Troy, I need Valium."  I said softly. I couldn't yell, the vibration of sound might have killed me.

June 9, 2003

       I smoked a cigarette. I smoked another. I smoked and smoked and smoked. But no matter how much I smoked, it wasn't enough. My withdrawal pains lessened some but they were still there, and I felt empty inside. I needed to get fucked up. I had nothing. I needed something. Anything. Troy wouldn't give me any more Valium. Troy wouldn't give me anything. I needed something to fill my emptiness.

      I grabbed some short hairs on the back of my neck. I pulled. The pain filled me. I needed more. I pulled harder and harder until some hair came out. Stinging pain shot down my spine. I grabbed more short hairs, a bigger clump. I pulled slow and hard, and felt the roots, one by one, coming out of the back of my neck. It hurt. And the pain, which was something, was better than nothing. I grabbed more hairs. I pulled. Pain. They came out. A couple blood droplets rolled down the back of my neck. 

      Pain was a suitable substitution for drugs.

       I was crying when Troy came in. "What's wrong?" he asked.

       Everything. I'm a drug-addicted, human landfill of emotional pain.

       But all I said was, "I need some Valium." 

      Troy put his arms around me and squeezed. I was sweaty and sticky and hot and I didn't want him hugging me so I didn't hug him back. Troy ran his hands up and down me. "You're bleeding, Skye."

       "I know."

September 2, 2003

       Three months passed, the physical withdrawal was over, and I managed to stay sober. I was doing okay. My butt was comfortably wedged in the contoured furrow of Troy's couch cushion that he worked so hard to form. My feet were propped up on his secondhand glass coffee table that was tinted with various colored rings from drinks that had been left on it for days at a time. I wondered if the Samuel Adams mug, that had been sitting on it for as long as I could remember, had somehow sealed itself to the glass.

      I had the radio tuned to Indy 103.1. One of my favorite songs, Your birthday present, by The Good Life, played. I sat in the classic Al Bundy position, one hand on the clicker, the other comfortably down my pants. The muted television played MTV videos that looked ridiculous without sound. Half-naked women sat in the backseat of a bouncing car that some rapper drove with one hand. His other hand held a gun. Then, the video cut to a new scene; a pool party with scantily clad women. I took a drag off the cigarette that rested between my lips, removed my hand from my pants and stubbed the cherry out. I was bored out of my mind.

       Boredom is Satan. Boredom is a loaded gun sticking in my craw.

      Fight it, Skye.

      I grabbed another cigarette, lit it, inhaled hard. Cool burning smoke down my throat. It tasted good. Nicotine's a weak drug, but at least it's a drug.

      I changed the stations. I smoked another cigarette. I changed stations.

      The television flickered lights like the lasers at a rave. Click, click, click, I changed channels looking for something to distract me. Nothing worked. I wanted to get high.

      Fight it.

      Jane Says came on the radio. I shut off the television and danced.

            "Jane says
            Have you seen my wig around?
            I feel naked without it
            She knows
            They all want her to go
            But that's ok man
            She don't like them anyway
            Jane says
            I'm going away to Spain, when I get my money saved
            I'm gonna start tomorrow
            I'm gonna kick tomorrow..."

      I tilted my head back, spread my arms out and danced in circles. The music filled my head, but it didn't replace my boredom... My desire to get high had never been completely out of mind, but today it was worse than usual. I was on the tight rope of sobriety and I was losing my balance. I needed to party, it'd been too long.

      I called Troy. I needed Troy on the couch with me to restore my balance.

      No answer.

      I lit another cigarette.

      I called Troy's roommate, Mike.

      No answer.

      I called Flora...  Nothing.

      Looking through the small inventory of phone numbers in my cell phone I came to Amber, in the T section, because I had her saved as Troy's Amber. I'd met her only twice, both times through Troy.

      "Amber, hi, it's Skye, Troy's friend."  I wondered why I said friend rather than girlfriend.

      "I know it's you, I have you programmed in my phone," she said. That made me feel a little more at ease about calling her.

      "So, umm... How've you been?" I asked.

      "Good. You?"

      "I'm good. So, what are you up to?"  I asked, being verbose.

      "On my way to pick up Kimberly from school. You?"

      "Umm, not a whole lot I guess, just bored." 

      "Oh," Amber said, followed by a heartbeat of silence. "...Did you need something?" 

      "Umm, actually, well... I don't know how to say this so I'll just come out with it...  I'm alone at Troy's, and I'm, umm, I'm falling off. That means-"

      "I know what that means. I'll pick up Kimberly and drop her off at Beth's dad's and then come over. Can you hang in there for half an hour?"

      "I don't know."

      "I'm assuming you called Troy."

      "Yeah."

      "Give me one second, I'll try to get someone to pick up Kimberly, I'll call you right back."

      Amber hung up.

      I sat back down, changed the channel. It was Permanent Midnight. Ben Stiller was shooting up. I changed the channel, drugs were in the news, I changed stations again, an anti-drug commercials. Drugs were everywhere that I was, laughing at me.

      My phone rang.

      "Amber?"

      "I'll be there in ten minutes, sit tight."

      "Thank you, Amber."

      Ten minutes I could survive. I turned up the TV's volume, and kept flipping. Pulp Fiction was on HBO. I watched. Harvey Keitel, the wolf, instructed John Travolta and Samuel Jackson how to clean up the blood, brain and guts from the backseat of their car before Tarantino's wife, Bunny, got home. Travolta and Jackson, covered in blood, argued with each other in the car while Keitel gave Tarantino money in exchange for the linens they used to disguise the car...  By the time Tarantino sprayed down Jackson and Travolta with the garden hose, Amber arrived... Mission accomplished.

      "Hey, doll," Amber said.

      "Thanks for coming," I said. I felt the intensity of a thousand loaded needles coming out of me the second I saw Amber's flawless, light-brown face.

      "Don't mention it."  Amber checked my pupils, and then gave me a strong hug.   "I have a surprise for you, Skye; it's exactly what you need right now."  The first thing that popped in my head was that she brought a beach ball sized bag of junk and the world's biggest spoon to cook it in. "Grab an overnight bag and pack three days worth of clothes."

      "Huh?"

      "I said, go grab an over-"

      "I heard you. Why?"

      "We're going away for a few days to get your mind off things."

      "Oh, thanks, Amber, but I can't do that."  I considered the possibility that she might be using my desperation to get in my pants.

      "Why?  Are you working?" she asked.

      "No."

      "Got important plans?"

      "No."

      "Playing a gig?"

      "No."

      "Then you can go."

      "But, I-"

      "No buts. You need to get your mind off things so we're going," Amber said.

      "What about your daughter?"

      "Taken care of. My friend's going to watch her for a few days."

      "What about work?"

      "Duh, you know that I'm a stripper. I work when I want."

      "Umm-"

      "Stop trying to think up an excuse and go pack. I left Troy a message about where we're going."

      "And where's that?"

      "I can't tell you. If I tell you, you won't want to go."

      "Oh, sounds great."

      "That came out wrong. You'll think it sounds like a dumb idea, but when we get there, trust me, it's exactly what you need."

      "Tell me."

      "Just get your bag."

      "What should I pack?" I asked.

      "Couple pairs of shorts, bathing suit, tank tops, t-shirts, a sweatshirt, and athletic shoes."

      "Are we doing a triathlon?"

      "And bring your guitar."

      "How much money do I need?"

      "A few bucks. Hurry up, we need to beat the 405 four hour, rush hour."

      I packed and we left. We headed north on the 405, then the 5 to the 99. We could've been going to San Francisco or Big Sur. San Francisco was the easiest city in America to get drugs in. Big Sur was exploding with psychedelic mind-altering drugs, and spiritual existential mind-fuck experiences.

      Why would she take me there? 

      North of the grapevine we got into industrial farmland areas. Miles and miles and miles of garlic, cotton and apples. The garlic was so strong I could taste it. I wanted to eat it. I wanted to fill my emptiness with garlic. Lots and lots of garlic.

      Amber told me a story about a horse and a farm in northern Florida that she used to live on. I noticed a tear in her eye and I think she was trying to open up to me, but I didn't hear much of what she said. I just wanted to get high. A resourceful junkie like me could find junk in under fifteen minutes once we stopped for gas and food.

      I turned on the radio, and we sung a few oldies together.

      "Troy said you have a beautiful voice but I had no idea. I can't wait to hear you play your original songs later."

       Singing kept my mind busy for a little while, but soon I was obsessing over drugs again. To distract myself, I decided to ask Amber personal questions about being a lesbian with a child. I'd never had the opportunity to talk one on one with a lesbian before. But I didn't know how to ask Amber. The desire to ask grew inside me mile after mile. Eventually, I decided not to ask because my desire to ask, on its own, was strong enough to whittle away at my drug craving.

      We passed through Fresno, stayed on the 99, and it hit me.

      "Yosemite?  We're going to Yosemite!"

      "It's about time you figured it out."

      "I've never been there."

      "You'll love it."

      I doubted I'd be able to score smack in Yosemite. I was happy to be far away from drugs and scared as hell.

September 17, 2003

      What if I pushed Amber off the mountain right now? 

      She'd fall, scream, curse. Splat! She'd be a dark stain on a jagged rock below. Those are the kind of thoughts that were going through my head while we stood together, high above the earth, after a long hike. Amber put herself in a position where she had to trust me with her life, and that made me feel good.

      We got in late the night before, slept, and Amber woke me at six in the morning to go on this hike. Reluctantly, I went, and I was glad I did.

      "It's so amazing up here, There's a tingle moving through my body, tempting me to fly off this mountain," I said.

       "That wouldn't be a good idea," Amber said.

      I laughed. Amber and I took in the scene few moments longer, and then we made our way back down from the Yosemite Falls trail. The giant waterfall was truly one of the most fascinating things I'd ever laid my eyes on. I understood why people travel thousands of miles to see it. The sound of the water rushing off the mountain and crashing into rocks below was pacifying; still, its grandness was terrifying. Being a music lover, the whole thing reminded me of Momentary Lapse of Reason by Pink Floyd, the song's sound is soothing but the lyrics scare the hell out of me.

      "Youre a Goddess, Amber. Thanks for bringing me to this wonderful-" I searched my head for the right word.

      "Escape?"  Amber offered. It wasn't exactly how I felt, but close enough.

      "Yeah. Thanks."

      "You're welcome."

      Back at the campsite in Yosemite Valley we got a fire going and grilled chicken while watching the sun drop down, kiss the mountain tops, and then disappear completely.

      After dinner we drove up to the famous Glacier Point to sleep above the world and under the stars. The road was long, winding, foggy, steep and skinny. There were no street lights and it got pitch black pretty quickly. Amber confidently zipped up the mountain gripping the edges of the curved road while I nervously gripped my seat so hard that I nearly tore through the leather.

      We drove higher into the sky, chasing after the full moon and tearing through the clouds that sat on the road. It was too dark and foggy to see the two deer and we were on top of them before Amber was able to jerk the wheel. The car fishtailed. Amber turned the wheel the other direction. We fishtailed the other way. I was halfway through a Hail Mary before I realized that we hadn't fallen off the mountain. I'm not Catholic, nor religious, but I got real religious real fast.

      By the time we got to the top of the mountain my stomach was in a knot the size of the famous Half Dome. The Porto-potty was disgusting. I was afraid that something would crawl up out of it and attack me. I hovered, held my breath and did my business, and I swear that I could've counted to at least four before I heard it hit anything. It was surely the deepest well of human waste in the entire world. Running out of oxygen, I finished quickly and then burst out, gasping at the fresh Yosemite air.

      We had to hike to the lookout area in total darkness because our flashlight was dead. We stumbled all over the quarter-mile long path, but we arrived without injury.

       "You first, rookie," Amber said, at the foot of the lookout.

      I took ten short steps, and with each step, the view became exponentially more beautiful. Glacier Point was easily the most spectacular view I'd ever seen, even better than the view of the Yosemite Falls, which we were now looking down on.

      There, at the edge of the world, Amber laid down two cozy blankets, and we nestled between them. I felt something of a euphoric exhaustion. I'd earned my fatigue. For once, it wasn't something that was lumped on me because of abuse to my body.

      I was comfortable and relaxed and happy and wanted to lie there forever. I felt that I could close my eyes and easily fall into a sleep so deep that the dream I dreamt would be a destination rather than a transitory phase to get me to the next day. I closed my eyes, took in a breath, and at that moment I became aware of Amber's soft arm touching the tougher Italian skin of my forearm. Her skin felt nice, it added to the ambiance. A faint desire to kiss Amber came over me, but I didn't act on it. Good decision  

      I felt peaceful and would've been perfectly happy to have stayed up on Glacier Point for as long as it took for one of Yosemite's sequoias to grow from seedling to maturity. Relaxed and satisfied with my day, I let my imagination drift into the nebulas above.

      "Imagine if we fell off right now," I said.

      "How long do you think it'd take to hit bottom?" Amber asked.

      "That's not what I meant. I mean, imagine if we fell off the earth right now, like if gravity stopped working and we just fell. We'd fall into space and float with the planets and stars." 

      "How do you know that way is up?" Amber asked.

      "What do you mean?"

      "You said we'd fall up there; how do you know that there is up?  Maybe the stars up there are the bottom of the universe and the top of the universe is underneath us, under Australia."

      "Good point."  Amber was great to talk too, she was a creative thinker. Society resists original thought. Historically, most geniuses were mocked and persecuted at first for their ideas. Magellan, Jesus and Einstein come to mind. I don't think I'd ever had a truly original idea, but I'm at least capable of thinking out of the box... Actually, I hate that expression- he's an out of the box thinker- it sounds like something from a motivational speech at a corporate picnic. People who say, think outside the box, should be locked up in the damn box, put in the space shuttle, and dropped off up on the moon.

       "What would you do if you saw an alien spaceship up there?"  I asked.

      "Wave."

      "What if they landed right here?"

      "I guess I'd say hello."  Amber answered.

      "What if they told you that Earth wasn't real. That it was just a tiny experiment being conducted by something greater, and the experiment was going to be over in a week, and our planet would be destroyed?  What would you do?  Who would you tell?"

      "Umm, Skye, you just summarized, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams."

      "Oh. Really? ...Never read it. Sounds cool."

      I crawled out of the blankets, and stood up. Below us a thousand campfires flickered like fireflies on a Philadelphia summer's night. It reminded me of my early childhood. The luminous full moon highlighted the outline of the magnificent Half Dome and cast its shadow onto the valley floor.

      There in Yosemite, four hundred miles away from my problems in Los Angeles, I felt healed. I had no desire to taste a drug, no desire to lash out in anger. Standing high atop the world looking down into the earth's crack at all the little people with their little problems made me feel important. I felt Godlike for a moment. Unfortunately this moment couldn't last.

      No matter what I do I'll always be a substance abuser. Up on Glacier Point, I'm far away from reality. I'm far from where my father whored me out, and the streets where my baby died. But I can't live on Glacier Point, soon I'll have to return to my real life where I'm a recovering junkie.

      At least, in living the junkie life, I know how I'll die, which makes it a little less frightening... Maybe misery and fear are the whole point of existence, maybe we're nothing more than a reality television disaster that God created for his own amusement.

      I accidentally kicked a stone off the cliff; it bounced repeatedly off the slanted mountain, chipping at its surface, and taking pieces away with it.

      I'm that rock, I deform those I come in contact with, and take them down with me in my fall. I won't change. Fifty years from now I'll still sit when I pee, I'll still smell the same when I sweat, my fingers will still understand the sexual desires of a guitar, and I'll still be a substance abuser who, as a child, was whored out by her father for drug money. I'm so-

      "BRO-KEN," I said.

      "What?"

      "I'm broken. I'm broken and everyone that tries to put me back together ends up cutting themselves on shards of me. You shouldn't bother with me, Amber."

      "Cool the pity party, Skye."

      "Fuck you. It's not a pity party."

      "Broken, huh?"

      "Yeah. Broken."

      "Well I've got news, love. We're all broken. We've got broken hearts, we come from broken homes, we've got broken bodies, broken dreams, broken personalities, broken religions, broken governments, broken prayers, broken memories. We're all broken people living broken lives in a broken world. Life isn't easy, nobody gets through it without scars. I've got mine. So you have a little drug problem. Your problems are only as big as you make them."

      "You can't say that. You haven't been where I have."

      "... No, I haven't... but I too have lived, and anyone who's lived, has been shit on at some point."

      "Yeah, but it's not fair to assume that your past has been as messed up as mine. You don't even know everything I've been through."

      "Life isn't fair. All we can do is make the best of it... Have you ever heard of Jim MacLaren?"  Amber asked.

      "Jim who?"

      "Jim MacLaren."

      "No."

       "Jim was a six foot-five, three hundred pound football player at Yale. One day he was on his motorcycle on his way to his girlfriend's and he got smacked by a forty-ton bus-"

      "I don't need to hear some inspirational survival story, Amber."

      "Yes you do. So don't interrupt me. Jim was pronounced dead for ten minutes, the police even chalk lined his body. Eight days later he woke up in a hospital missing half his left leg. He didn't remember the accident, and didn't realize he was lucky to even be alive. He was just depressed about his leg. He developed a cocaine habit to cope-"

      "Oh Jesus, here we go... And how do you know about this guy anyway?  You don't exactly seem like a big football fan."

      "I heard his interview on Oprah," she said, which made me laugh. Amber got agitated by my laugh so I shut up and let her tell her little story.

      "Eventually, Jim was able to get off the drugs. He fought back, became a tri-athlete, and even competed in the Iron-Man. He beat eighty percent of the two legged athletes. Ten years after his first accident, in the middle of another triathlon, Jim got hit by a truck. It broke his neck and turned him into a quadriplegic-"

      "Holy shit. What are the odds of that happening twice?"

      "Jim started doing blow again, only now he was so pathetic that he needed someone else to shovel the shit into his nose. He felt he had nothing to live for and was content to do coke until his heart exploded-"

      "I can relate to that."  I said.

      "That's fucking bullshit, Skye. You've got Troy and you've got great friends, and you've got all this beauty surrounding you." Amber threw her hands up in the air then spun around in a circle as if to show me something I didn't see. "Jim fought his addiction, he got his second Ph.D. and now he tours the country to help troubled youth. He spoke to Senator John Kerry, the man running for President, and he said to Kerry, don't kid yourself, we're all in wheelchairs. Can you believe he had the balls to say that?  Wow." 

      "Is that a true story?"

      "Google it."

      "Wow, that's amazing. That Jim guy is a strong man, stronger than me." 

      "Maybe he is. But you're missing the point. The point is that we're all in wheelchairs, we're all broken. We all need to help ourselves and help each other. Your wheelchair is drug addiction, and you can beat it."

      "I don't know how to beat it."

      "You can. We all can. We're all links in a long chain of the same mistakes that have been repeated over and over throughout history."

      "I guess."

      "Skye, problems aren't original, solutions are."

      "Maybe I do pity myself, but sometimes that's about all I've got the strength to do."

      "Fair enough. But you're going to make it through this, and I'm going to help."

      "Why do you even care?"

      "I don't-"  Amber said with a straight face, she held her face ridged for as long as she could but it yielded to a smile.

      I started laughing, then Amber started laughing. My laugh echoed inside me and came out feeling like music. It must've been contagious because Amber let out a belly laugh that was strong enough to make her tear. I wasn't sure why I was laughing, but it felt wonderful, it was something special, something to be grateful for. And I knew that our laugh was one of those moments, that someday ten years down the road, I'd remember and smile.

      Amber was as broken as I. I hoped our laugh would be the first step of putting our pieces back together.

      Eventually, our laughter faded, but the feeling didn't. "Thank you, Amber."

December 24, 2004

       The year after Yosemite was relatively uneventful. It was a constant struggle to stay sober, but somehow I did it. Tonight, Troy and I were celebrating the holiday at Flora's.

      "Thanks so much for having us over Flora, it sucks not having family on the holidays." 

      "When I moved from the Philippines I left my family. Since I don't have blood relation here I choose to make family of those I love. That's everyone here tonight."

      Troy, Troy's roommate, Mike, and myself were the only white people, the rest, all sixteen of them, were Filipino. I wondered how many of them were legal.

      "Fix yourselves a plate of food. First we eat, then we play white elephant, and then we sing." Flora said.

      It was nice to be surrounded by people. I usually spend Christmas alone, crying and getting high. Last Christmas Eve I rented Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, drank a gallon of eggnog, ate a frozen TV dinner, shot some primo heroin, and passed out before midnight.

      "What's this?" Troy asked.

      "Adobo," Mike responded.

      "Whats Adobo?"

      "It's a staple of the Filipino diet. It's chicken, cooked in sugar, soy sauce, and some kind of magical Filipino vinegar. There's other stuff in it too. It's the best chicken you'll ever taste," Mike said. Mike had been dating Flora for a few months and had become well versed in their culture.

      Troy took a bite. "Wow, that is good," Troy said. Juice dripped from his new goatee. His goatee was thin and silly looking. "What's this one?" Troy asked.

      "Pansit. It's like a Filipino version of Chow Mien," Mike said.

      "This?"

      "Dinuguan,"

      "What's that?"

      "Just eat. It so good. My many favorite," said Clarissa, one of Flora's friends. Clarissa, like most of the others, spoke broken English. Flora's friends probably would've spoken Tagalog all night if us white people weren't there. Instead, to make us feel comfortable, they stumbled through their English.

      Troy fixed himself a healthy plate of adobo and pansit. He filled a separate bowl with dinuguan. I was pleasantly surprised by Troy's unusual enthusiasm towards the food.

      "This Deno-gwan stuff is pretty good, Flora. What exactly is it?"

      "It's pork."

      "Whats the sauce?"

      "Pig's blood."        

      I wish I had a camera to capture Troy's face at that exact moment. He spit a mouthful of dinuguan back into the bowl, set it down on the counter, and nonchalantly stepped outside for a smoke. The Filipinos burst into laughter.

      I joined Troy outside. "Are we on Fear Factor or something?" Troy asked.

      Troy exhaled a thick white cloud of smoke that turned red as it rose to the Christmas lights above the door. It reminded me of the fog machines used in eighties glam band MTV videos.

      After a few cigarettes we returned inside for white elephant. Flora explained that in the game everyone puts their wrapped gift under the tree. Everyone pulls a number, then gifts are picked in numerical order. After each person opens a gift they have the option of trading it for somebody else's gift. The game was fun. I pulled an ice cream maker. I liked it but Meeko snatched it from me and left me with bed linens.

      "Damn, these guys make a lot of noise," Troy whispered during the game. 

      They spoke in high pitched sounds that resembled an off-key flute. Everyone talked at the same time, creating a thick carpet of sound. Nobody made much of an effort to listen, and occasionally someone would yank a thread out of the conversation and weave it into something entirely new that had nothing to do with what the first person was talking about. It was total chaos. I imagine thats how most large families were but this was my first exposure to a large family on a holiday...

      After I finished my second helping of food, Flora's adopted Aunt Pea forced a third plate down my throat. I ate it and then slipped away for a little privacy and watched It's a Wonderful Life on TV. I was able enjoy it without feeling sorry for myself for the first time since I was a young kid. I wanted to be one of the girls that got to jump in the swimming pool when the retractable floor opened.

      Jimmy was offering to lasso the moon for Donna when a platoon of Filipinos barged in. Flora turned off the television and announced-

      "Karaoke time!"  Everyone applauded

      "They're addicted. Literally. And the worst part is that they're all terrible singers," Mike said.

      "So we're getting a live version of American Idol here tonight?" I asked.

      "Yeah, we says it Filipino Idol!"  Ruthie stated. 

      Everyone laughed and applauded. Troy rolled his eyes. Ruthie stood about four foot eight, weighed about eighty pounds, had no chest or hips and from behind it was hard to tell if she was a boy or girl. She was cute as a button. She took the microphone, and stumbled through Nancy Sinatra's These Boots Were Made For Walkin. She was horrible, but watching Troy squirm through it made it worth it... Troy's such a music snob.

      "A few months ago, I woke up at like three a.m. to go to the bathroom.  Downstairs, I heard a noise that sounded like a cat whining," Mike said. "I followed the sound trail, and it led me to Flora. She was struggling through the chorus of Wind Beneath My Wings. I asked her to come back to bed three times and three times she ignored me. Then, I made the mistake of trying to snatch the microphone from her... I'm lucky to still have all my fingers."

      Karaoke continued. Delia did a Whitney Houston number. Joseph did I Will Survive. Barry did Sisters Sledge's We Are Family, then the Village People's YMCA. That was the last straw, the three of us white people went out for a cigarette... and Mike doesn't even smoke.

      "Flora's a doll, Mike, you're lucky," I said.

      "She's the best thing that ever happened to me."

      "You two have the same taste in music, and that's important," Troy joked.

      "Skye, you've got to sing some karaoke and rescue us from this Filipino Asian annihilation on American music," Mike said.

      Troy smoked two cigarettes in about five minutes and was in the process of lighting a third cigarette off the butt of the second.

      "Let's get back inside, I'm getting cold," I said.

      "Okay," Troy said, then extinguished the ends of both cigarettes on the sidewalk. Tendrils of smoke escaped the longer cigarette as he put it back in the pack.

      "Dude, you really need to quit smoking," Mike said.

      "Yeah, I do," Troy returned.

      "What, that's it?  No witty retort? No comeback or putdown?"

      "It's Christmas Eve, I'm feeling jolly," he laughed.

      "You're hilarious. So Skye, will you sing for us?"  Mike asked.

      "Why not?" I said.

      Back inside, Flora's friend, Tamisha, was finishing up her version of Queen's We Will Rock You.

      "Flora, can I sing a number?"

      "Which one do you want to sing?"

      "I'll do a cappella."

      "We no have that song," Tamisha said.

      "No baby, a cappella means that she's going to sing without music," Flora explained.

      Flora gave me the microphone and I started-

           "I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus

           Underneath the mistletoe last night." 

      I continued through the entire song. After finishing, I got a standing ovation. Miranda hugged me and cried.

      "You're like a Celene Dion. That was the most prettiest song I ever hears!"  Troy coughed at the mention of Celene. Everyone continued clapping, and it warmed me. It really was the best Christmas Eve I ever had.

      The party went on until about one a.m. Troy and I stayed to help clean afterwards.

      "Flora, I love what you said about making your own family. I want to adopt that philosophy... So, will you Flora, take me Skye, to officially be my sister to death do we part?"

      "I do."

      We hugged; I felt loved. Mike joined in the hug. Troy too.

      "Merry Christmas, guys." Troy said. "While we're embraced in this awkward sentimental moment I may as well announce to you guys that I've started writing again."

      "It's about freaking time," Mike said.

      "Yeah, I wasn't feeling fulfilled by my valet job," Troy said and then laughed. "Nobody ever bettered this corporate world by parking cars for its CEOs. I've needed to resume doing what I love for some time now. And your courage, Skye, in overcoming your addiction, has inspired me. You know I'm telling the truth because its not easy for me to say bullshit like that."

      Troy was working on something substantial for the first time in years. I was so proud of him. It was a fictional novel about us. He would tell the story of our lives, thus making all our personal tragedies into something important.

      "What are you going to call it?" Flora asked.

      "I was thinking about calling it, A Gang of Fucked Up Losers, " Troy joked.

      My conversation with Amber, in Yosemite, came to mind. I thought about when she said how we all have problems and we all need to help each other. We're all broken, she'd said.

     "How about, Broken?"  I suggested.

     "Hmmm, maybe."

     My fight with drug addiction was far from over, and I'd never see an end to the battle with my childhood demons. The only difference was now I had an army of friends backing me up.

Copyright 2006 by J. Matthew Nespoli

Runners-up

"Paper Jam"

by Carol Ryals

       "The copier is jammed again," moans Jenny to anyone who will listen as she starts to open all the compartments looking for the paper causing the jam. She finds it, removes it, closes all the doors, and sighs as the copier warms up again before being ready to make the copies she needs.

       "I swear, that thing has a mind of its own," comments one of her co-workers while getting in line to use the copier after Jenny.

       "It sure does," Jenny replies. "More than once a day I would just like to throw it out the window."

       It's late. Everyone has gone home. The office is dark. The copier sounds like it is humming as it sits dormant until the next day.

       Jenny's frustration is apparent as she reads the lights on the copier's panel telling her there is a jam. "Where is it?!" she says to herself. There is no paper in the machine to make the jam.

       "What did it do, eat the paper?" muses her co-worker once again waiting her turn to use the copier.

       "Who knows?" is all Jenny says as she closes the compartment doors irritably.

       It's late. Everyone has gone home. The office is dark. A spider crawls up the copier's main frame until it reaches the sheet feeder and rests. The copier starts up with a hum. The spider is gone.

       "Does that copier sound louder to you than usual?" Jenny asks.

       "It sure does," says her co-worker. "I hope that means no more jams."

       "No such luck," replies Jenny as the panel once again lights up, saying there is a paper jam. "I think I am going to give it a good, swift kick!"

       "Hey, I have seen evidence of a mouse," says her co-worker as Jenny is looking for the jam. "I will set a trap tonight."

       It's late. Everyone has gone home. The office is dark. A mouse is scurrying across the floor. It sees a trap and avoids it. It runs under the copier. The copier kicks into gear. The mouse is gone.

       Jenny and her co-worker are once again at the copier. "This thing really has an attitude," groans Jenny as she looks at the lights on the panel. "I get so tired of opening all of these doors."

       Her co-worker looks on, "It's been a while since we have seen any evidence of the mouse, but the trap is still empty. I guess he moved on."

       "Well, that is better than it setting up permanent residence with his family!" jokes Jenny as she forcefully shuts all the doors and once again pushes the "start" button.

       "The boss brought his dog in again," says her co-worker. "I think he is leaving him here tonight because his wife wants him to get rid of it."

       They both notice that the copier is getting louder every day.

       It's late. Almost everyone has gone home. The office is dark. The boss is rubbing the dog's ears. He hopes his wife gets over it and allows the dog to return home. Until then, the dog will stay here at the office. "Get rid of the dog!" the boss mutters to himself, "Like I wouldn't rather keep the dog over her!" 

       By now, everyone else is gone. The boss locks up and leaves. The office is silent. The dog lays in his masters office. He hears a noise. He wanders into the copy room. The slight jingle of his dog tags are the only noise in the quiet office. The copier  immediately starts. The dog is curious and walks up to the copier for a sniff. The compartment doors open by themselves. The dog is gone.

       "The boss is freaking out," says Jenny's co-worker as she watches Jenny once again try to find a paper jam. "His dog wasn't here when he got here this morning."

       "How could he have gotten out?" Jenny wonders out loud as she slams all the compartment doors. "Boy, this thing is getting loud."

       It's late. Almost everyone has gone home. The boss asks Jenny to stay late and get some work done. "That figures," Jenny says to herself. "He goes home and leaves me to do the work and fight with this dumb copier."  Jenny locks all the doors and turns out the lights in the rooms she isn't using. She then feels a little sorry for her boss. After all, he did lose his dog.

       She takes a break before attempting to use the ever-jamming copier. She really doesn't feel up to opening and closing all those compartment doors. She sighs loudly. The copier turns itself on with a loud noise. Jenny is startled. The compartment doors are open. "I didn't open those." Jenny says to herself as she walks toward the copier. Jenny looks concerned as the copier is louder than ever. "Honestly, I don't believe I am actually feeling afraid of a copier!" Jenny says out loud. By now she is close enough to the copier to start closing the doors. Jenny is gone.

       Daylight comes in the office windows. The copier sits quietly. Jenny's co-worker sips her coffee. The boss walks through the office, "Has anyone seen Jenny?" he asks. He is a little perturbed that his work didn't get done last night as he requested.

       "Not yet this morning," says the co-worker.

       A noise comes from the corner where the copier sits. "If I didn't know better," says the co-worker, "I would say it belched."

Copyright 2006 byCarol Ryals

"First Visit to Grandmas"

by Daniel Bablinskas

       We drove past long rows of Victorians on the way there, many abandoned, boarded and decaying. Here, the front yards were dotted with bits of fresh green amidst swaths of dead yellow grass and, occasionally, a crippled car. Since spring had warmed the town, folks waddled around in light coats and jeans, bringing Fairbanks, the cold mountain town, alive. Stopped at a streetlight, I peered out the speckled window of our rental and saw a somewhat cozy, albeit run-down diner. Outside the rusted shack were a few rickety trucks. Burly men sauntered to and fro, smoking cigarettes and sharing a vigorous laugh.

       "Funny story," my dad began, "long time ago me and a friend of mine were driving home from a concert and the only thing that was open was that diner--it was pretty late at night and we wanted something to eat.

       "So, we walk inside and the whole place is empty, no menus, just a few tables and a bar, and this naggy old waitress. So, we ask her, you know, well, what you got?

       "And she says, catfish.

       "So, I go, Okay, well, what else do you have?

       "Catfish. They only had catfish in the whole place." He chuckled and kept his hands on the wheel but suddenly I saw him in a different way than I had ever before. His eyes were somewhere else, somewhere back in the past, back in his poor childhood. Clear and blue his eyes looked that day, not sprouting with red veins from the years of wearing contacts.

       At length, we pulled up to my grandmother's apartment. The complex was gray and had an undue quietness about it. The air, though vacant and stale in the car, broke into a ceaseless blue outside the car: cloudless and stunning. Once inside the place, my dad gave me the directions.

       "Throw everything away."

       After scattering her ashes we had one last thing to take care of: her apartment was still full of our inheritance and needed cleaning. But, according to my dad, it would be no easy job, she'd collected and hoarded everything over the years--every gum wrapper, dirty penny, cheesy birthday card, and useless key-chain--and we had to get rid of it all.

       We brought up several trash bags, the heavy duty black ones, and a few cardboard boxes. We were going to have to stuff everything of hers into these to be tossed out, everything except the furniture and a few important documents my father would collect.

       He told me to start with the kitchen, and he'd start in the bathroom. I hadn't even had a good look at the place, but was thrust into taking it apart. Luckily, her apartment was modest: the place only had a living room, a kitchen, a bathroom and my grandma's bedroom. My dad said we could be in and out in under an hour.

       We began separately, he in the bathroom and me in the kitchen. In the kitchen there was a small window that was covered with a set of white curtains. A small triangle of the town was visible through the curtains and occasionally I'd look out to see glimpses of an older America than my own: an El Camino gargling the gas and revving its engine; old couples carrying shopping bags back to their apartment; and a cop directing traffic at a broken stop light.

       The kitchen, though small and sparse, caused the most trouble. I stood up on the counter--a simple white tile--and started emptying the cupboards. I took plates and cups and put them safely into cardboard boxes. I moved slowly at first, noticing the irradiant cleanliness of her eating ware; at least she didn't eat on trash. But, in retrospect, I didn't find the place nearly as filthy or frightening as my dad had forewarned.

       From the other room, I could hear him bustling around. I heard the cacophony of dozens of lipsticks, make-up boxes rusted shut, and balls of lint with random change mixed in, all of it sliding off the table and falling into his unforgiving garbage bag. He took less care than me in disposing of her final things. He bumped around and opened drawers quickly and then, with a  peculiar vigor, let fly handfuls of junk, staining his hands like jars of old pennies.

       I became bored with the white linoleum kitchen as I listened to my dad clear-cutting away her final remains and I began to speed up, breaking a few dishes here or there and distancing myself from any interest I might have in the small photos and newspaper clippings she had in her drawers. I tossed them all: her stacks of birthday cards and illegible sticky notes (her handwriting looked like a little boy's). Removing full drawers and dumping them, I still did not match the ferocity of my father who continued dutifully in the back.

       After the fridge, which seemed like it had been emptied earlier (only a couple microwave meals in the freezer and an empty milk carton were left), I finished with her silverware.

       I noticed a picture when I got to the bottom. My grandmother was holding a baby in her hand and looked serene, bubbling over with happiness.

       It was me! The baby in the picture was me! I recognized it, I don't know how, but I intuitively knew that it had to be me. My mom had often talked about how happy grandma was to hold me, how she'd never seen a lady so content and how difficult it was to retrieve me from her arms. I carefully slid the picture into my pocket, having finished the room.

       After the kitchen, I went into the living room and found my dad already working at it.

       "Look at all this shit," he said, holding a handful of unused postcards. "It's all got to go."

       He seemed blind to discriminating between different things. To him it all seemed like it was the same big jumble of trash with no hidden trove underneath.

       Nevertheless, I listened and continued. She had hundreds of toy trinkets stuffed into the big china cabinet. There were Happy Meal toys, unused video games, porcelain dolls which scared the hell out of me, children's shoes, pieces from Lego sets, Barbie dolls, various keys, lighters, sunglasses, scattered playing cards, and medicine--lots of medicine: Tylenol, Advil, aspirin, codeine, Valium, nitrogen peroxide, Band-aids. I don't know why she kept it in her living room.

       We kept going, throwing it all out, tossing it all away valorously. My dad, I observed, had clearly not inherited her hoarding gene. He didn't care to bother for a minute about sentimentalities. I suppose he was blind to everything she had, or blocked it out, out of embarrassment. Every morsel, bread crumb, everything she had he loathed and seemed ready to do away with.

       He told me to keep on digging through the china cabinet while he took down her TV and moved the furniture to the door. I hurried the last of her assets into the trash bag, remembering to scrounge the couches for any stray candy wrappers or pocket change. There were neither.

       Her bedroom had a purple aura, though it was in no way noble. It was dark, the carpet was burgundy, the furniture a deep mahogany. This, coupled with the strange northern light, made the room glow purple. My dad has shown a remarkable metaphysical sense at times, and I must say that when he mentioned her presence I knew I felt it, too. The ceiling seemed low and made us breathe a little harder. He, glancing upward, grabbed two last garbage bags.

       My father discarded her clothes in a separate bag that he said he'd bring to the Goodwill, but I think we ended up throwing it out from lack of time. I worked at the bookshelf which, for the most part, was full of awful books, Danielle Steele knock-offs and religious self-help literature.

       "Look at this." he said behind me. I looked on top of her dresser and wasn't sure what I saw at first. I didn't think it could be important, but the lowness of his voice ushered me over.

       "What is it?"

       "Imagine having to inject yourself every single day. That's what my mom did for sixty-one years. Most diabetics don't live as long as my mother."

       "So, she started taking it when she was twenty?"

       "Yeah, that's right."

       He seemed stunned, like he had just remembered something hed been trying to recall for years. I wanted out of the room though; the air was sickly.

       "Are you ready?" I asked him.

       "Yeah, all right. Let's get this done with."

       We moved toward the book shelf and started tossing the last things into our bags. There were a few family pictures that, when I asked him about, he said he already had. We took away the books all shelf by shelf, finding various notes hidden in the book shelf and tossing them as well.

       "Did you get those documents?"

       "What documents?"

       "The ones you needed."

       "Oh. Yeah, while you were in the kitchen."

       "What did you need?"

       "Oh, just some bills and personal info."

       On the last shelf, my father took out an enormous yellow book bulging with papers. My grandmother had been a devout Catholic, a dangerously devout Catholic, so attached to her faith it hurt her more than helped her. In her latter days she had become so selfless and giving that she'd done away with all her acquired funds.

       We took a good look at the book and scanned it through, sifting through brick by brick of pages. My dad's report cards were within, surprisingly many pictures of her ex-husband remained, immigration records from her parents' own meanderings, and obscure photographs of forgotten relatives. My dad found his original birth certificate, though the birthday was wrong so he could start school early. All the important stuff in her life was tucked away in that monstrous edition of the Catholic bible.

       I took the last of the books from the shelf and shoved them into the bag. My father looked at me with floundering, curious eyes.

       "What do you think?" he asked.

       "What do you mean?"

       "Well, we can't throw out a bible, can we?"

Copyright 2006 by Daniel Bablinskas

"A Pause"

by Linda Hudson Hoagland

       He approached slowly so he could continue his conversation on the cell phone with the feeling of anonymity as he stood outside the front of the building.

       "No, I can't do that!  I'll get into big trouble. You'll have to do it yourself."

       A pause, as the man waited for the person to stop speaking at the other end of the cell phone connection.

       "No, I won't tell anyone, but if you get caught, don't even mention my name."

       Ellen glanced at the plate glass window trying to see who was talking when she caught a glimpse of a man's reflection. He appeared to be standing behind her, a little to the left.

       As he closed his cell phone he cast his eyes at the same plate glass window and caught her eyes glancing at him.

       She realized her attempt at being sneaky about checking out the talking man didn't work when their eyes met for the briefest of moments. She quickly lowered her eyes, embarrassed that she had been caught watching him.

       The bus from the city transit system saved her from further shame by stopping directly in front of her. She gladly displayed her bus pass and climbed aboard the gigantic vehicle. As she located a seat and sat down, she felt his eyes watching her as if he could see through the bus and look at her sitting on her seat.

       She fought the urge to turn her head and look.

       "Driver, what are you waiting for?" she shouted from her seated position midway to the back of the bus.

       "Customer running. Just be a moment," he said as he motioned to a body racing toward the idling bus.

       She turned her head to glance out the window. He was still there, watching her, staring at the bus, as if he were trying to commit her face to memory.

       She slid down in her seat. She didn't want to feel his eyes on her.  Those eyes gave her the cold chill of fear racing up and down her spine.

       "Hey, lady?  Are you all right?" shouted the bus driver.

       Ellen didn't realize he was talking to her.

       "Hey, lady?  You, scooted down in the seat. Are you all right?"

       Ellen looked up.

       "Who, me?"

       "Yeah, Lady. Are you all right?"

       "Sure. Why do you ask?"

       "You're white as a sheet and down in that seat like you can't hold yourself up."

       "I'm fine. I'm down in this seat because I'm tired. It's been a long day," she sputtered in explanation.

       "You're sure you're okay?  I wouldn't want you dying on my bus."

       "I'm fine."

       The bus driver had closed the door and started to move the vehicle forward when he heard someone rapping on the bus door. He slammed his foot on the brake and opened the door.

       "You could have been killed pulling a stunt like that. I should have just left you standing there," the bus driver muttered to the man boarding the vehicle.

       "Sorry. How much?"

       "Seventy-five cents, correct change only."

       The sound of the coins being dropped into the fare box could be heard throughout the almost empty bus.

       Ellen tried to crawl behind the seat in front of her.

       It was him, the man who was watching her.

       He was walking toward her.

       Ellen popped up from the seat and ran to the back exit where she pulled the cable that let the driver know she wanted to get off now.

       The bus driver opened the rear exit door and allowed her to jump down and take off running at full speed in the direction from where she had come.

       The man walked to the back of the bus and watched her run.

       The bus moved forward through the congested traffic about a city block and the man pulled the cable so that he, too, could get off the slow moving public vehicle.

       He started walking in the direction that would take him to the girl.

       Ellen stopped running for a moment so she could get her breath and take a peek behind her.

       "Thank God," she whispered when she didn't see him.

       Ellen looked around to see if she could spot another bus stop. She had to get home, away from this street, away from the crazy man who was following her. Her only mode of transportation was the public bus.

       She appeared to be in a warehouse district. The streets were deserted but she could feel the presence of people behind dark windows and in murky doorways.

       Again, the cold chill of fear grabbed at her back bone.

       She saw no telephone booths and she didn't own a cell phone which was something she knew she needed to rectify.

       Slowly she started walking in the same direction that had brought her to the desolate, deserted warehouse district.

       "What if I run into him?" she mumbled to herself as she walked at a steady pace, searching every corner for a bus stop sign.

       The hour was getting late and the daylight was beginning to fade. Still no bus stop sign. She had no idea that her fear had caused her to run so far from the safety of the bus.

       It was almost full dark and it was difficult to distinguish the faces of the bodies that were walking toward her on the street. She was finally in an area where there were people and not warehouses.

       There were street lights but they were spaced far apart, not lighting up the entire area between lights.

       As there were people milling about, she was probably getting close to a bus stop.

       A bus stop sign, just ahead, a bus stop sign. She could climb aboard one of those big whale sized coaches and be whisked home in safety. She picked up her pace a bit. She didn't want the bus, any bus, to get to the stop before she arrived.

       She stopped behind the sign and stared into the direction she expected the bus to be taking. She could see a long way down the street courtesy of the street lights but she could see no hint of the whale sized vehicle.

       Suddenly she knew he was there. She could feel him. She could feel his vibes.

       She was tired of running blindly with no place that she could safely go.

       "Why are you following me?  What do you want?" she screamed.

       He stepped out of the shadows. He looked as frightened as she was.

       "You dropped your wallet. I wanted to catch you to give it back to you."

       "I what?" Ellen said as she opened her handbag to find out for herself if he was telling her the truth. She rummaged through the bag, finding no wallet.

       "Thank you," she said as she reached toward his outstretched hand that held her wallet.

       "My name is Sam Jenson. I work in the same building that you work in. Perhaps you've seen me?"

       Ellen squinted her eyes, trying to get a clearer image of him in the semi darkness.

       "Yes, you do look familiar. I'm sorry I ran but I overheard part of your phone conversation. It didn't sound too promising. Actually it sort scared me a bit."

       "Oh, that. What did you hear?"

       "You said you couldn't do something because you would get into big trouble and you didn't want your name mentioned if someone else did it."

       "I can explain. Really, I can. One of my coworkers was going to play a practical joke on another person that we both work with. I didn't want any part of it. That's all it was, honestly. I bet you thought I was planning to kill somebody or maybe rob somebody or burn a place down. That's what I would have thought if I had heard that part of a conversation. I don't blame you for running away."

       "My name is Ellen Hutchins."

       "I know."

       "You know. How would you know?"

       "We work in the same building, okay?  I asked someone else what your name was. I really wanted to meet you and ask you out to dinner."

       "How sweet."

       "Well, would you go to dinner with me?"

       "I can't tonight."

       "When?"

       "Maybe this weekend. Give me a call. We'll discuss it," she said as she walked toward the bus that was slowing to a stop to welcome her aboard.

       While she was sitting on the bus, Ellen realized that she had not had her wallet out when she was standing at the bus stop.

       She was glad that that day had been her last day of work at that building. She knew she wouldn't run into Sam Jenson again. She also knew he wouldn't be calling her because the address on her identification was wrong as well as the telephone number. She hadn't had time to have it changed.

       She knew deep in her heart it was her lucky day.

Copyright 2006 by Linda Hudson Hoagland

"What You Don't Know"

by Gwendolyn C. McIntosh

       Eerie silence, stifling air, hazy darkness, silky sheets and a man's warm body tangled up with her arms and legs greeted her first waking moments. She closed her eyes and tried desperately to feign sleep despite the panic she felt racing through her stomach.

       She waited still as stone until the first rosy gray streaks of dawn provided just enough dim light to determine his identity and her location. She stealthily turned her head to examine the man's face for some recognizable feature. His sun-streaked dark brown hair was straight and his skin looked brown as a roasted almond. His face, angular and gaunt, looked very relaxed or very pleased. It might have been a perfect face except that his nose looked a bit crooked and the scar on his upper lip was on the same side as the crook in his nose. In all he seemed quite attractive. Her gaze traveled down the arm that rested across her body in a very intimate manner. Anxiety joined panic when her eye caught a very shiny wide wedding band on his ring finger.

       And a mortifying thought occurred to her; I've slept with a married man.

       Unable to move her left arm without disturbing him, she felt her ring finger and found a wide band there. Fright, anxiety and panic began to boil up her throat and she frantically swallowed to halt their eruption from her body.

       Then a disconcerting question occurred to her; might I be married to this man?

       In the strengthening light of the rising sun, she raised her right arm and saw that her skin was tanned nearly as dark as his. Her nails were neatly manicured and polished red. On her little finger a yellow gold ring with an emerald and diamond setting shimmered. She did not recognize it. Her eyes traveled up her arm to her shoulder, her bare shoulder, and she felt her heart race.

       Am I nude?

       An awakening of self-awareness confirmed that her bare skin rested against his bare skin. Heat from her blush burned her cheeks and she wondered what was happening to her.

       Wait, she thought, who am I?  I don't even know what I look like or what my name is or how old I am.

       She groaned then and shifted uncomfortably, waking him in the process. When he rose she brought her left hand up and watched the sun catch a facet of the design cut in the wide band that matched his.

       "Poloma," he said squinting into the sunbeam streaming in through the one window in the room. "How long have you been awake?"

       As long as I can remember, she thought. And she lay still as she could, staring into his eyes, velvety blue eyes. I don't know who he is or who I am. Poloma?  Never heard the name before. Have we just been married?  The rings look pretty new.

       "Honestly, Poloma, I've never before seen anyone go so lethargic after one sip of wine. You must have an appetite this morning after such a deep sleep," he said.

       Her eyes darted over every surface in the room but she found no evidence that she even had any nightclothes, and he obviously hadn't worn any.

       When he moved closer her eyes opened wider and just before his mouth claimed hers she thought, his breath is quite pleasant. During the kiss she thought, his kiss is more than pleasant. I can believe I might have married him.

       When he lifted his mouth from hers he cradled her head under his chin and against his shoulder.

       "We should get dressed," he said as he grabbed a small clock on the bedside stand and blew out his breath. "I haven't slept until 9:00 a.m. for years, maybe not ever. See what you've done to me?"

       He kissed her soundly again and brushed bits of kisses on her shoulder while his fingers feathered her breast briefly. Then he stood, walked to the door of the suite, opened it and picked up the newspaper, tossed it onto a side table, and sauntered into the bathroom in a relaxed, comfortable stride.

       When he disappeared from the bedroom, she frantically threw the bedcovers back to see if she had any type of clothing to cover herself. None there so she timidly stepped onto the thick cushion of the carpet, slipped quickly about the room to check every piece of furniture for a gown or a robe. She finally found a filmy, ivory-colored, lace-trimmed gown that she threw over her head and smoothed over her body. An envelope stood propped against a lamp on the dresser, and she went close enough to read Mr. and Mrs. Nyle O'Shea Quinton written beautifully in sharp black on crisp white.

       "Nyle?" she said aloud.

       "Yes?" he said as he stuck his head out from the bathroom, razor in hand and face half shaved and half white with shaving cream.

       She stared at him and he smiled at her.

       "Shocking, isn't it?" he asked. "I meant it when I said you would be my wife the first minute I saw you. I just didn't know it would only take three months to accomplish the task."

       She raised her eyebrows and shook her head, three months is all it took?

       "Come my darling," he gestured into the bathroom. "We must get moving. You can't be shy about sharing the bathroom with me after all we shared last night."

       She stared at her reflection in the mirror-tiled wall behind the sinks and saw violet eyes wide open in disbelief, a long narrow face, a fairly nice nose and full lips. Her feet were long and narrow and her toenails were polished to match her fingernails. Her skin looked tanned, or perhaps naturally darker. Nearly as tall as Nyle, but so delicately built she determined she would probably not be able to fight anyone, if necessary.

       Nyle finished shaving, rinsed his face and stood behind her enclosing her in his embrace.

       He brought his face down beside hers and looked at their reflections in the mirror. "We are going to have some beautiful children, Poloma," he said nibbling on her neck. "You may even be carrying our first child right this minute."

       He knelt down then and turned her toward him while he nuzzled his face into the filmy material that covered her abdomen. Well, it appears I have found quite an enticing man for my husband.

       "Want to shower with me?" he asked lifting the filmy little gown from her body as he stood.

       She slipped out of his embrace and said, "I think I'll just do my face and see what I want to wear first."

       "Don't take too long deciding; you have much to choose from," he said smiling at her as he stepped into the shower. "I didn't think you were ever going to finish hanging everything last night."

       She stood as if rooted by the gentle sound of the shower spray. Shaking herself back to reality, or what was passing for reality at the present, she flew around the room ripping open every drawer and pulling open every door attempting to find herself. An amazing array of beautiful clothing hung in the closet and she felt certain she had never before had such a wardrobe.

       Weak in the knees, she sought a chair at the table. When she sat down to breathe deeply she saw the article on the front page of the newspaper, The Trinidad Guardian, lying on the side table.

       "Slain Woman Part of Mercedes Family," the headline read. Six words that would have meant little to her if not for the photo beneath the headline and beside the accompanying article. Her heart raced at the sight of the woman and tiny remnants and fragments of memories raced through her mind. Memories of a large manila envelope containing photos, news articles and a ring, an emerald and diamond ring, invaded her consciousness. Again she glanced at her right hand where the emerald and diamond pinkie ring twinkled in the full sun of morning. Mercedes, she thought. That name was woven throughout the contents of that envelope. Her pulse quickened. There was something else in that envelope, there was another thing. The memory teetered on the edge of her mind, but she could not pull it over. The photo in the morning newspaper and the photos of the young Mercedes girl in the envelope were of someone she knew very well. According to the news article that someone had been murdered.

       Panic seized her and she knew she had to flee. In the top dresser drawer she found a handbag. Inside was a small pocketbook containing more money than she believed she had ever seen before, a driver's license and a passport, both with her picture, and several credit cards, all in the name Poloma Giovanni.

       That should take care of me, she thought as she rifled through the closet to choose a few less colorful pieces, things that would not draw attention. A disposable bag from the closet shelf served as her travel bag, into which she stuffed her chosen items. After slipping into a sedate pair of trousers, drab tee shirt, light tunic and moccasins, she tied a scarf over her head, grabbed the handbag, travel bag and newspaper as she rushed out the door. Riding down in the elevator many thoughts thrashed about in her mind, among them, Giovanni sounds Italian; maybe I can go to Italy to find myself.

       Skidding to a stop in the drive leading to a house of mansion proportions and appointments, Maxwell Quinton smiled with the inner satisfaction he felt. Nearly all his professional acquaintances in the oil business chose much larger communities for their homes; but he dearly loved Nacogdoches, Texas and felt fortunate that he had chosen that area to make his home.

       "Neva Odette, where in this monstrous house are you?" Maxwell shouted as he stomped through the front door.

       He listened for a response from where the echoes of his voice and footsteps reached. Halfway up the stairs he heard the music his wife preferred for her daily workout.

       "Neva!" he shouted over the raucous beat of the music.

       She stopped her treadmill as soon as she saw him and pulled out her earplugs.

       "I never could figure out why you play music at the fullest decibel possible and then plug your ears," he said as he kissed his wife soundly.

       "I really don't know, but it works for me," she said kissing him back.

       "Have we heard anything from our son and his new wife?" he asked.

       "Nyle called around noon," Neva said. "They'd arrived in Port-of-Spain and love Trinidad.

       Maxwell sat down on their bed and motioned her to sit next to him. She cuddled under his arm and took little nips at his earlobe.

       "You should stop that now since I have an appointment in forty-five minutes downtown," Maxwell said.

       "These past few months were so full and so romantic, I just got caught up in all of it because Nyle is so happy and so much in love."

       "And it renewed our love?" he asked.

       Neva's eyes flew open and she leaned back to stare at him.

       "Renewed?" she asked.

       Holding her by the shoulders he looked through her beloved gray eyes speckled with green deep into her soul.

       "Neva, I know you threw yourself completely into Nyle and Paloma's romance," he began. "But I also think you sensed something was bothering me."

       "I did," she agreed. "I assumed your frustration was caused by the speed that this whole situation took."

       "That, too," he said.

       "That she could not remember who she was?"

       "That, too," he said.

       "What else then?" she asked. "Surely, you cannot question their love for each other."

       "Certainly not," he said. "However, another thing I'm worried about is, will she still love him when she remembers?"

       Neva looked at him and a cloud of trouble crossed her features.

       "Oh, Max, I truly did not think of that," she said. "I can not even imagine such a thing."

       "Then I am sorry I brought it up in your mind," Maxwell said. "But that is only part of my concern. My main concern is what sort of characters will be coming around looking for whoever she was."

       He gently rubbed her arm and Neva's eyes flew wide open.

       "What if they are gangsters?" she asked.

       "Now I do not believe that would be the case just from the type of person she is; she has some class."

       "Then they might be con artists and we might not even know it," Neva said.

       "Definitely," he said. "Con artists can be very classy people too."

       "Like somebody who could take everything we have before we realize it?" she asked.

       "Exactly," Maxwell said.

       Neva looked squarely into his eyes and said, "The only things I absolutely could not bear to lose would be you and Nyle, and of course, now Poloma."

       "That's exactly why I truly wish Nyle would have waited a bit longer so we might have been able to discover who she really is before he married her."

       "Oh, Max, you don't think she is married to someone else?" Neva asked.

       "Frankly, anything is a possibility at this point," Max said. "That's why I still have our company investigators working on this."

       "I only want the bottom line," the man barked into the phone. "Skip the minutiae."

       "The trail went cold in, ah, just a moment here," the detective's voice cracked and the sound of shuffling papers came through the receiver.

       The man remembered his impression of the detective at their first meeting. A little man, not fat but not skinny, sharp features and intense eyes, dressed casually in blue jeans, a turtleneck and a blazer jacket. But the guy had no wrinkles, no stray threads and no loose hairs.

       "Are you telling me that for the exorbitant fee you are charging you still have to look at some god damned report to tell me where you lost her trail?" the man asked.

       "Well sir, you are not my only client," the detective said clearly and firmly. "We covered every direction as far as she could have traveled by automobile from Duluth with no results."

       After a lengthy silence the man cleared his throat and asked, "Just what is it that I can expect now that this is a cold case?"

       This time the man kept silent during the detective's restraint.

       "I did not indicate that this was a cold case, I merely stated that her trail went cold. However, when we present the facts of a case to our client, we leave most decisions regarding that case to the client."

       Again the man kept silent, pondering the facts as they had already been presented. He stared at the Baccarat glass sitting on his desk filled with a very rich golden whiskey and picked it up to take a stout swallow before continuing. "Obviously some aspects of this case have gone cold. Despite that, I respect very much who you are and what you have accomplished. One must be quite something to be trained in the military and chosen to rise through the ranks to become a Special Operations Officer."

       "Thank you," the detective said softly.

       "How ethical are you about keeping client information confidential?" the man asked.

       "Sir, I should think the answer to that would be obvious. After all as a Special Ops Officer I had access to information such that might even melt that lovely glass from which you drink your fine whiskey," the detective said, remembering the man being a contrast of sharp wits and rumpled appearance, obviously comfortable in elaborate surroundings not his own.

       The man's eyebrows rose when he asked, "Is that from notes or memory?"

       "Memory, sir," the detective replied.

       The man nodded his appreciation then said, "What I need to tell you I must not say by telephone; shall we meet at the place my employer provided?"

       "Within the time frame we agreed on?" the detective asked.

       The man