The first time I visited Dr. Adams’ home, I was in such a state of nervousness I had neglected to notice the beautiful neo-Victorian construction. The house had a wide, white wooden wrap-around porch, and with the late summer sun setting behind it, it looked like the kind of place a person would sit on the porch swing, talking about the weather, drinking fresh lemonade. Maybe if we were on the East Coast, fireflies would be dancing in the hedges, and Glen Miller would playing on an antique Victrola just inside.

He seemed to know the image his home projected, and revel in it. He sat on the swing, a sweating scotch on the rocks in the hand that rested lightly on the wooden arm, dressed in what only the obscenely rich consider casual. His white linen shirt was slightly rumpled, but his loose khaki pants looked straight from the dry cleaner. He was humming to himself and looking out past where the porch railing bent around the side of the house, toward a clump of rocks with beach weeds growing through them.

He noticed me, and gestured for me to take a spot on a rocking chair that although, quite probably was relatively new, had an old, antiqued look to it. I obliged him.

“I thought we might conduct the first portion of our interview her on the porch, if that suits you, Ms. Avery. I believe the porch light should be enough for you to make notes”.

I agreed that the location seemed suitable enough. A gull cried out on the beach behind the house.

“Sometimes, I really enjoy just sitting here in the evening, it is such a comfortable place,” he sipped his scotch, “And aside from that, the demonstration I have prepared for you will have to take place in my lab, and, as it is in the basement, I thought we could enjoy as much fresh ocean air as possible before heading down.”

He spoke in a way that made me question whether the week of silence had truly been anger, or his preparation time for the show he was putting on now. He seemed collected and dignified in the way I remembered seeing in his big press conferences and television interviews. He toyed with the rim of his scotch glass, I would have said he looked thoughtful if it didn’t seem to fit so well with everything else he was putting together for my benefit.

“I am aware that a lot of people are under the impression that my work on the Holly is…petty? Although I don’t think that’s the right word. It unsettles them, and they don’t like it, so they dismiss it. Yes, that is more accurate, don’t you think?” He looked from the scotch glass to me.

I hesitated a moment, deciding that the question wasn’t rhetorical, “Yes, I think that is probably a fair assumption.”

He nodded in the manner I had grown accustomed to seeing college professors nod at students who were particularly good at regurgitating their beliefs and opinions back to them. “I think it is also safe, or fair, as you said, to assume that part of that reason is that they lack understanding on how important…how life changing, this project really is. They seem to have forgotten the child like wonder we all once felt when we believed that anything was truly possible. They see a man, a grieving man, creating an image of the woman he lost and they get lost in semantics and assumptions. They see a moral issue,” He said the last two words with a sort of refined distaste.

“They, being the general public, and some of my own peers, aren’t seeing the bigger picture. The joy this could bring, the happiness. In some ways, Holly is only the beginning, the light show I am able to put together using some of her genetic imprint and a lot of computer generated image is only the start. Someday, when the technology is discovered (and I think it will be, because I am working on it tirelessly), I think she can be…almost human”.

He paused thoughtfully and I took the opportunity to speak, “But, don’t you think that may be a big part of the reason so many people see this as a moral issue?”

He smiled as if he had anticipated the question, and was grateful I had asked it, “Is it morally wrong to wish to pay homage to those we love who are no longer with us? Is it a moral issue, Ms. Avery, when we watch home videos or leave flowers on a grave? Is it a question of morals when a person keeps a picture and a lock of hair in a locket around their neck? Because that is what my Holly is made from, pictures and a simple lock of hair. I chose to set the image free rather than keep it tucked away in a locket, is that so much different?”

I shook my head and scribbled in my notebook, praying I had enough room on my recorder to capture the length of what he had planned.

“Of course not. We worship our ancestors in much the same manner as the ancient societies did, we just do it in slightly different ways. This project is not designed to clone the dead, Ms. Avery, it is not meant to draw their souls from wherever one may believe the souls of the dead go. That is superstition, and I am no shaman, I am a scientist.” He took a deep breath, seeming to savor the outside air, and breathed out slowly.

He waited patiently as I jotted things in my notebook. “And there’s the other thing,” he said.

“The other thing?” I asked.

“I am a scientist. I still have the desire, the sense of possibility, the wonderment that got me into the research and development in the first place. I still want to see how far I can go, I still want to use the knowledge and ability I have to create things we never thought possible. Tell me, Ms. Avery, do you think your parents ever imagined cellular phones? That your grandparents could have wrapped their imaginations around something like the internet? Color television was a source of wonderment for our grandparents, and now, instead of Walter Cronkite in Technicolor, we have the entire world’s worth of information at our fingertips with the click of the mouse! I am sure if you described something like that to a group of conservative people in the 1940s a good many of them would see it as a moral issue. New technology almost always has resistance. Those of us who do not, or cannot create the new thing always feel a sense of dread at it. How can that person do that?, we think, how is it possible for that one person to have so much power? And of course, whenever someone has more power than we do, it scares us. It makes us feel small. And do you know what happens when human beings get scared? When they feel small?”

Although I was taken aback by his apparent God-Complex, and his assumption that he completely understood the human condition, I told him I did not.

“We forget to be surprised. We forget to feel wonder and amazement. We trap ourselves with fear, we make excuses for feeling that way, we say it is immoral, or disgusting, or wrong” his voice was full of passion and emotion, it was hard not to feel empathy, even wonder, when listening to him speak, “I’m not trying to bring back the dead, Ms. Avery, I am just trying to honor those we have lost, and fill the world with wonder and joy at the very idea, the possibility, that those we love need not amount to nothing more than a photograph once they have left this world”.

I looked down at my notes and suddenly felt guilt at the words “megalomaniac”, “God-complex” and “presumptuous” written in my hand writing.

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Also, looking for someone who may be able to help me deconstruct some of the things I have on this site, a friend designed this for me as a favor and I am not very happy with the changes I made, but have no idea how to fix them!

Stay tuned for more posts from Renee Asher.

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“Charlie, SHIT! The ball…it’s…it’s a ball again! And it’s quiet”.

Charlie shook his head and stretched, looking at the alien contraption. “The lights are gone, too. Do you think it’s out of juice?”

I shurgged. How the hell should I know? Just yesterday I had been convinced that we had been majorly ripped off, then I’m following this thing without giving it a second thought, eating the random food it produces from somewhere in its odd machinery and… “Damn, Charlie, what the hell are we doing? We don’t even know what this thing is”.

He looked at me without any real expression of worry. But he didn’t say anything, and I guess that was sort of a good thing. It wasn’t often Charlie kept his loud mouth shut. I stood up, keeping an eye on the giant ball bearing, wondering if I should pick it up, or kick it, or wait for it to do something again. I dusted off my worn out jeans, and as I did, the ball bearing made the decision for me. It started doing something.

“Look!” Charlie shouted. It began to hover again, only a few inches from the ground, and a low, melodic humming started from somewhere inside it. The humming got louder, and the ball began to unfold again, taking on the shape of a flying saucer again.

Charlie looked at me, his eyes glazed, “We don’t have much further to go, Duke”.

“How do you know that?”

Charlie shook his head, then looked at me, “I don’t know…I don’t even know why I said that, it was like,” he sighed, “It was like that thing was in my head”.

I got a chill, but before I could say anything, the flying saucer started it’s flight again, and again, Charlie and I were helpless not to follow it.

We were in the foothills now, and the happy, looping, showy flight patterns the thing was taking almost felt like mocking as we trudged up the rocky trails. I wasn’t as entranced this time around, and I was growing tired and agitated a lot more quickly. The sun was high in the sky, and not having had any breakfast I was feeling hungry, and at least a little grouchy.

“Do you think we have to ask it to feed us? Or maybe last night was just a one time deal? Fuck, man, I am so hungry”. Charlie was whining.

“I know as much about this thing as you do, remember?” I snapped at him.

“Yeah, but I’m really hungry.”

Just then the ball saucer made an abrupt turn, flew sideways for a moment and then disappeared into the opening of some sort of man made cave.

“Shit.” I started to jog toward the cave.

It was waiting for us right inside the mouth of the cave, boucning happily and doing a much better light show than would have been possible in full daylight. The lights kind of did make me happy. They were warm, somehow.

Then, it pulled its blooming flower trick again; and again, there was food. It was different from the food from the night before, but just as alien, and just as delicious. After lunch, I felt energized. I was ready to hike a hundred miles, no! A thousand.

The ball took off almost as soon as Charlie had popped the last of the alien grapes into his mouth, and we both stumbled and nearly fell trying to get up to follow it. It’s colorful lights cast abstract shadows along the wals of the tunnel as it zipped through at what felt like thirty miles an hour. Of course, it coulnd’t have been that fast, because we were keeping up with it. I mean, it definitley wouldn’t have been possible for it to effect our running speed…

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This is an excerpt from a current project title (tentatively) “The Epistle Of Jude” it is the other half of the story you have already seen excerpts from: “Saint Impossible”. In this passage, we find an eleven year old boy, in bed, while his mother argues with her boyfriend about Scottie’s new “friend” Benny. Benny is significantly older than Scottie, and he is a skinhead…I’ll leave the rest to your imagination. Please don’t forget to give feedback!

One evening, Benny dropped Scott off at home, and instead of her normal willingness to chat with Benny, his mother rushed him out before Scott had even finished his shower. From his bedroom, he could hear the reason behind it. Vincent and his mother were arguing. Vincent said Benny was bad news, that Scott needed to be kept from him, before it was something more serious than a three day suspension and a bloody nose. His mother told Vincent he was being unreasonable, Benny was obviously a nice young man, and Scott really enjoyed going to Benny’s place and learning about cars and spending time with the other kids.

“What other kids, Sarah? Have you thought of that? There aren’t any other kids in Benny’s car when he drops Scott off, you don’t wonder about that?”

“Oh, come on, Vincent, Benny has a younger sister a couple years younger than Scott, and the guys he works with at the auto shop all have kids that hang around, it’s good for Scott to be out of the house, around other kids”.

“This Benny guy is not a good guy, Sarah, I know his type, Sarah, Chicago is full of them”.

Scott heard his mother give a sigh, “What type is that, Vincent? He’s a nice young man, who has a decent job and doesn’t mind looking after a few kids in the afternoon, you, if anybody, should be happy, I know you hate having Scott in your hair when he gets home from school.”

“Look at him! The way he dresses, his haircut, just like the ones we see on the news, beating up on people, talking about white power.”

“Oh! Vincent, honestly, you think that young man is one of those crazy Nazis? What has gotten into you?”

Before Vincent could answer, the phone was ringing, “Let me get that,” Scott heard his mother say. The phone continued to ring while Vincent told her not to answer, they argued about the phone until it stopped ringing. A beat later, when it began ringing again, Vincent snatched the phone from its receiver and answered it. Scott couldn’t hear what was said, and didn’t know who had been on the line, but when Vincent spoke again, his voice reeked of anger.

“And now, Sarah, that peckerwood thinks he can call my house to ‘check up on things’? I don’t like that guy and I don’t want Scott going over there anymore.”

“Vincent-“

“I said I don’t want him to go over there anymore. It’s not like there isn’t anything for him to do around here.”

“Vincent, please, where else is he going to go?”

“Are you arguing with me?”

“What?” Scott heard the panic in his mother’s voice, “No, of course, not, I just don’t see…”

Scott heard Vincent’s broad hand strike his mother’s face, heard her yelp in pain. “Don’t ever think you can question me like that, you silly bitch!” He hit her again, she cried and whimpered out apologies.

Scott felt fury raging in his gut, his face was hot, he was too infuriated to feel fear. He wanted to rip Vincent’s yellow heart out of his chest and spit in the hole it left. He wanted to see the look on Vincent’s face as he got the living hell beat out of him. He wanted to burn the cheap, rat infested row home down and sit outside on the grass with his mother listening to Vincent scream out in agony.

How dare this dago fucking wop come into his house, sit on his couch, take his mother from him, then have the balls to beat her? In here, in his house. He wasn’t going to let it fucking happen, that was for damn sure, he was a fucking American, and this interloper wasn’t going to be running things in his life any fucking longer. He pulled the blankets down slowly, set his feet on the floor quietly, reached out and gripped the base of the lamp on his night stand. He felt the brass in his hand, cold and hard. He stood and carefully unplugged it, walking on eggshells into the living room.

He could clearly see Vincent, in an old ratty undershirt and his boxer shorts, standing over his mother, lecturing her as she cried on the floor. He was telling her he didn’t want to hit her, no, but she needed to respect him.

Respect? I’ll show you fucking respect!

Scott raised the lamp like a baseball player at the plate and crashed the brass base behind Vincent’s knees. It caught him off guard, and the blow was hard, even coming from an eleven year old, he lost his balance, unable to catch himself before spilling onto the floor.

“What the hell?” He roared as he turned to Scott, screaming threats and obscenities, Scott crashed the lamp into his face before he could stand up, then again. He couldn’t hear his mother screaming for him to stop, he wasn’t aware of his own guttural, primal screams as he bashed the lamp into Vincent again and again. He never let Vincent get more than halfway up from the floor, which was good, because if he had, Vincent probably would have flattened him, but he had caught the beast by surprise, and as long as he could keep Vincent on the floor, the better his chances were of surviving.

He wasn’t thinking any of this through, he was acting on instinct mixed with clean, unadulterated hate, his fury blinded him from any thought or emotion. He felt powerful, he felt in charge, for the first time since this dago-wop-piece-of-shit-fucking-interloper had come into his house, he felt at peace. And in his guttural, furious screams of passion and hate, he felt freedom. He felt in charge, and he fucking liked it.

He would have beaten this piece of shit into a bloody dead mess on the floor if not for his mother screaming. It broke through finally, her begging him to stop, her crying. It broke through his fury and into the softer part of him. The part of him that was still eight years old and only had eyes for mother. He felt his heart twist in his chest as he looked at her red, tear streaked face, and he put the lamp, now broken and bloody, down.

He looked at the mess that was once Vincent, and spit into his bloody face. His mother was a blubbering mess, hysterical, reaching out for him. He looked at her, and began to sob. He went to her, and fell on his knees, allowing her to hold him as he eroded into a confused, scared, little boy again. As she held him, rocking him, both of them sobbing, Vincent was getting his senses about him again.

Scott heard his mother scream as Vincent put a hand on his shoulder and pulled him away from his mother’s arms.

He would always hear her voice, screaming, in his dreams, in his nightmares, screaming for Vincent to leave her baby alone, don’t hurt her baby boy, begging him, please, please don’t hurt my baby boy!

And with his hate and fury removed from him, not an all powerful being, but a scared, eleven year old momma’s boy, crying, he suddenly knew with clarity, that without a miracle, he was going to die that night. He was going to die while his mother watched, and then, she too, would die.

Vincent held him by one arm and swung him around hard enough to hurt his shoulder joint. When he looked at Vincent’s face, he could do nothing but continue to cry. Vincent took Scott by the shirt collar and slammed him into the door jamb, his head hit the corner with a loud thwack and blood gushed down. Vincent let him slide down to the floor before kicking him hard in the gut. Scott had no sense about him, he tried to speak, tried to scream, but all that escaped his mouth were weak, unintelligible moans, his mother watched as his eyes rolled back in his head, and her screaming became more urgent.

“Vincent!” She screamed, “Vincent for chrissakes he’s only a boy, you’re going to kill him, please, oh please don’t hurt him anymore!” She screamed so shrilly that the small part of Scottie Wagner that was cognoscente desperately willed her to stop, it was splitting his ear drums. Vincent kicked him in the teeth and he spit out a mouth full of blood, and a molar. His mother continued to scream hysterically, and, just as the lights in Scottie’s world went out, he heard her scream turn abruptly into a yelp after a hard kick to what he imagined was her gut.

He felt dizzy and sick to his stomach, but he didn’t have enough sense to be scared, or to think about the throbbing pain in his head, as he came to, seconds, maybe minutes later, his eyes opened to see Vincent in a complete rage, holding his mother by one shoulder as he screamed in her face and slapped her hard. The thought that they would both die that night came back to him quickly, jabbing at him like the sharp end of a tent spike.

He tried to pull himself up, but his hand slipped in what may have been his blood, or may have been Vincent’s and he fell helplessly back to the floor. He remembered his mother teaching him to pray, and he wondered if God heard prayers from little boys covered in two kinds of blood. He prayed for anything to make it stop, please, God, oh Lord, please….please just make it stop!

His mother was still crying, still able to beg Vincent to stop, Scottie hoped that was a good thing. He saw Vincent back hand her so hard that her face jerked to the side through his swollen eye. He tried again to scream, and this time, he found a voice, but there were no words. He tried to push himself up again, and slipped again, smacking his face on the tile and sending all new waves of pain through his mouth and nose. He had made the decision to keep trying to push himself up until he succeeded, when he heard a pounding on the door. Oh thank God, he prayed silently, some one called the police! He tried to scream, but it was more inarticulate mush, his mother, however, still had her voice and she wailed for help once, before Vincent hit her across the face so hard that she hit her head on the cabinet behind her.

Scott attempted one more time to push himself up, and he made it to his knees in time to see Benny walk into the kitchen, his face red, his chest heaving with deep, heavy breaths, he was carrying a baseball bat.

Benny spoke clearly and calmly, but the hand holding the ball bat shook with anger, “Vincent, I want you to stop what you are doing, and walk towards me slowly. If you so much as fart as you do it, I will bean you with this baseball bat so hard your head will spin.”

Vincent laughed at Benny, “Is that so?” He stood and swung out, Benny pulled the ball bat back and hit Vincent square in the jaw. He fell. Benny picked him up by the collar and threw him into the grass. He nimbly padded down the steps after him and hit him in the gut with his bat, he nodded to two other men with him, both in bomber jackets like his, and they converged on Vincent like wolves on fresh prey.

He ran back to Scott and his mother. “Shit, shit!” he gasped, “Oh Jesus, are you alright, Sarah?” Scott now noticed the trickle of blood coming from his mother’s nose.

“Scottie!” His mother screamed, “He tried to kill Scottie!”

Benny turned to see Scott, still only half way up, his knees and palms on the floor, blood dripping from the back of his head and mouth. Benny helped him up, looking into his eyes intently, “Okay,” he sighed, “Now Sarah, I need you to be calm okay? We need to go to the hospital—“

“The hospital? Oh, god, oh, god, Benny is he okay? Is my baby okay?”

Benny looked her in the eyes, holding Scottie gingerly, “Scott will be fine, Sarah, as long as we can all calm down and take him to the doctor, he’s got a concussion, but he will be all right, I promise if you calm down and get into the car with me, everything will be fine”.

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I looked at Charlie, his eyes the size of sand dollars, jaw in the dirt, and for once, nothing coming out of his mouth.

I squinted and tried to peer inside the thing and as I did, I heard the most beautiful, melodious humming coming from inside, immediately, I smiled. I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the door, which was no longer dark, but filled with glorious colorful light, it was soft pink, no, bright green, baby blue, then a purple like I had never seen, if I could have looked away, and looked at Charlie, I know he would have been wearing the same awestruck stupefied grin as I.

It started to float away from us, and as I slowly rose, still in a daze, and half heartedly brushed my clothes off, never taking my eyes from it, I became aware that Charlie was still in the dirt. The thing bounced a little, to the left, then to the right, then back away from us, slowly and happily over the sand.

I leaned down and grabbed Charlie by the arm, “Get up bro, I think it wants us to follow it”.

And so we started walking, following the beautiful sound and soft light.

The sun was setting, and it occurred to me that it had only been eleven a.m. when we brought the thing out to the desert, we had been walking awhile, but it felt like it had been minutes. The melody of the humming would change now and then, but it was soft and soothing, much like the light coming from the small opening.

Before I realized it, we were coming up on the foothills. It didn’t seem possible, from the road, they looked like they were only thirty or so miles out, but in reality they were closer to a hundred miles out. How long had we been walking? My stomach started to grumble, and I looked to Charlie.

He was still following without taking his eyes from it, “Charlie, how long you think we’ve been walking?”

“Dunno,” he mumbled and shrugged, still not looking at me.

“Aren’t you hungry, man?”

His head lolled around toward me, he nodded, then, his eyes cleared a little, he shook his head, “Shit, yeah man, I am seriously fucking starving”.

Suddenly, the thing, that was once a ball, stopped, hovered a moment, then Land softly in the sand. Charlie’s eyes widened, “Shit, you don’t think we broke it?”

I shook my head, “No way, man, we didn’t even touch it, besides, it’s still singing.”

It sat still for a moment, then the top bloomed like a futuristic flower, and inside was food, glorious FOOD!. Charlie and I dug into the berries, that looked nothing like any we had seen, and tasted better than any we had ever tasted without considering that we didn’t know what they were. Just when it seemed that the berries would run out before our hunger did, the flower closed back up, then after a moment, opened again and showed us meat, it looked like beef drizzled in gravy, but upon tasting it, it was clear, this was something much better than beef could ever be.

After eating, it seemed impossible to keep my eyes open, and looking to Charlie, I saw he had already laid down, and was starting to snore.

Next thing I knew, it was morning.

keep looking for part 3!

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“How do you think it works?” I asked.

“Shit, I don’t know,” that was Charlie, always the eloquent one. What we had in front of us was supposed to solve all of our problems, it was supposed to bring us the money we needed and the transportation to get to it. It was supposed to change our lives.

What we had in front of us was a suitcase with a small metal ball in it.

That was it. We paid for this! Like we had money to pay for anything, and somehow we got together 5 grand to give to this guy who promised us that this thing would do something amazing and bring us all the fame and fortune we could ever desire. It looked like a giant ball bearing to me.

“Fuck!” I exclaimed, kicking at the dirt. There was no shortage of dirt to kick, by the way, so don’t worry, see we had used the last of our cash to fill the car up and drive out to the middle of the god forsaken desert before opening this thing and seeing what it would do. Apparently the way to reach your financial goals with this thing was to sell it to two desperate kids working at a tv station part-time tryingto make a movie.

“FUCK!” I screamed again, “fuck fuck fuck!” I had been spending too much time with Charlie.

I picked up the giant ball bearing and hurled it as far as I could, I was aiming for the foothills off in the horizon, spitting out obscenities as I did it. I turned and walked back to the car.

“HOLY SHIT, Duke! Look!” I turned toward Charlie’s voice, then followed his pointed finger to the sky. The ball bearing had expanded, no, it had unfolded, it looked like a flying saucer, it was dancing and spinning and putting on a show like I had never seen. Suddenly, if dropped from the air, plummeting straight down to the Earth, Charlie and I ran as fast as we could to try and break its fall, at the last moment, we both slid in like baseball players and about broke our necks on each other’s heads, and right as it should have fallen into our hands, it stopped, hovered, and a panel of it slid aside, revealing a door.

To be Con’t…

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He didn’t think they had meant to do it, no one could mean to do that. But all of it looked so planned. He could see her face now, paler than usual, her eyes wide, pupils overcoming her soft blue irises until her eyes looked black. Blood in her hair, all over her hands, smeared on her face and she was screaming, begging for help. He just stood there. Looking around the room, watching them, his brain trying to process it all… the way they were dancing, touching each other, as if they were at some frat party somewhere, but not her. She was scared, she was screaming, and no one noticed.

He stopped, looking into his own eyes in the mirror. He refused to think about what happened next. He was already a mess, he didn’t even know where he was, let alone how he got there. He looked at his hands, scrubbed almost raw, then to his clothes, he couldn’t see any blood. He walked into the bar, sat down, ordered a shot and lit a cigarette. He was cold, scared, and had no idea what to do next. He guessed he should go to the police ,tell them everything, but would they believe him? Would anyone believe him?

He ordered a straight shot of tequila, threw it back and ordered another. The bartender hesitated for a moment when he ordered his third, looking him up and down, as if trying to decide if the man in front of him needed a third shot or not, then, the bartender poured two, and pushed them both to the man in black. He downed them both gratefully.

At a point too drunk to walk, let alone find his car and drive home, he had the tender call him a cab. He noticed, as did the cabbie, that his hands still shook as he pulled some crumpled bills from his pocket. He looked at them as if they were the hands of another man, and in many ways, they were. He was not the man he was when he left home that afternoon to go see his long time girlfriend, meet some of her new friends, and hopefully get lucky. No, he was no that man, and a part of him wondered if he ever would be that man again. What was left of the young, successful and only slightly careless man he had been shouted for that other part of him to shut the fuck up.

He got himself out of the cab gracefully enough, but upon turning to face his apartment building, he noticed that everything else was turning, too. It had been a long time since he had been this drunk, he wondered out loud how many shots of tequila he had drained at that bar, wondered idly what bar he had ended up at, the cab fare had been too high for it to be Fells, hadn’t it? Of course, he realized, there was no unspoken code amongst cab drivers to not cheat the drunk.

He could fake sober well enough, so he decided to fake it at least until he got up the elevator and into his apartment. Just. Don’t. Look. Up. He walked, eyes straight ahead, ignoring the swimming in his stomach and the turning of the ground beneath him, he got to the lobby and prayed the night desk clerk had gone into the mailroom or to the bathroom, or was anywhere but the desk, and his prayers were answered. The rise of the elevator that usually only lifted his stomach enough for him to know it was moving, almost made him throw up. Again. He got to his apartment, finally, fumbling with his keys and leaning hard on the doorjamb for support, he heard movement inside, and the knob turn, he looked up at the ceiling as if looking beyond it and mouthed “Thank you.”

When the door opened he started to fall in, slowly, but unable to right himself, he needed to vomit again. Charlie, thank God for Charlie, caught him with a dip of the knee and righted him against the doorjamb.

“Whoa, there, Wesley! What the hell happened to you tonight?” Charlie still spoke with a Tennessee drawl as thick as it had been the day they had left their hometown to go to college.

Wesley thought he said “I don’t wanna talk about it,” but to Charlie it sounded more like “dun unnah alk bow ihk” and then he burped the kind of burp one only knows if one has had too much tequila on an empty stomach and needs to release it post haste.

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She was on her knees in front of the statue of the saint, praying in a feverish, frantic voice, her fingers rubbing over the rosary beads so hard, she worried they may break. She prayed and prayed to the saint to save her from this situation, to free her of her sin and petition God to help her through these tough times.

Then it hit her.

It was a statue. She looked up at it, yep, just a painted statue. And it wasn’t even a very good statue, the face didn’t look very realistic, and the paint was peeling from around the ears and neck.

What had she done?

She had lived in this convent for over ten years. Ten years and all of a sudden now, for reasons she couldn’t explain, it seemed awfully silly for her to be kneeling in front of this tacky statue, begging it to help her. What business did this statue have talking to God? And if it had any, how a hunk of plaster and cheap paint have more business with the Lord God Almighty than she did?

And what would Father Aaronson think if he knew these thoughts she was thinking? She began to laugh. Father Aaronson may not approve of her lapse in faith, but who was he to judge her? He was the reason she was asking forgiveness now. He was probably more fake than this stupid statue.

She rose from her knees, kissed the cheek of the chunk of plaster, and said, “Thank you, oh Holy saint, for you have shown me the true way to my God”.

She dropped her rosary at it’s feet and walked out of the convent, pulling her habit from her head as she did.

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The room was too small, way too small, the bass was so low it felt like it was regulating his heartbeat, the electric guitar raised the hair on his sweat slicked arms. Roxanne was laughing and he watched her, smiling broadly. It was impossible to hear anything, she flung her arm around his neck and screamed to him, his neck warm and wet with sweat. He barely made out that she was thanking him for bringing her, he turned, kissed her hard. She jumped up, wrapping her legs around his waist and kissed him back, she flung her head back and laughed deeply, then jumped down and flung herself full force into the writhing pit. Her long bangs were sticking to the side of her face as she danced around in the circle, pushing and shoving and kicking her legs out.

He stood back from the pit, watching her. Her calf length jeans just tight enough to show off her perfect, petite body, her thin white tank top clinging to her stomach. Looking at her teeny feet in the faded Converse All-Star sneakers, he almost laughed, looking down at his own feet, in almost identical shoes, twice the size. He could see her give herself into the music, her body seeming to move effortlessly, and beyond her own control in and out of the circling mosh-pit. Then, suddenly, she was right up in his face, clutching his shirt in her hands, saying something.

“What?” he yelled over the obscenely loud music.

He could tell she was yelling, but still could barely hear her, “What?” he asked again, turning his ear to her.

She pulled him close and yelled “Stop staring at me and get your ass in the pit!” She pulled him hard by his arm into the pit with her and he felt himself let go as well. It all felt so good, the music pounding in his ears (the club was so small, no matter where you went, you were still too close to the amplifiers), the arms and elbows pushing into his back, shoving him into the punk kid in front of him as he danced around, singing along to the band. He couldn’t even hear himself.

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“Sometimes,” she exhaled second hand Marlboro into the air, “It is easier to ask forgiveness than it is to ask permission”.

“So, are you saying it’s okay to do what you did?” He asked, pen hovering over his small notepad.

“Why don’t you tell me what you think I did? Think about what it is you may be accusing me of, and think about what you would have done in the same situation, I mean really think about it. Would you have stood there and said or done nothing? Stand there with your jaw on the ground and your tail between your legs? Waiting for it to be over, just praying they didn’t notice you standing there, as you tried to sink into the wallpaper pattern? Is that what you would have done if you had those bastards in clear view and they didn’t know you were there? If you had a rifle in your hands and they didn’t see you there? If you knew you could take them all out, wouldn’t you?” She looked at him, pretending to wait for an answer she knew he wouldn’t give, then took another long drag and stood up, smashing the butt in the ashtray in a way that let him know the interview was without a doubt, over.

For a moment, he considered apologizing, or asking for just five more minutes, but she turned and walked away, pulling her shoulder length hair into a pony tail, and not looking back. He had to admit, in an almost scary way, she was very pretty. He sat in her dimly lit sitting room a moment longer before deciding to show him self out. The rest of the evening he couldn’t help but think about what she had said. He realized that most likely, in his line of work, he wouldn’t be in any situation where he had a loaded weapon in his hand and a group of vile criminals in front of him, much less “know” he could take them all out. He was, however fascinated, she had been so deep undercover and done it so well, that she had managed to be carrying a loaded weapon in Mikhail’s command center. No one thought twice about it, no on wondered why she wasn’t at the meeting she had supposedly come for. And why? He figured she was sleeping with Mikhail, maybe she told him she loved him, while she spent hours in his home, collecting evidence and plotting a way to arrest him. Then the thought occurred to him—was she plotting his arrest? Or was it his death she had wanted all along? After all, Mikhail’s thugs never thought to ask why she had her rifle on her that night, but he had to wonder, why did she have it?

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