Sex and Murder Magazine

By Jeff Lacy

I.

In the Ramada Inn along I-95, six miles north of the Georgia-Florida border, Kylle's parole party rocked into its sixth hour.

Kylle and Chandler fixed a few lines of meth with a razor blade on the toilet tank behind the locked bathroom door. Chandler pecked Kylle on the corner of the mouth and handed him a rolled bill.

"Compliments of Raul."

Kylle bent and snorted half the line in one nostril, the other half in the other. He sprung and held his nostrils, snorted, and shook his head. He wiped his nose and licked his mouth and fingers.

"Things been going all right down in Yulee?"

Chandler plucked the bill from Kylle's hand with his index and middle finger and knelt on the toilet seat.

"Raul's treated me all right, I guess." He snorted the other line. "I had to suck his dick a couple of times, literally and figuratively. I'm glad you're back to help me deal with him."

Kylle sniffled and licked the inside of his lips. "I'm getting tired of hanging around here. What about you?"

Chandler dusted the tank with his index finger and licked the residue. "Whatch you want to do?"

"I don't know."

Chandler cupped and rubbed Kylle's crotch. "Want me to get us a room?"

"Better not."

Somebody pounded on the thin door. "Kylle, you in there?"

Natalie.

Chandler chuckled, "Speak of the devil."

"Kylle? Kylle? You in there? Whatch you doing?" She twisted the door handle and pulled at the door. "Unlock this door, damn it."

Chandler unlocked the door.

Natalie twisted the knob and Chandler fell out. He weaved and laughed.

"Hey Nat. Want a snort?"

"When did you get here, bitch?"

Under his hand, Chandler asked Kylle, "You want me to frisk her?"

"What?" Natalie stepped by Chandler. "What the fuck did that bitch say?"

Kylle leaned on the doorjamb, rubbed his nose, sniffled, and yawned. "Nothin'."

Natalie slapped Kylle.

"I can't believe you. You just got out for that shit. What you gone do when you got to pee in the cup or pull a hair follicle?"

He pawed her a step back.

"Go on. Quit pestering me."

She jabbed, hooked, missing, panting as Kylle leaned left, right, then bounced on his toes circling, slapping her on the side of the head.

"You can dish it out but you can't take it."

Slap.

"You can dish it out but you can't take it."

Slap.

Natalie swung with a roundhouse, missed, swung with a roundhouse, missed. She stumbled, catching herself before her head hit the floor.

She turned and lunged. Kylle caught her in a headlock, spun her, and, with his shoulders and hips, smudged her against the wall.

"Why you got to be this way?"

"Quit it, Kylle, goddamnit."

He slung her.

She charged again.

He dodged, snagged her hand and bent it in to the wrist. All he had to do was apply a little more pressure for it to snap.

She winced, bent over.

"Quit."

She tried kneeing his groin. Missed.

He kneed her in the stomach.

She screamed, "Bastard. Bastard motherfucker."

The other kids in the room coiled round them.

Panting, her hands shook.

"I ain't putting up with your bullshit anymore--"

He stood her by her toe tips, hanging by the throat, his hand the rope.

She gulped air. "I know Chandler's your fuckin' bitch--"

He raised her a half inch, the gulping stopped.

She grappled his wrists.

He knocked her hands away, drew his Ruger pistol from his back, and stuck its black muzzle between her eyes.

"I could pop a bullet in your head right now so easy, you fuckin' cunt."

Chandler yawned. None of the kids moved. Somebody screamed for him to stop. Most just blinked half asleep and swayed like Spanish moss in a breeze.

He let her get a breath, but still held tight. He flung up his sloppy tank top. A large bandage covered his abdomen.

"Forty stitches. You'd like to poke me again, wouldn't you?"

She puckered to spit.

He covered her mouth and nose, "Uh-uh. Uh-uh," whipped her head this way and that, bounced it off the wall, and stared at her, counting to himself, one thousand, two thousand, three thousand, four thousand, five thousand . . . . How long would it take for her to start squirming for breath? Eleven thousand. Pretty good.

"You want to breathe do you?"

"Mm-mm."

"You want to breathe?"

Scared eyes. She nodded.

Sixteen thousand. He moved his hand, leaned on her with his forearm, kept the Ruger pointed against her head.

A tall medium-skinned black boy with long dreads, wearing a teal football jersey, lurched from the circle of kids and offered Kylle a toke of his joint.

"Come on man, be cool. Put your tool away. Let little sister go."

Kylle squinted. "Who you?"

The kid raised his open palms above his faux diamond ear studs.

"I ain't nobody, man. Just want to have some fun like everybody else. Come on, let little sister alone."

"You the cocksucker been fuckin' her while I been locked up?"

"Naw, man--"

"Last nigga I heard braggin' about getting white pussy ended up eatin' out of a straw for six months."

"I ain't disrespectin'--"

"Why you in my business, then?"

"Man, I don't want to be in no-o-body's business, you know what I'm sayin'? I just want to drink and smoke some reefer and party with all these fine ladies here."

The kids mumbled agreement.

The black kid said, "We don't need no po-po."

"Let her go, Kylle," Chandler said. "Vitamin don't mean nothin'. He's a friend."

Kylle scanned the kids and smirked. He leaned until his mouth rested against Natalie's ear.

"If I can't have you, nobody else can. Just remember that."

He bit Natalie's ear, she screamed, and he stepped back.

Natalie buckled. The black kid, Vitamin, caught her.

Kylle watched Vitamin and Natalie's chunky, Goth friend, Lisa, crook their arms under Natalie's and walk her toward the door to the adjoining room.

He raked his skinned head.

"Don't be mad, baby. I'll call you later. I'll get us a room and we'll have our own private party like old times."

Natalie hurled his senior ring. He deflected it before it hit him above the eye. It landed against the bare foot of an Asian girl wearing faded jeans low on her hips and a red silk camisole. She smiled. He almost bent down but his pride told him to fuck it and he walked away to find Chandler.

The room vibrated again. Booming hip-hop. Girls in bikini panties. Smoke thick and bitter. Shirtless boys swilling from kegs and chanting, drink, drink, drink, drink . . .

Kylle watched Natalie and Lisa run out into the pouring rain.

The Asian girl tapped him on the shoulder. Her hair flowed down to her waist. She held up his ring. He swept her up against his bicep and kissed her. She opened her lips. Rode his thigh. He reached into his pant pocket and popped an ecstasy into his mouth.

"What's that?" she said.

"A happy pill."

She whined, "Oh, I want one."

He opened his mouth and slid it from his tongue onto her tongue. She smiled and moaned, swallowed the pill with a swig of beer she snagged from a kid walking by, and wiped her lips with her hand. Kylle's knees shuddered. The room spun. Fettered still to his temper, he moved in rhythm against the girl and caressed her hard nipples. Her fingers slithered into his pants. Later, he thought. Let her cool off. The both of them. He might get a tattoo. Some place on his body that would be painful. His shin, maybe. The back of his neck.

Chandler shoaled up behind him.

"What the fuck are you doing?" Chandler elbowed the girl.

She toppled onto the tawny carpet and gave them a confused look, while pulling down her camisole.

All of it crashed in on him like a wave.

"It's getting hinky."

He shoved past Chandler and stepped over the girl, slashing out of the reeking room and into the gnat-biting darkness. A thick cockroach wriggled upside down on the walkway outside the door. He stomped it and skiddered to his car.

The rain still beat down, getting caught occasionally in gusts that blew sideways like curtains. He sat soaked in the silver Mustang he'd bought off some Yankee on St. Simons. He lit a smoke and inhaled. The Newport filled his lungs. Then, he snapped the car in drive. It muscled away as the dual pipes thundered and the storm, blown in from the Atlantic, choked the sewers.

II.

Three days after the party, Kylle and Chandler were in Kylle's car, going down a chalky road, listening to the squawk from a portable police-band radio. They'd hit half a dozen houses. No dogs, no alarms systems, no neighbors, no risk the people would be coming home because the kids at the party had told them their parents or their grandparents were out of town, at doctors' appointments, work, or A.A.

Logging trucks and tractors used the road mainly to harvest the pulpwood and stumps in the swampy tree groves. After a time, the dirt road crossed railroad tracks that had been the scene of a double murder. Kylle and Chandler stashed some of their drugs and cash in plastic containers in a hole at the edge of the woods where one of the bodies fell. Every time they got to the tracks, Chandler told the story of the murders as if it were the first time Kylle had heard it. Kylle dug up the Rubbermaid containers, while Chandler chewed his fingernails and spit out the story.

"The old man dropped right where he stood. One shot in the back of the head. Boom. Turned his brain into fuckin' mush. Dropped face down right here in the weeds beside the cab, you know, right here where we're standing. Didn't even know what hit him. That'd be a bitch to be alive one second and dead the next without even expecting it."

"Probably the best way to go," said Kylle.

"The spot is haunted now," said Chandler.

Kylle stood. Sweat poured down his face and arms and back.

"So it's a good thing we're stashing this shit here then. The ghosts will stand guard, I reckon."

"Fuck you, asshole."

A man and a teenage boy came up the road on two four-wheelers with a couple of black dogs trailing behind them. Kylle and Chandler ducked behind some palmettos, unable to bat away the sand gnats biting their scalps or the mosquitoes swarming their faces and arms.

The silence returned after a few minutes.

"I wished you'd shut your trap and help me with this."

Kylle covered the containers with the musty black loam, palmetto fronds, soggy tree limbs, moss, oak leaves, and pine straw. Chandler threw Kylle a dirty motel towel.

"Any place where blood's been spilled violently is haunted, most of the time--"

Kylle mopped his face, neck, and arms.

"That's pure horse shit. Your fucking brain is fried. If that's what they're teaching you at college you need to get your money back."

"Kiss my ass. Tammy said--"

"That bitch don't know what planet she's on most of the time. She's like a possum. She wakes up in a new world every day."

"--she saw the wrecker parked right there next to the track-like the day of the murder-one night she drove out here."

Kylle grinned. "You lying sack of shit."

Chandler chuckled. "Yeah. Just wondered how far I could string you along about the haunted part."

"Well I guess you know."

They got in the Mustang.

Kylle geared the car and gunned it. The back wheels spun, throwing gravel and dirt. They barreled down the tunnel of trees, white dust boiling, powdering the car and the palmettos and ferns along the road. The car did not slow for a covey of doves that burst from gnarled vines or through the shadow of a hawk circling in an updraft, or for hogs rooting for worms in the moist road ditch. Kylle and Chandler's urgent purpose lie deeper in the swamp.

After a time, Chandler bumped Kylle's right hand and leaned in.

"You ever worry them kids will turn us in?"

"Naw. As long as we keep those stupid fuckers supplied with pot and pills, nobody's gone say a thing."

"I feel kind of bad about that old lady," Chandler said.

"Shit. Don't. That hair-lipped faggot grandson of hers fucked-up my community service. I had it sweet there at the mission. Inside. Air conditioned. Then the bitch lied and I ended up picking up trash on the side of the highway, sweating like a damn pig, eaten up by bugs. I almost got snake bit. Fuck that shit. Goddamn bitch. The bitch. Pissed off my probation officer when I wouldn't go back and he locked me up. The judge, she hates my guts anyway."

"She's gonna die."

"The judge?"

"Naw. That old lady. That's what her grandson told me. She's got a brain tumor or something. Cancer. They were at her chemo in Jacksonville."

Kylle's cigarette rested between his thin lips. Smoke drowsed from his nose. He shrugged.

"We all got to die sometime. Old people. They never throw nothing away. We got enough pills to keep your Brantley County bitches stoned for a month."

"What about that kid where we got all those guns and swords? I saw the pictures in the house. His dad a Marine or cop or something?"

"Both."

"Huh?"

"He's both. He's some big wig at the Law Enforcement Training Center at Glynnco."

"Fuck."

Kylle lowered his window and snapped his cigarette out.

"His kid just moved down here from Maryland or somewhere. He got into some deep shit up there and Momma sent him south to live with Daddy to keep him from getting locked up."

"It's good to have a daddy with connections."

"You should know."

"Shit, it was my dad's turn to cook for his supper club last night. I had to bartend for those old bastards."

"What'd y'all fix?"

"Crab stew, shrimp, corn, crab cakes from Barbara Jean's, baked potatoes, New York strips on the grill."

"Goddamn."

"They all left knee-crawling, elbow-walking drunk," Chandler said. "If there'd been a roadblock on Frederica, the twelve could have locked up nearly the whole courthouse crowd." Chandler grabbed his gym bag and rummaged through it. "Oh shit. I forgot. I brought you a cigar. Old man Dixon gave it to me."

"Thanks, bud." Kylle sniffed the cigar. "Expensive."

Kylle bit off the tip of the cigar and hunted for his lighter.

"Any women there?"

A blur of passing evergreens, hanging vines, waist-high palmettos. The mystery of creatures beyond, elusive as quicksilver. A hackled hog unspooling a cottonmouth from the knuckles of a cypress root. A wild cat half unseen behind the veil of Spanish moss. The corrugated back of a gator spying out of black water with its golden eyes. The pungent odor of a meandering polecat.

"I'm not supposed to say," Chandler said.

"Oh, the double raccoon secret bullshit. How many?"

"Hypothetically speaking, there may have been two or three."

"And hypothetically, you made the arrangements."

"Crank for the girls goes a long way to keep the boys happy with poontang. Funny as hell seeing those old bastards getting all steamed up while they got lap-danced and seeing them wheelbarrowing the girls across the floor. Dixon about threw out his back. They thought they were gonna get free snatch and blowjobs, but I got that straightened out right quick. Old cheap motherfucking bastards."

"Of course. And they had to negotiate that shit through you. You're a fucking prince."

"Damn straight," Chandler said. "I'm no fucking philanthropist. No altruist."

"Hold up, hold up. A what?"

"I don't give my shit away. You taught me that."

"Sure, sure. Hell, fuck no," Kylle said. "You never give nothing for free."

"I'm just as much a fucking capitalist as Dixon's bank and your fucking bondsman." Chandler pulled out a roll of twenties from his pocket, "Look at this. I made a couple of percent from the girls' action. It greased some of the old boys to pay off the bets they owed me and I took some more."

"Yassir." Kylle said.

"Yassir. Land of the Haves and Have Nots. Only The Apartheid Causeway between 'em."

"You fucking read too much," Kylle said.

"Hey, let me tell you what happened last Sunday morning," Chandler said.

"Shoot, cocksucka."

"Some Sea Island bitch dad's representing in her divorce came waltzing into the kitchen."

"Fuckin' for the retainer," Kylle said.

"Hold up, goddamnit. Listen, this bitch's face had been pulled back so many times, goddamn gnarly. No tan lines, fake tits, bald as one of those Playboy bitches."

"She had a Brazilian box?"

"That's what I said."

"Smooth as butter."

"Fuck you."

"You don't know what you're missing, Chandler."

Chandler huffed, "I'm not even listening to you. She had a cup of coffee with me and bummed one of my cigarettes. It was just as if it was our Sunday routine. She lifted the front section of the paper--"

"Your future stepmomma."

"Fuck you, asshole. In a little bit she said, `Sweetie, I just come down wondering if you had a little ol' mood booster.' `Well goddamn peaches, why sure,' I said. I offered her half of my bagel and a glass of orange juice. Oh, that pissed her off. I guess she thought she'd get a free snort."

Kylle said, "A bitch don't get nothin' for free."

"Fuckin' right. She finally pulled two twenties out of her big shiny purse. I handed her a baggie--"

"We need to--" Kylle started to say.

"Shut up for a minute. Then Mrs. Botox snorted it right there between us, gave me a kiss with some tongue, I almost knocked the shit out of her, then she shook her bare ass back up the stairs. I had to get the hell out of there, her whittlin' dad's pecker, screaming, just the way he likes 'em-- "

"This is what we need to do--" Kylle tried again.

"--Another fucking crazy morning in the neighborhood."

Kylle found the lighter. "Preaching to the choir, brother."

"It's just a façade. The island's really one fucked up, fucked up place."

"Let's go down to Daytona for spring break," Kylle said. "I know a dude we can stay with."

"Yeah. Okay. But, what about that kid?" Chandler said.

"What kid?"

"The one whose daddy is the fuckin' Fed."

"Shit. It didn't take the kid long to start doing the same shit down here." Kylle steered with his knee as he flicked the lighter, once, twice, three times.

"Here," Chandler said, "let me do it for you."

He lit it, holding the lighter in his right hand and draping his left arm over the back of Kylle's seat while Kylle spun the cigar under the flame.

"He uses his allowance from momma to buy enough shit from me to float through the days until he graduates." Kylle inhaled and blew a narrow stream of smoke. "He's gone try to be a macho Marine like daddy. Says he wants to go to Iraq or Afghanistan and kill Hajis. I hope he gets his stoned head blown off. Retarded motherfucker."

Chandler dropped the lighter in the console and leaned back against the door.

"Yeah, but if I'd known his dad was a Fed beforehand, man, I wouldn't . . . We could be fucked bad--"

"Naw," Kylle said.

"--A fucking arsenal."

"The kid told me his stepmom got the Tec-9 during some Customs seizure. She was supposed to have turned it in--"

"Thinks he's a bad motherfucker," Chandler said.

"He's a fucked up dumb motherfucker that would be in deep shit if the cops found out. Serious federal time. All we got to do is keep Mr. All Fuckin' American supplied with all the free dope he wants until he goes Jarhead."

Chandler sat up and flipped the lighter between his fingers.

"Still . . . Shit, that could cost us more . . ."

"Naw, naw. I got it all figured. He won't want to get his ass in a sling anymore, either."

"I guess."

Kylle grabbed Chandler under his chin, pinched his cheeks, and wagged his face. He puckered and leaned within a few inches of Chandler's lips. They laughed.

Chandler sat back again and watched Kylle smoke.

After a time they drove out of a thick row of pines into a swath bare and dry after its trees had been harvested. Kylle realized for the first time there was a pond about a half-mile off the road. He wondered about the fishing there.

Kylle said, "Me and my dad never did anything together except talk about doing things together. Not that he wouldn't, he couldn't. I don't remember a moment in my life that my daddy wasn't locked-up for gutting from rectum to Adam's apple that bastard who molested my sisters."

"Goddamn, Kylle," Chandler said, "you never said . . ."

Kylle blew a stream of smoke and held the cigar between his fingers atop the steering wheel.

"He was on death row for a long time until some judge commuted his sentence. I saw him more those six years he was on death row than at any time in my life."

Chandler pulled his knees under his chin and leaned against the door.

Kylle told Chandler about visiting his dad in prison, about how his mom would load him and his two sisters every third Sunday of every month in her brother's station wagon and drive them the 90 miles to the prison in Reidsville. The two hours it took to get there were hours of excited anticipation, like Christmas Eve. They knew the destination was the big prison, but it was as if they had no sense of what a prison was.

Reality would not hit them until they were in the parking lot. Then the curtain would pull back and the lights would shine and they would finally hear the gate snap locked, and see the razor-wired fence coiled round the building. The drive back would be quiet. Kylle would crawl in the back seat and fall asleep. He would wake sweating through his collar and stuck to the vinyl seat after dreaming that his dad and he had gone fishing on the river and caught a whole line of catfish. With the seams of the seat indented in his cheek, he would sit up, try to rub the crick out of his neck, see his mom still driving and trying to keep her eyes open.

His sisters were usually asleep like kittens in the front seat, the youngest slumped against their mom, the oldest against the youngest. The inside of the car was a wind tunnel. As it was Sunday, the only thing on the AM radio was an evangelical preaching about the wages of sin, eternal damnation and salvation. It never gave Kylle hope. Nothing gave him hope after month after month of enduring those goodbyes and drives home.

"The last time I saw him was the weekend before my twelfth birthday. The guard who escorted him to visitation ate cake with us and sang.

"The next day when me and my sisters got off the school bus, my Aunt Shirley met us at the bus stop. When I saw all the cars parked in the driveway and on road in front of our house, I knew something bad was wrong. I don't know why I remember this, but I remember my uncles standing under the aluminum carport smoking. And then I remember going in the back door, and my mom was sitting at the kitchen table crying real loud into a washcloth. Me and my sisters went to mom and we all three hugged at the same time.

"My little sister asked, 'Why are you crying, Mommy?' My sisters started crying because my momma was crying. My mom calmed down after a while and then she told us, 'Babies, your daddy's dead. Some prisoner stabbed him.'"

A glade lay a few hundred yards off the dirt road between the swamp and the heavy power line that ran west through Brantley County over to Waycross. Kylle and Chandler came here to be left alone.

"I still have the fishing dream where me and my dad catch all those catfish on the river."

Kylle and Chandler stored the rest of their stolen loot and some of their drugs in two six-foot long plastic coolers dug into the gray sandy ground behind some briar bushes and a thicket of palmettos. The coolers were full of pistols, rifles, bullets, loaded clips, pocketknives, pills in Ziploc plastic bags, rare coins, real silverware, and, now, two long samurai swords.

Shirtless, wringing sweat, shorts drooping, they covered the coolers with the damp loam, two thick pine logs, and their piss.

The tree frogs quank-quank-quank-quanked in time with the pulse in Kylle's temple. The swamp sounded like the inside of a pneumonic lung.

They packed cash in two other, smaller, plastic containers and stuffed them inside an armadillo mound that they planned to exhume later with a hook Kylle had welded and shaped.

The sun fell behind the western pines and water oaks. Their shadows cut across the dank glade. A sliver of orange globe expanded above, but it was twilight already in the thick woods. The moss-laden limbs and vines provided a shield from the outside world. Nocturnal beasts stirred.

Kylle and Chandler howled as the Tec-9 and the AK-47 chewed-up scrawny pines. The guns slung dozens of shells with each loud burst. Wispy strands of Spanish moss floated to the ground. Pine chips flew and ricocheted, leaving gnarled stumps. Kylle saw Natalie and her nigger rescuer (same as the image of the one that shanked his daddy) convulsing in a pile of skin and guts and bone splinters. They passed the Crown Royal bottle to each other with rebel yells and drank without wiping the lip, firing their guns until their ammo was spent and the barrels glowed blue heat and pale vapors replaced the concussions.

Then staggering and laughing, spitting and groping, rolling among the shells, wrestling like rutting bucks, Kylle heaved Chandler to his back and pinned his bare shoulders.

"Say calf rope. Say it. Say it, goddamnit. Calf rope. Say it. I got you pinned. Calf rope, motherfucker."

Chandler wriggled and scudded away on his hands and knees, kicking up oak leaves and pine needles.

He squalled, "Let me catch my breath."

Kylle grabbed Chandler's baggy jean shorts and pulled them down to his ankles.

"You cocksucker," Chandler hollered.

"Yeah, what you gone do about it?"

Chandler lunged.

Kylle lifted his hips off the ground and crab-walked backwards.

Chandler lunged again and tackled Kylle by his shoestrings, rolled to his knees and straddled Kylle. With his forearms, he pushed all his weight onto Kylle's shoulders.

"I got you in calf rope now, motherfucker."

Kylle rose from his abdomen, not to be pinned, never to be pinned. After a few seconds, he reached behind Chandler's head and pulled him down. He felt them lock in a hinging at the waist, and with it, a heat, a pressure from Chandler. Chandler before him, glistening in sweat, the oak leaves shishing, an unburdening breeze, them, in this moment, breathing, here.

That pressure, that heat. The hinging. He slid his hands up Chandler's arms, up over his shoulders, round and taut.

III.

Since being let out of Alto, Kylle had been staying at a motel on Highway 17, across the street from the abandoned paint factory. Chandler knocked on the orange door of Kylle's room a little before seven. Kylle pulled the curtain back and peeked out to see Chandler, in starched khakis and an untucked, blue, oxford button down, rocking from one sockless loafer to the other.

"Hold on," Kylle said.

It was a low cloud morning. The weather pressure squeezed his migraine. Kylle lit a cigarette, unlocked the warped door, and cracked it open, wearing just his boxers.

Chandler pulled his brown hair back tight with his hands.

"Ain't you going with me?"

Kylle rubbed his eyes, "Where you going?"

"Yulee." Chandler looked around. "A pick-up. Remember?"

"What? I thought you had a class at the college."

"Tomorrow. Come on."

"Naw, man. Think I'm gone puke."

"Aw man, get dressed. You'll be all right once you get up and going."

"Go on. I don't feel good."

"We'll get you some coffee and Goody's or something," Chandler said.

"Naw."

Chandler pushed the door.

Kylle held tight. "Quit being a pain in the ass, Chandler. Go on."

"I don't want to go by myself."

"Then don't go." Kylle coughed.

"You know I can't do that. Raul will feed me to the gators if you don't show."

"Ah, you been dealin' with him ever since I been locked up. He ain't gone mess with you."

"I told him you were coming," Chandler said, "he's expecting you."

Gulls stood and flapped and squawked on the old swimming pool that had been filled in with black dredged sand. A chain link fence still surrounded it, some sections gouged and drooping.

Chandler stretched to look over Kylle's head. "Who you got in there with you? That Asian bitch?"

"Nobody."

"Nobody? Really?"

Chandler slapped the wall beside the door, inciting dirt daubers from their fluted nests under the rotting eaves.

"It smells like piss out here. Let me in, goddamnit."

"I'm going back to bed."

"That why you didn't come stay with me last night?"

"Man, quit being a drama queen. Go the fuck on."

Chandler tramped back to his Jeep, mumbling.

He shouted back to Kylle, "I should have never given that little slanty-eyed bitch your number."

He flipped Kylle off as he tried to peel away.

Other than a few oleanders and unpruned crepe myrtles and palms here and there, no tree grew on the motel's grounds. Where there were not scuffed out sand splotches, St. Augustine grass lay scorched and overgrown with dollar weeds and clover, and throughout, veined mole tunnels.

A black man in shorts and a dirty, white sweatshirt walked beside the road against traffic, carrying a five-gallon bucket and a window squeegee, and whistling the National Anthem. Kylle had seen the Whistler before, riding an old cruiser bicycle or walking, whistling church hymns and marches. His volume could overcome the noise of jackhammers, train engines, and pulpwood trucks, or, like a shaft of light, pierce closed car windows.

Kylle remembered giving the Whistler a ride across the causeway once. It was a steamy afternoon, the sky full of boiling clouds. The Whistler reeked of fish and onions. They smoked Newports and rode with the windows down. They drove into a black wall of hard rain.

Rain whipping the smoky onion interior. Kylle and the Whistler, brothers of rain and cigarettes.

Just as quickly, they were out of the rain, reaching the mainland, Highway 17, the Fendig billboard warning convicted felons in English and Spanish that possessing firearms could subject them to federal prison too.

The Whistler said, "Somebody stole my cruiser right off the front porch of my Auntie's house and it only two blocks from the po-lice's station. You got a couple of Newports you can spare?"

This morning, with the sun rising and the Whistler in silhouette before the orange slit of sky, Kylle swayed like a skinny pine and blinked hard. Stoned, stunned, or by reflex or unknowing, whether in dream or no, his right hand crept to his heart and remained there until the Whistler walked in front of Mack's Barbeque, sustaining the last notes of the Anthem.

For the land of the free-e-e-e-e. And the ho-o-o-me, of the, bra-a-a-a-ve.

Kylle shivered, "Ho-o-o-ly shit." then took the last, long, savoring drags before he flicked his cigarette to the parking lot, turned, and slammed the door.

Fleas jumped as he slogged over the sandy carpet to the bathroom. He stood over the toilet and brooded over his stream of water. Under the weak bulb over the sink, he pulled back the bandage and studied the sutures. The wound was tender and inflamed, oozing puss.

"The crazy bitch."

He bit his lower lip and tore off the rest of the bandage. Winced as he dabbed bourbon on the stitch line with toilet paper. Concentrated to hold down the bile that burned upward. Taped on a fresh gauze square. Guzzled a mouth full of Jim Bean once, swallow, twice, swallow, three times.

Bleary-eyed, he crawled in the sour bed, embalmed and leaden, wondering whether he could unmoor himself from the old siege, like talons of some giant vulture gripping his heart. The overbearing weight that bore him down, the shadow that shut out all light all joy.

If he gripped the Ruger on the bed stand right now, would a bullet through the roof of his mouth be painless, instantaneous? Or would he just fuck himself up, brain-damaged, lying in a fetal position, imprisoned with machines and tubes, bed-sore, until his muscles evaporated and his organs gave out?

Would death be a soulless unconsciousness, Jesus' warm golden paradise where he might be embraced by his dad, or the unquenchable fires? Or would he be born again into some river insect hatching, skittering, and dying all in one day, or a red-assed monkey, or some water-headed catfish-skinned sentient from another galaxy with long fingers and an albino body like a starving toddler?

The accruing gray dawn seeped around the frayed edge of the brown curtain's orange and gold paisley. Sweat beaded his forehead. The muscles down his spine were like taut chain. He brushed away a fly that landed on his face. A wiry eight-inch lizard assumed the wall above his head like a cell's baleful sentinel. He repined into a head sore dreamless half-sleep.

The owner pounded on the room door at eleven.

"Check-out time, Kylle."

Bourbon filmed his mouth. His temple throbbed as if he'd been bludgeoned with a tire iron. The sutures bowed him in. Fresh mosquito and cockroach bites stippled his arms, legs, and neck. His ears rang a high-pitched e-e-e-n.

He snatched a t-shirt off the floor and armed into it. Legged into wrinkled jeans. Pulled on a pair of raveling white socks stained black at the ankles. Stomped into his prison-issued, scuffed and dull brogans.

Without looking back, he cracked open the door, his boot provoking a crab to sidle from under the air conditioner to the corner.

"This shit hole is all yours."

He staggered out of the room, leaving the bed sheets peeled loose, and shielded his eyes from the blanching glare.

Chandler unlounged himself from the hood of the Mustang.

"Y'all all fucked out?"

Kylle bent over and grabbed his side and sneezed.

"Goddamnit, shit."

The stench of low tide, downwind from the paper mill, turpentine plant, and power plant-another day's dose of poison. The heavy air fumed sulfur, chlorine, coal ash, and some other putrid chemical that Brunswick seethed in the processing of stump hearts, which he could not name, a miasma stinging his nostrils. He held his abdomen and flung his duffle into his car.

"Damn, you look like shit," Chandler said.

Kylle cleared his throat, "That's about how I feel."

Chandler sat beside him.

"Where's your company? The slanty-eyed bitch."

"What?" He slapped Chandler on the back of the head. "Man, don't be a shit ass."

Kylle followed Chandler in his Jeep to a Waffle House hemmed in by a tidal creek, a strip of marsh, and an abandoned Texaco self service station. Somebody had chained a three-legged wiener dog to the Brunswick News dispenser. The chain was just long enough for the skinny dog to sit shaded under a rusty folding chair. Next to the chair, courtesy of the County's inside smoking ban, was a metal table with a plastic Waffle House ashtray, full of butts.

The slid into a booth next to the window. Chandler read a newspaper left in the booth. He told Kylle of the front page story about a string of burglaries on St. Simons.

"Cops got no prints. Of course not."

Kylle propped his head on his hands and inhaled the steam rising from his black coffee while some country singer growled and gargled on the jukebox. The siege was full blown, like being eaten alive inside by millions of microscopic piranhas. The Ruger lay under the driver's seat out in the Mustang. If it hadn't, he could have blown his head off right where he sat.

"You look like death," Chandler said.

Kylle thought at first that he'd said, "You would like death."

He looked up and all was cataracted. He closed his eyes and massaged his temple and tried to come to terms with another day.

After a time, the waitress brought Chandler's food and refilled Kylle's coffee.

"Here you go hon."

Chandler slid the paper aside and wolfed down his scrambled eggs, waffle, bacon, grits, hash browns, and milk.

Kylle leaned against the glass and closed his eyes. Every ding of spoon and click of fork and knife, every cough and murmured word, every shuffled foot and flip of newspaper, pierced his ears and reverberated inside his head.

From time to time a waitress hollered an order downrange to the cook, prompting the slamming of refrigerator doors, the blending of eggs for omelettes, and the cascade of plates being unstacked and tossed like cards along the metal counter.

If only he could be deaf; though, he would have liked death more, at this moment-the soulless, unconscious kind.

Afterwards they stopped at a Jiffy store. Kylle bought a packet of Goody's, then headed back to the car to gas up.

While he stood at the Mustang pumping gas, he flipped his head back and poured the headache powder onto the back of his tongue, chasing it with a shot of flat Mountain Dew.

A cream colored Ford Fairmont with no hubcaps whipped in behind his heels.

Five Mexican men were inside, two in front, three in the back. The windows were down. Gray putrid smoke poured out of a tailpipe that was kept from dragging by a wire hanger. Chandler went to the car's red front passenger door and leaned into the window. Kylle couldn't hear anything said over the Fairmont's clacking valves and Ranchero music.

Chandler leaned out of the car window.

"The son of a bitch says I shorted him this morning."

Kylle turned around to the Fairmont. The Mexican at the back passenger door pulled back the front of his shirt to display a revolver.

"Tell the bastard that he should of counted the money during the transfer."

Chandler spoke to the driver in Spanish.

Kylle said, "Maybe one of these little greasy bastards stole it from him. Tell him I said he ain't getting any more from us."

Chandler translated.

The driver turned, rested his arm on the back of his seat, and stared at Kylle. He spoke slowly in a thick accent.

"You call me a liar? I don't do business with liars or cheaters."

Kylle pulled the nozzle out of the car, twisted the gas cap shut, then stepped toward the Fairmont's back passenger door.

The driver nodded his head to the one in the back seat who pointed his revolver at Kylle's chest.

Kylle studied the Mexican.

"You know, I don't like doing business with people who aim a gun at my chest."

Chandler stepped back and shook his head. "Fuck, Kylle, you're pushing the limit, here. I'll just give him the damn money."

"You didn't short him, did you?"

"No. Hell no."

"I ain't gonna let him rob us."

"Paying him is better than being dead."

Kylle asked the driver, "Raul, how much did you say we owed you?"

The Mexican held up five fingers. "Quinientos."

"Quite a shortfall," Kylle told Chandler.

The Mexican said, "Five hundred dollars."

"Five hundred," Kylle said. "Quinientos. Quinientos."

"Sim?n."

Kylle followed the black diesel fumes of a dump truck with a loud muffler gunning through a yellow light. The siege compressed into rage, a great black cat that prowled under his skin. He realized he'd been holding his breath and exhaled.

"We been transacting business quite a while haven't we?"

"Pos, si," Raul said.

"And we ain't had no trouble with one another."

"No."

"But now you're saying we shorted you five hundred today?"

"Sim?n. Five hundred dollars."

Kylle rotated his head and the muscles in his neck crackled like oak splitting.

"And you want it right now."

"Si. Pinche buey. Five hundred."

Kylle looked around the car. Chandler was nowhere to be found.

"Now? Right here?"

Raul, the driver, nodded to the other two back seat passengers. They pulled pistols from under their shirts and held them in their laps. One of them said, "Vámonos chingando a este pinche cabr?n." Let's kill the sonofabitch.

"Well, if that's how you're gonna be."

Kylle triggered the nozzle handle, spraying gasoline in the face of the Mexican pointing the revolver and into the lap and faces of the other Mexicans in the back and over the front seat and the shoulders of the driver and the front passenger.

The Mexican in the back dropped his revolver in the floorboard and screamed and clawed his eyes and kicked his fellows in the back. Kylle kept spraying as he reached into his left jean pocket and drew his disposable lighter. He let go of the handle, dropped the nozzle, and then thumbed the lighter wheel and held the flame a few inches from the front passenger's right shoulder.

"Vámonos, vámonos," the Mexican shouted.

The driver snapped the Fairmont in gear and the car squealed away into the road, pulling out in front of a tractor trailer with a load of new cars. Glass shattered, steel bent, plastic busted, Mexicans screamed. The truck braked hard and its momentum pushed the car, barely missing a minivan, a motor home, and a dude on a chopper, but it still clipped a Florida couple in a Cadillac with a handicap placard dangling from the rearview mirror.

Kylle tucked the lighter into his pocket and watched as the Mexicans heaved up the road, metal grinding, brakes moaning, Norteno accordions blaring, ay ay ayyyyyy.

Yessir, he thought, how far are you willing to go? That's what separates chicken shits from the real criminals.

The truck stopped when the Fairmont's front corner panel busted the new, road-level, Pizza Hut sign.

Kylle picked up the nozzle and hung it back on the pump.

Seconds later, the Mexicans kicked open the passenger side doors and scrambled. The Fairmont burst into flames. Two of the Mexicans guided the other blind, screaming ones, and the five dodged the six lanes of slowing traffic, holding their ribs and bleeding heads, limping behind the motor inns and restaurants, huffing toward the woods and the interstate.

Chandler jogged from the cover of the coin air pump wide-eyed and jittery.

"Goddamn that was fuckin' nuts."

They went inside the store.

"What the hell happened?" the crew-cut, convenience store attendant asked.

He wore a blue vest festooned with a yellow support the troops ribbon pin, a red and white ribbon with a blue star, and NRA and Marine Corps pins. A television monitor above the plastic booths by the soda fountains and coffee machines blared out Fox News.

"Looks like a bunch of Mexicans pulled out in front of a truck," Kylle said, handing over his twenties without looking up.

Something within the Fairmont exploded, rattling the store's pane-glass window. The attendant covered his head and dove under the lottery game cards. Chandler almost spilled his Slurpee ducking behind the pork rinds and cheese crackers.

After a few seconds, the attendant hoisted himself back up from the white and gray marbled, linoleum squares, grunting, and went into a spasm of deep wet coughs.

"Goddamn. I about messed in my britches." He gawked out the glass. "Looks like Baghdad out there."

"They tried to rob us," Chandler said. "Pulled a gun on my friend here."

Kylle slumped down and cut him an eye.

The man rung up Kylle's gas and Chandler's Slurpee.

"Must have been a bunch of illegals the way they fell out of that car and run off." He patted the back of his belt. "They'd a come in here trying to rob me I'd a sent 'em to the cemetery."

"I bet you would of," Kylle said.

"You damn right I would," the man said. His forearm was inked with a faded green-gray tattoo of an out of focused tiger or cobra or scorpion. "I just called 911. Maybe you could give 'em identifying information or something."

"Naw. It all happened so fast," Kylle said.

The man's gut hung over the cash register.

"News every day says we're being invaded by 'em. Politicians won't do a damn thing." He handed Kylle his change. "Damn Mexicans bringing drugs in by the truckloads. Ever week almost, the paper's got some drug bust down on I-95."

Chandler gave the man a ten-dollar bill for scratch off lottery tickets.

The man slipped the bill in the cash register drawer and unspooled the cards that Chandler pointed out.

"And they're having their babies in our hospitals and crowdin' our schools with a bunch of kids that we got to teach how to speak English. And you and me are paying for it. They don't pay a damn thing. I ask ya, how do you come to a country to live and don't speak the language?"

"I don't know," Kylle said.

The man handed Chandler his cards. He leaned with his palms on the counter.

"I say build a wall along the border and shoot ever one that tries to climb it or tunnel under."

"Well, I don't think they're gonna catch that bunch," Kylle said. He turned toward the door. "We'll talk to ya."

"Yeah. Well, nice talking to y'all." The man put on his reading glasses and turned around to the wall counter below the snuff and chewing tobacco rack to read the newspaper. "Y'all come back."

Chandler set his Slurpee on the hood of his Jeep.

"Goddamn, Kylle. Crazy motherfucker."

The Fairmont was charred and covered in flames. Thick smoke billowed from its burning tires. Sirens and fire truck horns blared, descending from east and west. Cars, trucks, and vans were stopped in every direction, while winter tourists in shorts and sandals, ball capped plumbers and electricians, pulpwooders in cut sleeved shirts and overalls, sunburned roofers, big hipped housewives, leathered Harley riders, and high school kids leaving the to-go windows at Burger King and McDonald's stood along the road ditch like a gaggle of pelicans shitting on a shrimp boat dock. They crossed their arms over their chests or videoed or photographed or cell phone squawked while they watched the car burn.

The driver had backed his truck off from the Fairmont. He sat on the doorstep of his cab smoking a cigarette, cradling a small fire extinguisher.

"Damn Chandler, can't you keep your goddamn mouth shut?"

Chandler scratched a lottery ticket with a dime. "What'd I say?"

"Don't say nothing. And how the hell did those heathens know where we were?"

"Mmm."

Chandler scratched another lottery ticket.

"I said how did they know where we were?"

Chandler held up his cell phone. "Listen. Raul called me and said he'd shorted me this morning. Insisted that he bring me my money."

"And you believed him and then you told him where we'd be."

"Well . . . I told him I'd meet him at the Cracker Barrell across the street."

"Didn't that sound a little suspicious to you?" Kylle shook his head. "You're going to get us killed or busted. You don't set up some meeting off the cuff like that. You checked the stuff he gave you this morning, didn't you?"

"Yeah."

"And you knew you hadn't shorted him, that's what you told me, right?"

"Yeah." Chandler sucked on the straw of his cherry Slurpee.

"You got to be more careful. It should have signaled a set up to you. Either he'd be wired or you were going to get ambushed. And you see which one he tried. Brought muscle with him. The cemetery and the jail are full of stupid criminals." Kylle opened his car door. "Remember who had the fucking gun aimed at his chest."

"Yeah. I'm sorry."

"Sorry? Fuck sorry. Think, goddamnit."

"Well, if you'd gone with me this morning instead of laying with that little Asian bitch none of this would have happened."

Kylle clamped his arm around Chandler's neck like a vise. "Chandler, it's moments such as this that I ask myself why I don't take you out to the Gulf Stream buoy and leave you."

Chandler held up a lottery ticket. "Look. I won a hundred dollars."

Kylle released him.

Chandler rubbed the back of his neck and ran into the store, only to come out moments later strutting, snapping a hundred dollar bill in both hands.

"You're the luckiest son of a bitch I've ever seen," Kylle said.

Chandler buried the bill in the middle of his money-roll and jammed it in his front khaki pocket.

"I'm way ahead of the odds."

They got in their cars and Chandler followed Kylle to a tattoo shop on Highway 341. It was on the same side of the street between the Pentecostal church and school and the dirt road to the gun range-across from the liquor store and the railroad switching yard.

Chandler had three fears: clowns, being locked up, and needles. He watched, shivering and stuttering, wondering how Kylle could sit there calm and quiet while a needle drew what was supposed to be the Chinese symbol for love on his left pectoral.

IV.

Natalie would not answer her cell or return Kylle's messages. He'd been trying to talk to her since the day after the party. One time a black boy answered the phone.

"Who's this?" Kylle asked.

"This Kylle?" the boy asked.

"I want to talk to Natalie."

"You a stubborn motherfucker, I'll give you that."

"Don't cuss me, nigger."

The boy hung up, howling.

Kylle called Lisa on her cell. She told him Natalie wanted nothing else to do with him. He was lucky she didn't swear out a warrant and get him thrown back in jail, where he belonged. Lisa refused to relay any message of his to Natalie. She hung up on him when he began cussing her.

V.

Kylle and Chandler had half a dozen deliveries to make that evening along I-95 from St. Mary's north to the Darien outlet mall. It would only take them a couple of hours, and Chandler wanted to go see some of the strippers across the interstate from the outlet mall when they finished.

Kylle grumbled that they didn't have time and that he didn't want to leave all that cash in the car while Chandler visited his skanky customers with their floppy tits and cellulite asses. Kylle had other plans that he kept to himself for the time being.

After their last delivery, when their hidden car compartments were full of cash and empty of pills and weed, they headed back south on I-95.

Chandler lit a joint and inhaled, holding his breath before exhaling. After a time, Chandler realized they were in the vicinity of Natalie's house.

"You're not thinking about going to Nat's, are ya?"

Kylle blew cigarette smoke through his nose and grinned. "Hey, there's an idea."

"No, we ain't."

Chandler leaned on the passenger door and picked at the acne on his forehead. Unruly black whiskers blotched his face.

Kylle knew that Natalie's mother would be at work at the hospital. He hoped her little brother was at a friend's, too. He flipped open his cell phone, and before hitting the speed dial, he turned to Chandler, "Here's what we're gone do. Get your cell phone out."

"Why?" Chandler asked.

"Just do what I said."

Chandler unclipped his cell phone from his belt.

"You're going to call Nat-"

"I don't wanna call-"

"Hell yes you're callin'. I call, she'll see my number and won't answer."

"You're aiming to fucker the shit, aren't you?"

Kylle hit Chandler in the face with the back of his hand and knocked the joint out of his mouth.

"Goddamn, Kylle. What'd you do that for?"

Chandler unbuckled his seat belt and bent forward, his head between his knees, foraging the floorboard for his joint.

"Do what I said, Chandler, or I'm gone beat your ass right here in this fuckin' car."

Chandler groped for the joint.

"Forget about that damn joint for a second."

Chandler sat up. "What?"

"Tell her you're on your way."

Chandler bit his lower lip.

"Give me your goddammn phone," Kylle snapped, "you're too fucking stoned to dial."

VI.

Kylle parked his Mustang at the Baptist Church down the street from Natalie's house. He pulled his Ruger from under the driver's seat and slid it in the back waistband of his jeans.

"Why you bringing that?" Chandler asked.

"Don't want to leave it in the car."

Chandler surveyed the church grounds and down the street.

"Nobody's going to bother it around here."

Kylle hocked up phlegm, nodded, and spit on the wet asphalt. He unlocked the trunk and stashed his gun under the spare tire.

Chandler zipped up his hooded sweatshirt to the damp cold.

"Hold up. I got to take a piss."

He ran up to a line of shrubbery behind the church, over by the children's swings.

Kylle locked the car with the key remote, then walked up to the shrubbery next to Chandler, unzipped his jeans, and joined him pissing in the black sand.

Kylle zipped his pants. "Come on."

Chandler pulled his shorts down and squatted, hanging onto the swing-set pole. He and Kylle laughed as he shat into the sand under the toddler swing.

Kylle said, "You are one stoned, nasty bastard."

Chandler wiped himself on the cold, wet, metal poles.

"Come on, let's go on back to the car and go get drunk at my house," Chandler said.

"We're already here. We'll go after."

The pavement was flushed in dull pink by streetlights every fifty yards. Kylle and Chandler kept in the shadows as they skulked along the grassy road ditch toward Natalie's house. All the dogs were barking on both sides of the street.

They climbed the chain-link fence and Chandler knocked on the back, sliding-glass door.
Natalie moved a wooden curtain rod from the bottom door track and unlocked the door.

Chandler stood in a small patch of light thrown onto the patio from the inside lamp and watched her slide the door back. Natalie brushed her bangs out of her eyes and stared at Chandler for a second, then peeped outside left and right.

"You sure you're by yourself?"

"Yeah, I swear," Chandler said, shaking his head. "I just come to bring you this peace offering like I promised--."

"I got a test tomorrow. I'm trying to study . . ."

He handed her a baggy. "I ain't gone stay long."

Natalie stepped back.

"Oh, thanks for the weed. Apology acc--" As she slid the door shut, Kylle jumped out from behind an oleander and pressed against the door.

Natalie pushed against it, but Kylle had leverage and was too strong.

Natalie ran for the house phone.

Kylle jumped around her and pried it out of her hand.

"Damn you Chandler," Natalie said. "Fucking pussy."

She backed against the wall.

"Son of a bitch."

Chandler picked up the baggy off the floor.

Natalie tossed her head and raised her hand.

"I want to know, of the three of us, who likes it up the ass better? Chandler, you the pitcher or the catcher? I'm always the catcher. Just the nature of my anatomy. But you boys. Don't think I didn't know. Kylle, how's it up the ass with you?"

Kylle backhanded her. Her head snapped back. Blood trickled out of the corner of her mouth.

Chandler opened the sliding door and caught Kylle's car keys.

Natalie smudged the blood from her mouth. "Shit, don't leave, Chandler. I don't care what they say. Three's a party not a crowd--"

Kylle backhanded her again.

She kept talking, "--especially between the three of us. We got so much in common. You boys come here for a threesome? I ain't into that."

Kylle slapped her the hardest the third time. She spun and stumbled into the wall and came up again rubbing her cheek.

"But that don't make no difference to you, does it? You'd just force me, huh Kylle? That what you come for? Beau'll be home any minute."

Chandler shook his head. He slid back the door and walked into the darkness.

Natalie sidled around the corner of the wall and tried to get down the hallway, but Kylle snagged her arm, brought her back to the plaid living room couch, and held her, their heads reclined on the maroon crocheted afghan draped over the back.

She covered her mouth. "Quit, Kylle."

"I just came by to see if you got the roses I sent, baby. I just wanted to see you."

"I threw the fucking things away."

Kylle laughed. "Boo-whoo."

"Fuck you, Kylle."

She wrung his arm from over her shoulder and scooted away.

"Where's your nigger boyfriend?"

"You're nuts, Kylle."

"Nuts?" He lifted the front of his shirt. "You're the one that cut me, remember?"

"You deserved it."

"Come on, let's put all that shit behind us, okay?"

She stood. "I'm tired of it, you fuckin' psychopath."

He pounced, knocking a cup of ice tea off the end table. She flinched. He caught himself and stepped back again.

"I'm sorry. Baby, I'm sorry. I love you, baby."

"Get the fuck out," she said.

"Come on, baby."

Her upper lip ballooned. Her face splotched. She rubbed tears with the back of her hand.

He smoothed his hands over her arms. "Sh-sh-sh-sh-sh. Natalie. Come on, baby. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you. I love you. What we've got is special. Come on." He massaged her shoulders. "Relax, relax. I promise I won't be mean anymore."

She hugged herself.

He wrapped his arms around her, patted her back. "You're gone hyperventilate like that."

"No, Kylle. Stop," she whispered. "Quit. Let me go."

"Natalie. Relax. Come on. Please. I promise."

"No." She pushed him away.

"I just want to talk to you. We've gone through these rough times before."

She shook, wiped her nose, coughed. "I'm tired of it."

"I love you, baby."

"You don't know what love is."

He grabbed her breast and squeezed.

She spit in his face and ran down the hallway.

He caught her at the threshold of her bathroom.

She rolled to her back and kicked, missing and cracking the drywall, but then tagged him with four quick kicks in the gut and ribs.

He mule-kicked her in the ass, jumped, straddled her neck, and yanked her by the hair and wrenched her to her feet.

"Goddamn cunt. Motherfuckit."

He punched her in the face.

Her head rolled and jerked like a puppet.

"Calm down, bitch." His hand gripped her mouth like a vice. "Calm down, I said."

She scowled and panted. Blood poured from her nose.

"You feel better, now?"

He blew his nose.

"You got me good."

Spittle ran down his chin. He smeared it on her shoulder.

"Calm down," he repeated, "calm down, damnit."

He pulled his hand away. Chuckled. Kissed her.

"You are one mean little bitch. I've always liked that about you."

She squirmed, brought her knee up, tagging him on the side of his knee.

He collapsed and rolled, holding his leg and laughing.

"Goddamn shit."

She scrambled up the hall and into the living room.

He pushed himself up and hobbled after her.

Three gunshots exploded around the corner ahead.

Something hit the wall, spraying metal and glass, and knocking the telephone to the floor.

His ears rang. His insides felt as if the explosion had gone off in his belly.

He limped around the corner and peeked into the living room.

Chandler stood over Natalie holding his Ruger with just a thumb and finger. Blood splattered the wall and Chandler's shirt.

Natalie lay on the floor, blood pouring out of her head, soaking the beige carpet. One of her legs twitched.

A gurgled moan.

Air exhaled.

Then stillness.

Gravity's hand slammed the air out of Kylle, dislodging him.

"Oh, my God. No. Christ no, no."

Chandler paced, still clutching the Ruger, snatching clumps of his hair and mumbling and stuttering.

Kylle yanked Chandler by the shirt, ripping his sleeves. "Christ, what the fuck did you do?"

Chandler covered his ears. "Fuck. Fuck. I lost it. Jesus, oh Jesus. Christ. Fuck, fuck, I lost it. I didn't mean to shoot. I just wanted to scare her. Oh, Jesus, no, no, no, no, no."

He swallowed the barrel, squeezed his eyes, and held his breath. Kylle slapped Chandler's hand and the gun flung across the room.

Chandler collapsed into Kylle's arms. Kylle unpried him and he crumbled to the floor.

Kylle roared at the ceiling, "No, no, no, no. Christ, no."

Chandler grabbed him by the ankles, drooling. "I love you, Kylle. I love you. I'm sorry. I-I-I--"

Kylle kicked loose and sank down alongside Natalie, tears wrenching from him.

Chandler walked over on his knees sobbing and rubbed Kylle's shoulder and arm.

Kylle clasped Chandler's throat and his nails pierced into flesh, drawing blood that inked his fingers.

Chandler twisted his head and tugged at Kylle's wrists. Piss streamed out his shorts, down his leg. His eyes rolled back in his head and he ceased struggling.

Blood leaked down Kylle's fingers a moment more. Then he threw Chandler down and booted him in the head to agitate him into breathing.

Chandler gagged and wheezed, crawled into the kitchen and retched on the marble tile.

Kylle laid his face in the blood and stared into Natalie's fixed eyes. He slipped his arm under her neck and pulled her to his chest, screaming and rocking.
































































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