Los Angeles, 1990
Rio put the suitcase in my hands and told me to run. So I did. It wasn’t much to look at, shiny titanium, all rounded edges and no scuffs. There was a weird-looking lock on the side, half a pair of handcuffs attached to the handle, and on top, some small marks that looked like rust. Or maybe blood.

They knew I’d pulled off a couple other jobs like this in the past. Stealth. Get in, get out, leave no traces. Last week, I broke into a high security area to get some electronics, and the authorities still have no clue they’ve been jacked. I made a killing selling that stuff. After finishing fencing the last of it yesterday, I told myself I’d be done with jobs like this. I was doing this to prove a point, to impress the right people, and I don’t think it worked. No more. I wanted to go legit. But you do these kinds of things, you get a reputation, and trouble finds you no matter where you go.

Rio told me the suitcase belonged to Mr. Valdez, and he’s a pretty big deal in this neighborhood. I’d heard rumors about the kind of stuff he had, so even as I was running, I was thinking… how could I turn this to my benefit? If I could somehow take the contents of this briefcase and market them on my own… trade, barter, direct selling… the possibilities were endless. Problem was, the Jackson brothers saw us making the handoff, and they instantly knew they wanted whatever this was. They’ve been ten feet behind me for a couple of blocks now.

“What the hell are you doing?” Cindy said.

“It’s a moat,” Billy answered. He didn’t stop shoveling.

“It’s a hole.”

Billy took a moment to wipe off his gigantic forehead. Sweat spread in patches across his gray tank top and caked dirt covered the rolled up ends of his blue jeans. A child prodigy with more speed than sense, Billy handled summer vacations poorly, and believed all answers lay in organized projects.

“I worked it out. I can have a moat with koi fish and a bridge. It’ll be fed from the line put in to run the bird bath. I worked out all the schematics and required materials on my laptop.” Billy reached into his pocket and pulled out a small remote control. With one button click, a laptop on a stump nearby hummed to life.

Billy’s ambitions centered on the largest tree in a spacious backyard closed in on three sides by perfectly even fencing. Strengthened by the noonday heat, the pungent scent of fresh cut grass permeated the air.

“Everything you ever love will some day be dead. Your classmates, your best friends, your relatives, that little girlfriend of yours. That silly, little puppy you’ve been dreaming about which you want to name Digger. Sooner or later, they’re all dead, drop like flies.

“But not this goldfish.

“Every goldfish you’ll receive for yet another birthday, an additional Christmas, or after crying non-stop for three days over a dead one, every goldfish you’ll ever buy—it will live always and forever. Even if it has a larger tail all of a sudden, or a paler color, a funny eye, even when it got flushed down the toilet for the millionth time, it will always be that same immortal goldfish until you die. It will be this very same fish that I give to you today.”

That’s what I was told after he had gone and left us, and I believed it for a little over a year.

The story goes like this, that just one day, Dad came home from work, said he was sick of it all and from now on he was going to be a beanstalk. “A beanstalk don’t need to kiss ass and suck fucking dick all day,” he said. Mom said hush and rolled her eyes in my direction. That didn’t help Dad’s mood and when Mom asked him what happened he didn’t answer and went into the garden “for practice.” I didn’t understand most of the “suck fucking dick” but reckoned he didn’t care beans about work anymore.

Her artery, that snake,
swallowed a rat
decades ago. The rat
loved it so
inside the tunnel
of her body, it curled up
inside those walls, as rats
will do, and called
the tunnel home,
lounging there as if
it had found the dark
alley behind a bistro
bar — booze, cigarettes,
scraps of gourmet fare.

They don’t ask for a lot,

a pound of nails
to hold the lid in place,

a story to help them
fall back asleep,

and now and then
the loan of a handkerchief,

which they always return,
when they remember to return it,

crumpled and stained.

“I don’t know how to make it better for you. You say I smother, cover you like an itchy wool blanket, heavy in a stuffy room. I say ‘I love you.’ I want to feel you and be felt by you. Why don’t you listen? What can’t you hear?”

Her tears fall in slow streams. The windows weep as well, with condensation.

No reply. No sigh. No shuffle or shifting in weight. His fingers lay still in his lap.

Over her naked body, she pulls on a hot pink slick raincoat, green and pink gingham boots, flings a woven yarn scarf over her shoulder and front again to tie a firm knot. Legs bare, chest tight, she clutches a masculine black wallet and closes the apartment door with a click.

Cold rain pelts her naked face, softens her curls much like thick clumps in a new garden.

“How are the peaches today?” she asks Mr. Wallace inside the neighborhood fruit market.

Ripken homered in the second and Mussina broke the Yankee shortstop’s nose in the third because he was crowding the plate, blood splattering over the batter’s box like he was Jackson Pollock. Even the umpire had to get a disinfectant wipe from one of the batboys. Combined, those had been the highlight of the evening.

On the stool next to me, Christine hovered like a vulture over carrion, one lazy eye on her pint, one on the Orioles game. I chained smoke after smoke until I sounded like Louis Armstrong. The fog of cigarettes hung heavy in Frasier’s, and it was almost like I could use that blanket as an excuse for smoking instead of talking. It didn’t seem like she minded. Or noticed.

I waved my hand to Ray, chatting up some chick at the other end of the bar with hair the color of a raspberry I’d gladly eat off her bare chest. It took using both hands like I was directing plane traffic to get his attention. I pointed two fingers down, one to the whiskey glass and one to my pint. He nodded and continued charming Red. I lit another smoke and turned my attention back to the game. Yankees had men on first and third, one down, but even in the sixth, Mussina was still throwing 90-plus.

The dog shivered against my heels. We kept our distance from Kenny, busy knuckling his eyes red and puffy. The television was off-channel then, the aerial down awkward behind the set. I traced the loose drift of dust motes in columns of light. Morning coffee became noon cold and time passed like hair grows. His teeth were clenched so tight I expected to hear them fracture any second, and the vein wriggling worm-purple at his temple was about the only movement in the room. He breathed heavy and his swollen lids shifted with the swing of his eyes, searching out something to beat on. He whispered at me, quiet, his throat hoarse from crying.

The dog shot at the stairs, one leg slack and rubber-bending off each step. She frightened me. I bent to scoop her scrabbling little body up and my ashtray exploded off the door. I was up the stairs then on three legs too, dog tucked to my breasts with one arm, my heart wild as a trapped bird. I wedged us against the bathroom door and held my breath listening for Kenny. He didn’t follow us. He howled and kicked and thumped our furniture until it exhausted him, then screamed about killing the bastard. I tried not to think about picking splinters of glass out of the carpet and arranged the dog so she wasn’t sitting on her bad leg. She had coarse black hair, like brush bristles, and coughed with the bathroom’s peroxide stink. I opened the window and held her up for air.

It is inside her,
but it lasts forever,
and in Minnesota
we have traveled
to Roaring Stony
on a honeymoon
your father
recommended.

He was a gruff
and uncivil
man, but his laugh
was raucous, bold,
hungry for your mother,
who was also bold,

the jam of a chokecherry
on her breast & abdomen.

Waukegan, IL
The Trojan horse twenty dollar bill sits in a pile on the night stand. Peeling wallpaper, and thick grey curtains block out the cars rambling by on the interstate. A cigarette smolders in the ashtray as she pulls on her panties. Black lace. Predictable, but effective. I watch her as she dresses, mesmerized by her tight body. Every bend and stretch, the first female flesh I’ve seen or touched in eleven years. Besides my wife. She is everything that my wife is not. Blonde hair down to her supple ass, green piercing eyes that sparkle when she laughs, and firm breasts that hold my every glance. It’s been easier than I thought it would be. Hit the ATM, a stack of bruised green bills, and that one crisp new $20, sitting on top. Watching me, laughing. The paper trail mocks me, screams out adulterer, liar. I don’t care. Her name is Kelly, and I think I’ve found a new hobby. She’s gentle and kind and looks me in the eye. Glancing back at me, she smiles, her lips barely parted, head bowed in a shy flush. She’s new. I know that much. And I’m already playing back in my mind every motion and touch, every gasp and moan. It’ll have to last me. At least until next month. I never notice the blinking red light in the upper right corner of the room. Soon we’ll be on the internet. And it will all fall apart.

Staring down past limpets and seaweed into the bottom of the crevice, Kim drew a quick breath of the salt-laden air. Treasure. Just when she was resigning herself to failure, here was one of the beautiful green shells that she had coveted all week.

It was no bigger than her thumbnail. Only a practiced tidepool-comber could have found it in the shadows.

It felt a fraction too heavy when she snatched it. She bit her lip and flipped it over. Sure enough, it was occupied, like all the others of its kind she had ever found. The iridescent worn spot at the center of the whorl was beautiful, but perhaps also a clue that the green shells were too fragile to survive rattling around empty.

Kim's restless fingers turned the shell over and over, unwilling to let go. This was the last chance to find something really good on this vacation, something to stand out among all the other memories jumbled on top of her bookshelf at home, adding a hint of salt to the sterile bedroom so far from this vibrant, dead-fishy world. All week she had only collected clams, slipper shells, mussels — nothing she hadn't possessed before.

The blind greyhound’s been pacing around the apartment for hours, clawing at the walls, whining its throat out, desperate to get away from the stink. He ignores it and hammers a final nail into the wood. He walks into the bathroom and takes a long hard look at the shattered reflection. Black bags cling to weary eyes, last night’s work etched upon his face. Splashes of cold water rinse off the dried blood, staining the sink pink. He throws his shirt into a bathtub already crowded with a hacksaw, scissors, clippers and half-empty bottles. He slips into clean clothes and steps out. He picks the box up with a grunt, and leaves the apartment. Soon as he slams the door, the dog’s frenzied cries stop. Down an endless flight of crumbling stairs, where each heavy step conjures up a cloud of dust. The elevator would make the task easier, but it stopped working long before he was born. The city streets hail him with their usual aroma: the sweet summer stench of clogged up sewers pouring out of rusted manholes, the distant sting of smoke from the southern part of the city forever burning, the sweat of nameless passersby. A frail sun slithers through charcoal-dark clouds, weak rays bouncing off the husks of endless airships adrift high above the buildings. He loses himself down the avenues and alleyways, the city waking up around him as he prays for sleep. Something thick drips through the wooden box and onto his shoulder.

Dear Skyle:

I found the diary you left behind. Was I meant to read it?

You've always made me smile. Before the diary, I mean. Being around you was like filling my lungs with a drug I'd never experienced before. I'd inhale and watch the world blur; feel the pressure lift, pulling the corners of my mouth into that goofy smile you always laughed at. I'd exhale, refocus, and there you'd be: as small and delicate as our words; Skyle from English class, the women I'd never spoken to but dreamed of asking out, of falling in love and running away with, of marrying.

Do you remember?

It was your smile that did me in, beautiful and tragic; it grabbed my heart and never let go. Unsure of itself, the smile rose after months of hiding, like a cloud I never noticed. The first time we spoke, in that English class where we spent a semester averting eyes and indirectly flirting, it broke the silence between us. You sat by me after three months and said, “I think you're wonderful." And I said, "I can tell we're going to be friends." Then, that smile of yours showed itself and those words I never forgot but never really listened to flowed from it. Not malicious, but so mater-of-fact, like you were finishing a song lyric I started, you said, "And nothing else, ever."