happiness is a warm gun. [entries|friends|calendar] shane start with the kind of happiness only a stiff drink can cure. info recent friends [ userinfo | insanejournal userinfo ] [ calendar | insanejournal calendar ]

Part I [ February 05, 2007 · 7:50pm] Growing up, I lived in a nice neighborhood. Now, that doesn't mean the houses lining the twists, turns, and cul-de-sacs behind the local public high school cost anything over $125, 000. I was one of the most famous people that lived there -- I was the fastest runner, and came up with a new game-plan for night tag -- run around the neighborhood for a while and when you get tired, run through people's houses, hang out, and have drinks until you felt like running again. I never got picked for teams much because I was always a team leader. The neighbors around were good people -- there was the paraplegic man Phillip. I was fifteen and hung out with him constantly. He told me I had great tits, but he didn't mean it creepy or anything. We used to play You Don't Know Jack like every damn day on the computer, and we talked a lot -- I don't remember much about what -- movies, the history of cinema, and all kinds of other shit I've forgotten by now. We talked about his life, his girlfriend Kim, his dog Indra, and his injury. He never complained about us kids blowing into his place at 9:30 unannounced, and running in a pack, slamming the door, and interrupting whatever he was doing with his night. In fact, he always smiled, and he always smiled when he thought nobody was lookin', too. We'd go for walks at night when it was warm enough, we'd go around the whole place, and he'd make me walk on the inside of the sidewalk while he was closest to the street. He told me that it was the proper way to walk with a guy, and if a guy didn't know that, "then he's not worth shit." Every Christmas, Kim would take Phillip and I to the mall, so I could help him buy all his Christmas presents. Well, except for mine. I know he got me CD's, but I can't remember which ones. There were two redheaded boys, Matthew and Andrew. They lived right across the street from me. Matthew was alright and always got picked for a team before Andrew, but never picked first. Andrew was almost always picked last. Maybe that's why he was a whiner. But Andrew was a sensitive kid, for better or for worse. Sometimes, it was for better. He had big, watery blue eyes, and when he camped out on the curb with his forearms slung across his bent knees, hunched over, I always sat down with him, always wanted to. Those guys had it tough with their parents, and came over a lot to hang out until their mom threw open their front door and called them home for bed. There were a couple times their dad would get them with the belt, and they'd come high-tailing it across the road, screaming and banging on our door, and we let them in. There was one time Chris almost punched that man in the face. There was also one time Matthew ran away, and his mom in all of her chunky, frizzy-haired, thick-rimmed-glasses glory, was a wreck. She was hyperventalating crying, called the police, and called just about every parent in the neighborhood looking for Matthew. She even came to my house, but we didn't know where the hell he was. 1 AM rolled around, and sure as shit it was him, throwing rocks at my window. "Thank God for night tag," he said when I let him in, and told him he could sleep in my room (before it was Stevie's). The next day, he made up with his parents and two days after that, this other kid Kevin went to my brother and asked if Matthew really slept with me in my bed, because he was telling everybody he did. There were others like Mary. Her older brother died in Jubilee Park -- he fell off the ferris wheel way back, I think. I never met her parents, but she was the mom. She was soft and she was dorky, and not real popular in school, according to Elise and Kathleen, two little girls that barely hung out and practiced cheerleading every goddamn day in their front yard, but wouldn't take care of their rabbits no matter what their momma said, maybe because their momma was always tellin' 'em to. They had an above ground pool, and we all used to go over there when it was hot, but really only for the pool. Horrible of me. Anyway, Mary had a crush on my little brother, and if you ever had a problem, she was the go-to-gal. She could keep secrets, that Mary, she never refused a walk, and sometimes she'd come door to door, askin' every person one by one if they could play. There was a legendary witch in one house, and now I know she was just one of those Wiccans, or Pagans, or whatever they are. But we always took extra care in sprinting across her yard. We'd also sit across the street and someone like Kevin (another crybaby, this time handsome, who wanted to make me his Mrs. Robinson), would swear he saw her scooping toads and goldfish out of the cheesy, manmade pond out front. A few kids would back him up. Night tag wasn't the only things we did. Street hockey, roller-blading, bike-riding, basketball in my driveway, tennis on the high school courts, and baseball if you crawled through the hole in the fence to get to the high school's soccer and baseball fields. And when Gretchen and MatthewTwo's grandma died, his parents were out of town, and my brother Mike was babysitting, we played spin-the-bottle while Mike was drawing or some kind of shit, downstairs. When one of the kids in the neighborhood died, this kinda fat kid Paul managed to get ahold of a Quiji board -- I still don't know how, because his single mother was Baptist as helll -- and we all tried to talk to Justin from beyond the grave. Then it moved and we got spooked, and scattered like the little roaches we were. I babysat for Anna and Scott next door, and they were always a good place to go. They didn't like all the kids, just some of them. I got in trouble once for letting some of the kids in the house when I was watching their little boy, but they were great. And Sandra and Tracy (Tracy, a man) hated kids, but liked my brothers because my brothers worked on their house after a couple hurricanes. They gave us their dog when they moved away. Anyway, the place itself? There were hot pink houses and electric purple houses, and yellow green and blue and brown and white houses. There were beige houses, they all looked almost the same -- there were like, three model homes I think, and those three models were the only kind of homes in the place. They all had short driveways, and half the people didn't mow their lawns, and most of the ones who did mow their lawns didn't bother to weed. They had little concrete decorative fences they'd put around single-file lines of poppies. The people who thought they were hot shit had palm trees, and put these ivory and brown pebbles around it in a circle, and then put a fence around it. There were cars in the driveways and cars on the side of the road, and most of them were rusted or banged up, and a couple of them hadn't moved from that spot under that tree for years, because they couldn't run and no one cared. The Homeowner's Association didn't bother having it towed. I don't even know what the Homeowner's Association did except have the speed limit on the road lowered and scream at us every two seconds to get out of the street before we got killed. But sometimes, the parents would come out and play with us, and Phillip would drive by on his motorized wheelchair with his dog Indra trotting in perfect time beside him, and he'd jerk his seat to a stop, and he'd watch over us. The old neighborhood felt nice and small and swaddled you, and no other place ever felt like that. And you always try to replicate what you love, you always do. Compact spaces, little places -- dorm rooms (you don't have much choice in the matter), apartments, motel rooms, single rooms, even more high rise apartments like you're going to be safe and swaddled in the center of big cities if you're only fucking high enough. If you're only fucking high enough, maybe you'll get a little privacy. Now that I'm older -- I don't even wanna think about how old, but if I think about it I do only vaguely, so I'm around twenty-something-ish -- I live in a new neightborhood -- Silvercrest, in the town of Miami Lake, Miami. It's actually the second neighborhood I've ever lived in. We didn't buy the house for the neighborhood though, it's just the neighborhood that came with the house. The perfect house. We bought it for the perfect porch. Okay, more honestly, Jesus bought it. I could never afford it. At first the house was a jar -- something we had to fill up to get warm. And then, it was something we had to get through, like divorce or disease, like herpes -- we'd have to live with for life, but could do that somewhat normally as long as we took medicine (pills/acohol/sex). Our kids wouldn't catch it if it didn't touch them. Jesus and I don't have to fight for our marraige, not right now. We put it together with lists. It took one night -- the night I stopped the midnight drives -- lists of things we miss, lists of places that are our favorites, lists of the architecture of our bodies, and the places we love the most. We made lists until we passed out on the back porch. But we're still fighting for that room -- the one we can't shake. We were too busy and self-absorbed to be bothered with the new neighborhood, which is more like its own little town. You know those maps you get at Disney World, the ones marked with stars and cartoons and colors to really let you know where the rides, restaurants, toy stores, and bathrooms are? Miami Lakes should have one of those that they hand out in that "welcome to the neighborhood" ad-pack they give everyone new. Actually, I'm really suprised they haven't thought of that yet! Mental note. Maybe then they'll like me (I really don't give a flying fuck if they like me). Anyway, one day, we noticed. Boom, just like that. We noticed we have a neighborhood outside our wrought iron gated and stone-walled property. We have Mainstreet, and streetlamps, and fountains, and our very own Theater, and Mainstreet Restaurant. We have Palm Lake, and the New School, and a park with bridges and a pavillion, and a Johnny Rockets conveniently right by the park! We have a Homeowner's Association that we can be a part of if we wanted -- they meet in the Community Center. We have a Neighborhood Watch Program that we can also be a part of, that also meets in the Community Center. We have neighbors.

[ November 12, 2006 · 10:45pm] Couple's therapy. We go there now, again, twice a week. It's a freak show, and I never want a cigarette as badly as I do when I walk into that place. We might be normal on the outside, but the office turns us into animals. It's a dog fight once the therapist tells us to talk. I wonder if that's who we really are -- base creatures, really. We're ugly, we're possessive, we're feral, we hunt when we smell blood and when blood is drawn. We're parents, we've got children and problems with authority, problems with each other, problems with what happens in happy homes. Maybe what I love about the motel in New York is that it's dirtier than us. It's got more experience than us, it's a 55 year old whore at the point in Atlantic City that's smoked two packs a day since she got pregnant with her first, at sixteen. She's seen it all, she's been around. It got on her. She's still infected. She had her day in the sun, but it happened at 3 AM -- there's always a sun outside somewhere, even then. To that woman, we've got a long way to go. I'm in my late twenties and I feel like I have too much of it already. I only wanted something simple, everyone thought it was too simple. I wanted the cheap house, the beat-up car, the good kids, the pool-our-change-together road trips, the cramped apartments, the dead end jobs. You know, the kind of life where you're collecting dirt samples of everywhere you've been under your nails. You're fighting for the smallest, tightest, most compact corner of the fucking place you can have so that your household is trampoline tight, four corners. No one let's go, or it all goes down. Don't get me wrong -- I love our house. I used to love our house. I still love our house, but there are rooms I don't. I blame them -- the rooms. Maybe there are too many, that's the problem. Maybe they're too new. Maybe they're too clean, and it's deceptive. Maybe it's because even though I try, I can't get passed how we afford them. Maybe I never will. Maybe I've seen what happens when I need him. Maybe his hypocracy killed it. Maybe I don't love him anymore, but I want to. Maybe I don't hate him, but he disgusts me. Maybe I did the heroin because I don't want any rights. I don't want the right to feel anything but what he wants me to feel because then, I'll feel better then I do now. Maybe I don't want to remember eleven months of defining moments that he says were some gift that he thought I needed. Him and his fucking business trips, him and his fucking weekends away and selfishness and cowardice, him and all his fucking decisions to live by. This isn't a simple thing. It was never simple, and that's why I loved it. It's one of the hardest things I've ever done. Every day, you're tearing at the seams. You're pushed to your limit. Every day, you think you can only go this far without breaking and you learn that's not true. You can go farther. When you're someone's obsession and when you're someone's life, there's this spectacular mutualism. Time and exposure undo that kind of greed. He tells me it's guilt, but I don't know. We can't fuck on beds. I don't know whether it's an omen or a curse. We thought we overcame it the night we made Maria. We made that poor kid on a bed. I might as well have snorted meth or hit the liquor cabinet every God damn night I was pregnant with her. The doctor might as well have used dirty tools when I was in labor. We made a mess of that baby, and she's three years old. She's a botched job. Christ fucking forgive me. She used to not be able to take her eyes off either of us. She was scared to turn her back. She used to call us all the time, when we first got back together, you know: "When are you coming home? Mommy, when? Is Daddy coming? Where's Daddy?" And it took a lot of patience, you know? It took a lot of patience to deal with the phone calls and that little knock on our bedroom door in the morning, every morning. It's been three and a half weeks tomorrow since I first did heroin. Five days since the last party. Two and a half days since I snorted something that would trigger these fucking muscles in my face to smile and the fucking knot right here in my gut, and the vomit locked right here in my throat to relax but more so Jesus could stand being around me, my body at least. Because when I'm not high, I'm awake, and when I'm awake, it's like being in A Clockwork Orange and I just have to watch this. I have to feel this.

[ November 05, 2006 · 11:15pm] Give my gun away when it's loaded If you don't shoot it how am I supposed to hold it The vials and the needles didn't intimidate my surgeon; his rough, calloused hands were gentle, and knew this procedure as well as they knew the curve at the crown of Maria's head. This was the aftermath; a mess of powerlines and scorched earth. I wanted to cut myself out of my family. I wanted to cut my children out of myself. Cut off the blood supplies so the lights would go out like a stadium, closing. It was great, once. It was a major artery in some city, it was vital to some people. It kept the cold out. It used to keep the cold out. There was a silent understanding that we would not speak again, not until this was finished. But it was understanding nonetheless, and it was all we had. Neither of us would damage that. That would be too deep of a betrayal, so we kept it safe. He took my wrist gently when it was time, and his thumb pushed over the inside of my elbow, tender with my veins. There is a place inside you that was there when you took your first breath. It will be there with you when you take your last. Exist in that place. Open-heart surgery. Jesus made me a pinball machine. He pulled the pin back for a shot up my arm, bullet-quick, and so cold it burned. I felt its travel vividly. I tried to keep my eyes open, trained on his outline -- a shadow against a 2 AM backdrop and dim porch lights. His evolution -- man to boy and boy to man, and man to something else, half and half or maybe nothing, or maybe some new species -- all of it was fade in, fade out, or maybe I was just nodding. Jesus could have been a boy again, ten years old like he'd told me about, in his father's place with his favorite machine. He could have been older. We could easily be married; still, he was tending to me, keeping me safe and on the verge of consciousness, as awed as he was competitive, as smooth as he was sharp. I lit up hard and heavy, technicolor. I flooded, an underwater arcade. When I woke up, I was lead-heavy and saturated, slow-motion; his mouth, drowsy against the corner of mine, whispering. The tips of my eyelashes moved because of him. I think I came before I passed out again. * * * * * [bathroom part. COMING SOON] * * * * * I saw this documentary once on drug-addicted soccer moms; they don't have time, and mainlining is the quickest way in. They hide it in the medicine cabinets or between the couch cushions in the TV room. They lock themselves up in bathrooms or cower behind the arm of the sofa while to do it selfishly, before they do their makeup, during breakfast, and in the car right before their 9-5. They don't think of their families when they're shooting up, they don't think of anything but the drug-fuck. I just want my family back.

[ May 09, 2006 · 3:49am] oh, the way home the way you are and all the way home oh the way you are, and oh Jesus slid the suitcase carefully on the table and motioned for me to open it. I kneeled on the floor to do so. Four vials. Two injectors. Eight sets of needles, neatly packed. These were the contents of the suitcase with the golden handles, as clean as surgical tools. This was another secret the house kept from me. "It's heroin," my husband said as he lowered his body beside mine. My fingertips crept over the vials of clear liquid. Almost two weeks ago, he kissed me and told me he was sorry. He barely comes home anymore. When he does, he makes sure I don't see him. My chest curled in on itself like paper, burning. "I thought we might try something." I wedged one of the vials from its silk-lined niche. Two weeks ago, I would have slapped him. I might have yanked out an injector and slammed it through his shoulder to destroy that part of us. I would have kicked him out of the house. If he wouldn't leave, I would have packed up the kids. I swear I would've. "Do it." Put yourself in my place

[ March 07, 2006 · 5:23am] I cut off three of his fingers and sliced a one into his torso. This was not a test. When it's late at night and I'm in our bedroom, I don't think of my children anymore. I lay down on my side of the bed, I close my eyes, and I breathe in and out. I swear I can feel the outline of the chair I'd placed so carefully at the end of the bed when I killed him. I swear Tony is still sitting in that chair, and that when I open my eyes, I'll see him there, bound and gagged. When the house creaks and groans (its fledgling yawn to settle against the property), it isn't the house at all. My mind's playing tricks again. It's him, you see. I can't sleep with the TV on, I never could, so with my heart hammering in the cathedral of my ribcage, I'll stretch my arm out for a blind feel of the night-table. I'll accidentally hit the lamp, and it will be teetering when I find the TV changer. I've broken out in a cold sweat. I'll feel like I'm stuck in one of those running dreams -- where the murderer's behind you in the forest, and you're running faster than most cars can go, but the murderer's running faster than you. You know the ones -- the trees and vines are weaponry, and they're on his side, and so's the mud, bowel-thick, beneath your bare feet. The TV's on, and there's a tick-tock, tick-tock moment before a blue-white glow explodes through the room. It washes the walls and floor, lye to shadow, and I'm sitting up in bed, and my spine's a xylophone. The tremors and the sweat won't stop. I swear I'm an addict, I feel like a junky. I'm really a murderer. My husband won't come home. I need him to come home. I need him. I need you, I need you, I need you. I'm stuck in a vice, and I need you. Sometimes I say this out loud. I'll crawl to his pillow, pull it close against my face, and tuck it under my chin when the cotton's too wet. I won't look near the foot of the bed. I love the edge of his pillow. The television murmers sound -- sometimes it's the news and sometimes it's the sports channel, and sometimes it's Maria's Sesame Street DVD looping over and over again because I forgot to turn off the player at bedtime. If it's that it always happens faster, even though I try to stop myself from taking the kids out this late. One's almost three, and one's almost one, and it's nearly midnight but I need to feel someone breathing besides Tony and myself in this God damn room. Sometimes I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand and call my husband. Sometimes he answers, and sometimes he doesn't. Most times he doesn't because he knows what this call means, and it's not an emergency. It just means I can't sleep again and he doesn't sleep either. But I did this, after all. Sometimes I don't give up until I hear his voicemail the whole way through. Sometimes I just hang up. But I never get off of my side of the bed when I'm alone at night. I never step where I can still see Tony sitting in the chair, or where I remember laying the knife or the wire, clean or bloody. I always crawl over Jesus' side of the bed to get to the dresser to grab clothes or to get to the door. I usually change in the hallway, but only after I've shut the door to my bedroom. I always leave the TV on so there's manufactured sound covering the sound of Tony's voice, but he won't let go of me. I'll move down the short hallway, and when I pass the door to my husband's office, I touch it. Sometimes I carress it. Sometimes I slap it. After I've slapped it, I curl up against it and inhale nice and deep, so deep I think I can smell him through the door. It's not enough, and it never is. It makes me hyperventalate. I go to the children. When I open the door, they're sleeping soundly; I can see Maria, angelic. I watch the way she breathes and the way her lungs, twin machines, fill and ease and fill and ease. She's curled up like a fist and pumps like our hearts, and I know I can't stop myself from gathering Christopher out of his crib so very gently. I cradle his head and put it against my neck, and it feels like a sigh. Sometimes I do sigh, and it feels like relief. Sometimes it's not enough. Sometimes I need to tell my son that I'm not crazy. The house is too loud, it's too much. He never cries when I lay him down on the changing table and push his little, fragile arms into his warm, blue coat. He'll wind his tiny fingers around my index finger, and sometimes that's enough. Sometimes I kiss his forehead and his cheek, and tell him we'll stay home tonight, and I'll just watch him sleep for a while. Last night, I pushed him into his coat and zipped it up. Laurie, the nanny was tying on her housecoat when I took him with me. I told her I'd be back soon. I promised Christopher it'd be just us, last night. I had the guards set up his carseat, and I refused to take a driver. I'm just going out for a drive, I told them. "I'm not getting out of the car. We'll be fine." And we were. God we were. We put Hey Jude on the stereo and went to Wendy's, and the beach. We parked in the parking lot and I undid his seatbelt and took him into my lap, and it was absolute solace. I pretended that it was just him and I, and we were running away, and I'd never have to look at any awful pictures or that awful bedroom, and that I'd never have to call that awful number and listen to the hopeless ringing or the voicemail. I could be happy like this, I decided. No more cold sweats or bad dreams or silent treatment or worse. My love and memories would stay right here in Miami, like a time capsule. We could just leave it all behind. Chris gurgled and grabbed at my Frosty. "It's 1:03 in the morning. Let's go home," I told him. "Hope can be anywhere, huh? I've never been like you. Maybe one day I'll get there." I bowed my head, and kissed the inside of his tiny palm. Christopher's eyes tracked my face, sleepy and adoring. * * * * * When I got home, I was careful in unzipping Chris' jacket and laying him down in the crib. I carressed his cheek and bent over the railing to kiss him one more time. I kissed Maria too, and closed the door. Jesus was home. I knew this because I heard his office. His office is an artery just a few feet from our bedroom door. When I moved down the hall, I pulled off my sweatshirt so I wouldn't have to look at the door, which was cracked open. I stepped on the slit of light his space threw on my space. "Only four or five more hours of hell and you can leave not guilty," I said while I wished that slit of fucking light would turn to cigarette ash. Of course it wouldn't. "Only that much? Am I supposed to not ask you anything about where you were? Sort of like I don't tell you?" I unbuttoned my jeans when I was back in the darkness of the room. He'd been here. He turned the television off. "I didn't know you were in the business of doing what you were supposed to." My back was to the doorway. His voice came closer: "I didn't know I was either. Just asking." "Am I supposed to answer when you won't?" I threw a glance over my shoulder. "I suppose not. I was worried, that's all." This sort of discomfort is rare. I wouldn't look at him but with him there, I walked through the place I killed Tony to sit on the edge of the bed. "I'm sorry," I muttered, and didn't mean it. "Have a good time?" His filler. "Why?" My resentment. "It doesn't feel safe to guess and check." Jesus breathed while I reached for the night table and turned on the light; my back disgusted him. I tried not to move -- my shoulders hunched in, my shoulderblades awkwardly still. Maybe he noticed: "It's not about you, you know. It's here. I ... I just delay being ... here, being present. I ... I just do. I don't like what's been here." "So leave me in it? Leave me alone in it?" I threw the questions over my shoulder, knife-edged and pained. I thought I saw him in my periphial, and I didn't want to. I didn't want to see his face. "That's not a husband, Jesus. That's not even a man. That's not even you. You want to give Laurie this room? You want to move? You want to leave? Just tell me what I'm dealing with. For Christ's sake, please." "What does it feel like, here? This room, this house, town, what does it feel like?" "Who gives a shit," I spat bitterly. "You're hiding from a room? A house, a town? I'm here. Where are you." "I'm not hiding from anything." The floorboards creaked once from his footsteps. I listened to the places his skin touched the floor. And then his arms were around me, his chest covering my ugly back and my boney shoulderblades. He held me tightly, like he was choking a sick bird. "It's just hard." I wanted him to hold my tighter than that. My arms rounded him, to show him. "What's the hard part?" "Thinking about you like that. I know you're not, but it doesn't stop it." We switched to two inch voices and murmering words against our favored places - hair, cheek, collarbone, and neck: "No. I'm exactly like that. I killed someone, Jesus. Two someones, it's not some misunderstanding, I wasn't harmonal." "That it was here. It just ... is. Having to breathe, it's been hard." Our cheeks were pressed together when his lips curved. "You smile like it entertains you. Has it entertained you?" "No. It scares me." "Why?" "Because you're supposed to be better than me." "Killed him, didn't I?" My forehead to his. He wouldn't look at me. "Shouldn't have had to. Why wouldn't I be scared?" "Had to. What's so vile about doing what you have to. Is that what I wanted?" "No. But it's a result." I pulled my head back, and he understood the vitality. When I spoke, Jesus looked me in the eyes. "... I'm still a good mom. I was being a good mom." "You're a still a good mom," he promised. Discomfort rose, though. It corroded his face. "Let's go, let's go out to the ..." I watched it, horrified, fascinated, and sad: "... Fine. You know, let's go. Grab something, will ya?" "Don't need to be reminded. I'll be right back." I changed my clothes when he returned to the bedroom. There was a small, fine, wooden suitcase in his hand; his fingers were wound around its golden, gleaming handles. "... What's that?" I asked. My husband pressed his back to the french door that led out to the patio and held it open for me. "It's um ... you'll see."

[ January 31, 2006 · 4:33am] Christopher, You're so clean. You're a moment, do you know that? You're a flesh and blood moment in a warehouse where your father was living his other life, and you're the minute he knew that I accepted it. You're the one possibility I couldn't wait to tell him. Your father didn't want Maria, not at first. Now I think I have a better understanding of why. Our trust was his sacrifice -- he kept himself from me for seven years. He gave me this dream in Las Vegas and all that time, Sin City wore a fucking halo for me. I asked for Maria when I got brave enough to think that I was nothing like my mother, and he was nothing like anyone my mother ever married, dated, or slept with. He didn't want Maria, and with what he had on his plate then, only now do I understand. I had this appointment in the afternoon to go to the doctor's for more birth control. He came home very unexpectedly that morning, and rushed in the bedroom to tell me not to go. He was my husband, and the editor of a magazine, back then. I thought we finally overcame our fear of beds, and reason to believe to us, they were undone. We were twenty-four years old and there was no way to be each other's any more, completely. Then, while on our way to church with two-year-old Maria in the back seat, there was an accident. I realized there was no way to be each other's anymore, completely. Every cent we had was stolen, and your father came clean then, about everything. I did a lot of screaming, and then I did a lot of crying. We had to do some bad things to get it back, he said. I've tried to walk away, I've tried to run away, I've tried to undo loving your father in every way I've known how, before. There isn't a way to stop, forget, live, or die without him. We've planned this, we've planned this all along. He left to give me time, that night. And I left with Maria with the one person he would never think to trace me with. Anthony Graison was your father's best friend, and he left with me to go to back to New York. Your father found us, and laid low. When an apartment in our building caught on fire, he panicked for Maria. One day, he'll tell you about his sister. We decided it would be best if he stayed away from Maria, and he promised there would be a way to find him if I wanted to. He left. Ant became your father's stand-in for Maria and me, almost. I hate him, Christopher, with every bone in my body, but he loved Maria. I don't think he would have loved you. He told me I needed to divorce your father, he told me Jesus was no good and that as a mother, I had to protect my kid. I found your father, in Miami, and had him served with divorce papers. I didn't want that fucking divorce, I wanted him to give it up, I wanted him to choose us instead. He didn't. Well, he did, but when I got those papers back signed, I didn't see it. I traced out his signature. The lawyer left the apartment and I didn't even walk her to the door. I couldn't move, I wouldn't move. He'd touched that God damn paper. He'd been there, if only for a second or two. I wanted a superpower. I wanted to touch the paper and see his face when he signed it. I wanted to know if the ink smears were because he cried, and I brushed my cheek against those spots, pretending they were still wet. Do you know what it's like to love someone so desperately? I hope to God you never do. Maria will. She feels things, she feels everything. She's a bruise that never heals. You will see things, and you'll take care of her. Your sister asked for a story that night, and it was one your father used to tell her all the time. We had a moment, her and I, exposed. It wasn't long. I was the child, and she was the parent. My face said "Maria, I'm so selfish, and I miss him, and I want," and her face said "Mommy, it's okay, let's go back." And we did go back. And we found his apartment, and we went to his door, and he looked at us like we'd never left. And he told your sister her story, and the three of us had everything in that living room. I know it sounds cheesy, but we did. I was still me, I was still relatively innocent, I was still a good mother. When I went into his bedroom, things changed. I didn't feel like I'd walked into it at all. Instead, it was like a diorama: the naked girl in his bed, the cocaine on the dresser, the gun on the shelf. She looked like me, but younger. Dark hair, tan skin, petite. She was sleeping. She'd been with him all night. The door hadn't disturbed her. It wasn't just the whore that looked entitled. Those sheets, those drugs, this light, that shadow, they had no right to be there. The bedroom really existed, or we really existed. Your father had both, and he sated himself with one. That's why I shot her, Chris. He has to starve like we starve, and need like we need, and feel like we feel. He has to be human, even if he's only human in our living room. He's cruel, and he's good at being cruel; he's only gotten better. And now, so am I. But I wouldn't touch Maria after what I'd done. Your father bartered -- his mouth for my body. He'd kissed the girl in his bed. I told him we'd divorce if that's what he wanted, and he didn't. I told him I'd kill again, and he swore he would cover it like he was saying he missed me for the last time. He did miss me, he must have. I used to be the girl who didn't like guns. You know, I still don't, but not for the same reason. When you hold one, Chris, it's so easy. It becomes too easy to make things an impossibility. It's stronger than 'no,' it's more expensive than 'promise,' but the one thing a gun won't do is lie, even if it's to protect you. Your father and I have worked things out, since then. He slept with them because he missed us, and this man named Tony told him that it would make all those bad feelings go away. He gave him girls, boys. He had him doing all the things I saw in pictures I wasn't supposed to see. He persuaded your father to survive without us, and he helped your father do that. It's against our rules. It wasn't only about that. He nearly erased us, Christopher. Tony taunted me. He adored your father, and he hated us. He made me think your father was still fucking around. He caused countless fights about fidelity and family. Every time your father stayed out late or spent a weekend doing business, I was beside myself with the thought that he was cheating, that he was bringing that taint and those lies into our home, that it wasn't just that bedroom, but this other life that our family couldn't survive. Tony had the power to do what we never could, and your father let him live. Jesus asked me for you. You were for Maria. Maria, the one he chose as the man he is while I was simply the girl I was. I said no, at first. How could I selfishly subject something so perfect ... to myself? How could I share my body and blood with you, now that I was so sick and weak and paranoid and vulnerable? I couldn't take care of myself, I wouldn't take care of your sister, and your father, he had all the security in the world. He bent himself over backwards, being patient. But you didn't come from weakness. Your sister, she is naivete and untruths. You are nothing but love and faith, and you are fierce. I planned murder until I planned you. You're one and a half now, by the way. We just watched Big Bird Goes to China, and you've fallen asleep. And you don't know yet, but there's this thing called evolution. They say that we evolved from apes, and one theory about the human eye's development is that first, we started differentiating between colors for survival. Early humans needed to tell the difference between red leaves, which were dead and therefore malnutritious, and green, which were healthy and give you sustenance. Before you were born, I was obsessed with the color red -- things like hot stoves, crosshairs, and the way skin looks after it's been burned. A burn even feels red until it stops hurting. When I was pregnant with you, I didn't care for the color. I didn't think of hurting myself anymore, not even once. See, when Jesus has business trips, I have you. And if he was or is still sleeping with other people, I still have you. I love you in a way that I can't love him: Perfectly. After you were born, it started again, and maybe that's because I didn't send Tony away when he came to the house when Jesus wasn't here, anymore. Your father let him live, like I told you, but he couldn't live. You couldn't protect me anymore and anyway, it's my job, privilege, and reason for living, to protect you. I killed Tony three days ago, Christopher. You'll never see this letter and still, I will never write to your sister this way. I choose you. I'm a monster. I chose you.

[ January 30, 2006 · 9:18pm] MISERY AND SPLENDOR Robert Hass, from Human Wishes Summoned by conscious recollection, she would be smiling, they might be in a kitchen talking, before or after dinner. But they are in this other room, The window has many small panes, and they are on a couch embracing. He holds her as tightly as he can, she buries herself in his body. Morning, maybe it is evening, light is flowing through the room. Outside, the day is slowly succeeded by night, succeeded by day. The process wobbles wildly and accelerates: weeks, months, years. The light in the room does not change, so it is plain what is happening. They are trying to become one creature, and something will not have it. They are tender with each other, afraid their brief, sharp cries will reconcile them to the moment when they fall away again. So they rub against each other, their mouths dry, then wet, then dry. They feel themselves at the center of a powerful and baffled will. They feel they are an almost animal washed up on the shore of a world-- or huddled up against the gate of a garden-- to which they can't admit they can never be admitted.

[ November 08, 2005 · 6:38pm] I went to a job interview the day before last for one Gregory Huddson. I found the listing on the internet. His offices hadn't opened yet, so he had me interview from his home. I covered up. He answered the door, shirtless. I thought he might have heard of me once six years ago and then stopped reading the paper. I used to be married to someone else once. He was a public fuck. But Gregory hadn't. He tossed a few lines my way, offered scotch. I don't need a job this badly, and tell him so. I saw him eight days later. * * * * * New house. New babysitter. New car every couple weeks. Another day, another rental. Jesus and I were running errands -- grocery shopping, toy store wandering for some pre-Christmas. He'd told me we'd have to stop at the warehouse -- a place I'd never been, but heard about. We pulled up just a couple blocks off. "We'll be home in a little while," I said to my cell phone, trying for patience. Jesus turned the ignition off and smirked. He was happy he didn't get the phone calls. "But Mom! Mommy, will you bring me a ... tooooy?" "We'll be home soon, go have fun!" I told Maria as I climbed out of the car and pushed the door shut. Fifteen days of patience, of not knowing, of secret-baring and secrets about baring. "Put Laurie on the phone, please?" Jesus, in his dark green Dickies and his black t-shirt (it took him years to wear black) rounded the nose of the car to head across the parking lot. "What's happening at home?" He asked loudly while he lit a cigarette, across the fifteen feet or so between us. I caught up and nodded him towards the warehouse doors, and once we reached them, my husband gave me one of his five-second neck massages before reaching around me to knock softly on the warehouse door. "Tease," I marked his eyes and murmered playfully to him before I heard the nanny saying hello to me on the other end of the phone. "Look Laurie. Just try to hide the phone or somethin'. In case of emergency is fine, but if she sees the phone, she'll use it --" When it opened, I saw two guards. Big boys, too. "Hey Mr. V -- Mrs. V," said guards. "Alright -- yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Bye," I told Laurie, and flipped the phone closed. "Hey, how you doin' today?" I smile. It didn't feel like a gift to be acknowledged by the boys I didn't know. Jesus hadn't said anythng in the kitchen, when we fought about the way Tony spoke to me. I'm glad he saw my point. "Mr. V -- Johanesen just called. He's going to be late. You need him called back?" "No, it's okay, he'll show up." Jesus told the guard of Al Johanesen, aspiring spousal protection. I was gonna meet the guy for comfort to make first cuts. Then we'd decide who got the job. And it's a security I need after the DEA screwing silencers onto weapons they're threatening me with in broad daylight and FBI agents, dirty and clean, showing up on my doorstep to look through my mail or propose some deal to my husband. I wonder if the law has always been so greedy and aware. He waited for me to step through the door and I did, turning to him. "And they're havin' a greaaaaat time. She's just ... Felt like sayin' hi. Where are you, what are you doin', when are you comin' hoooome. She's like our mother. She's like a really good, really on top of things mother." Mrs. V, they said at the door. I wanted a cigarette. I smelled nicotene and was repulsed, so I dug into the back pocket of my jeans, found my pack of Big Red, and pushed a slice of it into my mouth instead. I wasn't pregnant, but there's something about a physically impure vessel I don't like. Children are sacraments. Jesus will go clear when I tell him about this. He did when we were trying for Maria. We're making an investment, protection. Man, that was fun. Our place was pretty explosive for that first week without cigarettes. Worse without nightcaps for everyday stresses and pot for those extra-difficult days. Needless to say, the fights terrible and the sex like we were dead broke and someone paid us a thousand an hour to have it. "When are we starting her in preschool?" he joked, underhanded. I decided to tell him the secret, excitement stirred. "... I don't want her to go to preschool," I said, thinking of children. Jesus led me through the first room in the warehouse. It looked about as dirty and abandoned as it had on the outside. Parking lot bile with a table with a fruit bowl in the center, all couches and no chairs. "It's either preschool or being around Laurie *all* the time, when we're there and when we're not," he told me over his shoulder, heading for a narrow hallway, knowing that I would follow. I had, taking little note of my surroundings. I didn't care what was in the fruit bowl or where he stood whenever he stood in the room, or which couch was his favorite sitting-place. I cared about Al Johanesen and the perfect time, and I was remember the Christmas Eve I made him pick one present to open and hoped he picked the right one. "Where'd you get him?" This Al. "Vegas. He worked with me a while." My husband reached for a boxcar-style door, the middle door in the hall, and slid it open to reveal another room. A miraculously clean, beautiful room with a large, glass, circular table and burgendy, club-styled chairs around it with another one, a little bigger and a little more decadent on the farthest side. The decandent part? The brass nails in the center of the arm. I knew it was his. "Christ." It derailed me. He slid off the sunglasses he'd been wearing, and so did I, en route to that special seat, skimming the arm, the brass nail, and coming around to brace my hands against the back of it, massage-style. "If I didn't know better, I'd think small dick, fast car." My grin was still telling hime 'oh, come on! What is *this*' even though I wasn't. "I just thought it looked nice." Jesus' grin preferred the right side of his face. "Fuck, I feel so important," after the oh-so-luxurious sit down. I crossed my legs and slouched in the chair while Jesus leaned against the table, directly across from where I sat. We felt like teenagers. I felt like Alice (ref. in Wonderland, not Go Ask). "I say that we *try* this woman out with Maria, and we *look* for a decent preschool, either that or we *find* her some friends." Each word was punctuated by a playful bump of the heel of my hand at the brass screw driven through the arm of the chair. Gum-snap. Bubble-pop. "Whatcha think, JC?" "Okay, that's what we'll do then." The heels of his palms pressed against the glass, pushing himself back in that seat he had on the table. The conspiratory exchange of smiles and silence was appropriate. I took a deep breath, and decided to take one more before telling. I enjoyed keeping this secret from him. "Isn't this cute." Foreign, smoker-voiced, and from the open doorway. I traded Jesus for Miguel. And Gregory Huddson, white as a sheet, stood beside the man. My husband craned his head, trading me for the men. "And you'd be a great judge of that." "Hola mi jefe." Miguel gave Jesus the ritual-respect-show before sitting down in the seat beside me. "Senora Vaquero." Every time he speaks, you're waiting for the sound of a Zippo, and you're rarely disappointed. More cigarette smoke. Let's make this quick. "Huddson." My husband lifted his hand, flinched his fingers, and beckoned the interviewer over. I enjoyed this immensely because Gregory Huddson was suffering and afraid. It's how people should feel when they interfere. "This is Senor Miguel Rodriguez and my wife Shane." I knew I'd lost him with Miguel in the room. "Mr Huddson's a new associate of ours -- an accountant," he told his right-hand man. "We've met," I said. Gregory stopped and frowned. "But good to see you again. Don't feel obligated to do anything but shake my hand ... again." "I should probably be kissing some ring or something, but hey, that's what you get for hiring Un Gringo Ignorante, aye? Mrs. Wilder, it is a pleasure once again. Senor Rodriguez ..." He shook my hand, Miguel's hand, and took to undoing two buttons on his collar, to breathe. The aviator lenses followed. He reminds me of Anthony and Angelo. Like ... if Anthony Graison and Angelo Rosario had a baby, this would be it. "Any sign of regard is customary - just not outside. Never know who's looking," Jesus told Huddson. "Senor Rodriguez is something of my right hand ..." His eyes stuck on Gregory. My heart thudded. "Any ... call he makes ...." my husband continued, choosing his words wisely. "And I speak for myself," I tacked on, smooth. Fuck it. I reached for my bag, where my Camels were. Gum-snap. "Gotcha." From Greg. Miguel excused himself to the bathroom. "How'd you meet?" Jesus asked, beginning the interrogation. "Cooincidentally. Interview. He wanted to fuck me yesterday. I didn't get the job." Blow-bubble. Gum-snap. I took my cigarettes out. I put them away again. Nobody noticed when I caught myself. Instead of smoking, I pulled at my Big Red with my restless fingers, drew it out, and wound it around the index, too focused and too indifferent to be coy. "True story. The interview part. Hell, the fucking part as well. Beautiful wife. I congradulate you," Huddson told him, taking a seat. "Hey, beautiful accountant." I said, for Jesus. "I won't fuck her, I promise. I realize you'll cut off my balls and feed them to your dog if I do." Gregory was getting nervous. Jesus could smell it. So could I, I just didn't give a shit. My husband smirked slightly and brought his hands together into a clasp for a few slide overs, an air-clap or two in the middle of the runover. "Well, that's pretty disrespectful." He slid from the table he'd been sitting at for the last fourty-five minutes or so, onto his Puma'd feet. "I mean ... in general. My wife --" he gestured to me, and I threw my eyes to the boys, unimpressed. "-- is one thing. Now I take it -- in fact, I pray for your sake that you weren't aware she was my wife at the time." "Trust me, I had no fu --" the accountant stammered and stopped himself from using such foul language. I wondered why. "He didn't," I answered for him as I watched Greg coolly. "I had no clue she was your wife, and as from about thirty minutes ago, she will be treated only as such ... Sir." "I think that's pretty given." Jesus' smirk matured to a small smile. "You'll find out Mr. Huddson, that my associates follow a role of conduct in their business, and as my newest associate, you're no different, are you Mr. Huddson?" His steps neared Gregory with a little swagger. His hand-clasp was tightly rode out the tension, no longer casual. "That means don't try to fuck his wife," I snapped impatiently, and stretched my leg out to hook Jesus' leg with my own. Why? I was begging. "Where's that guy? And why did this turn into a social event? Or a business one, whatever." He tossed a look over his shoulder, a sharp glance. "It wasn't supposed to." And stepping over my leg just as easily, he kept talking to his newest employee. "Like I said, that's disprespectful - to anyone, if it wasn't my wife and I found out, whether it be some mildly funny story or someone I had at your offices seeing, I'd be having this same discussion with you. Now here's the thing, my associates don't work like that. They don't hire like that. And they don't treat their people like that. You know why? Because if they do, they get belted in the teeth. Now what you do in your free time is your perogative. But when you're working - in or out of your offices ... that sort of shit ... doesn't happen. Alright, Mr.Huddson?" "That's right, Huddson. I'm just like anybody else. Hell, everybody else." "Pardon me to be correcting you ... Sir. But you put the wrong damn emphasis on the wrong sylable. See, you missed the MY part. When I agreed to do this, I didn't say you could have my fucking company, Sir. Because that's what it is. Mine. No board of trustees, no co-partners ... and no ... whatever the hell you like to call yourself calling the shots. I hate to break it to you, but you are a client. And as much as I do like doing buisness with you and I would be honored to keep you as a client? I will not comprimise my company. I run it how I see fit to run it because I got it where it is. And yah, you're on your game. Good on yah. But the way I see it, I've been building this shit from the ground up for at least 10 years longer then you've been working at your game so you ... can stop it with the whole 'I'm the boss' shit right now. Wanna belt my teeth?" He grinned nice and wide, teeth bared to point at the rows with a fingertip. "Go ahead. 32 grand and I can have a new set better then these and you can have a visit from my lawyers ... and wouldn't that just be a bitch getting all caught up in the Florida legal system when they know the name Huddson better than Vaquero." "He's clear. You asked. I wasn't gonna say a thing. It was honest, but disespectful. I'd recommend letting someone else do the whole intervewing thing for you," I breathed. Annoyance-singed. Nothing. Not a word. Jesus didn't stir from where he was, eye-to-eye with Gregory. Focused. "You're right, Hudson," he began casually. "You're right. I am your client. You work for me. Before you came to me, you should have realized what you were doing. As my organization's accountant, I will be your only client--" "As a journalist. Every good magazine needs a good accountant ..." Gred smirked. "Gregory ... if you had wanted to be accountant for my magazine, you would've been talking to my buisness manager in Las Vegas. Now, as my accountant you'll be getting a yearly payment from me - now, I'm sure you thought that you would gain a profit from taking me on as a client, and you probably will, after all what expenses do Accountants have other that secretaries, rent, and stationary? Oh stamps --" "Quicken," I said. My husband continued. "And I doubt that your claim would go far. After all, you're the one who sought me out - you must've caught sight of my name somewhere. The legal system is a game of friends, Mr. Huddson - and I assure you I have many. Don't waste your time or money on a specialist attourney ... I'm young - but I'm not dumb. And I'm not easily conned. I didn't buy or cheat my way to what I am." "What, you think I'm in this for the money? First off, you should be glad I'm not because money get's bought out. Second off, I can deal with working for you. I can working for only you. But I'm not turning my company over to you. I am still planning to run it. Work for it, no. But it doesn't mean I'm not keeping it up..." His eyes narrowed lightly, and yet..there was that smirk once again, his weight shifted back to one foot. "And she's right. You did forget Quicken..." "I'm not asking you to turn your company to me - I'm just asking for you to follow a ... code of conduct, shall we say. I don't see why *that's* such a big problem." "And I am asking you to respect my ability as a buisnessman. Trust me, I will do nothing to shame your ... organization ... and hell. It will look a bit suspicious when I start to change my practices, won't it? So really... I'm just saving us both some trouble..." The accountant argued, like they were talking about a baseball game. "Look, could you not act like you're fuckin' five years old? It's semantics. And if you're not smart enough to grasp the fuckin' concept, you're not smart enough to work for him. Don't act like a pubescent male in front of Carmen Electra for the first time. Don't let your erection rule you. Then you'll get along just fine. And really, I think that's good advice no matter what fuckin' business you're in. Could ya'll cut the shit now?" I snapped, nearly throwing myself out of Jesus' brass-knuckled chair. "Care for a scotch? I'm sure he's got some around here," I said to the accountant. Both men stared at me. I could feel them, Gregory offended as hell, and Jesus probably pissed as hell. Still, his voice was calm, serene. "There's a bar down the hallway by the couches." While I poured, he turned his attentions to Huddson, who was making his exit. "I'm glad we understand each other." Gregory pulled the box-car style, sliding door closed behind him, and I tossed a look over my shoulder to Jesus, who was walking towards me. I recapped the bottle. " ... That man is a fucking idiot." His hands swallowed my shoulders, making up for the tease-massage outside the warehouse, well over an hour ago. "He is," Jesus murmered, working his fingers over my neck and shoulders in slow, tight kneads. "What are you drinking that for?" Gregory had shut the door just a few moments ago, but I still felt like I could hear the slam. I listened for it and in stark contrast, found the quiet around us again. "Ugh, you pissed me off. Why the fuck give *me* a look, he's the dick." I snatched up my glass. Jesus bowed his head and put a kiss to the turn of my neck from side to the back, where neck meets shoulder. Fuck impurity for today. Maybe I'd start again tomorrow. "It's what Gregory drinks. I don't mind scotch. It just makes me defensive." "Because it's my business -- and you know I mean business, as in with an office and cubicles and coffee machines. Did I ever come into Kolter and make shot-comments during your conferences?" Rex Kolter. There had been a huge fight when I took the job with Kolter Enterprises, almost break-it-off-worthy, and this time it was from Jesus' end. He didn't want me doing business with my ex-husband. "And ... you know why you speak for yourself." Jesus' thorough feel at my back continued. I made a soft noise, lashes dipping. "And why be defensive now?" he asked. "Adrenaline." "Why slow that?" "Bad for the blood pressure. And I'd never describe Kolter as an idiot -- I wouldn't have cared if you *did* walk in. It wasn't about belittling you, it was about being annoyed because he was wasting my time." I hadn't taken a drink from the scotch, but still had it secure in my left hand. "Want some?" "You can take it. And that's okay -- I've never been fond of the stuff. How's this feeling?" He asked of the massage. I put the cup down on the bar and reached above me to hook my arm around his neck. "Good." "It's not about him being an idiot, it was about having to manage two arguements at once," my husband explained quietly as hands moved from the back of my neck for a fluid wrap around my torso. "Which -- him and me, me and you, him and you?" Two-inched. He kissed my shoulder and murmered against my ear: "After you meet him, we'll go home, okay? To the house." "Me and him -- you and me." "I embarressed you." A question, in the form of a statement. "I'll deal." Silence. His arms tightened around me. "How much do you hate the chair?" "How am I supposed to be? And I think it's funny." "Why's it funny?" His voice hushed, making it so damn personal. "I want to screw you in that chair one day," he said to the knot of my jaw, keeping me bookended between himself and the bar. "Because it's so not you," I smiled slightly; he kissed my skin, and I squirmed around to face him, a softness to my voice. "How am I supposed to be, huh?" Vaquero's grin faded out before mine -- he was frowning when our eyes met. Hostile takeovers. I can ask, but I lacked the ability to ask. He can answer, but he does not like that he can answer. "What." I demanded, lowering a hand to skim my stomach between us. "It's a simple fuckin' question. What are you afraid of? If it's not me, it's not in this room." "I...I want to think better of myself than to want you different." His mouth tightened, pursed. I pushed my elbows back to brace against the bar. "But you're not," I told him gently, like I understood. "I just ... I can't choose between you ... and someone I'm doing buisness with. I can't. I choose you; I offend them - and some guys in this buisness aren't idiots. I chose to take on their fight over yours and I lose a part of you. I know what's at stake. And ... and ... I can't balance things all the time. It's ... it's too much. It's too much for me." The stammer crept into him again. "It's not just in general...it's just...in the same room - and it's two arguments happening at the same time and it's going in both ears and you have to take care of both. I don't want to mess up. And ..." Jesus licked his lips, beyond words, and doe-eyed. His arm stayed tight around me. Adrenaline surged through mybody, my chest tightened, a strong band against Jesus' words. I cut her eyes in the opposite direction. Away from him. Away from the chair. He couldn't choose between me and the business. He'd leave me before the business, or at the very least, he'd let me leave him. Lives were at risk. Parts of ourselves, parts of each other lost. "Forget I asked. I hate it," I spat, and groped for the glass of scotch I had yet to touch. "I wish I could ... could say what you wanted me to say. I know you --" "I *don't* smile and nod. I'll never just smile and nod. Not until I don't love you anymore." "No ... No, that's ... it's not going to happen. No." Tears stood in his eyes; I shook off his arm. "Not smile and nod. Just ... just ... tr-ry --" Jesus stopped himself to regroup, and watched me throw back a heavy, bitter swallow of liquor. It spoiled the secret and the secret-baring. Who the fuck needs to be clear? Not me, not today. "Just not to...fight with me...when I'm fighting them. Fight with me outside. Fight with me with they're not here. Argue with me when they are ... but just ... not ... then." I stared blearily at the place the air touched his bicep. I felt at my collar, I made the bone hurt. My brows pushed together and trembled tightly. "Don't make you choose because you won't choose me, and you don't want to lose. God, I hate you right now." Delicate, reedlike. Any louder, any more from me and my voice would have split, fractured, broken. Another gulp. More scotch. More give-up. "They were outside. You let them in." He let his arm fall off of me, but put his hand to my hipbone. He wouldn't let go there. "I didn't think they'd be a problem," Jesus told the floor between us, and looked for me again. "I ... just can't balanace it." My husband has eyes that are the color of electricity. Only now they looked tragic and reflected the sting they felt. You feel a sting too, when you match them. Magnetic, ferocious. "And ... I don't really have ... a lot of leeway right now. I can't ... threaten anything. "Maybe--maybe everyone's right. Maybe I am too young...too young for this. I can't --" I didn't interrupt him. I watched him breathe in snot and take a swallow of saliva. "I can't even get a fucking accountant to respect me. I--I dont know what the fuck I'm doing. I ... I can't handle the feds ... I can't even handle the fucking DEA, I can't even balance between my family and my business. I can't fucking have two lousy fights at once? What ..." He stopped himself short, cut himself off, and clamped his front teeth into his lip. There was trouble in his face. Balance? When the fuck have we had balance? We have security or we have everything else. Family or nothing. I covered my collarbone with my clammy hand like I was protecting something, and backed away from his touch. I didn't scramble to get free. I just stepped back to lean against the bar behind me. My nose stung, and I finally dropped my collarbone to fold my arm across my stomach, weakly hugging myself. "Those are all ... h-huge problems, Jesus." My throat locked up, sore and swollen. "Don't. You've done this for years. I mean, it's either figure it out or die tryin' at this point, isn't it?" I put down the scotch to pick up his hand. Just stop asking me to sacrifice for them. I've sacrificed. I don't want to give any more." "I'm not asking you to sacrifice for them," he whispered, pleaded. "Do this for me. Not for them. Me. If I only had one weakness - it would be you. You're the most manipulating of all of them. I'd do everything I could to keep you from being hurt. And that's why I can't choose. It's more about the threat of what happens when I choose you over them. Ego, power, it counts for a lot ... I ... I'm .. it's the truth. And ... if I play a hand like that ... and I lose - I get kicked out of the table." It's so rare to hear his voice tremble anymore. "Then there's no choice," I said -- finally looking him in the eyes again, and letting go of the hand-hold to pinch at the bridge of my nose, and fork my fingers out for an eye-rub. "...You asked." "Yeah, I know. And then I said forget it." "Why...why is this so hard? Fuck that. I know why. I just...wish--No, I dont. I dont wish that. I want life to be hard for us. You have to hate me sometimes. But why for something like this. Why ... Why does *this* happen." "I'm not having this arguement again," I snapped. "I don't know where the fuck to put the words anymore. Every good moment we have, it feels like I'm fucking stealing. Stealing it from someone, somewhere, hell maybe even from you. Because Jesus, we're fuckin' *trapped*. We're trapped in this, you brought us all into this, and now we're fucking stuck. We're priority one for me. We are, we've always been. I gotta change. Now I have to fucking change --" " I'm not asking you to change. And I'm not --" "I have new rights. I want the old rights!" While I yelled, Jesus clamped a hand over his mouth, turning frusturated-furious. I whipped around and away from him, to pace. My footsteps clipped, and the hollow echo reverberated loudly through the room. "I can't have the old rights or you get -- or fuck it, we all get -- And yeah, I accepted it, I accepted it when I *showed up*. I resent it. I resent all these fucking PARTS of you that run all over the place. You would too. They get you before I do because if they don't, something *catostrophic* happens." By then, my voice was trembling too. "I look at my daughter and sometimes I wish she wasn't even fucking *born*, that's why." "No," he barked, and shook his head, eyes like crosshairs and trained on me. "No. You just wish you were some lousy fucker's wife, and then that she was his. Hell, maybe not even that. The point is, what you wish...is that you didn't have to come back. That you didn't have to be with me. Yo--you dont want to change? I'd hate you if you changed." "No. Noooo, you're fucking wrong about that," I turned to him and smirked, bitter. "How wrong?" "Wrong, Jesus. So fucking *wrong*. You said you wanted to make art. We did. She's a target. You made her a target. You and me, we've never protected ourselves from each other. She was supposed to be *different*." "How wrong?" "I'll always want you. But great, thanks for the confirmation on where this train wreck's headed--" "Shane, I don't want you to change. You don't want you to change. I don't really see where the goddamn wreck is." "Yeah, you do. That's what you're sayin'. You just won't admit it. If you're not askin' me to change, what are you askin' for? 'Accept that things come before our family, Shane. Accept that when you say you need to talk, I have to go play meet and greet with somebody on a boat. Don't have an opinion in front of my associates. Don't argue with me.' Ugh, just forget it," I reached the bar again, snatched up the scotch, and kicked it back for a few hearty swallows. "I said we weren't doing it and here we are ..." ""It's business, Shane. It's the same thing as when I worked at any magazine, any newspaper, even at The Magazine. It's buisness. Except there are threats involved. I used to protect you from those. I met the guy at the boat, and guess what happened, he got shot in the arm by a sniper - so I guess karma bit my ass for leaving you for him. You have to have some sort of knowledge on what's going on to have an opinon, I've given you the space, I've given you the protection to speak your opinon, but the fact is that when it's about my buisness, you don't know the context. Things that make sense to the normal person don't here - things that are right and things that are wrong are the opposite - sometimes doing the most lucrative and disasterous thing puts you on top ... I just ... it's buisness. Don't argue with me, because I'm already arguing with another guy in the same very room you're in. And yeah here we are because it's just not one of those questions you can forget that easily. You made me answer it, I didn't want to, I told you why and here we are!" Ferociously, he grabbed at the glass in my hand in a rip I felt through my whole arm. I grabbed at him -- a handful of his t-shirt at his bicep and another handful at his chest, and gave him a violent shake. "Stop it. Just fuckin' stop. This isn't turning into that." Jesus slammed the glass down on the bartop so malicously that it might have shattered, and cut his keen, visceral eyes to me in a sharp dare and demand. He calmed when my grip did, a tight anchor, not a threat. "How can you think that your business isn't my business?" A dire and important plea, one that warrented the strain. "Be-b-because ... ...If this was your business...then it wouldn't just be your business when it's about you me and Maria. It's your business when there's five men you've probably never met, who swore loyalty to me, laying in coffins." That's when I let go of the material of his shirt, which was stretched from my fingertips. Two inched voices. "And whose mothers you have to look in the eye you have to look in the eye when you walk in. That's part of my business, Shane. Do you want in on that? Is that the part of my business that you're part of? Because you have to take it all." "But it is my business when it's about you, me, or Maria. You asked a question you just answered for yourself. Apparently, I don't have a choice." "I'm ... just ... just ... okay. Your choice. You have it. What you want to do. Tell me what you want to do. It's yours." "I want you to tell me why you allowed Maria to be put at risk. I want you to say your sorry to me for that and I want you to regret it every day. And then I want you to stop *toleratin'* whatever I have to say about the business like it's some burden you gotta swallow down, and I'll start shutting up in front of your people, and you start TALKIN' to me. I wanna know when your scared, not just when you've reached some breaking point cause I ask a fucking question you don't want to answer. I just ... don't wanna be blindsided again." "Okay. Okay. You won't be," my husband assured me, and reached out to thread his fingers through my hair, nice and slow. I took a step closer to him. "Can I just ask for one favor right now? No more scotch?" "Done," I whispered, praying that the tears in my eyes didn't slip down my cheeks. "Just for now. Maria was put at risk because...I...I...I wasn't...I always thought I could do this, and have it not effect her. I knew it'd be a threat. I've always known. I thought I could do it. I allowed her to put her at r-risk." He paused to lick his lips, blaming them for the stammer. "because ... I thought I'd be more powerful than I am." I clasped my fingers at the hem of his shirt, weight of my hands pulling it down. "Are you sorry?" My voice was more quiet than the air conditioning unit's hum. "Yes. Yes, I am sorry." He gives in so seldom. "What do you want of me." Jesus pressed his forehead to mine, and his hand moved from the track through my hair to cradle the crown. "To give me something. Surprise me. I've asked you for enough. " I kissed him, needy. I tasted like Big Red and scotch. "That wasn't it," I assured him. "You choose. What is?" "I changed my mind ..." I grazed his mouth with my mouth, his stomach with my hand, and the secret took over. "At the doctor's ..." My touch trailed to his hipbone, my lips to his throat, to breathe him in and feel his pulse. Already, it was racing. "You want me to give up scotch. But I fully intend on giving up liquor for a good nine months. That counts right?" I murmered to his earlobe. "...Nine months," he whispered back, to the air really. I knew about the 'hoooly shit' grin in his gut. I heard it in the disbelieving airlaugh, straight from his nose. "Best surprise I've had in four weeks." His hand peeled out of his pocket to come around my hipbone to sneak beneath my top. "What was the best surprise before that?" "Maria, and you." "You should call that guy and tell him not to show." I gave the small of his spine a nail graze, and he put down another kiss, loose-lipped at first, and then engulfing my mouth like we were dreaming. He kissed me well. He back-stepped me and kissed me all the way to the conference table. "C'mere," he managed against the base of my neck, molesting me there with bites and softer open-mouthed marks while his other hand moved from my hair to feel down the glass table he'd backed up to sit on. Then he took to feeling for that phone he threw off of the base by accident. His hand moving over the table in search of it like a chicken with its head cut off. ""Tell Johanesen that uh ... maybe ... sometime ... later," he managed. I chuckled and climbed to straddle his lap. * * * * * "You ready for this?" "I'm ready," Jesus said, kneeling to kick his head back. Our eyes met like a prayer. "No going back now," he grinned against my abdomen, and pressed a kiss to the spot.

[ November 08, 2005 · 5:26pm] Five days later. I still don't know what to do with the good news. Cartel Leader's Wife Caves -- Able to Produce Hellspawn The Vaqueros -- Shooting for Girl or Boy? Suddenly, my fertility is some form of sexual dysfunction -- over dinner's too casual. Company is always unnaounced. In bed, we're never positioned right. He leaves too early to go to work. Still, things have been mild. Laurie's all moved in -- her voice is shrill as a morning bird's, or a weeble's, or Karen's off of Will and Grace. My daughter has seperation anxiety and phones every fifteen minutes either of us spend out of the house. "Are you coming home?" "Is Daddy there?" "Mommy, when are you coming home?" She's desperate and three. She knows too much: I leave for a weekend or a week. Last time I left him, Maria and I were gone three months -- a cigarette break in New York City. I've always wanted to leave her father. I try her eyes. I can't look long, but I want to push my face against the curve in her neck, breathe deeply. In moments when I think she's onto me, I do. She's sensitive, like me. She needs more than breath to live. Jesus does not.

[ October 11, 2005 · 3:55am] Veins stretch over bone and branch over wrists, they're bluest where the skin's most tender. Soft and white, it protects the way that winter protects. Hands invent in more ways than women do. Boys shouldn't be jealous. A doctor shoots me up every three months with things that keep Jesus and I from making art, but we're still artists. We prefer welt-red, an organic beginning. The meaning isn't that we're human, but that we're imprinting, a negative upon a negative. Adolescents write their names with sticks in sand or cement. We leave our marks, authentic. Don't believe me? Take a look at our favorite place: our womb has four corners, a sprung mattress on this wall, not that one. We move this mattress when necessary. The wallpaper peels and the floor is stained. My husband held his first gun there, in the window. We married in the shower. The bloodstains by the doorway are his, the one in the hallway is mine. There are others, but they are not ours. The motel is in New York -- a crackden, really. I haven't been there in years. Jesus told me he wanted us to have another baby two weeks ago. We got a new place three days later. This place is full of rooms, clean rooms. Rooms to start over, rooms that will remember. But I can't get New York out of my head. * * * * * Today was my doctor's appointment and I missed it. I missed it because I couldn't stop thinking about that god damn motel room. I took off my clothes and got in the shower and closed my eyes, and pressed my cheek to the fucking tile, and squeezed my eyes shut tightly until I knew I was late. I fucking hate being late. In time, the broken mattress and the peeling wallpaper and the stained floors dissipated, or turned into something: a sound. A rain sound. I got calmer as it got later. The shower soothed me. * * * * * I shaved my legs in the shower. I left my clothes on the bathroom floor and stepped into the still of the bedroom. 2:29 in the afternoon with the husband at work, and the sounds of my daughter and the nanny -- Maria's fake cash register zinging open again and again, babysitting chatter. What do wives and mothers do when there's no one around? We spend our time unmaking things, like beds. The housewife's revolt. I enjoy it -- the neatness of sheets. Their fresh, crisp feel against my smooth, fresh skin. I roll over to nuzzle my pillow and make a reach for his. I draw it close, and drop my mouth against the soft corner, the start and finish of a seam. The light's pouring in from the bay windows, open. There are no secrets here. Jesus' pillow and I spend the afternoon together, dreamy. I wonder how to tell him I've decided 'yes'.

[ July 19, 2005 · 12:22am] Jesus woke me up with a roll into me and a bite to my ear. "Today we're going house-hunting," he whispered against my skin. "Mm, you're buttering me up, aren't you?" For what? A second child, because the sight of Maria walking down the hallway alone was the saddest thing he'd ever seen. A new nanny, because we're both tired of the disapproving looks and the 1-800 "Fight For Me", Domestic Violence magnets she keeps throwing on the fridge. We'd met with Laurie yesterday, the both of us together, after all. She was waiting on an answer. We told her we'd get back to her soon. I snuck my mouth to his shoulder. Bartering turns me on, stealing's even better; He grinned against my temple, mischevious. Fifteen minutes into it, four knocks at our door. Our mouths and bodies stilled, hoping she'd go play. "Mommy? Daddy?" The whisper came after the try at the knob. "Uggggggggh," Jesus groaned and threw the covers off of his body, mustering something up for a the kid. A smile. "Morning Maria," I managed and cupped a palm over my eyes to block out Maria, my husband, the sun, and most importantly, the look in them. The feeble grin on my face agreed with him entirely. * * * * * We'd breakfast'd, we'd changed, we'd climbed into the car. Young. Fresh. Up-swung. Pay Day'd. Selfish. Dazed. Conquered. Manic. In love. It took thirty minutes to make it through the clogged, traffic-filled streets. Damn tourists. We turned the radio on. I belted out a tune or two to a song on the oldies station. "This is it, first one on the list." Jesus hadn't interrupted me, but I cut the volume on the radio with a "How many are *on* this list?", and looked out the window. Holy. Fucking. Shit. "And how big was the family that sold it??" "Five..six maybe? And four." Cool, calm, collected as ever. "Jesus *Christ* ...opher," I said, reaching to give the sleeve of his shirt an insistant tug amidst my utter gaping. "Look at this shit!" "Mr & Mrs. Vaquero? Hiya." Late fourties. Bald. Cheap suit. Cheesy tie. Briefcase. Used-carsalesman voice, inflection, and smile. His eyes crinkled when his lips curved and offered me his hand. "Hey there Mr ...." I drawled it out and reached across Jesus' lap to give him the good shake. "Robbins, Joe Robbins." "Good to meet you. You're like, the best surprise I've had *all* week." My eyes made a shift to Jesus and right back. "Now tell me, is this a house or a hotel? How many people does this baby *sleep*?" "Haha! Well, it's big enough to fit a quaint bed and breakfast ,I'll tell you that much. Now if you want specifics, there are four bedrooms in the main house, and three in the service house over there," Robbins began, fishing a set of keys out of his pocket. "I told you I had an idea of what you were looking for, Mr. Vaquero. And if you like the sound of that," he gave them a jingle for us, "I got the keys right here to show you this beautiful home here." The real estate agent headed towards the front door with a stain of sunshine glare at the crown of his head. "Come oooooon!" I'd already bounded over my door of the convertible and, sulking, gave a pull to Jesus' door handle. Impatient. "Yeah, yeah, I'm coming." Sly. " God, any more giddy and you'd explode in girlishness," Jesus teased, following me to the door. I tossed him a look over my shoulder. "Just remember who got your car door. You're the wife today." * * * * * Thirty-five minutes later, we had the figures. I nearly choked on my chewing gum. "Are you fucking crazy?? You're fucking crazy if you think we're payin' that, Mister. No offense, but hell n --" My husband was the one to snag my arm and playfully pulled me into him. "So say we live here twenty years. That's nine million divided by twenty ... It's worth it." "But that's -- we don't *need* all this, Jesus." "I worry about the money. Don't *you* worry about the money. Just think about how much you love this house. Yours and mine and no one else's." * * * * * You can find us in the movies (those old black and whites mostly) and in police records. Hell, maybe a mention or two on the blotter every now and then, a little more rare than it used to be. You can't find us in domestic violence pamphlets or in the latest love stories. I think I've seen us in a music video or two, the kind cut up like foreign films, subtitled because they're in another language. "I can't BELIEVE we bought that fuckin' house," I breathed from the passenger seat of the Z3. The rental. We'd just pulled into the parking garage. I slung my head back against the seat and closed my eyes, a little short on breath. You would be too, if you saw all those numbers after the dollar sign. I don't know if I can count that high. "OhhhhhmiGod I need a drink. Miami's making me such an alcoholic. Let's just --" Exhale. "Let's just sit here a minute." When I rolled my head back Jesus' way, a calm smile in his voice, and a broad smile on his face. He cut the ignition off, but left the key alone. We were parked among a handful of black, Lincoln town cars. The usual. "Okay. We're sitting." Jesus reached his over and slid his hand between my neck and the leather of the seat. "It's ours. Can you believe that? Ours." Seven years of rentals. Our first house. " Is it? I mean, you're using some of my money right? You have to," I told him in between lip-brushes to pulse points, places he smelled the best. Casually. This skin is mine. Jesus wound his arm around me, reciprocating with the feel of my hair against his mouth while he murmered. "Well, I already gave him the money... it's ours, okay? We'll buy ever peice of furniture with your money." "... Do we have enough money for liiiiike ... A maid and a sitter? Cause if we do that, and you really wanna get rid of Tracy, we get rid of Tracy. Brand new shit for the brand new house." "Then we're getting rid of Tracy." We decided before we made up for this morning Laurie it is.

Sunday [ July 05, 2005 · 5:53pm] I missed the meeting with Jesus and Laurie (possibly the new nanny), because I was locked up in that unmarked government car. When I got home, Jesus asked questions. I told him not to. Laurie was gone, and I didn't ask about her either. I held Maria more than usual. I didn't kiss my husband. Instead, I steered his hand to my cheek and left it there while we curled up on the couch. I pressed my temple against his chest so he couldn't see my secrets. He read her a story like usual, that's his goodnight. Instead of kissing her cheek before they got to storytime, I waited until after. We slept in our bedroom for the second time. Might as well have been sleeping alone. * * * * * I kept it quiet for almost a week. I thought about handling it on my own. I thought about leaving him again. I thought about wearing the wire. I thought about him sitting in that booth with the blonde whore's head in his lap whenever he came close to smiling. Of course, he probly thought I was depressed or somethin'. I'm clinically depressed. I got depressed after the pregnancy. Life'll eat away at you if you don't eat it first. He wanted to ask. He didn't, and I was glad. Sunday rolled around. Sinners go to church, and there's always a crowd. We got quite a reception. It's been that way every Sunday since we got here. I wonder why these old women have such a fascination with my husband. Latin mass. I do languages, don't understand much of a God damned thing. Cues to sit, cues to stand. That, you pick up on. That you *feel* when there's a long-enough pause. It's not about the words, it's about the time between them. It'd be easier to keep the secret if it was easier to be alone. "Peace be with you," the church murmered, unnerving. Maria reached for my hand and tugged me down for a kiss, and Jesus followed it up with a kiss to our daughter's cheek. When he touched me, I pulled him into me. I whispered into his ear. He acted like he understood. I didn't wonder if it was the same face he's showing God. I should have. * * * * * One of his boys took Maria from us once we got out of the madhouse. Jesus drove us in the rental. A stop at the gas station for a refill and smokes. We pulled into the park at 9:30. Appointment with Laurie at 5:30 PM, plenty of time. I lit two cigarettes and passed him one. I'm afraid of black cars. There were three in the parking lot. One Lincoln. I didn't look back. "What is it?" Jesus arm slid around my waist. His thumb skimmed my hipbone. I hardly felt it. "Um ... You know, just ... We might be bein' watched right now, so um. So ... careful." "It's a risk but it's not a risk. When did you get so paranoid?" When someone with a b --" Interruption. I cradled my forehead in hand while Jesus stepped away to talk to one of his guards. I waited for him to tell the guy whatever it was, it could wait. He didn't. Instead, he basically told me whatever it was, I could wait. "We'll talk about this later," he said. I nodded dully. Jesus left me with the car keys. My chest was too tight to say much of anything. Even goodbye. I try not to smoke in whatever we're driving -- Maria doesn't need to be around that shit. So instead, I leaned against the driver's side door and finished, alone. Alone for three minutes. "Hello, Shane. how are you today?" I stared at the pavement in front of me. I knew the voice, smirked faintly, and took another drag. Figures. "I'm greaaaa --" The agent I had come to know as Thomas Scower paused, a foot and a half away from me. "You're good, I'm sure. It is a beautiful day. What did you say to Jesus, if I may?" "You mustn't. Something came up, I told him to be home for dinner. You smell like pot." I noted his loafers from beneath the cover of my sunglasses. I decided to take them off, and raked them into my hair as he spoke. "You must be a great cook." "I *do* love to cook." "You know, Shane, your eyes are quite beautiful. I did not notice them yesterday, behind those glasses." Bullshit. He had to stop there anyway; the man's cell phone rang. I was thankful. "Please excuse me for one second, Shane." "No problem." I flicked the butt-end of my cigarette to the ground. He got off the phone too quickly to escape. "Shane, let's go for a ride.. no interrogation, no naughty pictures. I do apologize for that, by the way, if that is acceptable. I'd just like to have some civil discourse with you." "It's not. You shouldn't apologize for shit you're not sorry for. I tell him that all the time," I muttered, and reached just behind me to feel for the door handle. he posed it as a question. I could tell from the look in his eyes that it wasn't. It wasn't even a nicety. It was condescending. It was a threat. I would have refused. I would have let him hall me off to fucking jail just to see, if I didn't have Maria. Maria changed everything for me. "I'll um ... I'll drive. I'm in mood. Nice day, and we can keep the top down." I didn't want to be in the car I was so afraid of. It was probably bugged. I say the wrong things all the time, I just ... didn't want to say the wrong thing. "I'm sorry, Shane, but it is protocol that I drive in my car. I've been watching you, so this may mean that someone is watching me. Photos of a drug agent being driven by a druglord's wife won't go too well with the big guys. My car is just there." Scowers gestured accordingly. "Then we don't drive. And I didn't marry a druglord, I'm not a druglord's wife. How about a walk?" "Shane, I believe i've been quite gentlemanly with you," the man explained as he pulled out a pistol. "I'll only ask you once more before I really will make you get into the car today." He screwed on a silencer. Me, stunned stupid. Broad daylight, the middle of a park. "I am not your average cop." I refused him and made a reach for the car door. He grabbed my shoulder and jerked the threatening, cool muzzle of the gun against the small of my back. Scowers shoved me in the car roughly, maniacle. When he climbed in his side, he was a gentleman, put the gun down on the side furthest from me, and presented me with a blunt like it was some prime smoke from a too-exepnsive cigarette case. "You were right," the fifty-year old man confessed with a smile as I glared at him venomously through tear-filled eyes. "Take it, Shane." Gently. "You deserve it." * * * * * "What happened? Fucking pigs. He comes up to you with a silencer and NO ONE SEES? Where the fuck was Rico. He's not taking Maria. They've got NOTHING. And if he even tries ... If he tries ... Goddamn. His fucking car. Is he fucking playing games? What'd he ask you? Wher...where's Maria? I should've never left you. What'd he say to you? What'd he ask you? What'd you say to him? Oh ... Shane ... Don ... Don't ... What'd he say? Then we won't talk about it...not now. What did he want to "talk" about? Le'ts ... let's... Here, we'll finish this in the bathroom, I'll get you a bath or...start up the sauna ... whatever you need, okay? Maria's not going to be a part of this. He's not taking her away from us. I can promise you that he's not going to come within eight feet of her again. I'm going to promise you it."

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