ebbing.

It’s tough to think back on the days when Bryan and I were best friends, just because everything looks a million times better in light of the fallout. Somehow, memory has a way of discarding the imperfections, offering up instead an inordinately pristine slideshow of sensory overload, five-second clips with too-bright lights and amplified laughter.

We’re at Bryan’s uncle’s lake house in '05, sitting on the gray wooden dock, fishing lines drifting as aimlessly as typical mid-afternoon conversation between fourteen-year-olds. Bryan turns to me and asks me if I know how to play Wonderwall on guitar yet, which is his way of keeping me accountable because I'd promised to teach him once I learned.

The air hangs thick and almost wetter than the seaweed swaying in the ripples beneath our toes, and the sky is the kind of blank paper gray that means there's literally a storm on the horizon. I say something clever. Bryan half-smiles, the way that always meant he was amused and trying not to show it.

Then we're back to the present, the approaching thunder echoing into the cavernous emptiness of a fading reminiscence.

farewells.

I looked behind me one last time.

It's not like the cello, the thought came in a moment, not like the way your fingers learn to mold themselves to invisible curves and crevices that your mind maps into notes you're searching for, joined together, released like a linen banner by the steady back-and-forth of your trembling bow. How the melody in your head flows in synapses that lift and let fall the tendons in your arm and wrist and hand. Free to flutter and fade with the fog of your November breath, lingering in an empty chamber full of promises for the future. No, it's not like that at all.

It's like digging a pit and watching as time turns its walls to stone.

I found him, finally. He stood still, while the steam and scream of the billowing locomotive stack swallowed first the world behind him, his silhouette stark against the twisting eddies of cloud whites and the churning grays of formless shuffling shapes. I imagined I could see his eyes - blue and narrowed, mirroring mine in their uneasy mix of resignation and intensity - but by then they were dark specks, shrinking by the moment, until he vanished completely, joining the current of unintelligible movements replacing a world I was leaving behind.

where.

Whitebeard's tavern was a musty, dark basement, always crowded, thick with humidity and the remnants of thwarted ambitions. The broken jukebox in the corner had long ago surrendered its gaudy prominence for the simpler job of creating atmosphere. Period photographs drooped crookedly in vintage frames and danced an erratic ballet across the walls.

The bar was modern, all chromes and glass and bright lights in edgy combinations, glittering with compassion for the wood panels and cramped booths that had known finer decades. Whitebeard's knew its priorities.

I spotted him right away, with no difficulty at all. A first. And only, I knew, because he wanted me to.

He was glowering at the counter over some bright green concoction. It threw a garish neon reflection across his chest. Artificial lime mingled vividly with the unmistakeable solid reds and whites, alternating horizontal strips that ran circles around his torso as if binding him with 50/50 polyester-cotton blend chains.

I slid into the adjoining barstool. He knew who I was, why I was here. He didn't bother to move or look up.

"Figured you'd buzz," he said, dryly. The words dropped straight into the drink he wasn't drinking.

"You made it easy," I replied. It was the truth. I wasn't too proud to admit he was good. Maybe even the best.

He glanced elsewhere. "How's the wife? Still chuffing the Xanax?"

"Vanessa's just fine," I replied. "I'll let her know you asked. She'll be thrilled."

I ordered a tonic and waited for him to really start talking. Around us, locals chattered about the ordinary problems of ordinary lives.

"It's all over," he said, at last, turning to face me. He looked haggard, like he hadn't seen the sun from the tail end of a dream in some time. The violet crescents cradling his eyes looked twice as deep through the round lenses. I realized this wasn't his first cocktail. "I'm out, bumped. Finished."

I said nothing.

"Sounds stupid, sure," he went on. "But there's just nothing in it for me anymore. Not now that -" He stopped. From anyone else, you might have expected a tear or two. Maybe a dramatic pause for a dramatic catch of an emotional breath. Not him. He looked me square in the eye and knew I could fill in the blanks, that he simply didn't want to.

"She didn't give," I said. "You know that, right?"

"Does it matter?" he asked matter-of-factly, and decided to punctuate the moment with a long sip from his glowing elixir. He grimaced. The stuff was probably as strong as it was green.

I didn't need to explain myself, I thought, but why the hell not? "We had our marching orders to up the ante. You know, stir the pot a little more than we'd been. Ms. Wilkins, see, she's always been a hot topic - nowhere near our Numero Uno. But high enough on the chain. We've had a whole lot of credibility on the line and too many checks bouncing lately." I shrugged. "So we switched sights. Stroke of luck we picked her just when she got soft. She flew first-class into our waiting paws and we did what we do. But she didn't spill a drop, kid. Nothing on you or the Pup."

He traced the rim of his glass with a lazy finger. "Classy chick, that one," he said. "If they dished out ribbons for not screwing up she'd have more yellows than a Chinatown noodle bar. Her twin, though-- Willow? Winnie."

"Wenda," I said.

"Freakin' alliteration," he spat, then frowned, twirling a finger. "They got a ribbon color for participation?"

It was my turn to take a meaningful sip. I set the glass down and folded my hands over it. "So, I'm curious. Why quit? Why now?"

He shrugged. "I'm getting too old for this, Hardy."

"That's my line."

"Get out. How on earth could I tell."

"I'm not getting any younger," I said with meaning.

"Now there's a shocker." He sighed, removing his glasses to scrub the lenses.

The babble and clank blended into one unintelligible hum as he spoke, absently. "I used to get a rush from this, you know. Crazy, right? This whole -- hiding in plain sight. Getting away with murder. I mean, the saying. Never dropped a bird in my life, I swear. I could have. Wanted to, sometimes. Got real close once. Lost my hat. But there's a lullaby for another lonely night at the bar."

He finished scrubbing, replaced the glasses, and stared through them at the ceiling. "It's amazing, man. All it takes is you find a couple tools here and there. The right ones. And suddenly you have the keys to anything you ever wanted. Everything you've ever dreamed of. And then some. Power's overrated, they say, but only because they say a lot about a lot they don't know a lot about."

With a single fluid motion, he tossed off the remaining green liquid and sent the glass sliding a yard down the counter. It stopped at the edge.

"God, man, I'm telling you. Ever had the high of a con gone good? Cracking a safe? Picking a lock with a freaking safety pin? Used to be there was nothing like the feeling of Sultans' rubies jangling in one pocket and some Golden Age auction-fodder rubbing down a couple of seventeenth century Iranian nuggets in the other as you hitched a train for an L.A. premiere to wrangle some fresh, wide-eyed starlet's red-carpet custom Cartier. All in the broadest of broad daylights. Right under every one of your stupid clueless noses. Every single one. Every single time."

"You make it all sound so boring," I said.

"That's the problem. It is." He paused. "I'm being ironic here."

"That makes two of us."

"I can't swing it anymore," he blurted, flinging his hands in the air. The drink was working its magic, clearly. "Plain and simple. It's not a solo game. I'd love to spin it that way. I've tried, I can't. It's gone. All the excitement, all the energy. I'm telling you - she's not the best, sure, not as long as I'm around." Somehow, he'd managed to deliver those words with a straight face. "But she's the best at what she does. It doesn't work without her. Hasn't, and won't." He lowered his hands in fists on the counter. "And don't even think to chalk this up to feelings. Let me assure you, you lose a couple of things to get to where I'm at. Like, say, caring. I have feelings for her like I have feelings for an Allen key on a good day."

"You're wrong," I said.

"You think I stay up nights waiting for her postcards?" He laughed bitterly.

I leaned forward. "I'm thinking you miss more than her postcards."

"I'm a thief and a cad, Joe. Not a killer, not a lover." He smiled without any hint of joy and flexed his thin shoulders. "There's just a whole lot of nothing anymore. The only rush left, I figure, is giving you and your boys a reason to pat yourselves on the back. One last good deed, man. A little morale boost. A little lovin'." He threw in a crude gesture and a grin. "You're welcome, by the way."

I looked at him sadly.

"Oh Joe, Joe, Joe." His sigh was patronizing. His words swam together. "It's killing me, seeing you so glum. I know, I'm sorry. It's not the blaze of glory that's rocked you to sleep for years, is it? No cinematic chase through the mall, no duck-hunting at the airport. But, hey, I mean, it's the next best thing, right? I'm sitting. Right. Here. Practically begging you to slap those handcuffs on me like charm bracelets. Would it kill you to show a little gratitude?"

I said nothing.

We both saw us as we were now, I could tell. Me, the proverbial cat. Old and tired. No longer enamored by the kill. Content to take pity on the worn-out, cornered mouse in skinny jeans and those red and white stripes who'd eluded him for a decade. Content to lend an ear to his brash, boozy squeaks before they triggered the trap.

The mouse knew it was coming. He slapped the countertop with gusto. "Gee, guess that's the closing bell."

We both knew, without turning, that Frank and his partner were coming down the steps behind us. The half-hour of alone time I'd put in a special request for was spent... and here they were, just in time to finish the gig.

The last image I can recall was his final wink at me as Frank's voice and a metallic click of cuffs punctuated the soundtrack at Whitebeard's. A moment and a hand brushing my shoulder later, they were gone.

I swivelled on the stool, alone in a crowd, staring into the neon light of the bar and filtering the grumbles of men who'd never jostled rubies in their pocket.

To this day, I still don't think of that night as the night I finally found Waldo. It's the night I first wondered if Waldo would ever find himself.

fairness.

Maria won't deny she's wanted to be attractive as much as the next girl — maybe a little bit less, but there is always something about it in the back of her mind.

She's used to it by now, she says, how they always tell her how beautiful she is and how they always tell her it's not beautiful enough. What they profess in profuse, symphonically-underlined commercial words and inspirational scripts, she finds, they undermine — whether consciously or not, it doesn't make much difference — in their blatant prostration before shapelier, skinnier, symmetrical sirens.

Not that she's bitter about the whole thing, she would clarify in a careful, candid manner that belies a deep consideration of the topic. Contrary to the stream of feel-good media maxims that coo sweet nothings and massage at the aches of beauty denied, she considers herself simply not meant to partake in that particular slice of the apocryphal 'good life,' and she's made peace with that.

The consequences of her shape and weight do not escape her. Neither do they imprison her. She will not waste away defiantly, but she has determined not to go desperately out of her way to sculpt herself, chasing a futile attempt to alter her intrinsic value.

Everyone, she reasons, has worth that manifests itself in different ways. The whole spectrum of one's blessings comprises surprising combinations of qualities that are neither mutually exclusive nor inherently bound.

While the world might worship at the feet of its finest physical specimens, Maria remains content to pursue a worthier surrender.

cupid.

I sort of imagined that the attraction would be a warm, happy, good-natured feeling. Something that would make me frown a little at myself, probably laugh self-consciously at the betrayal of my own accelerating pulse. Something silly and simple enough to file away under the annals of centuries of poetry and a veritable galaxy of songs. A warm blanket that felt nice, fit well, but could be set aside for more important things.

The truth is, there isn't one way it happens. I'm sure of at least that much. There's a world of difference between the suave chemical allure of charming repartee and a violent physical jolt that fills your veins with a volatile kerosene and turns a stove dial in your arteries.

The first sits, stews, simmers, until your senses register a gradual hot-tub comprehension of enjoyment and you think, gee, I really like where this is going. The other comes crashing in, the emotional equivalent of a hammer annihilating a carnival strength-test lever with enough hurricane force to set off all the blinding lights and shatter the bell with a tremendous peal, leaving you overwhelmed and only aware of a burning deficit in your account.

fatale.

"Well! Quelle charmante surprise."

Elsa licked her lips and dropped her eyelids just low enough to level Dodge a proper smoky glare. She did not alter the exaggerated pose with which she'd entered the otherwise empty tavern.

She barely moved at all, in fact, which she had long since learned was the ideal course of action when staring down a barrel, any barrel, which definitely included the glittering cobalt barrel of Dodge's custom semi.

"What do you want?" she asked.

They both knew it was rhetorical. Gunpoint conversation was a game of formalities.

Dodge was ice in all the precise ways Elsa was fire. He said:

"'Dull Sphinx, Jove keep thy five wits; thy sight is growing blear.'"

Despite his taut alertness, his cool baritone spilled through the tense, dusty air like a chilled, well-vented wine.

Elsa smiled and shifted her weight, a cautious, calculated motion. Her eyes stayed fixed on the weapon, the magnet that immobilized and held them together.

"I am afraid you have come to the wrong place," she said. "Or, at the very least, the wrong time. An unfortunate coincidence. You see, it was stolen last night."

Dodge made no sound or movement in reply. There was something in her voice that rang deeper than her lilting accent, something that slithered over the bar counter and threatened to ignite his skin beneath the tailored suit.

She began to move a hand upward and marveled at the ever-so-slight tightening of Dodge's tensed knuckles. She laughed.

"You are good, very good to have come this far," Elsa offered. "But think. Why would I lie to you right now? You have every capacity to tear this place to its foundations, and I have no power to stop you." Her mouth slid into a mock frown. "It is gone, M. Dodge. That is the truth. You are only wasting your time here."

As the final word drifted from her lips, Elsa took a single step forward, sending a rigid shock through Dodge's arm.

"Unless," she breathed, "you had some other business in mind."

"Not another step," Dodge said. His gaze and aim never wavered, but there was a thawing in his eyes.

"Why?" Elsa cooed. She tilted her head and looked incredibly concerned. "Does it bother you?"

"I'm warning you, sweetheart."

"Pardieu," Elsa sighed. "A warning from M. Dodge, the Lone Ranger himself!"

Her words sidled up to his cheek from five meters away, stroking the lines of his clenched jaw. "I have heard of him-- always so lonely, so angry, so cold. He comes looking for the treasure. It is not here, I have told him so. He loses time; ah! Even now it flies further away. Yet here still he stands, still so angry, waving his little toy. I think, he must not have come for the treasure; he does not care for it. So what does he really want?" Her eyelids lowered by fractions of seconds as her voice slipped into a velvet stage whisper. "What does a big, lonely man ever want from a poor, lonely girl?"

One stilettoed foot inched itself forward.

A bullet screeched millimeters past her ear and detonated in a shower of decaying wood panels behind her. Elsa was suddenly gripping the floor, a fireball of nerves, screaming with eyes circled wide with terror.

"Strike two," Dodge said. "Let me know when you're ready to start actually saying something, hon, or I'll let my 'little toy' here speak for the both of us."

femme.

Charly Huston had the lofty and faintly antiquated air of a woman who was used to getting what she wanted with a glance.

The storm washed her into my office on a Wednesday afternoon: a vision in a long, vintage, ermine-lined trench-coat speckled dark at the edges beyond the wingspan of her incongruously cheap nylon parasol. Outside, the clouds beat a tattoo, shifting relentlessly as they exorcised a deluge of summertime ennui onto the winking pavements.

She wasted no time. By the time I'd stood and offered to take her coat, it was already draped across the chair, as if the royal-blue Stella Gardot gown and jewels beneath it had been itching for hours to emerge from their heavy poplin cocoon. The color worked nicely with her eyes; above them, deftly-coiffured auburn waves rippled with intentionality, barely brushing her shoulders at the slightest movement of her head.

Her ripe-strawberry lips hung in the kind of half-pout that must have got results every time.

"Mr. Dodge," she said. The words pirouetted elegantly upward, trembled, and vanished like cigarette smoke. "I've heard you were the best in town." Her body and voice moved with impeccable synchronization. "And I need the best."

She looked like money and determination - things I liked in a dame.

rush.

She runs, though the flames, enormous as they are, seem to merely amble.

From time to time, they release a violent yawn-roar, as though freshly awakened from a lengthy winter’s hibernation – followed often by the crashing surrender of another building unfortunate enough to lie in the fire’s indiscriminate path.

The fear is cold despite the heat of the vibrating air. Sweat fogs her vision as she grapples with her hair, pulling it back and frantically twisting a strip of fabric to hold it there. Her normally deft fingers shake as she fights to tie the simplest knot – fails, curses – starts again.

All the while she still runs, every pounding step jolting out of sync with her frantic heartbeat.

She knows she is bleeding, but doesn’t feel the pain where it comes from.

The streets are filled with loud noises – cries, screams, shouts, shots, and sirens – but she is focused on avoiding the debris: wood, glass, bodies, metal, more metal. 

This was once a street lamp; this, a restaurant sign; this, perhaps a car door—distinctions grow increasingly unimportant. Categories of identification are subconsciously reduced. Everything is an obstruction, measured by levels of manageability in a fleeting haze.

She wipes her eyes and lowers her gaze toward feet whipping back and forth. She realizes after a moment that they belong to her.

Against the conflagration, the stark silhouettes of structural remnants become twisting, oppressive cast iron shards, a leering grin illuminated.

She dodges something that is ablaze and moving, and then remembers to breathe – instantly regrets it, as she inhales a lungful of smoke. She coughs violently, tastes the faintest flavor of warm blood.

Like the black engulfing the city, her mind chokes on ambiguity: nothing is quite certain, nothing is quite reliable, nothing is quite true.

Except that she must run.

enchanted.

The camping lantern sitting on my pickup indicates a broad circle of light, combating the dimmer shadows cast by the moon's insistent white glow. The trees are sparse here. The sun had sunk earlier into the furthest end of this field, which is now an impressionist sketch in dark blues and greens and flickering luminescent shades.

Her hands fly up to swat, meander through the humid August air, and come to rest in the grass next to mine.

"Mosquitoes are the worst," she says passionately. "It's not even funny. I get these huge welts, see." She points with a grimace to a sizable redness on her calf. "It's so gross. I hate bug spray, though. I should have brought one of those, like, candles."

"You could wear pants," I suggest.

Her laugh is quick, almost reflexive; her smile, wide and infectious. Especially right now, with a strand of hair falling in front of it that she doesn't bother to brush away just yet. ("Right? Let me just go grab the extra pair I keep in my purse.") One easy toss of her head in the other direction and it's all good.

I reach up into a plastic bag sprawled in the back of the pickup. "This is the best thing ever for itching. No lie," I say as I toss her a bottle of aloe vera gel, half-used from treating sunburned shoulders over the past week out here.

She wrinkles her nose in bemused caution, then looks up at stars that twinkle back in the dark pools of her eyes. "I'll take your word for it." She flips open the cap.

The fireflies sparkle in tempo with her breathing. Around us, the evening trembles with a gentle warmth, undercutting the heavy summer heat.

monument.

--but by God! What a miracle! What a colossal testament to the might and the mightiness of mankind, he thought excitedly, his neck strained as far backward as it could go, in a futile attempt to scale the thing with his eyes. The union of scientific majesty and man's infinite creative instinct, the pinnacle of man's potential--

He breathed in sharply, tasting the brightness of a crisp dew-flecked morning.

A thousand rays of light glinted off the metallic walls that wound through the clouds, winking eyes that burned with pride and a heady promise. They had spoken once, at its inception, of piercing the foundations of heaven itself. Who need concern themselves now with the dim, archaic pettiness of allegory?

His head spun with an intoxicating gilded euphoria, while the continuous belt of solemn-eyed slaves, laden with woven baskets of bitumen, rolled ever onward and upward in a dwindling spiral.

This, indeed, was glory, if ever glory could be seen: to harness the monolithic force of man united, invincible, exercising unstoppable dominion over the very universe.

surrender.

You cradle it with firm hands and stand where the lake nibbles eddies beneath your toes in the gritty New England mud.

The only way to know, now, if it will endure, is to let fly the expectation of unassailable assurance.

The freshwater breeze capers in your lungs in tandem with the choir of a blackbird tree. Your pulse thunders as you stretch and kneel, delicately capitulating to the insistent pull. You've brought it where it belongs.

You look at it for a moment, and wonder at the new emptiness in the hollow of your palms.

Turning, you haul the heavy cedar of your boat from a bed of flattened reeds and wet soil. The sun looks small today, you think, as you drift away from the shore, away from the stolid pines and the tranquil hum of mayflies, and a startling coolness envelops your feet as they rake the water's surface.

avalanche.

I drop to the ground and sit against a wall and just breathe, counting each inhale, exhale, like I’m doing reps.

I can’t figure out whether I'm about to laugh or cry. I feel more ready to cry, actually, a whole ocean of tears pawing at the space behind my eyes. But it’s not shock or sadness, or anger or happiness, either. It’s richer. Maybe it is shock. It’s just an overwhelming feeling. 

Feeling. So I know that I can feel. That’s enough for me, for now.

Another breath. Another glorious healthy compression of my lungs. Another one, and another one, and another one.

Well, I’m crying now. Bawling my eyes out. I couldn’t really say why except – maybe I’m thankful, yes, that’s it, so heart-burstingly thankful for everything.

Thankful for the sunlight. For solid ground. For being able to remember being six at the swingset. For the taste of sizzling bacon. For laughter and movies and music and the beach. For my family. For my friends. For the fact that I have time to spend and people I want to spend it with.

Thankful for the look on her face as she turned to me in those final moments with her eyes half open from behind the tubes, her hand draped around mine in the strongest grip she could muster. Like she was saying “go get ‘em, bud,” like she did with an encouraging smile when I used to hover on the sidelines, too shy to join the other boys in their pickup soccer games; or the early mornings when she'd dropped me off before debate tournaments; or at graduation, when she'd found me in those brief crazy minutes before I walked.

I’m not sad, I don’t think. Or maybe this is really sadness. I don’t know and I can’t try to figure it out right now. Everything’s so vividly bright and everything hurts at once. Doing reps, in and out.

But I’ve known this would happen for a long time and I’ve imagined what it would feel like, and it’s not supposed to be like this.  It’s not supposed to be heaving sobs and tears that won't give up jostling their way down your face, drenching your sleeves and making a mockery of the twenty-three years you've spent learning to "man up."

Feelings are so hard to understand until they tumble over you like an avalanche and crush you to the bone with the miraculous agony of…well, of being able to feel.

dénouement.

At the exact fraction of the nanosecond the sniper's bullet kissed the fabric of his shirt, he was seventeen again and standing in the crowd, devouring the pulsating theatrics of grinning uniforms marching past voluptuous red-lipped nurses, so certain that the world of this Technicolor pill delivered release from his own white-washed suburban acedia.

When the fabric sighed and gave way and the metal murmured against bare skin, he was embracing her in a jungle sweat, whispering "always" even as he knew their worlds were lifetimes and oceans apart and he would forget her name tomorrow, though the fire would remain to scratch and scar with cinder claws in the dead heat of future nights.

As the skin burned and surrendered its first tears, dark and rich as sunset wine, he was holding the child who wore his eyes, the way they had been, blue and bright, before cynicism had dimmed their vibrancy, before the echoing cries of the twitching damned had fettered questions to his faith and fostered a bitter wonder if anyone or anything truly saw each sparrow fall.

Tendon, artery, tissue, and bone made no struggle against the intruder, but not until the cardiac muscle throbbed out its final faithful iteration did he snap vividly back to now, fully present in the last moment of temporal existence, gasping out one searing breath that tore his despondency into jagged strips before the dark.