Relative Karma--Sample

Here's another freebee for you: Chapter 1 of my novel Relative Karma, currently available on Amazon for Kindle.  Enjoy!

Chapter 1

Jeff Vincent stands motionless in the shadows at the far end of the deck, undetected, listening…

Nick Grimmer gazes at a refraction of candle flame through blood-red brandy, brings the glass close, lets the vaporized fruit hit his sense of smell before allowing it to slide over his tongue.  “I wanna tell you what happened with Jeff Vincent.”

An early-Autumn breeze stirs the long chimes hanging from the Tinkhams’s deck rafters, mesmerizing in the gathering gloom, lulling in tune with the alcohol and tobacco haze.

Alex Tinkham takes a slow pull on his cigar, inspects the ash, pulls again.  “You mean that time he pulled the guy’s head apart, or is this something else?”

“That’s the time I mean, only Vincent didn’t pull the head apart, Lex, he just tried.”

“Fucking slim distinction, bro.”

“You wanna hear it or not?”

“Pour me another shot…thanks.  God that is some smooth shit.”

“Agreed.  You wanna hear this story or not?”

“You pretty much already told me this one, Grim.”

“You just got the highlights, mostly how it ended.  Even that was just bits and pieces.”

“I’m always up for a good story, but why now? This was a couple years ago, right?”

“Yeah.  But it’s one of the few times I’ve been involved in something that heavy when you weren’t there.”

“And you wanna share.”

“Yeah.”

“And you’re drunk.”

“That too.  And…I guess I don’t like it that so much doesn’t make sense.  I killed a man, Lex, and I still don’t really know why.”

“You did what you had to do, man.”

“See, you can’t really know that because you don’t know all of it.  Several people died during that shit and I never…I don’t know, I guess I never got to do what we do, you know?”

Alex took a slow sip of brandy.  “That’s because our job is to come in after and sift through the mess and try to make sense of it all.  You were in the middle of it.  You were too close to the thing for the brass to call you in to investigate after it all went down.  Besides, if I understand how it went down, there was nothing to investigate.  You knew all the principles, what they did, why they did it.  Right?”

“Yes.  And no.  I just never understood it.  Too many loose ends, too much weirdness.  And you weren’t there.”

“So, it’s a couple years after the fact and you want to do your job—our job—and see what there is to see.  Or was to see.”

“Maybe that’s it.”

“Tell it then.  And, Grim, when you get to the parts with Shelley…speak very slowly.  There aren’t too many women I would put up against my Lila—”

“Or my Cassie…”

“Or her.  But my God.”

“I know.”

“Yeah, I know too,” he says from the darkness at the far end of the deck.

“God, Vincent,” Alex says, “you scared the shit out of me.  How long you been standing there?”

“Long enough to know I got here just in time.”

Nick hooks a chair closer with his foot.  “Sit.”

Jeff Vincent pulls a glass from the small bar and sits, removing a bottle from a coat pocket, stripping the seal and pulling the cork.  “That’s my story you were about to tell, Nick.”

Nick eyes the newly opened bottle.  “Yeah.  And it can stay untold if you’d rather.  It’s not mine to tell, I just—"

“I know what you just.  I was listening, and I understand, believe me. Not a bit of it makes sense, including the horribly mean shit I did to set it all in motion.”

Alex leans forward.  “What are you drinking?”

“The Macallan.  You said it was the best single-malt scotch to be had.  Have some?”

There is just enough light remaining for Alex to see the label as he takes the bottle.  “Holy shit, I’ve only ever had the twelve-year-old.  This is twenty-five-year.”

“So it’s like twice as good, yes?”

“At least.  And probably five times as expensive.”

Nick holds out his glass.  “Fill ‘er up.”

Jeff Vincent tosses back his scotch, grabs the bottle and pours another, tosses it back, pours a third.

“Damn, Vincent, if you just wanna get drunk quick I’ve got some cheap tequila in the kitchen.  You’re not supposed to guzzle the good shit.”

“You boys got a head start on me.  If I’m going to tell the story the way it needs to be told…well, I need to catch up with you.”

Nick says, “No one needs to tell the story, man.”

“Maybe someone does.”  Jeff tosses back the third glass, pours a fourth.  “I’ve never laid it out how it all happened.  Maybe it’s time.  That shit changes a person—everything about it changed me.  You can’t feel your thumbs pop through a man’s eyes and into the sockets and not have it change the way you think, am I right on that score?”

No one says anything, because there is nothing to say.

Jeff sips at his fourth drink, the first three having done their job.  “Your ladies due back anytime soon?”

“Gone for the weekend.  Took little Bella up the coast to Mendocino.  Show her the ocean.”

“Good.  We have all night.  I don’t know what kind of half-assed story you were going to tell, Nick, but with me you get it all, because I can’t tell it halfway.  This disaster is with me daily, even two years later.  Although, I guess it actually began three years ago; that’s when I really got the karma wheel turning, or whatever the fuck you wanna call it.  Some details of what happened are lost to me, or maybe suppressed, but I remember most of it vividly…too vividly.  I suppose that’s my penance, the ability to pull up the nastier scenes at will like my brain was a DVD menu.  But once this mess gets rolling in my mind there’s no skipping to the end credits—the devastation just unravels chronologically behind my eyes, and people are dying all over again, and I can’t even fucking pretend anymore that it happened to someone else.”

Jeff takes another sip, stares at the amber liquid for a long moment.  “Maybe it will help to tell it.  Or maybe it won’t, I don’t know.  But I will tell you what I do know.  I will tell you what happened.”

Another slow sip.  “I’d been dead for a year,” he begins, then he is gone from Now, from the deck, from Nick and Alex and everything that is going right.  It is two years before, and he is alone again, remembering…everything.

Relative Sanity--Sample

For all of you hesitators out there, here's a freebee for you: Chapter 1 of my novel Relative Sanity, currently available on Amazon for Kindle. Enjoy!

CHAPTER 1

Nick Grimmer drained the last of his beer and placed the bottle on the coffee table next to an abandoned Jonathan Carroll novel.  He decided Carroll was okay to read when sober, but alcohol made his subtle reality shifts feel a little too familiar.  Especially lately.

He leaned back, fished between the cushions for the TV remote.  Across the small living room Cassie cleared her throat, an eyebrow slowly inching up.  He nodded, leaned forward and placed the empty bottle on a coaster.

Cassie had been home for a little over an hour.  Nick didn’t know where she’d been, only that if she wanted a little “her time” she got it.  She’d come home flushed, a little jittery-perky, as though she’d had a hit of speed and was on the downhill slide.  But there was no point in asking, no point in beginning a conversation that could only end badly.  Now she was lounging in the overstuffed leather chair wearing nothing but her tanned skin and a man’s long-sleeved white dress shirt, toned legs tucked out of sight except for a few inches of golden thigh, a slender finger marking her place in a Sue Miller paperback.

She smiled, nodded toward the empty bottle.  “You want another one?”

That empty bottle had been his second—twenty-ounce Kilt Lifters that ran around nine percent alcohol.  He should have been well on his way to a mellow buzz but all he felt was a thick-headed sluggishness; a third would not improve that feeling.  On the end table next to Cassie sat a condensation-studded tumbler of Tuaca she’d been sipping at for the last half hour.  The sweet Italian liqueur had eased the nervous edge off her voice, adding a throaty huskiness that Nick still enjoyed, despite everything else.

And she had that look in her eye.  Sue Miller must have turned up the heat.  Or maybe not—these days it could be anything.  Or nothing, he thought; didn’t have to be a damn thing at all lately.

Nick smiled back at his wife of twenty years and it almost felt real.  “You trying to get me drunk, ma’am?”  Part of him hoped she was, if only for the sake of old times.  A larger part hoped not.

She set her book aside, picked up the Tuaca, licked the rim of her glass with a pink tongue.  “Drunk or not, Detective, I’d appreciate it if you’d get over here and fuck my brains out.”

“I see.”  He used to love this game…used to love a lot of things.  “With or without my gun on?”  The words were rote, stale.  If she noticed, she gave no indication.  He figured it was unlikely that she noticed.

“Bring the gun…might be fun.  Hey, I’m a poet and don’t know it!”  She giggled.  The childish, babbling brook sound he’d fallen in love with so many years ago.

She sipped her drink, ran her tongue across her bottom lip to catch a drip.  This time it was not calculated sensuality, it was just she being herself, vintage Cass, and the utterly unselfconscious mannerism accomplished what the rim-licking, suede-throated come-on had not.  He wanted her.

Cassie’s drink seemed to float out of her hand to the coaster as he stood and walked slowly to her.  Her eyes widened slightly, glistening.

Would it be different this time?  Probably not.  Why should it? 

He stopped before her, took her in with his eyes, something miles deep inside him still marveling at the way she seemed sharper—more substantial—than everything around her, as though her presence required more energy than her mass could supply and had to borrow from things nearby.  What he’d always felt for her was beyond love and without definition, although he’d tried once explaining it to Alex:  It’s suffocating sometimes, he’d said.  Actually more than sometimes.  And it’s more than suffocating; it can be nearly debilitating.

His feelings at this moment were no less extreme than they’d been, but now there was an element of panic, a terror at the possibility of losing her to something unknown.

She did not raise her head, simply gazed upward at him through the wisps of blonde spritzed across her unlined forehead, a crooked grin tugging at the left corner of her moist lips.  Her crisp man’s shirt was unbuttoned halfway down, creating a V that pointed at a spot an inch above her belly button.  His eyes followed the edges of the opening up to where the gap widened to accommodate her breasts: perfect, natural, round and muscled.  The areola around the nipple of her right breast was just visible as a small crescent of pink.  The light caught a tiny bead of sweat—or maybe it was a drop of moisture from her glass—inching slowly down the elegant curve and into the shadowed cleft.  She was, as she had always been, beyond compare, beyond adequate description.

“Why do you love me?”  It was his voice but it seemed to come from somewhere far away; and the words felt wrong, as though they’d gotten mixed up between his brain and his lips and should have been: Do you still love me?  Apprehension clogged his throat, a need that had very little to do with sexual desire causing his heart to thud painfully in his ears.  He needed this to work.

She lifted her head, a quizzical look producing the hint of a line between her pencil-sketched eyebrows.  “Why not,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper filed at the edges.  And it was not a question—it was a challenge.

She shifted a little, her legs unfolding and opening slow-motion, delicate fingers sliding down her thigh, under the edge of her shirt, disappearing between her legs.  “I think I found something you’ve been looking for,” she said.  A fine sheen of perspiration glistened on her upper lip.

Nick smiled.  “Is that where I left it?”

And it was going to work this time.

Please, God.  This time.

Last Wish

"I don't want to die alone."
     Jack slid into the chair, phone cradled loosely against his ear. No point in standing for this one.
     "I'm sick, Jackie—" Her voice broke.
     "Chelsea, it's just a bug. You're not going to die."
     "Jack…"
     God, she could be melodramatic when she'd had a few. He shifted the phone to his other ear. "I'm here."
     "It's not a bug. I just got back from the hospital. It's cancer."
     Jack blinked. He'd misunderstood. For the two short years of their marriage she'd been a hypochondriac; the lasting cry throughout the separation and divorce had been, You never took care of me when I was sick. And she was always sick. But now…he'd misunderstood, plain and simple.
     He swallowed. "What did you say?"
     "You heard me."
     Fuck. "I…Chelsea, are they sure?"
     She sucked back a shuddery sob. "Yeah. They're so sure they didn't want me to leave."
     "Then why did you?"
     "Come over, Jack, please?"
     "Chels, you should be at the hospital. I'll come pick you up and take you back."
     "No. Please. Just come be with me. I don't wanna die alone."

* * *

     "I made myself some tea. Would you like a cup?"
     Jack nodded, watched her as she lifted the kettle and poured the boiling water into a China cup, part of a set they'd received as a wedding gift. She didn't look sick, and that alone was enough to make Jack believe. When in the throes of some imagined infirmity she looked drawn, frail, barely able to take the next breath. Contrived, carefully calculated illness. Now she simply seemed resigned.
     She placed the cup in front of him, matching saucer, delicate silver spoon. "Give it a minute, it's hot." She sipped at the cup in front of her, then tossed it back and added more water from the kettle.
     "I'm sorry, Chels. I…I'm so sorry."
     Their divorce had been brutal; ugly, prolonged and vicious. Now all he could do was watch her quiet elegance in the face of the ultimate fear.
     She shrugged. "It's done. They say the cancer has metastasized beyond…" She smiled softly. "Well, suffice to say I'm done. I could stay in the hospital, but to what good? Drugs to dull my mind so that I forget I'm dying for an hour or two? No. If I'm going to die, I'm going to die at home, my way, on my terms."
     "How long did they say?"
     She shook her head. "Doesn't matter."
     "It does, baby. We can look at alternative cures or something. Or at least make the most of whatever time you have left." She suddenly looked tired, about to fall asleep, but with a quizzical grin flittering on her lips. Jack frowned. "What?"
     "You called me baby." Her voice was soft, the words slightly slurred like she'd had a little too much to drink.
     "Did I?" Jack blew on his tea, took a small sip to test the temperature, then, though it was still too hot, drained the rest to have something to do while he tried to remember if he'd actually said the word. That word that had been his favorite endearment before things went south.
     She nodded. "Yes, you did. And…" Her eyes fluttered and her lips twitched in a crooked grin. "And it wuzzlovely." She seemed to be drifting away.
     He placed his hand on hers. "Chels? Baby, are you okay?"
     Her eyes cleared slightly. "Thank you for coming, Jackie. I wanted you to be here. I really didn't want to die alone." She smiled again, then frowned as a sudden spasm shuddered through her. She gestured with her teacup. "It hurts some, but at least it will be short-lived, won't it, sweetie?"
     Jack watched her trembling hand attempt to lift the teacup. Just come be with me. I don't wanna die alone. Her head slumped forward.
     "Oh, baby, what did you do?" He watched her go. She hadn't wanted to be alone, and she wasn't. She stiffened, her body spasming again, clenching and releasing, clenching and releasing. Finally the muscles relaxed completely and he smelled her bowels let go as rigid fingers uncurled from the handle of the cup. Her breath slowed, paused, and it was over.
     He should call someone, someone that could take care of her now that she was gone, take care of her like he never had. But he couldn't think who to call, or what to say if he did call. And he wanted to hold her hand resting so lightly next to her teacup. His hand stretched toward hers but seemed to take forever to reach across the table. He knocked over his own cup, watched the dregs stain the tablecloth, watched the cup roll off the table and heard no sound as it floated away into the darkness under the table. From far away inside himself he felt a contraction, a tightening sensation as something rebelled against whatever he'd ingested, then icy hands began to slowly squeeze his lungs. His fingers finally reached Chelsea's, so soft and still. He was glad to be sitting across from her and glad he'd been here because…
     "Baby," he whispered."
…she didn't want to die alone.

Little Girl Lost

Little Girl Lost

     “Daddy, I’m lost.” She sounded embarrassed.
     Michael twisted the car’s radio volume down and smiled into the cell phone, willing the I-told-you-so tone out of his voice. “Where are you, baby?”
     “Dad, if I knew that I wouldn’t be lost.” Definitely embarrassed, and silently begging him not to bust her chops about it.
     Beth’s sense of direction was non-existent. He’d been so certain she’d lose her way he brought a Thomas Guide street directory to work so he could steer her back on track when she called. Being prepared for things like this was Dad Stuff, just one scenario on a long list of scenarios he’d imagined from the day they’d first learned Deb was pregnant and their childless days were limited.
     A glance at the dashboard clock showed thirteen minutes before six pm. Rush hour traffic had congealed in the late-autumn night, bogging down to speeds nearly in the single digits. The street directory lay useless on the floorboard, unreachable and—with his reading glasses stowed in the trunk with his briefcase—unreadable.
     “Beth, I’ve got to pull off the freeway so I can get to the map. What street are you on?”
     “Dad.” Frustrated. “These stupid streets don’t have names.”
     Michael jockeyed one lane to the right. If the idiots paid attention to his blinker he’d make the off ramp at Madison Avenue; otherwise it would be Greenback Lane, another crawling mile east.
     “Sweetie, they have to have names.”
     “I know that, but it’s dark and I can’t see the street signs.”
     That couldn’t be right. True, it was dark out, but the intersections were brightly lit, large green and white signs stretching across the lanes. “Beth, pull over at the next intersection and tell me what you see.”
     “Okay.” There was a tremor in her voice that reminded him she was just sixteen.
     My God, wasn’t it just yesterday that Deb went into labor? How did she get to be sixteen already?
     A flash of high beams from behind and he had the gap he needed. He punched the accelerator, shot through to the emergency lane and sped along the stationary line of cars to the Madison Avenue off ramp, praying the Highway Patrol had better things to do.
     His mind told him this was no big deal, Beth was fine, she was just turned around and all he had to do was point her back in the right direction—but something didn’t feel right. Beth had been visiting her boyfriend’s grandmother who lived just off La Riviera Drive, a couple blocks west of Watt Avenue. Not a great neighborhood, but it was well lit. Watt Avenue was one of the larger thoroughfares in Sacramento, at several places six lanes wide.
     “Daddy?”
     “I’m here, baby. I’m almost off the freeway.”
     “I just passed an intersection but I didn’t want to stop. I couldn’t see what the sign said.”
     “Baby, I can’t help you if I don’t know where you are.”
     “It was dark and there were these guys just kind of sitting there in their truck. There wasn’t really anywhere to pull off anyway, just kind of a ditch along the side of the road.”
     What the hell? Where was she?
     “Wait, I see a sign coming up at the next intersection…it’s…something ridge.”
     “Slow down and try to read it.” He managed to keep his voice level as he turned onto Madison and into the right lane behind a solid wall of cars. A Chevron gas station gleamed less than twenty yards ahead on the right, but it might as well have been a mirage for all the good it served.
     “Okay, I see it,” she said. “It says Oakridge. I’m passing through and I’m on…what does that say? Geez, you’d think they could make bigger signs.”
     God, please let her be mistaken.
     The signal up ahead turned green, releasing the tension of cars so that he was eventually able to jump the curb into the gas station parking lot.
     “Par…ane…” Static. Digital garble.
     “Sweetie, you’re breaking up. Say it again.” Please, God.
     “I just passed through the intersection at Oakridge. I’m on Parlane.”
     Oh, baby, how did you get so far south?
     “Beth, you just need to turn around as soon as you can.” Keep it steady, she’s scared because she’s lost. She doesn’t need to hear it in your voice.
     “I see a lighted intersection up ahead, finally. I’m going to pull over there.”
     “No, Beth. Don’t pull over, just make a u-turn and go back the other way. Don’t stop.” God, protect my baby.
     “Daddy, there’s a gas station and I’m getting kind of low—”
     “Do not stop. I’ll talk you back to someplace where you can get gas. Just turn around. I’m going to grab my glasses and check the map.” He popped the trunk and got out of the car.
     “Daddy, you’re scaring me.”
     Baby, I’m terrified.
     “It’s fine, sweetie, I just don’t want you to stop in that area. Keep driving. Hold on a sec.”
     He opened his briefcase and dug out his glasses. Back in the car, he flipped to the back of the street guide and found the coordinates for Oakridge and Parlane.
     “Daddy?”
     “I’m here, baby.”
     “Okay, I’m going the other way now.”
     “Good, you’re doing fine. I’m looking at the map now.”
     The dome light showed two full pages of open county land bisected by two lane roads. He had an all too clear memory of the last time he’d driven through the area. He remembered thinking he wouldn’t want to drive through there at night. How had she gotten so far off track? Playing with her stereo more than likely. Fiddling with the radio, oblivious that she was driving into Sacramento’s version of South Central LA. Except that in South Central, there were people around; the south end of Sacramento County was largely uninhabited—except that it really wasn’t.
     “Damn it!” she said.
     His stomach tightened. “What happened?”
     “There’s some jerk behind me driving with his high beams on. He’s like totally riding my bumper.”
     “Just let him pass.”
     “I tried. I pulled almost onto the shoulder so he could get by and he just stayed there. Should I pull off and stop?”
     “No! Listen, just keep going. You should be back into town before long.”
     The map was no help at all. He knew exactly where she was, he just didn’t know how to tell her to get out without making it worse. Stay on Parlane? Or turn right on Oakridge and head over to Fallon? If memory served, Parlane was a bigger street but went through a worse section of town. If she could get over to Fallon—
     “Oh my God! He’s so close I can’t even see his lights any more!”
     “Beth, do not slow down. You should be coming back up to Oakridge. Turn right. When you get to Fallon, turn left. At that point you’ll be—” He yanked the phone from his ear.
     “Daddy, he just hit me!” Her voice was trembling. “Oh, God, he rammed into me and I almost lost it.”
     A sickening throb began at his temple. “Are you okay?”
     “Yeah. No. I mean I guess. He backed off a little and I’m turning onto Oakridge. Oh, shit, he’s coming up fast again! Daddy, what do I do?”

     His voice stalled. This wasn’t happening to his baby. He had no idea what to do. Or what to tell her to do. “Just keep driving, baby.”
     Why can’t I think of what to do? I was so prepared, so ready to be a dad.
     “Daddy!”
     The crunch was deafening this time. “Beth!”
     “Daddy—” sobbing now “—Oh Jesus, I’m so scared.”
     God, help me think what to do. Call 911? No, he’d have to hang up. “Just keep driving, baby, I’m getting help.”
     He stumbled out of the car and ran to the phone booth. No handset, just a busted cable, wires dangling, somehow looking like a torn umbilical cord. Come on, God, don’t fucking do this to me.
     He stared at that torn cord too long, finally backed away in a daze and got back into the car. He started the engine. “Talk to me, baby.”
     Open line. And Beth—my little girl—unable to speak as she gasped through the fear.
     “Keep talking to me, Beth.” He pulled onto Madison with absolutely no idea where he was headed, and was immediately stuck in traffic. No danger here. Just a lot of cars, people anxious to get home. And every one of them keeping him from his baby. He should pull back into the station and have someone inside call 911. Why didn’t I think of that? Why I am messing this up so badly?
     A sharp, static intake of breath in his ear. “Daddy…”
     And then he jerked the phone way from his ear again at the horrible crash of impact. And Beth screaming, or maybe that was the shriek of the tires, and the thin, quick sound of tearing metal and shattering glass and yes, that is Beth screaming like a terrified newborn and he couldn’t be hearing that sound coming through the cell phone, because this wasn’t the way things were supposed to go.
     He sat in a surreal nightmare of hardening-cement traffic as Beth shrieked in his ear from a place of terror beyond the world, screaming No! No! Please, don’t! over and over, the awful cries becoming distant but somehow more intense when the cell phone was dropped—ripped?—from her hand. And the other voice that was not Beth’s—nice tits, bitch—and so Michael’s mind tried to force it all into a muted garble, unwilling to accept that he was hearing his baby girl being raped.
     But the screams were still there—fight, baby—long and persistent, howling at a pain that is outside anything he can imagine—push harder—and the screaming has become a harsh panting and the voice is not Beth, it is Deb, crying his name…
     The traffic begins to spin around him, becoming a blur of white light—white walls, white tile—and there is a smell of antiseptic, the beep of monitors, and a hand on his arm, rough but gentle—
     “You back with us, partner?”
     Michael blinks in the sudden glare of hospital fluorescents. “Dr. Burney?”
     “He’s back,” the doctor says with a soft clap of the hands. “Let’s get this done.”
     Michael feels Deb’s hand grip his own as she leans forward and begins to push again, her body clenching as doctor and nurse urge her on.
     A glance from Doctor Burney. “Help her out, son, you know the drill.”
     And Michael does know the drill—push-push-push-breathe—but he is still trying to get his mind back from the place where Beth is still…Beth? At his side, Deb hunches over the distended abdomen that holds their first child, unborn and struggling to remain so.
     Another drawn-out hissing scream, this time from Deb—of course from Deb, only Deb—and seconds later from a much tinier set of lungs, and yes, that’s exactly what she will sound like.
     Doctor Burney holds the tiny vision high, as high as the umbilical cord—busted phone cable—will allow.
     Deb’s voice at his ear, whispered wonder: “Oh, Michael…Michael we have a baby girl.”
     I know, and we decided on Elizabeth for a girl, Beth for short.
     “Isn’t she beautiful?”
     Nice tits, bitch.
     “Yes, honey, she’s beautiful.”
     Deb’s fingers find his, interlacing and locking together, the way they’ve been doing since they were teenagers. “Our world just changed forever, Michael. You’re a daddy now.”
     Daddy…
     Deb’s voice dreamy, determined. “She is our focus now. I never want to let her out of my sight.”
     …I’m lost.

Killing Kari

Blue Kari

     Kari is gone. It’s the only thing Rebekah knows for sure and the only thing that really matters; because the world absent of Kari is Rebekah absent of cause, devoid of sensation and the basic human need to feel…anything.
     Rebekah’s eyes attempt to blink away the dryness of staring long at nothing and she wonders again if she killed her love, if the paintbrush in her hand might be the murder weapon. There is small comfort in the realization that it does not matter what device stole Kari from the present; be it sickness or madness, she is simply not here.
     Rebekah blinks again, focuses on the empty canvas before her, and questions whether she has what it takes to conjure her friend. This easel—holding a different canvas, filled with liquid blue longing—is the last place she saw Kari. That canvas is gone now, but she remembers its detail: Kari’s lips wanting to smile for her, and that awful resigned sadness in her eyes; a rendering of a blue Kari standing in a blue field under a blue sky, painted while Kari lay on the futon in the living room of the apartment they’d shared, two months past the date when her wasted legs decided they could no longer carry her.
     If Rebekah is able to bring her back, what will she say? Will she be able to say anything at all? What could possibly be appropriate?
     She looks at the palette with its swirls of blue and darker blue and wonders again if she might be losing her mind.
     Kari died of a disease, she thinks. It had nothing to do with me.
     If only she could believe that. If only she’d been able to talk to her after that last long sigh.
     If only she had never learned to paint. Her skill is something she doesn’t understand. The ability to reproduce images is a product of long practice and detailed instruction, but it is her use of color that sets the images apart. Maybe it’s because she uses so little color, but to such great effect, working primarily with blue and purple, although rarely in the same picture. Her paintings are technically of one color, though with many different hues. Her purples always dark but never depressing; there is somehow an upbeat tone when she paints with purple. Her blues seem to whisper a quiet melancholy, but rarely fail to inspire calm. Whether purple or blue, she uses only black and white to mix and create the variations. She doesn’t know how she achieves her ends, merely that the color is right when it’s right.
     And the color was right the day she decided to paint Kari, nearly ten years after the day they first met.

* * *

     Rebekah was nine, Kari eight, both struggling with watercolors at summer camp. Kari had a way of slinging paint that may have ensured a career in modern art if the disease hadn’t begun that same year to eat away at her muscle tissue. Rebekah loved Kari from that first summer, the progressive illness only intensifying her desire to protect and nurture her younger friend.
     Later, when Kari’s walking became limited to short stretches at a time, Rebekah broke her piggy bank and purchased a wagon to pull her in. They managed adolescence together, dated together, and—after a singularly unpleasant double-date—broke up with their boyfriends only minutes apart, flipping a coin to see who would go first. After that, boys had seemed pointless.
     For a while Kari’s deterioration seemed to slow, not enough to hope for recovery, but enough to pretend. But it was merely hiatus, and one short year later they were attempting to hold each other’s tears at bay, Kari somehow the stronger of the two, as the doctor gently explained that Rebekah should take her home and try to make her comfortable. Make her comfortable—a benign phrase and yet…final.
     The days ran together; seamless stretches of time defined only by shifting patterns of light at the windows. Rebekah quit her job. The living room became Kari’s dying room. They played every card game they knew, making up variations on old games as that limited knowledge played out; finally the cards were set aside when Kari’s fingers could no longer manage the burden. So it was television and music, and a kind of dreamy conversation that diminished with Kari’s decreasing ability to draw breath. Then it was simply waiting…Rebekah watching Kari fade and begging time to stop.
     Until the night when an emaciated whisper caused Rebekah to look up from the blurred page of a magazine.
     She laid the magazine aside and gently sat next to Kari on the day bed. “What was that, sweetie?”
     Kari took Rebekah’s hand and pressed the fingertips against her dry lips. “You haven’t painted in a long time. I miss watching you paint.”

* * *

     Rebekah lifts the brush, thick with paint, from the palette and holds it before her eyes. She makes a small stroke in the bottom corner of the canvas and feels the familiar calm settle over her—the color is right. It is the only thing that has ever mattered in her art, getting the color right, this moment always a little unnerving because she lacks a formula for her colors, has no recipe for her shades. She wonders if the day will come when the color balance eludes her. It might; she has no way of knowing. But this time it's right, and this time it must be right. This is to be the final and enduring Kari. She begins to paint, calling not on her fingers and hands to create the image, but her heart; and the sense memory of how Kari felt and smelled and sounded. The image after all is already there, in the color. Blue on blue on blue.

* * *

     That night, not so long ago, Rebekah picked up her brushes, her paints and palette, and settled before the canvas. She looked at her precious friend and said, “What should I paint?”
     “Paint,” Kari said, pausing to draw a breath that seemed a long time in coming. “Paint something you love.”
     Rebekah smiled, remembering. It was what Kari used to say when Rebekah was stuck for an idea, when the blank canvas mocked any attempt she made. Paint what you love, sweetie, it’s the only thing that matters.
     She began mixing blues. “I’m going to paint you, girl.”
     Kari’s lips formed the tiniest of smiles. “That will be nice.” Her voice was almost gone.
     Rebekah’s paintings usually took a couple hours to complete. Blue Kari took two days. She became hypnotized by the process of glancing to Kari on the futon and back to the canvas, to Kari, to the canvas. It was automatic and the brush never stopped moving. She did not stop to eat, although there was a dim memory of feeding Kari and helping her with the indignity of the bedpan.
     From the first couple brush strokes she knew something was different. Despite the intuitive method of mixing color, she was a literal painter. If her subject sat in a chair, she painted a picture of that person sitting in a chair. It was the striking, sometimes alarming use of a single, multi-hued color that set her work apart. But this time something odd was happening. Kari lay on the futon, mostly asleep, but Rebekah’s brush revealed her as she would be if she were standing in a cerulean field with a light breeze lifting her hair. The memory of a smile disturbed her pale lips, her eyes round and leaking a cobalt sadness so profound Rebekah could not look on them for more than a few seconds at a time.
     As Rebekah glanced from canvas to couch, the figure lying there began to seem insubstantial, a shade of the sapphire Kari coming to life at her hands. She felt as though she were racing time, overwhelmed with the sense that she would lose Kari before the portrait was done. As the hours passed, the world became a dark azure swirl, no sound save the whisper of brush on canvas and the occasional whispered moan from Kari.
     And then, the painting nearly complete, Rebekah did something she’d never done before: she got too much paint on the brush and touched it to the canvas where she had almost finished the shading around Kari’s haunted eyes. The thick glob began to run in a slow rivulet.
     From the futon, Kari cried out softly.
     Rebekah couldn’t believe what she’d done. She could fix it, but it would change the picture—an altered painting was not a true painting.
     From a hundred miles away: “Bekah?”
     Rebekah began to cry. She’d ruined it.
     “Bekah, are you there?”
     Something in Kari’s withered voice broke through and Rebekah looked to her friend. Her eyes were wide and staring.
     Kari’s voice fluttered like the wings of dying moth. “Bekah…please answer me…I’m scared. Why…is it so dark?”
     No. Please, God.
     Full daylight streamed through the windows of the tiny apartment. Rebekah lowered herself to Kari’s side and tenderly stroked her forehead. “I’m right here, baby.”
     Kari shifted her vacant gaze as Rebekah sat next to her. Her voice was rice paper-thin. “I so…wanted to see my painting.” The corner of her mouth twitched in what might have been an imitation of the smile on canvas had she been able to see it. “Thank you…for being my friend.” Then she frowned and her sightless eyes closed. “I don’t…”
     Rebekah waited, her breath stalled and useless, her eyes filling with the truth of the moment. “What, baby? You don’t what?”
     Kari’s eye’s shifted slowly beneath the lids, as if at the end of a dream. “I…don’t…think I’m much here…anymore,” she whispered, and Rebekah watched as a single indigo tear rolled down her cheek. “…miss you,” Kari said, and released a sigh that seemed to go on and on. Rebekah wasn’t sure when it stopped because her own cry of anguish overlapped and carried her into unconsciousness.

* * *

     She stops before beginning the eye detail on the new Kari. She remembers the blue tear and doesn’t want to make the same mistake again. But she knows it is not within her power to deny it if the tear belongs there. She dips her brush again and watches her wrist twist of its own accord, dabbing the excess. She smiles. Maybe this Kari is done with sadness. She takes a slow breath, her hand poised, and waits for the eyes to come to her.

* * *

     When Rebekah awoke, her mother was there. She was in the hospital.
     “Where’s Kari?” It hurt to speak, as though her vocal chords had been long unused.
     Her mother ran the pad of a thumb across Rebekah’s forehead. “She’s gone, darlin’.”
     Rebekah knew that. She’d known from the moment the blue tear ran down Kari’s cheek. “I killed her,” she said.
     “No, Bek. She probably lasted longer because of you. There’s nothing you could have done.”
     Rebekah explained about the painting, and the blue tear.
     “Darlin’, you’re just confused. Kari was lying very peaceful. There was no paint on her face.”
     “It wasn’t paint. It was a tear.”
     Her mother tried to explain how Rebekah, malnourished and sleep-deprived, had gone into a shock-induced coma after finding Kari dead. The coma had held her for the better part of a week. She’d missed the funeral. Her mother offered to take her to the cemetery to see where she lay. But Rebekah didn’t want to go. There was no point. Kari was gone.
     Under strict instructions to rest and eat her way slowly back to strength, the doctor allowed her to go home. It was two days before Rebekah was able to convince her mother that what she need more than anything was to be alone.
     The apartment’s living area was dominated by a sense of loss, the feeling intensified by the weeping Kari on canvas. Rebekah’s legs led her to the futon, where she sat to study the painting from what had been Kari’s final perspective before her eyes gave up.
     “Why are you so sad,” she whispered.
     Blue Kari just watched her, crying her single tear. The image became watery and indistinct as tears filled Rebekah’s eyes. She drew her legs up onto the small couch and laid her head on the pillow that had so long held that of her dear friend. She buried her face into the pillow, inhaling the last vestiges of Kari’s sickness, and watched the picture until she began to drift off.
     “I miss you, sweet Bekah.”
     She started awake and found herself staring, not at the painting, but at the small blue dot on the pillow.     
     She touched it with the tip of her finger. It was dry, but felt almost…alive. It seemed she could feel a light breeze as she touched the dried tear.
     And from the painting: a soft voice singing.
     Kari was watching her.
     And then the only thing she could hear was her own tired wailing and the tearing of the canvas.

* * *

     She is finished. And it is better than before. She smiles as she remembers shredding the old Kari. She was afraid then; she is not afraid now.
     That Kari is dead anyway.
     She steps back for a fuller perspective, looking away then looking back. So much better. No tears. This Kari is not sad.
     She leans nearer, closes her eyes and inhales the fragrance of her lost friend. She hears the faintest whisper: “Thank you.”
     She opens her eyes and settles back in the chair. To the palette she adds just the tiniest bit of white. Kari is finished, but there is so much empty space next to her on the canvas. Rebekah shifts slightly to better view the full-length mirror she has placed next to the easel. Her reflection is smiling. A finger guides the hair on the left side of her face behind the ear—Kari likes it better that way.
     Rebekah adjusts the mirror, locks the final image in her mind. “I’ll see you soon, sweet Kari,” she says and touches brush to canvas.

The End

Chaining the Beast in the Basement of the Muse

Some may call me cynical. But I know things; things they don’t.

Appearances are deceiving. The eye is unreliable, of both the viewer and the viewed. A long ago generation believed The Shadow to be the only one who knew what evil existed in the hearts of men.

But there is no Shadow, only you and me, babe. Just you…and me. And what do we see when we look? Hell, we see what we’re supposed to see…or maybe what we want to see. Take Frank Lucas, one of the most dangerous and profitable drug traffickers of this century. An upstanding citizen; a good son who took Mama to church on Sundays; a good friend of the community who handed out food to the hungry. And, of course, a fiend who made his millions off the weakness and need of others. And the scariest part of all? He was all those things—didn’t appear to be one more than another, but actually was the doting son, the respected philanthropist. And the drug lord.

So the question remains: Who lives behind the eyes we see, and what do we do about him?

Those eyes staring at me, wide-eyed and unflinching, seem innocent. But as I said, I know things. Back behind the hazel stare—ducking and hunching—is the real man, the one who wants to be forgotten, if not forgiven. That man is a liar, an adulterer. That man cheated, perfected the lie, and then had the gall to weep in the face of his accusers when his integrity was challenged. This same man, when the weight of his sin became too much to hide, told his childhood bride of fifteen years the biggest and most heinous lie of all—that he never really loved her and had to leave her because he just couldn’t (are you a fan of irony?) live a lie anymore. This he did the day after Christmas. And here that man stares from behind eyes that now belong to a man whose conscience will not allow him to watch a bootlegged DVD.

No matter how probing my gaze I cannot see that other, more sinister man, but I know he is in there, muttering and cursing himself, picking at his sores back in some dank and fetid corner where only the rats play.

I get as close to the mirror as I can…but only sane eyes stare back. So what do I do with the man cowering in there? That man who did all that I know he did? How do I deal with the knowledge of that Other?

I lock him in. Not away, but In. I strap him to a rough cane chair in the basement of my mind and demand that he tell what he knows of deceit. He has stories to tell, this man, and much to teach me; much to reveal about the dealings of liars and cheats. He is me and I am him and his sentence is to remain so much with me that he can never go undetected again...and to be slave to my dark-eyed, raven-haired little bitch of a Muse, whipped into action when dark thoughts are called for in an invented character. My Muse and I will bleed him dry, burn the husk and scatter the ashes.

Some call me cynical. But I know things.

Another Blog on the Fire

First, my confession: I am a 44-year-old blog virgin. I am told this kind of thing can be addictive...we'll see (if so, those of you following may now consider yourselves in a co-dependent relationship). I suppose I should take the advice of countless young virgins since time immemorial: Lay back and think happy thoughts. OK. Fair enough.

So, why "Humoring the Muse"? I suppose it is my way of not writing; or writing when I should be capital "W" Writing. If I may: Muses are these Greek goddess chicks who were supposed to be the source of inspiration for all things artistic or literary. I've always imagined what they would look like and how they would behave; perhaps Charlize Theron and whispered promises of the rewards that come to those who Write and Write well. Or, if I'm feeling retro, maybe a Grace Kelly Muse, or Marilyn Monroe, or...well, you feel me. And perhaps there are those who have such delicate and curvy inspiration. Nicholas Sparks, for instance, could only write what he writes with something soft and gauzy floating nearby.

My Muse, unfortunately, looks disturbingly like Ramona Quimby (look it up, there are no free rides here) and stands just over my right shoulder poking me incessantly with her grimy, fingernail-gnawed-to-the-quick index finger, repeating over and over in her five-year-old nasal: "Shouldn't you be writing? Shouldn't you be writing? Why aren't you writing right now? Why? Huh? Whyyyy????" If I didn't feel on some level that I actually do need her irritation (like the grain of sand in the oyster, don'tcha know), I'd clock that little bee-ahtch into next week.

Anyway, there are times (like now) when I feel like Writing, but not so much like Plotting...so I figure if I can write (small "w") here then maybe, just maybe, that little snit will leave off poking me and go watch Cartoon Network for a while. I will have humored her and flexed my writing muscle a bit and can go to bed with a clear conscience...and that's worth a bit of literary deception any day. TTFN.