by Toby Barlow
even sleepy, he’s a bear you wouldn’t poke at.
“Long time, Tati.”
“Yeah, long time.” Tati, waking up, smiles
as he watches Lark help himself to the fridge.
“Tati, I’m going to need your car for a while.”
“How long?”
“Does it matter?”
Tati’s smile wavers. “My car?”
Lark nods as he drinks the water.
Tati was once someone in certain circles
ten years and twenty pounds ago,
but things happened back then
leaving deep scars and comeback debts
that are thicker than blood.
It’s all dancing fast across the inside
of Tati’s mind right now.
His smile grows again, big and true.
“Sure, man, take the car.
Far as I’m concerned,
it’s yours.”
Driving out of the city center
Lark sees the sun rising up in the east.
He thinks of her, he thinks of Baron, he thinks of the boys
the fallen and the ones who are still out there
reaching onward toward
the fingers of the coming light.
He pulls up in front of Bonnie’s.
He knows the key is in the cactus pot
He knows the security code is 323
He has the computer on.
He has a week till she comes back.
And now he has a car.
One thing that’s nice about this town,
just like seeded soil on sunshine days,
LA will blossom for you.
All you need is intelligence, time,
and a solid automobile.
In moments he’s found six churches
worth a visit, each one a new age variety
where the lost ones land like dandelion seeds.
He’s found a methadone clinic
near the beach, sure to be populated
with souls as empty
as cracked swimming pools,
and he’s posted a notice
on an extreme sports site
offering “Self-Reformation,”
a radical technique
for anyone seeking
“discipline, adventure,
and dynamic physical
transformation.”
Out of these three paths
he might be able to sew together something
resembling
a somewhat decent pack.
V
Game day.
Cutter and Blue are up, showered fresh
as springtime ducklings, they’ve even got
ties and church shoes on.
Hair parted like choirboys.
These are the regional finals
goddamn it.
Let’s get serious.
The smooth carpet
feels like luxury, the staff
nod and smile as they pass.
It’s been a month of generous tipping and
now everyone working here treats them
like champagne kings.
Hitting the tournament room,
Cutter greets Sara Dudley
from the oversight committee.
Blue pours them each a glass
of orange juice from the buffet table
which is overflowing with pineapple, melon,
pastry, and cream. It’s all as abundant
as any civilization
could ever hope to be.
They’ve seen these fellows around here before.
Cutter sizes up Mr. Venable.
The man looks sharp and cagey,
he smells like bay rum and lavender.
The big fellow, Mr. Goyo, wears the same scent.
Cutter wonders what else they share.
Blue looks at them too.
He notices the way Venable’s eyes
don’t match his smile, eyes warm,
smile cold, eyes alive,
smile dead. Blue doesn’t know what this means
and he can’t read Goyo any more than
he can read a stone.
But he figures the play of the cards
will say a lot, it always does.
Cutter and Blue have their own conventions.
Their play has mystified
everyone from San Luis Obispo to Laguna Beach.
Their bidding leaps like electricity arcing.
Venable and Goyo have a quieter style.
Cutter can tell that Goyo is the machine.
Venable lets him lead them, Blue can almost smell
the numbers burning in Goyo’s mind.
Prim Sara Dudley announces the end of the first session.
It is now eleven thirty.
Cutter and Blue are up, two rubbers to one.
But it’s been tough, a battle won by small degrees.
At the coffee station they’re huddling, reviewing their hands,
when Venable comes over and interrupts
with some simple words that
throw the entire day
completely upside down.
“I’m sorry,” he says,
“to hear about your friends.”
Cutter’s and Blue’s eyes lock, everything stops as
they survey the quiet room.
In other times, the blood would start flowing
but now, there’s Sara Dudley checking the cards
as a waiter methodically refills the water pitchers
and Mr. Venable saunters back to his table
to whisper in Goyo’s ear.
Cutter’s hand goes to Blue’s shoulder.
“Let’s finish the game,” he says.
“The guy could just be fucking with us.”
Fires devouring mountains inside him
need to be quenched. Soon.
But first, there are cards
to be played.
Predictably the next rubber goes poorly.
For the good part of the early afternoon,
their rhythm is off.
It’s as if Cutter and Blue are trying to communicate
through rusty, broken radios.
Cards fall uselessly on the table,
as hand after hand fall dead beneath
the engine of the big fellow’s mind.
It churns on as Venable hums concertos,
his game gaining
the sort of momentum
that has always helped the assured
crush the confused.
Blue can’t hear anything but his heartbeat
while Cutter has flashes of the past, the pack
Lark, Baron, Con, the girl, Bone, Zack, the rest.
Aces are seizing the tricks,
and tricks are slipping away like time.
Cutter just wants to change now and run out
all the strength in his bones.
Run past the concierge.
Run down the street.
Run into the hills.
Run to the lakes and rivers where the pack
would find the peace that comes away from the city.
Where these animals all once ran,
where they belonged,
together.
His concentration is shattered, his eyes filling with tears.
And then he goes for the one strategy that might just
buy him some time.
He falls hard to the floor and closes his eyes.
In the banquet room’s bathroom
Blue throws water on his own face
while Cutter breathes deep.
“I haven’t thought about them,” he says.
Blue crouches down to where Cutter is sitting
on the gray tile floor, beneath the fluorescent lights.
“I know. But now, we just need to win.”
“Why?” asks Cutter.
“Because Lark told us to.”
Then they d
o something they have never done.
They reach out and hold one another, embracing
like brothers.
Five minutes later, they emerge
and engage.
They grit their teeth and
gnaw through the rest of the day
feinting and thrusting while
defeat ebbs away
like the end of a red tide.
“We are wolves,” Cutter chants
in his mind.
“We don’t find the weak. We
don’t prey on the slow.
We simply eat absolutely
fucking everything.”
The answer is literally there
in the cards.
If you were watching
you would see four men
playing classical music
with nothing but cards for an orchestra
and, in the end,
Cutter and Blue’s song
is just a little bit sweeter.
Sara Dudley and the other associates
present the boys with their check.
There is a picture taken for Bridge Monthly.
As Venable and Goyo rise, Venable extends his hand.
“We should play again,” he says, smiling.
“Yes. Soon,” Cutter replies, shaking
the man’s small, soft hand. “Let’s do that very soon.”
“Why don’t you come to my suite tonight?” Venable grins
with all the confidence of a sure winner,
leaving Cutter to wonder exactly what he’s won.
“Yeah, okay.” Cutter is
exhausted, curious, and hungry.
“We’ll see you there.”
VI
Frio and Jorge have been beaten bloody
every day. Waking up
sometimes in rooms filled with men
other times they rise in rooms
filled with barking, snarling dogs,
teeth bared with growling wet spit
spraying out onto
the boys’ cowering bodies.
Ray feeds them meat stew
and offers cryptic advice:
“The change is in you, boys.”
“The power comes from within.”
“There is your destiny, take it.”
Then the men come from behind.
The boys raise their arms but the
blows persist, raining down again and
again till the blackness returns.
One morning, the beatings are coming down,
as they always do—like cruel, unrelenting storms—
Frio and Jorge have their backs to the concrete wall, they are
struggling, shouting, begging, crying
when there is a new sound, a strange one.
Jorge turns to see Frio’s
eyes squeezed shut. A gurgling, growling noise is
coming out of his guts as he bows over.
Jorge thinks, that’s it, he’s dead.
But Frio’s body trembles and then
in a wild spasm, his flesh starts to
swell, bulging pink and raw.
Frio’s eyes flare with panic as his bones shift
beneath the changing skin, he reaches for his friend’s hand
but finds his fingers curving in, as bone yields to claw.
Jorge screams now too, high pitched and unrestrained
he shakes with fear as
furred needles puncture Frio’s face and arms.
Angry teeth and pointed snout mouth and eyes that hold
nothing familiar.
His clothing is torn as his body, in thrusts and jerks,
reshapes itself down to all fours.
Jorge screams louder. Frio barks back.
The men step back now
and bend down,
beginning their own dark change.
Within moments Jorge is surrounded by
a room full of angry dogs.
As Jorge leans against the wall,
the sound of his heart beating in fear
almost drowns out the barking of the dogs
who stare up at him with knowing eyes.
Frio is no different from the rest of them.
Jorge breathes deep and tastes vomit in his throat.
The door is unbolted and Ray enters.
He’s holding a .44 and the barrel
quickly finds its way
to the side of Jorge’s head.
“You’ve seen the change,” Ray growls.
“You’ve seen the destiny.
Either find it within, man,
or accept the end.”
The steel is so real
as Jorge inhales his fear
and screams a new sound
that can only be called
a howl.
VII
Reading the paper, she scans an article
while hummingbirds outside drink with their
insatiable, jittery thirst
compulsively sucking the nectar
from the violet curling petals.
Anthony turns the pages of the sports section.
She smiles because she loves his every motion.
She’s never felt it quite like this,
where the love runs so deep
and plays out as simple
as any child’s game.
She turns back to her paper,
reading in the lifestyle pages about
how some psychologists believe
a few hidden secrets
can actually help the average relationship.
Yes, it’s true, they say, surprisingly
the stupid drunken office kiss, a love sonnet from a neighbor,
an in-law’s sloppy groping
during dinner’s dish clearing,
these can all be buried happily beneath
the small and constant waves
of studious devotion until eventually
it is all simply
carried out to sea.
Yes, it turns out,
the open, completely honest relationship
may be as much of a myth
as unconditional love itself.
Even one good-size secret, these scientists say,
even an affair that rises and then falls within a few seasons
even this won’t rock the foundation
if the foundation is granite strong.
As she reads, her foot plays with her bag beneath the chair.
She has three cell phones in there
each wiped clean of the blood.
The owners have left the world,
their pain ended,
screams silenced
and much of what they ever were
is now buried within her.
The pack is drying up like a puddle in the heat
and she is as unforgiving and uncaring as the sun.
She is merely killing the spiders
as she always does
whenever she sweeps out the house.
She drives to the ocean with Anthony once a week
they swim and kick high against the waves,
his boyish smile ear to ear as
she hears laughter that’s so loud and full
she doesn’t even recognize it
as her own.
This is love.
And now here in this morning,
this is love.
She looks up at Anthony,
thinking how, if he knew,
if he had any idea,
then the soil of her Eden
would be ripped away
leaving her alone
on this unforgiving rock.
The secret must stay
and—according to the scientists—
the love will live.
The heart is quite comfortable with secrets.
After all, its home is a dark wet place
tucked in among all the other organs
who aren’
t talking either.
She smiles, touches his toe
with hers.
The idle morning trickles on, pages of the paper turn
until a crime scene photo
leaves her thinking about her own recent acts.
They were all so stupid,
these weren’t victims, they were fools.
Why do they go out solo?
Who’s running that damn pack?
Lark would never let his men go out alone
unless it was undercover
but each one she has called has appeared
as lone as a lost lamb.
They think they are strong, after all
they have guns in their pockets,
but bare teeth to an arm slow
a gun’s progress considerably.
Cocky men’s eyes grow bald with fear
when their flesh is torn open
and they face
their weakness.
Tomorrow she knows
the tactics will have to change
her luck has held three times
and as Lark has always said,
luck is stupid as a cow
and as blind as a bat.
What would you do
to protect the love you have?
Would you kill?
Would you hunt to kill?
Would you kill without mercy?
And if you wouldn’t
then how precious is your love?
She comes around the table
and straddles Anthony’s lap,
he laughs, still trying to read his paper as
she smiles and lifts her shirt.
Within a few simple, fevered beats
his lips are tasting the salt of her skin
while she grabs a handful of his hair
and holds him tight.
Later, think later,
for now there is only this moment
his hands, his body
and limbs stretch, muscles expand
as his breathing reaches
deep within her.
The heart is a bloody thing.
VIII
Peabody turns onto the block
ready for another night of the endless stakeout.
Watching the nothing unfold, as his partner used to say.
Twelve slow nights.
He’s about to switch off the ignition when he sees the dog
trotting down the street
cock of the walk, so self-assured.
It looks like the one back at Calley’s.
Peabody coasts just behind,
ready to throw the beast in the back of the car
drive it to animal control
and wait to see who shows up.
Suddenly the dog stops
looks back over its shoulder