by Alex Moss
He replaces his sunglasses to hide them.
Stelson continues south down Brighton Street, following Anna. She’s separated herself from him, opting to be alone for now, but okay with Stelson’s close guardianship.
Anna rolls up the sleeves on her hooded top as she slows down from a jogging pace and approaches a man with head bowed and arms crossed, seated in a parked car. She knocks on the car window. She’s got goose-bumps but they’re flared by a little wave of excitement rather than the cooling night air. A passing thought, or idea, that doesn’t actually pass at all. Perhaps an old taste for something edgy. Stelson is right behind, watching her moves, concerned for her. The man is asleep until Anna knocks again and he comes around and winds down his window, looking disoriented and hung over. He glances at Stelson with suspicion.
“What’s this about?” he says.
“You know where the nearest bar is?” Anna asks.
“Is that a question or a statement?” The man rubs his face stubble and snorts the air to wake himself up a little more.
“It’s a bit of both. I can tell you’re trying to sleep it off. When’s your wife expecting you home?” She glances at his wedding band as though it were a weakness.
“Expecting me at all would be a waste of her time. Anyhows, there is a place called Rocky’s on Lincoln parallel to here a block east.”
“Thanks.”
The man looks at Stelson. “Most of the guys in Rocky’s wanna get away from crazy chicks. The last thirty-six hours working on set or editing pornos does that. Happiness is a cold pitcher of beer. That simple. Not sure your girlfriend here will be all that welcome, besides, it’s kinda off the main drag and regulars wanna keep it that way.” He winds up his window and fumbles for his car keys.
“Anna?” Stelson expects a change of heart from her. He’s foolish for doing so.
“I ain’t a main drag kinda girl, so Rocky’s it is.” She runs off. Stelson fulfills his duty of letting her lead him head-long toward trouble.
Rocky’s is uninviting from all angles. Inside it’s low-key and cheap. It’s a dive bar and diner with a pool table. Soft rock music on the jukebox and patrons minding their own business at the bar with one eye on big screen football, the other on the meniscus of their favored liquor; until Anna steps inside ordering a double Jack on the rocks. Eyes shift, patrons look at each other furtively, yet all they do is clear their throat or suck their teeth.
Stelson removes his shades with the aim of distracting the patrons. It has the desired effect, but the shift in mood is now more fearful and foreboding than anything.
Anna drinks the double, licks her lips, and orders another as Stelson sits at the barstool beside her. “Choice of poison is a little obvious,” Stelson says.
“Poison is poison.”
“I thought you were clean?”
“I’m regressing.”
“Victor coulda walked away for good. He chose to come back and support you through this.”
“Are we gonna go on about it?”
Stelson shrugs.
“He only came back cos we’re family. My mother never took his name. Lesko sounded too dirty to her. She was such a two-faced racist bitch.”
“Family is family. That matters.”
“I guess.”
“We need to get back.”
“Relax. Drink. It could be your last.” Anna orders the same poison for Stelson and another for herself.
When the glass slides into his eye line, he catches it. “Victor will be looking for us. We’re on the clock and it’s running down fast.”
“Let it. I like pressure.”
Stelson drinks.
Anna goes all glassy-eyed. “I had this idea that I’d do something crazy like buy some land. Somewhere I can help many people. Build a town and a community with no barriers or bullshit. I want to be a savior to people but I need money to get started. Lots of money. Taking it off some bad people seemed the best way to do it. I hope it works out.”
“We are bad people.”
Anna looks at him and mouths the word ‘we’ in silence.
“Face it, Anna. You sure as hell think I’m a bad egg, but you’re still drawn to my kind. We want the same thing and you know it.” The whisky is starting to walk the talk. He moves closer to her, the badness in him rising.
“I’m not like you,” Anna says.
Stelson is not so sure. He has plenty on his mind. “So tell me what happened after you left me to bleed in that motel room last year? You had this crazy idea to help people, but you left me to fucking bleed at the mercy of those two assholes who now pretend to respect me.”
Anna tries to move away from him but he grips the hand she’s not drinking with. She looks at him and quits her half-assed struggle. “Get over yourself.”
He lets go.
Pretty much every guy in the bar is watching them but pretending not to. The patrons are masters at this. The realness is a novelty, though, and there are some uncomfortable glances at the barman who nods to acknowledge their subliminal protests.
“So you wanna know what happened after it happened? After all the blood.”
“Yes.”
“I ran. It’s what I do best.”
“Ran where?”
“Everywhere. I was never anywhere for more than too long. Always moving.”
“Why?”
“In a city filled with cars, I remained on the edge. I never used its veins. I only ever communicated in old-fashioned ways. I just ran.” Anna trots two fingers along the bar top away from Stelson.
The running digits become her, sometime last year, moving along Santa Monica Boulevard toward Seda’s Printing.
She enters and the pirate-faced man’s one remaining eye lights up and he does his best to neaten his appearance, smoothing his hair and eyebrows and stretching his shoulders back in an attempt to look chiseled. “Welcome back, Miss.”
“Let me ask you about this guy?” asks Stelson. “Did someone take his other eye? Was the other one different? Like mine?” Stelson asks.
Anna nods. She takes another drink.
“He thinks he’s a Saint now.”
“Well that’s what the fool was told. He got sold before he got old.” She’s swaying, enjoying her own foolish moment under the influence.
“Who took his eye?”
“Probably the same people that would take your fine green beauties if given the chance.” She’s embarrassed. That sounded like some sort of compliment about his appearance. She takes another drink. “You got demons, Stelson. N’they are on full display. Should carry a mirror and keep reminding yourself.”
“I don’t need reminding.”
Anna looks at him. The look says nothing but asks for everything and he can’t respond in a way that will appease her. “Do you mind if I just sit in silence for one minute? Then we should move on.”
“Ha ha, you think you’re so smart but I’m the smart one. The stand-out brainchild of all this shit we’re walkin’ into.” She closes her eyes and sways, and glides her hands about like angel wings.
Anna runs up Lexington Avenue with a red shoulder bag on her back. She enters the burnt out house, ducking under black and yellow tape to get inside. If there was anything saved or worth keeping, it’s gone now. All that remains is charred ruins. She enters what was once the kitchen, wooden beams collapsed in obstructive places, and burnt cardboard, paper, and other shavings litter the floor like dirty dead snow.
Anna removes the shoulder bag from her back and gently places it on the floor. She clears some of the black shavings, opens the bag, and delicately pulls out a pure white-feathered bird that could be a dove or a pigeon. It has a scrolled up piece of paper strapped to one of its legs and a small electronic device to the other. She places it down to rest in the space. She then pulls out some packing material from
the bag–strips of old crinkled paper and foam–which she fashions into a make-shift nest.
The bird takes in its surroundings, shuffles about a bit to makes itself comfortable, and then settles, quickly accepting that this burnt out shell is now home.
Anna turns her back on the bird that looks like the only pure and good thing left–white in blackness.
She exits the house, pulls out another sheet of paper, and unfolds it once to reveal the hand-drawn outline of the bird at the center of a color-copied chain of pearls. She pins it to a charred window frame so that it can be seen street-side and runs, strapping the shoulder bag to her back.
“The bird would be collected by the client days later. The poster I pinned up was removed to let me know that the bird had been taken and the message received. I would return to the house at irregular times to see if the pigeon had returned to roost with a response. I always knew that it had flown back from the data on the GPS device strapped to its ankle. Average speeds were always around a hundred. Can’t do that on the ground in LA.”
“That mean you know where they took the bird?”
“Nuh-uh. Device was switched off outbound and they would always launch her from a remote spot someplace in the hills.”
“Where did you get the bird?”
“Seda’s. One-Eyed Jack had a cousin who housed and trained homing pigeons.”
“Musta spent a lot of time gettin’ to know this dude.”
“Yeah he was a little fond of me, I admit.” Anna looks at Stelson in disgust and takes another drink. “You ain’t got a right to be jealous.” She gets up off her bar stool and teeters a bit before stabilizing herself and weaves her way to the restroom that is down a long thin corridor out back.
Eyeballs track her journey.
Stelson just stares into his drink until someone gives him a gentle shove from behind. Stelson jolts, flips around, and brings his fists to the fore, ready to fend off the assumed aggressor.
“Whoa, whoa, easy.” A man with a paunch and a checked lumberjack shirt is in Stelson’s face. He steps back, but still well within range to take a hit to the jaw line. Stelson eyes the dude but cools off, thinking better of it. The bar man is clocking him, also tensed up and ready to leapfrog the bar top.
“That girl you’re with,” the man says, “I seen her on TV. I watch lotsa sports. She’s an athlete, right? She runs very fast. Graceful.”
“So what about her?”
The man shrugs. “I was just curious about what she was doing here, drinking and all. Not so graceful.”
“I guess it’s none of your business, but you are probably right about that. Anything else?”
The man, disgruntled, looks Stelson in the eyes and seems as though he is about to say something but decides against it and turns and heads back to the other side of the pool table where his half-eaten burger awaits.
Stelson looks around the bar, perhaps expecting Anna to be back by now. He double-takes an empty stool and unattended bottle of Bud with its label nervously nailed to shreds further along the bar. He considers it and then marches toward the restrooms.
He enters the Men’s.
“Hello?”
He checks the stalls–all unoccupied. Exits fast and charges straight into the Ladies’.
There are murmurings from one of the stalls. A struggle. Stelson kicks the door open. It half-opens and thwacks into the back of the greasy-haired shit-bag who has one hand over Anna’s mouth and the other fumbling around her bottom half.
Anna’s on high alert.
Stelson reaches around the door, grabs the shit-bag, and pulls him backwards off Anna.
“Get him away from me,” Anna whimpers. She’s shocked and buckles at the knees, collapsing to the floor. Only one side of her body in plain view as the confinement prevents the door from opening, obstructed by the shit-bag who does not relent.
Stelson has to grapple and punch and scratch to stop this scum-filled maggot from bearing down on her any more.
“Your girlfriend is a filthy whore,” the maggot screeches, which just makes things worse for him. Stelson is able to drag him from underneath the stall door like pulling ground beef through a meat grinder. The maggot’s out onto the floor of the restroom.
Stelson punches his face in with zero hesitation. He keeps going at it until the maggot starts puffing up with blood, oozing from the nose and corners of his mouth, a gradual but horrifying transformation where the victim’s facial features don’t morph but adjust in abrupt time-sliced stages.
Anna can now see Stelson in action.
She’s frozen, pushed back against the latrine, knees to chest and she gazes at Stelson’s violence in complete fascination. It takes a while before she has the nerve and inkling to stop him.
This command takes a while to process, probably with intention. Stelson keeps whacking the guy for a few more long seconds before he takes his last punch and looks at Anna, but by this time it’s too late. She’s climbed to her feet and turned her attention to leaving the building post-haste. Stelson is pinning the guy to the ground still, his hands all bloody, and he looks embarrassed as though he had been caught playing with himself in a public place.
“Anna. Wait.”
But she’s gone.
The maggot ain’t wriggling so he flicks him off, stands up, and looks at his hands and steps over the body to wash them in the sink. He’s quick about it. He needs to go after her so that he can explain the violence.
Stelson storms through the bar. He still has blood on his hands but no one notices. Once outside, he turns his head left and right to scope out the outline of Anna’s departing figure. His eye-sight is second to none. He latches onto the faint dark blob, bobbing along south down Lincoln all the way across Empire Avenue and he goes after her.
Once the white and blue-streaked bi-level Metrolink train has passed, Anna climbs onto the rail track and follows it, heading west along the Ventura County Line. Other streaks of light go this way–the jet plane above her and the red tail-lights of vehicles in the distance, all converging on a pot of golden light that is the phosphorescent glow of an airport at night.
Anna runs along the center of the track. The alcohol in her blood compromises her grace and stride so she stumbles on some of the sleepers. There are moments when she senses Stelson’s follow and stops to search for him in the distance but she can’t see a thing. He remains out of sight and she hates that he has the talent to do that.
He can see her but she can’t see him.
All she can do is run from the inevitable.
She’s running parallel to the cars now and there is more light on the track up ahead.
A station for the Metrolink stop at Bob Hope Airport.
She steps onto the platform and sits on a bench underneath the shelter like a regular passenger waiting for a train. She is alone for now, but that soon changes. Her goose-bumps return as she sobers in the cool night air.
Stelson watches her from a dark patch for at least ten minutes and then uses the distraction of a low flying jet landing at Bob Hope to creep up on her from behind.
He says, “Excuse me, Miss,” and taps her on the shoulder like any stranger trying to bum a smoke would, given the chance to talk to a pretty girl lost in thought. He doesn’t want to frighten her. He wants her to stay calm and rational so that they can talk.
“If it wasn’t for you I’d never have killed that man.”
“Huh? It was me. I did it. You just saw me do it,” Stelson confirms, as though credit was about to be taken away from him.
Anna says. “I mean the man in my house. The feel of the knife in his stomach.”
This catches Stelson off guard.
“I cut his stomach open and then set fire to the house with him inside. How could I do such a horrific thing?” She’s having a crisis moment and it seems out of character for Anna to s
elf-analyze.
“He woulda killed you.”
“Doesn’t make it right.”
“So who wants to be dead, right?”
“That’s not funny.”
“I’m not laughing. Sometimes we gotta do different things to survive in this world. Sometimes bad, sometimes good.”
“Is the man at the bar still alive?”
“He was no man. Do you wish that upon him?”
“What?”
“Life.”
Anna thinks for a moment.
“Would you rather be some kinda Saint and go back to clear up the mess I made?”
“He was going to rape me.”
“I would rather go to hell than let him carry on with his life as normal. I think my demons make me stronger, Anna. More likely to survive in this world.”
“Selfish asshole.”
“Yeah, I guess I am.” Stelson walks off and exits the Metrolink station.
After a while, Anna actually follows him for the first time since they met. Stelson smiles as they make their way back to the warehouse unit, together and hand in hand.
“Where the hell have you been?” Victor peers around the side door entrance to the unit like a disgruntled Dad on prom night. “You been drinking? You know I hate that and what it did to our family.” He drags Anna inside, Stelson tailgating her. The door closes behind them. It’s dark.
“We are back on, Victor. Everything is cool,” Stelson says, trying to appease him.
“This doesn’t seem that cool.” He shoves Anna toward her booth and bunk. “Get some sleep. We have lots of work to do in the morning.” Victor turns to Stelson. “What happened to your hands? Noticed them on the way in.”
Stelson holds them up to his face. They are swollen with some darks flecks spattered across palms and backs. “It’s nothing.”
Victor doesn’t say a word. His face remains blank. “This ain’t going to come back around and bite us in the ass later on, son?”
Stelson shakes his head.
“From now on you keep her away from bars and liquor.”
Stelson nods. Victor holds out his hand to shake on it. Stelson reluctantly accepts as Victor grips tight enough to exacerbate the swelling and make his eyes weep. “Looks like we understand each other then,” says Victor, and he retracts his hand and turns away toward his bunk.