Hours later, Erik Estrada arrived with entourage in tow, a collection of guys in Hawaiian shirts and sandals. Despite his age, the wrinkles about his eyes could not be seen in this light, nor could you notice his sagging midsection. If only the same could be said for me.  

Bob was on his back in the sand, holding a balled-up neckerchief and applying pressure to the gunshot wound below his left hip. We kneeled around him. Keisha pulled out a flashlight, and Mariah rolled her sleeves up to the elbow. Louis got a needle and thread out of his pack. 

“I know what happens in the next scene Thomas.  And all the other scenes.  They’re just diversions to keep you from thinking about the pointlessness of it all. Like an Anderson movie.  See he gets it, that’s why his movies don’t make any sense, they only make you think they do. “

Our old pals lounged on the bench overlooking the water. It wasn’t hard to tell they were there. The air warped in striations where they were present, like looking at water boil up close. Sometimes, the air took on the colour of soap in a puddle, a psychedelic swirling rainbow. Staring at them for too long was like trying to keep an eyelid open in water. 

Colin Winters didn’t perform badly. This was my second section of composition, and he’d apparently taken in enough to repeat the lesson he’d sat through earlier. I watched from the back of the room as he repeated my words, my hand gestures, the notes I’d written on the board. When Lenin Diaz’s cellphone chirped, as it does at least a couple of times each class, Colin Winters lifted it out of his hand before the kid could answer. 

Davis Octavious and the rest of the crew are throwing me into Mt. Kilauea right before the next eruption.  People say it’s gonna hurt.  I don’t care.  My body, my choice.  I’m kind of into it.  My sister believes in reincarnation.  Maybe I’ll come back as a dinosaur.  

“I don’t know. I’m not everyone.” She shifted and he realized his arm was asleep, tingling dully under her weight. He started to pull it out from under her and he saw the movement made her dissolve in places, gashes of ragged white static spreading across her thigh and shoulder, her neck, the bite marks where she’d been unmade. He resumed his grasp, hoping to undue the damage. 

“I hate this game.” But he stood up and headed for the dance floor anyway. Mercifully, Estelle was already dancing with William Waddell, the English Department’s most recent hire, a specialist in captivity narratives. He moved liquidly through some pelvis-writhing routine. Estelle, by contrast, seemed to be concentrating too hard on looking graceful: she was having difficulty moving her feet, manacled as they were by the stiletto heels.

The night of his discovery, Tooth ran naked as an aphid on a rose bush through our neighborhood. “It’s in the water! It’s in the water!” he shouted, finally giving it a rest at our mailboxes. “We’re percolated, Dunc!” Tooth said as the Krupschanks and Stones gathered around and Virginia Millbauer offered Tooth her robe.

Later, in bed, I think of Harry and the bird on the bluffs. The big creature rises out of its paint job and flies next to the river, casting its red eyes and deer horns over the earth. It follows me and Mitch and Harry and Jess like an officer, its uniform a skin of thick brown scales. A bird like that could swallow our car. It could swoop down and lift us with its talons and take us deep into its world.

Eileen got to the address. She lit up a cigarette and leaned against the side of the building and smoked. She stamped out the cigarette in the gutter, went into the building and told the security guard in the lobby, “I have an audition for a McDonald’s commercial.” 

The conversation carries on while Sue slips headphones over her ears and resumes typing Jim’s endless dictation. As crazy as Jim drives her, she’s half partial to him. Truth is, if Sue left, Jim would retire. She knows it. He does too, but won’t admit it. The man’s just shy of helpless. He’s a fine trial lawyer. Tried over a hundred cases in his time, but the world is changing, and old dogs don’t always follow smoothly.

Johnny canted his neck to the side, then flung his muscled shoulders back, his vertebrae crackling. A black bandana circled his mane of corn-silk hair. He turned to Daniel, a sly, lopsided grin tilting his thin lips. Daniel flinched, retreating a step. He couldn’t believe it. In thirty years, Johnny hadn’t changed, not a wrinkle creasing his boyish face, not a gray hair on his head.      

Your brain can only be Oxygen deprived for so long. I felt like those helpless victims in Jaws. What would be worse? Getting ripped apart by that giant sea monster or not being able to get to the surface for a breath? One time in high school a jock had cold-cocked me upside the head for calling his sister a tramp. Afterwards I couldn’t stand straight or stop the ringing in my ears. This was no different, although that was a smidge more enjoyable.

With matching beards and weight, Fisherman and mom had a special tag-team wrestling clown act. She died. He’s been reduced in stature to a common roustabout. Once a star; he’s no longer billed as The Mad Greek Fisherman.

Within minutes, I discovered the artifact. It was a pistol, mostly intact I assumed. Tarnish and rust flourished upon the graymetal. I held it close to me like a newborn babe whilst scanning the area with my widened eyes. My heart pounded in my chest, awaiting the wayward voice shouting to disarm myself at once; to seize their rightful property from my wavering hands.

Ma Lieberman had been a turning point, not only for the Jew Strangler project, but for Rivka’s mother too. They’d never met, except through Rivka’s anecdotes about one mother to another. Now Rivka’s mother speaks to Rivka again. She serves Rivka’s dinners hot. They eat together. They discuss the Liebermans.

One can’t spend all day gazing up at the living, just as one can’t spend every living day pondering death. So we walk and talk. We share the stories of our lives. We develop friendships. We again pretend that we have infinite time. 

It’s two in the morning and Davie is standing under the bedroom doorway watching his wife sleep. He wants to know what fuels her. There was a time he was so sure of the contents of her soul that he would have wagered anything on it, now he wonders if he’s spent fourteen years chasing unidentified leaks and gaseous fumes.

My smile curls into an unattractive expression, my teeth protruding in the opening between my lips. Luke tugs the ends of his tatty t-shirt and curtsies. The ring stirs a sickening anxiety in the back of my throat, itching away. I down the rest of my pint in one to quell the discomfort.