Remember the Future

by

Bryant Delafosse

Copyright 2016 by Bryant Delafosse

All rights reserved.

Electronic edition: January 2016

Published in the United States of America

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events of locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental

PRELUDE:

Maddy awoke with a disjointed recollection of a dream--one so vivid that she was unable to rid herself of its echo, even after the sun broke.  She would later recall this as the moment her life changed forever, though she couldn’t have known it at the time.

In the dream, she approached the scene of an accident, the lights of the emergency vehicles casting carnival-like lights on the surface of the road, wet from an early morning rain.  A dread slowly built inside her, along with a crystal clarity that someone she cared about was in the direct center of that carnage.  No, not just cared about.  This individual was the center of her existence.

She walked toward the anxious emergency personnel yelling orders to each other and knew the hopeless feeling that with each step she was leaving her former life behind and walking into the darkness of an uncertain future.  She knew that the coming moment would set her adrift completely alone without her rock--the one thing that anchored her to this world.

When she finally awoke, it was with a cold emptiness that elicited uncontrollable shudders for the next half hour, no matter how many blankets she huddled beneath.  It was a psychological permanence that shook her to the core of her being.

Yet she knew that the dream wasn’t her own.  It wasn’t a dream at all, for that matter.

It was a memory that belonged to someone else.

She had never loved anyone like the holder of this memory had loved the victim of the accident.  Of course, she had loved and lusted but never shared a reciprocated love like the one she had only glimpsed in the nightmare.

It was a vision, she knew.  A night terror borrowed from another.

But who was this other person?

More importantly, what made this other person so special that she felt their pain before actually having the pleasure of making their acquaintance?

I.

HOUSTON, TEXAS

1

Grant sat behind the wheel of his dented white 1995 Toyota Corolla and tried to come to some sort of peace with the fact that he was about to die.

He held no romantic illusions about his life.  He was a working class man in the fourth largest city in the United States and was paid fairly well in a high stress profession.

He had been given a deadline one year ago to come up with a particularly large amount of money—a sum that had required him to liquidate the last of his resources (including his life insurance policy), sell his house, work every extra overtime hour he could manage, and otherwise, live his life on a shoestring budget.  He had even cut his food intake, sustaining himself, it seemed, on stress alone at times and moving through the motions of the drudgery of his life on sheer momentum.  At one point, he had become so gaunt that the Safety representative at work asked him if he needed any time off for health reasons, all the while carefully circumnavigating the dreaded “C” word.

After that confrontation, Grant had finally taken a good look at himself in the solitary mirror he owned in the one bedroom apartment down the street from Bush International Airport and found looking back at him a pair of bulging eyes in a malnourished face with the same ebbing light he glimpsed in the starving children from the commercials on late night TV for non-profit organizations overseas.

The company doctor that he had been obligated to see told him that if he did not start eating, he would be dead inside of a year.

Not yet, Grant told himself.  Not until after I’ve paid off what she had borrowed.

Paying his debt to the hoodlum Arturo Torres had become his only reason for existence, as if by successfully accomplishing it he would somehow rid him of the guilt that had plagued him for the last year.  Now with the end in sight, he felt that he had barely enough strength left to thrust his body across the finish line.

Grabbing the brown paper sack from the passenger seat, he shoved the driver’s door open and instinctively reached for the key in the ignition.  He stopped in mid-motion, gave a single dark snort at himself as he realized that this was, in all probability, a one-way trip, and left the keys behind in the unlocked car.

The single arc light atop a pole in the distance gave the empty parking light the grey pallor of a barren moonscape.  Nothing but dust and vacuum.

Grant felt momentarily giddy with excitement.

This is the end, he knew.  A rush of adrenaline fueled his advance to the solitary building, an automotive paint and body shop, and the single man standing outside smoking a cigarette.  It felt to him as if he were falling from a great height.

The waiting dark-eyed man squinted at Grant from beneath the awning of the door, casting him in shadow.  Wearing a dark leather jacket, the man seemed to almost completely disappear when he stepped out of the light.

Nice jacket, Grant thought randomly.  Looks expensive.

Grant instantly felt the firm reality of earth beneath his feet again.

“You’re not thinking of trying something funny, are you?”

Grant shook his head, not quite registering the reality of what he had been asked.

“Then what’s with that dumb-ass grin on your face?”

“Let’s just get this over with,” Grant replied dully, consciously reapplying the familiar grim expression he was accustomed to wearing.

The man snatched the bag out of his hand and gauged the weight.  Finally, he tossed the cigarette he’d been smoking to his feet and pushed the door open at his back, giving Grant a single finger snap to follow as he backed inside.

Grant started forward, taking the briefest of moments to find the discarded cigarette and grind it out with the toe of his shoe.

They entered a large mazelike office hallway and followed the distant high-pitched sound of lug nuts being removed.

“My name is Grant Frederickson.”

“I know who you are,” the swarthy-skinned man replied indifferently.

He entered a code on a door at the far end of the hall and entered a large garage filled with expensive European cars: Mercedes, Lamborghini, BMW, Ferrari.  There were ten or fifteen men hard at work removing and replacing large pieces of various cars.  Far in the back inside of a clear plastic tent, several men were taping up portions of a futuristic sports car that Grant didn’t recognize in preparation to painting.

Like a prod in the back with a sharp instrument, Grant realized that he had been allowed into a working chop shop.  On the heels of this, he concluded that there could only be one reason why he had been freely given this address—a single smoky grey business card with elegant black lettering left atop his answering machine--and allowed to see the on-going illegal activity of a man to whom he owed money.

As if reading Grant’s mind, his dark-eyed escort stared significantly at him just outside a large office door as if to ask the rhetorical question: “You getting a good look, Frederickson?”

Grant gave a single nod to the man as he entered a code into another keypad, pushed open the door and led him through a large office just big enough to act as a noise buffer to the second office within.  Half a dozen grim-faced men looked up from their various duties—one actually cleaning a handgun in the middle of a full bar.  Several grunts affirmed that the man who entered had been expected.  One reached out and rapped hairy knuckles on the single door set into the far wall.

“What?” a voice bellowed.

“S’Rudy!” hairy knuckles answered.

Moments later, a professionally dressed female opened the door, a Chihuahua squeezing around her tiny ankles leading to athletically-shaped legs.  She traded a quick but significant look with the man named Rudy and stepped outside the inner office, brushing ever so-slightly against the man as he held the door open.

Grant hesitated the briefest of moments before accepting his fate and stepping over the threshold.

Arturo Torres reclined behind his boat-like desk as comfortably as a five-foot five, three-hundred pound man could.  A fat cigar smoldered in an ashtray the size of a pitbull’s water dish.

“Rudy says you have my money,” Torres grunted.

The other man appeared at his boss’s side and set the bag on the desk.  The obese man snatched up the bag and upended it across his desk without looking down.  Cash in various denominations were rubber-banded in twenty separate bundles.

“How much?” he asked Grant.

“Every dollar that she borrowed from you.”

“There’s still the matter of interest.”

“I figure that money and my wife’s blood should settle things.”

Several men appeared from opposite sides of the room as if materializing from the architecture.  Rudy narrowed a look at Grant.

An amused smile appeared on Torres’ face.  “Oh, is that what you figure?”

Grant held his tongue, simply returning Torres’ look.  He felt suddenly as if he were watching the scene remotely and safely from a great distance, amazed and intrigued by what the tiny lone man that looked a lot like him was doing in this din of evil men.

Torres’ smile faded and he looked over at one of the men standing alert in the shadows.  “Al, you know shit about what Frederickson is talking about?”

“No, sir, boss,” a gruff voice answered.

“You, Phil?”

“No sir,” came the chorus.

“Well, we don’t know anything about all that, Grant,” Torres continued.  “That is a pretty bold accusation considering that you were the one who requested my services to begin with.”

“My wife was a smart woman who made a dumb mistake,” Grant replied, feeling emotion trying to rattle his steady voice and rejecting it.  “As I explained before, the deal she made was without my knowledge and out of love for me.”

“If you ask me who was at fault, I’d say it was you, Grant,” Torres snapped, clipping off the last of Grant’s declaration.  “You were the weak one.”

Grant stiffened.  The feeling returned all at once to his legs and the weight of reality made them wobble.

“Well, this is a healthy start, but it doesn’t balance our books.  There was a good bit of interest on your loan.”

Torres reached out retrieved the cigar from its tray--like a cannon from its mount--and took a long relaxing puff.   “Seeing as how you’ve seen our facilities and you’ve got no way to pay us back, I’ve really only got one option here.  A business arrangement that will square us up.”

Torres slid the top drawer of his desk open and retrieved a small tightly wrapped package and tossed it across the desk toward Grant.  “You deliver this for me to the address Rudy gives you, Frederickson then we’ll talk again.”

Grant looked down at the package and felt a smile appear like a gag reflex, completely impossible to contain.  He heard himself snort derisively and saw the men bristle as if provoked.

“That cash on your desk is all you'll ever get from me,” Grant heard himself say.  “I can give no more than what you've taken from me. If that's not enough, then I give you permission to kill me.”

For a moment, the room was a windless desert.  Even the garage seemed to be observing a moment of reverential silence.

“Permission?” The word in question seemed to float like a balloon out of the mass of confused expressions.  It took Grant a moment before he realized that it was Torres who had uttered it.

Then the big man was on his feet, moving more quickly than a three-hundred pound man had a right to and snapped his sausage-like fingers at Rudy.  “Get him out of my sight.”

But Rudy was frozen.  His dark eyes seemed transfixed at the scrawny man standing before the grand oaken desk as if trying to solve a puzzle.

“Now!” Torres commanded in a loud voice, and one of the men leapt from the shadows just before Rudy himself began to move.

Grant took a deep breath and steeled himself for the killing blow, expecting either the deafening crack of a handgun or the excruciating intrusion of a blade.

Instead he felt himself flying back through the garage and the maze of hallways as if rewinding a recorded image back to its beginning.  The only pain he felt at all really was the pinch of rough hands at the scruff of his neck and pressure of the waistband of his pants on his belly.  Suddenly, he found himself sailing through the air and colliding roughly with the pavement of the parking lot.

He rolled over and looked up at the dark-eyes of Rudy standing in the doorway of the building along with a second much-larger man, who turned his back without interest back to the shop.

“So, are we good?” Grant asked, finding--against his better nature--a smirk blooming on his face.

Glaring down at him for a moment, Rudy finally withdrew into the building and slammed the door behind him.

Grant took a moment to gather his weak legs beneath him and rise.  Dusting himself off, he cast a single look back at the closed door and wondered if the door would open again after his back was turned.  He certainly didn’t want to get it in the back.  He was still enough of a man to want to meet death face-to-face.

Finally, he climbed back into the driver’s seat of his car to find the keys awaiting him in the ignition.  He sat in silence, grasping the steering wheel and trying to get his shaking hands under control. Shutting his eyes, he took a long ragged breath and slowly released it.

He could hear the beat of his heart in his ears and knew that he was still among the living.

Finally, he cranked the engine and left the parking lot, wondering what to do for dinner since he hadn’t made any future plans.

2

A plane roared overhead as Grant opened the door to his apartment.  Even if it had not already been broken, he would not have bothered to secure the lock.

The room was as he had left it--in complete shambles.  Drawers overturned.  Dishes broken.  Mattress and pillows ripped to ribbons.  Cheap foam drifted across the pealing linoleum floor in the gentle night breeze.

About the only thing still operational was the answering machine upon which the destruction crew had left their calling card.

He wondered how they could be so sure that he wouldn’t go to the police first with the address on the card.  They were used to dealing with the scared and cowardly, he knew.  Perhaps it had never occurred to them that he would ever do otherwise.

“I saw them, Mr. Fred.”

Grant jumped and spun around.

A bony seven-year-old boy stood bare-chested behind him on the second floor landing.

“Justin, what the..?  What are you doing up at this hour?” Grant snapped, feeling more angry at being spooked than anything else.  He checked his watch.  It was a quarter to midnight.

“You seen my mama?”

Grant made a face of frustration and scanned the horizon.  From his height on the second floor, he could see a generous-sized woman waddling down the street leading from the liquor store a block away.

“Looks like she went to get cigarettes again,” Grant told him with a heavy sigh.  He considered calling child protective services again, then remembered that the lines on his phone had been severed.

“They was white,” the little boy declared, stepping up to inspect the interior of the trashed apartment.  “Just didn’t want you to go blaming the wrong folks, s’all.”  He kicked an open Doritos bag gently with his bare dirty foot.  “Looks like they got into your food, too.”

“Here, you can help me out by taking some of this.”  Grant retrieved a cereal bar from the floor and handed it to Justin.  “Just don’t tell your mom I gave you that,” Grant told him, pointing out the woman as she took a seat on one of the deck chairs below in the pool area.  She lit up, oblivious to her seven-year-old waiting for her above.

Glancing down, Justin had snatched up the bar and had already consumed half if it before Grant could say a word.

“Easy there.”

Giving one last wave, Justin scrambled back to his unit next door.  “Thanks, Mr. Fred,” he hissed in that loud projecting whisper of his, before disappearing inside.

Grant sighed again and stepped inside, shutting the door behind him.  Spray-painted above on the inside wall in bright yellow paint were the words: “TIME TO PAY!”

He withdrew to the remains of his bed and reached into nightstand to find the only object left seemingly untouched, a black-leather Bible.  Opening the book to Revelations, Grant gazed down at a single photograph of a smiling dark-haired woman in her early thirties.  Giving a long hitching sigh, he traced the face in the photo with his index finger before placing it securely in the chest pocket of his shirt.

“I’ll clean this up, hon,” he whispered.  “Don’t you worry.  I’ll clean it all up for you.”

3

Maddy studied the out-going flight monitor and waited for inspiration.

“Do yourself a favor and forget about the blue chip stocks.”

She glanced at the young, suited man on his cell phone that appeared beside her, the single well-used suitcase resting beside him.  The ever present anxiety of being followed slowly subsided as she took his measure and determined that he was not a threat.

Just before returning her eyes to the monitor, she took a look at the mirrored wall to her left.  Tightly gripping a small satchel colored blue with bright yellow daisies and wearing clothing chosen for comfort rather than style, the twenty-five-year-old must have appeared to be either someone waiting on a traveler with which she was only reasonably acquainted or someone taking a short trip and therefore traveling light.

“They’re high dollar and don’t present the kinds of quick returns you’re looking for.  Trust me on this,” the young professional continued, giving her a quick look then returning to let his eyes to linger.

Maddy stepped casually over to another monitor and put some distance between them.

Finally ending his phone conversation, the man stepped closer to Maddy.  “So which lucky destination will be graced with your presence?”

Maddy leaned over conspiratorially.

The young man eagerly lowered himself closer to the red hair that framed Maddy’s face. “Between you and me, I’m a nurse waiting to intercept an Ebola patient being escorted from Zaire.”  She gave him a serious look and held a single finger to her lips.

The man straightened up and studied Maddy.  Finally, he gave her an uncertain smile and began to chuckle weakly.  “Oh, she’s got a sense of humor,” he replied, building his confidence back.  “I like that.”

Maddy ignored him and continued to allow her eyes to touch each destination one after the other, waiting patiently for something.  Anything.

“I’m headed to a world trade conference on the west coast.”

“Already been west,” she replied disinterested, taking another step away from him.

“So where are you headed again?”

“I don’t know yet.”

He assessed her, made a determination, and seemed even more intrigued because of the challenge she presented.  “Buy you a drink while we’re waiting?”

For a moment, Maddy considered.

Was this something she was meant to do?  Perhaps this random meeting led to something else.  Something more significant.

She was on the cusp of accepting his invitation—after all, what’s the worst that could happen?  Boring conversation?  This line of thought was interrupted by something more definite.  A sensation more familiar.

Maddy stiffened suddenly and slowly looked over her shoulder.

Grant Frederickson strode casually past, his eyes at his feet tracking only the immediate path before him, seemingly oblivious to everything and everyone else surrounding him.

Turning her back to the suited man, Maddy watched Grant with interest as he continued across the airport to an elevator.

“Sorry, I have to pass on that drink.  I just remembered that I have a job interview,” Maddy answered.

“Really?” the suit replied with a bitter smile.  “At least the Ebola brush-off was original.”

After the elevator door closed on Grant, Maddy turned back to the suited man.  “Y’know, I could have had a drink with you.  We might have filled up on Spinach Artichoke dip at Polly Bar and Grill’s, had a few too many Long Islands and you might have started to tell me about your girlfriend Valerie. How she wants to get married and you don't.”

Joe College took an uncertain step backward, eyes widening slightly.

“Maybe you should be telling her these things and not a total stranger in an airport. You think?”

Maddy turned her back on the departing flights monitor, confident in her new found knowledge that she had not been meant to take a flight out of Bush International Airport as she had first thought. She had been meant to make a connection of a different sort.

Now she had the “where” and the “who.” As to the manner of “how,” she knew from experience, the details would become clear to her if she only practiced patience.

Ten minutes later, she stood outside the small coffee shop that she had only half-noticed on the way into the airport that morning just as an elderly waitress with a jacket over her uniform rushed past her in an angry huff.

“And for that matter, you can tell that asshole of a cook that he needs to work on his interpersonal skills, too,” the waitress exclaimed.

Ignoring the looks of the shocked customers, Maddy strode right up to the well-dressed woman behind the register.  “I’m looking for work.”

The woman stared at the retreating back of the elderly waitress then studied Maddy in disbelief.  “You’re kidding me, right?”

4

Leslie elbowed Sharon and nodded in the direction of the man in his mid-thirties sitting alone on the backseat of the tram.  “Isn’t that your friend from the tower?”

Sharon nodded, took Leslie by the arm and edged across the tram to stand beside him, waiting for him to notice and offer her a seat.  Unfortunately, the man stared glassily out the window, eying the oppressive view of the grim grey walls surrounding their car.

The guy was certainly an odd one, Sharon thought, not for the first time.

“Looks like you like Italian as well,” she said, prodding the take-out bag of Sbarro’s at Grant’s feet with the toe of one of her heels.

Finally coming out of his reverie, Grant gave her an almost apologetic smile.  “Yeah, it’s a little expensive, I know.  I normally bring my lunch, but I… kinda got off my schedule this morning.”

“It’s okay to indulge every now and again, right?” Leslie said cheerily.

“Oh, Grant, this is my friend Leslie Conners.”

The younger of the two women took the available seat next to Grant and held out her hand.  Grant shook it shyly and gave her a very brief moment of eye contact but said nothing.

Leslie glanced away and blinked up at her friend with a look of awkwardness.  Sharon finally found a seat on the opposite side of Grant.

“By the way, those backstreet shortcuts you gave me really cut my husband's commute in half,” Sharon told Grant.  “How do you do it?  Were you a bike courier or something?”

“I have a pizza delivery job on the side to make ends meet.”

Both Sharon and Leslie tittered at the obvious joke.

Grant blinked at them expressionlessly.  “I-I really did actually.”

“Oh, wow, you’re a workaholic, huh?  And what a far cry from what you do at your day job,” Sharon exclaimed, turning to Leslie.  “Grant works as an air traffic controller in the tower.”

“Wow, that’s impressive,” Leslie replied.  “That must be how you come by that talent for directions, I guess.”

Grant shrugged.  “I'm like a savant when it comes to getting around this city, but take me outside of Houston and I'm clueless.”

The women laughed politely but Grant continued to look embarrassed.

The tram stopped, an automated voice announcing the stop.  Grant rose and the women followed suit.

“Excuse me,” he said as he stepped from the tram.

The women’s smiles ebbed slightly as they returned to their seats.

“Kinda of cold fish, isn’t he?”

“He’s just one of those quiet types,” Sharon responded.  “That may have been the longest conversation I’ve ever had with the man.”

Sharon raised a hand to him outside as the tram started to move again.  “Heard he’s a widower.”

“Oh, my,” Leslie exclaimed.  Then after a moment’s thought, she scooted forward on her seat toward Sharon and asked, “So, he’s available then?”

5

Grant stepped into an office tucked into the corner of a bustling air traffic control tower and knocked on the open door.

Standing in the corner of his office in front of an open filing cabinet, Preston Mann, a large suited man, motioned Grant inside.  In a mirror attached to the front of the top drawer, he struggled to remove his knotted tie with one hand, cell phone pressed to his ear with the other, resorting finally to holding the phone between one broad shoulder and ear.

“The wife has me on hold.”  He gave a little shake of his head and nearly lost the phone.

“Simmons said you wanted to see me before I sat down.”

“You’re subbing for Lewis, right?”

“Yes sir,” Grant answered, glancing at his watch.

“I’m afraid I had to let Jordan take that shift.”  He motioned for Grant to sit, but Grant remained standing.

“Sorry, sir.  I’m not sure I understand,” Grant responded in confusion.

Making a face of frustration, Mann tossed the cell phone to his desk and finally managed to remove his tie successfully.  “I also wanted to talk to you about your vacation schedule.”

“I’m not scheduled for a vacation.”

“You are now,” Mann stated bluntly, casually tossing his tie across the room into the open cabinet drawer.

Grant opened his mouth to express confusion when a tiny voice called out from the cell phone lying atop the desk.

Mann spun around and scooped up the phone from the desk.

“Don’t worry about a thing,” he spoke into the phone.  “I’m leaving right now.  No-no, I don’t have time to…”  Collapsing into the seat behind his desk, Mann shut his eyes and gritted his teeth.  He motioned for Grant to sit opposite him and lowered the phone to review some information on its screen.

Grant tentatively took a seat at the desk, glancing at his watch.

“They tell me that lately you’ve been cashing your hours out and covering some of the other guy’s shifts as well as working your normal hours.”  Mann gave a weak chuckle and glanced up at Grant with a troubled expression.  “Wish I’d heard about it earlier so I could have advised you against it.  Sometimes being the boss only assures that you’re out of the loop.”

“I’m not sure I’m following you, sir.”

A different tiny voice spoke from the phone and Mann held it up to his ear again.  “Hey, honey.  Yes, daddy will be home soon, okay?  Put mama back… that’s right, I will… put mama back on the phone.  Okay.  Love you too, kiddo.”

Preston shuffled his phone aside and cocked a brow at Grant, checking the other man for a reaction.  Grant pretended to notice something going on outside the tower.

“I’m taking the family on vacation to Disneyworld in Florida for two weeks,” he said as way of explanation, then suddenly looked guilty.  He cleared his throat and attempted to start again with more authority.  “Listen, FAA regulations stipulate that all traffic workers adhere to the required vacation schedule.  Since you haven’t chosen a time, they chose one for you.  Your forced vacation starts Saturday.”

Preston struggled out of his suit jacket and tossed it on a hook beside the cabinet.

“Forced vacation?” Grant protested.  “But I need to work, Preston.  I need those hours.  My record is as clean as a whistle.”

“And we want to keep it that way.  You know that they’ve been scrutinizing us lately.”

A tiny voice erupted from somewhere in the office.  Mann looked around the desk in confusion.  Grant pointed to his jacket hanging on the wall.

Mann leaned over and grabbed the phone out of his jacket pocket.  “Yeah, I’m here,” he grunted.  “Right, got it!  I’m gone.  Love you too.”  Mann rose abruptly.  “The FAA basically told me to restrict your presence from the tower for three days.”

“Thing is, I need the money,” Grant told him, all the enthusiasm leeched from his voice.  He knew that he had sounded this alarm so many times before that even he was tired of hearing it.  But this time, he had given literally everything to Torres with the expectation that he may not see the light of a new day.

Plans had changed, it seemed.

Mann started for the door then turned back when he noticed that Grant was still seated.

“Listen, Grant, I know you’ve had some tragedies.  If anyone should have a little time off, it’s you, man,” he said in a low voice, then cleared his throat.  “For Pete’s sake, Frederickson, it’s a three measly days.”

“I’ve made a substantial investment that didn’t go the way I wanted,” Grant found himself lying, his back to his boss.  He felt like dirt the moment it was out of his mouth.  Preston Mann was a decent boss and a good man.  He deserved better than to be lied to, but under the circumstances, Grant saw no way around it.  The truth was an opera that no one outside of the local asylum would believe.

“Look, I’m sorry, but the Feds make the rules and we have to abide by them.  This thing is non-negotiable.”  Preston stood at the door anxiously staring back at Grant.  “Look, we can talk more about this when I get back here in a week, okay?”

Preston flipped out the light in the office, leaving Grant alone and slouching in the chair.  After a moment, he glanced at his watch, started to leap up, then fell lifelessly back into the chair.  He pounded the armrest of the chair and cursed under his breath.

6

Grant dragged himself back through the airport, his head down and shoulders slumped.

“Hard day?”

Grant stopped and glanced back at the dark-jacketed man leaning casually against the railing of the airport concourse, while passengers dashed by anxiously all around him.  He lowered his head again and gave the man a single frustrating shake.

“Looks like you need a pick-me-up.  Let’s you and me have a coffee,” Rudy said, taking him casually by the arm.

Grant instinctively brushed his hand away—like a fly from his skin--but fell into step beside him.

Minutes later, Rudy was sliding into a booth of the small coffee shop just inside the entrance to the airport.  After a moment, Grant followed suit opposite him.

“Do you really expect to intimidate me?” Grant said through gritted teeth.  “You people have taken everything that matters to me in this world.  I no longer have anything worth losing.”

Wearing a moist apron over her wrinkled clothes, Maddy materialized at the table, set two mugs down and began to pour coffee from a fresh pot, her ever-present blue satchel swinging from the crook of her arm.

Rudy and Grant stared blankly at her.

“Didn’t I ask?  Sorry.  I’m new here.”

“That is the best customer service I’ve ever seen,” Grant commented flatly, taking his mug in his hands but keeping his eyes on Rudy.

“Thanks,” Maddy chirped, her attention fully on Grant.

After a few awkward moments, Rudy sighed heavily and focused his hard eyes onto her.

“If you need anything else, just let me know,” she said cheerily, pointing up at the nametag with the coffee shop’s logo perched on her chest.  “My name is Maddy.”

“Thank you, Maddy,” Grant replied, glancing up.

Maddy locked eyes with Grant and for a moment Grant felt a subtle confusion.  She was acting as if she recognized him and expected him to recognize her.  Finally, Grant dropped his eyes with embarrassment back to his coffee and Maddy backed away from the table, running into an empty chair behind her.

Rudy looked from Maddy to Grant.  “Friend of yours?”

Grant started to shake his head then glared at the other man.  “Weren’t you here to threaten me or something?”

Rudy stared evenly at Grant, then slowly reached into his fashionable jacket and pulled out a familiar small package.  He placed it on the table between them.

Grant stared down.  “I thought I made myself clear.”

Rudy shrugged.  “You don’t have the money.  Apparently this is the only other option.”

“What is this anyway?” Grant asked, taking the package and flipping it casually over with the distaste of a man kicking over a dry cow paddy.  “Drugs?  Electronics?  Pictures?”

Rudy gave another shrug and smiled.  He took an amiable sip of his coffee and finally commented: “Look, Torres makes the rules and I follow them to the letter without question. It's non-negotiable.”

Grant gave him an ironic snort.  “Y’know, you’re the second one to tell me that today.  I’ve just been put on administrative leave for three weeks.”

“Not my problem.”

“Just a reminder that even if I wanted to pay your boss anything more, I couldn’t.”

“Yeah, I’m afraid the option to pay us is off the table.”  Rudy swept a hand across the table with a dapper little whistle.  He tapped the package with one finger.  “Unless you do this thing for us, you’ll be dead within the next twenty four hours.”

Grant unsuccessfully attempted to resist the urge to swallow back his anxiety.

Rudy stared boldly at him, awaiting a response.

How convenient, Grant considered.  After all, I told him just this morning that the money I had given him was all he would ever see.

Now the rules change again.

But Grant wouldn’t budge.  He was done with the death march.

Willing his shaking hands back under control, Grant reached down and brought the mug to his lips for a quick nervous slurp.  He set the mug down and looked up at the other man.  “How’s it going to happen?” he managed.  “Will it be you, Rudy?”

Rudy flinched slightly, broke into a smile and sat casually back in the booth with a forced chuckle.  “You are one morbid son-of-a-bitch, Frederickson.  You know that?”

“Y’see, I understand the concept of a debt,” Grant said, leaning forward almost aggressively.  “This little thing has nothing at all to do with the money I borrowed.”

“So, how about you tell me what this is all about then?” Rudy replied, leaning forward to meet him.

“I figure if he wanted me dead, he could have done it a year ago and saved me a lot of pain and suffering.  So, this is obviously something else.”  Grant relaxed back against the cushions of the booth.  “What’s your opinion?  What do you think this is about?”

Rudy studied Grant seriously for a moment then turned his attention to his coffee.  He drained half the cup in a single gulp.  “They don’t pay me to speculate.”

“He wants to demoralize me.”  Grant turned his palms up atop the table.  “I’ve nothing left to bargain with but my pride and that’s non-negotiable.”

Rudy took a long hard look at Grant, finished the last of the coffee and removed a bulging leather wallet that matched his jacket exactly, Grant noted.  He turned his side to Grant and silently slipped the package back into his jacket without looking at him.  “So, run,” he murmured under his breath.

Grant frowned.  “What?”

“Look, I don’t care a good goddamn about your soapbox morals.  I’ve got a job and I do it.  You’ve got twenty-four hours, Frederickson,” the other man said sternly, his hard eyes sliding over Grant one last time.  “Choose how you want to spend it.  I don’t give a shit.”

He rose and tossed a couple of wadded bills to the table.  “Enjoy your coffee.”

Rudy started out, revealing Maddy wiping down the table just behind him.  She glanced over her shoulder at Grant.

“Refill?”

“No thank you,” Grant replied, rising and staring down at the two lonely wadded bills on the table slowly opening like dirty flowers.  He sighed and drew his wallet from his pocket.

Maddy sidled closer.  “You have to excuse me, but did that man just threaten you?”

Grant studied her for the first time and finally smiled disarmingly.  The young woman was actually quite striking, he decided.  She didn’t seem to fit this depressing little coffee shop.

Maddy smiled back, the tension on her face lifting somewhat.

Grant chuckled and gave a shake of his head as he removed a single bill from his wallet and slid it across the table, his hand hesitating a moment before releasing it.  “Nah, he was just having fun with me.”  He started away, then paused at Maddy’s side.  Without looking up at her, he murmured, “Don’t ask to see the other player’s cards unless you know the stakes.”

Maddy watched as Grant left the coffee shop.  She turned to the table and gasped at the hundred dollar bill on the table between the two crumbled dollar bills.  Setting her satchel on the table, she unzipped it, revealing the contents, a disorganized pile of multi-denominational cash and tossed the hundred-dollar tip in with the others.

The well-dressed cashier paused just behind her, running a tube of gloss across her lips in the reflection of the mirrored glass over the booth. “How did your first table go?” she asked.

An anxious expression appeared on Maddy’s face as she zipped up the bag.  Tucking the satchel back into the crook of her arm, she slowly untied her apron.  “I’m afraid I have to go now,” she said, sincerely apologetic, handing the cashier her neatly-folded apron.

The woman stared at Maddy in disbelief as she walked out of the empty coffee shop.  “One table?  Seriously?”

7

When Grant arrived at the second floor landing of his apartment, little Justin was sitting out on the front stoop of his apartment under the shelter of the roof, his bare feet dangling out into the pouring rain and scissoring back and forth with the enthusiasm only a seven-year-old could muster.

“Hi Justin,” Grant murmured under his breath.  Oblivious to the current climactic conditions, he was dripping wet, a soggy cigarette dangled from his lips.

Justin clambered up and padded over to Grant.  “Hey, Mr. Fred!  Did those cops ever find out who busted into your place?”

“Oh, they were old friends of mine,” Grant replied.  “Don’t worry about it.  They won’t bother anyone else.”

Justin stared up at the cigarette as Grant opened his unlocked door, a puddle forming on his ratty welcome mat—one which the same “friends” had felt fit to slash into slivers.  “Hey, I didn’t know you smoked too.”

Grant looked down at Justin with confusion before reaching up and retrieving the drooping white stick from his mouth.  “This?  I used to smoke a long, long time ago,” he answered.  “But I quit.”

“Why?”

“Because my wife asked me to.”

Standing at the threshold to his apartment, Grant sighed and turned instead to the railing.  He tossed the cigarette out into the night and held his left hand out into the rain, watching as the rain washed over the band of white gold on his second finger.

“You were married, Mr. Fred?” Justin asked.

“I am.”

“What happened?” Justin asked, taking a position next to Grant at the railing.

“She died.”

“Was it the cancer?”

Grant peered down at Justin.  “What do you know about that?”

“My Paw Paw died from it,” Justin replied.  “He got so tired that mama said that it was better that he just go ahead and went to sleep forever.”

Grant withdrew his hand and shook off the rainwater, bringing it to his breast and buffing the ring against his shirt gently.  “I figure that I was the one who brought the cancer to my wife,” Grant told him.  “I was the weak one.”

Justin seemed to consider this then said, “My MeeMaw says that if you ain’t got the strength to get over the hill, you get trapped in the shadows where the sun can’t find you.  Is that what’s happening to you?”

Grant stared down at Justin, his mind blanking on a sufficient answer.

“Hey, Justin!”  A hefty black woman stood at the door to the apartment next door, her brow knotted in frustration.  “Get yo ass inside fore you catch yo death!”  She gave Grant a glare of warning.

In return, Grant gave her a friendly nod and a slight smile.

She gave him a grunt and disappeared back inside.

“Sounds like your Mee Maw is a very smart woman, Justin.  You listen to her.”

Justin nodded and gave Grant a parting wave before returning to his apartment.

8

A uniformed airport security guard shook Maddy awake in her seat.  “Excuse me, ma’am.”

Maddy, though disoriented from sleep, straightened immediately out of sheer instinct and found the floor with her feet in preparation to flee.

An imposing security guard, with a scowl honed from years of doing the same job well and enjoying the ego boost that came with intimidation, stood over her chair in the terminal.  Just behind her, several airport female workers watched the scene with morbid interest.

“It’s been reported to me that you’ve been asleep here for most of the night and concern has been expressed if perhaps you may have missed your boarding call,” he said flatly as if reading a memorized speech.  “May I please see your ticket, ma’am?”

Maddy patted herself down and rose from her seat, nearly tripping over the satchel at her feet.  She retrieved a mangled ticket from the inside of her wrinkled green jacket.  She slapped it to the security guard’s chest roughly and scanned the airport concourse like a scared animal.  “What time is it?”

“Quarter to six, ma’am.”

“Oh God,” she snapped.  “I never meant to sleep that long.”

The security guard nodded back to the airport workers behind him, as if to say, False alarm, folks.  There will be no bloodletting this morning.

“Yes, ma’am.  This ticket was for last night.  These ladies behind me can help you re-schedule your flight,” the guard said instead, his eyes already scanning the adjacent waiting areas for other possible victims.

“No, that’s okay.  I just need to orient myself first,” Maddy murmured in obvious confusion.  She started away then turned and took the ticket back from the guard as an afterthought.

When she was sure that the guard was out of sight, she tossed the ticket in the nearest trash.  She had purchased the ticket to Dallas-Fort Worth with cash knowing that she would never actually board the plane, but thinking that using her own name might throw them off her trail.  Who knows?  Maybe it had actually bought her some time.

She realized now only in retrospect that she had needed the ticket for that exchange with the security guard.  She had only really sought a public place to stay for the night and the airport was obviously the most convenient.

Stepping to the nearest restroom wash basin, she set the bag on the floor securely beneath her feet and splashed several handfuls of cold water on her tired face.

She silently chastised herself.  Focus!  Wake up!  Remember.  White Toyota.  Dent on left side of rear bumper.  Jazz Fest sticker on back windshield.  Jazz Fest.

“How cool is that, right?”  She looked up suddenly in the mirror, realizing that she had said the last bit out loud.  In the last stall, she saw two dusty sneakers dangling below the door.  Snatching her bag off the floor, she rushed outside.

Maddy lowered her head and marched onward.  She couldn’t afford to jump at shadows.  When the real threat appeared, she had to be prepared to react.  She must trust her instincts and push the fear aside.

Fear equaled sloppy.  Sloppy equaled dead.

9

Inside the busy confines of the Bush International air traffic control tower, men and women sat at rows of stations and advised hundreds of pilots in the skies above Houston, Texas.

Carl Simmons removed his headset as Grant sat down at the board adjacent to his.  “Hey, Frederickson, I heard a rumor you were actually going on an honest-to-goodness vacation.  Is this true?”

“Yeah, I’m afraid so,” Grant replied with an uncertain smile.

“Man, I can’t remember the last time you even missed a day.”

Grant swallowed awkwardly.  “Actually, it’s been about a year.”

Half-listening, Carl rose from his seat and made a quick circular motion above his head.  As he did about ten controllers rose as well from their own stations.  They all turned to Grant, and in unison, clasped their hands together over their respective heads in a show of victory before returning to their seats.

Grant stared in awed confusion and looked at Carl, who chuckled at his reaction.  “Yeah, I know.  Kinda sappy.  We just wanted to let you know how much we appreciate you around here, man.”

Grant smiled at the faces around him and turned with embarrassment back to his station.  “Wow,” he whispered to himself.

“Yeah, well, secretly we’re all jealous and hate you,” Carl snapped with the hint of a smirk, turning back to his own station.  “So, take your time off and don’t leave us holding the bag here for you too long.”

10

When the Blank Men entered Bush International, Maddy sat in one of the automated inter-terminal trains that ran around the clock deep within the bowels of the airport.  She had only meant to ride it once around, but instead found herself there for most of the day falling into the deep meditative state that she had been practicing lately. In this way, she had actually been able to discover the level and section of the garage where the white Toyota with the dented bumper was currently parked.

She had been in this state when the feeling broke through like a pulsing alarm.

Glancing at her watch and finding that nearly two hours had passed, she rose immediately from her seat like a sentry spotting a threat on the horizon, grabbed her bag from the floor, and disembarked at the next stop.

The underground passage below the terminal was narrow and dimly lit, which only added to the claustrophobia.  Glancing back behind, she found both the corridor and the tracks on either side empty.  She had to find a dense crowd and get lost inside, quick.  From experience, she knew that there was safety only in numbers.

She increased her pace until she arrived at the next stairwell and started up to the ground level.

A single man in a grey suit stood alone at the top of the stairs, his back to her.

No, she calmed herself.  She could feel the messiness of his mind.  The conflict.  The confusion.  The anxiety.  This one was clearly a traveler preoccupied with the near future.

She climbed the stairs past him then stopped.

A single non-descript man in what appeared to be a black raincoat stood facing her about fifty yards away at the entrance to the terminal, his face in shadow.

A Blank Man.

No thoughts.  No emotions.

No arc into the future.  No trailing past.

A blank spot on her radar.

Here we go, she told herself, seating herself fully in the reality of the moment--no longer looking to the future or the past.

Maddy turned and started back downstairs, dashing down the narrow corridor in the opposite direction as an automated tram flanked her on one side.  She had to get to the next intersection and get upstairs before the other man.

Too late!

Just ahead, she could see him rushing down the stairs from the level above, the black tail of his raincoat trailing behind him like a dragon’s tail as he headed down toward her.  He had anticipated her direction and was attempting to cut her off.  Now he would expect her to turn back and head in the opposite direction.

She increased her speed instead and blew through the passage between the two sets of steps, committing to take the next available stairwell up to the ground floor of the terminal.

Taking one quick glance behind, she found the suited man stopped in the corridor, speaking into a cell phone.

Making it to the next stairwell, Maddy took the steps two at a time to the terminal above.

She emerged from the lower level and started down the enormous nearly empty concourse that formed a bridge between terminals.  The stark dying rays of the evening sun cast broad lines across the floor from the transparent roof lattice above, drawing long web-like fingers on the floor around her.

Just ahead two pairs of pedestrian platforms moved in opposite directions down either side of the corridor, moving passengers quickly through the length of the long concourse to their destinations.

Feeling suddenly vulnerable, Maddy glanced back behind her and noticed several small groups approaching.

Dropping to one knee and setting her bag down beside her, she pretended to tie her shoe.  She waited until the first group was reasonably close before rising.  Gradually, she slowed her rate until the group had overtaken her then fell into step just behind and slightly ahead of the second group.

The fifty yard long concourse began to fill with people.  She assumed that a plane must have just de-boarded.

Stepping onto the moving platform to her right just behind the large group she was following, Maddy took a moment to discreetly glance over her shoulder.

The Blank Man on the cell phone had emerged from the lower level and had started down the platform about twenty yards behind her, pushing roughly past travelers in his way.

She looked up.  Just ahead, a second suited man waited at the end of the moving platform, cell phone held down beside the long tail of his raincoat like a sidearm.

A second one.

Maddy stopped walking. The man behind her also stopped.

Making eye contact with a random man in military camouflage approaching on the opposite moving platform to her left, Maddy bolted forward again, waving erratically at him.

“Help, sir!  I’m being attacked,” she yelled to him as all surrounding eyes turned in her direction.

The second Blank Man stepped casually onto the opposite platform moving toward her.

Maddy slipped over the short dividing wall between the moving platforms with the help of the confused soldier, then leapt the short outer wall to the solid floor of the concourse and broke into a run toward the entrance to the next terminal.

The two Blank Men continued down the opposite platforms at a casual pace as the soldier and surrounding travelers watched Maddy disappear from view into the crowd ahead.

11

At the end of his shift, Grant walked to the station of everyone he felt he knew reasonably well and shook their hands, saving Carl Simmons at the neighboring station for last.

Giving him a firm handshake, the other man studied Grant’s face with a bemused expression.  “Why do I feel like your retiring instead of just going on vacation?”

Grant tried not to look awkward as he considered.  “You never know,” he responded.  “Maybe I’ll get used to the lifestyle and decide to stay on permanent vacation.”

“What?  Did you go and win the lottery on us?”

Grant gave a dark chuckle.  “I wish,” he replied, thinking instead: If only money could solve this problem.

Carl gave him one last nod then turned back to his station.  “Yeah, if either of us could retire at our age, we’d have done it by now, right?  Have a good time, man!”

Grant started out, taking one last look back before he headed out to the elevator.

12

No one approached Grant in the airport as he made his way to the garage.  Down in the belly of the underground garage, he watched every shadow and listened attentively for footsteps coming from behind in the darkness but no one materialized.

All day, his mind had been replaying one of the last things Rudy had said to him: “You’ve got twenty-four hours, Frederickson.  Choose how you want to spend it.”

He could have spent the day somewhere other than work, but oddly enough, he had still felt a duty to his co-workers and to all the anonymous passengers on all those planes that depended on people like him.

Grant found his Toyota parked in the usual spot, tail-end first in the far right hand row.  He opened the unlocked door and cranked his engine.

The knock on his window brought him to attention.

In that split second, he thought: If this is it, I’m ready to go and I’m going to meet this thing head-on.

Slowly, he turned to look his destiny in the eye.

The girl stood at his passenger side window with a wide-eyed panicky look on her face.  After a moment, she produced a hundred dollar bill and pressed it wordlessly against the window with an open palm.

“Maddy,” he recalled in a murmur.

Grant instantly recognized her from the coffee shop even before she proceeded to press her nametag next to the hundred he had given her.

He had completely forgotten that he had given her the last of his cash.  At the coffee shop after he had done the thing, he had felt instantly free and unburdened, almost as if he had removed the last of the piece of ballast that had kept him from floating away.

In an odd way, seeing his money again brought back the heaviness of reality.  Life and its responsibilities seemed to settle back onto his shoulders like a backpack, and he felt a sudden urge to shake this person off and continue to look for the man who had made a date to kill him.

After a few moments of consideration, Grant leaned over and cranked the window down by hand.

“Hi,” she said, apologetically.  “I saw you get off the elevator and…  I’m having a little trouble and I need a huge favor.”

Just behind her a black Mercedes slid into view and stopped.  The driver watched from the darkness of the cab.

Maddy looked behind her and quickly shuffled into the car seat before Grant had responded.  “Please, I’m being followed.”

The cab light in the Mercedes lit up.  Sitting in the driver’s seat, Rudy nodded across at Grant.

“It’s not you that’s in danger,” Grant told her.

“You don't know me, but I believe I know the kind of man you are. I'm gambling that you would never dismiss a woman in distress. Please.”

Leaving the engine idling, Rudy climbed out of the car.

A non-descript black sedan crept forward between him and Grant's Toyota.

The man behind the wheel gave Rudy a long hard stare as he slowed his car to a stop.

Rudy coolly returned the stare. He reached down into the pocket of his jacket.

The sedan pulled abruptly away.

Rudy’s fingers loosened from around the hidden switchblade in his pocket as he watched the sedan sail down the ramp leading to the exit of the garage.  When he finally looked over to Grant's parking space, he found the Toyota gone.

“Shit!”

13

A thin misty rain had begun to fall as the Toyota pulled to a stop at the airport’s small police substation.

Maddy peered out her window.  “What’s this?”

“Airport police.  You'll be safe here,” Grant replied, glancing into his rear-view mirror.

“No-no-no,” Maddy said, stiffening anxiously.  “Look, I know you think this will help, but you just don't know what these people are capable of.”

“They aren't after you. Trust me when I say...”

The black sedan screeched to a stop just in front of them, effective cutting Grant off.  Grant watched with trepidation as two men in black raincoats emerged from the car.

“Maybe you should just go ahead and get out now,” Grant urged his passenger.

Maddy closed her eyes and lowered her head.

“Are you okay?” Grant asked her.

“First, get the door. Wait.  Wait.”

Grant studied her with steadily growing concern.  “Ma’am, what’s wrong?” he asked.

The taller of two men appeared at Grant's window, motioning for him to lower it.

Grant tried to get a good look at the man’s face, but the rain on his window partnered with the fog on the window from the heat inside the cabin, made it difficult for him to focus.

“These people are not interested in you. Just open the door and go to the police right outside,” Grant attempted to reassure Maddy. “Can you hear me?”

Maddy blindly reached out and put her hand on the handle of her door.  She shook her head twice, then suddenly nodded resolutely.  “Got it!” she snapped, opening her eyes and turning to Grant.  “How do you feel about guns, Grant?”

“G-Guns?”  Grant stared at her with confusion.  “Did you just call me by my name?”

Just outside Maddy’s window, a uniformed police officer in a green rain coat stepped out of the substation.

The tall man in the black raincoat knocked loudly on Grant’s window.  “Sir, will you step out of the car, please?” he asked in a low muffled voice.

Grant wiped his hand across the window to try and see more clearly, but it didn’t seem to help.  The rain gave the man outside a foggy appearance.

Grant cranked his window down a crack.  “She doesn’t have anything to do with any of this,” he called out.  “I'll go along quietly to see your boss if you just let this woman go.  Okay?”

The man seemed to look past Grant.

Through her own window, Maddy watched as the other Blank Man showed a uniformed police officer what looked like a badge.  Unlike Grant, she could see the man outside very clearly.

“Step out of the car, sir,” the man on Grant’s side commanded.

“Grant, no!” Maddy snapped.

Grant pushed open the door, giving Maddy a discreet nod as he slid out.

The man stepped back slightly to allow Grant to climb out, then rushed forward, twisting his arm behind his back and effortlessly pressing him chest-first against the roof of his Toyota.

“Hey,” Grant exclaimed angrily.

The Blank Man’s hand disappeared into his coat and reappeared with a gun.

“Here we go,” Maddy murmured to herself shakily.

The second Blank Man started to open Maddy's door, but she threw all her weight against it. The corner of the door connected with his chin, sending him to the ground.

Maddy scrambled out and grabbed the arm of the officer.

“Help,” she shouted.  “These men are not cops!”

Pushing her firmly aside, the officer dropped his right hand to his holster and unsnapped the guard as his left hand hit the transmit button on the radio attached to his coat pocket.

“Unit six!  Lou!  Get out here!”

The fallen Blank Man leapt up, burying his knee in the officer's crotch.

As the officer hit the ground, Maddy drew the officer's gun from his holster and pressed the gun to the Blank Man’s head.

“Down! Knees! Now,” Maddy barked in an authoritative voice.  “You with the gun!  Drop it!”

He stood stock still.

The Blank Man with Grant gave an almost infinitesimal nod and the other man dropped slowly to his knees.  Grant attempted to look up over the roof, but Blank pushed him firmly against the car.

Turning her attention to the other man, Maddy called out: “Get rid of the gun and let go of him! Now!

The tall Blank Man did not move.

“Bert, you and your friend Ernie read my file?”

The taller Blank Man released Grant, returned his gun into his coat and backed away palms turned out to Maddy.

“Now go get in your car and keep your hands on the wheel where I can see them.”

Pushing away from his car, Grant looked from the Blank Man to Maddy.  “You aren’t here for me?”  He attempted to get a look at the man’s face but he smoothly turned aside.  “Who are you with?” Grant demanded.

On his knees at Maddy’s feet, Ernie-Blank gave just the hint of a cold smile.

Bert-Blank dutifully climbed behind the wheel of the black sedan, the Toyota’s headlights brightly revealing every movement as he placed his hands almost demurely atop the steering wheel.

“Grant!  Car! Now!”

Grant slid into the driver’s seat of the Toyota without hesitation, glancing over at the grimacing police officer rising slowly to his knees.

Maddy opened the passenger side door, rolled the window down and slid inside, all the while maintaining her aim on Ernie.  “Grant, I’m going to fire this gun twice now, but no one will be hurt.  You understand?”

“What?  What?”

Hanging out the window, Maddy fired one shot each into the black sedan's left side tires.  The car sank to one side.

On the driver’s side, Grant covered his head with both arms.

“Sorry-Sorry,” Maddy called out, sliding back inside.  “I had to do it.

Grant slowly untangled himself and stared at Maddy with a mixture of shock and anger.

“I shot the tires.  Yes, they're still breathing,” Maddy told him.  “Drive the car.  Now!”

Putting the car into reverse, Grant pulled the Toyota back far enough to get around the sedan and back onto the road.

Ernie-Blank slowly rose from the ground behind the crippled sedan watching the Toyota drive off into the night.  Bert climbed out from the behind the wheel and stood beside the car just as a black Mercedes cruised past.

Rudy rolled down his passenger window and surveyed the scene as he passed them.

“I’ll call AAA for you,” Rudy called out, accelerating past.

Bert-Blank yanked his cell phone from its holster and hit the speed-dial.

The police officer finally rose to his feet, patting the empty holster at his side.  “Aw hell.”

Turning slightly away from him and without seeming to aim, Ernie-Blank drew a gun and pumped two shots into the policeman —head and chest, perfectly placed-- then returned the gun to his coat.

“Scarlet Fever has spread,” Bert-Blank spoke into the phone.

14

Accelerating down the feeder road of the Beltway, Grant sat red-faced behind the wheel of his car, quietly attempting to digest his chaotic thoughts.

Maddy watched him patiently, trying unsuccessfully to gauge his level of anxiety.

Glancing over, his eyes fell on the gun that remained in her hand.  His first thought was that he’d never been this close to a gun before, but then he remembered his tour of the chop-shop.

It had been a hell of a memorable couple of days for him.

Maddy followed his eyes and carefully placed the gun on the floor. “You should probably breathe now.”

Grant shot her a wide-eyed look then returned his eyes to the road.  “How much trouble am I in right now?  Am I going to prison for assaulting a federal agent?”

“Oh those weren’t FBI agents, Grra…Granted, I could see how you might think that.”

She tried to put on the brakes--True, it was a really feeble attempt at damage control--but she’d already said his name once and almost did it again.  The only thing left to do was throw up a smoke screen, misdirect him, and hope that she hadn’t completely botched this up by displaying the crazy card too soon.  She knew that it was coming but she had hoped to put it off as long as possible.

He shot her another warning.  “Tell me how you know my name.”

“You introduced yourself in the restaurant,” she replied quickly, then before he could analyze it too deeply, she barreled forward.  “But let’s get back to the gun.  It belongs to a police officer and has my prints all over it, so we should get rid of it as soon as possible.”

Crazy card, she chastised herself again.  Back your happy ass up, now, and stop talking before he kicks you completely out of his car!

Grant seemed to consider this, opened his mouth, then closed it again.  He raised a finger then shook his head and instead pulled the car into the nearest gas station on the feeder road, pulling the car up to the nearest pump.

Too late, Maddy thought dejectedly.

“Out please,” he said in an even tone.

“I’m not a felon.”

“Out now,” he repeated, somewhat louder.

“Grant, you’ve already seen why I can’t involve local authorities.  They are ill-equipped to deal with these people.”

“These people,” he murmured to himself.  Turning his head away from her, Grant simply stared out his window with a hard expression.  “We’ve all got our problems, apparently.”

“You can’t leave me out here in the middle of nowhere.  These men are dangerous!”

“You’re at a public gas station two blocks from Bush International Airport,” he exclaimed.  “I even gave you a hundred dollars!”

“See!  That’s the thing.  I know you’re a good man, Grant, for just that reason,” Maddy continued.  “I could tell from the coffee shop.”

Grant threw his door open and leapt outside.  Walking around the car, he stepped up to the pump and withdrew his wallet from his front pocket.  He pulled his lone credit card out and held it out toward the pump.  His hand quivered perceptibly as he attempted to slip the card into the appropriate slot.  He took a deep breath and managed to settle his nerves enough to insert it.

When it accepted his card, he whistled appreciatively at the fact that it hadn’t been cancelled yet.  On second thought, why would they stop him from running up his debt?  This only justified the higher interest rates.  Bigger racket than the mafia those credit card companies, yet people recklessly signed up for as many as possible.

As he began to fuel his car, the passenger door opened.  Maddy slowly rose to her feet.  “Thank you for the money, but I can’t take this,” she reached out and slapped the hundred dollar bill to the seat.  “Sounds like from your conversation with Mr. Personality yesterday, that you need it more than I do.”

Grant glanced over at Maddy, who stood with her head lowered in front of the open passenger door.  She lifted her satchel from the floor.

“Did you get the-the..?” he started, his eyes scanning the floor of the car.

“Gun?  Yes?”

Grant sighed and turned his back to her.

“Look, can you at least spot me a bottled water before you leave?”

Grant looked over at Maddy.  “Yeah.  Okay.”

He turned and started toward the store.  Just before entering, Grant glanced up above the entrance, spotting a surveillance camera scanning the parking lot.

“Grant!”

At the sound of his name, Grant turned as he was nearly to the entrance of the store.  Maddy rushed across the lot and held out the keys he had left in the car’s ignition.

For a moment, Grant stared in confusion before reaching for them.

Maddy held fast for a moment and locked eyes with him.  “This is a night which the Lord hath made.  You’re an angel of God.”

Releasing the keys, Maddy started toward the store ahead of him.

“Hey, do me a favor and stay in the car,” Grant asked her, his eyes on the satchel on her shoulder.

Hesitating briefly, Maddy finally gave a smile and headed back to the Toyota.  “Right, the gun.  Sure thing.”

Grant gave a furtive glance at the camera one more time before starting into the store.  He headed quickly to the refrigerated case at the back, craning his neck to glance out at his car one last time and nearly colliding with a diminutive little woman with an enormous beehive hairdo trying to reach a carton of milk on a rack just a bit too high for her.

Grant watched the woman struggle for a few moments before stepping around and retrieving the milk for her.  “Can I help you with that, ma’am?”

“If you wouldn’t mind, dear,” she responded in a tiny yet warm voice.  “Need anything on the bottom shelf?”

“No, I’m good,” Grant answered, handing down the milk and grabbing a bottled water.  He flashed the woman a smile and started away.

“Thank you, dear,” the little woman said as Grant started towards the register.  “You’re an angel of God.”

Grant craned his neck as he started to the register, but noticed a raised four-wheel drive monster truck blocking the view of his Toyota.

“How’s it going tonight?” the stony-faced black cashier asked Grant.

Grant gave an ironic laugh.  “Possibly the strangest night of my life.”

“Thankfully it’s almost over.”

Grant blinked at the casher.  “My life?”

“Your night,” the cashier replied flatly, making eye contact with Grant for the first time.  “Dollar even.”

Grant scooped the last of the change from his pocket, spilled it to the counter, and began counting out coins.

With a bit of a yawn, the cashier glanced up at his surveillance monitor, where Grant could see that the view revealed nothing beyond the monster truck.  “This is a night which the Lord hath made.  Let us rejoice and be glad,” he stated.

Grant went stiff, his vision going fuzzy as he stared down at the coins.  “Excuse me?”

The cashier glanced vaguely at the coins before him and expertly slid the desired amount off the edge of the counter into his hand.  “This oughtta do it.  God bless ya now.”

Grant retrieved his bottle from the counter, giving the cashier an off-center smile as he backed away and nearly collided with another customer entering behind him.  He excused himself and stepped awkwardly down from the curb, breaking into a trot toward the monster truck and his car hidden behind.

He found the car empty.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” a familiar voice said from behind him.  “We’ve got cameras.”

Grant turned to look at Rudy, hand placed strategically in his jacket pocket.

“Shouldn’t you be more worried about that than me?”

Ignoring the comment, Rudy took a slow look around the station.  “Where’s your little friend, Frederickson?”

“I told her to run.”

Rudy glanced up at Grant, checking him for sarcasm.  “The waitress from the coffee shop, right?  Y’see, I knew that you two already knew each other.”

“She’s a stranger to me,” Grant replied.

“C’mon to my car.  You and me need to talk about what just happened.”  Without removing his hand from his pocket, he nudged him roughly with his elbow toward the Mercedes parked at another set of pumps just in front of the Toyota.

“Where’s the gun?”

“What gun?”

“Don’t play games, Frederickson,” Rudy snapped, prodding him with his elbow.

“She was the one with the gun and she took it with her.”

“You want to tell me what sort of fun she’s into that she needs one?”

Grant stopped and turned to Rudy, giving him a matter-of-fact look.  “You mean, you don’t know who she is?”

Rudy studied him for a moment before removing his hand from his pocket and shoving him against the side of the Mercedes.  “Get in,” he ordered, throwing the back passenger-side door open.

“I’ve got a better idea,” a voice said from inside the car.

Squinting into the darkness, Rudy found Maddy huddled low in the backseat with the gun trained on him.

“Throw your gun inside,” she prompted.

Rudy dutifully started to reach inside his jacket.

“Stop!” Maddy snapped.  “On second thought, take your jacket off and lay it down.  Slowly.”

Rudy glared at her.  “Now why would I want to remove my favorite Argentinean leather jacket?”

“Because you’re starting to think that maybe you don’t have the full story and maybe we’re capable of much more than you thought.”

Rudy scoffed and glanced at Grant resting against the side of the car.

“You better just do what she says,” Grant murmured.  “I’m not sure what this woman is capable of.”

“Fuck this,” Rudy snarled, reaching for his weapon.

Maddy cocked her gun.

Instantly, Rudy showed her his open palms.

“Jacket,” Maddy prompted.

Rudy slowly removed his leather jacket, his face a mask of frustration and tossed it in a bundle on the floor of the car.  “Now what?”

“Now you’re the proud new owner of a slightly used Toyota.  Fully-fueled and everything,” Maddy said, waving Rudy backwards as she stepped out of the car.  “Grant step around to the driver’s side, please.”

Grant rushed around the car without hesitation and climbed inside.

“Keys inside?” she asked him.

“Yeah!”

He cranked the engine.

“Can you please hand me the keys to the Toyota?”

Grant hesitated briefly before removing the keys from his pocket and pushing the passenger door open for Maddy.

“Really, Frederickson?  Grand Theft Auto?  You sure you want to do this?” Rudy called out to Grant, raising his arms dramatically as he stepped back to the pumps.  “Up until now, this was just business.  You really want to make this personal?”

“What part of murder is impersonal?” Maddy asked, standing in the open doorway of the passenger side.  “Put your arms down, you knucklehead!  The cameras can’t see around that monster truck.”

Rudy glowered at Maddy and slowly lowered his arms, attempting to find the pockets of his jacket out of instinct and missing.  “Y’know, the boss is going to get real sore when he can’t reach me on the cell phone that’s in the pocket of that jacket.”

“That would be something to discuss with the boss,” she replied, lowering the window and sliding inside.  “While you’re at it, you might want to ask him what secrets he’s been keeping from you, Rudy Pedroza.”

Maddy dropped the keys to the ground between them.

The Mercedes pulled away from the pumps, leaving Rudy standing alone and staring down at the keys to the Toyota.  He spared a look at his retreating Mercedes in utter confusion.

15

Continuing down the feeder road, Grant glanced over at Maddy.  “Are you going to level with me now?”

“I’ve been completely honest with you from the first minute.”

“You said you’re not a felon,” Grant said with a nod.  “Why did you ask those two men if they’ve read your file?  What file?”

Maddy studied Grant then turned away from him to look out her window.

“See, I knew it,” Grant exclaimed, pounding his fist on the steering wheel.

“I’m a lot of things, Grant, but I’m not a criminal,” she snapped, then glanced ahead of them and pointed.  “We should get on the beltway south and head towards Interstate 10.”

Grant ignored her and continued down the feeder road, increasing his speed slightly.  “I’m waiting for some sort of reasonable explanation for everything that just happened.”

Maddy studied Grant.  “You would think I’m crazy.”

“Lady,” Grant said with exasperation.  “I already do.”

Maddy stomped the floorboard.  “I know Rudy’s type.  He’s a man of action.  Not a man of thought, like you.”

“You don’t know me,” Grant growled.

“I know this.  Without me, you would be dead or in the backseat of that hoodlum’s car.”

“Hoodlum?” Grant murmured under his breath, impressed at the anachronism.  How old was this girl anyway, he wondered?

“I’m the one who separated him from his gun and I have him second-guessing himself right now.  Also, he’s on edge because he’s trying to quit smoking.”

Grant raised his brows in interest.  “And how do you know that?”

Maddy kicked the empty cigarette boxes at her feet and pointed to the plastic box of nicotine gum in the dashboard console.

“And you know for a fact that this hoodlum had a gun?”

“What?” Maddy exclaimed in exasperation.  “Are you serious?”

She suddenly glanced around in agitation.  Turning in her seat and climbing up onto her knees, Maddy craned her neck over the seat.  Finally, she straddled the center console and pressing in close, reached around onto the floorboard of the backseat, her behind waving beside Grant.  Glancing over, he gripped the wheel more tightly.

“What the hell are you doing?”

Maddy yanked Rudy’s jacket up and returned to her seat.  She retrieved a gun from one of the pockets and displayed it to Grant.  “See!”

Grant leaned away from her, swerving slightly out of his lane.  “Whoa!  Easy!”

“What did I tell you?  Bad guy.  Bad,” she exclaimed, looking out over the road behind them.  “What do you think this is for?  Shooting cottonmouths in the back yard?  This was for you, Grant.”

Grant leaned in toward the wheel, grip increasing, his face reddening slightly.

Maddy watched Grant with a slight smirk.  “Are you angry?”

“I’m glad I stole his goddamn car,” he remarked stiffly.

Maddy nodded in satisfaction.  Catching a glimpse of red within the black interior of the jacket, she laid it on her lap and turned it open.  There, sewed in red thread into the black lining of the jacket, were the words “R. Pedroza.”

“Pedroza,” she whispered to herself in sudden understanding, then turned her attention back to the weapon in her hand.  “We have to get rid of these guns as soon as possible.  Are we going over any bodies of water?”

Grant massaged the bridge of his nose, while he consulted a map in his head.  “No, nothing.  Dumpster?” he managed lifelessly.

“That’ll do,” Maddy responded.

He pulled off the road and took the car behind a strip of shops, finding the inevitable set of dumpsters and pulling the passenger side window as close as he could to an open container on the end.

Grant watched Maddy as she tossed Rudy’s gun into the dumpster.  “You knew him.  You knew his name,” Grant said.  “And the thing is, I’ve been going over the conversation at the coffee shop, and I’m positive I never told you my name.”

Maddy unzipped the satchel at her feet and retrieved the police officer’s gun.  “Maybe it was Rudy then,” Maddy replied, tossing the second gun in the dumpster after the first.

“He’s never used my first name.  Ever.”  Grant peered down at the satchel on the floor and saw money.  Twenties and fifties and hundreds, stuffed in and around clothes and shoes and a make-up bag.  Grant straightened in his seat, his face paling.

Maddy rolled up her window but continued staring out into the dumpster.  “There’s a reason why those men have a file on me.”

Grant nodded, turning away from the wheel and giving his full attention to her.  “Okay, I’m listening.”

As promised, here comes the crazy, Maddy thought.  Be smart now.  Soft peddle it.

Maddy turned back to Grant, folding her hands pensively in her lap.  “I've got this ability that makes me valuable and dangerous at the same time.”

Grant nodded more fervently.  “Go on.”

“A certain skill-set,” she continued, staring him straight in the eye.  “Call it an insight into probabilities.”

Grant furrowed his brow, his mind spinning around like a roulette wheel until he narrowed in on an explanation like the dropping of a ball into a pocket.  “So, wait.  These men are after you because of some kind of special gambling technique?  Like a system?  Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”  His eyes flickered to the satchel lying securely on the floor beneath her feet.

She cocked her head at him and searched his face.  “No, not exactly,” she started to say, then waved distractedly at the dumpster where they sat parked.  “Look can we please start moving away from the guns.  I’m getting a little jumpy and that makes it hard for me to concentrate.”

Nodding, Grant pulled away from the dumpster and headed back toward the feeder road.  As an afterthought, he reached into his jacket and sheepishly handed the bottled water to Maddy.  “Almost forgot.”

Maddy took the water and stared at it, appearing close to tears.

Grant glanced furtively at her then down at the bottle in her hands.  “Is this the wrong brand or something?”

Maddy gave a little laugh then took several gulps from the bottle.  “It’s always like this when I’m coming down off an adrenaline rush.”  She held out a hand, shivering uncontrollably.  “Look at me.  I’m falling apart,” she began to sob quietly and turned away to look out her window.

Grant drove in silence for a few minutes.

He arrived at the transition to the Highway 69 intersection and spontaneously decided to get on.  There was no method or plan.  He was winging it now.  Going on sheer instinct.

Maddy stared at Grant with wide eyes.

“What?” Grant asked, noticing her attention.

“You—You’re..?” Maddy started to say, then simply shook her head.  “I didn’t know you were going to do that just now.”

“No,” Grant replied with a sigh.  “Neither did I.”

Through her puffy, tear-stained face, Maddy studied Grant with an intensity reserved for museum pieces.

Feeling vaguely awkward, Grant glanced over at her.

Giving him a gracious smile, she blotted her eyes on her sleeve and relaxed back into her seat, feeling more secure in the moment than she could remember feeling in a very long while.

She had no idea where she was headed right now.

Which meant, neither did the Blank Men.

16

As they approached downtown Houston, Maddy watched the tall buildings and let her mind drift into neutral.  She gently grasped at the loose threads of potentiality, glimpsing all the alternatives like road signs passing outside.

The feeling of not knowing was glorious--of luxuriating in all the possibilities, instead of calculating the path of least potential danger.

She glanced over at Grant when she was sure he wasn’t watching and observed his profile.  His stately, larger than average nose.  His rugged jutting chin.

Stop what you’re doing, right now, she chastised herself, and returned her attention to the city flying by outside.  Can’t afford attachments like that.

Attachments equal confusion.  Confusion equals dead.

“I still can’t figure it,” Grant finally stated, fracturing the silence between them.

Maddy lifted her chin inquisitively, a peaceful smile on her tired face.  She had almost fallen asleep a moment ago, that’s how relaxed she had become in this warm, protective space.

“You knew what they would say,” Grant said, the confusion slowing the pace of his words.  “Did you know him?  Is that how you knew he would say what he did?”

“Who?”

“The cashier at the gas station?” Grant replied.  “He said exactly what you’d said to me before I went in the store.  How..?  I mean, how could any mathematical system come up with something so specific as that?”  Grant peered at Maddy, staring at her with a look of utter helplessness.

Please help me out of this gaping hole of logic that I’ve tripped and fallen into, his look seemed to say.  Because every time I try and get a grip, I keep slipping back down again.

Maddy gave him a conflicted look and considered telling him the truth, something she had not shared with anyone in years with good reason.  Instead, her stomach growled loudly, breaking the silence and giving her an excuse to avoid addressing the question a while longer.

“I’m hungry.   Are you hungry?” she asked him.

Grant’s eyes briefly went out of focus, then sharpened again to read the road signs ahead of them.  “Yeah, it’s just off the highway here.  A place I’ve eaten once,” he responded.  “Nice and public.  I can drop you there if you’d like.”

Maddy felt a hole rip open deep within her and spray ice-cold fear into her guts.

No, you can’t let him go, she screamed at herself.  Right now, he’s the only thing standing between you and the Blank Men.  He’s your ace in the hole.

She thought suddenly about the hundred-dollar tip Grant had given her and the portion of the conversation she had heard between him and Rudy and understood a small part of what was going on here.

“You never expected to walk out of the airport tonight, did you?” she asked him.

Grant continued driving without a response.  “It’s just up here,” he muttered under his breath.  To Maddy, the voice sounded tired and so very sad.

Maddy knew then that he needed her as much as she needed him.  Without her presence tonight, he would have given himself up and let the dogs drag him under.  She could never let this man give himself up on her watch.  That would just be wrong, she decided.

Grant pulled the Mercedes into a truck station parking lot, rolling past a line of semis parked in a row.  Grabbing Rudy’s jacket off the floor, he shut the engine off, climbed out and headed for the entrance to a restaurant called the The Space City Depot.

Maddy hung back and stood beside the open passenger door with her satchel at her side.  “You left the keys in the ignition,” she informed him.

“Yeah, I figure this is as good a place as any to leave it,” he said, holding the door open and waiting as an older couple passed outside, the gentleman giving him a smile and a nod.

Maddy rushed over to him.  “I don’t understand what you’re doing.”

“Well, it’s stolen,” he explained.  “Otherwise, I’d give it to you.”

Grant dug the cell phone out of the pocket the Argentinean leather jacket then crammed it halfway into a nearby trash can.  Turning his back on Maddy, he continued inside the restaurant.

Pausing at the entrance, Maddy looked up and noticed for the first time a long-haired man with an overgrown beard sitting on a bench in a thin grey Houston Astros t-shirt, a bulging backpack sitting on the ground at his feet.  She gave a quick whistle to get his attention and pointed at the jacket in the trash can just before she stepped into the restaurant.

Maddy joined Grant at a booth near the entrance where he sat focused on Rudy’s phone.  He located the call log on the phone and flipped through the list of numbers and their corresponding names until he found one saved number listed only as “A.T.”  He sighed and set the phone aside as a waitress stepped up to them.

“Hello, my name is Thalia and I’ll be your server tonight,” a young waitress with multi-colored hair and a nose stud told them as she handed them menus.

Grant accepted his menu then after a cursory glance, set it face down on the table in front of him.  “Thalia, what would you recommend for someone who’s been violently threatened and may not live to see the morning?”

Without the barest of hesitations, the waitress answered: “Our Space-shot special.  A stack of buttermilk pancakes, two eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns, and biscuits all covered in country gravy.”

“Sold,” Grant snapped, holding his menu out to her with a satisfied smile.  “Maddy?”

Appearing slightly confused, Maddy replied, “Cakes and coffee would be great, Grant.”

Thalia smiled and hustled away.

“I overheard you and Rudy in the airport coffee shop,” Maddy stated.  “So what I don't understand is why you didn't take his advice and just..”

“Run?” he asked, his expression grimly determined.  “I won’t do that. I’ve never lived my life that way.”

Maddy searched Grant's face.  “Do you think you deserve what's going to happen to you?”

He glanced down at the phone on the table and gave a belabored sigh.

“You don't seem like the suicidal type, Grant.”

“Look, I'm not one of those types who avoid responsibility. That’s why our society's in the shape it is. The jails are filled to capacity with them. They suck up our tax dollars and run out on their children.”

“Yes, the world’s in terrible shape, but can we talk about you for a moment?” Maddy asked, watching as he picked up the cell phone and began glancing through the address book.  “Are you really planning on giving yourself up to these people?”

“I really don’t think that's any of your business,” Grant snapped.

“It is when you're threatening my life.”

Grant looked up from the phone in disbelief.  “Excuse me?”

Thalia appeared again and set two cups of coffee between them.

Both Maddy and Grant thanked her in the same rushed tone.

Giving them a polite smile, she took the hint and scurried away.

An edge entering his voice, Grant said, “I thought we were going to talk about you.”  He scooted forward in his seat conspiratorially and shuffled the phone aside.

Leaning across the table toward him—almost close enough to kiss--Maddy inhaled the coffee's aroma, closing her eyes with a pleasant smile drifting across her lips.

Grant blinked at her uncomfortably and leaned back in his booth.  He glanced across the restaurant at an older gentleman in a Peterbilt cap, quietly sipping coffee and reading a newspaper over his dinner.  He sighed heavily and stared at the man with sadness entering his eyes.

“Grant, for the last two days, I've been trying to cope with the fact that I am dying.”

Grant stared at her in shocked confusion.  “You’re dying?”

“That is, I will be dead,” she sputtered.  “Uh, actually, will have died.”

“I'd say that I'm not following you, but that implies there was a time this evening when I actually did.”

Glancing around suspiciously, Maddy leaned forward and Grant followed suit, down to the quick look over his own shoulder, feeling foolish but also unable to suppress the inclination.

“Two days ago, my memories of the future went blank,” Maddy whispered to Grant.  “Do you have any idea what that's like for someone who's been precognicient since the age of thirteen?”

Grant studied her face then broke into a smile.  “You’re screwing with me,” he responded, leaning back to look around the restaurant for their waitress.

Ignoring his reaction, Maddy continued in her same tone of voice.  “For you, it would be the equivalent of going blind and deaf at the same time. There was no future to see. At least for me, there wasn't.”

Grant sighed heavily and draped his arm across the top of the booth seat.

“Then I wandered into your airport on my own, without any pre-knowledge of what I would find, and I saw… you. I recalled my first memory in seventy-two hours. That was significant.”

Again Grant looked across the restaurant at the old man in the Peterbilt cap.

“I saw myself getting a job in that coffee shop. So I took it on a lark. Figured that way, I might run into you again. And when I did, I had another memory.”

Despite himself, Grant found himself listening to this crazy woman he was sharing a table with.

“I saw your shitty white Toyota with a jazz festival sticker on its bumper and when it was you who slid behind the wheel, I knew you were the reason I was having memories again.”

Grant takes an awkwardly sip from his coffee mug.

“Then, just moments ago, when you said that thing about dropping me off here, it happened again.”

“What?” Grant asked.

Maddy's eyes glistened with emotion.

“Nothingness. Darkness.  But when I got out again and started after you, I immediately saw us together, here at this very table having pancakes.  I realized that I could live at least a few minutes longer if I stuck with you.”

Grant studied Maddy closely. His eyes cut furtively across the restaurant to the man in the Peterbilt cap.  He opened his mouth to tell her that he thought that the gentleman might be a good safe choice to catch a ride with from here when Thalia the waitress set a bevy of steaming plates of food before them.

“And here’s your butter and syrup and it looks like you’re okay on the coffee,” Thalia told them.  “Anything else I can get for you right now?”

“No, thank you,” Maddy and Grant again said simultaneously, this time in identical melancholy tone.

As they began preparing their pancakes, Thalia stared at them in silence for a moment with a dumb smile on her face.

Grant glanced up at her expectantly.

Thalia shook her head.  “That’s just awesome.”

“What is?” he asked.

“I mean, you guys are like in perfect sync with each other right now,” Thalia told him in a tone of amazement.  “Me and my boyfriend are like never like this.”  She gave one more disbelieving shake of her head and strode away toward the kitchen.

Maddy continued slathering butter and syrup on her pancakes, trying to hide the smirk on her face.

Grant gathered up a fork and stared down at his own stack, watching the remnants of his cube of butter slowly melt.  “You have no idea the mess I've made of my life,” he said to her.  “Believe me when I say, I can't help myself much less anyone else right now.”

“So far, you've kept me alive and that's enough for now,” she answered, slicing off a chunk and devouring it with a look of total ecstasy.

Loud hip hop music erupted from the cell phone beside Grant’s hand and he literally dropped his fork.

Maddy stopped chewing.

Grant stared down at the phone, his face a mask of indecision.  He reached for the phone, his hand hovering a few inches above it as he cleared his throat.

Her eyes narrowing, Maddy snatched the phone up from beneath his hand and pivoted slightly away from him.

“Yeah?” she answered, pressing it to her ear as Grant rose to step around the table.

“Give it to me,” he stated firmly, holding his hand out to her.

Maddy’s face grew pale as the blood drained away.  Yanking the phone away from her ear, she rose to her feet beside Grant and searched the restaurant.  “They're coming.”

Stiffening, Grant looked around.  “Who?  Mine or yours?”

“For me.  The two from the airport,” she said urgently.  “Dammit!  We stayed too long.”  Maddy hauled her satchel from beneath the table, unzipped it, seized a handful of bills from within, and tossed them to the table.

Grant looked from the open satchel to Maddy, his expression hardening.

“You've just got to trust me until I can explain,” she snapped, zipping up and rushing toward the entrance doors where they entered.

Maddy stopped, shook her head and looked back at Grant, who was standing immobile one step away from the table.  He looked from the man in the Peterbilt cap to Maddy, his face contorting with conflicted emotions.

Maddy swallowed awkwardly and closed her eyes, appearing to be in silent prayer.

“Hell!” Grant growled and started toward Maddy.

At the touch of his hand on her arm, Maddy opened her eyes in wonder.  “C’mon,” he snapped, almost angrily, guiding her toward a gift shop on the opposite side of the restaurant.

Moments later, the shorter of the two Blank Men swept in through the front entrance.

“Table for one?” Thalia asked him.

The man in the black raincoat ignored her and scanned the restaurant.

Maddy followed at Grant’s heels through the gift shop to a door leading them to the self-serve gas pumps.  She spotted the Blank Man walking across the restaurant and ducked her head slightly.  “They’re inside, Grant,” she hissed urgently.

Grant grabbed her hand and hauled her outside without looking back.

A familiar white Toyota pulled to a stop just in front of them.  Rudy rolled his window down and glared at Grant.

“He’s coming,” Maddy called.

Grant took one look back over his shoulder and ran toward the car.  Pulling the back door of the Toyota open, he pushed Maddy roughly inside and clambered in after her.

“What do I look like?  A limo service?” Rudy barked.

“I suggest you drive away,” Grant offered.

“Not her, Frederickson!”

Through the gift shop, the Blank Man trotted toward them.

“Here he comes!” Maddy said anxiously.

Rudy hit the gas just as the man in the black rain coat rushed outside, narrowly missing the car.  Noting all the cars parked at the pumps, the man drew his hand out of his coat.

“Where’s my gun?” Rudy wanted to know.

“We tossed it in a dumpster,” Grant said.  “Would you like directions?”

When Rudy reached the corner of the building, a man leapt out of nowhere in front of the car.  He stood on the brakes, narrowly missing the homeless man in an Argentinean leather jacket.

The bearded homeless man snarled at Rudy, lifting his arm in a one finger salute, before slowly ambling out of the way.

Rudy watched him with open mouth.  “Is that my… jacket?”

Grant glanced at Maddy with an off-kilter smile.

A squeal came from behind as a black sedan came to a stop just long enough for the Blank Man to hop inside.

Rudy accelerated.  “Who the hell are these guys?”

He slid into a right hand turn.  The sedan followed at the same speed.

“Will someone start talking to me?” Rudy yelled.

Muffled hip hop music came from inside Maddy's bag.

“Is that my phone?”

“No, we just happen to have the same taste in ring tones,” Maddy replied, unzipping her bag.

“Give me the phone,” Rudy demanded.

Maddy held the phone out to Rudy, who snatched it up and held it to his ear.

“What?  Who the hell is this?” he shouted, then paused to listen.  “Oh, is that right?  How the fuck did you get my number?”  His eyes glanced up through the rear view mirror and he flipped the phone down to the seat. “Feds?”

Neither Maddy nor Grant answered.

“Who the hell did you piss off, Frederickson?”

Grant glanced over his shoulder.  The black sedan was a single car length behind them.

“Maybe this is about the half mil that I borrowed,” Grant muttered with a straight face.

“Half mil?  That’s a joke, right?” Rudy snapped.  “Hey, somebody better start talking to me here.”

“Why don’t you hand me the phone so I can ask your boss what he thinks we should do?” Grant countered, glancing over at Maddy, who seemed to be in a world all her own.

Flashing a look through his side mirror, Rudy braked slightly then twisted the wheel hard to one side.  The Toyota went into a controlled spin, until it faced the sedan, then accelerated past it in the opposite direction.

Rudy looked up in the rear-view, allowing himself a smirk.

Grant looked over his shoulder again.

The sedan promptly followed suit, sliding around and continuing the chase.

The smile evaporated from Rudy's face.

Rudy’s face went blank.  “These aren’t civil servants.  Never knew one that could drive a nail straight,” he growled.  “Frederickson, I need to know what I’m dealing with here.”

Grant looked over at Maddy.

She sat with a dazed look, staring down at her hands folded in her lap.  “Killian's.”

“What? What did she say?” Rudy wanted to know.

“Buttermilk pancakes. Killian's. French Quarter,” she murmured.

“French Quarter?” Grant asked her gently.  “As in New Orleans?”

Rudy cast a troubled look into the rear view mirror, then angled the car toward the freeway entrance ahead.  The Toyota leapt onto the I-10 west entrance ramp, sparks flying from the fender.

“Take it easy with my car,” Grant snapped.

“Hey, you’re the reason I’m driving this piece of shit.  So unless you want to go back and get my Mercedes for me…”  Rudy’s phone rang and he snatched it off the seat.  “Yeah?  Tino!  Hey, what’s the word?”

On the other end of the phone, a heavy-set black man blotted sweat off his bald head with a Whataburger napkin.  From behind the wheel of a taxi cab, he watched the red and blue strobes of a half dozen police cruisers surrounding Torres’ garage.  He snapped a switch on his dash and the “off-duty” sign lit up on the roof of the cab.

“I’m over here at the garage on Harbor,” the taxi driver told Rudy.  “Looks like we’re being raided.  Cops are crawling all over like flies on road kill.  What are we supposed to do now, man?”

Rudy sighed heavily and glanced up in the rear view mirror at Grant, who watched Maddy with concern.

“Fall back to Jerome’s until we hear different.”  Rudy snapped the phone off and flung it to the passenger seat.  “Hold on to something.”

The Toyota rolled roughly onto the emergency turnaround in the center esplanade of the highway and accelerated into the flow of traffic headed east down Interstate 10.

“What are we..?” Grant began.

“You made a call to the cops, didn’t you Frederickson?” Rudy asked, flashing a hard look back at Grant.

Grant blinked in confusion at the man in the front seat.  “Call about what?  Why are we going back?”

“Are you going to tell him or should I?” Maddy suddenly asked from the backseat.

Rudy flashed a dark look back at Maddy.  “When you need to know a piece of information, I’ll enlighten you.”

“That’s not very nice,” Maddy grumbled, then turned to Grant.  “We’re going to New Orleans.”

The Toyota dove to the shoulder of the highway, kicking up a cloud of dust.

With a grim expression on his face, Rudy twisted around to face Maddy over the back of the front seat.  “Tell me how you could possibly know that?”

Maddy exchanged a look with Grant but remained silent.

Rudy stormed out of the car, pulled Maddy’s door open and pulled her roughly from the vehicle.

Grant leapt out behind her and seized the arm holding Maddy.

The other man lashed out with an open hand and cuffed Grant across the face.

Grant fell to one knee, covering his nose.

Shoving Maddy to the ground, Rudy took a position next to the open back door.  “Get in,” he told Grant.

Grant removed his hands and looked at his open palms, surprised not to find blood.  Taking Maddy by the hand, he gently helped her to her feet and steered her back to the car.

Rudy grabbed Grant by the neck and shoved him back up against the car.

“Do it,” Grant hissed through constricted throat.  “You came all this way to kill me.  What are you waiting for?”

Blinking down at Grant, Rudy slowly loosened his grip.

“He can’t,” Maddy commented, watching Rudy cautiously.  “His boss gave him orders not to touch you.”

“Shut up!” Rudy snapped, releasing Grant and striding over to Maddy.

Suddenly, Grant stood between them.  “Get in the car, Maddy,” he told her.

“No,” Rudy stated.

“We are not leaving this girl out here in the middle of nowhere,” Grant replied, staring Rudy directly in the eye.  “Now if you want to hit me again, do it, but you’re the one who’s going to have to explain it to your boss.”

Rudy blinked and glanced at Maddy peeking out from behind Grant’s back.

“Get in the car,” Grant repeated.

Maddy stepped slowly around Rudy and eased herself back into the car.

Breaking eye contact with Rudy, Grant himself returned to the backseat of the car and closed the door.

Rudy took a long, deep breath.  He retrieved a stick of nicotine gum from his pocket and began to chew it double-time before slowly returning to the driver’s seat.  After a moment, he draped his arm over the back of the seat and looked Grant in the eye.

“Just so you and me have an understanding here, Frederickson.  Torres told me to bring you around in one piece.”  Rudy made eye contact with Maddy, tipped her an ironic wink, then returned his eyes to Grant.  “The girl wasn’t even part of our discussion.  If I were you, I’d be more worried about her getting hurt than you.”

Grant gave a single nod.  “Sounds like for once we’re on the same page.”

The three sat in quiet understanding for a moment.  Finally, Rudy returned to the wheel and took the car back into the flow of traffic.

Maddy glanced over at Grant. Giving him a shy smile, she laid back into her corner and shut her eyes.

“I have been given a job and that's what I'm going to do,” Rudy said.

“If it helps you sleep, just keep telling yourself that,” Grant murmured.

“I gave you a choice once. You ignored me.”

“What?  To run?  Only the guilty run. I paid my debt,” Grant told him.  “In every way that matters.”

“Ain’t none of us innocent lambs here,” Rudy replied. “It was your wife bailing you out that put us here.”

Maddy opened her eyes, giving Grant a fresh appraisal.

Grant slid deeper into his seat.

“Let’s just not to forget that little fact, Frederickson.”

Grant turned his eyes to the window and sat in quiet retrospection.

17

Maddy opened her eyes.  She straightened up and looked around the cab of the Toyota in confusion.  The car sat parked on the shoulder of a dark feeder road, a single stark street light shining down on them from above.

“Where are we?” she whispered urgently to Grant.

“He’s looking for his car,” he replied indifferently, still gazing out his window.

“Thanks again, Mortie,” Rudy spoke into his cell.  “That’s two I owe you.”

“GPS,” Grant told Maddy.  “That’s how he found us at the truck stop.”

“So, why aren’t we back at the truck stop?” she wanted to know.

Neither Rudy nor Grant responded to her logical question.

It struck her all at once.  “Wait, you mean it was stolen?” Maddy asked, sitting up with interest.

“These things happen when you leave the keys in the ignition,” Rudy growled.

A subtle smile appeared on Grant’s lips.  “And it was a nice car too.  Smooth ride.  Clean interior.  Probably fetch a good price on the black market.”

“Feel free to go back to sleep,” Rudy snapped, yanking open the Toyota’s glove compartment and flipping through the receipts and books in frustration.  “No maps?”

“No maps,” Grant replied.  “I don’t need them.  Not in this city.”

“Right, because Houston is arranged so logically.”  He leaned over the back of the seat and showed Grant an address written on the palm of his hand.

Grant gave him a patronizing look.  “I thought you wanted me asleep.”

Rudy gave him a silent glare in response.

Sighing, Grant looked down at the address.  “Yeah, I know the area.  It’s industrial.  Follow the south loop east feeder.”

As Rudy nodded and headed out, Maddy cast a look at Grant, who continued to stare blankly out his window.

“Once I get my car back, I figure we’ll have one car too many,” Rudy commented, glancing back.  “Maybe you and your friend there can come to some sort of arrangement before someone gets hurt.”

Grant looked over at Maddy.  She shook her head once sternly.

“He’s right,” Grant told her.  “It’s probably best that you get as far away from me as you can.  When we find his car, you can have mine.”  He turned back to the window and murmured under his breath, “I won’t need it where I’m going.”

Maddy clenched her jaw in anger and turned her back to him.

Rudy studied them both in his mirror.  “Any of this look familiar?”

Scanning the dark streets around them, Grant pointed ahead.  “I believe that’s the intersection you wrote down.”

Rudy slowed the Toyota, cranked his window down, and cruised slowly into a large dark parking lot lit with stark ice blue arc lights.  About a hundred yards distant, a dark car sat in the distance on the opposite end of the parking lot.

Grant leaned forward over the front seat.  “Is that it?”

When the Toyota closed to about twenty yards, they could clearly see that it was the same Mercedes.  There were no lights or movement within the cab.

Rudy braked to an abrupt stop.  “Settle back,” he grumbled.  “I don’t know the story here.”

Grant sat back as Maddy leaned forward.

“Blink your lights at him once,” Maddy suggested.

“You’ve been watching too much Law and Order, lady.”

The Mercedes flashed its lights once.

Maddy exchanged an amused look with Grant.

Rudy sighed and blinked his own lights on and off once.

The driver’s side door of the Mercedes opened and a single figure arose.

“Don’t either of you move,” Rudy hissed around clenched teeth.  He removed a knife from his pocket and opening it, slipped it up into his right sleeve. Snapping off the interior cab light, Rudy opened the door.  “Keep your head down.”

“If this goes south, should I give Torres a message for you?” Grant asked.

“Yeah, Frederickson, tell him that I’m starting to understand why he wants you dead,” Rudy snapped, rising slowly and shutting the door securely behind him.

The person who had emerged from the cab stood beside the door of the Mercedes.  When Rudy started toward the car, the other reached in through the open driver’s window and turned the headlights on.

Rudy threw a hand up before his eyes.  “Hey!”

“Who the fuck are you?” a young man’s voice called out.

“I’m here for the car,” he responded angrily.  “Turn your goddamn lights off.”

After a moment, the lights went dead.

Rudy squinted out at the person standing beside the Mercedes, a teenage boy that looked no older than seventeen with a shaved head.  He wore a button up shirt with a white t-shirt beneath.  His thumbs were hooked strategically upon his belt.

“What the fuck do you want?” the kid demanded.

“I want my car,” Rudy responded.

The teenager looked him up and down.  “You mean my car, bitch.”

Smirking at the other’s audacity, Rudy looked around for other cars.  “What?  Is this your initiation?”

The kid stiffened.  “You wait long enough, maybe you'll find out.”

“Fine.  Which gang?”

“The Seventh Street Gangsters.”

“Never heard of them,” Rudy replied.  “What’s your name?”

“V-Man.”

“Okay… V-Man.  Do you know what will happen to you and your brothers if Arturo Torres finds out you stole one of his cars?”

V-Man glanced at the car behind Rudy.  “I don't know any Torres, bitch.”

“I bet your brothers do? Do you want to bring that kind of heat down on them?”

The kid shifted his weight. He clenched his belt tighter.

Rudy angled his body toward the Toyota.  “Look if you need to save face with your buddies, you can have the Toyota.”

V-Man snorted derisively.

“It's like this, V-Man. You keep the Mercedes and bring shit down on your gang, or you can have the Toyota. Then at least you won't meet them empty-handed.”

The teenager fixed his eyes on Rudy.

“Yeah, okay, maybe,” V-Man decided, dropping his hands in a less aggressive posture.  “Let's go take a look at it.

Rudy turned toward the Toyota, taking his time and allowing the kid to catch up with him.

Click.

The teen pressed the gun to Rudy's head.  “On second thought, I'll take them both.”

Rudy sighed.

The Toyota blasted a single honk.

Rudy spun and trapped V-Man’s gun arm under his.  A shot broke the dead silence.

The bullet struck high on the Toyota's windshield.

Inside the car, Maddy—folded over the center console in order to reach the horn-- screamed and dove back, falling into Grant’s arms.

Snatching the gun from V-Man, Rudy cuffed him on the ear like a naughty child. The teenager fell to the ground holding his ear with one hand.

“Kids today,” he sighed.  He leaned down to his ear and yelled, “Don't get greedy!”

A knife appeared in the teen’s hand.

Rudy drove a booted heel down on the other’s hand.  Kicking the knife across the parking lot, he brought the side of the gun down across V-Man’s face. V-Man screamed in pain.

The teen yelled, rolling onto his side and throwing his hands up in defense.

The rear door of the Toyota flew open.  Maddy rushed out of the Toyota, the ever-present satchel clutched in one hand.  “He's just a child,” she bellowed at Rudy’s back.

Behind her, Grant grabbed Maddy’s arm and gently restrained her.

Rudy yanked his arm away and stepped up to V-Man, slapping his hands away and taking his chin in his hand.  “Cowards,” he said in a contemptuous tone.  “Your generation is nothing but a bunch of pussies.”

“Get off me, you bitch,” V-Man said in a whimper.

Releasing him, Rudy turned his back on him in disgust and headed for the Mercedes.

Stepping slowly up to the youth, Maddy offered him her hand as he struggled to rise from the ground.  He slapped her hand away and spit in her direction.

She backed away with a grim expression and collided with Grant standing behind her.  They watched as Rudy popped open the trunk of the Mercedes, peering down into the open trunk from behind him.

A small wooden case sat in an otherwise empty trunk.  Several bungee cords secured it to the frame to keep it from sliding around. Rudy unfastened the strap and opened it with a squeak of hinges.

Grant furrowed his brow and cocked his head to one side.

“Is that what I think it is?” Maddy asked, trading a look of confusion with Grant.

“Either that Chihuahua is a very deep sleeper or it’s a corpse,” Grant commented.

Ignoring them, Rudy closed the lid and fastened the bungees back in place.

“She belonged to the boss,” Maddy said to Grant.

Rudy glared at her. Grant edged slowly between them.

“We wouldn't have come back for just any car and it's not every dog gets a coffin like that,” she added.

Slamming the trunk, Rudy turned to face Maddy.  “You're so fucking smart, then maybe you can tell me what its goddamn name was.”

“Pepe,” Maddy replied flatly.

Rudy blinked wide-eyed at Maddy.

Grant coughed into his fist, then just surrendered to laughter.

“Name was inscribed on the coffin.”

“Wait, you got a dead Chihuahua in your trunk named Pepe?” Grant managed between laugh fits.

Rudy grabbed Grant by his collar.

Something in the distance caught Maddy's attention. “Headlights!”

Rudy peered in through the open driver’s side window of the Mercedes and found the keys in the ignition.  “Get in the car!”

All three piled into the Mercedes.

As the car squealed away in the opposite direction, V-Man crawled across the parking lot and retrieved the knife.  He slowly rose, weaved to the Toyota, and collapsed behind the wheel.

The dark sedan arrived moments later and pulled to a stop along the left side of the Toyota.  The Shorter Blank Man leaned out of the passenger-side window and quickly scanned the interior of the adjacent car.  Satisfied that his target had gone, he stared out at the fading taillights of the Mercedes.

Rolling down the driver-side window of the Toyota, V-Man cast a long look at the men in the sedan and attempted to strike a look of bravado.  “Hey, you assholes ain’t from Seventh Street.”

A gun appeared in the Blank Man’s hand.

Two gunshots echoed across the empty concrete lot.

18

Maddy awoke from a sound sleep to the hip hop strains of Rudy’s cell phone.  Grant lay asleep in the seat next to her, stirring slightly at the music.  She took a look outside and saw nothing but dark empty highway.  It appeared to her like they were still on the interstate.

“Yeah?” Rudy spoke into the phone.  “Only my suppliers call me ‘Mr. Pedroza.’  What are you trying to sell me?”

Maddy settled slowly back into the darkness behind Rudy’s seat, but cocked her head closer to the left side of his seat, straining to hear both sides of the conversation.

“Aiding and abetting, my ass,” Rudy replied in an even tone.  “Law enforcement wouldn't use your tactics. Try again.”  After a moment of silence, Rudy snorted derisively.  “Oh, is that right?  If you're lonely or something, try the classifieds. Just don't try and threaten me, Mr. Lonely Heart. I don't respond well to threats.”

Silence.  Rudy sighed heavily.

“Can you hold on a moment?” Rudy responded in a bored voice.  “I gotta put you on speaker so that I can dig my underwear out of the crack of my ass.  You’re scaring me so bad, everything’s retreating up into my anal cavity.”

Bringing the phone up to the steering wheel, Rudy hit the speaker-phone button as he glanced casually up into the rear view.

Maddy shut her eyes and listened closely.

Over the other phone, she could hear the hum of freeway noise, the steady thump-thump-thump of tires on a patch of highway she feared not far behind them.  The anticipation of the voice on the other end of the phone sent a slow, agonizing chill up her spine.

Finally, the Blank Man spoke.  “Up until now, this was just business. Do you really want it to get personal, Mr. Pedroza?”

In the rear-view mirror, Rudy's smile disintegrated.  He cut the call short and flung it angrily atop the dashboard.

Maddy recognized the words and judging from Rudy’s reaction, he did as well.

When he glanced up into the rearview mirror again, Maddy appeared fast asleep.

II.

NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA

1

Grant felt himself slipping deeper and deeper into self-loathing.  Lack of sleep always did this to him.  He’d caught precious little this morning and had awakened abruptly because of the nightmares.  They were the typical ones.  He had arrived at the scene of his wife’s car accident, the officer on site informing him of what they knew—though he heard only half of the explanation the first time because of his overwhelming grief.

Though it had been over a year ago, the pain felt as fresh as it had been the day after.

When she had been with him, the world had seemed tolerable.  After the tragedy of her loss, he had honored her memory through sacrifice, knowing that he was obligated to her to pay back what she had borrowed on his behalf.

And now that that was done…

He was tired, physically and emotionally.  He couldn’t deal with this corrupt pit of a world any longer.

He felt ready to die.

He cast a look at Rudy out of the corner of his eye.  My reaper, he scoffed.

Oh well.  Beggar’s can’t be choosers, he thought.

The newly risen sun shined dimly on a sign that announced the Orleans Parish line.

Maddy awakened with a start and looked around.  Grant stared silently out his window.

“Did we miss the sunrise?” she asked.

Grant made no sign of acknowledgement.

Rudy glanced back indifferently, spitting the gum from his mouth into his hand and angrily tossing it into the plastic litter-bag hanging from his gearshift.

Lip curling in revulsion, Maddy turned from Rudy to examine Grant, who sat so quietly, he almost looked as if he were in a meditative state.

“Y'know, the French Quarter is number seven on my list of things to see before I die,” she said quietly.

Grant gave her a sad little smile.  “Glad I had the chance to share it with you,” he replied, failing to keep the irony out of his voice.

Giving his profile a moment of serious appraisal, she turned away to stare outside her own window.  “So am I, Grant,” she said in a low melancholy tone.

Rudy snorted and shook his head.

Maddy glared at him as he shook out another square of gum from the container in the console and began to chew it with a look of disgust on this face.

“So what's the deal with Pepe?” she ventured to ask their driver.

“What?  You don't know already, smartass?”

“I figure that maybe he knew too much and you had to rub him out.”

Rudy allowed himself a smile, before asking, “Who are these men who are following you if they’re not feds?”

“I don’t know.”

“You must have some idea.  You a criminal, Maddy?”

“Are you a murderer, Rudy?”

“I have killed men who had it coming if that’s what you’re asking,” he retorted.  “What are you wanted for?”

“I have a clean record before God.  Can you say the same?”

Rudy chewed his gum in silence, a smirk on his face.  “Oddly enough, God’s never really evaluated my work record.”

“Be patient,” Grant murmured just loud enough for him to hear.

Rudy’s eyes shot up to the reflection in his rear-view.

“Where are you going to bury Pepe?” Maddy quickly asked before anyone else could interject.

“That would be up to the boss,” Rudy said.

“So your boss doesn't know yet?”

His steady chewing suddenly stopped.  “Course he knows.”

“If your boss was very attached to Pepe and he knows Pepe is an ex-Pepe, why is Pepe in your trunk?”

“Your girlfriend's got a smart fucking mouth, Frederickson.”

Grant smiled silently out his window.

Maddy nodded to herself in satisfaction then turned to look out her own window.  “You don’t have a clue about either of us or our relationship.”

“Why are you protecting this whore?” Rudy asked Grant.  “You knock her up or something?”

At the sound of that ugly word, Grant’s spine jerked whip straight.  He felt a rage rise out of him for the first time in hours and wiped the depression from his soul like a flame streaking over a dry field.  He cleared his throat as life flooded back into him.

“How do you stand on the death penalty, Rudy?” Grant inquired, turning his attention away from the world outside his window to focus it fully on the man at the wheel.

“Never given it much thought, Frederickson.”

“I believe that there is evil in this world, Rudy, and as a fan of social order in general, I figure if and when you have the opportunity to destroy something evil you do it without thinking twice. That's why I'm a big advocate of capital punishment.”

Grant turned and looked at Maddy.  “Do you believe in evil, Maddy?”

Maddy stared seriously at Grant.  “Yes.”

“So, that is the reason why I'm protecting her, Rudy,” Grant told him.  “Because as long as there are evil men like you in this world, there will be ordinary people like me to protect their own.”  He promptly turned back to his window.

Maddy stared over at Grant with wide-eyed with admiration.

Rudy gave an exaggerated show of applause.  “This conversation is putting me in the mind of a last meal,” he commented darkly.  “Anyone else hungry?”

2

As the Mercedes headed east down Poydras Street in the heart of the city of New Orleans, Maddy gripped Grant’s arm and pointed excitedly out the window as it passed the Superdome.

“Look! The Superdome!” she told him.  “It’s one of the largest man-made structures in the world… in terms of diameter.  It covers 13 acres and stands 27 stories tall.”

“Thank you, Travel Channel,” Rudy interrupted.

A brooding silence settled over the car.  Maddy continued to gaze out the window with the awed smile of a child.

Grant watched her with a newfound interest for a few moments before asking Rudy, “Where are we going?

“The best hole-in-the-wall in town,” he replied.  “A little place called Mother’s.”

The Mercedes pulled into the cracked-asphalt parking lot of a low-profile downtown restaurant.  Killing the engine, Rudy leapt out almost cheerfully and held the back door of the Mercedes open for Grant, but ignored Maddy entirely as she stepped out.  She gasped aloud, turning a slow circle to take in the sight of all the tall buildings surrounding them.

“Y’know, New Orleans is a great city to get lost in,” Rudy said slamming his door and breezing past her.  As he started to the entrance of Mother’s restaurant, Maddy joined Grant, smiling broadly at the streetcar that passed on the street.

Continuing to watch Maddy, Grant’s face finally broke into a smile.

Smiling self-consciously, Maddy said, “Sorry, but you don’t know how great it is to finally see this city.”

“You don’t have to apologize,” he remarked.  “It’s actually pretty cool to see genuine happiness for a change.”

Waiting patiently, Rudy held one of the double glass entrance doors open.  Trotting several steps ahead, Maddy opened the other door for Grant.  He stopped short and took the door from her, waving her ahead and garnering a glare from Rudy.

Inside the cafeteria-style restaurant, a few customers stood in front of the open kitchen placing their orders for the various Cajun and Creole style dishes behind a steam-covered glass partition.

“Order up, Frederickson,” Rudy told Grant with a congenial slap on the back. “I'm buying.”

Grant gave him a grim look.

An elderly black woman stirred a pan filled with crawfish etouffee.  “What can I do for ya'll?” she asked stifling a yawn.

“Morning, could I please get a crawfish etouffee omelet. Black ham biscuit. Pancakes. Stack of three,” Maddy said enthusiastically.

The woman started to scribble out the order on a receipt, but Rudy waved a hand in her face.  “Nah-nah-nah.”

The woman’s face hardened.  Her eyes pinpointed Rudy like the tip of finger leveled in accusation.

“Boy, ya better get ya hand out ma face,” she snapped.  Making eye contact with Maddy, her face softened slightly.  “Sugah, you want any toast with that omelet?

“No thank you, ma’am.  The biscuit will do just fine.”

Rudy turned to Grant, trying to maintain a calm demeanor.  “What do you want?”

“How much did you plan to spend on me, Rudy?” Grant asked him.  “What’s the price for whitewashing your soul?”

“Look, Frederickson, do you want the fucking food or don't you?”

The elderly black woman’s face hardened even further as she glared at Rudy.

“You want absolution, go to a priest. I don't want any part of your charity,” Grant snapped.

Rudy sighed heavily and turned back to the woman behind the counter.  “One coffee. Black.”

The woman ripped the receipt off and slapped it down in front of Rudy with a glare.

Rudy took one look at the receipt and adamantly shook his head.  “Nah-nah-nah.  Separate tabs.  She ain’t with us.”

The woman snatched up the receipt, ripped off a thin strip on the bottom and tossed it back to Rudy, while she handed Maddy back her receipt.

“Thank you, ma’am,” Maddy responded with a gracious smile.  “And may I ask your name?”

The woman blinked at surprise at Maddy, an unpracticed smile appearing on her work-worn face.  “I’m Cheryl.”

“Well, you have a good day, Cheryl.”

“Same to you, Shug,” the woman replied, flashing a more genuine smile this time and pointing to the cashier.  “You can pay Mavis over there at the register.”

The dining room behind the kitchen was a non-descript room that looked almost like a patio out of someone’s house.  Rudy chose a seat at a table in the back near a window looking out over his car.  Giving the parking lot a long look and feeling satisfied that no cars had arrived after them, he finally dropped into his seat.

Maddy made eye contact with Grant.  Grant lifted his brows in question.  Maddy shifted her eyes to an ancient black man at the adjacent table thoroughly buttering a stack of pancakes.

Grant felt his stomach growl.

The black man then proceeded to slather Tabasco sauce all over the pancakes, turning Grant’s hunger into revulsion.  He shivered and turned back to Maddy, who smiled back mischievously as if she were somehow in on the joke.

“You kids seem to be enjoying the honeymoon,” Rudy grumbled, setting his cell phone on the table in front of him and checking for messages.

“You picking up a package? That's what your people do, right?

Rudy gave Grant a condescending look.

“His boss is a late riser,” Maddy explained.  “As most morally weak men are.”

Rudy's look hardened. He turned his attention to the television on the wall running the morning news.  “What do these men want with you?”

Maddy stared down at the five dollar bill she had been given as change, held tightly between two fingers.

“Listen, there’s no reason why I couldn’t leave you here,” Rudy told her.

Grant stiffened slightly.

“I think Frederickson and I both agree that this is safer than the side of I-10,” Rudy continued, flashing a quick look at Grant.  “Now, I don’t plan to do that, because since you’ve been around, our boy’s been cooperative and I appreciate that.”  He paused to fix Grant with a look.  “But I need to know what level of trouble to expect from your friends.”

Maddy looked Rudy in the eye.  “I don’t know who these people are or why they’re harassing me.”

Rudy stared at her a moment, then smiled at Grant.  “Y’see, now why don’t I believe her, Frederickson?”

“I've got a question for you.  Purely speculative,” Maddy asked Rudy, moving to face him.  “If Grant were to give you the money he owes, would you let him go?”

“As I already explained to your client there, counselor, it is not my decision to make,” Rudy answered.  “It is beyond my pay-grade.”

“Just so you understand, I paid them back in full,” Grant told Maddy.  “It took me a year and the liquidation of all my assets, but I managed to do it.  Torres decided to change the amount after the fact.”

“There was the matter of interest,” Rudy added, his eyes shifting to the TV indifferently.

“So you know Grant can't pay your boss back?

“Listen, what money he has, doesn't have, that's between him and the boss,” Rudy replied, turning to scan the parking lot again.  “I don't speculate. I don't interpret. I just do my job.”

Grant finally sat forward in his seat.  “Don't you see that the money isn't the issue here?  If I came up with that, there would be more interest and more interest.  Try and explain to her, Rudy, how someone like Torres can dedicate so much of his time and resources to ending the life of a nobody like me, because I've been trying to come up with an answer and I can't. My own death will be meaningless to me.”

Maddy studied Rudy.  “This man you call your boss, he may have had what passes as honor once, but something happened to him and someone with street smarts like you must be starting to question his motives.”

Rudy sat silent, watching the TV.

Maddy continued undauntedly.  “That inner, more reasonable, voice, whatever has kept you alive so long in this business, it's starting to ask what's going on here.”

Cheryl stepped out of the kitchen and set several plates of food down between Grant and Maddy, who smiled and slipped the five dollar bill into Cheryl’s hand.

“Thanks, Shug.  You let me know if you need anything else,” Cheryl called back over her shoulder to Maddy as she headed back to the kitchen.

“I could use some coffee,” Rudy called to the retreating woman as she returned to the kitchen without a look back.

Grant watched as she closed her eyes over the plate of pancakes for a moment, then nodded. “Here.  You’ve got to help me with all of this,” she said, sliding a knife and fork over to Grant.

Rudy watched as Maddy flooded the pancakes with syrup and carefully sliced off two crescents.  As she held one of them out to Grant, Rudy returned his attention to the TV with a grunt.

“I’m good,” Grant said uncertainly.

“Take one bite.  If these aren’t the best pancakes you’ve ever eaten in New Orleans then I won’t offer you a second bite,” Maddy replied with a smirk.

Grant gave a shrug and leaned forward, allowing her to feed him.

She speared the second crescent in the plate and stuffed it in her mouth with unladylike abandon into her mouth, her eyes closed in satisfaction.

Opening her eyes, she made eye contact with Grant, his mouth still full and nodded over her shoulder at a sign on the wall of the dining room.

Grant swallowed and studied the beer sign in silence wondering where he had heard of Killian’s Irish Red before.  It sounded somehow familiar.

Then suddenly he remembered.  During the chaotic escape from the truck stop, she murmured something that had sounded like nonsense at the time.

Buttermilk pancakes.  Killian’s.  French Quarter.

Slicing off another chunk, Maddy held out the fork to him.  “I told you, didn’t I?  Best pancakes in the Quarter.”

Grant slowly accepted the food into his mouth while he stared at the Killian's beer sign.  Finally, he looked over at Maddy with an expression half confused, half awestruck.

“This is the first time I’ve ever been to the Quarter,” he told her.

“Well, there you go,” she quipped smugly, looking back at the Killian’s sign again.  “Crazy, huh?”

Shaking his head in disbelief, Grant began to chuckle in spite of himself.

Rudy had stopped watching the TV altogether for the more interesting spectacle going on in front of him.  He quietly sipped his coffee and watched the verbal interplay like a tennis match being played between two pros from different alien species.

“Just like at the truck stop?” Grant asked her.

Maddy nodded and leaned in closer to feed him another bite.

Rudy narrowed his eyes at the pair in frustration as they laughed and shared food from the same plate.  Finishing off his coffee, he swept his cell phone off the table and stepped away.

“Does it always involve food?” Grant asked, casting a look over at Rudy’s retreating back.

“I think it's a visceral thing. Basic human needs stuff. If I'm hungry, my mind is thinking about where I'll be eating. If I'm in trouble, my mind is on how I can escape.”

Suddenly, her eyes glazed over.

A hand reached out from behind and grabbed Maddy's arm.

She turned to stare into the faces of the two Blank Men standing just behind her.  On the TV beyond them, a small private jet took flight in the distance on a vacant airfield, while Rudy shoved Grant ahead of him, a gun down by his side.

Registering the change of expression on her face, Grant reached out to take her arm.  “What is it?”

Maddy pulled her arm away from Grant and glanced back over her shoulder.

The other side of the dining area was empty.

Maddy pushed the plate over to Grant, her eyes glazing over.  “Sorry.  I feel a little sick all of the sudden.”

Rudy's cell phone rang. He moved even further away from the table and answered the phone, as a cheer goes up from the TV during a sports highlights reel.

Just as Grant was about to put another bite in his mouth, Maddy seized his arm.

“Listen,” she stated with authority.  “This is very important.  We can’t let him reach the airport.”

Grant simply stared at her in confusion.

“Watch me.  Be ready,” she concluded as Rudy snapped off the phone and grabbed Grant's arm brusquely.

“Breakfast is over.”

Casting one last look over at Maddy, Grant dropped the fork and followed Rudy.

Maddy scrambled behind them nearly colliding with Cheryl. She took two steps toward the door then stopped, retrieved a couple of bills from one pocket and shoved them into the woman’s hands.  “Have a good life,” Maddy exclaimed as she disappeared through the exit.  “See you on the other side.”

Cheryl looked down at the pair of hundred dollar bills and wobbled on her tired feet.

“Mercy me.”

3

“How much?”

Rudy looked up into the rear view mirror at Maddy as the Mercedes rocketed down the Pontchartrain Expressway.  He honked his horn angrily at an eighteen-wheeler lazily veering into his lane.  “How much what?”

“I thought about it and I think he’s right.  It’s not about the money at all, and you don’t care do you?”

Grant watched Maddy keenly as she leaned determinedly forward in her seat.

“Everybody has their price,” Maddy continued.  “Torres either pays you very well or you feel loyalty towards him or…”  She started to shake her head then studied him in the mirror.  “Maybe that’s it then.”

As the car in front of him started to brake, Rudy blasted his horn and cut around him back into flowing traffic as the driver gave him the finger in return.

“Does Torres have something on you?” Maddy asked him.  “Are you afraid of him?”

Rudy’s lips hardened into a thin white line.  He accelerated the Mercedes even faster, cutting again around a slower moving car.

“I’m assuming you know why Torres is doing what he’s doing,” Maddy continued.  “Either you approve of the death of the man sitting in your backseat or you’re in fear of your life if you questioned the judgment of your boss.”

Rudy glared up into the mirror then looked away.  After a moment, he snorted derisively.  “I’ve heard them beg and I’ve heard them talk trash, lady.  This is an original.”

Maddy exchanged a single quick glance with Grant before turning back to Rudy.

“An animal doesn’t distinguish between right and wrong.  It goes to whoever feeds it,” she continued, her voice, instead of increasing in volume, actually dimming to a whisper just loud enough for the man in the front seat to hear.  “You’re a man, Rudy, isn’t that what you tell yourself.  And when a man takes easy money without regard to self-respect, well, isn’t that the dictionary term for a prostitute?”

Rudy locked half-crazed eyes on her through the mirror.

“You called me a whore, but isn’t that what you really are, Rudolph,” she whispered, leaning slightly closer to him.  “A whore?”

Glancing quickly back, Rudy twisted around and blindly reached his arm over the seat to grab her.

Maddy threw herself back, just not quick enough.  His hand snagged her collar.

Grant grabbed Rudy’s wrist as Maddy let out a piercing shriek.

Through the windshield, Grant watched as their car veered violently to the right.

Attempting to regain control of the car, Rudy over-corrected.  The Mercedes cut across the lane of an eighteen wheeler, careened out of control, and spun completely around to face the other direction.

Grant leapt over and grabbed Maddy protectively in his arms as an SUV struck them from behind and sent the driver’s side crashing into the guard rail.

Lifting their heads, Grant and Maddy peered around the cabin.

Glass covered the dashboard.  Rudy rested with his head against the wheel.  Grant could see blood beneath his nose.

“Now c’mon,” Maddy commanded, leaping past Grant’s stunned face and slipping out of the passenger side door with her satchel in hand.

Leaning forward, Grant gripped Rudy’s shoulder.  “You okay?”

Rudy lifted his head and blinked foggily up at Grant.  The blood from his nose didn’t seem quite so copious from this distance, he thought.  Probably just a busted nose and not a skull fracture.

Grant felt a tug on his arm and stumbled out into the freeway alongside Maddy, surrounded by stalled, honking cars.

“He’ll live,” Maddy snapped, tossing the satchel at Rudy through the shattered front passenger’s side window.  “There’s at least twenty grand cash in that bag.  Give it to your boss and tell him to call off the dogs.  You understand me?”

Rudy doesn’t react.  He wiped at his nose, blinking in disbelief at the blood on his knuckles.

Sticking his head back in through the window, Grant called out to Rudy above the noise of the cars around them.  “Hang on.  We’re going to get you some help.”

“Get out of here,” Rudy mumbled, shaking his head in frustration and laying his head back down against the wheel.  “Goddamn boy scout.”

Maddy cut around the back of the car and into the high-weeds of the shoulder, hauling Grant behind her by his arm.  She swung one leg over the guardrail then looked down the slope of hill stretching out below them.

Acres of above-ground crypts stretched out as far as the eye could see. A city of the dead.

“What about all the other people that were in the accident?” Grant sputtered, giving her his hand and helping her over the guardrail, but still looking back over his shoulder at the mess on the highway they were leaving behind.  In the distance, he could hear an ambulance.

“Listen, help is on its way,” Maddy told him.  “You’re not running away.”

“That’s exactly what I’m doing,” he protested, following her over the railing.

“How are you going to spend the last hours of your life?” she snapped.  “I don’t plan to waste one minute filling out paperwork with a traffic cop.”  That being said, Maddy began the descent down the sharp grassy incline toward the cemetery, carefully avoiding the discarded items of trash and broken bottles that lay like hidden mines throughout the tall weeds.

Grant gave her a look as if registering for the first time his position relative to the man that remained behind in the Mercedes—the man whose sole purpose was to deliver him to a gangster who would see him dead.  Giving one final look back at the Mercedes, Grant started the forty-five degree march down.  He quickly lost his balance, dropped to his bottom, and sailed past Maddy on the seat of his pants—half-sliding, half-rolling to the foot of a chain-link fence bordering a gravel-lined railroad track and came to an abrupt stop.

Maddy dashed the last few steps down the incline and offered him a hand, hiding a smirk.

Ignoring her, Grant rose to his feet and looked grimly at the fence and the railroad track on the other side.

“They’re coming,” Maddy exclaimed, looking with wide-eyes back over her shoulder.

Following her line-of-sight, Grant could barely see the tops of the cars from his position, but he trusted her observation regardless.  Before them was a foot-trail, obviously made by ambitious young explorers (or possibly the homeless).

“C’mon,” Grant said, taking Maddy by the hand and pulling her along behind him down the dirt trail.

“What are we looking for?”

“How the locals get through,” Grant replied.  Rushing forward, he found a gap in the fence, and held the frayed ends open for Maddy to squeeze through.  He quickly followed.

They scrambled over the empty railroad tracks and headed toward the seven and a half foot graffiti-covered wall, razor-wire lining the top.  Taking her hand, Grant tugged her down the dirt trail between the track and the wall.

Maddy gave their interlocked hands brief contemplation before looking ahead toward the patch of wall Grant was angling toward.  Coming to a stop, Grant released her hand and examined the wall.  About five and a half feet up was a wide two foot by two foot square of missing bricks covered from view on the inside of the wall by a large tree.  At their feet lay remnants of a wooden pallet, all that was left of the method the explorers had gained access to the cemetery.

While Grant ran his fingers along the edge of the opening and attempted to see inside, Maddy crouched beside the wall and studied its base.  Finding an un-mortared brick a few feet from the ground, she worked it loose and began to slide it out.

Grant stooped and together they slid the wide brick out until it stuck out like a makeshift shelf below the gap in the wall.  Hopping up, Grant stuck his head through the hole in the wall and found a crawlspace behind what looked like an enormous azalea bush.

“ ‘Enter through the narrow gate,’ ” Maddy whispered at Grant’s back.  “ ‘For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction.’ ”

Grant withdrew his head and cast a concerned look back at Maddy.  “Um… yeah.  Maybe I should go first,” he suggested, diving arms-first through the hole, as Maddy looked nervously back the way they had come.

4

As the sound of ambulances grew louder, the passenger side door of the Mercedes opened. Rudy lifted his head weakly and tried to turn his head to see who was rooting around in the backseat of his car.

But he knew without seeing.  It was Them.  The fullbacks in raincoats.

The taller of the Blank Men clucked his tongue at Rudy then reached down to pop the trunk with the lever below the seat.

Blinking rapidly to try and clear the blurriness in his vision, Rudy peered around at his side mirror as the second shorter of the two men lifted the trunk.  “Whateryoudoin?”

The first Blank Man reached through the window and grasped Rudy’s nose between two meaty fingers.  “Gotcha nose,” he said in a teasing voice.

Rudy howled in pain and struggled to reach around but fell weakly back to the wheel.

“We need to go,” the second voice snapped.

Rudy peered past the first figure.  The second Blank Man appeared, with Pepe's coffin beneath his arm just as the first man slapped his black-gloved hand over Rudy’s mouth.

Rudy’s eyes widened.  He could get very little oxygen through the broken nose filled with phlegm and congealing blood.  He could not breathe!

He began to struggle, feeling real panic for the first time in a very long while.

No final taunts were exchanged.  The dark man in the shadows of his Mercedes simply watched him with an almost analytical curiosity.  Try as he could, Rudy could not get a good look at his face.  His vision and his mind remained fuzzy.

Rudy resisted, steadying his heart rate and retaining what remained of the air in his lungs for what last moments he had left.

I will not give this bastard the satisfaction of dying like a scared little bitch, he thought morbidly.

The sirens grew louder.

“No more time.”

The pressure against his mouth disappeared and Rudy gasped in sweet air, color rushing back into the bluish skin of his face.

“Wish we had a few more moments to talk, Pedroza,” the first Blank Man said, giving him a pat on the head like an adult might give a small child.  “We’ll be in touch.”

As the white spots on the edge of his vision slowly dissolved, Rudy focused on taking in one breath after another—in-out, in-out, in-out--all the while trying to ignore the fact that they had taken Pepe’s corpse.

But none of that seemed as important as the reality of how close he had come to that old acquaintance Death.  Only this time instead of some other unlucky sap, the Old Man had been paying him a visit.

5

Sliding roughly on her belly over the edge of the hole in the wall, Maddy felt Grant’s hands around her waist as he guided her down to the ground.  She landed with a bit of a blush, one which was easily concealed within the shade of the enormous azalea bush she found herself shielded beneath.

“Looks like a big place,” Grant whispered, stepping casually out into the open and staring down from the small hill they stood atop at acres and acres of enormous crypts of stone separated by well-manicured grass and sidewalks.  Some appeared to be miniature buildings topped with ornate crosses, while others were statues of human beings or angels in mid-flight.

“This is either Metairie or Greenwood.  I can’t recall which,” Maddy answered in the same hushed tone.  “All I know is that they’re not open to the public yet.”

“Why are you whispering?” he asked her. “We’re not likely to wake anyone up.”

She shrugged.  “You started it.”

“Where’s the way out?”

Maddy turned a slow circle then pointed to the northeast where some of the larger crypts seemed to be.  “That direction?”

“You sound uncertain.”

“Well yeah.  I’ve never been here before,” she replied, starting down the wide open path between crypts.  “Anything I know was gathered from travel books about this city.  This is one of the better kept cemeteries.  The ones closer to the Quarter are in serious disrepair.  Crypts falling apart.  Graffiti everywhere.”

Grant fell into step next to her.  It was eerily like walking through an abandoned, immaculately-kept city in miniature.  All the lawns were perfectly trimmed and the tiny streets clear of litter.  Only there were no people—rather, none above ground.  “How far?”

“This is like some kind of a dream,” she whispered in awe, gazing around with a child-like smile on her face.  Suddenly she grabbed his arm and shook him roughly.  “I still can’t believe we’re in New Orleans!”

Grant recovered and put a discreet distance between them.  “And if this were a pleasure cruise, a cemetery wouldn’t be one of the hot spots on my list,” he said with an unconscious shudder.  “The only saving grace is that it’s daytime.”

“Is it freaking you out a little?” she asked, giving him a look of interest.

“No,” Grant retorted a bit too sharply.   He increased his speed slightly.  “How big is this damn place?”

“No idea,” she admitted, double-stepping to catch up to Grant.  “There’s a hundred or so acres of dead folks in here.  In fact, I think Louis Prima’s grave is around here somewhere.”

Grant scrutinized her with an impressed smile.  “Louis Prima?  Really?”

“That’s what I heard.”  She flashed him a look of honest confusion.  “What?”

“I ain’t got nobody!” a voice sung out from behind them.

Maddy squeaked and throttled Grant’s arm.

Untangling himself, Grant spun to find a mound of rags on the steps of a crypt slowly materializing into a figure.  A bearded face emerged and blinked at them foggily.  “I ain’t moving, no how,” the man exclaimed, tipping over the empty bottle sitting next to him and sending it clattering down the stone steps of the crypt.

The sound rang like the chiming of a bell through the still morning air.

“How ‘bout a little help here?” he asked them blurrily.

Grant took Maddy by the elbow and guided her in the opposite direction.

“God Bless and the Devil curse,” the homeless man yelled at their backs, suddenly sobering up.  “Curse you, you selfish sinners!”

Just ahead the wide path narrowed to an intersection surrounded by towering stone monument-like crypts.  Mounted atop one, a six foot tall angel laid draped around a cross as if in mourning.  Another figure sat casually on the ledge beneath it, watching the passing couple with interest.

“Okay, I’m officially spooked now,” Maddy admitted in a hushed voice.

“You’re whispering again.”

“Yeah, well now I have a good reason.”

“I think you shoulda paid the gatekeeper,” a voice suggested in a conversational tone.

Maddy attacked Grant’s midsection, throwing herself behind Grant and putting him effectively between her and the skinny emaciated black man in a top hat that had separated from the shadows atop the crypt beside them like a man-sized crow.

“They ain’t open yet, y’know,” Top Hat informed them, dangling his legs off the ledge.

Grant gently nudged Maddy backwards, but unable (or unwilling) to grasp the hint, she continued to cling to his mid-section.

“We were just passing through,” Grant replied.

Jamming his two pinkie-fingers into his closed lips, Top Hat gave a single shrill whistle that reverberated through the tiny space.

Grant cocked his head back over his shoulder and hissed: “If you don’t let go of me right now, so help me!”

Maddy dropped her arms and took one step back.  Throwing her arms protectively around herself, she squeezed her eyes shut.

Grant gave her a look of concern.

A second man--this one tall, broad-shouldered and clothed in rags--stepped casually out into the path behind them.  “Morning, t’ ya’ll.”

Grant moved around the immobilized Maddy, putting himself halfway between the two men as Top Hat slipped carefully off the crypt ledge and onto the top step.

“You okay?” Grant asked her.

“Just checking the forecast,” she muttered in a low tone.

Top Hat closed in on them from the other side.  “They's selfish ones! They's desecrated this sacred spot.”

“I don't have a dollar to my name. Look.”  Grant took out his wallet and held it out at arm’s length.  “Does it look like rain?” he growled out of the corner of his mouth in Maddy’s direction.

Finally, she opened her eyes, her face pale.  She gave a single hopeless shake of her head and darted behind Grant again.

Top Hat snatched the wallet from Grant's hand like a starved wolf would take food.  “You done insulted the sanctity of this here hallowed ground,” he said, rifling through the billfold with a disgusted expression.  “Where’s ya’ll credit cards?”

“I had a bit of a money problem and had to cancel all those,” Grant responded. “You probably know how it is.”

Raggedy Man stopped a foot from Grant.  He scrutinized him from a slightly taller vantage point.  Grant met his stare and held it.

Top Hat spiked Grant's wallet to the cement in frustration.

Grant reached back and set the palm of his hand against Maddy’s belly, giving her a push firmly away from him.

Maddy held tight to his hand, unwilling to part from him.

Dropping his eyes, Raggedy Man turned to Maddy with a smirk.

“There was a time when I would have been scared of guys like you,” Maddy said, stepping out from behind Grant.

“You should be, dahlin,” Top Hat replied.  “We’re the ones you been havin’ nightmares ‘bout.  I’m comin’ for my pound of flesh.”

Dismissing Grant, Raggedy Man side-stepped him and gingerly took Maddy’s chin in his huge hand.

Grant glanced over at the taller man standing beside him and gave a sigh.  He was exhausted and he was hungry, but in that moment, instead of frustration taking control--tired of being dismissed and taken for granted--Grant found himself acting out of instinctual concern for another person.

Ragged Man looked down in surprise and found Maddy running her hand gently along his belly.  He looked up again into her eyes, a sensual smile spread slowly out across his lips.

Running on pure adrenaline, Grant grabbed the man’s wrist, twisted it behind him, and kicked the back of his knees, dropping him to the ground.

“If today is the day I am going to die, I swear by every soul in this cemetery, I will not go with my back to thugs like you,” Grant yelled, turning to Top Hat with fiery eyes and letting loose a cathartic yet blood-curdling scream.

Blinking as if awakening from a dream, Top Hat turned and bolted into the grass.

Suddenly as if by magic, there was a pearl-handled six-inch blade in Maddy’s hand, held across the throat of the man at her feet.

“I would take a hint and run before I hand the crazy white man your knife.”

Raggedy Man fell to his bottom and back-pedaled a few yards away before rising and running after Top Hat.

Maddy handed Grant the knife, which he promptly flung blade first into the grass where it stuck fast in the earth.  He seized Maddy’s hand and led her down the path after him in the opposite direction of the two would-be muggers.

Maddy looked over at him with an adrenaline-fueled smile.  The animal within her suddenly wanted very much to rip the clothes off this man and have her way with him in the center of this graveyard.  Where the hell did that come from, she asked herself, the out-of-character feeling both shocking and exhilarating her.

“That was quite a scream,” she said coyly, gripping his hand even tighter and in response, she could feel him increase his grip as well.

“Yeah,” he said breathlessly, a wide-eyed incredulous expression on his face.  “I don’t know what came over me.  I just saw him reach for you and I… and I…”

Words failed him and he glanced furtively over at her.

She pulled him to a stop and looked hopefully up at him.

He stared at her for a moment, recognized something in her expression, and looked away with a panicky expression.  Pulling her after him urgently, he started moving again.  “C’mon, let’s get the hell out of here before something else tragic happens.”

Maddy lowered red-tinged cheeks and trudged after him.

6

City employee Marvin Sanders had just raised the American flag and opened the gates to the Greenwood Cemetery when he saw the casually-dressed lady and gentleman approaching from inside.

From inside?

He’d seen a lot of homeless folks over the last six weeks he’d been employed by the city of New Orleans, but none of them had worn clothes in as good a condition as these two.  Maybe he was missing something here.

“Hey, uh..,” he started as they trotted toward where he stood at the entrance.

“Okay, you must be the new guy,” the man said to him as he whisked by him, pulling the woman behind and out through the gate.

“Well… yeah,” Marvin replied, feeling like he was missing something very important.

“You realize that we've had a bunch of homeless folks in here all night?”

Marvin turned his attention away from them a moment and looked into the cemetery with interest.  “Again?” he murmured under his breath, unclipping the radio from his belt and turning it on for the first time that morning.  Guess, I’m going to have to call Mr. Bernard, he thought.  Man, he hated dealing with that idiot.  Always picking his nose right in front of God and the world.

Suddenly, he glanced around, wondering if he would be asked about these two, but they were already headed for City Park Avenue.  But they work for the city, right, he figured as he stared emptily after him.  Sounded like they did.

The lady pointed out toward Canal Street, and the man glanced furtively back one last time at Marvin.

“Don't just stand there! You might still be able to catch them if you hurry up!” the man called back to him as he trotted after the lady.

Marvin nodded and headed into the cemetery, calling for Mr. Bernard on his radio and hoping he’d at least remember to blow his nose this morning, so Marvin wouldn’t have the watch the spectacle of his nasal excavation.

7

“Are you sure taking the streetcar is such a good idea?” Grant asked, rushing along behind Maddy and resisting the urge to look back again at the park employee at the cemetery gate.

“We have to keep moving and stick to crowds,” Maddy said, grabbing Grant by his arm and drawing him closer to her.  “They know we went through the cemetery.”

“How do you know that they know?”

Maddy pointed to her stomach.  “You can feel it in here.  Can’t you?”

Grant gave her a look of confusion.  “No, you’re the one with the… system.”

A streetcar pulled up across the street. Maddy raced toward it and Grant followed.

They rushed into line behind a small group standing at the door of the car headed southeast toward the Mississippi.

“You usually disregard it, but everyone has it to a certain extent, Grant,” she said, giving him a patronizing pat on his own belly.  “Even big strong, logic-minded men like you.  I mean, you just did it a few minutes ago.”

When their turn arrived, Grant followed Maddy up the steps.  “What are you talking about?”

Cutting him off, the uniformed driver announced: “Two-fifty.  Exact change, please.”

Maddy turned to Grant with an alarmed look.  “You have two-fifty in exact change?”

“You're the one with all the money,” Grant replied. “Where's your bag?”

“You saw me leave it in the car with Chuckles the clown and the recently departed Pepe.”

“C’mon.  C’mon,” the driver grumbled, glancing at the line slowly forming behind them.  “We’re on a schedule here.”

Grant cursed under his breath and rummaged through his pockets.  Finding the crumpled hundred dollar bill, he handed the bill to the driver and pointed to Maddy.  “Two tickets please.”

The driver glowered at the bill and without looking up at the face of the hand holding it said, “Now what exactly am I supposed to do with that?  Roll it up and snort a line.”

“Wow,” Grant exclaimed, giving Maddy a look of disbelief.  “Look, I love your sense of humor, but seriously, it's the smallest I got.”

“Must be nice to be you,” the driver said indifferently.  “Go get some change.  Another car will be round at fifteen after.”  He pointed to the door.

“No, we've got to take this one,” Grant replied.

“Or we're going to be late,” Maddy added from beside him.  “Very late.”

“Look, you can keep the change,” Grant continued to argue.  “Please accept it as a donation to the Courteous Bus-Driver’s Association.  I don’t care.  We just need to get on this particular streetcar.”

The driver sighed heavily, glancing at the passengers behind Grant growing more and more agitated.  “I got all day passes. Five dollars each.

“Perfect, give me two.”

“Exact change only.”

Grant stared blankly at the driver.  “Give me twenty.  Free all day passes to the next eighteen passengers,” he proclaimed, turning to the grumbling line of humanity crowding into the tiny stairwell behind him.  “Just my way of welcoming all of you to the city of brotherly love.”

Several of the passengers grumble their indifferent thanks.

The driver began to count out pairs of passes, then stopped to search the ticket compartment in vain.  “I've only got the five pair.”

Grant seized Maddy by the shoulder and leaned in to whisper conspiratorially.  “Please take control of this situation before I throw myself through the windshield,” he pleaded.

Maddy nodded and stepped past Grant to address the driver.  “Please, sir. We really need to catch this car.  It may very well be a matter of life and death.”

Finally making eye contact, the driver quietly assessed the woman standing before him.

“You have the money and you asked for twenty all day passes, I just didn't have the proper number of passes available. Driver error. You ride for free. Please take your seats,” the driver concluded, turning to the next passenger in line.

As Maddy led Grant down the aisle, he leaned down to her and said, “There’s a man who genuinely seemed to take pride in his job.”

Grabbing the first available seats, Maddy plopped down and beamed brightly as Grant joined her.

“What?” he asked.

“See, you can be positive when you want to be,” she stated, leaning casually against him.

Grant cleared his throat and looked somewhat uncomfortable.  Finally, he separated himself and angled his body to face her.  “Now, explain what you meant when you said that I did it a few minutes ago.  What exactly did I do?”

“You knew that guy watching the gate of the cemetery was new.  How did you know that?”

Grant considered.  How had he known?

“In whatever brief amount of time we had, I must have just assessed him and something spoke inexperience to me.”

Maddy tagged him playfully on the arm.  “That’s in small measure what I do,” she told him.  “It’s not so crazy actually.”

“Did you see the knife?” Grant asked fixing his eyes on her with a laser-like focus.

Maddy shrugged.

“That’s not an answer,” he challenged her.

“In a way, I did see it,” she answered.

He continued to stare at her, giving a subtle shake of her head.  “Was that an example of what you were talking about before at the truck stop?  Remembering the future?”

Maddy lowered her eyes almost with shame.

“What?  Now you don’t want to talk about it?”

“Yeah, I didn’t exactly have a choice.  You were going to leave me there,” she replied, an edge to her voice.

“What’s stopping you now?”

“I find it’s not a wise thing to… y’know.”  She looked away.  “Let’s just say, bad things happen to the people I open up to, Grant.”

Grant gave up and gazed intently down at the hundred in his hands.  “What you do is very special, kid.  It’s not a system.  It’s not something you can teach.  What you do is a full-fletched phenomenon.”

“Now do you understand why I’m being hunted like an animal?”

Grant gave her a slow nod then turned back to the bill in his hands as the streetcar finally started to move down the track.  “So you really gave Rudy all your money?”

“Yes,” she replied, staring wide-eyed out the window as the driver rang the bell of the streetcar.  She sat forward on the edge of her seat and brought her hands together like an excited child.  “Don't worry about money,” she told him without looking up.  “As long as you’re with me, you never have to worry about it.”

“You want to explain to me why you had a bagful of loose cash to begin with?”

“Right place at the right time, Grant,” Maddy responded enigmatically, tipping him a wink.  “Just like finding the knife in the waistband of that punk in the cemetery.  If I need it, I'll find it.  I knew I would need a satchel full of money at some point and for some good reason, but I didn’t know the reason until I met you.”

Grant gave a heavy sigh and looked over his shoulder.  “Giving him that money won’t change anything.”

“It’ll change something,” Maddy said, looking back out the window and catching a sudden breeze that blew her hair back from her face.  She closed her eyes for a moment and basked in the sensual feeling of the air against her skin.  “The only constant in all our lives is change Grant.”

While her eyes were still closed, Grant took the opportunity to study her face.  She held a pleasant smile there, almost as if she were on vacation instead of being pursued by maniacs intent on killing her.  In the moment, he envied her that ability--to compartmentalize the danger and tragedies of the past and live only in the moment.

She opened her eyes and stared openly and without shame into his eyes as if glimpsing a corner of his soul.

He quickly diverted his stare, feeling the sudden intimacy of the moment too much.

“By the way, in case you’re wondering.  I can’t read minds,” she explained.  “When I was younger, I thought I could if I tried hard enough—y’know, practiced and meditated.  But no.”  She shook her head. “I thank the Lord that he never handed me that cup.  Some things are meant to be kept private, y’know.”

Grant nodded, his mind turning to his own past and the demons that made their home there.

8

Leaning out onto the balcony, Rudy looked down on the mass of humanity already starting to fill St. Peter Street below. He took a long drag on his cigarette and closed his eyes in satisfaction.  His nose was swollen and every inhalation caused him pain but it was worth it.

The hell with the doctor!

If he was going to live a few less years because of this habit, then so be it.  Better he should spend his life happy than to die old with a mouthful of that foul-tasting nicotine gum.  Besides he held no illusions as to his life expectancy in this profession.

Mack, one of Torres’ bodyguards, called out to Rudy from inside.  As much as he hated to, Rudy crushed the cigarette out under his foot.

He found the big man sitting alone surrounded by at least ten empty dishes at a center table in the empty restaurant.  He was reading a newspaper and smoking one of those foul-smelling Dominicans he liked--being too cheap to spring for the real Cubans he could easily afford.

Arturo Torres owned the Restaurant DeBois as a cover.  Still, it was a damn good restaurant.  The chef was some hot shot French douche-bag from Paris and could knock out anything from pasta to gumbo.

Laden with mental exhaustion, Rudy dropped heavily into a chair across from his boss.

“Well, let's hear it,” Torres said around the edges of the cigar in his mouth, without looking up.

Rudy sighed and touched his nose experimentally.  “Had an accident on the way to the airport, boss.”

“Hear you lost Frederickson,” Torres stated, folding the newspaper in half with a snap and slapping it loudly down on the tabletop.  He turned the full intensity of his glare on the other man, an expression that made lesser men weak to their knees.  But Rudy had seen it before.  More and more often lately, it seemed to him.

“I've been on this thing since, what, midnight last night and...”

“I don't want to hear how fucked up your day's been,” Torres growled angrily.  “I lost my shop, about a million and a half of inventory and to top it all off, in all the confusion, my Pepe went missing.”

Rudy opened and quickly closed his mouth again.

Torres fixed him with a look that said, “Tell me something.”

Rudy quickly switched gears and narrowly avoided striking the pothole in the center of the road.  “The good news is Frederickson came through with the money,” he said, taking a seat at the table. “The boys inventoried it downstairs. Twenty thousand eight hundred seventy.”

Giving him a look of suspicion, Torres returned to his paper.  “I already explained to you that it doesn’t matter. His grace period expired.”

Rudy studied Torres for a moment before leaning forward and taking a careful measure of the approach he was about to make. “Arturo, you have the money and Frederickson is gone now. Why don't we just wash our hands of this guy and move on to this Houston situation? Do we know what the story is there?”

“No, we don't,” Torres snapped, an edge to his voice.  “Do you have something to tell me about the garage in Houston?”  Looking up from his paper, the large man breathed heavily and stared steadily at Rudy.

“I wasn't there, because I was busy handling this Frederickson thing just like you asked me to do. You can guarantee if I'd have been there, it wouldn't have happened.”

Torres grunted ironically and polished off his cup of coffee.  Wiping his mouth on his sleeve, he said, “Questions have been asked. Like maybe Frederickson led those fuckers out to the Lakeshore site.  There’ve been a lot of fingers pointed in your direction.”

Rudy stared blankly at Torres, his eyes slowly growing more and more confused.  “I was told personally by Charlie B, when he showed up that morning to let him into the shop.”

Torres grunted and turned back to his newspaper.

“No, wait!  This is important,” Rudy said sharply, resting his hand on Torres’ arm.  “Remember when I asked you how he had found the location and you told me that Tran had left him a message in his apartment?  Do you remember that conversation?”

Torres stared down at the hand on his sleeve.

Behind him, Rudy could sense movement toward the table.  He didn’t have to look back to know it was Mack.  The shaggy-faced Cajun never even went to the can without a loaded gun on him, and he knew better than to make him nervous.

Rudy slowly removed his hand from his boss’s sleeve and settled back into his chair.

“Listen carefully,” Torres told him, removing the cigar from his mouth and gesturing at his chest with it. “You are going to find this man.  If you need reasons, then here's a couple; because I want him and you work for me. Do you see any flaw in my fucking logic?”

Rudy took a moment before answering, turning his head slightly and finding Mack standing just a few yards away from them--clearly an active listener in the conversation now.

“Is there something else you want to tell me about Frederickson? Something personal maybe that might help me find him?” he asked.

Torres’ face hardened then finally he smirked.  “Yeah, the asshole will always do exactly the opposite of what me or you would do in any given situation.”

9

So taken with the view of the city he had never been to before, Grant didn’t realize that they had slowed to a stop until after he heard Maddy’s voice and the edge there.

He had been lost in thought, knowing that he had to end this soon and wondering how he would do it.  At this rate, he would have a hard time getting back to Houston, and the longer he drew this out, the trickier it would be trying to get away.  He could already feel her growing attached to him, and it made him jumpy.  He didn’t want to lead her on.  Did he do or say something that may have given her the wrong impression?

All these thoughts disappeared as the alarm appeared in her voice, and the streetcar came to a complete stop in the middle of Canal Street.

“Why are we stopping?” Maddy called out to the driver, rising and slipping into the seat behind him.  Grant joined her.

The driver tapped a gauge on his dashboard, and an incoherent voice barked something inaudible over his radio.  “Power's out,” he answered in a nonplussed voice.

A look passed between Maddy and Grant.

The noise level slowly increased throughout the car as word traveled that none of them would be reaching their destinations at the time they originally thought.  But almost immediately, the sound dimmed as all the locals accepted their fate with grim resignation.

Such is life, their attitude seemed to say without words.

This only drove Maddy to greater agitation.  She could barely maintain contact with her seat.  “We’ve got to do something,” she muttered to herself under her breath, her eyes darting around at the streets flanking them.

Grant cleared his throat and got the driver’s attention.  “Does this happen often?”

“These lines are old,” the old man replied, drawing the radio’s transmitter into his gnarled work-worn hand. “Odds are it'll be back on in another ten or fifteen minutes.

Maddy popped from her seat and scanned the frozen landscape around the stationary vehicle.  “We don't have that kind of time.”

The driver cast a nervous look at Maddy and spoke into the mike.  “Just to let you know, the power’s temporarily out,” he announced. “Any ya’ll want to step off at this point, feel free.”

Giving the driver a parting nod, Grant rose and followed Maddy to the door.  The locals sat back watching indifferently from their seats and fanning themselves with whatever they had on hand.  The driver nodded genially back at Grant.

“Just be mindful to observe the crosswalks now.  I don’t want any pedestrian accidents on my watch,” the driver continued in a relaxed pace. Flashing a look of warning at Maddy, the driver pulled on the lever beside him and opened the door.

Squeezing through before the door had even fully opened, Maddy stepped down onto the streetcar rail path in the center of Canal Street, gasped and dropped to one knee just outside.

Grant leaped off and bowed down beside her.  “You okay?”

Maddy could dimly hear his voice, but when she looked up she saw a huge cypress tree spread out before her in the center of the busy French Quarter street.

Shaking her head only seemed to set the hook even deeper, bringing the image deeper into focus.  The rushing cars and busy city noises folded under her consciousness as if a thick blanket had been thrown over her.  She closed her eyes to clear her mind, but when she peered up again, a bayou lay beyond the clear image of a cypress tree.

Two gunshots rang out.

So realistic was the sound that she actually gave a sharp startled scream and threw up her hands to instinctively protect her face.

She could feel strong arms around her now, and she knew somewhere out in the real world Grant was trying to get through to her.  His concern, from the urgency of his grip, felt genuine.

She opened her eyes, her intention to tell him she was physically okay.

A dark featureless figure loomed above her now.  The silhouette of a massive handgun pointed directly down at her from the hand of the broad-shouldered figure above.

Then as if she had emerged from the surface of a lake, reality rushed in like a bright light and filled the vacuum.

Traffic noise returned to her ears. Canal Street came into clear focus before her eyes.

The sound of Grant’s voice came through above the sound of the cars around her.

“Can you hear me?”

“Yeah,” she managed, turning to make eye contact with him.

He looked at her with such concern that she could have kissed him.

Surprisingly enough, the streetcar driver stood next to him.  The concerned look on his face slid from Maddy to Grant.  “You okay, young lady?  You need me to call for assistance?”

“No sir, I’m fine.  Thank you for your concern,” Maddy responded, taking Grant’s hand.

The driver gave Grant one more look, then without another word retreated back into the streetcar.

“I have it now,” Maddy said, attempting ever-so-slowly to rise to her feet.

Grant grasped her elbow and supported her as she stood.  “What are you talking about?”

“The expiration date,” she replied, looking up at him with red glassy eyes.  “I knew the moment I touched Canal.”

“The expiration for what?” he asked in confusion.

“For me,” she told him, starting in the direction of the nearest crosswalk then stopping with a brisk shake of her head.

“You?” he said with alarm.  “Are we back to this again?”

Maddy fixed Grant with a steady glare.  “You still don’t believe me?  After everything you’ve seen today?”

Grant sighed heavily, then pointed at a bench a few yards away, helping her toward it.  “How much time do you think you have?”

“Only until sunrise tomorrow,” she informed him, dropping roughly onto the bench.  She was feeling suddenly weak.  Where had that come from?  It was like the emotional charge of the moment had taken a physical toll on her.

“How can you know this? What if you're wrong?” he asked, sitting down next to her.

“If I stay on this path, I won't live to see another morning,” Maddy told him, taking a deep breath and looking around in expectation of something threatening.  “Something’s changed.  Something changed the arc of our direction somehow.”

Grant lowered his head, unconsciously glancing away from her back toward the direction they had come from—back toward the interstate.

Maddy studied him.  “You’re going to leave me?” she inquired in a soft, scared-child voice.

He had never heard that degree of vulnerability in her voice.  She seemed really shaken.  Knowing all that, he could still not bring himself to look at her.

“I’ve got to get back.  I can’t just…” he started to say.  “I have to get home.”

“I can’t believe you’re going to leave me,” she whispered to herself in a quiet awed voice that rang loudly in the quiet space between them.  “After everything.”

In the distance, he thought he could hear the locked brakes of a car and the squeal of tires sliding to a sudden crash.

At the sound, his body involuntarily shuddered.

No, not again.

He straightened and craned his neck in the direction he thought he had heard the crash.  It was suddenly very important that he see some evidence of an accident.  Maybe if he could just hear the sound of an ambulance, he would know for sure that he wasn’t just hearing things.

Don’t let her drive away, a voice within demanded.

When he came back into himself and looked around, the bench next to him was empty.  He shot to his feet and looked over his shoulder.

Maddy stood on the raised esplanade, moving slowly into the busy intersection against the light.  Cars honked and brakes squealed.

Cursing under his breath, Grant bolted after her, grabbing her arm at the last second before she started across.  “What?  So your own death isn’t coming soon enough that you’re trying to shorten your life even more?” he grunted, moving toward the closest crosswalk.

Maddy stared at him in surprise, grabbing his arm tighter in hers and giving it a brief but intense squeeze.  “Thank you,” she said simply.

“Where to?” he asked in confusion, stabbing at the crosswalk button.

She shook her head.  “No, you have to lead.  On my own, this day will end badly.  I need you to steer me in the right direction.”

Grant traded a look with her, then slowly nodded his understanding with a dark smile on his face.  “Why not me?  After all, I haven’t a damned clue where we are right now,” he murmured, tugging her gently across the street when the light changed.

“S’kay,” she reassured following him closely.  “You couldn’t possibly do any worse than me.”

10

Passing Grant and Maddy, a swarm of shirtless children rushed up the sidewalk through an older residential section past ramshackle housing and broken down vehicles.

Beside him, Maddy stiffened as if bracing for trouble, and Grant flashed a look over at her.  “You okay?”

“Yeah,” she replied in a low nervous voice.  “I’m just not all that sure of the character of the area.”

Grant frowned at the cryptic response.  “Actually, it reminds me a little of my neighborhood,” he said passing a shirtless man, sitting out on his porch drinking a forty-ounce bottle of an amber liquid. He gave them a bleary-eyed look of accusation as they strode past.  “Many of these folks are just as much victims of circumstance as you are.  Some will never be the same as before the hurricane.”

Katrina.

Like 9-11 had been to the entire nation, Katrina had been to New Orleans.  To the locals, modern history for them would forever be divided into life before and after Katrina had come to town.

There were still places in the neighborhood that looked as if the storm had hit just yesterday.  Rotting corpses of homes.  Overgrown fields of weeds where children used to play.

Maddy spotted a sticker of the Virgin Mary on the back of a “dually,” a dual-wheel utility truck and felt her shoulders relax slightly.  “We’re among good folks here,” she commented confidently.

Grant gave a nod of agreement as they passed an elderly woman rocking a small child out on the front porch that looked to be six months old.  She gave them an uncertain smile and a nod of greeting.

Nodding back, Grant asked Maddy, “Any clue where we are?”

“Somewhere between Faubourg Tremé and the Seventh Ward,” she answered. “Neither of which are known for safety.  In fact, the guidebook I read warned against going there.”

A blast that might have be a car backfiring or a gunshot drew Maddy immediately to Grant’s side like a magnet.

Grant threw an uncertain look over his shoulder.  “Just the same, you might have warned me.”

“I didn’t want to influence your decision,” she explained.

Grant growled.  “I’ve been heading roughly north by northeast, trying to parallel the general direction of the interstate.”

Maddy nodded.

“What’s our ultimate destination here?”

Maddy stared at Grant with wide-eyes.  “Not sure I can answer that,” she stated quickly.

“We’re going to the Quarter, right?”

She gave him a blank look then lowered her eyes.  “I trust you, Grant.”

“You can’t do this,” Grant growled, coming to a sudden stop and turning to confront her.  “How can you put your trust in me like this?  I mean, you don’t even know me for God’s sake!”

“I think I do, Grant.”

“You really don’t.”

“You don’t know how big a step this is for me,” she responded, giving him a gentle nod and looking into his eyes.  “I never trust anyone.  I’m evolving.”

“So you’re going to start with me,” he huffed derisively, taking a right turn at the next street.  “You’re putting your life in the hands of a total stranger.  One with a very, very questionable track record.”

“You’re just a vehicle,” she responded.  “I trust something bigger than both of us is in control right now.”

Grant snorted and gave her a look of disbelief.  “You’re kidding me, right?”

“Okay,” Maddy said, effectively bypassing the entire issue altogether.  “Tell me how it is that you owe this mobster all this money.”

Grant marched along quietly.  “I’ve got a better idea,” he said with an ironic chuckle.  “Since you have all the answers, why don’t you tell me?”

Maddy gave him a shake of her head.  “I can’t.  And I think you know why.”

Grant shrugged.

“You haven’t decided yet,” she explained.  “If you are going to eventually tell me, I would already know.”

Grant shook his head.  “I’m not sure I’m following.

Maddy stopped and turned to look at something across the street from them.  Without a word of explanation, she started directly toward it.

“Um, what happened to me making…” Grant began.  Throwing up his hands, he trotted after her, joining her moments later as she stared riveted at the sight before them, a garish purple, gold, and green painted residential house with two front windows of stained glass.  The front yard was a junkyard of derelict fountains, birdbaths, baptismal fonts, and angels of every shape and size.  “Good God Almighty,” he muttered.

Maddy swayed gently.  Grant rushed forward and steadied her with an arm around the waist.  “Whoa! Serious vibes coming off this place.”

“Contact high?”  He scrutinized the travesty of construction, glancing between the house and Maddy.  “Nice paint job.  Very colorful.”

“Purple, gold and green,” she replied.  “Justice-Power-Faith.”

Maddy stepped up a path overgrown with rose-laden bushes.

Grant followed Maddy onto an iron trellis-lined porch beneath a hand-painted sign reading “Sadie's Salvage and Insight.”  The porch was packed with an overflow of more antiques, including an enormous bird cage, painted an audaciously gold color, which took up nearly half the space of the porch.

As Grant peered at the colorful parrot within, the bird seemed to study him in return.

“Hi there,” Grant greeted it.

“The doctor will see you now,” the parrot said, cocking its head at Grant.

Grant smirked at Maddy.  “Okay, that’s pretty cool.”

“Doc Ross willed that bird to Sadie when he passed on,” a gravelly voice explained.

Glancing around the clutter of the porch, Grant found a shriveled black man in mirrored sunglasses, sitting in his rocking chair like one other artifact among many.  Though he appeared to be looking directly at them, something about the man’s demeanor told him that he was blind.

“Used to keep him in the waiting room until the pest raised such a commotion with the customers that he had to put him in the back,” he continued.  “Go on through to the back yard and have yourself a looksee.”

“Yeah, Maddy, maybe we ought to keep…”

But she had already started inside.  Taking a look back onto the empty street, Grant sighed heavily and resigned himself to follow her.

More antiques and curios packed the central room of the house from wall to wall.  Sterling silver crucifixes, loudly-painted picture frames, and hand-crafted German clocks covered the walls.

As Maddy threaded her way through the tightly-packed room, Grant stopped at the fireplace mantel to contemplate a slice of fresh pound cake sitting in a plate before a picture of a black Jesus.  Lit candles, jars of strange organic matter, and what appeared to him to be a tea saucer of dried blood surrounded it.

As Grant took it all in, he heard a gasp from behind.  Turning, he watched as Maddy rushed outside onto the back porch.  He quickly followed, cursing under his breath.

The dim sound of Louis Armstrong’s trumpet drifted out of the distance, as he gazed upon a backyard filled with angels--every shape, size and material, from ivory to wood.  He watched as Maddy slowly descended the wooden steps of the porch, covering her gaping mouth.  He followed Maddy as she walked at a dreamlike pace into the rows and rows of multi-colored rose bushes thriving among a scruffy lawn in need of some weeding.

Feeling vaguely uneasy again, Grant scanned the expansive yard, his eyes stopping on a ramshackle double-wide trailer house set beneath a shady oak.  Covered in jewelry and dreadlocks, a massive black woman sat on what looked to Grant like a displaced cafe booth and table.

The tiny but curvaceous Hispanic girl sitting at the table handed the woman a box of American Spirit cigarettes.  In response, the woman gestured to a large ornate chest resting in the grass beside the table filled nearly to the top with figurines and religious symbols along with more mundane objects such as beer “koozies,” foam-floating key chains, and New Orleans Saints ball caps.

“Thanks for the visit, Treena,” the woman said. “Grab you a trinket.

“Got a love charm, Sadie?” the girl asked, bending over to sift through the chest.

“Damn, girl. You’re dangerous enough as it is, even without a charm,” the woman replied with a hearty chuckle, giving her a playful slap on the bottom.

Treena straightened up with a scowl at Sadie.

“What, you want those boys to be totally defenseless?  Here.”  Sadie grabbed a small wooden spoon from the box and thrust it into the girl’s hands.  “Cook better, and the right one will find you. Now go on!”

Treena curled her lip into a pout and shuffled off past Maddy and Grant back toward the house.

Rising with an effort of one familiar with wrestling with gravity, the large black woman started over to Maddy, where she ran her fingertips across the tiny mirrored glass pieces embedded in a green and silver cherub birdbath.

“You’re feelin’ somethin’ first-hand which you only recognized at a distance before.”

Maddy turned to Sadie as Grant evaluated her suspiciously at a distance.

“You have a squadron of spiritual guides, my child,” Sadie continued. “Why have you turned your back on them?”

“Angels were…” Maddy began, then bit her lip as her eyes went out of focus.  “I’m very conflicted on that subject.”

“They held a very special place in your past.  In your youth,” the woman continued with a troubled smile.  “You have bad memories of those times and bad associations with all that from that period of your life.”

Maddy stared at her with interest.

“We're all ev’ry one of us in our own way angels,” the woman said.

Grant appeared at Maddy’s side.

“And demons,” she concluded with a glance at Grant.

“You must be the Sadie from the sign out front,” he stated in a business-like tone.

“I am,” she replied, giving him the once over before returning her attention to Maddy.  Taking her around the shoulders, Sadie led her to a seat at her table.

Frozen in place, Grant could only watch as Maddy took a seat.  Left with a lingering feeling of paranoia, Grant scanned the borders of the backyard until he was satisfied that there was no back entrance into the residence.  With a single troubled look at Maddy, he finally wandered back through the house, leaned just inside the front doorway, and scanned the road out front.

“Who you watchin’ for, if you don't mind my asking?” the old man asked from his rocking chair.

Grant stiffened suddenly and looked over at the blind man with suspicion.  “We might have had some folks following us earlier.  Paranoid I guess.”

“Folks from your past or hers?” the other man asked.

“My past,” Grant responded.  “Um, her future.”

The old man lifted his head in interest.  “The name’s Horace.  What do they call you?”

“Grant.”

“Grant, in exchange for your story, I might be obliged to offer you one of them beers on the bottom shelf of the icebox in there,” Horace said. “I haven't heard a good one in weeks.”

11

Both arms stretched out, Sadie fixed all her attention on Maddy, studying her face in silence with hands held open in a gesture reminiscent of surrender.

After a few moments of hesitation, Maddy took the other’s hands.

“I don't want to know specifics, dear,” Sadie told her.  “I just want to know why I'm feeling that you have saddled this blessin’, this gift, with enormous guilt.”

“Who am I kidding? I lived fast,” Maddy confided.  “Now I'm dying young. I know the drill.”

“Your gift was given to you as a test to preserve your soul and you failed miserably.”

Maddy watched Sadie with slowly reddening eyes.

Sadie chuckled benignly and squeezed Maddy's hand.  “I believe that this is the lie you’ve been tellin’ yourself--that what you’re dealin’ with is a punishment for past sins.”

“Listen, I'm no saint. I'm a human being. I made mistakes.”

“That's the first revelation I had on my own journey,” Sadie admitted. “I see that you've come to it sooner than I did.”

“Do you know what I see?”

“You remember what has yet to happen,” Sadie stated without hesitation.  “I’ve seen that sort of thing only once before.  She had the same blur around the edges of her aura that you do.  Like the future ain’t never fixed solid.”

Maddy leaned closer, eyes widening.  “You’ve seen this before?”

Sadie nodded and gave her a warm smile.  “Did you think you were the only one to suffer what you got, sugah?  You look to be in a lot better shape than most of the head-cases that pass through here.”

“What else do you see?”

“That you’ve got a rare soul.  An honest one.  And that there is great risk to you, my dear. Le Mal. It pursues you.”

Maddy clutched Sadie’s hands tighter.  “They’ve been after me since…”

Sadie shut her eyes and held her hands up to Maddy.  “No specifics. This battle you've already forfeit in your heart. It's stronger than me, you tell yourself. Resistance seems pointless.”

Maddy stared at Sadie in wonder, a gracious smile blooming on her face. She nodded.

“The rock isn't expected to stop the wave, y’see. Truth comes to face that which is evil, not overcome it,” Sadie said.

“That's what Grant's been trying to do all along,” Maddy replied.  “Grant is the man I’m with.  I wouldn’t have survived the last twenty-four hours without him.”

Sadie sighed heavily and took Maddy's hands once again.  “I’ve got to tell you.  This man you're travelin’ with--death has taken his soul a long time ago and he's been courtin’ it like a jilted lover ever since.”

Maddy stared soberly at Sadie.  The smile that was on her face slowly dissolved.  She shook her head in confusion.

“Sugah, that man just ready to die.”

12

“I can tell a lot about a person by the sound of their voice,” Horace told Grant as he sipped from his can of simple red-label beer.  “In your case, I hear the voice of a man whose tank’s done been drained clean.”

“It’s been a long day, sir,” Grant replied with a sigh, contemplating the can of beer on his knee as he sat back in a wicker chair beside Horace.  His eyes continued to scan the street beyond the cluttered yard.  “I’ve lost a bit of the spring in my step.  That’s all you’re hearing.”

Horace grunted agreeably.  “Yeah, but that ain’t it,” he answered.  “How old you think I am, Grant?”

Grant gave him a long look.  “I don’t know.  Mid to late sixties.”

“I am eighty-two years old.”

Grant gave him a second look, nodding appreciatively and raising his can to him in a toast.  “I must say, you’re in great shape, sir.”

Eerily, Horace raised his own can in response.  “Yeah, I ain’t no spring chicken but do you hear any despair in my voice?”

Grant took a long drink and shook his head.  “No sir, I don’t.”

Horace finished his own then wiped his mouth with his sleeve.  “Sonny, I hear it in yours.”  He crumpled the aluminum can and tossed it blindly into a half-filled recycling can a few yards away with amazing accuracy.

Grant lowered his head, sighing heavily.

“What?” Horace coaxed him gently.

“Lately, I’ve been questioning the order of the universe,” Grant said, taking a sip of beer.  “How is it the worst of us drive the best cars and wear the best suits?”

“That is indeed a question for the ages.”

“What kind of world do we live in where evil men are rewarded and hard-working men live in poverty?”

“The world is a hard place for the man with an eye toward elevatin’ himself above his station in an honorable way,” Horace replied, with a solemn nod.  “Sometimes it might seem like a desert to a man dyin’ of thirst.”

Grant studied his can and drained the rest.  “That’s exactly right,” he said, tossing his can to the recycling can and missing entirely.  “Hell,” he muttered, rising to retrieve it.

Instead, Horace drove his heel down atop it, dragged the can over to the edge of his seat, reached down and retrieved it himself.  He tossed it effortlessly into the can with a flourish.  “You got to rise above your station.  Use whatever you’ve been given and stop wishin’ things were any damn different.  Because they ain’t.”

Grant stared at the black man thoughtfully.

“You know how much harder my life would’ve been if I ever once thought I was a victim, Grant?”

Grant lowered his head and shuffled back to his seat.

“You ever think instead of dyin’, the Man upstairs might have other plans for you,” Horace asked.  “Why do you think he put this little girl into your life?  You think it’s pure chance?”

“Maybe she’d be better off without me.”

“Why don’t you let her make up her own mind on that one,” Horace snapped.  “Go get us two more.”

“Thanks, but I think I better go find Maddy,” Grant said, rising slowly.  “We’re kinda on a tight schedule.”

Horace gave a nod and settled back with a smile.  “Was that your stomach I just heard or did you bring an angry dog in with you?”

Already halfway across the porch, Grant shook his head in disbelief.  “Amazing, Horace.”

“You can have what’s left of that chicken in the fridge if you and ya girl want it.”

13

Feeling suddenly anxious as if a confrontation were imminent, Grant headed into the backyard, carrying a folded paper towel with a large breast and thigh of fried chicken inside.  He found Sadie in the same booth seat, fanning herself and reading a romance paperback.

Removing the remnants of the picked-clean chicken leg from his mouth, Grant urgently asked Sadie, “Where's Maddy?”

“She's restin’,” she responded, turning her book face down on the table. “Why don’t you have a seat?”

Grant cast a look over his shoulder toward the trailer.  “I just had a long talk with Horace.  You seem like really nice people, but I told him the same thing I’m telling you now.  Maddy and I have a situation that requires us to keep moving.  The longer we stay in one place, the hotter the fire.  You understand?”

Sadie simply stared at him.

Grant shifted nervously from one foot to the other, casting another look over his shoulder.

“Out of the two of you, she seems to be the more perceptive and she’s takin’ this opportunity to sleep.”  Her eyes moved down to the chicken leg in his hand.  “And I see that you felt you could spare a few minutes to eat.”

Tucking the chicken leg into the paper towel, Grant dusted his hand off on his pants and let it drop in frustration.  “Perception aside, for some damn reason she chose to trust me and I feel we need to leave here ASAP.”

Sadie nodded and leveled a beefy index finger at his chest.  “I think I see your point.”

A digital version of "Black Magic Woman" broke the silence.  Sadie removed a cell phone from an inside jacket pocket.

“This is Sadie.”  Her brow wrinkled as she listened to the voice on the other end of the line.  Peering at Grant with a wrinkled brow, she drew the phone away from her suddenly pale face and quickly crossed herself.  “This may be the company you been expectin’.”

She held the phone out to him, her eyes taking his measure soberly for the first time.

Grant stared down at it.  Conversing with whoever was on the other end was the last thing on his mind, but he knew there was no way out now.  Somehow, he had become the damsel’s sentinel.

Clearing his throat, Grant placed the chicken down on the table and gingerly took the phone from Sadie’s hand.

“Are you ready to stop these games now, Frederickson?” the voice on the other end inquired in a soft yet menacing voice.

Grant glanced up at Sadie and she gave him a nod as he distanced himself from her, starting through the yard amongst the stone angels.

“We would all like a peaceful resolution to this,” the voice said.

“So far that sounds like a reasonable objective,” Grant answered.

“All we want to do is talk to the girl.”

Grant stopped and glanced back at the trailer where Maddy lay asleep.  “I’m not an idiot.  Your actions so far do not reflect that.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line.  “We are aware of your IQ.  We know that you will listen to reason.”

Grant held his tongue and listened, his eye fixing on a fountain cherub that seemed to be making eye contact with him.

“As long as she runs, she will be a target,” the other informed Grant.  “If she chooses to stop and talk, we will listen.  It’s that simple.”

Grant swallowed awkwardly.  The voice was getting to him.  He was starting to make sense.  Immediately, Grant cleared his head and recalled for the first time all the questions he had been asking himself.  “Who are you?  What organization are you with?” he demanded.

“Who we are isn't as important as what we have the authority to do to anyone who stands between us and the woman you’re traveling with.”

Threat?  The hairs on the back of Grant’s neck stood up like red flags announcing a storm warning.  Grant started to move through the yard again. “Who is she that you want her so badly?  What is her importance to you?”

Momentary silence.  “She's not who you think she is.”

“Fine.  Who is she?”

“She's a danger to everyone she comes in contact with,” the ominous voice continued.  “She is… contagious.”

Grant’s pace increased along with his anxiety.  Angels began whipping past him as if taking flight.  “You’re saying she has a communicable disease?”

“You could say that.  Though the danger she represents is far worse than any bio-hazard.”

“Clearly I'm not as smart as your sources led you to believe. Spell it out for me.”

“Let me give you a comparative analogy,” the other told him.  “If space/time were flesh, the woman you’re traveling with would be a cancer eating away at reality.”

Grant abruptly stopped. He briefly stared down at the phone before returning it to his ear.

“That woman is a danger to all of us and we have the authority to dispense with anything or anyone who stands in our way including you and the old couple you’re using as human shields,” the voice said, its pace quickening slightly.  “We're aware of your position.  You owe Torres a particular sum of money.  It may be within our power to make this problem go away. For good.”

There it was: The threat followed by the way out and a carrot to keep the beast on the right path.

He barely succeeded in stifling the chuckle that had threatened to bubble bitterly from of his throat.

The other end of the line remained silent.

Click.

Without his uttering a word in response, they had known his answer.

14

Grant followed the sounds of a brass section into the confined space of the small trailer.  He held the door open, allowing his eyes to grow accustomed to the dingy darkness.  Whatever light there remained seemed to have stolen inside from around the peeling foil that had been taped over two small windows.  It was like a cave or an animal’s den, and a thought popped into Grant’s head that Sadie must be prone to migraines.  He wasn’t sure on what basis he had come by that information.

To his left was a clean, orderly kitchenette that smelled of the remnants of something delicious that had recently been cooked.  His eyes instinctively flashed down to the chicken wrapped in the paper towel that he held in his hand.

On his right was an alcove that included a television and a stereo with a turntable where the incongruous sounds of seventies-era Chicago played on an LP.  That was where he found Maddy, lying on a couch with her knees raised slightly up in the beginnings of a fetal position.

How she could sleep with the sounds of syncopated brass blasting into her ears was beyond him.

Out of instinct rather than logic, Grant shut the door as quietly as he could and slipped into a ratty green recliner that-- despite his best efforts to the contrary-- squeaked with age anyway.

Surprising enough, that was just enough noise to stir the sleeping form before him.

“I’m up,” came the sudden but dim reply, the voice of someone stirred from a deep sleep.  A gasp of a wide-mouthed yawn followed.

“It’s me,” he said, then considered his response of familiarity.  He was the closest thing to a familiar face this girl had in the world right now that he could utter a simple greeting like that.  Somehow, that fact made him sad.  Didn’t she have family?  Or friends?  Who was this person he had unwillingly joined destinies with?

As if he had spoken the words aloud, she rolled over and gazed at him with a pair of sleepy eyes and a gentle smile.

He leaned forward and laid the paper towel open upon the small stained coffee table before her, exposing the fried breast and thigh--the action, in retrospect, completed without a word of explanation, felt oddly to Grant like a priest presenting an offering.

Making a sound of excitement, Maddy immediately attacked the thigh.

Striding over to the turntable, Grant found the volume and turned it down.

“What, she didn’t have anything harder to sleep to?  No Iron Maiden?” he asked, shaking his head in wonder.  He returned to his seat to a wounded look on the sleeping girl’s face.

“Hello?  It’s ‘Beginnings,’” she simply stated. “From Chicago’s first album.”

“Good to know,” he countered.

“It’s a classic, you uncultured swine,” she continued, her mouth full, gesturing for him to take the chicken breast remaining on the table.

“If you say so,” he replied with a shrug, eying the chicken distastefully. His stomach had turned a cartwheel since the phone call.

“When I’m stressed, the brass massages the tension out of my skull.  Something about the harmonics, I guess,” she speculated with eyes drifting to the window where she knew Sadie waited outside.  “Sadie told me that I would find something in here to help me relax.  I was afraid she meant weed or something, but she knows me better than anyone I can remember in a long, long time.  She’s miraculous really.”

Grant a felt momentarily itch of anger toward Sadie and wondered about the source of it.

“I don’t do any drugs by the way,” she added.  “Not that I have anything against it.  I just don’t like the way it warps my senses.  It makes me more paranoid than the average bear, and I don’t need to feel more of that, y’know?”

Attempting to gather his jumbled thoughts, Grant blinked at her in confusion and found himself looking away, his eyes falling on the framed photos on the walls.  Some of the pictures looked old enough to be turn of the century.  In one, a shriveled old man with riveting dark eyes wore a robe and a turban that reminded Grant of the Professor Marvel character in “The Wizard of Oz.”  Apparently, Sadie’s family had been at this gig for a long time.

Grant felt suddenly very young and naïve in this strange place, while oddly enough Maddy seemed right at home--wise beyond her twenty-something years and plugged into something ancient about which he had no perspective.  He felt completely out of his element.

“Something happened, didn’t it?” she asked, her voice reaching out to pierce his bubble of self-doubt.

“Your friends called me on Sadie’s phone,” he replied.  “They know we're here.”

She rolled slowly into a sitting position, dropping her bare feet to the floor and staring glassily at her shoes—worn tan flats-- as if dreading to put them on again.  “Of course they do. They've been following us every step of the way.”

“Then we should probably get going.”

Maddy made no effort to move, her eyes studying him defiantly.  “What did you tell them when they asked you to give me up?”

Grant met her eyes and sighed.  “Wow,” he could only say, shaking his head.

“I’ve been running a long, long time, Grant,” she said as way of explanation.  “I know their M-O.”

Grant settled back in his chair and stared at the pictures again.  Coming here was wrong.  Putting others in danger was reckless.  “He threatened to kill Sadie and her husband if we didn't cooperate.”

“Sadie's too high profile here in this neighborhood. They won't touch her. They're just trying to smoke us out, Grant,” Maddy responded sharply.  “What else did they say?”

Grant stared down at her shoes, thinking that the poor things looked like cowering dogs.  I’ve got to get her something more comfortable, he thought instinctively, and then quickly analyzed the thought.  Somewhere along the line, he had decided to stay with her a while longer.

“Something’s changed between us,” she continued.  “What did they say that’s making you feel differently about me?”

“They said that you're a danger to yourself and everyone around you,” he admitted.

“Did you buy it? Did you buy their story, Grant?”

“It raised a lot of questions.”

“Which questions?” she asked.  When he didn’t answer quickly enough for her, she snapped, “Grant, talk to me.”

“How long have you been running?”

“Two and a half years.”

“Have you ever considered just talking to them?  Seeing what they want?” he asked her.

“I know what they want, Grant.”

“How?”

“Because they held me captive for six months.”

Grant stared at her in disbelief.  He scooted forward slightly.  “Tell me.”

“At first they just wanted to study me. Poke me full of mind-altering drugs. To run tests.  They wanted me to tell them things. Things about foreign governments and economies.  They wanted me to tell the fortunes of strange men with hard to pronounce names.”

“Can you do that?”

“I already told you.  No, I can't. My visions are extremely narrow.”

“So why do they want you?”

“They don't want me. They just don't want anyone else to have me,” she told him.  “Did they tell you that they only wanted to talk to me?”

Grant gazed over at her with raised brows, knowing at this point it would be pointless to deny, even if he had wanted to.

“That’s what I thought,” she sniffed, finishing off her chicken thigh and reaching for the breast.  “That’s one of their tactics.  You gonna eat this?”

Grant shook his head as Maddy began to eat.  “They told me crazy stuff about warping reality,” he continued.

Clearing her throat, Maddy set the breast aside and squared herself off melodramatically toward him.  “Ok, it’s time I leveled with you, Grant,” she said in an overly serious tone. “I'm a time traveler from another dimension.”

Grant leaned back in his chair heavily and gave her a dull exasperated expression.

“Zero manure,” she snapped with a smirk. “I'm progressing forward in time from a dimension east of this point called Florida. It’s a very humid dimension, filled with a wrinkly blue-haired alien race called The Retired.”

“You’re from Florida then?”

“Born and raised,” she replied.

Grant rocked forward, his face set seriously.  “They say you’re contagious.”

Maddy snorted derisively and nodded.  “Didn’t you know that we can all warp reality, Grant?  Every single one of us.  If a single act of kindness can change the arc of an otherwise entirely miserable life, I’d call that a welcome change of reality, wouldn’t you?”

The words of the Blank Men had entered his mind and worked their evil magic, casting doubt on the woman before him.  But he knew she was right.

When Grant made eye contact with her again, he found truth and compassion staring back at him.

Maybe Sadie or Horace could lend her some shoes, he thought.

“When you had this vision of yours at the streetcar? Are we together? At the end?” he asked her.

Maddy’s eyes slid away from his like fingers losing their grip and falling down a sheer cliff face.  “No. I die alone.”

As she picked up the remnants of her chicken and continued to eat, Grant moved an ottoman closer to the coffee table and sat directly across from her.  Eying him self-consciously, she finally set the piece of chicken aside and gave him her full attention.

“Explain something to me,” he asked, leaning toward her.  “Why does my taking the lead change how the day is going to end?”

“I’m not sure,” she admitted, her eyes going distant and foggy.  “Something about you, they can’t track… like they can with me.  Whatever it is, it seems to be working and I’m not going to question it.”

“Tell me what you see. All of it.”

“I'm in a swamp. There’s an old shack and cypress trees and moss and pelicans.  Y’know, like a backwoods bayou.”

Grant nodded and waved for her to proceed.

“I see the Blank Men coming for me. They have guns. I hear two shots. Then everything goes black.”

“Which bayou? Where?”

“My visions don't work that way.”

“Do you know what time of day?”

Maddy closed her eyes as she tried to recall.  “Evening,” she said emphatically.  “The sun is setting.”

Grant lowered his head and stared down at her shoes again.  Something about those poor lifeless things communicated surrender to him in a way that her words never could.

A simmering rage came to a boil within him suddenly.  He leapt up and stormed toward the door of the trailer, running his hands through his hair in exasperation before spinning back around to face her.  “So, now what? Are we going to wait here for a police escort?”

“Short of walking out the front door, I don’t know,” she answered, looking significantly up at him.  “Despite the fact that I don’t know the answer to your question, the fact remains that when you lead, I’m not haunted by the image of that lonely swamp.  You have to get us out of here, Grant.”

Sighing heavily, Grant threw his hands up in frustration.

15

Grant rushed down the creaky wooden steps of Sadie’s trailer and rushed past the booth where Sadie was in the process of laying out tarot cards in patterns only significant to her.  He stopped and glared back at the trailer.  “That is the most..,” he began then trailed off as he started toward the house, but stopped and headed back to Sadie.  “If I didn’t know any better, I would think that woman is suicidal.  She wants me to get us out of here, knowing that those X-Files rejects are sitting just outside waiting for us to show our faces.”

“Have you considered calling the police?” she suggested, removing a cigarette from the pack on the table.

Grant watched longingly.  “Considered and rejected.  They’ve been threatening everyone we’ve come in contact with and I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve killed people along the way.”  He gestured to the pack of cigarette.  “You mind if I...?”

Sadie handed him the pack with a smirk.  “I didn’t peg you for a smoker.”

“I quit back when I stopped gambling,” he explained, putting one in his mouth and accepting the flame from the flashy gem-covered lighter that Sadie held out.

“Gamblin’,” Sadie spat distastefully, her eyes sharpening with understanding.  “That’s your demon, is it?”

Grant wordlessly studied her, taking a mighty tug and slowly exhaling.  “The hell with her,” he continued, completing ignoring her comment.  “I should just leave her here.”

“But you won’t.”

“Shit,” Grant cursed under his breath.  He took the chair opposite Sadie, gave a cursory glance at the cards and scoffed.

Transferring her attention to the tarot, Sadie turned over the next card.  She nodded in satisfaction and peered up at Grant.  “You’re not a man of God, are you?”

“We have a mutual understanding to stay out of each other’s way.”

“What you mean to say is that you and the devil have agreed on the terms of your form of captivity.”

Grant held his breath a moment and peered up at Sadie with an almost wounded expression.

“Yeah, people tend to get a little offended at how straightforward I can be most times.”  Sadie chuckled darkly.  “So what do you believe in?  Hard work?  Blood, sweat and tears?  Mom, apple pie, and the American Way?”

Grant took a slow drag of the cigarette and simply glared at her through the smoke.

“Since you’re havin’ a cigarette on my good nature, I figure at the very least you owe me the illusion of a conversation.”

“I was raised Catholic.”

Sadie flipped two more cards.  “Ah, a recoverin’ Catholic, eh.  I know your type, Grant.  You went to mass every Sunday and paid your tithes, thinkin’ that your reward was in the bank, but when you went to the ATM to make a withdrawal, it wasn’t there. In fact, life just kept getting’ worse and worse for you.  So you start askin’ what's the point, right, Grant? Where's God in all of this?”

Grant cast a glare back toward the house.

“Does your God punish? Is that what he's doin’ to you, Grant? Are you doin’ penance for past sins?”

Grant rose from his seat abruptly.  “I think I’ll go enjoy this fruit of your good nature somewhere else now.”

Flipping over another card, Sadie said, “I'm a Christian, Grant. Does that surprise you?”

Grant stopped and cocked a thumb back toward the house with a confused look on his face.  “So, what's that altar on the mantle all about?

“Our rituals might be different, but we all believe in the same Truth,” Sadie stated, sitting back and taking a long look at him.  “For instance, Grant, I believe that everyone in this world either works to advance His plan or resists it.”

Grant stared at the trailer for a few moments.  “Y'know, my mother used to tell me that God never closes a door, without opening a window. Well, I've been getting nothing but walls since the day my wife was murdered.”

Sadie stiffened and blinked at Grant, her eyes growing red as she viewed him from a newfound angle.  “I’m truly sorry for that, Grant.”

Grant drew in a long hitching breath.  “Yeah,” he managed.

Sadie stared down at the corner of a card that lay at the bottom of the main stack, the grinning skull of Death peeking out beneath all the others.  “Funny thing about walls, Grant.  Some see them as barriers.  Others see them as opportunities to gain a greater perspective on the path their lives should take if they could only break the shackles of their own limitations.  Their own expectations.”

Grant held his cigarette out at arm’s length and gave a scoff of disdain.

Ignoring his reaction, Sadie continued.  “I am truly sorry for your loss, but for a moment consider the woman at the center of all this. How does she fit into the path you’ve set for your life?  Is she a wall or a window?”

Taking a deep draw on his cigarette, Grant slowly exhaled.

16

Preoccupied with finding the way out of the current situation, Grant accepted another beer from Horace--and another--until both men dropped off into a fitful afternoon doze on the front porch, sweat beading on respective brows.

In that half-dreaming, half-awake state of semi-consciousness, Grant found himself in the midst of one of the endless parades through the Quarter during Mardi Gras--something that, despite his intent, he had never got around to attending.

After all, he’d had all the time in the world.

The woman beside him was dark-haired, dark-eyed, dark-complexioned but always light in spirit.

Lara.

His wife in her prime.  Vivacious and free-spirited.  Launching into penetrating deep-issue conversations with strangers standing next to her as if she had known them all her life.  It was a talent he had witnessed with marvel as if watching a documentary on alien life from a distant planet.

In the dream as he watched the colorful floats cruise by and the bizarre costumed cast of characters lope past, he felt the restless anxiety of someone pursued, while Lara lived in the moment.

“Maddy, we need to go,” Grant suddenly told her.  “We have to keep moving.”

Lara turned to him, the smile on her face stiffening with concern.  “Who’s Maddy?”

Then applause erupted from the crowd around them as if a celebrity had arrived and Lara turned back to the parade, her smile returning to full power.

Grant looked up to see the Blank Men cruising slowly through the street in their dark sedan, dark shadowy faces scanning the crowd around them from open windows as they escorted a crypt-shaped float filled with stained glass and stone angels upon which sat Sadie and Horace.  Behind the float rode Rudy in his Mercedes, his trunk open to reveal the tiny coffin within.  The substantial bulk of Arturo Torres rose from a sunroof that hadn’t existed before, waving like the Pope to his fervent believers.  Behind the Mercedes walked the streetcar driver and the convenience store clerk.  Between them they carried a longer coffin.

Who is in the coffin, Grant wondered.

When he next looked at the woman standing next to him, he found Maddy—she of the red-hair, green-eyes, and strawberry-milk complexion.

“What did you say?” she called out as the trumpets and drums of the parade grew louder.

“Who’s in the coffin?” Grant exclaimed.

17

Grant awoke with a start and turned to find Horace kicking his chair with a dirty work boot.

The blind man blinked at him, a half-amused, half-concerned look on his aged face.

“Sounds like you were having a doozy,” he told Grant.

It was a nightmare.  Daymare?  Whatever.

So why could he still hear the trumpets and drums?

Grant straightened in the wicker rocker.  “Is that a parade I hear?”

“Shore ‘tis,” Horace responded.  “Folks sometimes walk through the neighborhood on their way to some church or another.  Good way to spread the Word.  Maybe pick up a few more along the way.”

Grant sprung to his feet and nearly tripped over the two cats that had made a warm nest around his feet.  He vaulted from the back porch and sprinted to the trailer past the wide-eyed face of Sadie, reading in the shade.

He burst into the trailer and announced, “We have to go.  Now!”

Maddy shot up and looked around at Grant with disorientation.

“No time to explain,” he shouted, turning and heading back down the wooden steps.  “Follow me.  Quick!”

Maddy rushed after him, then turned to retrieve her shoes from the floor.

“Gotta go now,” Grant proclaimed, galloping past Sadie at the booth and sparing a wave.  “Thanks for the cigarette!”

Maddy made eye contact with a confused Sadie and gave her a shrug.

“Sounds pretty motivated.  I’d just go with the flow if I were you,” she called after Maddy.

Pausing at the steps leading into the house, Maddy slipped her shoes on and cast a final wave back at Sadie.  “Thanks for giving us shelter!”

Grant waited expectantly on the porch as Maddy appeared.

“What’s going on,” she asked.  “What are we doing?”

“We’re walking out the front door.”

Taking her by the hand, he tugged her down the path through the miscellaneous junk--or treasure, depending on the angle of the sunshine--and stepped out onto the street where a group of ten brightly-dressed men and women, some playing musical instruments, moved east down the small residential street.  The group beckoned them forward with welcoming faces.  Grant and Maddy slipped into the loose formation and did their best to keep up with the high energy.

“So, where exactly is everyone going?” Grant asked a man in his twenties wearing a St. Louis Cathedral t-shirt and a towering red-and-white striped Cat in the Hat style hat.

“We're stirring up the Spirit in our ‘hood,” the man responded.  “Drawing every extra soul we can to go with us to the cathedral.”  He proudly displayed his t-shirt.

“We're going to St. Louis Cathedral,” Maddy announced, giving a happy skip and clapping her hands excitedly.  “Looks like we've got our escort into the Quarter, Grant. Just like you requested.” She tipped Grant a wink.

Grant cast a look back over his shoulder toward the residence they’d just left and saw Sadie and Horace standing out on the sidewalk just inside the gate, arms linking around each other.  For a moment, his eyes found the sign “Sadie's Salvage and Insight” above the couple and lingered on the word “salvage.”

“Can you say, thank ya, Jesus!” a woman in another St. Louis t-shirt proclaimed unabashedly to the quiet neighborhood.

All the participants, including Maddy, cried out "Thank ya, Jesus!"

People began to trickle out of the homes along the route to see what the ruckus was about and a few even began to walk along with them just as Grant and Maddy had.

Grant made eye contact with Maddy and nodded in the direction of the curb to their right, where a familiar dark sedan sat parked just a few yards down and opposite Sadie's house.  A single arm dangled out the window, holding a smoking cigarette in his hand.

Maddy looked down through the driver’s window of the sedan as she strutted past.  “Away from me, you evildoers!” she shouted in a sing-song voice.

“Away from me!” several others shouted in response.  “Praise the Lord!”

A young teenage girl in a tight St. Louis T-Shirt spun around and gave Maddy a big smile and a high five.

“There will be wailing and grinding of teeth when you see Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and all the prophets safe in the kingdom of God and you yourselves rejected,” cried another.

Grant glanced back behind them just in time to see the hand dangling from the sedan flick the cigarette into the street and withdraw into the darkness inside.

18

The procession came to a stop just outside a small neighborhood church.

In the heat of the afternoon sunlight, Grant squinted up at a huge statue of St. Jude that seemed to welcome them with open arms.  “St. Louis Cathedral always looked a lot bigger in the guidebooks.”

“This is Our Lady of Guadalupe.  And over there is St. Jude’s Shrine,” the guy in the large red-and-white striped hat told them, as he wiped the sweat off his brow. “We're stopping to pay our respects to my man Jude.”

Grant gravitated to Maddy’s side, scanning the street anxiously.

“He’s the patron saint of hopeless causes. Helped me pass my algebra final last year,” said the teenage girl, stepping over to Maddy.

“I never understood why Catholics pray to saints,” she told the teen.

“No, we don't actually pray to them,” the girl replied. “They intercede on our behalf, y'know. Like having a brother in the business that puts in a good word for you with the boss.”

Maddy held her hand out with a smile.  “My name’s Maddy.”

“Beth,” the other answered, grasping her hand.  She nodded toward the entrance to the chapel, then started inside without waiting for a response.

Grant eyed a passing sedan, his muscles tensing in expectation, then realized that it was the wrong color.  “I think we should get moving again,” he whispered over his shoulder.  Taking a look back, he saw that Maddy was dutifully following the group into the church.  He rushed after, cursing under his breath.

Beth dabbed her fingers in the holy water font and signed herself absently.  Maddy angled directly over to a statue on the right of the entrance.  The flowers and saucers and napkins with slices of yellow cake surrounded the statue of a young centurion in armor.

Sheepishly entering the chapel, Grant absently crossed himself with the holy water from the entrance font, then spotted Maddy and the teenage girl standing before the statue.

“This is St. Expedite,” Beth explained to Maddy as Grant joined them.

“Hey, shouldn’t we be moving along now?” he whispered to Maddy with an urgency he tried unsuccessfully to conceal.

“You ask him to help you when you have to have results in a hurry,” the young man in his twenties told Maddy, idling up between her and Beth.  In turn, Beth took a step back, putting some distance between her and the young man, who nervously kneaded the striped hat in his hands.

“Expedite? Is that Latin?” Maddy asked.

“No, that's what was stamped on his crate when it got here. Least, that's the story,” the young man answered, taking a long hard look at Maddy and smiling sheepishly.

Beth rolled her eyes at him as Maddy squinted down at the plaque beneath the feet of the statue, her lips parting in wonder.

“He's the saint of rapid solutions,” the young man continued, his eyes lingering on Maddy.

“That’s fine, Theo,” Beth snapped, taking Maddy by the arm and leading her gently away from the young man and up the aisle toward the altar.  “When we want to know more, we’ll give you a holler back.”

“What's the deal with the cake?” Grant murmured over his shoulder to Theo.

Staring back at Maddy and Beth, Theo absently replied.  “When he gives you what you've been praying for, you give him a tribute of flowers and a slice of pound cake.”  He turned and started after them.

Grant looked back in confusion, realized that Maddy was no longer beside him and rushed after Theo.

“Yeah, I heard once that some guy tried to nickel and dime him with a twinkie,” Theo continued without looking back. “He got a case of the crabs something fierce.  ‘Bout nearly rotted his privates right off.”

Glancing up at the crucifix above the altar and realizing for the first time where he stood, Grant came to a complete stop.  He blinked at Beth, who genuflected before the altar and watched as Maddy observed her and followed suit.  Grant sighed heavily and looked around at the pews that surrounding him, empty except for the ten or so parade participants in St. Louis Cathedral t-Shirts who had entered along with them.  All of them knelt in silent prayer.

Maddy followed Beth into the first pew opposite the altar.

“God damn it,” Grant grunted under his breath.  An elderly woman kneeling a few yards away widened her eyes at him in shock.

He dropped his head below his shoulders and retreated around the far side of the pews, coming around to Maddy’s pew on Beth’s side.  He sidled down the row, tripping over the kneeler loudly and recovering himself.

Beth and Maddy peered up at him.

“Take a knee, Grant,” Maddy directed.

“Nah. If you want to pray, you just go ahead,” he responded impudently.

Both turned away, Beth bowing her head and Maddy staring up at the crucifix with distant eyes.

Grant shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other.  Peering back at all the eyes on him, he finally dropped to the pew in frustration.  After a few moments, he discreetly cleared his throat and leaned over behind Beth’s back.

“You forget about our friends parked on the street outside Sadie’s?”

“No,” Maddy replied.

“Don’t you think we ought to be moving along?”

“Actually, I don’t know of a safer place to be than a church, Grant.”

“But they could be waiting right outside.”

“If that’s the case, I suppose it would be God’s will,” Maddy returned.

Grant made a face of frustration then pushed in closer to Beth as he tried to crane his neck to Maddy behind her back.  She eyed Grant and glanced over at Maddy.  “You want me to give you some privacy, Mads?”

Maddy smiled at Beth.  “Mads?  I like that.”  She frowned at Grant.  “Can we please just sit quietly for a few minutes and think positive thoughts.  Maybe say a prayer that we get safely through this day?  Can we do that, Grant?”

Grant returned her stern expression and finally folded.  He gave a submissive nod and slowly, carefully—as if the cushion beneath his knees were hiding thorns—eased himself onto the kneeler.

Sighing, Grant fiddled with the envelopes in the pocket in front of him, straightening them and tucking them deeper into their slot.  Beth reached blindly out and placed her hand firmly over his.

“Look I haven’t set foot in a church in a good two years,” Grant hissed.

“My gram-gram used to have a saying.  ‘Let go and let God,’” Beth told him.  When he started to respond, she put a finger against his lips.  “Hush up and listen to that inner voice.”

Grant inched over slightly, putting some space between them and took a speculative look up at the crucifix.  He dropped his eyes and glowered down at his folded fingers.

“Well, my Paw Paw had a saying too: ‘God helps those that help themselves,’” he grumbled to Beth.  “By the way, what happened to following my lead?”

“That was before, when you were looking out for my best interests instead of acting out of some knee-jerk God issues I didn’t know you had.”

Grant blinked at Maddy, momentarily too flustered to speak.  Before he could gather enough of his feelings together to give her a rejoinder, Beth asked, “Maddy, are you in some kind of trouble?”

Grant exchanged a look of warning with Maddy.

“Yes, you might say that,” she told Beth.

Grant dropped his forehead to his knuckles.

“Hey, every one of us is in some degree of trouble, aren’t we?” Beth replied with an uncertain smile.

Grant gave a hopeless chuckle into his folded hands.  “Not like this.”

Theo appeared in the middle aisle next to Maddy.  “Hey, you guys coming along with us to St. Louie’s?” he asked.  “We’re just about to take off.”

Beth blinked from Grant to Maddy.  “So are you coming with?”

Maddy looked over at Grant.

“Yes, we’re coming,” he said popping out of the pew and rushing out down the opposite aisle to follow Theo toward the exit.

Beth lowered her head and followed quietly behind Maddy.  “Maybe we can help you, Mads.  I mean, we have a small but stubborn parish.  If it’s about money…”

Maddy gave a sudden crazed laugh.  “If only it were simple enough that money would take care of it.”  She stepped out into the aisle and kneeled, bowing her head toward the altar.

Beth gave a quick bow herself and turned to follow Theo and Grant then paused to study Maddy, who remained kneeling, her head lowered.  The church was completely empty now except for the two of them and when Maddy gave a short sniff it echoed like thunder.

Beth turned away reverently and waited for her to finish the conversation she seemed to be having.

Slowly, Maddy rose and with her back still turned to Beth, dragged a sleeve across her eyes.  Without a word, she rushed up the aisle past Beth.

“Maybe if you just tell me what’s going on…”

“Sorry, I can’t,” Maddy responded.

When Beth lowered her head, a frustrated expression on her face, Maddy slowed and fell into step beside her.

“Beth, only bad things happen to those I let get too close to me.”  She stopped and looked back at the altar.  “That prayer wasn’t for me.  It was for the man I’m with.  It was for Grant.”

19

Maddy let out an audible gasp when the slowly growing parade turned from Toulouse onto Chartres Street and the spires of St. Louis Cathedral became visible just over the rooftops of the buildings up ahead of them on the left.

For the last ten minutes, their small group had grown from a small annoying group of seventeen to a massive traffic-congesting crowd of thirty-eight.  Instead of attempting to dissuade them, the French Quarter patrolmen simply held traffic at intersections in an effort to get the procession through as quickly and safely as possible, causing the least amount of problems.

Law enforcement around the Big Easy had learned the best way to manage chaos sometimes was to simply go with the flow.

At Maddy’s gasp, Beth and Grant traded a look between them.  Beth had become fiercely protective since leaving Our Lady of Guadalupe, and without an available target, her anger and frustration had landed conveniently on Grant.

Grant had chosen the high road of simply ignoring her altogether, but now--out of the blue--he had suddenly gotten a very strong feeling of direction, which clearly veered off the path the parade had been following.

“Maddy,” he called out before he had even attached a motivation to his compulsion.

But she was too busy looking around in wonder at the wrought-iron balconies and the smiling waving people looking down on them, plastic cups in every hand.  “Y'know, there's a museum that has Louis Armstrong's first cornet.  Oh, and I want to try absinthe and have a hurricane at Pat O'Brien's and of course, I want to hear some live Dixieland Jazz.”

“Maddy,” Grant said more urgently, garnering an intense look of contempt from Beth.

“I want gumbo and Bananas Foster and a muffuletta.”

“Central Grocery on Decatur makes the best,” Beth exclaimed above the noise and chanting of the marchers around them.  She glanced at her watch and shook her head.  “Though, they’re probably completely sold out by now.  You’ve got to go first thing in the morning.”

“Maddy,” Grant snapped, grabbing her arm.  “We’ve got to get off this street.  Now.”

Maddy gave Grant the same wide-eyed look of confusion she would if she had been awakening from a dream and found a man serenading her with a ukulele.  She gave a simple nod and allowed him to pull her out of the crowd as the parade continued down Chartres Street.

Beth rushed after them.  “Hey!  Where are you taking her?” she yelled at Grant, following them down Wilkinson Street, which branched off to the right of Chartres.

Grant glanced back at Beth without slowing.

Maddy turned and grabbed Beth by the shoulders.  “Beth,” she started, then closed her eyes a moment.  When she opened them again, the eyes seemed not only calmer to Beth, but filled with a depth that threatened to spill from her soul like tears from a broken heart.  “Theo might seem like a real jerk sometimes but he honestly respects you, and trust me when I say that he will treat you like a princess if you give him a chance.”

Beth just stared at the other woman with a confusion that was so profound she couldn’t find an appropriate response.  Instead, the words that exploded from her mouth were, “What the hell are you talking about?”

Maddy nodded sagely and continued in a calm unemotional tone.  “Things are going to go from bad to worse with me very soon, and you don’t want to get involved.”

“Maddy,” Beth chuckled disarmingly, “I’m going with you and there’s nothing you can..!”

“You can’t come with us,” Maddy snapped flatly, giving Beth a firm push away from her.

Beth’s eyes reddened then hardened a split second later.  “Fuck you, you crazy bitch!”

Maddy drew a hand to her mouth as she continued to back away from the teen.

Standing in the street a few yards away, Grant rushed back and tugged Maddy down Wilkinson Street after him.  “Now, Maddy!  Now!”

Mere moments after Maddy and Beth parted company, two darkly-dressed men wandered casually up to linger in the exact spot where the others had just been standing.  One of the men lifted his chin in the direction of the departing girl in the St. Louis Cathedral t-shirt. Trading looks with the shorter man at his side, they followed her discreetly for a half a block until the parade reappeared, continuing up Chartres.  When the girl had rejoined the crowd marching toward the cathedral, the taller of the two men immediately stopped and shook his head to the other.

Together they turned in slow but opposite circles like sonar dishes searching out an elusive signal.  If anyone found good reason to focus on them, he would have immediately recognized the frustration on their faces.

But in the center of the sensory hurricane that was the French Quarter, everyone was adrift on their own island.

After rushing the full length of Wilkinson Street at a steady clip, Maddy stumbled and went to one knee.  She ripped the shoe off of her foot and threw it as hard as she could against a street lamp, then began to sob uncontrollably.

Grant glanced back down the way they had come, toward the sound of the fading trumpets of the parade.  He put her at his back almost defensively, resting his hand on her shoulder instinctively without a look back at her.

He knew he would have to wait this one out, but it would be okay now that the threat had been alleviated.  The anxiety he had felt earlier like a prickling heat-rash itch at the base of his skull had subsided.  He had never felt anything like it before.

“I’m done,” she managed unevenly between her choking sobs.  She dropped to her bottom and scooted back away from the street lamp until her back was to a building wall.  She buried her face in her hands and began to sob with abandon.

Retrieving the shoe from the sidewalk where it had fallen, Grant dropped back against the wall himself and slowly lowered himself down beside her.  He kept his silence, ignoring the looks of passing tourists and considering the shoe he held in his lap.

“Why can’t I be more like you, Grant?” she asked in a small voice.  “No attachments.  Pushing everyone away.  It’s easier that way.  Neater.”

“You can’t.”

Maddy peered up, her face reddened and tear-streaked.

“That’s not you,” Grant told her.  “You want to be happy.  You try.”

Blotting her eyes with her sleeve, she stared up at him.  “But don’t you want to be?”

He sighed and gave her a sad smile.  “That’s… a very good question.”

Maddy gave a short uncertain laugh and took a deep hitching breath.  She looked back toward Chartres, her eyes squinting with emotional pain of her memory.  “Wow!  That hurt more than it should have.”

“Well, what did you expect,” he replied, handing her the shoe.  “You hurt her and she was just lashing back at you.”

Maddy considered him.  “Yeah, but I did the right thing by her by making her go,” she murmured, casting a quick look at Grant.  Slipping the shoe back on, she slowly gathered her legs beneath her.

Grant leapt up and gave her his arm as she rose.

She looked up at the intersection up ahead and nodded.  “I think that’s Decatur,” she said with a gasp.  “Oh, Café Du Monde’s up there!”  Giving his arm a single tug, she started around the corner.

Grant shook his head and trotted after with a smirk.  “See that’s exactly what I was just saying.”

“What?” she asked innocently, craning her neck to look across Decatur Street at a set of steps leading up between two buildings.

“You were just crying and now look at you.”

Ignoring him, she pointed to the steps opposite them.  “Oh, the Riverwalk!  Ah, hell, we have to see Old Miss, don’t we?  I mean, it’s an imperative!”

She rushed toward the crosswalk up ahead at St. Peter and turned to beckon Grant expectantly.  “Sorry, but if I have less than twenty-four hours left, I only get one chance at this.”  The crosswalk changed and she sprinted across, turning to wait for Grant who was moving at a trot.

Looking back across the street, Maddy gazed at the fence-line of Jackson Square and at the bevy of horse-drawn carriages awaiting passengers, the street vendors, the painters, the musicians and rising above it all was the legendary triple steeples of the St. Louis Cathedral.  She froze, blinking back a sudden overwhelming wave of emotion.

“This is it,” she said in awe under her breath as Grant reached her side.

“What?”  He turned and looked back at Jackson Square and found himself smiling in spite of himself.  It was a postcard image of the square and the cathedral.  “Wow, huh?”

Maddy nodded and swallowed the emotion back, trying to fight the urge to cry knowing that he wouldn’t understand what she was feeling and misinterpret entirely.

“I spent my whole life just a few hours away from this place and this is my first time here,” Grant said to her in frank wonder.  “What took me so long, right?”

“The timing was never right,” she said softly. “I think we were meant to share this.”

Grant glanced over at Maddy but her glistening eyes were focused in the distance beyond him.

“It was on my bucket list of places to see before I died,” she said.  “And here I am.”

“Okay, don’t get all morbid on me, kid,” Grant said with a dark chuckle.

Finally, she looked at him and gave him a sad smile.  Blindly, her hand reached out and found his.

“No, you don’t understand.  In the same way I get short glimpses into the future, I’ve been seeing this moment all my adult life.  Me.  Here.  Looking back at the cathedral, hearing the Dixieland jazz, and smelling the fried food and the musk of the horses.  And there was always someone standing by my side.  But I never saw his face.”  She looked around and found his face.

Grant swallowed awkwardly, his eyes flittering away and his hand letting go of hers self-consciously.

Maddy lowered her head slightly and nodded to herself.  “You’ve got to give me a moment here.  I’ve been running my whole life to catch up to this moment.”

Somewhere behind them a soulful voice began to sing an old blues song.

“Maddy, I-I gotta say,” Grant sighed.  “This is the weirdest damn day of my life.”

“Join the club,” she replied with a dark smile.  “And I do the impossible on a daily basis.”  A mounted police officer clip-clopped by them along the curb, his head slowly scanning the street before him.  Maddy absently reached out and ran her hand across the horse’s flank, almost as if to assure herself that this was not a dream.

“When we were on Chartres, I had this overwhelming sensation to get off the street,” he told her.  “That’s why I was so insistent.”

She reached out and squeezed his arm.  “Good.  You communicated perfectly.”

“Yeah.” Still hearing the blues, Grant looked around and spotted a street musician sitting in the shade along the corner of the building behind them.  “It was an odd feeling.  Like an irresistible force.  Like a storm at sea.”

“And now?”

“I’m perfectly calm.  Not even a ripple on the surface of the water.”

Maddy nodded and studied Grant.  “Interesting.  And you never felt this before?”

“Not that I’m aware,” he answered.  “What do you make of it?”

She shrugged, casting an almost playful smile at him as she turned, then almost as an afterthought she stood on her tippy-toes and kissed him on the cheek.  “I’m just glad we’re on the same side.”

She paused to listen to the musician behind them.  Dark glasses obscuring his eyes, the aging black man played that blues standard “It Hurts Me Too” on a twelve-string, its open case lying invitingly next to him.  A passing man dropped some assorted change from his pocket, seemed to think twice then tossed a single wadded dollar bill in as well.  Lying in the shade next to the man and assessing everything happening within his sphere of influence was a grey and white terrier, who gave the old black man a nudge with his nose at the appearance of the dollar.  The man simply nodded and continued playing.

Grant joined Maddy who stood at the musician’s feet and listened.

As he sang about things going wrong, they turned to look at each other at the same moment and spontaneously chuckled.

Grant reached out and took Maddy’s hand.

Her eyes lit up briefly.  Then she felt the wadded bill in her hand a moment later as his hand released hers.  She held the bill out over the guitar case and let it roll off the tips of her fingers, trying not to express the disappointment she felt that the man beside her was only letting go of money instead of something more important.

But it’s progress, she told herself.

The terrier blinked down at the bill and turned its head slightly in confusion, giving a tiny whine.  He gave the musician a nudge then a gentle scrape of its paw.

“Gimme that,” the blues man said, reaching out and holding his hand out as the dog scooped up the bill in its teeth and gently dropped it in its master’s palm.

Maddy gave a hop and clapped her hands in elated surprise.

The old man held the bill between two fingers.  “Nah, it’s real alright, Gus, but you don’t recognize it, cuz you done never seen one before.”  He turned his head up as if to look at them.  “A hundred is more than generous.  Brings an honest man to look for strings.”

“Okay, that was impressive,” Grant admitted with a grin.

“Look it as a down payment for services not yet rendered to generations of tourists you have yet to meet,” Maddy told him.

“Sounds reasonable enough,” he responded, pushing the bill down into the inside pocket of his brown suede jacket.  “Guess I’ll get busy and start with you folks.  Any requests?”

A scruffy-looking man in his thirties shuffled up next to Maddy.  “Bet you twenty bucks I can tell you where you got them shoes.”

“Ah hell, Grimey,” the blues man groaned.  “Why don’t you leave these good people alone?”

“It’s okay.  Tell me,” Maddy said.

“You got them on yo feet,” Grimey replied, giving them a huge laugh and setting his shoulders expectantly as he awaited his reward.

“Double or nothing says I can do that trick for real and tell you where you actually got your shoes,” Maddy countered.

“Naw naw naw,” he uttered.  “I’ll just take my money.”

“No no no, Grimey,” the blues man cut him off, two twenties appearing in his hand as if by magic and holding them in the air.  “I got her forty bucks right here.  And Hell!  Since I already know the answer to her question, if she don’t guess right, I’ll tell her anyway just for the fun of watching you squirm!”

“Sure thing, Deacon,” the con man sang out.  “Your money’s good with me.  Take your shot, lady.”

Pausing a moment as if to recall, Maddy looked Grimey directly in the eye and answered, “Last week you stole them from a drunk that passed out on a Jackson Square park bench.”

Deacon, the blues man burst into laughter as Grimey backed away from them urgently--eyes bugging out in wonder.  Finally, he turned to retreat, casting a few suspicious looks back over his shoulder as he disappeared into the crowd.

“Don’t know how you guessed that, but it sure was satisfying to see a man get what’s coming to him,” the blues man said, slapping the two twenties down on the pavement at Maddy’s feet.

“We can’t take that, sir,” Maddy told Deacon.

“Well, you better take it, sunshine,” the blues man shot back.  “You done won that bet fair and square.  Besides, I couldn’t buy me a better story for forty bucks.  Hell, for a hundred you already laid on me, I should have given you his entire rap sheet.”

Maddy traded a look with Grant before scooping the money up.  She started to toss the money in the case, but the old mutt lifted its salt and pepper snout and leveled an almost offended look at her.  Instead, she clutched the money protectively in her fist and rose to her feet.

“Thank you, sir,” she replied, starting away.

“Please, call me Deacon,” the old man responded jovially.  “Now, how about that request?”

Maddy shrugged and looked back at Grant.  “Any Louis Prima will do,” she said casting a playful look back at Grant.

The blues man began to sing “Just a Gigolo” as Grant started after her.  “What just happened here?” he ventured to ask.

“Well, you gave a blind man with a generous nature a hundred dollars, and because I provided him an entertaining story, Fate gave us forty dollars change,” she replied.  Then considering the two twenties she still held, she corrected herself.  “Personally, I consider it more than Fate.”

She pocketed the cash.

“Hey, I know better.  That wasn’t just a wild guess.  How did you know about the shoes without his ever telling you?” he asked as he caught up to her.

“That’s the thing, though.  He did tell me.  Or he would have told me.  He said so himself.  Remember?”

Grant considered a moment before shaking his head in confusion.  “Nope.”

“Okay, follow the yellow brick road of logic.  I would have lost that bet.  I just learned from my mistake before I made it.”

“So, you changed reality,” Grant shot back.

“Well, if you want to get technical,” she concluded, grabbing Grant’s arm and linking hers around his.  “The generosity of strangers never ceases to amaze me.  It’s folks like Deacon that are protecting us right now.  This crowd is our shield.”

20

Just as an elderly couple rose from their seats beneath the covered patio of the famous Café Du Monde, Maddy and Grant slid into their still warm seats, setting down the two paper cartons of beignets and two cups of jet-black chicory coffee freshly ordered from the windows.

Maddy dumped the change she received in the center of the table and considered it.

“It’s kind of amazing when you think about it,” Grant said, taking a bite of his beignet and washing it down with coffee.  “We meant to give away every penny to that man and still managed to get coffee and beignets.  We even got some change out of it.”

Maddy held a beignet up and eyed it as if it were made of gold.  “‘Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they?’”  She took a huge bite and closed her eyes in ecstasy.

Grant narrowed his eyes at her and shook his head.  Despite how hungry he was, he set the fried dough back down in its container and pushed it aside.

“What?” Maddy asked, opening her eyes.

“Too sweet for me.”  Looking away from Maddy in obvious irritation, Grant wiped the sugar off of his hands with a napkin and grumbled, “Were you raised in a convent or something?”

“No, Grant, I was not.  I was raised in Florida by Mr. and Mrs. Murphy,” she replied plainly, assessing him patiently.  “My folks weren’t the church-going type.”

“Can we talk about something else, please?” Grant snapped, tossing the wadded napkin to the table.

“Oh, I see.  Never discuss religion, politics, or the Great Pumpkin, right?”

Grant stared down at his coffee.

“I guess this is the first opportunity we’ve actually had to talk about something other than a direction to run.”

“And there’s been little discussion on that topic lately,” he interjected grumpily.

“We’re safe for the moment, Grant.  Deal with it,” Maddy told him, finishing her last beignet and eying Grant’s untouched stash.  After a brief hesitation, he slid his beignets over to her.

“So, you’re from Florida originally?”

Maddy smiled.  “You have been listening,” she replied, reaching out and attempting to wipe the powdered sugar from his lips.  “It’s hard take a man in makeup seriously.”

Snatching the napkin from her, Grant swiped the powdered sugar from his face.

“You have family back there?” he asked.

Maddy stopped chewing and wiped the sugar off her own face.  “No,” she stated simply.  “Not anymore.”

Crowd noise settled around them as they grew quiet.  Maddy sighed heavily and glared at the beignets as if they’d just threatened her with bodily harm.  “Yeah.  Too sweet,” she muttered.

“Look, Maddy, I didn't mean to...”

Maddy straightened in her seat, her eyes locking on Grant’s.  “When I say that the men who are following us are capable of murder, I am speaking from experience.”

Grant’s eyes slowly moved back to her and remained patiently silent as Maddy struggled with whatever she wanted--no needed--to say.

“They killed my family. Murdered them all.”

Someone dropped a glass bottle a few tables away and cursed.

Grant stared at her with wide eyes.

“They held me at this facility just outside of Georgia.  They told me if I tried to escape, they'd kill them all,” Maddy continued, her eyes never leaving Grant’s.  “That’s how they were able to get me to cooperate for so long.  But eventually, I discovered the truth.  They had killed them a short time after they had kidnapped me.”

Unable to maintain eye-contact any longer, Grant looked down to the careworn hands folded upon the tabletop, registering their condition for the first time.  For a young woman still in her mid-twenties, she had the hands of a forty year old.

He could muster no words of comfort for her.  “God, Maddy,” was all he could manage.

“But they didn't tell me right away.  They sent Jeremy’s high school football scores and the improvements Daddy was making to the kitchen. They tried to make me believe that everyone was so supportive. Like I was in summer camp.”

“I'm so sorry,” he managed in a small voice, his eyes finding her face again.

“Daddy…” she began then stopped abruptly when the emotion got the better of her.  She took a deep hitching breath and continued.  “He was the one who liked Louis Prima and Chicago.”  She laughed through the tears that streamed down her face.  “He used to play it so loud that the house would shake with the sound of that brass.”  She closed her eyes and put her hands over her ears.  “But it was like a sanctuary of sound, y’know?  A strong protective wall.  Just like Daddy.”  She opened her eyes and dragged a sleeve across her face in irritation.  “I guess Sadie read me like a book,” she chuckled.

Grant studied her with a fresh perspective.

“There were even pictures of them sent to me.  It was so... grotesque what they did, so creatively evil, that I began to think that these people weren't human. Maybe they were demons. Maybe I was in Hell. Maybe I'm being punished.”

Gamblin’, Grant could Sadie say clearly in his head.  That’s your demon, is it?

Grant nodded, feeling guilty for all the moments he may have harbored ill will toward the girl sitting with him.  Here he was thinking that he was a victim of circumstance when, unlike her, he had brought everything down on himself.  “Sounds familiar,” he muttered.

“Are you still married, Grant?”

Grant just stared expressionlessly at Maddy.

She reached out and touched his ring finger and he twitched slightly but managed not to withdraw his hand.  “I never asked before because I know it's none of my business.”

Grant lowered his head, nibbling his lip slightly. For the first time, the possibility of sharing the source of his pain occurred to him as a possibility.

Maddy blinked and sucked in a breath, her eyes going out of focus.

She knew.

What he had just witnessed was an honest reaction on her part.  She had reacted as if he had uttered the actual words instead of conceiving the thought.

Despite that, he knew he had to say it aloud.  After all, it was a foregone conclusion now, wasn’t it?  If she knew now, then he must eventually tell her, right?

The unassailable logic paired with the implausibility of the thing made his temple throb.

If nothing else he had experienced today had already convinced him of these abilities that she claimed, this singular moment did.

Grant felt a sudden heat around the edges of his eyes and he fought to maintain control over his emotions as he formed the words.

“She was murdered by Rudy’s boss.  A man named Arturo Torres,” he told her.

When he looked up again, Maddy wore a shocked expression, her face pale, but just below that surface he could see that she wasn’t completely surprised.  In fact, her expression seemed to say: Now it makes sense.  Now I understand.

She waited patiently for him to elaborate, but he returned to his coffee instead.

After a while, Maddy realized that there would be no more.

“Was she your soul mate, Grant?”

Grant patiently collected his thoughts, trying to pull them into a shape that resembled words.  It had been a long, long time since he’d attempted to articulate his feelings to a woman, any woman.

“I didn't know I was capable of being a man until I found her,” he finally told her.  “Since she died, nothing in my life has made sense.”

Including the last two days, Grant contemplated darkly.

Grant dragged the container of beignets back over to his side of the table and began to eat again until he had finished them all.  After he had wiped his face, he realized that she had been watching him the whole time with a sad smile on her face.

“I think the key to finding your soul mate is finding someone who is like a family member you've never met.  When you do, it's like, ‘Oh, it's you. I remember you now.’”  After a moment, she lowered her eyes.  “I’ve never found anyone like that,” she lied.

She peered up to see if he’d bought her thinly veiled deception, but he simply stared in a thoughtful stupor down at the empty beignet container.  Had he even heard her?

Gazing at the man before her, she recognized that he was losing himself in memories, slipping further and further away from her.  But she couldn’t allow that.  She needed him.  For her own survival and…

Examining her feelings she realized, that what she was feeling was actual jealousy.  Not a general kind of jealousy at the fact that she had never had a relationship as passionate as theirs had seemed to be.

But instead, that the other woman had had him.  This man sitting before her.

Oh no, she thought.  How could I let this happen?  I tried to be careful.

Then the answer came back to her.

Of course, you’ve developed feelings.  He’s your lifeline.  You’ve been relying on him since you left Houston.  It’s natural that you formed a bond with him.  But you have to realize that this is simply your survival instinct kicking in.  Nothing more.

Maddy took a long drink of her coffee and tried to subdue the feelings of envy rising within her heart.  “What was her name?” she said a little too accusatorily.

Grant looked up after a few moments as if regaining consciousness.  “Lara.  Her name was Lara.”

“Tell me about her?”

This other woman.

“She was five six. Dark hair.”

“Something private, Grant.”  Then when she realized that she had asked with a bit of a tone to her voice, she added, “Please.”

His eyes came unfocused and he stared beyond her.

He’s looking through me, she realized.  As if I’m not even here.

“She used to trace words on my arm with her finger when a dinner date with other couples got too boring,” he told her.  “She always seemed to know the exact moment when my tolerance was at its breaking point.”

Maddy watched Grant with a sad smile until his eyes eventually refocused on her face.  “Would she have found me a boring date, Grant?”

Grant gave a little ironic chuckle.  “No, you would have been a memorable one, Maddy.”

“Thank you,” she said, reaching out to touch his arm but drawing just short.

What the hell is wrong with you, she questioned herself.  Nothing has changed between you both.  If you start acting erratically, you’ll only give him a reason to leave.

He’d never do that, she answered herself.

“Well, that explains why you still wear it,” she said, pointing at his ring finger.

He examined it at a distance and gave a sad smile.  “You see now why you bet on the wrong horse?”

“No,” she said resolutely, “I didn’t.”

“Well, then you’re naïve… and wrong,” he answered, looking away.

She wanted to tell him how romantic he was.  That his image of a broken down horse was seen by her instead as a chivalrous steed.  But all that sounded only beautiful echoing through her exhausted mind, swollen with emotion.  She knew the moment the words left her mouth they would sound hallow and infantile.  So, she keep her silence.

“I wish that was all there was,” he replied with a deep sigh.  “Oh, don’t get me wrong, there was no shortage of romance.  But the reason I wear the ring is to never forget.”

The way he said the words “never forget” felt bitterly cold to her.

There was a dread to her voice when she finally asked the question: “Never forget what?”

“That I was the reason she was murdered,” he stated bluntly, his eyes meeting hers.  “Because I was addicted to gambling.  Torres entered our lives because of me.”

It was exactly as Sadie had warned her.

Death has taken his soul a long time ago and he's been courting it like a jilted lover ever since.  Sugah, that man just ready to die.

Now she felt like an idiot for dredging up the memory just when he was starting to act like a human being.  Served her right, she thought, for being selfish enough to want to know his past.  About Lara.

Well, it was too late to take it back now.  It was as good a time as any to address the elephant in the room.

“Grant?”

The way she said his name triggered an alarm somewhere in his soul.  “What?”

“Do you want to die?”

Grant stared blankly at her, feeling like a child caught messing with something dangerous that he knew he shouldn’t have touched.

She could see that he was calculating the best way to lie to her.  “After everything we’ve been through, the least you can do is be honest with me,” she shot, injecting a bit of venom into her tone.  “Once I’m out of the picture, you’re going to go right back to slowly poisoning yourself, aren’t you?”

Grant lowered his eyes.  “I don’t want to talk about this.”

“We need to talk about this, Grant,” she replied.  “Or have you forgotten since you took on the role as my bodyguard that I saved you first.  A couple of times, if I recall.  So, you owe me something.”

He fired a glare at her that broke ineffectually over her stony expression like a wave upon a boulder.  “I never asked for that.”

“True suicides never do.”

Flinching at the sharp edge of her comment, Grant crushed the empty paper container sitting between them and tossed it into the nearest trashcan.  “There’s a casino at the end of the Riverwalk,” he told her, rising to his feet.  “It’s a place that stays open twenty-four hours and is always filled with people.”

“Genius,” she said, her eyes softening.  Noticing that he was already standing, she hopped to her feet.  “I thought you didn’t know anything about this city.”

“An addict always knows where to get his fix.  Back in my heyday, I’d always meant to come here.  Maybe see just how far down I could crawl to the rocky bottom,” he said, giving her an ironic snort.  “Real life intruded on my plans.”

She stared at him and he stared back.  “Are you finished,” she snapped.

He narrowed his eyes at her.  “I think we should separate here.”

“I didn’t realize that you were on a schedule too, or did you see the moment of your own death as well?”

“Fine,” Grant growled, starting slowly past her back toward Decatur Street and she rushed dutifully after him.  “Remind me never to get on your bad side.”

He slowed his pace for her and cast a look at her face to assess her state of mind.  “I’ll get you safely to the entrance of the casino, but I can’t go inside.”

Maddy met his eyes and lowered her head in silent affirmation.

True he could never accompany her inside.  It would be the same as asking an alcoholic to spend the night in a bar without having a drink.  It was the perfect hiding place, she knew.  If she agreed, this would be the end of their association.

She would truly be on her own again.

21

Grant and Maddy made their way down the Riverwalk in silence along the banks of the Mississippi.  Off to their left, a paddleboat drifted serenely in the distance, as the sounds of Dixieland trumpets floated back to them on the wind.

As Grant glanced around them—suspicious at the lack of people--Maddy slowed slightly as she watched the riverboat.  “I really wanted to see Louis Armstrong's cornet,” she said longingly under her breath.

“C'mon,” he grunted, turning in front of the Audubon Aquarium and heading back toward Canal Street.  He could just make out the fountains in front of the casino in the distance.

“You ever think about how many places you'll never visit, how many strangers you'll never meet, how many secrets you'll never learn?”

“Why are you talking like this again?”

“Like what?”

“Apocalyptic.”

Maddy studied Grant.  She shook her head in wonder at his observation.  “You’re right, I am,” she admitted.

“So, what’s the problem?” he asked.  “The casino is within sight.  You’re almost home.  Once we get you inside, all you have to do is wait until morning, right?”

Maddy was silent, her pace unconsciously slowing.

“Right?”

“They haven’t stopped.”  She traded a look with him.  “Images of the bayou.  The gunshots.  The End Times vision.”

“But I don’t understand,” Grant slowed and fell into step with her again.  “The casino is the right move.  I’m sure of it.”

Maddy simply looked up at Grant with concern and shrugged.

“God, I need another one of Horace’s beers,” Grant commented, running his hand through the back of his hair in obvious exasperation.  “Tell me again everything you saw.”

“I’m in a bayou.  I see a big cypress tree and grey pelicans.  Someone is holding a gun to my head.  There are gunshots.”

“Wait!  What does this someone look like?” Grant demanded.

“It’s just a silhouette.  No detail.”

“Am I with you?”

“No,” she responded, glancing furtively over at him.

“You know this for sure?  You die and I’m not with you?”

“Yes, Grant.”

Grant cursed under his breath, increasing his pace.  It took him a few moments to realize that Maddy was no longer beside him.  Then he heard the soft weeping.

He turned to find her standing immobile, both arms wrapped around her mid-section insecurely as she looked over at the casino.

Grant rushed back to her and put a hand across her shoulder.

She clutched at his arm almost defensively.  “I’m sorry.  I thought I'd be able to handle this if I knew what was coming. What to expect. I didn't know it would be this hard. Grant, I'm so scared.”

Grant stood looking out at the casino with anxious eyes.  His heart began to race at the thought of the electronic pinging of the machines, the cards sliding elegantly across the soft green felt, the sound of the colored chips as they began to stack up into a pile in front of him.

Unconsciously, his mouth began to water.

No, I can’t do this again, he thought.  I can’t.

Grant reached out, his hand hovering just above her hair but stopping just short.

“I won't leave you, Maddy. I promise.”

Maddy peered up at Grant. Her faces brightened slightly.  “Y-You mean it?”

He nodded, turning slowly but resolutely back toward Canal and the beckoning fountains, glistening like an oasis in the Louisiana heat.

“But you’ve got to promise me something, Maddy.”

“Anything,” she quickly replied, starting them forward again with her arms still wrapped around his left arm.

“You can’t let me sit at a table,” he told her.  “In fact, it’s probably best if we avoid the machines too.”

Maddy studied his face with concern.  “Yeah, I’m sure there’s a buffet restaurant or something.”

“Yeah, a buffet sounds really, really good.  I’m starved,” he groaned.  “Fried dough and coffee burns through the engine fast.”

With just a few yards from Canal Street left to go, the black sedan screeched to a halt just in front of them.

For a moment, Grant stared at it in disbelieving wonder, the odds that this could be happening so close to their destination simply not registering within his tired brain.

Then Grant came to his senses and rushed into a defensive stance in front of Maddy, pulling her behind him.  They began backing away as one of the Blank Men stepped out of the passenger seat.  He looked one way then the other, confident in the fact that there were no witnesses.

It’s Bert, the tall one.  The thought raced through Grant’s mind as he gazed upon the other man in the street before him, standing in the stark afternoon sunlight in a dark suit and black-out sunglasses like an object “Photoshopped” into an artificial environment where it didn’t belong--like a fish floating above the Grand Canyon.  Grant realized that if he were just slightly closer he might be able to make out details of the man’s face for the first time.  In that moment of thought, a cloud rolled over the sun and obscured all the other’s features.

“You thought about what we talked about, Frederickson?” the man asked.

Grant felt Maddy increase her death-grip around his wrist as she pressed in closer to him, her hip touching his.

“We can make all this go away for you, if you cooperate.  What is it worth?  Getting your life back?”  The Blank Man opened the door to the back seat, displaying Rudy's doggie coffin resting in the dark air-conditioned interior.

Who’s in the coffin, Grant suddenly thought, recalling his dream.

“She knows we have no intention of killing her.  There are other methods of eliminating a threat to us that doesn’t require the complications of physical death,” the dark man continued, favoring her with a grimace that might have passed for a smile in some corner of the universe bereft of hope.  “Isn’t that right, Madelyne?”

‘The complications of physical death,’ Grant thought.  What an odd thing to say!

Grant wanted to look back to see how Maddy was taking all this—to see if she was buying any of their propaganda--but knew better than to turn his back on them.  Instead, from their point of contact, Grant could feel a shiver roll through the length of Maddy’s body like a death shutter and got his answer nonetheless.

“So, all the chasing and the gunplay--I suppose all you've been doing is just trying to make this more entertaining for us?” Grant asked snidely.

After a moment’s hesitation, the Blank Man said, “You were the one who brought Pedroza into this.  He added unnecessary complications.”

There’s that word again, Grant thought.  Complications.

On an impulse, Grant asked with trepidation, “Did you kill him?”

Grant could see the taller man give a gallows smile.  “No, but then, you probably wouldn’t have had any problem with it if we had, given your stance on the death penalty.”

Grant felt his blood run cold.

How could they have..?

Glancing around, Grant saw that the street was still empty.  In that moment, he considered the wild impossibility that the two men standing between them and safety had stopped Time itself for this confrontation.

How could they have known about the private conversation he had held with Rudy unless they could read his mind?  And if they could do that, what else could these men do?

Despite the sudden doubt that plagued him, Grant could feel Maddy’s firm hand squeezing his reassuringly.

“Make this go away for Grant and I'll go with you,” he heard Maddy say.

Oddly, the Blank Man held both his hands out as if offering to carry luggage for her.

“My terms,” she snapped, as her hand loosened in Grant’s.

“Yes, that's fine, Madelyne. Let's discuss this in the car,” the suited man replied, starting toward her eagerly.

As Maddy moved forward, her hand slipping out of his, Grant threw his arm out protectively.

Standing beside him, Maddy peered up into Grant’s eyes and gave him a single determined nod.  I’m ready, she seemed to be saying.

“Excuse me? Is everything ok?”

Grant looked around at the sound of the new voice and saw a tall fair-haired man in his forties, dressed in a leather jacket and tie marching up to the car from the opposite side of the road. He flicked a cigarette out of his hand with a graceful, fluid motion.

Then almost like oxygen rushing back into a pressurized room, Grant felt the humid breeze of the Quarter hit his skin.  And like the turning of a knob of a radio, the sound of traffic slowly became audible again along with the cascading patter of the water drops from the fountain across the street.

Grant blinked in confusion.

What the hell just happened to me?

He watched as if through another’s eyes as The Blank Man flung himself into the sedan, which forced itself back into the busy traffic of Canal Street, that had not existed only seconds before.

Had it ever been empty to begin with? Grant wondered.

Maddy stared at the sharply dressed man across the street with a mixture of confusion and wonder.  “Brigham?” she managed under her breath, her voice pitched high in amazement.  “What..?”

The man smiled and gave a wave.  “Madelyne, is that you?”

Waiting for a lull in traffic, the man trotted across to join them.  He instantly moved forward as if to embrace her then simply held her at arm’s length by the shoulders, almost as if to inspect her.  When she moved in slightly, he gave her a light peck on the cheek then continued to stare at her.

Grant studied the man, his mind reeling in five directions at once.  “Excuse me,” he snapped, looking up the street to reassure himself the black sedan had indeed disappeared before returning his attention to him.

“What on earth are you doing here?” Maddy muttered, ignoring Grant for the moment.

“Having a smoke... Oh, you mean in New Orleans,” the man answered with an accent--British, just not the Cockney type associated with the working class in the UK, but something further north.  Geordie, he’d seemed to recall hearing it called.

“I own the Old Miss, the restaurant that just opened upstairs,” he exclaimed excitedly.  “Oh, Maddy, this place is a dream. You've got to see her.”

Grant stepped forward and offered Brigham his hand.  “I'm Grant.”

Brigham shook his hand without completely taking his eyes off Maddy.

“What has it been? Close to three years?” she asked him.

“Two and a half,” the Brit corrected concisely.  “I simply must show you my baby.”

Maddy shifted awkwardly in place, casting a look over at Grant before nodding.

22

Striding through the expansive entrance, Brigham held Maddy’s arm as he led her through the casino, past slot machines and gaming tables, leaning down to her ear in order to be heard above the sound of cascading coins and the electronic pinging all around them.

“Wait, are you trying to tell me that you own a piece of this?” Maddy asked with wide-eyes.

“Well, I could lie to you, but I’ve never been able to pull the wool over your eyes effectively,” Brigham said, giving her arm an affectionate squeeze and tipping her a wink.  “We’re still paying off the start-up loan, but we’re definitely on our way!  You’ll see.”

Entering a few steps behind, Grant pushed forward with his eyes planted strategically down until nearly colliding into the bosom of an Amazonian redhead holding a Hurricane big enough to drown both her and the elderly gentleman she towed behind her.

Stepping out of their way, Grant stopped and stared around himself for the first time, his feet slowing to a complete halt.  Like a child at the gates of Disneyland, his eyes glazed over and his jaw drifted slowly down as he took it all in.

It took him a few moments to realize that someone was calling out his name.

“Grant!”

Looking up in confusion, he saw that Maddy stood about ten yards away facing him as Brigham waited patiently just behind her.  He was unable to engage his mind enough to move forward then wondered why he should follow her anyway.

Why are you debating this?  She doesn’t need you anymore, his gut offered.  After all you’ve been through, you deserve this.

No money, he answered desperately.  I’m tapped out.  Nothing left to wager.

Yes, that was him in a nutshell, wasn’t it?  Nothing left to wager.  And that was the direct result of his inability to disavow the call of that inner voice in the first place.

Suddenly, he felt a solid grip on his hand and a tug in the opposite direction and simply followed the momentum.

“Geez,” he heard Maddy mumble into his ear as he stumbled along after her.  “You weren’t kidding, were you?”

Maddy gave him a gentle shove, forcing Grant into step between her and Brigham.

“By the way, whatever happened to that restaurant in Vegas?” she asked.

“Bought it.  Renovated it.  Flipped it.  It was just a stepping stone,” the Brit replied with a hearty laugh, glancing awkwardly at Maddy and Grant’s linked hands as he held the elevator door open for them.  “So what have you been up to the last two and half years, love?” he asked, settling in beside them.

“Oh, the usual.”  Maddy glanced at Grant, his eyes still glued to the sights and sounds of the floor as if trying to memorize every aspect in as short a time as he could.

“Well, let’s see.  You were fleeing some bad relationship when I met you and then disappeared rather abruptly again,” Brigham commented.  “So, am I to take it that you’ve been continuing to avoid failed romances all this time?”

“Hmm?  Let’s see.  Yeah, actually that about covers it, really.  Right, Grant?”

The door slid shut effectively cutting off the noise of the casino like the slamming of a bank vault door.  Grant jerked slightly as if awakening from a dream.  He glanced up at Maddy then down at his hand gripping hers tightly.  He released it and gave her a smile of embarrassment.  “Sorry,” he whispered in the stillness of the elevator’s piped-in music.

A moment of awkward silence ensued.

“You still managing bands?” Maddy finally asked.

“No, that lifestyle got a little… chaotic.  Had to put on the brakes before too long,” he said with a sly glance casually over to Maddy, then back up at the floor numbers.  “But I still have my contacts in the industry just in case this restaurant business gets a bit too dull.”  He caught Grant’s eye and tipped him a wink.

“Brigham managed acts like Ludicrous Confusion and Toxic Dogs,” Maddy added.

Grant gave a shy, uncertain smile.

“And what do you do, Gram?”

“Grant,” Maddy corrected.

“Sorry, I’ve never met a Grant.  I know lots of Gram’s,” he replied.  Then under his breath, “Grams and ounces.”  The door opened and Brigham strode through into the muffled crowd-noise of a full house with light jazz floating like a spring breeze just over the patrons’ voices.

Head down, Grant started to follow.  Maddy put her hand out and touched his arm.

“You okay?” she asked, looking him in the eye.

“Yeah,” he said a little too quickly.  “Listen, Maddy…”

“No seriously,” she snapped, her hands latching onto his as he tried to back away out of the elevator.  “You kinda soft-balled the whole addicted to gambling thing, didn’t you?  This is… a bit more significant.”

“I..,” he started to then fell silent.  Giving a heavy sigh, he admitted, “Honestly, I didn’t think any of my past shit mattered anymore.”

“Why?  Because you expected to die today?”

He gave her an almost apologetic look and dropped his eyes.

“How much?” she wanted to know.  “How bad did it get, Grant?”

He abruptly yanked his hands out of hers.  “I’m okay now,” he quipped, attempting a wry smirk at her that fell flat.  “Really.”

Maddy studied him with concern as he stepped in front of the sensor to keep the elevator door open and turned slightly away, obscuring his face from Brigham’s eye-line.  “I need to know if you saw this guy Brigham ahead of time?  I mean, did you know this was coming?”

For a moment, she looked completely clueless.  This was her default look when challenged about her hidden talent, and she fell naturally into the role before remembering that Grant knew everything.

It was odd how this little foray back into the past could cause her to lose her tentative grip on the present. Grant knew all her secrets, she had to remind herself.

She stared into his eyes for a moment searching for something more than simple concern.  “No, I…”  She shook her head at him.  Brigham had been a complete surprise.  She quietly analyzed it for the first time.  How could that be?

She decided to chalk it up to putting Grant in charge and how his positioning had disrupted her normal vision.  After all, she hadn’t seen Sadie either, had she?

“Madelyne,” Brigham called from behind Grant.

Grant stepped casually aside and allowed Maddy to move into the entryway of the upper-scale supper club.  Behind Brigham, who conversed with an oak of a man whom she took to be the maître d', sat a roomful of well-dressed men and women in mostly suits and dresses.  The supper crowd.

Maddy felt instantly awkward as she joined Grant in the center of the entrance.

The eyes of the maître d' passed over Maddy and Grant--quietly assessing who it was his boss was making such a fuss over--then back to Brigham.  With a nod, he waved to the head waiter and took him aside for a few words before the waiter bustled off on his mission.

Brigham joined them with a bright smile.  “We’ve got a great view of the river.  That is what sold me on the place.  You’ll see.”

Grant watched as Maddy cast a nervous look down at her worn shoes while Brigham gazed at her with an intensity that he’d last seen outside his apartment in Houston when a crack addict pleaded with him for money.  A moment later when Maddy looked back up, the expression had disappeared but Grant’s memory of it sat like a bur deep in his sock.

“Brigham, aren’t we a little underdressed for this place?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Madelyne,” he snapped.  “You couldn’t possible look any less than fantastic.”

Maddy rolled her eyes, while Grant gave Brigham a forced smile.

Brigham met his eyes and for a moment Grant saw something there that put him instantly on the defensive, then his smile reappeared as did the head waiter.  “Right this way, Mr. Gordon.”

Brigham gestured for Maddy to lead the way, then stepped into stride beside Grant, giving him a firm pat on the back.  “We like to keep up the profile since we stole Miles Fletcher from Manhattan, but we’ve yet to turn anyone away if they weren’t wearing a tie.”

“Miles Fletcher,” Maddy gasped in wonder, turning to look back at Grant.

Grant returned her look, but added a head-shake of confusion.  “Is he good?”

“He’s one of the best chefs out there,” Maddy snapped, giving Grant a slap on the arm.  “Heat of the Kitchen?  Cheyenne Proper?  Don’t you watch television?”

“I owned one,” he admitted.  “Though I think it might have been kicked in by Rudy’s friends the other night.”  At the thought of his tiny one-room apartment, Grant felt a strange mixture of feelings that was one part nostalgia and one part dread.

The wreckage of his apartment was a physical manifestation of the way he felt about his life.  The mere thought of returning to Houston and settling back into his comfortable yet fatalistic rut sent chills up his spine, much like the thought of walking into a dark alley on the wrong side of the Big Easy.

What I am doing here anyway, he asked himself.  Don’t I have a job to get back to?

The question hung unanswered before him as they reached a prime table at a grandiose wall of windows on a slightly elevated landing above the main floor of the restaurant—like a stage, Maddy considered with trepidation.

When the waiter reached for Maddy’s chair, Brigham made significant eye contact with him.  In response, the waiter instantly lowered his head and stepped aside.  Brigham smoothly took the other’s place, carefully holding the chair out for her.

Conscious of all the eyes from other patrons watching and wondering who they were to garner such special treatment, Maddy darted into her seat, wide eyes watching as an army of waiters descended upon the table.

Before Grant even reached a chair, a waiter slid a steaming plate into the space on the table before him--something so spicy that it opened his nasal passages almost violently.  He took a step back as a second and third waiter set dishes down on the quickly-filling table.

Maddy glanced back and did a double-take of the view from the window behind her.  “Oh my God!” she nearly shouted, attracting the curious eyes of the diners around her.  “Get the hell out of here!  Will you look at that view?”

Brigham beamed at Maddy and chuckled nervously—nodding apologetically to a neighboring table--as he found the chair closest to her.  “See, I knew you would appreciate it.”

“Look, Grant!  You can see a riverboat down there,” she called, frantically waving him over as she leaned precariously on the back two legs of her chair.

Grant leapt up and held her chair steady as he joined her at the window, for a moment forgetting the previous thought of his apartment back in Houston.

Behind them standing at his side of the table with a deepening frown, Brigham cleared his throat loudly.  Maddy dropped the legs of her chair to the carpet while Grant scrambled back his seat again.

“As you can see, I took the liberty of ordering a few of my favorite appetizers for you to sample.  Oh, and a round of drinks as well.  I do hope you’re a whiskey man, Gram.  Sorry.  Grant,” Brigham corrected himself as yet another server set three drinks down.  “I apologize if I’m being too rash, but sometimes my enthusiasm gets the best of me.”

As the waiter set a blue-colored martini in front of Maddy, she gave a low chuckle and flashed a look at Brigham.  “Is this a Black Orchid?  You remembered my drink?”

“How could I forget?  There was a time when I thought you subsisted exclusively on this particular drink.”

“That’s an amazing memory you have,” she concluded, as her wide eyes reviewed the steaming dishes arrayed before her.  Crawfish gumbo.  Turtle soup with sherry.  Baked oysters on the half shell.  Buttermilk fried frog legs.

Brigham watched with a ravenous expression. “We serve a mixture of both Creole and Cajun cuisine here.  I just hope you haven’t already had your fill of New Orleans cuisine during your stay,” Brigham added.

“Are you kidding me?” Maddy replied.  “Since we hit the city limits, all we’ve had are pancakes and fried chicken.”

“And beignets,” Grant reminded absently, glancing at the view outside.

“Oh, yes.  And let’s not forget the beignets,” Maddy chirped, favoring Grant with a secret smile.

Brigham blinked at her in confusion, his eyes wandering to Grant, giving him a series of shame-inducing clucks of his tongue.  “Well, hopefully this experience will rectify that trauma.”

“Do you serve Bananas Foster?”

“Are you kidding?  The best in town.”  Brigham caught the attention of one of the servers.  “Andy, please put in the raspberry soufflé order now, and in addition, you will bring us a Bananas Foster with a double serving of Blue Bell.”  The server nodded and started away, but at the last moment Brigham caught his arm.  “Oh, and a chocolate bread pudding as well.  Thank you, sir.”  He turned his attention back to Maddy, his smile turning anxious.  “Well, that covers nearly our entire dessert menu.”

Maddy watched Grant who stared silently down at his own bowl of gumbo.

Brigham’s smile faltered, as he whisked the ornately folded linen napkin from the table and dropped it into his lap.  Clearing his throat, he lifted his drink.  “Here’s to renewing old relationships.”

Maddy scooped up her glass and touched Brigham’s as Grant slowly lifted his own hesitantly behind theirs.

His eyes lingering on Maddy, Brigham prompted: “Well then, shall we begin?”

Maddy and Brigham reached for a frog leg at the same time and giggled at each other.  Maddy heartily began to eat, reaching for one of the oysters before she had even swallowed her first bite of the frog, while Grant simply sat watching Brigham.

“How bizarre, right?”

Brigham blinked across at Grant, the breaded frog leg drooping in his fingers.  “How’s that?”

“I mean you two meeting out here after, what, three years?”

“Well, more like two and a half,” Brigham replied, glancing around at the plates of steaming food surrounding them almost as if attempting to locate a problem.

“What a coincidence, right?”  Grant’s eyes wandered up to Maddy, who froze with the half shell in her mouth, almost as if caught with her hand in someone’s pocket.  Slowly, she withdrew the shell from her lips and set it on the empty bread plate beside her.

Brigham stared at the bread plate with a troubled expression.  “How’s that for fate, eh?” He gave a weak chuckle and dipped a spoon experimentally into his turtle soup.

Grant quietly tried his gumbo and gave a nod of appreciation.

Maddy glanced up at him her eyes stern and confused.

The live jazz band paused between numbers and Brigham lifted his head along with the rest of the patrons to give them a hearty round of applause.

“If you cats don’t mind, we’re gonna take a short break here,” the lead singer announced.  “We’ll be back in a few.”

The sound man slapped in a disc and grabbed his jacket from his chair.

As the Doobie Brothers “You Belong to Me” began, Grant stirred his gumbo lazily, his eyes examining Brigham.  Ignoring him, Brigham turned to Maddy and opened his mouth to speak when Grant cut him off.

“So, they don’t allow smoking in this casino?”

Brigham stared at Grant questioningly.  “They do in the casino but not in the restaurant.” he answered.  “But you’re with me.  Go ahead and light up.”

“The reason I ask is because I noticed that you said that you went outside for a smoke,” Grant challenged, fixing him with unblinking eyes.

Brigham gave him a smile.  “Yeah, that is what I said, Grant,” he responded, settling back in his chair to study the other man.  “Sometimes I just need to put some distance between myself and all this. Breathe the air of the Quarter.”

Grant met Brigham’s look with his own.  A few moments of silence passed at the table.

Maddy lowered her head closer to her bowl, her shoulders slumping.

“If there’s something you’d like to ask me, Grant..?”

“There’s plenty I’d like to ask,” Grant replied.

“Then by all means.”

“Trouble is where to start.”

Maddy darted her eyes from one man to the other with something akin to wonder, until finally pushing away from her plate, dabbing her lips with a napkin.  “I should run to the ladies room.”

“Please let me escort you,” Brigham responded rising from the table.

Grant immediately leapt to his feet as well.  “I’ve got this.”

As Brigham turned his darkly veiled eyes to Grant, Maddy stepped between them.

“I’m going to go alone and I’ll be okay,” she interjected with her eyes on Grant.

“You think after the way this day has gone, I’m going to just let…”

“Yes, you are,” she snapped.  “Because I need a few moments to myself, Grant.”

He slumped slightly and found his seat again.

Brigham remained standing a few moments longer, watching her disappear around the corner before taking his chair as well.

Grant swished the ice cubes around his untouched tumbler of whiskey and after apparent consideration returned it to the table without a sip.

Staring down into his own whiskey, Brigham sighed heavily.  “Listen, I can understand if you don’t trust me.”

“What’s not to trust?  An old friend shows up after two and a half years under suspicious circumstances and begins wining and dining us…”

“The truth is that I’m in love with that woman,” Brigham stated bluntly, his voice fading slightly.  He cleared his throat with a cough and glanced toward the ladies room self-consciously.

Grant’s eyes widened in utter surprise, not so much in response to the revelation itself but to Brigham’s sharing of it.

“I let her disappear on me once and I’ve regretted it ever since.  So, yes, from your perspective my actions might seem to be that of a madman.  But then you’re not in love with her.”  Brigham’s eyes affixed to Grant in challenge.  “Are you?”

Grant’s eyes darted up to the other man nervously.  “Am I what?”

The other man’s eyes lingered on him a moment.  “Since the first moment I saw you with my Madelyne, I’ve been asking myself, what is this man’s relationship with her?”  He leaned forward slightly.

In response, Grant settled back, putting an equal amount of distance between them again.

“How are they involved?  Are they friends?  Are they lovers?  Are they related?” Brigham continued.  With each question, he scrutinized Grant’s reaction.  “Did one of these mythical boyfriends she always talked about running from finally manage to get to her stay?”

Boyfriends?  Maddy?  Grant thought.

Grant took a slow even breath, vaguely feeling a dull ache from somewhere within.  “So, what was your conclusion,” he asked.

“The woman’s always been an enigma to me,” Brigham continued.  “But you.  I can read you like a book, and you know what I see?”

Maddy rushed back into her seat as if re-claiming her musical chair.  “Here I am!  How’s everybody getting along?  Nice, I hope.”  Her eyes fixed on Grant.  He ignored her.

“Barnum and I were just having a very stimulating conversation, s’all.”

Brigham’s eyes flashed up at the obvious misstating of his name.

“Sorry.  Brigham,” Grant finished, with a glance in the other man’s direction.

Maddy’s eyes flickered from one man to the other and sighed heavily.  She shot to her feet again, giving a forlorn look down at the food.  “So, how about that dance you promised me two and half years ago?” she asked Brigham.

The Brit nearly knocked his chair over, climbing to his feet.  “B-But of course, Madelyne.  It seems that I’m not the only one with an amazing memory.”

Moaning slightly under his breath, Grant returned to his gumbo with less enthusiasm than before.

Ella Fitzgerald’s “I’ve Got a Crush on You” began to play.

Brigham rose to his feet, extending his hand to Maddy.

She stood and started to reach for his hand, then turned back to take a quick sip of her drink.  As she leaned across the table, Grant glanced up and caught the single wink that she tipped before turning back to the Brit and allowing him to escort her onto the dance floor.

Pausing with his spoon held loosely in the air, Grant set it aside, his eyes watching Brigham and Maddy step onto the empty dance floor, every patron’s eye on them, each face blessing them with a pleasant smile.

After a moment, Grant sat back in his chair heavily, his shoulders slumping in defeat.

23

Brigham offered Maddy his hand.  She gave him a mischievous smile before taking it and stepping closer, while still maintaining a secure distance between their two bodies.

“Brigham Gordon,” Maddy stated with a chuckle.  “What are the odds?”

“Not bloody likely,” he replied with a smirk.  “Like I said before, it’s more like fate really.  We had some good times back in Vegas, didn’t we?”

Maddy’s smile flickered and died.  “No, actually that wasn’t a good time for me,” she admitted, glancing up at him.  “Nothing to do with you, of course.  Just a bad few weeks.”

“Things better now I hope.”

“It was the best of times.  It was the worst of times.”  Her eyes flittered up and over his shoulder to the table where Grant sat.  She could see him staring awkwardly around the room, looking ill at ease.  Why did he always look so uncomfortable?  Had she ever seen him off guard and relaxed?

“So, who is this Grant character, Madelyne?” he asked bluntly.  “And should I be jealous?”

Maddy smiled brightly, her cheeks reddening slightly despite herself.  “Well, I don’t know.  You can be anything you want, Brigham.”

“Should I be?”

He gave her a direct look in the eye, a look she couldn’t maintain.

“No,” she replied, her eyes sliding down his chest to examine the tip of a scarlet handkerchief sitting perfectly exposed from his jacket pocket as if sculpted from cedar.

It was then that she was reminded of what had rubbed her the wrong way two and a half years ago.  There was always something so rehearsed about this man, nothing spontaneous.  Despite his efforts to the contrary to seem carefree, he was a very deliberate man.  And with her particular abilities, she could always see him coming hours away.  She realized back then that she could never live like that.

So, why hadn’t she seen him coming this time?  If it was true and their meeting was a complete fluke, how did this change her fate, if at all?

“Forgive me, Madelyne,” he said quietly but with honest passion, “but when I saw you standing there in the street my heart bounced. I looked at you and realized that all my success is pointless without someone to share it with.”

“You just need an audience to help lift that weighty ego of yours, Briggs, that's all.”  The moment the words left her mouth she felt cheap for saying it.  She tried to tamper it with an apologetic smile and a demure laugh as if to say: Just a joke between friends, right?

It didn’t seem to matter anyway.  He hadn’t even seemed to have heard her.

Unabated, he went on.  “Suddenly I remember happiness again. Youth. Innocence.”

Maddy sighed in exasperation.  That was Brigham in a nutshell.  So busy delivering his lines that he had forgotten to listen to the other actor’s dialogue.

Pulling him closer, she propped her head on his shoulder--the better to get to the heart of the matter, the reason she had agreed to the dance in the first place.  “Brigham, I need a forged passport to get me out of the country. You still connected?”

Looking down at her, the Brit blinked in obvious surprise.  She could actually see him recover his ego and shift position.  “For you, my dear. Anything. I'll make some calls.”

Maddy glanced over his shoulder to see one of the wait-staff talking to Grant at the table.  Somehow she sensed there was an issue.

24

“I’m not sure I understand,” Grant replied, blinking up at the maître d'.

“This was arranged by my boss Brigham Gordon, who assumed that you might want to do some gambling later downstairs,” the maître d' explained, handing him a plastic card with the casino’s emblem on it.

Grant slowly, tentatively reached out to take it.

“It has some funds already loaded onto it at the courtesy of Mr. Brigham.”

Grant blinked up at the suited man.  “He wants me to gamble.”

“As his guest, he just wants you to be as comfortable as possible while in his establishment.”

Grant frowned down at the card.  “How much?”

“Ten thousand.”

Grant’s eyes snapped up in astonishment.  He held the card out to the man.  “A-As much as I appreciate the gesture…”

The maître d' gave a quick bow and immediately departed.

Grant stared after the man then turned his eyes back to the dance floor.  Slapping the card down to the table top, he watched as Maddy and Brigham continued to dance, their faces very close as they whispered to each other about God knows what.  Maybe the old days and whatever they had back then.

What kind of relationship did they have back then, he wondered?  What a fool I was to have stayed!  Maddy had no one else before, so of course, you were the go-to person.  Now, she’s got Barnum there, he thought bitterly.  And do you resent her, really, for making such a sensible choice?

His eyes moved inevitably back to the card lying on the table.

“Goddamit,” he hissed venomously as he gave in to the inevitable.

25

The elevator doors opened downstairs onto the casino level and Grant strode out.  Removing the card from his pocket and expertly twirling it between fingers, he moved directly to a window and snapped the card down upon the counter in front of the uniformed gentleman.

“Hi,” Grant said, a bit nervously.

“Hello, sir,” the cashier promptly answered, standing slightly straighter.

“Can you please tell me how much is on this card?”

Flipping the card over, the cashier drew a hand-scanner and ran a laser across the mag-strip on the back of the card.  He glanced over at his computer monitor and said, “Ten thousand exactly, Mr. Frederickson, sir.”

Grant nodded and gave the cashier an extra-long look.  “So, my name is on this card?”

“Yes, sir.”

Grant stared down at the card with a troubled expression, his hands resting casually on the counter.

The cashier blinked across at him.  “Will that be all, sir, or would you like me to cash it out?”

“Cash it out?”

“Yes, sir.”

Grant wet his lips almost hungrily.  “You’re saying that I can just cash the card out.”

“Of course, sir,” the cashier answered.  “It’s your money.  Of course, the casino would prefer that you take chips instead, you understand.”

Grant nodded again, his eyes lingering on the card.

Looking slightly uncomfortable, the cashier still managed to maintain his pleasant demeanor.  He waited patiently, his eyes darting up over Grant’s shoulder to the couple that just stepped up behind him.

“Of course, you can hold onto the card.  Use it at any machine or get chips at the table should you decide to…”

“I’ll take ten bananas,” Grant interrupted curtly.

“Certainly,” the cashier responded, sweeping the card expertly toward him.  Running it through another scanner, he gathered ten yellow chips from a drawer and counted them out on the counter in front of Grant, then slid them into a small tray.

Instead of taking the tray, Grant took five of them in each hand and pulled them protectively to his chest.  Lowering his head, he turned quickly away, nearly colliding with the couple behind him before looking up and veering away at the last moment like a man leaving the scene of a crime.

He moved from one table to the other, his breath quickening.

The sound of coins crashing grew louder in his ears as he stepped deeper into the casino.

Grant blotted his forehead with a sleeve and started up to an open spot on the first available blackjack table.

The bearded dealer acknowledged him with a blank expression.

“New player!” the dealer’s cry went out.

Grant looked from the Dealer to the chips in his hand and backed slowly away from the table with a single shake of his head.  Shoving the chips deep into his pockets, he spotted a men’s room.  He moved directly to the nearest basin and splashed water on his face.  Taking a few breaths, he straightened and studied at himself in the mirror.

He retrieved a single chip from his pocket and wound it dexterously through the fingers of one hand.  He gave a sad smile and glanced up.

A ten-year-old wearing a Texas Longhorns ball-cap stepped out of one of the stalls behind him and watched Grant’s finger trick with an awed smile as he washed his hands.  “Pretty cool trick, Mister.”

“Only thing I’ve ever been good at,” Grant said under his breath.  “That and self-destruction.”

The smile on the kid’s face dimmed a few watts.  “Okay bye,” he grunted, moving quickly toward the exit past the hand drier and wiping his hands on his blue jeans.

Sighing heavily, Grant squeezed his hand into a fist around the chip and headed out to the casino.  Head down, he started in the direction of the blackjack table out of memory.  When he finally looked up, he found Maddy standing about ten yards away between him and the table.

Registering the troubled expression on her face, he felt that she clearly saw in that moment the slowly darkening shade of his soul.

He waited with both dread and relief as she approached.

“What are you doing?” she said sternly, looking down.

He followed her eyes to his closed fist and slowly--like a child revealing something it shouldn’t have access to--opened his hand to reveal the yellow chip.

Maddy stared down at it then slowly back to his face.

“Are you going to leave me and go back there?”

Grant closed his fist with a snap and held it stiffly down by his side, his thoughts too disjointed to form a cohesive sentence.

Leave me, he wanted to say?  But aren’t you gone already?

Then another voice seemed to say: Does it really matter to you what choice she makes?  Is what you’re about to do good for you?  And for your soul?

“Did your life have that much appeal that you want to go back?” Maddy asked.

As Grant looked away from the judgment in her face, his eyes fell on a suited man wearing the loud pastel colors of the casino setting up a large sandwich board on the far side of the room.  Uttering not a word, he started immediately toward it past Maddy.

Maddy lowered her head and started in the opposite direction.  Burying her face in her hands, she rushed toward the elevator.

Rushing up to the color advertisement, Grant grabbed the sleeve of the gawky young suited man and pointed at the sign.  “Where is this?”

The man glanced at the tight grip on his sleeve and swallowed awkwardly.  “It’s not open yet.  Next week,” he managed, gently extricating himself.

Grant leaped forward and snagged his sleeve again.  “Yes, but where will it be when it opens?”

“Upstairs,” the young man answered, backing slowly away, reclaiming his sleeve again.  “One level above the Old Miss restaurant.”

Grant released him and spun back to the advertisement.

It read: "The Bayou Blues Club--Coming Soon."  The sign displayed a color photo of the stage area of the proposed club, revealing a big faux cypress tree in the center of the room, Spanish moss and all. Murals of grey pelicans taking flight over cypress knees and an old ramshackle cabin complete the illusion of a bayou.

Grant stiffened. “It’s the bayou from your vision,” he blurted out, then looked around in confusion, realizing suddenly that he was alone.  “Maddy?” Looking over his shoulder, he watched—frozen in shock--as the elevator doors closed on Maddy, catching a quick glimpse of the two massive goons flanking her, one slapping a meaty paw over her mouth.

Grant raced across the lobby, obliviously leaving a single yellow chip on the floor behind him.

A beat later, the ten-year-old in the Longhorns cap slipped up and furtively scooped it up, thinking as he pocketed it that it had to be worth at least ten bucks.

The moment the second elevator door opened, Grant leapt inside, punching the button once, then twice more when it didn’t instantly respond.  Finally, the doors started their agonizingly slow trek toward each other.

Just before the doors shut completely, Rudy Pedroza slid through, his right hand buried in his pocket and his hard eyes daring Grant to try and move.

Grant simply gaped at him with wide, uncomprehending eyes.

“Don’t worry.  We're keeping your girlfriend company upstairs so she won’t get too lonely,” Rudy stated in a calm un-menacing voice. “They figured you might want an escort to show you the way.”

Grant took a deep breath and collapsed helplessly against the back of the car, his mind racing in circles to try and find a way out.  Not just for his sake any longer, but for Maddy’s.  But every turn he made, he kept running into walls.

Suddenly he heard Sadie’s voice from the not-so-distant past intrude on his desperate thoughts.  Funny thing about walls, Grant.  Some see them as barriers.  Others see them as opportunities.

Rudy swung around to the side of the car and shook a cigarette out of a pack in the breast pocket of his shirt.

“You give up?” Grant commented.

Rudy gave him a look of complete confusion.  When he finally realized that Grant was referring to the cigarette, he bristled angrily.  “Fuck you, Frederickson.”

Grant turned away with a nod.  “You can’t smoke in the elevator.”

Rudy gave a single honk of laughter.  “What are they gonna do?  Toss me out?”

Grant nodded.  “Figures all this belongs to Torres,” he said as way of confirmation, more to himself than to Rudy.  “What happens to Maddy when I'm dead?”

“I’m not privy to those details.”

Grant gave a weak laugh.  “Cause you’re just doing a job, right?”

“See, we have a short-hand now,” Rudy replied with a smirk, removing a lighter from his jacket pocket.

Grant broke into a smile and gave a short laugh.

Rudy froze.  The flame of the lighter stopped just short of the butt of his cigarette.  He remained still, his eyes locked defiantly on the other man.  “What’s so fucking funny?”

“I was just thinking about the first thing you ever said to me,” Grant answered.  “You remember, right?”

The elevator chimes.

Shifting his back swiftly against the closed doors, Rudy dropped the lighter and reached for his jacket pocket.

Grant thrust all his weight against Rudy, driving his elbow up beneath his chin and using the other’s own momentum to throw the back of his head against the closed door of the elevator.

Rudy’s hand emerged from his pocket, loosely holding the grip of his handgun between two fingers.

The doors slid open.

In a flash, Grant snatched the gun out of Rudy’s fingers just as the other man tumbled out onto the entryway of the Bayou Blues Club.

Reacting to the sound of the elevator, Arturo Torres turned to face Grant.  He held Maddy tightly at his side, one large paw around the back of her neck and the other holding a gun beneath her chin. Guns appeared in the hands of the two large suited men flanking him.  Grant briefly caught Brigham backing into the shadows of a large open room with no chairs or tables before the Brit turned his back to him in obvious shame.

Grant sneered, feeling validated but no healthier for that awareness.

“Pedroza, you are such a worthless piece of shit,” Torres groaned.

Down at his feet, Rudy blinked in obvious confusion, his eyes attempting to focus as he grasped the back of his head.

“That’s not a toy, Frederickson.  If you’re not careful,” Torres called out, “you might just put a hole in your girlfriend.”

“Brigham!”

The figure behind Torres froze and slowly turned, his palms turning instinctively up.  “L-Look, I’m sorry.  I owe Torres a bit of money.  Otherwise, things might have…”

“Brigham, are we on the top floor of this building?” Grant interrupted loudly.

“Yes,” the Brit confirmed.

“No other rooms above?”

“No.”

Grant nodded, lifted the gun and fired a single shot up into the ceiling above them.

Recoiling in terror, Maddy gave a sudden sharp scream, followed simultaneously by the screams and loud voices from the floor beneath them.

Rudy rolled instinctively to his feet away from Grant, his eyes widening.

One of the thugs, a shaggy-faced Cajun, lunged toward Grant with his gun, and Torres lashed out, slapping him hard across the face.  The broad-shouldered man sucked his lips in pain and glared at his boss in injured amazement.

“What did I tell you, Mack?” Torres chastised him.

“Sorry, boss,” the big Cajun murmured, lowering his gun again.

Torres shook his head and sighed.

“Now that I have everyone’s attention,” Grant snapped.

“Grant,” Maddy called out.  “I do not see this ending well.”

“What could be worse than you dying?” he replied.

She gave a helpless laugh under her breath before murmuring, “Both of us dying.”

Torres gave her a warning glare, effectively quieting her.

“Listen to the girl, Frederickson,” Torres interjected, giving her a shake from where he held her by the back of her neck.  “She sounds like she’s got a brain in her pretty head.”

“Are you okay?” Grant asked in a quiet tone.

She stared at him for a long moment, seeing something in his eyes for the first time--something that she had been looking for desperately.  She blinked back a single tear.  “Yes, Grant,” she offered, swallowing back a sudden lump.  “I’m okay now.”

“Hold on a few minutes more,” he told her.  “That gunshot should convince someone to call the police.”

Torres smirked.  “So that’s your big play here, Frederickson?  Get the cops involved?”

“Well… yeah,” Grant muttered a bit defensively.

Torres shrugged indifferently, his face still as calm as if he were waiting for the valet to bring him his sports car.  “Cops.  No cops.  Doesn’t matter either way.  I’m closing the books on the account you had with me here tonight.”

“We gave you your money,” Maddy pleaded in Torres’ arms.  “Every cent and more! Tell him, Rudy!”

Standing beside his boss, Rudy glanced at Torres, whose dark eyes were glued to Grant.

“Tell her, Torres.  Tell her what I’ve been trying to for the last few days. Maybe she’ll buy it if she hears it from you,” Grant said.  “It was never about the money.”

Torres narrowed his hard eyes on Grant.  “You’re going to die here tonight where you stand and there’s absolutely nothing anyone can say to me that can stop that from happening.  You can fill this building with cops and it won’t make a shit of difference to me.”

“One of us will die, and believe me, when it's time for me to go, I will embrace it, because finally I'm at peace with this thing,” Grant told him. “How about you, Torres? Are you prepared to be judged for how you've spent your life?”

Torres snickered.  “Love thy neighbor, say your prayers at night, and everyone gets a comp in the Garden of Eden, right? Well, I got news for you, Frederickson. The real world doesn't operate by those rules. Never did.”

“Is that what you told my wife before you murdered her?” Grant asked, taking a step forward.

Torres tightened his grip on Maddy.  “Did you have time to discuss philosophy with Frederickson's wife before you rolled her car into the river, Rudy?”

Rudy turned to look Grant in the eye.

Grant rushed Rudy and got one solid punch to his nose before Torres’ thugs grabbed him, ripped the gun from his hands, and shoved him to his knees.

Tossing Maddy to the floor behind him, Torres stepped determinedly forward, digging the muzzle of his gun into Grant’s hair.  “See, I knew you would be good for something, Rudy.  Now before I splatter this shit-heel’s brains all over the floor of this club, tell me how much of my money he gambled away before you stopped him?”

Grant gave a weak laugh.  “Yeah, please tell the man how much I lost.”

Rudy pulled a bloody sleeve away from his nose.  “Gave him all the time in the world just like you said,” he replied flatly.

“And?” Torres demanded.

“He never spent a dime.”

Torres glared at Grant with a furious expression.

Looking slowly up at him, Grant gave Torres a smug smile.  “No, I get it now, but y’see, it’s not mine to give you.”

“What's that?

“My soul.”

Torres pulled the gun away from Grant's head and chambered a round.

Maddy rushed forward but one of the suited men caught her arm.  “Killing him won't prove anything,” she shouted.  “You already know he won!”

Torres leaned forward over Grant, his clenched teeth just a hair from his ear.  “You think you're better than me, don’t you, Frederickson?”

“Grant, you're the strongest, most decent man I've ever met,” Maddy cried out from behind them.  “I love you!  And the only reason this monster wants you dead is because he can't be you.”

“Maddy,” Grant called out.  “Did we change the arc?”

Giving Grant a look of concern, she squeezed her eyes shut.

Torres glared from Grant to Maddy. Rising quickly--his aging spine giving a loud whip-like crack--he turned the gun on her.  “Love, huh? I'll give you one chance to prove it right here and now, bitch. Your life for his.”

Maddy blinked down at the gun.  Giving it a nod of acceptance, she closed her eyes.

Grant gaped at Maddy in wide-eyed horror.  He rolled to the balls of his feet, his leg muscles tensing.  “Is that the deal you offered my wife?” he spat at Torres.

“No, he wanted something else,” Maddy stated.  She opened her eyes and gazed directly at Torres, who narrowed his eyes at her, truly seeing her for the first time.  “But she wouldn't let you have her, would she, because she was good too.  As good a woman as Grant is a good man.”

Grant stared at her in disbelief, his eyes glistening.

Torres reddened, the gun beginning to tremble as the muscles in his hand tensed.

“She was faithful and moral.  All those things you resent,” Maddy continued.  “Because the darkness hates the light, doesn’t it, Arturo?”

Sidling back against the edge of the stage, Rudy looked up at Maddy with a dim smile and shook his head, laughing weakly as he drew another cigarette from the pack from his breast pocket with his teeth.

“Y’know, she tried the same shit with me,” he stated in a low voice, searching his jacket for a lighter.  “It worked too.  Got me so worked up that I forgot to focus on the job.”

“Rudolph, could you please shut the fuck up,” Torres grumbled.

Rudy snatched the cigarette out of his mouth in frustration and tossed it to the floor.  “By the way, I killed your fucking dog, Arturo.”

A supremely wounded expression appeared on the large Latino’s face, looking briefly like a child who had been slapped without provocation.  His gun arm wavered and finally dropped.

“Yeah, he was foaming at the mouth, because one of your genius mechanics at the garage in Houston figured it would be a gas to feed a dog crystal meth,” Rudy said, folding his arms across his chest in a clear show of bravado.

“You killed my Pepe?” Torres managed, turning to look over his shoulder at Rudy.

“Technically, I put him out of his misery instead of letting him suffer.”  Rudy started toward Torres.  “Why didn't you tell me we were running drugs out of the Houston office, Arturo? Why didn't you tell me the real reason you wanted me to kill an innocent man?  And his wife!”

Mack’s radio squawked and he snatched it off his belt.  “Go for Mack.”

Brigham rushed irrationally toward the fire escape, wondering what had possessed him to stick around this long.

Grant watched Maddy with concern as she stood with her eyes squeezed shut, despite the fact that Torres’ gun was no longer on her at all.

Mack turned to Torres.  “Boss, we've got a couple of guys at the service entrance to the bar. They're...”

A couple of gunshots echoed from a distance. The radio exploded with static.

Rudy stared Torres in the eye.  “I warned you about these guys, Arturo. And now here they are.  In our kitchen!”

“Are these the ones that called earlier?” Torres barked, turning the gun back on Maddy.  “Then we’ll give them what they want.”

Mack and the other bodyguard drew their guns and turned in opposite directions, placing their backs to one another.

Brigham reached the fire escape doors and pulled frantically on them.  He wondered, How in the hell can they be locked?

Grant rushed to Maddy’s side.  “Are you okay?”

Her eyes remaining closed, she whispered as if deep in a dream.  “Here we go.”

“What?” he muttered in confusion.

She opened her eyes and took his face in her hands.  “Do you trust me, Grant?”

He hesitated only briefly before saying, “Yes, I do.”

“Close your eyes and don’t open them until I tell you to.”

Grant nodded and closed his eyes.

26

Waves of color transformed the fire escape door from white to a deepening red that seemed to crawl with a supernatural kinetic energy.

Brigham stopped tugging on the handle of the locked door and glanced over his shoulder. Turning his eyes to the ceiling, he stared in confused wonder at the enormous blood red cloud blooming overhead.

Through a tiny hole in the ceiling--like the hot tip of a burning cigar--where Grant’s single gunshot must have gone, a bright pulsing light bubbled and spread slowly like lava across the four corners of the ceiling.

Brigham backed slowly away, watching in horror as the hole began to move upward before his bulging eyes.  The whole ceiling seemed to be pulling itself up into the shape of a cone, like the tip of a tent.

Or the inside of a volcano, Brigham considered with increasing alarm.

He spun and threw himself violently back against the fire escape door, the lock finally giving way and swinging open to drop him down into the outer hallway.  He looked up to discover a towering dark-suited man standing just inside.

Grabbing him by his collar, the giant tossed him out of the way behind him like he were a twenty-pound child and strode into the room firing a single shot to take out one of Torres’ bodyguards with barely a pause to aim.

*

Charging into the blues club, the Blank Man skidded to a stop and cast a look at the grey walls around him, which appeared to be melting like dark candle wax.  He peered down to find his shoes sinking into the electric blue carpeting of the club.  Yanking up his feet, the glowing carpet held tight with coiling tendrils that moved as if alive and attempting to feed on his shoes.

Tugging his legs with all his strength and unable to free himself, the Blank Man lifted his watch to his mouth.  “An event is in progress.  Keep clear and do not enter the room!  I repeat..!”

The door behind the bar swung open and the other Blank Man swept inside.

Mack, the other bodyguard, rushed him, firing as he advanced.

The Blank Man dropped him with a single shot.

*

Rudy watched as the mural of the painted pelicans on the wall of the stage area begin to bulge and glisten.  He stumbled backward, shaking his head in denial as the lanky birds pushed themselves out of the mural as if emerging from a birth canal.  The creatures hopped down to the stage floor, flapping their wings as if to flex unused muscles.

“Arturo!” Rudy called out.

*

Torres’ attention was in the corner of the room, where the rickety wooden cabin sat, a scarecrow perched in silent vigil over a faux corn field, turned in his direction and slowly began to lift its raggedy head.

Torres lifted his gun and began to fire at the creature, the bullets piercing the soft grain of its innards and passing out the other side to strike the dark wall beyond, the pounding thumps of the bullets ricocheting around the enclosed space.

The scarecrow lifted its pitch fork as it pulled free of the nails pinning it to its wooden platform.  “Time to pay, Arturo!  I’m comin’ for my pound of flesh,” it croaked at an inhuman pitch.

Firing until his gun emptied, the large man scrambled awkwardly backwards, tripping over the fresh corpse of his man Mack, his head twisting back and forth in an instinctual denial of the reality that he was experiencing with eyes which had never betrayed him in the past.

*

Taking two steps at a time, Brigham barreled down the fire escape steps until he hit the exit door three floors later.  He skidded to a stop just outside the casino building and looked both ways for any sign of Torres or his goons.  Almost immediately, a uniformed man leaped out of the shadows and threw him expertly chest first against the building.  Out of the corner of his eye, Brigham could make out an entire unit of similarly-dressed armed men storm into the fire escape doorway.

“Tell me what’s going on upstairs,” the man who held him against the wall demanded gruffly.

Brigham pressed his forehead against the wall and gave him a helpless laugh.  “Frankly, I’ve got no goddamn clue what just happened to me,” he answered, his weak voice slowly regaining some of its moxie.  “But I’m alive!  The Brigster is alive and still kicking up the charts!”

The soldier rolled his eyes and cuffed him unconscious with a strategic punch to the back of his head.

*

Dropping to his knees, the lengthening and thickening coils of supernatural electric blue carpeting dragged the first Blank Man to his knees like tentacles of a squid.  The Blank Man that Maddy had once nicknamed Ernie began to scream for help, the sound feeble and hoarse like a new instrument unaccustomed to playing at a particular register—as fear was not an emotion with which he was accustomed.

Giving his partner a casual glance and otherwise ignoring him, the second Blank Man, whom Maddy had once given the name Bert, retrieved the tiny wooden coffin held by his side and dropped it loudly atop the bar.

“Ain't so Pepe now, eh Arturo?” Rudy screeched hysterically.

At the sight of the coffin, Rudy began to wheeze with pent up laughter.  The newly birthed pelicans took flight all around him.  He could actually feel the feathers of their wings brushing against his ears.

It’s real.  It’s all really happening, Rudy thought as he felt a strange crawling sensation down his arms and up his neck.  Out of the corner of his eye, Rudy sensed movement and looked down to find a trail of long and slender white objects moving in a line down the length of his left arm.  He reached instinctively up and swept the side of his hand across his neck.  Two unlit cigarettes bounced to the floor at his feet.

Peering down at the open pack of cigarettes in his breast pocket, Rudy watched in morbid fascination as a cigarette separated from its brothers and slithered out of the foil opening to crawl up the front of his shirt, the middle portion of his tube-like body rising and falling like an inch-worm.

Rudy began to dance around, slapping at his body like a teenage girl who had just walked through a spider web.

Someone begin to scream with laughter.  It took him several moments to realize that it was him. The laughter exploded from his belly like thunder from a storm cloud, the noise so foreign coming from him that it sounded to his own ears like sobbing.

Torres dropped to his knees and stared with an open mouth at the coffin on the bar.  Coming to his senses, he gazed back over his shoulder at the slowly advancing scarecrow and snatched up the pistol from his dead soldier’s hand.

Rudy screamed something at him that at first he couldn’t understand.  Finally, it registered: “It’s her, Arturo!  She’s doing all this!  Shoot her!  Shoot the witch!”

Torres blinked in numb-wonder at Rudy and dutifully turned the gun on Maddy, who remained in Grant’s embrace, both pairs of eyes still closed against the monstrosities surrounding them.

Bert, the remaining Blank Man, marched determinedly from the bar past Rudy, retrieved a reflective object from his pocket and lashed out in the direction of Torres’ gun, which fell to the floor along with several of the big man’s fingers.

Torres lifted the mutilated stump of his hand before his eyes and wailed like an injured animal.

In response, Rudy began to laugh even harder, slapping his knees even as they began to buckle.

“Freeze!  Drop your weapons!” a shout came from the fire-escape door.  A group of uniformed combat-ready men piled into the room and instantly began to spread themselves out across the room, their laser-sighted weapons searching for targets.

“No way,” Rudy wailed hoarsely, grabbing his gut and trying to control his laughter. “This shit keeps getting better and better!”

Two of the agents swooped down on one of the suited men, who lay completely unrestrained in the middle of the carpeted floor of the restaurant, yet still feverishly calling to be freed.  Rolling him roughly onto his stomach, they cuffed his hands behind him.

Another agent rushed Rudy, who lifted his hands in acquiescence and turned to face the stage in expectation of the eventual pat-down.  “I’ll do anything you want, man, if you just give me a cigarette,” Rudy said hopefully, peering down at the floor and the white sticks scattered there.

Did one of them just move?

“On second thought, you got a stick of gum?” he asked dully.

Bert lowered the large knife he welded and cast it aside with a disgusted smirk.  He placed his hands behind his head and dropped with resignation to his knees, quickly sighting the bloody gun in the pile of chubby dismembered fingers lying beside him.  He peered up to gauge the distance between him and his target.

But she and the man were both gone.

He scrutinized the fire-escape door on the opposite side of the room more than twenty yards away.  There was no realistic scenario in which they could have reached the door in that short of a time and shut it behind them without a sound.  Since the entire floor was free of tables, he had a clear line of sight.  There was no other place they could have gone but through that door.

Unless she was still somewhere in the room.

It had finally happened!  She had expanded her awareness to the next level.

She had broken through the psychic shields that protected him and his partner.  The infiltration had spread completely, he thought with sudden alarm, and she could make them see or un-see anything she could imagine.  Her power had become potentially limitless, subject only to the mental capacity of her target.  To make matters worse, she had taken them completely off guard using the confusion around them to her advantage.

Yet instead of taking their lives, she had chosen to escape.

That decision displayed her basic weakness, he thought.  Unlike them, she was restrained by a moral code.

That would give them the advantage next time.  If there was a next time, he considered.  There was the distinct possibility that they might both be removed from service indefinitely because of this debacle.

Glaring over at his partner a few yards away, wreathing in the full throes of madness on the carpeted floor as the agents attempted to get him into restraints, Bert, the Blank Man glanced down at the discarded gun again and considered shooting the weakened amateur in the head just as a professional courtesy.

The emergency lighting flickered on along the walls and rendered both dark-suited men in bright white lighting.  Bert cringed, lowering his head.

Agent Morrison, a young short-haired man wearing a flashy green tie beneath his uniform rushed in behind the other agents.  “Arturo Torres, we have a warrant for your arrest.  We have enough from that shop in Houston to put you behind bars for the rest of your life.”

Cradling his bloody hand beneath his arm, Torres glared at the floor, his body vibrating with hatred.  He casually lifted the gun that no one had bothered to confiscate yet and casually placed it into his mouth.

“Stop him!” Morrison bellowed at the top of his lungs.

Uniformed men rushed him from every direction as a bullet traveling at high velocity through Torres’ cerebral cortex effectively removed all possibility of his giving any person a loan, a gun, or drugs ever again.

“Well, shit!” Morrison exploded, shoving past the nearest agent to take a look at the corpse of the mobster.  “Exemplary job, guys.”

Turning to the apparently more lucid, suited man whose hands were folded cooperatively behind his head, Morrison reached out and flicked the dark glasses off of his face with an index finger, revealing ice blue eyes.  “You want to give me an idea of who the hell you are supposed to be?  Elwood Blues?”

Bert slowly peered up into the eyes of the agent and gave him a secret smile.

Agent Morrison blinked at him, his pupils growing larger.  He took a single step backwards and gasped.

Cursing under his breath, Rudy ignored the stick of gum the agent had been in the process of offering him, snagged the loosely-held rifle out of his hands, and opened up on the remaining Blank Man, reducing his head to a red and grey stain on the head agent’s obnoxious green tie.

“There!  I’m done now,” Rudy snapped as he dropped the rifle at the agent’s feet and thrust his palms into the air in surrender.

The agent spun him around, threw him chest-first onto the floor of the stage, and buried his knee in his back.

“Sorry, sorry,” Rudy coughed, as the agent struggled to remove the handcuffs from his belt.  “You think I could still get that gum?”

27

Maddy stood alone at the railing of the Riverwalk looking out at the Mississippi, pondering the nickname it had been given as the “Gathering of Waters.”  The title of “Old Muddy” had always seemed more appropriate to her.

Grant backed slowly up to stand beside her.  “No one’s following us yet,” he said breathlessly.  “We should go.”

Maddy shook her head.  “It’s okay, Grant.  No one will find us here.”

“We’re only a few blocks from the casino,” he protested incredulously.

“No one will follow us now,” she said, turning to study him.  “You said you trusted me.  You meant that, didn’t you?”

His taut shoulders slowly relaxed.  He gave her a simple unqualified nod.  “You’ll have to explain to me what just happened?  I heard screams.  I heard gunshots.  But nothing even touched us.  In fact, we just walked out right under their noses, didn’t we?”

Maddy studied him.  She could see a little agitation in his eyes, but that was probably just a little of the residual adrenaline.  Beneath that, she could see a strong foundation.  This incident wouldn’t blow his house down, she knew.  If he accepted this particular batch of weirdness, they would be okay.  Really okay.

“What are you really asking me, Grant?”

“What did you do to them?”

“Well, in the words of Louis Prima, ‘I took a bucketful of steam and a dozen rooster eggs, and I mixed them up gently with a bushel full of goldfish legs.’”

Grant turned away from her with a tense smile and gazed out over the river.

“I just showed them nonsense.  I gave them something else to worry about,” she said.  “A carefully shuffled shell to look under.”

He studied her and an amused smile broke across his face.  “So, you twisted their perception of reality?”

“Well, if you want to get technical.”  She made a small expression of surprise with her mouth, her eyes going out of focus for a moment.  “I guess Bert and Ernie were right after all, huh?”

Grant sighed heavily and searched behind them.  It was hard to break the old practiced patterns of paranoia.

She asked if he trusted her and he had answered truthfully.  He had answered from his heart.  Now he had to convince his mind.  That feat would be something altogether different.

Maddy turned back to the small lapping muddy waves of the river and reached blindly back to gently take his hand.

In response, he firmly grasped her hand and settled comfortably by her side.

A laughing young couple walking hand-in-hand brushed past their backs, nearly colliding with them, despite the fact that there was plenty of room on the Riverwalk.  Grant frowned in consternation at their seemingly rude behavior, then slowly it began to dawn on him.

They couldn’t see them, just like inside the club.

“Could you do this all along?” he finally asked her.

“No. Maybe.  I don’t know,” she responded with a nervous giggle, leaning closer and putting her weight against him.  “I think I just I woke up.  It was your trust in me that opened that locked door. I just needed a guide to show me the way inside.”

Grant slowly, awkwardly folded his arm around her waist.  Suddenly, it felt natural to him.  Her warmth, soothing the cold places.  Her substance, filling the gaps in his soul.

“How did you know about Torres?  How he felt about my wife?  Were you able to see something in his mind?”

“No, Grant.  Just the natural power of woman's intuition.”

Glancing up, Grant spotted the couple that had passed them walking together on the Riverwalk seemingly oblivious to their conversation.  It struck him in that moment the enormity of this talent that she seemed to have and he understood for really the first time why she was such a prized target.  She held a power that could be very valuable and very destructive.

By all rights, he should feel a healthy fear of her, he decided, but he hadn’t lied when he said that he trusted her.

“I’ve dedicated my life to making amends for her death,” he told the woman beside him, his hand wringing the metal railing. “Now that I know that she was targeted by an evil man just because she was a good woman, what am I supposed to do with that?”

“Give yourself absolution, Grant, and start living again. Like a good man should.”  She leaned her head against his arm.  “You’ve done your penance and Lara forgave you a long time ago.”

“How could you know that?”

“Maybe it's a conversation she and I will have sometime in the future.”

Grant gave her a cathartic chuckle and wiped his eyes.  Taking her hand, they began to walk down the path beside the Mississippi.

“I thought I was going to die tonight,” she reminded him.  “And suddenly, there's a tomorrow.”

“After what happened tonight, I see the whole world in a different way.  I mean, what am I supposed to do now?”

“What do you want to do?” she asked, glancing furtively over at him.

“I know what I don’t want to do,” he replied.  “I don’t want to go back to the depressing life where I did my time, waiting to die.”

“You could stay with me,” she suggested, linking her arm in his securely.  “They say that you’re responsible for the life you save.”

“You or me?  I mean, who really saved who here?”

“I think we both made out on that deal.”

They laughed together and caught each other stealing a look at the other at the same time.

Maddy stopped abruptly and planted herself in front of him.

He took her face in both hands and gave her a tame kiss that quickly grew passionate.  Like blood rushing back into long resting legs, he remembered the steps again and followed his heart along the dusty dance floor.

When they finally separated, he continued to hold her face in his hands and simply gazed upon her.  She opened her eyes and smiled sheepishly at the attention, ultimately blinking and burying her face in his chest to hide the tears of joy she could no longer contain.

Finally, she thought.  Finally!

“I guess I kept another little secret from you,” she admitted in a quiet voice.  “When I used to remember the moment shared with someone out at Jackson Square, I also recalled a kiss.  A wonderfully, romantic kiss.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, kid,” Grant quickly responded with a wry smile.

She tagged him on the arm and started away from him with a mischievous look on her face.  He gave pursuit.

“Now that we’ve got the big decision out of the way, where shall we go from here?” he asked her.

“Short term, I could really go for a drink right now,” she told him.  “A Hurricane sounds good.”

“Well, if we’re talking about short term, I think I'd like to go back to the little church if you wouldn't mind. Y'know, the one with St. Expedite,” he told her.

Maddy paused and allowed him to catch up, giving him a look of surprise.  “You?”

“In the heat of it all, I kinda asked old Jude to pray for a hopeless cause and help us out.”

She took his hand and squeezed it tightly.  “That’s big, Grant.”

“Can’t remember the last time I prayed,” he confessed, looking down at their joined hands with an intensity reserved for the freshly committed.  “Now, I think we need to talk about the long term plan.  I don’t know what happened after we exited the stage, but I heard a lot of gunshots, and I have a feeling whatever organization wants you, isn’t about to give you up so easily.”

Maddy gave a sober nod.

“Here’s the deal,” he replied. “I'll get your back, if you just keep your eyes out for what's ahead.”

After a few moments, she said, “Grant, y’know how I’ve been practicing this little exercise of releasing control and allowing myself to be guided?”

Grant nodded, recognizing the seriousness in her face.

“I think maybe that’s what they mean when they talk about Faith,” she whispered.  “You think?”

Grant remained silent, considering her question.

“I’ve been living in the future for so long,” she said, gazing down at their intertwined fingers, “that you’ll have to excuse me if I want to just live in the present for now.”

She ducked down and brushed her lips across the top of his hand, smiling brightly up at him.  “How about we both just live in the moment for a change?”

Together they walked hand and hand toward the lights and sounds of the French Quarter.

6-7-15

For Gi Gi

About the Author

Bryant Delafosse was born and raised in Southeast Texas.  He currently lives in Southern California with his wife, son, and two terriers, Luna and Jules.  His two previous novels include The Mall and Hallowed.

You can email the author at Bryantdelafosse@yahoo.com and follow him on Twitter @BryantDelafosse.  Become a Fan on Facebook at www.facebook.com/BryantDelafosse.