Thursday, December 24, 2015

The Unwanted Gift


The Unwanted Gift - a reading (on YouTube)


I am the unwanted gift,
The last present beneath the tree.
The one you knew you should have opened earlier,
While you could still conceal your disappointment.

I am the tie you’d only wear to your boss's third wedding,
The perfume you’d only use to fend off a blind date,
The umbrella you wouldn’t even take out in the rain,
The toy as a child you abandoned for the box.

Someone somewhere thought I was a good idea.
Someone designed me,
Someone constructed me,
Someone carefully picked me out,

And then gave me to you.

Who stuffed me to the back of a closet,
Then tossed me in the garage after cleaning me out,
Before packing me up with the discards from the attic,
Then heaping me atop a holiday donation pile.

Someone hoped you would
Treasure me for a lifetime.
Now I linger on a secondhand shelf,

Waiting for a better you.


© 2015 Edward P. Morgan III

Friday, December 18, 2015

Slow Tuesday Night


These things usually happen to my husband. At parties he always recounted any number of tall-tale adventures. I was the staid one who chatted with close friends in the corner. I didn’t use to be. In college I’d lived my share. But that was before jobs and responsibility and a business ate up all my time. Now I was content just to spend quiet evenings at home. Mostly.

Ever since the incident with the Patriot Police, my husband had gone native. He’d started hanging out with other probationers and more than the ordinary Eisteddfods reprobates, even a councilman. He decorated the Jeep with a gun rack and magnetic bullet holes just to blend in. But I’d drawn the line at the NRA bumper sticker. So he’d grown a beard that looked as forlorn in flannel as Al Gore’s lost election.

He’d descended in despondency. Even our mayor’s mandatory concealed carry amendment hadn’t stirred him from his funk. The only thing that roused him was his Tuesday night poker game. Every week he skipped dinner and disappeared until deep into the night. I only had a faint impression of exactly who he was with. I’d never been invited even though he knew I was a better player than he was. I just wrote it off to them not wanting a girl around cramping the boys’ fun.

Normally, I took his Tuesday absence as an opportunity for a little me time. But I’d caught up on American Horror Story and just binge watched the first five seasons of Pretty Little Liars. I’d seen the Game of Thrones finale two weeks ago and the new season of House of Cards wasn’t due out for another month. Usually, I’d settle in for anything by Jane Austin but our streaming service had readjusted their offerings again and all they had was Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which was an affront to both literature and man.

So I texted Nicci to see if she was up for an impromptu girls’ night out after work. Ariadne’s had just opened on the edge of Osceola. It was the type of club where we could doll up and pretend we were pair of cougars for an evening even if we really were just a couple of tame house cats. I’d heard on the way home that our favorite darkwave band was in town for the night before heading to more lucrative venues in Germany and Sweden. The place should be bouncing. If nothing else, it would be nice to cut loose for a little while like we did back in college.

Nicci texted back that she was up for an adventure. She’d stop by right after she got in her evening run.

That gave me time to pick out just the right outfit. Flipping through my closet, I pulled out a clinging black neoprene dress whose front was all brass zipper, both top and bottom. Fishnets were too tacky. So I opted for a pair of black stockings with cat faces at the imaginary garter line that Nicci had given me as a gag for that birthday which shall not be named.

Ariadne’s wasn’t the type of place you wanted to guard a full purse, so I slipped my license, credit card, cell phone and a couple twenties into a cute little black wallet with a string shoulder strap, along with two keys, one for the house, one for the SUV.

Which left me only one option to comply with our newly minted concealed carry ordinance. Not that I believed for an instant everyone carrying guns made anyone safer. If that were true, Syria and Yemen should be safest countries on earth. I just didn’t feel like being the canary in the coalmine who walked this case all the way up the courts. Not tonight anyway. Besides, the custom fit garter holster I’d picked up on Etsy didn’t spoil the look and might warn off the slower wolves if a wedding ring failed. So I strapped a Ladysmith 9mm high inside my thigh and started working on my makeup.

Like everyone else in Osceola, I’d gone through all the required training to obtain my concealed carry permit. Unlike the degenerates from American Heritage Pawn with their wives or Star Spangled Strip Club girlfriends, I actually took the training seriously. In fairness, for me it was more of a refresher. My college dorm was nicknamed Little Sarajevo. Sorority pledges and Art History majors can be the absolute worst.

In college I had dated an expert marksman who taught me how to shoot. He said he’d been stationed in one of the ‘stans, but never said which one or with which branch of service. Turned out he really wanted to recruit me to babysit a nuclear missile silo, but thinking back, he had never said whose. He did say I had the perfect demeanor and personality for it. The psych major who was my freshman roommate might have disagreed. Fortunately, we weren’t speaking much by then. In fact she wasn’t speaking complete sentences to anyone anymore which suited me just fine.

I was just finishing up my hair when I got another text from Nicci. One of the sub-zero freezers in the bio-lab she managed had alarmed just as she was walking out the door. So now she was scrambling to find room elsewhere for eight cubic feet of fetal pig tissue samples before it turned into so much mystery meat. Give her another hour to coordinate with the lead scientist and we’d be back on schedule. Promise.

I knew with Nicci an hour could easily turn into two. She was ultra-competent at her job but her professional life was a complicated mess. Which put me back to my original dilemma of what to do kill some time. Ariadne’s wasn’t the type of place where I wanted to hang out alone.

Sigh, might as well be a responsible adult and get something done in the meantime. Something that wouldn’t ruin my hair and makeup in case we eventually salvaged the night. I ran through my mental to do list and decided on a budget update.

It should only take an hour or so if my husband had rolled in the inputs from Eisteddfods. Thankfully, I’d convinced him to hire a real accountant to take care of those books. All I really needed was an idea of how much we had available to spend on our annual Christmas charity. This year I told him I wanted us to sponsor livestock in economically depressed areas of the world from a catalog we received in the mail. Eisteddfods had started turning a profit so we should have a reasonable sum to work with. We both wanted to give back something that would really help the people who needed it. Between Nepal, West Africa and the continuing mess in the Middle East, there was too much suffering to get caught up in the current wave of electioneering paranoia.

So I settled in at the computer and fired up the spreadsheet. On a good night it wasn’t much harder than balancing a checkbook, really just double checking my husband’s math.

Tonight wasn’t one of those nights. None of the numbers added up with the estimates in my head. Something was off. Thousands of dollars off.

Before I knew it, I had three different spreadsheets open, crosschecking the previous months’ archives versus the printouts I’d dug up from the accountant. I was about ready to start pulling out my perfectly coiffed hair. As I went to open a fourth file, something odd caught my eye. The last modified date was only a month ago. I checked the others. Sure enough, each had been updated on the same day. So had every other file going back to the beginning of the year.

That’s when it hit me that my husband was hiding something. Something to the tune of about five hundred dollars a month that he’d cleverly hidden to make disappear. Not a small sum to us. Or at least to me.

Ok, calm down, girl. This doesn’t mean what you think. Does it? No. Maybe he bought you something really nice for Christmas. A diamond? A Rhine river cruise? A down payment on a car? Something big now that Eisteddfods had turned a profit. Although none of those really sounded like him.

And the adjustment date was just a month after he’d started playing poker. He said it was penny-ante, just a guys’ gathering that Freddie King had roped him into when he played a few solo sets at Eisteddfods after hours. At the time, I had thought it was great he was finally making new friends. I hadn’t been worried; he’d never been a gambler. He’d never wanted to go to Vegas, or even the Hard Rock casino nearby. Sure, he played the lottery but said it was just an interesting way of paying taxes with a chance for one hell of a return.

So I started digging deeper, pulling up his credit card bills and bank statements looking for a similar pattern. His card was scrupulously clean, no balance carried, no suspect charges. But on the tenth of every month, he withdrew two hundred dollars cash from his steadily shrinking savings. Starting the same month as his creative accounting on the house budget had begun.

Son of a bitch. He wasn’t. He was. Right under my nose. How could I have missed it? Did I? I started looking for other signs. How would I know? He did most of his own laundry. We kept individual bank accounts and credit cards in addition to the joint ones. We each received an allowance so we had our own fun money.

I was digging through his dirty laundry in the closet, going through his pants pockets when Nicci called. The failure had cascaded to the freezer with the bull semen samples that she now was hosing down and sanitizing like the cheerleaders’ bathroom after homecoming. Raincheck?

Nicci was so wrapped up in her own crisis that she didn’t notice my monotone, monosyllable replies. I was numb, oscillating between white fog and red rage.

I next found myself in the driver’s seat of my car with it running without remembering how I got there. I only remembered the pistol at my thigh when I tried to engage the clutch. I shimmied the holster off my leg and tossed it on the seat beside me.

I was out of the neighborhood before I realized I didn’t know where I was going. I pulled over at the rail trail and tried calling my husband. His phone went directly to voicemail. Only then did it occur to me that I didn’t even know where this poker game was held.

Now what?

I could turn around and go home to wait for him, ambush him as soon as he walked in the door. Or I could try to find more information to either confirm or deny what might be going on. I channeled my inner Nicci and decided to press forward. I had to know. But where else could I look? Where else might he be hiding something?

Eisteddfods.

I arrived just as the evening shift was closing up. I told the manager I needed to check some figures in the office.  Not to worry, I’d set the alarm and lock up when I was done. Only then did I realize that I didn’t have my set of keys and had to ask her for her key to lock-box where we kept the spares in the office. I ignored the long, speculative, somewhat scandalized look she gave my dress as she freed the key from her chain. I gave her my resting bitch face. Honey, give it another fifteen years and maybe you’ll understand.

As soon as I was inside, I set straight about ransacking the office. First, I double-checked the books to make certain the inputs I’d seen from the accountant’s report synched up. They did. Which meant he wasn’t in on whatever my husband was up to.

Next, I riffled through the files and bookcases looking for anything he might be hiding. Unless you counted the boxes, back orders and invoices for Cuban, Czech and Chinese science fiction, I didn’t find anything worth noting. Just like at home, the office was neat and orderly as if he were incapable of hiding anything. Which only made me more suspicious.

I was about to give up when I noticed a poker chip tucked beneath the mechanical pencils in the desk drawer. Not the small, cheap plastic variety you see at home, a substantial, iridescent neon blue with the outline of a curvaceous woman poised beneath the lacquer. Like I used to see on mud-flaps of four-wheel drives around Osceola before their gender preference switched to truck-nuts. High-end and professional. Not exactly penny-ante.

Now I had to know what was going on. So I dropped it in my purse and dug around the records looking for contact information for Freddie King. He would know exactly where my husband was. I remembered my husband saying he always hitched a ride. I didn’t find a contract, just a record of a cash payment with a P.O. Box and a phone number, the bare minimum the accountant insisted on.

That’s when I decided that maybe I’d delved too deep down the rabbit hole of paranoia. Up to now, I’d trusted my husband implicitly. Even with the mild exceptions of the implausible tale of his Christmas adventure and his ill-fated protest against the Patriot Police, he’d never disappointed me. And those incidents were more amusing than an existential threat to our marriage. There was probably a simple explanation. And I’d get it as soon as he got home, one way or another. Maybe I’d overreacted. Just a bit.

So I filed Freddie’s number in my phone in case I still wanted to talk to him when I got home. At this point I wanted nothing more than to untruss from my outfit, and relax in a warm bath, maybe with some candles and a glass of wine. Something to take the edge off so my confrontation didn’t turn into a de facto castration. Too much blood and screaming. Besides, I valued those little guys.

With that settled, I slipped the key into the lock-box to retrieve the spares so I could lock up for the night. I pulled up the metal cover. My heart stopped when I saw a key with a blue plastic fob hanging to the right. Like an old motel key.

I snatched it off the hook. It read U-Storage America with a white 13 and an address imprinted below. Not a secret rendezvous, a storage unit. A wave of guilt washed over me, followed by curiosity.

I did a search on my phone and pulled up an address on Google Maps. Just past the railroad tracks by the abandoned industrial park. Didn’t ring a bell. So I clicked their site which looked like a Web Design for Dummies boilerplate. 24/7 drive-up access. No rates, just a phone number. Your privacy guaranteed. “Cache In at USA” was their tag line.

That clicked. The locals called it Cache for Trash after it was featured on an episode of Trove Traders. Guaranteed privacy translated to no onsite security so you only stored what you could afford to lose. What in the world would my husband be keeping there? Certainly not books or business records, or the accountant would have written off the expense.

I thought about calling my husband again. As I pulled out my phone, I noticed the time. It was still relatively early. I hesitated. I could easily check out the storage unit, return the key to the lock box and get home before he did. If need be, I could confront him then. And if I found something reasonable in there, I could pretend it never happened.

So I locked up the store, jumped back in my SUV and headed for the edge of town. All through the drive, I wondered what I might find. My mind whirled through everything from the unreasonable to the downright irrational. He’d set up a man-cave with a big screen TV, a fridge and a pool table like I’d seen on that commercial. No, he really was having an affair and collecting furniture before he shacked up with the blond twins half my age that he always joked he’d trade me in for one day. No, a boat. He’d bought a boat with our savings and needed a place to hide it while he worked up the courage to tell me.

That last one wasn’t as improbable as it sounded. I vaguely remembered one of his coworkers at his last office job had pulled a stunt like that. Bruce, that was his name. He’d seen a boat tagged with a for sale sign as he was driving home from work. He said the price was so right that he’d be losing money if he didn’t buy it then and there. Only that brilliantine had stored it in a friend’s driveway as he worked out how to break it to his wife that the Mediterranean cruise they’d been saving for would actually be spent in the tiny bow cabin of a Boston Whaler fishing in the Gulf. He still hadn’t come up with a convincing explanation a few weeks later when his wife spotted it and he was busted.

I couldn’t get that scenario out of my head. My husband had always laughed at Bruce but with a subtle hint of admiration at his audacity. And he was smart enough not to make the same mistake. So he’d found a clever way to keep his purchase under wraps.

By the time I whipped into the U-Storage America parking lot, I’d built an unbreakable image in my mind. A little cuddy cabin cruiser outfitted with fishing poles, coolers and every marine gadget known to man for the guys, plus a little sun deck and swim platform for the bikini-clad twins. The more electronics I envisioned, the more livid I became. He and the twins were probably out there right now on a moonlight fishing expedition.

I cruised along the front of the building, searching the rollup doors for number thirteen. U-Storage was a converted roadside hotel just off the federal highway. For a while after the bypass went in, it survived as a no-tell motel the locals fondly referred to as Foreclosure Inn before the internet ate into their business model and small town adultery alone could no longer keep it afloat. During the real estate boom, a New York developer snatched up it with the surrounding parcels, but only got as far as laying road patterns for a high-end gated community and an industrial park before the Great Recession fallowed both projects into weed-infested bankruptcy. Eventually, an outfit from the Caribbean converted the main drag to a single strip, small plane airpark after the county tax sale. That’s when a private equity group out of North Dakota had gutted the hotel’s room interiors, ripped out the Holiday Inn style windows and replaced them with aluminum rollup doors then marketed it as drive-up self-storage.

Looking out across the ill-lit, forlorn landscape, I wondered why the DEA hadn’t just set up a field office next door. Oh, my god, that was it. He wasn’t hiding something as pedestrian as a boat. He’d fallen in with some local trailer trash entrepreneurs running Redneck cocaine out to the islands in exchange for marijuana they could mark and resell as medical, probably paid in duty-free rum he pawned off on the bikini twins to keep them quiet. Or maybe they were the masterminds behind the whole operation.

I screeched the SUV to a halt. There it was, bathed in pinkish light, a dingy white thirteen painted in a red bull’s-eye on the door. By now I had worked myself up into full furor. I slammed the door of the SUV, slapped the key into the lock and swept up the reinforced door.

Then I stared blankly at fully packed interior. Nothing in my paranoid rantings had prepared me for the shock. I couldn’t even comprehend the meaning of what I’d found.

Confused, I stumbled back to SUV and slumped sideways onto the driver’s seat, still staring into the open door. Slowly, I withdrew my phone and dialed up my husband’s number. Straight to voicemail. Again. His cheery message lifted me from my haze.

I ripped off a quick text message, “Call me ASAP. 911.” I fumed as I awaited his reply. None came.

Even my imaginative internal seether couldn’t construct a credible scenario. I think she’d curled up and was shuddering in toxic shock. I couldn’t make sense of the individual pieces of his cache never mind the collection as a whole. What earthly use would he have for what had to be a four-hundred square foot storage unit filled with wholesale sized boxes of disposable diapers, dried baby formula and tampons?

I looked from my phone to the storage unit and back again. I knew I had to find him now, knew I couldn’t wait for an explanation until he got home. That’s when I remembered Freddie King.

Quickly, I scrolled through my contacts until his number came up. He would know exactly where my husband was. Hell, he could be sitting right beside him. With the right motivation, I knew I could get him to put him on the line. I pressed call before I could think through the consequences.

The line rang once, twice. By three times, I was convinced it would also flip over to a message.

Just before the fourth ring, a female voice answered. “Hello?”

I could hear music pounding in the background. It sounded like she was at Ariadne’s. That made no sense. From her voice I pictured a pert little goth chick dressed just like me only still able to pull it off.

My mind spun through the implications but some professional part of my brain kicked in and said, “I’m sorry, I was looking for Freddie King. It’s kind of an emergency.”

“Girl, everything with Freddie is ‘kind of an emergency.’ How’d you get my number anyway?”

I told her the truth. “He listed it as his contact for a gig.”

“Son of a bitch. I told him I’m not pretending to be his manager anymore. Let me guess, he’s a no-show?”

“Something like that.” I stretched the truth but just a little. “Look, I really need to talk to him.”

The other woman went silent. I knew the line was still open because I could still hear my favorite song echoing in the background. It almost sounded like she was backstage. Suddenly, I grew insanely jealous.

“This isn’t about a gig at all, is it?” she finally asked. “You two banging boots?”

“What? No!” I protested. “I’m married! He’s playing poker with my husband and I need to find him.”

Now she laughed. “If your husband’s playing poker with Freddie King, then you definitely need to find him, girl.”

I seized on the sisterhood angle. “Any idea where they might be?” A slight pleading crept into my voice, not completely feigned.

She paused as if evaluating me again but not as long. “He tends to run his life pretty dark. But ever since his wife found out about us, she has him on a short leash, with a curfew and everything.” She emphasized “wife” with bitterness that said she hadn’t known.

“I’m sorry,” I said quietly. Freddie King sounded like a piece of work.

If she’d heard, I didn’t notice. “On a school night, he turns into a pumpkin by midnight. I’m texting you his address and his wife’s number. But I wouldn’t call her unless you’re looking to star in a live-run episode of Cops. That bitch is unstable even on her meds.”

Her incoming text registered with a ding. Relief flooded over me. “Thank you,” I said, allowing some of it to leak through.

“Don’t thank me, girl.” She laughed again. “Anything that adds a little family drama to that prick’s life is just karma come back to bite him in the ass. I should thank you for landing it in my lap. When you talk to him, tell him Chastity sends her love.”

This time I laughed.

“You take care now, girl,” she added warmly. “And good luck with your husband.”

With that, she hung up.

I glanced at the time as I plugged Freddie’s address into Google Maps. Just about enough for me to get over there and ambush him on his way in. I closed up the storage unit and headed that way. I thought about going home to change, but decided that if things went bad, I wanted my husband to know exactly what he’d be missing when I found him.

Freddie’s place was in a sketchy, low-rent neighborhood tucked behind a pair of strip malls, one anchored by a branch of Lexington Green Payday Loans, the other with a struggling Indian restaurant. It was a maze of tiny two-bedroom cinder block houses built in the early sixties.

First I did a drive-by. No lights were on. I decided I didn’t have the courage to knock after Chastity’s warning. Thankfully, most people parked on the street. So I found a spot around the corner shadowed by a spreading oak where I could keep an eye on the house.

It was the kind of neighborhood that made me reconsider my wardrobe choices this late at night. So when I spotted the Ladysmith lying on the seat beside me, I reached over, strapped it on my thigh and smoothed my skirt back over it. Feeling more confident, I settled in to wait, not quite sure what I was waiting for. I guess I’d see come midnight.

Midnight came and went with no sign of Freddie. I checked my phone again to make sure this was the place. The GPS confirmed it was, if Google Maps could be trusted which I knew it couldn’t.

Just then, a cab pulled up one corner down and quickly doused its lights. A man got out and paid driver then casually strode toward the house after the cab turned around and pulled away. Even as he tried to skirt the light from the lone streetlight at the center of the block, I knew it was my man Freddie. I’d only seen him a couple times at Eisteddfods but I recognized his swinging ponytail and the distinctive swagger that he just couldn’t hide. He absently flipped something like a large coin through the fingers of his left hand.

I started the SUV and pulled around the corner. As my headlights played across him, he furtively turned away and bent down as if he’d dropped the coin he’d been playing with. Awkwardly, he stayed in that position as I slow-rolled up beside him.

“Freddie King,” I called through the open window. “Just the man I need to talk to.”

He snapped up like a meerkat caught out in the open looking for a place to hide. He shot a glance toward the house then spun and walked the other way.

I paced him in the SUV. “Unless you want to hear an improv rendition of In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida on my horn that’s guaranteed to wake the dead, I suggest you get inside. I just want to know where my husband is.”

“Lady,” he hissed just above a whisper without looking up as he started walking faster. “I don’t know who you are and I sure as hell don’t know your husband. Now leave me be before you bring a world of pain down on both our heads. Go on, now. Scat!”

“Would you rather I called your wife and asked for you?” I held up my glowing phone. “Chastity gave me the number.”

He finally looked up, and promptly deflated as he recognized me. “Aw, shit.”

He scurried around the hood and hopped in the passenger seat. Slouching down with a hand shielding his face, he pointed the way I’d come in. “Pull up around the corner and kill the lights. We can talk there.”

I did as he asked. The engine began ticking as it cooled.

“Where is he?” I demanded when Freddie showed no sign of breaking the silence between us.

“I don’t know.” He wouldn’t meet my eye. “I figured he was home with you.”

“Don’t try my patience, Freddie,” I shot back. “It’s Tuesday night. You always catch a ride with him.”

Freddie sighed. “Last I saw, he was sitting across from some very serious dudes at a high stakes table.”

I felt blood flush my neck. So much for penny-ante.

“Where?” I insisted in the voice I used with delinquent nieces and nephews before I threatened to tell their mother.

“Oh, come on,” he whined. “These aren’t the type of guys you just rat out.”

My eyes narrowed. “Do these serious dudes have something to do with a storage unit full of tampons, baby formula and diapers out by the airpark?”

His eyes darted left then right. He licked his lips. I knew the next words out of his mouth would be a lie.

“Forget it,” I said. I started the car. “You’re taking me to him.”

Freddie’s eyes went wide as he finally looked up at me. “I…” he started, but struggled with what else to say.

“The next words out of your mouth better be, ‘I can do that’ or,” I held up my phone, “I swear to god I’ll call your wife and tell her how you stood up Chastity and me for a threesome at Ariadne’s. So buckle up, One-Eyed Jack, and tell me where we’re going.”

He stared at me open mouthed. I could see he was still trying to decide if he could talk his way past this somehow. I pressed the buttons that brought up his wife’s number and angled the phone so he could see it. I hovered a thumb over call as I looked him in the eye.

He folded inward like an errant child. “Head across the bridge,” he mumbled as he crumpled against the door. “Shocking Blue.”

“The strip club?!” What in the hell had he gotten my husband into?

Mutely, Freddie nodded, like a kid caught red-handed in the cookie jar. “Please, I’ll do anything,” he begged. “Just don’t call my wife.”

“Oh, I know you will,” I said as I pulled out of his neighborhood and raced toward the highway. I couldn’t get my hands on my husband soon enough.

I banked my anger to something glowing as we drove in silence. Freddie just slouched against the window, staring out at the passing streetlights like a carsick kid.

But once we hit the causeway at the bay, he kept sneaking glimpses over at me. Then he started tapping out a rhythm against the glass. Slowly it grew more upbeat until he was sitting up, flicking his fingers along the dash. When I glanced over as we crested the bridge, I saw the coin flipping through the fingers of one hand. It flashed in the passing streetlights with the same iridescent blue as the one I’ll pulled from the desk at Eisteddfods. Shocking Blue. I could tell Freddie was working on some angle, I just didn’t know what.

It was one in the morning by the time we pulled into the parking lot. The place wasn’t packed but for a Tuesday the lot wasn’t exactly empty.

Atop the crest of the roof knelt a giant Aphrodite with her arms outstretched like a goddess on a mountaintop which had earned the place the nickname Mount Venus. Twin neon blue spotlights played up and down her figure. The marquee below her scrolled: Sweet, Sweet Connie on a one night stand from Little Rock. Apparently, that was a draw.

“Pull around to the VIP entrance,” Freddie instructed as he pointed toward the back of the building.

“VIP entrance?” I raised an eyebrow. “Seriously?”

“They put it in during the Republican National Convention a few years ago,” he explained. “Couldn’t have the upstanding delegates of the GOP caught with their elephants hanging out. Now it’s mostly valet parking.”

Sure enough around the back corner was an entrance roped off in blue velvet and shielded from prying eyes by a series of cinderblock walls that looked like they belonged at the US Capitol or the Green Zone in Iraq. Until I noticed the valet stand manned by three young women in short, diaphanous togas. None of them so much as blinked as two opened our doors and the third exchanged my keys for a blue, numbered ticket dominated by the same female line drawing. I tucked the claim into my purse. One of them held open the door inside. Freddie smiled at each of them in turn.

Flashing lights and pounding music assaulted us as soon as we stepped in. Straight ahead, beyond a blue velvet rope monitored by a pair of beefeater security types in tight corporate logo-ed tee-shirts, lay the main club floor. From the VIP area we had a prime view of the stage where Sweet, Sweet Connie was doing her act for an enraptured audience of perhaps a dozen men. Something Cirque du Soleil on a pole, descending like a goddess from summit of beauty and lust. Is that what men really wanted? Was she why her husband was here?

Amazingly, any number of men were accompanied by equally enamored if slightly green-eyed women, none of whom appeared to be working for the club. At least half a dozen more men watched distractedly from the bar staffed by young women whose togas had somehow slipped from their shoulders.

Between the laser light show and the thumping bass, I felt dizzy like I might be on the verge of a seizure. When I had taken a class in jazz dance in high school, my mother had always been afraid I’d end up in a place like this. I closed my eyes as I steeled myself to enter.

Freddie laced his arm through mine and steered me away from the sound and fury. When I opened my eyes, I found we were in a dimly lit hall that led to a pair of bathrooms with an ATM parked in an alcove between. Beyond the ladies room, another shadowed hallway jogged off to the right.

“Hold up a second,” Freddie said as he firmly held my arm before I could round the corner. “I can get you in here, but there are some things you need to understand.”

I waited. Now I’d hear what he’d been cooking up.

“First rule is there are no observers in there, everybody plays. Which means once you’re inside, I’m not going to be able to stick around. I’m giving you my seat. It won’t mean much but it gets you in the door without paying the initial stake.”

“If you’d told me, I would have stopped by the bank.” I glanced at the ATM.

“Unless you’ve got a cool fifty five hundred hiding in that dress, or your withdrawal limit is a lot higher than mine, it wouldn’t help. Besides, the cash is only to cover shipping. The real entry fee is a standard container full of goods.”

“You mean like…” I started but didn’t finish my thought.

He nodded. “Yeah, what you found out by the airpark. That’s your husband’s stake.”

Now I was really confused. “So then where’s it all going?”

“That’s what we’re playing to decide. Winner takes all, and he gets to fill up a container with goods of his choice and direct it to his favorite destination. Syria, Ukraine, Sudan, Myanmar, anywhere he wants. He can stock the excess for another round or sell back what he doesn’t like.”

“A smuggling operation?” How had my husband ever gotten involved in this?

Freddie had the sense to look abashed. “Some of us prefer to think of it as humanitarian aid. Kind of a Goodwill drop for abandoned refugees.”

Slowly, the pieces began to click together, the creative accounting, the storage unit, even the contents suddenly made sense. In a backhanded way, my husband was trying to help people like we’d talked about. I didn’t know whether to be proud or appalled.

My suspicious nature re-exerted itself. “So why are you telling me this?”

“Because I want you to go in there and kick some ass,” he said, rubbing his hands together.

“Uh-uh, no way,” I said. “I’m only here to haul his stupid ass out.”

He shook his head like I was sadly naïve. “That’s not the way it works. I told you these dudes are totally XM-Sirius. One’s a retired colonel or something. Another’s a politician who’s looking to get back in the game. A third’s some kind of spook. Plus that crazy Swedish dwarf.”

“I think they like to be called ‘little people,’” I corrected.

Freddie rolled his eyes. “Not this one. Trust me. Plus, they’ve got this whole sworn to secrecy thing down.”

“What did you get him into?” I sighed.

“Me?” he sputtered. “Your husband and that little Swede brought me in then pushed me out in traffic. Tonight I got run over in both directions just trying to keep to the middle of the road.”

I tried a different tack. “Poker’s your thing, not mine, Freddie.”

“Just please, please, please, tell me you know how to play.” He put his hands together, rocking them back and forth as if in prayer.

“Of course I do. I’m just a little out of practice since college.” Back then there was nothing more fun than luring a couple of rich, entitled MBAs with the promise of strip poker that somehow turned into real stakes once they had nothing else to lose. Their first real business lesson. I must have paid for half of my degree just by showing off my bra. “So what?”

“So you can take these guys,” he said excitedly. “I know it.”

I gave him my coldest, hardest resting bitch face.

Freddie slapped out a quick rhythm against his thighs then pointed. “See, that’s it. That’s the look. No one can read you. Everyone’s afraid of you. You’re the only reason no one at Eisteddfods steals your husband blind. And I’ve never seen anyone call your bluff even when they know you are. After that run-in with you husband, Lisa Waters issued the Patriot Police a secret memo about you. You are untouchable now.”

He cut himself off there as if he’d said too much, then just stared at me with a wide, sad-eyed look of anticipation like an overeager puppy waiting for adoption at the pound.

Against my better instincts, I reluctantly agreed. Something told me he was unlikely to get me in otherwise, no matter what I held over him with his wife. I figure he’d been playing that instrument for a long, long time and knew exactly how to get it back in tune. “Ok, if this is the only way to get him out.”

Freddie did a little dance. He almost whooped but covered him mouth. He looked like that same puppy who might pee on the carpet from all the excitement of a new home. I didn’t know how he’d gotten a reputation for playing poker. He didn’t seem to be able to bluff. He must be good at counting cards.

“Now, be careful once we’re in there.” He leaned in and whispered conspiratorially. “Like I said, these dudes are completely Apple iSerious.”

“I get it,” I reassured him. “I’m sure I’ve dealt with worse.”

I could see there was something Freddie wasn’t telling me. But it didn’t matter. I’d say whatever it took to get inside so I could drag my husband out.

I straightened my dress and checked my lines. I always knew my college cosplay days would come in handy. I hadn’t attended all those fantasy conventions with another guy I dated for nothing. I had usually dressed up like a cross between a Disney princess and an R-rated Scheherazade but had no desire to become some geek’s One Thousand and One Nights. If I could handle the windowless van creepy photographers on the floor after midnight by myself, these guys should be a piece of cake. At least I had dressed the part.

Freddie led me around the shadowed corner. At the end of the hall stood a door marked “Private.” Freddie rapped out a rhythm and winked at me as we waited.

A vacant-eyed goon cracked the door. Even in the dim light I recognized him though I wasn’t sure he knew me. He was a nasty looking piece of work, brutish and short. Tom Hobbes. I’d never seen him without his flag pin. He must have been moonlighting on his night off from the Patriot Police. He gave me a quick up and down.

“Amateur auditions aren’t until Thursdays,” he said stonily, his face splitting into a troll-like smile.

I fixed a glare on him I’ve been told usually melted lead.

Freddie just flashed a smile and then that blue chip appeared between his fingers. “She’s with me.” Maybe his stage presence made him better at bluffing than I thought.

Slowly Hobbes swung open the door, giving me another once over, his eyes dismissive. I seethed inside but turned my stare past him as if he didn’t exist.

Ever in keeping with his lady’s man persona, Freddie swept his arm forward inviting me to enter. As much as part of me would have rather followed him through, another part understood he was giving me the opportunity to make an entrance.

I settled my expression to neutral like I had already claimed the room beyond then strode in before him. A short, dark hallway led to a brighter room. As my eyes struggled to adjust, a cobalt blue flash at the threshold dragged my attention to the floor. Another chip.

And that’s where whatever plan I had started to unravel.

I don’t know exactly what happened. I could only piece it together from what Freddie and my husband told me on the ride home.

As soon as I recognized the chip, I took another step and bent down to pick it up. That was both my first and second mistake. First, I should have stayed focused on the room. Second, I shouldn’t have bent straight over to pick it up. But you can’t exactly do a bunny squat with a pistol strapped to your inner thigh.

I’m told that at this point, Hobbes took in the full panoramic view of my ass then shot a look at my husband that said, watch this. He may or may not have mouthed those same words. Either way, he reach out and gave it what he thought was an ample pinch. Definitely a few rounds short on mental ammunition.

He must have only gotten the neoprene of the dress because I never felt a thing. I just began to straighten like nothing had happened, because for me, nothing had.

Before I even looked up, I heard my husband’s voice roar like I’d never heard before.

“That’s my WIFE!” He exclamated the last word with a resounding thud of his fist, sending drinks and stacks of chips hopping before they crashed or sloshed back down.

I froze as I looked up to find a felt-top gaming table bathed in a pool of light, a thick layer of bluish smoke hanging above it. Five pairs of eyes were focused firmly on me.

Of the men at that table, I recognized only my husband who was cradling his hand.

First, there was a tall, brush-cut blond with smolderingly intense dark eyes that seemed to reject my presence outright. He had the look of a lifer from the Air Force base down the road that housed the special ops and intelligence command. In my head I called him Blondie.

Continuing around the table led me to a man in a grey sports jacket whose hair could have been dark or dirty blond, and whose eyes were either green or grey or Atlantic blue depending on the angle, which concealed his remaining features that almost defined nondescript. The Chameleon.

The third man I recognized from his appearances on Coyote News, a rabid, rightwing analyst who hoped to become our local representative after a failed senatorial run. He made O’Really sound like a moderate. The Politician.

Finally there was a very small man in a suit who I might have mistaken for a boy had he not been smoking a cigar and leering openly at me, alternating between the point where the top zipper of my dress and the bottom one rested. This had to be Freddie’s Swedish dwarf.

Before I could decide how to react, Freddie snatched the chip from my upheld hand and beelined for the only empty seat.

“Deal me in, boys.” He slapped down two blue chips in front of him and leaned back in his chair. “Freddie’s back.”

“You left the game, jotunn-breath,” the little guy piped up in a booming baritone that carried. “No take-backs.”

“Yeah, but you vultures haven’t completely picked me clean.” Freddie smiled. “Consider it an extended bathroom break.”

Amazingly they all looked at Hobbes, who only shrugged. “All or nothing. It’s in the rules. As long as he can make ante.”

Of all the low-end moves. What was all Freddie’s pleading about? Knowing him, he’d just seized his first opportunity to get back in the game.

Now I was pissed. Since I had no way to take it out on Freddie, I directed it at my husband.

“Ok, Maverick, let’s go.” I crooked a finger at him with that come hither motion. It had been a long night and I was ready for it to be over. My hose were starting to chafe.

“I can’t…” he started then winced as he rubbed his hand.

I cut him off in the tone I usually reserved for Eisteddfods employees I caught sampling the wine. “I found your secret stash out by the airpark. Freddie told me all about the container.” The blonde with the brush cut shot a glare at Freddie who slinked down in his chair. Served the weasel right.

“I’ll figure out a way to eat the loss,” I continued, making sure my heels clicked authoritatively as I strode over and grabbed his good wrist, fully prepared to bodily drag him out of there if that’s what it took. “Playtime’s over. Time to go home and pretend to be an adult again tomorrow morning. That’s IF you survive tonight.”

“You don’t understand…” he shook his head, growing paler by the second.

“Oh, I understand just fine.” I lowered my voice to an icy whisper, which he knew was his final warning. “You’re the one who seems to be having a problem with language comprehension. You’re coming with me, Rain Man.

“No one’s going anywhere until we finish this,” said one of the other men sitting at the table.

I turned to respond with whip-like sarcasm only to find Blondie pointing a pistol at my husband. That fact only dimly registered when the Chameleon also drew a gun.

“This was supposed to be a private game,” he added.

“Hey, guys, I thought we agreed no guns,” Freddie protested even as his hands shot up. Both barrels immediately swung toward him. Freddie’s eyes went wide as he was suddenly at a loss for words.

With everyone turned the other way, the little guy used the distraction to draw a pistol of his own. But instead of pointing it at Freddie like the other two, he trained it on the Chameleon. 

“Why don’t we all set down our weapons and play like adults.” he said. When Blondie started to turn, the little man added. “Uh-uh. Don’t you ettins test me.” He motioned with his gun. “Set ‘em down and our man Hobbes will collect them for safekeeping so we can get back this friendly game.”

Blondie laid his pistol on the table. The Chameleon did the same.

I about fainted from relief. I slowly turned back at my husband. “What have you done?”

“We’re no longer playing for what goes into the container,” he said in a small, resigned voice like a child who found himself trapped into telling the truth. “We’re playing for who comes out. I put up the house…”

“You what?!”

“… and Eisteddfods.” At least he managed to sound sheepish. “I thought I could do something good.”

All the implications slowly sank in. I released his wrist.

Hobbes went to take the dwarf’s pistol. “Hands off, Sasquatch, unless you want to play the pan-pipes left-handed. Search the others first.”

Hobbes frisked the Politician then my husband. When he came to me, my husband protested, “You already copped a feel. If you didn’t find something then, where the hell do you think she’d hide it?”

I fixed Hobbes with a glare that could cut ice. The dwarf shot another leer my way then waved him off. Hobbes shrugged and moved on to Freddie.

“All clean,” he finally said.

The dwarf surrendered his pistol. “Put the hardware in the house safe with the collateral.”

Hobbes keyed open a floor safe tucked between a pair of leather club chairs, locked the guns inside then collapsed into one of the chairs.

I nodded toward my husband’s hand, the side of which had begun to turn a lovely shade of reddish purple. “He can’t play like that.”

“Probably just a boxer’s break,” the dwarf growled. “A little ice and he’ll be fine.”

“He can’t even hold his cards, never mind bet,” I protested.

Freddie seemed to rediscover his stage footing and strode up behind me, resting a hand lightly on my shoulder as if anointing my like a knight. My husband scowled. I’d never seen him so possessive.

“I say we give her his seat as the proxy for his stake.”

Blondie’s eyes narrowed, but then he slowly smiled. “Anybody have a problem?” No one did. To my husband he said, “You go sit beside the safe.” Then, “Hobbes, send in a girl with some ice and two more rounds of drinks. After that no one in or out until this thing’s finished. Understood?”

“You got it, boss,” Hobbes said as he hustled out the door.

“Keep an eye on Carl, the dwarf,” Freddie whispered in my ear. “When he’s bluffing, he’ll always touch a white chip before he goes for blue. Good luck.” He headed back to his seat.

Now I couldn’t tell who was playing who. I slipped into my husband’s chair after he abandoned it.

When a girl in a sheer satin toga came in, she asked the others whether they were sticking with their usuals, the typical collection of scotches and cognacs. The Chameleon changed his up to club soda after an evaluating look at me. I knew the trick Blondie was playing. Guys always think they can out iron bladder a girl. Except when the girl didn’t drink. I had no intention of starting but loved the relief I saw at their corners of their eyes when I gave her my order. Coffee with cream and sugar.

While the girl distributed the drinks to their respective players and handed my husband a Ziploc full of ice, I focused on a strategy. My initial thought was to take out Freddie first. He was obviously the weakest player. But after his whispered suggestion, I hoped to keep him alive so I could use him to tag team the others even if he didn’t realize it. I wanted to test out his tell before I tried to bite off Carl. Blondie had too many chips to attack right away. I suspected I needed more than my husband had left me to take him or the Chameleon down. So I focused on Politician.

“Ante stands at one blue,” Blondie said as he tossed a chip to the center of the table.

Before he was relegated to the sidelines, my husband explained the chip hierarchy was standard: white worth less than red, red less than blue. But the exact values were complex and fungible. Whites could be anything from locally banned books to baking supplies. Reds could be everything from Bibles bound for N. Korea to condoms headed to Venezuela. Blues ran from military equipment to morning after pills. Carl seemed to keep a running exchange rate in his head. It scared me to think that all this stuff might lay concealed in unmarked storage units sprinkled through the tri-city area.

I slid in one blue that I was told represented half a dozen thumb drives of state-sponsored pharmaceutical research smuggled out of China. “What’s the game?”

Carl had the deal and decided to play cautious to see what I was made of. He called Soko, a Scandinavian variant of five-card stud with the addition of mini-straights and flushes. All the others groaned.

The small stack of chips my husband left didn’t leave me with much room to bet, but then I was used to thin margins from my strip poker days. A girl couldn’t afford to lose as much as the guys in those games. I snatched a win with a lucky draw.

The Chameleon then tried for a quick knock-out strike with what I learned was the table standard of seven-card stud, kind of a throwback after the popularity of Texas Hold’em from poker tournaments on TV. Easy enough to work. I tested out a flirtation angle with him during a bluff but only the Politician and Carl struck the line. Valuable information I filed to use later. I still collected a moderate pot after the Politician’s inside straight fell apart.

That gave me just enough cushion to start working the table, sometimes bluffing, sometimes folding, sometimes sticking even with a losing hand. I supported Freddie when I could but he seemed distracted. Either that or he figured out what I was up to and was just biding his time.

Pretty soon the game settled into a quiet intensity. Conversation was limited to things like, “I’ll open with a dozen beehives on pickup trucks waiting to cross the Rio Grande … I see your case of insulin and raise you three hundred pounds of heirloom Bhutanese red rice seed… Let me sweeten the pot with four apartheid-era Krugerrands… I call with two cases AR-15 full-auto conversion kits and ten thousand rounds body-armor-piercing ammo…”

We cycled through hand after hand, my individual chips waxing and waning but my stacks increasing on average. Pretty soon, I had the Politician on the ropes but I let Freddie deal the final blow. I focused on Carl next which wasn’t hard with Freddie’s tip. He must of figured out I was after him as he withdrew while he still had a hefty stack of chips. Which left me in a lurch since I still hadn’t figured out a strategy for the Chameleon or Blondie yet. I suspected they were sharing signals.

Before I could figure out how, Blondie struck a death blow to Freddie. I almost got caught in the crossfire before I realized trying to prop him up would be a temporary victory at best. So I let him fall.

Now, Blondie and the Chameleon focused on me like a pair of piranhas on an Amazon child who had waded too far out into the channel. The next several hands were like a death of a thousand nibbles. They just kept playing the odds with one holding and one folding while Carl kept fiddling with his chips while he chomped on his cigar.

That’s when I noticed he was signaling me with his tell. White then blue for a bluff. I don’t know why he did it, but it allowed me to stage a comeback.

I’d barely clawed back to even when Blondie set me up for a knockout blow. By now I was eyeing my cold cup of coffee longingly. It had to be four in the morning, later than I’d been awake in a long time. My concentration had began to fray. The Chameleon seized on it by suckering me all-in by standing on a three card flush with me holding aces and eights he couldn’t see. After Blondie folded but before the final card was laid, Carl slid his remaining chips across the table to me, a collection representing five crates of English primers bound for Gaza, a case of experimental Marburg virus vaccines, one gross of cell phone SIM chips with a multi-region burner, and four vials of fertilized Siberian tiger eggs.

That meant I could more than cover the Chameleon’s bet. Which was good because he turned the flush after I drew what would have been Blondie’s Queen of Spades. The bitch. Dead Man’s hand. The Chameleon drew what would have been my eight.

That tore it. Blondie was counting cards. The Chameleon was taking his signals from whether he raised or folded. I’d seen this strategy once before from a couple overly ambitious MBAs who knew my reputation and tried to take me down. Once I’d figured it out, I opted for revenge over money. I’d slipped a couple discreetly snapped pictures under their girlfriends’ doors. Which I later learned had been their initial plan for me only with a much wider distribution. After that, I’d focused on scholarships as my primary source of funding.

Unfortunately, I was pretty sure the Chameleon had a signal of his own. He was a keen observer which probably meant I had a tick. If the odds were in the Chameleon’s favor, Blondie would fold to improve them. If the Chameleon saw my tell for a bluff, he’d do the same. They could afford to trade off pots as long as I was whittled down or until they knocked me out with an all-in bet. I suspected after I was out they didn’t really care who won. They’d probably set it up from the beginning.

So I waited for the moment when I could reuse my first ploy against the Chameleon. Since I didn’t know my tell, I opted to substitute one he’d seen before. And I got lucky.

We’d settled into seven-card stud. I was showing a ten-queen run with a suicide king sitting in the hole when an ace came down with two cards to go. I couldn’t ask for a better if more unlikely hand.

Blondie folded as expected, revealing the odds favored the Chameleon’s hand. But the Chameleon hesitated, perhaps having seen my tell. So I glanced at him sidelong as I considered my next bet, making sure I just caught his eye before I coquettishly looked away. I scratched an imaginary itch on my sternum, inadvertently pushing the top zipper of my dress just a fraction lower as I studied my cards. Then I bet all-in. Sure enough the Chameleon took the bait. I didn’t have enough to take him out, but I damaged him to where he couldn’t afford to lose another pot.

Two hands later, the Chameleon was gone. And I was sitting on the highest stack of chips.

“It looks like it’s just me and you, Blondie,” I said, winking at him flirtatiously. “Your boyfriend can’t help you now.”

Blondie set his face in stone. Gotcha.

Every time I dealt, I switched to five-card stud to take a bite out of his card counting strategy. On his deal, he would switch back to seven-card stud to improve his odds. To neutralize it, on his turn I took to going all-in early if I was sitting on anything royal in the hole. It only worked a couple rounds but it chiseled him down and seemed to rattle him.

Then he went on a streak of three hands that ended with us evened out. I was tired and losing concentration again. My hose were too tight. The hem of my dress was digging into the backs of my legs. I reeked of cigar smoke. Time to finish him.

So I stacked my chips by color in front of me while he shuffled then I downed the cup of cold coffee still sitting on the table to sharpen my edge.

Blondie started snapping down cards for what I was certain would be the final deal. Seven-card stud.

My hand started with a pair of sixes, only one of which was revealed, against his ace to show. This hand had promise. I tried to see if I could rattle him again with a theory I’d been piecing together all night.

“So how much are you skimming from this operation?” I asked as I studied my cards.

Blondie gave me a stone cold look. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, I think you do,” I replied, sweetly. “As Freddie explained it, you started by playing to determine where a relief container full of cargo got sent. Which doesn’t make any sense. Why gamble over a destination? Even that seems to be a bit much to write off to testosterone poisoning. Or was it just the setup for a bigger game?”

Blondie didn’t answer. Carl perked up. Even my husband looked interested again.

We both bet cautiously. My six was joined by a partner showing, plus a couple fill-ins for a straight. Three of a kind. The Number of the Beast. Blondie was showing AK47. I took it as an omen and laid a heavy bet, my last of dose of lethal injection drugs just to make sure he’d bite.

“The way I figure it,” I continued, “you thought you’d get us to finance some little overseas adventure. You were probably thinking once we lost we’d never know what actually happened to the goods. Even if we won, what would we get, a couple snapshots from some overseas station that showed everything arrived? Pictures that could have been faked from anywhere in the world.”

Blondie shot a glance at the Chameleon who studiously ignored it. That told me I was on the right track.

Then Blondie smiled and went all in. I smelled a trap. I wanted to know exactly where we stood, so we counted chips. And came up dead even. I slid in everything I had.

“How many games a week are you running anyway?” I asked him. “Must be a lot to make this little Ollie North operation work. If that type of scandal broke, it would even make Coyote News.”

Now I had the Politician’s undivided attention. Carl looked like he was flicking through an abacus in his head. My husband adopted a wide-eyed expression I associated with him silently begging please don’t.

Still Blondie neither confirmed nor denied my conjecture. He dealt the remaining cards in silence. My sixes never completed the set. His Kalashnikov was joined by another four. I wasn’t worried. With sixes to fours, I still had him. He threw me the Ace of Spades as my final card, wrecking any chance of a straight but lengthening his odds. I smiled and revealed my hole card. 666.

Blondie responded by flipping over his own concealed card. Another ace for two pair. It all came down to the last draw. He needed the final ace, pretty long odds in a tall deck. He licked his thumb and flipped over the top card with a flourish and a smile. The Ace of Hearts. A full house.

My hands collapsed into my lap. I was stunned. No one gets that lucky on a draw.

As Blondie reached to rake in the chips from the center of the table, Freddie grabbed his wrist. “How about we separate those cards you just stuck together so we can see if you really won.” Freddie picked up the ace and twisted it between his thumb and fingers, revealing a two beneath.  

For an instant everyone froze. From nowhere a small pistol appeared in Blondie’s other hand, pointed straight at Freddie’s face. Freddie dropped his wrist.

“I don’t know what double dealing card trick you just pulled, Freddie,” Blondie said levelly, “but I won that hand fair.”

With nimble fingers, I found the hem of my skirt and started inching it up.

Blondie motioned Hobbes toward the safe. “Open it. We’ll take our winnings and go.”

By then my right hand clutched my Ladysmith. A quick pull and lift saw it out of its holster and rising toward the table’s edge.

That was my third mistake of the night. Before my hand cleared the table, the Chameleon called out. I found myself staring down the barrel of the Blondie’s pistol as it whipped across to cover me. I stopped moving. So much for the good guy theory of concealed carry.

Carl slammed something onto the table. It looked like an olive green apple with a lever attached where the stem should be. Oh, shit, a grenade. I about strained used coffee through my hose.

“I thought we had an agreement earlier that we shouldn’t play with guns,” Carl said indolently as he spun the pin around his index finger.

Slowly, Blondie lifted his aim and laid the pistol gently on the table. The Chameleon’s eyes turned as cold and hard as agates.

“I think we’ll call that the lady’s hand,” Carl said as he retrieved Blondie’s pistol. He motioned me to put mine back away. “As I see it, that’s game, set and match.”

“So here’s how this plays out,” he continued. “Hobbes is going to very carefully open the safe and give everyone back their collateral. Then the three of you,” he motioned to Freddie, my husband and me, “are going to disappear while I explain to these jokers how much my partners dislike being played.” He turned toward the Politician. “Just ask your boss what happens when you cross the Fenris brothers.”

Wait, the Fenris brothers? My husband’s merry band of dwarves were real? I thought they were just a story he told to cover up another of his mistimed misadventures.

“What about the bet?” I asked against my better sense. But this whole night couldn’t be for nothing. Not with the promise of actually helping people who needed it on the line.

“Don’t worry,” Carl smiled evilly. “I’ll see that everything’s taken care of before you can say Nibelungenlied.”

I didn’t even know what that meant. But at that point I didn’t have time to worry about it.

So we left the club through the back entrance, and waited as the valet retrieved my car. When girl swung around with the SUV and held the door open for me, I unsnapped my purse and tossed her the blue chip I’d been carrying all night.

Her face fell like I’d handed her a worthless piece of plastic.

“My good luck charm,” I told her. “Cash it in with the dwarf in the VIP lounge. I won’t be needing it anymore.”

She smiled as she slipped it somewhere beneath her toga.

With a hangdog look, Freddie asked if he could hitch a ride with us. He didn’t really want to hang around waiting for a cab.

I felt generous after his last-minute heroics. “We’ll drop you off right after we stop at an immediate care clinic.”

The sun had just begun to lighten the cityscape behind us as I drove back across the bridge.

---

My husband shaved left-handed the next morning then cleared Tuesdays from his calendar. The next weekend, while he stripped the last traces of faux redneck from the Jeep, I donated the contents of the storage unit to a local women’s shelter.

Whatever deal Carl had negotiated with the poker ring must have stuck. The DEA raided Cache for Trash a week later then seized both it and the airpark. The next day, the Politician withdrew from his race unexpectedly and terminated his contract with Coyote News. Blondie and the Chameleon never resurfaced. Though I did run across news of a diplomatic incident involving a pair of former US military and intelligence personnel caught in a counter-terrorism sting holding a herd of cattle awaiting a passage to India at a Bangladeshi customs warehouse. I couldn’t help but think of them.

My husband heard through the after hours grapevine at Eisteddfods that Hobbes had quit his job with the Patriot Police. Rumor had it he was headed to Kathmandu on a spiritual retreat. Soon after, Freddie also disappeared from a long-awaited comeback tour of Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas. Perhaps he’d shacked up with Sweet, Sweet Connie for the holidays somewhere in Little Rock.

After that, I tried to block the incident from my mind. I wanted to forget that night. I knew he did, too. We never talked about what had happened. And it wasn’t like we could brag about the bet in our annual Christmas letter anyway. I expected it had all been in vain.

Until, on Christmas Eve, a FedEx truck rolled up with an overnight envelope. International delivery, the return address the same as the destination, no signature required.

Inside I found a printout of an article from an Oslo paper translated by Google into English. It seemed Fenris Brothers LLC had sponsored a dozen miracle families, refugees from ISIS. They were providing them a fresh start with housing and jobs in a newly constructed hamlet along the Norwegian-Swedish border.

An enclosed card read “Thank you” in various languages of the world. Inside was a cashier’s check drawn on a Swiss account that more than covered our losses. The card was signed with a single word: Nibelungenlied.

This time I Wiki’ed it. It was the name of the German Iliad, a story that began with the hero Siegfried slaying a dragon whose treasure he then left in charge of a dwarf. It served as the basis for Wagner’s Ring Cycle. When I showed it to my husband, he said it was a compliment. But that if I ever saw Carl again, it was best not to mention the Wagner part.

I next caught up with Nicci at the Eisteddfods New Year’s Eve party. She apologized for having to cancel our girl’s night out at Ariadne’s then asked if she’d missed anything fun.

“Nah.” I shrugged then smile enigmatically. “Just another slow Tuesday night.”


© 2015 Edward P. Morgan III

Thursday, June 25, 2015

The Woodsman


The Woodsman - a reading (on YouTube)


Nothing I say matters,
This is not my red-cowled curse.
Yours is not my pain but it resonates
Like the first blow against a family tree.

In their eyes, I am sworn to support you,
Not fight for you, with you or against you,
Stand clear-eyed as their phantasms descend
In what should be the twilight of your gods.

Say nothing as they whisper in your ear,
Reweaving the illusions that consume you,
Reinforcing their familiar bonds,
Their slipknots tight and sacrosanct.

Attend like a dutiful daughter,
As they would have you do,
Forgetting I am neither female nor blood kin
Whose bedroom privileges apparently overlap on mine.

Bind your hands without comment
As you rework a childhood puzzle,
Your fingers bloody from the shards,
Black from unwinding the lead came,

As you reconstruct the mirror,
Piece by shattered piece,
Into a stained glass window
Reflecting your perfectly broken past.

Ignore the looking glass on your nightstand,
Casting light at fractured angles,
Revealing the shattered image of a woman
From the girl I never knew

Whose eyes implore me not to cast the counterspell,
As if my silence is not complicity,
As if glass daggers have not sliced my hands,
As if my fingertips are calloused yellow from craft

Like yours.

You play the fairy tale princess,
I watch you fall asleep,
To reawaken decades later
With a slap rather than a kiss.

I’m no charming wolf-prince like your brother,
No shining housecarl as you wish,
I inherited no magic sword,
Only this ax and an ordinary grindstone.

I command no armies, no allies,
Raise no tartaned clan,
Just wield this iron wedge,
Cleaving right from wrong.

I am the woodsman,
Rough-hewn and splintered timber
Fit only for the charcoaler,
Or to lay a charnel fire.



© 2015 Edward P. Morgan III

Sunday, May 17, 2015

Pearl



Oh Margarete, my precious pearl, captive of Kraist, enraptured afar in the shadows of Repugnikratia and its realm of unilluminated darkness, please believe I did not know. Lying atop your burial mound, I feel as empty as your grave.

---

My name is Cotton Nero A.x, last of the Demokins. Or so I thought until I broke the sacred seals and peered into the Domesday Book. Our people had fallen long ago, first in fire, then in blood. Now our mark has been all but erased from this earth. Kraist and his barbarians would say cleansed.

My journey began when I returned from searching the southern upland wilderness for artifacts. A salvage crew had claimed they had stumbled upon a cache on the outskirts of the ruined Yellow City. The valedictors sent me as an authenticator to establish any connection to the lost Nighthawk niversity. After a six-week investigation, I suspected the salvage crew had strayed illegally into the Southern Venom Zone surrounding Peachtree but had used the Yellow City to mask the origin of their finds. Only time would tell whether the burning sickness condemned their trespass.

As I returned to the seat of the Scient, I saw smoke rising from the Villa of Ashes, drifting through the broad river valley like a poisonous fog. From an overlook near the ancient parkway, I stood witness to the aftermath of the Demokins’ final battle.

I interviewed the survivors as they fled. Most averted their eyes and ducked their heads as they hurried past, shunning my visible badges of office. Only a few paused to relate the tale.

I pieced together how Repugnikratia’s lightning raid had fulfilled the destiny of our mountain stronghold like Kraist’s accusations of topomancy. The zealot’s forces had flowed through the valley like a flash flood, inundating everything in their path. Even our northern enclave of The Boon with its catacumbal niversity had been overrun. Now, our scoles and corts and libers were indistinguishable from the ancient ruins. We’d grown complacent behind our walls.

Where Kraist styled himself as a warlord and a savior, the people of the Scient saw only the dimming of an ancient light. With the fall of the Villa of Ashes, I knew the Demokins as a united people would cease to exist. All of our cathedrae had fallen silent. Kraist’s heralded edicts now replaced our sacred lore. Our salvaged knowledge had come undone. Our Reluminescence had been eclipsed.

Quickly, I got swept up in the refugees’ exodus to the mountains. Any unsecured chattel was being put to the sword.

---

Days later, I awoke alone at Capel Sion in the place of Hanging Dogs, not knowing how I came to be there. The other refugees had scattered like fallen leaves before a winter wind.

A decade past, Capel Sion had marked the highpoint of our Reluminescence. Now, the abandoned Manuprint workshop afforded me scant sanctuary, a final refuge in my flight. All the procurators and copywrights were gone. Slain or fled, I did not know. The vineyard lay fallow. The herb garden was overgrown and clogged with weeds. Rapeseed obscured the burial yard beneath a yellow carpet. That softened the blow of seeing your and your mother’s graves again after so many years away.

I knew then I’d come to say goodbye.

After I revived myself with rations from the valedictor’s hidden stockpiles, I unsealed the Domesday Book. First, I searched its square pages for clues to the workshop’s sudden demise. Finding none, I next scoured the index for your gravesite. Kraist’s marauders had claimed you and your mother in one of their first raids a decennium ago. Mistra Nero A.x had been a Valkyrie assigned to our protection. I was an adjunct procurator on my way to becoming an authenticator. You had only just emerged from infancy a year before.

They came by night, circling through the mountains. I only remember the smoke and blood and tears. Valedictor Velim Faustina wouldn’t let me see you. He said it was for the best. He told me that you had died within Mistra’s arms and that was how I should remember you both.

Soon after the burials, I threw myself into righteous work to re-illuminate the night. Each passing year only dulled the pain a little more, but the wound of your and your mother’s absence never fully healed.

And yet, the Domesday Book still bore your name. Valedictor Velim Faustina had lied. Why I didn’t know. I only knew your grave stood empty. As I skimmed the pages, I found yours was not the only one. I discovered a host of others, all girls, none older than twelve. Kraist had abducted hundreds of the Otho generation. Perhaps that solved the riddle of why the valedictor had fled. 

On my knees at your graveside, the tears returned unbidden. I wondered if you were still alive. I wondered at the young woman you might have become. I knew that in my ignorance I had failed you. Kraist had stolen everything from me. If you yet lived, I vowed to get you back.

Weary from the bright sunlight, I curled up and fell into an uneasy slumber.

---

The scent of the rapeseed overwhelms me like sweet incense. Plucked music like a memory permeates the air. The euphony drives me mad. It refuses to leave my head. But is my journey just beginning or have I already reached its end?

---

When I awoke, sunlight was fading. Crepuscular rays illuminated a previously hidden arbor set in the shadow of the forest. A path receded into the darkness like a vision. It called me like a dream.

I gathered my scant belongings and provisions for the journey. I strapped on my black Evlar breastplate and my iTanium dagger, the badges of my now nonexistent office. I was no Martial or Valkyrie but I knew my way around a blade. Scrounging through the Manuprint workshop, I added a Polaris stone, an ancient copper penny, and a polished magnifier as clear as a mountain stream. The Polaris stone would guide me. The copper would buy me aid. The magnifier would help me see.

The arbor track descended from the mountains. Two score days I wandered through the upland forests. Beneath the canopy of trees with boles as dark as indigo, only the Polaris stone kept my path toward sunrise true. Every farm and freehold and fastness I passed was eerily abandoned like the ancient ruins. Or a pile of charred timber and artificial stone. I encountered no other soul on my journey, living or dead. As if every man and beast had been taken up to the heavens just like Kraist’s fanatics said.

But from the shadows I sensed eyes upon me. Ten years as an authenticator had honed my instincts. Without them, I never would have survived. Predators, two-legged or four, I was certain of their presence. I could feel their piercing stares. Hair bristled on the back of my neck for no reason. Startled birds rose into flight from deep within the trees.

I scanned the wilderness and ruins with the magnifier but saw not even a flicker of movement. These moss-troopers never revealed themselves to me. Once or twice daily I called out a hail but received no reply. After I time, I stopped. Yet I still drew comfort from their presence, my unseen traveling companions.

Then, a few days before I reached my destination, all traces of them disappeared. I was once again alone. Perhaps they had sated their curiosity. Or had I passed beyond the borders of their territory?

My journey through the uplands ended atop a high bluff overlooking a river that snaked through the pristine landscape like a thread of gold. Beyond stood the verge of a verdant garden, reborn in our long absence. The far shore was lined with fruit trees. I counted a dozen varieties at least. The scent of apple blossoms drifted across the water like sweet nectar. The border of Kraist’s territory. The Eastern Venom Zone.

This was not how the valedictors had described it. No word had filtered down that the lowland waste was free from the burning sickness never mind flourishing and green. What other vital data had the valedictors kept hidden?

I once again pulled the magnifier from its leathern case and scanned along the river. Its water flowed quick and deep. I traced the shoreline seeking a ford or ferry. My copper should see me safely to the other side.

Across the water, I spied a carefree demoiselle in a white dress on a rock outcropping with her legs curled beneath her. She was plucking the petals from wildflowers and tossing them in the water, watching as the current swept them downstream. Her golden hair was loose and glistened like the river. Her pale skin shone in the sunlight like the ancient porcelain we so rarely found intact. She was yet a maiden but displayed woman’s grace.

In the middle distance, I spotted a city perched upon a hill, its walls shining like a vision of Kraist’s mythical heaven. Her home, I assumed. A new city, not an improvisation built atop the ruins. Kraist’s city.

I needed to investigate. This girl was the only person I’d seen in weeks. Hers wasn’t an extension of the upland wilderness that buffered our separate worlds. Perhaps her aid would see me to the other side.

I descended the bluff along a sweeping, switchback trial. At its base I found a gravel path that shadowed the near shore. I followed the path downstream. When I was nearly across from the young woman, I hailed her.

She looked up, startled by my presence. A large, unblemished pearl lay at the point of the shallow v of her white, embroidered bodice. Even from a distance, she was as beautiful as Mistra. As if I was seeing a much younger ghost. My breath caught in my throat. Margarete.

She watched as I approached the shore, curious but unafraid. No recognition dawned within her eyes. Of course she would not remember me. She would have been much too young. I knew I had to approach her carefully. I needed to be certain.

When we were separated by a stretch of swirling but silent water, I called out to her. “Do you hail from yonder city?”

“I do but nearly all my life,” she cried back boldly. Many young women would be afraid to converse with strangers. Not her. Though her face held a curious expression.

“I seek a crossing,” I said. “Is there a ford nearby?”

“All the fords are guarded by my master. None may cross without his permission.”

“Then perhaps a ferry.” I held up the ancient copper coin and made sure it caught the light. “I carry the standard fare.”

She gently shook her head. “No ferryman will bear a stranger from Gilead. Only death or a pass from my master will see you safely across the river. What business calls you to this side?”

I seized on her curiosity to keep the conversation going. “I search for my daughter. She was lost to me half a score of years ago. I recently discovered she may have found her way here to live.”

“Many daughters have been blessed to find their way to Capel Hill.” She laughed spontaneously as if her mood had bubbled up from a secret spring that fed the river. “What does she look like? Perhaps I know her.”

I wanted to say, she looks just like you but I knew I needed to woo her into acceptance, if indeed this was truly her. “In all honesty, I do not know. She was lost to me when she was very young. She would be about your age, perhaps. Her mother had fair hair, pale skin and was slim like you.”

She laughed again, a sound as high and sweet as trickling water. “I suspect you attempt flattery to gather in my trust. All that you can see from where you stand.”

“But I cannot see your eyes,” I called back quickly. “Hers were as blue as still, deep water reflecting a cloudless sky.”

She glanced at her image in the river. The tiniest furrow marred her brow. “Did this daughter bear a name?”

“Margarete,” I called across the water, as much an answer as a plea. “Although I can’t say in honesty whether she would remember what we called her.”

“Margarete is my name,” she said in a cross between astonishment and dismay. She eyed me as if seeking similarity to the reflection she’d just studied. I knew I had to tread carefully if I was still to earn her trust.

“How did you come to be here?” I asked, approaching the problem from an oblique angle like an artificer.

She misunderstood my question. “My master told me to wait by the river this morning. For what purpose, he did not say. He commands; I obey.”

I did not like her lack of independence. Her mother would not approve. “And you do all he tells you without question?”

“How could I do otherwise?” Her smile turned radiant. “I am his bride.”

Bride? I struggled to keep my feet steady even as my mind reeled. What kind of beast was I dealing? I knew in that moment I must liberate her. “You are too young,” I stammered.

“The first fruits are appointed to the lord,” she responded as if by rote. “The Master of Might.”

I regained my composure. I knew that moniker. It was scrawled in ash across the Scient, the land she called Gilead. “I have heard of this Master of Might. Kraist is his name.”

She nodded. “I was very young when Kraist took me into marriage. Destiny chose me as his sister-wife.”

“Has he treated you well?” I felt I whispered but my voice must have carried.

She looked away. Had a flush tinged her cheeks? “He washed my robe pure in blood, and crowned me in virginity and pearls.”

Now choler stained my face red.

“I am happy and unharmed,” she quickly continued. “The Queen of Courtesy has settled me beneath her wing.”

I knew I must set my emotions aside. I thought furiously a moment. “They say he is a seer and a prophet. If he sent you to the river, perhaps he intended us to meet.”

Her expression turned from guilt to something bordering on shame. At first I thought she desired to flee. Then I heard a pair of metallic cracks behind me as the springs of two Domani rods locked into place. My pearl has merely served as the distraction to allow her companions to sneak into place. But how to interpret her look of remorse?

I turned to find myself confronting a trio of Kraist’s soldiers. Two gripped their anno-fiber control batons low but at the ready. The third, lingering behind, clutched a catchpole in the shape of a shepherd’s crook with a corded noose and drawstring. All three wore short, white tabards emblazoned with a staurogram in red. Like a bloody basket-handled cutlass pointing down.  That marked them a squad of Kraist’s Defensors Fidelis, his personal bodyguard. Were these my shadows through the wilderness?

Thankfully, none were armed or armored with bangsticks or transparent tower shields like his elite raiders. In my Evlar breastplate, I stood a chance.

I drew my iTanium dagger and assumed a fighting line before the skirmishers could close. I relied on the treacherous footing across the rocks to either side of the trail that led to the water to ward my flanks.

The first skirmisher advanced with his Domani rod forward. I thought he might be preparing to probe my armor for weakness until I noticed a full section of his control baton remained retracted, ready to punch through armor and then bone with a flick of his thumb.

Behind a quick series of circular parries, I gave what little ground I had to narrow his attack front and keep his companions out of distance. I resisted the urge to glance at Margarete behind me across the river but I did allow my eyes to flick away from his face briefly. That was all the water needed to allow the mustard seed of his overconfidence to blossom.

The moment I saw a smile shadow the corners of his mouth, I lunged beneath his guard.  With a lightning strike of beat parry, riposte, I scored a line of blood along his right side. A trick my wife had taught me. Though I knew the wound was surficial, I hoped it would provoke him.

It did almost faster than I could react. When I saw his backswing forming, I dropped my hand and lowered my body beneath his counterstrike. As it passed over me, I stabbed upward with my blade. The razor-sharp iTanium scraped along bone, nearly severing his thumb. He screamed as his Domani rod clattered to the ground. Reversing my balance point as I kicked back onto my line, I snatched up the control baton with my now trailing free hand.

My first opponent stumbled out from in front of me, cradling his ruined thumb to staunch the blood. He whimpered like puppy. I adjusted my stance to a Florentine style to face the second man.

This skirmisher approached warily. I exploited his hesitation to close distance and regain an extra step or two between me and the river should I need it. Too late, I realized this was a counter-tactic to draw me out to where the third man could harass me, effectively neutralizing my newly acquired offhand weapon. A mistake my wife would never have made.

Before I could rectify my error, I found myself pressed from two sides. The second man lay into a series of attacks, while the third darted in and out of my guard with the catchpole, seeking to snare either a limb or weapon within his noose.

In a press of coordinated feints, attacks and parries, I desperately tried to slice through the catchpole’s cordage and render it ineffective. The third man was fast and prepared. I had just pulled back to slip my knife hand free from being caught when I felt the iTanium grab and nick the cordage. I had no way to assess the damage before I was forced to retreat back toward the river and the relative safety between the rocks.

Now my only chance lay in defeating them in detail. The second man seemed to recognize this, too. He began a series of probes and feints to wear me down. I knew it was a delaying tactic but delaying for what? Did he have reinforcements on the way?

My answer came as I heard a skittering of pebbles among the rocks to my left. The injured first man was trying to flank me along the river. Something small and sinister lay concealed within his unbandaged hand.

I quickly swung a beat against the second man’s Domani rod and sought to readjust my facing. As I turned to gauge the distance, a malodorant stream shot forth from the first man’s hand. It struck my Evlar breastplate and splashed up onto my face, burning my eyes and searing my nose and throat.

Gasping through a veil of tears, I stumbled toward the river, escape my only thought. With neither sight nor breath, I knew this battle was lost. Half-blind, I waded into the river, my arms outstretched toward Margarete as if she alone could save me. Waist-deep, with water tugging at my legs, I felt the catchpole’s noose loop around my neck. The frayed cordage held as it yanked me back to shore.

Darkness swallowed the look of horror on Margarete’s face as the water swirled over my head.

---

I awoke to find my body swaying as if transported on rhythmic waves. My lungs were raw and sore. Had the cordage finally broken? Was I floating free downstream?

It took me a moment to orient myself and realize I was lying face down with my ribs resting on a curved, swaying platform. The smell of leather, livestock and dust quickly filled my nose.

I opened my eyes to find grass sashaying beneath me. I was slung across the back of a beast of burden, my badges of office stripped away. I struggled to rise only to find my hands and feet were tied. A captive then. The memory of Margarete’s betrayal came crashing back as I once again slumped down.

Within moments, the moke beneath me came to a rest. Two pair of hands hauled me to my feet. One each remained firmly on my shoulders.

I stood before a white pavilion perched on the grassy hilltop before the walls of the shining city. A banner fluttered from its center pole, the same staurogram that adorned the Defensors Fidelis serving as its scarlet blazonry. A man stood in the open entry in a white robe freshly stained with blood. Kraist.

He waved someone toward him, whether myself or my captors I could not say, then retired into his tent. I felt the grip on one shoulder tighten. The other guard drew forth my stolen iTanium blade and sliced through the bonds at my ankles. A shove in the small of my back sent me stumbling forward, my hands still bound before me as if in prayer.

A gravel path led to the canvas praetorium. Small, iridescent pebbles as bright as tiny pearls shone in the slanting afternoon sun among the broken shards of common stone. My leather clad feet crushed them into dust.

Surrounding the city stood row upon row of orchards, some heavy with fruit. A host of demoiselles in white gathered that bounty into woven baskets. Rapturous birdsongs no instrument could imitate filled the early evening air.

Beyond the pavilion, a gravel road led to the central of three gateways adorning this side of the shining city. Twelve shallow steps glistened like gemstones just inside the portal. Twelve levels ascended from the foundation in a perfect square. Its shining white walls rose above the orchard-strewn hillside like polished glass, running a mile and half again on each side. Strains of plucked ethereal harps notes emanated from within.

In that near distance, the city appeared so beatified and unaggressive. How could such an idyllic structure serve as the womb for all the Scient’s woes?

At the threshold to Kraist’s pavilion I hesitated to survey the space inside. The furnishings were simple yet struck me as opulent in their near perfection. A well-carpentered narrow wooden table stood to one side. Atop it lay a pewter ewer and cup, and a pewter plate piled high with bread and ripened pears.  

A scissor-folding chair stood opposite the entry, intricately constructed yet unadorned. Its arms and slide-in back shone like honey in the rays of sunlight streaming through the entrance. Tapestries and weavings carpeted the grass beneath its feet. Sweet incense wafted forth in waves.

“Welcome to Capel Hill.” Kraist beckoned me inside. “Come. Refresh yourself while we speak. I have been waiting for you.”

I stepped into the shadow and waited for my eyes to adjust. The incense nearly overwhelmed me. I swayed a moment before I steadied my resolve.

Kraist rose and poured clear liquid from the ewer into the dull chalice, offering it to me. I clutched the cold pewter in my bound hands. Kraist made a sweeping motion to the plate on the table before ensconcing himself back upon his throne.

No scent from the cup permeated the perfumed air. I took a long, deep draught. What I thought to be water transformed in my mouth to clear, sweet wine. I drank no more, instead setting the cup aside before facing him, turning my back on the remainder of his hospitality.

Kraist eyed me intently. “How have come to stand before me? Men from Gilead and the Scient are barred from crossing the river from the Citadel to the Southern part of Heaven.”

I feigned ignorance. “I did not know I trespassed. I came in search of my lost daughter. And I think I have found her. I wish to take her back.”

“You have lost nothing,” he replied almost quietly. Even though they were softly spoken, his words were infused with authority. “All fathers must eventually give up their demoiselles.”

“A daughter should not be taken from her family.” I insisted.

“Even by her beloved?” he asked, his eyebrows rising in mild surprise. “Your daughter is a rose in bloom. She would have withered without my hand.”

“No girl should gain a husband by abduction,” I shot back. “She was just beyond her infancy, incapable of being wife to any just man.”

“So you say I receive my payment unjustly?” He did not raise his voice as he steadily held my eye. “She is the Guerdon of Bright Heaven. She was promised as my bride. You forfeited her with your deeds and worries. Such is the price for access to my orchard.”

The wine fortified my resolve. “We have sampled nothing from your garden, so our familial rights remain unbound. She was stolen from us, her absence masked as death. My wife gave her life defending her.”

“Your valedictor signed a contract,” he replied dismissively. “Your people were allowed to prosper until they transgressed against it. Why should you complain now?”

My mind reeled. What had Velim Faustina done? “I was party to no agreement with Repugnikratia.” His expression clouded when I voiced that name.

“You Demokins always try to seize a greater fortune than belongs to you. You arrive at the eleventh hour and demand a full day’s wage.” Anger crept into his voice. His face reddened. He looked as if he might set the contents of the tent askew. And just as suddenly it passed. “And I shall grant it. Yet first you must work for me.”

“Why would I consider that?” I asked, defiant.

“Because your daughter has pledged herself in body, mind and spirit. Greater mysteries await her but only if you yield. If not, perhaps I will allow her to become my bride in deed as well as word, as is her most fervent desire. From that day, she would remain cloistered. You would never look upon her face again.”

I stared at him aghast. I could not believe even he was such a monster as to make good upon that threat. “She is just a little girl,” I whispered, pleading.

He stared back at me openly. His eyes were soft and sad, almost piteous. We stood in silence a moment before he asked, “Did you see the gateway to the city as you approached?”

I nodded, uncertain where he was taking this sudden turn of our conversation.

He arose and walked behind his seat. He pulled back a panel of the pavilion and motioned me over. When I stood beside him, he pointed to the city through the gap.

“Each gate is inscribed with the names of all the girls who have found their way to me. They call themselves my sister-wives. They are glorified around every portal into the city. They know no jealousy. They are bound together by their common desire to please me any way they can.”

He gazed out wistfully.

“One day, twelve thousand names will adorn each of a dozen gates. One hundred and forty four thousand pearls, none different from your Margarete. Each of their names will be scribed into the Book of Life. And that day, the prophecy will be fulfilled.”

I thought about trying to kill him in that moment. Just wrapping my bound hands around his neck and squeezing his throat until life fully fled him. I knew I could crush it before his guards could pry me away. But I hesitated, thinking about what would happen to Margarete. I could not let my actions spell her doom, not after I had been reunited her, however briefly.

By the time I realized that path might be the better one, the moment slipped away. Kraist let the panel drop back in place and walked across the tent toward the entrance, leaving me in stunned silence in his wake.

He paused there a moment, haloed by the crepuscular sunlight streaming through the opening.

“There are many manors in my Father's empire. I go to prepare a place for Margarete.” His eyes pierced to deep within me as if he had read my mind. “I will prepare one for you nearby as well. Bring me the Balm of Gilead and I will return her to you unaltered.”

Unhurried, he departed, leaving me to wrestle with my thoughts alone in the falling twilight. Just outside the tent, he issued instructions to his guards.

---

Ill fortune befell me that day at your mound, Margarete. Once again bowed with grief among rapeseed, I am stretched across your grave, longing only to lie here forever. Either to be reunited like Kraist foretells or be relieved of the burden of my vows. I know it is mad to strive against him, but I also know I must somehow resist his will. Through my love for you, my daughter, and my inaction, how many others have I condemned to your fate?

The heretical priest emerges from Capel Sion to fortify me with sacramental wine and bread. Two Defensors Fidelis stand watchful sentinel nearby. I rise to face him but only make it to my knees before defeat settles over me like a rain of ashes once again.

The bread he offers tastes like it has moldered, the wine now tastes like blood. As I choke down this final repast before I embark upon another journey, the priest whispers Kraist’s final words like a catechism in my ear.

“Grant us this man become Kraist’s servant and suffer the little children, innocent and undefiled,” the priest intones. “Verily, let him bring our lord the Balm of Gilead and delight him with precious pearls.”

If that’s what it takes to save you, Margarete, so be it. So say all men.


© 2015 Edward P. Morgan III