Apr 10, 2019 | Blog - Mary Marcus
Nate had been teaching Tatiana how to practice yoga. Because of her own need for unobstructed space, Tatiana’s uncluttered apartment was a great place to lay down a mat. Her practice was really coming along. Her dog Lancelot, the black poodle, seemed to like seeing her moving from up dog to down dog, and being a genius, often did a down dog along next to her. If she forgot to roll up the mat, it would become the black poodle’s favorite sprawl place. Whenever he looked up and saw Lancelot on the mat, her great black poodle smiled at him.
Photo: Joel Goodman
How does a blind person learn how to practice yoga? The same way a blind person learns how to do anything physical: concentration, skill and determination.
Nate had been Tatiana’s sexual surrogate. They had fallen in love as it happened, but Nate had refused to see her anymore. He was married and loved his wife. Then Nate’s wife’s mother got sick. And she went back East to care for her. It was open ended because his wife worked on her computer anywhere. As much as he hated admitting it—he liked his mother-in-law—it had been a Godsend. Tatiana was the loveliest, funniest, sexiest woman he had ever met. He was totally hooked on her. It was wrong. He would end it. But not now.
“Should I keep my mask on when you take me to your class?” she had asked playfully that morning when he suggested it.
“Up to you!”
“What do they look like to you, where my eyes used to be?”
He told her the truth. “They look like where your eyes used to be.”
“You’re not used to them yet, I can tell, your body gives off a fear. Your hand changes temperature.”
“That’s my problem, not yours. I’m not as brave as you. I still have some issues I’d like to deal with in my own soul. Maybe where your eyes were will help me do that.”
Tatiana took his hand up and drew it to her mouth. He liked to see her this way in the morning, her pale skin, without make up, her hair a little messy. She was wearing his favorite jeweled glasses as she had sensed rightly, he still needed a little help with her blank spaces. At least he did this Sunday morning.
“So, I’m taking you to class. You’ll be my guest, and I’ll put you in front near me in a safe place by the window. It’s not a challenging class; you can do everything you’ve learned with me. And we can take Lance and put him next to you.”
Tatiana smiled. “Linda will be here in twenty minutes. She’ll help me get dressed. I want to wear a beautiful outfit to my first public yoga class. Maybe you can walk Lance while I get ready.”
…
On that same Sunday morning, Lady suggested when they woke up, to go to Nate’s yoga class. It was just a week after Lady had taken Blue to the mountains. They were still together. Lady never asked him if he had a job; Lady never asked him about his past; Blue went back to his little apartment above the antique store, to check in, to change clothes, not that he had a lot of clothes to change into, but it gave him space.
He never asked Lady anything much either. They ate the simple meals she made, or went out to easy places where she laid down her card. They ate, they walked down to the ocean and looked at the sunset, they made love and they did big puzzles. He discovered he had a knack for them. One thing he always bought was their cappuccino, though he avoided his favorite place because he was worried about Endless. Endless who had hired him to kill Nate. Endless who had tried to reach him on the mountain, but who now seemed to have vanished like a bad dream.
Presently Lady and Blue were walking up Montana toward the studio. And then up the stairs to the second floor. Both of them checked in. Blue was glad to see his yoga card had not been cancelled. He had been worried about that. He still liked maintaining the fiction that he had something of his own. And in fact he still had a hundred dollars on his grocery card at the Whole Food market. If Endless wanted to come for him, he thought, Endless can come. It was the first week in Blue’s life he had lived in happiness. If Endless was going to send him to jail as he had threatened, when he laid down his government ID, so be it.
Students with mats under their arms were filing in the class. A mix of people from the young with great bodies, to the middle aged, striving to hang on. A half dozen fat girls with shapely bodies and quite a few middle aged men. Blue grew excited to be here. He missed Nate, not that he had much to miss, just the idea of a friendship that might have been. But that was something.
They put their mats down close together in the front row. Then, Nate came in. The class quieted down immediately. Nate had by the arm one of the most beautiful women Blue had ever seen. She was in shiny black from head to toe. Her body was spectacular. Her breasts pushed up seductively in the tight yoga top. On a metal pull that looked like a bicycle lock was a pure
black poodle with a service vest. Blue got it. The gorgeous chick was blind. She had on dark glasses for a reason.
Now Nate was standing next to him and Lady. He placed the gorgeous blind chick’s mat down next to Blue. He leaned over and touched Blue on the arm.
“Blue! This is my friend Tatiana. This is her first public class.”
The blind chick smiled and nodded formally. Her dog curled up in the corner to stand guard. Lady reached out and introduced herself to the blind woman.
“I’m Lady,” she told her. “My friend Blue will be next to you, and I’ll be next to him. Namaste!”
God, Blue loved Lady for that Namaste…
“Namaste, everyone,” Nate called out. “Let’s find a comfortable cross-legged position.” Nate who had the most angelic smile on his face. Nate who looked ten years old.
There were maybe thirty people in the class. The room was absolutely quiet. Blue saw Nate look toward the door. Somebody was coming in late. And Nate’s baby face was changing from happiness to something else…
Blue turned. Lady turned. Now Blue looked back to Nate who was still frowning. The blind chick who had been smiling all aglow was doing something really weird. She was sniffing. And her poodle was sitting up alert, ready to her command.
It was Endless, of course. He was holding a brown paper bag, and looking around. Blue sprung to his feet, ran to the back of the room and tackled Endless to the ground.
The black dog was now beside him. Blue didn’t know what happened first, the sharp blow to his head, or the cry of Endless, as the black dog tore into his leg.
The world went black.
by 
Mar 27, 2019 | Blog - Mary Marcus
On Saturday morning, Lady unpacks her Lady Smith .38 from her purse and decides not to kill the man who took her virginity all those years ago, not tonight anyway. Instead, she texts him she has to break the date they had planned (their fourth) and she’d be in touch next week. Lady had insinuated herself into his life and now the former cherry popper is halfway in love with her. He texts back an emoticon crying. To keep buttering him up, she texts back the one with the hands praying.
Tough shit. Let him suffer. After that, she texts Blue from yoga, who she’s hot for and invites him to dinner.
“Wanna go skiing or to Nate’s class?” she asks the next morning. “I haven’t seen you there lately, are you still practicing?”
Blue loves the “practicing.” It makes him feel part of something bigger than himself. As for Nate, whom he has been hired to kill, he still can’t face it. Even with Endless showing up, pointing at his watch, appearing in the doorway of the café where he gets his morning cappuccino. Endless whom he thinks of as the devil or the Angel of Death. Why does Endless want Nate dead? Once upon a time, Blue would not have cared for reasons why. Killing was necessary from time to time. But killing Nate actually feels like a sin.
Photo: Joel Goodman
Blue’s exposure to sin began in reform school decades ago and continued on to prison with the chaplains, the Rabbis and the various members of the cloth who bring with them canned goodness as fake as the canned meat they serve inside.
Since his last stint, in the first decade of the new century, yoga had entered the prison system–at least it had in California—where Blue had spent some time. There, as he had told Nate, when they had coffee together and were forming a friendship before Endless showed up and cut that off… “I practiced inside,” he had told his yoga teacher.
“Good place to practice yoga!” Nate had replied without a trace of sarcasm.
And in fact Nate was right. The guys who did yoga got out sooner than the ones who pumped or jumped or lay around doing nothing. Practicing yoga inside had saved him in more ways than one.
Yoga had brought Lady into his life. And she, thank God, was as far away from ways to kill someone as he could imagine. Lady, Blue loved the name, and that she wasn’t a lady in the sack, but had a lot of class nonetheless. Lady: her straight brown hair, thin and silky, the lines around her mouth and green eyes, the short clean nails cut like a child’s.
“Cat got your tongue, young man?”
Lady lets her smooth leg rub against his.
“Not going to Nate these days, but don’t know how to ski, babe, besides my car’s in the shop.”
Car’s in the shop is a phrase he has not used since two lifetimes ago when he actually owned a car. No use going into that now.
“I’ll drive, we’ll go to Big Bear. I have ski clothes but we’ll rent you everything you need. It’s on me, my treat!”
“Well, if that’s the case,” he smiles and rolling over on her. “Let me treat you first, my Lady.”
….
Sure it was sort of corny with the tourist stops, the restaurants, the souvenirs, the cheesy motels that but for snow looked like any other no count tourist traps he’d seen across the country. But the mountains in snow, so pure, so white, are a miracle. Blue’s uplifted by the sun shining on the trees, the trees exuding light, the look on the faces of the kids snowboarding down the mountain. This, he decides is some kind of heaven.
Endless’ pinched face, his small hole of a mouth, the stubby arms with its expensive watch on the left hand, keep appearing in his mind’s eye. Blue is halfway expecting his nemesis to show up here in Big Bear, just as he’d appeared at the café with Nate, at the beach when he was sitting on a bench with Lady.
Lady’s outfit is black and red, his own, blue because she laughingly wanted him to wear the color of his eyes and his name.
Sparks were flying between them all during the drive from Santa Monica up the mountain trails, from eight lanes to two lanes, Blue feels liberated to be out of LA, though his two small rooms above the antique shop are the only home he has known in more than fifteen years. If keeping that space—yes that holy space, fuck it—depends on him killing Nate, then he’d pay the price, though he knows, because he knows, his own days are numbered if he does what Endless wants. Fucking Endless.
Lady helps Blue with the skis. And insists he wear a helmet like she has on. She playfully pulls his ponytail that hangs down the back of it.
“We look like nerds, but so what?” she tells him. “Everybody wears helmets now.”
Blue is looking down now after his first lesson. “I get it!” he tells Lady. But poised now at the top of the little slope, fear overtakes him. His stomach drops, his balance begins to teeter. He grabs Lady’s gloved hand.
“I’m chicken shit!” he confesses. “You go. I’ll watch you!”
She soars gracefully down the bunny slope weaving this way and that. A snow angel in black and red.
She reaches the bottom of the little hill. She glides back up making her slow way smiling now by his side, a black shadow against the snow.
“It’s easy! If you fall, you fall!”
She nudges him forward, “Lean into it…”
Suddenly it’s really happening. He glides past a tree, a snowboard whizzes by, he shouts out in joy. Joy and prayer. Never has he uttered a prayer. Not even in his darkest days, not in a stinking cell, or being whipped by one of his dads, or in solitary, or on his many icy nights on the street when the cold came in to formally take him away.
Then without warning he falls. Falls right on his face, his skis splayed. In a flash Lady is by his side, smiling, bringing with her the lightest sprinkling of snow glittering against the blue sky. She offers him her hand; he takes it and pulls her down in the snow on top of him.
As they laugh and kiss, he’s surging with happiness. A phrase from an old rock song his twin brother used to play over and over sings in his head, “In the presence of the Lord…”
I won’t kill Nate, he thinks. I won’t kill anyone ever again.
“Blue,” Lady says and rolls off. “Blue your phone is ringing.” Blue puts his hand in his pocket around the sleek instrument. He knows who is calling. He doesn’t need to look at his phone…
Fucking Endless.
The characters in this story also appear in Hot Water, A New Man, The First, The Safe Zone, Aftermath, Blinded by the Light, New Year, A Meeting of Minds, and Stumbling Block.
by
Mar 11, 2019 | Blog - Mary Marcus
Endless knows something is up the instant he steps in the door of Tatiana’s apartment on a grey day in February. Here on one of the highest floors in Westwood, with the huge plate glass windows facing west above the Veteran’s Administration complex, the sky is greyish and the air is thick. The green of the VA is indistinct; other lower buildings are just smudges; a mixture of smog and fog. When his cell phone tells him the air quality is moderate, he knows it means the air is shit. His eyes are red and he can’t breathe so well.
Was it his imagination or did the doorman downstairs give him a funny look a few minutes ago, as if he wasn’t welcome? Usually he waves him through but today he ostentatiously calls before Endless is allowed to ride up. When he tries the door it’s locked, usually it’s unlocked. He doesn’t like that feeling. Tatiana unsmilingly greets him, dressed very plainly in jeans and a white shirt. No lipstick, no rouge, and she’s sporting her unadorned dark glasses with the black plastic frames, which means she’s in a serious mood. With her black hair, her very white skin and pale lips, she looks like a vampire, another turn on. Everything about Tatiana turns him on. Obviously her assistant hasn’t come today to do her makeup. Lancelot, the poodle, with his bright black hair and jeweled collar looks more noticeably groomed than she is.
Photo: Joel Goodman
“Sit, Greg,” she tells him, as if he’s the dog. The poodle is sprawled luxuriously on the couch beside her. Endless reaches for Tatiana’s long pretty hand. She gently withdraws it, and moves away. She takes a little time before she says,
“I like you, I even trust you, and I was seriously considering marrying you, but I can’t.”
Endless isn’t surprised.
“Is it because of him—that yoga teacher?”
“Yes and no.”
“I knew you were in love with him. Even when you said yes to me, you were still thinking about him.”
Tatiana sits there, a blind statue. Endless sticks out his tongue at her and shoots her the bird with both hands, a minor release.
“Tatiana you’re one of the smartest women I’ve ever met, and yet you’re in love with a guy you pay to give you sex lessons?”
“I told you in the beginning about him. It was very helpful. And of course Nate refuses to take money from me now.”
Money won’t do that New Age twat any good where he’s going, Endless tells himself. Maybe Blue already did the job. If everything goes smoothly maybe he’ll also have Blue bump off Tatiana’s brother—then she’d have nobody. But himself, of course.
Although he will never mention Nate again once he’s dead, he can’t help saying now, “He took your money once. You’ll always have that between you.”
He watches Tatiana’s mouth grow hard. “In any event,” she continues, her slightly accented English growing more ESL by the moment, “Explain, please, why it is your business whom I pay? If we were to marry, do you think you could inflict this sort of monetary inquisition on me?”
“Tatiana, darling, I would never do that! You’re rich. I’m rich. That’s one of the great things about us. We don’t need each other’s money.”
A lie of course. Other than his share of the rents he collects for his father’s properties, he has nothing other than the apartment where he lives, and his father owns that too.
He sees Tatiana is thinking about this. Her head very still, her hand reaching for the dark glasses, and then the moment he waits for, when she draws them off and sets them down on the table in front of her, not feeling around, as though she could see exactly where she was putting them.
She turns to confront him with her indescribable face, the two dark gashes where the eyes had been, the prominent bones below them, the perfect eyebrows shaped and plucked. It is a face that could illicit horror and anxiety, but in his own case, lust.
He did not know it had a name until just a few years ago when he looked it up on the Internet. The gashes excite him. He loves her blank dead places; the helplessness that comes with it, the isolation she feels, the absolute darkness she lives in. For a while before he met her, he had a long affair with a woman in a wheelchair. She had turned him on too. But nothing close to what he feels for Tatiana. Her being beautiful and rich doesn’t hurt, but the eyes, as they say, have it. He had encouraged her since the beginning to feel free not to be covered up when he’s around. It was one of their early bonds.
“So you called me over to tell me it’s off? You don’t even want to be friends?”
“Why are you getting up, Greg? I’d like to talk to you about this so you understand.”
He heads toward the window to escape the keenness of her other senses, overcome with desire for her, he has to take care of it right now.
“What are you doing, I can hear you breathing!”
He pants loudly as he comes, and then quietly zips his fly, covering the noise by saying.
“It’s so polluted out, the damn air. I drove here with the top down. I forgot my asthma medication.”
“Poor Greg, come here, sit down. We can come to some sort of understanding.”
“Ok, I’m just going to get a kombucha from the kitchen.”
He returns and very softly moves the dark glasses from their accustomed spot, covering the sound by loudly putting his glass down. A line from a long ago Sunday school class enters his head. Thou shalt not curse the deaf nor put a stumbling block before the blind.
She’s fumbling now for her glasses, she likes to put them on and take them off. Her hands are sweeping the table; she’s beginning to panic.
“Tatiana, let me help you!”
“No! I want to help myself!”
Her hand knocks the glass over and she cries out.
“Don’t worry,” he says, “I’ll clean this up.”
She sinks back into the sofa and reaches for her poodle who begins to growl softly.
Tatiana sighs. “We can be friends. You can come here. We can go to the ocean and sit on the bench. We can drive with the top down and the wind in our faces. But I won’t marry you. And we’re not having sex anymore.”
That’s what you think…
The characters in Stumbling Block, appear and reappear in Blinded by the Light; New Year; A New Man, and A Meeting of Minds.
by
Feb 25, 2019 | Blog - Mary Marcus
Lady
“What’s your name? I might have asked before, but I forgot.”
“I’m calling myself Lady these days.” What I don’t say is “after my Lady Smith revolver” that I keep it in my underwear drawer.
“Lady,” smiles my handsome friend. “If you’re Lady I wanna be the Tramp.”
We both smile.
We had met at yoga. We both like Nate who goes slowly, doesn’t blast you with constant oldies-but-goodies or even worse, fake spiritual crap. We had walked out together twice and chatted. Now we are having cappuccino, his treat. That’s the first step in the dating ritual. Cappuccino and then if the spark is there, a date soon after in the evening. I’d been through dozens of variations of this dance since my divorce, but had abandoned all such activities once the dark arm of the angel of death, the big C, had appeared and just as mysteriously disappeared like a miasma of smoke that clears after the bomb goes off. I’m in remission. But for how long?
Photo: Joel Goodman
Until this handsome classmate sidled up next to me after class, the only thing on my mind has been another man, one who haunts my days, and appears in my fantasies and often my dreams. I’d even tracked him down and seduced him. And he’d liked it. Had I liked it? Certainly I’d enjoyed that my motivations were unknown to him, just as his had been unknown to me back when I was young, sweet and naive. His hobby I discovered later was popping cherries then saying cheerio, so to speak. It was a long time ago, but the night is seared in my memory. He did what he wanted and vanished.
Looking at this gentle man across from me, I know he would never do such a thing to a girl. That night, so long ago, became a sort of template for my future relationships, meaning I learned to suck it up young and expect the worst – and blame myself when it didn’t work out. I could never get back all those years, those feelings I lost, because I had to squash them down. Squash them down and let them rot inside me. No wonder I had gotten the big C.
“And you? What’s your name?” I ask my handsome yoga friend who smiles.
His teeth aren’t very white. I like the off-color teeth. It is like a slap in the face to the prevailing zeitgeist. Should I tell him this? When you are single and “out there” you have to be very careful with big words. Big words intimidate men and sometimes women too. But fuck it. This last act of my life is just for me. I can say all the big words I want.
“So?” I’m still smiling
“I’m Blue,” he tells me, “like the color…”
Blue
It’s been three weeks since Endless showed up. Already Blue feels at home in the two small neat rooms above the antique shop. He’s grown accustomed to the food cards, the yoga pass, though he’s still in awe of the wonderful cappuccino he gets to drink every single day here at the café on Montana. He has stopped being friends with Nate, the yoga teacher, because naturally that’s whom Endless wants gone. It makes him almost sick thinking of it. Why the fuck do the good always have to die young?
This woman, Lady, and she is a lady, feels like icing on the cake of his new life. He likes her, she doesn’t push his buttons. He knows right away when his buttons are pushed. She’s smart; she has a sense of humor. He supposes they are around the same age, with maybe a couple of years more for her.
Blue has sought her out, even though he’s supposed to be figuring out how to off Nate, or as he told himself last night, help him leave the planet for a better place. He thought of that phrase last night as he lay in bed, waiting for sleep inside his nice clean bed, near the window with the moon and street lights outside, even the telephone wires that kind of hiss are sweet sounds to him. The sounds of being out of prison: bits of polite conversation, a laugh, one made without someone getting kicked or punched or reamed or slammed into solitary. Prison makes the hair on the back of your neck stand on end at the sound of laughter, and even the sound of tears. For a man, anger and
tears are a dangerous combination.
Still, Blue is getting used to the idea. Endless has told him he can stay here for a while in the new life. They want him to stay in place. That’s fine with him. A life like this, with his needs met, suits him just fine. On one of his earliest runs, he’d had a house, a car, and then of course he lost it all at the tables. Or maybe they’re just shitting him. The hit man is often the next to go.
“I’d like to see the ocean, would you?”
“Yes,” Lady replies, and takes a last sip and wipes her mouth not so daintily then blows her nose. He likes her forthrightness. Nothing phony about Lady. My Lady he feels like saying.
They take the ten blocks west at a fair clip, not talking much, past stores that sell nothing and fancy salons that promise straight hair or no hair. Does Lady wax it all off? He hopes not.
Halfway there he takes her firm warm hand and she squeezes it back, with just the right kind of squeeze. How does she know how to do everything right? Probably she leaves just a little.
The weather has been cool lately, cool and often there is rain, unusual for southern California. They get to the ocean at five forty-five, just as the beautiful sky is lit with the sunset. It really does look like a ball of fire about to drop in the water. Colors he’s never registered before are registering now: the grays near the blues, the light purples and the bits of orange. Best of all are the rosy clouds that are starting to lose the light.
Blue leans toward her, their heads touch for a moment, he closes his eyes.
He opens them to a now familiar voice. Endless, who is standing in front of them is asking for the time. Endless, holding his watch up, smiling sweetly to Lady, “I think my watch has stopped.”
Fucking Endless.
Blue stares back mildly, but inside he’s roiling. Endless – maybe Endless is the one who has to go – not Nate. He wonders if he could pull it off – killing a Federal agent…
Blue smiles sweetly at Lady and then at Endless, “No problem.”
The characters in this story also appear in Hot Water, Safe Zone, Christmas Eve, New Year, Blinded by the Light, A New Man, The First and Aftermath.
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Feb 14, 2019 | Blog - Mary Marcus
“What are you calling yourself now?”
He takes in the blond guy, who looks like a lot of forty-something year old men who make good money, maybe go to Vegas for their kicks, have a wife, kids, an affair or two. His mind races around the fact that the guy knows all about him, has been following him for some time, has mentioned his twin. Has also mentioned the woman who died some months ago, and the one who had not on Christmas Eve. He’s busted. The blond guy’s next few words confirm it:
“We’re guessing you don’t want to go back inside, do you?”
He shakes his head, trying not to appear guilty. “I’ve been calling myself Blue. Like the color.”
The blond guy’s own blue eyes take him in. “Blue, it suits you. I like it.”
Photo: Joel Goodman
His mother had named him Steve. Not Steven just Steve. He never liked that name. His twin had gotten the far better name, Anthony. Anthony and Steve, identical twins, one good as gold, the other, a bad ass from the get go.
“So, what’s your name as long as we’re getting personal?”
“For now it’s Greg Endless. Would you like to see my ID?”
“Not unless you want to show it to me.”
This makes Endless smile.
Endless had been following him for a couple of days. He was there when he came out of the shelter. He was there when he did some panhandling in Beverly Hills in the Neiman Marcus parking lot, one of his favorite spots. He was even there when he walked off the metro, at the last stop in Santa Monica under an umbrella in the pouring rain, wearing one of those old fashioned trench coats, collar turned up, like a man in gangster movie.
About an hour ago, on the first bright day in a week, when the sky is the blue of postcards, and the trees a deep primal green, Endless quietly approaches and asks him to have a cup of coffee.
He and Endless are now sitting in the corner of a stylish café in Santa Monica. The coffee he had just enjoyed, in a small cup, made the shit at Starbucks taste like swill. His time inside, his time on the street hadn’t adulterated his innate good taste. He knows—without having a lot of experience of it—what good food and drink is. He appreciates it and wants more in his life. Could he afford to, he’d have the cappuccino they served here three times a day.
“We’d like you to do a job for us.”
“You don’t look like a cop. FBI?”
“Not exactly,” Endless replies. “It’s complicated—national security.”
“Can I get another one of these? As long as you’re paying?”
“Yeah, but get it to go…”
II
Blue now has a clean furnished room above a shop that sells antiques, on the trendiest street in Santa Monica, a couple of blocks from the café where he enjoys his morning coffee, wearing decent looking sweats, good sneakers. His soft thick hair is clean and cut and tied back in a pony tail with another clean band. He has soap, shampoo, socks, underwear, pots and pans. Right away Endless had handed him store cards for the Whole Food market, for a restaurant a few blocks from here, and a pass for the yoga studio across from the market.
“I get it,” Blue had told Endless. “You want me to off someone.”
Endless merely shrugged his shoulders.
“We know you liked yoga when you were inside. I’d try Nate’s class.” He handed Blue a sheet with a schedule on it and certain classes highlighted.
Probably they wanted Blue super cool before he did their dirty work for them.
“Piece of cake, Mr. Endless.”
III
“Welcome to class Blue!” This from the pretty girl behind the desk when ever she sees him.
The teacher Endless suggested is great. Who would have thought? Nate is around his own age, and is funny. His clothes no better than Blue’s maybe a little worse. He has an innocence Blue admires, something like his own twin brother. This teacher seems to like him, his twin never did—always looked at him a little scared. Was Blue learning to act like a rich shit head, or was the teacher just naturally hip? What did it matter? Outside had always been sweet, but never this sweet. Whatever he had to do for Endless would be worth it.
Within a couple of weeks or so, Blue could feel himself calmer, his anger not boiling up inside, even slipping away, like a heavy coat that has fallen off his shoulders on the first warm day. With a place to live, a place to have coffee, clean food to eat, and now this yoga practice that suits him in every way.
Updog, Downdog, Triangle, Half Moon; he’s getting better at the transitions. He can go from Tree pose, to holding his leg out almost straight. He vows he’ll learn how to stand on his head.
His teacher Nate gives him the thumbs up.
His second week, after class, the two of them end up walking on Montana Avenue.
“How long have you been practicing?”
Without thinking Blue replies, “I practiced for a couple of years in prison. A while ago.”
The teacher nods. “Good place to learn yoga.” No sarcasm in his voice, just acceptance. Blue has a warm rush of unaccustomed pleasure in his chest, like someone is patting his heart then rubbing his chest.
Nate says, “Looks like things are going ok now?”
“So far, so good,” Blue replies. And seeing where they are, at the café where he comes every morning, Blue asks, “Hey, Nate, let me buy you a cappuccino?”
Inside, the place is almost empty, not like the rush and the line he’s gotten used to in the morning.
“Sit,” Blue says, “Cappuccino, macchiato?” Blue’s always been an excellent mimic, and he’s enjoying the foreign names, knowing he’s saying them as exactly as the guy who makes them does.
Nate smiles. “I’ll have a chai, they make great chai here!”
Blue is enjoying himself, being host. Glad to be in the company of the yoga teacher he likes, feeling almost proud to have a friend, it’s obvious the dude could be his friend. How long has it been since he had a real friend?
Someone once during his first time in juvenile detention… a lifetime ago.
He places his order, watching the barista expertly fill his cup, and then do something different with the chai Nate has ordered.
He puts a dollar in the tip jar. Why not? Cups and saucers in both hands, he turns and heads toward the table.
It is then, he sees Endless standing at the door, sun behind him, partly in shadow. Endless who tilts his head very slightly indicating Nate. Nate, whose back is turned to the door. Endless makes the faintest gesture of his pointer finger across his throat, and then vanishes as swiftly as he appeared.
Fuck, It’s him…. do I hafta? Not him. Anybody but him.
*The characters in this story appear and reappear in Hot Water, Safe Zone, Blinded By The Light, Christmas Eve and New Year.
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Jan 28, 2019 | Blog - Mary Marcus
We had just made love in the afternoon, in the big king size bed in the master bedroom facing the back where huge trees, none of them palms, a rarity in Los Angeles, had been growing for decades. And where there was a rose garden with mature roses, a little bench, a fountain, quite a set up for a “lonely bachelor” as he called himself when he showed me around the place. Actually, since I’d done my research: he’d been married and divorced four times, and had grown children. Was he close with any of them? Was he generous with his money? Did he love them? Did they love him?
I knew it was going to happen today, because I was going to make it happen today. And, after all, we are consenting adults: I am early fifties, he sixty-three. He’s pretending to be around fifty now. There’s a prescription for the pills in his medicine chest—I checked that out when I went in to pee forty minutes ago. He had done the same five minutes before that. The pill takes a quarter hour or so to activate. It says so right on the label. Sounds like a missile about to launch, doesn’t it? As in, ready set… I felt like asking him, “Are you seeing blue?” That’s one of the side effects.
Photo: Joel Goodman
It was my freshman year of college. We met at a mixer. I had half a dozen real dates with him before he did the dirty deed. He wooed, he tickled, he licked, he caressed, he bought dinner, he discussed, made sure the proper birth control was in place. On the night when “it” happened, he moved in for the kill swiftly, like a cat, total focus, breath drawn in. I remember opening my eyes with him above me, the terror of the thrust itself—the pain—then he moved off the body, got dressed and drove the corpse home, still dripping.
I came from a strict, religious family. It wasn’t anything like today: no Internet, no helpful sex education, no cell phones, it was a simpler time.
I was the only virgin in the dorm, my most experienced friend had told me to get it “out of the way.”
I didn’t get it, that I was going to get deflowered and dumped and that’s what it was all about. His game. I certainly thought I’d see him again. I didn’t see him again until after three weeks of wondering what happened and no phone call. I saw him at a mixer going through the same motions with a girl he had gone through with me. I watched him from the dark fringes of the room, music blasting, coming in on her. I did what I always do when something pierces me to the very core. I simply went dead, zoned out.
Left my body.
It wasn’t until years later, after I married, after I had children, and after the children were grown, when I was getting my hair done, and the young girl who was working on me told me about the ring she was wearing. “My father gave it to me. We had a ceremony, I pledged my virginity to him.” When I looked at her trying not to gasp, she said, “In our religion, we have a ceremony and our father gives us a ring. Then when we get married, we take off that ring and our husbands give us another.”
“They hand you off!” I was fascinated.
And then I realized what had happened to me all those years ago and what had happened to the others, I’m sure there were dozens of us.
This person who had just made love to me, and nicely too—had once been an assiduous cherry popper: an ancient ritual, as old as man and woman themselves!
Soon after, my own long marriage ended. My children left home. I had a short and very unpleasant brush with death. And decided since I was in remission, what I’d do with my remaining time.
We lived in the same town, after all, different neighborhoods, his much more plush. I found myself obsessed with killing the man who took my virginity like that. Yes, to get even with him. Do something to him. Why? Because he deserved it. I could probably even get away with it.
I bought a pretty little gun, a Smith and Wesson “Lady Smith”. The salesman assured me it would be lethal if the need arose. They were so helpful at the gun range and I learned to master the recoil and hit the target.
Last week I made a first attempt. I made an appointment pretending I was a journalist. He’s famous enough to have not thought it weird. But I chickened out.
Today I came back, seduced him, and he swallowed a pill that did or did not make him see blue, and here we are…
I’m not going to kill him today, I didn’t even bring my little lady gun. But I’m going to break his heart before I break his neck, or do something really awful to him. The bastard. He deserves it.
“That was wonderful,” I said, stroking his arm. “You’re such a stud, so manly!” I saw him smile in the dying light of the afternoon. The gloaming the English call it.
I got up. Went for my clothes, and heard him asking, “Don’t go, stay. We’ll have dinner!” And at the door his rapt expression, “When can I see you again?”
“Soon,” I replied. “Very soon.” And I closed the door firmly.
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