When it became grimly obvious to Greg Endless that Blue simply wasn’t going to kill Nate, the yoga teacher his ex-girlfriend Tatiana was in love with, he was mad with a rage fueled by his nagging, unremitting lust. One made worse by the knowledge that Nate was practically living there in Tatiana’s airy Westwood high-rise. Greg was relegated to the position of trusted friend, meanwhile Nate got to fuck her and worse than that, see where her eyes used to be.
Photo: Joel Goodman
His plan had been simple and god dammit, his plan should have worked: find a homeless man, set him up, give him a gun, and make him do the dirty work. When he approached Blue the first time, Endless—because he couldn’t help himself—pretended he was a government agent. He had pretended the same thing when he met Nate. Easy to get false ID, easy to fabricate an elaborate story. How was the homeless man or Nate for that matter, to know he was telling the truth or making up a bunch of lies? Endless alluded to some crimes Blue had committed: murder, theft, and had watched Blue’s face. Bingo! A deal was struck.
He set Blue up in one of the apartments his father owned on Montana, a couple of rooms above an antique shop, gave him a few food cards, a pass at the yoga studio where Nate, the beloved of Tatiana worked, and promised him once the deed was done, he’d give Blue cash to just split. He passed on to him a small revolver he had purchased from an LAX baggage handler some years ago.
This morning, knowing Blue was out; he had let himself into Blue’s apartment and found the little gun he had given him. It should have been a breeze, but it was instead, a tropical storm, a hurricane, a tornado and in the end this morning, a tsunami. Endless burst into the yoga studio on Sunday morning, and the next thing he knew, he was hitting his own hired executioner over the head with the gun. A micro second later, Tatiana’s fucking poodle was sinking his teeth into his calf. Endless, bleeding from the leg, fled down the stairs, and hid behind some dumpsters edged with a thick stand of timber bamboo until the police arrived at the studio. They went up the stairs and Endless split.
It was night now. Endless was in his car heading north on the 101. He was happy to see that the Amber Alert was for a missing child not him. Though no doubt, the police were looking for a man of his description with a bleeding dog bite on his calf.
Nate knew who he was. Tatiana had caused them to meet. Blue certainly knew who he was, and Lance, Tatiana’s dog—had ripped open his calf. Tatiana, being blind, wasn’t exactly a prime witness. Though she could identify him if she wanted to. It wasn’t safe to stay in town. It wasn’t safe to try and off Nate. Nate was high up in the sky with Tatiana doing the things Endless himself would never get to do again.
His leg had stopped bleeding hours ago, but now it was swelling beneath the bandage he had wrapped around his calf. By evening, it was bursting through his khakis. He had to use his pocketknife to rip open his pants. He wouldn’t have rabies, because Lancelot didn’t have rabies. But an animal bite is painful and it felt infected.
Maybe it would be easier to just give up. Pull over on the road and die. His parents were in Europe. He had no real friends. Tatiana didn’t want him, and his hired assassin refused to do what he had been hired to do.
Somewhere outside of Malibu, just before Ventura County, he stopped the car on the side of the road, and crossed over to the ocean side.
The moon was shining on the water, though the air was clear, it was easy to see on account of the lights from the coast highway and the brightness of the sand. It hurt to walk, his bitten leg throbbing, but he made himself carry on.
He sat down on a rock embankment, because his bad leg was throbbing so intensely. The sound of the waves crashing to shore, the cold wind by the ocean felt good to his feverish body.
He closed his eyes. And must have fallen off for a moment. It was very dark now; just a little light from the ocean, but the moon had slid behind a sudden bank of clouds.
He thought of his beloved Tatiana, in a world so black, so dark, and was suddenly sorry for the fascination her empty eye sockets brought him, remembering now how often he had pleasured himself in her presence but never really cared about pleasuring her. He knew it was his own darkness, his own lack that fed his obsession with her. He wanted forgiveness: hers, a god’s, anyone.
A sound from behind him began to build, when he was totally aware of it, the sound was immense, the roar of the ocean, and now this oceanic arfing. On the beach in front of him were an army of seals, rows of them, making their peculiar sound, and he wished Tatiana was here beside him so he could describe the incredible sight of them, while she listened to them talking, surely that’s what they were doing, talking among each other, as they came to shore, then disappeared from shore.
Endless did not know how long he had sat there. A minute, an hour, his arms were growing numb, and it was a blessing he felt, that his legs were numb now too. Moment by moment he was slipping away, until his ears could hear no more, nor his cold body move. He was going home, to Tatiana… they were children playing on the beach, nothing bad had happened to either of them, and it never would.
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