Aug 15, 2019 | Blog - Mary Marcus
“I’d feel safer if I had my little Ladysmith in my pocket, Blue.”
Blue and Lady were packing their things up. Lady didn’t have much stuff, what she had amassed in her other life went to her daughter and to the Goodwill. She’d been living in a furnished place off St. Vicente in Brentwood, and for a few weeks now, since he got out of the hospital Blue had been living with her. Their plans were made. Tomorrow night on the way out of town, they would park a ways from the guy’s house, Lady was going to go in, Blue would follow. Afterwards, they’d head toward Vegas. Then to anyplace else they felt like going. Maybe Mexico. You could live cheaply, and the food was good there, Lady had heard.
Blue told her, “Do you what you want, darlin’, just don’t lose it. If they find a gun and trace the gun to you, fun and games are over. You got that?”
“Yes.”
“Come here!”
Photo: Joel Goodman
They had taken lately to doing it on the floor after planning a certain stage of the crime they would commit tomorrow night. Sinners know the presence of evil can bring you to God, and Jesus, and also that God and Jesus are not altogether absent when the sex is great. Crime can make you horny. Great sex can make you see God. What’s the connection? Neither Lady nor Blue, were thinking about any connection other than theirs. So attuned were they to one another these days they came at the same time, and this made them shout and laugh.
“Last chance to back out, doll.” This from Blue the next night. Lady’s hand was on the handle of the door. She stopped. And for a moment, Blue thought she was going to turn around and say, “Who cares? I sure don’t anymore!” But she didn’t say that. She was carrying the last of the things she wanted to take with her, and he was following behind with his own small stash rolled neatly in two Whole Foods plastic shopping bags.
Down the hall of the second floor of the apartment complex. Down the concrete steps. They were in the elevator now, going to the underground parking. He still had twenty dollars on his food card. It wasn’t much, but it was something. It was he knew, so easy to get used to food and shelter. If they lasted the year out together, and she went ahead and died like she meant to, maybe he’d go with her. He knew now he never wanted to be without her. It was something, a baby, then a child naturally felt for its mother. A need safely desired. I am myself when I am near you. That had not happened with him and his own mother. Or anybody else. But Blue knew the old feeling of want. And that’s what Lady had given him, something no one else ever had: that sense of belonging. He’d do anything for Lady.
Can a man be saved? Would his terrible anger return like clouds covering the sky on a perfect day? Or somehow had his anger gone into her? So much had gone on between them, maybe he had become her, and she God-help-her, had taken him in. It was a funny thought, himself living with a version of himself. It put an edge on things. He was the bad ass, not her. Or maybe not.
Blue had spent time inside with an inmate from Louisiana. His Grandmother had practiced voodoo. She sent him food and she sent him little dolls stuffed with odd smelling puffs of old skin and hair, according to the guy who everyone called Louisiana. He’d punch the dolls and they’d give off a smell: garlic, rot, blood. Louisiana claimed children could be gotten a hold of and used for voodoo. Blue didn’t like anything happening to children. But Blue had been very interested in hearing about the voodoo practice of exchanging energy.
Someone had killed Louisiana. Hung him from the pipe on the ceiling, it wasn’t suicide. The yellow eyeballs bulging from their sockets were part of the memories that melded of jail.
They were in Lady’s car now, and Blue holding in his hand the wire he would use soon around the guy’s neck. Lady was in a thoughtful mood. Very clear about checking her mirrors. Very clear about backing out carefully and not hitting the badly placed poles. And very definite now, as if the garage itself understood: “Goodbye, and thank you for everything I’ve learned here!”
They were still quiet as they drove up his street: the soon to be dead guy’s street. They were still quiet when they parked the car, filled with their stuff and cut the lights. And sat there.
“I called him. He’s expecting me,” Lady said. She turned to him and they kissed passionately, he folded his hand over her breast, and she rested hers over his thigh.
She was the one who broke the kiss. Broke it and opened the door.
He watched her until she disappeared. It was dark in the car, it was a dark night, and up here in the rich shit’s part of town, the only lights came from the big houses. Not many people were home. He and Lady had been noticing this on their nighttime walks. They called them shadow houses, because no one seemed to live there but the lights went on. Once upon a time, he would have been casing them.
Five minutes went by. Ten minutes. He kept pressing the bezel of his Timex that lit up in the dark. He was supposed to start walking after fifteen minutes. Now it was twelve. Thirteen. He was gripping the wire in his hand, readying himself.
Now all at once a house shone with every single light. It looked like a Hollywood Premier, maybe they were even floodlights. Sirens now. One siren. Two sirens. Four, five, six police cars coming up the hill. Parking a little ahead of where Lady’s car was parked.
Sirens, bright lights, and now the front door opened like a gateway into hell. Two big police officers, one of them black, one of them tall and blond were holding Lady by her arms, leading her out. She appeared like a rag doll in rough children’s arms. Her head bowed, her feet had lost their liveliness.
She looked up suddenly, a dazed look on her face. Their eyes met. He cried out, “Lady! Lady!” and headed out of shadow into the light, his arms outstretched.
The first bullet grazed him. The second made it’s mark, dead center in the middle of his chest.
As he fell, he heard Lady call out! “Blue!”
The rich guy who was supposed to die was now standing in an expensive bathrobe in his doorway. A young woman, way younger than Lady stood next to him, also in a bathrobe.
They looked at the ground at Blue bleeding.
“I don’t understand…” The rich guy put his arm around the young woman. Then he turned, as if the sight of Blue bleeding on the ground made him sick.
He shut the door behind them.
The last thing Blue heard, lying on the gravel drive that was surprisingly soft, was Lady urgently calling out his name.
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Jul 12, 2019 | Blog - Mary Marcus
My father died just short of my tenth birthday, in another century, in another culture and milieu. He’s a black and white memory, with the cartoon quality of newsreel footage. What I know about him is this: he was the youngest of five brothers; his mother (for whom I was named) had tuberculosis when she became pregnant with her fifth son, and never had the strength to give him any nurturing. Perhaps because of that, he hated women. And sometimes I think he named me after her, so he could get even with her for having refused to give him love. He picked on me endlessly. Nothing I could do ever pleased him. He called me awful names, he claimed I was ugly, he hit me, he told me I smelled, he screamed at me, anything damaging one could do to a child, short of actual murder he did, and did again without the slightest gesture of self-control, eventual remorse or even, I’m guessing pleasure. Pleasure being different than gratification. Surely I must have gratified the burning ID of this doomed yid. (I am here paraphrasing Philip Roth).
Photo: Joel Goodman
Unlike my mother, who slowly died over a period of twenty years, my father took only a forty-eight hour time period to kick the bucket. He and my mother went to a Luau themed party at some private club in Shreveport, Louisiana where he stuffed himself on roast suckling pig, came home after he wasn’t feeling well, and then ended up in the hospital that night and that was more or less it.
Two memories of that fatal weekend remain with me.
My sister brother and I were taken to the movies by family friends who knew the scoop: that Daddy was near death and in a coma and Mama was by his side. His four older brothers had flown to the deathbed in the early morning hours, and we, the inchoate half-orphans, were the only ones kept in
the dark.
I remember walking into the living room of our empty house and being told to go to their bedroom. There, Mr. S., Daddy’s best friend, awaited us. One look at his face was all any of us needed. We all burst into collective wailing even before he announced, “He’s gone.”
Suddenly, the house was full of people. There were platters of food; there were other people’s housekeepers with white aprons serving it. There were flowers, there was whiskey. My mother, pale and cowardly arrived amid this clatter. “I’m sorry, darling!” she said to me. “Your childhood is over.”
The room goes black.
My mind goes black.
My hatred is frozen in time and fossilized like some creature caught in amber, it never makes a movement.
It is Stonehenge. It is Mount Rushmore. It is Congo.
Until the day before yesterday, when out of the blue, I suddenly forgave him.
And why is this? I have no idea. But my body tells me so. And my spirit has sighed a huge one of relief.
He was mentally ill. He didn’t know what he was doing. He was just in his idiotic way taking whatever he could that he was interested in at the moment. Other than playing gin, and eating, perhaps I was his other gratification.
I’ve tried since the grand release of ancient hostilities to grab a hold of one event, one nice thing to hang my sun hat on so to speak. It’s awfully hot outside this July fourth weekend. I don’t go anywhere without my sun hat.
There was the stuffed dog he won me at the Louisiana State Fair. That was a big one. Even though I knew the dog was about him, he didn’t give it to big sis or big bro. I actually came home with the loot for the first and only time.
And how I loved that dog!
Then, just last night, I remember him sitting on my bed. Just sitting. He’s not gonna hit me, or hurt me, or yell at me, or do what they do in Congo to so many little girls.
One night shortly before he died, he taught me to pray.
Now if Jesus was involved in this story, this would be one of certain redemption. But we were small town Jews in America. We feared Jesus and all followers of the cross. They burned black people, and they burned Jews when they ran out of black people. Hadn’t they done that to all the Jews in
Europe?
My father taught me my shema. For anyone who isn’t Jewish, shema is the mother lode. It is the Lord’s Prayer and more. Pious Jews recite it every morning when they awaken. Anyway, he taught me my shema. In English and then in Hebrew. Then as now, I’m a quick memorizer. And that night, I said it back to him in nothing flat. He didn’t praise me. Never once did I receive my father’s love or praise, but he did nod his head with some satisfaction.
Then, he told me, I was to say, following the shema, “God Bless Grandpa Marcus’ soul and Grandma Marcus’ soul.” This followed by an amen.
Sometimes he would come to the dark room and stand by the foot of the bed and he’d have me go through the litany. Shema, God Bless. Amen.
The night he died, and here finally is my pure untainted recollection of that time: one that does not involve terror, or make me angry, or give me a neck ache, migraine, a panic attack or a week long case of the hives.
I knew I must pray for him on the night he died but I didn’t know where to put him in the hierarchy. Should he go before the God Bless Grandma Marcus’ soul and Grandpa Marcus’ soul? It did not seem logical because I was going in the order of their deaths.
But I put him first in line. His was truly the first death, the death that mattered, the death that night gave birth to my new life. By the time I was ten, two weeks later, everything was infinitely better.
God bless Daddy’s soul, Grandma Marcus’ soul and Grandpa Marcus’ soul. I liked the cadence of the blessing. I was aware that it was a new cadence, one that was not yet comfortable in my brain, that I noticed it rather than just recited it.
Daddy was dead. And I blessed his soul for years. Last night I did it again.
Shema, Daddy, Grandma, Grandpa, Amen.
My gratitude is endless.
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Jun 21, 2019 | Blog - Mary Marcus
“Look Blue, up there, that’s the house with the lights in the windows upstairs!”
Blue told Lady, “Don’t stop! Cut your lights, we’ll park a little further on. I know which one now! That’s a good girl.”
They were in Brentwood, California, made famous by OJ and still famous for all its Hollywood denizens. The house in question was on a very dark street that went straight up and then winded its way down again to the flats off San Vicente Boulevard.
Photo: Joel Goodman
This was their plan. Lady would phone the fucker, say she was coming over, get him in bed, leaving the front door unlatched, and then Blue would come in and finish him off. They weren’t going to use Lady’s Ladysmith, Blue explained to her that the bullet might be matched to the gun, and the gun to her, if things went bad. He’d either strangle the dude, or knife him, that could be decided the morning of. Then once he was iced, the two of them would get in Lady’s car and hit the road.
“I’ve got a year, maybe a little more, and we can use up all the money!”
“How much have you got?” Blue asked her.
“A hundred to use, fifty I’m leaving to my daughter, we can’t touch that.”
“Ok, cool,” Blue replied. And he meant it.
She had told him the story, the dude who was into popping cherries. And how after her cancer went into remission, it was her greatest desire to see him dead. Things she told him had changed since he, Blue, came into her life. And Blue got it, like everything had changed since he had walked out the door with Lady after Nate’s class that day that seemed a long time ago.
Just over a month now.
Blue in turn told her about Endless, fucking Endless who kept showing up. Lady remembered him standing in front of their bench at the Palisades Park; she remembered the look on Blue’s face on the mountain when Endless tracked him down. And of course, that last time before class when the blind woman’s dog tore into him. Too bad the dog hadn’t finished the job.
Lady agreed. She totally agreed. They had to leave town because Endless was bound to come back. But meanwhile she wanted the cherry popper dead.
Blue didn’t mind.
Because fuck it, maybe he was just made for murder. The same way some people are made for dancing, or to be painters or chefs, or writers, or whatever their inborn talent. His inborn whatever was definitely for bad shit. He’d practically never had a good day in his life before he met Lady.
Lady didn’t mind. That’s what he loved about her, in addition to her good body, her soft hair, the kind way she took him in, it was her being ok about him being who he was. Everybody else had tried to change him, or save him, or something. She met him right in the eye. It was a shame, actually that she wanted him to off the dude. He would have stopped killing for her. He would have said, “I’m done.”
“Let’s go home, now Blue, we don’t want to be caught here. Neighborhoods like these have security swarming. Who knows they could be taking our pictures right this second.”
Lady drove down the hill.
They needed something for dinner, so they stopped at Vicente Foods which was the best market Blue had ever seen. Fuck the Whole Foods where it was so easy to steal. He would think twice before reaching out for anything here. Staff everywhere. Staff in aprons and clean shirts. Everything first class.
They bought a cooked chicken, one just off the spit, some potato salad from the deli counter and a quart of fresh orange juice. Lady said they had the best orange juice here, they squeezed it every day.
A lot of his adult life had been spent inside. A meal such as they had just picked up casually, like it was a penny on the street, did not exist inside. Imagine fresh squeezed juice in the slammer.
They were in the Lady’s car now, heading home, the savory smell of the fresh roasted chicken was making him hungry. And for some reason, he kept thinking about the trays of food in juvenile detention: the trays, the color of the plates, the sogginess of everything, and what wasn’t soggy was stale. Or had mold. No juice of any kind. Milk once in a while. Flies swarming over everything. Rotten coffee in the morning, half a cup, tasted like piss. So did the chocolate milk, though it tasted like shit.
He’d do anything for Lady and this year they had ahead of them: her last. And maybe his last too.
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May 30, 2019 | Blog - Mary Marcus
Blue was starting to feel better. The nausea was gone, the dizziness too. The whack Endless gave him on the skull wasn’t throbbing anymore. Meanwhile he was still at Lady’s apartment in Santa Monica, and she was still treating him like a hero, her hero, the world’s hero, and at first it was pissing him off. The police had come and gone, and for all they knew, he had been just a brave man who took the hit when some psycho had burst in the yoga studio brandishing a gun. The police were treating it as some isolated act. Nate apparently hadn’t told them anything. The gorgeous blind chick whose dog had bitten Endless wasn’t saying anything—what the fuck could she say? And Blue certainly wasn’t going to either. Maybe now, Endless would just disappear.
It had been years since he spent more than one night with a woman. Lady was now at the top of his list for the last decade. What was it about her that made him, in spite of his shakes, still want to be here? He knew he had a problem. At worst it would make him kill—at best it would give him the shakes. Women pushed his buttons. Once upon a time there had been shrinks in jail who had recommended books for him to read, and his brother, who was the bookworm in the family had also made sure he had stuff to read on his various stints inside. The problem stemmed from his mother. Duh. Maybe even more from his beautiful sister who had more or less ruined him for anyone else. Until Lady came around. Just the thought of her red hair, the games she made him play, the tickling, the touching, the wicked way she shamed him into doing what she wanted. And then laughing hysterically in his face, the bitch.
Photo: Joel Goodman
Shame, shame, shame. Blue bowed his head, his shoulders hunched; the shame crawled up his belly into his chest and beat there. The beating in his chest turned soft. He felt his heart in his chest. Tears rolled down his cheeks. The blow on his head must be making him soft. He wanted to believe in a god, but he couldn’t believe; all he saw was some white guy, not unlike Santa, but dressed in a long white nightgown.
God if He existed was the mountain glistening in snow. God was the rush he had felt with the cold wind in his face, and the rush of love when Lady glided down next to him, and the snow shimmered up around them in the sun, and they kissed.
Blue wanted to be better now. Blue wanted to try. Some unseen hand had delivered him to Lady and her kindness and love. Some unseen hand knew he was sitting with his legs up, and his head propped up against pillows with a cool drink by his side. If that unseen hand was a god, he was thankful.
“Blue you’re looking downright healthy again!” Lady bent over his head and kissed him lightly.
“Maybe tonight we can wash your hair. I’ll help you!”
“Sit down, I want to talk.”
Lady picked his legs and feet up, and put them back down in her lap. She had on yoga pants, and a thin sleeveless top that she looked damn good in: the high bust, the firm arms, the still tight thighs, the shapely lower legs, and the belly pretty fucking great for someone her age, she had told him once, and only lied a little. He had sneaked a look in her pocketbook and seen her driver’s license. She was almost ten years older than he was, but she didn’t look it, and her name wasn’t Lady, it was Alice. Who the fuck cared? His name wasn’t Blue either.
Maybe it was time they started out fresh. Alice and Steve. No he’d stick to Blue and she would always be Lady to him. Still even, his Lady. My Lady.
She was caressing the tops of his feet with her long silky hands. Massaging his high insteps with her thumbs.
Blue closed his eyes and then reluctantly opened them.
“I was a bad ass kid,” he told her. “Always getting in trouble.”
“I was a good girl. I like that bad boy in you.” She kept on rubbing.
“But damn, I was real bad… I’ve,” and here he stumbled. “I’ve killed.”
She nodded, “I can tell you’ve suffered.”
He felt vastly relieved. That warm spot in his chest seemed to be growing. Those tears again down his cheeks. My heart is filled with something like love.
“I’ve been in and out of jail. I’ve panhandled; I had some trouble in another state with welfare fraud. You want something to eat and they fucking lock you in the slammer for it.”
He was losing the soft spot; his heart was growing hard again.
“You’re stiffening up. Don’t Blue! Let yourself go. Remember the mountain! The snow! You skied down the hill.”
The sun on the mountains. Salvation.
They stayed like this for a while. It was late in the day, and the sky outside her apartment window was growing darker.
Just the two of them, no one else in the whole world. God is love.
“Would you kill someone for me?” Lady said, at last.
Blue lay there, his eyes closed.
“You’re shitting me!”
“I’m not,” she said softly.
Blue opened his eyes. “Not Nate?”
“Why would I want you to kill Nate? He’s our favorite yoga teacher.”
“Then who do you want me to kill?”
Lady rubbed his feet and she told him.
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May 13, 2019 | Blog - Mary Marcus
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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Apr 22, 2019 | Blog - Mary Marcus
When Blue awakened in the Emergency Room of St. John’s hospital I was holding his hand. He didn’t know who I was right away. But momentarily he drew my hand to his lips. “Lady,” he said my name that he didn’t know was made up, in a way that made me know he loved me. I love him. Never more than when he put his own life on the line to protect us all from the maniac who had brought the gun to Sunday morning yoga. The first thing he asked when he came to was about Nate, “Is Nate ok?”
Photo: Joel Goodman
This whole thing has made me question my Lady Smith .38. The one I bought to kill that prick who seduced me all those years ago. I still think he deserves to die, but I don’t know if I have the whatever-it-takes to do it.
The police are still looking for a blonde man, five foot eight, with a recent dog bite on his calf, probably needing stitches. He fled the yoga studio, after knocking Blue on the head with his gun. I have a strong feeling no one will ever see that creep again.
…
“That was heroic, tackling an armed man, were you in the military?” Blue smiled wanly at the policewoman who had come to the hospital, and I smiled too.
“Had you ever seen the man before?”
“I can’t say for sure.”
“Would you recognize him again, sir?”
Blue looked unconcerned, “I don’t know.”
“So why did you go back there when you saw him, according to our reports you were all the way in the front of the room.”
“I thought he was going for Nate,” Blue replied. “I wish I could tell you more, I’m still a little foggy.”
We were in a private room at the same hospital where I was given radiation treatment last year. And where I decided one morning after I got zapped, that I wanted to live, because I wanted to off the bastard who took my virginity and then never called me again. Old CP was what I called him to myself. I’d off the Cherry Popper and then I could end my life’s journey.
First I bought my .38. That took some time. Whoever said it’s quick to get a handgun legally hasn’t tried to buy one. A multiple choice quiz, and then a waiting period while they do a background check and you presumably cool off if you’re in a rage – but I didn’t. Then, of course I had to learn to shoot it. That was fun. I went to a range in the valley and played bang bang. Girls don’t get to do that enough. I loved it.
I ingratiated myself into the cherry popper’s life. That was much easier than buying the gun. I brought it to his house, one, twice, three times—to see how it felt. I even had sex with the guy and made him fall in love with me. Then I met Blue. They are releasing him from the hospital tomorrow and I’ll bring him home.
…
“Just sit on the sofa, and I’ll bring you something to drink,” she said.
He could see out the window it was evening. Where had the day gone? It made him nervous. He couldn’t remember what he’d said to the cops, he couldn’t remember what he’d said, period.
The blow on his head; the trembling in his hands, now he felt trapped here.
He tried to get up, but had to sit right back down. Dizzy. They had told him at the hospital his head might spin; there might be nausea, a headache. All he remembered was Endless raising his arm, a dog’s growl, and then the world went dark and when he awakened, there was Lady.
The police wanted to know about Endless. The police wanted to know about a lot of things. He needed time to construct a reasonable story, and he needed concentration to memorize it.
He had a fake driver’s license supplied by Endless with the name Blue and something else. He was so foggy now, he couldn’t remember his made-up name.
Having Lady around acting like his girlfriend made him look legit. He could tell the cops thought he was some Westside asshole or other. Hadn’t he been posing at that since the fires?
The question remained: how good was his fake i.d.? Had Endless given him something that would stand up? Or had Blue sold out to the fuck-head for a couple of grocery store cards and a roof over his head.
Another thing: would the place above the antique store still be safe? What if Endless was waiting for him there?
Lady had some food and a drink on a tray and was putting it down on the coffee table in front of the couch.
“Here you go, hon,” she said brightly. Blue didn’t like that “hon.” Who the fuck wanted to be called hon.
He looked sideways at her. She was so eager, so pleased to have him here, so kind, so good, and now all he wanted was to get the fuck out, and have space to think of his next move.
She had her hair pulled back away from her neck in a soft ponytail and a low cut top. Her neck looked sweet, and sort of vulnerable. In a couple of years it would start to waddle.
Blue looked down at his own hands. Trembling. Wanting to do something. Eager to help him release the anger that was pulsing in his throat, that was tightening his jaw…
“You okay? Hon? Why are you looking at me like that?”
Blue closed his eyes, “Sorry, you, I guess I’m still a little out of it.” He tried to talk gently, but it sounded harsh and unconvincing to his ears. He tried to quiet his hands, staring straight ahead, fingers clenching and unclenching, imagining his hands around her neck…
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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