Moses&Curio & Ebony-Ivory Bday Surprise

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Moses and Curio and the Ebony-Ivory Birthday Surprise





         Behind the door of a Room 237, the bed not so much creaked as barked abruptly, as if the mattress, not the woman lying upon it, was being sexually pummeled.  Sharp, fierce retorts jammed from the mattress as the thrusts continued in a carnal cadence of shared wonders.  The rawness of the act was surely felt in the distended tension of the worn springs when the wild coupling finally ceased. A couple’s rapturous grunts from their excited labors framed the mattress’s noise in perfect paces.

In that inevitable race for the climactic finishes for which the shared act of lust competes, the woman was winning much more often than the man by far.  As the finales repeatedly resounded, her exclamations were all the more conveyed.  Trembling and nervously hushed at first, the young woman’s climactic explosions were increasing in ferocity as the initial oddity of casual sex with a man she did not know transferred into the wail of a woman so possessed with her unceasing pleasures, she could care less if he even had a name.

His gifts thrust within her were more than enough to distinguish him than a mere name.  Man would suffice.

         The glow of a muted television illuminated the room.  The woman’s sense of modesty turned off the lone lamp bolted beside the bed when she and her somewhat inadvertent lover for the evening began making out in earnest.  When his lips reached second base and then a steady and practiced finger came sliding inexorably into third, Kara Jessup clicked off the light, lest he see too much of her pale white skin in the yellowish light of the fixture’s globe. 

She had the normal body hang-ups of a college junior who studied both the airbrushed covers of the nudie mags and the bodies of her more-toned and vain classmates and found herself lackluster in her estimation.  Her hang-ups were unfounded, her lover reminded her.  He was charmingly incredulous she would think so, but also remembering his own lady had that random girlish notion of her appearance possibly lacking from time to time. Caressing and admiring Kara in the light of the TV, his captivating smile and look of want eased her lingering doubts.  His demeanor was not hasty or too eager and he was truly approving of her body.  His smile as he studied her with his eyes, his hands and his mouth, was sincerely adoring.

Letting him take her, Kara quashed any lingering qualms about accepting his body into hers after that charming smile said only, “you’re beautiful” to her without uttering a sound.  She was certain he knew what he was in for and in her estimation of his possible capabilities, what he was in for was making her climax beyond her belief.  If he had any disappointments about her as he casually yet firmly removed her clothes, he kept them away from his bemused face. 

His John Thomas certainly approved.  Kara took that as a definite nod to her beauty and responded accordingly.  There was nothing as sexy as being wanted for who she was, not for what she could offer.  For that, he had a woman already.

The night was moving along quickly, far more intimate than she had thought herself so quickly capable of being.  She reckoned that in the TV-lit room, where her young blue eyes had only gradually adjusted to see her seedy paramour completely, his older and harder eyes could easily make out every crease and curve of her.  There was something in his bedroom eyes that reminded her of a bird of prey.  His eyes absorbed their surroundings.  They studied her.  He was attuned to her nuances as if he knew her sexually for a year.  She would have bet he could see a gnat's knee at the bottom of a deep well at midnight with those eyes.  In the light of the room, he saw only her as he had her.  At no time were his attentions diverted from her pleasure and the devilish little attention to her subtle details made for the best outright pounding she may have ever known. 

Even under the night’s odd circumstances.

His eyes noted every nuance of her in a split second when she first advanced to their table several hours before.  His lustful companion had looked her over as well.  His paramour’s eyes were half-closed by a sedative and half-opened both by a ready lust for him and a casual "you know we-oughta just…!" sent in Kara's direction the entire time they dined.  Kara read every nuance of that, as well.  The woman was feeling good and wanting Kara to help her feel great.

The paramour was unfortunately laid out.  Attempts to rouse and arouse her were unsuccessful.  Their kisses to further the attempt to arouse her ended up sending them down the path of a man and a woman wanting release. 

As he grasped her around the shoulder with one hand and locked a sinewy arm around her left thigh, pulling it tight against his right side as he worked himself slowly into her while resting on his knees, her wetness quotient skyrocketed.  When he first entered her, testing her fit, tasting her mouth, hands caressing her neck and ears in between fervent gropes of her breasts, his calm touch and plan of attack worked perfectly in unison.  She almost felt as if she was an objective, some target to be overwhelmed by stealth or force depending on which plan would be most successful.  When he infiltrated, they were both successfully overcome.

That was several orgasms ago.  Her glands were tuckering out and he had fulfill his personal mission as of yet.  He let up not one iota.  Kara found herself marveling about the axiom of everything being bigger in Texas.  Inside her, his statement to that effect was embodied thoroughly.  There was enough moisture inside her to feel pleasurable for them both still, but the longevity of the friction was beginning to make itself felt.  Feeling him steady and practiced within her, she noticed she was now on a giddy plateau, let loose, giving, taken, wanted, unencumbered...into it.  The pain was an actual plus.  It meant it was being done properly and not fleetingly as she had experienced many times before with the usual youthful braggarts.

Kara had transcended from a slightly coked-up and buzzing waitress nervous about coming to the hotel for a naughty night as a third party in a couple’s bed to a woman enjoying simply being fucked the hell out of.  In one brief moment of random recollection, a brief blurb that crossed her mind as he whispered to her to turn over and she did so on legs whose bones had surprisingly melted to quivering jelly, she ran through the short list of male lovers she had known since losing her virginity a scant five years prior and only one time could she recall being worked so thoroughly and pleasurably.  A sincere, non-stop, almost automaton-like hard fucking.  It was an almost dispassionate jack hammering when they got the situation secured.  And it was rendered unto her without the older guy even wheezing or letting up to shift his weight on a knee that had to be sleeping.  He simply endured and excelled, firm, strong, rehearsed, efficient, and engaged with her.

And with panache, she thought to herself as he gripped her hipbones and she pushed backward accepting him all the way to the hilt.  He adjusted his stance on his knees, nudging her legs apart to drop her pelvis to a more agreeable height so he could get the angle they both wanted.  He moved himself inside her slowly, withdrawing his cock almost completely and then sliding it inside, feeling the angle of attack, gauging her wetness.  Her gasp and subtle moan brought the motion a little faster and soon enough his fingertips were pressed hard into the skin of her ass- tinted a cozy blue in the TV’s glare.  The thrusts turned sharper as he got into it, relaying her moans to his thrusting hips. 

Finally, as she came again, shuddering as she bit into a pillow, he swept a strong arm under her breasts, pulling her back to his, his lips sucking hers and she felt him explode, hot and completed, within her.  As he tensed and suddenly sighed, he hummed his gratification, in the same tempo as the spasms she felt him unleashing within, while they kissed wildly.  The shuddering between them ebbed and they lay forward across the mattress.  He dragged a sheet over them and kissed her softly below her ear.  She held his hand as he drew her close, sighing blissfully as she panted and closed her eyes to savor the feeling inside without the eyes seeing beyond her body’s rapture.  His cock quivered, still thick inside her as he flinched it deliberately and chuckled about it.

His hands felt unyielding as iron, somewhat calloused but not in such a way she would identify with as some workingman’s thick-skinned mitts.  His hands were used.  They had purpose, truly dexterous appendages that he wielded with measured strength and focus.  He was deft with the fleeting touch of his nimble fingertips as they maneuvered across her sweaty chest and belly.

Kara exhaled slowly and gave a chuckle.

“I think that rates a cigarette.”

“I dare not disagree.”  Moses Holliday sighed and wiped away a tint of sweat from his tanned brow, his sex waning inside her.  He rolled over to his left, giving her the right side of the bed and putting himself between Kara and the motionless young woman beside them.

Kara reached over and pulled her pack of Camels from her purse.  After shaking one out and getting it lit, she stood up, embarrassed that he was leaking from her after a little cough to get the smoke down into the lungs properly.

“Shit!  I’ll be right back.” Embarrassed suddenly, she rose and shuffled quickly to the restroom.  For the first time since they began to kiss, Moses noticed she did not seem shy about her body.

Too fucked to care, huh baby?  He smiled and reached over on his nightstand to get a Winston lit.

“You can stop playing possum now, dear.”  He sidled up to his sleeping girlfriend, whispering, “I ain’t gonna tell her I love her or nothin’.”

Curio Phelonie, his comatose girlfriend, never so much as winced.  She was plowed under by a bellyful of red wine, ubiquitous pot tokes, two Xanax bars, four shots of 1800, a purple hooter shooter, whatever the hell liquors were in a Panty-dropper, a few token beers, a few bumps of coke, and an all-nighter on ecstasy the night before they drove up from south Louisiana to Jackson on business.

“You're missin' out, darlin'.  She's definitely a peach.  If I told you once, I told you a hundred times.  Moderation, ma’am.”  Moses patted her on her bare ass, tsking her. “Even if it is your birthday.”

Smoking quietly, he could hear Kara running water, peeing, running water again, shuffling around, and coughing hard.  Yawning, he stroked Curio’s calf and the back of her knee, trying to get her to flinch.  She was hypersensitive to the touch; even a little blowing of cool air across the bend of the knee would normally make her giggle and goose bump.  She already had goose bumps.  The room was cold. 

Curio never flinched.  She did snort slightly in mid-breath and roll over on her side.

The bathroom door opened and Kara exited, her Camel down to the nub.  She dropped it into an empty bottle. 

Hot-boxed, Moses reckoned.  She hurried over to the bed, aware, again, she was walking full frontal to a stranger without the liberating stare of hot sex in each other’s eyes to shield him from looking her body over again.

“Shit, I'm cold again!”  Her voice reverted to the singsong chirp she used on them several hours before as she served them Curio’s birthday feast at Dennery’s.

“That’s because you’re naked and sweaty in a cold room, lil lady” Clenching his Winston in his teeth, Moses got her covered under a sheet.

“Is she okay?  She hasn’t hardly moved.” Kara looked at the sleeping beauty. “I mean, shit.  She didn’t look all that drunk when y’all left.”

“She's tied it on up at that 1001 place you sent us.  She took a few pills and then she got shit-faced.  She’s a pro, though.  Don’t let that little Miss Fairy appearance fool you, she can run with the damn bulls.  She came up partying in New Orleans.  Need I say more?”

“She’s so pretty.”

Kara frowned inside.  When she committed to meeting them, in her mind it was supposed to be her and Curio together.  Perhaps with Moses vibrantly refereeing and-or interloping, as needed or wanted.  She hadn't really taken much notice of him.  Looking at the soft sleeping face, she sighed to herself.  The brash sexuality of the young woman when they had been her patrons in the restaurant had intrigued her.  Now she was just a pretty girl passed out drunk.

“I hate her.  She looks that way without a bit of make-up, I bet.  I have all these damn freckles to cover.  My boobs ain't big.  My damned hair takes forever to straighten.  It sucks.  But not for her.  She’s just born awesome.”

“You’re a good-looking woman, Kara.  Don’t kid yourself.  Don’t take it from me.  She’s the picky one.  You’re here, after all.”

“Thank you, but I know what I am and what I’m not.  And I ain’t that.”  She circled her fingers around Curio’s face and bared breasts.  “That's fucking hot!  Trust me, she is.  I mean, I know it when I see it.  I ain’t a full-bore dyke or nothin', by the way.  In case that's what you thought.  But I did have a girl thing a few years ago…”

“In college?”  Moses chuckled at the stereotype.  “Lemme' guess, sophomore year?  Did you meet her in a women's empowerment seminar?  Or was it on the softball team?”

“No-ooo…junior year.”  Kara chuckled and bit her lip. “And it was at a Millsaps-Belhaven game.”

“You fall for the pitch or the catch?”

“You’re funny.  It wasn’t like that.  I just think people are sexual.  I mean, you know, it’s the Nineties.  Everybody’s tasting the rainbow, you know what I mean?  I see a beautiful girl who clearly wants to have me, I figured, what the hell?  They’re a hot couple.  They’re from out of town and no one knows or is gonna’ know but us.”

“Well I. for one, am glad you decided to drop by.  Even if we are eating her birthday cake, kinda’.”  Moses kept watching Curio’s face for a telling sign.  He knew she was faking.  Had to be...

“We ate something.  Don’t know if it was cake but by God, it had a lot of icing.” 

A whole lot of icing...  She reminded herself nervously.  Suddenly she found herself counting “how many days since...”

“Just a frosting, Miss Kara.  In case you were concerned, don’t be.  There ain’t no yeast in my batter to make the cake bake in your oven.”

“Oh, I’m on the pill anyway.  But good to know.”

Really good to know… 

“Kids and I ain’t gonna’ happen.  I already made that call.”  He winked and scissored his fingers to her.

“But she’s young and she’s a woman.  She may want kids at some point.”

“Maybe.  But look at me, look at her.  Look at us.”  Moses waved at the plate with coke on it, a half-emptied bottle of Rebel Yell whiskey and an empty bottle of tequila lying askew, a rolled joint ready.  Clothes tossed around.  Kara's bra hung from the corner of the TV.  “We been kickin' up our heels together a while now and we love it.  Ain’t no way I’m ready for a bringin' up a kid and she sure don’t want none right now.”

“Plenty of time.  I mean, she’s twenty-two today.  Plenty of time.”

“Well, you get to be my age, seen what I’ve seen, been where I’ve been, done what I’ve done, you’ll get to figure out time is best spent in three or four day increments.  Really ain’t much sense thinkin’ further than that.  After a few days, outside forces usually rear their ugly heads.”

“What do you do for a living?  I never heard you say.”

And you never will, Miss Kara…

“I’m a contractor.  I do a lot of traveling around.  I troubleshoot business problems for a firm down in Louisiana.”

“That ain’t where you’re from though.  You don’t sound like a Hebert or some Thibodaux.”

“I’m from west Take-sass, may-yam.” He took a drag. “Steer and queer country.”

Kara was impressed. “Shit, I fucked a real cowboy?"  She rubbed his foot with hers.  "You don't have no spurs, though!”

“I’ve been on a horse more than once to be sure.  Don’t spur too much these days, though.  It’s been a looong time since I been out that way.”

“She's from Louisiana though.  I partied enough down in New Orleans to know it when I heard it in her voice.  Them dem’s and doh’s got thick when she started hammering on that red wine.”

“Oui, oui, mademoiselle.  She’s a bonafide coonass.”

“She looks like you would think a French model should look like.  You know who she reminds me of?”

“No telling.”

“You’re old enough to remember that war movie..."

"You callin' me old?"

"Don't take it personally, Paw-Paw.  To your credit, you sold me on older guys.  Golf clap for your ego."  She cocked her head, trying to remember a fact.  "Shit, what was the movie called?  My papaw watched it a hundred times.  It had John Wayne in it.”

“They all did, ma'am." 

“Smartass."

"Was he shootin' at Nazis or Japs?”

"Nazis.  Oh yeah!  It was The Longest Day.”

“The big D-Day movie, sure.  Epic movie.  A lot of big-time actors were in it.”

“Yeah.  That’s it.  She looks like the French woman who blows up the train tracks!  Damn,” Kara gazed at Curio again.  “She even kinda’ has the same hair-cut.”

“I can’t remember that much about it.  Guess I’ll have to watch it movie again.  I ain’t seen it in a long time but I do kinda’ think I remember the woman blastin’ a train.”

“She was in the French Resistance, remember?  She was so pretty, too!  I love that French look, though.  Did you know Jackie Kennedy had French in her?”

“Bouvier was her maiden name, I think.”

“It was.  I love her.  She was so classy.”

“She did wear a pillbox hat better than most.  But classy ended after Camelot took one to the head, don't you think?"

"Huh?  How you mean?"

"That fat Greek husband she took up with kinda sullied my impression of her.

"Ari Onassis?  He loved her!"

"Come on.  Really?  He was a playboy and after she waited long enough for the folks to find out her old man was stickin’ it to every thing in a skirt and then she decided to get her jollies for a while.  I just hate it was with him but whatever floats the boat, right?”

“What’s wrong with that?  You got a problem with foreigners?”

Moses smirked wryly at her.  “Not foreigners per se.  But darlin’, everyone knows Greeks like it in the ass the most.  I rather not think of the saintly widow of our beloved JFK getting ass-stuffed by some rich, oily, fatass Greek on his pleasure boat.  I had respect for her as a First Lady, but hitchin’ her wagon to Ari Onassis warn’t my first choice for her to do after she got over Dallas.”

Kara slapped his arm, feigning shock.  “Blasphemy!  No dissing Jackie O in my presence, cowboy.  She was gorgeous.  It wasn't her fault you cowtippers out in Texas didn't corral all your crazies too good back in '63.”

“I cain’t deny that.” Moses grabbed the joint and lit it.  "I just think she coulda’ picked a better rebound lay."

“Perhaps you gotta point."  She shrugged.  "So, what are you two doing in Jackson?”

“I got some business to take care of up this way.  It so happens it’s her birthday, so she’s tagging along.  Somewhere along the way, she decided a three-way might be a glorious thing indeed to do on her birthday.”

Kara guffawed.  “That her idea or yours, cowboy?  That sounds suspiciously like something a guy may have maybe hinted at?  Maybe she went along with it under the guise of her wanting to do it just to appease you.”  She toked from the offered joint.  Stifling a cough and grimacing, she added, "Wouldn't be the first girl to do some weird kinky shit and pretend to like it just to make her man happy."  She winced as the smoke exhaled.

“If she told me it was only gonna’ be a scissor party, I would have begged off.  We ain’t the jealous type.”  He stroked Kara and Curio’s thighs simultaneously.  “Obviously.”

“She likes women?  This ain’t no weird birthday-so-fuck-it-why-not thingee, is it?”

“She likes women.  She likes men.  Occasionally, she likes the two together.  Curio is whimsical about a great many things.  She never ceases to fascinate me, I can tell you that for durn sure.  Her tastes are occasionally disturbingly..." He fumbled for the word, thinking of her tastes.  "Eclectic.”

“She ever have two men?”

“I’m sure she probably gave it a tumble.  Not in a while, though.  Not since we’ve met.”  He studied Curio's face for the hint of a smile. "Least far as I know."

“And no tasting the rainbow for Moses?  I'm sure you've been asked.  You got that rough guy thing goin'."  Kara giggled, "Queens love a manly man.”

“Moses has been to prison.  There warn’t no rainbows in there.  Just horny pissed off sumbitches with shanks under the mattresses and soap on a rope.”

“Prison?  No shit!”  Kara looked him over.  The scars and tattoos he sported on his body suddenly had a dirty taint to them.  Before, she chalked them up to "bored in the ole barracks" ink.  The scars were perhaps a bad night drunk behind a steering wheel.  Now the etchings bore out a tawdry shiver in her.  The scars now had the look of inflicted, aimed wounds.

He was dirty!

Do I like it dirty?  She wondered if that had been the reason she felt so good with him.  A dirty ex-con with tattoos and a loose girlfriend in a seedy motel...I won't make it a habit for obvious reasons, but it's definitely getting written down in my diary and locked away for a lonely night with the rabbit with a fresh pair of double A's.

“What did you go to prison for?”  She asked, propping up on her pillow, wide-eyed as if seeing a wonder of earth for the first time.  His face suddenly seemed harder, menacing.  His stringy muscles had to have been formed lifting iron outside in some dusty prison yard full of sweaty, bad men.  Real caged up animals, sweating, foul predators, kept pent up and watched by men behind aviator sunglasses, holding big guns lest they be released on an unsuspecting female populace of impressionable young women who could be swayed to crime by the raw sex the cons would lay upon them if they were freed.

“Am I the first ex-con you ever been with?”  Moses chuckled and toked again.

“You may be the first one I ever even seen that wasn't on TV.  You certainly the first I ever fucked before.  I ain’t fucked that many people really.”

“Well, I been in three times.  All for assault.”

“You a fighter, Moses?  You handy with the fists,” Kara put up her dukes and giggled, “like John Wayne?”

“I’m not much on fightin’, I’m a lover.”

“I bet you do both pretty good.  You certainly know how to punch up a pussy.”  She laughed and covered her mouth.  “That wasn’t very nice to say it that way.”

“You’re nice on many levels.  And thank you.  Want a shotgun?”  Again, his eyes looked at Curio.  Inside, he snickered.  Every time he shotgunned Curio, they ended up kissing.  He assumed she would have to peek to see if he was consistent. 

Again, not a peep, even as Kara hacked and coughed from the charge.

“It ain’t a hit ‘til ya cough.”  He flipped the joint around and inhaled some more.

“I’m done.” Kara waved the joint away and croaked.

“Suit yourself.”  He roached the joint and laid the plate between them.

“You do coke a lot?”  She asked.

“When the mood hits us we get a baggie.  It’s not a thing that should be done a lot.  For obvious reasons.  I’m sure at the restaurant and in college you’ve seen what a lot can turn into.”

         “Not really.  There ain’t a lotta' coke up in my circles.  Good God the pills though.”

“Whatever gets you through the night, I guess.” He razored up four good lines and handed her a straw.  She snuffled through her pair and pinched her nose.  In two practiced snorts, he disappeared his lines and set the plate

“Ain’t all this against your parole or whatever?”  Kara honked and sniffled.

“I ain’t on parole.” He sniffled. “I couldn’t do what I do if I had to check in once a day for parole officers.  I did all my time so I wouldn’t have to.”

“You ever worry about going back?”

“Naw, I reckon if I fuck up now, it’s life I’m looking at.”  If I’m lucky… 

He shrugged. “I ain’t going back. I’ve got my lady to think of now.  And I think highly of her.”

“She ever been in jail?”  Kara smiled at the soft face of Curio Phelonie.

“Nope.  Unless you count growing up practically homeless in New Orleans.  Not all prisons got bars on 'em.”

         “That’s way sad!  Holy shit!” Kara looked again at the soft and sleeping Curio.  How’d she end up homeless?  She ain’t got no family?”

         “None to speak of.  None that amounted to much more than added bullshit for her anyways.” Moses smiled and rubbed Curio’s feet.

         “She always been an orphan?”

         “She probably woulda’ been luckier if she was.  Naw, she had a crack whore for a mama.  Her mama managed to get herself iced in a drive-by in broad daylight by some crackheads.  In front of Curio, mind you.  I think she was eleven at the time.”

         “Oh my God!” 

Stoned, Kara imagined herself at eleven.  Living out in white-bread Clinton.  Church lock-ins, flag corps, weekend night trips to the skating rink.  Watching John Hughes films at sleepovers.  Turned loose while her Mom shopped at Metrocenter mall.  Painting toe nails, giggling about hair metal singers and various NKOTB members.

         “She had to use her Mama’s body as a shield when the bastards reloaded to try to get her, too.  Helluva' thing to have to do.” Moses sighed and kissed Curio’s calf.

         Kara’s hand flew to her mouth in shock.  She looked at the sleeping Curio with a new set of stunned eyes.  “Oh my God!  You’re serious?  You’re just fuckin’ with me, right?”

         “Dead serious.  The girl had it rough before that and rough after that.  You okay?  You kinda green.”  Kara was fanning herself.

         “I’m okay.  I just get emotional when I hear stuff like that.  I mean, you hear about stuff like that on the news and all, but damn!  Poor thing!  She...okay?  I mean, me and my mom are best friends.  You know what I'm tryin' to say?”

         “It’s a luxury for you to say that.  Be thankful.  She's okay, I guess.  Whatever okay you can be after that.”  He shrugged.  "What's okay these days anyway?"

         “I am thankful.  I mean, shit!"  The pot buzz kicked up a notch.  Her mind tried to wrap around going through such a bad day.  Then it rambled off into how bad the life had to have been after that.  Even with the flow of stoned thoughts, she couldn't fathom the depravity of a soul scarred by that upbringing.

         "The hardest thing I ever dealt with was falling off a bike and my dad and my mom getting divorced when I was ten.  He still lives up in Grenada.  I’m tight with him, too.  But I’m an only child and all, so me and my mom always been tight, ya know?  I couldn't imagine....you still got your parents living?”

“I got no family left, either.  Both my parents and my kid sister got killed in a tornado while I was on my first tour in Nam.

         “I’m so sorry.  Were you close to them?”

“Yeah.  We were a good family.  I went kinda wayward of course.  Being a teenager and all.  My old man was a God-fearing man.  I of course had to be the prodigal son.  Started drinkin' up my paydays, jumpin' the border on Saturday nights with my buddies.  He took to bustin' my ass until I hit eighteen and enlisted.  When he died we warn't on speakin' terms much.  My mama wrote to me all the time and Nora, that was my sister, she wrote me a lot while I was over in Nam, too.  She was just nine when they all got killed.  I came home from Nam, buried my family and went back in a jungle in two weeks.”

“That’s sad.  Damn!  So much tragedy between the two of you.  It’s kinda good you two have each other to lean on.”

Moses smiled at her and patted Curio’s calf.  “Before I met her, I would not have thought so, so much.  I had a whiskey bottle and a couch to sink into most of my days before her.  I do think so now.  She definitely showed me a capability for loving I never knew I was lacking.”

“Capability?”  Kara sniffled and winced as the coke drained down her throat.  “Bleh!  Drainage!”

“To love, ya know?  To find someone who makes me joyful to be alive.  It’s not a thing all people have for whatever reason or another.  I used to think it warn't possible for me to find a girl, date her and fall for her eventually.  You know, the usual bit.  Two kids and a dog and such.  Date a while, find a good fit and settle down with her and the soccer fields and the mortgage.  Tradition, you know?. I like to think love is kinda traditional.  But given my work schedule and all, I figured it warn't meant to be if that was what it meant.  But I met her it ain't like that in the slightest.  Neither she nor me could ever end up behind a white picket fence.  But we managed to fall titty deep in love and we enjoy being together.  We're inseparable.”

“Call me a romantic.  I still believe in love at first sight.”

“I do too, now.  I flipped for her the day we met.  Literally from the moment we met, we’ve been inseparable.  Almost like we're welded by something.  We have our own places of course.  But we are rarely really apart except when she has something she wants to do or I got something going that she doesn’t get into.  Obviously with the age thing we come from light years apart on a lot of stuff.  Not to mention the whole Texas desert versus New Orleans thing.  When they say New Orleans is a foreign country, they ain’t kidding.  It's a foreign country to say the least.  But I guess the same could be said for Texas.  They think so out that way anyway.”

“You fell for her at first sight?”  Kara stretched and spun herself to lay with her head closer to Curio’s face.  She took pity on the goose pimples and draped the heavy comforter over her bare body.  “Poor baby, she’s freezing to death in here.”

“I swear she’s faking.”

Kara kissed her lips, slowly, and whispered.  “You can get up now, sleepyhead.  I want to give you your birthday present.”

Curio never flinched.

“I’ve been shot down by a coonass.  I can’t believe it.”  Kara flopped on her back and tossed the comforter over all of them.  She gripped Moses by the calf for support and dragged Curio closer to her.  She looked at him for permission and he nodded with a smile.  Kara brushed Curio's cheek with the back of a finger.

“So you fell for her at first sight?  I see why.”

“It was a lot stranger thing than just seeing that pretty face.  It was her presence.  I felt her before I ever saw her.  I can’t explain it.  I was in New Orleans in the middle of a day, minding my business.  Piss drunk, a million people bummin' around and I felt some weird energy.  It was like a magnetism or...I don’t know if you ever played electric beer cans, but it was like that kinda' shock.”

“What the hell is electric beer cans?”

“Well here they just plug a lamp cord into a wall and do it.  But in Nam, we would split some radio wire and hook it to a battery.  Split the ends to expose the copper and tape the ends to a coupla’ empty beer cans.  Get a buncha' guys in a circle and we'd slap hands until the last two guys who were holding a beer can apiece.  When the circle was joined, everybody would get a lil jolt.  Then you would cull out a fella and do it over again.  The fewer guys, the less resistance and the stronger the juice, you see.  You could only get to three usually.  Two would probably cause electrocution.  I know four give us a helluva punch.”

“You guys really needed a hobby, huh.”

“Our hobby was hunting people who were trying to kill us.”

“And holdin' hands with men with a live wire going through y’all helped in what way?  I'm sensing a pattern here, cowboy rainbow warrior.”

“That's too funny.  It didn’t.  But it beat grab-assing I guess.  Cheaper than beer and whores on what we were paid back then.  Anyway.  I was sitting on my stoop down there and I feel this jolt all over me.  I really thought I had stepped on a live wire or something.  I look back and there she comes, justa' walkin' down the street…”

“Singin’ doo-wah-diddy-diddy-dum-diddy-do?”

“Singin’ three for one hurricanes at the Cat’s Me-ow.”

“Potent!  I’ve been there.  I like to never got over that night.”

“Indeed.  But, after my tongue came back in my mouth and my nuts fell back down from up in my craw, I said, Moses, ain’t no sense sitting and wondering.  I walked over, said hey, hopin' she didn’t think I was some old pervert.  Actually I just hoped she didn’t think I was just old.  And whaddya' know?  We hit it off.  Been together since that day.”

“You don’t seem old.  You seem, I don’t know...distinguished ain’t the right word.”

“That’s the truth.”

“Mature ain’t it either, though.  I mean, you ain’t kegger age but you ain’t AARP either, you know.”

“Middle-aged, ma’am.  I’m a middle-aged man.  And don’t I feel it some days.”

“I got the impression she keeps you on your toes.”

“We keep each other youthful, I guess.  I met her nearly five years ago.  We seen a lotta' shit, done a lotta’ shit, been a lotta places and lived some kinda crazy life.  But I love her and she loves me.  I may doubt the word of politicians, preachers, weathermen and women who say size don't matter, but ain’t no doubting that, ever.”

“Y’all fight?  You seem so different.  She seemed spunky.”

“You mean are there spats?  Of course.  Every couple bickers every now and again.  You had boyfriends, I'm sure.  At least I think I'm sure, Miss Rainbow Licker herself."

"Moi?" 

"Yeah, moi.  But we are kinda like business partners as well as lovers.  There’s mutually beneficial business to attend to every now and again.  I try not to daddy her too much and she tries like hell to learn from me what needs to be known.”

“What’s an example of what needs to be known?”

Moses would not say the first thing to be known that popped to his mind.  Which was:  “Don’t shoot for the head, shoot for the chest.  It’s a bigger target.”

“Stuff like taxes, negotiating with peckerhead guys, changing a tire, handling problems in a way that's cost efficient and agreeable to a client.  You know, dumb patronizing man stuff.  She gets fighting mad when I mention things like that.  She can be a total kid about a lot of stuff.  Practically plays with her meals still.”

And gets wet when she shoots some dumbass with a death warrant from the boss, but worse things left unsaid, right?

“That’s any strong woman though.  You said she came up in the streets?  Probably had to live by her wits and all.  Got used to calling her own shots and things like tire rotation and taxes probably wasn’t high on her to-do list."

"You could say that."

"I did some thesis work on homeless issues and I read a lot of personal stories from women and men in Memphis and over in Atlanta and New Orleans about what it took to keep going.  It takes strength.  But it also takes a lot away from a soul.”

“Soul she’s got in spadefuls.  Misplaced karma sometimes, perhaps.”  Moses shrugged and laughed.  “As for strength, she’s like a sledgehammer when it comes to tackling a problem.  I’ll give you an example of what she ran up against one time before I met her.  Write this one up for your next thesis on the plight of the poor homeless people.”

Curio smacked her lips in her sleep and rolled over, facing them.  Kara adjusted the comforter and snuggled up against her.  Curio sighed and moaned slightly.

“One story she likes to tell when she gets a chance to is when she was in between foster homes and the streets.  She had this girlfriend for a while.  Same age as her.  Platonic.  Kinda' platonic, A girl from one of her schools or something.  Well, around January she started crashing at the girl’s house, unknown to the parents.  The chick had a big walk-in closet so Curio had a mat and a sleeping bag kinda shoved in the back of it under the hanged-up clothes and all.  She would creep in and sleep in there.  At least until everyone left for school and work and all.  Then she would make herself scarce in the city all day, do some hustlin’ or whatever all day.  Or maybe just hide out in the room, watch TV and take a shower or whatever.”

“Okay.  I’ve heard of runaways doing that stuff a lot.  It ain’t always living on a steam grate with a buggy and a tin cup.”

“Well, get this.  One day, the old man comes home early.  He busts in and catches her there, in the damned shower of course.  Figures hey, ain’t no free rent, right?  She tells him she ain’t got a place and figures he might be cool and understanding.  Especially since leaving might mean crashing somewhere cold in January.  It gets cold down there by the water and all.  But she misjudged.  So then, guess what?  It’s handjobs and blowjob time to keep her from dodging gang rapes by gutterpunks and ghetto types adorning those lively streets of Sin City or maybe shivering in a car she broke into to stay off a cold, wet ground after a shitty night of rain in December.”  He smirked and pantomimed as he spoke.

“Oh shit.  Fucking bastard.”  Kara shook her head.

“Gets better.  Mama’s clueless but the friend finds out about Daddy one day when she skips school and sees how he's been spending lunchtime.  Gets all pissed off, big drama scene.  Later, Curio tells her the old man expects it and she doesn’t want to do it but she ain’t got nowhere to go right that instant.  So the chick says prove it,” Moses pointed at Kara.  “Prove you don’t like it.  More importantly, pay me my rent, too, you slut.  Curio probably woulda ate her pussy voluntarily after a bottle of Strawberry Hill if she had asked.  I don't have to tell you being told to do it ain't sexy.  She ended up practically whoring for Dad and the lil princess for a closet space to sleep in for a few weeks while it was wintertime.”

“Damn!  Poor thing!”  Kara held her closer.  She felt a sincere sisterhood outreach in the embrace.

“The old man never fucked her at least.  He was too nervous about knocking her up.  But one night when Mama was way outta town, he decided to bring some buddies from somewheres around to get a taste.  Told them all about the wild chick who would get all freaky with them and all.  But that was the last straw.  She cut out.”

“That’s just some sick shit.  I hope she called the cops.”

“Didn’t need to.  The old man had a bad car wreck and got killed.”

“Right on.  Karma, bitch.  I hate a pervie fucker.”  She kissed Curio's cheek.  "I hate it for her.  As a woman, I can't stand hearing about that kinda shit happenin' to other women.  It ain't right what we have to put up with because of our gender."

"Yeah she kinda thinks that way, too.  She's been known to take it kinda personal."

"It's such a harsh world."

"Always has been, always will be."

"Always so negative, Moses."  Curio mumbled with her eyes closed.  "Life is gooood!  With the proper pills and some sex, anyway."

"Sleepin' Beauty."  Moses chuckled.  "You supposed to wake up when your prince kisses you.  Or did I read it wrong?  Is it Princess?"

"Who said I'm awake."  Curio slurred and smacked her lips.  "I need something to drink bad."  Her eyes opened slowly.

"I bet you do.  Headache?"

"I'd bet I’d have one if I wasn't so drunk."

Kara laughed.  She was nervous.  Despite his assurances about them being together not being a problem, there was an innate girl thing about another woman having a boyfriend to themselves in that manner.  She hoped he was correct.  But she knew not how to handle it beyond smiling as sexily as she could at Curio as she roused from her stupor.

Moses rolled over and pulled an ice chest to the bedside.  He opened a Red Stripe beer with the opener on his keychain and handed it to her.  She sat up and slurped it.  "Damn that's good!"

"Kara wrote a thesis about the homeless, baby."

"What about the homeless?  They don't wash their asses, they beg all day, they drink and piss anywhere.  And they steal your shit if you don't watch it.  The homeless suck."

"You was homeless."  Moses chuckled.  "You exempting yourself from that statement?"

"I was houseless.  There's a difference."  She wiped her forehead with the cold glass bottle.

"Which is?"

"I always washed my ass."

They all laughed.

"And I think I need a good showering right damn now.  I smell sex somethin' fierce in here.  Assholes."  She slapped his arm.  "You been tappin' my birthday present?  Indian giver, I see how y'all are."

"We didn't asshole each other.  You got that wrong."  Moses rolled across Kara and kissed Curio's shoulder, tapping Kara on the shoulder and giving her a thumbs-up behind his back.

"I'm surprised."  Curio took another sip of the Red Stripe.  "All the weed gone?" 

"Grouch ass.  No.  We got plenty.  We ain't out of nothin' but your birthday.  It's after midnight."

"Well I for one don't think a birthday night ends until all gifts are unwrapped and played with."  Kara said.

Curio looked at her and bit her bottom lip greedily.  "Anything left I didn't see on the table to unwrap?"  She lifted the sheet playfully and looked at their bare groins.  "Nope.  Beat to the punch."

Kara leaned forward and they kissed.  Moses smiled and stubbed his Winston.  "I'ma go hit the Coke machine."  He got out of bed and rustled up his cargo shorts from an open suitcase.  Curio turned the beer bottle up and drained it dry.  Kara kissed her daintily in the same place Moses had.  Curio quivered.

"I forgot what a girl's kiss felt like.  You stoned?  You look it."

"I'm higher than hawk pussy...to quote your man over there."

"Well I tell you what.  I'm gonna hit that roach, kiss your pretty lips a while and see how you look soakin' wet in a shower with me if you feel up to it.  You're pretty as hell under a shower I'm bettin."  Something in the way Curio said that made Kara swoon inside.  To see Curio, demure, delectably French and put together even after a bender...and growing up on the nasty streets of New Orleans, Kara reminded herself...and hear her sound almost manly insistent despite her sultry voice and undeniable femininity was oh so sexy.

"I'd like that.  And I want to make you love it."  She kissed Curio hard, cupping her cheeks between her hands, feeling the soft tan flesh.  Curio lay back and they were still kissing and only just beginning to moan as Moses scooped up his keys, phone and wallet and left them to it.



Travon Gordon heard his phone ringing over the din of The Upper Deck Sports Bar in Ridgeland, Mississippi and excused himself from the thick redhead who definitely into him as she sipped her third Screamin Blue Motherfucker at the barstool next to him.  He walked outside quickly, noticing UConn was up fifteen over Georgia Tech with less than four to go.  The Huskies just netted him close to seven grand if they held the lead.  With a smile he went outside to the patio.

"'Lo?"  He lit a Newport.

"Travon."  He did not know the voice but did not expect to recognize it.  The number was unknown but he did not expect to know that, either.

"Speaking."

"The couple still in play?" 

"As of an hour ago.  Nothing changed.  Still at the same location and got a few people over.  No one who'll be missed.  All information I passed on is correct as of then."

         "Thank you.  And congrats."  The phone clicked.

Travon slid the phone into his pocket and muttered, "Thank you, whoever you were."  Quiet, disciplined and succinct.  Travon prided himself on having those traits himself.  To hear it in another of his employer's associates was refreshing.  The man, and woman, he was replacing after their imminent demise were anything but that.

He smoked his cigarette to the nub without noticing his fingers were trembling.  Taking over the cocaine trade for all of central Mississippi was a daunting thing.  As he walked back through the doors, he felt somewhat larger than life.  The redhead was leaning with her back to the bar, inhaling him with her eyes as he returned.  He felt like celebrating, definitely.

But never before in his twenty-eight years had he felt so watched.



"Still on?"  Through the scrambler line his employers set up through a call forwarding service in North Carolina, Moses Holliday spoke with his employer's brother and bodyguard, Pete Fontenot.  Pete patted his forehead dry as he stood with steam rolling from his ample body.  The white towel could scarcely circumnavigate his belly.  A call girl got up from her knees in the sauna and closed the door behind him.

"It's on.  With bells on.  Be careful when you get 'round dem though.  Dey some kinda spooked out deez days."  Chuckling at that fact and who he was talking to, he added, "And dey oughta be now."

"Understood.  On it."  The connection ended.

Moses leaned against the rail staring at distant traffic racing up 1-55.  His eyes turned to the south, where the objects of his attention were probably chillin' in their home with some friends over.  Music blaring, ample crack and weed smoke in the air, eyes looking out the front window every time a pair of headlights turned down the horseshoe street.  He frowned as he thought of Grizzly Fontenot's words a week prior.

"I gots me one bigass shit-ton size problem up in Jackson."

"That town is gonna put you in prison one day."

"I'm startin' to think you damn sure raht, Mo.  I cain't keep no help worth a damn up dat way.  I don't know what in the holy hell dem idiots drinkin up dat way but I'm startin' to think dey goin' retard en masse.  It's good money and it's good to be 'round dem capital moneybags, but shit fire it's rough."

"What's the deal?"

         "My movin' man up dat way done hooked up with an old girl with a rock problem.  He wasn't the smartest damned thing you evah talked to but he could move some stuff and he kept the ledger in big bold black ink.  But dis girl-a his, she used to be a model.  She black, he white by the way.  She used to be a looka too.  Kinda still is but da rock, ya know.  Dat rock work a face ovah pretty bad after a while when you done been suckin it up."

"I've seen it happen from time to time."

"Dis here girl, she got caught with a lot of it in a house she wasn't spoze tah be in with a man who wasn't spoze tah be inside a-her no kinda ways.  But he was.  Balls deep from what I done heard.  So she tryin' to keep my boy from findin' out all 'bout dis other beau-a hers and also dat she done been busted for intent.  Some kinda way, Frank Melton shows up and it all goes under a log.  My boy don't know it."

"She's narcing?"

"Right up ole Frank's alley.  He gonna put my boy in dem cuffs for the six o'clock purty soon and den he gonna go to crowin' 'bout how he gonna clean out all dem illicit substances at six-thirty one night.  Of course, I say fuck dat."

"You gonna be clear if she does?"

"I got dat covered.  Da boy done got sloppy and he too dumb to know any better.  He thinkin' he too badass to go down.  Of course, he all talk and when he all talk eventually it's only gonna be all talkie talk to the DA 'bout ole Fontenot.  And you know how I feel about dem DA's bein' talkie talked to."

"Gotcha.  Time frame?"

"Yesterday.  How's my lil cheri?"

"Her birthday is comin' up.  I'm cain't for the life of me think of what to get her."

"Get her a rock.  By dat, I mean the rock.  Not dat rock that melts with a smile."

"We ain't the marryin' type, Griz."

"You be surprised.  You know how good she be to you when you and her jess shackin' up making weird faces and all dat.  Hoo boy, you put dat stone, ain't no tellin how crazy she get fo you."

"I'm thinkin' a Rome trip.  Maybe a whole European tour if the pay is nice."

"You rather hang around a buncha' Europeans than make her an honest woman?"

"What the hell is honest about her and me?  Evidence the reason we're talkin' right now."

"If you say so.  You mark my words doh, Mo Holliday, Boy Wonder.  A girl, even dat lil wild cheri a-yoze, she lay around all snugglin' up to her pillow when you not der.  And she a-dreamin', yes sir.  Jess dreamin' up a storm about having her man all to herself.  Dey cain't help it.  It don't even have tah be dey man, it can be some other ole girl's man.  Even in a dark lil world dat is her mind, too.  Best I figger, she wonders about it."

"She had about every gift but that one.  I'll toss it around."

"Be careful.  I'm fond of my lil cheri.  She a lil wired up lately, though."

"What's careful for us?"



His cheri had disappeared into the shower stall with Kara when he walked back in the room.  Moses shucked his shorts and crawled back into bed.  He was idly flipping through the late-night channels when the women came giggling from the bathroom.  Steam boiled from the bathroom and their skin as the pair walked to the bed.  Both of them stared at Moses with a playfully swarthy grin. 

Moses lit the roach and wiggled a come-hither finger at Curio.  She crawled across the bed on all fours, her dark eyes filmy with the lethargy of chemical and orgasm.  He shotgunned her as Kara watched.  Holding the charge, Curio patted the pillow and Kara leaned across.  They kissed, Curio passing the smoke between them.  It wafted as they worked each other's mouth. 

He took another drag and put it out.  Taking a swig from the bottle of Rebel Yell, he tossed his pillow aside and lay flat across the mattress as he took Kara's hand.  Curio helped her steady her pussy over his mouth and then he was the recipient of Curio's oral method as he tasted the excitement his beloved had stirred in the shower stall while he was gone.

Curio tasted Kara's sex on him, eager to wash it away and replace it with her own.  She snaked herself around and found Kara's hands and fingertips wandering in search of her as she rocked on her knees astride his eager mouth.  Her eyes were closed, the other senses exploding as his tongue massaged her intimacy.  Her hands found Curio wet, pulsing as Kara probed lightly.  The moans and hums began in earnest as everyone found their preferred rhythms and the focused feelings of lip-biting randiness brought forth a shared ferocity. 

For a long while, the women were hard-wired into their efforts.  In time, Moses was fit for battle.  Directing Kara to turn about to face her, she lowered herself on Moses, savoring the penetration, knowing he savored her upon him completely.  She and Kara shared him only for the night.  It was a gift to a nice damsel in distress in Curio's opinion.  Aroused from Kara's delicate touch, she climaxed quickly, punching him within her to the hilt and freezing that way, crying out shamelessly and then accepting Kara's frantic kisses as Moses intensified his efforts as he felt Kara moisten at the sight of his beauty at her most beautiful.  Kara's mouth had scarcely found Curio's dark nipple before her own orgasm shook her free of the breast.

He paused as Kara rolled off of his face, her freckled face crimson.  Both women soon found their way beneath the comforter, stroking Moses on each side and making small talk until he got up to pull some more coke from a suitcase.

"It don't do no good tucked away does it?"  He stood in front of them, lean and strong in the blur of the TV, untying the bread-tie on the baggie. 

"Kinda like that dick of yours."  Curio opened two Red Stripes and handed Kara one.

"He is packin' one, ain't he?"  Kara took a long drink.  She looked at his erection as he walked over to dump a glob of powder on the plate and hid the bag.  It was fascinating for her to see it.  Before in the dim light of the room and under the influence of his hands and mouth, she was barely aware of it until she guided it inside her at first.  She was aware of how it felt, not how it looked.  Like the rest of him, it hung hard with a swagger.  Up to the challenge, ferocious almost.  But like him, tawdry, weathered and certainly no stranger to bad times and worse places.  Numbed, too.  She recalled him inside her as she watched Curio pet it softly.  There was no real passion, only an act he thought he should play but play to the hilt.  The play worked, but it was a rehearsed eroticism that struck home nonetheless.  His was the role of the man he thought was needed to fuck her.  Touching Curio's soft breasts as she watched her eyes stare at him while her free hand rubbed her clit as she touched him, Kara was envious.  To see the look of casual love and adoration the two could exude in only the slightest sharing of smiles while he was methodically carving up lines for them all was a thing for which Kara would have given anything to feel just once.  However odd and asymmetrical they may have been, she marveled, they just fit together.

"Batter up!"  Moses scooped a dollop of coke and sprinkled a taste on both of Curio's nipples as he finalized the lines.  Kara's tongue soon numbed.  She shared the numbness together with Curio's tongue as Moses pretended to spill some on his cock and walked to the mattress.

For another hour, the trio numbed all their moving wet parts, trading places often.  Finally, with a fervent, "God, I love you!", and locked hands, Moses came inside Curio as she rocked in unison with her own.  Despite her involvement, their interest in all that she offered and happily shared, her own beauty, her hipness, and her sexy help, at the end Kara only sniffled her numbed nose and watched as the couple made love and found each other more than enough for each other.

It was Curio that walked her to the door when Kara noticed it was pushing dour a.m.  Moses was in the shower. 

"That was beyond fun."  Kara gave Curio a kiss on the cheek as she slung her purse over her shoulder.

"Couldn't agree more.  I've had some helluva birthdays but I can't say unwrapping a pretty woman as a gift has ever happened on one of them."  Curio smiled coyly and pulled Kara to her suddenly.  "You beat the living shit out of a pony, I'll say that for damned sure."

"I'm glad.  We should maybe do it again sometime."  Something about the sway Curio had as she tried to hold Kara to her on unsteady legs but with a steely look in her eyes was unnerving.

"Maybe.  But we don't get up this way much.  You're a very pretty woman, Kara."  Curio pecked her on the cheek softly, looking amused as she stroked Kara's cheek with a delicate hand.  "I thank you for what you said when I was sleeping."  She winked and put a hush-finger to her lips.  Kara gaped.  "And girlfriend, don't be so hard on yourself.  You got," she mimicked Kara's circling her face with a swirling finger, "all that, too.  I look like me.  You look like you and you fuckin' rock.  Don't waste it all on some stupid ass who tells it to you because he wants to fuck you and don't really, really, mean it.  You hear me?"

"I hear ya.  They are all full of shit, ain't they?"

Curio looked over her shoulder as the faucet cut off in the tub.  "Ninety-nine point nine-nine-nine to the fuckin' infinity, cheri.  And that leaves only one.  Sucks to be you, 'cuz I already got the one."

"You're lucky."

"In a lotta' ways.  You just don't know."

"Well," Kara shook her keys. "It was good to meet y'all.  It was damn sure better than drinkin' up my tips with a bunch of waiters and dykes at Joker's all night on a Friday."  She accepted Curio's final slow kiss and opened the door.

Kara smiled and waved goodbye at Moses, who alertly poked his head from the bathroom door when the front door opened.  "Goodbye, Cowboy!"

Moses waved with a smile.  "Be careful headin' home."

Kara nodded; pecked Curio again, blew a kiss to Moses and walked away.  When the door closed, Moses stepped naked from the bathroom lowering his .45 pistol from behind his back.

Curio latched the deadbolt and flattened against the door, gazing at him.  "You ain't gonna shoot me with that big gun, now are ya' Mister?  We got so much to do today!"

"What?  This old thing?"  He tossed the pistol on a chair as he walked to her slowly.  "I'm not so sure I ain't shot all the bullets in it."  He pushed against her, ravishing her neck, smelling the sex all over her.

"Oh my my my, Cowboy."  Curio huffed as she had her wrists grabbed and she was spun around face first against the door, his mouth wet and hot on her ear.  "I bet you got one more in that chamber for me."

He did.



Robbie Courtnay accepted the blunt from his crony, Earl "E-Love" Russell, bobbing his head to DMX.  The larger E-Love leaned back on Robbie's couch, laughing his fool head off at Richard Pryor describing getting some Playboy Bunny trim.  Robbie double-toked from the blunt and sent it around the circle.

Also in the circle, seated on recliners and the two plush leather couches, were Robbie's live-in girlfriend, Sheree Jardine, his bodyguard of dubious worth, Claudio King aka 'Do-One,' and two friends/buyer-distributors, Jamal Ali and Johnny Terrell. 

The air was non-existent, replaced with the fog of smoldering Menthols and exhaled sensemilla, occasionally blasted with a heavy spray of vanilla air freshener when Sheree's crack-induced paranoia brought terror to her eyes when a distant car door slammed on the quiet street.  All night came the constants of loud laughter and cursing, blaring rap music, numerous nervous customers dropping by and leaving before their car motors had scarcely the time to shut off completely. 

All of it going down in a south Jackson neighborhood whose integration was still new to the aging white residents, many of whom were plotting to sell soon and were merely biding their time as their kids cycled through nearby Forest Hill High School.  Courtnay setting up shop did little to stem the tide of realty signs that popped up in yards on Will-o-Wood Street.

The events of that Friday night, tame by the homeys' standards actually, were exactly the sort of inattention to detail that had signed their death warrant.  His supplier, the New Orleans mobster, Bertrand Fontenot, bought the house as a quiet base of operations for his then-steadfast young upstart, Robbie.  The idea was for the white Courtnay to blend in and move product away from the ghetto areas of Jackson.  It worked for nearly sixteen months.  Fontenot reaped mightily from the investment during that time.  But, the enterprise now faltered, rotting from within.

It was Sheree who brought the house down.  Once upon a time, she was the Homecoming Queen of Callaway High School.  She even modeled for the local Dillard’s ads while she attended Phillips Junior College.  Tall and Nubian, she still walked with a long-legged grace though hopelessly attached at the lips to the stem of a glass pipe she liked to call, "Mister Smile."  At one time, her hair had been styled by the best in Jackson.  Around the time when the pipe smelted permanently to her mouth, she opted for a Jeri-curl look, though the era of it was long past.  Her long hair pulled off the look, though, when it was treated properly with activator.  In the past month, her nerves were especially on edge.  When at home, she retreated almost completely to the upstairs game room and the activator can remained unused.

Known to Travon Gordon and thus to Fontenot, Sheree Jardine was seeing another man on the side.  The man was an old boyfriend of hers from back at Callaway who lived out in the Presidential Hills area of west Jackson.  Two weeks prior to that Friday night, she was caught in bed with him around noon by a task force armed with insider information provided by the owner of the local NBC affiliate, the self-styled crusader, Frank Melton.  Her purse yielded eighteen grams of crack spread across ten glass vials.  Seriously felonious.

No official record of the bust was noted, however.  Travon heard about it through a cop friend of his and passed it along straight to Fontenot in person.  The secrecy of the arrest and the fact she was home before the sun set that night told the gangster all he needed to know.

Since the arrest, Sheree only inhaled more cocaine, walked on eggshells around Robbie, and waited for instructions.  Sitting next to him on the couch and taking a nonchalant toke from the blunt as she watched Pryor, every slam of a car door shook her to the core.

Full beers disappeared around three a.m. and the main core of the Jackson, Mississippi sales force for the crime syndicate known as the Atchafalaya Mudbugs in Louisiana began nodding off and disappearing.  When the sun rose the next morning, only one was fully awake, listening to car doors, the voices of unseen demons, and her snoring boyfriend.

 

"Travon says she a little twitchy these days."  Curio Phelonie slurped the last bit of Waffle House coffee and threw her balled-up napkin on her plate.

Moses stubbed his Winston in the ashtray and flipped a five on the table as they both rose to leave.  Their very dark and overweight waitress, Jackie, dove at the money first before clearing the plates as Curio gathered her purse and Moses went to pay. 

"Thank y'all for that!"  She smiled, jovial as she had been as she took care of them. 

The loud banter between her and the all-black staff were thoroughly entertaining throughout the meal.  Moses had blushed as they fanned themselves and whooped at him as they walked through the door.  Curio laughed at his sudden pause as he realized all eyes were on him in the busy restaurant. 

"He's more than a pretty face, too!"  She announced as he looked back at her in exasperation.  "All this,” she circled his face with her fingers to the staff and patrons, "you can borrow.  All this," she circled his crotch laughingly, "All mine!"  He chuckled at the dancing and screaming response from the ladies and walked to the only booth.

"Thank you, Jackie.  I gotta tell ya," Curio stretched her arms. "The service in this town has been a lot better lately than we're used to."

"Mississippi is the Hospitality State." Jackie shrugged.

They pulled into the truck stop at the Gallatin Street exit off I-20 so Curio could pee while Moses watched the sun begin to slip just above the tree line.  He was getting worried.  His idea was to hit the target house some night at his leisure.  There was a rush now, since a snitch in their midst was delaying traffic.  Travon's details told Moses the best time to hit would be at daybreak, when the party was over and heads were foggy.  That opportunity was being squandered, becoming too risky as the sun woke up potential witnesses.

She jumped in the car.  "That felt good.  I'm so damn full."  Curio handed him a stick of gum.  He drove around the Frontage Road until he reached McDowell and drove to the parking lot of adult book store next to a giant UPS complex.

"You buying me a lil’ take-home present?"

"Perhaps.  Let's get loaded.  Twenty minutes."  Curio nodded and jumped out to get the gear in the trunk.

Moses surveyed the Jackson street map one more time.  She lugged the heavy black duffle bag from the trunk and slung it on the back seat.  Without a word, they loaded weapons and readied themselves for combat.  In the past, they would banter and kid.  After a while and numerous bad days, Curio's playful exuberance had ebbed into a dull machination of readying for whatever may lie ahead.  Her soft face was sharpened from the lush sneer of a woman on fire awaiting her opportunity to inflict harm for both money and the raw feel of power to use at her disposal to a fixed setting of her eyes on the task at hand. 

Moses, with his many years on the job and two tours in Vietnam as a mud Marine and Lurp, carried that look already when she started working with him.  He had known eventually, her yearn for adventure would evolve into the ho-hum taste of her efforts.  But even on her face which carried her eye-liner and rouge-lipsticked version of the "thousand yard stare", the look was tantalizing for him to see.

"Remember, anyone in there is a hostile."  He jammed his .45 in a cargo pocket.  She nodded, feeling the tingle in her loins as she chambered a round in her Luger 9mm.  She kissed the Death's Head on the grip for luck and shoved it in its holster. 

"I'm to the task, baby."  She bit her bottom lip as she examined the new Spyderco dagger Moses had bought her as an early birthday gift.  It was sleek, evil, with a six-inch blade, a nice compliment to her Luger.  She slid her tight black leather pants to her knees in the back seat and strapped the sheath to her upper thigh.  Checking that she could pull the handle from the pants, Moses nodded.

"Fits good."

She got the CAR-15 rifle he called "Cletus" assembled, loaded and stowed in the bag.  Checking the other items, she gave him a thumbs-up and zipped the bag.  Jumping into the front seat, she gave him a kiss on the cheek.

"Let's fuck 'em."  He said and cranked up the old Grand Am. 

They drove up the bumpy McDowell Road, Curio applying makeup and fast-forwarding through a mix-tape she made.  Finally she found Black Sabbath's "Sweet Leaf" and let it ride.

A turn on Raymond Road and a few miles put them turning left onto Will-o-Wood Road.

"729.  Third on the left.  Right there."  Curio read and pointed.  Moses nodded, his eyes seeing every detail of the area. They drove around the horseshoe, eye-balling the target house and sampling the neighborhood's dawn mood.

The house was a cookie-cut two-story with a cedar exterior.  A large plate-glass window with heavy tint dominated the second floor facing the road.  He hoped a handful of sentries were not watching them from behind the darkened glass.

Numerous cars were parked at some of the homes, leftovers from get-togethers like the one at the target house.  Most of the residents were aging white folks, still.  Most of the houses only had a single Buick or some aging Chrysler or Caddy sitting alongside a truck.  Others housed low-riding Nissans, worn-out Caprices or the occasional work truck with a bed full of toolboxes and ladders.  They were surprised to see a pair of old ladies, one white and one black, carrying small dumbbell weights and power-striding around the horseshoe, sweating in jogging suits.

"I thought old people hit Cracker Barrel for the early bird special."  Moses muttered as Curio waved at the ladies.

"I guess widows don't.  They must either get older and die or they get fine and live again."

They drove back up to Forest Hill High School and sat for a moment.  Moses sucked at a cigarette.  The target house had three cars visible.  No one seemed to be stirring much around the horseshoe, though.

"Plan stays the same.  We gotta go and go now.  That sun is a deathtrap." 

"I'm here.  Let's go."  Curio unzipped the "war purse" she carried when on the job. The Luger, a roll of twenties, wet wipes, a heavy first-aid kit, a throwaway cellular telephone and her make-up were the only items in it.

"I'm not gonna remind you about the last time I sent you to knock on the door of a house full of thug ass dope dealers."

Curio looked lazily over at him.  "Slight snafu."  They had been captured and Curio was raped before Moses got them loose.

"No repeats."  He said.

"No shit."

They entered at the far end of the horseshoe and pulled up at the curb of the house to the right of the target house.  Curio took a long look at it and around.  Grabbing up a handful of "Watchtower" pamphlets, they jumped out.  Carrying the duffle bag, Moses walked beside her up their driveway.  He crouched down beside the car at the rear of the parked cars, pretending to fix a boot's fit.  Casually, he jammed a tire spike in its two driver-side tires and barely missed a stride.  The covered carport's door was open.  At the front of the house, they parted ways.  Moses walked into the carport.  Curio walked up to the front door. 

Standing on the porch, she adjusted her loose white button-up blouse to make sure the dagger was hidden and her breasts were properly exposed.  In harm's way now, not thinking but instinctive and lethal, she felt the throbbing in her crotch renewed.  Smiling, she clenched her muscles inside her for a moment.  Then, assuming a perfect womanly pose, she held the pamphlets to her bosom and rapped softly with a knuckle on a pane of window glass in the heavy door.

A hulk clad in a well-worn JSU jogging suit looked out the window.  Curio waved at him shyly with a bubbly smile.  As the curtain on the door closed and she heard him fumbling with locks, she looked one more time around at the neighborhood.  The only movement was a few squirrels amongst the longleaf pines in a few yards.  One yard was being automatically sprinkled with city water.

Do-One opened the door, rubbing his eyes.  "Help you?"

Curio spoke to the necklace he wore, seething inside.  In large gold letters, were the words THUG NIGGA 4 LIFE.

"Hello!  My name is Janie and myself and a few of my friends are canvassing the neighborhood this morning.  I would like to ask you a question, if I may?"

"Shiiiitt, that's easy.  Eight inches of answerin' prayers, lil' filly."  Do-One said with a huff, patting his crotch.  "Answer anything you wanna know if you ask it right." 

"Well, I was gonna ask about your soul's salvation and maybe ask if I could get a drink of water to take a pill." she said in a fake huff.  "But since you said that, maybe I should be going.  I'll pray for you and your eight inches, sir." She turned to leave.  He reached out.

"Naw, naw, naw.  I was just playin', baby girl.  I thought you was some skeezer ass bitch.  You got a church you talkin' for?"

Curio handed him a pamphlet.  "We are seeking new members for our new hall over on Robinson.  Check us out sometime.  Is there anyone else in the house who may be interested hearing about the great things God's love can offer them?  In these trying times, sometimes it's hard to cope with what the world can throw you.  But there is caring and help from God available at all times.  That's what we would like to share..."  She swooned slightly, jamming her hand against the wall to fake propping herself up.  "Excuse me."

"You a-ight?"

"Diabetic.  It'll pass when I take my pill in a bit."  She handed him a few more pamphlets, feigning discomfort.  "Here, if anyone you know is interested, we'd love to have you pray with us."

"Hold up.  Come on in and get some water fo you fall out, lil' filly.  He opened the door and led her inside.  "Skuze the mess and all deez passed-out niggas.  We was partyin' late."  Jamal Ali and Johnny Terrell snored aimlessly in two recliners.  BET murmured on the TV.

He led her through the living room and into the kitchen.  It was a shambles throughout the house. 

She sat at the half-bar, next to the door that led to the carport. 

"The lady of the house ain't much of a housekeeper."  Do-One fumbled around the kitchen, stealing a glance at the pretty missionary as she propped her forehead on her hand, clearly in some distress.

"You need to eat somethin'?  I gots some Popeye’s in here."  He opened the fridge and leaned in.  Curio reached over and opened the deadbolt of the backdoor quickly. 

She pulled back the curtain on the window of that door and winked at Moses as he brought Cletus to his shoulder.  He nodded and pulled his balaclava over his face.  She was just turning the latch on the doorknob when Sheree came around the corner, holding a laundry basket heaped high with clothes.  She paused at the doorway.  She and Curio locked eyes.  One bitch saw another in an instant.  Men could be swayed by Curio Phelonie's looks and cleavage, she was not.  Sheree saw her opening a door, saw a glimpse of a man in a mask on the other side of that door, and saw only Do-One's ass sticking out from behind the open refrigerator door.

Curio sneered at her.  "Hey snitch bitch!"  Her hand dove into the purse.

"Robbie!  Five-o!"  Sheree screamed and threw the heavy basket of laundry hard at Curio.  Curio was inundated with dryer-fresh wife beaters and Fubu’s.  Sheree was gone in an instant, dashing through the door that opened to the stairs that led to the upstairs game room. 

"Five-o?"  Robbie Courtnay yelled from the bathroom down the hall.  Do-One stood up with a box of chicken in his hand, puzzled.

"What the fuck?"  His eyes widened as he saw the girl pull a pistol and jump to her feet.  He realized the ruse and pulled his Glock 9mm from behind his back.  Curio dropped to her knees, putting the bar between herself and Do-One.  The door to the game room slammed.  The two men asleep in the recliners barely registered the cacophony.

"Quit suckin that fuckin pipe, you stop seein' shit, Sheree."  Jamal mumbled as he rolled over in the chair for a better position.

"Gankers!  They strapped, yo!"  Do-One yelled, his voice commanding.  Then the window of the backdoor exploded.  The back of Do-One's head exploded as well as Moses shot him through the mouth from behind the glass.  He opened the lock through the shattered glass as Curio charged ahead into the living room.  Johnny Terrell rolled his head over and opened one eye.  He saw only the muzzle of her pistol before it pressed into his ear and discharged.  Jamal Ali managed to get out a brief yelp before he was dead in his chair as well.  She heard noises from down the hall to her left and moved toward them. 

Moses entered the living room, sweeping with the rifle.  He saw the two dead men just as Curio walked through the threshold. 

"The woman went upstairs."  She pointed at the door to the game room.

Moses pointed down the hall and then to his eyes.  Curio nodded and moved methodically.

Suddenly the door in front of Moses swung open.  E-Love had the drop on the Moses Holliday with an AK-47 held at his hip, Scarface style.  With a battle cry, he pulled the trigger, expecting the recoil.  The rifle never made a sound.  A click would have been at least something.  He never had time to realize what Moses knew in an instant.

"Safety's on, asshole."  Moses shot him through the heart with the silenced .223.  He grabbed the dead man's leg and dragged him from the doorway.

"Sheree!"  Moses yelled up the stairway.  "We know what you did.  You can sit your ass up there all fuckin' day.  But it's your man we're after!  You can snitch about it later all you wanna if you sit yo ass up there.  His ass is dead, though."

"Fuck you!" Moses heard the breach of a break-action single-shot gun click home.

"Don't do it, you dumb bitch!" 

Sheree fired the twelve-gauge down the stairway.  The carpet and wood floor at the foot of the stairs exploded.

Moses grunted in disgust.  It was too many shots fired.  The cops would be coming.  Knowing time was running out for escape, he ran to the carport for his bag.



Curio recalled Travon's instructions about the layout of the house as she opened the first door.  Spare bedroom, he had told them.  Clothes and stolen goods kept there from time to time.  Next three doors were laundry room and then two bathrooms on either side of the hall. 

The first room was clear.

"Robbie.  Best you don't make me wait out here!"  She called as she looked into the laundry room.  "I'm kinda spoiled by prompt service in this town."  Curio stood outside the doors to the two bathrooms.

"Eenie, meenie..." She never made it beyond that.  With a hard kick, she broke open the wrong bathroom door.

Robbie Courtnay was deep into thought on the commode when the fracas erupted.  Sheree was screaming, "Five-o!" and he only cursed under his breath.  The woman was getting to be a regular crackhead.  When he heard Do-One yelling in the kitchen and the sound of glass followed by more screaming, gunfire, and slammed doors, he had little time to think of a plan.   

He jumped up, tugging up his boxers.  He was in Sheree's john.  There were no weapons in it.  Hearing a woman's voice calling him by name, he crouched to the side of the door as he expected bullets through it.  Heart pounding, he heard a loud boom from upstairs.  Robbie steeled himself for combat.  Every lesson he learned in tae kwan do and tae chi raced through his mind.  Still fit at thirty-three and occasionally sparring from time to time, he figured he had only a few scant seconds to strike and disable his foe and make a dash for a window in the back rooms somewhere.

The spare bedroom's door opened.  Tensing, he suddenly saw the giant box of baby powder beside the sink.  It was the only weapon he managed to have ready when Curio Phelonie kicked in the other bathroom door.  When she did, Robbie opened his and sprang at her.

Curio barely turned from the empty bathroom when suddenly a great glob of powder hit her square in the nose.  Immediately she was fubar.  She gasped involuntarily as she saw him coming and inhaled a lot of the powder instantly.  Her eyes were hit, dried out and caked with talc.  Robbie bicycle-kicked her in her gun hand.  The Luger went flying from her grip.  She tried to yell but only a raspy cough and a cloud of talc flew from her mouth.  Robbie brought his hand down across her wrist as she tried to punch him and then swept her leg from beneath her.  She tumbled into the wall, scraping her cheek raw as she slid down. 

Scrambling, she tried to get back up.  Robbie tried for the kill shot.  He punched her, palm-up, in the nose.  He got a lot of her but not enough to send the cartilage into the brain.  Curio bled profusely.  She managed to get a glancing kick in the balls and he backed away.  She stood up, spitting as much as she could and wiping an eye clear with a sleeve of her blouse.  Her vision cleared somewhat, she saw only the dirty bottom of his bare foot as he bicycle-kicked her savagely in the solar plexus.  Something crunched inside her.  She felt immediate pain.  No words came out as she tried to scream, only her wind and another puff of powder.  She tried again to call out, "Moses!"  The taste of talc and blood came from her mouth.

Robbie walked past her to retrieve her gun.  He closed and locked the door leading from the hall to the living room.



Moses grabbed a gas can in the carport and shook it. 

Half full.  He opened it and smelled.  Plain gas.  Grabbing it and shoving a thermite grenade from the duffle bag into a hip pocket, he carried the bag inside and hit the 'close' button on the carport door.

He could scarcely see Sheree's feet beginning to tiptoe down the first few steps.  Holding the can and with the bag slung, he could not get a good shot.  From the hip, he fired a few rounds at her feet.  She screamed and ran back up the stairs.

"Stay your black ass back up there."  He mumbled himself as he walked quickly back into the living room.  With deliberate arching splashes, he slung the gas up the stairs and then threw the can on the body of Jamal Ali.

"This is gonna hurt, I'm afraid, bitch."  He said under his breath where Sheree could not hear.  He pulled the pin and lobbed the grenade up and to the rear of the game room.  He heard it pop as it ignited and the boom of the shotgun again splintered the floor in front of the door. 

Moses closed the door and dragged a heavy sofa in front of it.  Almost immediately, a smoldering spot began growing in the ceiling of the dining area as the magnesium in the grenade begun to burn a hole beneath it.  The thermite was designed to melt metal if necessary.  In a wood-framed house, it made short work of anything around it as it spewed fire.

"Smoke up time, crackie." He said and went to see what Curio was doing.

She dragged herself into the laundry room as Robbie went for the Luger.  Sobbing in pain, she pulled the dagger from her waist and clawed her way up to her feet.  When he rounded the corner, she was against him, driving the dagger into his gut, lurching it upward, twisting it madly.  He shrieked, the gun forgotten.  She pushed them both forward, crashing against the wall.  He trembled as she sneered like a maniac in his face, stabbing him in the chest over and over as she screamed in furious pain.  She was an animal cornered and he forgot the rules about handling them.

Moses opened the door and gasped audibly.  She looked at him, still unable to speak.  She looked like a psychotic clown, her beautiful face covered in white powder and blood.  He rushed to her, pushing her aside and shooting Robbie twice in the head to be sure.  He smelled smoke and could hear Sheree screaming upstairs.

"You okay?"  He stuffed her knife and gun in a pocket.  She shook her head no, clutching her belly and barely moving.  Whatever broke inside her, it was serious.  He could see it in an instant.  "Can you walk?"  She only cried and staggered up to her feet.  Doubled over, she offered a trembling hand out to her lover.

Moses slung the rifle over his shoulder and picked her up.

"Belly’s all fucked up." She whispered as she coughed talc. "He kicked me hard.  I ain’t doin’ too good here, baby.  I’m scared."

"We're gonna be ok, you hear me?"  He ran with her in his arms, looking at the duffle bag.  In an instant, he reached and grabbed it as he passed, clutching her to him with the strong free arm.  She marveled at that, how despite not being a muscle-bound gym freak, he had muscles of raw steel it seemed.  She opened the door with a free hand and they suddenly were public.  Black smoke began to flow out from behind them.

Fresh sunlight shone down through the longleaf pines.  A few nosy neighbors were standing in their morning clothes, staring open-mouthed at the house down the street, a few pointing at the smoke.  Paranoia set into the couple now.  Curio felt something was very wrong inside her.  The pain was acute.  A broke rib at least.  Perhaps worse. 

Moses could feel the dragnet beginning to tighten.  Running as fast as he could, he loped with her for the car, the rifle bouncing on his back, the bag swaying.  People saw the rifle and began to run for their doors.  He threw open the rear door and tossed the bag and Curio inside.

Running around to the driver's side of the car, he glanced at the upstairs window of the house.  Illuminated by the flame behind her, Sheree's silhouette could be seen through the tinted glass.  She was leveling an AK-47 at them. 

"Fuck!"  Moses had Cletus up to his shoulder in an instant.  He fired a round that shattered the heavy glass.  His next two caught Sheree center-mass just as the flames inhaled the fresh air sucked in through the broken window.  The room exploded in a back draft flare.  Sheree's body was launched, clothes and hair set aflame, into the trunk of a pine.  It bounced and fell to the concrete porch with inhuman smacking sound.  For good measure, he turned and began firing at the cars up and down the street, hoping to shock the memories of any potential witnesses.  The cars thumped as the .223 shells hit them, but it was not the raucous show he wanted with the rifle silenced.  He pulled his .45 from his pocket and quickly popped off an entire clip down the street.  The heavy Colt asserted its presence far better.  The gawkers fled in terror.

He jumped in the car and floored it as soon as the engine caught.  Turning right immediately on Raymond, he pulled off the balaclava and jammed it in a cargo pocket.  He kicked out the .45's clip and jammed another into it.  Fishing out her Luger, he gave it to her over his shoulder and did the same with Cletus.

"Reload Cletus with the Teflon."  He barked, looking in his mirrors continuously for a cruiser.  Turning right on Cooper Road, he pulled over dutifully for a passing fire truck as wailed and blared its way to the residential fire reported on Will-o-Wood.  Wincing and moaning as she moved, Curio found the clip of Teflon-coated bullets he kept in case they were ever chased by police.  The bullets would penetrate car motors and if need be, body armor.  She locked and loaded.  Then she lay still with her hands on her stomach.

"We're gonna get clear, baby.  I'm gonna get us loose-a this, just you don't worry now.  Just lay still.  He probably busted a rib.  It hurt to breathe?"

"It hurts all over.  I'm fucked up back here."  She thrashed in pain, angered at the piss-poor luck.  "Fuck you!  You dead, Daniel-san!  Wax on, wax off that shit, motherfucker!"  She cried out and regretted the effort, coughing, tasting talc and blood.

"Just hang tight.  We're gonna get to the Bronco.  I'm gonna’ torch this fucking ride and we're gettin' the hell outta Mississippi.  You hear me?"

"I hate Mississippi.  I ain't coming back here, you hear me?"

"Let's hope not.  Shit.  Cop ahead." 

A Hinds County Deputy flew past them, followed by a fire station commander's Caprice with their lights flashing.  He gunned the motor, trying to put distance between he and the deputy should their description come through.  Crossing the intersection at Rainey Road, he began to hit traffic on Cooper.  Jackson city cops began appearing from the side streets, all turning north and heading to the sight of shots fired.  Moses put on sunglasses and threw on his black Stetson for good measure.

"Play some music or something."  Curio closed her eyes, covering them with an arm as the sun baked her face through the side mirror.  Moses turned up the volume.  The tail end of “Paradise City” played through briefly.  Moses looked over his shoulder as he passed a small strip of shops and a skating rink on his right. 

"Pull up your shirt."

"Kinky but I'm really not into it right now, Tex."  She tried to raise it but it hurt too much so she unbuttoned it.  Stealing glances over his shoulder Moses saw her belly was darkening and swelling.

Internal bleeding.  He knew it instantly.  She was bleeding out from the inside.  Just before Hope Sandoval began her angelic vocals on "Fade Into You," Moses turned it off and pulled out a cell phone from a pocket. 

"Turn it up.  I love that song."

"I'm calling the doc.  You're in bad shape."  He plugged it into the lighter jack and dialed a number from memory.

"Hello?"  An elderly black man answered the phone in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

"Holliday for Pete."

"Yes sir."

A few seconds passed and Pete Fontenot, Bertrand's brother and bodyguard picked up.

"Whatcha' say, Tex?  You stirred up some shit dincha'?"

"Curio's hurt, Pete.  Bad."

In Algiers, Louisiana, Pete Fontenot cradled a cell phone in his ear and pulled another from a box of them.  He unboxed it and plugged it into a wall as he spoke.

"She get herself shot?"

"She got kicked all up in the craw, son.  She's got a bleeder inside-a her.  I need the doc ASAP."

"Okay.  I'm already on dat, Tex.  How bad is bad?  You okay otherwise?"

"There's witnesses.  It spilled out into the road."

         "Damn.  I'm on the line with a fella who done got one of dem police scanners.  He been listening in fo’ us up dat way.  Dem piggies ain't got yo’ car yet.  It’ll happen fast doh.  Scoot yo’ ass along."

"It won't be long, I know.  There was too many eyes.  It was dumb hittin' them folks at dawn.  I shoulda’ fuckin’ knew better."  He looked over his shoulder at her once more before turning on Meadow Lane.  If she was pale, he couldn't tell under the cake of powder and blood.  He passed a walking park and flew through a four-way stop.

"You get dat car scorched up and you be okay.  Don't worry a thing 'bout dat.  I'ma roll the doc yo' way.  Can she hold up a coupla hours?"

"Maybe.  I dunno.  Depends on what's busted.  I may need him on the phone before that though if I gotta’ go in myself."

"Gotcha', but looka here now, ole Boy.  Now, don't you be goin’ Ben Casey on ya’ girl, Tex.  You wait if you can wait.  Now I'ma call a few fellas I know up dat way and see about gettin' you somewhere to lay up 'til you can get her moved aftah the doc does his thing.  Bien?"

"Tres bien.  Tell the doc to hustle up, Pete.  I'm serious.  Please."  He pleaded without knowing it.

"I'ma get the ball rollin' fast as I can, Tex.  You just get dat hot car taken care of and hide out."

"I'm on it.  Call me back."  Moses hung up.  He wiped his sweaty brow and shook his head.  “Fuck.” He mumbled.

"You're scared.  Don't be, baby." Curio raised a bloody hand up to pat his headrest.  He put the phone in his lap and gripped her wrist.  Her pulse was good.  It was just adrenaline, though.  He could feel her strength ebbing in her hands.

"We're fine.  Pete's got the doc on it.  We gonna’ go get the Bronco and we'll be fuckin Fonzi then."

"That's the spirit.  Fonzi was cool..." She sighed and passed out as he turned Hope Sandoval back on.  Turning on Savannah Street, he made the quick right on Terry and a left on CL Bradford, trying to stay on back roads.  The Bronco was parked behind a fish house in Byram, several miles south of Jackson.  Thinking she was fading out to Hope's soft voice, he pushed the button on the tape deck and the other side began playing in the beginning of "Don't Tread on Me" by Metallica.  She jumped awake, startled.

"No sleepin', darlin.  You know why."  He flew down the quiet road until it ended at another frontage road that paralleled I-55 South.  Turning right, he floored the Grand Am down the straightaway.

"I'm gonna be okay, right?  But just in case and all.  I love you."  She spoke through grunts.

"I love you, too, baby doll.  It's gonna be okay.  You lay still.  I'm gonna pull over and get some water for your face.  You're a mess.  You look like fuckin’ Marie Antoinette on that bad hair day back there."

"A hot mess though, right?"

He looked over his shoulder again and winked. "Of course, baby.  Always."

"Better be.  Do I really look like that hot French chick in that movie you two were jawing about?"

"I knew you were playin' opossum.  I don't remember the chick she was walking about, but we'll rent it when we get home and see."

"If she's ugly, I'ma stomp a hole in that bitch's ass for comparing me to her."

"That's my girl."  He turned at Elton and crossed over the interstate to turn onto the opposite side of the frontage road.  The intersection at Byram was a busy one.  They would miss it by approaching from the northbound side.

Again, he floored it. 

"Slow down, baby.  We get into a shootout in a routine speeding stop I won't be so pretty."  Curio chided him.  When he did not relent, she knew why.  In his estimation, she was dying and the car they were in was a deathtrap for them both even if she had not been hurt.  He was breaking his rules because if he was to lose her, if would not be just so he had a fighting chance by playing it safe.  He would do everything to save her, even if he paid the price in his own mortality.

She smiled at that thought.  It was good to be loved.

He slowed as he neared the commercial area along the Frontage Road and turned into the parking lot of the Swinging Bridge Fish House.  The lot was empty except for his old Bronco parked casually in the far end of the lot as if forgotten.  He pulled the car on the passenger side and jumped out.  Working fast but trying to look nonchalant, he threw the guns into the duffel bag and tossed it into the passenger seat of the truck.  He opened the camper shell and pulled out a jug of water.

"Close your eyes."  She closed them tight and he poured a third of the gallon jug over her face, scrubbing with the palm of his hand as he did. 

"My hair, baby."

"Wear a hat.  You look like what it would look like if some lil kid shotgunned Bozo in the face when they didn't win the Grand Prize Game."  He scrubbed away the drying blood.  More trickled from her swelling nose.  He grimaced at her belly and touched her nose softly.

"You gotta stop gettin' hit in that pretty face.  Shoot ‘em first.  No fightin' with ninjas from now on."

"That pussyass dickhead wished he was a ninja.  I went samarai on his ass."  Moses pulled a towel from the Bronco and wiped her face.  When he was more or less done, he held the towel to her nose. 

"I'm gonna’ lay you down in the bed.  I don't gotta’ tell you how bad that's a-gonna’ suck.  But you can't sit up."

"I'm good.  She sat at the door, clutching her side and burying her face in the towel.  He slid the various items he kept stowed in the rear of the truck aside, making a trench.  Spreading a pair of sleeping bags on the metal floor, he eased her from the car.

"Easy, easy."  He walked her to the door and helped her inside. Yelling in pain, she slid behind the seat into the hollow behind him and collapsed.  He pulled a jug of kerosene with a blasting cap/timer assembly taped to it and dialed in one hour.  Pulling everything from the car and dumping into the Bronco, he sat the jug in the trunk and pulled the car to the far side of the lot.  Leaving the keys in it, he locked the doors and walked to the Bronco.  His phone rang just as he hopped inside.  When he heard Pete’s voice, he finally had some hope.

The doc was on his way.



Both Grizzly and Pete Fontenot got in the face of Kenneth Grovonaux as he stood with his mouth wide open at his home in Kenner, Louisiana.  His wife hustled her two kids into a back room of his posh home.  She looked back over her shoulder as if she may not see her husband alive again.  If the looks on the gangsters' faces were any indicator, she was to be planning a funeral and a police interview in the very near future.

"What? You don't hear so good now, Kenny boy?" Pete pulled a Bulldog .44 from his shoulder holster and jammed it into the insurance executive's ear.  The muzzle felt impossibly large in the canal.  "How about yo' hearing now, you sumbitch?  We ain't askin'.  We fuckin' tellin!  The jet!  Wheels up in forty minutes!"

Grizzly growled, "Or dat two-timin’ fuckin’ wife of yours gets paid the double indemnity on yo’ policy."

"I can't shake out a flight hop in that kinda’ time..." Kenneth stammered. 

"You da fuckin boss or not?"  Grizzly blew a smoke ring in his face.  "Make the call or you ain't nevah found or seen again.  And I don't leave witnesses, asshole.  Think about dem kids dat might not be yoze in der."

"It's logistics, man!  We schedule the pilots way ahead of time.  It's all scheduled.  The jet's expensive.  I mean, shit, I ain't the CEO of fucking GE, man!  I don't run Disney!  The jet ain't at my disposal anytime I fuckin' wanna go golf a Sunday with Lee Iacocca.  I don't have a dick that big."

"As I recall, one of dem perks I ordered when we began doin' dat lil bidness you like done is dat fuckin jet when I ask.  I was askin'," Bertrand pulled his own Sig Sauer .40 caliber and put it against Grovonaux's other ear.  "Now, us and deez two guns, we tellin' you.  One more damned time.  Get somebody’s ass in dat pilot seat.  Whatever it costs."

"It can't be done.” The hammer on the .44 clicked in his ear. “WaitWaitWait!” He gulped and stammered. “I can get a helicopter, though.  An offshore shuttle chopper.  They do stay on standby.  We keep them in case there’s a rig problem.  I can get one of those."

"How big a chopper?"  Bertrand looked at Pete, who shrugged and clenched his teeth. "You take it to Jackson from here?"  He asked the exec.

"It probably has to refuel in McComb or somewhere up that way, but yeah."

Grizzly walked over and picked up a phone.  With a devilish glare he handed the phone to the shuddering man. "You bettah' be right, white bread."



Doctor Theopolis Delandry and his nurse/wife Betty stepped aboard a twelve-seat Bell helicopter at the tiny airstrip near their home in Hammond, Louisiana.  The pilot jumped out and helped them aboard along with their gear.  Theo boarded with three large plastic totes full of equipment and an ice chest.

The pilot tried to strap them in but Theo waved him off.  "Ain't my first time in a dust-off.  Get this bird in the air!"  The pilot gave a thumbs up, pointed at the headsets stowed above them and tapped his helmet.  Theo nodded and strapped down a nervous Betty.  The helicopter was on the ground less than four minutes.  It landed in McComb, refueled and was landing at Hawkins Field within three hours of the phone call from Kenner.

Moses Holliday was waiting for them with a cab and the Bronco, per his instructions.

"How bad is she?"  Betty asked as Moses humped the totes rapidly into the rear of the Bronco.  His face was ashen.

"She's pale as a ghost.  I hope she ain't gone by the time we get back."

"She got kicked?"  Theo asked as he helped lug the totes.

"Yeah.  Dead center below the tits.  I'm betting spleen or liver.  God knows what else."

"We ain't got much time then.  We followin’ you."  He ducked into the cab.  Moses leaned over to the cabbie, a young Greek.  He threw two hundreds in his lap.

"Those two people are doctors.  My girl is sick and they got medicine to fix her.  You got me so far?"  He glared at the driver.

He nodded.  "I got you, boss."

"I'm driving fast, assfucker.  Don't make me wait for you."

The man swallowed and started the meter.

Moses took them to the abandoned Med Assist office Pete directed him to find in Clinton earlier.  Moses pulled up to the rear of the building and pulled away the pallet he left to hold the door shut.  The cab turned in and the Delandrys got out. 

The cabbie pulled beside Moses.  "I do good, yes?" 

Moses flipped another hundred to him.  "Enjoy those goats, Plato."  The driver smirked and gave him the OK sign.  Moses knew it was a Greek insult but headed to unload totes.  Betty went inside first.

"Honey, you still alive?"  She saw Curio lying on an exam table in a room obviously used as a day surgery cubicle.

Curio turned over suddenly, Luger in her hand.  She aimed at Betty, who screamed.

"Curio!  Friendlies!"  Moses yelled.  Curio relaxed, her face pale. 

"I thought if I told her to guard the door it would give her a reason not to nod off."  Moses hurried past Betty and went to her side. 

"You still with me, baby?"

"Til the bitter end.  It's hurtin' though, baby.  It really hurts."  She stroked his cheek.  Betty walked up to her, Theo following with a stethoscope plugging into his ear. 

"Oh shit!  I remember y'all!  How y'all been?" She perked up as she recognized them from an earlier episode.

"We're fine, Miss Phelonie.  But we have got to stop meeting under these circumstances."  Theo went to work.  "Holliday, get that gear in here." 

He looked her over with his hands and eyes as Moses nodded and followed orders.

"Do you have orders to let me die?"  She asked him when she heard Moses head outside.  "I understand if you do.  Make it look good though.  I don't want him to tear himself up about what happened."

"Honey,” Betty pumped up a blood pressure cuff.  The girl was so pale. “Bertrand done basically stole a helicopter to get us up here fast as we could get here." Betty held her hand and wiped a trickle of blood from her nose with some dry gauze before holding the stethoscope to her wrist.  The blood-soaked towel she had pressed against her nose had fallen from the table during a light-headed spell and she dared not hop down to retrieve it. 

"We could have gone the long way if he didn't want you walkin' amongst the living a lil while longer.  But that’s the rules.  You should already know that.  Your man does." Theo gave Betty a be-silent look when she said that.  Giving the downer injection was not a thing they liked to discuss with their nefarious patients.  Even as men died in agony, if they knew the next shot would stop their suffering, most would fight its use.

"That's sweet of the boss.  I'll have to send him a card."

"Hell, send me one." Theo readied a syringe from his tiny medic bag.  "I had to sit in a chopper…” He thumped the bubbles, “with her scared to death of flying all the way up here.  I’m lucky my wrist ain’t broke from her grabbin’ it."

"Oh shit.  I bet.  I hate flying.  I get shitfaced before I get aboard a plane just so I don’t freak the fuck out."

He held up the syringe.  "This is a local anesthetic.  It'll knock the edge off."

"I'll take that, thank you."  She offered an arm with a wide smile.

"Got a few things to talk about first, though."

         "Shoot first, ask questions later, doc.  Chop, chop, si vous plait."  She waved with her offered arm. “A girl has needs.”

"You need to hear this.  I'm going to have to cut you open.  I'm going to have to do exploratory surgery on you to see where you are hurt."

Her eyes widened.  "I'll take that sweet shot then first, if you don't mind."

"Or.  You can go to a hospital.  In fact, I'm urging you to."  Theo said.  "We can take you and say we found you on the street or whatever.  Maybe call home and make up a story with Bertie's lawyer before we get there.  But that's y'all's arena, not ours.  We just treat and street, okay?  But you?” He placed a soft hand on her shoulder.  “You need surgery, I'm sure of it.”

“The shot will make me more agreeable to that.”

“Curio, you got a lot of blood in your belly.  It means something's torn up.  Eventually, if left untreated, it'll kill you.  Now, without a CAT scan or at least an x-ray machine in here, I gonna’ have to go in blind and look for whatever he damaged.  But,” Theo handed the syringe to his wife and pulled out a pair of latex gloves, "In Nam, I did it a lot.  We had x-rays back then of course, but a lot of times, conditions didn't allow for that.  So we did a lot of them.  Surgery hasn't always been a nice neat little cut and tuck, you know."

"He's done quite a few since the war, honey."  Nodding, Betty spoke. "Of course, we don't talk about those."

"You gave a lot of good shots back then before you did any of that cuttin’, I bet.  I want only what our brave troops got.  Fire...away." She slapped the crook of her arm. “Hit me baby.”

Moses came into the room, dragging the whole set of totes stacked atop each other.

"They wanna’ cut me open, Moses."  She cried out.

"I know it, baby."  He walked to her, looking the room over.  If they had to perform a clandestine impromptu surgery, the old day surgery clinic was as good as could be hoped.  Looking at Theo DeLandry, he nodded and said.  "Pete's pretty smart, ain't he?"

"He does an awful lot of legwork in towns he works in."  Theo nodded. "I can't help but wonder how he got this place to close up and stay locked up out here with all this equipment left behind."

"Not everything is left.  All the heavy rad stuff is gone."

"Radioactive equipment has to be accounted for.  We damn sure coulda’ used it, though."  Theo slid a green tote and the ice chest closer to the exam table.  "Baby, look around and see if there's any sterile drape packs stashed around here."  Betty nodded and opened cabinets. 

"Holliday, I'm gonna’ need betadine and some other stuff ricky-tick if it ain't here and I ain't got it stowed.

"Vroom, vroom, Doc."  Moses kissed Curio on the cheek.  She was trembling.

"I'm scared, Moses."  She whispered in his ear.  "I'm gonna’ die on this table.  I can feel it."

"Ain't happenin', dear."  He whispered back and pointed at Theo. He spoke loud.  "You see that tall black bastard there?  He may not look like Ben Casey, but he is the best combat medic I ever saw in Quang Tri.  Honey, you’re in the best hands that dope money, kickbacks, and dancing girls can buy.  These two saved me quite a few times.  He learned to save men from the worst kind of wounds in the nastiest, shittiest places you ain't never seen.  The man held a lot of guts in his hands and the men whose guts he was holdin' are still walkin and talkin.  I trust him with my life and yours."

"She's got a shot full of hell yeah in her hand.  I trust that and that alone right now."  She moaned.

"I was tellin' her about the other option.” Theo said. “A real hospital.  If we can get there without shaking her around too much, it would be a far better deal.  I can't just give the local to her and say I just had it laying around.  You know what I'm getting at.  I'm asking one more time before I get going.  We should go to a trauma center right now.  Do you want to do that?  When I stick her with this, we’re here.  No retreat."

"I know."  Moses rubbed his forehead and looked away.  "We can't do it, though.  It’s too hot in this town now.  Something else Pete is good at is checking on local cops.  A rough description of us is out there.  She shows up injured with a weird ID and lame story, paying cash and all that.  It's not good."

The Delandrys looked dejected, but both of them nodded.  Moses looked ready to cry.  Curio looked at the both of them, exasperated.

"Excuse me but Doctor?  You can cut me from my asshole to my eyebrows, but can I get that fucking shot now?"

Moses chuckled.  "You have the floor, Doc.  I'm setting up security."  He kissed her. "See you in a while.  You'll be fine.  I love you."

“I love you, Moses.  See you on the other side, baby.” She held out her arm to Betty as Moses pulled back gravely to let the medics work. “Hit me, Hot Lips.”

“You’re so funny, baby.  We’re gonna’ take good care of you.”

Betty administered the sedative as Theo readied an old-fashioned ether mask.  There was no way to run a modern anesthesia apparatus.  Theo was operating with World War One technology but with Desert Storm-era skills and technique.

"You gonna be fine, Curio."  Betty stroked her face with a soft, matronly hand.  "Just fine."

Curio drifted off into unconsciousness, sighing, "Yes, Kara.  Oh yes, Kara baby.  Do it like it's...my...birthday...biiitchssssh..."



It was nearing sunset in Jackson as Moses perked up on the hood of the Bronco as Theo walked outside into the alley.  He flipped half a Winston away and jumped down.

"You got any whiskey left out here?" Theo mumbled.  He looked tired.

"Quite a bit.  You a-needin’ a drink for what you're gonna’ tell me?"  Moses swallowed hard.  "Am I gonna’ have to go for more after what you're gonna tell me?"

"Well, Moses.  She had a busted spleen and lost a lot of blood inside.  I got it out okay and all.  Sewed up a bad leaker, too."  On Betty's orders, Theo DeLandry stopped smoking six years before.  He slapped his shirt pocket for a smoke.  "Christ I could use a cigarette."

Moses could not read his old friend’s mood.  He clasped his shoulders.  "I need to know, Theo!"

"She didn't make it.”

Moses could not process the next few seconds as Theo spoke.

“Even with all the O-neg we put in her, shock had set in.  The low blood pressure was too much for the anesthetic.  In a hospital, it may have turned out different, but probably not.  The damage was done."  He patted Moses on the back as Moses slumped against the Bronco.  "She was a real pretty lady, brother.  It was just beyond my control.  I'm sorry, man."  He whispered as every bit of the legendary steel in the bones of Moses Holliday dissolved into slag. "It's a tough business, though.  I don't have to tell you that."

"Oh man."  Moses Holliday whispered, his breath uneven.  A man of action, he was paralyzed by a seizure of the heart. 

She was gone.

“Oh man.” His hands slapped to his face.  His breath was suddenly gone.  She had taken it as she passed. 

"You feelin' that, Holliday?" The gentle hand patting his back suddenly became a claw on his neck.  For an instant, Moses thought he was being examined, but Theo really was clamping down hard on the back of his neck.

"What the hell, Doc?"  He tried to turn and Theo held him tighter, pressing against him to pin him to the side of the Bronco.  Theo DeLandry outweighed him by forty pounds, but Moses was stronger and in no mood for being restrained.  He squirmed under the man's grip.

"That's the weight of her on you, Holliday!"  Theo grunted as the two men began to struggle.  "That's her on you!  You know what that is?  That's the weight of your fuckin' job killing her in front of you!  That's the weight of her pretty head when some motherfucker shoots her in it and it explodes all over you!  Be happy that shock you feeling ain't real.  She pulled through, shitbird."  He let up.  Moses froze, mid-punch.

"She's alive?"

         "No thanks to you, Moses.  What in the flying fuck are you two doing?  She done been raped workin' with you.  She done almost bled to death in some abandoned doctor's office on account of you.  You love her?  You really love her?"  Moses just stood silent, relief beginning to return his pulse to normal.  "Then end this with her.  You can do what you do.  It ain't right putting her in harm's way on account of what you are."

"She wanted it..."

Theo held up his hand.  "I give a flying fuck what she wanted!  She's a fuckin’ kid, man!  You was too, once.  She just wanted you.  Anywhere you went, she was going.  That's what women do, they follow their men.  I don't care if they're twenty or sixty.  Hell, it's one thing if they follow you from Baton Rouge to Shreveport because you got a supervisor job for the power company, but you got this girl getting herself in a heap of trouble and damn near dead.  Twice, Moses.  Twice, me and Betty done got a call to come patch her up after she got the shit beat outta’ her and I'm bettin' getting raped wasn't what she signed up for."

"She knows what she signed up for."

"Bullshit!  She is just a kid.  All aboard for adventures and all that wooooow...I can take out a lowlife bastard or two and get paid by my gangster boss.  Wheeee!  Sounds like so much fun.”  He jammed a finger in Moses’ face.  “Until she gets beat to death or gut shot one day with a load of buckshot and dies slow while you lay dead next to her.  You goddamn oughta’ know better and if you love her by God, why in the holy hell you still got her in with you on jobs?  Are you crazy or just stupid?  I ain’t never known you to be either, Tex."

"I hear what you're sayin'.  But, Theo, you don't know her.  She knows the score.  You got no idea how hard I tried not to let her in.  I even tried to make the first ones she went in on nasty to try to sway her from it.  It didn’t take.  She's all in and that's the skinny of it."

Theo shook his head.  "No, Moses.  You are all in.  Only now, you got your arm around her waist to take her down with you when you fuck up even worse than today one day."  He turned away from Moses. 

"She will be coming around in a little while, but I got her doped up as much as I dare to until she stirs.  Go look in on her if you want, but wear a mask and gloves.  I didn't cut her open and fix your fuckup just to have you kill her with an infection.  I ain't God, you know.  She dies, I did what I could."

Moses started toward the door without a word.  Theo faced him as he pulled the latch.  "Two strikes on her already, Holliday.  You don't really want to see if she can take the next pitch, do you?"

         "Again, you don't know her, Theo."  Moses smiled and half-shrugged.  "She'll swing away at anything close."  Tossing his flask to Theo, he tipped his hat.  "Thank you for saving her life, Doc.  Send me the bill."  He went inside.

Moses was met with a sterile yellow gown by Betty, who was still masked, gowned and gloved as if still in surgery. 

"She's coming around, Moses.  She gonna’ be in a lot of pain and real woozy.  She was mumbling about her mother."

"Her mother's dead."

"It wasn't a pleasant talk about her mom."

"Her mom wasn't pleasant."  Betty helped him get covered up and sprayed him down with Lysol. 

"I can't vouch for the germs in here.  We did as best we could sealing the room and spraying it down before we opened her up but we didn't have much time to play with.  I think we did okay though.  He gave her the usual antibiotics so let’s hope."

"Thank you for all you done.  I love her."

"Theo go off on you out there?  I thought he might."

"He said what he needed to say."

"Was it enough?"

"Probably not.  You know why."

"It's a shame for the both of you then."  She pulled off her gloves. "Go on in there.  I’m going to pray awhile."  Betty went outside.

Curio was impossibly pale.  The vibrancy and perennially tan face that shaded her soft pink features and black eyes in a deep and dark sensuality was non-existent.  She looked like a dead child he had once seen in a ditch in Vietnam.  The body was paled by death and the soaking of a monsoon rain.

For a long while, Curio never stirred.  He sat next to her with his forehead pressed into the cushion of the exam table next to her hip.  She was covered by clean green sheet, her hair in a net.  Never had she looked so young to him.  She made never have the opportunity to age any further. 

On account of what we do…  Silently, he counted teardrops as they dotted the floor at his feet.  What have I done…we could have walked a long time ago…

He sniffled on the cushion for an eternity of her shallow breaths.  Finally, he smiled as her soft fingers danced lightly through his short hair.  Without looking up, he locked his fingers with hers.

"How am I?"  She slurred softly, clearing her throat to be heard.  "You look like you're praying, baby.  Am I done in?"

He sniffled and wiped his eyes and nose.  Raising his tired head, Moses found her smiling wonderfully at him.

The smile faded.  He was crying again at the sight of her beam. 

"I am, ain’t I?" Her lip trembled. “They brought me back to say goodbye, didn’t they?”

He clasped her hand firmly and kissed it.  "No baby.  You're still all in."

"That's groovy.” She swooned. “I'm feelin' pretty good about that.  But then, I'm feelin' pretty gooood." She chuckled woozily. "Get a script for this shit when we get home.  It needs some field testing with some Dark Side of the Moon playing…"  She nodded off, mumbling words only she could hear and understand.

"Take a break, baby."

Stroking her face, he savored her life with him as she slept.  Moses stood up and kissed her forehead timidly for a long time before he left her to rest. 

Looking at her one more time before he left her to recover, he mumbled.  "We ain't gonna be all in much longer, baby."





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