Chapter 12 - Was That So Hard?

The young man smiled at his aunt.  She frowned back.  His uncle had wisely held his face in the same neutral position one would expect to find at a funeral or a child's baptism or a perfunctory bowel movement.  He did not get the scolding look that the boy did and somehow seemed smug about it without ever showing it.  The young man walked with his elders into the old wooden house with the screen door eeeeeek and bammm! signaling their entrance.

They had come here to see a dead man.  Well.  A dying man.  They, the older two, had known the old man in his youth and vitality.  He was old then too.  One of those who frowned at everything.  Color photography was wasted on this misery of existence.  He never saw the vibrancy in life.  And viewed those that saw the reds and blues and yellows and greens of the world as frivolous.  They knew his first wife.  And his second.  And his third.  They had not yet met his fourth.  

The young man child walked into the old wooden house with the door banging behind him and felt the hairs on the back of his neck standing up.  He had no knowledge.  No awareness.  No experience.  But.  His body knew.  His body was aware.  His body contracted every follicle across every inch of skin.  Hair, everywhere, stood at attention.  Only on his neck, did he notice.

They walked through the house silently.  A young voice, not tired or ironic, we are back here.  

The older ones greeted the husk in the bed.  They ignored the young voice.  His fourth.  They paid her no mind.  He saw her.  He never quite realized that he stared.  He closed his mouth quickly when he found himself wondering how long it had been open.  He saw her eyes - green.  He saw her lips - pink, red.  He saw her shoulders - soft and round.  He saw her neck - graceful.

He shook himself back to the world when he realized that he had forgotten his uncle and his aunt and the corpse in waiting.  They had disappeared.  They had not existed while he stared at that spot where her neck disappeared into the shadows of her brown hair.  He knew he had to leave.  He had no control here.  How long had he been here?  How long had his eyes been on her neck?  Her legs?  Her breasts?  Her eyes?

How long has she been looking at him?  What is that look on her face?  Why are the old ones still talking at the corpse in waiting?  How are they not aware of this?

He got up.  He walked away.   Eeeeeeeeeek and Bammmm! goes the screen door.  He is walking down the the dirt road.  He is walking away.  The hair on the back of his neck is not going down.   Behind him, without looking,  he hears the announcement:  Eeeeeeeeeek and Bammmmm!

He keeps walking.  Down the road.  Down the dirt road.  The pines are towering erect on either side of the road.  The ditches run with water trailing from the hills.  He walks on.  

He sees the straw raked up in a pile.  The straw fallen from the towering pines raked into a pile in the ditch, just above the water running down from the hills.  He stops there and waits.  He has no experience.  None.  But he waits.  By the straw.  Under the pines.  With the sounds of the rushing water like hushed whispers.

She finds him quickly enough.  She is older.  Experienced as much as the old man could teach before his old age and cold nature could subdue him.  She kisses him first.

He lays her down in the ditch, in the straw, just above the water and under the shade of the pines.  They strip each other of the clothes they have and hands and mouths find the most vulnerable with care and tenderness that neither of them have known before.  They grow hungrier and bolder.  More daring in their desire.  They are experienced together in moments.  Desire does not have to spoken or even fully thought.  An inhalation.  A look.  A fingernail trailing...and a muscle tightens.   She pulls his hair and it hurts in all the best ways.   He holds her down and she knows she is powerless except in the most important of ways.

It is over.  She is tucking her shirt back into her skirt and walking back to the house owned by the soon to be corpse.  He stands in the middle of the road thoroughly ...  untucked.   He has a certainty that he has not had before.  His aunt will not be able to cower him with a look ever again.  He knows who his wife will be once the corpse is finally a corpse.  His is going to marry this Wetta who he first loved in a straw bed in a ditch on the side of a dirt road.  He is going to marry her.  And he is going to remind her every day of the passion shared this day on the side of a dirt road.  He is going to marry her. 

He smiles to himself.  He smiles as a man with confidence.  She thought this was just a small pleasure in her life.  A sideline.  A brief respite from the horror of her ancient husband leaving this world.  But he knows.  This moment was special.  This moment was life changing.  This moment was larger than she could have ever imagined.

EEEeeeeekkkkk.    and   Bammmmmmm!

2 Corinthians 1: 3-4

I picked my daddy up.  I had to kind of toss him up a bit - like you see in the movies when the hero picks up someone.  I had him in my arms and tossed him up to shift his weight on my arms.  He was not conscious.  There was dried blood from his left nostril and it had pooled at his left ear.

My mom had yelled his name.  Nothing else.  Or maybe she had yelled other things.  I just remember her yelling his name.  There was terror in it.  I ran to their bedroom.  I saw him.  I picked him up.  I carried him to the living room and sat him up on the couch as he seemed to come back to consciousness.  The ambulance drivers got there soon after that.  

Called them ambulance drivers.  Not E.M.T.'s.  I call them that now because that is what I thought then.  Simple.  Primitive thought.  An ambulance in our yard.  It got there because of ambulance drivers.  That was as complicated as my thought got. 

It turned out to have been a seizure.  But I carried my father.  He had lost weight following his first heart attack.  His second had prompted surgery and inaction.  His arms no longer held their power that I remembered from my youth.  I had heard stories about those arms.

The sawmill was a constant in my life.  My father and his friend Ralph bought a sawmill in Nicholls, Ga.  My daddy moved us there to live in a trailer on the yard of the sawmill.  My earliest playground had massive saws and log trucks and stray dogs and sand that smelled of diesel fuel. 

The mill moved to Douglas and years later while a teenager I worked there during my summers.  I remember Kevin Bullock telling stories of my daddy.  Kevin started at the mill as the log turn at the head saw.  My daddy ran the head saw and as it cut parts off the log, the log has to be turned.  Kevin did that.

Unless the log was too big.  Too heavy.  Too unwieldy.    Then it would be left to my father.  Kevin described the veins that popped out.  He was not discreet or modest.  He did tell one bit that I will tell here -my father bit down on his own tongue.  I had seen him do that too often to doubt the veracity of the lewd tale of how my father had flipped the largest, most onerous logs.  His arms were powers.   

I picked up my daddy.  I carried him to the living room.  Ha!  That name. 

As the heart disease took more and more from him, I held out my arm to allow him to steady himself as he walked.  I lifted him up to help him dress.  I bent down to my knees to remove his shoes.  

Later in my life I found my life - Priscilla.  I am coming to love her family.  The easiest of them to love was her Uncle Billy.  A kind old man.  Jovial.  I met him briefly before we were married.  He was the uncle that every movie ever gave us.

I was with his family days before he died.  We came to visit him on one of those horribly optimistic "Good Days".  His eldest daughter had moved back home for a few weeks to help care for him.  As more and more family gathered, she asked me to help her dress her father and get him into the chair to wheel him out to spend time with everyone.

Interesting choice of me.  I was the only male.  I was also a stranger to her.  Dressing him caused him pain.  His pain, caused her pain.  I knew that look whether I ever saw it on my face or not.

A week later we were in the family area at the hospice center.  His three children were trying to decide how they could take their father home to die.  I sat quietly for a bit.  I smiled.  "You want to take him home.  You know you will feel guilty if you don't do SOMETHING.  But the something you want to do, you can't do.  On one of his best days, one that you, yourself, said was a good day, you could not dress him if I had not been there.

I talked a bit about how my daddy died.  Or how he lived till he died.  And how we lived with him.  I told them to leave him with the people at the hospice.  They would see to his care.  They, his children, would see to his soul.  Be there.   Everyday, I said.  But let them care for him. You love him.  

I told them how helpless they would feel.  And that it was alright.  They were helpless.  Be at his side as often as you can.  When he is there - when he is with you - talk.  Talk about ancient history or yesterday.  Talk about what he remembers.  Ask the questions about his childhood or his adolescence or the day he met your mother. Don't waste time sitting here trying to figure out how to take him home.  That is beyond you.  That ain't your fear talking. This is from a man who walked too many miles in your shoes.  This is froma man who  spent years wondering why he was on that road.  I am here to tell you - comfort your father.  Don't cater to the things you think you ought to do.  

2 Corinthians 1: 3-4  " 3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God."

My cousin was diagnosed with breast cancer.  I never knew her from my childhood.  I met her in a funny way.  She was waiting on her interview at Walmart DC 6010 years ago while I worked there.  She was waiting in personnel.  I was in personnel for some reason and running my mouth as those of you who know me would expect.  

From behind me she asked, "Are you Ray?" she asked.  I liked her voice before I turned around.  I was in my early twenties.  I liked most any female voice sight unseen back then.  I answered that I was.  In a cool way.  I am sure it was in a cool way.

"Are you Ray Mancil?"  I had had dreams like this.  Are you Ray Mancil, the man who could run the two man cut off saw at the sawmill by himself?  Are you Ray Mancil who could name every secret identity of every Marvel and DC comics superhero EVER!  Are you Ray Mancil with what Nightline and 60 Minutes refer to as the largest ever measured male... Well.  This is a family blog.  

I answered yes.  She said I might know her brother.  As a pick up line, this absolutely sucked.  But she was cute.  And blond.  That bought patience.

Who is your brother I asked.

"Micah Japuntich,"  Oh.  Oh.  GOD.  The evil of that.  I am a PROUD SOUTHERN man.  But not that Southern.  But just that proud.

"OH.  Then we are COUSINS."

I love that story.  Even when I recite it in my head.  I can remember the trailer home paneling in the old Walmart offices in Douglas, Ga.

Facebook is miracle and curse.  I have a grand niece I have not seen but for Facebook.  Miracle.  I first heard about my cousin Aimee's battle with cancer on Facebook   Curse?

I promised and lied about shaving my head.  Her brothers shaved their heads with her and I wanted to too.  But then I realized it would be an intrusion.  I decided it would be a lie and let them be the THREE in the picture.  

I prayed for her.  I asked you all to pray for her.  I asked even those of you who don't pray to pray.  I promised to owe you one.

She has two you kids.  She has a loving husband that I like and that I surmise doesn't approve of me.  At least I hope he doesn't.  I love the idea in my own head of being the black sheep.  But why did she have to deal with cancer?

Her father, my cousin, a man that might as well be brother to my mother had a tumor on his kidney.  It was large and as I type this they only know it was cancer.  They don't know how much a bully the cancer was and so they don't know what kind of treatment is in store for my cousin.

My cousin - the father of the girl and her brother who told me my DAD had died.  My cousin - the father of the children who were all bald on the same day.  My cousin who served two tours in Vietnam and then was a preacher.  My cousin who did things in Iraq where he had to fly out of Indianapolis while I lived in Indy - taxi service to James Bond.  

My mother loves this man like a brother.  I love his children like long lost siblings that I never abused in childhood.  My wife and I count the days until we can again drink good beer and wine with his son and daughter-in-law.  

Her father faces terror.  A veteran of Vietnam.  Facing terror.  And the mother of two of this grand children, the slight girl that he protected from the monsters under her bed, his little girl - she takes his hand.  She tells the former minister that this is how the LORD OUR GOD LEADS US THROUGH THE VALLEY OF DEATH WITH NO FEAR.

2 Corinthians 1: 3-4  " 3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God."

The world is not easy.  It is not pleasant.  But the tested among us shine.  They provide light on the path.  I was a poor, poor reflection.  But I was mentioned by Cilla's cousin as a "sweet man".  I am not.  I was then.

The world is not easy.  What lesson will a father learn from the comfort offered by his youngest child?  His little girl?  And I am the ultimate optimist.  What lesson will he one day teach from this time?

"Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ..."

Untouched

Good wine with a good steak with a potato baked for an hour with sour cream and scallions and butter and salt and fresh cracked pepper.  A soft kiss on lips that you can tell are trembling against the want that dances in the blood that gives them their color.  A smile.  From her.  The feel of the corner of your mouth going up.  A smile.  But at her.  Or something she said.

Hot water.  Painful.  But just barely painful.  Your skin going pink.  Sweating under the steam of the shower stinging you into wakefulness.  Hard to breath but clean.  Turn the water off and just begin to sweat.  Run your hand through your hair and feel the formerly hot water cool on your back as it races past your most naked parts and down your legs so cold that it leaves a trace of goose bumps.

Goose bumps.   Goose bumps while living so far south that you had never seen geese.  But as you exhale you see the world.  Blues and greens and yellows and browns leap out at you from the things that are unchanged from the day that God himself traced a finger over them.   The absence of color screams at you from the time before the Almighty cleared His throat.

The steak tastes of char and blood.  The potato tastes of scallion and butter and cream gone to sour.  Salt.  The almost bitterness of wine finds the blood and evaporates as it is swallowed.  Again.  Again.  Again.  Yet another bite.

Inhale.  The noise of the modern.  Everyone doing everything.  And no farther than the time it takes thumb and forefinger to find phone.  The sun peaks in from the corner that is not guarded by sunglasses.  She holds your hand and you step lively - never betraying the future that you can't see.   The glare clears.  Ferris Wheels and roller coasters dance out before you.  Laughter. Loudly.  What else can you do?

Kiss her.  And then...  But...  She kisses...  Kiss her.  Kiss her.  Hold her tight.  Feel her breath on your neck.  Hold her.  Try not to melt as she melts into you.  Her breath coming up to tickle your ear.  Smiling.   Her teeth just on bottom of your left ear.  Pulling back.  Smiling in shock and awesome confusion.   Biting your own lip as she clicks her teeth together in threat / promise.

The last breath of winter trying to move the curtain dramatically.  Failing.  The cold of the early spring trying to masquerade as the rebirth of life.  Failing.  Life - carrying on.  Simply.  Her fingers intertwine with mine.  I kneel to the flowers.  I inhale.   I am rewarded with the smells of my youth.  I am mortal.  This earth is mortal.  My love is mortal.  This time is untouched.  She smiles at me and I take yet another sip of wine.  Her glass sits untouched.

Chapter 11 - Children of Housekeepers

Ginger stood silently while his employer finished loading dishes into the dish washer.  He brushed his right hand over his close cropped red hair and exhaled slowly.  He marveled at her.  No one would have thought anything strange about hiring a housekeeper.  She made enough money, legitimate money.  No one would ever have suspected anything funny about her having a housekeeper.  But she didn't want one.

They had argued about it once.  To the extent their relationship allowed argument, he had argued  about it.  She talked about the one time when she was a little girl and the Lady of the house had her pearls go missing.  They were only missing for a couple of hours.  But somewhere in those hours the Lady had looked at her mother and she, a girl of five, had seen the look.  She had wondered if she had known what that look meant at five years old.

Or.

 Or had she merely filed that image - that memory - away.  Was it years later when she understood what that look meant?  As she remembers it now, she can't pull the indignity and scorn away from that look driven at her mother the housekeeper.  

He had sat quietly at that recollection.  She was connecting dots from her memory to her reasons for not hiring a maid that he could not see.  He was smart enough to sit quietly through the parts he didn't understand.  She had told him that his willingness to allow a silence to fall was one of the things she loved about him.  She saw it in play when she was telling this story of pearls and smiled at him.  "I never want to be the kind of person who simply misplaces something and demeans another with just a look.  Having someone at my beck and call in my own home?   That could do that to me.  Know your weaknesses, Ginger, and take steps against them."

That had closed the conversation on that day.  But Ginger's mother had been a maid too.  That money had but bread on their table when he was a child.  He asked her about that.  Her weaknesses denying a livelihood to others.  She had bit her lip and sat silently for a time.  "Interesting" was all she had said.

A week later Ginger was put in charge of finding four young ladies who were looking for work cleaning homes.  They were each given the homes of three widows of limited means.  Ms. Wetta picked up the tab for all 12 homes to be cleaned.  Ginger had smiled at her when she had given him the assignment.  None of the bosses in London would have ever spent money in this way.  He did some digging.  The widows were of police officers, firemen, and such.  He smiled.  There must be an angle, he thought.

It was going well until two of the widows began to complain of things going missing from their homes, their purses.  Ginger was tasked with searching their homes for the missing items - older women could make the mistakes of the elderly, after all.  He was discreet.  They never knew he had been in their homes.

 He was next tasked with searching the home and the person of the young woman accused.  He found the things she had not pawned yet and then worked his way out from her home to each pawnshop along the way. She had gone to all the trouble of going to pawn shop that was the fourth farthest from her house.

He made his report to Ms. Wetta.  She asked him to tell her about the girl.   He laid it out as best he knew it and then answered her follow up questions.  The girl was from a lower middle class family.  Not much in the way of luxuries but not hurting either.  She had made good grades in the school but the family had made no provision for college.  She sang in her church choir but did not get any solos.  She liked to dance.  She would go to the bars in Houston and two step with the 10 gallon hats she found there.  Pretty girl but not strikingly so.  

Ms. Wetta nodded to all of this and finally inhaled deeply and exhaled as the judgment had been reached.  "Crush her left ankle.  She never walks again without a limp, Ginger.  If she ever again takes a step without a limp, you go back and crush it again.  Am I understood?"

"Yes ma'am," he answered with a clear voice.  He had tried once, in shock of one these coldly delivered pronouncements, to simply nod his head.  She had not allowed that.  Clarity did not allow that.

 "Ginger?"  He paused and waited for whatever was to come next,"She can keep the job as long as the things are returned to the widow.  Have one of the other girls cover for her while she recovers."

But that was years ago.  Today he stood quietly while she finally finished the last dish.  "So he got into the game the way we expected, eh?"

"Yes, ma'am," he answered as he took his seat across from her at the kitchen table.  "I barked at him pretty good but he let it roll off him.  Even made a joke about the little window being an 'affectation.'"

"Never use a ten cent word when you can wedge in a five dollar one, that's my boy."

They both smiled at that.  Ginger went on to tell the tale of how the boy and Clay Diamond had stripped a small fortune off the others at the table before turning on one another.

Ms. Wetta sat and listened closely and never again interrupted him except to offer him a cup of tea, which he refused.  She sat back down with her own cup of coffee.  Ginger had not seen any tea but was certain, based on her offer, that if he had said he had wanted tea, it would have appeared.

At the end of the story she sat back in her chair and lifted the coffee cup to her lips and having never taken a sip, sat it back down.  "Diamond busted him?"  Ginger nodded.  She shook her head.  Actually sipped her coffee and shook her head again.  "He let Clay Diamond take every single cent?"

"He needed a lesson in humility, you said so.  That's why you let this play out.  It will do him some good," Ginger volunteered.

Ms. Wetta sipped her coffee.  She smiled as she looked into the dark black liquid.  And then she laughed.  She laughed long and loud and hard.  "What the hell, he earned it.  He truly earned it."  And she laughed even louder as Ginger sat quietly.

End Chapter 11

Chapter 10 - Welcome to Houston

The martini was icy cold.  So cold that the gin and vermouth felt like oil on his tongue.  He was quite comfortably and satisfactorily drunk.  He looked out of the great huge windows and could not see a single plane that he knew was grounded out there in the dark and the gloom and the wet - somewhere.  Every single person who had told him to not even bother going to the airport today had been right.  There was just no way under the sun - hell, there wasn't even any sun - that his flight was going to leave today.

But it was not a total waste.  He had met Henry and Henry had made him the best martini he had ever had.  He could not at this moment remember which of the several martinis had been the best martini he had ever had, but he was sure that Henry had made it.  Why did Henry keep saying Jeremy every time he called him Henry?

He could not take time to worry about that now.  He was in a charming conversation with a local that was just fascinating.  The man knew the best places in town to play cards or get laid or get drunk.  He was the one who had introduced him to Henry in the first place.  Why had he called Henry Jeremy?

It was after several martini's and a captivating story about how the stranger's mistress had been shot by a jealous boyfriend and how that boyfriend had been beaten beyond recognition when the Texan had turned to him and asked, "Don't I know you?"  It had sounded much more like, "Dawn't Ah know Yew?" but the English to Texan translation center of his brain was apparently still working.   He turned and smiled at the gentleman who had paid for more than half their drinks. "I do don't I?  Have I seen you on TV or something?"  And that was all it had taken to form a beautiful friendship over fantastic martinis.

"You may very well have, my good man."

"Well I'll be...   You're that lawyer, ain'tcha?  The one representin' that guy in Chicago that stole all that Wallstreet money."

"Well, sir, I used to represent him.  Until about 3:22 in the morning this past Tuesday."

"Oh hell, that's right.  I heard about his heart attach.  Sad.  Man that old, under that kind of stress.  And word was you was going to get him off."

"Oh hell, yeah.  The S.E.C had no idea what hit 'em.  Best they could have hoped for after I got done with their star witness was a mistrial and they knew it.  I caught the poor bastard up so many times the jury wasn't sure if they believed him when he stated his name for the record."  This was followed by a cackling laugh and then a hacking cough.

The other man shook his head and took a sip from whatever he was drinking from a tall collins glass.  "Damn.  That's sad.  To have the stress and strain of a trial kill ya.  And him with that young wife of his expecting.  How old is she?"

He sipped his latest favorite martini and winked at Henry and said,"Twenty-two.  And every attribute that you have ever admired on television or in the papers is completely and totally hers.  Nothing store bought on our Mrs. Russoff.  No sirree.  That's all hers.  And near as any gossip I have ever heard, those twins she is carrying in that new great big belly are the sole responsibility of my 78 year old deceased client.  She is apparently a faithful and true gold digger and he is - was - a miracle of modern science.  TO FATHERHOOD AT 78 YEARS OLD!"  He sloshed his drink in the air and the other man smiled at him while gently shaking gin and vermouth from his left arm while hefting his own drink.

"To an innocent man," he said as he lifted his collins glass.  This was met with even more violent laughter and  a truly disturbing coughing fit.  The martini was forgotten as he coughed so hard he gagged.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and then wiped his spittle covered hand on his tailored slacks.  "Innocent?  Innocent?  Oh God.  He wasn't innocent!  He was guilty as sin!  He stole every damn bit of that money and more that the Feds had no freaking clue about!  Innocent!  Ha!  Henry, I've lost my damn drink.  Hit me man."

He never noticed how Jeremy the bartender looked at the man with the collins glass and waited for a subtle nod before he ever reached for the gin.  "Guilty?  Really?  He took all those millions from all those people and those companies  Really?"

"Geez, man.  That's just the money on the actual - above - the -table - books.  My client, my poor little Russian emigre' of a client, Osip Dmitrii Russoff was old school mafia.  Went semi-legit way back in 50's.  Used to say he was following the Kennedy model to respectability.  But he kept some of the ties. SOOoooo,  when he starts making millions for legit outfits, it was only a matter of time before his friends with the crooked noses wanted a taste.  Only they didn't know it was a great big ole house of cards.  And he was either too scared and too ballsy to tell 'em."

He paused to sip his latest martini.  "Henry,"

"Jeremy"

"...that just might be the best damn martini I have ever had it my whole damn life."

The man with the collins glass smiled.  "He swindled the mob?"

"'THE'?  'the'?  He swindled every damn mob there was.  Early on it was the Italians and the Irish and the Jews.  And then it was the Jamaicans, the Russians, the Crips, the Bloods, the Mexicans, the Columbians.  You name a poor, mistreated minority group in this country that had a self hating criminal element that abused their own people, and Osip Dmitrii took 'em for millions - billions maybe.  And was smart enough to get away with it."

"How?"  This was met with more laughter.  And coughing.

"Any time he had to make a payment to anybody that he couldn't cover, all of a sudden a gang war would break out or somebody would turn state's evidence or something would happen that would just completely wreck the operation in question.  Sometimes it didn't even cost him a dime.  He would just tell one group what he saw the last time he was with one of the other groups.  Hell, sometimes it would even be the truth.  The old bastard was a master at it."

"The whole trial, all of it, I wouldn't be surprised if the old coot hadn't set it up as an out.  Make himself too hot for the boys but not hot enough to get convicted.  God knows he was never worried a single step of the trial.  Never met a damn soul as self-assured as old Osip Dmitrii."

The man with the collins glass smiled and shook his head.  "If he had it all planned out that well, why did he need you?  No offense,"  he added as he saw the beginnings of a hurt look on the other man's face.

"None taken.  I was a prop.  I was stage dressing.  I am building a name for myself, ya know,in certain circles.  He was my biggest case, by far, ya know,  but I had gotten other guys off, or, at least, reduced sentences.  Settled some cases that looked like federal time was coming for my clients.  But I'm good at what I do.  It would be plausible.   I could get him off if he had been in any actual trouble.  But the more I think about it, I wonder if the prosecutor or even the damn judge was on his payroll."

"A crooked judge?  That's a hell of an accusation."

"Just the martini talking.  Speaking of which," and he picked up his martini, " to Osip Dmitrii Russoff, the guilty bastard!"

The man with the collins glass raised it for the toast but then asked, "Hey, isn't all this, what do you call it, attorney - client privilege?"

The man with the martini laughed long and hard and wound up coughing again.  "Look mister, no disrespect, but we are basically alone in an airport bar drunk off our asses and I'm the currently-famous-because-of-the-latest-crime-of-the-century attorney John Farfenelli.  If you went outside right now and tried to tell anybody any of this, what do you think the chances are that anybody would believe you?"

"Oh, I don't know.  It has been my experience over the years that even if they shouldn't, most people believe the word of a sitting county magistrate."

"What now?"

"We have not been properly introduced, Mr. Farfenelli.  My name is His Honor Bentley Amos Bradshaw, elected Magistrate for Harris County, TX.  Welcome to Houston."

End Chapter 10

Chapter 9 - My Brother the Problem

Joey Suka sat and sipped his vodka alone in the little office at the back of the club and could tell by the lack of laughs that someone was bombing on stage.  The man with the gun came in and sat down across from him.  He did not speak.  That was normal.  It used to unnerve Joey - him coming in and sitting quietly.  It stopped unnerving him when he began to think that was the whole point.  Now the man with the gun smiled at him.  And that unnerved the hell out of him.

"Vhat?  Vhat do you vant?"

"Please.  Do you even know what the word 'suka' means in Russian?"

"Is vone ov de most feared criminal organizations in Russia dating back to the Great Patriotic War."

"Don't you mean 'Var'?  As in 'Var Var 2'?  Isn't 'the Great Patriotic War' what WWII was called by the Russians?"

Joey sipped his vodka.  The lie was on the tip of his tongue.  Maybe the vodka washed it away.  "I know full well what 'suka' means in Russian.  It means 'bitch'.  Stalin freed prisoners who were willing to fight the Germans in World War Two.  When they went back to prison they were everybody's bitches just like they were for Stalin.  Until they banded together and killed any and every single person who looked at them funny."

The truth had an invigorating quality. Or maybe it was the vodka.  "I liked the story.  Taking the insult and making it a badge of honor.  Forming one of the most feared criminal organizations in the world and having the audacity to call yourselves by the insult everyone else threw at you - embracing the term 'bitch.'"

The man with the gun got up and fixed himself a glass of vodka with two cubes of ice.  He took a sip and you could see an idea come to mind, "Do you even like vodka?"

Joey smiled.  "I hate the stuff.  I hate the stupid accents and I hate what I do."

"Then why do it?"

"Have you ever looked in Jamie's eyes?  I mean, really had a moment to look my brother in the eyes?  There's nothing there.  Nothing really there.  Like he doesn't even have a soul.  An empty shell.  Who looks exactly like me."

The man with the gun squinted.  It was an answer.  But it didn't answer anything.

"He killed his first human being when we were 13 years old.  Not a bully or a self defense kind of thing.  Lured an eleven year old boy into the woods and killed him.  And not quickly.  He hurt the boy.  Explored.  It looked like someone trying to figure out a how a clock works by removing all the gears.  Just a whole lot more blood."

The man with the gun sipped his vodka.

"By the time we were sixteen I got him to focus on bullies and the abusive. Mostly.  At nineteen I gave up.  I couldn't control him, I thought.  I decided to kill him.  I wasn't into knives or guns.  I was just big.  And strong.  So.  I decided to beat him to death."

"I hit him.  And I hit him again.  I remember the look on his face.  Surprise.  And I hit him again and again. I cried.  I mean, great big snot bubbles kinda crying while I am just whaling on him.  It didn't even register at the time that he wasn't fighting back.  I just beat him until I was exhausted.  But he wasn't dead.  I couldn't kill him.  I loved him.  I couldn't understand him.  Or forgive him.  But I loved him."

"Everyone who's died and suffered since has done so because I loved my brother too much to kill him.  That's why I got us into this business.  He gets his jollies with people who come the closest to deserving it.  And who knows, with so many thugs and scum bags with automatic weapons, maybe one of them gets lucky one day."

"I learned something from beating him so badly.  I learned how important it was to him that we were identical.  I should have noticed.  Mother never tried to dress us alike.  But there are all these pictures of us as kids in exactly the same outfits."

"Maybe that should have been a warning.  I never saw it that way.  Until he came at me with a billy club once he got out of the hospital.  It was methodical.  Didn't seem that way at the time.  Just seemed like I was getting my ass kicked.  No.  That's too flippant.  I thought he was going to kill me."

"He beat me systematically.  Bruise for bruise, broken bone for broken bone.  You see this scar?  We both have it.  His was because of a ring I used to wear on this finger.  Mine was because of an exacto knife.  He beat me down and then sat on me, with his knees on my shoulders and his left hand forcing my head to one side, carved the same scar under my right eye with an exacto knife.  He pulled the skin from his carving with a pair of tweezers."

"So.  We had to match.  We had to match.  That was an advantage.  A small one.  But an advantage.  It took me years to figure out."

"So I tested it.   We had to speak in wediculous wussian accents.  We became grotesquely fat bastards because I could do that to him. I could do that to him and he could do nothing back.  I did my best to embarrass him.  To humiliate him.  I can't kill him.  But I can make his life miserable."

"But...what kind of life..."



"What kind of life did that leave you?"

"I haven't had a life since I was thirteen years old."

End Chapter Nine

Chapter 8 - No Laughing Matter

Jamie Suka stood at the back of the club twirling around his shot glass of vodka.  He did not like vodka.  But scary Russians drank vodka - ALRIGHT JOEY - not red wine or lambic beers or those fruity drinks with the umbrellas.  So.  Jamie stood at the back of the club and twirled the shot glass around and round with the vodka somehow maintaining within the glass.  The comedian was not getting many laughs.  Some.  But not many.

The comedian stood perfectly still.  "Who am I?"  he asked the crowd.  "Michael J. Fox break dancing."  Groans.  A couple of boos.  Muffled laughter.  Jamie smiling from ear to ear.

"You think he's funny?"

It was the flowing red hair that had pressed the ceramic razor against his throat.  The flowing red hair had come the closest of anyone other than Joey to ending his life.  But unlike Joey, she had not smelled of fear.  She had smelled of vanilla and chamomile.  The blade, once the flowing red hair had removed it from his throat and placed it under his nose, had smelled like something else altogether.  The blade had smelled of his sweat and something... else.

He looked at her and his nostrils flared in the memory.  The hair, the red hair, the flowing red hair trailed down over her shoulder and came to a rest on the breast of her leather jacket.  Other men would have noticed the tar black jeans and how they ran recklessly over her curves.  Jamie could not take his eyes away from the flowing red hair.  "He is funny enough.  Smart.  Too smart for most of them here.  Too honest to."

"You think making fun of someone with a disease is funny?"

"You were offended?"  He did not wait for a reply.  "Do you know someone who suffers?  Is that why suffering is not funny to you?  Or do you care just too damn much?"

"I had an uncle with Parkinson's.  It brought a very strong man low."

Jamie looked at the flowing red hair and imagined, no, knew he was not the first to be captured by that image.  The shaking uncle had offered protection.  Until the shaking had proven too great an impediment.  He wondered how soon after the shaking uncle had been rendered ineffective before she had found blades.  He picked up the shot between his thumb and forefinger and downed the vodka violently.  No need to let her see how much she had let him see.

"You know," he said, "Most of the time, when someone accuses someone of going too far, of being obscene or inappropriate, the response is to condemn the accuser of not having a sense of humor.  I think differently.  I think the person who is offended is such a caring person, such a loving person, that they cannot find humor in the suffering of their fellow man.  It is a sign of deep empathy that the pain of others registers so personally for them."

The flowing red hair stood before him in what could only be awe.  She had not expected such depth from him.  She turned her head slightly to the left and reached out and cupped his right elbow with her right hand.

 He so enjoyed the look on her face as he said, "But I see the humor in everything."

End Chapter Eight