Randitty

“Of course I’m not going to wear an expensive swimsuit just to lose it in the water… at least, that’s what I hoped we’d be doing out there.”  Goldine then waved giddy good bye to the dark beach house.  Yes, there was a hot tub, a romantic fireplace and a wine cellar, but when Zeus was afraid to even the lights on at night, it might has well have been some decorated hovel.  One of those fake fishbowl palaces.

And so, they went swimming.

Zeus could taste the salt of the water on Goldine’s lips.  He became absorbed in the smell of ocean on her skin, in her hair.  The night air was dry, light, better than remembered it.  Zeus had gone swimming at night only once before, during boyhood.  This was the only time, he recalled, that his father didn’t laugh something off.  A motherless son, getting swept away, in black water.  Goldine held onto him.

“I’m sorry, Goldine.  I shouldn’t be so quiet–rude, I guess.  You’re a great swimmer.”

“But we’re treading water, now.”

Humans were not made for this.  Whenever the lovers ceased movement, to indulge, then they began to sink.  Bipedal movements were unnatural for true independence in the water.  Fish could do this, not people.  Zeus realized their limits, and that Goldine was shivering.  A chill wave crashed over them, they both coughed and spat it out.  Her mood changed and suddenly Goldine was pulling on Zeus’ arm, back towards the shore.

“Don’t be shy all of a sudden, Goldine.  We can do this.”

“No, we can’t.  I love swimming too, Zeus, and this was such a wild and crazy day, but this is not the same as a bathtub.  Sweetheart, I draw the line when you holding on to me like this… Well, we don’t have fins, silly.”

“Please.  Goldine, did you ever think… that there are millions of gallons of oil out there, drawing nearer everyday, and so it may be decades, or never, before we can make love in this water again?”

“That has got to be the worst come on, of all time, Captain Finnegan.” and she sounded more sober than ever.

“No.  It’s what the fish are saying right now, if you think about it.”

“Don’t you mean the real skeevy, desperate bachelor fish?”

“I miss Boston.”

“I miss my sorority sister.  We’d always swim together, but she drowned last year.  I never finished school.” Goldine used a trembling hand with gold-painted fingernails to sweep hair from her face.  The color flickered oddly in the shadows, like lost treasure.  “Today at the gym was my first time really being back.  Every other Wednesday before was weird and I’d just go in the locker room and cry afterwards.  Then you came along, and gave me that awful line, I laughed, then drank too much when really, I’ve been scared out of my mind the whole day.   But you’re so cute and funny, and I wanted to be happy swimming again, so badly.  It’s like I lost the other half of myself last year.”

“God, I didn’t know.  Now I really feel like one of those skeevy bottom-feeders.  But I think you’re doing better now, aren’t you?  I wouldn’t let anything happen to you, sweetie.”

Goldine close her eyes as they drifted further out. “About right here, this far from shore, is where I couldn’t find her… But it’s not scary.  Gosh, I do feel safe with you, Zeus.  I mean, I must be sober by now.” they laughed, “Oh, but please, don’t let me ever leave the water again.”

“Shh… you’ll never get through it like this, by rushing through… mourning takes time.  It’s hard being human, living, but at least you can choose to get through the pain, try and forgive yourself.  My mother died when I was little.  And then my father went too, right before I left Boston.  I hate thinking about it, him and his sadistic, cruel way of being my dad but never, ever feeling like he was, and then there’s all that I didn’t do, but should have.  I slept in my car, for like a month, after we lost the house I grew up in.”

“Poor baby.  That’s so sad.”

“But that’s what I’m saying, we shouldn’t dwell on it.  A person has a choice, not to drown in sorrow.”

Goldine forced her mouth over his.  Zues let his head drift back and inhaled deeply of the water.  He stopped swimming and started to have her, take her with him.  Blue everywhere.  She leaned over him, onto his shoulders.  Their lungs burned and instinct burst awake.  Any normal person would have let go immediately, spread out the five digits, the four limbs, and propelled upwards, in mad pursuit of air, terrified of the weightlessness.

But man took another breath of heavy liquid.  Woman crossed ankles and expelled a final stream of silver bubbles from her mouth then kissed him again.  In those final moments of sentient life, before oxygen leaves the brain and humanity is forever lost, Zeus reached upwards, ever upwards, glad for the watery moon–new deity, and Goldine pressed down, determined, no longer shivering but pulsating, alive, aquatic.

She, a goldfish, emerged from bubbling torrent to dart mindlessly about.  Zeus no longer recognized her.  He lashed tail, stalked the tiny yellow creature for a time because she was pretty.  He teased playful whiskers between them and sensed that he adored, and needed her.  So then, of course, Zeus the catfish opened his mouth, ballooned gills, burst powerfully forward to intercept this dazzling prey at an angle, and ate Goldine.

In a much drier land, far, far, far away, it wasn’t hard for Magnum, a.k.a. the bookie, a.k.a. Harmon Davis, to re-think this entire knight-in-shining armor bit, while he and the airport taxi driver were stuck in Las Vegas traffic.  Worse than Los Angeles, worse than New York City (and far worse than driving into Washington, D.C., I’m sure Harmon would have observed too, if he’d been aware of it).  At least, that is what it seemed to him, with cars barely moving down the Strip at this time in the evening.  He could see the casinos, felt thirsty while forced to watch their expensive water falls.  Harmon worried that he could actually see the white froth evaporate into the air.  The cabby announced that the shimmering gold building he might just recognize from that Las Vegas cops’ show was on their left.  It was the Mandalay Bay resort, known for its impressive indoor shark reef.  And then there were other fish in that aquarium, from all around the world.  Tickets only cost…

“You know, I lived in L.A. forever.  I’m not tantalized at al right now, so can you just turn and drop me off.”

“…Yessir.”

In a city where everyone needed tips to survive, good service was not hard to find.  Even when, Harmon realized, he must have sounded like a pompous ass.  Finally, the light changed for a third time and the few j-walkers cleared–so many more passed overhead on specially-made bridges.  Among all the car noises, the throb of so many clubs going, and the blare of bright lights raging every delight conceivable, the taxi was able to pull up to the MGM Grand.  One mammoth-sized, golden lion sat crouched in front of the casino, snarling at everyone.

Harmon leaned into the front seat to pound the horn when the valet parkers wouldn’t move along fast enough.  He ended up throwing some bills at the cabby, then dashed out of the car.

There were lions even inside the casino.  A big glass cage walled off from the slot machines, supposedly sound-proof and even scent proof.  Handlers, inside of the cage, remained seated on the fiberglass rocks, a great distance away from these somewhat tamed animals.  Harmon had seen this all before, and decided long ago it wasn’t cute to stand around in a smoke-filled casino to watch a hulking cat with real claws, teeth and mane, bat a ball around the size of a small child.

If Carmen was still there at all, and any semblance of their savings together remained, in Vegas of all places, then she should be on the fourteenth floor.  Though, he remembered, while in the elevator, that technically, since the casino elevator buttons jumped from twelve to fourteen, Carmen was on the 13th floor.  How unlucky.

In either case, he eventuallywent on the door of room number 1439.  Breathe.  This was going to be fine.  She called because she wants to see you, in the end.  The red-eye flight from swamp to desert wasn’t awful.  The hand that finally went and pulled a gun on big dumb Billy until he handed over all the money he owed–the late money, that wasn’t terrifying.  It was, in fact, scary and sick, almost fun, Harmon, wasn’t it?  Just like back in L.A. before you had to flee to Orlando ahead of the old law firm or the cops, whichever came first, and so ruined Carmen’s life.  He would never admit to himself that his life felt like a waste, now, too.

The knob had been slipping round for a long while.  Finally, whomever it was got the door open.  A woman, his woman, peered across that little gold bar they put between hotel room doors and their seals, exactly for dramatic situations such as these.

“Do we still have money, Carmen?”

“Pasa…”

“What else is wrong, did he hurt you?  I’ll kill ‘im.  Where is that sonofabitch?!”

“Flavio is not here, tonto.  He left me.” Carmen stayed planted up against the wall, though Harmon wanted to hold her, at least.  That hurt.

“Wait… what?  Did you just call me, to come all the way to Vegas because your boyfriend broke up with you?”

“You are the one who came in here, asking for money first, before you even cared about me!” she growled.

“I didn’t…” then Harmon lost his voice, along with all his sense, he also supposed.  The room was spinning.  It had to be.  Because Carmen had stepped out into the middle of the room, swishing a real tail in wide, angry arcs.

“When Flavio saw this,” then Carmen raised her shirt and showed Harmon what was once a sculpted flat stomach he knew very well, now covered in the same gray fur.  “…he left me, before we even got to the altar.”  Next, she whimpered, “And I grew the tail, while I was waiting for you to get here.  You slow, stupid–aaaaargh!  I hate you, Harmon, I hate you!  I can’t even run away from you, or our marriage.  No puedo, con mis vestidos quemados y con una cola?   You’re always so mean to me.”

There were a lot of things Harmon could have said in that moment, certainly.  “Okay, so… I’m gonna go downstairs to drink and gamble until this starts making some damned sense.”

Carmen’s panicked, feral screams followed him down the hallway.

Captain Zeus Finnegan flinched when his bookie staggered out of a yellow corvette.  He’d either been fighting, or drinking, or both.

“Eh, hello Magnum.  Everything alright there?”

Goldine had gone from yellow swimsuit to a bright yellow dress that nearly glowed int he ink blue darkness of evening.  She threw the long, flowing skirt into the wind again and again, smelling like rum and humming to herself.  Harmon leaned on the exquisite car’s door, testing just how swollen one black eye was.

“You ever been to Celebration, Captain Finnegan?”

Did his bookie want a shoulder to cry on?  Zeus looked up and down the street.  Only one or two passerby and most of the shops were closed at this hour.  Hardly any substantial witnesses.  What now?  Compliment the man?  Buy him flowers?  Shout at him to man-up when Goldine could just float away again, at any moment?

She presently played at twirling and seeing the dress flare in the thick night.

Harmon went on, “The place is about thirty minutes from here in Osceola County, I had to pass through it to get downtown.  Well, I chose to pass through, after my wife screamed for some short little man to hit me.  That whole town, Celebration, looks like some kind of cartoon paradise.  Carmen and I wanted to live there, at first.  The Walt Disney Company and its world famous team of magnanimous people didn’t open Celebration too long ago, like in the nineties, I think.  was supposed to be a paradise, with all kinds of people living in the most perfect, cozy southern town together, right near the Magic Kingdom itself.  Ha!  But it was still too expensive for us.  Hundreds of thousands of dollars for a house–I know these things.  Some Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow… half the people who need to be there, can’t even get in.  And we had secret money troubles even back that far, when we first got to Orlando two years ago.  I just lied and said her idea was stupid.  Don’t get too comfortable in your shoes, though.  Captain Finnegan, your timeshare is even less affordable.  Oh, but some people, they get their happy endings, don’t they?  Because I’m such a wicked-good lawyer.  Did I sound like you?  I’ve been practicing that, Zeus.”

Zeus began scratching his bright hair furiously, hoping Harmon would stop.

Harmon droned, “So, no picket fence, no children for us… just two women screaming for Buster Sparks to finally punch me in the face.  Isn’t that cake?  And not once, did Carmen want to stop and talk about the clothes I burned in the goddamned pool.”

“Yeah, Magnum’s always on joke-time, Goldine.  Wait, Sparks?  You know that weirdo?”

“Hate to break it to you, Zeus, but you were targeted.  Too many well-connected golfers attached to your name when I looked it up.  Oh, and here, I had this cleaned.  I felt bad about what our incontinent friend-in-common did to it.”  Harmon came over and stuffed the cap down over Zeus’s mussed hair.

“Let’s a… hey, do you have the keys, there, Mr. M?  Goldine and I have been waiting for you a long time.  She’s been drinking for hours, actually.”

“I’m taking your car, in exchange for this one.  Why?  Because you never pay me.  I hate late money.” Harmon yanked open the door of Zeus’ jeep and had a seat.  “Don’t forget that the property is still under litigation.  So, don’t break anything.  And, if there’s some accident or other… don’t call the cops.  I fired the regular security guys, so that’s maybe about forty-eight hours before anyone at the old firm figures out what’s wrong.  Some kind of stupid, mid-week team building thing.  Lots of drunk, self-absorbed lawyer types who think me and all my security access just disappeared when I was fired.”

Zeus hushed him.  “Are you drunk right now, Magnum?”

Harmon started honking the jeep’s horn for no reason.  Goldine yelped and stretched two soft arms overhead, in some great instinctual breast stroke to cover her ears.

“That is not legal, Captain Finnegan.  No, no, no.  I’m not drunk.  Just sad.  That one building in Celebration, the town center, looks like a cage.  I couldn’t figure out which side of it I was on, after a while.  It’s why I was so late.  Sorry.”

Getting away with the girl was now a matter of survival for Zeus.  He saw that it would be easier to get into the other car than to wrench his bookie out of the jeep.  Zeus tugged at Harmon’s fist, bent a swimmer’s body completely in half to reach in, unclenched one finger at a time from around the keys.  Goldine could get away after he’d been searching and fiending for so long, she could still float away…

Harmon fought back. He seized the shirt collar that still smelled so strongly of chlorine, and snarled.

“Ah!  What the hell man–”

“I thought…”

“No, you attacked me.  You tried to bite me.  But I stopped you.  Magnum, I know you’ve got problems–don’t take that stuff out on me, alright?  I said I’d pay you.  Got it?  You’re not going to call someone and have them come down to the beach are you?  Hey, are you listening to me?  Are we cool?  You’re not going to turn into some freaking vampire on me, are you?”

Harmon relinquished keys and pulled the jeep door shut, to seal himself away from everything.  “I am a man named Harmon Davis.”

Zeus could not have heard.  He ushered his gold woman into the corvette and that roared off moments after.

The other reason Harmon wanted the jeep was because he didn’t have anyplace else to sleep and no money to fix it with.  Carmen snatched his wallet before she threw him out.

And so, the cell phone was allowed to ring for a long time before he had the confidence to answer it.  “Carmencita, look.  I feel awful.  Don’t apologize, I just want to come back home.  I’ll see you there–what?” teeth bared, “You’re where?  Mujer–the hell I am!  Look, just calm down… I’ll find some money, I’ll get to you any way I can, alright?  Don’t do anything else drastic.”

Harmon gripped the steering wheel, started the car and prayed before he realized he was still capable of it.  Carmen was in Las Vegas.  And, she was hysterical.

The ‘Wild Thangs’ Ultimate Frisbee team captain, Zeus Finnegan, loved to swim.

A Southie forced to migrate south, savoring the sea-salt breeze until forced to contend with that Labrador Current.  It was necessary to fly over-land, therefore, to secretly kiss the ocean–to fingers–when Zeus could see the coastline changing.  And he would give up eating fresh crab right from floating restaurants, and smiling at sharks every first Sunday at the aquarium, and the eventual, amorous brunch after some pretty date got to see a real-live whale breaching out in the wild blue open.”

“My god, Zeus, I just feel so new–a real whale?  I thought it would be sort of touristy, but no.  How magical.  You’ve made this day so special for us.” the woman, whomever she was, always said as much, then gifted sweet kiss.  But that all really couldn’t be heartfelt, not on a first date.

And then Zeus would resent his name again, for the millionth time.  He hated it as a child, but then it became fun in college, of course.  By the time Zeus was fully independent and exhausted with fast feelings–all for his name–then rejection once the mystery wore off, he’d grown to regret being so special all over again.  His father’s cruel sense of humor never let up, did it?  Not unlike the real Cronus.

It used to just be about missing Boston’s bay.  Now, he was wounded by a longing for water, any kind of large body, that could lift him up and make him smell salt again, feel at home.  The comfort of swimming laps at the gym beat all, if Orlando was too far from the coast, nor could he get to the lake every single time he wanted it.  Chlorine smell was hardly anything when it was still possible to feel as weightless, watery and basic, simple as water.  Dolphins could play in the water, revel in it, love and hate in the water, and never feel separated from it.  They found love, made love even, in the water, and he wished that he could do something like that.

Better than even teaching golf, when it was one chance connection which tore Zeus out of Boston, in the first place.  He needed money, and pushing a mop at that pirate-theme restaurant was getting hella-old.  Now that he was in Florida, Ultimate Frisbee was about finally being called Captain.

All this, Zeus meditated on while trying to forget how some idiot really had the gall to steal his Red Sox cap.  No, he just wasn’t coping with the move away from home, very well.  Happiest place on Earth, his white ass.

No, back to the water.  Do another lap.  Breathe, yes.  Submerge.

Why couldn’t people be like that, let water press into their pores, even, and breathe it? Or, maybe he should save up for a boat–a yacht.  Excellent.  Captain Zeus Finnegan, enchanter of mer-maids.  Get just one woman to like it, to like you, the immersed you, and then you’ll never have to leave the water again, Zeus.  Could a woman really be fooled into that?  Then what?  Well, of course… the birds and the bees, and the fish, too, etcetera.  Just like the whale and the dolphin.  Imagine, if there was never a need to leave that tour-boat with a hot date, ever.

Jesus!  Just get a ticket home, already, stay in Boston for a weekend.  Have lobster and white chowder, some tea without friggin-sugar for a few days.  Get it out of your system, then leave.  From the ocean and then back inland.  Challenge the Labrador Current again, and so many others, when steady income was only right here, in Orlando.

What a perverse impulse, Zeus Finnegan.  This is better than swabbing a fake deck and sleeping in your car, isn’t it?  So swim, and dream of salt-water.  Meet a woman at the YMCA or something.  In fact, what’s her name, the one over there?  She’s here on Wednesdays, just like you.  Now she’s a babe.  More streamlined than her yellow swimsuit.  What an athletic stroke, she was probably in the Olympics, or at least the trials.  She’s already in the water, you know, so ask her, go on.  Say something crazy like ‘I once beat Michael Phelps in a race.  Yep, then he hit me back.’  Wow, that’s not one of my better ones… Though, it’s better than considering skipping rent for a flight back home or measuring a flight to Boston against a train ride, more than a day’s ride…  But it only takes moments to swim to that side of the pool and ask a woman one, stupid question.

Consequently, Captain Zeus Finnegan later found himself on the phone, asking a lot of other stupid questions:

“I know, but, Magnum–listen.  I can promise to pay you in some other way, later, but right now I really need this timeshare.  What is it you want?  I’d do anything.”

“So then, you actually want to meet me at some undisclosed location, after how you’ve been wasting my time?”

“I swear I won’t disappear on you again, Magnum.  About yesterday… I don’t get channel 58.  They cut my cable.  But I swear to you, the love of my life is practically on the hook, but I need a beach-house to reel her in.  Jesus!  Isn’t our entire financial institution already based on little fish owing bigger fish?  You can bilk me forever if you want.”  Was there a woman screaming in the background, on Magnum’s end?  Zeus waved off his newest lady friend hugging over the edge of the pool, named Goldine, and then turned to bang his head on the pay phone.  The excuse that his cell was way, way back in his locker actually worked, which meant this was sure to be easier than normal.

Zeus knew he was playing with fire, but hanging up the phone now, having to live one more day unsated–no, truly it was the start of madness, he sensed, a fetish setting in.  No balm existed for this kind of loneliness, a flesh eating burn.  Then, for whatever reason, Buster Sparks’ frisbee incident from last week came to mind.  Really, Zeus had secretly understood up until Sparks tried to come up to him afterwards, and hug the captain or whatever.  Now that was just crazy.  Captain Zeus Finnegan had to draw a line somewhere.

Magnum’s voice resurged. “What you’re really asking me for, Mister Finnegan, is a chance to go into debt for two of my services.  If you mess with me this time, Captain, I promise that I am going to gut you wide open.”

“Wait, how did you know that I–”

“I’m a shark, Finnegan.  A big-time lawyer, you know that.  This is just for kicks.  I am hungry for a chance to come after you anywhere, at anytime, as soon as I smell your blood, your fear.  And I’ll make it so that the law can’t touch me.”

Suddenly, the woman’s voice on Magnum’s end was a lot easier to make out.

Malecón.  Harmon!  Por qué no puedo encontrar los vestidos nuevos que compré ayer?  Voy a cortar los huevos y fritan con el salchicha si lo que nadaría en nuestra piscina ahorita, es lo que pienso!

Long sigh, “Our usual place, downtown.  One hour.  If I sneak out the back.”

“Oh thank God!  Magnum you’re saving me man, you really are–”

Dial tone blared through the phone next.  Zeus replaced the receiver carefully, then passed a little prayer, over shivering teeth.  It was either lingering disparity between the warmth of pool water and the actual chill of life, or the terror of so much freshman year Spanish suddenly coming back to him.

There is far more to Orlando than the ‘happiest place on Earth’, but the closer one travels to the big theme parks, the more plastic things begin to seem. Beautiful weather may encourage bright colored houses, mansions set with their own tall white gates and palm tree groves. Or, maybe it’s just smart business to make everything seem like a thrill, an adventure. Lots of places, not just restaurants, or other fancy do’s, have that star-lit quality, the big, colorful signs. Glistening characters–all kinds–perched wherever they can fit. Not quite Eden, and certainly not like Vegas. But what if, to some souls grasping desperately for a fairytale happy ending, there is a real talismanic power in all that grand effort? For example, Harmon and Carmen Davis are not natural residents of Orlando, and they didn’t come for any practical reason other than Eden being an impossible place to get to, and Vegas being worse, because of the LA traffic.

But Buster Sparks liked to think of himself as a normal human being, in fact, completely different from those dangerous plastic types. He only needed one thing to make himself happy on mornings, when he didn’t have to work. When that beautiful red disk sailed just over the grass, ultimate Frisbee was Sparky’s game. And they were usually smart enough to pass it low too, take full advantage of–who else–but the team star. The man destined to be, top dog, this Spring. But no, six-foot Jolly Green Jojo decided to show up for their season opener, and Mister Finnegan was throwing it high today.

The team regrouped at midfield and Sparky idly pulled the scruff of some bruise on his neck, then nudged captain Finnegan in the shoulder. “Zeus, man, why are you throwing it so high? I was wide open.”

“So was Jojo… I simply couldn’t see ya Sparky. Now, we can still win this. They’re just barely ahead. Ralph and Hot-Spot, get on D this time. That way, everyone else can–”

“Yes you could see me; I was right there.” Sparky liked being called tenacious, the Spark-plug.

“Would ya look at those other guys, Sparks? Jojo is the tallest one out hea; I’ve gotta take advantage of that.”

“Well Zeus, throw it lower then, where they can’t reach it.”

“Sparky, I’m tired of hearing your cartoon voice, man. Now, we gonna to talk about midgets or play this game?” went the green giant. Sparky craned neck up, and doubly felt the inconvenience.

Zeus re-adjusted a Red Sox cap. He was a freshly transplanted Yankee with weird orange-gold hair the exact color of a gold-fish cracker.

“Alright, stop. Some of us are weirder than others, okay? I accept that. But right now, if you want, we can all finally talk about the game instead. Though, I was trying to be polite, giving Jojo and Sparky a chance to chit-chat about their vertical fetish.”

Ready. Set. Throw. The whole field animated as shirtless men sprinted after the shirts who scrambled into position. But the opponent knew better. Eventually, everybody fought to get near big Jojo. Two safety-orange cones sectioned off the goal line directly behind.

Instantly, Sparky jumped up and down waving his hands. “I’m open, Zeus!” he cried. So different from the husky male shouts around.

Captain Zeus Finnegan’s defender wouldn’t give up on him, and the redhead jogged a few steps trying to see. He kept the red frisbee tucked in the crook of his arm like some ancient discus player. At last, a swift, clear launch.

Shirtless, stronger men stayed with Jojo the giant as he reached to catch, but the shirts fought them off hard. Below, dark forms pressed in everywhere. Blue sky swallowed up as hands laced together so many long dark fingers. Heavy bodies crashed. More mud, more sweat–geesh, was everyone here a dog lover? It was possible to smell dog hair, onto of everything else. So low to the ground now that he was in his element, Sparky noticed a scant opening in that tangled canopy. He itched his neck furiously, then smiled.

Buster Sparks clambered up–someone got kicked in the mouth–and snatched the frisbee. Now to run. Sparky would need to dive over or fight to the goal line. Sparky dodged a few good tackles, used both hands to shove away someone else coming in hard–frisbee clenched in teeth achieved the trick. Then backpedaling, strafing, now sprinting in the other direction.

“Yer goin’ the wrong way, ya damned idiot!”

Sparky was aware of this too. He’d seen it happen on so many after school specials to become a victim. No, no, no. Frisbee is too valuable. Plastic tastes salty, good. Put it away, save it. The short man hit the floor as they snagged him round the knees. Sparky forced fingers into the dirt, scraped, wedged the bright red disk as deep as he could get. Not enough. Cover it completely. Can’t they see it’s mine and over? Too late? Sparky threw himself over the hastily buried frisbee, wedged hands away from their angry grasps, beneath, opened fly, and if he had been standing, he would have been able to let fly…

Revulsion unpeeled the pile-on of men like no football referee ever could. And maybe it was partly their fault too, when it was just a neighborhood park and the game wasn’t so serious in the first place. But Sparky, in his present state, couldn’t possibly reason all that fast enough. Because, man or animal, urine possesses this striking offensive quality that definitely and always says, ‘get the hell away from me.’

Some whistle blew, though it didn’t have to. That was certainly game.

Zeus Finnegan was usually a blue-mood, level headed guy no matter what. He’d probably even breathe water like air, if he was drowning. It was frightening for Sparky to see the team captain this angry. “No, don’t you come any closer, Sparks. And what are you doing, fetching the frisbee after all that–god-dammit, you’re off the team!”

Sparky had to go quickly–well, he already went, but now it was necessary to truly go, flee, for several reasons. Other than the horrifyingly obvious, there was some frantic voicemail from his wife.

When Buster Sparks reached the Davis’ beautiful home, he took care to freshly re-dress, of course.

Unlocked screen door opened to Harmon lounging alone in his living room. To Sparky, Harmon always smelled… suspicious. The way Harmon was constantly on buzzed vacation, the way his wife Carmen didn’t work, the way that they both lived in this mansion, in the middle of an expensive neighborhood so unlike the graying condos and public parks with dying fountains and odd palm trees he and Binny knew so well–the difference did matter, this couple was too snooty to ever hide that fact, but yet, Harmon and Carmon welcomed Binny and himself? It felt something along the lines of pity. Harmon was supposed to be a top-dog lawyer? Weren’t those supposed to lead stressful lives and never see their wives or children. At least having no children made sense.

“Binny called me a while ago, is she still upset? And what the hell happened to your pool?” Sparky asked, knowing the answer behind all this, already. Sparky was just barking, making noise, when Harmon was always on the verge of some better insult.

Harmon was laid out on the leather couch, green flip-flops on crooked. He watched Sparky for a time, through drowsed eye-slits. “A man with a dog’s name… has no respect for himself.”

Sparky replied, “At least my marriage isn’t some sorry excuse for a divorce. If you want to go screwing around town, you selfish bastard, why don’t you just let Carmen go? I’m tired of my wife being drawn into the middle of this. She upstairs, or in the kitchen?”

Harmon lifted an arm, preventing departure. “Is Binny pregnant? She almost fell into the pool this morning, and when I saved her, she couldn’t stand being touched.” Sparky curled lip, said nothing. “And then, when we came back inside, she wouldn’t have what I was having.”

“Maybe because that thing on the coffee table is your typical third drink of the day, and it’s just barely noon now? Harmon, Binny is too obsessed with getting to be your wife’s size, your wife’s tan, and saving up for your wife’s Indian hair extensions or whatever, going on and on about the craziest, most useless things, to ever get pregnant.”

Harmon heard the difference, stared.

“To ever be pregnant, I mean. It wouldn’t be safe. And how is this any of your damned business? Bunny, I’m here–where are you, what’s wrong?”

Harmon sat up, as best he could. “I just told you. I wanted ice, she went and locked herself in the bathroom.”

“What the hell were you doing, getting my wife to fetch crap for you, Harmon? And if you make another one of your jokes about her already being my bitch, I swear, I’m going to–”

“She was happy to help. Binny’s a sweetheart.”

“No. Noooo, I know that look. I know that tone, don’t you even think it, not with my wife. Harmon, this time, you’re dead.”

Sparky instantly vaulted over the couch, bared teeth, and landed punches. Harmon winced and yowled, caught between the shock of having been attacked in his own home and being trounced in such a stupid way by Buster Sparks. Harmon threw the better of his drunken musculature, and both men crashed to the floor.

Binny emerged from the depths of the sun-streaked mansion then, but her tearful begging wasn’t enough to douse the men’s rabid competition. Proof that this wasn’t their usual dog-and-cat squabble arrived, before long.

A pair of authentic Manolo Blahniks going in tandem across the Davis’ marble floors enforced silence and obedience, before the alpha-woman even had to ask. “Harmon. I just saw the pool.”

Sparky finished shoving, as Carmen simmered with hand on her hip. Harmon forced shaking hands into what could have been Tom Selleck’s barely-there back pockets, once upon a time.

“It’s nice, honey, to see you working around the house. Ah, Binny, querida, you know how many times I asked him.” Smooch-smooch, for both tear-stained rosy cheeks, “Come on, girl, I want to tell you something about this new procedure I heard on the radio. It’s perfect for you. Remember the satellite stations from L.A. I kept? Well on the drive over, they said you wouldn’t even need to go under the knife. Pero, mira, better than that, tengo chicas back home in Cali, with con conexiones, y pueden hacer cosas muy lindas cuando dicen todos sueños en el mundo son más baratos, en México. Why are you crying? Procedure is different from surgery, right? Ir y regresar. Easy-easy…”

It wasn’t absolutely clear why Sparky then sat, took the remote and started flipping channels.

“Get out of my house!” yelled Harmon.

“Heh. Oh, but it’s not your house anymore, is it? Just like that isn’t my wife, any longer. And Harmon, I wasn’t joking earlier. You’d better not have given me any of your cat-diseases. What kind of sicko bites another man trying to settle a debt? It’s not healed since you took my money last week.” Buster Sparks rubbed his neck.

“It was late money, that’s why. Don’t come into my house again, with late money.”

“Tyson did that once, right? That‘s the kind of half-man, half Tom-cat diseased, ear-eating monster you are.”

“If you had any balls for betting real sports, bitch-boy, we wouldn‘t have any problems between us. Go to 58, I think there’s a fight on, now that you mention it.”

The shorter man peered over the edge of the couch to mind the ladies, his brow barely cleared it, and then he slipped a hundred bill into Harmon’s hand. Sparky said, “But it has got to be our last time.”

“This your Red Sox cap? Why does it smell like piss?”

“Look.  I don’t care about the open marriage thing. This has to be our last time.”

Carmen leaned on her elbows, came up on palms, extended her back until it made an inhuman arc over the rickety mattress.  The rest of the studio apartment was, thankfully, less dingy.

Then, she sang to her lover, “Vale más un buen amor, que un costillon de oro…”

Flavio inhaled more than half an amber cigarette.  “Oh God.”

“Vale más, un buen amor, por eso, eres, mi tesoro.  Olvidemos el pasado, y lo que–”

“Yes, yes, and forget what the other people say about our love–except, that what we have is so very far away from lo que canta Vicente.  Carmen, you watch too much goddamn television.  And don’t sing at me, like some mariachi under my window.  I know you have other boyfriends.  Then yes, a husband.”

“You don’t like Vicente Fernandez?  Flavio, did you forget you are supposed to be my Juan?  El fuego en la sangre.  Or, are you suddenly Catholic again?”

“Don’t make fun of me, when I’m worried about you.  And it’s not just my faith.  There’s this other thing, mi abuelita, she used to tell me.  I swear that it’s real.  Did you know that if you don’t use your humanity, Carmen, you could lose it?  And after the way you bit me last night…”

“Lose it where?  On the floor, out the window?  With ideas like that, shouldn’t you be on a street corner, selling oranges?”

“You are so vicious, y racista, against your own.  Do you see?  Already losing yourself.  But this isn’t just about you.  Forget the devil y los pecados.  I don’t want to know, querida, what is really deep down inside of me if I keep going on like this.” Flavio crossed his arms. “Besides, it’s not a Mexican saying.  My grandmother was just a little crazy.  But sharp also, like when you cut a carrot wrong and take off a finger.”

“Open marriage is not some vegetable, Flavio, and I’m not crazy.  Is that what you think of me, because then I don’t have to come back here, ever–” Carmen flashed a middle finger.  Flavio seized her slender wrist.  “Please, please don’t put me out, Flavio.  You begged me to take care of my marriage, and I then did–”

“Pero, cuantos veces me lo decías, con rabia!  Un triángulo no es lo que quiero–”

“Harmon doesn’t have your real name, he doesn’t have anything.  He and I both agreed that an open marriage is best.  Things are going to be better now, I promise.  Now, do you still think my husband is going to come after you?”  she yawned.

As it often is with people, her little roar demanded another.  Carmen’s yawn involved curling tongue to grace mouth-roof, like some lioness.  Then, she rolled onto her back and began to dress.  Beyond the apartment window, Orlando’s midday rain began.  Hard rice being poured out everywhere.

“Look, Flavio, I’ll go if you want.  You can go to church today, like you planned, and I will just spend the boring holiday with my stupid husband… hijo de puta.”

“Perdón?”

“I said, ayudame.  Por.  Favor.  And the tie better not be in a bow.  Armani is meant to be sophisticated.”  Flavio sighed and undid one fast, puffy ribbon, and then re-tied long straps of Carmen’s dress into a loose knot.

“Because I date you, and I am addicted to you, I know the difference between the two.  Which is sad for a man.  One is for weddings and babies and my little sisters–ay, porque pienso en familia ahorita?  The other way is more like a noose, isn’t it?”

Carmen leaned in to kiss goodbye, snapped teeth at Flavio instead, then left.

Mrs. Carmen Oliva Davis was last seen wearing a sundress on the previous evening.  Bright yellows and oranges muted to fiery red hues.  Actual flames burning up the flowers.  Then charred black, along both sides of the A-line.  Silk?

Harmon sat alone by the edge of the swimming pool in his backyard.  Today, he was an unshaven, slumped over brute.  At his best, Harmon usually enjoyed a bemused sneer through granite features, like some alpha wolf.

His wife would wear nothing less than silk.  Yes, and there were high-heeled open-toed shoes too, officer, a classy nude color that did not distract from the already flamboyant dress.  It went past her knees, but the drop of the neckline… Well, Carmen is the kind of vixen who makes a man get an appetite women’s fashion.  Not that I was trying to make mental notes, Officer–or really, I was, you see.

So, they’d know it was her own fault.  Carmen was the one dressed to kill when she walked out the night before, not him.

The rain stopped and Harmon stood, swayed, then cocked his lighter sideways as if it was some gangster’s piece.  As air cleared, the strong smell of lighter fluid came right back. Now, his smile could come back.  Bright teeth pierced granite features, the grin of some alpha wolf.

Creak of the back gate.  “Carmen?  Oh.  You’re not my wife at all.”

Binny was his wife’s friend, a plump southern belle who wore too many rings on her fingers.  And, she was presently wearing a knock off of what Carmen had spent good money on.  Binny was so good at looking like his wife but not being her, in any useful way.

“Yes, looks like we’re gonna have another sunny Florida day afterall–what in the world are you doing?”

Click.  Fwoosh!  “Happy Cinco de fucking Mayo, Carmencita.  Hahahaha!”

Harmon should have used a match instead.  The cigarette lighter was still attached to his hand when he leaned down and the box caught fire.  Pale flames peeled the folded cardboard edges and singed them black.  He barely retained enough sense to toss the hot lighter into the aqua swimming pool.

And then Binny screamed over Harmon’s blurred conscience.  The silly woman was trying to reach, through the flame, and salvage Carmen’s wardrobe.  Harmon kicked the flaming box in flip-flop, then braced low to heave Binny upright again before she fell into the pool too.  All that dazzling aqua water clouded as ravaged, fire-eaten clothing floated to extremes of the pool.

She was getting hysterical. “Those were gonna’ be mine in, maybe three sizes!”

“Oh yeah?  Well I lost my job a few months ago.  Carmen still doesn’t know.  In fact, she’s been having the time of her life, screwing some hot-shot guy she met when you two ran off to Miami that weekend, remember?”

“What?  That doesn’t sound like Carmen at all.  And you can’t be seriously blaming me when, if anything… well she’s just a lost soul, maybe.”

“Well, you’re her henchwoman, so of course Carmen is innocent.  In your ears, it’s going to sound like we both mutually agreed to have an open marriage, or whatever she wants it called.”

The ruined moving box, still marked ‘Carmencita’s LA babies’ began to gurgle as it melted down, down, into the swampy swimming pool.  Chlorine, embers, and burning hair smell bubbling together.  Orlando and its close marsh heat used to be that, before Walt Disney moved in.

“It’s not our marriage, Binny.  It can’t be.  We have this house, I still find money for us.  My woman has everything she could want.  I’ve been holding everything together just fine, until last night.  We were good, dinner was great.  Joking, laughing, kissing…”

“Well, usually things like this are just building up in a marriage, until–”

“I bit her.  That was when Carmen changed.  We argued, she ran out of the house.  I know it sounds crazy, Binny, but I swear, that’s how it happened.  What’s wrong with me?  Is it stress?  Maybe some deal is about to go wrong and I can feel it.”

“Oh, calm down, wolf-man.”

“What if that’s what I am, for making her move all the way out here?  Turned into some heartless monster, some vampire… One thing after another going wrong, I feel like I’m cursed.  What’s that legend, the chupacabra, or something?”

“A chupacabra is for sheep, last I heard.  Harmon, honey, you’re still drunk.  And maybe even there’s an itty bitty touch of heatstroke in there?  Some illegal substance, too, knowing you…”

“Oh God, oh no.  Vale más, un buen amor…”

“Harmon.  Your gringo Spanish sounds exactly like one of those cheesy lawyer commercials, ‘si, se habla Espanol.’  So, definitely don’t start singing in it, either.”

“That’s how we met, you know.” He sniffled, “One of those Hollywood celeb parties.  I don’t even remember whose.  My firm used to have a contract with Telemundo.  She was trying to find this Juan guy from her favorite novela.  But I was determined to have a conversation with Carmen in my broken Spanish.”

“Oh?  Well that’s sweet.  Buster was just my old prom date.”

“…And then Carmen cussed me out in English.  Best day of my life.”

“Alright, that’s it, Harmon.  Let’s get inside the air conditioning.  You definitely need some coffee.  Or an exorcist.”