Chapter Five: Kiwetinohk Kacakastek

Chapter Five: Kiwetinohk Kacakastek

 

 

"De omnibus dubitandum."

 (Everything should be questioned.)

 

- Karl Marx

 

In which we discover the tombs.

 

When Frank and Gia married, it was a modest, elegant ceremony (under $12,000). A family affair, not too showy. Most of the guests were named Marcos, Marvello, Bjola, or Burczyk. Frank's best man was his old schoolmate, Bob Scieszka, and the usher was a fellow called Piss-drinker Ken—so called because he was known to have consumed his own urine, on occasion, just for shits and giggles. Piss-drinker was one of Gia's legion of second and third cousins. He and Bob went and got flat-out wasted together, in the Church tool shed, before the ceremony commenced. Connie Craine was there, too—the unabashed fellatrix from Champion Cardboard, eight years earlier—accompanying another  of Gia's cousins on the Marcos side. Stefan. He would eventually become her third husband.

Some people might have called the loss of the best man and usher a bad omen. Not Frank or Gia—they moved ahead without the drunks, said their I-dos, and had a fine old time.

The occasion was the second-to-last time Frank spoke to his father. Piotr Francis died within the month—liver failure and a hundred other diseases. Nothing unexpected.

...

 

Francis was perfectly yellow with jaundice. This was the afternoon before the union. Father to son, heart to heart. They sat down together at Jack's Juke, which was a favorite watering hole—greasy dirty little shit pub—among Discord's old timers. Right down the street from the Grotto restaurant. Francis had gin and Frank had beer. Both men were in a no-cigarettes phase, trying to quit, Francis for the first time in his life, but what was the point, really?

He told Frank, “You've got to listen close. I'm not good for much, I know that. I know I brought you into a bad place, a strange world, and I could have made it go different if I tried harder. Your mother is an odd duck. I know that, too. That's my fault. I could have done better. I should get a wrecking crew into the house to bulldoze all her garbage into the street. If I had any balls, I'd do it. Bulldoze the works, send her flying—”

Frank asked, “Is this why we came to Jack's? To talk about Mom?”

“No, forget your mother—she can't be helped. I want to talk about the Marvello girl, your fiance. You know I was there when they pulled her folks out of the Ghost River. You remember I told you that, huh? Romano and the lady. The Marvellos. Sweet Jezus, it was a wretched day. And I'm the kind of guy who knows wretched days, believe me. I saw your sister's body after it bled to death.”

“I thought she got burned up?”

“I told you, you need to research it all. In the archives. My brain is shit. I mean it. I'm not good for one single thing and I know it. Oh, it's so hard to keep the details straight. It's been a lot of years. But I can tell you that I saw my daughter's body with all the blood drained out.”

“Don't worry about it. Go on.”

“Those Marvello girls—the orphans, I mean—they got it rough. They were split up and sent with different relatives, some of whom were distant and some of whom were strangers. Two of them, real unlucky ones, got sent off the continent, all the way back to Europe. Terrible news. Did you know any of the Marvello girls in school? Some of them were in your age group, I think—“

“Dad, Gia and I remember each other from grade ten. We were partners in English class.”

“You knew her when—“

“I remember the day of the train, yeah.”

“You have to take my advice, son. You dicked around with the wrong woman for two years or better. That Tracy. Stain on a sheet. Heartless cunt if I ever met one. She was even worse than Pam. I remember Pam, too. Both of those women were horrid, but Tracy really took the cake. You fucked around and wasted your time and settled for someone who's not even worth a half pail of my own shit. Do you know what I'm saying?”

“Yes. I know. I know, Dad.”

“This Marvello girl is like the Venus o' Milo. The Mona da Vinci. The girl is sweet and kind and good. And she's good to you. And for you. And she's smart. I know she thinks I'm a piece of shit drunk, but I've had some conversations with her. She's not a fucking dunce. She's a person of substance. She is quality. You just don't know how good she is.”

“I think I do.”

“I hope you do.”

“I do.”

“You might judge against the garbage you were with before and think you know what quality is, but that's setting the bar pretty low. You need to set the bar higher. Gia is up, up, up.”

“I wouldn't marry her otherwise.”

“She came through hell, Frankie. She came through hell to get to here, and I know it as well as anyone because I was there on the day her whole world busted apart. Fucking John Quay, the criminal! Gia's parents had no business being on that train—it was a lark, a business deal, he was shuttling to Moose Lake to drink cosmopolitans with a potential business partner he never even got to shake hands with. That's how quickly it happens. Life on a dime, huh?”

“Yes, I know.”

“I knew those people. I knew Romano Marvello.”

“I know. I do know that.”

“Take care of her, boy. And love her.”

“I will.”

“I hope you do.”

“I do.”

“At least you're getting good practice saying that part.”

...

 

Miles above Arizona, aboard a 737 bound for Mexico, for the first time, on their honeymoon, Frank decided it was a good time to talk with Gia about the Discord rail disaster. He'd had a few too many travel-sized drinks, on account of his fear of flying. He turned to his fresh bride and said, “If things had gone differently, if tragedy hadn't stolen the your parents away, do you think Candelaria and Romano might be spending their odd Friday nights playing diminishing whist against Dora and old Francis?”

Gia was pleased and surprised with herself to find that she did not overreact to this question. Instead, she chewed on it, quietly, tactfully, then asked, “Are you wondering if our parents, yours and mine, would have been friends, if mine hadn't been killed?”

“Yes. I do wonder that, sometimes.”

“It's a strange thing to wonder.”

“I know it is.”

“Your brain takes you to dangerous places, sometimes.”

“Yes, sometimes it does.”

“What I think is this: My parents were old when they married, and yours were young. You're the oldest sibling in your family and I'm the youngest in mine. My father was nearly sixty when the accident happened, and yours just turned sixty-four this last April. It is a sharp difference in age. I doubt any of them knew each other. It is highly unlikely.”

“I suppose that makes sense.”

“Please don't talk about my parents anymore. It upsets me.”

“I'm sorry.”

Frank did not say, “My Dad remembers the day of the accident. He was there because of the power line. He and his crew were called to assist the injured. That was nine o'clock in the morning, May thirtieth, the last day you came to English class. Twenty-six people went to the hospital in serious condition. Dad was forty-one years old, which is how old I'm going to be in a couple years. He remembers every little detail. He says he can still smell the various perfumes and colognes the people were wearing, even though they were soaked with blood and river water.”

Nope.

He didn't dare say this.

Gia said, “I'm not angry with you. I love you.”

Somewhere on the planet below, hundreds of miles north and east, on a random freshwater lake in the forest, a common loon pined for its mate.

Frank ordered another drink, vodka with Coca-cola, and washed down two Xanax..

Gia took a deep breath, seriously attempted willing her head to explode, then told him, “If my parents were still alive, they would probably be like just your parents. Unhappy, perhaps. Probably.  People stay together for too long and it drives them mad. Dying together may have been best for them. The universe has a way of getting exactly what it wants from us.”

Immediately after her parents died, Gia quit school, moved away, and got a job at the Meskanaw Motor Inn, making bug-infested beds and cleaning up empty glasses and full rubbers. Frank had a hard time convincing himself that was what the universe wanted for her.

She went out of his life for two decades.

Other men got to put their hands all over her body.

Deep inside of herself, Gia knew that the death of her parents was a huge cosmic mis-step, the sort of error the universe makes only once in every so-many million lifetimes. Had they lived, had that cursed train stayed on its mother fucking tracks, Gia probably would have gone to Yale or Harvard and united quantum mechanics with gravity well before the twentieth century sputtered out.

Frank and Gia never would  have gotten back together.

Apples and oranges, glasses half full and half empty.

This was a place they didn't like to come—the hypothetical place, the deep inside place.

Most people hate that place.

...

 

Frank Burczyk spent a lot of time in the deep inside place, and he was becoming certain that was why he constantly cycled over and over  through hard urges to kill himself. He was on Wellbutrin, 150 milligrams per day, and it wasn't doing the trick. Other than that, well, he wasn't allowed to self-medicate, anymore.

On the day he turned 40, when the kitchen clock hit 9:30 in the morning, he thought aloud, “Why am I still here? Why haven't I finished things off?”

There was a biker rally in Discord. Fucking Corsairs were tearing up and down the avenues, gunning their engines, selling their drugs, acting like total assholes.

The day was going to be a long one. Staying home from work could sometimes stretch a twenty-four hour day into ninety hours or better. He still had a lunch date with his wife to endure, maybe a beer date with his best friend to get through. For this instant he despised everyone, no one moreso than himself, and the world seemed a stupid place.

A few breaths. Let the feeling pass.

The Idiot, Lump, came downstairs and wanted a ride to Island Market, where all the drop-outs and drug-addicts whiled away the daylight hours. At dusk they'd all become vampires. He didn't care. He said, “You want to go and be with your own kind, don't you?”

Lump nodded slowly.

There was more metal in her face than there was in Bob Scieszka's leg.

A week earlier he'd caught her rifling through his drawers, in his bedroom. She hadn't even attempted to explain herself or apologize. Two days after that she smeared her excrement down the bathroom wall but denied all responsibility. She said it was the work of evil tree spirits.

She never looked directly at Frank when he spoke to her.

She blinked constantly.

He thought he'd like nothing more than to punch her square in the face—just knock her fucking block off.

...

 

Not including the territory south of the rail-line, or the trailer park, industrial zone, golf course, city utilities, recreational parks, playgrounds, or the blob-shaped satellite neighborhoods of cookie-cutter houses, Discord was ten blocks, north to south, by twelve blocks, east to west. Twenty-five crisscrossed streets of perfect symmetry and dullness, with disgustingly ordinary names like Main and Candle and Riverside and Market and Union. Frank had been up and down every one of them, through his years. Even the newer routes, outside of the box—Federation and Pipe and Paint and Park—were, as the saying goes, as familiar as the backside of his right hand.

Heading home from Island Market, located at the intersection of Island Street and Market Avenue, he drove headlong into utter weirdness.

First, the French street, which people called French Street, which was actually rue Trousse-Puteyne, which intersected Main, where all the interesting businesses were located, seemed to have lost a longtime attraction. The used record store, Vinyl Gigi, was gone, bulldozed into oblivion, and all that remained in its stead was a billboard announcing a Subway restaurant—coming soon. 

“Fucking ridiculous! We already have a Subway on Hayes Road!”

He hadn't been to Vinyl Gigi in years, didn't have the time or the equipment to groove on 33 1/3 RPM LPs these days, but—damn—he wished someone had warned him that the place was going down. He figured he would have stopped in, once more, for old time's sake.

Then he noticed, beyond the Subway billboard, looking directly through the ghost of the old record shop, there was what seemed to be a row of nine grey granite pillars. Grave markers, tall and ornate, almost as impressive as the statue of Perseus at Hector Park. What the hell? He assumed he was daydreaming. He had to be. Nine tombs in downtown Discord, behind where Vinyl Gigi used to be... From the lay of things, that would mean there was a street he'd never been down before, which was pretty well impossible. Like discovering a third ear on your own head—

He was jarred by the sudden appearance of CW, Gia's ex-boyfriend, the dope fiend, or someone who looked remarkably similar to him, leaping in front of the truck to cross Main Street, his face torn and disfigured by violence. Frank nearly ran the bugger over.

“Fuck me!”

Gia used to say, “Everything bad begins with CW.”

She'd been with that leach for a long time. The mental image of Gia holding CW's hand, and worse, sent negative energy buzzing down Frank's spinal column. Ten years together, or close. And CW was societal debris—pure garbage. Matching him, mentally, with the pure, natural beauty of Gia Marvello was perfectly incongruous.

Jealousy issues.

Gia had them, too. No mistake about it.

“Watch where you walk, asshole,” Frank muttered. Truth be told, he was so distracted by the tombs that he rolled through the pedestrian crosswalk and swerved into the opposite lane.

...

 

After Frank and Gia's wedding ceremony, CW met Gia in the parking lot. He hadn't been invited, but he waited outside for two hours, wearing ripped blue jeans and a conspicuously bloodied shirt. Everyone was coming out to take photographs and smoke cigarettes.

He said to Gia, “Take me back, baby, please—I'm all better now.”

Short white guy with a shaved head. Kind of like one of those modern Nazi types. He was frail and bony, with more of that vampire skin that people were sporting, in these modern days. He always had spittle frothing up in the tight corners of his mouth.

Gia told him, “We are four years over, Casey. I just got married!”

“Please, baby.”

“You're a fucking retard—“

She waved to cousin Shally Marcos's boyfriend, Darby Sigfusson, to come and take care of the problem. No use in getting Frank all hot and bothered. Darby knew CW from years back, knew what kind of creep he was, and so escorted him off the property with something like extreme prejudice. (Broke one of the little bastard's ribs in the process, too.)

...

 

At the other end of the spectrum, Frank received a call from his ex, Tracy, on his cell phone, roughly about the same time that Darby Sigfusson was throwing CW into the blue dumpster behind the church. Frank didn't recognize the number, and could barely hear Tracy talk over the voices in the lobby. She told him, “Congratulations, you ignorant fuck.”

He said, “Pardon me? I can't hear you. It's quite a party, here.”

“Congratulations on getting remarried, you ignorant cocksucker.”

“I'm sorry. I'll have to phone you back. Is this Auntie Lynn?” He really thought it was.

“Fuck off. Eat shit. Goodbye.”

“I'm sorry you couldn't make it down here. Give my sympathies to Uncle Herbie.”

“Fuck you! Fuck you!”

Only when she called back with more swear-words did Frank realize it wasn't sweet old Lynn.

...

 

Tracy Olafson's body was serviceable enough—and well-serviced it was—but there wasn't much else about her that was worth, as they say, writing home about. Her IQ was lower than she imagined it was, and her output of cuss-words was higher than most people could stand. “She swears like two truckers,” Frank once told Bob Scieszka. “I don't think it's a positive attribute.”

She had a nice rack, once upon a time. Her ass was getting bigger, as the years passed, exponentially so, but some guys valued such a trait in a woman. Child-bearing hips. Also, short legs, with ankles like a lumberjack.

Beyond that, Tracy had inherited her family's cottage, out at Pipe Lake—an adjunct of the Ghost River—and many men, particularly fishermen, like Uncle Joey, might have viewed that as the most favorable trait of all. In all the time they were together, Frank only spent three weekends at that place. In his view, it was a squalid hovel, little more than a tool shed built of dry-rotted wood.

Plus, Pipe Lake was a mosquito-spawning slough, the sort of place that appealed only to muskrats and chainsaw-wielding maniacs. It gave Frank the creeps. It took a different breed of man, a die-hard sportsman, to appreciate a place like that.  This was evidenced by the fact that there were only four other cabins built on the lakefront. All the sensible cottagers were over at Lac Vert.

When they broke up, Tracy told Frank, “Think of everything you're going to miss, fucker. You're going to miss my fucking tits, you asshole. You're not going to be able to use my chalet.”

True. She called her three-room shack a chalet.

Frank told her, “I really have to go.”

And he went.

...

 

 

 

Life turns on a dime, as Francis said.

After Tracy, everything could have gone quite differently.

Frank could have ended up with a woman named Karyn Ayn.

Karyn was a redhead originally from the big city, Sawanoko, stuck teaching English to elementary-level students in the village of Sprague, matched with Frank by an online, computerized dating site—Just $29.95 for the first month's service! (Some conditions apply.) Frank had a fancy dinner date planned with her. Over-priced fish and cocktails at Red Lobster, down highway 355, in Tromso. The event was less than a day away.

He stopped in at the Meskanaw Grocer-Rama for cigarettes and bumped into Gia Marvello at the express lane check-out (11 items or less) .  She was the last person he ever expected to see there, of course.  The years were like thick fog. She was buying hair products and he was adding sandwich fixings—bread, mustard, Swiss cheese and corned beef—to his tobacco order. Grocer-Rama stunk of mildewed wood and brown lettuce.

Gia said, “Frank Burczyk, my freaking stars! Is that you?”

He said, “Gia Marvello! Amazing! Holy cow!”

They hugged. Frank wasn't normally so unabashedly physical, and their teenage friendship had been minimal at best, but they hugged all the same. Hugged hard, like he was just back from war in Europe. And Gia whispered in his ear, “I'm so glad to see you, you have no idea,” and he felt her tears on his cheek.

So, the date with Karyn Ayn was off, and that was actually quite a relief. Frank hated the way she chose to spell her name—Karyn instead of Karen, legally altered—right from the get-go. And she pronounced Ayn as Ain, rather than Ein, and that was just too much. And then there was the issue of the red hair. Recipe for disaster. He told himself, “She probably has eight pounds of daisy-fresh air between her ears, and nothing else. Some of these teacher-types aren't as clever as you might think.” You really do need to be mindful of what you'll meet through a dating service. Also, Sprague was a little ways off the beaten path.

He kept the Red Lobster reservation and took Gia, instead.

...

 

For the record, this Karyn Ayn ended up dating a furniture salesman named Ollie Lamerz, and that relationship lasted for three months, right up until Karyn wrapped her small, brown Datsun around a concrete pillar and gained instant access into the afterworld of non-life.

But Frank never heard about that.

Sad story.

Sooner and later, everyone goes where Karyn Ayn went. And a thing can't be so terrible if everyone has to do it at least once.

...

 

The District of Ghost River was famous for bad roads and vehicular accidents.

In winter, buried ice heaves up under the tarmac, causing bulges that will be torn away by grader blades and ordinary traffic.

Spring comes, then rain, and the beavers build dams that wash away chunks of road.

Summer is re-construction season, and the Department of Highways adds a new layer of highway, here and there, little more than tenuous band-aid fixes.

When fall arrives, the summer fixes are still new, but then the winter frost comes (too soon) and glazes the surface like a hockey rink and—suddenly—everyone has forgotten how to drive with care. (November is HUGE for ice-related fatalities.) Of course, moose and other large creatures crossing the road are always a concern, but especially during the rut.

...

 

Another thing that the Ghost River region was famous for—apart from Discord's seven hills, all the pretty wilderness and record-breaking pickerel—was methamphetamine. Crystal meth, more accurately, which was baked up in a hundred secret, local shacks, and widely distributed by the Corsairs motorcycle club.

The Corsairs were based in Tromso, and were themselves an adjunct of a larger motorcycle club in a larger city, further out west. They were so efficient at their business that, for the longest time, all throughout the 1990s, many local residents weren't even aware that there was a motorcycle club in Tromso. You might have seen a handful of bikes—Harleys, Hondas, and the odd Triumph—zipping up and down highway 351 in the summer months, from Tromso to Discord and back, but their presence was so slight that hardly anyone noticed them.

Frank Burczyk didn't even know what a Corsair was until he was in his 20s.

When the gang made the front page of the Meskanaw Reader—“Bad Corsairs Dope Floods Streets of Discord”—average folks weren't able to make a lick of sense of it. Like reading gibberish. Mind you, as time passed, people began to know what was what. In the 2000s, the Corsairs had clashed with rival gangs in larger markets and were practically celebrities among the youth. Their logo, a red, stylized, inverted C, was already beginning to show up on skateboards and homemade tattoos. Unofficially licensed product. The Corsairs bigwigs, guys who dressed in black Armani and never got within a half a mile of an iron horse, would have preferred to stay low on the public radar.

They made the papers again, the same day Frank met Gia Marvello at the Meskanaw Grocer-Rama. “Tired Cops up to their Eyeballs in Underground Bike Crime.” Frank would have purchased that newspaper, just to decipher its nonsensical headline, if he hadn't been distracted by Gia.

...

 

She was sure she'd been told he moved down to Montana, years back.

“And didn't you run off to Europe with a stripper?”

“Nope,” he said. “Since Discord I've only been here.  In Meskanaw. And you?”

“I was in Tromso for awhile. My first husband had a car dealership.”

“Had?”

“You know how it goes.”

“I guess I do.”

“He pissed everything away on this and that, this and that, same old shit.”

“Yeah, I get it. I just can't believe you were married.”

“You can't believe I was married? Why? Don't people get married?”

“No, of course—they do. I know they do. It just threw me off a bit.”

“It's not so weird that I was married. You look like you're going to faint.”

“Maybe the fact that you were married and divorced makes me feel old.”

“Are you sure that's all?”

“Pretty sure, yeah.”

...

 

Gia arrived home before noon, as she promised, and then offered to take Frank out to lunch, to the Grotto, in order to celebrate his 40th birthday. She told him, “It's nice that you took the day off, otherwise we might miss the buffet. It's the best. They do lasagna in the old-fashioned way and you can eat as much as you like.”

Frank told her, “I saw CW today.”

Gia said, “Pardon me?”

“Did you know he was in town?”

“Last time I saw Casey was at our wedding. I thought he was in jail these days.”

“If he was, he's out.”

“I wouldn't know either way.”

“He was in pretty rough shape. Looked beat up, to me.”

“Do you want to go to lunch with me, or not, Frank?”

“Yes. I think I do. That would be nice.”

...

 

CW was indeed loose, like a horny bull, in Discord.

This time, he was high as a Chinese kite, full to the gills with the Corsairs' finest black-tar heroin. And after fading in and out, in and out, he finally came to in the lobby of the Osawaw Hotel, at the north end of Main, the seediest, scummiest joint in the District of Ghost River—the exact kind of place he usually tended to frequent—with his arms bound behind his back and his face dripping clots of blood. He had the idea that Gia Marvello's new husband had just recently tried to run him over, but he knew from experience this memory was probably mere delusion.

His whole shirt was red.

It was noon, Friday, far too early in the day to be so messed up.

He struggled to his feet, bracing himself against the soda machine, and then staggered to the front desk. The woman there was accustomed to everything. A three-legged dwarf in a luchador mask wouldn't have thrown her. She told CW, “Get the fuck out of my building and get yourself to a hospital, you dirty little freak.”

There was something wrong with his face, he could feel it. A tightness, a sharpness, pain running from his brow to his mouth, down the left side of his face. He figured he'd been cut. Pissed off the wrong guy. Took not only a beating but a slicing, too.

Instinctively, he wanted to touch the spot where the pain was, but he couldn't work his wrists apart. They weren't handcuffs, back there, he could tell. Felt more like leather or nylon. But whoever tied him, tied him good.

Butting his head against the glass door of a Mac's gas station, at the rue Trousse-Puteyne intersection, he caught a glimpse of his reflection. Sure enough, the left side of his head was dark and bloody, and with a long blob of flesh that puckered outward like the San Andreas fault. What the hell? Was it a six-inch turd?

“Never be pretty again,” he huffed.

The Mac's clerk dropped his Hustler magazine. He gasped and said, “Jezus, pal—you have a dick on your face.”

CW said, “I know, I know, I'm pretty funny looking, to you, boy.”

“I'm not kidding.”

“Not kidding about what?”

“You have a big fucking cock attached to your face!”

“Can you untie me, please? I swear I'm not a criminal.”

The clerk picked up the telephone.

Nothing in the Mac's guidebook about customers with cocks on their faces.

Nothing at all.

“Just relax, sir, and I'll get help for you.”

...

 

The severed penis of a black man had been stitched to CW's face.

He hollered, “This town is full of monsters!”

And it was true—

Discord was full of monsters.

The erect kind—the ones who pretended to be homo sapiens sapiens.

...

 

Some fucker was selling black tar heroin on the sidewalk in front of the Legion Hall.

Filthy, dirt gutter rat, pissing all over the legacy of the war vets.

Some days, Frank could just murder somebody!

...

 

The Grotto's lasagna was pure shit—tasteless and overcooked—and the service was poor. But it was the third Friday of the month, after all, the day of welfare checks, treaty payments and various other provincial living supplements, and all the restaurants in Discord were full to capacity. Basically, the Indians, the seniors and the unemployed single moms were living it up.

Gia and Frank had eaten here pretty recently, in July (and Frank, without her, again just a few days ago), and she now decided that the quality of the service and the food had gone straight down the toilet in that relatively short span of time. Her favorite lasagna tasted in her mouth like bland leftovers from a tin can. They could have gone to Boston Pizza, eaten better in a cleaner establishment, and paid less for it. But things were off with Gia, these days. Touch and go.

She only wanted to discuss financial matters.

Frank didn't want to hear it. He was coasting over the hill and into another burst of sunshine and suicide. No point to any of it, really. Gia was going blah, blah, blah, blah, and he was day-dreaming about how many of Bob Scieszka's morphine tablets would be enough to stop a human heart.

She looked good, Gia did. That was constant. She always looked fine.

“Frank, are you listening to me?” she asked, sipping blackberry wine.

“I'm not,” he said, candidly. “My mind is two thousand miles from here, back at Emathios.”

“That was one year ago.”

“It was a beautiful dream, is what it was.”

“Yes, it was very nice.”

“I wish we hadn't left. I wish we hadn't come home. Everything has gone wrong, ever since. Everything has gone to beans. The town, my health, our marriage, the whole thing. Drugs and bikers and murdered girls—we should never have come back. I'm serious. We should have stayed at Emathios and died there. It would have been best. We were never happier. We can never be that happy again. It's gone.” There were two tears running down Frank's cheek, but he didn't know it.

Gia regarded him warmly, then said, “We can go back, someday.”

“I want to go now. We can't wait.”

“We have Kayla to consider. She's our priority right now.”

“She's almost an adult. She doesn't need us.”

“She's my sister's daughter—”

“Gia, I don't know if I can last another year, in this place.” Frank pounded the table for effect, for the sake of drama, and his lasagna plate went smashing onto the floor.

...

 

At Emathios, at night, Frank watched the stars.

Blobs of light in the sky, like cosmic jellyfish, high above the hiding place, reflected in the cool water of Lake Neronia. And perhaps it could have been the other way around—the Nayarit fire serpent reflected in the heavens above.

He was very tired. He muttered—

“Fire serpent... how lovely...”

He thought it a fantastic coincidence that Emathios and Rebowken, nearly at opposite ends of the continent, both laid claim to the same mythical deity.

Earlier, on the beach, across the highway, he'd nearly walked smack into a jellyfish. Felt the tendrils on the hairs of his feet while wading in the Pacific, turned in time to see a ten-gallon globule of slime and pain rolling away from him.

He stayed out of the ocean after that.

He decided upon Lake Neronia, instead, for his aquatic needs.

...

 

 

Frank and Gia left Discord and the entire Ghost River region behind for three solid weeks—got it right out of our minds, out of their pores. Their lives were in flux, in upheaval, and there was no hurry. Whatever mess awaited them back home could go right on waiting.

Just like the first time: Everything was wonderful. Everything was exhilarating. Being together in another country felt, to Frank, like a bigger step than tying the knot. Adrenaline mingling with fear and giddy anticipation. Isn't that how parachutists feel?

“We've been on autopilot,” he told Gia, “I don't know what else to call it, but you and I have led the most uneventful lives imaginable, lately. Meatloaf and potatoes, yeah? An outsider might have called us boring. And now, this. We have a grand piano and people are constantly trying to feed us. It's like we have the whole world at our disposal. I suppose this is how Lee Harvey Oswald felt immediately before NASA shot him off to the moon.”

“Yes,” said Gia. “Him and Neil Armstrong.”

“Feels like the bottom could drop out at any second, doesn't it?”

Gia nodded.

Frank did not want the bottom to drop out from under him.

Who would?

Gia said, “I'm not the one who digs meatloaf, mister. That's your baby.”

...

 

The Nero's concierge, a tall rack of bones with a tiny moustache, Raful by name, approached with a tray of drinks. He said, “Will you have beer or wine, my friends, mes amis?”

Frank took two glasses of red and handed one to Gia, thanking Raful with a nod and saying, “It's quite a place you've got here. I couldn't have imagined such a place. Last time we came, everything tasted like turtle. It's so big, so extravagant. My wife thinks it's like a fairy-tale. We were supposed to be at the, uh, Cairo, over in Nuevo Vallarta, but the travel company screwed up. This is much better. Like a dream. Beyond dreams, really.”

“Yes,” Raful responded, “it's quite rare for Catrina Suns to make such a blunder. They're one of our premiere agencies. Rest assured that they've taken care of everything on your behalf. You should want for nothing. Nothing at all.” Immediately, Frank noticed that Raful was speaking clear English, without a trace of the notorious Mexican accent. If anything, the man sounded British. Maybe Scottish. It was very slight.

“We're very pleased,” said Gia, downing her wine and handing the empty glass back to Raful. “It seems like we could walk around and around for days and not see the whole place.”

“Are you talking about the whole region or just the hotel, ma'am?”

“Both, I think.”

“Yes, Puerto Vallarta offers many hidden treasures, and I think you'll find that the Nero has a few of its own. Our guests are never restless or bored. There's always something. Billiards or shuffleboard, or otagers, depending on what you prefer, so many activities, and always consider the therapeutic properties of the lake. No matter the time of day, it's surely a good time for a dip.”

“Yes, that sounds nice.”

“Lake Neronia is home to the Nayarit fire serpent.”

“Pardon me?”

“The Nayarit fire serpent—a string of lights, aurorae, that manifest in the water instead of in the heavens. They move and dance and shimmer as if alive. Easier to see at night, believe me, but still faintly present in the daylight. One of our finer attractions.”

“I'll surely consider that.”

“Thank you, ma'am. Amigos. Have a fine stay with us.”

“Buenos dias.”

“Indeed, yes. Umm, oui.”

...

 

Frank told Gia, “I think I might have dreamed this.”

He wasn't being figurative.

She agreed that it was the same sensation she was trying to convey, earlier.

That deja vu moment.

...

 

 

There was too much to see, to do. All the moments seemed full of sights and activities, and the breaks were minimal, and it felt like time itself was all smushing into a lumpy ball. They'd been four times around the grounds that constituted the Nero and still had seen very little of it. Allegedly, there were six restaurants but they'd only located two of them. There were nineteen bars, ranging from a trendy two-deck disco to a nine-seat tequila stand, but they'd been to only five. A miniature shopping mall, containing half a dozen clothing boutiques, two shoe stores and three jewelry shops had utterly failed to turn up. Raful, assured them that it was down the path to the sauna facilities, “But take a quick left halfway down and you'll bump smack into it.”

Didn't happen like that, and Frank became annoyed. He said, “This place is a labyrinth of excess. I haven't been to the same cigar shop twice. Nothing is marked properly. Everyone's going to the beach or to the gym, and all I want is a hat to cover my neck. Where can I buy a hat, huh? We need to cover the scar on my neck or it will catch cancer.”

Gia told him, “Whoa, Cowboy, relax. They have everything we need. Go slow and easy.”

Middle of day two and Gia was sitting in the window frame, warm breeze rustling through her hair, and she was painting her toenails crimson red. She had a pina colada and Frank was nursing a bottle of beer. He sat at the piano and plinked at the key at the far right. (No musical aptitude at all, him. Not even a drop.)

He suggested calling the Bishops. He said, “Instead of us going to visit them, you should have them come down and visit us. We can hang out in the hot tub, have some drinks, take them out to dinner. Wouldn't that be better?”

She shrugged.

He pressed.

Plink, plink, plink, plink.

She said, “We don't need to call them. I never talked to them in the first place.”

“They aren't expecting us?”

“Not really, no. I haven't spoken to Nancy in four years.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“No. Not at all.”

“But we came all this way. They're on our itinerary. For fuck's sake—you said they were your friends, you said it was important.”

“It was important, but I didn't call. Jezus, Frank, lighten up.”

“Oh, Gia, this could have gone badly.”

“How could it? Relax. You're overreacting. Just like your mother.”

“Don't start with all that.”

...

 

Gia's perfect asshole tasted like sucking on a copper coin.

...

 

Nice.

...