Black and White Gang

Emory is a black and white canine elder.  He’s nearly 17 and has the facial hair of an ancient Asian master or a Latino Bandito. He has Schzu in his long and celebrated heritage.  He is truly the leader of the black a white gang.  Madigan met him and thinks the world of his older friend who like hm rides in a box on the back of their master’s Harley’s. The belle of the gang though is Bella, the cutest sweetest white and grey Javanese with a joyous piping back more reminiscent of an exotic bird call than a canine bark.  Her sister is younger black Lucia also Havanese.  She’s shy and often hides back while Bella greets the boys. Madigan loves her and breaks leash running a hundred yards full out to greet her and she flops over on her back to celebrate the occasion.  Emory walks with a statesman like elegance but seeing Luca and Bella with efforts puts a little extra bounce in his stop and increases his forward momentum a smidgeon.  

The black and white came to be as their masters walked about the community where Doberman’s and German Shepherds also lived. Whenever greeted though the group explained to neighbours and owners of Rottweilers that the Black and White Gang were the new ‘security force’ protecting and watching over the neighbourhood.  The other dogs were more loners who might be called in as snipers and Navy Seal reinforcements but the bobbies on the streets were the black and white gang.  Together they were a sight to behold as their walks became animated and they piddled and pissed with the confidence of belonging and being a part of something bigger than they were. 

Their masters of course decided the fate of the world in far reaching discussions.  The dogs nudged each other and gathered for a particular message left on a branch. There were heads nodding and extra sniffing and all the while the masters ambled along confident that all evil and wrong was being dispelled by the presence of the dogs, more like Tibetan monks than Rambos but somehow able to keep the bad at bay.  Sometimes once but often twice they did their rounds and flew the tail flags declaring their presence.  

The gang met with other little dogs and there was a great conference when the groups grew to as many as 6 or 8 and the volume rose and the masters and mistresses laughed and shared recipes and chat. All was well when the black and white gang patrolled.  

 It was believed that Lucha, the shy girl was the one who first found the dead body by the river. 

‘Whatever is that smell,” she asked Bella who simply wrinkled her nose and couldn’t say. Madigan knew no more but Emory who’d been napping as he walked for a bit lifted up his ancient nose and cocking his head remember, “That’s a dead human smell.”  

Like a wave or a flock of birds they all veered towards the scent pulling their surprised and scent blind masters behind them the short distance to the river where yes indeed there was a dead human.

That’s how Madigan met the police dog, Ranger.  A very handsome majestic creature who told stories of his time with the Canadian Forces in Iraq to Bella who told him about her time on the beaches off San Diego.  Lucha shyly congratulate Emory on his superior nose and Emory always the gentleman took her praise graciously as all then officious men in suits with guns and matching cars busied out while the neighbours snapped pictures with the iPhone cameras.  It was quite the festival especially when the media showed up.  A girl looking just like Lois Lane got it right according to Bella. She propositionsed the masters for a group picture which was the one that appeared on the front page and went off to be seen by millions in social media all because Bella was thought to be so photogenic and Emory looked so distinguished.  That was the first time the Black and White Gang had their photos taken.  The paperazzi came later when they solved the case of the Climate Change Arsonist.  

No one ever did find how the body had ended up by the river.  Obviously shot through the back of the head. All sorts of speculation about corrupt politicians and Communist Chinese hit man but in the end another cold case without further leads.  Not that the Black and White Gang forgot.  There were always clues and clues in the markings that would one day link the two cases but for now the dogs were more interested in supper time after all that excitement.  While their masters discussed world affairs and international crimes they discussed the merits of liver versus chicken treats.  Of course. 

Glory

When Lori came back  to church after her bottom surgery, her transgender friend, Anne’ jokingly said,said ‘well. I guess you won’t be using glory holes any more.’

‘Not likely,’ Lori laughed, never herself using one but knowing the reference.and appreciating the joke. They both did not  not realizetheir conversation was overheard by the pastor’s oldest daughter who’d stepped out of the stall saying,’if you’re not using the glory hole anymore would I be able to use it.

Lori and Anne had no idea what evangelical spa or bible study place the girl was thinking they were about. It was all they could to resist bursting out with laughter as the hurried out the exit together. When the two girls were outside in the hall, Anne couldn’t help saying in, ‘Would you call that bent on glory?”

They laughed. 

“I would indeed. Do you think we should have explained?” Lori asked.

“ I wouldn’t know where to begin”, said Anne. 

‘Probably a good idea because that’s as far back in the rear view mirror as testosterone’ said Anne

‘Amen.” 

The two women walked up the stairs from the church basement leaving the pastor’s daughter staring shocked at her iPhone’s wickipedia page, knowing for sure she was going to erase her search immediately.

Anti testosterone take over

It wasn’t long after parts of the government were exposed for their complicity in the Communist Chinese doping Chinese urban fast food with anti testosterone agents.  That it had gone on for years without anyone being aware wasn’t surprising since the media was no longer free and journalists were ghosted routinely. 

 The success had been greatest in LA, San Francisco New York and Chicago.  The Midwest was essentially immune because of their access to Whole Foods.  A lot of home cooking remained except in the large urban areas where young men often didn’t even  have microwaves. The inflation and housing costs had increased so most loved in their pseudo barracks lwith room mates and little freedom or independence.  

The girls were increasingly attracted to the immigrant men from large families shouting fertility to the Marxist feminist minds of increasingly pheromal young arts students.  Offended by everything masculine in their white cohort they couldn’t find fault with the swarthy men because that would be racist. They didn’t even bother to report the gang rapes growingly prevalent in these crowded urban settings where police were castrated and only criminals carried guns.

The Communist Chinese forces landed in Canada with the welcome of Prime Minister Trudeau.  The Chinese in Vancouver had been warning of this invasion but those most vocal just went missing along with their families as Communist secret police had been resident many years.  PM Trudeau called the massive increases of Communist troops  across he country a training exercise.

“Are you suggesting a Wolverine or Red Dawn  scenario?” Matt asked his friend as they sat by the campfire in the hills. They’d had a feast of rainbow trout they’d caught that day. 

“I think that movie was a wake up call but not at all realistic if you’ve watched the war in the Ukraine.  I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re all chipped already but if we weren’t the communists here would chip anyone they suspected or even chip their own informers and napalm the whole area. Communists are godless as everyone is quick to deny. Stalin kill millions as did Mao. There’s no way a kid commando exercise is going to work”  John said sipping the coffee he’d laced with evaporated milk and Canadian honey.

‘What do you suggest?” 

“I don’t know. Really. The communists are ready and willing to take us back to the dark ages so long as they win. They will nuke and starve and destroy. That’s always been their modus operandi. They’ve controlled world media and universities too so they might not win the hearts they always have the minds.”

“Why can’t they win the hearts too if they’re so good.” Asked Matt.

“Too many witnesses. Too many survivors.  The massacres and mass graves stink up their history despite how many CBC outlets they buy.”

The pine trees surrounding them looked especially pretty in the light of the fire. The red orange embers glowed beneath the dancing flames .The wood smoke blew away from them but the scent was divine.

“Argentina, even Chile might be the answer.  Commando units and family based resistance was the reason the success of the Chetwyns and Afghans. Lenin and Engles hated the family. Saw it as the supreme  threat to the State.”  Matt said.

“What about Trudeau and traitors like him.”

“They’ve been bought.  Promised that they’re be safe on some island like the Khan’s .  All these weak men will seek out everyone for their own protection. I suspect he cares for his children.  But beyond that he’s pure narcissist.  The joke is the guys envision themselves in some Utopian post law and order state ,not realizing they may as well be in a prison of their own.  Gilded cage no less. But imagine Trudeau with a place down the road from Korea’s Kim.  Trudeau wouldn’t last a week.  These pampered western leaders haven’t a clue what the communists and jihadis are really like.  They’re so Christophobic and terrified of  God that they don’t even realize the depth of the demonic and soulless. Civilizations isn’t that bad when you consider the alternative. “

“I’m rather fond of indoor plumbing’ said John putting another log on the fire.  The dog woke up to watch that event.

What about the girls.”  Asked John,

“That’s been what’s so hurtful. If they all began growing beards men would express some concern and investigate. But it just seems the women have been glad to take over. They’ve never wanted to work together. They’ve just wanted dominance and don’t care that there’s millions of Communist Chinese soldiers whacking off now to western girl porn having all  promised a big breasted white girl after the takeover.  Cleopatra is an ideal but she was the smartest woman of her day and there’s a lot more dumb Karadasians today”.  

The tent beckoned as they both doused the fire before turning in. 

“I think the girls are a silly lot  but I have a lot of faith in the mothers and grandmother’s especially those who kept their men and didn’t fall for the promises of government hand outs that put their children into second class dependency”

“It’s all bunk you know,” said Matt

“Yea.”

They were looking up at the canopy of stars.

“I haven’t a clue what is happening. Democracy is a conspiracy theory. I might just be a voice over on this comic strip written by Steven King when he was drunk.”

John laughed.

“I prefer to think I’m in a Richard Adams comic strips”

They stepped through the tent flaps. They had two cots with sleeping bags and a hanger for clothes. They’d even laid out a small woven carpet between the cots. Matt turned on the battery operated lantern.

When they were both in their bags John finally said.

“There’s always the hope of space travel to escape.”

“Yea escape. There’s always hope.” 

Excitement

How exciting to watch the sun come up. That great orb of brilliant yellow and orange rising in the eastern sky. Being here to see the never ending miracle of light returning. I think of how for 80,000 years we all used to do this, before Edison.  

You are more beautiful each day.  Your hair dishevelled by sleep.  Your face relaxed and all those lines of worry from work and pressure gone in the morning as you rise to greet the new day.  A stoic. A warrior. A woman of faith and confident. Resilient with humor and grace. I love how the light bathes your sensual skin.  I am blessed to be with you.

“Is there life after death,” she asked, looking across at him over the rim of her first morning coffee.

‘We slept last night and we’re awake today.  What more do you need?”  He said, buttering the croissants for them, before sitting beside the rickety bamboo table they kept on the east facing veranda for just these mornings.

“But I’ve seen dead people. I’ve been to funerals. You know what I mean.” Her eyes twinkled as she peered at him . A late cock crowed as if the sun had surprised him.

“I am not them. I don’t know what they are experiencing. There’s an infinity of possibilities. I feel sorry for those who can’t imagine so reduce everything to their own perspective. I simply choose to believe.”  The old dog smelling food had moved from lying by the door to sitting down beside them at the table, lest they forget he liked croissant too.He put his paw on his masters knee.  The man knew he was there, of course. It was a game they played. He waited. They both waited. When the time was right, he’d respond.

“I do too.  Life’s an adventure and a journey.  I feel people who don’t see that think of it as a prison and death as an escape.  It’s sad really. “ The sun was now above the mountain where the pine and spruce were opening their stomachs to the radiance and food of light.  One bird song was definitely a robin.  The other was a chickadee. A crow was squawking too.  Morning news and comments. The cock crowed again preening itself and unapologetic for sleeping in.  

There was a special elegance to the way she lifted the porcelain cup of honey flavoured Ethiopian coffee flavoured to her full red lips.  He thought how little time there was to relish her.  To see the surface reflection of her infinite depth in the tiny movements she made.  Like now,as she put the cup carefully back on the flowered blue and yellow saucer and reached for the still warm croissant.

“I like to think of life as a gift and something to be thankful for. “ he continued. “Like a toy a child receives without instructions but meant to be played with and enjoyed.  The wisdom texts are the messages down through the ages of others who have found satisfaction in the game and shared their insights into the meaning and joy of this mysterious thing.” 

Now he broke off a piece of croissant with his fingers, passing it under the table to the waiting dog.  The dog carefully accepted it before quickly swallowing it, taking his paw from his master’s knee but waiting still for more.  Insatiable.   The dog loved being included.  Sharing the food at the table was as sacred to the pooch as sacrament at church. It meant inclusion in community, shared pleasure in sustenance for the body, heart and soul.  The dogs’ tail wagged. The master smiled.  Sympatico.

She finished her croissant taking a last sip of coffee before rising naked to walk lithely to the beach.  A pelican flew awkwardly overhead as her body transformed into a sleek dolphin  slipping under the soft lapping waves.  He joined her moments later waiting only to watch her fin cut through the souther tropical  sea that engaged the northern land.

  He became a walrus as he moved from the soil to the sand, bouncing awkwardly and manly after her. Looking back she stood high on her fin  laughing at him before twisting and falling into the wonder of water.  Seeing her grace and beauty he galumphed more hurriedly after her into the sea.  The dog barking happily, swam beside the master for a awhile. Then the dolphin and walrus swam together further from the shore into the reap. He turned and paddled back to the cabin to wait their return, curled up on the veranda beneath the bamboo, guarding the croissant crumbs he knew remained on the plate.

In the ocean deep, the walrus and dolphin cavorted.

 

The Dinner Party

We needed the house to sleep and live in.  As a young married couple it was what one did.  Buy a house. Fix it up. Decorate it.  Live in it. Go to work to pay for the house. Have the parents and family to dinner and then have friends over.  Not just dropping in. But for having a dinner party.  

We’d argued about the couch. She wanted white and got her way. She always got her way.  I’d loved the hard wood floors and the oak cabinets in the kitchen, the mosaic shelves.  We’d agreed on most things.  Not the colour of the couch or the colour of the walls. 

“They’re pink. She’s got you saddled with a white couch and pink walls.” He said. My friends laughed at me.  

“They’re peach.” 

“Pink. Didn’t you even put up a fight?”

“I did.”

“Not much of one.”  

We were young professionals in Winnipeg, Manitoba, the heart of the country.  My friends and  I liked each other’s company.  Hung out together.  Discussed Seinfeld and George.  Played racquetball and squash.  Our wives were friends. We mostly were all young and married.  New in our work. It was stressful but we were the brightest and best. That’s what we were told.

I don’t remember who divorced first. It wasn’t me.  Others went onto have children and grandchildren.  Long careers. Stable noteworthy folk. We’d had similiar beginnings.  

I liked the picture of the polar bear on the wall.  She was with her cubs up close. All of them eating a seal.  

“I don’t like that picture,” she said.  “It’s too martial.. It does nothing for women’s digestion.”

“I almost died to get that picture.” I said.

“It doesn’t fit our decor.”  

At least she liked my friend Toni, professor of art at the University of Manitoba’s painting.  She put that in the living room above her white couch.  

Looking back I think I could have compromised on the polar bear picture frame. I’d carved the frame myself waiting to deliver a baby,  in the arctic , where I’d met the polar bear mother who’s intent had been to eat me.

I felt pushed into a tiny corner but held my ground refusing to take the picture down.  Sometime later I’d find she’d moved it to the basement.

We’d just brought in groceries from the Toyota.  The car was parked in the garage and the groceries had to be brought from the back seat and the trunk. Years of being a vegetarian helped me immensely choosing vegetables. Once we’d got the parkas off and outer boots off, the groceries in the kitchen, I’d start on the chopping.  I loved chopping vegetables and making huge tossed arrays with treats like almonds strewn into the standard fare. The piece de resistance was my salad dressing. I made my own.  Just the right proportions of oil and vinegar, one fresh egg, and Tobasco sauce with a touch of soy, stirred lightly.  

She had selected sole for the evening.  She had a recipe from the Joy of Cooking.  Sole in white wine. We’d bought a dish specifically for oven baked fish. It had it’s own woven metal basket. A work of table art.. All was presentation.  That was her most important contribution.  That and her special nut pie. She liked to cook the nuts in sauce to pour it into a light pastry shell.  It was a delicate procedure and all the ladies expressed delight at her pastry.  My salad was not a show stopper. But I’d loved my Henkel knives. I’d always loved knives and chopping vegetables with Henkel was sweet.  I had bought the baggots remembering Paris as I did. We’d both been to Paris separately.  I’d ridden my bicycle through the town while she’d worked there as an au pair and been violated. There were things young couples didn’t discuss.  Her past was a minefield.  I dared not go there. Everywhere, especially in her family, were awful memories. 

“It was only because of my sister, I survived it. Mom and Dad always fighting. The boys arguing. The shouting, the screaming. The drinking.  It would have been hell without my sister. We rescued my mother from it all. She says that.”

We’d had the requisite dinner parties with our families. They were the first we invited to our new house.  Early days. She had her mother and father over. I had my mother and father over. We had them over together. It was all very well.  She was pleased.  I found it all very awkward. My mother and her mother didn’t get on so well. She thought they did. But I knew my mother didn’t like other women around my father.  She found her mother alright but ‘brazen’. She was a nurse. Her father was a car dealer.  Dad liked him well enough. As men they got along just fine talking about cars and small towns in Manitoba. They both knew the country. The mothers were the problem.  

“They drink too much. I know they’re your in laws. But they’re not very respectable.”  When my mother said ‘respectable’ she was really saying they weren’t Christian. She was Baptist and she was next to Jesus.  Others were judged by their proximity to her and the Lord.  My mother in law was nominally Christian but clearly not next to God. My parents both thought my wife was.  They doubted I was but loved my wife despite her questionable beginnings.  

Women grow bigger with age.  The men take up less space. I remember an image of the two of them in the kitchen vying to clean dishes and my mother’s frown.  Her mother considered herself superior and didn’t appreciate how superior my mother thought she was herself.  

“You cooked the meat well,” her mother told me. I’d thought it wasn’t such a big deal. I had an oven with numbers and a thermometer that I stuck in the roast. I ‘d majored in biochemistry. But this arcane art  of the cooking of the meat took on mythical manly proportions.  

“I heard my mother tell you, you cooked the meat well. That’s high praise.” She beamed.  I often thought women were unusually touched.  My dad had certainly liked the beef. But he was as he was proud to say, ‘a meat and potatoes man.”  My mother didn’t approve much of spices. “Salt and pepper were good enough for the Lord.”  She once said. I never did learn where it said that in the Holy Bible.

We’d served roast beef and baked potatoes with sour cream that night. Because my parents hardly drank we went light on the alcohol.  Her father hadn’t liked that.  My dad didn’t care.  “Nice enough, fellow,” he’d said of him.  It was a very tense affair and we talked of the stress of having our parents over. She loved her mother but didn’t care for her father. I loved my parents too but was focussed on the future.  It was the friends that mattered.

I loved my house.  I loved coming in from the cold to the warmth of this place. In the summer I loved the back yard. I’d put a barbecue by the back door and barbecued year round. I grew basil and peppers along the sidewalk so I could use them for cooking.  

It was the dinner parties for the friends that mattered most to me.  I’d read of the Huxley’s and Virginia Wolf and thought the ‘circle of friends’ was apocryphal. The whole dinner party was a piece of work, a symphony production. Live theatre.  We’d made the stage so well. My carpenter friend, Gord, had hand produced the perfect table and chairs. Oak. Minimalist.  Elegant.  He was a university graduate. Rough in his work but extremely clever in his mind. The finished product art. I loved his company though his association with a security firm and the tales of the dark side of the city that his family’s business brought him next to, seemed risqué.  I rather thought of him more as the carpenter monk in Herman Hesse’s Narcissus and Goldmond. 

I wasn’t a theologian but took pride in being an ‘intellectual’.  An ‘intellectual’ colleague had called me that and I ‘d rather beamed in the glory of it. Now I had my carpenter friend, like Jesus, and we discussed character and heaven.  He charged me well for his work but was much admired. His wife was an artist in her own right. He worked out of his home, his basement turned into a workshop. I loved his pragmatism and the freedom of his life.  By contrast I felt such pressure in my work and home. He seemed satisfied. He’d have an annual party and bring in lobster from the east coast.  I’d learn later that it was mostly customers and lots of booze.  I loved it more than my wife who preferred a more stately affair. Though he made dinner tables, his parties were always smorgasbord plates set on side tables.

My brother in law introduced me to Jean Luc Ponty, jazz electric guitar.  John was an accountant. He liked hockey.  I did too. I liked him well enough but what we most had in common were marriage to identical twin sisters.  Our wives truly were the beauties of the world.  Lithe with  long blond hair.  I taught mine to dance Viennese waltz. We froze whatever dance floor we were on. Everyone happily stood aside and watched her flow like mercury about the room.  We loved Cleo Lane those days, attending the concerts she had in the summer in the park.  I thought of music as central to the dinner party.

The choosing of the stereo had been as important as the choice of blond hard wood for the floors of the house.  I’d gone with a musician acquaintance to ensure I had the best one. The speakers, the turntable, the amplifier.  The turntable was Phillips but the speakers had to be Bose.  

She cooked the main course but I made sure that the sound was just right.  I liked a mix of music for greeting and appetizers, the dining and the after dinner conversation music. I felt that if I got it just right I could massage the evening to perfection.  Repartee and fine feelings would flow from all the parts of the evening coming together. I S days he turn table was as much the man’s job as the barbecue. 

She seemed to think the night all depended on the main course and the house she’d decorated and her dress she’d chosen. I thought it was more about Steely Dan, Jean Luc Ponty, Yehudi Menuhin and Ravi Shankar.  She shopped at Holt Refrew for her dinner party dresses.

The women wore cocktail dresses and heels. The men wore slacks, sweaters or  jackets.  Guests brought a bottle of wine to add to the collection.  I favoured Mondavi Brothers Cabernet Sauvignon and a German Riesling.  I was a wine connoisseur in those days, as only young academics in Winnipeg Manitoba could be. I thought serving Dubonnet as an aperitif always began things well. The guests arriving and leaving their outer clothes in the hallways coming into sit on the white couch and white lounge chairs.  There was a cut out portion to the kitchen so that whoever was doing preparation could still be a part of the conversation in the living room. We’d had that modification made to the house when we redid the cabinets and mosaic counters.  

I always felt uncomfortable sitting on the white couch talking with people at first.  I’d suggest she do it but she insisted it was the ‘man’s job’.  I felt my knees came up about my ears on that couch and that we were became all ankles and knees.  I was glad to get the dubonnet poured and get glasses into everyone’s hands.  No toasting at this point. Just lubricant.  

Breaking the ice conversation was always difficult with her friends.  Debbie was a quiet beauty, large brain and very pleasant but I always thought she was more interested in the price of things.  I didn’t know her man who like her was calculating the costs of everything in the house as if they were cat burglars.  I thought them shallow though I cared about money as much as the next person I thought it gauche to enquire about prices. I simply didn’t see things in price tags. I was more interested in ideas.

“She doesn’t want to be poor. Wealth is security for her.” My wife said. They’d been friends since childhood and she defended her.

“But she’s never reciprocated. She’s come for dinner a dozen times and never once returned the invitation.”

“They don’t have anyone over.  They’re not social that way.” 

“She’s social enough if someone else is paying for it.” I said sounded oddly like my father.

“I don’t think she’s that way at all. You’ve got her all wrong. She’s a very dear friend.’

“Maybe, but I’ll still watch the Oneida.” She didn’t laugh. I meant it as a joke. 

Other than her being cheap and a taker I liked Debbie well enough.  But she also didn’t have a lot to say, smiling, listening and looking pretty but never contributing to the conversation.  I was the one selecting the evenings companions always hampered in my design to have an illustrious dinner party of great conversation by her insistence on her girlfriends who were ‘fine’ but not at all the entertainment I thought my friends were. Her sister was dynamic but that was pretty much it.

 My friends Frank and Miles and my artist friend Paul were definitely brilliant dinner party companions  I found my friends and their dates incredibly entertaining. I’d often add a young professor ,male or female from work, a playwright. I always ensured  a single man and a single woman to balance out the table. I loved ‘match making’ . We’d have ten for dinner and 8 would be couples. 

We had the Rosenthal dinnerware, the Colleen crystal, Oneida silver, and candle light.  The men were handsome. The women incredibly beautiful, young well heeled, bright and downright sexy.  Mile’s Kate was startlingly funny. I loved when Jon could come. He’d often play guitar after. I had always had a guitar about in those days. Later it would be a Martin but then it was the Canadian guitar, the wood suited to the changing climate.  Susan came later too. But mostly it was conversation, good food and booze. I loved those dinner parties, the conviviality, the laughter and the rich exchange of ideas. 

“The communists really did think they just had to put up a banner, ‘workers unite’ and all the workers of the world would come to them. They were deeply disappointed. They didn’t give up on that tactic till the wall fell. They moved then to the environment.  Saving the world became their new gambit for power. I don’t think it’s going to work out well for them but that’s what all the concern about the spotted lizard is.  Part of their grand strategy for world dominion.”Frank said one night. 

Frank’s father, a doctor, had fled Checkoslovakia and his insights into world politics were so beyond the average Canadian. Paul, the artist, was Latvian an had visited Riga. His mother and grandmother had escaped the Russians and the Germans.  

“When I  visited , “ Paul said. “the things I took that people most cherished were the condoms and American jeans.” He laughed.

Miles, our resident writer and poet spoke of Ginsburg and Franny and Zooey.  We all talked of books and movies. It seemed we were all ready Saul Bellows those years.

For me, Red wine always made the girls breasts look bigger.   Susan and Lynn were best endowed. I found that by the second bottle of the night, considering I’d begun with the dubbonet, I was losing eye contact, but  I felt I’d died and gone to heaven.  My wife’s breasts were already perfect. They became more so after a bottle of wine.   Paul danced on a table once or twice. Simon sang Gilbert and Sullivan acapello.  Miles sang IRA revolutionary songs. Frank couldn’t stop laughing.

 In the summer as guys we’d go out into the back yard and smoke cigars. I was a bad influence.  Later I invited Lori and didn’t know that her husband was a drug dealer.  I just loved the variety of conversations. 

“I delivered twins for the first time.” I shared. 

“How was that?”a big breasted beauty asked me.

“Shocking. I didn’t know there was another one coming.”

“No shop talk,” my wife said.  My wife liked to interrupt me when I was about to tell a story.  It was like there was this music control in her mind that insisted that it must always be elevator music. Her family had been so angry and rock and roll she liked the superficial. Only later when as guys we sat about drinking drambuie or whisky while the girls sat together talking about whatever, I never knew, by then didn’t care.  

We were discussing hockey teams or government and I was wondering if I’d behaved because I was by then hoping everyone would go so I could sleep with my delectable wife. I’d have slept  with any of the others wife’s or all of them together if decorum allowed. Getting ‘lucky’ in marriage, as we called it , all depended on my personal performance in her eyes. It was never very good.

“What’s the greatest sexual turn off for women?” He joked

“Wedding cake.” He said when I didn’t answer.

There was a point in the dinner party when we all sat at the table and the food was being savoured. The candlelight lit up the room. Snow was falling outside.  Handel was playing on the stereo.  I’d lean back in my chair and look at the light flickering of the crystal, this collection of friends, my gorgeous brilliant wife, and think for a moment, that life couldn’t get better.  Then I’d help her clear the table and we’d sneak a kiss in the kitchen. 

The herb teas and liquors would come out. The coffee and French Press.  It was all so good. The dinner party.  A domestic play couples put on for friends. An improvisation.  Ours was a favourite. No one ever turned down an invitation that I recall.  Often colleagues would ask about these special times. The word of them spreading. We had parties too.  It was good to entertain when young. Before the divorces and the babies.

I remember the Rosenthal and wonder where it is today.  She took the Colleen crystal. I have no room in my life for that these days. I loved my library, floor to ceiling books. After the dinner party the men and I would stand in there and talk of the latest books we were reading.  There always was talk of shop and politics but mostly we discussed ideas.  The times of existentialism. Kafka Camus.   Reading Dostoyevsky.  

I remember the best nights we made love after the guests were gone and the dishes were stacked in the dishwasher. She was truly exquisite. I became one with her spirit, wild in the night, smooth as a lake at dawn.  Her sensuality flowed out from her, forming a halo around us. Lying back looking up at the ceiling my heart beating, the musky scent of her beside me, her breath returning to normal, I felt samadhi.  If I’d died in my sleep those nights it would be good, for I’d have known heaven on earth. 

The dinner party, he fine food, the wine, the conversation, love making and sleep.  Waking in the morning a little hung over.  Reading the Manchester Guardian Weekly on the white couch in pyjamas and wool housecoat, I Tek ER watching her, fragile, move like a fawn across the room. She drank the coffee I’d made her holding the cup with both hands. I savoured her, reminiscing on the deliciousness of the evening. All of it but especially her.

That was the dinner party. Colleen Crystal and Rosenthal dinnerware.Candlelight and Epicurean. Philia and Eros love.

  

20 yo University of Winnipeg

I really loved University of Winnipeg.  Malcolm Gladwell wrote about the importance of the ‘right size’ and ‘right fit’ of a college. If I’d gone to nearby University of Manitoba or even Stanford or Cambridge or Oxford I would not have experienced what I experienced at University of Winnipeg.  The class size was truly important.  The very best aspect though was the professors.  They really cared about me individually as a student.

I interviewed my professors. I rejected only one after the interview. I was paying a lot of money for a year learning from them so I wanted to know they were worth it.  I had a list of a half dozen questions. I made an appointment.  I met with them and told them my purpose.  All but one welcomed it. All said they’d never experienced this before but all but one passed with flying colours.  The one who failed was arrogant and didn’t comprehend the idea of ‘hard earned’ money and the buyers desire to ensure his investment. Today I’d just think of him as a privileged socialist who thought others should pay for him. Marx was like that a royal kafetch who was supported by his Jewish friends and bit the hands that fed him.  

I was still teaching dancing at Ken Matthews Dance Studio. I was meditating and praying and would begin meditating 2 hours a day minimum for the next decade or so.  

I was grieving my marriage, feeling such an utter failure. I missed Baiba but I’d moved out of her parents basement into the walk up bachelor apartment beside the university. I really liked the Murphy bed that came out of the wall. I had a crock pot and an electric frying pan. I began my love affair with cooking.  

Paul Simon’s song, « I am a rock I am an I am an island. I have my books...I have my poetry to protect me....I touch no one and no one touches me ‘ was my theme song of the period.

I lived in the library.

I met these great guys, other guys who lived in the library.  Glen Benoit would become my friend and inspiration. He was younger. The son of a famous Winnipeg opthalmologist.  He wanted to be a doctor from childhood. He was dedicated. We both lived in the study carrel.  We’d met because of our matching routines. I’d sit in the confines of the study carrel, no distraction, the little white desk sensory deprivation chamber.  Every hour for 10 minutes I’d get up and have a cup of coffee. Usually the horrid machine fare.  I’d meet Glen and we’d chat. He liked Cat Stevens and introduced me to the album Tea for the Tillerman.  I thought he was young and loved his focus. 

 I wore a black suit and tie to school. I was going from classes to teach dancing.  People thought me unusual. I was a »Manon Black » before this was cool. 

I was supposed to get a white lab coat.  I was doing my own laundry.  I concluded that white was going to get dirty much faster and instead bought a blue mechanics long lab coat. I was the only one dressed dark. The reason for the white is that you can see spills.  I couldn’t see the spills but after I washed my lab coat, not something I made a habit of, one could see the holes where the unseen acid and other solutions spills ate through the fabric.

Glen was my partner in Chemistry lab.  I was an ‘arts’ student when I did my second year of sciences.  I’m confused about the time line and the separation and divorce. The university years flow one after another but their connection with my other life seems less clear.

I remember blowing up the lab that summer.  I think the lab instructors name  was Mrs. Tascona.  I had several fires and explosions and was told that if I had one more explosion she would have to ask me to leave.  I had difficulty with the precision that the ‘science’ students took for granted. I would forever affer know what too many lawyers, politicians, bureaucrats and other potential bullies in the arts crowds  lacked because I had this same trait when I began my science studies.  Arts doesn’t have a ‘lab’.  I thought of myself as an ‘ideas’ man. I took pride in being called an ‘intellectual’. I loved my ‘big mind’.  What I didn’t appreciate was the connection between the inner world and outer world.  I lived in my head.  I put less value on application.  I missed that part where the rubber meets the road. 

In the lab that’s where that all occurs. My mechanic friends and engineering friends would have ideas and then have to ‘operationalize’ them.  For people who haven’t got their hands ‘dirty’ this is all anathema to them. We are living in a world where most people want to give orders and want to be thinkers. The women seem the worst. They simply don’t want to learn from getting their hands ‘dirty’ but they do think they can be administrators.

It’s in the detail. I’d learn more about reality and life in the lab and later in surgery than I’d learn from countless books full of ideas and schemes by people who hadn’t done anything.

I didn’t appreciate the importance of a ‘point’.  That little indicator on the measure.  So I filled a spoon with 1 ml when it was supposed to be .1 ml.  It exploded, fortunately in the gas chamber which I’d not completely closed since closing it enough was okay. The instructions were precise. I’d done it imprecisely my way.  The lab had filled with smoke to the level of 4 feet below the ceiling. It had to be evacuated until the fans could get rid of the smoke. The lab was off from the main school. Good planning.

I’d approached my my other lab  partner and asked if he’d be my lab partner. He would turn out to be the very best lab partner because he was amazing at doing technical things but couldn’t comprehend the process of presentation and recording.  We were a straight A team. But as a joke he’d sometimes leave out a « . » in our combined lab work with the result I had another explosion having used 10 times the chemical indicated. He was a joker.  No one died.  His skill in chemistry and labs in general resulted in his becoming  a technician.  I would go onto be the doctor but seeing his comfort with the translation of ideas into reality was a life lesson. I happened to be good at translating what had occurred and recording. Glen my other lab partner was good at everything. 

Glen was beside me on the day of another explosion. The other classmates considered him heroic. There had no takers for the space beside me. By now my lab coat was holed with chemical spills and half burnt. I looked more like a homeless person than a chemistry student. 

 There’s this unusual experiment where we made nitro glycerin in the lab. We had this nifty buzon burners and all that evil scientist paraphernalia .I’d mixed up the ingredients in my usual less than precise way. But I had this concoction going without realizing the amount of heat was another variable that needed careful monitoring. It said in the lab notes that under no condition was the liquid to boil away and become dry as then it would explode.

I saw that the liquid had magically disappeared.  I pointed that out to Glen who was standing beside me.  He turned off his bunson burner and backed carefully away as if I’d just pointed out an STD.  I called to the courageous lab instructor and said, « Pardon me. I seem to have boiled off my liquid. ». 

I don’t know why I just didn’t turn off the flame. The decision to do that took a second or two or more because I was distracted by the mass exodus of students with Mrs. Tascona encouraging this at the doorway. 

I watched as she herded everyone including Glen out of the lab.  There I was alone in front of this major beaker of what obvious was nitro glycerin and nitroglycerin alone.  

I had a brilliant idea. I carefully lifted the still hot beaker and put it under my desk and moved away. The explosion lifted the desk and charred the insides of the wood but otherwise caused no damage.  

« Quick under the desk, » Glen would say another time when I got the experiment a bit off and he being much more scientifically astute recognized what was about to happen. Again a loud noise. The desk lifting.  Class and teacher staring at me. 

« If you have had another  explosion. I can’t let you complete the lab.  I can’t put the rest of the students lives at any more risk. ». 

The pressure was exordinate but I did complete that lab and learned the terrible importance of detail.  What I thought and what I did needed a congruence and care that simply was methodical and not that orgasmic intuitive inspirational bit that is so addictive and appealing in the arts.

A marine colonel would say it was the polishing of boots that made the soldier. My Queen’s counsel friend would say the best lawyer learned to dot every ‘i’.  My surgical mentor Dr. Ross would one day say, « it’s how you handle the tissue’.  

I learned attention to detail in  Mrs. Tascona Chemistry lab. In future contract I’m sure she insisted on danger pay and was sure to keep up her life insurance.  I learned  that little things really counted.

I will forever remember our great long suffering lab teacher on the back of Glen’s motorcycle screaming as he drove her to the bar where we gathered at the end of course. We all raised our glasses to chemistry with a whole new appreciation. For most of us this skill would be turned to  making of better wine and beer or bathtub hallucinogens. .  Chemistry became everything for me. I loved considering the ingredients of everything.  

All the while I was making stews and soups and studying recipes and trying to discern the ingredients and herbs and spices in everything I ate.  The two went hand and hand together. I could even smell some of the chemicals and would later smell disease long before some of my colleagues rationally concluded what was wrong with the patient.  It was like I had this whole other sense open up for me and it had all begun with the periodic table. 

 Now I was thinking in three dimensional spaces. In biochemistry we’d consider the combinations of carbons and other elements in three d and I’d see these shapes dancing in the air visualizing them. I’d speak to a composer and he’d tell me he saw the music that way. I ‘d seen music when I’d dropped acid but he said it was the clefts and lines of script like ticker tape and each of the instruments in these great sheets he’d read in the hall as he directed and his ears listened. I was like that then for chemistry.  It was a marvellous love affair.

At night I’d dance.  I had these regular students and I’d get to know their lives and we’d translate the idea of dance into their bodies and their forms and choreograph these routines that flowed about the rooms and got them awards. I’d choreograph show dances for tv and local shows, great and beautiful presentations of groups of young bodies laughing in form. It was a wonderful time. I felt my senses were alive in a way I’d not known.

I was loving learning in classes. I had these friends at school and the friends in the dance. I actually read text books as I walked at fast pace from the university to the dance studio. Between classes I’d been memorizing mathematic equations.

I’d buy my first Texas instrument computer calculator. Life would become so easy. I’d never been adept with the slide rule. That loss of a ‘point’ could occur so easily with those mechanical devices that needed an intuitive understanding of the desired end to really make them work. I didn’t have this in math. I was always surprised and fascinated by the conclusions I got to these equations that had taken hundreds of years of genius to find. The Texas instrument calculator was a god send. I wore it with pride dangling from my belt buckle. I had a white plastic pocket protector and my pencil and my pen. My hair was cut short and I wore the black slacks, white shirt and often took the tie off so it didin’t get in the solutions. Then in the afternoon like Superman I’d switch back to Clark Kent and go off to teach dancing secure in the knowledge I  could make explosives.  Each technique and process gave me a skill that would be the basis of mastery of all that we took for granted in the 20th century.  Once you can make the basics its not a whole lot different to use these ingredients to move forward. 

I talked not that long ago with a fellow doing gene splitting and we reflected on the simplicity of it and how the new machines were making it so much easier.  

The computer moved us completely into a ‘multi factorial’ analysis that revolutionized our understanding of disease all the while too many people left to ideological teachers remained trapped in cause and effect and binary reductionism. The awe and wonder comes with science.

My love and appreciation of God grew daily in my study just as I’d been in wonder looking at the drop of pond water in that little microscope I’d been given by my parents so many years before.

University of Winnipeg was this wonderful playground for me. Every night I’d be three or 4 hours in the study carrels. On the weekend I’d study 8 to 10 hours each on Saturday and Sunday. Glen would want a ‘change’ and I’d get on the back of his motorcycle and we’d ride to a different library where we’d sit in a different study carrel and study for hours expriencing the different coffee from a different terrible from different coffee machine.  He’d call that a ‘vacation’. He was a funny guy. His brother Archie was older and would go on to be an anesthetist. I’d get to know him and like him him too through the years of medical school. The Benoits were a great family and I appreciated seeing them alone and together and seeing how family transmitted the really important intimate details. I’d meet his mother a beautiful deeply loving woman and his father who had that surgical intellect with the confidence of experience and constant reliability.  It was a great honor to be a friend. I’d be forever thankful.

In medical school I’d come up against these weird blocks. One was kidney. I couldn’t wrap my brain around the idea of ion exchange. It was a puzzle. Once you got it you couldn’t understand how you ever missed it but it was a reall impediment to my school and understanding. A couple of critical times Glen sat with me and went over it again and again until I had that ‘aha moment’.  We had formed a study group by then. A half dozen of us who’d mainly met in that University of Winnipeg library who’d go onto University of Manitoba medical school and stay together and work together whenever we could. It was great comraderie and truly amazing people.

I’d enter medical school with straight A grades in Arts and Science. Even in medical school I ‘d continue to take courses with Dr .Ridd, studying Kierkegaard and Kafka. Dr. Ridd was a Christian existentialist. He’d have a group us us sitting around a coffee shop after class considering the meaning and purpose of life and reflecting on Ecclesiastes and the Trial.  Then I’d be dissecting the dead in the daytime and dancing to Van Morison the next evening. 

But that’s getting ahead of myself. When I entered medical school I had straight A’s in Arts and Sciences. I joined with a hundred other people whose lowest mark had been one B in one year. We were considered a very smart class. There were 15 other Straight A’s several master students and some PhD’s. For the first time since I’d been in the gifted class in school I felt among my own. I had the same comraderie as the dance world but here the pace was incredible. There was no time for parties.  No time for a ‘break’. We were always on.  It was exhilarating. I loved the overload and the wonder. I loved the learning. I was ecstatic and having one ‘aha’ moment after another.

Long after I left University of Winnipeg I’d return and study in the stacks and carrels.  I’d  love the smell and feel of the library.  The teachers were so inspirational.  My classics professor just for one was a wizard. They were all gods and goddesses to me. These amazing people who shared their arcane knowledge. Gnostics who opened their minds and hearts to us.  Of course Dr. Ridd was my favourite self effacing hero, a basketball player who loved his family and loved students, loved God and loved learning.  I am truly blessed in this life.

I’d still have dinners with my family. My brother and Adell had begun on their amazing love affair. I’d look with wonder at their lives as we all were moving forward crossing these great expanses of wilderness and park lands taking the various bits of pavement.  I’d left the unbeaten paths and the roads less travelled and was really enjoying the speed that came with the well trodden path. I was  loving and appreciating the selection of learning my professors deemed critical.

 This was especially true in philosophy where my professsor had contributed to the insaniety defence decisions and I’d years before my time study the originals of the laws that I’d one day work intimately with.  The university I’d once thought had nothing to offer now gave me so much and condensed so much learning. I was simply in love. I wasn’t standing but I was crawling up the backs of millions who had gone before me to find out the very fabric of modern society. It was incredible.  

I’d leave University of Winnipeg which would always remain a true university to me, like Oxford,  to go to the University of Manitoba which would only be part university but mostly technical school.  I’d love the latter in time too.  I simply loved learning. That humility and stupidity then the learning and mastery , repeated over and over again.  

The Catch and Release Woman

When I was 18 I met an older woman who was utterly remarkable in every way, beautiful, sophisticated, loving, talented. She had but one flaw. She baited the men of other women.  She was not interested in any of the single successful handsome and rich men who wanted her. Like other single women with children she’d have a dozen excuses for why she didn’t date.  Some indeed were truly valid. Society is so constraining  on mothers, especially the truly gifted and intelligent.

But when her girl friends or other women brought their husbands and boyfriends over she’d go into erotic hyperdrive enticing the men, or « baiting them « as one young man once observed. Then when she was sure they were all but trussed up and hung in the window she’d turn them down. 

She had demonstrated that she could have the men but didn’t take them, she retuned them slightly used emotionally, not physically,  to their partners. They didn’t much  appreciate the handling of their men. She did create a false impression, always feigning innocence. She was unsettling to  the always dubious harmony of long standing relationships and community.

I coined the term ‘catch and release’ woman because she didn’t like fish. She just liked knowing she could put the hook in the cheek, extract it and throw the fish back in the sea.  

No one knew what had happened to her when she was young .  Those who knew her then said she’d loved a married man who did not leave his wife for her though she’d believed he would. She believed she had more to offer than his wife and she would show him.   Ever since ,she’d repeated this emotional trauma proving she could,and unwilling to accept that she hadn’t.  She couldn’t even be angry at the man and might well still be waiting. 

  

She was sad for one so beautiful.  She appeared  doomed to love the memory of a  man she never really knew. But that’s just what some said. 

I only observed the behaviour and encountered it again and again in my work where dreams and myths were so often safer and more controllable than reality.. The adventure of living was no less because these ‘beautiful losers’ as Leonard Cohen described them lived where others merely existed. She was big on a broad screen and famous in her little world where she did  so much good. She was kind especially to children. She taught the young so much especially of a lost time of romance and love. When warriors really did ride on white horses and fighter planes flew over head. Before so many young men died never to be replaced. 

 She grew wise and even more beautiful with time. Everyone forgot her dancing on toes and hearts. Who cared really. It was all so far in the past. Just  to be touched by such glorious magnificence was such a thrill for the lonely.  

When I throw back a fish I sometimes  of her. The catch and release woman.

Revenge

The girl saw that he was powerless in the bed, unable to control his limbs.   As he lay smiling she extracted his semen.   She took his seed in her mouth and then spat it out. She used her fingers to insert it elsewhere.
When she was done she went to the hospital and claimed she’d been raped.  They used the rape kit.  She didn’t mind the cold stainless steel inside her.  His DNA was there.  She’d needed that.

She said that her assaillant had sexually attacked her.  She claimed she was a victim and that he’d controlled her by his position and with his mind. She’d written her statement weeks before and liked how it sounded. She held back giving the name of the man at the hospital. She ‘d said she was too afraid and cried. No one pressed her. When she was ready.

Then she approached the man’s wife. She demanded $500,000 and told her what she had done. If the wife paid her she said she’d not expose him. The much older  woman looked long at the young woman then paid her.

The husband had  a  friend who was another neuroscientist working on  removing the brain and  transplanting it into  a cyborg body. It had worked with monkeys but he’d not yet done a human trial. He agreed with his friend’s wife. They didn’t see the need to discuss this with the husband. The wife would make all the arrangements.That night her family, their sons and daughter, collected  the girl in their SUV. Just scooped her from the street and took her to the friends lab. She called the bank and cancelled the cheque as well. She explained it was an error. No one could reach the girl.

He removed her brain. He  implanted it into a Japanese sex doll cyborg body he had handy, big lips, big breasts, big butt. The Kardashian model.  Her consciousness was connected but like her victim she had no control over her limbs and movements. These were programmed by the user. There was a key pad and voice operated control system that worked from without. She had no volitional control herself. She couldn’t communicate.

The doll was sold to an asteroid mining corporation which kept a brothel for Miners. The sex dolls were for the poor or cheap miners   who couldn’t afford the live girls.  

She was used over and over again. She was aware.  She just couldn’t do or say anything.  All the holes of her cyborg body  were sowed repeatedly. A maintenance Man cleaned her  each night before the new days clients.
Thanks to the advances in brain transplantation that she had contributed to, her victim one day received a fully functional cyborg body himself with complete sensation and communication. 

One day with his wife’s approval he visited the asteroid belt and used a particular doll rather roughly. Only the maintenance man noticed. He’d thought it odd for a cyborg to request a cyborg.

It was eventually noted her brain had putrefied because a customer complained of the smell. It was  returned to the scientists lab. The scientist  cleaned it up and sent it back simply mechanized. The miners said it performed better.  Previously they felt resistance and hostility. No one knew how she had felt..  

The scientist thought it would have been nice if he’d been able to interview her but that would increased the risk of being caught.

The wife loved her husband till he died then she too died., their children present for the funeral of the great man. And later his loving wife.

The scientist lived a long life. His research continued to help those made vulnerable by neurological   diseases. .He died famous and happy after a long loving life with his family. 

The Smoke

He stepped out into  the alley . He’d just wanted  a last smoke, and a moment alone. He was thinking of his bride, the wedding,the dance. Right now she was with her family. Shortly they’d be changing to their going away clothes. The last hoorah. He’d needed a cigarette, and a moment alone.

The two men saw him. Standing there alone.

‘Mick, look.’ Raj said to his mate.

Mick, smiling, nodding to his friend,  was already pulling out the short bat he favoured.They walked the very short distance down the dark alley as if they were going to the light beyond. Mick had his bat tucked up his sleeve. Raj had a knife he’d only use if needed. Neither liked when things got bloody.

The groom was savouring the last of  his smoke watching the rings rise in the air , looking above to the  dim new moon in the oily black sky. He only heard the men approaching.and ignored them, lost in his revelry. He took that last drag on his cigarette, prepared to stub it out before turning to return. His mind was on the white gowned goddess who was now his wife when blackness fell. 

Mick struck the groom on the side of his head behind the right ear. Years ago Mick had practiced with his bat hitting cantaloupes and coconuts to improve his aim and get a feel for the thing. Over time he’d become adept and experienced. He took pride in his skill and trade.

The groom fell in a heap to the dirty soiled alley pavement. 

Raj was on him in a second

“ Mick, I’ve got his wallet, lets go!”

Mick was  standing there looking at his partner who was fishing through the tuxedo of the groom and slipping the smart watch from his wrist. Mick eyed the groom’s  beardless face and slim athletic body.

“I fancy him, Raj.”

“Not again.”

“Yes again”

Raj furtively looked about  spying  the space behind the dumpster.

“Alright then help me pull him over there,”

Together they dragged the groom behind the dumpster. Raj used his knife now to cut open the pants. He slipped off the shoes then pulled down the pants and white underwear leaving them all in a pile to the side. He stood back for Mick.The groom lay face down, his ass  gleaming white  in the soft neon light  from the distant street.

Mick unzippered his black trousers and pulled out his  massive cock. He always seemed to get hard these days when he did a job. Tonight he was particularly aroused. The grooms tuxedo, the musky cologne, the smooth shaved face.

He kneeled down, then lay full  on top of the groom, positioning  himself on the young man beneath him. He didn’t even bother using his hand to direct the thing. He rammed it in. The tight dry hole tore open for his manhood. The soft body jerked in unconscious revolt. With a couple of thrusts Mick  came almost immediately dumping his pile  into the hot ass with a grunt of animal satisfaction. He withdrew and standing placed  his spent thing into his trousers a zippering up. He didn’t wear underwear. They  slowed him down, he said.

He kicked the groom in the head before joining Raj who had stood by the dumpster edge watching Mick and the groom and watching the alley. They now sauntered away to where the neon lights were brightest. Mick feeling pretty cocky was smiling. Raj opened the wallet and showed him the thick wad of cash inside. They sauntered  on now, scot free. 

Mere moments later the groom came to, not knowing where he was, his head aching. He struggled to his feet, standing unsteadily, then staggering  towards the light of the street. Two men were turning the corner.  He tried to call to them for help but the words wouldn’t come. At the street he saw the bright lit vaguely familiar entrance to the hall and stumbled up the stair holding  into the banister as he pulled open a large glass door,

Music came from within, He staggered forward through swinging doors and walked into a crowd of happy well fed well dressed people. He thought he should know the faces turning towards him with ill concealed embarrassment.

The most beautiful girl dressed in a long white gown stood staring. An old couple were turning towards him as the music stopped. Everyone was now turning and staring in the slow congealing silence.

Blood,mucous,semen and shit oozedfrom his torn anus and leaked down the back of his naked legs. 

A couple of men at the bar laughed seeing him naked from the waist down his shrivelled member dangling like a juicy worm in search of a fish.

A collective horror was rising  from those behind him as he again staggered  forward towards the girl. She covered her face with her hands ashamed and embarrassed before turning and sobbing, ran from the room. The pretty  bridesmaid with a scornful look at the groom, turned and followed the bride.

The groom stopped ,not knowing what to do. His throbbing head hurt terribly. A searing pain and wetness from behind  competed for attention. 

Watching the most beautiful girl leave , all eyes turning and following her exit, they now returned and stared at him. He just  stood slightly swaying. His mother with eyes full of sadness looked at her son. Her husband, his father moved quickly forward , removing his own coat and wrapping it around the waist of his son. As he did so he saw  the reddening bruise on  his sons forehead where Mick had delivered his parting kick. Up close he also saw the early swelling of the rising egg behind his son’s  ear. His nose recoiled from the  pungent smell of sex and shit.

Blood,mucous,shit and semen pooled on the hardwood dance floor. 

“What happened, son?” The father said. 

“What do you mean?” The groom found the forming of words difficult. Memory was juggled. 

“I had a smoke.”

Mick was caught selling the watch Raj had given him. He himself was beaten to death when he raped the wrong boy in  prison. The boys mates hadn’t meant the bludgeoning to kill him, They didn’t even know he was dead when they raped his body one after another in the prison shower.

The groom never knew what happened any  more than the speculation of the coarser of the two police.police.   “Stole his wallet and valuables. Then he was bred. Case closed without more evidence”

.When Mick was caught his DNA was a match. He said he didn’t remember. 

The bride couldn’t get over the image of the groom  or the stories. The idea of her husband publicly exposed  with shit and semen running out his anus and down his legs was something she just couldn’t bear. When  he was discharged from hospital the groom read her note leaving him. With the help of a psychologist testifying to her trauma the marriage was annulled. 

HIs motherr said ,”You can’t blame her”.

He gave up smoking.  

The bride was eventually abducted by aliens and used for sexual experiments. She was picked up walking naked down a country road.

The groom never learned of this. 

Raj found another partner and continued his dirty work

     

An Ethiopian Planning To Visit Canada

“Aren’t you afraid to go to Canada, “ Beca asked her friend Solomon. They were sitting in an Adis Ababa coffee shop talking.  Both were in College. Solomon had told Beca he was off to Canada to take a course at UBC

“I’m going to Vancouver in western Canada. It’s not like I’m going to Eastern Canada or the north  where there’s people freezing to death. That’s where all the crime we hear on the news is from too. Quebec is ruled by  biker gangs and mafia.  Not  Vancouver.  All they have there is money laundering in all their casinos. I’m not going to the casinos. “ 

“But they have pit bulls running in the streets of Vancouver. I read that. ” Beca said.  She really liked Solomon but thought him too sensitive and naive. Beca was a model as well as studying fashion at the college.  She didn’t think westerners had any sense of colour.   

“I heard they’ve taken care of that problem.  I’m still worried about the Beaver Fever though.” Solomon said seriously. He planned to see a travel doctor too because he’d heard they had outbreaks of measles because of all the anti vaxxers.  It really wasn’t safe for an African to travel in Canada anymore. Tuberculosis, Syphilis  HIV in the Red Cross blood supply, Hep C. All the drug addicts dying from overdoses.  Hospitals completely turned over to Heroin injections sites.  He really wished he could have gone to another university but UBC  was the one offering the course he wanted counselling gay men. 

“Are their beavers running around the streets biting people? “ Beca asked. She wasn’t sure what a beaver was but thought it sounded rude for some reason. “There’s huge black bears in Vancouver . I read that. They’re on different streets than the pit bulls and beavers probably.   There are  big cats too they call cougars killing the children and dogs.  They say the cougars chase the young men too.  ”  Beca was horrified  just thinking about Canada. She really hoped that Solomon would change his mind and go some place civilized and fashionable. 

‘I think it’s okay if you only go out during the day.” Solomon said,  “ It’s just like here in the rural towns. . You only have to worry about the animals mostly at night.” 

“ I read the bears and pit bulls are out in broad daylight. Outside of the city they  have polar bears so the people living in the igloos can’t even go outside at night.” 

 “ I’m not going outside of the city, Beca.  It’s winter there now.   I don’t want to have to get the boards everyone wears on their feet there. I saw them on pictures in Whistler. It looks very awkward. I know it’s  a really backward uncivilized place  but I’m not going to take any risks.   It does look so pretty on the television. I just don’t know why all the  white women wear yoga pants, running shoes and  back packs. It’s like  they’re always ready for some emergency.   I think it must be the earthquakes or maybe a tsunami they’re afraid of. “ said Solomon thoughtfully. He was sipping his Ethiopian coffee and realizing how much he was going to miss real coffee. He couldn’t imagine what swill they served in such a place.  He’d heard they had an Ethiopian restaurant called Axum so he hoped he’d be able to get some decent food and maybe they’ve have real coffee.  He worried he was going to have to eat bannock and moose the whole time he was there, whatever bannock and moose was. . 

“I think it must be the poverty, why the women all have back packs.” Beca said. “  We have poverty in Africa but there’s way more poverty in Canada in the CBC news.” Since Solomon said he was going to Canada she’d downloaded some CBC news podcasts and thought the poverty must be awful especially since everyone was so old and no one took care of the old people but just euthanized them. “ I think the women are carrying food in their back packs.” She told Solomon.  ‘So many of them are obese. I don’t think they share their food with the children like we do.” She continued. .

“I don’t like the men, Solomon. You have to be careful.  On the feminist Utube channels all the men in Canada are violent rapists. Every woman in Canada is a rape survivor.    I’d never go there as a woman.  I’d rather go to Saudi Arabia.  Saudi Arabia was elected head of the Women’s Rights Committee for the UN. .   Canadian men are rapists and bullies.  It’s  no wonder all the Canadian women abort their babies. They’re trying to get civilized families now from Africa who like children to move there. I’d never move there. How can people hate children so much.? “ said Beca. 

“You know me Beca, I’d like to go anywhere else but that’s where the course on counselling   gay men is being held.   Gay men are in the government and heads of churches there. That’s better than here or anywhere else in Africa. When I graduate I want to help the gay men here. The Muslims are killing them but the Christians still lock them up.  I want to help them Beca.  At UBC the course I’m taking is about helping gay men. If I’m going to be a counselor I want to be able to help them. We have no courses at the university here about counselling gay men. We have gay men, even in government, but no one admits it.” 

“I know Solomon, you’re such a big heart.   But we don’t have as many gay men as Canada.  Look at their Prime Minister in the gay parade with his tongue out.  Ethiopian men are virile..   Ethiopian men love their children.  Canadians are gay.  They don’t have any testosterone in the west.  I think it’s their food.  Ethiopians who have eaten Canadian say the food is awful.  No spices.  And everyone eats with forks and knives like they don’t want to touch their food.    Ethiopian men,  since we got rid of the DERG Red Terror communists killers and pigs,   have all been really intelligent,  Ethiopian men are gentlemen. They love their families. I loved when we had  Emperor Haile Selassie.  Canada’s never even had an emperor. They haven’t even  had a king or queen. They’re as immature as the communists.  Everyone is a worker with only the elite having all the wealth like the DERG..Canada’s a backward country.   I don’t think you can learn anything about culture from them. They don’t even eat with their hands, that’s how backwards they are.  And don’t even think of going swimming in the bay there. I saw on the news they’ve got  sharks and killer whales right in their bay.  I worry about you, Solomon. This is a really bad idea to go to Canada. You should go someplace safe like South Africa. They’re only killing white farmers there and the universities are better than what Canada has, even this UBC you think is so good because of it’s medial school and counselling.”

“I’m going to be okay, Beca. . I’m just going for a few weeks. I’m going to do this one course for counselling gay people.  I’ll be right  back where it’s safe and people love each other, before you know it.” Solomon said , trying to reassure her all the while wondering what was he thinking when he thought he’d go to Canada. There were no courses at the University of Addis Ababa on counselling gay men, that’s for sure. But Beca was right he could have gone to South Africa. The universities were the best and it was a lot safer and more civilized than Canada.

‘I hope so, Solomon. I hate to think of you being bit by a beaver, gored by a pit bull,  attacked by one of their  bears or cougars or have those gangs of violent Surrey men  shoot you.  I hope you’re not travelling on a bus either.  I read a man was just sitting on a  bus when another Canadian passenger  chopped off his head with a machete.  They put him in hospital then let him out..  I don’t know what they did with the guy whose head went rolling down the aisle of the bus.  . Then I heard another story  a  terrorist who killed the American medic and  the gay clown Prime Minister paid him $10 million dollars. Our government leaders in Ethiopia wouldn’t  payAl Shabaab terrorists if they killed Americans.  Canada is  a terrible dangerous  place, Solomon.  .  I don’t care if they don’t care who you have sex with it’s not safe.  There’s too many Canadians there. I’d rather you come with me to Saudi Arabia or South Africa where it’s safe.  “ Beca was close to tears pleading with him then.

“I know all the whites in Canada  are racist and the men are all rapists and bullies but the UBC professor whose putting on the course is from India. He assured me  its safe for a black man in UBC. He told me that Vancouver isn’t like Toronto. Black Lives Matter was in Toronto demonstrating against the police which are the most racist police in the world apparently. The Toronto police and the RCMP who ride horses are worse than the Africaner apartheid police used to be.  But they’re all in the Eastern Canada.  The police in Vancouver don’t even have cars. They ride bicycles.   It’s not safe for a black man  in Eastern Canada  but Vancouver is mostly Chinese.  I’ll be okay Beca.” Solomon said.  “I ‘ll call you on my cell phone and send you pictures”

“Are you sure they have cell phones?” Beca said gathering up her lap top and finishing the last of her fine Ethiopian coffee.

“Yes, Beca, they have  cell phones.” Solomon wasnot completely certain but was hoping they did. .  

Gun shot

“Get down!” He screamed in the crowd even as the first victim fell, The crimson painted her back as blood pooled around her.

He guaged the sniper direction of entrance and exit wound like finding north on a tree from the presence of the moss.

The sniper was moving to her second target still standing in the square.  A trousseau sculpture about to fall. SHe liked he way her bullets reached out and knocked the people over like bowling pins.  SHe had no emotional. Efficiency was her motto.

Under and behind the truck tire, he scanned the building a half mile away as people continued to exit the square bodies falling like bowling pins.  

At last he saw the open window. 8th floor.  He spoke quickly into his cell floor.  “8th floor,  Pink high rise. Open window.”

It was all he could do.  A team was headed there from outside of the kill zone.  He knew by the time they arrived the killer would be gone.  More shots rang out.  More bodies fell.  The last one was going back to help a woman, a friend, a lover. The two died.  The paper would show next day that 12 had died.

Next day the police had no clue.

She long left the square and boarded a train.

He had his Glock 9 mm in the shoulder holster.  It had been easier to get it onto the train. The plane would have been faster but  there would have been more hoops to jump. He didn’t like chasing a sniper carrying only a Glock 9 mm but it was better than going unarmed. The way things were going in the west , only the criminals would be armed soon. They had their own weapons manufacturing and soon would be building bazookas.  Every Afghan village could produce an AK 47. Not much to it.  Modern weapons were getting deadlier but the tech to create them was getting more available.  3 d printing was even a stage further forward.

On the train the passengers about him were reading, sleeping or listening to iPods. He would have napped if he could but sleep evaded him. He was wearing a tan cordoroy jacket and jeans. He took a Toblerrone chocolate bar out of his jacket and had a generous piece.  

She’d got on the first plane out of the city.  The rifle was shipped by purolater, broken down into parts. Even if scanned, placed in a box with the right miscellaneous mechanical parts, no one would see the rifle parts.  She’d be able to observe the site where it was to go when she got there to assure her even more there was no concern. Right now she wanted to nap off the rush she’d just had.  Pulling her black tongue low over her eyes , she curled innto the window for a nap. She hardly noticed the plane take off.

Out of Control

“She is out of control. She’s been going down town and picking up men randomly for sex,” he said, quite hysterical

“Is she using a condom?” Raven replied

“How can you ask that. She’s married to one of the most important men of our time. This could be a public relations nightmare.”

“It could be a whole lot worse if he and she both die of Aids. Or word gets out she has syphillis They don’t call it the English Disease or the French disease any more. People know how STD’s spreads.” Raven answered, looking at her long painted nails. She’d chosen red polish with tiny black roses.

“Do you think she’s infected now? Do we have to get her tested.? Will she listen to reason.’ He was shuffling papers feigning to look for something. It’s what he did when he was anxious. He was very anxious now.  His job depended on the present regimen. There was never any security but he’d just invested in some offshore property. He had commitments. He didn’t need her acting like some teen age girl who’d had her first orgasm.

She was very beautiful. Exotic in the manner of tall willowy black haired women.  She knew men desired her. She had known since her father climbed into bed with her and she felt that pain and his covering her mouth as she tried to scream. Her mother was angry at her in the morning. But her father had told her after that she was his number one. Her mother made her clean her own laundry. But she stared down at her mother after that. Shameless. She knew.

Her father then came into her room night after night. There was only a little more pain. She began enjoying the attention anticipating his coming.  Learning from him what he liked.  She moved her hips and her tongue danced.  “You’re so much better than your mother, ‘ he told her.  She liked that until she saw her mother crying in the morning.

She would cry scant years later when her younger sister became her age. Her father never came to her bad after that.

She’d learned her power. She watched other women, how they walked, how they held themselves. She practiced on the boys at school but they were children.  Her teachers were a bit more interesting.  Her mother had taken her to her own doctor. She’d begun the birth control pill. Every culture knows about in breeding. Until the Pill and IUD all cultures had were taboos. 

 Her mother become more her friend and sister . She stopped being mean to her.  She was still a little girl. Her sister now was old before her time.

At college she was in control. She rode her policy professor like a little donkey. 

“Men are so easily pleased’, she thought, smiling to hersel. They’re useful too.

She wanted so much now. She had fine clothing and a fancy car. Her own car. A little Fiat.  Her father had bought it for her.  She’d used it to fuck the professor in the back seat, not caring he found it cramped, having to open the door, risking being caught,  that first night , in the park.  

She liked the feel of men between her thighs.  She didn’t always orgasm.  She liked them serving her..She really wanted  servants. 

“I’d prefer slaves,” she’d laugh to herself. A master of pc, she to keep that thought to herself. 

When she had her degrees she got a job that came with her own staff.  She was quite the bitch.  Behind her back they called her names. What did she care. She was smart and elegant. Men wanted her. Women too. Her boss was a woman who introduced her to a whole different world, More rough in some ways, more tender in others.

It was after that she got into politics.  She liked to dress up and talk with powerful men and women.  Raised in the family she was ,with the associations of her father and the relatives of her mother, she’d a certain ease of relationship with people of what was once referred to as “class.”  Her group was a classless society now.  It would be a terrible faux pas if she were to let that word slip at some party.  Class was one of the many new “banned” words. They all knew  there were things that they didn’t say. 

Whwn one of the others was among them they made it seem as if he or she was like them. Outsiders didn’t know.  The atmosphere just changed when they were gone. She and her former boss would love to laugh  and gossip. They didn’t share a bed so much anymore but when they touched there still electricity. The bedroom door wasn’t closed. They had both just expanded their range..  At the spa naked together in the steam room just a towel between them they’d talk of lust and lovers.  When they having they would talk of politics without names. They had demeaning nicknames for all the players.. They were very careful not to let anything slip from their adventures in the board room. But beneath the sheets, that was different.  It was also knowledge.  Knowing a person’s particular whims in private gave one a certain power.  Only the inner circle shared this knowledge.  Knowledge was power.

She saw him first.  He was acting silly with his mates. She’d not have paid him any attention except for his name.  He was cute too in a girlish sort of way.  Not strong like her father.  Boyish and sweet when she got to know him.  So insecure.  Right from the start he let her use him.  Their engagement followed not long after.  She was getting too old to be single. Twenty six.The married men were beginning to consider as mistress material.  She needed her own fiefdom. 

She wasnted to compete in these domains.  She’d thought of being a concubine but she saw early the power of religion especially to the other women. She didn’t believe in any of the nonsense but the forms were pretty. She liked the rituals. She felt something when she practiced especially with the women, some of whom she’d known outside the place of worship.

Now married it followed she would have children. She stopped the pill. Her mother and sisters were close to her. Together they shared everything.  Her mother was even friends with her former lover now. She was even a bit jealous. They talked of shoes though. There was no doubt  they each coveted what the other had.

She remembered her first 4 inch heels, how she’d had such difficulty walking in them. The sales girl said, “Honey they’re not for walking. If you’re walking in those beauties you’re definitely doing something wrong.”

When they came, she liked her children.A girl and a boy.   She didn’t know if she would have, were it not for her nannies. She enjoyed best when her sisters came over. They had children of their own.  She, her mother and they would drink  wine and some  smoked hashish. Her mother preferred opium. The nannies prepared the little ones for naps and fed them.  She began drinking a bit more.  Shiraz was her favourite.

Those days her husband was sleeping with his secretary . A little blond who was too coarse to keep him interested too long. She was everything she wasn’t.  Her mother had been the first to notice the  change in him. She tried to warn her.  No one would say they  plotted but the women  did discuss it at length. In their circle it wasn’t approved of but men were pigs. It was only considered acceptable if he was discrete.  It was obvious that’s what he wanted. They were not sure about her.  

A friend of her sisters took the time to talk to her about discretion. The girl was quite shocked to be confronted by this powerful woman . The woman explained to her the rules as if she was a school girl.  It really was all about class but no one would call it that. After that the affair didn’t last much longer. All the sauciness had gone out of the girl when she understood the  larger picture.

This wasn’t about individuals. In her mind she’d been competing with the wife. The  wife was alone in her mind. That just wasn’t alone. The wife was part of a coven. A nest.   A crèche situations.  Even the man didn’t know how many were involved in the fabric of this thing.  

“You’ve had  a bit much, don’t you think dear,” he said to her that first night after the secretary quit. He’d used her for his pleasure, the first time in months,  a moment of desperate manliness. He’d not even bothered to wait for the bed. In the garage he’d pinned her to the wall,  pulled down her black lace panties, staying behind her,  pinning her with one arm against something metal.  She’d felt dirty. She even worried a bit about her crimson gown getting soiled. There was no pleasure for her. She was just a convenient receptacle. He didn’t take long.  She brushed her skirt down, picked up the panties from the cement floor and followed him into the house. She went straight for the wine cabinet.

She was on her second glass of Shiraz when he made the comment. She was wet with him and sore.

——————-

“I don’t know how we can keep this out of the news if someone sees her.” He carried on. Raven was listening. 

“She’s not taken the Mercedes down there. She leaves it by the train and uses that to get to the city.”

“Did you have her followed.”, “There’s always been some surveillance for the family. His father insisted . But I stepped it up myself after she hit the parked car on the street and we had to have our lawyer friend brought in to avoid the police her.”

“Has there been more.” Raven asked. 

“More? I’d think the pictures of her naked in that back alley down town with a homeless man would be enough.”

“Of course it’s enough but how much more is there?

“Well we have her in the western bar.  There’s  a gang of black men in the porn club. She’s been to the park as well.

“God, how long has it been going on.” Raven sighned. She was staring at one nail with the black rose. 

“I told you, it’s only been a couple of weeks.’

“A couple of weeks.’

“Yes.  

“And she’s the same in every other way.”

“Yes. With the kids and in her own work. It’s just she seems tireless.  All that fucking. All those nights out. Whenever he’s on trips away , she’s up half the night drinking and going  with different men. There must be 30 or more already.”

‘We have to stop this.’ Raven said, adamant, no longer studying her nail, looking straight at him. 

“What do you think I’ve been saying?” He asked, his tone hurt

.”while what do you suggest. You must have some suggestion. You’ve been building up to this’

“I think we have to Talk to his mother.”

“Really. “ she said, looking back at her nails

 “Yes. Not just because she has her own problems. She’s got the most to lose.  I’ll talk to her mother too.  Lets the ladies handle it. I expect they’re concerned but they don’t know all of it. I was hoping it would stop without them but it hasn’t. I need you to arrange it.”

Raven understood. It just wasn’t in her job description as a bodyguard. She didn’t like things to get messy and this really had the potential to get messy real fast. Besides she liked her job.

——-++

The mothers talked to her shortly after, in the morning, over coffee.

“We’ve decided it would be best if you took a vacation dear.” 

She’d looked from one to the other.

“We know’ her mother said.

She looked around the carefully decorated sitting room, bay windows ,brocaded couch. Her eyes settled on the French Provincial Furniture legs.

“What if I don’t want to take go ?” She asked. after taking a sip of tea from her cup peering over the rim  at the two women, calculating.

“It’s best for the children.” Her mother said.

“ We’re only thinking about the children, Dear.” His mother said. 

She wondered how much they knew. They’d never say but it wasn’t about details now, was it. Not to these women.  She’d not seen them look so strong in so many years. She didn’t like them looking at her this way.  She felt sick and she didn’t think it was just her hangover. She tried to think of her options.  She was wearing a linen pant suit and found herself staring now at the fabric, admiring it as she did the incredibly expensive Persian silk and wool carpet 

“Where would I go, “ she asked, after a while

“We’ve made all the arrangements with friends back home.” 

“I dont want to go there.”  She abhorred that place.  So strict. So secretive. So controlling. She thought she’d run away if they insisted. She was studying the bone china cup.

“You’ve given us no choice dear.”  First one mother spoke then the next.  They were sitting side by side.  Matriarchs  

It was only days later she was on the plane.

———

Raven  had flown out with her. Neither spoke. 

Her husband met the waitress after her shift was finished. He took her to the suite at the Beach Hotel  he’d rented for the occasion.  She really was a young thing. So energetic. She’d insisted on being on top and he liked that.  He couldn’t remember how good strange felt. Looking up at her pert breasts and pretty face as she ground her hips and moaned in ecstasy her head flung back her long neck stretched back, he felt young and powerful. After they’d done it once she’d wanted  him to take her from behind. He’d liked that. He’d even been a little rough. Slapped her ass a few times. Like a porn star.  After they’d showered together.  He’d watched her dress.  He’d thought of offering her money but when she didn’t ask he’d thought nothing of it.  He just figured she’d liked it as much as he did.  He was planning on seeing her but she was a little coarse. A bit cheap for his taste now he was dated. Lacking class, he though He didn’t know what he thought of the ‘Fuck You’ tattoo she had cursively written across the small of her back either. 

——-+—

“What were you thinking?” His father asked him two days later.  The family lawyer was present.  “Forget that question. It was stupid of me. You weren’t thinking.  Now tell Mark here exactly what happened and perhaps he can make it right. You can can’t you, Mark.”

“I think so. It would have been worse if she’d gone to the police. The fact that she called you is a pretty good indication it’s just a straight forward shake down. I don’t like the bruises.  You didn’t do any of this, I presume.” He showed the picture of the girl with a bruised and swollen eyes and split lip.

“Of course not.  That’s ridiculous.  I never hit her face. I slapped her butt maybe but I didn’t do that. I’d never hit a woman in the face.” The son was furious. Bantu cock furious. 

“I didn’t think so, so this could mean either she’s done it herself or she’s got an accomplice.’

What’s she asking?” The father asked. 

“Well she’s not asking anything yet. She’s just saying she doesn’t want any other woman to go through what she’s gone through. She says she feared for her life and wanted you to know that she isn;’t after money or anything but that she’s concerned. She thinks your son needs help.”

‘God, that means she wants a lot. What do you guess. 5 figures, 6 figures.” The father looked at Mark. 

“I’ve asked Lou to find out if there’s a boyfriend. I think she wants 6 figures but we can get it down to 5. It’s not like she’s anyone.  What we can tell from her  family is that they’re into drugs.” Mark said. 

——$$

She was admitted to a private hospital overseas in a country where oversight wasn’t an issue and privacy was respected more than anything. The country existed solely to serve the wealthy and powerful. It had been that way for hundreds of years. Most times  such hospitals didn’t  even records. The staff kept what they needed to protect themselves if anything  unravelled. 

Her case was fairly straight forward. There were twenty other women all about the same age, young to middle age mothers, all supposedly depressed.   They had all been fairly  shaky the first days after their arrival.  There was no talking therapy.  Good food, rest and clonepin. There was no liquor in the facility.It wasn’t easy to come by in the country. Not  that that had stopped the local women of class. What they hadn’t been able to buy on the black market their young bodies and obvious intelligence had been able to procure. 

It was different for her.  She’d always had it.  No restrictions. Wine racks always stocked. Until now.  She didn’t like feelings she had now.  She’d been in a foul mood when she spoke to the doctor, called him all manner of names but he’d just put her in a room by herself. The women in the white uniforms, were all butch. Big girls.  Russian by the accent. She’d tried to seduce one but she’d only laughed at her.  

——+—+-

He sat watching his father and the lawyer. It was the second discussion. 

“There’s a biker boyfriend. He’s behind the extortion. He’s not affiliated though. Just a druggy. Even sold his Harley last month for some more crack. Its desperation. The two of them.  Drug addicts who thought they’d lucked out. Wanting the big score. Feeling entitled to it.”

“What can we do.” The father 

“They only want $10,000 . They’d started at $100,000 , just as I said. They settled for $10,000. I have the pictures of her and don’t think there are any more. They’re not smart enough to have kept copies. I scared them a bit too”

“But what happens when they use up the money you’ve given them and they need more drugs. Won’t they keep coming back.’ He asked, even though he’d felt relief at what he’d heard. 

“I don’t think so.  I talked to a friend about that and they said they’d look into it.” The lawyer answered, sharing an imperceptible nod with the father.

———-#

A couple of months later there were two more fentanyl deaths in the city.  The man wasn’t known by any one locally. The girl had a mother who identified her body for the police. The father’s whereabouts were not known.

——-+—

The young woman came home a couple of months later.  She was older now. She wanted to be angry with her mother but she couldn’t be. She was just so glad to be home . To see her children.. To be in her own house. She talked half the night with her sister who caught her up on what was going on.

“Serves him right,” she said when she heard.

That was it.

————$

Life went on.  She talked with the psychiatrist like a good girl. He never asked her anything about herself just wanted to know about the medication. It was what they’d given her in the hospital.  An antidepressant and something  that curbed her desire to drink as well.  

She saw the psychiatrist every month for fifteen minutes. When she’d tried to talk to him about her past or anything but the medication, he cut her off. “I’m sorry our time is up. We can discuss that next session.”  But nothing was discussed.  He was a private psychiatrist and the husband’s family paid him $500 each month.. She learned to take the medication and dutifully comment on her sleep and bowell movements.

Everyone was happy.

She was the wife of a very powerful man today.  The man’s lawyer took him on vacation to some island a couple of times a year.  There was all sorts of scandal in the news feeds but nothing stuck to her or her family.  When her father died her mother told her how much money they had overseas. She hadn’t thought she could be surprised but she was. 

That night she slept with her old boss and told her. “I knew all along girl. It never mattered to me.  Never let the kids know or it will go to their heads.  You don’t want children to lose control now , do you.”

“I guess not, ‘ she said.  She remembered the men in the back alley and the park. She could use a drink. She took an extra pill that night. Her son would be  graduating college soon. She didn’t want to think of her past.