ANN

Escape. It's as if I am programmed this way.

I never think to stay and fight it out with Bud. Why would I? The only instinct I have is to cut my losses and flee. From the moment I stumble down the steps of our apartment, I am rushing headlong into my penchant for destroying my own world.

My fingers are numb as I put the key into the lock on the gate that hides the lot where we park our cars. I have the gate open then ... look in to find his car parked next to mine. I kick his rear bumper on my way to my car. It is so futile. I am in my car and fleeing the city then.

I don't plan to ever come back.

There is no aim to where I drive. I just go. It is almost an hour later, long after I've driven over the bridge that spans the mouth of Lake Pontchartrain that I realize where I'm going. Another instinct.

I'm heading to Florida.

Do I think I'm going to Reggie's family's cottage there? How silly of me. In this world, that cottage was destroyed two years ago in a hurricane that smacked into Florida's panhandle. In my real world, it's where I went when I was fleeing Terry and the mess I'd made of our lives. It doesn't exist here for me to use as a refuge.

When the interstate forks north of the lake, I keep heading north rather than going east toward Florida. I drive into Mississippi, away from the Gulf. I don't know where I'm going so at the state line, I stop at the welcome center to get a map. Outside, in my car, in the heat, I spread the map out on the steering wheel. My eyes are too blurry to see. I cannot focus.

Jesus Christ.

How could he think that of me?

I close my eyes and lean back in the seat. I struggle to not think, to blank my mind. Before I even am aware, I am drowsing in the heat. I come to just enough to turn on the ignition and drive the car over to a space where a tree provides shade and a modicum of cooler air. I lower the windows to let a cross breeze try to get in, lower the seat back all the way, shove my purse and keys under my seat and go to sleep. It's a stupid thing to do. To sleep like this in a public place where anyone could carjack me or rob me. But I am too exhausted to even give a shit.

And maybe someone watches over me. When I wake, hours later, I stare up at the car's ceiling for a while and realize I am alive still. And awake. And hungry. And thirsty. And angry like I haven't been in a long time.

Scary angry.

Inside the welcome center, I plop change in machines and take the soft drink and snacks back out to a bench near the car. I sit at the bench and eat and drink. I think about what is happening.

I have nowhere to go.

I cannot leave New Orleans. I can't leave the bar that I am about to own. I can't start over, all over again, with no friends. I don't want to be alone in the world again. It isn't fair. I just can't do it. That's the truth.

So I am not at all surprised that when I leave the rest area, I double back towards New Orleans at the next exit. I will return to the city, to the bar, to friends. But that does not mean I am returning to Bud. I stop at a shopping area before I cross into the city, where it is still spotty if you'll find anything open. There is a Wal-Mart at the exit. I go in and stock up on toiletries. I buy a few outfits, things I can work in, stuff to schlep around in. Just a stock for a few days until I can figure out how to get back into the apartment and pack up without having to see him.

Him. Bud. The man who thinks I'm as vile as I suppose I am, but not for the particular thing he thinks I've done.

I don't really know where I'll stay but I figure I'll check into a hotel so I'll need a few days of supplies.

It's as I'm exiting off the interstate, turning off Basin, entering the Quarter like it's a beacon to me ... this is when I think of where I'll stay.

The owner has a place. It is the third floor of the building. It's where he lived before going to be with his son and his son's family in Baton Rouge after The Thing. We have the keys to the place in the bar's office. He always kept a set there, just in case there was an emergency.

If Dino is buying the building, that would mean the apartment on the third floor as well, right? It's only a matter of days before I will be an owner of the building so no one could possibly mind if I stay up there in the meantime.

I put the car back in the lot. I don't even have it in me to kick Bud's car on the way out. I am far too angry to even see his car. I lock the green gates and stride over to the bar with my Wal-Mart bags and my purse. It's all I have to start over again.

No, I take that back. I have this bar. I have my friends. It's so fucking much more than I came here with.

I enter through the side entrance, down the alley that few people know is there. In the office, I unlock the case where the keys are. It's where I'd found the gun long ago, the one I gave to one of the neighbors after the storm. I was not going to carry it myself because I remembered how it used to freak Terry out, the thought of me touching a gun since I was afraid of them and didn't want to know how to use one.

The gun is in the case again. It is clean. The neighbor cleaned it before he returned it. He never had to shoot it. I touch the barrel, move it aside, take the keys to the owner's apartment. One key unlocks the elevator that was put in to make it easy to get to the supplies we store on the second floor. Used to be that they kept the kegs up there, used gravity to work the taps. That bright idea lasted less than a year, is what I've been told by the owner. But lugging the kegs up and down was a drag so he put in an elevator.

I picture his face when he was telling me about this. Talking about the bar, about how he used to love it but how he's grown less enamored now that his wife is dead and his kids live outside the city. This was one of the stories he told me. Of the kegs on the second floor and putting in the elevator. His eyes twinkled and he grinned. Said he decided he'd make the elevator go up another floor so his wife wouldn't have to keep hiking up the stairs ... how she said she felt just like the Queen of Sheba, riding up in her own elevator.

So I have an elevator, I think. It lunges upward. It opens into a hall with two doors. I never have asked about the other door but as I stand in front of the door to the apartment, it dawns on me that this other door must be the door to the stairwell. Duh, I think to myself as I let the door to the apartment open.

I've been up here a few times. It all looks the same. The parlor. The hall. The kitchen. The bathroom. I've seen all those. But I haven't seen the back of the place so I wander back there. I find a small bedroom with twin beds and hope this is a guest room. I find another small room that has been made into a man's den complete with smoking lounger, bookshelves and a television. At the end of the hall is another bedroom. It is larger than I expect, airy. The furniture looks like it's from another time ... the 50s.

"God," I groan. Just thinking of that decade brings this guttural, sad explosion. I screw my eyes shut and will myself to stop thinking of Bud. I whirl around and hunt for where I'll keep my Wal-Mart clothes. There is a door I open, thinking it may be a closet ... but it is a door to the outside. To a deck. A deck on the roof. With planters that hold only dead twigs. Someone has laid down cypress decking on the roof, to form this outside sitting area that I never knew existed. Other than the planters, though, there is nothing here. I walk to the edge of the roof, where it rises up part way to form a half wall. I lean over and look down over the alley, into a neighbor's courtyard. That's why I never noticed it. You wouldn't see it from either street that forms the corner.

Wow. This is nice. I like this. Everything inside may be the owner's and it will go when he comes to move out ... but this space out here? He must have never really occupied it. I can make it my own from the very beginning.

Already, I can visualize a canopy, a table with an umbrella. Lights strung along in cheery colors. A grill. A lounger to sunbathe. Maybe even a spa. There is room for it all.

Not that I have money for that, mind you, but dreams don't cost money. You can still dream even when you're poor and living paycheck to paycheck.

Inside, I sit in the kitchen and drink from a bottle of wine that I will have to replace if the owner remembers he left it here. I think about what I'll do now. This night. For a few days.

I think about the fact that I cannot feel my toes, my fingers, my head, my eyes, my tongue, my elbows. All I can feel is my heart. It is swollen. It feels like if I jostle it, even a tiny bit, it will leak. And then where will I be? It will leak out all over the floors and I will not have a heart anymore.

How did this happen to me?

Nothing has prepared me for the knowledge that Bud never trusted me. That whatever else he ever knew about me, he believed me capable of betrayal. Why did he think I'd done this? Had Leo told him it was me?

It was not, of course. 

I call Leo's hotel, ask for his room, leave him a message to call me. My cell rings a moment later. I check the number ID and it is Nate. I remember Bud's voice from earlier in the day and know that Nate also thinks I did something terrible. Fuck him. Talking to him would be like talking to Bud.

Without even realizing it, somewhere my mind is calculating escape from any entanglement with Bud. I have a place to stay. I will not return to the apartment except to pack my things and move them here. I will never speak with Bud or his friend Nate again. I will carve out a separate life.

Maybe.

If it's even worth it, I think, gazing out the window as the light takes on the evening's blue hue.

I call the weekend bartender. Ask her to cover a few nights this week. For me. Starting tonight. She can do it but she will be late tonight. I call the bartender on duty and ask him to stay a few hours over. There must be something in my voice. They must both hear how close to the edge I am. They both agree to what I ask and they don't argue.

By this point, I've drunk most of the wine in the bottle. It is not a night to face sober. I don't want to think. I don't want to feel. I don't want to know my heart is swollen and maybe leaking already.

I deserve this, I tell myself as I finish the bottle and go in hunt for another. Ah. Gin. Makes for a lousy hangover for me but it does get me drunk quick, in my experience.

"And you do have experience with getting stinking drunk on gin," I think as I pour myself a slug-full, add some ice, whisper 'vermouth' over it and then shake the glass until it is cold. Well, it's close enough to a martini, I think.

Why was it again that I ever thought I deserved to be happily in love? It wasn't like I earned that, like some right. In fact, didn't I cheat my way to it? Karma, after all, doesn't know that I'm in another world.

My phone rings again. It is a number I do not recognize, but it is local. So I answer it. It is Leo.

"What did you tell Bud?" I ask him, trying hard not to slur my words.

"Bud? You mean the cop? Dunno I've talked to him, Ann. He isn't exactly approachable."

"You had to say something. He thinks I've been your source ... on the arrest."

"Oh."

"Yeah. 'Oh.' Yeah. Great comment. What'd you tell him?"

"Not a thing. We haven't spoken."

"He said you knew ... the name of the guy ... that you were nosing around."

"Ann ... give me a break. I didn't nose around. I went to the NOPD's PIO and asked for confirmation on the identity."

"Did he give it?"

"Ann."

"Okay, so he didn't. What did he say?"

"Nothing. Next thing I knew, I was meeting with the division commander. He said the arrest was going down soon, that it was sensitive and they needed to finish getting evidence. That if I waited, didn't report what I knew, they'd let me have the arrest first. That I'd have an exclusive for maybe a few hours. You know, it would have been the first news cycle exclusive. That sort of thing."

"But how did you know? The name, I mean. Who told you?"

"A contact. A source."

"Who, Leo? Please. Bud thinks I told you."

"It was ... a friend. Dating one of the officers in the division. Just slipped out, think he was trying to impress her, maybe. Or something."

"God."

"You okay?"

"No."

"If Bud wants me to verify it wasn't you, have him call me."

"It's too late."

"Why?"

"He won't believe it now. He'll think you're covering up for me." I pause and look out the window. It has grown to night and I didn't notice it. "Besides, it doesn't matter. Not now. Not anymore. We all make choices and we have to live with them in the end. He shouldn't have even asked me if I was the one who told you. He should have just known I would never do that to him."

I fill a baggie with ice. I squirt lemon juice I find in the fridge into the bottle of gin. I take the bottle, my glass and the ice out on the deck. It is still so hot out there. If not for the deck, the roof would never work as an outdoor area because the tar on these roofs turn to liquid fire in this heat and stays all soft and hot even after the sun goes down in the summer. But the deck is cool, elevated just enough to be fine. I sit with my back to the wall and pour gin over ice in my glass. I am seriously intent on sitting out here and drinking myself into oblivion.

But then a roach crawls across the space before me, scampering when I lurch to my feet and I wonder who runs faster ... me or the roach ... but it takes me nothing to get back inside the house. I've left the bag of ice outside but I do have the glass and bottle.

So I sit on the floor of the bedroom and get drunk.

The next morning, I rouse myself only enough to find another bottle of something that I think is gin again. I drink until the hangover doesn't hurt.

When I wake up again, I am in such agony. I spend so much time on my hands and knees over the toilet that I don't have energy to even crawl from the bathroom. I hear my phone ring several times as I lay there.

Eventually, I climb to my knees, reach for a washcloth and soak it with cold water from the sink. On the floor again, I put it over my forehead and moan to make sure I'm still alive.

I crawl in, slowly, to the bedroom and gingerly climb up onto the bed. My phone is there, as I find out when it rings and I can do nothing more than try to shut it out but it won't stop so I open it to answer it.

"Annie?"

"What?" I drawl out, hearing my accent from nowhere.

"You okay?"

"Dino?"

"Yeah. Where are you? You sick?"

"Yeah. I am. Sick."

"Where are you?"

"It doesn't matter. What do you need?"

"I need you."

"Me?"

"Well, your signature. I have the contract. I'm here in town. I'm delivering the contract ... overnight express, remember?"

"No. I don't ... wait ... I do remember now. I thought you meant you were FedX'ing the papers."

"That's what you were supposed to think. I wanted to surprise you."

"You did a good job. I'm surprised."

"Yeah. And sick."

"Hung over."

"What's going on? Bud said he didn't ... well, Bud was ... less than cordial. You two have a ... uh ... a fight?"

"I moved out."

"What? When I talked to you the other day, it was all roses and sunshine and he was the greatest thing since sliced bread."

"I was wrong."

He says nothing for so long that I think he's hung up. But then through my haze, I remember who I'm talking to. This is one of his favorite tactics. Silence ... because human nature is to fill that void in a conversation. I have used this tactic myself. So I just hang on the line.

"I'm outside the bar. Where are you? I still need you to sign the papers."

"I'm ... uh ... close by. Look. Go in, have a drink. I'll get cleaned up. Come down and see you. How's that?"

An hour later, I ride the elevator down. Inside me, I have lots of ibuprofen to counteract the hangover symptoms. I have eaten all the crackers I found in the freezer. I feel my way down the hall, outside into the alley, down to the street, along the building and into the door. Dino is perched at the bar. Leo is sitting not that far from Dino.

Before I can make it to Dino, Leo leaps up, gets to me, drags me over to a table. Tells me I look awful. That he feels really bad that Bud thinks I was his source. That he went to the station, to find Bud, to tell him. But Bud wasn't there.

"So?" I say, gruff and edgy. I lean around him, motion to Dino to hang on. Dino gives me a look. "I told you to leave it. Don't talk to Bud."

"I was gonna talk to Nate ... but it's awkward."

"Sure. I can see that. Look ... just leave it. It just doesn't matter anymore."

"No, you don't understand. I want to fix this."

I sigh and blow air out. I put both hands on his shoulders and look right in his eyes. "Leo, leave it. The way I figure it is that this was coming one day. He didn't even know me. So it was bound to happen. Better now than even later, eh?"

"You're sure?"

"Positive. Now, look, I have a friend I need to meet with. We have some business together." I pat him on the arm and half-shove him toward the door. "Go home. Go read a book. Chill out. And don't worry about anything."

When I reach Dino, he is flirting with the bartender. I order mineral water. Dino gives me the twice over. I suck down the water. And another. He asks when I've eaten last. I ask if crackers count. He takes my hand and guides me out of the bar, down the street, into a pizza shop called Mona Lisa. The place is almost full. I can remember how it was always one of those places you had to wait a long time for a seat this time of night. Now, there're three tables open.

I don't think I'm hungry but when the pizza comes, I devour a piece.

Dino never really asks me what's going on. He doesn't have to. He just watches me. He tilts his chin down, smiles when I say something sassy, and looks sad when I just stare into space.

So I tell him what happened.

"And just like that, it's over?" he asks, cocking his head to the side and studying me.

I shrug. "There's nothing left, really. You got any idea how it feels that the first thing he thinks is that I told someone a secret he told me? That I did it to score points with another man? Hey, I suppose I don't blame him."

"No? You think he shouldn't trust you?"

I shrug again. "He knows things about me you don't, Dino. Things that would color any man's perception of my moral integrity."

"Bud's not like that."

"Bud's human. He may have thought he loved me but I think he just wanted to rescue me. He confused that with love."

"You're not mad at him?"

I shrug but don't answer this time.

"What are you going to do, Annie?"

"I'm going into business with you, Dino. He can go to hell."

And this is what I think. And I think I mean it. I think I have closed the Bud chapter of my life. I sign the paperwork, I become an owner, I have the keys. Dino says he thinks it's fine if I live in the apartment on the third floor. He says that's a good solution.

The next night, when I'm not hung over, Dino comes with me to my old apartment. The one where Bud now lives. Dino goes up, makes sure it's empty. And then he helps me pack some things. Clothes, books, a few mementos, whatever we can fit into his rental and drive over to the bar. I leave Bud a note and tell him that I have found a new place so he is welcome to this one. That I will want the furniture that is mine ... eventually ... so for him not to toss it just yet.

Dino scopes the new place out. Says it looks like an old man lives here. He makes me laugh in spite of myself. 

We talk over the bar, the building. Upgrades. Improvements. Changes. He has brilliant ideas but I have a feeling anything would sound brilliant since my mind is still a void when it comes to thinking ahead.

When he leaves the next day, I know he thinks he's abandoning me. I tell him this will be good for me. It will be a growing experience. I need the challenge right now.

But the truth is that when Dino is gone, I sit in the middle of that bed in the master bedroom and I cry. And I am angry. I am furious. I am so angry that I feel like doing something. Something bad.

My mind is drifting with these waves of anger ... and the fruitless search for the right thing to do to express that anger ... and into my head floats a snippet of a conversation I once had with Bud.

"You don't know angry," Bud said.

But if there was ever angry, it was embodied in his voice. I thought about what I'd done, once when so angry over a betrayal. I thought about what I'd become in the aftermath.

"I do, actually. And that's why I can say this to you ... You have a right to be angry. You do. Just be careful what you do with that anger, Bud. You'd be surprised how it can turn on you and you end up hurting yourself in ways you just never see coming."

It's the truth, too. 

I am capable of the worst things when I am this angry. It should scare me what I can do. I ruined my life in that other world because of what I did when I was so angry. It ended up hurting me and someone I loved so horribly. It is the reason I am here. The reason I lost that life. That I lost that Terry.

My self-destructiveness comes out when I am angry. It's why I slipped willingly across the line into S/M. I had this instinct that the more I debased myself, the more I would pay for the sins I committed in that other world. I was angry then ... angry that I'd never get a chance to atone for those sins.

So, I don't exactly know what to do. But I make myself a vow to try to learn from my mistakes. I hope I can be rational this time through.

Is there even any sort of rationality in anger? This kind of anger? I am angry ... at Bud, I suppose. At life in general. Am I still angry at me, though?

That night, I lie in the bed and watch the clock on the side of the bed as it ticks the hours down. I am not used to sleeping at night. I am used to working. I watch the digital clock tick and I muse on how digital clocks don't really tick.

What is ticking is my heart.

It is so loud.

I can hear music downstairs. I cannot sleep. I get up, dress, go down to the bar. I should be working tonight but I am still not on the schedule. I still have the weekend bartender filling in for me. I pretend I am coming in from a night out. I doubt I fool anyone.

Least of all Nate.

Nate who sits at a table in the corner sipping on something amber and neat.

Who watches me with sad eyes as I sit down at his table. Who doesn't flinch when I mention to him that he probably doesn't want to hang out here anymore. That I know how much loyalty means to Bud so even if Nate is forgiving me, it is not important enough to me to upset his friend and partner.

"Why would I forgive you?" Nate asks me.

"Fine. Don't. Doesn't matter ... it just seemed maybe that was why you were here. To show me I'm forgiven."

"For what?"

I blink and then look hard at him. Is he drunk as a skunk? He looks a little pie-eyed but not blotto. "For telling Leo about your murder suspect's name."

"You told Leo?"

"No."

"Then ... What? You just said ..." He sits up, shakes his head like he's cutting through spider webs.

"I meant ... Bud thinks I told Leo. I didn't. Not that he will believe me. Not that he should have suspected me in the first place ... but he did. And he was wrong. And I just figured he told you what he thought ... in fact, he said you were angry, too, over all this."

"But not at you."

"Leo was just doing his job."

"Sure. I don't like what he did but ... he's got a job. And he didn't spread it over the streets like we thought. It's not him."

"Wait, I am so confused. Are we even involved in the same conversation?"

He leans over the table toward me. The juke box goes loud. I lean toward him. He puts a hand over mine. "Bud ... Bud thinks you are Leo's source for the perp's name?"

I nod.

He shakes his head. Grips my hand. "No, no. It was Margaret."

"Who is Margaret?"

"The reporter from Leo's paper. The one I was trying to ..."

I close my eyes and think about what Leo said to me, about the source. A cop telling a girl he wants to impress. "You told her. She told him."

"Yeah. And now she's flown home to New York. So I can't even yell at her, being such a bitch."

When I open my eyes, colors in the bar swim in front of me. "Then why are you here, Nate? Are you and Bud not even talking to each other? Have you not told each other this?"

Nate cups my cheek in his hand. His eyes are round with worry. Sorrow. "I thought we understood each other. I thought he knew it was me. Thought it's why he was so ... He's been a bastard working with but I figured he was working out being pissed at me. Y'know? That he knew I fucked up ... and wasn't gonna rat me out to the brass but wasn't gonna make it easy on me, either."

I put my hand over his, the one on my cheek. I know I'm crying. I just don't know why. I honestly thought I was done with crying over this. Thought I'd pulled my armor out and was girding my heart with it already.

"Then why are you here?" I ask Nate. "If she's flown home and Bud's not coming around ... why are you here?"

"I figured I'd come someplace where people still like me. I thought I'd come see you."

"If you are ever hoping to see Bud after work, you won't see him here."

He purses his lips. And then he gives me one of his sloppy smiles before kissing the tip of my nose. "And that's my fault, for sure. I will take care of this, Ann. Promise. Trust me?"

"Don't get involved, Nate. Please. Just let him go on thinking it was me. That damage has been done and it's not fixable. You tell him it was you and then he won't even have his best friend over all this. And it will all be for nothing if you're thinking it'll fix whatever is wrong between me and Bud. Because we are history."

"You still love him. Don't kid a kidder."

"I will get over it. I am going to be fine."

And I will be. I know I will. It will take time but I will be fine.

If I've learned anything, I can find a way to survive.

July 13
BUD

In the past, busting a big case was a spark that fed my thirst for this job. For my role in making justice work. You crack something after days and weeks of tracking every tiny lead to its logical conclusion, then something quirky happens and things make sense in a different way. Or someone you gave up on suddenly has an attack of the guilts and will tell you something that makes all the difference in the world.

And you know what happened, who did it, why ... and the thing is, when you feel it fall into place like that, you can forget the cases that you'll never solve and you can believe you are on a roll.

I used to feel like that. Walking into the station the next day, starving to attack the next case, wanting to stay on the roll.

But it is only empty inside me after we make the case on Anthony. He killed five boys. He's a boy himself. He's one sick, mean motherfucker. He would have done worse if we hadn't gotten to him but he's already done a crime so foul it made every cop in town think for just that fraction of a moment about whether or not it was worth it, being out there on the streets.

He's off the streets. But how many other Anthonys are out there right now? Did it even matter getting this one if there were others who'd take his place?

Two mornings later, I came back to the apartment after my shift, sure that Ann would be up there. I stood down below, on the sidewalk, one foot on the stoop's bottom step, and contemplated not going up. I was tired beyond anything. I did not want to see her. I figured she'd be up there, waiting on me, ready to lie to me again. Her probably thinking maybe if she just lied good enough, or apologized at last, that we'd work through it.

Anger still rippled through me. It fatigued me. It unnerved me for how I could not figure out what to do with it.

But when I got up there, finally ready to face her, the place was empty. And there was a note from her saying she had found a new place to live.

No apology for what she did.

Just cutting me completely out of her life. Moving out on me.

The only thing she was worried about was her furniture. I mattered less to her than her fucking couch and table.

It took every bit of self control not to smash all of that furniture into small bits. I did some damage, true, but not what I felt like doing. It was just one dining room chair that made a healthy few dents in the wall and took out a lamp before finally breaking apart. The neighbor downstairs came up, wanting to find out if Ann was okay, still not used to me being around all this time later. But his face, looking behind me into the apartment ... and reading right there in his eyes and tight mouth that he really did think me capable of hurting this woman I loved ... I suppose it's what stopped me from the rampage I felt like going on.

Because I did love her. Despite it all. If I didn't, would it have hurt to have her betray me? To make me feel all over again like the man who didn't deserve having a good woman put him first in her life?

Called in and took a personal day off for that night's shift. I hadn't slept, nothing to eat. Ragged from what little I'd drunk down in between trying to call Ann on her cell. I wanted to hear it from her, in her voice, make her tell me why she moved out ... if she was moving right into that bastard reporter's hotel room.

Late afternoon, Dino came by. Said he was in town to see Ann. Great, I'm thinking, she's called in Dino. Dino the magic man, come to fix things for her. He says he wants me to listen, that he's got something to tell me about Ann, about how I got it wrong. I tell him to get fucked, that if she's got something to say to me, she says it herself.

He doesn't back down. Just stares at me. Silent.

"What?" I finally say to him, just to get it over with.

"Go talk to her. Clear this up."

"It's clear already, O'Leary. Get out of my business."

"You know me better than that. Where would you be right now if I'd left you to wallow in your business back in California?"

"I wouldn't be here, that's for damned sure."

"She wasn't the source."

"Yeah? She tell you that?"

"Yes. She did."

"What'd you think she'd tell you, Dino? You think she'd own up to this? Of course she's gonna deny it."

He shakes his head. Puts his hands on his hips like he does. That always irritates the fuck out of me when he does that. I have to look away or I swear I will punch him.

"You have got one chance to make this right, Bud, or you will both lose something I don't think either of you can afford to lose. She thinks you don't trust her. Apparently, she's right. But I'm telling you, you are wrong. Go see her. Straighten it out."

"I ain't going to that fucker's hotel room to see her."

"She's not in a hotel. And what fucker are we talking about?"

I turn to look at Dino. He is staring right into me. Steady. Calm. "The fucking reporter. Leo. She knew him in her other world. They were friends ... I think maybe lovers, too, from how she reacted to seeing him."

He purses his lips at first. Like I'm an idiot. I may be, but I don't need O'Leary passing judgment on me. "She's staying in the apartment on the third floor of the building where the bar is. And I am telling you this only because I trust you will do something smart here. What difference does it make, in the end, which one of you makes the first move as long as you talk this out?"

"Why the fuck would I need you to tell me what to do?"

"Fine. Throw it away."

"Get out. And don't come around telling me shit again, got that?"

"Fine."

When he leaves, I am even angrier. Or maybe it's just that the anger is back on the surface, needing something to exorcise it. Or exercise it, maybe. I stomp down the stairs, heading for the street, sure I can find a way to work the anger out tonight. The anger at her.

Outside, my body instinctively wants to turn to the right, heading in the direction of the bar where Ann works. But I force it to go left. I find other bars that night. The third one, I find a woman ... she's sad and blousy, as we used to say ... she's here working the recovery for some insurance company and at first I have to listen to how everyone thinks she's a bad person because she works for the insurance company. How alone she's been. I buy her a second drink; we move to a back booth where it's dark and we sit next to each other. When her drink's almost empty, I put my hand on her knee. She runs a hand up the inside of my thigh. I return the favor. I put my mouth on the side of her neck; she leans into me. I stick my tongue in her ear; she shivers then kneads my groin.

The moment I ask if she wants to take me back to her place for a nightcap, she gets that smile they all get when they think they've found someone sweet to pass the night with.

She does fix me a drink. I have most of her clothes off by the time we are ready for a refill. She's bending over the miniature refrigerator, pulling out the little bottles in there, the ones with liquor. I grab her from behind. We struggle our way over to the bed. It's all we can do to make it there before I fall on her. She stops me ... wants me in a condom ... I feel the taste of bile in the back of my throat after the unbidden thought I get that this is a good idea, and one I should have had, because I don't want to take a disease home to Ann.

I don't want to think about her. Or about the fact there just ain't no going home to her anymore.

Her face comes into my mind and I try so to shut it out.

The woman I'm with, for some reason, she asks just then if I'm married ... if I'm about to cheat on my wife. I just shake my head. But I can't fuck her if I'm looking at her so I turn her over, cajole her around ... and just do it.

I won't lie that I don't come because I do. I won't lie that there wasn't a part of me that felt satisfied ... and a part of me that just felt terminally bitter. For all my life, I think, I will remember the way that woman rolls over and kisses my cheek when I say I better go. It is sweet and simple ... and the last desperate gesture of a lonely woman wanting to feel she's reached me in some way beyond the purely physical.

Walking home, it's just turning to that really dark part of the night. The time when most people are gone home. Most tourists have drunk their fill. Bars are quieter. Those who work here are getting off, wandering out for their own drinks in the bars that cater more to the locals than tourists still howling on Bourbon.

I think about going to her bar. She'd be there. Working this shift. I think about how she might be able to tell I have just come from another woman. How she's walked out on me so what would she care? Only I know she will care. I hope it will hurt her; I know it will slice into her self confidence.

Dino feels sorry for her. I feel sorry for me.

When I walk in her bar, I glance toward where I know she'll be, behind the bar. I am going to walk right up to the bar, take a seat, order a drink from her. Let her deal with seeing me. Knowing I am not just going to go away just because she thinks I'm more disposable than her furniture. And she will be able to tell I've been with someone else ... because I'll be able to tell if she has. If she has been with that fucker Leo.

She is not behind the bar, though. It is Kristi, the weekend girl. Kristi looks at me as I walk in, as I hesitate on my way toward an empty barstool. She turns and looks to her left, toward the tables. I turn and see where she's looking.

Nate. Sitting at a table. Talking to a woman. He leans across the table. Strokes her face ... it's his classic move ... next thing, he'll move in to kiss her. It's his schtick with a girl he's picking up.

It's when it dawns on me who he's with. Who he's picking up tonight.

Ann. Letting him touch her. Annie. Putting her hand on his. Their faces so close now that I feel the breath leave me like someone has punched me. I turn around and leave before I have to watch them kissing.

I stand outside the bar for a long time, it seems. I need to catch my breath. I didn't know it would hurt like that. They've both betrayed me, right?

Eventually, I do have to walk away. Other people come, they want to get in the bar. I move aside for them but not far at first. Then I get tired of people coming in, people who know me, people saying hi and shit. I wander back to the apartment that was hers and then was ours and now is my prison to sleep in without her.

I can't go up there. So I sit on the stoop and listen to the Quarter noises.

Footsteps approach. They get so close, they make me notice them. They stop before me. I look up.

It's Nate.

My fingers are around his throat and I don't remember moving. I punch him; he punches back. We are rolling on the sidewalk, belting each other. He doesn't stand a chance with me except he fights dirtier than I do. And because somewhere deep inside me, some voice is shouting at me to not kill him.

Someone, the neighbor downstairs who's been worried about me all day, must have called 911. I hear the car squeal to a halt before us but I am trying to get in position to belt Nate in the chopper again when hands are dragging me off.

Through the red fog of anger, I hear voices and know it's cops. I notice the cop car next to us a second before the guy who has me around the neck shoves me into it, face first.

The fight leaves me. I go limp.

The cop who has me asks for ID. I haul out my badge. Nod at Nate, who's standing with his arms up on the hood of the cop car. I say to the cop that Nate's on the job, too.

Eventually, we sort it out. They look at each other when we say we are partners. They will not file a report. But if they get called out again ... they will write us up if they do have to come out again, one of them tells us.

When they drive away, Nate drops onto the stoop. He calls me a motherfucker. Says whatever he's done, he didn't deserve that but that he's glad I got the ass-kicking out of the way.

"I always thought I could count on you when it came to not messing with her," I say to Nate. "Isn't it bad enough already? That she fucked us over, then left me? Why would you go to her after that?"

He leans back against the building and looks at me. Shakes his head. His lip is bleeding. I hand him a handkerchief. "Fuck. You mean Ann? This was about her? You saw us ... just now? In the bar? Well, crap, of course that would be it, since everything else is so fucked up around us."

I can't even speak. To speak is to acknowledge the pain. I won't show it to him. Not more than I already have. A man shouldn't have to do that in front of another man.

"Bud, it isn't what you think. We were both just sad. We were just talking. That's all."

I swallow. What did I expect him to say? "What are you doing coming over here to see me now? Tonight? After you been with her? What am I supposed to think?"

He shakes his head, looks off. Shuffles his feet the way he does when he's about to come out with something he's been thinking hard to put into just the right words. Then puts his hands up as he raises his chin, looks into my eyes without blinking. He is sweating. Bleeding from where I must have got him on the mouth. "I need to tell you something, Bud. I just don't want you to hit me. I want you to remember that you already done hit me tonight, okay?"

This is when he tells me. About how he told this girl that works with Leo the name of the guy who did the murders ... Anthony. How it just slipped out ... they were out drinking ...they ended up in her hotel room ... he was trying to get her into bed ... and it just came out. He thought it was just between them. He shouldn't have been drinking, he says. He knows he fucked up, he says.

I'm listening to him. When he stops, I turn around and look the other way. Feels like my chest has caved in, like if I looked down, it'd just be this big curved area that was smashed in on itself. I am not angry with him, not really. This is Nate. My partner. My friend. I've lost everything else ... him, too? I would have understood, I tell him. If you'd just told me, I would have understood, I say.

He says he thought I knew. That I'd seen him with the girl, that he figured I'd put it all together.

All I can do is sigh. Shake my head. And on the heels of this revelation, a moment of supreme clarity explodes in my head.

Jesus fucking Christ.

I've thrown it all away. And I know her well enough to know what it means that she walked out the way she did, without looking back.

The world swims before me. I barely make it to the curb before I lose whatever was in my stomach. Feels like I will never stop retching when Nate puts his hands on my shoulders, leading me toward the apartment building and up the stairs. I hand him my keys and he opens the door that leads to the place I remember coming to after the hurricane like it was the refuge from every soul-searing thing I'd seen or smelled in that bad time.

For a while, I stand empty-eyed before the bathroom sink. And then I rinse my mouth, brush my teeth, wash my face, scrub my hands ... and know if I looked in the mirror, I'd see a hollow man crying tears that don't mean shit. So I don't look.

Nate's standing in the kitchen, looking out the window. He's got coffee brewing. I fucked up, I tell him. He says he knows I did. That I have to go make it right.

But I cannot go to her tonight. Not with the remains of another woman still on me. 

ANN

Since I cannot sleep, I decide to spend time in the bar's office. With the door shut, the noise out in the bar is a series of dull thumps punctuated by tingles of laughter.

I mean to make notes, think, plan. I have ideas and I've talked to Dino enough to have other ideas. I've been managing the bar long enough now to know a lot of what needs to be done. But now I'm free to think beyond managing the other bartenders' schedules and overseeing the ordering of supplies.

Before me is a pad of white paper with thin blue lines. I want black handwriting to appear on it. Maybe some bar genie will come in, wave a magic wand, and my ideas will appear on the paper so I can start planning how to implement things.

But it is all rather overwhelming, this sudden load of responsibility that is a firm commitment ... the firmest one I've made in an awful long time. No more cutting and running. That's what I wish I could do ... cut and run. Get the fuck away from this city and from every memory it ever held for me of a man I'm sick in love with. And deadly angry with. Dangerous fury that has in the past caused me to self-destruct.

And I find I am just not in the right frame of mind to have a free-thinking session to make plans for a future that is both a salvation and an albatross.

Truth is, all I can really think about is Bud. And how I am really going to have to go on without him in my life. How unfair it is that I will never be able to prove my innocence to him. Pain moves in. I try to shove it away.

And then I think about how I never deserved him or this chance with him anyway. Not really. It just fell in my lap and I should have never grabbed onto it like I did. After the things I've done in my life to other people who loved me, it's fair that I'm getting fucked over by someone I love. I don't think life owes me much more than this anyway.

Who was I to think Karma would not exact a heavy toll from me?

I close my eyes and put my face on the desk. I see Bud in my memory. Smiling at me. And then I see sadness in his eyes, fatigue in his body. I see the droop in his shoulders. The defeat in his jaw. The shuffle in his step. I know he's hurting, thinking I've done something so bad.

Thinking another woman he took a chance with has let him down so badly.

Hours later, I wake up to find a puddle of drool under my cheek. I snort as I wake and jerk up. I look down at my drool puddle and wipe my mouth dry. Jesus, what a loser.

July 14
BUD

Before I pick up Nate for work, I cruise past the bar. Scope it. Park. Get out. Look up to the third floor. Actually count the floors. One. Two. Three. Is she up there? It's early for her to be working the bar. Maybe she's up there, looking down, seeing me standing there.

It doesn't matter if she sees me.

Maybe it'd be good if she did.

She must know that Nate came and told me about their conversation. She must know that I know now that she didn't even think it was worth defending herself to me when I accused her of being the fuck reporter Leo's source.

If she'd said something ... it'd be different.

But then I play that encounter between us ... way I remember it ... I never gave her a chance. I wouldn't have believed anything she said. She never even tried. Not really. Did she?

Nate told me to send flowers. Big ones. Spend a paycheck on them. Make the note cryptic, sophisticated. You can't buy her, I had said to him. It was us both on our fourth cup of coffee, up all night, up all morning. Him thinking if he could fix this, it was something.

It was something, all right.

Something only I could do.

You can't buy her. You can't buy me, either. I think maybe that's the first time I've put that together ... we are alike in that way. Our sense of honor may not be what others consider normal or right, but we both know what honor means to us.

Eventually, I figured out what to do. So, I did send her flowers. Well, flowers may be a stretch but the plant was in bloom. I did not spend a paycheck. I sent her an azalea bush. The bloom deep pink. She would remember, she would. It would turn out to be the right thing to do. The way to make her see that I wanted to see her again. And soon.

So why am I here, now? The plant had to have gotten to her by now. Did I expect her to come rushing out, the plant in her hands, a smile on her lips, calling my name?

No, I do not. But I do think I came here like an exclamation point to the gesture of knowing enough about her to send that plant that I know will touch her, soften her up.

Fair warning, I say under my breath just as I turn and climb back into the car. 

I'm about to turn at the corner, heading toward the river to get Nate when something dark with splashes of green falls to the sidewalk in front of the pub. I stop when I am abreast of the now splattered remains of the azalea bush I sent to her as a message to say I remembered the part of her that she gave to me.

I look out the other window for a long moment before I can look ahead of me, into the future, and drive into it.