BUD
April 17, 2005

New Orleans. Airline Highway.

"I recognize this stretch," I said to Nate.

"Not exactly the Miracle Mile unless you're thinking the street corner hoochies are handing out gold nuggets instead of blowjobs," he said.

Like I said before, I like Nate. He's got something inside him that I recognize ... used to identify with, now envy. It's a clear-cut knowing of his place and his role.

"We got places like this in L.A. Don't worry. I don't know anyone's ever thought I was a choirboy." I let the fleeting memory pass ... of the first time I was on this stretch of asphalt. Playing pool and other adventures.

"You? Choirboy? Wendell White, I can see you up in the choir loft now, singing with that pretty voice of yours. All the girls creaming their jeans. You, though, wouldn't have the first clue what to do with that kinda action."

I squirmed in my seat a bit. Getting tired of him ragging on me about me and women. He knew I was holding out on him in some way. I'd been staying with him the last week because he was trying hard to convince me to leave San Francisco behind and take a detective's job open in his precinct. I was pretending to consider it.

In reality, I was sinking. Wanted to believe I could control my life, my decisions. Needed to prove to myself I was taking back control. Only thing ... taking control meant I had hard times ahead. Decisions to make. I still didn't believe except I did. Which sucks. It's why I was sticking around. Longer I was here, longer I didn't have to do what a man's got to do in times like this. But this night, I had begun to turn the corner without fully realizing it. Nate was part of the reason.

He had this way of calming me down. Of challenging me and my assumptions. Of just saying something and I'd want to punch him at the same time I wanted to ask him how the fuck he got to know me so quick.

Options? He held out one big fat juicy option when I told him I needed to figure out what I was going to do with everything in my life changing. He gave me this look; said he never had figured me for the sob sister type. That a man takes control of the changes as soon as he can. Rather than sitting around bitching and whining like life owes you something when it sure the fuck doesn't.

Had to look my future in the face. Even my old man hadn't beat out of me the ability to take on the future with my past riding along.

I hung around with Nate and made some plans for my future. But I was still waiting on something ... some explosion, maybe. Some ultimatum. Some definitive proof. Until then, I gathered bits of evidence and I nursed the blackness of belief.

At night, I'd do their shift, riding with Nate and his partner Bobby, the good family guy. We'd finish up at their precinct, do the paperwork, hit the showers. Bobby'd take off for home. Then Nate and me would dive some joint, have some drinks, talk some bullshit, hook up with other cops ... and all the while, Nate was looking for skirt. He looked for skirt for me, too, but I never could take it.

Not then.

I told him I made a promise to someone. And I had. But I don't know if that's what was keeping me back. Because the reality was there was someone here who made me want to imagine a future right here. Here with a woman whose body I knew but whose mind and spirit didn't know me from Adam. Lately, though, she seemed to be taking an interest in me. Me. Not my body. But me. And she made me want better things, pure things, like natural attraction. I'd rather spend all night watching her work behind a bar than a few sweaty minutes getting it off with some woman I picked up in one of Nate's bars.

Nate knew I was staying away from California as much as I was staying in Louisiana. He wanted to know specifics; it bugged him. It would have bugged him more if he'd known.

I liked going out on calls with them. It passed the time. And then we passed this joint on Airline. I remembered going in there once with Annie, the one I knew. Playing pool. The knots that woman twisted me into. I tried hard not to think about it. Embarrassing to get all excited sitting in a cop car, cruising along a seedy street on the outskirts between Metairie and New Orleans.

"I used to know a girl who lived here," I said as I looked at the street corner floozies as Nate crept along in his car on Airline, probably intrigued that I'd said I recognized this stretch and wondering if I'd say how.

"She not live here anymore?" Bobby asked me.

"No." I saw them exchange glances because I said it so abrupt. Made me feel like a chump. What'd I expect if I bring it up; they're going to ask questions. "She's got a relative still here, though."

Fuck. I don't know why I said that. Like I got some kind of death wish? Why open that particular little can of worms for them?

Nate looked at me in the rear view mirror. Slow smile on his face. "So. Bud White. You snake. Been holding out on us. She the real reason you're still in town pretending you're waiting around in case your perp's paperwork hits a snag?"

I grunted and looked out the window. Yeah. So I was still there. So I was telling my captain and anyone else who asked that something was maybe hinky with the paperwork and I didn't want to leave until I knew the extradition would sail through. The captain said to leave it for the marshals to escort him back. I didn't give a shit what he said.

Maybe I just didn't want to be going back more than I was wanting to stay here.

Maybe I liked the way my mind was sharper lately.

Maybe I was afraid of what I'd do if I went back.

Maybe I thought I could figure out my life if I didn't do anything stupid.

Maybe I was fucking tired of all the ways I'd compromised only to realize nothing was what I thought.

Maybe I was just too fucking angry about that.

Everything was changing.

Maybe I liked the way she was looking at me the last few nights.

Maybe I liked the way it made me feel like a man again.

Maybe I wondered more and more how she had gone through what she went through and how she'd really come through it all to seem like she was okay now.

Maybe I wondered if she was really okay.

Maybe I wondered if she would understand what I was going through.

Maybe I wondered how she'd feel if I just asked her to give me an excuse to stay here.

"So who is she, Bud? Gonna introduce us? C'mon, man. You know I'm gonna find out," Nate said.

"Shut up, shitbird," I said. But I grinned up at his eyes, crinkled up and looking at me in the rear view again. I pictured Annie taking him apart. This was a different Ann though. I pictured this one with Nate. I pictured how she dealt with the guys coming on to her at that bar. I said, "She's just a friend. But she's too smart a girl for the likes of you. You'd never be able to handle her."

"Oh?" His eyebrows went up. "I think Bud has just laid down a challenge. Don't you, Bobby? C'mon. Where is she, Bud? We got two hours left on shift. We can blow this other stuff off and no one's the wiser. Let's cruise by and check her out. Maybe there's a crime wave nearby we need to investigate."

"No." I imagined what she'd say if we showed up at her bar. I looked at my watch. She'd be at work. Things would be somewhat quiet if it was like normal.

"That means yes," Bobby said, turning in his seat to look at me. "Besides, you don't tell us and we'll just call your partner up in Frisco and ask him who she is. Your secret's safe with us, Bud."

"No." I looked at Bobby. "He don't know her anyway. And we don't call it Frisco. Only the tourists do. And idiots like you two bozos."

"Mmm. Trying to get us off the scent, isn't he? But I smell a man who's cheating on his woman."

"I'm not cheating on anyone. Not like that. Besides, the only thing going on in my love life is an open door so it's not a question of cheating."

"Sure. We believe you."

"It's not what you think. She's a friend of a friend. Just looked her up, to check on her for her friend."

"You think? Yeah, yeah, I know just the kind of friend of a friend you are."

I stared at Bobby until he turned around. Then they giggled at each other. We cruised on a while longer. Suddenly, Nate snapped his fingers and glanced at Bobby. "Hey. You remember that chick Bud asked us to run down right after he got here? Works as a bartender in the Quarter? Remember that?"

"Oh, yeah. I'd forgotten." Bobby leaned back in his seat.

"I never forget when a man does something he thinks I'm gonna forget," Nate said, now eyeing me up in the mirror again.

I shook my head. But he had me.

"Just leave her alone, okay?" I said. 

"Let's see now. What bar was it?"

"Might as well tell us, Bud. If it's not tonight, Nate'll remember it eventually. And if worse comes to worse, we'll look up the records search."

I gave them the name of the bar. We cruised over. I wanted to see her. On the way there, I got to thinking this over. I wanted to push this. I wanted her to see I'd push it, coming in with these two jokers like I was willing to shake things up.

Past two weeks, her and me dancing around things, just talking, never really taking it further. But lately, she might have been looking at me and it didn't seem it was the same way as in the beginning. So she didn't know me. But that didn't mean she wasn't interested now. That didn't mean I didn't maybe know a few things about her I could use to my advantage to get her interested.

Something had to shake things up ... I was having a hard time being that close to her and never being able to really touch her like I'd once touched her body. It made me edgy. I held on with everything I had to the fact that I had to fix my screwed up life before I made another mistake. But sometimes she'd look at me and I found myself looking back instead of forward. I was drowning. But I kept waiting for a reason to go. I kept thinking of reasons to stay.

She wasn't behind the bar when we came in. She was dancing with some guy. The jukebox was playing a salsa. I recognized her from the back. She always had liked to dance. She had good moves.

When she saw me that night, her reaction was hard to place. I'd been coming in there every night. Just to have a drink. And we'd talk. About the weather, about the economy, about crime, about taxes. Okay, so it was mostly the kind of talk a good bartender makes with a regular. But I kept coming back for more of it. Because more and more, I was figuring it out. She wasn't the woman I knew ... but there was no danger here except in seeing her for who she really was. I just kept thinking she'd remember me. She never did. 

I'd gotten in the habit of dropping in about an hour or two before her shift was over and then walking out with her, watching her as she walked to where her car was parked. Hanging around near my car to make sure she got off safe from the parking lot.

So while she might have gotten used to me coming around, not only was I a lot earlier than normal this night, but I was lugging two strangers with me like I owned a part of this place.

We sat at the bar. I watched her finish the dance. The guy she was dancing with was dark and he moved like he knew that what he wanted with her was not just a possibility but was a sure thing. He looked Hispanic of some kind. He looked like a bum the way he was touching her.

When she came back behind the bar, she was flushed and had this light sheen of sweat on her face and down to her chest. She was wearing a deep pink top that kind of skimmed her shoulders. She was fanning herself, smiling and trying to not be smiling when she looked at me.

I noticed it right off because I'd begun to look forward to the smiles she'd give me. They might have been mostly impersonal but when she smiled like it was meant just for me, I couldn't help the impact it had. It made me feel like I was somebody to her on a personal level, you know? Like we were getting to know each other. A lot of nights, it was just me and her at the bar for long stretches of time. Other customers might be in there, but they'd be clustered around tables, partying it up a bit.

Last night had been one of those nights. I actually learned something about her instead of the bartender patter she tried to stick with. We talked about places we might want to go someday.

She's been lots more places than I have. She said she used to have a job that took her all over. I liked watching her eyes as she talked about some of them. Even when there was pain, I liked watching her eyes. It forced me to see her and not the Annie I'd known.

I said the only place I felt like I'd missed out seeing was Cuba in its heyday with the Tropicana and Copa Cabana, places like that. Take a girl dancing under the moon, I remember telling her. Big bands. Real dancing. Get dressed up with the girl of your dreams on your arm. Sipping one of those piña colada drinks.

She said she'd never figured me for that kind of guy. And then she teased me when I blushed.

First time I've smiled in a few weeks.

Yeah.

This is like digging a line in quicksand. My life's so fucked up right now and I'm having thoughts about her that I have no right to think. Somehow this has changed from me thinking I should be watching over her. The last thing she needs is my woes added on top of hers. What kind of man am I?

But I liked being around her. And I liked thinking about her. And I liked that it was beginning to seem possible that she was thinking about me in that same way. So, I was ... what? Thinking I'd chuck the old baggage and park myself in her life, like I could just trade lives that way with no pain, no problems, no remorse, no fuss? Maybe I really was just nothing too much more than my dick.

I needed to go back, put order to the chaos, and then make up my mind where I was going next. I couldn't stay in California. No way. That was over and I knew that, too. It hurt. It was raw. But there was no way I could stay there now. Not now that I was figuring I probably believed Arthur. The pieces all fit ... the ride was over.

So if I left that city and struck out on my own, what was next for me? So, yeah, I'd been thinking a lot about Nate and all that talk of openings in the NOPD. I had this whole fairy tale already drawn up that maybe I'd found my port in the storm. Like I had a ready-built new life here.

Who's kidding who, here?

I swear that I honestly do know she's not the woman I first knew in that body. But there was mutual interest between us, me and this other Annie. I don't think I was kidding myself about that. Or maybe it was just that my ego needed her to be interested in me ... as if to prove that I could catch someone like that without any outside help.

And then the three of us walked into her bar that night. Me, Nate, Bobby. And it went to shit in a hand basket. 

It started the moment she and Nate started flirting with each other like I wasn't even there. I watched the courtship dance up close going on between them for the better part of an hour. The way they traded innuendo. The way her strap would slide down just enough that you could see that outside curve to her breast, and Nate would reach over and slowly raise that strap back up her arm all the while he was talking low in her ear and she was smiling all slow and seductive.

Within an hour of us getting there, he had her phone number and a date for the next night. And then we were leaving. She hadn't hardly noticed me for all the eyes she had for Nate. I didn't say a word on the drive back to the station. I just got in my car, drove away and left them to do their paperwork.

Next thing I knew, I was cruising down past her bar. For once, I didn't stop. I just kept driving and ended up at one of the bars Nate had taken me to. He showed up about an hour later. We both pretended he hadn't just fucked up my boyish notions of that woman having the hots for me.

I wasn't sure what I was expecting.

The next day, the extradition paperwork for my perp was through and clear. I made arrangements to take custody of him the day after that and escort him to San Francisco. Hell, it was my perfect excuse to go deal with my shit of a life.

The night before I left New Orleans, I cut out of Nate's apartment while he was whistling in the shower as he was getting ready for his date with Annie. I was itching and couldn't scratch. He was going to make it with a woman he had to know I felt something for even if I couldn't define it much less talk about it. He had asked if it was okay with me. What the fuck did he think I'd say? Did he think I'd say, no, you can't see her because I want her to wait around while I ditch my old life and then decide what I want to do? For fuck's sake, she doesn't even know me.

So all those nights talking to her and this is how it ends up. There really was no interest on her part? Nothing? No spark? At all? Guess not.

I drove around for a while. Had dinner. Had a few drinks. Drove around some more. Ended up on a street not too far from Nate's. Sat in my car for a while. Killing time. Watching. Waiting. Getting darker. Getting too needy.

What drives me to do these things?

The car pulled up outside her apartment building. It wasn't the best building I'd seen but it was far from the worst. I watched as she got out of his car. He caught up with her just at the foot of the stairs leading up to her place. They stood there for a minute, him with a hand on her elbow, bending over her, his mouth at her ear.

He followed her up the stairs.

I don't know what I felt. I just hunkered down. They went in her place. Together.

Lights flicked on inside her place. A shadow across the window. Another one a minute later. Time passed. I sat there. I wonder if I even blinked.

He came out the door a lot sooner than I thought he would. They talked a minute, her leaning against the doorjamb. Him leaning against the railing.

I saw her laugh. I used to know that laugh. It used to be something I could make her do. I tried to remember the last time I'd made the Annie I knew laugh like that ... free and easy and like we shared a secret. This Annie wouldn't do much more than make small talk with me but would go out with Nate and take him home to her place.

When his car pulled away, I still sat there in mine. I don't know. Was I waiting on something? Was this the explosion I'd seen coming? I looked up at her place again. Saw a shadow pass the window. Maybe that's what made me go up there. I don't know. Who ever knows why they do things like that?

She answered the door, peering around a chain. I didn't say a thing when she asked me why I was there. I just looked at her. I looked at this woman who was confusing me to the point where I didn't know what to do. I think at one time I might have thought this was someone I could talk about things to ... have help ... but all I felt just then was this stab of jealousy that was so hard and insistent that I couldn't speak to her.

Don't know if I was jealous of her and Nate ... or if I was jealous that she'd moved on with her life while all I could see in my own life was shit that I didn't want to shovel.

I was tired of getting kicked around.

The door finally opened wide. Her hand stayed on the door, like she was determined to keep me out. She leaned a hip in there and regarded me. Her hair was messier than it had been when she'd bid Nate goodbye and I had this visceral image of her throwing her head over, brushing her hair out, rising back up, hair falling where it would, her eyes closed and her unaware what impact things like that have on men. She was wearing a short little t-shirt. Showed her belly. Shorts that showed her legs. No makeup. Getting ready for bed?

"What is it, Bud? You taken to watching my home now? Work not enough for you?"

I was wound so tight. I was falling apart. I was keeping it together by force of will and refusal to be dismissed anymore.

"Why him and not me?" I asked her.

She rolled her eyes. "God. Grow up, will ya? I don't have time for this."

"Why Nate?"

"Because he asked."

And there it was. Dismissed. Everything I'd imagined was only that ... my imagination in the face of this woman and her not being interested enough to even think of me as a man worth real time with her. 

"That's all it would have taken? Then I'm asking," I said. I heard my voice. Aggression covering doubt.

For the first time, she looked nervous. Her eyes dropped. She licked her lips. "I don't think so, Bud. You got commitments already."

"Maybe not."

She looked up again. This time, studying me hard. "What's happened?"

"Everything."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"When I go back, it's not gonna be pretty."

"What are you saying?"

I looked at her hard. Ground my teeth. Tried not to say what was wanting to come out. It came out anyway. It fucking pissed me off that I was letting this happen ... I didn't even try to hide it. I said it like an accusation: "Why don't you remember me?"

She stepped back. I stepped in. She kept her eyes on mine. "I - I don't know what you mean."

"I knew you."

"You never knew me."

"Yeah. I did."

"You knew her. You never knew me."

"Why don't you remember me?"

She shook her head; closed her eyes. Like she was caving in to something she dreaded. "I remember the you from my world. That's all."

It took me a few moments to catch up and realize the enormity of what she'd been saying ... Jesus fucking Christ.

She always had known who I was. It felt like getting punched in the gut ... all this time, she'd been faking not knowing me. When I thought about the weeks I'd spent trying just to get her to notice me, thinking I was a stranger to her ... I don't know if this was better or worse, learning this.

I couldn't even think. What was the first thing I'd want to know? My mind was struggling. She had known who I was because she knew another me. All I could come out with was, "You didn't like him?"

She opened her eyes, glanced at me and then away; shrugged her shoulders. "I didn't really know him. But what I knew of him didn't impress me."

Another woman, fucking me around. Pretending. The blackness was creeping in. I could feel myself starting to sweat. "Why did you act like you didn't know who I was?"

"I was hoping you'd leave."

"Were you? You sure about that?" I growled it out and moved in close then. She started to move back but she hesitated. There was something different in her eyes all of a sudden when they flashed up at me. Interest ... in me. That's what was there now. "I don't think you were really hoping I'd leave."

"Don't," she whispered but her hand was on my chest. It was small and cool.

So I kissed her.

It's as good a reaction as any. I was glad she struggled. I needed her to struggle.

ANN

Nate's a smart guy. He knew from the first look that I was choosing him because he didn't have a ring on his finger and because I wanted Bud to figure he had lost his shot.

The why of that last part, though, that was what he was interested in.

Who knows?

I do, of course. But it's complicated, I suppose. And it's not exactly like I could tell Nate, is it? I mean, he's normal. Not like me and Bud. We're not, are we? Whether I want it or not, we have some kind of bond just because we have both looked into ourselves and come away realizing we are not like everyone else ... but more than that, we are not what we thought and our worlds had had things going on that we didn't know ... we didn't know. I had faced mine and paid for it. He was facing his and about to pay the full price. Other people wouldn't buy what Bud and I both knew on some level that probably recognized each other.

But Nate is a smart guy. And he's basically a decent guy. He's just a guy, though. And if he thought he could get a leg over, he wasn't above trying. Ah, hell, I was kinda rooting for him myself. I was hoping he'd succeed. But he didn't.

After I cooled his jets the first time, Nate asked about Bud. I don't think he bought it, my glib answer, "Bud who?"

The second move he tried, I appreciated that he had. I told him that. He shook his head at me. He's a good-looking guy. Another time and I might have been all over a man like this. Only problem was, I imagine what I would have had in mind might have been a bit much for him. Although, he might have said yes. And then ... then ... Oh. Hell. Hell. That's what. And I was more into anonymous sex than what I think he was offering. Besides, I would have been doing it for the wrong reasons.

And I am not so callous as to blatantly use a man anymore. Well. I was. Once. But I've learned from that mistake.

All I wanted was for Bud to realize that I'd never go for him, not in a million years. That it wasn't shyness on my part or the fact that I didn't really know him that was holding me back from acting on his obvious interest. Interest I didn't want to respond to. Except that the longer he hung around, the more I learned about him, and the more I thought maybe I understood why she had liked him. But he came with a passel of trouble that I didn't need in my life. He was just a complication that needed to go away.

So he sauntered in my bar that night. And I wasn't sure I understood why he'd come in there with his two buddies but I knew something was up. And one look in his eyes told me he was ready to do more than talk with me. So I came on to Nate, a natural flirt who talks a big game that he's willing to back up. And that was that.

The next night, we went on our date, Nate and me. Push came to shove ... I didn't want to use him. So we flirted a bit heavier, he got in some hands ... and he was decent enough about backing down when it was clear it wasn't clear to me what I wanted. That's a damned tough line for a man to walk.

He tried to tease out of me why I'd been so hot for him the night before but was now cagey and elusive.

So we talked about Bud and I pretended not to know him. Not to care. Not to be interested. But I still listened to one cop talk about another. Even back in my day I had a jaundiced view of cops. It was worse now. It was colored by the thin veneer of working in a bar in New Orleans. Not that we had out and out shakedowns. But they got their drinks for free, on or off duty. And they always thought they could throw their weight around unless you were friendly. And if you were friendly, their eyes lit up and their hands got all touchy feely.

Nate told me Bud was leaving the next day for California to take the guy they'd arrested back. I thought that was a really good thing, Bud leaving. I did. I just wished I'd known that before I tossed myself on Nate in the bar because it had turned out to not be necessary if Bud was leaving anyway. I gave more than a fleeting thought to wondering what Bud would do now ... if he'd ignore the belief Dino felt he was developing that all was not open and shut. I was pulling for him to not ignore it ... for him to take the punch to the gut and keep standing.

Somewhere in that date with Nate, we relaxed and got in some dirty dancing because Nate's a damned good dancer. And I had fun with him. But we're both experienced in the dating game enough to have known it wasn't going to end with him in my bed.

At my apartment, we had a nightcap and Nate tried one last move. He said he would have kicked his own ass if he hadn't. He said that to me as I pushed him to arm's length and he was smiling at me. Because he'd gotten in a good kiss first. Good enough I was wondering what was wrong with me. My God.

At the door, he said, "You can't blame a man for trying."

I said, "A man's got to do what a man's got to do."

He said, "That's what I've been trying to tell you all night."

Nate. He cracked me up. What a man.

Back inside my place, I wandered to my bedroom, laid on my bed, looking up at the ceiling fan. Imagined Nate coming back to find me more realistic, more receptive to his sure and good-spirited approach. And for some reason, when I shut my eyes to imagine someone between my legs like that, it wasn't Nate I saw after all.

Oh.

No.

No. No. No. NO.

Then the knock on my door came. I was almost ready for bed. I looked out the peephole, hoping it'd be Nate to chase out the demons. But it was Bud White, looking haunted. That's really why I cracked the door open, keeping the chain on, knowing that chain wouldn't keep him out if he really wanted in. I wanted to just send him away ...

Because tonight was feeling all sorts of nasty.

Don't you dare release the chain, I told myself when his chin raised and he just looked at me after I asked him what he wanted. Don't you dare. Don't ...

The chain swung from its holder on the jamb as I opened the door; that chain as ineffective as my instincts that night. And it didn't take much, when I considered it later, and Bud White was inside my place.

Why not him, he wanted to know. Because I don't want the complications and you're not worth it, is what I should have said. But I didn't.

And then he blew it all by making it so plain for me to see that he knew he'd reached this dangerous crossroads in his life ... talking about going back to California and his voice made me fear for what he'd do. I thought about all that Dino had told me. I wondered how I'd feel if I'd been one of them, with my entire life enmeshed in this stuff ... and if then I'd just become convinced that what was whispered about was true. I remembered Dino's musings on how Bud would feel.

I felt sorry for him.

But then again, I didn't.

I felt empathy for what it felt like.

But then again, I didn't feel pity.

No one had saved me. I wasn't going to be his savior.

No one had been my balm, my fortress in the night. I wasn't going to be his.

Except in that instant, I remembered Jack's attempts to understand me. I remembered Stephen's steadfast refusal to leave me alone in the beginning. I remembered hearing Jack cry behind closed doors and yet how he was unfailingly kind to me in ways that go so far beyond what I deserved.

I looked at Bud White and wondered if it was my karma to find a way to help him as payback for what Jack and Stephen had been for me even when I was at war with the very things I have come to realize had been given to me because they had loved the woman in whose body I was existing.

You should see what Bud looks like when his soul is at war.

You should feel the power from him when he is wounded deeply.

He kissed me because I let him. Should I be ashamed? Screw it. I liked the power. I liked it. A lot. It was the first time he was sex to me except in dreams that shamed me to remember in the daytime.

Why not him, he had asked me. Oh, crap, that was so not the question.

Or maybe it really was ... if you think about it. But he was mixing it up ... why Arthur and not him, is what he should have been asking.

So that's what I could do ... I could force him to face it. To really say what that meant. To feel the impact of it. Feel it right where it hurt the most. Where he was a man. I did it for a reason and I'm not going to pretend it was a wholly virtuous one. I did it for impact and for effect. And it had one. That's when he got that look that came over him. Like a piece of kindling looking for a match. I've seen that look before.

That look.

That restraint that is within one tiny breath of a thought from vanishing as if it never existed. All it took was the right thought. All this time, I've been thinking I'd no more demons.

"You either have to talk to me or leave," I said. That is exactly what I said. Another push of a man teetering on the edge and willing to take whoever was near him over with him.

"Do you know who Arthur is?" he blurted out, belligerent, like he'd just said something naughty and was waiting to be reprimanded.

"Yes. I know who he is." My skin prickled at the waves of darkness coming from him in response. His big hand was behind my neck. I felt the fingers flex in their hold of me.

"He's a father now," he said.

"I know."

"How'd it happen?"

"How? In the normal way."

"Someone told you about this. You know the answer. I want it. I want to hear you say it. Why him?"

"You tell me. Maybe he's got a bigger dick."

"Don't fucking play games with me."

"You're the one playing games, Wendell. And from where I stand, they're pretty disgusting."

He grabbed me. I didn't see it coming. Not that I could have avoided it. Not that I would have.

But it shocked me. He grabbed my wrists, shoved me into the wall, followed my body in, pressing in over me. Mouth at my neck. A temper-filled demonstration of what a man can take from a woman.

Isn't this how it has become for me? Isn't this what I invite? The bad things I've done and that one night with another man in another world who I'd coaxed into taking it out on me? I felt this whimper start low in my gut and I fought it from coming out, but it came out ... and it sounded so guilty and deserving of this.

He must have heard it and recognized the sound of someone so defeated. He stopped; his thigh between mine, his knee grinding up, rubbing hard into me right where a man knows a woman is going to always be vulnerable. But he stopped. I felt him swallow against me. I heard him apologize before he could even form the words.

"Go on," I said, my teeth gritted. "Use me. You'll feel better."

"No."

"I like it this way. Do it. Go on."

He released my wrists; leaned back away from me. Looked in my eyes. I saw pity.

I saw red.

"You're not man enough. That's why him and not you," I said.

He backed away, shaking his head, looking like a good man.

"A man wouldn't take this crap," I said. "Let me show you how to be a man again. Come here."

"You don't like it like that. You don't."

"You don't know shit about me. You're thinking of her. All her games and short skirts and pool halls ... this is me, Bud. I'm the perfect remedy for you tonight. I'm the perfect revenge, if you think about it. You can fuck me, rough as you want, get it all out, get that blood up ... and then you can go back ... and they will know and you can ..."

"I can what?" he asked me, that cold anger that signals a reckoning on the horizon. "You really think this helps me? Do you? It doesn't. Not that you give a shit but she was my friend and I wouldn't use her that way."

He was heading for the door then. I don't know what happened. But I felt this sense of self-knowledge. I'd thought I could erase my guilt playing this role over and over with a man in trouble? As if physical punishment would absolve me of the initial crime?

"Bud ..." I said it soft; maybe that's the only reason he stopped ... his hand on the knob, his back to me, his head down. "I know you're angry about what's been going on. But ..."

"You don't know angry."

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."

He turned and looked at me over his shoulder. I felt like he could see everything I'd done ... after.

"I don't care what you do. Just don't do anything that is going to be hard for you to live with knowing you were capable of doing," I said. "You know, it's just experience talking here ... but in the end, when it's over, you have to be able to live with how you feel about who you are in your darkest times."

"What did you do?" he asked me, turning now, full on, willing to face me. 

I shook my head. Shrugged my shoulders. Refused to cry. "I did something bad. Something I ... It doesn't matter, Bud. I just hate to see you do something you'll feel bad about later. Because a man like you, I think, you'll carry that forever. And I hate to see that."

His eyes got soft. I looked away.

"She woulda said something like that. Getting me to see what I'd feel like later ... to think about the bottom line."

"I'm not her, Bud."

"You would have liked her."

"I'm not always sure about that."

"Why'd you make your hair red?"

My eyes swept up to his. I smiled at the unexpected turn of this question. "It was just a personal statement. Line in the sand. I'm me. Not her. And I just got tired of feeling like I was living in some rented life ... I don't know. Maybe I am. Maybe someday, I'm going back there. But it doesn't seem likely, does it?"

He shifted around. His shoulders sloped. Like it had only been his anger keeping him upright and now ... now what?

"I don't know what I can believe anymore," he said, his voice both soft and hoarse.

I didn't know what to say. He walked over to the couch, sunk down on it. Looked down at his hands. 

"Do you believe Arthur?" I asked him.

"Yeah."

There was a world of unspoken emotions clouding that one simple declaration. I wondered ... how would he reconcile it? Would he rationalize it? Would he decide it wasn't such a big deal? God, but I felt for him. Imagine that? Imagine finding out the mystery of all mysteries in your life ... and who have you got standing near you to help you but a person who feels no allegiance to what's just been ripped from you? Do you cling to the old? Or do you ... do you ...

Do you find yourself out on your own ... strange world ... no one you know you can really believe is who you think they must be and everything is so confusing? Where you feel betrayed? Where you just don't know what to do with the new knowledge that maybe the deck was stacked in a way you never quite got before? And you realize that it's not that you were dealt a losing hand so much as that the pot you thought you were aiming for never existed? So everything's for nothing. And you've crapped out. And you've lost.

Everything.

And that's where Bud was. I looked at him, sitting there on my couch, his head down, his shoulders slumped. Not saying a word. Breathing and even that was probably hurting.

I remember feeling like that. I remember hating myself for all the things I did wrong when I reacted to what I thought was Terry not loving me anymore. I can't believe ... even now ... I can't believe I was capable of what I did with Maximus. I keep repeating that mistake, here where no one knows. And I have somehow lost the ability to feel bad about it. Like I've inured myself. And it's the only way I can come. How sad is that?

And who wants another person to walk that road?

She liked Bud. I have to admit that I do, too. He is such a hard ass about things. But he is willing to believe.

And he does believe.

He believes Arthur.

And I knew that meant his other life was on the brink.

I just didn't want that to destroy him. 

For the first time, I felt real allegiance to her ... to that other Ann, the one who just liked this guy for what he was. It's why I walked over to him, put my hand on his shoulder. Bent down just a bit. Whispered to him.

"You have a right to be angry. Just remember that when this is all over, you are going to want to be able to look in the mirror and see someone you can still believe in."

He breathed in all shaky and rocky. I rubbed his back. I felt awkward. I am not the best person in the world, but maybe that's the point. Maybe it takes a sinner to help.

I heard him say soft and low that he appreciated it ... appreciated what I was trying to say ... that he had to figure this out.

And all the while he was talking, he was not even aware that his hand was on my hip and then on my back ... then gently pulling me in toward him. And he said that he was going back there but he wasn't going to stay ... and he put his forehead on my chest and his arms were around me ... and I knew this was comfort for him but for the first time, I really thought about how gentle he was with a woman when he was needing something a man like him needs without knowing how to verbalize the request.

I can be cynical; I could say that all he wanted was a soft touch, to feel my body. But even at my most cynical, this would have struck me as being meant for me.

Because there was something about the way he touched me. Like maybe ... maybe ... maybe I wasn't the sum total of my dark places. It felt personal. It felt individual. But I am not capable of being the kind of woman that would help gentle him through this time. No. I did things I'd be ashamed for this man to know.

I backed away and he released me. I turned to gather my resolve and he got up to leave. I wished I had the answer and he was making his move. I wanted to wish him well and he said goodbye.

And he was gone.

Poof.

Gone in the night.

I've been down so far. I have come back from the depths in most aspects of my life. I hope Bud doesn't destroy his own chances for a good future ... the future after he acts on what he now believes.

I poured myself a drink after he left. A scotch in his honor. And I thought about how this big part of me really and truly wanted nothing so much as that he would be able to walk unscathed through what was coming ... or rather, through what he'd feel about himself.

But there was another part of me that felt like maybe he would get off too easy that way. Because maybe he's not totally innocent in this whole thing.

And that's the part of me that dreamed of him that night, feeling free to imagine him in my dark images just because I'd never see him again.

Who knows why you ever open up. Who knows why you shut down.

I've been both places.

He's the walking wounded.

But what am I if my dreams still haunt me with the sickly sweet knowledge of what I am capable of desiring with a stranger?