It’s night. My feet splash in ankle-deep water as I run in a swale behind an industrial complex. My socks and shoes are sodden, and the air is thick with the stench of burning flesh. Officer Madero gains ground on me. In his outstretched hand, a torch that glows bluish white that is so bright it hurts my eyes to behold. My lungs ache. Lactic acid building inside my quadriceps screams a chorus of pain, its volume rising with each step. I’m just outside of Madero’s grasp and I feel the heat of his torch as its light falls upon my back and shoulders, casting my shadow before me. The light sears my flesh and singes my hair away, and my shadow on the ground in front of me is on fire. It’s ashes flake away, rising on convection currents and into the starless sky.
[/I]
A phone rings.

I sit up in bed, reach over to my nightstand for my cell phone. The caller ID says, “Unavailable.”

I say, “Hello?”

“This is Trisha Marie.”

“Oh, uh...hi.”

She says, “I hear you have something to tell me.”

I say, “Yes. Thanks for calling me back. This isn’t easy to say...not that it will be easy for you to hear, but--”

“Get to the point. What do you want?”

I say, “You...you may have been exposed to HIV. By me.”

“You gave me AIDS! How could you do that to me? My life has just started and now I’m going to die!”

“Trisha--”

“And you’re the one that killed me!”

“Trish, I--”

“MURDERER!”

She doesn’t say anything else, and neither do I. I listen, phone pressed to my ear as she weeps. She lets out a wail which echoes inside my skull and a light shines through the phone’s earpiece.


I’m being nudged...My eyes open to Amanda shaking my shoulders. She hands me my phone ringing cell phone. It’s M.A.I.M.

“Erik Robinson?”

“Yeah, that’s me.”

“Your final test results came back. HIV ‘Not Detected’”.

I hang up and tell Amanda. She nods. Then she gets up and goes into the bathroom and the shower hisses. The door shuts.

When she returns she’s wrapped in a white towel and her hair is held up by her scrunchie. She sits on the bed and looks at me.

“So, now what, Erik? You planning on going back to work?”

“The quarantine list hasn’t cleared, and moratorium on shooting has not been lifted.”

“‘Moratorium’, my ass. I know people are still shooting, and some people who are quarantined are still trying to get work with forged HIV tests. I read it on the message boards. Regardless, that’s not what I asked you, and you know it. After.”

I say, “After the quarantine list clears and the moratorium is lifted? No...I think I’m done.”

“Good.”

She goes to the closet and lays out some clothes on the bed. She begins to dress.

I say, “Who knows, maybe the industry will be better for this experience.”

She turns to me and shakes her head.

“What?”

She says, “People don’t change. Adversity doesn’t build character. It reveals it.”


Amanda and I lay on our sofa. A warm breeze blows through the windows and the first movement of Beethoven’s Ninth plays in the background on auto repeat. She’s sleeping with her head resting on my chest and our fingers are interlaced. On her lips, the hint of a smile.

We met at my last real job, a part-time gig for company that evaporated during the tech bubble burst. The firm was bleeding market share in an atrophying market, and it was an open secret the Great Layoff was coming. The day the firm gave everyone notices I was sitting in the cafeteria contemplating the upcoming rent and my non-existent job prospects. I looked up and she was there. She smiled, and that was it.

That night over drinks she told me she’s from a Latin American country where violent death is a fact of life. Everything I really know about her is from the day we met and onward. Details of her life before she first entered the States are black. While going through her things one day, I discovered the name on her university degrees are slightly different from the name on her birth certificate, which is a bit off from the name she used to introduced herself to me. Some things are best left buried, so I left the issue alone. Without her, I’d be dead or wish I was--that’s all the clarification I need.

Once, while she thought I was sleeping she climbed out of bed, knelt beside it, and began to pray in Spanish. Prayers of hope? Penance for past sins?

Maybe I’m her albatross...Maybe she’s mine.

My phone rings. The caller ID says it’s a director. I thumb the volume down before it wakes Amanda, and let the call go to voice mail. I listen to his message: I have some scenes coming up for you. Call me.

Delete.

I turn the phone off and let sleep come.

A knock on our open front door by the mailman wakes me but not Amanda. I extricate myself from Amanda’s grasp, ease her head onto a pillow, and greet the mailman at the door.

Past-due bills I could swear I’ve already paid, asking for their money plus late fee charges...and returned check fee charges tacked on to the original sums.

Then there are a couple of letters from my bank. Enclosed with the first bank letter are two checks from Sexual Deviants: the original check I re-deposited, and a second check Sexual Deviants sent to cover the bounced check fee for the first check. They both bounced. The letter says my bank charged me returned check fees for both.

I rip open the second bank envelope. The letter says some checks I wrote (to pay the now past-due bills) have been returned due to insufficient funds. They’re charging me fees for those, too. The sum of all fees and charges I’m slapped with nearly equals the amount of the original Sexual Deviants check.

I grab my car keys.