A bag sits on the bedside table. It’s a small bag but it contains the few items Lola still owns and possesses in this world. A couple of changes of clothes, some makeup and other necessary supplies. And one picture. The picture she took as she left her house for the last time. The picture of her with her former husband, Bill, of both of them smiling, early on in the newlywed phase, when the future is just that, a future, with unlimited possibilities, with the hope for a long life filled with all of the things she ever wanted. What did she want? What did she want back then? Lola stares at the picture. She looks at her own face, unformed, like a baby’s face before the bone structure solidifies and the muscles fill in. She never knew what she wanted, did she? Not when she moved to Los Angeles, not before she got married, not after she got married. She never knew. She knew what she didn’t want, what she was running away from, not what she was running towards.

An unformed mass of expectations and hopes and childish dreams, that’s what she is looking at when she looks at that picture and her face. That is the person she used to be. Now, after all that has been taken from her, she is left with one thing. It isn’t the clothes in the bag on the side table. It isn’t the memories of her past life or the picture she holds in her hand; it’s a purpose. For all that was taken, she was left with that purpose. It isn’t a happy purpose or a hopeful one, it’s mean and vengeful and dark, but it’s there, it’s given her a meaning she never had. That bitch tricked her into leading a guy to his death, she stole my $93,000, the money I was going to use to start over, and then she tricked me one last time into killing the only person who was trying to help me.

Yeah, I would say I have a pretty definitive fucking purpose. I’m not some unformed baby calf that can be led around by the neck anymore, I’ve grown a lot in the days since I woke up with amnesia next to a dead guy. I’ve grown more than most people do in a lifetime in the last one hundred and twenty hours.

Tears begin to flow from Lola’s eyes, because of the death, not just Walters’ death but her own as well. Dorothy Drake died when Walters died, maybe even before she shot him, maybe when she shot the goon to save Walters’ life, or maybe when she watched Roxanne slice Frank Moreno’s throat open. Dorothy Drake is most certainly dead. But in her death she has created life. She has given Lola a mission.

The tears stop as suddenly as they start, her eyes as dry as fire. Those hands start tearing the photo, tearing and tearing, ripping and ripping, a piece of radiated phosphate to shreds with a vicious ferocity reserved for the wronged in the world. It’s only a bunch of snowflakes now, littering the moldy gray carpet of the motel room. Lola goes and finds that clip she threw across the room. She’s going to need it. Because of the mission. She only gets to live again once that mission is complete. She only gets to reclaim her life once her revenge is complete.

---

There’s a pleasant white two-story house sitting on a quiet street called Arrowhead in a section of the San Fernando Valley called Van Nuys. It hasn’t been occupied for some time. It’s been broken into a couple of times lately, at different times by different men carrying firearms, but it’s been untouched since a couple on the run hastily left it at peace a few days ago.

The middle of the dark of night. So far into the abyss of the night, everything is asleep. There are no dogs or cats making noise. The cars that travel major thoroughfares at late hours don’t touch this street at this time. A little oasis of serenity.

The windows of the of white house are darker than the night. Like the eyes of the dead. Until. In the back, far in the back of the eyeball, there is a flicker. It looks like a light being turned in one of the back rooms only it’s not a light being turned on, it’s the type of flicker that keeps flicking. And grows. It’s followed by another flicker in the living room two rooms away that can be seen from the large bay window in the front of the house and then a third flicker of orange flame in the front room that can be seen from the street.

The man tasked with watching the house by Jackson for Roxanne sits up in the driver’s side seat he has planted himself into for the last eight hours of his shift. This has been what he is waiting for. Some sign of life. He may not have expected a fire, but in his line of work it’s not exactly unheard of either. With the appearance of the flames, he readies himself for an appearance of a person. He draws his Beretta 92FS and waits for that inevitable someone to emerge, running out the front door to safety as flames grow higher behind them. His hand goes to the latch on the door, he opens it a smidgen. He puts his left foot on the ground. He doesn’t want to miss the running person. His eyes stay on the front door.

The front door never opens, it stays shut until the white of the door begins to crisp at its edges. Dusted white turns orange, fire burning through wood, orange turns brown then black, the entire faded white of the front door glows alongside its burnt frame until the whole thing lights up like a torch in the night along with the rest of the front of the house. No one emerges from that fire, no running person, no walking person, no dying person. The man and his drawn Berretta are confused, and a little disappointed. He expected more. There’s only a quaint nice white two-bedroom craftsman house now completely immolated from the ceremonial bonfire.

Some kind of accelerant must have been used to make this place go up like a yule log, it’s going to be ash before the fire trucks arrive. The man, one of Roxanne’s many nameless henchmen, can hardly believe his eyes at this offering to the gods of war. The house continues to burn, the henchman continues to watch, distracted from his duties by the giant flames.

Somewhere behind the house, somewhere down a forgotten alley, a figure in dark clothes with a black ski cap over her hair walks away with a confident stride. She knew the house was being watched. She knew she just sent a message.

Walters slides his car behind a large gray SUV that’s parked at a meter on the side of the street. From this spot, he can see the front door to his building. He can also see the other side of the street. He watches for movement at his front door. He watches for movement on the other side of the street. Anything out of place. A guy who stands in one place too long. Someone with a heavy object hanging down the side of their jacket. Groups in sunglasses who are too interested in the opening and closing of building doors or who sit in the front seat of a parked car drinking cup after cup of coffee for too long.

Less than thirty minutes later, he see what he doesn’t want to see. There’s a guy, looks tough or wannabe tough, hair cut short into a crewcut, shoulders too broad for his jacket. He’s not a business man, that’s for sure. He’s a stooge or a goon or somebody who spends too much time in the gym powerlifting. Walters knows his type from all the hours he spent working one job or another with Moreno’s guys. Who’s he kidding, he was one of Moreno’s guys. And the guy with the flattened nose hanging out near the front door of his building with his square face and brown crewcut, he has the look of one of Moreno’s guys, which means he’s now one of Roxanne’s guys. Crewcut’s doppelganger walks over and they have a nice long chat with each other in front of Walters’ building. They’re not very good at being undercover. Moreno’s guys were better back in Walters’ day.

Walters scans his rearview mirror and then the other side of the street to see if anyone has spotted him in his tight parking spot behind the SUV. He makes some quick deductions. If they are casing his place he has to assume that means they know his car. It might be true. It might not be true. But he has to assume it is. The two goons wearing sport coats and flattened faces finish their chat. One gets into a black Mercedes and sits. The other walks down to the end of the block and back again like he’s a background extra in a movie.

“Fuck” Walters says to himself and checks his watch and his rearview mirror again. If he’s going to make his appointment for the night he’s going to have to move. He can’t be late. Not for this appointment. He has other spots in the city. Other hideouts. His mind sprints through them. He settles on one. It would be easy to go there and prepare. It’s closer to the warehouse anyway. But then there’s Lola. Poor Lola. Where is she? Do they have her? Did they grab her in the loft? Or maybe when she left? He can’t just leave her to the whims of those two hundred thirty pound guys with flattened faces. But if he doesn’t know where she is how can he help? If he walks into Roxanne’s trap there’s no way he can help.

Walters continues to wait, looking at his watch every few minutes, hoping Lola will show up so he can rescue her. He’s her white knight, damnit, it’s his job to rescue her. As the minutes swim by he slowly realizes she’s either already taken or she has escaped. He also realizes he’s nobody’s white knight. He’s a black knight with a black hat. He’s spent his life as a criminal. Perhaps he’s been a criminal with a certain sense of honor. An honor that Roxanne betrayed. But still, he’s a criminal through and through. He can’t save Lola by riding in on his white horse with his white hat. He can save her with his black hatted ways, though. And that means getting to that warehouse and stopping Roxanne. And that means getting there before 8:00.

Walters pounds the steering wheel in frustration. Everything was going so well. He had it all planned and now his plans have changed again. Fucking Roxanne. She always has that step on him. And everybody else. Well, if he can get to that warehouse tonight, he can get the jump on her. He can disrupt her plans for once. Lola, hopefully she’s safe. But she’s going to have to wait. Until after 8. Until Walters has that briefcase and those documents. Once he has that, he will have the upper hand, he will be in control and Roxanne will be at his mercy.

He starts the engine and peels out and does a U-turn almost crashing into the U-Haul truck heading down the street in his direction. He looks in his rearview mirror one last time. He isn’t being followed. He looks at the time. There are just enough second and minutes for him to get to his new base of operations and properly prepare before he needs to leave for his rendezvous for the night. For his appointment with least favorite blonde and her two favorite goons.

---

Lola has returned to her home away from home. Hell, who is she kidding, her home, period. The Driftwood Motel. Redondo Beach. Not really near the beach. Next to a gun shop and a pawn shop. Not in the best part of town. But this is her part of town now.

“Hey, you’re back.’ The bored clerk brightens at seeing his old friend.

“Give me the same room.”

The clerk tries to make small talk with his favorite reoccurring customer. Lola is in no mood for small talk. She’s focused on the night. On 8:00. On the warehouse in Harbor City.

Lola enters the familiar room and begins less familiar preparations. Next to the pawn shop and the gun shop next door, on the block after that is a Ross, dress for less. That’ll do, she thinks to herself. Lola looks at the clock radio next to the bed. She has time to go on a shopping trip before she needs to leave. Let’s see, what’s on her shopping list, maybe another gun or two, bullets, definitely more bullets. Some stealth clothes. And comfortable shoes. A nice pair of comfortable black tennis shoes with a killer grip.

When Lola returns from her shopping trip there isn’t much time. No time for showers and cleaning up. Only enough time to change some clothes and pack a bag.

Lola pulls on the sporty black pullover and black workout pants. She bundles up her hair, underneath a black ski cap. She was lucky to find one in Los Angeles at this time of year, but Ross has a surprising range of selection. The last items to go on are the black socks and comfortable black tennis shoes. Lola looks at herself in the body length mirror. She pulls the ski cap down to her eyebrows. She’s a darkened angel. A black angel of vengeance.

Next on the list is the weaponry. She bought a couple more at the gun store next door. One a lesser, cheaper version of the Sig Sauer handgun Walters gave her. A Glock of some kind, Lola didn’t really care about the details, as long as it shoots straight. She also got a couple of holsters, one for the left side, one for the right. They both go under the pullover. The third gun was some kind of used cheap one, with that and the bribe money she paid the guy at the gun store to forgo the background check, she going through the money that Walters gave her pretty fast. It probably doesn’t matter after this night anyway. Nothing will probably matter after this night.

Lola doesn’t know where to put the small gun, so it goes in the small black Addidas duffel bag she got at Ross. She puts a rope in there as well. She doesn’t know why she bought it but she thinks she might need it. There’s also a crowbar she bought on impulse from the pawnshop. Maybe that will come in handy in breaking a window or door. And two flashlights. It’s a random assortment, but all this is pretty new to her. She’s still learning. She looks at the clock radio. It’s time. Time to call a cab to take her to her fate.

---

Walters is engaged in similar preparations in another part of the city. This hideout is smaller than the loft downtown, less nice, pales in comparison to the sparse yet stylish furnishing of the loft. If the loft was the base for an overworked hip architect, this is the apartment for his down on his luck cousin who works at the local gas station. But it’s okay, it has a sufficient stash of necessary items for a night like this.

Walters is getting his own bag ready, more organized than Lola’s but surprisingly not that different in contents. A small wirecutters is an addition she didn’t think of, the rest of it is pretty much the same. His clothes are similar as well, dressed in all black, head to toe. Walters’ black is more flexible black and makes less noise than the ones Lola wears, his fabrics are more expensive and appropriate for stealthily breaking and entering. He didn’t buy them at the discount store down the street. His weapons are more expensive as well. He plants three different handguns on his body and puts two more in a black bag he slings over his left shoulder. Walters makes his way to the door of his hideout all of the lights in the tiny apartment are off, only the hallway light illuminates his black figure as he stands in the doorway looking back into the small apartment making sure he didn’t forget anything.

Lola, ten miles aways, stands in her doorway to her motel room, looking back as well. There isn’t much else in the motel room, so there really isn’t anything to forget but she looks back anyway as the cab waits in the motel’s parking lot. She is not in shadow, she left the motel room’s light on, her black clad figure illuminated by both the lights inside the room and those blazing through the parking lot. The Driftwood Motel sign blinks neon in the distance over her right shoulder. The shoulder that harnesses her black bag.

Two figures. Both dressed to hide in the night. Hide in the warehouse. Both ready to surprise Roxanne and her men. They close their doors at almost the exact same time, a moment of synchronicity in a violet chaotic world of randomness. One marches to her cab the other to his car. They will both be at the warehouse in less than 20 minutes.

Roxanne finished her preparations a long time ago. She’s in black as well, it appears to be the fashionable choice for the night. Only her black is much nicer. More form-fitting and stylish. She looks immaculate. Short blond hair slicked back, a beautiful Armani women’s suit outlining her body cut to a tailor’s perfection. She could be on her way to a catwalk instead of the trap she has set. For now, she’s walking down a hallway with determined gleam in her blue eyes. Marco and Tomas flank her sides, walking a half-step behind, forming the base to of the spear to Roxanne’s tip. An open limousine door waits for them outside. Roxanne isn’t only dressed in fine style, she’s going to arrive in finer style. The three of them get into the back of the limo. Tomas and Marco wear tiny earpieces in their ears. They look like secret service agents for the president. Roxanne puts her favorite sunglasses on. The limo takes off for its destination. This all happened an hour ago. Before Lola and Walters left their respective hideouts. Before Lola and Walters had fully prepared for their assignment for the night. While they were still getting ready in the locker room, Roxanne was already on the playing field.

---

Roxanne has set up the geometric plan. A warehouse like a video game, a maze with two contestants and two ringers leading them through the maze to their ultimate destination. Each contestants has only their wits and swift feet. And guns, lots of guns. Roxanne’s plan was near perfect, she knew it was, sure, there was a small chance either Tomas or Marco would get hurt in the process, maybe even killed, but she was sure they wouldn’t and besides she was willing to take that risk. Maybe she was gambling with their lives, but Roxanne liked to gamble. She figured she was pretty good at it.

Roxanne looked down from her spot above the warehouse floor, in a room overlooking everything. Maybe it’s the foreman’s office or the head of the company that owns this place, for tonight it’s a control room, her control room. A bank of monitors feeds images of every noon and cranny in between the maze of creates down below. There’s a microphone on the desk in front of Roxanne. A microphone like a public address announcer’s mike. It allows her whispers to be fed directly into the ears of her two favorite men. Such a perfect plan. Four chess pieces she could manipulate at will. Such a challenge. So much fun. Lola was playing against the grandmaster now. No more speed games in the park. She wasn’t ready for this even if she thought she was. Roxanne looks down from her perch. He talons come out stretching over the board in front of her. It was so good to be a predator in this world full of prey. So good to be the one with strength and the material advantages of soldiers to throw at her problems. To play with her problems. She was going to be the best boss of all of them. It’s not only Lola that needs to watch out. They all do.

Marco and Tomas stand at their respective starting positions in the maze. There’s even a prop briefcase. Tomas holds it in his right hand. Roxanne breathes her words into the mike for the first time. They nod their acknowledgment down below. Tomas is ready. Marco is ready. Now they just have to wait for the two contestants to arrive.

Contestant number one, Lola, approaches in a cab. She is dropped off a block away from the warehouse, a block away from the fence that surrounds it, across a ravine that was more a ditch, wary of any security cameras picking up her image.

She leaps over the ditch. She has a clear sightline of the large warehouse but her eyes go to different images. Images of the past few days. The rare nice images in her life from the past few days. As this black clad angel of vengeance danced over grass towards the wire fence, she did not think of those events that brought her to vengeance, but instead thought of Walters, his surprisingly understanding face, his surprisingly muscular body, of being in bed together, making love, the closeness she felt to him, the passion they felt for each other. It wasn’t love, at least not to Lola, she had become too hardened to feel love at this point in her life, but there was something, something stronger than passion, something not as strong as the hate she felt for Roxanne.

Lola was under no illusions she could spend the rest of her life on the run with her hitman, whether they defeated Roxanne and her army of goons or not, but still her brain betrayed her as her body moved. In the moments she should have been preparing to kill Roxanne, she was thinking of making love with Walters. She could feel the warmth of his hands on her cold body, the only warmth she had felt since she woke up in that motel room. Hell, the only warmth she had felt for years. Their bodies entwined in her mind as she stared at the warehouse from behind a chain link fence, that might as well have been prison bars, waiting for 8:00 to arrive. She checked her cheap wristwatch again. She still had a quarter of an hour. She looked back through the wire, the metal of the wire bisecting and dividing her face. Staring at that building waiting for the right time to enter. The pleasing memories of touch faded as the present returned, the blurred mesh of the chain link coming into focus. It was time to move. She found a gap in the fence where it lifted easily. She ducked under and through the fence and moved towards the building.

Contestant number two. Walters. As he drives to the destination, his mind wanders as well. Like Lola he thinks of their moments together, their bodies together. Many of the images are the same just from a different point of view. Although one would expect him to be more jaded than Lola, considering his profession and experience, he’s not. At least not now. He pulls his car into an abandoned parking lot two blocks from the warehouse and his mind leaps distances away from his material body, hands caressing her body instead of the steering wheel, his lips on hers, the same romantic scenes playing out in his head like a late night movie half-remembered. Only this was real. Or was it real? Are these emotions real or superimposed. He has fallen. Hard. The last time he was in love was so many years ago he can hardly remember the details of that love, of that life. The situation was different but the same, on the run with someone in Mexico, hiding out together, falling in love together, making plans for a future that might never happen, that might not even be possible. Is he just reliving the past, repeating the same mistakes and the same feelings.

Those months in a distant province south of the border on the run from a different crime boss for different reasons were some of the best months of his life. The cinched bonds of their situation only made them fall harder for each other, quicker for each other. Of course it ended tragically. It had to, didn’t it? She had to die from a bullet aimed for him. Wasn’t that fated in some weird way. Wasn’t it fate he would spend years seeking revenge for the only woman he loved, and then getting revenge, burying his past as he buried a body in the Mexican desert. And now here he was again, falling for another woman in a way he said he wouldn’t let himself. For Lola, an innocent, at least as innocent as one can be in this world. It’s his job to protect her, just as it was his job to protect Marlena. He failed the first time. He can’t let himself fail again.

Walters gets out of his car and approaches the warehouse in stealth. Shadowed by the night, avoiding pools of light from street lamps. Like a cat burglar he swiftly uses his wire cutters to bypass the fence. By chance he is on the other side of the warehouse. Perhaps, if he and Lola had shown up on the same side, if they had run into each before they went inside, they would have foiled all of Roxxanne’s well laid plans, but from such small things as these fate is made.

8:00 arrives and Roxanne gives her first directions. Tomas and Marco move from their starting positions to their second positions, outside the warehouse. One for Lola, one for Walters. Roxanne’s wall of cameras can see outside as well. Despite their darkened camouflage Roxanne can easily see two figures in black approaching. The rest of her guards stay out of sight, far behind the action. She doesn’t want her game ruined by some absent-minded goon wandering into the frame.

The black pawns both stop at the sight of their bait. Lola with Marco. Walters with Tomas and his briefcase. Roxanne’s twins make sure to stand conspicuously under a bright light near an open doorway. They are noticed. The fish are hooked. Marco and Tomas walk back inside the warehouse. Cautiously, stooped, running black clad ninjas follow. Walters to his door first. Lola to her door second. Still on opposite sides of the warehouse, still unaware of the other’s presence

Can you really manipulate people to get them to move like you want them to. That is the challenge. Roxanne likes that challenge. She feels like a great scientist, a BF Skinner of the criminal world, finding ways to make people do things they would never do without her prodding, dogs chasing after rabbits on a track, mice chasing after a piece of cheese in a maze, hamsters desperately running on a wheel. Is it as easy as all that, to manipulate human beings as it is those of the lower animals on the food chain. Of course, this experiment could go wrong. Experiments can always go wrong. That would be sad for Tomas or Marco, and maybe even a little sad for Roxanne up in her control booth. But again, she has backup. If worst comes to worst, she can make a call and everybody on that warehouse floor will be sacrificed and she’ll have to start again somewhere else with some new contestants. But she wants to have some fun first, she wants to try a little experiment first. She has supreme confidence in her powers. It’s time to test them out.

Marco and Tomas are back on the maze-like warehouse floor, waiting for their respective contestant to enter the arena. Lola goes in first, perhaps foolishly, led by a purity of hate. She sees Marco, half hidden behind a stack of crates. He moves so she follows, confident he hasn’t noticed her. If only he is meeting Roxanne, then she can surprise them both and complete her mission of death and vengeance. A date, isn’t that what the old man said. Yeah, this will be the most delicious date she’s ever had.

Roxanne can see the slow-moving chase from her position above. She doesn’t really need the monitors anymore. She can see it all so perfectly. She tells Marco to move to his right, so he moves to his right, Lola follows. She tells Tomas to shout and wave across the warehouse like he just somebody important, so Tomas shouts and waves and then moves. Walters is more cautious than Lola, but Tomas has moved so he needs to move now. The meeting is taking place. For a moment, Walters loses his studied patience. To finally get one over on Roxanne, to get one back for Moreno, to take possession of that briefcase and those documents. Maybe he can leverage it not for power, but to get out, to get enough money to retire to some island or something, maybe even Lola will come with him.

Walter’s well-refined nose leads him on ever closer to the exchange. Tomas’ little earpiece speaks and he makes a left in the maze, Walters just far enough behind, ten yards behind.

The two contestants drawing ever closer. Roxanne continuing to issue orders, Marco this way, Tomas that way, turn here, move here, faster, slower. Lola with gun drawn, Walters with gun drawn, both ready to pounce as soon as that briefcase is handed from one person to another.

Everyone is in a confined space now. A studio apartment’s square footage between them. Here is where the game becomes a real challenge. Timing is everything. In life. In this game. Roxanne says the right words at the right time. Tomas and Marco both turn right, into little nooks that no one would know are there, a hidden escape passage in the middle of the maze, now Lola and Walters are headed for each other, just one more turn and they will meet each other, unexpectedly, where they both expect to meet a villain.

Lola’s eyes squint under the harsh lighting of the warehouse flourescents. Where is Marco? He was just here, how did he escape? She turns a corner, to her right, staying as close to the side of the wooden crating as possible. She sees a black object, unholstered, a gun drawn and aiming. Her gun whips, Marco has spotted her and is shooting. So she fires first. She’s going to drop that bastard to the ground. The shot rings out hollow and echoes through the warehouse as the man unwittingly moves into the open space.

Walters walked into the bullet like a boxer walking into a punch. It hits him in the throat. Bad luck for Lola. Worse luck for Walters. He drops to the floor fast, trying to breathe, blood flowing out of the hole in his throat. Lola rushes over to him without a thought to Marco or Tomas or briefcases or Roxanne. She only sees a man dying on the cold gray concrete floor of an old desolate warehouse. She cradles Walters’ head in her right arm, trying to raise him up so he can breathe but his throat is shredded, every second, every millisecond he gets closer to death. It looks like he wants to say something, to raise his arm to caress her face, to tell her it will be alright just like when he was shot last time, but he can’t breathe much less speak, his hands go instinctively to his own throat instead of Lola’s face. His hands are around his own neck now. Lola rocks his head back and forth, the coughing, spurting, spluttering of the hole in his throat stops, the blood slows, his head falls back, there is no more struggle, no more breath, a limp cold head and frozen scary empty eyes stare back at Lola but see nothing.

Lola shrieks, “No!” She screams and screams and screams.

Roxanne watches from above. Lola cradles the lifeless Walters in her arms. Holding him tighter and tighter. Roxanne keeps watching. Watching from the box like it’s a sporting event. She should be smoking a cigarette but there’s no cigarette, not now, only satisfaction of a game won, a bet that came through, a hard job accomplished. The door to the control room opens. It’s Tomas.

“We should get going.”

The sunglasses go on, the look of satisfaction stays on, Roxanne follows her bodyguard out the door. The limousine is fueled up and ready to go. Marco is already in the backseat. After a swift climb down the stairs Roxanne is in that backseat, too. There should be a glass of champagne waiting for her, that will come later, the cigars will come later, too, the limo takes off before the screaming sirens of the police show up to drown out Lola’s screams in this warehouse in the middle of an industrial nowhere. It couldn’t have gone any better if Roxanne had planned it herself. Oh wait, she did plan it herself. Isn’t she so clever and smart.

Of course, if Moreno knew something that usually meant someone else knew that same something. That person had been biding their time year after year, collecting little facts no one else thought were of importance, they were watching and taking mental notes of all these things that only the head of the criminal organization knew, that only her boyfriend knew. Moreno wouldn’t have let anybody else know these important details, this information he used to ensure he was the one in charge, but after a few years he trusted his girlfriend, he thought she was safe, it wasn’t that he purposefully told her these things, eventually he just stopped hiding them from her, if she overhead a conversation or read a document it was no big deal, she was family, or as close to family as she could get, so if she learned details of something she wasn’t supposed to know, it was okay, she could be trusted, and eventually as year toppled onto year, she collected a lot of information until she knew everything there was to know, everything Moreno knew. And this included at least two of Walters’ favorite hiding spots, and, luckily for her, Walters had chosen one of those places to hide out with Lola. She had assigned Marco to wait outside that address watching for any signs of Walters-like movement. Walters thought he was safe so he wasn’t difficult to spot. Marco saw him as he walked into the long-term parking lot and then reemerged in that Nissan. He recorded the type and license plate of the car. He called his boss.

“You were right, he’s at the downtown address. He just took off.”

“Is Tomas following him?”

“Yes.”

“Good. You stay on her. I know where he’s going. I want to know what she will do.”

Marco understood his orders. He continued to wait for Lola to emerge. They had a specific plan for her once she did.

---

Walters reached his destination without noticing he was being followed. This was not because of lack of skill on his part or because of a particular skill on Tomas’ part. It was because Roxanne not only knew Walters’ favorite hiding spots in the city, she also knew the two or three people he relied upon for information in times like these. She made sure to pay those individuals handsomely just in case Walters turned to them for help. They weren’t difficult to pay off. In this line of work loyalty has some purchase, lots of money has much more purchase. In a morally compromised profession, lots of money usually gets you the things you want. In this case, Roxanne wanted to play some dangerous games. And with enough money on offer Charlie Fives was willing to help her.

Charlies Fives is old and craggly, 75 and looks 100. May have been all those cigarettes. May have been all that alcohol. Or maybe it was just bad genes. More likely it’s the karma of all the nefarious deeds he’s witnessed and helped to facilitate in his time. One may think an old man nearing the old age when he would leap off the face of the planet would be close to some kind of internal reckoning with all of the things he has done in his life. This was not Charlie Fives. He was a reverse Dorian Gray, those bad actions aged him and made him look older than he is, but he had no desire to make amends.

Walters knew this about Charlie Fives, he was under no illusion about the character of the man who was waiting for him in a back booth in the rundown pizza joint in San Pedro. He also knew, or thought, their interests aligned. That’s what Walters usually counted on for such meetings with the Charlie Fives of the world. Moreno was Charlie’s benefactor just as he had been Walters’ benefactor and to Walters this meant Charlie would want to get revenge on Moreno’s murderer. But he miscalculated Charlie’s sense of indebtedness. Charlie had made his decision before Walters showed up at that pizza joint. Before Walters called him for a meeting. Frankly it wasn’t a difficult decision. Helping a long-term work acquaintance in his quixotic attempt to undue perceived wrongs or siding with the winning team, the new boss. Those decisions are pretty easy for Charlie Fives.

Walters slides in the booth across from the man he has placed a limited trust in.

“Charlie. Long time.”

“Yeah, long time.” Somewhere there’s a smile underneath the creased lines in Charlie’s face.

Walters tries to stay lowkey, to make his pitch in a way that Charlie will understand. Charlie nods sometimes. He agrees sometimes. Walters’ pitch is a good one.

Charlie agrees that Walters is right and gives him the information he is looking for. A meeting at a warehouse in Harbor City where the briefcase will be passed between Roxanne’s man and a secret ally. If Walters can get the drop on them, he might be able to get his hands on that briefcase, on those documents, he might be able to prove Roxanne was behind its loss in the first place, he might be able to blow up Roxanne’s plans once and for all.

Walters was so focused on the possibilities of catching Roxanne in her lies, he missed the big one Charlie was telling him. That is a big mistake. The type of mistake one can’t make in this business.

---

There’s a grand in small bills in an envelope on the side table and a note in the envelope.

‘This is not for last night – this is walking around money. You will need cash if you are going to survive. I will be back later tonight.’

Lola shakes the envelope and keys to the loft fall out. She also notices the black object that’s underneath the envelope. There’s a note taped to its handle – ‘you will need this, too’

Walters’ hideout doesn’t have a television. Lola is bored. She spends a boring morning there waiting. She doesn’t even know what she is waiting for. For Walters to return that night. She doesn’t want to wait for that. Sitting like a sitting duck. She has a mission now. Sitting around a barely furnished loft isn’t going to help her finish that mission. Coffee might do that. Coffee usually helps. Lola ventures out of the loft to get some coffee. Luckily for her, she lives in a time and place where there is pretty much a coffee shop on every corner. Even in a not very good part of downtown Los Angeles. And it may not be exactly on the corner of her block, but it is only three blocks away. She walks there taking in the sights and sounds of the warehouse district. It’s in the middle of the day so it’s safe. She has no worries there. She also made sure to take the gun Walters left her, so she feels extra safe. And just like the loft was surprisingly modern and trendy once inside, she finds the coffee shop on the corner three blocks down surprisingly modern and trendy as well.

It's full of people, hipsters and business people and warehouse people and fashion district people. All kinds of people getting their midday caffeine fix. Lola remembers another coffee shop from a few days ago, from when she was still trying to remember who she was. It’s nice to have a little money now. Sure, it’s from the stash Walters left her, so it’s not exactly a long-term fix to her financial issues, but it is money and it will pay for her coffee, so in that way she is in a slightly better spot than she was before.

After she orders and receives her latte, Lola looks around for a place to sit. All the tables are taken. What a strange crowd, Lola thinks to herself, as she waits and continues to scan the place for an open chair.

That’s when she sees Marco seated at one of the tables.

It can’t be him, can it?

Marco, this goon she had never met nor seen before the other day now seems to be haunting her life. He’s everywhere she goes. How can he be in this place? That’s a pretty big fucking coincidence. But it is kind of a seedy part of town. She hides behind a pillar and scans the crowd again.

Is this a place where gangsters meet?

He didn’t see her. She’s sure of that. She’s also sure it’s him. There’s no mistaking the square jaw of the man she chased out of her house with a gun and her naked body. She won’t ever forget his face. Would he remember hers? She’s pretty sure he would. But he seems busy now, preoccupied. There’s a man across the table from him. They are leaning confidentially into each other. They’re sharing secrets. The other man has a shady look to him. He may not be the male model goon out of central casting, but he’s the slimmed down older not to be trusted informant type of shady. He wears a long brown overcoat even though its warm outside. His hair is dark, his face is dark, his eyes are dark, he looks like a shadow, even when he’s under the fluorescent lights of the coffee shop as he is now. They are still whispering to each other, that square jaw and that shadow. What could they be whispering about?

Lola keeps observing. She feels she’s onto something, something that’s going to help her plan for revenge. She stays hidden behind that pillar holding her latte for a number of minutes. Her heart beats a little faster, she breathes a little slower. She knows she has that gun in her pocket. She doesn’t plan on using it, not in the open like this, not in a crowded coffee shop, still, it’s nice to know she has it with her.

Finally, the shadow moves, then the square jaw looks back and forth and he moves, too. Quickly. To the door. Doesn’t notice Lola behind that pillar. She notices the scrap of paper they left on the table. Careless. In her experience, Marco has the habit of being careless. Roxanne may like him, may rely on him, but thoroughness doesn’t seem to be his greatest asset.

Lola rushes over to the table and the scrap of paper. She snatches it before anybody else can sit down, before one of the unenthusiastic coffee shop workers has to wipe off the table. She retreats back into the shop now that she has the paper.

There’s scribbling on it. It’s hard to make out. Jesus, do I need reading glasses. I’m not that old yet, Lola thinks to herself. She squints She still can’t read those damn scribbles. Whoever wrote this has really bad handwriting.

“I can’t read this.” Lola says to herself, absentmindedly out loud.

There’s an old man, obviously retired, a little shambolic next to her waiting for his coffee at the counter.

He heard her. His ears perked up and he looked in her direction but didn’t say anything. In the big city, this big city, people tend to keep to themselves, no need to talk to strangers just like your mother taught you when you were a child, but he heard her, he definitely heard her.

Lola’s a little desperate. She turns to the old man. He looks at her with interest. She hands him the note.

“Can you read this?”

The old man is amused, happy that she asked, happy for the brief interaction with another human being in this cold city. He takes the note from her. He takes a pair of reading glasses out of his pocket and peers at it.

“It says 8:00.”

He squints, trying to read the rest of the note, the nearly indefinable scribbles.

“2225 Industrial Blvd. Harbor City Warehouse.”

There’s another part that is completely indecipherable, just a scribbled line, a signature. Somehow it makes sense to the old man.

“Roxanne.”

He hands the paper back to Lola.

“A date?” The old man asks. Lola smiles at the thought.

“Yeah, a date.”

---

Walters and Charlie are still sitting across from each other, a half-eaten pepperoni pizza between them.

“Eight o’clock?” Walters says.

Charlie nods.

“Eight o’clock.”

Walters stands up from the booth and looks down on Charlie. “I’m glad we’re on the same page about this.”

“Anything for an old friend.” The creases in Charlie’s face move in a semi-circular formation approximating a smile.

Walters walks away from Charlie. Out of the restaurant. Charlie takes out his phone and makes a call once the little bell on the restaurant door dings signaling a customer has left.

“It’s done. I want the rest of the money wired to my account.”

“You’ll get it when he shows up.” The woman’s voice on the other end of the line says.

“Oh, he’s going to show up, believe me. I’m very believable.”

“I won’t forget this favor.” The woman is very assured and confident.

“Don’t worry. I never liked the fucker anyway.”

Walters gets into his car and decides to give Lola a call. He isn’t sure if he’s going to tell her the news about the warehouse, she’s still a little bit of a wild card in all of this, but he does want to hear her voice.

There’s no answer in the loft. She doesn’t have a cell phone, so there is no other way to get in contact with her. Walters figures she’s gone out. He drives by the loft and waits for her there.

---

Lola is on her way back to the loft, scribbled note still in her hand, clutched tightly. She stops dead in her tracks a block away from the front door to the building. Two men have just come out that door, one of them is Marco.

Jesus, this guy is following me everywhere. How did he get this address.

Lola can’t believe her luck. The bad kind. She hides behind the corner of the building like she hid behind the pillar in the coffee shop. This explains why Marco was holding meetings in the neighborhood. He was already on to Walters and his favorite hiding place.

Fuck! I need to warn him.

Lola has change this time. She has a grand (minus price of coffee) to make as many calls from payphones as she wants. She finds one down at the other end of the street. Thank god for grimy payphones in grimy part of downtown. She puts in her change and starts dialing Walters. She goes to press the first button. Only there’s no number to dial. She doesn’t know her hitman’s cell number. Why would she know his number. She only met him a few days ago and it’s not like they met under normal circumstances, like he gave her his number to call him later. She has no idea what his number is. Why didn’t he leave his damn cell number in that envelope with the money and the keys? There’s no way to call him.

“Fuck!” Lola slams the receiver onto its cradle. It doesn’t latch and flies off and swings wildly from side to side. Lola doesn’t care and looks down the street. She can wait for Walters and try to flag him down. But she doesn’t even know what kind of car he’s driving. Still, she can wait. There has to be a way to wait for him and catch him before they do.

“Hey!”

That’s a loud shout on the street. Even for a downtown street. Even for a not very good part of downtown street. Lola can’t help but to look. Everyone looks at the guy he shouted the loud ‘hey!’

Two guys are running in her directions. That shout was for her. She can’t see the guys’ faces, but she doesn’t have time to look at the guys’ faces. It’s Marco, it’s gotta be Marco. She knows this, he’s following her everywhere. He knows her face and now he’s chasing her down from a block away.

Instead of turning towards the ‘hey’ she turns in the other direction and sprints. As fast as she can. She sprints through a dirty alley, jumping over a fallen garbage can, and comes out the other side on a busier street. Cars are flying by on both sides of the street. Cars are parked all along the street. She sees a yellow one. It’s a cab. Thank God. She waves. She doesn’t look behind her. The cab stops. She dives in the back and tells the cabbie the only address she can remember, the only address that feels like some semblance of home now.

“Driftwood Motel. Redondo. As fast as you can.” The cabbie steps on it. Lola stays face down on the backseat, waiting for a few blocks until she rises and looks out the back window. It’s safe. She audibly sighs at the narrow escape. The cabbie gives her a strange look.

“You running away from a guy?” He asks.

“Yeah, something like that.”

She feels a sharp object in her side. It’s sticking into her. It hurts. She reaches down to remove the bur from her side. Her right hand reaches for, then she remembers, what it is. A piece of hard metal that shoots deadly objects. For some reason this makes her smile, like when she was back in Walters’ loft. It’s her security blanket. She looks at the piece of paper in her left hand, still clutched in her left hand. She has a date for tonight. And she has the (name of gun). She can keep that date. She just hopes Walters is as quick as she was when Marco shouts his name. She worries for her lover. But he’s the experienced one. He’ll be okay. She knows he’ll be okay. He’s not going to walk into their trap. He’s too smart for that. He has to be too smart for that.

She tours the place like a prospective buyer. It’s barebones in terms of furniture but could otherwise be the trendy loft of some up and coming architect or maybe a desperate to be cool lawyer instead of what it is.

After her initial tour, Lola keeps wandering the place with empty eyes. There’s a couch and a bed and a kitchen, of course. A couple of chairs that look like they were hastily purchased at Ikea or some store like that. It doesn’t look like anybody has been here in years, which is possibly true.

While Lola is touring the loft, Walters is working away on a couple of the floorboards.

“Is this where you go when things are bad?”

“Are things bad?”

“They seem that way, yes.”

Walters shrugs. “I’ve seen worse.”

He raises one of the boards. “I keep a few places in the city no one else knows about. It makes my life less complicated.”

“And you’re good at avoiding complications?”

“Usually, yes.”

“But not anymore.”

Walters doesn’t answer. He’s now retrieving items from his hiding place under the floor. Lola keeps up the wandering and makes her way over to where he is. She peeks into the opening in the floor. It looks like he has an armory stored under there, and those are only the things she can see, who knows what else is down there, maybe a tank or antiaircraft gun as well. Walters is rifling through a large army green duffel bag.

“I know a guy who can help straighten things out. He’ll know what’s going on.”

“And you trust him?”

Walters stops rifling through the bag. He thinks about the question. “No. I don’t trust him. But he’s helped me in the past. He’s helped Moreno in the past. It’s in his interest to help me. I don’t trust him, but I trust he will do what’s in his best interest.”

“He’ll know what she’s planning?”

“Yes, he will.”

Now it’s Lola’s turn to stop and think. But the more she thinks the less she cares about Roxanne’s plans. She doesn’t care about Roxanne’s maneuvers in the criminal underworld. She doesn’t care about that briefcase she helped to steal and set all of this into motion. The list of concerns in Lola’s life have dwindled to only a select few primal urges. Basic desires of death and survival. She no longer wants anything else from this life.

After taking what he needs, Walters puts a smaller black bag with money and fake passports and practical items for those on the run back under the floor. The larger army green duffel bag stays out. It has an actual military insignia on it. It’s not just army green, it’s an army bag he must have stolen from some base somewhere. Walters unzips it and it is an armory within an armory. Exotic lethal killing machines of all sizes, a few rifles, a machine gun or two and lots and lots of handguns. For some reason, Lola instinctively smiles at this. She never smiled at the thought of such things before in her life, the thought of guns and bullets and death, these things did not bring her joy before but now that she sees her hitman sorting through pistols and automatic pistols she can’t help but to smile. Maybe it’s the absurdity of it all. Maybe it’s a defense mechanism. Either way, she turns back from Walters and tours the loft for a third time.

“You still might want to consider getting out of town.” Walters shouts over the clanging of the metal he is moving about.

Lola stares at the only picture in the entire place. It’s an abstract painting. Not a Jackson Pollack. A sad derivative attempt at a Jackson Pollack, many generations removed. It’s the type of thing you would find on a hotel wall. Lola wonders what this says about the man behind her on the floor.

“I’m staying.” She answers.

“This isn’t your fight anymore. It’s bigger than that. You can disappear and not be a part of what’s going to happen next.”

“Can I?” Lola turns back.

Walters is standing, having successfully transferred enough weapons to a smaller white bag.

Lola doesn’t believe she can disappear any more than Walters can. Or Moreno could. Disappearing now would only be a kind of delayed death. She’s a loose end. Loose ends don’t have very long lifespans.

“I want her dead.” Lola is surprised at the words as they come out of her mouth, not because they aren’t true, they are most definitely the truth, but because she said them aloud. She isn’t sure of much in her life at this moment. She is sure of this.

“Those are pretty strong words for someone who just killed a person for the first time. It doesn’t get easier after the first one, you know that, don’t you?”

“She took everything from me. I’m going to take everything from her.”

Lola’s eyes turn microscopic and focused, no longer empty, full. Full of hatred. Full of certainty. Full of a ruthless confidence.

---

Marco’s homecoming is less welcoming than returning to an empty loft. He has to tell Roxanne the bad news of his failure.

“Walters escaped.”

“How could you let him go!”

“He’s teamed up with the girl. She surprised us and shot Dante and Rafa.” Marco has surmised it’s wiser to lie to Roxanne than tell the truth. He may not be the brightest goon around but he’s bright enough for a little self-preservation.

“You’re kidding.”

“It was a set-up. That girl knows what to do with a gun. She was waiting for us.”

Roxanne stares at the square jaw of her second favorite bodyguard. She knows he is lying, that isn’t even a question at this point, but what is he lying about. Is he working with for someone else now? One of the reasons she likes him isn’t because he is trustworthy or especially honest, but because he is too dim to try to scheme and plan. There is loyalty in his dimness. Has that changed? Has she misjudged him. After another look in his eyes and jaw, Roxanne dismisses the idea. Whatever he’s lying about, it isn’t because he's trying to trap her. He’s being honest in his dishonesty.

“I know I taught her well. I didn’t think I taught her that well. I didn’t think she had it in her.”

“She definitely has it in her.”

“So she’s back in the game.” Roxanne seems more bemused than concerned, bemused by the idea of her one-time protégé plotting revenge against her. Lola couldn’t handle playing with the big boys like that, it’s almost sweet even. Like a child wanting to sit at the adult’s table. Roxanne had just toppled one of the most ruthless men in the entire city of Los Angeles and Lola thinks she can play in the same game as her, please, she shouldn’t even be on the same field, she should be playing with the little leaguers not against Roxanne in the major leagues.

Tomas, Roxanne’s once and current favorite bodyguard enters the fray. His jaw is slightly squarer than Marco’s.

“Should we kill them both?”

Bemusement stays on Roxanne’s face then turns into a kind of quizzical gaze. Her eyes sparkle the sparkle of someone who has just had a particularly delicious thought. She smiles an enigmatic smile to her two favorite bodyguards.

“No. Let’s have some fun.”

---

Lola is lying in bed. Walters is in the shower. She is wide awake. Ever since the amnesia, she doesn’t seem to sleep anymore. She spends a lot of time lying in bed thinking. And staring. And staring. And thinking. Amidst the thinking and staring, her microscopic focus of earlier has turned into a vague daze of remembrance. She contemplates her past. She contemplates her future.

The sound of the shower shuts off. Lola stays in her daze and barely notices as Walters walks to bed in only a towel. He gets into bed beside her. She still doesn’t turn to him.

“I found out something interesting earlier. I made a few phone calls. There’s going to be a meeting this weekend at Moreno’s mansion.

“His former mansion.” Lola says.

“Roxanne is hosting a get together. It’s an important meeting for her. Kind of like a coming out party.”

“Or an audition?”

“Perhaps. She’s going to use that party to consolidate her power.”

“Is it that easy?”

“Easy? No. It’s not easy. But she’s been around these men for ten years. She had all that time to gain favor. She’s good at that. You know that. You’ve seen it. If she’s been planning this for years, this is just the final piece, she’s already done the hard work.”

“Yeah, she has done the hard work.”

Lola still hasn’t turned towards Walters. She crinkles the top of the sheet with her left hand, gripping it with all of her strength.

“If I’m going to stop her, I’m going to have to do it before that meeting.” Walters continues.

“Stop her from doing what?”

“From taking over Moreno’s organization.”

Lola scoffs and turns to Walters. “I don’t care about that.”

“I thought that’s what you wanted.”

“I want her dead. I don’t care what she does to make money before I kill her.”

“You certainly know how to hold a grudge.”

“She’s my first.”

“The first person you’ve held a grudge against.”

“The first person I’ve vowed to kill.”

Walters doesn’t know what to say to that. Even a hitman doesn’t know what to say to that.

“I met her in a bar.”

“That’s Interesting.”

“I had just split up with my husband, we were separated, honestly, I thought we’d still get back together. Roxanne became my new best friend. We’d meet every week, drown our miseries, she would tell me about how bad her boyfriend was, I would tell her about how bad my ex was, she was older, wiser, someone to lean on.”

“She had this ruthless streak to her. I liked that. I hadn’t been so ruthless in my life, I was the nail, everyone else was the hammer. I wanted that to change. She urged me to split permanently from Bill. It was tough, I had no money, I was going to start fresh. I got deeper and deeper into debt, she said she had a way out of that. 93,000. That’s a lot of money. At least to me.”

Lola shakes her head.

“It was just supposed to be flirting. Easy money. No one was supposed to die. She set me up. I trusted her. It was all a lie. She played me. I’m not going to let her get away with it.”

“Wanting revenge and getting revenge are two very different things.”

Walters looks into the eyes of his new potential apprentice in the killing business. Maybe he sees something in there he likes, besides her beauty, besides the obvious.

“It’s a path you don’t come back from. At least I didn’t. It’s such a cold world to live in. It’s not a conscious choice, not for most people, maybe it was for Roxanne, I don’t know, but there’s more to killing than shooting a gun. Pulling the trigger is the easy part. Anybody can pull a trigger. People do it every day on the range. Into a body, a living human, it’s another thing completely.”

“I’ve done it.”

“That wasn’t planned. It was spur of the moment. You did it to save me. You did it to save yourself. That’s not what you are talking about now. You are talking about revenge, about doing it in cold blood, premeditated, planned. That’s the thing most people can’t do. And it’s a good thing they can’t do it. You become less human when you do.”

“Are you less human?”

“Yes. Than I was before. Than when my momma gave birth to me. Yeah, most definitely. But my path wasn’t one of choice. You have a choice.”

“No, I don’t. I’m not some amateur. I have more skills than you know. I went into the army after school. I served for five years. I wasn’t special forces or anything like that, I never was in combat, but I know enough. I grew up in fucking rural Kansas, for chrissakes, I grew up with a gun in my hand. You think I can’t handle myself. I can handle myself. When this is over, I’m going to be holding a briefcase with $93,000 in it and Roxanne, she’s..”

Lola shakes her head again, she doesn’t need to finish the thought.

Walters is still searching in those eyes of Lola. Is she an apprentice or an amateur. Is she talking big or is she willing to cross over to the other side. He decides to lighten the mood.

“Kansas, huh. Wizard of Oz and shit.”

Lola laughs. “Yeah, Kansas.”

“So you have some perfect middle America childhood, white fence, football games and prom and all of that?”

The daze of remembrance returns to Lola’s eyes. The bad memories return as well.

“No, I didn’t have any of that. It wasn’t a good childhood. I was an only child. I was alone a lot of the time. I liked to be alone. I was safe when I was alone. My mother hated me. I think she viewed me as competition, I don’t know. I was an only child to her. I did have a half-sister from my father. She was a lot older than me, almost the same age as my mom. For some reason my mom liked her, but she hated me. My half-sister hated me, too. They would gang up on me. It wasn’t Wizard of Oz, it was Cinderella, but not in a good way. It sucked. I hated every second of it.

“I think my dad felt guilty about the way they treated me so he would take me out hunting, fishing, shooting, he didn’t know much about girls even though he had two of them, those were the only moments that were half-decent. I guess that's why I joined the army after high school because I was used to that kind of stuff, only I didn’t do any of that in the army. I did a lot of logistics, whatever that is, and that was pretty boring so I got out as soon as I could and got out of Kansas with the little money I had from the army. I came to Los Angeles because that seems like the place people go when they want a new life. My dad was dead by then and I didn’t care about my mom. She's dead now, too. I met Bill out here pretty early on. He was from here, he was from Pasadena. He had a good family, his parents liked him, a good job, all this stability. That was good. And it was good. We got married. We had a few nice years. Then he cheated. So I cheated. And it went downhill from there. We tried to get back together. We didn’t know what we were doing, we could have made it work, I suppose, maybe. Then I met Roxanne in that bar. She was so damn cool. Assured. Seen everything. Knew everything. She was rich, too, I could tell that even without her telling me, she carried herself the way the rich do, the way those who don’t have to worry about next month’s rent do. Sure, I knew maybe the money wasn’t hers, that it was her boyfriends, but still it was money. That’s why I believed her when she fed me the story about the $93,000. Just a way of getting back at some guy who swindled her and her boyfriend. I looked up to her. I wanted to be like her. I was getting divorced and I had nobody, no family, no one else out here, and then I had her, she listened to me, she gave me advice, she gave me hope.

“And then she betrayed me. She stole the last few beliefs I had about this life. About the possibilities in this life. That’s as bad as stealing money. I’m not going to let her get away with it. She owes me. She owes me money. She owes me a future. She took my 93 grand and left me for dead. I’m not walking away from that. I’m going to get revenge. Even if it kills me.”

“Even if it kills you?”

“Yeah, don’t you know, I’m the most dangerous person in the world.”

“You are, huh.”

“I no longer have anything to lose.”

Walters wasn’t sure what would make him fall in love with a woman before her heard that speech from Lola, but that speech might have done it. He had the heart of a killer, and those words were the exact words that would make that heart, his heart, fall for another. Lola wasn’t about to make that same mistake. As they made love Walters was falling in love, despite his hardened heart. As much as she liked him, Lola reminded herself she had been betrayed before.

I can’t believe I just slept with my hitman.

Lola’s mind races. She looks over at her hitman. He is kinda cute, and he didn’t kill me when he first met me and had the chance, Lola thinks to herself. Those are a couple of positive traits. He’s certainly better than some of the guys I was with when things were looking bad. When that bitch in sunglasses led me down the downward spiral.

93 grand. Flirting with a guy for 93 grand. I knew it was too good to be true. But I needed that money. Desperate for that money. She used me. She betrayed me.

And that was the worst part to Lola. Roxanne had used her and betrayed her and she could do those things because Lola had grown to trust her. She really did trust her and look up to her and Roxanne did say a lot of things that made sense. Some of those things still made sense. Was it all just a lie? She had obviously been using her from the beginning, but Lola felt the emotion, the emotion from the big sister she never had. Okay, she had a big sister, a half-sister, but she didn’t like her or get along with her, so the big sister she never had and liked. Roxanne said she reminded her of herself at that age and it still feels like that was true. That’s why she left that card. Why on earth would a sociopath leave that card. “Goodbye Lola.” Does it make it any better if you’re murderer leaves you a goodbye note? Who was that damn card for anyway, for her? She was unconscious, she was never going to see it. It was for Roxanne. For her guilt. Is she capable of guilt?

Lola hates these damn racing thoughts at night. She looks over at Walters again. She wishes she could sleep like he’s sleeping. She shakes her head and tries not to think about Roxanne. She’s not successful, her mind circling the same drain of thoughts. The only things that would stop these thoughts are actions. Or a noise.

Wait, did I hear a noise?

It could have been a noise that mattered or maybe it was just a noise in the night that doesn’t matter. Those noises happen all the time. But this one didn’t sound like one of those. It’s like she’s stuck in a timeloop. The noise sounded like the noise Walters made when he first came to her house, but he's in bed next to her now. It’s so damn black. She can’t see anything. She can’t turn on a light because then the noise would find her more quickly. She can only lay there and listen. Listen in the dark for a noise that might be somebody who’s sneaking into her place to try to kill her. Sleeping next to a hitman should be more comforting in such situations, but Lola doesn’t find it comforting. She’s upset. No, she’s pissed off. That bitch in sunglasses betrayed me and now she sent someone here to kill me. She doesn’t even know where I live and she sent someone here to kill me. Probably wasn’t that hard to find out. The more Lola thinks about it the more pissed off she gets. She doesn’t need to wake up her hitman.

There is that noise again. That’s definitely a noise that matters, the noise of a person trying to get into her place, maybe he’s already in her place. Lola doesn’t have time. She reaches over to the gun on the nightstand. At least she thought to put it there before the sex.

The bedroom door is open, Walters never closed it after he entered the bedroom. It leads to a whole bunch of darkness. Lola peers into that whole bunch of darkness holding a .45, the same gun she used to shoot a man dead the day before. The noise has gone away but she thinks she sees movement, a black mass moving against black. She squints into the darkness, it doesn’t help. She feels like she’s dreaming, her conscience rising up to make her pay for, what, killing a man who was about to shoot someone else. Damn conscience, that doesn’t feel like a good thing to feel guilty over.

The black mass is still moving towards her, this ain’t no fucking dream.

She fires. A flash of light amidst the dark.

“Ah, shit!”

Walters snaps awake and flips on the lamp.

Marco is on the living room floor, shot in the arm. Walters reaches to his clothes for his gun. He raises it to fire again. Lola pushes the gun away. “No.”

Lola gets out of bed. She stands naked, her gun still aimed at Marco, holding it in two hands like she did when she shot the stooge the day before. She walks over to Marco and stands over him, barrel aimed at his forehead.

“Get up.”

Marco gets up from the floor.

Marco scoffs at the situation he finds himself in. A naked girl he was sneaking up and trying to kill now holding a gun on him. “That was a lucky shot.”

“The next one doesn’t have to be.” The barrel of her gun is now trained between his eyes.

“Turn around.”

Marco turns around. She frisks him and takes his phone out of his pocket.

“How did you find us?”

Marco doesn’t answer.

“I said, how did you find us?” She cocks the gun to try to intimidate him. He still doesn’t answer.

A shot whizzes by his head into the wall. Walters is still in bed but he has pretty good aim from there.

“I suggest you answer the lady.”

“I followed you here from the other place and then waited until you were asleep.”

“Is there anybody else with you?” Lola asks.

“No.”

Neither of them know whether to believe him. But if he wasn’t on his own, his backup would already be in the room with them. Maybe Marco took this on his own initiative, maybe he was afraid of going back to Roxanne with his screw up of letting Walters escape. Maybe he was trying to make amends before that screw up was found out.

“I think you’re lying. That means we have to kill you.” Lola says.

“I’m not. I’m not. I’m alone.” Marco turns around and puts his hands into the air. He shows real fear. Desperation. Enough to believe him. Even though he lives in Los Angeles he’s not good enough of an actor to fake that desperation.

“I’m alone. Honest.”

“That was stupid.”

Walters is out of bed, Lola’s a step ahead of him. She wants to keep Marco alive. She turns him around again.

“Start marching.”

Marco starts marching. They march to the front door and outside the front door to the front lawn. The first rays of the sun are sprinting over the horizon. Lola stands naked on her front step holding her gun on Roxanne’s second favorite bodyguard. Walters watches from the doorway.

“Tell Roxanne I want my money.”

Marco doesn’t know what to say to this.

“I said tell Roxanne, I want my money.” This time with menace.

“Get out of here!” She shouts at him. He doesn’t move, just staring back at her.

Lola shoots at Marco’s feet, watering the grass with a couple of bullets. Marco runs for the Hummer for the second time in two days. The Hummer drives off. A neighbor casually walking their dog sees a naked Lola on her front step.

“Good morning” Lola says to her neighbor.

“Good morning” the old lady says to the younger naked one, not noticing the gun she holds at her side.

“They know about this place. We need to get moving.” Walters says to Lola as soon as she is back inside.

Lola and Walters indeed get moving and dress and pack in minutes.

---

Done packing, Lola, with a duffel bag that contains the last of her life around her shoulder, stops at the doorway one last time before closing it and locking. Walters is already outside.

“I know a place that’s safe.” Walters says. This is a man with more than one hideout at his disposal. “Do you have everything?”

“No.” Lola answers honestly. She’s pensive. Walters gives her an impatient look.

“Yeah. I have everything.” Lola lies.

“Then let’s go.” Walters walks the front lawn, gun drawn at his side. Lola doesn’t follow. Instead, she goes back inside her house one last time, for one last time. She reaches for a picture that’s hung on the wall near the entryway. It’s of her and her former husband looking happy. She slips it out of the frame, folds it and puts it in her pocket. She leaves her house for the last time.

Walters is already in the blue Honda, with the engine on. Lola throws her duffel bag in the backseat and slides into the passenger’s seat of her car. They drove off away from Lola’s former life.

Lola could turn to Walters and say there is no going back now, but the truth is there was no going back before either. Lola wasn’t sure when exactly she had lost any chance to return to her former life, maybe it was when she separated from her husband, or when she first met Roxanne, certainly by the time she had taken up Roxanne’s offer of seducing a stranger with a briefcase and most definitely certainly by the time she shot one of Roxanne’s henchmen in the back so she could the save the life of a hitman, that opportunity had been lost. Forever. There may have been a brief moment when she was laying down on her bed, when the kaleidoscope of her life returned most of her memories, that she hoped she could have it back again, but that was just a fool’s hope, a jester’s wish, there was never any chance of that. Some decisions are decisions. They stay with you for the rest of your life. The only thing you can do at that point is move forward. And Lola was now ready to move forward. To move forward and get her revenge on the woman who took it all away from her.

The second car follows from some distance behind. It’s not that nice of a car, more function than style, a blue Honda with over two hundred thousand miles on the speedometer and a large dent on the passenger’s side. Even though she has most of her memories back, Lola has no idea where that dent came from.

Luckily, following a Humvee is a lot easier than following any type of normal car. Lola doesn’t need any special skills for this as they snake their way down the winding canyon and into the Valley where Lola’s house is.

It’s funny, Lola thinks, as she follows this giant white Humvee that sticks out like a shining sun driving down Vanu Nuys Blvd, is he really taking them to my house? Why would he do that? He had his chance a few hours ago and he let me go, why would he take them there now?

The caravan of two cars makes its way to Lola’s neighborhood. A small enclave in the San Fernando Valley of a few suburban-lite streets with two-bedroom one story houses lining those streets. Lola’s house is only a couple of more blocks ahead. She is sad in a way. Once they reach her house there’s no chance of her ever going back there again. She isn’t even sure she wants to go back. All those memories she barely remembers. There was a freedom when all of that was lost to her. A freedom from her past failures, from her ex-husband and her relationship with a family she doesn’t get along with. A freedom from her workaday life at a series of jobs she was no more successful with than her family relationships. Lola didn’t think she would miss any of that, but now that her house is about to be taken from her violently, she feels wistful about what she can no longer have.

As Lola is having these feelings of remorse and nostalgia, Walters intervenes and tells stooge number one who is driving the Hummer to take a right when he shouldn’t take a right, at least not if he was heading to Lola’s house. The giant blinding white sun of the Humvee turns onto Magnolia Lane and starts creeping slowly from house to house. Lola’s house is still a couple of streets over. She eases her car into the end of the block, far enough away from the Hummer for the stooges and the goons not to notice her in their rearview mirror.

Walters’ face is pressed against the closed window counting off the small houses, looking for something. Marco next to him is getting impatient.

Walters tells them to stop in front of a white craftsman the same size and look as pretty much every other house on the block. It has a gated fence around the back, one can see that from the front and there’s a sign in the yard that’s partially covered by a bush. Walters thinks he can make out the word ‘beware’ on the sign.

“This is it.” Walters says. The Hummer stops.

The lights in the house are off.

“I’ll see if anybody’s there.” Marco says and starts to move.

“She’s not going to answer if some goon rings the doorbell. I told her to be careful.” Walters does his best to stop him.

Marco thinks. It’s not easy for him.

“She knows my face. She trusts me.” Walters says.

Marco keeps thinking. He may not be the smartest goon in Roxanne’s stable but he is smart enough to know Walters is going to try to trick him, but the asshole Walters is right, she’s more likely to answer if he’s the one at the door.

“Alright, fucker, have it your way.” Marco gives in.

The blue Honda is still at the end of the block, very far back. The fact Lola was never spotted wasn’t so much because she had any special talents in tailing another vehicle, as it was that Marco and his two stooges had been so focused on Walters it never occurred to them they might be followed by somebody else

Marco, Walters and the stooges exit the Humvee.

“I should be the one to ring the doorbell.” Walters says.

Marco is even more suspicious now. He knows Walters has a plan, he just can’t figure out what it is. And to be fair, Walters does have a plan. Just not a very good one. Walter’s plan which he came up with on the ride down the canyon and into the valley may not be the best plan in the world, but with six pairs of eyes and at least three guns on him, his options are limited. Walters feels like he could take Marco one on one, but that still leaves two guns and four eyes. Walters isn’t faster than a speeding bullet, so even if he managed to take out Marco and one stooge, there would still be the other standing to plug him before he could do anything.

That is obviously a problem. A distraction would help. And Walters is praying for that distraction, so he can disarm Marco, focus on stooge two and then, well, stooge three is still a trouble spot for this plan. Sometimes, you just need to act and hope or hope and act, the order doesn’t really matter, but sometimes that is all you can do in these types of situations, knowing there’s little chance of getting out of it alive but maybe you’ll be able to take two of these suckers with you. Or maybe fortune will smile on the bold and a bullet will miss or a stooge will panic and somehow you survive the scrape. Of course, even if he survives the initial encounter, he’ll probably be shot in the back as he’s running away.

Better not to think of these things at all. Better just hope and act. Or act and hope. It doesn’t matter. We’re at the door now.

Walters and his three friends reach the red door of the white house. Walters looks at the chipped white paint of the fence on the side of the house, hoping for a good reason for that fence and hoping that good reason isn’t a cat. Cats don’t’ need fences like that but dogs surely do. Big dogs. He never got a good look at that sign hidden by the bush, but if he had to guess there’s the word ‘dog’ on it somewhere after the word beware.

I really hope that dog is home right now.

Walters’ finger goes to the doorbell and he readies himself, Marco at his side, the other two stooges behind. One of them has a gun sticking into Walter’s left rib, this stooge thinks it’s a good message to send, to keep Walters tight on his leash, but for Walters it’s better this way, he knows where that gun is, so he will know how to neutralize it. Marco’s beside him, so he might be able to neutralize him as well with the distraction. Walters tries to sneak a look back to see exactly where the third stooge is standing but like he found out earlier in the day, the corners of his eyes don’t work as well as they used to.

I’ll deal with him after the first two.

The doorbell rings.

Woof! Woof! The jaws of a large rottweiler appear in the side window barking with menace.

Walters spins, taking control of the gun sticking in his ribs. He re-aims it behind to stooge three, the wild card. He’s lucky, it fires into the stooge’s chest, knocking him to the ground, this is going better than Walters could’ve hoped. Still holding on to stooge two’s arm and gun for dear life, Walters keeps spinning, in one sweeping motion he kicks the gun out of Marco’s hand as it fires. The loud shot goes off and with another kick Marco is on the ground.

During that second kick, stooge two extricates his arm from Walters’ embrace, sans gun, which flies to the ground and scatters across the front stoop. He throws a punch at Walters. Walters elbows him in the sternum. And then a kick, another kick, Walters legs are on fire today, stooge two is knocked a few steps back. This isn’t pretty but Walters it still alive.

Marco reaches for his gun and for a second time, Walters gets there just in time. It fires into the ground again. Marco and Walters struggle over the gun. Both trying to gain the upper hand, using their strength to gain control. They’re tight in a clinch. Another shot fires. Into the pavement this time. It ricochets into the side of the house. The rottweiler is still going crazy, barking at the top of its lungs. It might jump through the window to join the action.

Stooge two has found a gun, maybe it’s his, maybe it’s the other stooge’s gun, it doesn’t matter, it will do enough damage. Stooge two has to aim carefully so he doesn’t shoot his boss by accident. The struggle continues. The gun is knocked from both of their hands and flies off into the grass. Marco separates from Walters. Stooge two has a clear shot.

Walters and Marco hear the loud pop of gunfire in between the barks coming from the house. Walters looks down at his chest. There’s no blood. He looks at Marco, he’s not shot either. Stooge two drops to the ground revealing a young woman standing behind him fifteen feet away. She holds a .45 caliber handgun, both hands on the grip, still aiming at the place where stooge two stood seconds ago. Lola and Walters eyes meet for a brief millisecond. Lola looks away. To a running Marco. He’s made the executive decision to run for the Hummer and is already there. The shining sun of the Humvee takes off at the speed of a shooting star. Walters and Lola stand in the street, watching him leave. Walters checks his shirt. He’s bleeding on his side. He hopes it someone else’s blood. The pain in his side tells him it’s probably his blood. He turns to Lola.

“We should get out of here.”

Lola does not disagree with this assessment. They run to the blue Honda parked at the far end of the street and drive the couple of blocks to her house.

---

When they arrive, Walters heads straight for the bathroom and runs the water. This isn’t the first time he’s been shot. It’s not even the second or third time. It’s an occupational hazard, and as long as it’s not in his face or his heart, he’s sure there’s enough medicinal type supplies in Lola’s bathroom for him to patch himself up.

Emergency self-surgery can take time, Walters tries to make small talk with Lola who is somewhere else in the house as he works on his wound in the bathroom.

“Are you sure it’s safe here. Doesn’t Roxanne know this place?”

“She doesn’t know where I live.” And then in a quieter tone. “She never cared to ask”

Walters’ head pops out of the bathroom to find Lola sitting morosely on the couch.

“It can’t be that hard to find out”

“I’m not listed.”

His head pops back into the bathroom as he begins with the stitches. “Still, can’t be that hard to find out.”

Lola gets up from the couch and takes a step towards the half-closed bathroom door. She can see Walters with his shirt off patching up his side like an Army field medic.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” Walters answer is slightly muffled as he concentrates.

Lola walks closer and opens the door a little. Walters barely notices as he is in a more delicate part of the procedure at the moment. She can see a needle and thread going into his side, closing a wound. She winces in pain even though its not her side.

“That looks bad.”

“It’s just a nick, it missed the important bits.”

Now it’s Walters turn to wince in pain as he works on closing the wound.

Lola stays in the doorway, leaning her head against the doorframe, arms crossed. She is staring down at the floor.

Walters hasn’t gotten through the trickier part now. He has time to make small talk again.

“Why did you save my life?” Walters is genuinely curious.

Lola’s eyes don’t leave the floor. “Because you saved mine.”

“How?”

“By not bringing them to my house.”

“They still would have killed me even if I had.” Walters keeps at the wound, some bullet holes are harder to close than others.

“I know. But you still saved mine. I thought it was gallant in some strange way.” Lola walks away from the bathroom, arms still crossed, protecting herself.

Walters is close to finishing. He hasn’t noticed she has left, so he continues the conversation.

“It might be safe for tonight, but we better move tomorrow. Like I said, it won’t take her long to figure out where you live.”

Lola is gone. She’s left her place at the doorframe and is no longer in the adjacent room either. Walters peeks his head out.

“Are you okay?” He asks is a louder voice in the direction of the closed bedroom door. There is no answer from behind that door. Walters can see light through the opening at the bottom of the door. He decides to give her some space. Besides, he needs to make sure this wound won’t get infected.

A little later, Walters is cleaned up, side bandaged, he grows restless on the couch in the living room. There’s still light coming from underneath the bedroom door. Walters hesitates, then walks over to the door and listens. He doesn’t hear anything. He knocks, expecting she won’t answer. It’s a light knock.

“Come in.” A weak voice answers.

Walters opens the door slowly and silently like a cat burglar. He sees Lola sitting on her bed. It doesn’t look like she’s moved since she went in there hours ago. She’s despondent, she looks like somebody she knew just died or perhaps she just killed somebody for the first time. Walters feels like he needs to be sensitive here. Not everybody is used to his line of work.

He tiptoes over and sits down next to her on the bed. His shirt is still off because quite frankly it hurts too much to put on a shirt right now. Lola’s eyes are still on the floor. Maybe they’ve been there the entire time, from her walk from the bathroom into the bedroom, since she sat down on her bed and didn’t move. Her arms still crossed over herself protecting herself. It’s a damn long time to stare at the ground. Even if you feel guilty about killing someone.

Walters leans in. “Are you alright?”

“No.” Lola turns her head away from him while keeping her eyes on the ground.

Walters doesn’t know what to say. This isn’t exactly his emotional territory.

“I took a man’s life today.”

“You saved mine.”

“You might be used to this, I’m not.”

“He’s not someone that will be missed.”

“And you think that makes it easier.”

Lola clenches her jaw. She is fighting back tears. Walters puts his arm around her and reaches out with his left hand. Slowly, he turns her chin towards him, so that he can see her eyes.

“You had to do it. It not only saved my life. It saved your life. If they killed me today, it wouldn’t have taken them long to find you.”

There are definitely tears in her eyes now. “I know.”

Lola puts her head on his shoulder. It’s a nice shoulder. She finally uncrosses her arms. She leaves her head on his shoulder for a very long time. He doesn’t move. His arm still around her. After that very long time, she looks up, her eyes into his. There’s a chemistry between them. Between this girl on the run and the hitman they sent to find her. There shouldn’t be chemistry but there is. Sometimes, these things can’t be controlled. Lola doesn’t want to control them right now, that’s for sure and neither does Walters. They kiss. They kiss again.

Walters hesitates. “Are you sure.” Lola doesn’t answer with words. She throws her arms around him. They fall into the bed. Walters making sure to fall on his side without a bullet wound. It doesn’t take much for their clothes to come off. Walters hesitates again.

“Are you sure?” He says again.

“Oh, shut up and fuck me.” Lola seems pretty damn sure.

They make love. Twice. A sweet release for them both. A few moments of time away from crime bosses and hitmen and stolen briefcases and the elaborate schemes of a sociopathic blonde.

“Hard to say. You’re in a lot of trouble. But then again, if what you say is true, a lot of people could be in a lot of trouble. Including my boss. Including me. You weren’t the only one double-crossed. I have to be careful with the information you gave me.”

Walters writes something on the back of the ‘Dorothy Drake’ card.

“You should leave town. Here’s my number. It’s in your best interest to call me if you remember anything else about this blonde.”

Walters holds the card out for her.

“That’s it?”

“Yes. For now.”

Lola takes the card.

“It doesn’t seem enough, somehow.”

“Maybe not, but it’s all I can offer you.”

Walters gets up from his spot on the armrest.

“Goodbye, Dorothy.”

She looks confused.

“Lola.”

“What?”

“Call me Lola. The name Dorothy is still too weird for me.”

“Isn’t that what she called you.”

“Yes.” Lola shakes her head. “It’s the name I remember, maybe, eventually...” her voice trails off.

“Alright, Lola. Keep in touch.”

Walters decides he will exit through the front door this time. Before he does, he stops and walks back to Lola.

“Here.” He’s holding out his gun. It’s a Sig Sauer P226. Lola looks at it like the foreign object it is.

“Take it. You might need it.”

“Lola takes the gun from Walters’ hand.”

“Stay safe.”

Walters turns and leaves. Lola follows him to the door to close and lock it, not that such things did much good before, but it makes her feel safer. At least for a second.

Then she has another thought.

---

Walters arrives at Moreno’s mansion and gets out of his car and is greeted by Jackson in the driveway.

“Do you have anything for us?” Jackson says.

“I think I should talk to Alphonse.” Walters tries to brush him off, but he stays on him like a fly buzzing around butter.

“What? Don’t you trust me?”

“Bobby, I trust you about as much as I trust a drowning rat.” Walters slaps Jackson on the back and walks into the house.

He doesn’t get far. Just as he was greeted in the driveway by Jackson, he is greeted in the entryway by Roxanne. Marco and Tomas stand behind her, one on each side, Roxanne forming the tip of the spear.

“Hello, John.”

It doesn’t take much of a sixth sense to know something is up. Jackson greeting him outside is one thing, odd, micro-managey, but that describes Jackson. Roxanne with two goons beside her and Moreno nowhere in sight, that’s more than odd, that’s a party with a new host, a circus with a new ringleader. Unlike Moreno, Walters never had any illusions about Roxanne or her place within Moreno’s organization. Maybe that’s because he didn’t sleep with her every night, sex clouds the judgment of the best of men and Moreno wasn’t the best of men. Walters knew Roxanne was a climber just like Moreno was in the beginning, just like Walters was in his younger days. She was on the lookout for her next playdate, her next big score, the fact she stayed with Moreno as long as she did shows how successful he had been in climbing to the top of the organization, to become the wealthiest of the wealthy of the criminal kind making it as far as a crime boss could in this town in this day and age. Maybe that’s why he got comfortable and lazy. Lazy enough for his girlfriend to pull her body over his eyes. Lazy enough to start losing briefcases because of his flunky younger brother. Walters isn’t any sage or Nostradamus, he didn’t predict Roxanne’s betrayal of his former boss, but he was wizened enough to not be surprised when he realized it either. He stared at Roxanne, watching her on her pedestal as she looked down on the world. He had seen that look so many times before, in the corners of many rooms when Moreno wasn’t aware, from behind Moreno when he was telling others what to do. But she was a tamed bird then. Now she had been set loose and was searching for prey. There’s no telling who she might swoop down on next. Actually, that’s not true. From the looks of things, Walters knows who the falcon is coming for. There’s not much he can do to protect himself. He just has to find a way to survive.

“Where’s Alphonse?”

“He’s busy, anything I can help you with.”

Jackson is standing behind Walters. Walters doesn’t like Jackson standing behind him. Walters takes a step to the left, so he can see Jackson out of the corner of his eye. He doesn’t want anybody putting a gun to his head and pulling the trigger before he can notice it.

“I thought he was expecting me.”

Roxanne laughs the laugh of a devil. “He had too much to drink. He’s sleeping it off.”

“That doesn’t sound like him.”

“Maybe you don’t know him as well as you think you do. You’re just an employee. You’d be surprised at the number of habits he has that you don’t know about.”

“I’ll come back another time.”

Walters turns to find a 9MM Taurus pointing at him. I guess the corners of his eyes don’t work as well as they used to. They say the eyes are the first things to go when you hit forty. The Taurus isn’t aimed at his head, but a bullet to the heart wouldn’t do him any good either.

Walters turns back to Roxanne. “What’s going on?”

“Did you find out anything from the girl?”

“Oh, the girl.” Walters smiles, scans the room. Four against one, not very good odds. And he gave his gun to that girl, too, might not have been the smartest move. He winces at the thought. Of course, he didn’t expect to be walking into an ambush, but then again that’s the thing about ambushes, they’re not something you expect.

Roxanne is right in front of him now. She has a big smile on her face. The smile of someone who’s been dealing from the bottom of the deck and just won a big round of chips. At least he knows she’s cheating, that’s something.

“She talked about you.” Walters says.

“Who?”

“The girl.”

“I doubt that.”

“She remembers you. She talked a lot. I don’t think she likes you very much.”

Roxanne gives a nod to one of her goons and either Tomas or Marco, Walters can never keep the two of them straight, frisks him. The goon let’s Roxanne know that Walters is unarmed. Her self-satisfied smile grows more self-satisfied. Roxanne reaches up to Walter’s face. He flinches. Her hand brushes his cheek and goes around to the back of his neck. She straightens his collar. It was a mess from his fall at Lola’s place.

“That’s better.” Roxanne turns away, announcing as she does so. “Al’s dead.”

“And you took the briefcase?”

“Oh John, why would you say a hurtful thing like that?”

“Because it’s true.”

“Al was getting sloppy, he started losing things.”

“Because of you.”

Roxanne doesn’t answer his accusation, standing behind her two bodyguards. She looks into the living room with the sofa and the large floor to ceiling glass window that looks over the pool she swims in every day. She pretends to be far away from any of the earthly concerns that Walters is trying to bother her with. She is above it all, doesn’t he know that. Can’t he see that. He’s such a mere mortal in the presence of the divine. Divinities don’t care about cheap accusations. They don’t care about hitmen with short lifespans. They don’t even care about nice mansions and nice pools that overlook the Pacific Ocean. But there are some things a divinity does care about and she just can’t help herself, under her breath, as nonchalantly as she can, Roxanne asks a question she is dying to ask.

“What did she say about me?”

And Walters found his card. The only card he can play against this stacked deck. The only card he can play to survive. A Lola. That’s his card.

“Do you want to know where she is?”

Roxanne’s eyes get wide against all her intentions, a reflex that can’t be controlled. Yes, she does want to know where she is, but she can’t tell this killer that. Such an obvious set up. But she oh so desperately wants to know. She has three killers on her side. And that’s just in this room. Okay, two killers and a Jackson. But that might be enough to see where this takes her. To see what Walters knows. To see what Lola knows.

“She doesn’t worry me.” Roxanne picks some imaginary lint off her dress.

“She should worry you. She’s the only one who can pin this on you. She remembers everything.”

“And who is she going to tell?”

“She knows people.”

“No, she doesn’t. That’s why I picked her.”

“I gave her some numbers to call.”

Roxanne approaches Walters again, parting Marco and Tomas down the middle. She walks straight up to him, holding the collar that she fixed earlier with both hands, staring him straight in the eye, trying to project all the confidence, arrogance, that she possibly can. “You’re lying.”

“I’ll take you to her.”

She needs more convincing, Walters can tell that, his eyes circling hers, she’s teetering, she’s trying too hard, all this fake confidence and arrogance, it’s the type of thing a playground bully does. Like any good boxer, he sees his opening.

“Why would I protect her?” A shot to the ribs. “It’d be stupid to let an opportunity like this pass.” A jab to the head. “She’s the only one that can stop your plan now.” An uppercut to the jaw.

“Fine.” A flick of the wrist and Roxanne agrees and retreats from her perch on Walter’s toes.

“Marco, take some guys with you and see if there’s anything to John’s story.”

Marco moves away from Tomas. Oh, so that one is Marco. “What’s in it for me?” Walters asks Roxanne.

“If she’s there, we’ll let you go.” No one in this room believes that. A gullible child wouldn’t believe that. A newborn baby infant in the cradle is cynical enough to see through it. But it buys Walters a few more minutes of life so it’s a fiction he’s willing to go along with for now.

Two other bodyguards show up and escort Walters outside. Marco stays behind, at Roxanne’s hip, to get one last direction. Roxanne leans in to her second favorite bodyguard and whispers in his ear.

“Kill him either way.”

“Gladly.” Marco has his assignment.

Jackson is standing nearby. He always seems to be standing nearby. I guess that’s his job. The living room of Moreno’s mansion has a beautiful view of the pool, floor to ceiling glass windows. Out beyond the pool is the Pacific Ocean. Moreno doesn’t watch the ocean, his eyes watch the calm cool ripples on the surface of the pool. It helps him relax. His girlfriend Roxanne is swimming underneath those ripples, thinking of her helps him relax, too.

Two of his bodyguards stand at the entrance to the room. Moreno gives a look to Jackson, then to the guards. Jackson dismisses the guards. Jackson and Moreno need to be alone for this conversation.

“Any news about our lady friend?”

Moreno lights his cigar.

“Walters is still watching her.”

“That’s it?”

“She’s waiting to make her move.”

“Goddamnit! We can’t let her. That briefcase can’t be allowed to float around. Those papers implicate you as well.”

Moreno waits for that to sink in to Jackson. But his words skip off Jackson like a stone off ice. Jackson remains cool. This gets Moreno hotter. “Who the hell is she working for?”

“We don’t know.”

“Find out.” Moreno’s temperature is about to pass a boil, Jackson looks around to make sure there aren’t any paperweights lying on desks nearby. The pool comes to life and a beautiful mermaid emerges from the rippling water. This draws Moreno’s attention away from his worries.

Roxanne, dripping wet in her black one-piece bathing suit, towels off her short blonde hair. She wraps a white robe around the black of her swimsuit and puts on a pair of sunglasses to walk inside. These sunglasses are a familiar sight to Moreno, Roxanne’s favorite pair, rounded, oval and dark, completely hiding her eyes. She loves wearing them, even inside. Moreno is always telling her to take them off so he can see her blue eyes.

Those sunglasses would be familiar to Lola as well. They are the same make and model of sunglasses the blonde who set her up wore during most of their meetings. They are the camouflage that Roxanne uses to protect her eyes, to hide her thoughts from the rest of the world, they are the sunglasses that reflected Lola’s own image back at her as Roxanne led Lola down a much more interesting yet darker path than Lola’s previous two bedroom craftsman house married life. The glasses she wore as she taught Lola how to seduce all the gullible marks in the world, while she was unaware she was being seduced by Roxanne.

Of course, Lola surviving the blast was not part of Roxanne’s plan. Whatever feelings she may have developed for her younger protégé in the preceding months, Roxanne wasn’t about to let those feelings get in the way of a well thought out plan. She was too ruthless, like her older boyfriend, to let such things as emotions and personal attachments get the best of her. Or was she? She left the note, one last gesture of sentiment, one last moment of weakness. Is that why Lola survived? Maybe she wasn’t as good at this game as she thought she was. From behind her darkened oval sunglasses she stared at the current master of such games through her own reflection in the window to the pool as the sun set over her shoulder.

Roxanne’s mind dances. The fact that Lola was still alive did not completely ruin her plan. In some ways it helped. It distracted Moreno and those who were still loyal to him. They were focusing on the wrong person giving her time to set up her next move.

She enters the living room, casually eavesdropping on the conversation that Moreno and Jackson are having, and walks over to the bar and pours herself a glass of something strong.

Moreno gets up from his place on the sofa to go embrace his girlfriend. He makes a stop along the way and leans in to Jackson taking his arm and keeping his voice low.

“Tell Walters to get his hands dirty. Fuck this waiting around shit, tell him to torture her if he has to. I want him to get those papers back and find out who she’s working for. I’m not going to let some fucking lost briefcase bring me down.”

Moreno lets go of Jackson’s arm and continues towards Roxanne, brightening up.

“How was your swim, honey?”

Roxanne takes a drink from her glass, sunglasses still on and smiles brightly.

“Relaxing.”

Moreno gives her a smile then turns back to Jackson. “Get it done.” These are his last few working words for the night before he clocks off.

Jackson understands his boss’s order and nods his understanding. He acknowledges Roxanne and leaves the two of them alone.

“How about making me one of those.”

“How about I make you something better, something special.”

Roxanne takes out another glass and starts mixing Moreno a concoction of her own creation.

“You don’t seem very relaxed.” She says as she finishes the unusual mixture and adds a ripe cherry dropping into the browns and yellows of the cool liquid making a splash.

“It’s nothing. Just business.”

“You shouldn’t worry so much.” She turns around, drink in hand, stem of the cherry sticking out from the top of the glass.

“Baby, it’s my worrying that allows you to spend all your time lying in the sun.”

Roxanne hands him his drink and smiles. Moreno doesn’t want the drink. He sets it aside and pulls her towards him with those meat hooks he calls hands.

“Take off those damn sunglasses. I want to see your eyes.”

“Take them off for me.”

He removes her sunglasses and sets them down next to the drink. Moreno stares into her eyes. They are beautiful. Blue as a cloudless sky. Moreno appreciates the beauty. He pulls her in tighter.

“Why don’t you help me forget these worries.”

He kisses her. Roxanne’s eyes stay open looking over Moreno’s left shoulder. In the open doorway, Jackson hovers in a spot where only Roxanne can see him. They hold eye contact as Roxanne continues the kiss, moving her hands down her boyfriend’s body to keep him occupied. Jackson disappears from the doorway. Roxanne’s eyes stay fixed on the spot. Sun passing over the cloudless sky. Her cold calculating eyes ready for her next move.

---

Lola is sitting down on the couch, Walters is across from her, still on the edge of a sofa chair. He’s holding the Dorothy Drake card in his right hand.

“A blonde in sunglasses. That doesn’t help much.”

“If I knew more, I’d tell you. I want her, too. She owes me 93 grand.”

“Why?”

“Half of what was in that briefcase.”

Walters is surprised.

“You think money was in there?”

“That’s why I seduced him.”

Lola gets up from the couch and walks past Walters to her kitchen.

“He wasn’t supposed to die.”

She looks at all of the bills stacked up on her counter.

“I need that money.”

“If we find her, money will be the least of her worries.”

Walters stands up.

“The man you.. she killed, was the brother of my boss. The briefcase didn’t have money in it. It had something more important.”

“What’s more important than money?”

“There are a lot of things more important than money.”

“Says the person who has money.”

“When he finds the person responsible for this, he will have retribution.”

“Retribution?” Lola finds the word choice odd. She lets it hang in the air. “For his brother?”

“No.”

“For what then?”

“For taking what is his.”

---

Moreno and Roxanne are in the bedroom. Moreno has finished his drink. The drink that Roxanne made for him. The browns and the yellows of liquid gold with a cherry on top and something a little extra squeezed inside. There is a beautiful view from the window, the last edge of the orange sun on the horizon over the Pacific. Moreno is unbuttoning his shirt, removing his business attire for something more casual for a night with the girlfriend. That girlfriend has something else in mind. She watches Moreno as he continues to unbutton his shirt. It seems like she is waiting for something. Moreno doesn’t notice this look of hers. He generally doesn’t notice her looks of most kinds, at least the ones that aren’t in his specific interest. This is one of the good things about being a man with power and money. Moreno has enjoyed the trappings of that power as most men would. It has given him little concern over his lifetime, these things a crime boss needs to do to stay a crime boss and the things a crime boss can take as prizes for those things he has done. Maybe he has been in power so long he’s started to take such things for granted, to take the trappings of power as permanent fixtures instead of the temporary rewards they are. Roxanne, his girlfriend of almost a decade now, was almost certainly one of those items he took to be a permanent fixture no matter what he did or said. Maybe she didn’t like being considered a permanent fixture, not that much different than the couch he was sitting on when he watched her swim in the pool. Maybe she thought of herself as something more as a reward. Or maybe she thought of herself as something else entirely.

Roxanne watched this old man as he undressed, staring at him like a falcon, her talons tapping her side, waiting for the right moment to pounce. A fog descends on the old man’s brain. Each button harder to unbutton, this fog isn’t normal, it’s not the relaxing fog of exiting a day of work, it’s a fog that grows denser by the minute, or by the button, until Moreno needs to stop half way down his shirt. He can’t even reach the end of all those buttons, they look hazy, they keep moving side to side, he hasn’t had a hit of acid since he was in his teens, all of a sudden he’s on a trip again, he had forgotten what this feels like.

Why would I feel like this?

The talons are removed from the falcon’s side as she swoops in to her boyfriend. He thinks it’s to help.

“This fucking headache. I need to sit down.”

There’s a chair not far from Moreno, Roxanne holds the top of the chair in her hands like a maître’d seating a guest. His knees bend. He moves to sit down. She pulls the chair away.

He steadies himself. He looks at her strangely. “What are you doing?”

His hand gropes for the seat of the chair. It might as well be made of water at this point. His hand can’t find it. Does she keep moving it?

“Poor Al.”

Moreno’s eyes widen then narrow then widen again. His head is in a complete haze. Objects don’t appear natural. The room doesn’t appear to be a room. This is worse than an acid trip. Everything grows distant.

The door to the bedroom is open. Two bodyguards, Tomas and Marco, are standing there.

Thank God for the bodyguards. Thank God I always have someone nearby. I never thought it would be her. I thought she loved me, or at least loved what I gave her, why would she do this to me. My bodyguards will save me.

Tomas and Marco won’t save him. They are looking at Roxanne, waiting for directions from her. She nods. That’s all they need. Marco closes the door. The room becomes darker. Moreno’s last chance disappears.

Moreno’s tie is still on. He left it on as he went to unbutton his shirt, his normal routine. Roxanne walks up to him to help him with his tie. She undoes the knot. Moreno’s legs are jelly but he is still on his feet. Barely on his feet.

“How long has it been since you picked me up in that club. 10 years?”

It’s actually 9 and a half, but who’s counting.

“Ten years of your bad breath. Ten years of your condescension. Ten years and it never even occurred to you that I might have a brain that goes along with this body. Ten years and you never realized the reason I was with you wasn’t because I was some dumb blonde, but because I’m smarter than you.”

Roxanne has the tie off his neck now, she holds it in her hand. She takes something out of a pocket, a strong thin cord and runs it along the length of the tie. She leans in and whispers into Moreno’s ear just before he falls to his knees.

“I was the one who stole your precious briefcase.”

She backs away. Moreno looks up to her. “You?”

“Me.”

“They’ll come after you.”

“No, they won’t.”

“You can’t kill me. The other bosses won’t allow it.”

“Please. After what you lost they’ll be happy someone had the balls to get rid of you.” She walks back to Moreno, tie still in hand.

“They’ll be so busy looking at each other wondering who gave the order they will never suspect little old me.”

Roxanne wraps the tie, with cord inside, around Moreno’s neck. Moreno, drugged, helpless is unable to fight back. Roxanne enjoys this, keeping the tie around his neck, using all of her strength to strangle the life out of this man she may have once loved or perhaps just liked but now loathed.

Moreno struggles as much as he can, which isn’t much. His eyes bulge. The door opens behind her and Tomas and Marco walk back in as Moreno falls to ground, dead.

“You know where to put him.”

Yes, Tomas and Marco know where to put a dead body so it won’t be found.

The crash could have been anything really. It could have been a cat slinking between the garbage. It could have been the wind blowing an empty beer can through pavement. Lola is paranoid. After seeing someone get their throat slashed, even if it was in a memory, it’s enough to make anyone scared for their life.

Lola walks over to the fireplace and grabs the poker. It’s solid iron. Enough to stop any slinking cat. Now there’s rustling outside. Metal crashing and then rustling, that’s some strong wind. Lola, in darkness, moonlight the only glow, slips back into the bedroom, she knows her way around this house now, it’s not complicated, her memories snapped back with total recall. She stalks through the bedroom, it leads to the garage in the back. She stalks through the garage, iron poker firmly in her right hand. She emerges into the backyard. The rustling is in front of her now. Maybe it’s a city raccoon.

There’s a large dark object struggling to unlock the sliding glass door. That’s a damn big city raccoon. The size of a man. He opens the sliding door as quietly as he can. It would be silent to anyone who wasn’t watching him do it. Lola is watching him do it. The stalking grows faster. Three swift strides from her high school sprinter’s background. And strikes the large dark moving object him knocking it to the ground. She flicks on the light. A man is lying on the floor. Walters is looking up at her. Lola stands above him, poker raised, ready to strike again.

Walters is surprisingly calm considering he just got hit by a hard piece of iron.

“Hey, you’re good.”

Lola doesn’t like his tone. She takes a half step toward him to strike again.

“I wouldn’t.”

Walters’ eyes move down to his right hand. Lola’s eyes follow his line of sight, she sees the gun Walters is pointing at her. She takes a step back, poker still raised in the air.

“Who are you?”

“That’s funny, that’s the same question I was going to ask you.”

She stares down at him, not knowing what to do. Seconds go by. Walters is comfortable in the silence. He can see that Lola is getting nervous. She might try to strike him again if he doesn’t say anything.

“I’ll make you a deal. I’ll put the gun away, if you put that thing away.”

Lola thinks about the offer.

“Trust me, it’s a good deal.”

It is a good deal. Lola is annoyed it’s a good deal. She doesn’t want to give in to the man with the gun.

She doesn’t have much choice. She throws the poker on the ground. Walters puts his gun away and gets up from the floor. He notices the jug of milk on the floor.

“Looks like you spilled.”

He picks up the jug and takes it into the kitchen, putting it back in the refrigerator.

“Mind if I have a beer?”

Lola waves her hand, as if to say go ahead. Walters takes a can of beer from the fridge.

“Who are you?” Lola asks again.

“I’ve been hired to watch you.” Walters opens the can of beer and takes a much-needed drink.

“Why?”

“My boss thinks you have something of his.” He walks over to Lola, sizing her up. “But I don’t.”

Walters takes another drink. “Now. Who are you?”

Lola walks away from Walters, wandering around her living room once again. Her eyes scan the pictures on the wall. The picture from her former life. “I don’t know.”

Lola picks up a picture of her and her former husband. “I remember some things, some memories are coming back, just not everything.”

“So you don’t know how you ended up in that motel room with a dead man.”

Lola’s eyes turn cold. “No. That I remember.”

She sets the picture down and turns to Walters. Walters sits on the arm of a sofa chair.

“Then tell me.”

“Why should I?”

“Because I lied before. I wasn’t hired to watch you. I was hired to kill you.”

“Is that what you’re going to do after I tell you what happened?”

“No.”

“Why not?

“Because, like I said, I don’t think you’re the one we want.”

“You’re right.”

“How do you know?

“Because I was set up.”

“By who?”

“I thought it was me.”

“What?” Walters is confused.

Lola hands him the “Dorothy Drake” card.

This is not the kind of suburban living they have in the middle part of the country or in Kansas where Lola grew up, but it’s a kind of Los Angeles suburban living or was in the early 2000s for those that have made just enough to buy a little piece of property in a land filled with very expensive property.

Lola stands in front of this white painted stranger, this small barely two bedroom house. It has the feel of a distant cousin you haven’t seen since you were a child, it is familiar and familial yet still remote and strange. Lola takes her key out and looks at it. Just an ordinary key, an ordinary house key, one of only two items that survived the demolished motel room. Well, three items if you count Lola herself. Maybe her subconscious was the one who told her to take it, maybe somewhere, despite the forgetting, deep down she knew it was the key to her house, the key to her past.

She puts the key in the door. It fits. She looks over her shoulder to make sure no one is watching, worried she’s entering the wrong house, someone else’s house. She turns the key, it unlocks the door. She steps inside.

“Hello? Is anybody home?”

Lola walks into the front hallway and closes the door behind her.

A black car drives down Arrowhead Lane. It stops a few houses down from the one Lola just entered. Walters had followed one bus after another, across half of Los Angeles to get here. He had been slowly crawling along once Lola exited at her stop and walked the 3 blocks to the house, making sure to stay just enough out of sight. Now he sits waiting, watching.

Lola walks into the front room. There’s a framed picture on a coffee table next to a couch. She rushes over and picks it up. She has the right house. The picture is of her, a little younger than now but not too much younger, maybe it was taken last year or the year before. She is with a handsome man, roughly the same age. They both look happy, so happy, holding each other and laughing as young couples do in photos.

Lola stares at the picture, mystified. She looks up to the wall, there are more pictures; of her with the man again, of her with other friends. She looks happy in all of them.

What happened to this life?

Lola, still holding the framed picture, sits down on the couch, trying to take it all in, the life she had that she doesn’t remember. It feels like some elaborate joke is being played on her.

She looks down at the picture again. She still can’t remember the man. The harder she tries to remember, the more her mind blanks out the past.

She finally sets it down on a table in front of her. No amount of staring at that photo is going to make her past come back.

She gets up and wanders into the dining room, more pictures of her with the guy, family, friends are around. Shell-shocked she makes her way into the kitchen.

Lola gets a glass from a cabinet like it’s a part of muscle memory and opens the refrigerator. The food in there looks fresh, nothing spoiled, it can’t be that long since she’s left her house.

She takes a jug of milk and checks the date. It’s still good. Lola takes a much needed drink straight from the jug.

As she does this, she notices a blinking red light. An answering machine that’s been waiting for somebody to play its messages. Lola takes another swig from the jug and with an absent-minded flick of a wrist she hits the blinking light and walks into a room where there’s a couch and sofa chair staring at a television and glass cabinet with more pictures.

The first message is an automated message from the energy company saying that her last bill is past due.

The second message is another automated message. This one from the cable company saying her last bill is past due.

Lola is still holding the jug of milk as she looks at the pictures in the cabinet. She focuses on one with her and an older woman. This must be her mother. It feels like it is her mother. The picture has that type of tension that pictures with mothers and adult daughters can have in them. There’s another picture with her an older man. This must be her father. It was taken several years earlier than the one with her mother. It is just her and the older man. There are no pictures with the three of them together.

Why can’t I remember my parents?

The third message on the machine is a hang-up. Lola squints, trying to remember her relationship with her mother, with her father.

How can I forget my own mother?

The fourth message comes on.

“I need to talk with you.”

Lola freezes...

“I think you know me...”

The voice is familiar.

“I don’t really remember.”

Lola drops the jug of milk.

“That’s why I need to talk with you.”

It’s her own voice!

“I don’t have a phone, but I’ll call back tonight. Please pick up. I’m desper..”

Lola runs over to the machine. The next message starts.

“I need to talk with you. It’s urgent..”

She frantically searches through papers and envelopes and notes on the counter.

“It’s a matter of life and death..”

She finds a bill. The name on it is “Dorothy Drake.” The message is still playing. It sounds like a ghost calling to her.

“Please, pick up if you are there.”

Lola finds another bill, same thing, the name is Dorothy Drake.

There is just static on the other end of the line now as Lola waits for “Dorothy” to pick up the phone. She runs through the tv room into the main bedroom. The answering machine signals the end of the messages with a few beeps then silence.

Lola is breathing hard, hyperventilating. She looks around the room, sees a dresser, opens a dresser, rifles through it, only clothes.

Another drawer, more clothes.

There’s a bureau next to the bed, she can barely see her heart is pumping so fast. Time is speeding up. It’s too fast. Her eyes can’t keep up with her mind, with the world. She goes through the bureau like a gopher digging a hole. Items flying up into the air behind her. She finds something. It’s hard to read when your eyes can’t focus. But she doesn’t need to read much.

It’s a passport. It has her picture. It has the name Dorothy Drake next to her picture.

Lola passes out.

A kaleidoscope of images. An entire life flowing through seconds then minutes, not in any order but in a way that might make sense to the mind that owns those images, to the person that has led that life. Lola is unconscious but her mind is awake, flooding her with memories, not everything just yet, but a lot of things, decades of life and events, of people and moments, of places and betrayals.

The betrayals are where those images stop and slow down, playing out in real time, no longer a kaleidoscope but distinct colors, distinct voices, distinct actions.

Lola waits in a car with the blonde in sunglasses. The blonde’s sunglasses are back on hiding her eyes. The blonde is at the wheel, Lola is on the passenger’s side. It’s a busy street, Wilshire Blvd, a fast-moving artery through the heart of Los Angeles. There’s a tall, striking black building on the other side of the street. It was built in some period when the people of the city took great care with the architecture. It’s an office building with as much foot traffic as there is car traffic on the street in front of it. Lola and the blonde continue to wait. It doesn’t take a genius to know what they are waiting for. Or who they are waiting for.

Frank Moreno is in a suit and tie. It doesn’t fit him any better than it did his brother. He’s also wearing handcuffs, or one handcuff, the other end is cuffed to a briefcase.

So we didn’t go straight from the coffee shop to the motel.

The pieces are coming together for Lola. The coffee shop was the first contact, this is the interception.

Lola exits the car. She walks stylishly in her black dress towards the black office building. She crosses the street against traffic with only one car honking at her to stop. She makes it to the building. She follows Frank from behind. He hasn’t seen her. She reaches the elevator when he does. Just after he does. The doors are closing. A hand sticks out to stop them. There are a couple of other people in the elevator. Frank pays no attention to the because he recognizes Lola. She smiles at him. It doesn’t take much imagination to know what happens from here.

Lola is amazed at the coincidence of them running into each in this place. Frank doesn’t have any suspicions. They flirt. They talk. Lola says she doesn’t have much time but she knows a place.

The place is the Starlite Motel. The blonde set the room up. Lola takes Frank there. She does the job the blonde asked her to do. Asked her to do to get paid. She doesn’t have to sleep with him. She only has to lead him into the motel room. The blonde says he stole money from her boyfriend. The blonde said if Lola helps her she gets to keep half of what’s in the briefcase. She gets to keep 93 grand. Lola isn’t usually the type to do these things. But she’s desperate. The blonde picked the right girl. Lola needs that money. Not to live. To survive. She has no one else to turn to. She has nowhere else to go. Sure, it’s a shady proposition. But she doesn’t have to sleep with the guy. And she trusts the blonde, she’s like a big sister to her, they’ve grown close over these last few months after they randomly met in a bar one night both drowning their sorrows. And the blonde said the money is really hers or actually her boyfriends, that this guy, this crook swindled them out of their hard earned cash. She’s really doing the world a favor, to try to stop con men like this and the blonde said she had a plan that the she’s going to confront the guy and the guy will cave, maybe the police will be there, Lola’s a little hazy on the details, but she doesn’t need details, she trusts the blonde, why wouldn’t she trust the blonde. She just wants her money back.

So they walk into the motel room. Lola keeps the door open a crack like she was told to do. She takes the guy to the bed. She’s distracting him, she knows how to do that, maybe the shoulder of her dress slips off, that usually works with guys, once the strap slips, guys tend to focus on the objects in front of them, they are so predictable, and then the blonde was going to come in and surprise the guy and get the money, it’s so simple, such an easy setup.

And the blonde does show up as they are on the bed. Oh yeah, there’s the bottle of champagne as well. The one they picked up on their way to the motel room. Now the guy is distracted with opening the champagne bottle. This is going to be a fun afternoon.

Or maybe not.

Because the blonde is behind him. She doesn’t have anybody with her. Lola catches that out of the corner of her eye. Lola is on the bed on her knees facing the guy, facing the open door. The blonde behind Frank, who pops the champagne all happy. He takes a drink from the bottle and moves to the bed to offer a drink to Lola. That’s when Lola sees the knife. The gigantic knife. She didn’t even know they made knives like that. Well, maybe she does know that, but she hasn’t seen one like that operated so swiftly, slicing a guy’s jugular so smoothly, blood pouring down his front. Lola’s screaming now. Really screaming. The blonde has to shut her up. Lola is in no place to practice self-defense. The blonde knows this. She doesn’t want to use her knife on Lola. And in a way, she can’t, not for the way this has to go. But she does need to shut her up. The champagne bottle will work, most of the champagne poured out of it anyway when she sliced Frank’s neck open. Now she just has to pick it up and whack Lola on the head. That will shut her up.

And it does. And Lola’s world, her memories, her life, everything go dark. And that’s how she ended up in that motel room with that dead guy and that bomb.

The house phone rings and Moreno answers it.

“She’s at a motel near the beach in Redondo?”

“Redondo? Why would she go there?”

“No idea. Maybe that’s where she’s meeting the buyer.”

“Is Walters still on her?”

“He has it under control.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure. No reason to worry. We will find out who’s behind this.”

“Okay. Keep me informed. We don’t have a lot of time.”

The phone call does not put Moreno’s mind at ease but he is tired after a long day. He takes Roxanne into his arms and slowly falls asleep like a baby lost in dreams that have nothing to do with stolen briefcases and double crosses. Dreams of better times when he was young and happy with his brother Frank.

---

Dreams and memories are like a time machine. They can go any place in the past, minutes, years, decades or centuries. For Alphonse Moreno this time machine takes him to his childhood when he had few cares in the world, when he was the protective older brother for his younger brother Frank, protecting him from an abusive father, and supporting his mother by working at the docks from the age of sixteen. These were the happy days for Alphonse Moreno, when money and power were only distant stars on his horizon, when family and ambition were the lights that lit his days.

Lola in her bed does not travel as far back in her time machine. She travels to a not so distant time that may have been only a few weeks ago or maybe a few months ago. She walks into a bar off of a busy Venice Boulevard and is greeted by a blonde seated at one of its many round tables.

“Lola!” The blonde announces happily as she walks him. She’s not wearing sunglasses this time, but it’s certainly the same woman, Lola in her dream is sure of this. She can see her face more clearly now without the mask of the sunglasses. She’s a little older than Lola, maybe a decade older, maybe slightly less, somewhere in her 30s. She looks good for her age, but something in her manner, in her movements shows an experience with life that Lola does not have. She carries herself with confidence. She moves with confidence, she orders drinks and sits in her chair with confidence. This blonde with short hair is not afraid of anybody. Even though she is in the same rundown bar as Lola, she is not inhabiting the same space, she owns her space, in a way she owns everyone who walks into that bar.

Lola is less confident. One could even say she looks a bit of a mess, emotionally and physically. She sits down across from the blonde with the ease of familiarity and unloads a sigh as she does this. “Bill called again, he wanted to talk.”

“Oh, Lola, what’s there to talk about?”

“He wants me back.”

Lola takes the wedding ring off her finger and looks at it as though it is a guide that will tell her how to respond to her estranged husband.

“I can’t believe you still wear that thing?”

“Technically, we’re still married.”

“Technically.” The blonde gives Lola the look of jaded experience, Lola feels naïve and stupid. “You’re not going to get anywhere wearing a wedding ring.” She leans in. “You don’t need him. Look over there.”

The blonde gestures to a guy at the end of the bar pretending to talk to the bartender. He’s really looking back at both of them.

Lola turns her head and sees him. The guys smile at her.

“And there.”

Now the blonde directs Lola’s gaze to a booth in the back, a couple of preppy college students sit there drinking their bottles of trendy beer and checking out the two available women in the middle of the room.

“And there.”

Two tables over, three guys, not college students, older, maybe even married, most certainly in relationships of some kind, are very aware of the two attractive women sitting and discussing something confidentially only a few feet away.

“They’re a dime a dozen. You can do better. You can have anyone you want in this place. Anyone you want in any place. Stick with me and I’ll show you a few tricks.”

The haze of the dream, the memory, the night, drifts to later on in the evening, late in the evening. Lola’s leaving the place. She isn’t drunk. She’s stone cold sober and so is her blonde mentor. They are both laughing uproariously. They are in the parking lot.

“Can you believe that guy?”

“One bullshit story after another.”

“So I guess he’s not with the CIA then.” They both laugh.

“I don’t know, let’s check.” The blonde pulls a wallet out of her purse.”

“You took his wallet?”

Lola takes the wallet from her.

“I told you I’d show you a few tricks.”

“I can’t believe...”

“That’s what a guy gets for slapping my ass.”

The blonde lights a cigarette as Lola looks through the contents of the wallet. Not much interesting. Certainly not anything that confirms his story of being an agent with the CIA. She stops on his driver’s license.

“Look at this photo.” She shows the blonde the photo, a typically hideous DMV photo, they have another laugh. Lola focuses on the license as she puts it back in the wallet.

“Hey, I know where this guy lives.”

“Maybe you should drop by his house sometime.”

“No. I’m serious. I think he’s only a few blocks away from my house.”

“You might run into him at the grocery store.”

That’s when the dream, the memory goes to an interesting place, an image that may be real, that is probably real, of a small white house in the San Fernando Valley. The house comes with a feeling, with emotion, with warmth attached to it, it feels like home.

This is my home.

1355 Arrowhead Lane.

And like that Lola remembers, well, something. Still not everything but something. She wakes up with a purpose.

The same bored clerk from the night before is still at his post.

Lola approaches him to check out.

“Can you tell me where 1355 Arrowhead Lane is?”

“I used to live near an Arrowhead Lane when I lived in the valley..”

“Yes, it’s in the valley.” Lola seems sure. She puts on her most innocent face. “Could you possibly do me another favor.”

For some reason, the bored clerk has grown found of this mysterious guest who paid in cash and keeps asking for favors. She’s like the little sister he does have, but he doesn’t like his real-life little sister, he does like Lola.

Lola tells him the number of the address that popped into her head when she was asleep. The clerk looks up the address.

“Yeah, I was right. Here it is.” He turns the monitor to Lola. Her eyes widen.

“Can you show me how to get there?”

The clerk takes out a map he usually gives to tourists. He takes out a marker and draws a long line. He gives the map to Lola.

“What do you expect to find at that address?”

Lola is walking to the door with the map in her hand, she uses her back to open the door and turns to the clerk.

“I think I live there.”

And now she’s not. She’s walking down the street in her cheap flip-flops and once nice but now ravaged black dress that has been through an evening of drinking, a night of murder, a morning of a bomb blast, and an afternoon of riding city buses.

Man, this is a pretty bad street.

Lola is getting worried. A few cars cruise the streets. There are a few other girls out on the corners. There are a lot of homeless and drug addicts wandering everywhere. Lola would be even more worried for her own safety if she wasn’t so fucking tired. The sleep on the bus helped a little but not enough. Her body is sore from the day’s activities. She needs to rest. She leans against a stoplight. At least she should be safe there under its bright light.

The stoplight turns from red to green but the only car waiting for the light doesn’t move. Lola’s eyes are still closed. The sound of the car’s engine revs louder. She opens her eyes. The passenger side window of the of the older model gray Mercedes rolls down.

What the fuck is this guy doing?

Curious at what the fuck this guy is doing, Lola leans in to the passenger side window. The guy leans over from the driver’s side.

“How much?”

Lola is confused.

“What?”

“How much for an hour?”

You have got be fucking kidding me.

Lola takes a second. She’s going to tell this guy to literally go fuck himself.

But in that second she catches a hint of her reflection in the guy’s glasses. She looks down at her cheap flip-flops on her sore feet. She has a better idea.

“Five hundred.”

“Five hundred?”

“That’s the price.”

The guy looks her up and down. Even though she’s beat to hell, she is quite attractive in her once nice black dress and all.

“Okay. Where?”

“I want the money now.”

“Now?”

“Yes. Now.”

“I don’t know.”

“Half now, half at the motel.” Lola revises her offer, quickly reassessing her leverage in the situation.

“Otherwise, no deal.”

The guy thinks for a second, he looks her up and down for a second, he looks out at the other girls on the other corners. Lola’s the best looking one. Maybe she’s worth it. He reaches for his wallet.

“This better be good.”

He takes out the money and holds it in the air. Lola goes to take it. He pulls it back.

“Where?”

Lola doesn’t hesitate. “The Starlite Motel. Room 118. You know the place?”

“Yeah, I know the place.

“I’ll meet you there in a half an hour.”

She goes to take the money. He pulls it back again.

“How do I know you’ll meet me there.”

“I’m not getting in the car with you, I’m not that stupid. That’s not how this works.”

“Yeah, but, how do I know you’ll meet me there.”

Lola leans in to the car seductively. “Honey, you think I’m out here walking down this shithole street because I like the night air. I’m working. I want the other half of that money. I’ll meet you there.”

Lola can be convincing when she wants to be and the other party wants to be convinced. The guy drives off. Lola watches him leave. Maybe her luck is changing. She sees a taxi and waves it down and gets in.

“Where to?”

“As far from here as possible.”

Apparently, Redondo Beach is as far from here as possible because that’s where the cab driver takes Lola. It wasn’t a short ride or a cheap ride, but it did get her to the water. Lola always liked the beach. If she could remember she would remember that was one of the reasons she moved to Los Angeles. The beach. The beautiful ocean. Not those stagnant lakes in the middle of the country where she is from. She paid a heavy price to live in a place with a beach. Maybe she should have moved to Florida instead.

In the early 2000s the beach towns of the south bay area of Los Angeles weren’t quite as expensive as they would become in only a few years time later in the decade, so Lola is able to find an affordable motel for the night. Another motel. Hopefully, this one doesn’t blow up.

The clerk doesn’t seem concerned about potential explosions. He seems bored because he is bored. He checks Lola in and she pays with cash and he doesn’t care she doesn’t have any identification. Better to not ask questions about these kinds of things.

Lola gets her room key and walks to her not quite seedy motel room and opens the door and goes straight to the bed and sits down. Unlike most times in her life when she’s entered a motel or hotel room, she doesn’t have anything to unpack, just her past and she doesn’t remember that. She notices the phone on the bedstand. She takes out the Dorothy Drake card and dials. Now that her luck is changing maybe the second time will be luckier than the first.

The phone rings.

And rings.

And rings.

The machine picks up again, the automated voice telling her to leave a message again. Lola leaves a message again.

“I need to talk with you. It’s urgent. It’s a matter of life and death. Please, pick up if you are there.”

Lola waits.

And waits.

No one picks up.

The line beeps, her time is up. Lola hangs up and falls back into the bed sideways, her feet still on the ground. She closes her eyes.

Finally, sleep. Real sleep. In a bed. In a bed without a dead guy next to her. It’s amazing how quickly one can get into a dream state when one is so damn tired. She drifts into dreams.

But a thought hits her like a slap to the head.

Damnit. I need sleep.

She fights the thought. The dreams are so much nicer than reality. Let me stay in the dreams. But the thought keeps nagging. And nagging. And punching her in the face.

Fuck it.

Lola gets up from the bed, her feet never leaving the ground, and walks out of her room and to the front desk. The bored clerk is still there, still bored. For some reason he isn’t excited to see the lady in the black dress who paid in cash coming back to the front desk to break up his boredom. She’s probably here to complain about something.

“Can I ask you a favor?” Lola asks him.

She’s definitely here to complain about something.

“I guess.” The bored clerk warily answers.

Lola holds up the Dorothy Drake card.

“Can you look this person up for me?”

She hands him the card.

“Dorothy Drake. I can make your dreams come true.” The clerk reads the card aloud. Now this is interesting. The bored clerk is willing to help interesting requests. He goes to the computer and googles the name and phone number.

“Are you looking to buy a house?”

“What?”

“Dorothy Drake. It looks like she’s a real estate agent.”

“I guess that explains the tagline.”

“What did you think she was?”

Lola is flummoxed. She honestly has no idea. But somehow a real estate agent is so less exciting than any of the other possibilities. So pedestrian, so mundane. A real estate agent doesn’t seem like someone who would trap you in motel rooms with dead guys and bombs and write messages telling you goodbye. This must be one fucked up real estate agent.

“Is there an address?”

“No. No address. Just a name and number. Honestly, the site doesn’t look professional. I don’t know if I would trust this Dorothy Drake person.”

“Thanks. I’ll remember that.” Might be a little too late for that advice.

Lola turns to walk back to her room. The bored clerk doesn’t want to let it go now that he has decided to be helpful.

“If you want her address maybe you should give her a call?”

As she uses her shoulder to exit the door Lola answers the clerk. “Yeah, I might try that.”

One unproductive visit to the front desk later, Lola is back in her room, back sitting on her bed sideways, staring at the business card of Dorothy Drake and the key that looks like some kind of house key, trying to remember. Trying to force herself to remember. She lays back into the bed again, even more exhausted then when she laid back into the bed a couple of minutes ago. Her whole body hurts. Her head still hurts. Her feet hurt. Even her fingernails and toenails hurt. What a fucking day. Finally, finally, finally, she falls asleep.

A car sits across the street from the moderately priced one-story Redondo Beach motel. Walters is in the car. He watches the light that is still on in Lola’s room as she sleeps. He takes out his phone to call someone. That someone is Jackson.

He doesn’t bother with pleasantries when Jackson answers.

“I don’t think she’s the one.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Call it a hunch or whatever. She’s not the one we should be after.”

“I don’t care about your hunches, she’s the one.”

“She’s not acting like I would expect her to act, like she should act if she planned this. She’s acting more like... she’s trying to remember or trying to find something out. She’s not the one.”

“I know Moreno put you on this, but I’m running the show. She’s the right girl. Only one person emerged from the rubble and it was her. I don’t want any of your fucking hunches, got it?”

Walters doesn’t answer.

“Got it?”

Walters still doesn’t answer.

“I’m asking you a question, do you understand me?”

“Yes.” Walters finally answers.

Click. Jackson hangs up. Walters looks at his phone.

“Asshole.”

Walters sets his phone down and keeps watching the motel room with its one light on. Walters hunches down in his car and reclines his seat. It’s going to be a long night.

What a fucking morning.

She enters the restaurant and quickly makes her way to the bathroom. Lola finds herself at another sink, just like the one in the motel, she washes her face again, just like in the motel, trying to wash away the previous night and the current morning, trying to wash away the situation she finds herself. What is that situation exactly, she isn’t even sure. How did she end up in that motel room with that bomb and that dead guy.

Another woman enters the bathroom. The woman is well-dressed, maybe this restaurant is a little too nice to use to recover from a bomb blast and a one-night stand. The woman takes a look at Lola, her bare feet, her hair a tangled knotted mess, a black dress that might have been nice once but is not nice now and maybe a little too cheap for this restaurant, certainly to cheap for this well-dressed snob of a woman.

“Rough day.” The woman does not seem to be understanding of Lola’s situation.

Lola gives her the look of death as the woman enters one of the stalls. Lola looks back in the mirror.

Yeah, it’s been a pretty fucking rough day.

There’s movement in the stall as Lola splashes water on her face yet again. No amount of water is going to remove the dust of the morning. She looks over to the stall, the source of the movement. She sees the woman’s handbag on the floor at the edge of the stall. Sticking out of the handbag is a red purse.

Lola looks down to her bare feet. They are worse off than her face, covered in black soot. Lola realizes she has no money and no place to go. She realizes that she’s lucky to be alive but that somebody killed the guy next to her in bed. She remembers the note saying goodbye, somebody wants her dead, too.

Lola looks over at the stall again. The red purse is still there, like a candy cane sticking out of a stocking. The woman is occupied. She’s not going to miss the purse.

Fuck her.

Lola is walking on the street again going through the contents of a small red purse. Credit cards, driver’s license, other cards, she doesn’t care for any of those. There is some cash, not much, enough to buy her a pair of shoes and a little time. She tosses the purse in the garbage and keeps walking.

There’s a clothing store a few blocks down. Lola walks in and emerges a few minutes later in a comfortable pair of pumps. At least her aching feet have some protection now. Her next move is obvious. It’s really the only thing she can do.

Lola finds a payphone a few more blocks down. She has change from her recent purchase. She has the card from the motel. She looks at the card again.

“Dorothy Drake. I can make your dreams come true.”

Lola’s not looking for her dreams to come true but she does need information. She puts the change into the payphone and calls the number on the card, praying this Dorothy woman answers and has some answers.

The phone rings and rings and rings.

The click of an answering machine then an automated voice comes on, not the voice of a human, the voice of a computer imitating a human. It says to leave a message. Lola hangs up.

It’s not even 10 am and it’s already been the longest day of Lola’s life. It was almost the last day of Lola’s life. She walks a few more blocks and finds a park and a park bench. She doesn’t have much in this world. She can’t remember who she is. She only remembers fragments of her past and goddamn is she tired. The weight of a forgotten past is crushing her. It’s a pretty busy park. It seems safe. At least during the daylight it might be safe.

I am going to close my eyes for only a few seconds, just a few seconds. Okay, maybe a minute. I need rest. I need to get this headache to stop. Anything to get this headache to stop.

Lola lays down on the bench to rest her beaten body and pounding head. She clutches the rest of the money in her right hand, balled up into a fist. It’s only going to be for a minute or two, just enough to refresh her mind, so that she can figure out everything, anything.

Just for a minute, only a minute.

Across the park, a nondescript car is parked amongst other nondescript cars lining a side street. There’s a driver inside. He’s been in there for quite a while, a shadow that refuses to exit the vehicle. The shadow has a good vantage point from where he sits. He sees the entire park and all of its activity and he sees Lola sleeping on a park bench in her black dress clutching her dollar bills.

The shadow pulls out his phone and makes a call. On the other end of the call is a man named Walters. Walters nods a couple of times as the shadow gives him information. Walters had been given his assignment by Jackson earlier that morning. Now he has the information he needs to complete that assignment.

-----

Hours have passed, Lola is in REM sleep, she is dreaming or remembering, who knows if there is a difference between the two.

A blonde woman with short hair in sunglasses is talking to her in her dream. It’s the same woman that flashed in her head in the motel when she saw the Dorothy Drake card.

Lola and the blonde are sitting inside a coffee shop having a very animated conversation. It’s a little too animated. But it’s a dream so Lola can’t make out any of the words, only the energy of the conversation. They are hidden from the outside tables of the coffee shop. There might be a reason for this. It feels like they are hiding from someone. The blonde finally sees that someone, her prey. She gestures to them. They are sitting outside. Lola turns to look behind her and there’s a guy alone at one of the tables. He’s drinking coffee and reading a newspaper. This must be his normal morning routine.

Of course, it’s not just any guy. It’s the dead guy from the motel. It’s Frank Moreno. The blonde doesn’t take off her sunglasses but she does lean in and whispers into Lola’s ear. Lola understands. She gets up from the booth and walks outside.

The name of the coffee shop flashes in Lola’s head, now it’s definitely memories not dream. “Ray’s Coffee Shop.” Such a generic name. Who is this Ray guy anyway. She startles awake.

Groggy, it takes Lola a few seconds to realize where she is and how she got there. Park benches are not comfortable to sleep on. She cracks her back as she sits up. It seems like she is missing something. Lola looks down at her once balled up fist. It’s no longer balled up, the dollar bills she had been clutching are gone. She looks down at the ground, hoping they had fallen, but they haven’t fallen. They were taken.

Fuck.

Even though she knows the money is gone it still feels like she’s missing something else. Lola looks down at her feet. Her new shoes are gone as well.

Double Fuck.

This day is not going well. Lola sits up on the bench. It might be the afternoon now. It feels like the afternoon, or maybe lunch. Lunch is a good time to go to a coffee shop. Lola needs to find that coffee shop.

Through stillborn eyes Lola looks out across the park. Randomly, she has chosen the exact spot where the shadow sits inside his car, only she doesn’t know he is there, would have no reason to know he is there, that she is being watched. Lola’s groggy throbbing head tries to think clearly. If last night was last night with all of the activities with the guy in the motel, then she must have been at that coffee shop yesterday. They picked him up at that coffee shop to take him back to that motel. And if they picked him up at that coffee shop it can’t be that far from the motel. She isn’t far from the motel now.

Lola may not be able remember who she is, but she can remember her city. She remembers all kinds of random places and important landmarks of Los Angeles and its roads and restaurants and even coffee shops. And if by some miracle as she sits on that park bench staring out into an abyss while being watched by a menacing shadow of death, she remembers where the Ray’s Coffee Shop is and how to get there. It’s just a short bus ride away.

-----

A Los Angeles city bus pulls up to its stop. Several passengers get on putting their money into the slot. The driver is about to close the door when Lola’s hand stops it from closing, she is pretending to be out of breath. She steps on the bus.

The driver looks at the pay slot. Lola looks at the pay slot. She doesn’t have any money. She is still breathing heavily, pretending to breathe heavily, she puts on her best desperate and tries to look like a tourist who has just been mugged, which in a way is kind of true.

“It was horrible… They even took my shoes.”

The bus driver looks at her bare feet, her tattered dress, her tangled hair, Lola may be acting a role but those assholes did take her money and her shoes. The bus driver lets her on. Satisfied, Lola makes her way to a seat.

The bus jumpstarts as buses do as it leaves it’s stop, and with her reflection in the window, Lola watches the city go by for a few blocks.

Ray’s Coffee was farther than Lola thought. Maybe the map in her head is a little off. She had the right street, though, she had the right bus line and after twenty minutes she had the right stop.

The bus makes it to the Mid-Wilshire area of Los Angeles and Lola gets off at the stop a block from the coffee shop. Tentatively, she walks up to it, seeing chairs placed haphazardly outside. Was she here just yesterday? It seems like a previous life or a dream. Actually, a nightmare, maybe it’s a nightmare she is having and she will wake up from. If only that were true.

Lola walks up to those cheap plastic chairs and those cheap plastic tables outside the apparently cheap coffee shop, a few customers are drinking their coffee and eating the bagels, it’s not that busy. An older man looks up and watches Lola. He watches her like he knows her.

Was this guy here yesterday? Does he recognize me? Why is he looking at me like that?

She walks by him into the shop. She waits in line for her coffee like everyone else. It’s a pretty long line. AS she waits, she looks over to the booth where she sat with the blonde in sunglasses, hoping it would bring back the details of their conversation. It doesn’t bring back anything, only that she was there, that they were there and that the dead man from the motel was sitting outside.

It’s Lola’s turn to order coffee. She doesn’t want to order coffee. She’s desperate. The woman behind the counter already doesn’t like her.

“I’m sorry, I was wondering if you could help me. I’m looking for a friend of mine.”

The woman behind the counter audibly sighs.

“She was in here yesterday, I think. We both were in here yesterday. Or maybe a couple of days ago. She’s blonde, medium height, she was wearing sunglasses.”

The woman behind the counter shakes her head, why is this nutjob wasting her time. “In this town, honey, that’s just about everybody.”

“I need to find her. If you could just help...”

“I can help you if you want some coffee.” She cuts Lola off.

“Please, if..”

“Next.” She looks behind Lola, some businessman is anxious to get his order in and steps up moving Lola over like a shunted child.

“Could I have a caramel espresso macchiato.”

The woman behind the counter rings him up, the businessman pays, Lola watches, still like an ignored little kid.

The businessman dumps his extra change into the tip jar and goes and waits at the next counter for his coffee to be delivered. The woman behind the counter turns around to make the coffee.

Lola looks at the tip jar where the change was deposited. That damn tip jar. She scans the room. No one is paying attention to her. She is still invisible.

Lola emerges from the coffee shop with a handful of bills and change and starts walking. The tip jar was less bountiful than the red purse but maybe she can cover her bare feet again and make another phone call again.

From a distance, from atop one of the neighboring buildings, a man looks down at her, watching her. He doesn’t watch with the naked eye, he watches her through a powerful magnifying glass, through the scope of a high-powered rifle. The crosshairs of that rifle are directly on Lola’s head.

From Walters’ vantage point, he can see Lola talking to another one of the workers at the coffee shop. This worker was wiping one of the tables. Walters’ finger massages the trigger of the rifle. It seems like Lola doesn’t get the answer she wants. She walks away from the worker and the coffee shop dejected. Walters is still waiting for any sign of that briefcase.

There’s a Rite Aid on the corner of the block. Lola walks in to the Rite Aid. She emerges a couple of minutes later wearing a pair of cheap flip-flops. She marches down the street another block to a payphone. She takes out some change and the Dorothy Drake card. She calls the number on the card again, praying for a better answer this time.

It rings and rings. Lola gets the answering machine with the automated voice. She’s going to leave a message. She needs to leave a message. Lola’s voice falters a little at first, she starts to find the right words to say to this stranger.

“I need to talk with you...I think you know me, I don’t really remember. That’s why I need to talk with you.”

She waits, waiting for the machine to respond. It’s only dead air.

“I don’t have a cell phone, I’ll call back tonight. Please pick up tonight, I need..” The machine beeps, cutting her off, ending her message. Lola hangs up and lets her head rest on the phone, cursing and praying at the same time. She closes her eyes and would like to wake up from this nightmare of forgetting.

She doesn’t wake up. She hears a loud bus instead. Lola doesn’t think, she quickly gets on, this time she has money for the slot, taking the bus to someplace else, anywhere else. Maybe anywhere else will be safer.

A car pulls out following the bus. The driver takes out his phone and makes a call.

“Jackson. Yeah, I’m watching her.” Walters says. He listens for a second, he answers, “No, there’s no sign of it yet. I think the person she was supposed to meet didn’t show. I’ll stay on her.”

The bus drives off into the sunset, Walters follows.

Alphonse Moreno is an imposing man. Despite the best efforts of the best tailors in Los Angeles, the expensive suit he wears doesn’t fit him. Moreno wasn’t a man meant to wear expensive suits. He was a man meant to run a criminal organization. He stares out a window down at the traffic twenty floors below.

Several people stand at attention behind him. He does not bother to face them. There’s one man sitting down in front of his desk.

“He may not have been the smartest man. But he was loyal.” Moreno turns to face the room. “He was loyal to me, he was loyal to all of you.”

“He was a good man, a kind man. God knows, he wasn’t a family man.” Moreno almost lets out a smile. “He had his flaws, we all do. It was my job to look after him.”

Moreno lowers his head to come face to face to Bellows, the man in the chair in front of his desk.

“Do you know what that means to have that kind of responsibility? He was my younger brother. My younger brother!” He pounds his fist on the arm of Bellows’ chair.

Two of Moreno’s bodyguards stand at the door, still at attention. A third man, Jackson, stands against the wall holding a business folder. His expensive suit fits him better.

Moreno continues yelling at Bellows. “And you sent him on this bullshit assignment.”

“It was important.”

“Was he your errand boy?”

“He wanted to do it.”

“Was he your errand boy!” .

“He asked me to do it.” Bellows says quietly.

“I don’t care what he asked you to do. It wasn’t his decision. It was yours! I trusted you to make those decisions!”

Moreno turns back to his desk.

“We both know that Frank could be careless. That he could be sloppy. That’s why he wasn’t supposed to handle these things.”

Moreno fingers a fancy black pyramid-shaped paper weight that is sitting on his desk. He picks it up.

“Do you know he gave this to me?” Moreno shows it to Bellows. “Just last year, it was a gift for my fiftieth birthday.” Moreno smiles at the memory. Bellows gives a small smile, too.

“He was a kind-hearted man. He may have not been the brightest, but no one could ever doubt his heart.” Moreno walks over to Bellows still holding the paper weight. That’s why he had to be looked after. He was too kind, really.” Bellows nods in agreement.

“That’s why he had to be taken care of.”

Bellows continues to nod, looks up to Moreno hopeful. It appears the tirade is over, that Moreno is calming down. Moreno continues to stare at the paperweight, lost in thought. The longer he stares the more something builds inside of him. Moreno shifts the paperweight from his right hand to his left hand and back again.

“You were supposed to look after him.” Anger rising.

“And you just fucked it up!”

Moreno hits Bellows in the eye with the point of the paper weight. Blood flies in all directions. He hits Bellows again. One of Moreno’s bodyguards turns in disgust. Moreno smashes the sharp point into Bellows face over and over again.

Jackson watches on coldly. Bellows body slumps to the floor. Moreno’s face and shirt are full of blood. There is a giant hole where Bellows’ right eye used to be.

Moreno looks at the lifeless body of his failed underling. Now that he’s gotten his anger out, he begins to calm down. He composes himself, adjusts his shirt, straightens his jacket. He gestures to his two bodyguards.

“Clean up this mess.”

The bodyguards take Bellows’ body away. Jackson closes the door behind them. Moreno gets out a tissue and starts cleaning the blood off the paper weight. He tries to remove the blood from his shirt and face. The small tissue loses the battle, it has little effect on the stains. Moreno turns to Jackson.

“Who killed my brother?”

“Peter said a woman in a black dress emerged from the rubble.”

“Who the fuck is Peter?”

Moreno carelessly throws the paper weight down on his desk. It tumbles and rolls several times.

“He’s the manager of the Starlite Motel. It was one of ours.”

“Frank took her to one of our places?” Moreno shakes his head. “What do the police have to say about this?”

“It’s been handled.”

Moreno turns down a picture on his desk. It’s of his brother, his girlfriend, and himself at some tropical vacation resort. They look happy, relaxed. The picture is now streaked with blood.

“Did she have it?”

“No.”

This upsets Moreno almost as much as the death of his brother.

“Do we know who she is?”

“No.”

“Do we know where she is?”

“Yes.”

“At least we fucking know something.”

Moreno balls up his fist again. He looks like he wants to hit something, anything. “I need that briefcase back.”

He takes a second to think, to try come up with a solution. His balled up fist relaxes. “Put Walters on it. He’ll know what to do.”

Jackson nods.

Moreno walks to the window and peaks through the half-closed blinds down at the street. “If the wrong person ends up with those documents I don’t have to tell you what will happen.”

Moreno looks to Jackson. They make eye contact.

“It’ll be taken care of.” Jackson assures his boss.

Lola lies in bed asleep, passed out. The light grows stronger as the sun rises higher. Her eye opens, bringing her back to consciousness. In the background a tv plays a replay of the presidential debate between George W. Bush and John Kerry from the night before. It’s volume is low, the lights in the motel room are off.

Lola raises her head. She does not know where she is or how she got there. It’s a motel room, she can see that, a seedy motel room, she can see that, too. There are bars on the windows, not a nice area of town. And there is a rough looking man next to her on the bed sound asleep. Lola winces.

How the fuck did I end up here with this guy? My head is killing me.

As her life spiraled downward, this was not the first time she woke up next to a strange guy trying to remember the details of the previous night. But it was the first time she couldn’t remember anything at all. Maybe it was better to forget the details anyway.

Lola gets up from bed. Her black dress is still on. Couldn’t have been that good of a one night stand then. That guy must have been drunker than she was from the looks of him. He still hasn’t moved an inch. He was definitely drunker than she was.

Lola walks from the bed, flicking the tv off as John Kerry is making some important point about the war in Iraq and makes her way to the bathroom sink. She has to step over an empty champagne bottle on her way there. Champagne is usually not the drink of choice for such nights. She wishes she could remember last night. She wishes she could remember the name of the guy. She wishes she could remember her own name.

What the fuck happened to my head?

She splashes water on her face to help her remember, well, anything. A brief flash from the night before. She sees the face of the man she woke up beside, a couple of decades older than her, and then the face of a blonde woman. The blonde woman is wearing black sunglasses.

What the hell happened last night? How did I end up here? God this hangover. It feels like I’ve been hit with a club.

Lola reaches up and feels the back of her head, the source of the throbbing. It’s sticky. She brings her hand down and her fingers have clumps of congealed blood on them. She feels her head again. More blood. There’s definitely a cut on the back of her head.

What did this asshole do to me? He’s not going to get away with it.

Lola marches back to the bed and stops abruptly. Frozen, she stares at the man. She sees the side of his face that was hidden before. There’s a huge gash in his neck, blood has pooled on the sheet and floor. He looks dead.

She is stunned. Her knees buckle. She runs to the door to get the hell of that motel room. She turns the handle. It won’t open. Lola tries it again.

What the fuck!

It still won’t open.

Lola tries with all her strength. She bangs on it and kicks at it, but the damn thing won’t move.

She runs to the window and throws the blinds back. There is no way she is fitting between those bars on the window. She sprints into the bathroom. There’s the smallest window over the bathtub. She looks through it. There was no way she could fit through there.

Fuck.

Lola sinks down in the tub, her back against the wall, muttering to herself, trying to remember how she ended up in a room with a dead guy. Wondering how she can get out of this.

Her eyes brighten. Lola jumps out of the tub and goes over to the phone. The cord has been cut. She looks around the room and sees her purse sitting on one of the tables and quickly digs through it, she pours the contents onto the table.

Her cell phone is gone. Her ID is gone. But there is a key. It looks like a house key. She picks it up and examines it. It’s not much use to her now if she can’t get out of this room. Maybe it’ll be useful later. Lola keeps the key and puts it in the inside pocket of her dress. She turns and looks at the dead man lying on the bed.

There’s one last thing to check.

Cautiously, very cautiously she walks over to him.

Lola reaches out and pokes him and backs away, expecting him to wake up.

Of course, he doesn’t. He’s dead.

Disgusted by the thought of going through a dead man’s pockets, she does it anyway. Lola reaches into his pocket and begins to dig around. She finds a wallet. She rifles through it. There’s no identification for the man. She finds a business card with a woman’s name on it.

It says ‘Dorothy Drake.’ Below the name it there’s a tagline. ‘I can make all of your dreams come true.’ Below that is a phone number.

Lola mutters the name to herself. That name sounds familiar. Lola thinks back to the blonde in sunglasses that flashed in her mind. That must be her. Maybe she knows what’s going on. Maybe she knows the dead guy. Lola keeps the card and looks around the room again.

There’s got to be some way out of this fucking room.

She sees the spilled contents of her purse. There’s something odd sticking up amongst all of the useless stuff.

It’s another card. This one isn’t a business card. It looks like a birthday card or one of those cards you give to relatives on holidays.

Lola opens it. And looks at the card confused. The writing is clear, but it doesn’t make any sense. She looks at the silly picture of balloons on the front and then back to the message written inside. It still doesn’t make sense. Nothing makes sense this morning.

Dejected, Lola sits on the floor, card still in hand. She stares at the message. Scrawled in bright red lipstick in large letters are two words ‘Goodbye Lola’.

What does that even mean? Who’s saying goodbye? This Dorothy Drake woman? The dead guy in the bed?

She looks at the dead guy.

I doubt he wrote that.

The focus of her eye is drawn beyond the red and white of the card. To the darkness underneath the bed. There is the digital readout of a clock.

How did the clock end up under the bed?

She drops the card and crawls to the clock. It not telling the time. It’s counting down. It’s attached to something else. It’s attached to a black box.

It’s a fucking bomb!

It reads 1:20 and is counting fast!

Lola tries to rip it out from underneath the bed. Its handcuffed to the frame. She yanks on it again. It’s not going anywhere.

Lola jumps and runs to the door, desperately screaming and shouting for help, she tries to kick it down.

She runs to the window, but the bars are still there. She runs to the bathroom.

She reemerges into the main room. There is no way out. Not in a minute.

She’s Trapped.

Less than forty-five seconds left on the clock.

Lola paces for five seconds.

She paces for ren seconds.

Pacing isn’t going to get her out of that room.

Or maybe it is.

Thirty-five seconds left on the clock.

She’s thinking.

Thirty seconds.

Lola looks at the man. A thought flashes across her face.

She springs into action and pushes him off the bed. She pushes the bed to the far corner of the room. The still attached bomb is counting down.

Twenty seconds.

Lola wraps the man in the bedsheets and starts dragging his ass out of the main room towards the bathroom where the bathtub is. He’s a heavy dude, she struggles. Fifteen seconds. Down the hallway. Twelve seconds.

She’s at the bathroom door. Ten seconds.

At the tub. She drops him there. And climbs in, she’s got to pull this guy and the bedsheets over here for protection. She pulls.

Five seconds.

FOUR seconds.

THREE.

Finally, she’s got the dead guy, the sheets, everything over her in the bathtub. She waits.

Two..

And waits.

One.

The dead guy ‘s eye opens. His hand jerks down grabbing Lola on the wrist as he coughs up blood.

He’s still alive!

Explosion.

The world shakes. Everything goes white then black. Lola’s world disappears.

There is silence.

Her world returns. She hears the chirping of birds.

Sunlight streaks down onto the rubble covered bathtub from the now roofless motel room. The metal frame of the shower lays broken amidst shards of glass and plaster. It’s like an earthquake just hit.

A hand stirs in the rubble. It peaks through the rubble. A face emerges. Lola has survived. She crawls out of the debris and stands amidst a destroyed room, a demolished motel.

The dead guy looks dead once again. This time Lola’s sure he’s dead.

Lola has bruises and cuts and generally looks like hell, but miraculously is otherwise unharmed. She digs in her dress and takes out the Dorothy Drake business card.

The flash of the blonde in sunglasses pops into her head. There’s only one person that knows why she was there. Well, only one person that’s still alive that knows why she was there.

Lola starts to move.

I’m going to find that woman if it’s the last thing I ever do.

The woman in red is in the cellar with Romero. She is in the corner of the room. She is hunched over, crying. Or maybe gagging on something. We cannot see her face.

Romero approaches her as he did on the cliff. He still cannot see her face, she is turned away from him. Her hands are busy doing something or holding something. Romero keeps approaching.

He is a step away.

The woman in red still has not noticed him. Romero reaches out and taps her on the shoulder.

She turns to him with red eyes, her mouth full of blood. She is holding a half-eaten cat in her hands.

Romero recoils in fright and disgust.

She speaks to him, blood crawling down the sides of her mouth.

“Look at what he has turned me into. What he has done to me. Don’t let him do this to her. He will do the same to her. You can still save her. Help her, save her.”

“Save who?”

“Save her..”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

“You will. You will understand.”

Now it is her turn to reach out to him. She sets the dead cat on the floor and reaches out with her bloody hands to Romero. But before she can touch him, the door to the cellar opens, light crashing into the cellar shining on her like a spotlight.

The woman in red hisses at the bright light.

A strong voice shouts at the woman in a foreign language. The woman in red climbs up the wall in fear, then disappears into the top corner of the room.

Romero opens his eyes. He is back in his bed, he turns and sees Westbury sitting next to him as usual, dressed stylishly in a tuxedo, playing chess against himself.

“I had another dream.”

Westbury is composed, calm. He does not answer, concentrating on his game. Romero turns to the corner where the woman in red was and is shocked by the sight. In the corner, is the half-eaten dead cat, his former pet, blood covering its body. It is a truly disgusting sight.

Romero is horrified. Westbury finally speaks.

“I will have Grace clean that up.”

“It was real? The ghost is real? She isn’t just in my dreams, my imagination?”

Westbury stops concentrating on his game and leans back in his chair. He turns serious, thoughtful even. The first time that Romero has seen him this way. He seems almost contemplative, wistful.

“I saw a ghost tonight as well.” Westbury is lost in memories.

As if by magic, Romero realizes what the woman in red was trying to tell him. He speaks a word without even realizing or controlling what he is saying. He speaks a name as though he is also recollecting past memories.

“Violetta.”

This name, this knowledge surprises Westbury. Now it is his turn to be surprised by the spells of the undead.

“How?”

“The ghost. She was warning me. She told me what you are going to do to her.”

“And what is that?”

“You are going to make her what you are.”

“Am I?”

“You are going to try.”

Westbury’s face changes, he turns serious and severe.

“Yes, I am. There are more parts to this curse than you can possibly imagine. I need her.”

“You don’t need her.”

“You don’t understand.”

“I do. You’re a selfish monster.”

“I am not a monster. At least not the kind you think I am.”

Westbury stands up and takes a few steps away from Romero, his back to Romero.

“It has been over 200 years since we last saw each other.”

Westbury turns to see the reaction on Romero’s face. Now it’s Romero’s turn to be surprised.

“What, you don’t believe me? I thought you believed in the immortal soul. I have been waiting for her to return. Decade after decade, century after century, I have been waiting. She saved my life the last time. That was the second time I lost her amidst the rivers of time. The second time I held her lifeless body in my arms. I will not lose her again. I will not watch her die again.”

“Are you sure it’s the same...”

“Yes.” Westbury cuts Romero off. He is very confident in this assertion.

“Does she have any say in the matter of her fate.”

“She will see it the same way that I do. As she has before.”

“Will she?”

“She loves me as I love her.”

“And if you are mistaken.”

“I am not mistaken.”

“You say you are cursed, that you did not choose this life, yet you are willing to condemn her to the same fate.”

“I love her. She loves me. This has been proven over centuries of time.”

“All the more reason to spare her from this curse. To not condemn her as you have been condemned.”

“You don’t understand.”

“I do understand.”

Romero gets up suddenly. Westbury is taken aback, unsure what Romero is going to do.

Romero crosses to the table and sits down in the chair in front of the chessboard. Westbury cautiously sits down across from Romero.

Romero starts arranging the pieces back to their original formations.

“You say you are a good player.”

“I am.”

Romero is still taking his time getting the white and black piece into their proper starting spots. He finishes with the white queen. The chessboard is set.

“What do I get if I win?” Romero asks.

“Oh, a bet.” Westbury is amused at this mortal’s presumptions. Amused and interested.

“Your freedom?” Westbury says.

“Not my freedom.”

Westbury is confused.

“Her freedom. As long as I hold out, you will not take her soul.”

Westbury contemplates the offer.

“And if I win you must let her go.”

“That would mean you would b trapped here forever whether you win or not.”

“I know.”

“You’re willing to give your life for hers.

“I must do what I can to save a soul, even if it costs me my life.”

Westbury is deep in thought. He did not expect this from the priest.

“And if I win?”

“Anything you want.”

“Absolution?”

“That is not mine to give.”

“Well, perhaps you can put in a good word for me.”

“I can try.”

Westbury is now lost in contemplation, travelling through time in his mind, over centuries of life and death, over centuries of love and loss. He reaches out his hand to Romero.

“I accept.”

They shake hands.

“Do you want to take the white pieces or the black?” The vampire asks the priest.

“I think we both know which side we are on.” The priest answers.

The white pieces are in front of Romero, the black pieces in front of Westbury.

“Very well. Let’s begin. It is your move.” Westbury says

Romero puts his hand on one of the white pawns and moves it forward.

The duel begins.

Previous Chapter: Chapter 5

The woman in red is standing next to the cliff once again.

This time there is no sound of children playing. It is the sound of one baby crying.

The baby sounds like it is far away.

There is blood down the front of the woman’s dress like the blood she coughed up in the last dream.

Romero is once again trying to reach out to her, reaching out with his hand. He is so close to touching her, to comforting her. As his fingers touch her shoulder, she jerks back and stares at him with blood red eyes. Her head jerks back again like she is being pulled by a noose. Then she is lifted. Her body climbing into the sky, floating above Romero.

He looks up to her.

“I have come to help you.”

She looks down at him.

“You cannot help me.”

“I will save you from him.”

“You cannot save me from him.”

The sound of the baby crying is louder, closer. The baby’s screams are piercing. They both turn to look.

There is nothing there. Romero turns back to the woman in red as she floats above him, floating above the cliff and the ocean.

“Help her.” She says. “Help her.” She repeats.

“Who? The baby? How?”

The woman in red is frightened. She looks over Romero’s shoulder, she sees something coming at her.

“No..No.. No!”

She screams and vanishes like the ghost that she is.

Romero wakes up.

Westbury, dressed in a tuxedo, once again in his old man form, is sitting down contemplating his next move in a game of chess. The chair across from him on the other side of the table is empty.

“It’s no fun playing against myself.”

Romero does not answer.

Westbury gestures to a plate on a side table next to the bed. “There is a plate of chicken for you. We thought you might be hungry.”

Romero just stares at Westbury.

“We?”

“Grace brought it for you.”

“She was here?”

“Yes. You were sleeping.”

Romero is starving. He looks at the plate of chicken. He quickly grabs the plate and goes and sits down on the floor in the far corner of the room as far from Westbury as possible.

He says a small prayer before he eats and then gives a look over to Westbury. Westbury is amused by the prayer.

The black cat wanders the room. Romero starts eating. Westbury moves one of the chess pieces.

“They’ll come looking for me.”

“I took care of that today.”

“What?”

“You went to the church and told them you will be spending the month easing an old man’s conscience.”

Romero is stunned.

“How?”

“I can’t explain all of my secrets to you, can I?”

Romero turns his body away from Westbury, like a little kid that’s trying to hide something.

“How’s the chicken?”

Romero doesn’t respond.

“You can’t sulk for the rest of time.”

After waiting a few seconds, Westbury gives up on trying to talk to the priest and goes back to his game of chess.

Romero eats in silence. He notices a glass of water on the side table where the chicken was. He grabs it and goes back into his corner.

Westbury is concentrating on his next move in the chess game.

Romero looks down at his glass of water. He has an idea. He looks back over to Westbury who is not paying attention. Romero quickly makes the sign of the cross and blesses the glass of water. He looks back up at Westbury again, who is still concentrating on the chess board.

Romero takes his chance and rushes across the room. He throws the water in Westbury face.

Romero waits for something to happen, anything to happen.

Westbury, now soaked with water, looks up at Romero with a deadpan expression. He is incredulous. Slowly, very slowly, he wipes the water away.

Romero looks down at the empty glass of water, wondering why his host is not burning.

“I forgot to cover holy water, didn’t I? It takes more than a blessing by a priest to do damage to me in my own home.”

Embarrassed and defeated, Romero goes back to his corner.

“Anything else you want to know. Do you want to talk about coffins?”

Romero stares at Westbury with hatred. He goes back to eating his chicken. Westbury goes back to his game.

“You can’t keep up the silent act forever. Eventually, you will want to talk.”

Romero still doesn’t say anything. The cat jumps into his lap. He pets it. Westbury notices this.

“Have you named him yet?”

“Yes.”

“What’s his name?”

“Judas.”

This catches Westbury by surprise. “Lovely.”

Westbury stops his game of chess and stands up and looks down at Romero who is still in the corner of the room with his cat and chicken to keep him company.

“There’s going to be a party tonight. Every month, I have a few...friends over. It might get a little loud. I apologize in advance for the inconvenience. Goodnight, Father Romero.”

Westbury turns to walk up the stairs and as he walks he transforms into his younger handsome form.

The door closes and locks.

Romero stares at the locked door, trapped.

Next Chapter: Chapter 6
Previous Chapter: Chapter 4

It is a beautiful day, a woman in a red dress is walking on a cliff high above the ocean. There’s the sound of children playing somewhere in the distance.

The woman walks towards the edge of the cliff. Father Romero approaches her. He calls to her. She stops at the cliff’s edge and turns and looks at him. She tries to smile.

But something is stopping her from smiling. She starts to gag and then cough. She continues to cough until blood comes out, lots of blood, it flows down her red dress, the dark red of the blood mixing with the bright red of the dress.

Romero reaches out to her with his hand trying to help her, for some reason he can’t get close to her, as if she is surrounded by an impenetrable field. She is still coughing heavily, spurts of blood coming out of her mouth. She looks up. She is trying to say something. She struggles, unable to catch a breath. Finally, she is able to say one word. One faint word.

“Help.”

She repeats the word.

“Help.”

Romero takes another step towards her, trying to get through the force field but she steps back keeping the space between them. Romero keeps moving forward. The woman looks down to the ocean below. She is on the edge of the cliff now.

Romero can’t help himself, he takes another step forward. The woman looks back at him and as she does she takes another fateful step, off the cliff. She stares at him as plunges to the ocean below.

Romero screams.

And wakes on a bed in a cold cellar. He sits up in bed still screaming. He realizes he is awake now. Someone is sitting beside the bed. Romero turns and sees Westbury, in old man form.

“Nice dream?” Westbury asks.

“Where.. Where am I?”

“My basement.”

“I’m your prisoner?”

“I prefer to say guest.”

“You can’t do that.”

Westbury frowns, he clearly thinks, yes, he can do that. He is in a surprisingly light-hearted mood for someone that has just kidnapped a priest.

He holds up a black cat.

“I brought you a friend.”

Westbury lets it go and it runs away to the corner of the room.

“And some entertainment.” Now he holds up a closed chessboard.

“Who are you?”

“I have told you that. It was not a lie.”

“What do you want with me?”

“I have told you that as well. And that was also not a lie.”

Westbury places the chessboard on a small table and opens it. “Now that we are, how would you say, better acquainted, I’m afraid I can’t let you leave. I have prepared this cellar for your extended visit.” Westbury starts arranging the chess pieces to their starting positions.

“You can’t keep me here.”

“Yes, I can.”

Romero composes himself. He remembers his dream. “Souls call out to me in my dreams.”

“They have that unfortunate habit.”

“Are they people you have killed?”

“Perhaps.”

“Why do you keep them trapped here?”

“They are not trapped. Some choose to stay, some choose to go. I do not control what they do.”

“They call out to me for help.”

“I am sure they do.”

Westbury is almost finished arranging the chess pieces. “I must warn you, I am quite a good player.” He pauses then looks at Romero with a devilish smile. “Years of practice.”

Romero is seething at his predicament, at the moral corruptness of the man who sits before him.

“How many have you killed?”

“In the beginning, many, very many, now, as few as possible.”

“But you still kill?”

“There is no other way.”

“There must be.”

“I try to be humane, if that is the right word, but the longer I go without sustenance the more dangerous I become. It’s like a drug addiction, I suppose, if I go too long I become... feral, until I’m just another animal prowling, killing, drinking. Trust me, you don’t want to see me like that.”

Romero is aghast at how matter of fact Westbury is about something so important.

“You’re insane.”

Westbury sighs. “I am old and tired. I am not insane. I am forced to live a life I did not choose.”

“There is always a choice.”

“Is there?” Westbury doubts this. He leans back in his chair, relaxed, in command. “So what else would you like to know? The blood thing, we’ve covered that. The sun, yes, I suppose you could say it’s bad for my complexion. Garlic, I personally don’t like the taste, but in some dishes it’s not so bad. Crucifixes, and the cross, well that’s a little complicated, but I am not without some powers to resist. A stake to the heart and cutting off the head, well, I think that would kill just about anybody, don’t you. What else?”

“The photographs, the mirror, I thought.”

“There are many myths about us. If you couldn’t see us in mirrors or photos we wouldn’t have survived very long, would we? Of course, these days it’s harder to keep one’s privacy, which can be a challenge, but all this social media makes it easier to find suitable prey. One door closes another opens.”

“I won’t let you use me for your disturbed purposes.”

“Isn’t a sinner allowed confession?”

“Not all sinners. Not if they don’t repent.”

“I repent.”

“I will not forgive you. God will not forgive you.”

“Are you so sure?”

“Yes.”

“Do not be so sure of your favor with God. He may abandon you as surely as he abandoned me. You are part of a dying breed just as I am.”

“Humans?”

“Priests. I’m afraid the modern world does not have much need for either of us.” Westbury smiles. Romero stares with hatred.

Westbury perks up like he heard something. He gets up from his chair. “It is late.”

“It’s still night?”

“No. Morning. For me that means it is time to sleep. I see that you will need time to adjust to your new surroundings.” Westbury walks up the stairs to the door. “Good morning, Father. We shall see each other again.”

Westbury leaves the cellar, the door closing on Romero, locking him in.

Next Chapter: Chapter 5
Previous Chapter: Chapter 3

Westbury takes a picture down from the wall. He gives it to Romero. It is a black and white photograph from World War 2. There are three men in the photograph. All of them wear U.S. pilot uniforms. They all look to be in their early twenties.

“You served in the war?”

“I am the one on the right.” At first Westbury seems proud but then he shakes his head. “Such a senseless tragedy. All of those deaths.”

“You believed in the cause.”

“Young men always believe in causes. There are always reasons to fight. One war leads to the next leads to the next. This is what you realize when you live a very long time.”

Romero hands the picture back to Westbury who carefully places it back on the wall.

Westbury takes off his robe and sits down in a high-backed leather chair. He gestures to Romero to sit in a matching chair across from him. Romero sits down and lets out a little cough.

“Grace can bring some water.”

“No.” Romero is a little too emphatic with this. He is happy to be out of the dining room and under Grace’s command. “We should continue, as before.”

“Yes, we should continue.”

“Did you kill other soldiers during the war?”

“Many men.” Westbury pauses, as if he is deciding whether to finish the sentence. “And women and children, too.”

The last part surprises Romero. He tries to make sense of it.

“Was this part of the bombings?”

“At the time, you are doing what you can to survive, what you are told you have to do to survive, most don’t even think about it, I suppose I was aware, even from the beginning.”

“What happens in wartime is monstrous. What young soldiers must do is beyond tragic. God forgives those who ask for forgiveness. God understands the sacrifices we make.”

“Does he?”

“Yes, he does.”

Westbury gives a sad knowing smile. He does not seem to agree with the young priest. He stands up and walks back over to the wall with the black and white photographs.

“Do you know how old I am?” Westbury does not look at Romero as he asks this question.

“The war was a very long time ago. I could not guess.”

“I was born August 1^st…” Like a very old man Westbury searches for the year in his mind. After a second, it comes to him. He says it very slowly. “August 1^st in the year 1581.”

Romero squints when he hears the year. It would not be the first time a very old man had told him the wrong year. Westbury seemed more lucid than most, but he clearly is mistaken.

Westbury turns back to look at Romero as he continues. “I am 442 years old.”

Romero adjusts uncomfortably in his chair, wondering if he should correct the senile old man.

“I have carried these sins with me for centuries.”

Romero realizes this has gone far enough, he needs to say something to dissuade this old man of his delusions.

“I think you may be mistaken. Your parents. What year did they pass?”

Westbury smiles at the thought of his long-lost parents.

“I hardly knew them, really, it was such a long time ago. They were so young when they were taken from this world.”

Westbury goes over to an antique bureau and takes out some more black and white photographs. These are not in frames. He tries to sort them with his old fragile hands. He mishandles them and they drop to the floor.

“These damn hands. Could you help?”

Romero quickly goes over to pick up the fallen photos. He looks at them as he picks them up from the floor and stacks them on top of each other. There are many pictures of the same young Westbury as from the World War 2 pilot photograph.

“These are more pictures of you in the war?”

“Yes.” Westbury hands Romero a photo that did not fall. “And other wars.”

It is clearly a photograph from World War 1. The same young man from the World War 2 photograph is in this one. This time he wears a German uniform.

“Who is this? He looks a lot like you.”

Westbury hands Romero another photograph, an even older photograph. It is labeled with the year 1900. It is from the Boer War. It looks like the same young man again. This time in a different uniform again.

“Is this a relative?”

Westbury only smiles in response to Romero’s question.

Romero flips through the other photographs in his hands. He finds one dated 1854. It is from the Crimean War. It is clearly a picture of the same young man, looking exactly the same age as in all of the other photos, in yet a different uniform from the other photos.

“I don’t understand. Why are you showing me this? Are these people relatives of yours?”

“No.”

Romero thinks some trick is being played. Westbury points to the picture on the wall.

“That one is me.”

He points to the World War 1 photo in Romero’s hands.

“That one is me.”

He points to the other pictures of other wars, other times in Romero’s hands.

“That one is me, that one is me and that one is me. I would show you more, but unfortunately, photography is a somewhat new invention.”

Romero recoils. He looks at the photos again. They all certainly look like the same person.

“These can’t be real.”

“I assure you they are.”

“With technology, it is easy to trick..”

“I am not a trick of technology, Father.”

Romero takes a step back away from Westbury.

“You believe in spiritual things, you believe in miracles, in many things that are not part of the known world.”

Westbury opens his arms. “Why can’t you believe in me.”

Romero falls back in his chair.

“You’re not well. You need a doctor.”

“Doctors do nothing for the soul. Your God is the only one who can help me.”

“What?”

“I will properly introduce myself. My name, my original name, was Wilhem Bakosz. I was born and baptized in Gyor, Hungary in the year 1581. I lived for three decades as a normal human being until a devil found me and transformed me into…, well, something else.”

“You need help.”

“Yes, I do. That is why I called for you.”

Westbury takes a deliberate step towards Romero. Romero flinches, putting his arms up to protect himself.

“I know a psychiatrist. He can help you.”

“No. He cannot.”

Westbury takes another step. Romero reaches into his pocket. He fumbles for his phone, frantically, trying to get it out and make a call to someone, anyone.

Behind Romero, there is movement in the darkness once again. A slow-moving figure crawling towards Romero. Romero cannot see this. The creature is hidden from his sight by the high-backed chair. It creeps closer and closer. It looks like it is on all fours. Romero is still focused on his phone. Trying to unlock it with his damn password. He mistypes and tries again.

Westbury takes another step towards Romero. Romero can’t help but to look up and sees something utterly remarkable. With a single step, Westbury has transformed from a frail 100 year old man to the young handsome man in the photographs.

The smile is still on Westbury’s face. He has proven his point to the young priest, who in astonishment accidentally drops his phone to the floor.

The movement behind Romero has now risen above him, the monster, the creature, rising high on its hind legs, Romero unaware, transfixed on the image of a now young Westbury standing before him. Westbury takes another step. He transforms back again, to the frail old man, the smile still on his face.

Romero desperately reaches down to his phone to call 911, but it is too late the figure from the darkness behind is now on top of him. It is Grace, transformed into a six-armed monster. She wraps Romero with all of her arms. He looks up. His world turns to black.

Next Chapter: Chapter 4
Previous Chapter: Chapter 2

Romero takes his time eating the almost rare lamb. Even though he is not hungry and he did not come to this place to eat, he must admit it is not bad, maybe even quite good.

Halfway through his meal, as he takes another bite of the lamb, Romero something again. It is from the vent again. It sounds like a faint cry again.

He stops mid-bite. The sound is gone. The room is quiet. He swallows the piece of lamb and takes a drink from his glass of wine. He brings the glass to his lips. Another sound. Another faint cry.

Romero gets up from his chair. The whisper continues. He kneels down next to the vent on the floor. He puts his ear down to the vent trying to understand the cry.

It sounds like a voice from a woman.

“Help.”

It is very faint. She repeats.

“Help.”

Romero can’t be sure of the words being said or if they are even words at all. He lowers his head even more his ear directly on the vent.

He is startled by a loud sound. It is the loud footsteps of the woman. She stands at the other end of the dining hall.

“Is something wrong, Mr. Romero?”

“I…I’m sorry. I heard something again. It sounded like a voice. A voice crying out for help.”

“It is the wind.”

“But it sounded like..”

“It is the wind.”

Romero stands up and looks to the window. It is night now, dark outside. There doesn’t seem to be much wind.

The woman walks over to the head of the table and takes the plate of half-eaten food.

“I will bring dessert.”

“That is not necessary.”

“Sit down, sir. I will bring dessert.” She is unyielding. She begins to walk out of the dining room. Romero sits down and looks at his watch.

“Will Mr. Westbury be joining soon. I really must get back to the church. It is a long drive and I should be leaving shortly.”

The woman stops on the other side of the dining room. She turns to Romero, still holding the plate. She stares at him. She does not say anything.

Romero looks back at her confused, worried.

From the darkness behind Romero there is movement. The woman from the other end of the hall watches this movement behind Romero. He thinks she is staring at him, but she is watching a shape emerge out of the blackness.

The shape begins to take form behind Romero. The woman continues to stare at it. Romero is still confused, unaware of the movement behind him.

Slowly, very slowly, this shape creeps forward closer and closer to Romero. A pale hand reaches out from the darkness. A ghostly face hovers above Romero’s head. The hand reaches out and brushes Romero’s left cheek. Romero turns and sees nothing.

“The church? What a comforting thought.”

Romero jumps at the voice. He turns and looks at a very old man dressed in a dark robe who is now on his right side. The man looks to be near a hundred.

“Did I startle you?”

Westbury speaks with an undefinable accent. He pulls out a chair near the end of the table, next to Romero. He turns to the woman on the other side of the dining hall before he sits down.

“That will be all Grace.”

She leaves.

Westbury sits in the chair next to Romero. His right hand rests on a cane with the carved head of a ram on top.

“I wish I could join you. It has been far too long since I was able to enter a place of worship.”

Romero composes himself.

“I’m sure arrangements could be made for you to attend a service.”

“Unfortunately, I don’t think that would be possible for a man in my condition.”

Westbury seems in good humor, friendly.

“I apologize for my tardiness. I trust that Grace has been taking care of you.”

“Yes.”

Grace returns and a bowl of dessert is unceremoniously placed in front of ROMERO and as soon as she was there she is gone.

Westbury smiles. His teeth are discolored. He nods at the dessert.

“Bread pudding, it is quite good.”

Romero looks down at the dessert. It does not look appetizing.

“You will not be dining tonight?”

“At the moment, I am not hungry.” Westbury smiles again.

“I really do have little time.”

“So do I.”

“I mean..” Romero tries to clarify. Westbury cuts him off.

“I know what you mean. Please forgive an old man a small joke.”

“We should start.”

“With the confession?”

“Yes.”

The old man nods his approval to the young man.

“Do you prefer to do this at the table face to face or…”

“I would like to see your face as I confess.”

Now it is the young man’s turn to nod his approval to the old man. Romero readies himself to say some words of prayer, but Westbury breaks down before he can start.

“I have done terrible things, Father, very terrible things. I have been such a horrible being who has taken so much from others. I am not good, Father. I am evil. I have condemned myself to an eternity in Hell.”

Westbury puts his head in his hands, as though he is weeping.

“You can save yourself. There is still time.”

“I have murdered so many, far too many to be forgiven. I have killed because of my lust for blood, for vengeance. Do you understand what I am saying to you?”

Westbury looks up at Romero, tears in his eyes.

“So much death.” Westbury shakes his head. Romero is worried, trying to understand this old man’s confession. He clears his threat.

“Please continue.”

The old man lowers his head again. He can’t continue. Romero reaches out to comfort him, but before his hand can touch the old man’s shoulder, Westbury straightens up, his eyes bright, as if he had never said anything, as if he had never confessed anything, back to the pleasant demeanor of a casual dinner conversation.

Westbury stands with agility of a young man and turns on his cane. He walks towards the end of the dining room, leaving Romero seated at the table.

Westbury stops at the edge of the room and looks back.

“We shall retire to the sitting room.”

Next Chapter: Chapter 3
Previous Chapter: Chapter 1