Dead Reckoning by Dino Parenti

Author:Dino Parenti [Parenti, Dino]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: epub, ebook, QuarkXPress
Publisher: Crystal Lake Publishing
Published: 2018-10-01T00:00:00+00:00

SAVIOR

YOU’RE GONNA TALK about Liza now.

Because you’re following her, and it’s easier expressing your thoughts to her ass than her face.

There she goes now, a sprite loping across a parking lot with all the slack-jawed grace of a murmuration, sidestepping puddles of streetlights and bounding k-rails before plunging into shadows.

To keep up with her takes all your muscle-memory from route clearance missions in Iraqi villages—proof that this part of you will never die no matter how hard you try to snuff it out.

You catch up to her again as she waits for a car to drift past before tearing across the street on coltish legs towards the south wall of Leland’s Tavern. The wall farthest from its crazy-bright sign that keeps you up most nights with its irregular flicker and yawning buzz that gives the cicada a run for their money, even at the edge of a marsh.

She tiptoes against the mottled tin siding to the back corner, and you decide to squat between parked Chevy long beds to catch your breath. In truth, there’s no need for you to match her pace. You’ve done this fruitless dance many times. You know she’s going to the barn. Its glow seeps from behind Leland’s, a frosty effulgence slithering around corners and peering through the mesh of Spanish beard with the warmth of coroner’s lights.

Will you look this time?

You’ll probably get as far as the back of the bar before retreating to your apartment, as usual. In the stifling heat of your narrow room, where the plumbing shudders and the floorboards groan lurid secrets with every contraction, it’ll be your old man’s oft-stated credo that’ll squire you to sleep: that the worst sin you can commit upon your heroes is to unmask them.

In a blink she rounds the corner and melds into the light, and the same predictable breath scrambles up and grapples to the roof of your throat. Thus her namesake. Her invented self. Even removed from the glory of the trapeze, the moniker suits her just as well on the ground.

Within the majesty of the big-top, under a patina of makeup, she’s known as The Golden Starling. But her real name is Liza. Mother of three. You might love her, and she might love you.

It’s complicated.

You cross the street.

***

You remember the first time you saw Liza the way you remember the first time you fired an M16. Both shocked you to the core with their power. Even the simple act of her hanging a poster in the bar for the forthcoming three-week run of Coolidge and Sons Circus was enough for her to drive the same jolt into you.

You’d just started living in the apartment above Leland’s where you worked four days a week. Because of your appearance, they relegated you to the back loading stock, filing inventory, book-keeping, and generally maintaining a wall between you and the patrons. Whenever the barkeep called for a new case of Wild Turkey or a refilled keg of Old Milwaukee, you shoved it through the canvas curtain between the bar and storeroom with your boot.

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