A GLAD MAN ISN'T HARD TO FIND

The air is thick with juniper, citrus rind, and the sour-sweet tang of Angelino dreams.

Neon numbers, a bloodstain that glows as if radioactive against darkened glass: 1200, West Hollywood. Terrazzo under wan lights, brass rails glinting like incisors displayed in a reliquary. The place should be a mausoleum at eleven on a weekday night, but a pack of two dozen middle-aged professionals has colonized the banquettes and barstools. Wrapped in expensive textiles, they laugh too loudly and swig too quickly.

Maxine is polishing a coupe behind the counter. She turns away to distort her face at the other bartender, right palm curled into a crisp jacking off motion. Not how a Tuesday night should go, and although a few folded hundreds have been slotted into the crystal fishbowl, both would’ve preferred a quiet night. The gaggle arrived in black vans, already lit from a morale outing at a rented IMAX theater in El Segundo. They clap each other on deltoids still sore from ergonomic chairs, roaring about torque ratios and NDAs. Now and then, a thin piece of ribaldry prompts forced amusement.

The white-haired regular sits in a corner. Staff think of him as furniture, familiar and convenient. Mr. Ash, pseudonym, nickname or something earned. He slots himself into dim corners, stays until last call and pays with cash. A trench of ruined flesh furrows his left cheek, beginning under the orbit and skating toward ear, as though a predator tried to excavate secrets from his skull. He’s surveying the jabbering strangers from under the muted orange of a sconce.

Two women, their low-cut blouses translucent with sweat, totter toward the baby grand piano squatting on a riser. One—platinum-maned, mauve-lipped, her pupils dilated with a grab-bag of intoxicants—tries to perch on the stool. A heel skids. Gravity claims her. She careens into Mr. Ash’s table, high-pitched and flailing, scattering lime wedges.

He rises, hooking firm fingers beneath her elbows. Precise, marble-mannered. She leans into the lift at first, smiling. “Easy,” he mutters. “None of this will exorcize your anger at him.” The pronoun lands like a projectile, making a red wound out of the blonde’s mouth. The flush drains from her face and neck. She jerks away, clutches purse up to chest, and clatters toward the restroom. Her companion casts a wary glance before following.

From across the room, a dapper, lean man has also monitored the pantomime. He carries himself as if he calculates vectors before crossing the street. Curly hair the shade of corrugated cardboard, navy sportscoat. He glides toward Mr. Ash to offer towels snatched from Maxine, setting an amber-filled tumbler on the table. “That was odd,” he offers. “What happened?”

The scarred man mouths gratitude, patting his sleeves. He folds the white cloths and aligns them to the side of the table, leaning back. “Not much.”

“Enough to send Clara reeling. She’s… not the type. What did you say to her?”

“Not important.”

“Humor me,” the copper-haired man insists. He reaches for a nearby ottoman, stages it close and flares his blazer wide as he sits. “I’m Julien. Refill, or a different drink on me?”

“No, thanks.” Mr. Ash folds into shadow, eyes darting across his interlocutor’s face. Baroque bottles click in the distance, bartenders mobbed again. “If you really want to know, how about a bet,” Mr. Ash proposes, syllables low-slung, sinking. “I lose, I tell you. I win, you pay my tab.”

“Your tab.” Cordial but wary. “How much would that be, mister…?”

“Ash. That’s what they call me here. Suppose you could do the same.” His shoulders hitch into a slight shrug. “Don’t know. A lot. Been a regular for years. Does it matter? You can afford it.”

Julien crosses his legs, a finger tracing the rim of his bourbon neat.

The scarred man gestures toward the crowd. “Choose any three members of your coterie, and I bet I can tell you what each one of them is sad about.”

The startup contingent swells all around them, a crescendo of insipid banter.

#

A flicker of dislocation across Julien’s carefully composed features. A sensation of being perceived—not just observed but assessed.

“Silly,” he objects. “I’ll wait until tomorrow morning and ask Clara what upset her.”

“No.” The syllable is declarative, final. Mr. Ash swirls his tumbler, ice cracking with the sound of a distant fracture. “She hates you.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Julien adjusts his sportscoat.

“Maybe. But she hates you. Not sure, but… you probably hate her too. Isn’t that right?”

Compared to the certain “no” from moments before, the question is soft, insinuation. The curly-haired man ignores it, smooths a trouser crease, and lets the pause fill up with drunken babble. A knot of particularly demanding patrons has tightened around the bar, mouths glistening and wide. A tan woman in a sequin top and whipcord-tight denim brays at Maxine, whose stoicism is stiffening into something brittle. They’re petitioning for roof access.

Julien seizes the distraction: “Are you in law enforcement, Mr. Ash? Corporate security, maybe? Private detective?”

A dry, rustling sound, autumnal leaves across pavement. “Not at all. Haven’t worked in a long time.” The confessed retiree reviews the panoply of bottles behind the bar. “Since my twenties.”

Fingers through his curls, Julien thinks. Looks to be in his sixties, so four decades. Betting men usually run out of money, and the demeanor has nothing of the manic quality he’s come to associated with criminals. “That’s remarkable.”

Mr. Ash agrees with a curt nod.

The rooftop-aspiring gang is escalating matters, decibels increasing in inverse proportion to coherence. A man with a clenched jaw raps his knuckles on the counter, complaining about spending a fortune. Maxine’s shoulders rise another inch as a brunette in aerospace-athleisure kicks in frustration, stiletto heel skating on the foot-rail.

“We were promised panoramic views. The Valhalla package!” Maxine’s eyes are two bobbing black olives, her sentences apologetic but clipped. An inebriated confrontation had seemed inevitable from the moment interlopers began drifting in. She closes her eyes and grips the bar-gun, imagining herself lifting the hose, aiming it at the leering faces mobbing her. The sweetness of hammering the button for max spray.

Mr. Ash strides toward the confrontation. He approaches, hands in the pockets of his grey slacks, posture neither paternal nor threatening. “Max,” he calls. His expression is curatorial, forbearing. The group pivots as one, confused by the interruption. “An exception for my friends. A favor, please.”

Maxine’s unwinding is performance art, her body relaxing into resignation. A key ring materializes among high-pitched whoops and deferential slaps on Mr. Ash’s back. The men offer slurred gratitude as they file past him, drinks in hand. Miss Sequin Top attempts to plant a kiss on his chin but stumbles while rising on the balls of her feet, splashing rum and coke. He absorbs the indignity coolly and waves her through the unlocked fire door, hand avoiding exposed skin. The smell of urine from the stairwell briefly floods the bar.

Mr. Ash returns, dabbing with one of towels again. He sits and samples his drink. “My sleeves are getting over-seasoned,” he comments.

“Apologies for my coworkers.” Julien squints at the crowd and drains the rest of his cocktail. “They can be insufferable. Appreciate your intervention.”

Around them, the party is tattering. The energy has crested and is now breaking, leaving behind a film of intoxication. People loosen their ties, whispering complaints and confessions. Some summon rideshares. They’re molting, becoming porous with alcohol, spores looking for new host bodies. In a corner, a beautiful trio leans into a conspiratorial triptych under the wall presence of an expressionistic Californian bear. Light strikes them from below, shards of neon reflected off the floor, their cheekbones cavernous, lips bustling with machinations.

“I thought you had an investigative background because you picked up on the tension between myself and Clara.” Julien leans intently, elbows on knees. “I’m the director of people at the company, and she’s been… problematic. Shows up intoxicated, makes advances and lodges accusations when they’re reciprocated. Keeps happening, a… a Sisyphean HR boulder.”

Mr. Ash’s gaze is probing next to the shock of his scar. “A demanding job. Do you enjoy directing people, Julien?”

Enjoy: the word is a fishhook; a pivot that leaves Julien momentarily lost.

“It’s… it’s fine. The title’s pretentious. I’m an adult playground monitor.” He shrugs. “But it pays well, and I like rewarding good behavior, punishing bad. Lot more of the latter.” He swirls bourbon, watching the meniscus cling to crystal. “Guess I do enjoy it when someone gets what’s coming to them.”

“Yes,” Mr. Ash affirms.

“Alright,” Julien declares. He puts down the nearly-empty glass. “I’ll quit stalling and take the bet.” He stands, gesturing to the bar, then to the unlocked door. “Please join me upstairs after I get another drink. I’ll point out three people, and we’ll see what you come up with.”

Mr. Ash blinks slowly, vaguely reptilian in composure. They collect fresh drinks, gin resurrected with fresh lime and bourbon displaced by a mammoth cube, and drift toward the stairwell. Behind them, Maxine wipes the counter, her rag moving in careful elliptical orbits, as though massaging tension from the spine of the bar.

#

The rooftop soaks in exhaust, ocean brine and heat leftover from midday sun.

The city below glitters like the jeweled gut of a sleeping dragon, red and white pulsing along Santa Monica Boulevard. Midnight has burnished the sky to deep indigo.

Mr. Ash stands at the parapet. Behind him, the gaggle that ambushed Maxine has gathered in a loose circle, the incandescent dots of their cigarettes bobbing. Someone is narrating an escapade involving a double-date and coconut oil. The anecdote ends in collective ruckus that ricochets off HVAC units and dissolves into the thrum of ambient traffic.

“You’re perturbed,” Mr. Ash observes.

“Perturbed,” Julien repeats, testing the syllables. “Yes. No. Yes? I don’t understand. The three I chose… especially Kai. ‘Congenital liver failure,’ not a guess.”

“There’s more to it, but look at the man. Jaundiced, nursing a mezcal all night long. His shirt cuffs ride half an inch too long, recent weight loss he hasn’t bothered to tailor for—so, something serious. Still carries himself with ease. Serious but managed.”

The explanation is polished, an unobjectionable sequence of deductions. Julien shakes his head. “Something’s not tracking, Mr. Ash. You were spot on about all three, like you had employee files and diaries on hand. I don’t know. Like you’ve been hired by a competitor or somebody shorting us in private markets. You’re giving off spook vibes.”

The rustling, dry chuckle returns. “Not the case. Though I’ve been called spooky before.”

Downtown’s skyline blinks red aircraft lights, banks stacked like quartz dominoes. There’s a guttural thwock-thwock of a police helicopter’s searchlights to the east, hunting someone whose story will make local news. To the west, the 405 is a lethargic python, scales of headlights sliding south toward the airport. Above, low-slung fog struggles against onshore wind. The moon re-emerges, round and pockmarked, a coin minted by a bankrupt empire.

“Need a smoke,” Julien announces. He crosses the tar-paper expanse to the cackling group and returns with an ignited stick.

“Fiancée made me promise to quit. Tried to, really did. Then I started to use disposable gloves and mints to keep the stink off. The routine works. She thinks I’m in the clear.”

The scarred man grins at the confession.

“Anyway. I wasn’t supposed to be part of this morale outing, Mr. Ash. Wasn’t there for the early part. Drove myself here. Thought my presence would rein in misbehavior.” Smoke plumes from Julien’s lips. “Instead, everyone’s sloshed. On the verge of making terrible decisions.”

“So it goes,” Mr. Ash intones.

“Yeah. There’ll be clean-up work after tonight. Some punishment to dole out.” Something uncontrolled across the elegant man’s face, a crack in otherwise lacquered calm. “And now I’m going through a small existential crisis because of a… Not a parlor trick, sorry. Whatever you just did.”

“Didn’t mean to cause distress. You’ve been a good sport. Bet’s off.”

“No,” Julien declines. “Deal’s a deal. Not paying feels like… courting karmic retribution. Just annoyed that I can’t figure it out.”

The party unspools. Two men shoulder-stumble toward the stairwell, arguing in expletive-laced finance jargon. The sequined woman leans into a shadowed corner, where a beard-shadowed giant pins her wrists above her head and bends down to chew at her face. She’s missing a shoe. No one watches; voyeurism has been outsourced to a rotating security camera. A bottle tips and glugs, contents flattening into a puddle.

“Clara,” Mr. Ash says suddenly, pulling Julien from his cigarette reverie. “She found her biological father recently. He wants nothing to do with her. Armchair psych, but… the men she victimizes are surrogates for the one that matters. The one she can’t hurt back.”

Julien stomps on his butt, curls aflutter, and rearranges his sportscoat a touch too briskly. “How could you possibly know that? That’s not an observation.”

“No,” Mr. Ash concedes. “It’s not.” He turns back to Julien. “The bet was a pretense to secure your attention. I’ve had a long time to experiment with ways to get a man’s attention. Losing a bet to is up there.” He pauses. “Truth is, I want something from you.”

The thin, elegant man is very still.

“What?”

“Not here. You mentioned you drove here, yes? Let’s talk elsewhere.”

They descend. Groundside, the remaining patrons move languidly, beads of mercury seeping out of a smashed thermometer. Maxine’s reflection warps across the mirrored surface of the counter. Mr. Ash approaches, reaches into his jacket, and places a compact brick of hundred-dollar bills before her.

“For my tab, and for any collateral damage upstairs.” Maxine’s protest is automatic, mouth arched in a mumble about the payment being far too much, inappropriate.

“Don’t flatter yourself, Max,” he says. “I don’t feel like counting. Another gin and tonic, this time double. Tanqueray Rangpur as always.” Mr. Ash points at Julien. “He can pay for that one. Bet’s a bet.”

#

Bruised felt and lingering nicotine, magenta cursive alternating between 24 HOURS and POOL HALL. The fluorescent tubes buzz like electrocuted dragonflies. Above the twelve tables, lazy fans and cheap speakers that lend cracked treble to Javier Solís:

“Payaso… no llores más… tu engaño fue quererla…”

The lyrics drift like a helium balloon over worn-out seating, wall racks and vending machines. A compressor clunks on, wafting scents of stale beer and chalk dust. Incense for the insomniacs still loitering here, between once-aquamarine walls, now aged into the hue of sewage-tainted ocean.

Julien’s sportscoat drapes an isolated barstool. He leans from the waist, left hip planted against the table. His cream dress shirt remains immaculate, sleeves rolled up to reveal hairless forearms, veins branching like the roots of invasive vine. He draws the cue back with no wrist flutter, holds his breath and releases. The six ball rolls with a sound of sucked breath, thuck! It vanishes into one of the holes. He walks the perimeter, calculating angles and visualizing trajectories, forehead creased.

“Amor de mis amores… si dejaste mi lado es por otro querer…”

Mr. Ash occupies a worn vinyl chair upholstered in duct-tape silver, jacket across his knees. His scar catches strobes from the wall-mounted sign. He’s peeling the label of an empty Samuel Adams Tetravis into narrow spirals, dropping them into the bottle. He studies Julien the way an entomologist might consider a rare specimen.

“Fifteen,” he begins. “I was a troublemaker. My parents tried everything, and everything failed. They followed a family friend’s advice, sent me into the wilderness. An all-boys camp out of state. Temporary exile to Colorado woods. Character-building.” He stops shredding the label and draws a line in the condensation on the bottle. “First week, we found a raccoon in the main cabin, the mess hall. Inside-out, organs splayed like a mandala. The counselors blamed coyotes, but even suburban teens could tell that was horseshit.”

“Y volver… volver… volver… a tus brazos otra vez…”

Julien breaks a pile of balls, sending number seven into a lateral pocket. His eyebrows are a single line, gaze absorbing the geometry of the table, Mr. Ash’s contour, the three-a.m. patchwork of light and shadow.

“Deep wrongness to those woods. Freakish weather. Hail in August, a few freezing nights. Thunderstorms that rattled our small cots, logs jostling and creaking. The mangled raccoon was the first of many animals that stumbled into the compound to expire. Deer, squirrels and even a young black bear… Inexplicable mutilations. Not the work of a cougar, something else. The counselors sold joints, constantly drunk. One of them was openly chasing minors, trading whiskey for favors. No cell phones back then. We pretended things were normal and played a lot of card games. Nightmares, every night. A sixteen-year-old had a heart attack during sleep. Full cardiac arrest. His roommate was a CPR-certified scout. Lived but wouldn’t say anything before a hospital van arrived.”

He pauses and lifts the Tetravis, looking inside. His left eye twitches.

“I woke up one night, or thought I did. Couldn’t move or speak. Couldn’t breathe. Something on my chest, crushing. Ice-cold. It was dark, but I felt something. A breath on my face, earthen-rot, and then a tongue. Frigid. Rough along my eyebrows and ears. Thought my chest would cave in from the weight.”

“Sombras… nada más… son sombras sin fin…”

“My trousers split, and it forced itself on me. Nothing erotic, nausea and terror. Couldn’t budge, could barely think. Tried to recall something good or holy, the church my grandmother used to take me to. I was six or seven. St. Jude’s. Remembered the altar: gold leaf, white linen, a crucifix larger than I was. The image came clearly, and a sound tore out of my throat.”

Julien straightens, chalking his cue. A bead of sweat slips from his temple, navigates the cliff of his cheekbone. He doesn’t wipe. A bottle shatters in a far corner of the hall, sounding like a gunshot. Three young men in plaid overshirts and matching do-rags, bent over a sloppy game, stare openly at Julien. One of them throws another empty bottle. It smashes on the floor, near their table.

“¡Pendejo de mierda y su pinche camisa de mamón culera!” the loudest one shouts, voice cracking.

“Soon as I called out, a gush of iced water. Then, agony.” Mr. Ash continues. “Something tore my face, claws. Fangs. The staff found me paralytic and hypothermic, but the gash wasn’t bleeding. Down to the skull, cauterized and hot to the touch, even while I was freezing.”

The corner trio hold cues like misplaced broomsticks, missing every shot. They curse the balls, fate, their mothers. One of them points at Julien: “¡No debería estar aquí, esto es nuestro, hijo de la chingada! ¡Chínguele a su madre, cabrón!”

“Since then,” Mr. Ash says, “I see a shifting ring of colors around people. Hard to describe, but… Iridescent halos. Around their shoulders, cycling and strobing, sometimes flashing symbols. Over the years, I’ve learned to decipher the chroma. That’s how, Mr. Julien. I witness everyone’s worries and sadness, their fears, a corona surrounding them. Clara’s dejection, everything about the three you pointed out.” Mr. Ash thrusts his chin toward the corner. “That one. He’s swimming in green-purple, the heartbreak of infidelity. He found out that the woman he loved was with many men. Don’t take his performance personally.”

Julien folds himself into a meticulous right angle and sinks another ball. “I never do,” he says. The three are taking swigs from oversized aluminum cans, lost in their clumsy game. For a moment, it seems like Julien will ignore them, but he excuses himself with a polite phrase.

He walks to a wall rack and selects two more cues. Holding all three bundled in one fist like fasces, he stalks toward the corner table. They don’t register his approach before he pauses, winds up and takes a giant, two-handed swing at the back of the loudmouth’s head. The sound is a wet, percussive crack. The do-rag departs from its hosting skull in a sinuous lob, and he drops like a puppeteer-less marionette, a dark crimson blossoming on the linoleum. The other two putative toughs lock up; mouths puckered.

“Headgear,” Julien points. “¡Sombreros, ahora!” They stare bovinely until Julien hints at lifting the cues again, at which point they scramble, handing him the red pieces of cloth. “Emergency room,” the bronze-curled man hisses. “Ve a urgencias, ve, ve!” They shrink from him, grasping limp limbs, lumbering to the exit.

He pockets the do-rags, lets the bludgeoning bundle clatter to the floor and strolls unhurriedly back to Mr. Ash, right palm stretched out. “Cash,” he demands.

“Cielito lindo… no llores…”

The white-haired man rummages through the jacket on his lap, eyes locked on Julien’s face, a newfound stiffness to his frame. He hands over a wad of hundreds secured by a paper band. Julien takes it, walks to the service booth where a uniformed teenager stares, and lays the money on the counter. “Clean up the mess and bring two more of those bottles to our table, then lock the front door. Don’t open it until we leave.”

He picks up a new cue and returns to the table, two balls left on the green The overhead bulb catches fine hair above his wrists, filaments of delicate copper. Mr. Ash regards him silently, features neutral, as if lost in the math of a particularly complex proof.

“Not about my ego,” Julien explains, tone academic. “Punishment.”

#

Five a.m.

The parking lot is a black lake, exuding yesterday’s heat in undulant breaths. Sodium lights gutter to a sickly peach, their shine wounded by the lavender infiltration of dawn. To the east, a low range of clouds smolders as if a titanic arsonist is at work beneath the horizon.

Julien’s shoes scratch the pavement, Italian calf flecked with dabs of drying maroon. His pacing is casual. Mr. Ash trails one pace behind, scar livid. They reach a silver Range Rover, where Julien pops the trunk. He steps out of his sportscoat and lays it down in a neatly folded square. Retrieves a matte fanny pack and cinches it around the tapered waist of his dress shirt. “So many concessions to a nasty habit,” he chuckles. “But effective.”

They move to a pocket of darkness between defunct lampposts. The ragged silhouettes of palm trees arch against new light, fronds like the charred feathers of a prehistoric bird. The air itself is liquid: warm, streaked with burnt rubber and jasmine. Julien rummages through the nylon container, movements incongruous with his dress shirt and tailored trousers. Translucent polyethylene opens with a flirtatious snap.

“Behold,” he muses, wriggling gloved fingers. The plastic catches the lamplight, suddenly leprous. “Haute couture for the discreetly addicted.”

Mr. Ash is carved from soapstone, arms folded across his jacket. He offers the barest contraction of facial muscles, a twitch that could be mistaken for a wince. Julien extracts a lighter and a crushed pack of Hestias from the container around his waist and lights up. The flare paints the underside of his jaw carmine. He inhales, cheeks hollowing, then exhales sideways, a deliberate plume that crawls through the air like the specter of an iguana.

“I don’t believe any of it,” he says. “Campfire story. And you still haven’t told me what you want.” Smoke ribbons around each word.

The night is exhaling its final oleander-scented sighs across the basin.

“No reason to trust me, true.” Mr. Ash shrugs, straightening his elbows and pocketing his mottled hands. “But why would I lie?” He turns his gaze from Julien’s gloved hands to the sky. “I was twenty when I made my first few million. No longer troublesome, in college… The debate club hosted a chemical conglomerate executive. I was seated a few feet away from him, watching the performance. He was knowledgeable and convincing. Aura like curdled milk, shot through with rust. Fear. Desperation. The next morning, I liquidated my college fund and took out loans to short every share I could. The company imploded a week later. He had been cooking the books, embezzling huge amounts to pay gambling debts.”

He gestures broadly, as if trying to grasp the metallic tang of the ocean. “Money has meant nothing for such a long time. I’ve nothing else to care about, save for… For what I see.” The scarred man’s voice drops lower, a jagged rasp. “Can’t turn it off. Makes relationships impossible. Every shame, every grief. Festering resentments, all there. Shimmering. Everyone’s filth, constantly erupting. No intimacy.” He lowers his gaze to Julien. “I’m a lone man, with nothing but curiosity for company. And I’m curious about what I see around you, the first of its kind. I don’t understand your aura. Not a shimmer, no colors. This solid thing, a dense slate of gray.”

Julien takes a final drag. “This might be performance art,” he nods while extinguishing the butt. He puts it inside a small plastic bag, inside the black pack. “But I get that. You want to understand something that doesn’t make sense. Same way I wanted to figure you out.”

“Yes,” Mr. Ash slowly nods. “That’s what I want. An explanation.”

Julien pivots toward the other end of the blacktop expanse, where the pool hall hire is unlocking the main door. He steps closer to the scarred man and points.

“Show me again. What’s going on with that kid, the one who didn’t bring us the second round of beers? I’ll tell you about myself, after.”

The silver-crowned head follows. “He’s drowning in cobalt blue, streaked with orange. Worried about his parents… Yes, his mother. A medical procedure, something to do with her…”

Words disintegrate into a gurgle. Steel has pierced neck-flesh with the sound of ripe cherries being halved. The icepick had emerged from the pack with grace, Julien’s gloved palm cupping a well-worn walnut handle. He taps it once, twice, a carpenter seating a delicate nail. The tool sinks, point finding the carotid notch beneath the jaw’s hinge. Blood fountains in a vertical sheet, instantly black.

The scarred man is convulsing, sinking in increments, as though earth is dilating under him. Arms dangling, knees hit the asphalt with a clap. Blood pulses in diminishing parabolas, painting the dusty flank of a nearby sedan. Each spatter steams, the spurting reminiscent of a lawn sprinkler. His jacket is a dripping patchwork.

Julien stoops carefully, away from the gush but close to the dying man’s ear.

“Sadness and worry leave me when I do this,” he murmurs. “There’s your explanation.”

The icepick withdraws with a soft sucking kiss and the old man crumbles, eyes empty save for a reflection of the morning sky preparing to burn.

Julien steps back from the twitching body and seals the steel instrument inside a quart-size Ziploc. He peels the gloves, reversing them with the ease of routine, and stuffs them into a second bag. Cleans his hands with disinfectant wipes from yet another pack compartment, scanning for movement across the lot. Satisfied with the sanitizing operation, he reaches into his back pocket and flicks the two confiscated do-rags into the widening pool of blood. He watches their bright red darken.

Silence save for a finch testing a tentative scale.

Spring to the elegant man’s stride as he returns to the large SUV. He drops into the driver’s seat, places the waist container on the passenger seat and taps the touchscreen. The engine wakes with a spaceship hum, and the speakers begin to vibrate, all serotonin synths and shampoo-commercial exuberance. He opens the glove compartment, fetching a compact gun.

“I’ve got a feeling! That tonight’s gonna be a good, good night…”

Julien stands and drapes a sculpted, impeccably clean forearm on the open door. He sways to the chorus, watching eastern clouds rupture into rose-gold cataracts of dawn. Turning back toward the pool-hall, fingers firm around the carbon-fiber grip, an incandescent smile blossoms across his smooth, friendly features.