blew the shot

RIGHT BETWEEN THE EYES. It was the shot heard round the countercultural world; the literal Big Bang of the Beats. In 1951, during a party one night in Mexico City, writer William S. Burroughs drunkenly convinced his wife Joan Vollmer into standing against a wall with a shot glass on her head while he fired a gun at her. BLEW THE SHOT weaves up to this appalling incident, drifting back and forth in time, examining the reasons and keystones behind Burroughs’ murder of Vollmer. The motivations and events, examined and tossed about like a Rorschach test, creates a story that’s part biography, part horror tale, and part touchingly emotional psycho-drama. The author Luis Blasini leaves lusciously ambiguous whether the shooting itself was murder, drug-fueled madness, or one of those great historical incidents transcending its reality to become an allegory for art and destruction. BLEW THE SHOT slides artfully along the razor’s edge suggesting the principal character might be either a genius or merely a depraved madman. There’s the sense of a man who’s tormented by the demons of his lusts and appetites, and is often helpless before them, as revealed within dramatically fact based innuendos that will leave the reader desiring for more.

At long last my novel is complete! It just went hot on amazon.com if anyone is interested in ordering a copy. I quite enjoy the outcome of it and I hope you will too. As a matter of fact, I think you will.

cover idea

Though it's still months away from completion, I began drawing up ideas for the cover.

an oasis in a wasteland

I recently overcame my writer's block and began writing the chapter in which Allen Ginsberg and Lucien Carr visit Joan Volmer during William Burrough's hiatus down in the Amazon. This is an experpt and unedited, of course. So, please refrain from any judgement. I like this chapter, because in lieu of research, it will be bitter-sweet and funny opposed to the dire depression of the previous chapter. A well deserved holiday for our intrepid and well inhebriated characters. Enjoy.

FIRE AND BRIMSTONE

an unedited exert from Blew the Shot

While William and Marker roamed around South America and explored the lush jungles of the Amazon basin for yagé, Allen Ginsberg and Lucien Carr, accompanied with Lucien’s dog, Pasky, made a surprise visit to Mexico City in a beat-up old Chevrolet to visit Joan.

   In apartment 8 at 210 Orizaba, Joan lay in the gloom on the sagging couch. Her body, though numb from the excessive alcohol intake, still throbbed from a discomfort overtly visceral; mostly from boredom and loneliness. Joan glanced over toward the dusty writing desk cluttered with unanswered correspondence. Billy Jr., who had just turned four, sat on the foul carpet in soiled underpants rolling a toy car back and forth. The front right wheel long missing. Frail Julie slumped in the adjacent chair listening quietly to her stomach growl. It was early morning and Joan was gathering strength to prepare a simple breakfast for herself and children when a series of loud knocks issued from the front door. Joan remained immobile, staring up at the stained ceiling, taking a long drag from her cigarette. The pounding repeated itself.

   “Mommy, someone’s at the door.” Julie faintly stated.

   “I hear that, sweetie.” Joan croaked.

   Bam! Bam! Bam!

   “Aren’t you going to see who it is?” Julie asked. “It could be daddy.”

   Joan took another puff and sighed. “Your daddy wouldn’t knock.”

   Bam! Bam! Bam!

   “Well.” She looked at Julie and smirked, “I assume it must be important.”

   Julie giggled and with a weary groan and a bit of effort, Joan wobbled to her feet. Clutching her cane, she awkwardly ambled toward the door. Cracking it, all anxieties and depression dissolved as she screamed in glee when she flung the door open to reveal her old friends Allen and Lucien standing on the landing.

   “Oh, my Lord!” She squealed as she leapt onto each man with a tight embrace.

   “Joanie!” Lucien said. The force of her actions nearly knocked the dangling cigarette from his lips.

   “Didn’t you receive my letter?” Allen asked. “I never heard anything back.”

   She smiled a toothless smile, coyly brushing down the wrinkles of her rumpled skirt. “And I do wish to apologize for that, Allen. I never got around to mailing my answer. You said you were coming down with Jack, though.” She glanced quickly past him expecting her friend to be lurking in the shadows. “Where is Kerouac?”

   Lucien dropped his duffle bag next to his dusty shoes. “Oh, that kook dropped out at the last minute. Some ordeal concerning his mother. I’m here because I was invited to attend the wedding of a friend from UPI who is staying down here. So, not wanting to go alone, I simply drove around to where Allen was living and said, ‘Al, it’s time to take a couple of weeks off and go to Mexico.’ He drolly agreed, ‘Fine, I’ll have to pick up a sweater.’”

   She smiled at her old roommate. His hair was thinning a bit and he sported a black beard. Yet, the same passionate fire broadcasted past those thick horn-rimmed glasses. “Same old Allen.”

   “It was a nice sweater.” Allen sniffed. He said to Joan, “You gave it to me, remember? Anyway, as you well recall, I don’t drive, so it was down to Lucien, fueled by alcohol, to get us there.”

   She took Allen’s hand, pressed the delicate fingers with her own. “How was the trip? It must had been long and painful for you, dearest Allen.”

   “Allen is no stranger to things long and painful.” Lucien interjected, dropping his cigarette butt onto the floor, squishing it with the toe of his shoe.

   Allen ignored the jib and stated feyly with eyes closed, “Entirely uneventful. We only stopped to sleep in the car and grab quick meals. The solitary calamity being the top of the Chevrolet’s thermometer blew off as we drove through a dreadful Texas heat wave. Other than that, it was pleasant. Well worth the trip to come and see you and Bill.”

   “Where are my manners…please, do come in.” Joan said.

   Allen forlornly examined Joan as she gauchely turned to usher the two in. After several years of not seeing his old roommate, he noticed she had deteriorated strikingly, akin to a withered potted flower uncared for and left to rot on a windowsill.

   Allen and Lucien entered the dank apartment, glanced around the unkempt room. Allen immediately noticed little Julie sitting on the overstuffed chair. She looked like a dirty doll gazing at him with oversized eyes.

   “Is that Julie?” Allen smiled warmly at the child.

   “Indeed, she is.” Joan croaked. “Julie, you remember Allen, don’t you? He visited us when we lived in Texas?”

   The child remained silent and actually seemed as if she was attempting to sink farther back into the cushions.

   “She’ll be giving you competition soon,” Allen told Joan upon noticing the girl’s blossoming beauty.

   “Oh, I assure you, Allen, I’m out of the running,” responded Joan, glancing out the corner of her eye at the unopened bottle of tequila that stood on the table.

   “Billy? Is that you?” Allen boomed at the small boy. Billy Jr. shot a startled glance up toward Allen and then scampered quickly into the bedroom, slamming the door after him.

   “They’ll warm up to you.” Joan sighed apologetically. “They’re just hungry. I was about to prepare breakfast. Care to join us?”

   “I could eat.” Lucien smirked, rubbing his stomach.

   Allen frowned at the shut bedroom door, “Lucien brought his dog. He’s still in the car. Perhaps after breakfast I can bring Pasky up and the kids can play with him. Would you like that, Julie?”

   Julie simply shrugged.

   Joan made her way into the kitchen and as she noisily began pulling pots out from the cupboards, she called, “Well, sit and make yourselves at home, fellahs. To commemorate your arrival in Mexico City, I’ll whip up a time honored breakfast of huevos rancheros. Lucien, grab some glasses and pour us a shot of that tequila there, then you can astound and amuse me with your tales of high adventure and romance.”

   Lucien found three tumbler glasses, wiped them with the front of his dusty shirt and began pouring the shots, “Speaking of adventure and romance, I heard Bill went to South America. Is he back, yet?”

   Allen flinched as he heard a skillet loudly being slammed onto the stoves range.

   “I regret to inform you he has not.” Joan casually responded. “You know Bill, his addiction to junk is only surpassed by his addiction to the boys.”

   Allen took the glass offered by Lucien and sipped the contents, wincing. “Well, that’s a fucking bummer. I really wanted to see him. Lucien and I have about a week to waste, you think he’ll return by then?”

   “Of that day and hour knows no man, no, not even the angels of heaven. Lucien, you mentioned something about being down here for a wedding?”

   Lucien handed a glass to Allen, strode into the kitchen and handed one to Joan. “Shit. Bill’s not here? What a fag. He knew at least Allen was coming down. He should be here.”

   Joan cracked two eggs into a greased skillet and said, “So, what about that wedding?”

   “As I stated, a coworker from the newspaper lives down here and is tying the knot. He invited me. I invited Allen.” Lucien handed the glass to Joan. “And now, I am inviting you.”

   Automatically, Joan gulped the shot and held the empty glass to Lucien. “Oh, I don’t know. I have to tend to the kids. Bill is due back any day, I am certain…”

   Lucien returned to the living room to refill the glass. He swallowed his own and replenished Joan and his glass, “Screw Bill. He left you here to rot in boredom.” He returned to the kitchen holding out the glass to Joan. “You need a little diversion. I’ll pay for someone to mind the kids. I insist you go, Joanie.” He smiled, “There’ll be unlimited booze.”

   “Unlimited booze?” She repeated flopping tortillas onto the open range to heat them. She turned and took the tequila from Lucien, instantly throwing it back.

   “Unlimited.” He stated coyly, tossing his own shot down. He took the glass from Joan and went to refill them both. “Plus, it would be good for you to get out and meet some new people. I insist.” He walked back into the kitchen slightly wavering. Tequila dripped off his hand onto the grimy tiled floor. “I am certain you will wow those squares with your vast intellect and razor sharp, witty repartee, just like you did back home.”

   “Please, Joanie?” Allen pleaded as he began clearing dirty dishes off the dining table and placing them in the already over-filled sink. “It won’t be cool if you stood us up, too.”

   Joan took the glass from Lucien and glanced at them both, smiling. “Because I missed both of you and because you are both so sweet to me, how could I refuse such a temptation? And as you both realize, I can resist anything but.”

queer 2.0

Here is yet another excerpt from my new Burroughs novel Blew the Shot. It is the first draft and I completely understand it is in dire need of editing. This particular entry relates when Burroughs first meets Lewis Marker. What I am finding difficult, especially with this chapter is attempting to stay true to the source and not simply copy Burroughs' prose from his novel Queer. When I set out to write this book, I never intended it to be a straight biography, but a 'fucked up' love story about Burroughs and Joan. Though I am basing it on factual events culled from relentless research, a large part of it is dramatical. Especially the chapter Queer, balancing the meticulously detailed account written by Old Bill himself and then rewriting it in my own style. (I previously stated that "Queer" is simply the working title for this chapter and certainly will change by time of publication.) I hope you enjoy it. Or not. I really don't care.

excerpt from Blew the Shot, Chapter Five, Queer

On a bright and clear day in early April, William walked into the Bounty. His habit, in which everyone who frequented the bar was well aware of, was to arrive punctually at five in the afternoon. He briefly faltered in the entrance when he noticed Lewis Marker slouched on a stool at the counter with Arnold Copland, that loud-mouthed alcoholic and one of the most ignorant, foulest bastards he had encountered south of the border. On the other hand, when not inebriated, Copland acted nice enough that William could endure his intelligent, albeit simple, conversations. Apparently, he was sober now.

   Healy smirked when he noticed him, however the real attention grab came from the brief glance of recognition he received from Marker. William was wearing scratched, two peso sunglasses and a yellow scarf. He casually ambled up to the bar next to the youth, removed the glasses and scarf, placed them on the counter, and miffed in theatrical tones toward Healy, “A hard day at the studio. A rum and coke, por favor.”

   “You betcha, Bill.”

   Healy continued his conversation with Marker as he retrieved William’s order, “She asks me why I drink. What can I tell her? I don’t know why.” He flashed a knowing glance at William. “Why do you have the monkey on your back? Do you know why? There isn’t any why, but try to explain that to someone like Jerri. Try to explain that to any woman.”

   William nodded sympathetically. “Joan’s continuously saying to me, why don’t you sleep more and eat better? I can’t explain it. Nobody can.”

   Healy placed William’s drink in front of him, Marker sulkily watched out of his peripheral vision. Healy said, pointing to William, “Hey, Marker, here is another student from the MCC. You know him?”

   “No. Not as such. I’ve seen him around, though.” Marker said a bit put off.

   “Bill, this is Lewis Marker. He’s down from Florida. Bill’s taking anthropology classes or something. Arrived from south Texas. Used to own a farm or oil field or some kinda bullshit.”

   William extended his hand, Marker unenthusiastically shook it.

   “I always wanted to be an oilman, bet I could make some real money.” Copeland interjected.

   Lee looked him over and shook his head. “I’m afraid not. You see, it isn’t everybody qualifies. You must have the calling.” As if dictated from ethereal dimensions, William droned in his monotonous drawl a long and originally humorous routine concerning the oilmen trade of South Texas. His audience chuckled, albeit nervously, as he regaled them with outrageously cartoonish characters like Old Man Scranton, Clem Farris, and Roy Spigot. His impromptu tale, laced in dark humor and homosexual innuendo entertained and amused his captive audience, especially Marker. As the alcohol continued, as did William’s monolog, he gauged the young man’s reaction. Appalled and confused at first, the ice eventually was broken when the boy began laughing heartily at the absurd tale.

   John Dumé walked over toward William from the back of the cantina. Dumé, a tall, thin, well-dressed man, associated with a small clique of queers who haunted a beer joint over on Campeche called The Green Lantern. Dumé wasn’t obviously homosexual, but the screaming queens at the Green Lantern certainly would not be welcome at the Bounty.

   Dumé stopped and slurred somewhat intoxicated to William, indicating Marker with a wave of his beer bottle. He states in a jesting tone, a smile wide on his face, “How ya like this little shit, Bill? He comes to me and has the downright audacity to ask, ‘You one of the Green Lantern boys?’ So I says to him, ‘I am.’ He wants me to take him around to some of the gay places here.”

   Marker glanced over his shoulder, turned and said, “Hey, John.”

   “How are you, my young man?” Dumé smiled back, coyly.

   William knew Dumé held a reputation of keeping his gossipy fingers elbow deep in the gay expat trough. There was nothing he did not know and nothing he did not divulge.

   I hope Dumé told Marker about me, William thought. He loathed the dramatic “something-I-have-to-tell-you” routines put down by so many other desperate fags, the difficulties of the casual come-on: “I'm queer, you know, by the way.” More than likely, they pretend to not hear. Or the tired double entendre: “If you were as queer as I am, dearie.” The other aloofly changes subject and you’re left with whether he understood or not.

   “Will you push off, you fucking fag.” Copland growled.

   “Fag?” Dumé smiled.

   “Yeah. Fag.” Copland snapped. “You’re a fucking queer.”

   Dumé glanced over to Marker, “You need to upgrade your associates, young man. Refine yourself. See you later, kid.”

   William watched Dumé return to his booth in the back of the bar where a young Mexican man waited. “Dumé’s not a bad character.” He flatly stated.

   Copland retorted, “He’s a queer and you aren’t, Bill. You just go around pretending you’re queer to get in on the act.”

   “Who the fuck wants to get in on your tired old act?” William said.

   “To hell with this faggoty shit. I have better things to do.” Copland snarled. He gulped the remainder of his beer and stormed out of the bar.

   In the passing and somewhat awkward silence, William noticed Marker was slightly drunk. The youth’s eyes were tinted a hazy crimson. He ordered himself and the boy another rum and coke. Then another. William knew the game. As time passed and Marker allowed his defenses down, he began relating a story of his experience with the Counter-intelligence Corps in Germany, articulating in a very fast, high voice of a young child. As he gesticulated enthusiastically about an informant who had been giving the department false information, William sat sincerely attentive as Marker continued, displaying inhuman gaiety and innocence.

   “What about the accuracy of information?” William asked. “How did you not know ninety percent of what was told by these rats wasn’t fabricated?”

   “To put it frankly, we didn’t. Not a clue. Misinformation occurred more often than I care to remember. We did cross-check all information with other informants and, we did of course have our own agents in the field, but this particular character made all of it up. He had our agents running around looking for an entire fictitious network of Russian spies. So, when the report comes back from Frankfurt—it’s all a bunch of fabricated shit. Instead of clearing out of town before the information could be checked, the dumb fuck returned with more. At this point we’d had enough of his lying bullshit.”

   “What did you do?”

   “We locked the asshole in the cellar. The room was completely bare and freezing cold, but that was all we could do. We were under orders to handle prisoners carefully after the war. In lieu of all we did, he kept typing out these confessions; enormous, elaborate things.”

   This story delighted Marker, who kept giggling as he went on. William sat utterly captivated by his combination of intelligence and childlike demeanor. Marker was friendly now, without reserve or defense, like a child who has never been hurt. He switched the subject and began telling another story.

   As Marker spoke, William scrutinized the boy’s delicate hands, the exquisite eyes, the ruddiness of exhilaration on the boy’s animated face. William felt the throbbing agony of desire in his chest with each rasping breath. Imaginary fingers caressed Marker’s ear, phantom thumbs smoothing the young man’s eyebrows, pushing the hair back from his face. As Marker continued his story, William’s imaginary hand intimately brushed down over the lean ribs, the flat stomach. William’s mouth was open a little, revealing yellowed teeth in a half-snarl of a bewildered animal. His white tongue licked thin, chapped lips. He honestly loathed this sexual frustration. He saw the constraints of his homosexual desires as bars of an abhorrent cage. He had learned as an animal learns, always peering out through the invisible bars, watchful, alert, patiently awaiting the keeper to forget the door, the loosened bar…constantly waiting, eternally suffering in despair and without consent.

   William snapped back from his revelry as Marker continued. He was slouched over and slurring his words, “I went to the door and there the asshole was with a damn branch in his mouth.”

   “A branch in his mouth,” he said, then added coyly; raising a fey eyebrow, “Was it a big branch?”

   The overt pun flew right past Marker, “It was about two feet long. I told him to go fuck himself, then a few minutes later he appeared back at the window. I picked up a chair and chucked it at him. From the balcony, he leaped down into the yard. About eighteen feet. Very nimble. Almost inhuman. It was rather uncanny. That’s why I threw the damn chair. I was terrified. We all assumed he was faking it to get out of the Army.”

   William took a puff from his cigarette, blew a billowing plume toward the ceiling, “What did he look like?”

   “Look like? I don’t know, around eighteen. Like a clean-cut boy.”

   “Really? Hmm.” William cooed. “Go on.”

   “We tossed a bucket of cold water on him and left him on a cot downstairs. He began having convulsions, but he didn’t say anything. We decided it was an appropriate punishment. They took him to the hospital next day.”

   “You think it was pneumonia?”

   “Maybe. Maybe we shouldn’t have thrown water on him.”

   Marker placed his hands onto the counter, steadied himself and exhaled, “Oof, I think I’d had enough. I’m going home.”

   “I’ll accompany you.” William smiled.

   “Okay.” The boy said sliding off the stool.

   William walked Marker at the door of his building.

   “You live here?” William asked.

   “Yes.”

   William said good night and walked home. After that, he met Marker every day at five in the Bounty. Marker, who seemed accustomed to choose friends from people older than himself, looked forward to meeting William. William continued the absurd and elaborate conversational routines in ways Marker had never heard. He felt at times coerced, as though William’s seemingly constant presence shut off everything else. William’s infatuation became relentless.

boys in the backroom

Here is another unedited excerpt from my current novel based on William Burroughs and Joan Vollmer's stay in Mexico City. I just finished typing this out and I realize it is in dire need of editing. It is from the chapter titled Queer in which Burroughs meets Marker and they take the trip through Central America. I know...I know...Queer? I'll think of another title, don't fret. It is also obvious to the well read of such subject where I lifted sections from the source material. That will be re-written, also. I,and perhaps my readers, will enjoy to look back on these notes and see how long and arduous the writing road is from initial idea to finished work.

excerpt from chapter five of Blew the Shot:

Everything constructed in this shitty country falls apart, William morosely thought as he sat at an empty table in the Bounty nursing his third beer and casually examining the blade of a stainless-steel pocketknife he recently purchased. As if made of silver paper, the chrome plating was peeling off. Holding the knife up to his face, he slowly picked at it with dirty fingernails. Wouldn’t surprise me if I scored for a boy in the Alameda and his…

   A beefy hand slammed a beer bottle down in front of him. William wearily glanced up and noticed a large, flabby man with a politician’s red Irish face dump several bundles of bagged goods into the opposite chair. Flopping into the empty chair next to William, he wiped the rim of the beer bottle with his sleeve and drank in a loud, singular gulp. He emitted a sigh afterwards. It was one of the American expats named Joe Guidry.

   “So, Joe, wattaya know?” William asked.

   “Nothing new, Bill, except that some asshole ripped me off for my typewriter and I know exactly who it was. That Brazilian, or whatever the fuck he is, you know, that Maurice character.”

   “That wrestler you had last week? The one you went on about?” William folded the pocket knife and placed it into his jacket pocket.

   “No, not that one. You’re thinking of Louie, the gym instructor. Please try to keep up. This is another one. Louie decided sex with men is all of a sudden wrong and explains to me that I am going to burn in hell, but he is the one going to heaven.”

   “Serious?”

   “Dead serious.”

   William took a sip of his beer. “Those fundamental types. Always want to drone on about God but are never in a hurry to meet him.”

   “I heartily agree. Anyway, whether he likes it or not, Maurice is as queer as I am.” Joe belched loudly. “Excuse me. If not queerer, you understand. But the macho fuck won’t come to terms with it. I do believe lifting my typewriter was his way of demonstrating to me and himself and probably God that he is in it for all he can get. As a matter of fact, he’s such a mincing queen, can’t stand him. Who the fuck am I kidding? When I see the little shit again, instead of stomping the hell out of him, I most likely invite him back to my apartment for a mercy fuck.”

   Bored of this dreary babble, William leaned his chair back against the wall and glanced about the bar. A man was composing a letter at the next table and if he overheard Joe’s rant, he gave no inclination of caring. Healy stood behind the bar silently reading the bullfight section of the paper, spread out on the counter in front of him. A silence peculiar to Mexico seeped into the room, a vibrating, soundless hum. Joe slugged down the remainder of his beer, wiped the back of his hand across his unappetizing mouth, and with crimson-tinted blue eyes gazed at the wall.

   Though William was attempting to act nonchalant, he actually was straining to overhear a conversation by two young men who sat with an American girl with dyed red hair and carefully applied makeup in the corner of the bar. Amid various empty bottles and a chess game spread across the table top, sat a more frequent patron of the Bounty was a young American from Florida, twenty-one year old Lewis Marker.

   William recognized the young man from the MCC. He never spoke to him before, but William was immediately infatuated with him. In William’s eyes, the boy had a slim youthful look, actually the sort of helpless look of a baby bird about him, this innocent slightly surprised look. His eyebrows were like pencil lines and black whereas his hair was almost blond. His eyes were almost brown, thin nose, small face. He was six feet tall and weighed about 125 pounds, but very healthy and surprisingly confident physically.

   Marker was a gawky, lanky, graceless gringo whose motto in life was “Get rich, sleep till noon, and fuck ’em all.” He resided at 122 Monterrey, sharing the apartment with John Healy, Louis Carpio, and an American couple, Glenn and Betty Jones. After arriving in Mexico, Eddie Woods lived in the same flat with these four denizens of the Bounty, where he went quite often to drink rum and Cokes.

   At age sixteen he’d enlisted in the army and spent three years in Germany collaborating with the gringo counterintelligence services (during that time J. D. Salinger was doing the same thing in France). Back in Florida and fed up with military discipline, Marker applied for the GI Bill and in 1950 went to study at Mexico City College. In August 1951, Eddie Woods, a childhood friend, with whom he’d played hooky, stolen cars, and disobeyed military orders, caught up with him. In mid-1951, while recovering from a flying accident, Woods, who had remained in the air force since his enlistment at age fifteen, decided to get together with his old friend.

   William remained stoic as he listened to the inebriated Marker relate his tale to an attentive Betty Jones as Eddie Woods sat slumped in the booth opposite her. “…when Eddie and I were in Jacksonville and a barroom drunk started an argument with Woods and began getting aggressive. I pretended to drunkenly stumble against this man, who yelled, “Hey, get away from me, skinny!” I hooked my finger in the man’s belt, holding him down, and brought the heel of my hand up under his chin, dropping him to the floor. I then stepped on his face.”

   The two friends laughed, lit cigarettes and settled into their beers.

   The silence seeped into William’s body, and his face went slack and blank. From his vantage, William could see his reflection in the large mirror behind the counter. The sullen face was ravaged and vicious and old, but the clear, green eyes were dreamy and innocent. His light brown hair was extremely fine and would not stay combed. Generally it fell down across his forehead, and on occasion brushed the food he was eating or got in his drink. How to approach the boy? His main tactic was wordplay: the spiel, cooked up and served in small doses, of a thirty-six-year-old man aware of his scant sex appeal, sure of his intellectual superiority to the youth, practically a teenager of twenty-one.

   William thought he had that innocent very American look, but something really cold and fishy behind it. Very cold person, a real agent type. He was receptive to a point, he was unshockable.

   Joe emitted a sigh, rose, and grabbed the shopping bags from the chair. “I need to get going.” He nodded to William and flashing a fake smile soaked in resentment and walked out, his half-bald head silhouetted for a moment in the sunlight before vanishing from view.

   William yawned and picked up a comic section from the next table. It was two days old. He put it down and yawned again. He glances over just as Eddie Woods got up and left. At that moment, William and Marker’s eyes met. William endeavored to pull off a greeting at once both friendly and casual, designed to show interest without pushing their passing acquaintance. William stood to bow in his dignified old-world greeting, instead there materialized a leer of naked lust, wrenched in the pain and hate of his deprived body and, in simultaneous double exposure, a sweet child's smile of liking and trust, shockingly out of place; mutilated…hopeless.

   Marker was somewhat taken back. Perhaps he’s got some sort of tic?

   He decided to remove himself from contact with William before the man did something even more distasteful. William looked at him helplessly for a moment, then turns back to his beer, defeated and shaken. William finishes his the drink. When he looked around again, Marker was playing chess with Betty.

   “Why waste time here?” William bitterly thought. He pays and walked out. A young Mexican boy passes by William and looks at him. He motions to William and walks off. William follows.

   Marker glanced up and watched William exit the bar. It was Marker’s move and Betty noticed Marker’s concerned look as he sat staring at the now vacant entrance to the bar.

   “Who was that?” Betty asked.

   As if shaking off an ominous shade, Marker shrugged and returned to the game, “I have no idea.”