blurring_the_edges_42_hanging_by_threads birdmad Nearly two years after her surgery and after having been considered in remission for nearly a year, your mom starts having the same problems and pains as before and the doctors still seem remarkably hesitant to conclude that the problem has arisen again. One weekend morning as you get done with the yardwork and get cleaned up to take your nephew out to the movies, you are concerned that your mom looks drawn and tired. You offer to stay if she needs any help, but your sisters are coming by in the afternoon anyway, so she insists that you and the kid take off. Your last few paychecks have been heavy with overtime and you have actually managed to build up a couple of grand in savings even in spite of your tendency toward self-indulgence. You decide that in addition to the movies, you will humor the kid and go to the comic shop up on Glendale just a couple of miles from the theater. The movie turns out to be rather boring to you, but seems more than reasonably entertaining to the other nine-year olds and assorted adolescents in the crowd. As soon as you announce that the next stop is the comic shop, you are greeted with an enthusiastic whoop and an equally psyched exclamation of "Oh Cool!" You wonder if he would look up to you as much if he was old enough to know and understand the things you've been and done. Through it all, you were careful to avoid the cowboy element in the game, the type who aren't adverse to hurting someone's family to make a point. There's only three types of people that could be classed as players in the coke business in this town anymore as 1993 draws towards its last couple of months: Narcos from down in Mexico, reckless fucks who traffic more in crack than in powder anymore, moving the snow from the upper-class suburbs to the southside, and an assortment of cops on both sides of the border fence and sometimes on both sides of the law. You look at the boy whom you refer to by names like "Little space-monkey," "Cabron," or any other playful jabs and you muss his hair as you are driving, for once ignoring the weight of your mother's reminders that since your sister and his dad divorced, you have become a weird mixture of big brother and father figure to him. It's funny in a way, it feels less like a burden when your mom isn't reminding you of it and you half jokingly tell your sister without letting any of your secrets slip that if he turns out badly, they can't complain about the quality of the influence you have on him. Inside the comic shop, you find an odd comfort in the smell of the paper-stock and the colorful cartoon graphics all over the walls. It comes as a surprise to realize that there are so many different imprints of comic books besides the one you are familiar with from the little corner convenience store up 35th Avenue from the house. As you let the boy take his pick of a few of the new titles on the long main rack against the back wall, you walk around and see an interesting cover in an area devoted to old back issues arranged in archive boxes on a long table. Taped to the front is a very stylized image of a figure wearing a white mask with a pair of black eyes on it punctuated by symmetrical vertical lines similar to the scar over your right eye. Curious, you pick it up and thumb through it, marvelling at the unusual artwork, richly colored and not as prone to depicting everyone as hyper-muscular caricatures of humanity. The narrator of part of the story seems to be a detective who keeps referring to these masked characters as "Devils." In fact, when you flip it closed again, after having skimmed through a couple of pages, you notice that at the bottom of the cover illustration is the subtitle "Four Devils, One Hell." The title at the top appeals to the literary snob in you and you wonder about why the books creator chose it as an inspiration. Grendel. You remember reading the epic in junior high, and as you pay for the books that you and the kid have come up with, as well as the pack of X-Men trading cards that he wanted, you decide to buy it. When you get it home, you see a quote from a book that Tony always used to recommend to you since, like you and a few others early on, he was almost as obsessed with books as he was guns or drugs. In the letters column of the book you are intrigued to see that instead of the usual adolescent debates you would expect, the readers and the editors are discussing God, ethics and philosophy. Meanwhile, before you have the chance to sit back with the book and really get to enjoy it, you get another call from Greg and Dana, and this time Greg sounds rather insistent and annoyed when you speak to him and Dana sounds almost totally incoherent. When your sisters leave, taking your nephew with them, you clean up the kitchen and the living room for your mom, who has decided to turn in early. You tell her that you are going out for a little while to see what kind of trouble you can get into and tell her you don't think you'll be out too late. The drive is uneventful as the last evening light fades and you make your way through the city taking the not-so-scenic route of McDowell from 35th Avenue, all the way east to Scottsdale Road and then north, taking the pretensiously named side streets all the way over to 96th Street. You break north again until you reach the house and as you pull into the driveway, parking your beat-up little Ford next to a classic Jaguar XKE and the Cadillac convertible that has been the vehicle of many of your misadventures over the last five years. You ring the doorbell as you step to the front door. You are not expecting what you happens next. As the door opens, you are aware of only the barrel of a cocked Beretta 9mm sticking through the partially opened doorway at you. Using a trick you learned from Henry Ash, you catch the carriage and slide in a quick motion and remove it from the body of the pistol and without thinking any further, you drop the gun part to the floor and follow the line of the harm holding it with your right fist in a hard snap jab, when the barrage of cursing is produced from a familiar female voice, you feel a surge of guilt run through you that makes you want to throw up. Dana opens the door, holding her jaw and you swallow a mouthful of your own vomit. When she breaks into laughter over your obvious guilt, you feel no reassurance. In fact, you start to feel a measure of offense at the fact that instead of just laughing at the absurdity of it, she is now just mocking the look of shock and guilt that overcame you when you realized you had hit her. "Alex," Greg says, clearly exasperated, "I've made arrangements to meet you and to get her some help, but i can't put up with her shit anymore just now, can you please do me a favor and take her to the airport, i've gotten my dad to charter a plane and she decided to pick the most god-awful expensive rehab clinic on the east coast she could find even though one of the best ones in the world is down by Tucson...of course i should know, my mom just came back from it." Okay, that was a little more information than you needed to know, but, oh well, it's not as if you and any of these people have many real secrets from each other now, is it? "So, what do you want me to do, Greg?" "Easy, use the Caddy and take her to the private flight wing of the airport, use the car-phone and call the number on this sheet of paper when you are about halfway there, Ask for Doctor Matthews and tell them that the patient is en route and to be ready." As he says this, he picks up the gun from the foyer and drops the clip from the butt and begins to put the bullets back in their box. "You're the only one i can trust to do this without letting her do any more stupid shit like what she just did here. I swear to fucking Christ, Alex, if she hadn't been so high that she forgot to disengage the safety, she would have shot you through the door as soon as you rang the bell." Jee-zus! The goddamn nine was loaded? Through the aggravation and frustration in his voice, you can tell that even though this marriage may have been a sham, for the sake of convenience, he does actually care about what happens to her. He brings her a glass of water and brings her two packed suitcases which you take and pack in the trunk of the Cadillac. She has gone from seeming hyperactive to suddenly being very docile and you can't help but be worried about her yourself as you buckle her into the passenger seat and get underway toward Sky Harbor. When you get to 44th Street and Camelback, you call the number from the car-phone and do as Greg instructed you. Doctor Matthews informs you that he will be there in fifteen minutes, which means he will get there about five or ten minutes ahead of you. Deciding not to fight the Camelback traffic on a Saturday night, you break south on 44th street, taking it all the way south to Van Buren before hitching west again toward 24th, breaking south by the State Hospital and pondering the fate of its inhabitants and the cheap hookers who prowl this stretch of the street near the cheap motels that date from back in the age when Van Buren was the main highway through town before the time of the interstates. When you get down to the Airport, you circle around between the terminals for a few minutes, capitalizing on the few extra minutes you bought yourself with the shortcut. You find the sign directing you to the entryway for the private and charter flights terminal and take her inside. You wait for a few minutes and are greeted by a pilot who says that Dr. Matthews will be along shortly. As you sit in the waiting area for the doctor, Dana leans into you and says, in a fashion that reminds you of an apologetic drunk, "Alex, I'm sorry i shot you." "It's okay, Dana, you didn't shoot me, the safety was on, and while we're at it, I'm sorry i decked you." "Oh yeah, that's why my jaw hurts. Don't worry about it." "If i had known it was you i wouldn't have hit you, but all i saw was the gun...really, i'm sorry." "I know, i could tell when i saw the look on your face. I didn't mean to laugh but your expression was pretty funny. You were all scared and sad looking at the same time and from everything i've seen you do or heard about you doing, it doesn't fit the image of you that your reputation creates." When Matthews shows up and directs you to the plane, you hold Dana's hand and are surprised when she turns back on her way up the little stairway and gives you a little peck of a kiss on your forehead. Even with her absolution, you still can't forgive yourself for hitting her and as you return the Caddy, you politely refuse Greg's offer of a drink and drive back home, ignoring the chance to stop at Paradoxx to either drink or dance as you make your way back from Scottsdale along Camelback road. It is just after midnight and you have to find a way around Central as one of the last big cruises along the avenue has brought about the roadblocks to keep any east-west traffic from joining the mass from as far north as Bethany and as far south as Baseline. You hate the little gangbanger fucks from neighborhoods like yours who ruined cruising for everybody and made it too dangerous for the City's tastes to allow to continue. Doubling back to Seventh street, you head south and get on the newly completed I-10 heading west under the tunnel and taking it to the 10-17 interchange marveling at just how big the cemetery that sits by it is from up here on the highest bridge of the interchange stacks. Still consumed by the guilt of punching Dana and by the worry over how your mom is doing, you try screaming in the car, but it offers you no release, so you do what you haven't done since you gave up on the idea of ever getting together with Tina. Taking the small utility knife you keep in the glovebox, you open your shirt, content that you won't have to answer for bloodstains on black and cut a shallow, but bloody line about three inches long down your sternum. The cut stings in the cool, polluted night air. After you get home, you undress in your room and make a few more cuts along your left thigh and your upper left arm, not quite trusting your left hand to do the job without causing more harm than just a bit of bloodletting. Sleep, when it comes, is restless, and the next morning, you sing in church, but you put none of your heart in it and listen with only a thinly veiled contempt toward the universe as the long-winded deacon gives another of his interminable sermons. 030526 what's it to you? who go blather from