Chapter One

The window unit pushed stale air into the apartment, wheezing with the death rattle of a sick dog. Its supports have been failing since the Clinton administration. Every few minutes, the frame jostled against the drywall, settled, then remembered it wasn't done suffering.

Hale slouched shirtless on the couch pecking at the laptop balanced on his belly. A salt ring ran around the waistband of his grey sweatpants that lost their elasticity last week, but remained loyal anyway.

Letters cascaded across the white screen: She reclaimed her soul from the DARK KING.

The line sat there loud and proud and stupid as wearing cologne to a funeral. Hale had written her as somebody’s mother, a queen, and now a witch from Kentucky. He hated all three versions for different reasons.

Hale stared.

The cursor disappeared and reappeared, disappeared and reappeared.

On the desk beside the keyboard sat a warm beer, a paper plate holding two hard croissants sprinkled with dust, three unpaid notices arranged according to which one accused him least, and an orange prescription bottle with its label turned toward the fuchsia wall.

He looked through the bottle at the paint behind it blistering from old damp. The bubbles gathered into a face if a man was inclined to be foolish. Hale had no such inclination. He'd worked hard at not being foolish. He had doctors, pill schedules, and a laminated card that told him what to do if reality started negotiating.

The face watched him anyway.

Hale snatched the bottle and turned the label toward him.

SCHIZ-NO-MORE.

He rolled it once in his palm, the pills clicked against the plastic. The pharmacist had slapped a yellow warning sticker around the bottle; may cause drowsiness. Somebody somewhere had decided sleep was the danger worth mentioning.

The window unit shuttered and leaked from the bottom left corner. Pipes knocked. The upstairs neighbor dragged furniture.

“It’s three in the morning.”

Hale pressed the cap on the pills, twisted, and nothing. Just click click click. Childproof caps were optimistic inventions. They assumed a child was the only person in a house who might lack the will to keep living.

He pressed harder. The cap gave.

Three tablets nestled into his palm, pale and round. Small things pretending they couldn't change the weather inside a man's soul. He threw them into his mouth and reached for the beer. The first swallow carried them halfway. The second finished it. Hale sat with his tongue pressed against the roof of his mouth. The face on the wall kept its counsel.

Hale dropped the empty bottle. It fell into the trash landing among grocery receipts, old drafts, and a paperback with a sword on the cover and a man on the back promising an ending that would change fantasy forever. Hale had read the ending. It changed nothing.

A horn blew from the street. His chin came up. The rest of him took a moment. The horn came again. Longer; less request than accusation. Hale pushed away from the desk. The chair rolled over a sock, stopped, and turned him halfway toward the window as if trying to help.

“What now?”

His voice sounded rough in the room. Not sleepy. More like it had been left out overnight and brought back damp.

Hale shoved the window up. It stuck. He hit the frame with the heel of his hand. It gave three inches with the exhausted surrender of an old man.

He pressed his face against the half-open window. Heat surged in, pressing against him - pavement, cut grass, engine oil, fryer grease, wet cardboard, the sour breath of the dumpster behind the beauty supply store.

Bruce LeRoy stood beside his truck practicing knife work with the solemn incompetence of a man who'd seen three martial arts movies and believed the Lord had called him to star in a fourth.

He was white, balding, narrow in the shoulders, and dressed as if several subcultures had lost a custody battle: black leather vest, denim beneath chaps, boots with buckles that had never seen a horse and would've offended one.

The sun flashed off the blade of a butterfly knife as Bruce swung it around like nunchucks. He nearly took his thumb off. Bowing to nobody seemed a reasonable means of preserving his dignity.

Beans polished her veneers with a paper towel. She was Vietnamese, weathered down to something tougher than age.

Her black hair twisted into a knot that had quit trying before she had. Without the veneers, the gap between her front teeth gave her the mischief of a child and the threat of an auntie who knew where the bodies were.

A rat pushed his head from the collar of her shirt. Rizzo sniffed the air, showed both yellow teeth, and disappeared again like a stage manager refusing blame.

“What?” Hale called.

Bruce pointed the knife at him. It wasn't pointed where Bruce intended, but that rarely stopped him from meaning things.

“Come on, jive turkey. We gotta make money.”

Beans fit the veneers into place, and snapped her jaw twice.

“What’s the scheme today?”

Bruce holstered his weapon,

“Trash day tomorrow in the rich neighborhood. Prime pickin' and scrappin’.”

Beans slid from the hood. Both boots landed together.

“Hell yeah. Let's get that cheddar.”

Rizzo surfaced again, and chittered hopeful whispers.

“Not actual cheddar,” Beans told him.

The rat's nose worked. Hale couldn't hear him from the second floor, but he knew disappointment when he saw it.

“Give me a second.”

He tried to shut the window. It dropped two inches and stopped. Some homes had doors. Hale's apartment had negotiations.

He crossed to the dresser and pulled on the first shirt willing to be found. A white muscle shirt gone brown at the collar.

Red and blue letters cracked by washing, read: BEERS, BRATS, AND BITCHES. The back said: FREEDOM 4TH OF JULY beneath an eagle that looked angry to be involved.

Hale faced the mirror. The shirt made promises his body had no intention of keeping.

The hallway smelled of mildew, fried food, old carpet, and somebody's attempt to defeat all three with lavender spray.

Years of feet had worn a dark path down the center. Near the stairwell, a child's sticker of a smiling sun clung crooked to the wall. Its edges had been curled by humidity until the sun looked tired of shining.

Hale crept out the front door. Bruce raised both hands for a hug. Hale slapped one and kept moving. Beans offered a fist. He hit it too hard and apologized with his face.

Bruce wobbled toward the truck like he'd spent the day in a saddle. It was small, rusty, and one pothole away from the junkyard.

The hood had faded from red to the color of dried blood under dust. One fender wore primer. The passenger door barely latched with the stubbornness of a mule.

Beans slid into the cab from the driver’s side swift as habit while Hale folded in behind her like a trailer park lawn chair.

Momma Bear leaned out the second floor window - Hale’s neighbor and confidant. Well, at least he was her confidant.

“Hale, baby.”

She was portly and soft, with faint gray hair along her jaw she wore without apology. A pink robe clutched at her left shoulder. Her hair was wrapped in a towel patterned with raccoons.

“Did you take your medicine?”

Hale's smile changed. It didn't leave, it just drew in around the edges.

“Yes, Momma Bear.”

She threw Hale a kiss with her arms spread eagle..

“All right, sugar. You have yourself a good time.”

Hale caught the kiss and flicked it to his chest.

Bruce turned the key. The engine coughed, rejected resurrection, coughed again, and came alive in a blue ribbon of smoke that drifted in and settled on their lungs.

“Momma Bear's looking good,” Bruce said.

Hale’s head creaked to the side.

Beans inspected her veneers.

“Don’t.” Hale snapped.

“I’m just appreciating a woman of stature.”

“Don't appreciate her.”

“Appreciation’s free.”

“Not if I make you pay for it.”

Beans smiled a nearly toothless grin before sneaking her veneers in.

Momma Bear watched the truck pull from the curb before she was swallowed up by the building.

By noon, the rich neighborhood had set its unwanted things beside the curb with the tasteful shame of people who believed garbage ought to match the house.

Exercise equipment came first. A treadmill with one cracked handle. A stationary bike with dust on the seat and a towel folded across the handlebars, as if somebody had meant to become a better person and stepped away for a snack twelve years ago.

Bruce didn’t even turn his head as he backed into a dumpster corral. The reverse alarm had died, so he supplied it himself.

“Beep. Beep. Beep.”

Rizzo snatched a sunflower kernel from Beans and darted down the front of her shirt.

“You know saying it don't make it legal?”

“Law's mostly confidence.”

“Prison is mostly people who thought that.”

Hale shifted in his seat and glared out of the side window.

Beans climbed into the dumpster and handed Hale the treasure: a blender without its jar, a box of cables no household had understood since 2004, three remotes belonging to machines that no longer existed.

He worked with the care of an archeologist handling relics. Every object held a question.

Could it be sold? Fixed? Stripped? Given away? Turned into something else? Saved for a story? A broken thing wasn't useless to Hale until he'd failed to imagine its second life.

Beans sorted salvage like inventory. Rizzo rode her shoulder with the vigilance of a foreman paid in crumbs.

“Yeah, so the guy is cute and has all his teeth.”

Hale passed her a kettlebell. She dropped about two inches.

“That sounds promising.”

“My sponsor says he's trying to thirteenth step me.”

Hale inspected the inside of a toaster with no cord.

“What's the thirteenth step?”

“You sleep with somebody in the twelve-step program.”

“How does your sponsor feel about that?”

“She's totally against it.”

“So you're not going to.”

Beans laughed once. Dry. Finished.

“I'm an addict, Hale. Nothing is ever enough. I practice twelve steps every day. Why not one more?”

Hale tipped the toaster oven. A dead roach dropped out and struck the bottom of the dumpster.

“I don't think recovery math works that way.”

“Recovery math is why I let other people count my money.”

Bruce popped up with a bicycle helmet cocked on his head.

“She ain't wrong. Counting invites demons.”

Hale’s face froze; not because Bruce said it. Bruce treated language like a knife trick. Nobody knew where it would land, least of all him. Hale stared toward the mouth of the corral.

The alley halted.

A grocery bag skittered over the pavement, caught on chain link, filled with wind, and struggled there like a small white animal trying to get free. A car passed beyond the fence. The bag collapsed. The world went on.

Hale wiped his hands on his sweatpants.

“Looks like everybody's finding love but us, Bruce.”

Bruce climbed out carrying a box fan beneath one arm, the helmet slid over his face.

“Speak for yourself, daddio. I'm trading my cut at the pawn shop for companionship.”

Beans narrowed her eyes.

“What kind?”

“The pocket kind.”

Hale pointed all four fingers at Bruce.

“You're buying a secondhand sex toy?”

Bruce set the fan down with care.

“Pair of shoes don't fit right till they're broke in.”

Rizzo chittered, Beans nodded in agreement.

“He says you're nasty.”

Bruce flicked the fan blades with his thumb; they gave one tired turn.

“Rizzo eats out of your bra. His standards are aspirational.”

Hale climbed down.

“Women love poetry.”

“Do they?” Beans asked.

“The ones who can read.”

Bruce lifted one finger.

“Some that can't, too.”

Beans picked at the corner of a loose tooth with her thumbnail.

“Try this. Blonde hair, blonde hair, eyes so blue. Come here, baby, I wanna to make love to you.”

Hale blinked. Twice.

“That only works if she has those attributes.”

Bruce pursed his lips and nodded with priestly gravity.

“She ain't lying. I had a version of that work once.”

“You did not.”

Bruce considered it.

“The hundred dollars might’ve have contributed.”

Beans slapped the truck. Twice.

“Load up. Pawn shop closes at six.”

The ride back carried them through streets that looked like somebody had started believing, then got tired.

Boarded-up strip malls. Churches in rented storefronts selling Jesus beside bail bondsmen. Payday lenders with banners bright enough to make lying feel like a design principle. A smoke shop had taken over a children's dentist and kept the giraffe painted on the window. Smoke curled from its mouth.

Hale sat between Bruce and Beans, his knees turned wrong, one hand against the dashboard because the seatbelt had chosen another career.

Salvage argued behind him. Metal struck metal. Plastic answered. Something with springs complained over every pothole. Hale watched the city through the cracked windshield.

Bruce scanned the streets and saw nothing but opportunity. Beans saw threat with occasional discounts. Hale couldn't tell what he was looking at.

At the light, a boy crossed in front of them on a bicycle; no helmet, but eyes down, chin tucked, pedaling fast.

Hale watched longer than he wanted to. Two fingers crawled to the place on his shirt where a breast pocket would've been.

“You good?” Beans asked.

“Yeah.”

The light changed. Bruce hit the gas. The truck sputtered, considered the request, then limped toward SELL-YO-SHIZZ GET-THAT-HIT PAWN.

The shop stood at the corner of a strip mall abandoned by everything but buzzing fluorescent light. Half the storefronts were empty. One kept the ghost letters of a tanning salon on the glass - pale ovals where the sun had failed to reach. Another advertised a final closing sale that had been final for eighteen months. The dry cleaners kept its lights on, though no clothes appeared to have entered or escaped since before the Olympics.

The pawn shop thrived among them. Its sign buzzed red and yellow above barred windows crowded with guns, leaf blowers, old consoles, wedding rings, and a mounted sword angled so every customer entering could understand that disappointment had options.

Behind the building, a blue tarp patterned with cartoon fish sagged over a makeshift shelter. Shopping carts stood around like livestock while flames rolled in a barrel.

Bruce slammed the brakes, salvage shifted, something metal screamed across the bed.

“All right, Hale. Man the ship while me and Beans negotiate our payday.”

Beans shook her head and shoved the passenger door open with her shoulder, jostling Rizzo perched on her back leaning to keep one black eye on Hale.

“Don't let Bruce spend all his money in one place.”

“This is one place,” Bruce answered.

“That's what worries me.”

Beans counted three fingers pointing at Hale. “Watch the truck. Watch the tools. Watch the man in the Bob Marley shirt.”

A bell rang over the door as they entered. Dust, metal, and bad decisions swallowed them up while Hale stayed outside.

Jesse stepped from behind the cartoon fish tarp, though Hale didn't know his name.

Thin by degrees. A shirt hung loose from his shoulders. His beard grew in patches. One shoe was tied with electrical wire.

Hale raised a hand. The man didn't see him. Something moved across Hale's forearms. Every hair stood. The heat above the pavement bent, then held.

Traffic continued beyond the lot. The pawn shop sign buzzed, buzzed, buzzed.

The space around the tents drew one breath; and kept it.

Hale leaned forward. A thin line sliced the atmosphere behind the pawn shop. Too bright for shadow. Too dark for light.

Hale's chest touched the steering wheel. The line widened. Wet neon moved inside it.

Not from any sign on that street, but another alley. Another heat. Another place. It folded into the air like a memory returning in somebody else's clothes.

A shopping cart rolled. No wind. Its front wheel turned with one small squeak. Another cart answered. Then another.

Hale opened the truck door. His foot met pavement.

The worlds split.

Things came through.

Not in a line. Not one by one. The tear threw them into the lot in flashes of horn, feather, smoke, wet teeth, long fingers, red eyes, too many knees, no knees at all.

A thing with antlers made of human fingers cleared a parked sedan and disappeared behind the nail salon.

Two little girls, in funeral dresses, crossed the asphalt hand in hand. They hummed a tune Hale recognized but couldn't name.

Something shaped like a bull, weeping through a bishop's face, charged through the side of a bus shelter without slowing.

A shadow slipped beneath Bruce's truck.

Hale stepped back. His shoulder hit the open door.

The shadow came out the other side wearing the truck's reflection wrong. It ran for the road. Cars passed. No horns. No brakes.

A woman left the payday office with her purse tucked beneath one arm.

She never turned as a creature made of smoke folded through the bus stop and entered a sleeping man through the side of his head.

Hale opened his mouth. The air caught behind his tongue.

His hand went to his pocket.

The bottle wasn't there.

He checked the other pocket. Nothing.

His hands moved faster - sweatpants, shirt, back pocket. Wallet.

Behind the laminated card, trapped in the fold of the leather, a single tablet sat flattened inside a torn square of foil.

An emergency dose he had forgotten putting there.

Hale dug it loose with his thumbnail.

He put the pill on his tongue and swallowed hard.

It caught halfway down.

He swallowed again until it moved.

Jesse saw the opening. Or something saw him seeing it.

What came toward him was smaller than the others. That made it worse.

It had none of their theatrical mercy. It moved low to the ground, tar-black limbs twisting beneath a shape that couldn't hold still.

A child's paper crown seemed caught in its head. Its mouth opened sideways.

Then backward.

It closed with a click.

Jesse turned as if somebody had called his name. The thing entered through his chest. His shirt didn't tear. His back bowed.

He stood on his toes for half a second.

Then his heels touched down.

The lot breathed out. Jesse's face changed last. The eyes stayed where eyes belonged. The mouth remained his by law, if not by ownership, but something with different habits had taken the lease.

He looked left. Then right. Then smiled at the strip mall as though he recognized the neighborhood.

“The end is nigh,” Jesse said. “So everybody boogie.”

He began to dance borrowing enough from dancing to insult music.

His arms jerked. One shoulder hitched. His knees worked through separate arguments. He spun, stopped, and moonwalked across oil-stained pavement with the grave devotion of a prophet receiving choreography from hell.

Hale watched him.

The tear pulsed.

More things came through and scattered toward places that seemed to have been waiting.

The alley behind the strip club across the road. A motel balcony burned with old cigarette marks. The church billboard at the intersection, where one black letter flickered. A cul-de-sac beyond the drainage ditch, every lawn clipped, every curtain shut.

They didn't make those places wicked. They knew where wickedness lived.

Hale stepped toward Jesse. His body moved before his judgment voted.

The medicine was somewhere inside him, dissolving on schedule. The beer was there too. The doctors. The card. The hours he'd spent learning to ask whether what he saw was real. The nights he'd failed. The mornings he'd apologized to people who pretended not to remember. All of it rose at once.

The strip stood unaffected.

Jesse danced harder.

A bus sighed to a stop at the corner. Something clung upside down beneath it, smiling through the wheel well.

Hale looked at the opening.

At Jesse.

At the pawn shop door where Bruce and Beans had disappeared.

Nobody came out.

Warm beer and medicine climbed the back of his throat. He swallowed.

“What the -”

The words stopped there.

Above him, the pawn shop sign buzzed, buzzed, buzzed doing its little red work against the daylight.

Jesse laughed. The sound didn't belong to him.

Behind Hale's eyes, in the private place where a man keeps every warning he's ever been given about himself,

a door opened.

Nobody else believed it was there.