The Prompts
waterlogged, enameled, dial strapless, slippery, ebb
The excuse
I didn’t time this. I was having trouble so I kept writing. I think I failed at every piece I tried to force into the puzzle of a tale. I might have to try this again in some other story
The Story
Waterlogged and bloated the shells of a man and woman, locked in the embrace of death came down the delta and were stranded on the beach by the ebb tide. With rictus splitting their lips, so close and held neck to neck with a woven LL bean belt, size 32, they seemed almost to be kissing, and the belt at their naked waists …
“You leave anything of my crime scene?” Fredricks asked a couple of pale uniforms.
“Leave em alone.”
Fredricks turned slow.
“Looks like you haven’t missed many meals here in Podunk captain”
“Astoria. This is Astoria.”
“I know.”
“Means two things Fredricks; One, tourists, they come here to take a break from dead bodies, they could gawk at them at home and Two, it means you don’t have jurisdiction.”
“I might have an ID on the Vics; I’m wrong you send me home, I’m right and floated here from my jurisdiction. I know we got history, captain, I didn’t know we had a problem.”
“Just saying those are my men, they are good men.”
Fredricks nodded.
“So, who are the love birds?”
Fredricks pulled a handful of photos from his inside breast pocket; A glamour shot of the man, a glamour shot of the woman, and various grainy black and whites of them together.
The captain raised an eyebrow, “And?”
“Mrs. Li Tong,” Fredricks waited a beat for the name to sink in “And Charles Johnson, Triad CPA.”
One of the uniforms was trying to unbuckle a belt, it kept slipping from his hands.
“Hey!” the captain yelled at the uniform “You numb nut son of a whore! Step away from the meat. Go direct traffic somewhere wouldja?”
Fredricks didn’t smile, but it took a lot of will power.
I met my lover at Couch Street fish house in a strapless gown I saw in on Coco Chanel in an old photo and had my ladies recreate. We were right across from my husband’s Dim Sum front. So bold, so naïve. We drank Dom from crystal flutes and danced. His men waited for us in the parking lot.
“He hasn’t the balls to come himself?”
I was punched hard in the mouth. The iron taste of warm blood and champagne trickled down my lips. I imagined it like my lovers kiss as I knew we would not kiss again.
I was wrong. Our bodies rolled overboard, 100 yards from shore into the fast still current, locked into an eternal embrace, an eternal kiss. It was supposed to be a message. It was a kindness. The process of life for the human animal is jumping from one branch of pleasing the meat too another. Cruel men don’t cause pain, not at their worst, they prune the branches in-between.
We float like a fallen limb, bleached white from the absence of sap, turning over again and over in the cold current, cold as a sundial at midnight. Petals from the spring plum blossoms drop into the river like supplications at a wedding, and, like love, the ocean refuses no river.
“Mr. Tong, may I get you anything else?” The man bowed slightly.
“No, leave me. And the lights turn off the lights”
Mr. Tong watched the man’s reflection retreat and when the lights went off the room disappeared and the black window sparkled with the lights of the city, of china town, his town, the coal of a Cuban pyramid winking red, trailing a ghostly stream of smoke from his thin lips.
She had been a child bride, arranged, the daughter of man who had owed him tribute. It was a business transaction, a deal for respectability, a symbol for allegiance from an enemy. He was going to fuck her and then put her on a shelf. That first time she was afraid and she was hungry and she smelled like lilacs and lake water and woman and he had fallen in love.
“You don’t love the prize, the prize for intimidation” he muttered to the dark window, “I would have had to kill them anyhow.”
A thin stream of smoke watered his left eye. The right eye was just crying. He did it alone and without sound and he’d forgotten that he even knew how to.
“The ME is on his way, He’s coming from North Tillamook county, you don’t have to stay” the captain said, both him and Fredricks facing the shore, squinting at the wind.
“Strangulation, it’ll have been before they were dumped. It’s an execution, but it’s a message. A rival would have a gunshot to the head and heart. This is a different kind of message.” “Yeah? Don’t marry Tong? Don’t fuck his old lady?”
“No, that’s too personal, that might be why they are dead, but it’s not the message” The captain turned from a cold strong gust of wind, his words were almost warm on Fredricks cheek, stoically facing west. “What then?” “That love is not enough,” Fredricks sighed “I’m staying up at the Shiloh. Fax the report there; I need it for the warrant.”
“Love is not enough,” the captain echoed and the wind smothered his words and three seagulls squawked about being shooed away from the salty meat.
More prompts for next week
Cannery, diffuse, entitlement
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