“That was some damn good pie,” she said. She was leaning against the trunk of the Pontiac Townes had been caressing and cussing into running condition a couple hours a day over the past few weeks. It was still a little rough around the edges, with patches of compound around two of the wheel wells contrasting the original, jet black finish. The moment he’d driven it out of barn and pulled to the front of the house, she loo...

The bungalow was tucked into the green obscurity along the mountain road a few miles east of Larsen’s Peak. The place was well kept if not exactly tidy. Townes had moved in a year before, and spent the first few months repairing cracked walls and broken terra cotta tiles. He’d painted all the rooms as well as the exterior, and built beds where herbs and vegetables were thriving. There was a small barn about forty yards on...

I’m here, it said. Layne let out a slow breath and hit the send button on his phone, then waited while the car idled at the curb. It was a torpid night - muggy - and the city reeked of human confinement. It was the eve of some transplanted third world holiday and the streets were humming, a simmering stew of anguish and celebration. Swaggering sidewalk idols stalked the pavement looking for a corner to happen on. Halfway...

X Lyla was sitting on the piano bench, facing the keyboard. Shana was sitting close beside her, facing the opposite way. The singer was absently running through finger patterns on the keys with one hand, but the board was turned off and there was nothing but the soft clack of her fingernails on the fake ivory. “All this time…” she said, her dreadlocks dangling over her face as her head bent down. Shana didn’t say anything...

VIII Case lay naked on the floor of the open, ground floor salon listening to Lyla play through the songs she’d been working on over the past month. It had surprised him when he first heard her sing without a full band behind her and only accompanying herself on the keyboard. She almost sounded like a different singer, but the strong, crystalline voice was pure Lyla. At that time of night, she was invariably naked at the...

V They were heading through the mountains with the top down on the Invicta. Lyla was wearing as small a T-shirt as he could find, and a pair of drawstring pants with the bottoms rolled up. She had her dread locks tied up the best she could manage in a pale, blue scarf Case had given her. He was surprised how easily he could look at her wearing it. It was a relic Kelly had left in her wake. And an ill-fitting pair of aviat...

III Rawlins undressed in his living room while Lyla took a shower. Despite driving another hour and a half with the heat blowing, his clothes still felt tacky. Leaving them in a heap on the terra cotta floor near the couch, he clicked on the television and padded naked into his bedroom to rummage for a pair of sweatpants and a dry T-shirt. Lyla had left the bathroom door ajar. He listened to the water run. He wanted to go...

Lyla Simon was breaking a sweat, skin glistening like wet obsidian while the band drove her hard through fatback anthems of desperation and betrayal. She was an avenging angel of lust in every song, full of anguish and the perfume of human strain. She moved around the mic stand like the bass line was coming from the center of her body, her voice slicing the humid air like a whip above the heads of a packed crowd. In a bla...

He waited in the front courtyard near the car. The laundry Aria had hung earlier was gone now. He wore light, charcoal linen pants she’d washed and carefully ironed, with a loose, button down short sleeve shirt. There was a huge streak of guilt in him for tolerating her doing things like that. Things that made him feel too valuable. Whenever he looked at the depth of her being he just felt wan and inadequate. She was noth...

Aria moved like a torch song, as if her body were all one, fluid continuum of sinew and flesh. She was hanging wet laundry on the line between the rear corner of the villa and the date palm at the edge of the cobbled driveway. She was wearing the kind of bikini that rode her curves like it was constantly trying to catch up with the motion of her body. Today it was a turquoise string bikini that stood out in stark relief a...

I have seen her move naked Through the semi-darkness Like a sphere of pale light That wandered off out of a streetlamp And got lost on the way to a dream In which we were coming home From the end of everything that wasn’t this To rest in a bent circle Made of arms and whispers I have seen her kneel And crawl above me A cavern of heat around her body That follows her like a shadow Hair falling around our faces Enclosing us...

There always has to be a girl at the end Even if she’s something like a broke wing bird Who lived out the best part of the story Just before the lights went down And there has to be someone Who’s going to love her forever Even if he never says it like that Standing in a half-lit doorway Looking like the plot kicked him Upside the head until everything broke But his heart And you know – you just know now How the night does...

Lately she’s been borrowing things out of his apartment. She never returns them, but he never considers them stolen. She just forgets until he needs something back and brings it up. He only has himself to blame since his door is never locked and most of the time it’s hanging ajar. Besides, she is far from the only one who goes in and out as she pleases whether he’s at home or not. But she pays her rent on time and always...

Everything is burning And so beautifully hopeless Behind a thickening fog That turns the streetlights into Something like those dying stars I always see in your obsidian eyes When everything comes down Not to what we say But the way we say it Whatever the story is of a night like this I tell you it’s a hundred years Whispering back and forth in the dark Of a city that forgot we were here I tell you it’s about nothing But...

Mary Alice is at the sink washing cups in the double-wide that used to be the snack stand. Her dark hair is up and she’s wearing a white button-down of Gaines’. She’s surrounded by morning light but even so there’s a darkness about her he recognizes from the droop of her shoulders. Out the window in front of her tall weeds shoot up out of gravel. A few of the metal poles people used to hang the speakers on still stand amo...