Fuzzy Navel

11:47 P.M.

MARY

IT DOESN’T WORK, as Mary expected. As soon as she presses the circuit breaker, it pops right back out. Mary presses it several times, with the same results.

No ZAP. No cries of men being electrocuted.

Which means Harry and Jacqueline are completely vulnerable.

Voices, coming from the living room. Jacqueline’s voice. Then a man she doesn’t recognize.

Mary has no weapon, and even if she had one she wouldn’t be able to hold it. The OxyContin has made her lightheaded, and it’s dampened some of the pain, but she still can’t open her hands.

Mary heads down the hall anyway.

As horrible as the last few hours have been, Mary has learned something about herself. Old and useless are not synonyms. Age does not equal feeble. And even though Mary is beaten, bowed, and has been around for a long time, she’s far from helpless. Her daughter needs help. And dammit, she’s going to get some.

Mary slips past the refrigerator, moves quietly to the edge of the living room, pausing next to the wall. She sees two men in army fatigues, holding very large handguns.

They’re pointing these guns at Jacqueline.

Mary gets ready to call to them, to draw their attention, and then the taller man gets shot in the throat.

Jacqueline doesn’t waste the opportunity. She runs into the garage.

Get away, Mary thinks. Bring help.

But knowing her daughter, Jacqueline won’t leave until everyone is safe.

I should have raised her to be less considerate.

Then Harry rushes the other man, and there’s a scuffle. Though Harry McGlade is – what’s a good word? flawed – Mary has grown fond of the guy. She hurries into the living room to lend a gnarled hand. Mary abandoned him once, and won’t follow that particular path again.

More sniper fire. The man who was hit in the throat gets shot several more times, not in any vital spots. It’s so appalling that Mary knows Alex must be behind it. While Alex is preoccupied with that, Mary gets close to Harry, to push against him and keep the man pi

Mary gets knocked backward, Harry smacking into her.

She has no idea if she’s been shot, or if Harry’s been shot, or perhaps even both of them.

11:49 P.M.

PHIN

ALEX HAS FOUND A RIFLE.

She’s fifty, maybe seventy-five yards from Phin. He can’t see her body in the dark, but he can pinpoint her muzzle flash. Phin watches her fire at the house. Watches one of the gunmen fall. Watches Alex take the guy apart, limb by limb. Deliberately. Cruelly.

It’s a sneak preview of what’s going to happen to him, to Jack, to everyone in the house.

Phin shuffles along the asphalt to the front of the truck, out of Alex’s direct line of sight. He can’t bend his arm at all. His elbow is busted, or something in it is torn.

The pain is bad.

He seriously considers digging into his pocket, taking out the pot he stole from that Wrigleyville banger, and eating as much as he can. Marijuana is a marvelously effective analgesic. Phin is an expert when it comes to analgesics. The past few years of his life have been dedicated to a singular purpose: the numbing of pain. Physical, mental, and emotional.

After his terminal diagnosis, Phin dropped out of society. He left his job, because it was meaningless to work when you’ve been given a death sentence. He left his fiancée, because he wanted to spare her the torture of watching him die.

Since he had no hope for the future, he began to live day by day.

Sort of like a dog.

That’s not a negative comparison. Dogs live in the moment. They don’t think. They don’t dwell on the future. They exist to meet their base needs. Eating. Sleeping. Breeding. Surviving. No worries. No regrets. Minimize effort, maximize pleasure.

Phin tried to do the same. He lost himself in drugs, liquor, and whores. When the money ran out, he robbed dealers, gangbangers, pimps, and criminals. That led to hiring himself out as a rent-a-thug, solving problems for people who didn’t want to go to the police.

It worked. He was able to blot out his pain.

Then he met Jack. She arrested him after a fight with a group of Latin Kings. Later, he and Jack ran into each other at a neighborhood bar, and began to play pool on a semi-regular basis.

Which would have been fine if it didn’t go any further. But, unfortunately, they became friends.

Phin didn’t expect it to happen. He didn’t want it to happen. Friendship involved responsibility. Phin’s only responsibility was to himself, to his indulgences. To avoiding pain.

Yet Jack calls, and he comes ru

Just like a dog.

Phin shivers. His bare chest is gooseflesh, cold to the touch. The smart thing to do is to eat the weed, run into the woods, and try to find a hospital, a bottle of tequila, a few grams of coke, and a clean hooker. Forget Jack. He owes her nothing. He isn’t going to be around long enough to regret the decision.

Run away, he tells himself.

But he doesn’t run. Instead, Phin stands, crawls onto the hood of the Bronco, and gets up to the windshield. He’s wearing gym shoes. The rubber soles aren’t hard enough.

But he knows something that is hard enough. Something that routinely cracks car windows.

Friendship sucks, he thinks.

Then he shuts his eyes, rears back, and slams his forehead into the glass.

It brings out more stars than the ones currently occupying the clear night sky, but he manages to crack the windshield – a spiderweb pattern the size of a di

He waits for the dizziness to pass, realizes it isn’t going to, then spins around on his butt and drives his heel against the crack. Again. And again. And again. And again.

The spiderweb gets larger. The window bends, indents. Then his foot busts through.

Phin continues to kick, widening the hole until he can slip inside, avoiding cutting himself on the glass while climbing into the front seat.

His head hurts. So does his arm. And the tumor on his pancreas feels like a piranha trying to eat its way out of his insides.

But when Phin touches the sniper rifle, he can’t help but smile.

“The truce is over, Alex,” he says.

11:49 P.M.

JACK

I GET TO THE GARAGE as fast as I can, which isn’t very fast. The house feels more like a ship, rocking to and fro in the waves, making it challenging to stand. I stop in the doorway, feel for the light switch, and stumble over to the workbench.

I’m looking for the gun Phin said he dropped.

The light is just a single bare bulb, maybe a sixty-watt, and my loopy vision is further impeded by a black eye that’s puffed halfway closed. There are boxes strewn about the garage floor. Some Christmas decorations. A few books. I don’t want to let go of the bench because I’m afraid I’ll fall over, but I don’t see the gun from where I am. I’ll have to go searching.

I take two steps toward the mess, moving a box aside, peering beneath it. Nothing. The floor is cold, causing me to shiver. From inside the house, more gunshots.

Sniper fire.

I wondered if it was Phin who saved my life, grabbing one of the sniper’s rifles when he ran outside. It might have been Alex, who didn’t want anyone else to kill me because she was saving that particular pleasure for herself. Either way, I caught a break. Now I needed to capitalize upon it.