When Raindrops Come Crashing

By David M. Bachman

John Chang, a police officer haunted by his past, has meticulously planned his own demise; his ex-partner has something better for him in mind. Brooke Bridges, a young woman facing a mournful anniversary, is pestered by her best friend to break out of her reclusive lifestyle. Through fate and friends, they were led to one another. There is still a debt of blood to be paid and John, painfully reminded by history, is reluctant to let Brooke become involved. However, some things, such as a dethroned gang leader's thirst for revenge, are as inevitable as rain...

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jan 15, 2001
• ISBN: 9781469770208

David M. Bachman

Having begun at the age of 13, David M. Bachman has written and published several novels and short stories over the past two decades, including the modern vampire trilogy "The Darkest Colors," and the short stories "Little Miss Mute" and "Belladonna." He currently resides in Arizona.

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All Rights Reserved © 2000 by David M. Bachman

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher.

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Printed in the United States of America

Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

To all my friends and family, be they together or apart for one reason or another, for helping me maintain my sanity and for supporting me on my way to (finally) getting published. Also, an apology to those who previously believed that I was going to stick with my preppy, clean-cut, nice guy image indefinitely. It was just a phase. I grew out of it…and I realized I had it right the first time around.

CHAPTER 1

May 10th, 1996–12:34 AM

If the benefits, pay, and personal fulfillment he received by doing his job weren’t as important to him as they were, the sheer frequency and graphic nature of the deaths he dealt with on a daily basis would have long ago forced him to search for a new career.

He wasn’t quite sure yet why they were calling him to the scene of a homicide, but it most likely had something to do with gang and drug activity. He was with the drug enforcement unit, not homicide’s Stiff Squad, as it was known. Furthermore, he had been due to be home a half an hour ago and had been eager to return to his fiancée’s embrace to bear witness to the special surprise she wished to share with him. Unfortunately, it seemed that he would be dealing with dead bodies and equally dead minds rather than the jubilantly alive and invigorating experience of his love’s kisses and caresses. He could almost feel his body ache to have his uniform removed by his loving fiancée’s gentle, slender, soothing hands.

Ducking under the plastic yellow tape that endlessly declared Police–crime scene—do not cross, he found himself in an alleyway populated densely by a crowd of fellow police officers, forensics experts, and medical examiners. The star attractions of this gathering were five cadavers, lying in various positions and distributed in a perfectly random fashion starting just outside a doorway in the alley and leading into a warehouse room of a nearby building. As he approached the largest group of people in the alley, a strobe of bluish light would occasionally pulse from the direction of the open warehouse doorway as a homicide investigator snapped shots of the victims inside–assuming all of the dead could really be called victims.

Well, he said to a familiar lieutenant, somebody call me here for something?

The middle-aged, sloppily uniformed, and mildly amused lieutenant nodded to him silently and pointed at the first visible body that was lying half in and half out of the doorway with a white sheet covering it. Judging by the large blotches of crimson soaking through the sheet, the subject had been shot to death–quite excessively.

Looks like one of your informants had a run-in with the local bad-ass, he said. From what we know so far, a ‘special interest’ of yours found out we were keeping tabs on him through this fellow, so he and a couple friends had a brief little talk with the snitch. We need you to just take a glance at a couple of the bodies, see if they’re related to the case your squad’s building. If they are, well, I guess you’ll have to cap off those avenues and start looking for other ways to listen in on the wacky world. Thought maybe you could give us a little more insight into why this whole thing happened, anyhow.

Are there any witnesses that can verify that it was him?

The lieutenant shrugged and replied, Well, nobody on our side actually saw him in particular, at least not very clearly. But as you know, we’ve wired up your informant a few times before and this time wasn’t an exception. The snitch said his name a couple times before he got whacked.

He just walked in and killed everyone while you were listening? he asked, astonished.

We had units on two sides of the warehouse, but we still never saw them come in. We’re guessing he and his accomplices were already in there, waiting for him. Before we could even hop out of our vehicles, they were hauling ass down the alley and they jumped in the back of a pickup, he explained. His face darkened and a scowl deepened on his mouth. I heard the whole thing myself in the van. Fuckin’ gruesome scene. The poor woman who was in the van with me lost her lunch and damn near had a total emotional breakdown. I guess they knew we were here, so they planned the hit accordingly. A simple pop ‘em, drop ‘em, and roll.

Stepping closer, looking in through the doorway of the warehouse, he could see a very obvious trail of blood leading away from the informant’s body to an overturned chair, some scattered chairs, and three more bodies covered with blood soaked sheets. He stepped around the informant’s dead body, trying his best to ignore the pungent stench of thickening blood and a plethora of other bodily fluids.

As though he was directing a tour, the lieutenant explained, In here we have two dead Crips, one dead female, and one unknown dead guy. Since the mystery guest has a slashed throat, we’re guessing he was probably part of the company that owns this place. Chances are they killed him so he wouldn’t alert the four people to the fact that someone was waiting for them. His body was stuffed back in one of the offices on the other side of the building.

Most of the warehouse was obscured from their line of sight due to the huge stacks of wooden crates and cardboard boxes stacked in a semi-orderly manner around the area. What could be seen of the area was lit too brightly by portable floodlights that had been set up, bringing out the sick, sharp contrast between the calm, dry world of peace and the wet, spilt blood of violence. He covered his nose and mouth for a moment as he was assaulted by a wave of death’s stench in the air, fighting off the urge to gag at the horribly intensified odor of blood, urine, and bile that filled the area.

There was a fairly clear trail of spent shotgun and pistol shell casings leading from an aisle that extended deeper into the warehouse and went all the way out the door he had just entered through. It looked like they’d marched into the small group with guns blazing, finishing off their final and most primary target on their way out the door. He was no re-enactment expert, no true detective, but the arrangement of the bodies’ locations, the empty shells, and the splatters and smears of blood everywhere gave clear testament to what had gone down.

He watched a detective, helping to explain the massacre to a couple of other officials, act out the killers’ actions by pacing through the carnage and pointing his fingers around like a kid with imaginary guns for hands.

The lead suspect started in through here, the detective explained, stepping in through the open aisle, and he fired two rounds at the first victim. Bang! Bang! Probably simultaneously with a gun in each hand. He nodded to one of the forensic assistants. Have the lab run a ballistics test on all of the recovered slugs and see if all of the shots came from the same gun or from two separate pistols. He turned back towards the scene and aimed his imaginary gun-hands. The first man flips the table over, falls down, and starts to crawl for the door while the female ducks behind the table. Meanwhile two assailants with shotguns go after the Crips, one with a twelve-gauge, the other with a twenty-gauge, probably pump-actions. One gets a shot in the chest and the shoulder, the other gets it in the face, throat, and chest, plus a shot in the chest and stomach from the lead guy.

He looked down to the covered body to the left of the detective. The large blotches of red coming through the sheet, as well as the hideously disfigured outline of the dead man’s head confirmed the detective’s theory. He felt his stomach beginning to knot with revulsion at the thought and he immediately wished to be back home with his fiancée, away from the death and the blood and the horror of the world he seemed to be struggling to deny.

The female apparently thought she’d be safe if she hid behind the table, the detective said, pointing to the last of the bodies, which was half-kneeling, half lying down against the long wooden table in the middle of the open room. But as you can see…well…

At least eight to ten holes had been punched through the table’s surface, tearing fatal holes through wood, flesh, and bone alike as the woman’s killer had mercilessly fired upon her. Some of the bullets had passed through her body completely, resulting in the blood that had been painted upon the floor up to a yard from her body before the slugs had buried themselves in the surface of the nearby brick wall. A pool of darkening red blood encircled her death-shrouded body. She had been armed with nothing more than the opened purse which lay on the floor about three feet away from her. Two small zipper-seal plastic bags had fallen from the purse, containing two separate colors of pills, and the lifeless fingers of her exposed hand were lightly curled around a small amber vial–inside, he could see, was a portion of crystallized methamphetamine.

He felt a mixture of terror and morbid curiosity upon seeing the woman’s covered body. She almost seemed to be hiding beneath the sheet, trying to shield herself from all the hate and tragedy that surrounded her with nothing more than a white cotton sheet that was soaked with gore. Something within him kept assuring him that she would at any moment lift the sheet and peek out from under it, looking to see if the bad men had left and it was safe to run away. His imagination began to carry itself away swiftly, elaborating upon the idea; from beneath the blood soaked sheet would emerge her bullet-riddled corpse, smiling at him with bloodstained teeth and lips and glazed, bloodshot eyes, coming to take him with her into the Netherworld.

As the detective went on with to explain the rest of his theory, he swallowed hard and asked the lieutenant, So why do you need me here?

We just need you to verify some identities, that’s all, he said, folding his arms. It’s all for the sake of the paperwork, my friend. I’ll show you the faces…or whatever they have on hand for I.D.…and you let me know if they have anything to do with the projects your folks have been tracking.

Whatever, he said with a shrug, just wanting to get the hell out of there as soon as possible.

The lieutenant withdrew a pair of thick blue latex gloves from a pouch on the back of his duty belt and slipped them on, crouching down by the first victim’s body. He carefully peeled back the sheet a bit, which stuck slightly to the cadaver’s bloodied parts. Beneath the gory sheet was an even gorier sight, a late-twenties black male with a shaved head–well, at least what was left of his head after a point-blank shotgun blast. The chips of concrete surrounding him revealed that he’d been shot repeatedly where he lay dying.

Yeah, he said, flinching away slightly as a wave of nausea gripped him once more at the sight, that’s the informant.

Not anymore, he ain’t, the lieutenant corrected him with a callused smirk, covering the body again. Now, about the female…

He dreaded having to see the poor woman’s face. She looked to be quite small and thin, and as the lieutenant unveiled her face for him to see, she was quite young as well–tragically young. Her eyes forever closed to the world, strands of natural blonde hair spotted and stained by her own blood, the girl’s driving license picture showed that she had at one time been very beautiful. There was still a fair amount of beauty left to her, for her face was not marred in any way but for a trickle of blood from her nostrils and lips. However, the ugliness of violence and death combined with this woman’s vague similarity to his beloved fiancée all but caused him to spring to his feet and sprint out of the room. He dared not allow the lieutenant to pull the sheet down any farther than it was necessary to identify her, for fear of seeing the lethal damage done to her body by the hail of bullets that had destroyed her life.

I remember her, he said sadly, shaking his head. The informant’s girlfriend. I met her when I busted the snitch for possession. I had to give her a ride back to her parents’ house. She ran away from home and left her mother and father to worry about her.

What’s the age on her license show? the lieutenant asked.

Glancing at the card and closing his eyes, he replied, Sixteen, just three months ago.

Jesus.

For some reason, it was always infinitely more disturbing to encounter the corpse of a once beautiful female than that of any male. Perhaps it was simply the horrible realization that there was nothing so innocent in the world that it could be immune from the corrupting effects of mortality and hate. Beauty didn’t guarantee safety.

He’d had enough. He was shown the bodies of the other three victims but was unable to associate them with any of his current enforcement projects. He could only verify the signs of their gang affiliation by the tattoos on their bodies and arms and the style and color of clothing they had been wearing. He bid no farewells to anyone in his haste to leave, storming off to his patrol cruiser with a horrible fog of illness about him. He sat in the driver’s seat of the car with the door open and his feet hanging out, bent over as he waited for one last horrible wave of nausea to wash away.

He couldn’t get the thought out of his head–the dead blonde in the warehouse could have just as easily been someone else, someone he loved very dearly. He had no idea why he should think such a strange and scary thought, for his wife-to-be had nothing to do with the sick and perverse world of drugs, prostitution, and violence that his career was meant to counterbalance. She was a florist, for God’s sakes, whose only knowledge of bloodshed was the occasional scratch of a rose’s thorn. Still, there was something about the fragility and irrelevance of the informant’s girlfriend that distinctly reminded him of the woman he loved so dearly, not so much a matter of their vaguely similar appearances as their innocence. The girl, like his fiancée, had absolutely nothing at all to do with the real reasons as to why it had been decided that the informant should die; her only guilt lie not in the dealing of methamphetamines or bullets but rather in her mere association with a marked man.

He, a cop, lived a life and worked a career that was scarred absurdly with evils of every sort in spite of his intent to do only good. The very fact that he was a police officer was alone a risk to his life, for there were many willing to see him shot dead during a routine traffic stop or firebombed while sitting in front of his own television at home. With such people in the world out to do him such harm simply for being what he felt he had to be, anybody who was in any way close to him at all was just as much at the risk of death or wounding. It was fortunate that his best friend also happened to be a police officer in the same department and the same task force as he was.

But his fiancée had nothing to do with his career, loving him solely for the fact that he was who he was, and she worried for his safety constantly. Each night he came home late, she stayed awake until his arrival. Each time he left for duty, she was reluctant to release him from her embrace or to even let go of his hand. Although he should have felt delighted to have such a close bond between them, to have such a beautiful and affectionate woman that was soon to be his wife, he felt a horrible burden of guilt and fear. She was just as likely a target as he was, just as mortal as anyone else, and simply by being a cop, he was placing her in a horrible position of danger.

At last, what little he’d had for dinner that evening managed to settle itself back into his stomach rather than somewhere near the top of his throat and he pulled himself into the car, closing the door. He started the car and backed out of the area in a hurry, eager to get home. All he wanted was to see his fiancée, to see that she was safe and alive. As soon as he walked in through the front door, he wanted to hold her in his arms and never let go. He wanted to whisper to her (and a bit to himself) that everything was going to be okay, that the world was not as doomed to collapse inwards upon itself as it so often seemed to be. And even though he was sure the world truly was doomed, all he ever wished to ask of God was the opportunity to be with his dear love in those final moments of the earth’s life as all hell broke loose at once.

A half an hour later, he was home. She was untouched. He did all of the things he’d silently promised to do upon his arrival and in response she took him to bed. He couldn’t help but wonder why he always expected the worst, why he feared so much, and why he always seemed to have a knack for finding so many negative possibilities in every day rather than daring to be optimistic. Trying not to let his mortal concerns and his pessimism become available to his fiancée’s attention, he did everything he could to give her the most thorough and sensual massage and lovemaking that was within his mortal abilities.

He never told her about the faces of death he’d observed that night, for it somehow seemed that she knew about it all, anyhow. She never asked him how his night was–she simply appeared to be thrilled by the one fact that he’d returned home as intact and sound as she.

*          *          *

May 8th, 1999–8:14 PM The world looked like a wet, lumpy sheet of dark modeling clay in the glow of a red light bulb. The sun was just beginning its descent into a bed of crimson, the sky was filling with violet, and the wet asphalt surface of the shopping mall’s parking lot steamed with a strange little fog from the brief storm that had passed. Droplets of water shimmered like round, misshapen diamonds on the painted sheet metal of the many cars parked in the lot. The lush, slim trees which grew in the dividing medians between parking rows shed the rain that still rested upon their leaves as the wind gently blew through, seeming like green clouds tied to the earth by rigid brown ropes. Two electronic chirps resonated through the dense evening air and echoed slightly between the brick buildings. With the car’s alarm now disarmed, the hatch of the blood red Trans Am popped up slightly as Brooke turned a key in the lock of the curved glass hatch. With only a little assistance from her gentle hand, the hatch lifted itself up fully to greet her with an empty and waiting cargo well while the automated pull-down latch hummed upwards. She carefully heaved two plastic bags of just-purchased clothes into the well and reached up to close the hatch. She sometimes regretted the fact that she worked in a clothing store. Sometimes it seemed that almost half of her paycheck went right back into the place, or at least to all of the surrounding stores of clothes, shoes, and useless nick-knacks she passed by while leaving at the end of each day.

The surface of the spoiler was still pleasantly slick and glossy from the many coats of wax she’d applied to the car several days ago, and as she gently shut the hatch a cascade of gurgling, fat beads of rainwater trickled across her hand and fingertips. She flicked her hand a few times and blotted it upon her jeans before approaching the driver’s side door while the motorized latch pulled the hatch tightly into its fully closed position.

Situating herself in the plush fabric of the bucket seat and closing the door firmly but respectfully, she tossed her purse onto the passenger’s seat and slid the Pontiac’s key into the ignition switch. She turned the ignition key, and was rewarded almost instantly with the deep, growling rumble of a three hundred-fifty cubic inch V-8’s exhaust note as the engine came to life.

To her, this 1989 Trans Am was her second pet, her lover, and a good friend all rolled into one. She washed it, groomed it, and fed it only the finest meals (of gasoline) available as though it was a purebred cat–although no car could ever take the place of her loveable young Siamese cat. She spent many of her evenings with it, would daydream about it during work, attracted many admiring stares with it, and even caressed and embraced it as though it were her closest boyfriend. And the mischief she could get herself into with it (without getting caught), the fun times they’d share, and the memories she would always cherish of it made this Fire Chicken as close a friend to her as Kristi. Well, almost as close of a friend, anyway. Of course, it was no substitute for any of these things, but it was certainly a vital part of her life in so many ways.

And it was a sentimental detail as well. When both of her parents had been killed in a traffic accident almost two years ago, she had been granted a sizeable inheritance that included a very large sum of money, even after the local, state, and federal governments had each taken their own little bites out of it. After stashing almost all of it into a savings account for almost a year and refusing to touch it–she felt a strange guilt for being an heiress to so much–she eventually allowed herself to use a small portion it to purchase this marvelous work of automotive art. By no means had her parents spoiled her as she’d grown up, for she had (up until the time of their death) earned all of the money to buy her first car, apartment, and other material possessions on her own. She was sure that they would have been satisfied by the way that she’d managed her inheritance because she hadn’t blown it on stupid luxuries that she didn’t really need. After all, she probably could have afforded a sexy Dodge Viper instead of a not so exotic late-eighties Trans Am that had probably been run through hell and back and then rebuilt for another tour. Still, the idea of spending forty to sixty thousand dollars (compared to the mere six thousand she’d spent on her Trans Am) on a car that went only a couple of seconds faster seemed ludicrous. Besides, her father had always been a little partial to GM muscle cars.

She opened the center console, withdrew the detachable face of her car’s stereo, and gently clicked it into place. She’d purchased the car as a used vehicle from its original owner, a young man who was a bit of a show car enthusiast, so there had been a few significant upgrades made to the car’s appearance, stereo, and performance ability. One of those upgrades included the addition of a CD player, higher-power speakers, and a 300-watt amplifier. Pushing a few buttons, she skipped ahead to the tenth track on the CD and cranked up the volume three-quarters of the way to its maximum output level. Brian Setzer’s Switchblade 327 began with an exhilarating guitar riff and Brooke couldn’t hold back the grin that came to her lips as she jabbed the accelerator pedal a few times with her foot to tease a few roars from the engine. The Trans Am opened its eyes to the coming evening road with a soft whirring as she activated the Pontiac’s pop-up headlights. With a gentle pull back to put the leather-wrapped shifter into driving gear followed by a mild stab of the gas pedal, the sixteen-inch rear wheels of the monster coupe buzzed in their struggle for traction and sent up a spray from the wet pavement.

As always, she took as many back roads as possible to get back home, taking advantage of every opportune stretch of rarely-patrolled road by roaring through a series of gearshifts at eighty-percent throttle. She’d never before received a traffic ticket of any kind (except for a rather unfair parking ticket at college) largely because she knew just when she had to be a good girl or where she had a chance to be a thrill-seeking little imp. Her sometimes reckless driving had only got her pulled over once before (before she owned the Pontiac), but lucky fate had intervened and the officer on duty let her off just this once. She doubted that her luck would last forever and that someday a laser-happy cop would zap her doing sixty-five in a twenty-five…oh, but hell, until that day would come she could always enjoy life a little bit.

The clouds were quickly departing from the immediate sky and the air was sufficiently hot enough to allow for the open-air relief that rolling both of the large windows down could provide. She was in a hurry to get home, for Kristi had promised to have a nice hot pizza and a movie ready and waiting for her when she arrived back from work and shopping.

The little house she had called home for all but a few years of her life resided in a quiet suburban neighborhood surrounded by old retirees and a few redneck wannabes–young and middle-aged white trash types that dressed and acted the part but owned no fields or livestock. In the front yard on a hill that sloped downwards to the street stood a scrawny crabapple tree that had refused for years to produce anything more than a few shriveled leaves each season. Along both sides of the house were a series of elephant grass plants that were, by this time, already showing signs that they needed to be trimmed, and in the front a splurge of various flowers her mother had long ago planted were returning to bloom again. On one side of the doublewide gravel driveway was parked a late-model white Cavalier, informing Brooke that Kristi, her best friend and roommate, was home.

Brooke clicked the transmission out of gear, set the hand brake, and (with a little reluctance) switched off the rumbling engine–but not before jazzing the accelerator just one more time to let Kristi know she had returned. She popped off and stowed the faceplate of her stereo, exited the car, and removed her purchases from the rear cargo hold.

In a town filled with little more than a bunch of full-sized geezer mobiles and countless rusted-beyond-recognition Ford and Chevy pickup trucks, her shiny red Trans Am stuck out in the community like a big, bright, ripe cherry in a basket of raisins. Fortunately the local neocowboy punk kids of the town’s high school had not yet found a reason to vandalize her treasured set of wheels. The only time her car’s alarm had ever gone off at home was during a particularly nasty thunderstorm. For the time being, she left her shiny red chariot unlocked; besides, she intended to pull her car into the garage before the end of the night.

The front of the house featured two doors, one upon the lower level that was next to the door of the built-in garage, and another that was at the top of a series of concrete steps and a wooden porch that her father had constructed. She unlocked the lower door and opened it. After living in this house for a year and a half now, she still hadn’t become totally accustomed to the sight of a bare entry room. Her father had been almost obsessive in his pursuit to keep as much junk as he possibly could. In spite of the fact that she and her mother had pleaded with him to get rid of or (at the very least) organize his collection of useless crap, Brooke had been reluctant to get rid of it. She was very sensitive to honoring what she believed her parents’ wishes might have been and because her late father had so hotly refused to clear out his ever-growing accumulation of crap, she had delayed the cleanup until just a few months before.

Whereas before this small hallway leading to the garage, main basement room, and laundry room had been so cluttered with stuff that it was nearly impossible to safely navigate in the dark, it was now so empty that the sounds of her entry echoed slightly. Shelves had been crammed with spray cans of every array and function, used (but useful) car parts, jars, boxes of magazines, electrician’s utensils, motorcycle equipment, paint, and a countless list of other little unidentifiable things that supposedly served some function or purpose that warranted their keeping. Now the floor was bare to its concrete foundation and its strip of walk-in carpeting, and on both sides were completely empty sets of shelves. She had always respectfully kept the house spotlessly clean, having even waxed the concrete floor to a shine, but in spite of its cleanliness the place felt tainted to her because of the way she’d changed it. Still standing in the doorway, she leaned against the door’s frame and sighed. Even now she could imagine her dad sitting on a cloud above, looking down on her with a disapproving frown and grumbling all sorts of things unbecoming of a resident of heaven.

Sorry, dad, she sighed softly, but somebody had to do it.

The sound of water travelling up the supply line with a hiss and trickling down the drainpipe emanated from the laundry room directly ahead of her. Kristi was apparently taking another one of her long after-work showers that never failed to use up all of the available hot water. The main basement room, which had once been her bedroom in her early teenage years, was also quite empty. After she and Kristi had cleared away everything that had absolutely no practical use, the room had changed from yet another clogged and sloppy miniature storage garage to a useful room that currently hadn’t been appointed to any real use. It simply remained, for the most part, empty but for an oak entertainment center with a small television set and an old stereo system with a turntable and an eight-track tape player. Brooke still felt too guilty for throwing away or selling all but a few things of her father’s collection to do much of anything for any length of time in this basement. God, how she hoped her father would have understood.

She ascended the stairs leading up from the basement and opened the door leading to the first landing. As she opened the door, a soothing rush of cool air blew past her and she quickly closed it behind herself to avoid letting all of the air-conditioned atmosphere pool up uselessly in the basement.

With her back to the main front door of the house, she again hesitated before moving up those last few steps. She’d felt especially moody for the past week or so, mostly caught up in a swarm of feelings much like the weather had been earlier, thinking so terribly dark of the world, so dreary and soggy and harshly blown by the winds of life. She had done so well for so long to avoid feeling much sorrow for the past. Of course she had wept upon learning of her parents’ demise but after that, sometime during that same night, something inside her heart had snapped soundlessly and she hadn’t shed a tear for them (or anything or anyone else) since then. Even the funeral for her mother and father had somehow failed to arouse tears from her eyes, a fact that had haunted her for years with guilt and confusion, perhaps even a bit of fear. She often wondered if Kristi somehow thought of her as some sort of an emotional cripple as a result of all that had happened and the conditions surrounding the accident.

Everything lately, however, seemed to finally be catching up with her again, seeming as though she’d merely delayed her mourning until she could finally find the time and strength to deal with it emotionally. Every little detail, every event or conversation somehow seemed to remind her of something from her childhood or something involving the many memories of her mother and father. But in a way it made a little bit of sense for her to think this way at this time, really. The next evening would be the third anniversary of her parents’ end. She didn’t have time for tears today, nor did she expect that she would next week or any day after.

The tear factory was no longer in business, so to speak. There certainly was no shortage of demand for crying, but she just wasn’t ever sure it was necessary. Kristi insisted that she was trying too hard to be too strong about everything, but that was nonsense–well, sort of, anyhow.

When she topped the last few steps, Brooke turned on her heel and headed down the hallway to the closed bathroom door. Her cat was not present to greet her in its usual curious manner, and she wasn’t busy with her food and water dish in the kitchen. She dared not even attempt to look for her furry friend in the living room and thus confront the memories it held, which held even more memories of her father. She couldn’t even stand to glance at the dining room or kitchen for more than a moment, for she was reminded too strongly by those places of her sweet and loving mother. She only wanted to go to her room, close the door, start trying on some of her new clothes, read a chapter or two of a book, or do anything else she could to distract herself from thinking about the days of yesterday.

She paused in her brief travel to stand before the bathroom door. The sound of water trickling and splashing in the presence of a bathing body in the shower was muffled by the foam-core, dark-grained wooden door before her. She quietly turned the knob and opened the door just enough to speak to Kristi. The scent of fresh soap, shampoo, perfume, and the curious addition of what she could only guess to be some kind of men’s aftershave cascaded over her face in a dense, damp, invisible mist of air.

Hey, kiddo, I’m home, she said softly.

She suddenly felt something pinch the side of her neck and something hissed wickedly in her ear. As she let out a shriek of surprise and pushed open the door a bit further as she spun towards the threat, she almost expected to find that she was trailing the rest of a ten-foot cobra behind her while its fangs remained imbedded within the flesh of her neck.

Kristi! Brooke gasped, covering her stammering heart with one hand. Jesus, don’t do that to me!

Kristi O’Grady was five feet, six inches, and just over a hundred pounds, a young Asian woman of nothing but beauty, mischief, and love. Dressed quite casually in a pair of loose-fitting blue jeans and a tucked-in, white tee shirt proudly displaying the cartoon character Kenny, from the television show South Park, dying in four different ways, she was as sexy, silly, and lovable as ever. Still laughing, she picked up one of the bags that Brooke had dropped in her moment of surprise and began looking through it.

So, what’d you buy for me this time? she joked with a grin. She withdrew an item on a plastic hanger and held it up away from Brooke, out of her reach. Ooh, thong panties!

A man’s voice from the shower: Woohoo! Thongs kick ass!

Yeah, whee, woohoo. Now gimmie that back, you snoop. Kristi handed the bag and panties to her and Brooke jerked her thumb towards the shower. Is that monkey in the shower supposed to be Justin?

She seemed a little embarrassed herself by the question, simply nodding her head in acknowledgement. Kristi often seemed to have a sexual appetite that bordered on the verge of becoming full-blown nymphomania, for all that she apparently lacked was a spare lover and a mistress, perhaps even an appearance on a television talk show. For as much money as she spent on contraceptives, mood music (mellow R&B CD’s), and lingerie, Kristi probably spent more to support her libido than any other living expenses. Judging by Kristi’s bare feet, damp hair, and lack of a bra beneath her shirt, it had probably been wise of Brooke to have gone shopping after work; had she walked in twenty minutes sooner, she again would have undoubtedly walked in on them in mid-orgasm.

Hi, Brooke, Justin said, waving his hand at her above the shower curtain. I’ll be out in a minute if you wanna model those thongs for me.

What’s wrong with the one that I had on earlier? Kristi asked.

Oh, nothing, nothing. I just like, y’know, a little variety now and then…or something.

Brooke laughed, muttering, You two are about as horny as a couple of alley cats, as she stepped back and flushed the toilet. A shout of surprise and discomfort came from the shower’s occupant a moment later as a result of the sudden change in water temperature that the toilet’s flushing had caused. Brushing past a giggling Kristi, Brooke exited the bathroom with a smile and took her other bag of other purchases with her. Were it not for Kristi, there would be little joy in her life.

Having successfully distracted herself from the miserable thoughts of her past that had pained her earlier, Brooke continued down the short hall to the last door on the left. Opposite the open door to her own bedroom was the closed door that sealed off her parents’ bedroom. As they would have most likely done in her memory if she had somehow died before them while still living in this house, she had left the room exactly as it had been on their final night of life. The only time she dared enter the room was to dust it on the first day of every month just to keep it looking appropriate, a day that she dreaded almost as much as the tragic anniversary that was soon to come. She kept the door closed at all times and regarded these days as just another featureless part of the wall, as if there were nothing beyond it but the open lawn of the back yard. She did well this time to avoid recognizing that room for what it was by heading straight into her room with Kristi following closely behind her.

So how was work? Kristi asked as Brooke tossed her bags upon the fur-like, tiger-print spread of her twin-size bed.

Brooke did not immediately answer, instead doing an about-face and falling backwards limply onto the firmly sprung mattress of a bed which was set at a diagonal angle from the northeastern corner of the room.

Her room had never been very extravagantly decorated at any point in time, but it was even less so in the days since she had moved back into this room. Before, onto the flesh-colored walls she had taped up a few posters of cute things like the once-famous bull terrier Spuds McKenzie and an albino tiger as well as a bunch of silly photographs she and Kristi had taken in high school. Now she only had a few stand-up frames with photographs of Kristi, Brooke in a red two-piece bikini laying on her side upon the hood of her Trans Am (Kristi’s idea), and her parents’ twenty-fifth anniversary picture. There were no posters, no terribly silly photos, and no weird-colored walls, just four pictures of friends and family besides a plain-looking dresser, full-length mirror, her bed, and boring, satin white paint on the walls.

The tiger-print cover upon her bed stood out only because it was something Kristi had given her long ago to "give the room some sort of personality." Perhaps this one detail was what made the room reflect Brooke’s personality so accurately–functional, nondescript, and somewhat boring in most respects, but with a little zing of humor and mischief somewhere in the middle (mostly involving her friendship with Kristi). It was this fuzzy, warm, and unique part of her room that Kristi sat down upon to be next to Brooke as she listened to her describe her usual work day in a retail clothing store.

Boring as hell with a sprinkle of rude-ass customers, Brooke sighed. And how was your day?

Well, after I got home things warmed up quite a bit. Justin and I started right when I walked in the door. My God, you wouldn’t believe how many times I—…

Yadda, yadda, yadda, sex, sex, sex, Brooke groaned, waving off another one of Kristi’s graphic stories of her coital adventures with Justin. Sometimes Kristi could be a little inconsiderate of the fact that not everyone had a sex life. But before that…?

Oh, same story as yours, just a different place, she said. You know, people who end up missing their taxi because they were too busy standing in line to gripe about the fact that their flight was late, our airline sucks, the food was terrible, blah, blah, blah.

Sounds exciting.

Hardly.

A moment of silence passed between them. The sound of water running in the bathroom shower squeaked to a halt and Justin could be heard clacking back the shower curtains to get out and dry off. Kristi gasped upon remembering something, turned slightly, and lightly smacked Brooke’s thigh with the back of her hand.

"Hey, something kind of interesting did happen today, though, she said with that spontaneous enthusiasm so characteristic of her. I was feeling kinda generous, so I went out and got you hooked up."

A date?

Yup.

You’re kidding.

Nope.

A date?…With a guy?

No, a date with the frickin’ cat! Yes, of course it’s a guy!

Brooke sat up with a gasp of surprise. After a moment, though, she narrowed her eyes at her beloved friend and a half-amused smile curved one corner of her mouth as Kristi gave her that tongue-between-herteeth grin of uncanny mischief.

You didn’t.

In a child-like voice of mockery, Kristi cried, Did so!

How? Who is it? she asked, still remaining skeptical. More importantly, why are you trying to play cupid again?

Kristi rolled her eyes and slid off of the bed to stand on her bare feet once more.

"Oh, why am I hooking you up? Ooh, gee, let me think about that for a second now, she mocked, faking deep thought with a finger to her chin. She held up a hand and walked over towards the closet. Ah, now I know. Here’s a quick impression."

Kristi opened the darkly stained sliding closet door and wedged herself backward into it, hunching down slightly to get under the closet rod.

This is you on a typical weekend, she said before closing herself inside the closet. After a moment, she opened the door again and popped back out,looking a little serious. And this is you during the rest of the week. She pouted her lower lip, folded her arms tightly at her chest, bowed her head, and gave Brooke the best wounded-puppy-dog look she could muster for several seconds. Brooke only smiled a little, hurt slightly by the blunt truth of Kristi’s humor. She scooted