Ruben sunk the eight ball on the break. I said it was fate. He wanted to go double-or-nothing for the third time in a row. I told him it was his funeral.

Misplaced-cargo anecdotes from the docks, someone dropped a hammer down the furnace shaft, goddamned woman got me on the bottle again; The Pine Box hummed with post-work conversations. The Orioles were mounting their annual August comeback on the TV chained behind the bar, next to a photo of a man in a Marine uniform. Four years ago, the TV had been colorized. Then someone got hit with a bottle and a fight broke out and someone else got their head mashed into the antennae. Now everyone on the screen looked mummified, skin yellowed like parchment paper.

I chalked my cue while Ruben racked. Man-sweat and smoke and synthetic pine from the tree-shaped air-fresheners in the bathroom. The lights over the table flickered, threw epileptic shadows and made the table shimmer like a mirage. Depth perception had always been an issue, so the lights didn’t bother me. For all the other regulars, those shifting balls took some adjustment, but whenever anyone came in hustling, they left without even the lint in their pockets. Before I could shoot, Ruben grabbed the cue ball.

‘So it’s double or nothing, right?’

I shrugged, wiped the engine grease from my hands on my jeans and rolled my glass eye inside the socket. ‘Buy a round and we’ll call last game even.’ His wife had gone a little crazy with QVC the week before and I didn’t want to exacerbate his thinning wallet. ‘That work for you?’

He waved a hand to Denny, put up two fingers. The cue ball cracked like a gunshot, three stripes and a solid falling. A beer next to my hand, condensation rolling like tears. I pointed the table. ‘Fourteen off the ten. Corner pocket.’

‘Don’t scratch.’

The fourteen fell like a dead soldier, ten rolling to a stop about an inch too far. Ruben muttered something in Spanish. It sounded pretty vulgar.

The floorboards creaked and dipped under my feet as I surveyed the table. Denny’s old man had been a one-stop undertaker; build a casket, embalm the stiff, then facilitate the memorial service. When he didn’t come back from the War, Denny sold the company and bought a bar, disassembled the caskets and made it a floor. He named it The Pine Box to honor his father.

The front door swung open. Baltimore breathed rancid smog into our bar, Little Carl and some of the other humps from the docks riding in with the current. Denny averted his attention, dried a glass with a grey rag. Even from across the room, I could see the smears. They saddled up to the counter, Little Carl trying to strangle me with a glare. I leaned against the table, posturing. Tap…tap…tapped the cue in time with my heartbeat. He spit on the floor and pulled out a stool.

I ran the table, only giving Ruben one shot. Just as he was lining up, I popped my eye out and set it in front of his ball. He couldn’t stop laughing to take his turn, so I finished the game and gave him four quarters for the jukebox. Beer to my forehead, I unstuck my shirt from my chest. A laugh rang out behind me. Delicate, but hoarse, like a nightingale with emphysema. I took a long drink, swallowed the acid taste of anxiety and turned around carefully.

Darla straddled a stool, listening to one of Little Carl’s trolls tell a joke. Her pockets peeked below the frayed edge of her jean shorts, a bikini strap caressing her neck underneath a tank top the color of a fresh bruise. She threw her head back when she laughed, tender breasts rocking, slender throat pale and exposed and I could taste the salt on her neck, smell the hot sweat on her thighs. When the troll turned to order drinks for them, she glanced over to me, licked her teeth and winked. My stomach filled with moths and metal shards.
From the jukebox in the corner, Stray Cats began to play. Ruben shuffled over, stifling a laugh.

‘You’re an asshole.’

He feigned shock. ‘No lo dice. What did I do?’

‘Sexy and Seventeen? You had to play that right now?’ I dropped my cue on the table and killed the rest of my drink. Behind my eye, a piece of dirt scratched my socket. The scrape against glass was audible inside my ear. ‘You’re an asshole.’

‘Hermano, you’re the one fucking Little Orphan Annie.’

‘She’s not an orphan.’

‘You’re the one fucking Little Annie.’ He laid a hand on my shoulder, picked up his beer and made a toast to himself. ‘I’m just here for comic relief, manito.’

I flicked my head towards the bar. ‘Get us another? I’ll buy.’ He started over and I called out, ‘You’re still an asshole.’ I fed more quarters into the table and racked up.

Darla rose and sashayed in my direction. Conversations became timid and I could hear change jingling in her pockets. Stools scraped away from the bar. Steel-toed boots hit the floor. Little Carl growled. I made a concerted effort to breathe. She passed without any eye contact, but clucked her tongue so only we could hear, and opened the door to the bathroom. Jokes and anecdotes resumed and I willed the sweat back into my skin. Swallowed half my beer when Ruben returned.

‘Your break,’ and I handed him a cue. Leaning against the back wall, I tilted my head down as if examining Ruben’s stroke, while taking stock of the room in lopsided glances. Little Carl and the rest argued about the Orioles, smoked cigarettes, ordered shots. The room buzzed at a normal level and my blood settled.

Then Ruben broke. And hopped the ball. And hit Little Carl directly in the anklebone. The creak of his stool was a clap of thunder. A rat scratched inside the wall behind me. The fan blew lazy hot air. He knelt and picked up the ball, cheeks flushed with pain he wouldn’t show. Tossed it in his hand like it was some strange meteor fallen from the Heavens. A masochistic smile spreading, he looked up at us. Needles stuck into my fingertips. Little Carl nudged one of his trolls, a brief chuckle like they were sharing some inside joke, then reared back and threw the cue ball at us. The bulbs flickered and reflected blades of light and the ball hurtled to my right, and I ducked but it was in a blind spot, and I tasted the impact in the back of my throat before I felt it.

Cigarette ash and grease footprints and splinters of pine. Ruben’s machine-gun Spanish above me. I touched the side of my head, fingers warm and sticky. Just the tip of my ear, more embarrassing than painful. I bit the inside of my lips and stood. Little Carl was already back in his stool, elbowing the guys and sipping from a bottle. Denny poured drafts, head down to avoid taking sides. I palmed my beer and slunk out the back door.

The air was tactile. It filled my lungs like viscous fluid and I wondered if this was what people felt when they were dying of lupus. I crossed to the adjacent parking lot. Sleeping bags piled behind a dumpster and warped cardboard posing as a ceiling. A crunch under my foot and I scraped my shoe over a parking curb to remove syringe pieces. A bum in a torn winter jacket scuffed along the wall. I hopped onto a chain-link fence and drank my beer.

The breeze from the harbor carried saltwater and gasoline. Streetlights buzzed like hornets. My ear throbbed. Fucking eye. Non-eye. Two kids threw rocks at the window of a vacant row-home. Fucking Carl, the goddamned bastard. And now I looked like a coward and he’d gloat about how he’d run off the pedophile Cyclops, sent him back to his cave.

Across the street, the door opened, light spreading like an infection over the sidewalk. Darla dodged through traffic, arms hugging her ribs. She slowed as she came closer, afraid that I was mad at her, maybe. I crushed the empty can and tossed it aside. Five feet from me, she stopped, head down and toeing a chunk of concrete. The tendons in her foot flexed.
‘Hey,’ she said, more to the parking lot than me.

‘Hey.’

She kicked the concrete away, slowly took my gaze. Her eyes glistened like oil on a rain puddle. ‘You okay?’

I shrugged, lowered myself from the fence. ‘Just a little blood.’

A wet streak down her face and she fell into me, pressed her head on my chest like she was burrowing. I kissed her forehead and squeezed her tight, felt her breasts flatten against me. Her hair smelled of peaches and exhaust. Skin sticky with sweat. She turned her head up. ‘I’m so sorry about my brother. He’s…’ and her voice crumbled. She shuddered with tiny whimpers.

‘Don’t cry. You’re a little sparrow, and sparrows don’t cry, do they.’ Smoothing her hair, I said he was only doing what a man needs to do. ‘He’s just looking out for you. He doesn’t want you to get hurt, is all.’

‘He’s a cocksucker,’ her voice muffled by my chest.

I breathed a laugh. ‘Yeah, and he’s a bit of a cocksucker, too.’

Fast food wrappers and crushed cans tumbled down the street when the breeze picked up. Her hair fluttered like thin burgundy wings. Night had elbowed out day and the sky faded into a black eye. She pulled back, breathing now steady, and wiped the drips of makeup from her cheeks.

‘Why can’t we just leave?’

‘I’m not leaving because of anybody. I bought a house here, I’ve got a job here, I live here.’ Holding her chin between my thumb and index finger, I watched the veins expand and contract across the white of her eyes. ‘I’m sorry, darling.’

‘But there are garages everywhere.’ She cupped her hand around a cigarette and lit it. ‘I can get a job, we can get a house.’ Her arms flailed like she was playing charades, acting out the idealized life we could have. Over her head, I saw the door open again. Five figures stepped onto the sidewalk, one holding something long and slender.

‘Darla,’ I started, then took a drag of her cigarette. An additional figure scuttled out of the bar. Ruben, I’d guessed. ‘In two months, we’ll talk about it, okay?’

Her face knotted like she’d bitten into a sandwich and found half a finger. ‘Two months?’
‘There’s laws against us leaving now, darling. I could do time and your brother would beat you senseless.’ I gave back her cigarette and glanced around the parking lot for a board, hockey stick, chainsaw. Anything. Taking her hand in mine, I pressed our wrists together. Pulses synched, our sparrow wing tattoos matching up, hers covering fine white scars. ‘Two months, I promise.’ I leaned down and kissed her, breathed in and tried to absorb every bit of her, held her bottom lip between mine so we’d never part, and behind her, heavy running footsteps. I whispered against her cheek and pushed her away.

‘Fucking pervert!’ and a fist swung at my face.

I judged it right this time and stepped back, squared up and ready to throw. And to the side, the corner of a board peeked from the edge of my blind spot. Enormous, splintered, splattered with tar. All I knew was Darla’s scream and the hollow tinkle of glass, like a Christmas ornament imploding. Glittering blood pouring from my eye. Concrete in my knees as my forehead hit the ground. Ruben screamed from somewhere. Boots in my ribs and I curled fetal. A deep grunt and the soft thud of metal on flesh. He cursed them in Spanish. Someone moaned, a thud and another thud and cursing. Then a crack like a celery stalk snapping and Ruben’s scream turned horribly nasal.

Splinters of wood in my forearms, I felt Darla’s hand touch my back then evaporate and she screamed to leave her alone, you fuck. The smell of burnt pennies, blackness everywhere. Darla shrieked and someone sucked in breath like they’d been kicked in the crotch. I rolled to my side and peeled open my eye. The city, tinted burgundy. The color of her hair, of seeping blood. Ruben lay curled in a ball, hands covered his shattered face. One of the trolls on his back, cradling his ruined testicles.

Little Carl had his sister in a wrestling hold, dragging her away. She cursed, screamed, swung her heels and clawed at him. An oozing scrape on the back of his head. I lifted myself to my knee, wiped pebbles and cigarette butts off my face. A glob of blood fell from my eye. I grabbed the plank beside me, a triangle of glass with the edge of my pupil stuck to the front. The backside, speckled with nails and rust and tar.

The parking lot teetered under the flickering lights. Everything was flat, no depth. Flat and red. I hobbled after them, the plank a makeshift cane.

‘Carl!’ My voice ragged, imaginary. I stumbled and scuttled on my knees. ‘Carl!’

He swung around, hand covering her face like Hannibal Lector’s mask. Her eyes shone bright with fear, hope, love. I felt myself smile. He dropped her and she ran to me. I felt her skin on mine twenty feet away. One of the guys snatched her using the same hold as Carl. I brought myself to my feet.

‘You stay the fuck away from her.’ Spit flew from his mouth like a rabid dog.

‘Let her go, Carl.’ I wavered but stayed upright. Light faded in and out, entire chunks of the lot turning black then reappearing. I smirked. ‘Let her go and see who she comes to.’
He snarled and charged me. Somewhere in the blackness, the guy screamed, ‘She fucking bit me.’

I curled my fingers, anchored my leg and raised the wood to swing. Carl’s eyes, diabolical. He was going to run me over. Let the plank break over his skull then pounce and tear the flesh from my bones with his teeth. Destroy my body and consume my soul and in another life we would’ve been in-laws. I flipped the plank, nails out. Swallowed. Held my breath. Swung.

Darla screamed my name. Then a grotesque crunch.

Her scream fell underwater. Her voice, drowning in blood.