Prologue

"I am sitting on the grass somewhere in a field. It seems a little cliché that I should be doing so, but the fact that the field is full of bloodred grass and the sky is palest yellow makes the scenery seem less mundane and more meaningful. I am not garrisoned in a fort on one of those mythical asteroid colonies, floating around like some overbloated space chaparral, nor am I on some fantasmagorical alien planet. This is Earth. My Earth. The New Earth."

Chapter I: Maria

Maria

It all seemed to start with vodka. Stories like this always do. It was vodka and twilight and a porch swing and a house like something out of “Leave it to Beaver”, foiled perfectly with the mom with the pineapple coiffure and the “dad” figure that could have been the lazy older brother except for the toothpaste stained tie. They weren’t paying any attention, but then they had nothing to pay attention to. Had a psychotic knife-wielding gang-banger leapt onto the porch in his black hoodie from a beat up red Camaro my “dad-figure” would have been jostled into action. His metamorphosis from househusband to hero would have been complete in an instant, minus the spandex tights and cape—and he would have rushed to my aid to protect my virtue, producing some form of small handgun from beneath the sunken maw of the couch with which to find off the impending intruder. “Back off, bitch!”, my masked assailant would cry at him, but would be foiled by a swift pistol-whip and even swifter dialing by my mother. Three digits and a 9mm equals sure justice in our pseudo-suburban paradise. Clint Eastwood and Forrest Gump taught him that.
Anyways there was vodka, and green eyes, and the thoughts of just blowing the whole joint, masked assailant or no, and there were green eyes with a little sparkle in them, and a red Camaro, and did I mention green eyes coming ever so slowly towards me on the porch swing, so slowly that you wished there was a soundtrack playing right at that moment so you could engrain it in your over-romanticized brain forever but of course that wouldn’t happen because things like that never happened in “real life”… And then there was the kiss. Disappointing to say the least, that stars didn’t explode in my head, just a dull humming throb from the vodka, sipped surrepititiously from a flask under my own hoodie. Even more disappointing when my eyes met those same green ones with the hazel flecks in them and discovered raw, hot, love. The kind you always dream about someone imbibing you with but then regret it when it turns out to be totally the wrong person. Dad would have died had he known I was kissing a girl. Mom would have been more okay with it, knowing I never really liked her much anyways. She would have called it an experimental phase.
Still, the hotel happened anyway. The whole green, green grass and white, white porch were all just too much to take that night, and the perfection and yet lack thereof under the glistening stars were making my head spin. So we stopped at a small pizza joint, picked up some New York style with extra cheese even though it was sure to give me indigestion later, ran across four lanes of traffic for the sheer joy of it into the almost-seedy part of town, and fell asleep in each other’s arms to Letterman. We were young and wild and free and blah blah blah, and I would never forget that night. Not because it was the night I realized I might be a little bit gay or a little bit off, I’d known that for years, but because it was the night the world was torn apart.

Chapter II: Xander

Xander

She was so beautiful. Like an island. She held my hands and rocked with me on the swing in the cool, damp night while the bad man finally left. It was all my fault, really. I had made the crucial mistake of making eye contact. In the dark club in the haze from all the pot and god knew what else, trying to scout serendipity from between two dark lines of eyeliner, I had looked him in the eye and begged silently “Love me, please mister.” And unfortunately, he had tried. I got out of there okay, thanks to her, leaving behind only one black Baker’s stiletto boot as a memento of my run-in with death, and ran into the arms of a longtime-almost-best-friend, but he had followed me home like a deranged puppy. In my head, the scenario had played out with me in a tattered dress instead of ripped jeans and a too-tight T shirt, and he in some kind of biker gear rather than the token black hoodie and acid-wash baggy jeans. I had pleaded for my innocence while my protectrice and her family had formed a circle around me against this rapacious hoodlum. In my head I had never known his name or offered him a kiss, the kiss that was now being stolen by the only person who had ever loved me for real on the worn-down mattress of a cheap, but chic motel uptown.
The duvet cover was a pea-green. I remember because she said it brought out my eyes. As she brought me out of my clothes and filled my holes and held my hands and erased my somewhat melodramatic memory of her father coming out and telling the young ruffian to go home (with a pistol no less!), I looked back into her deep brown ones and thanked her, then lay back and watched the plaster crack beautifully on the ceiling as she made love to me. It was almost the last time I would be close to anyone again, that night from the porch to the lobby to the bed, because after that night I was struck totally blind.

Chapter III: Tobari

Tobari

The club was absolutely disgusting. Nasty with slime and sweat and slick with cheap beer. He would have preferred a nice New York Style with extra cheese but this was where his ex-girlfriend used to hang out, so here he was, pretending to be having a guy’s night out on the town but secretly looking for her. She would be wearing something trampy, something dark and edgy to attract attention. He himself was in some stupid checked shirt he’d borrowed from Carlo and flat black Converses. They were supposed to be the shoe of the moment, complementing the new style emerging with the X club ravers. The police would be there in probably the next hour to bust those same ravers and then half the partygoers would magically vanish out of a two by three bathroom window, but that was none of his concern. All that concerned him was the vodka tonic in his too thick glass and scouring the crowd for Xander, or atleast a solid replacement.
And there she was. Eyes closed, lips half opened in a pout designed to mimick lipstick ads on billboards in the City, hips gyrating. God he hated her. The way she moved was nothing short of obscene, and the four inch black stiletto boots did nothing to preserve any image of modesty. He could almost see the small tattoo above her ass-crack coming out the top of her ripped jeans and she spun too slow for the music, unawares that she was drawing a crowd. But then, that was Xander, always attracting attention and never truly meaning to. He took another slow sip of his tonic. What If he braved the haze and the writhing snakes on the floor and just went over and said “Hi.”? What would that be so wrong with that?
As he mused about his muse, he noticed another pair of unfriendly eyes musing him. Tight black sweater with a hood, cronies close behind, peering Xander as she did her little sexy dance on the slippery floor, somehow never falling, or missing a beat. He watched with his tongue halfway down his throat as her eyes met the stranger’s, coolly at first, flirtatiously second, and then unsure at last. She stopped dancing. The lights seemed to slow. The haze and thrum of the crowd took a deep breath. He spat an ice cube back into the glass and slammed it on the filthy bar as she turned as fast as he’d ever seen her on one heel and headed for the restrooms. So this was not a casual rendezvous. What was she doing with a grifter? Against every fiber of self-control left in his being, he followed her.
The exchange was short. The stranger moved in for the kill outside the bathroom. The club may have been seedy but men couldn’t get in to the ladies’. Too many females shooting up in the toilets, he surmised. She pushed him back gently at first, insistently second, and then turned again to leave. The grifter seemed unfazed, heading back to where his cronies were at the bar. As he passed, the faintest sliver of light from a strobe passed over him and Toby got a detailed look at his face.
“Shit.”, he said to himself.
Two hours later, Xander wasn’t responding to text messages, he assumed she was with Maria but a quick drive by of the house showed her car still in the driveway and no lights on in the house. He knew Maria well, and she wouldn’t be asleep at only midnight. They must have gone somewhere. He had to find them before the hunter got bored picking up whores at the club and came looking for his mark. And of course it would be Xander. He slammed his fists on the steering wheel. That girl was going to get herself killed just walking around the way she did. He’d said one night many moons ago that he couldn’t deal with her exhibitionism, but here he was, trying to protect her, which was exactly what she wanted. He didn’t care if she was the goddamned princess of the entire planet (she wasn’t) she did not have the impunity she thought she had. He was walking, living proof. His eyes scanned the lush trees and manicured bushes in the neighborhood, looking for anything out of place. If he knew a grifter, and he did, he’d be out there, biding his time until the family went to sleep, and then break in and look for clues. He’d leave the family alone, maybe take a memento or two from Maria’s bedroom for later, and then finish his obsessive chase. God hope he never had daughters as stupid as Xander, or never had daughters at all.
His stomach grumbled menacingly. It was always harder to find someone when you were actually looking for them than when you weren’t, and that’s the way it was with women especially. Look all over for them to find out they’ve gone to Paris and back that weekend and forgotten to call. Stop looking and there they are, ass hanging out, in your least favorite club in town picking up stalkers. He stopped at a pizza joint, asked around. The doughboy pointed him to his large with extra cheese and to two hipster girls he’d said went across the street an hour or so before. He scarfed his slices and headed over to the motel. Fifty bucks in the palm of the desk-man pointed him to room 109. He was refused a key, no matter, he could easily crack the lock. Likely, they were too drunk to have clicked it all the way anyways. As he walked down the too-patterned carpet, past art deco wall sconces he worked himself up into a nice, red temper. He was fully prepared to bust in there and give them the whole what-the-fuck-are-you-doing-in-this-part-of-town-by-yourselves-speech, but what he saw as the lock faintly clicked open stopped him so that not only could he not yell, he could not breathe…
“Maria?”, he whispered slowly under his breath.
She was lying on her side, one arm protectively draped over Xander’s hips. They were down to their knickers, but weren’t kissing. They were sharing air and carbon dioxide between four swollen lips as if it was the only thing keeping them conscious. Why was he always left watching, unnoticed in the wings? As he continued to gulp and stare, Maria rose up, supporting her weight on one arm, and enveloped Xander’s face in a mass of her hair and curves. Her knee was…someplace inappropriate, but still he watched. Her hands were stroking, caressing, opening and Xander’s soft, milky white legs were sliding slowly in passion across the green bean colored sheets. Green like her eyes, he thought, but no sounds could come out. He almost choked up his pizza. A low, dull hum began in his ears as everything he’d thought he’d known about his two best friends rearranged itself in his head, and as he removed himself from the equation, subliminally. Xander’s eyes opened, and just as she turned towards the light from the open doorway, and as Maria shuddered out her last wave of passion and laid her head on Xander’s chest, she saw him. Their eyes locked for less than a millisecond and then everything blew apart. The pressure of a massive explosion knocked him off his feet, and then all was dark.

Impressum

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Tag der Veröffentlichung: 27.11.2011

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