Jason Brown scanned the Metro for a victim. Man? Woman? Boy? Girl? It has to be a m/an, but who? Jason lowered his head and peeked out over the top of his sunglasses homing in on a potential mark. Twenty, twenty-two; fresh pressed blue suit, loose at the shoulders, missing jacket button, dollar ninety-eight at Goodwill; fraying white shirt, blue ink on his pocket; red, white and blue striped tie; tight ass, virgin. He's an intern, worthless. Jason's eyes rollerbladed through the crowd, quickly gliding past the women before lighting on navy whites. He's a Pentagon man with balls bigger than his hips; I bet he's got an attitude to match. Arrogant attitude. Twice married, maybe three times, couple mistresses on the side. Jason's eyes hung a right, simultaneously swiveling his head and upper body. There! Hugging that pole like Mary the fucking Poppins, afraid he'll fly out the door if he lets go. White collar twisted backwards: a preacher man! He's news!

Jason raked through his shopping bag, past the Slim Jims and Snickers bars, spilling half the Cheetos, pulling out the syringe.

"Next stop, McPhearson Square. Doors opening on the left." The somnambulistic recording made Jason smirk. D.C. folks are so fucking stupid, they have to be told which door's gonna open. Why can't they just open their eyes and look? Stupid God damned fucks!

The doors rattled open, but Jason remained in his seat.

"Excuse me, that seat's reserved for the handicapped."

Jason ignored the frizzle-curled blond boy with the grass-stained Timberland backpack. I got here first, besides, everybody's sitting in the God damned handicapped seats and nobody give a flying fuck. . . unless a blind dwarf stumbles in, then they all get up and kiss his sorry old ass and make him fucking king for a day. Jason shifted his ass, trying not to fart, wishing he could. I wonder what the big ball military man's doing. . . and that punk wearing the Fourth of July tie. Will they be news if I kill them?

"Next stop Farragut West: doors opening on the left." Jason was running out of time. He had to find his mark.

Carlos Alvarez and Alejandro Rodriguez sat a few seats behind Jason, holding each others' hands in anticipation of Gay Pride Day. Alejandro, the aggressive but diminutive Argentine director of Twenty-first Century Theatre Productions after writing, directing and producing Corked-a comedy murder mystery-where the victim was killed not once, not twice, but three times-because three times the charm's, mind was wandering helter-skelter as he thought of his play and of the parties they'd throw and of reuniting with their gay friends. Meanwhile, Carlos, the passive curly-haired giant from Costa Rica, was thinking of the struggle he'd already gone through-psychologically and emotionally as one of fourteen children but thanking God for Alejandro and praying he'd never be lonely again. I know how to get a man, I just hope I can keep him. I can't handle the pain of losing another.

Nine-year-old Noah Lynch and his kid brother, Jus, sat on the opposite aisle. They'd just finished reading all two-hundred fifty-four pages of Treasure Island, acting out every scene, hoping to find the lost island, the one-legged man, and the ubiquitous black spot before they got home.

"Do you think pirates ever sailed up the Potomac?"

"I don't know, but the Potomac's navigable." Noah sat up, pleased he'd used one of his fourth-grade social studies words in the real world.

"Maybe we're standing on treasure right now; maybe we're standing on a bazillion pieces of eight."

"And a dead man's chest."

"And a sunken ship."

"Sure, but first we got to find the map. Without the map, we're dead men's chests." Noah had no concept of puns or double entendres, because his boy mind was crammed full of pirates and lost treasures and pieces-of-eight.

Five foot one, ninety-two pound, Rhonda Wilkerson was pissed. She'd been pissed since her conception, since her mother's conception, since the Immaculate Conception, dreaming of marrying a giant, settling for the gnat killer: Kiefer Alan Wilkerson the Third. Everyone said he was an up-and-coming accountant. An up-and-coming A-Hole's more like it, when he gets it up! If he gets it up! But. Fuck it, I'm stuck with him, like a seamstress stuck with a needle up her cunt. Rhonda's five-year old son, Robbie, started to cross and uncross his legs. "Why can't these people put toilets on trains?" Rhonda spoke to the air, pronouncing the world people with two distinct syllables as if they were pee poles. "I swear, if Robbie pisses his pants one more time, I'll-"

The Right Reverend Billy B. Abel, a limp-wristed forty-seven-year-old high school drop-out and self-ordained born-again evangelistic preacher, jerked for a brief moment as Jason jabbed him with the syringe, which broke against Jason's hand before he plunged it into the Reverend's neck. Abel remained standing, hugging the pole as motionless as a zombie, eyes fixed straight ahead, unable to move.

Carlos, who just happened to glance up for a moment, thought he saw his former sex partner, Jason Brown, rise from his seat and stand behind the preacher man. Then he saw a glimmering object in his former sex-buddy's hand, "Jason? Is that you?" Carlos rose without disturbing Alejandro, who was deep in thought, already glorifying in his upcoming production of Corked and still planning the gayest party of the year.

The Metro door jerked open-shut-open-shut-open-shut three times as the crowd shifted ranks, allowing Jason to elbow his way through the mid-level government drones mingling by the door. If they stand any closer, they'd be fornicating, Jason thought as he wrinkled his nose and squeezed through the door as if he were Odysseus steering between Scylla and Charybdis.

"Jason. Jason. Remember me? Jason!" Carlos shouted.

Six-foot six, Kiefer Wilkerson, a slim-hipped anorexic blond who had the most gorgeous Frank Sinatra baby blue eyes, stared out the window, trying to avoid Rhonda's glare, unaware that the Right Reverend Billy B. Abel had just been stabbed with a broken and leaking syringe, as he focused his attention on the exotic young black man exiting the train. Kiefer ran his eyes up and down the man's body, lingering at his crotch, measuring its length with his eyes, wondering if the man had stuffed an entire box of Kleenex into his jockey shorts, wondering how anyone could be that big. Then, as the man's crotch disappeared below the windowsill, Kiefer glanced at the embossed name tag on the back of his shirt: ARGOS. Well, Jason, I'll ride your Argos any time, if you're man enough to take my Golden Fleece and steer us both away to a bold new world. Keifer glanced at his wife and two small sons and felt no regret. None!

Jason didn't turn around until he felt the heavy hand on his shoulder, then he swung his left hip forward, grabbed his knife from his side pocket and swerved it deep into Carlos's chest. Then, without breaking stride, Jason continued walking as Carlos fell to the terra cotta Metro floor, which nudged the knife deeper into his chest, as he screamed out in utter agony and pain.

The crowd now began to pour into the Metro, rushing as if to Paradise, before the damned doors slid shut-but, of course they did their normal open, close, open, close, open a half dozen times, catching several shoulder bags and ripping off a tennis shoe until the operator finally woke up, "There's another train directly behind us, please do not attempt to board this train. These doors are closing. These doors are closing! Stand back." The doors closed, opened halfway, and wheezed one last time before the Metro pulled out of the station. It was then that Alejandro realized Carlos was gone.

Rhoda saw the shopping bag a few moments before Noah, but the boy was faster. "Hey, did somebody leave this?" Noah held up Jason's shopping bag while commandeering the handicapped seat for him and his brother.

When no one responded, Rhonda sulked, looking longingly at the prime real estate the boys had usurped, knowing her sons, Owen and Robbie, coveted the window seat and she was powerless to get it for them.

"Be careful," Jus whispered as his brother glanced into the shopping bag. "It might be a bomb."

"Yeah, right," Noah dug deep into the bag, pulled out a copy of the Washington Express and crammed it into the seat. "That's what the big people do," he said as he pulled out the opened package of Cheetos, "we can't eat these; they're contaminated."

Jus wriggled closer to the shopping bag, shoving his hand all the way to the bottom, twisting around and around as if it was a grab bag, and pulled out a package of Slim Jims and a supersized Snickers bar and passed them off to Noah.

"Is that it?"

"Nope." Jus dug down to the bottom and pulled out a wrinkled piece of paper. "There's this." Jus grasped it firmly, shaking off the last of the Cheetos.

"What's that?"

"It's a map with X's on it. And look at all them lines."


Click on the picture for a larger view
(Noah's copy of the treasure map)

"Those lines," Noah corrected. "They look like trails on a-"

"Treasure map," both boys said together.

"Finder's keepers," Noah said as he cast a quick look around. Then he folded the map and stuck it inside his T-shirt for safekeeping.

Sissy Noland, recently transgendered at the Washington Hospital Center and just getting used to her over-sized boobs in her feminine body, stifled a scream as she watched The Right Reverend Billy B. Abel wobble against the pole-like a God damn whore in a strip club she thought, like a pole dancer, down to her G-string. Noland bit her lip as her past life as a female impersonate flashed before her.

The rest of the riders remained in limbo: neither acting nor reacting. They just behaved like typical Washingtonians: stoic, aloof, and filled with not much more than a daily dose of ennui because doing or being anything else was tantamount to political suicide.

With noses buried in paperbacks and newspapers, no one beside Sissy noticed the slumping man except Rhonda who now sat on the edge of her seat, peering at Abel as if he was the elephant man and she was Michael Jackson cancelling the purchase because of damaged goods.

The train was crowded and the late-morning rush hour passengers fought for enough space to stand without touching, of falling onto each other. Only the Right Reverend Billy B. Abel stood mute, his fingers twisted tightly around the center pole, unable to yell through his pain.

"Will someone call the paramedics? That man is sick." Sissy Noland said.

A hundred hands reached for cell phones.

"Should we get off now?" Jus asked his brother.

"Nah, the cops'll tell us what to do-just sit tight."

Kiefer Wilkerson didn't want to take the Metro that morning; he wanted to grab a cab to the airport, but Rhonda had insisted they take the boys on Metro's morning choo-choo. Now she was head-tossing Kiefer, giving him her post-menstrual look, accusing him of creating the chaos on the train. If you'd only listened to me, we'd be at the airport now.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Twelve blocks away, at the corner of Twelfth and Constitution, Adman Kurtz, Jason's second cousin twice removed on his grandmother's side, closed the shutters of his hotdog stand. He didn't care about the sodas in the coolers outside; if someone stole them, they stole them. He slipped into his coveralls, pushed the portable hotdog roaster to the back of the trailer to block the exit door, lifted the hatch at the bottom of his hotdog stand and slid off the top of the manhole. He thought, as he glanced at his watch and then climbed down the ladder into the sewer, in another few minutes the streets will be alive with police sirens.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

On the corner of Seventh and Constitution, Terrill Johnson, who along with Adman, was co-founder of the Faggot Ball Busters gang known as the FAGBUSTERS, closed the hatch of his Three T-Shirts for Ten Dollars booth and locked it from the inside. Then he climbed down his manhole, hurrying down the ladder, only a foot to go, only one more foot, he thought.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

On the other side of town, David Burns, a five-foot nine inch, thirty-three-year-old, sandy-haired Caucasian, who had the uncanny ability of being able to disappear in any crowd, was at his Tasty-Cream donuts stand at the Foggy Bottom Metro stop. At precisely 8:45, during the height of the morning breakfast run, he closed the chuck wagon hatch, pushed several dozen donut boxes to the rear and pried up the ersatz concrete slab from the sidewalk. He had spent the past three weeks breaking through the walkway before covering it with a prefab cover good enough to fool a thousand George Washington University students as they walked across it each night. David whistled a tune that had been rattling around in his head since that blond-headed, sweet-voiced, hot as hell Baptist lady purchased her daily honey-coated donuts: Give me that old-time religion, give me that old-time religion, it was good enough for me. If he'd been a dancing man, he would have done the quick step, but instead, like his co-conspirators, he descended into the murky maelstrom beneath D.C. Synchronize, he thought. Jason's victim should arrive on the 8:54. I've got less than ten minutes. Burns continued whistling, glad he had a contingency plan in case the ambulance didn't arrive in time to drown out the blast.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

No one at the Farragut West Metro station had seen the knife; they didn't realize Carlos was stabbed until after Jason Brown reached the top of the escalator, but as Jason reached the street, a woman, pushing a double stroller with one black and one white child, accidentally blocking his way and he spent an instant making faces at the babies while removing two smoke bombs from his shoulder bag and dropping them gently into the trash can. Then, he noticed the fine tight asses of two young white men as they wriggled in between the baby stroller and the curb. They're holding onto their books so hard I bet they're Mormons struggling with the Word of God. I bet they're afraid to come to my neighborhood, afraid they'll get their hot white asses fucked as soon as they crossed the Anacostia. Jason smile turned into a laugh as he thought about how he could have some fun with their tight firm virgin asses: Just before I blow them to hell, he thought-just before I watch pieces of them flying all over the God damn Metro.

Jason didn't want to call any more attention to himself, but a sudden surge of George Washington students, hospital workers, and office clerks enveloped him, and he became a twig in a rainstorm, forced back toward the crime scene.

Damn, I left the bag on the train! Jason willed his heart to slow down, breathing deeply and methodically, I don't have time to go back, besides, David's got plenty of maps. . . and what he doesn't know won't hurt me.

Jason hurled himself forward, elbowing a nun as he bumped an undergraduate's chest, pushing both forward. Then he ran.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The Metro doors refused to open when the train pulled into Foggy Bottom and the passengers chalked it up to Metro, what they didn't know was that the police were already on their way.

"We're approaching the crime scene now," Detective Erik Salmi, a thirty-one-year-old green-eyed Adonis and semi-pro soccer player, turned on his walky-talky. "Don't do anything 'til I get there."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Peggy McGruder, Metro's five-foot-six, tow-headed Chief of Medical Emergencies, had an early morning X-ray appointment at G. W. Hospital and spent a few moments touching base with her old friend, the one-eared Korean War veteran George Campbell, who recently had been promoted to Chief of Operations, just as the report came in that a crime scene train was heading her way. Damn, I hope George doesn't get wind of it, Peggy thought, knowing George never did what anyone expected. Peggy grabbed her medical kit and raced down the escalator. If I want to keep my job, I'll have to turn this into positive publicity! Almost immediately, Peggy spotted a cop racing two steps at a time down the escalator on the other end of the platform. That's Detective Salmi, if I let him have full credit, he'll give me all the publicity I need . . . and maybe a little roll in the hay when we're through. Peggy smiled, unsure of where to put her focus, as she glanced back and forth from Salmi to the incoming train.

Salmi and McGruder had worked together recently, when a team of thirty volunteer make-believe injury victims had participated in Metro's Annual Emergency Evacuation Drill. God bless National Homeland Security. Peggy pictured herself triaging Salmi, checking his vital signs, hot waxing his groan, happy trail and ass crack. Hair's fine, but if he was mine, I'd hot wax him down to the bone. McGruder suppressed a laugh just as Salmi slid his size twelve a foot in front of her, giving them both a moment to exchange nods before peering into the train windows, trying to locate the injured party.

As Salmi slide the door open with his emergency key, Reverend Abel, with his fingers still firmly grasping the pole, slid all the way to the floor and landed hard on his ass, heaped in a pile inches from Jus and Noah, just as Salmi and McGruder boarded the train.

"Stand back, everyone please stand back and stay where you are!" Salmi was still raw and failed to notice that nearly everyone was seated; he even failed to notice that Gloria Matthews, a nineteen-year-old, pregnant with triplets, was seated on the orange and yellow seat in the middle of the train. "You're all part of a crime scene and no one's leaving until I get statements from each of you who witnessed this event." Salmi's voice faded into nothingness as he flipped his notebook open and began taking names and addresses, still unaware of Abel's condition-almost not caring if the reverend was alive or dead.

Meanwhile, Peggy McGruder searching for Abel's pulse, barely missing the sharp edge of the exposed syringe, breathed more easily when she felt a steady heartbeat. This is too good to be true. Everything's going to be fine.

"I need statements from everyone who witnessed this event." Salmi felt like throwing up. He hated the masses; he even avoided the RFK locker room after playing soccer for D.C. United, preferring to drive home in nothing but his soggy shorts and jockstrap and then shower at home in privacy. "Please identify yourselves." Salmi was sweating now, unsure of what to do next, wishing he hadn't gone that extra round with his girlfriend. Sex dulls my senses, Salmi thought, Next Lent I'm giving it all up. He smirked.

Like Hermione Granger, the most eager witness nearly jumped out of her seat as she raised her hand. "My name's Rhonda Wilkerson. I saw everything. Everything!"

"Wilkerson. Got it. Your contact information? Cell?"

Rhonda gave the required information and started her diatribe, but Salmi cut her off. "Who else?" Salmi sensed Rhonda cared more about herself than the crime, "I need a complete list." Move on, next! He thought as his eyes railroaded down the car. That one's a redhead. I like that. I wonder if she shaves her pussy, cause if she doesn't . . .

Maeghan Gainey, a twenty-three-year-old wanna-be veterinarian and part-time teller at the Eastern Market branch of Bank America, raised her hand and Salmi took her information. "I'll get back to you," he said, handling the case as if he were a Wal-Mart greeter. Thank you for shopping Metro. Ya'll come again now, okay? "Who else witnessed the event?" Next! Ching. Ching.

Sissy Noland raised her hand and then quickly withdrew it, angry at herself for making the 911 call, knowing she hadn't seen anything except a man in trouble, wondering what she was getting into.

"Your name?"

"Noland, Cecilia Noland, but everyone calls me Sissy."

"Contact information?" After scribbling down another short paragraph filled with nearly illegible symbols and numbers, Salmi continued, "Who's next? Come on! Who's next-talk while you can still remember," Female K-Mart shoppers, meet me in the dressing room for a pantyhose inspection. Salmi tried to stay focused-but his dick just wouldn't behave! Bad dick, bad dick. Pay attention!

Kiefer sat on his hands. He knew he was no match for Rhonda; pitting himself against her eyewitness version would be tantamount to suicide. I didn't see anything. I didn't see anything. I didn't see anything. He chanted his mantra as if he had killed Santa Claus, oblivious to his youngest son's pee-stained pants and his hollow-eyed wife.

"Anyone else? Is there anyone else?" Salmi looked at the boys who sat by the door. "Did you boys see anything?"

Both boys nodded and gave their names.

"Anyone else? Is there anyone else?" after a very long pause, Salmi dismissed everyone except the two boy eyewitnesses.

Sterling Powell, the nineteen-year-old albino station attendant, who had been sitting on the john when the cops arrived and whose stomach generally traveled a foot ahead of the rest of his body, lumbered down the platform, aware that his buddies would deride him for leaving his post, but unable to linger any longer. There's something big going on down there and Brigitte will drive me crazy until she finds out all about it. Sterling had only been married to Bridgette a week-barley breaking the bitch in, as his buddies said, so he knew he'd have to give his wife extra TLC and feed her all the Metro gossip-especially after his despicable wedding night performance-after his prepuce refused to retract-after she had inadvertently sucked off the foot fungus growing on his right toe. I'll be available, Sterling thought, and if the cops need me, I'll do anything to cement my relationship with Bridgette-the cops had just better fill me in.

Detective Salmi nearly vomited as Sterling Powell entered, whose scent reminded Salmi of his first experience with that smell when he was an eighth-grade football star at Colonel Joseph Belt Junior High in Wheaton Maryland. It's smegma-it can't be anything else-but who? Salmi turned around, nearly overcome by the four-hundred-pound station attendant. "Take these boys to the upper mezzanine! They need some," Salmi choked trying not to breathe, "air," Salmi reached into his pocket and whipped out a twenty. "Use this to buy the kids something from the vending machines. They look hungry." Salmi looked carefully at Powell, aware that he was probably making a mistake entrusting so large a man with so much unearned income, but he didn't want to take any chances. Kids are generally the best observers; I'll hold these boys until I thoroughly exam the crime scene-by then I should have a handle on what happened and let the boys confirm or deny my conclusions about all these thoughts choking my brain. Kids always have sharp memories!

Just then Marcus Q. Villano, Junior, a dark-skinned Sicilian who reeked of pastrami and fried eggs, started sweeping the train for explosives, but the moment Villano rubbed against the reverend, the jagged end of the poisoned syringe scratched his right arm and Villano staggered to the floor.

Now the paramedics, who were just entering the station, had two causalities. The medics put on their rubber gloves, isolated the syringe, carried Villano and Abel to the ambulance, and drove both men around the corner to the emergency entrance of George Washington Hospital, which was seventeen feet away from David Burns' donut stand. The screeching of the ambulance, as it entered the emergency room's bay, drowned out the sound of the mini explosion that opened the final few feet of rock between David's tunnel and the Tiber River Canal beneath the city.

At the Farragut West Metro, a second paramedic crew helped Carlos onto a gurney and accompanied him in an ambulance as it sped down Seventeenth Street toward Constitution Avenue, just as Adman Kurtz blasted a small cap of dynamite to open the second part of Washington's underground canal system. Then the ambulance continued down Constitution and past Seventh Street, where it was temporarily tied up in a small traffic jam outside the Archives-giving Terrill Johnson enough time to set off the final blast.

Then, one by one, Adman, Terrill and David climbed back up their ladders, replaced the lids on their manholes and reopened their businesses as if they had done nothing more than taken a quick break.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Carlos was taken to the brand-new Homeland Security triage station at the pedestrian plaza between the National Gallery of Art and its East Wing. "I still say it's a strange place for a triage center," Esmeralda Lopez, the three-hundred twenty-pound undocumented paramedic, said, as she clutched a St. Christopher medal and prayed INS and Homeland would remain as alien as she was.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The Right Reverend Abel woke up in the hospital, certain he had seen the face of God. "Jesus told me to go to Africa to save the heathens in Rwanda."

"Calm down, sir. Do you know where you are?"

"I'm in heaven's anteroom, waiting for my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ."

"No, sir, you're in the emergency room at George Washington Hospital. You were attacked while riding the Metro. What do you remember?"

"I remember a blue-black man was standing in front of me. He had eyes of coal and hair of fleece, and the voice of the Lord came unto me saying: this man is a Mau Mau Hottentot, a colored man of the unredeemed race, unconsecrated and uncircumcised. You must minister unto him and bring him nigh unto me."

"Calm down, sir. Have you ever seen a Mau Mau . . . or a Hottentot?"

"No, but the Lord God Jehovah knows what Mau Mau Hottentots look like, and Jesus himself told me to minister to the African Hottentots in Rwanda, to minister to the man who stuck me with the jawbone of an ass."

"No one stuck you with a jawbone of an ass, sir. He used a syringe"

"The Lord God Jehovah never errs. The man was an African Hottentot from Rwanda, but God forgives him, and so do I. When you find him, bring him to me so I can baptize him in the name of the Lord."

"As you like sir, as you like."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

David Burns' blast didn't cut all the way through the sea wall. He had planned for such a contingency, however, and set a second charge while waiting for the brouhaha caused by the smoke bombs Jason had planted along Pennsylvania Avenue. The smoke bombs will divert everyone's attention. Washingtonians are such asses.

David turned on a fan and set off a secondary smoke bomb by remote control. One below and two above should work. Newspapers fly through the tunnel all the time and trains spark. It happens all the time. Fires, smoke, the managers are used to it but everyone else will clear out and give me plenty of time to detonate the next charge.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Terrill Johnson completed his task and opened his yahoo account, hunting and pecking the familiar address: Theonlygoodbug@yahoo.com In the subject line he typed MI for Mission Impossible, his favorite movie of all time, and in the message line he wrote, "7C sec." He pressed the send button before opening a six pack of Snickers, The Only Good Bug's a Dead' Bug's energy food, he thought, as he dug into the first bar, barely ripping the wrapper back far enough to bite off half, and chewing part of the bottom half of the S along with the candy bar. However, Terrill remembered to bite on the left side of his mouth, trying to avoid the impacted wisdom tooth in his bottom right, afraid of the dentist and of pain.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Adman read Terrill's message, 7Csec, pissed that it had taken so long to secure the Seventh and C Street site. I ought to whip his ass, he thought, as he reopened his hot dog stand, ready to gouge the tourists for the rest of the afternoon, joyful that soon they and the city government would be closed and the nation would cringe in terror.

Carlos Alvarez woke up screaming, "We're all going to die!"

Nurse Jennings, a twenty-two-year-old blonde, blue-eyed, pocked-marked virgin with pointy breasts, rubbed Carlos's hand. "You'll be fine, Mr. Alvarez." Her nubby fingers grated against Carlos's skin as if she were eczema.

Carlos pulled his hands away, wiping them on the bed sheet, pretending he needed to readjust the top sheet, looking out the window, thinking of Alejandro. At least the sheet's not over my head.

What would Nana do? How would she handle this? Nurse Jennings, who was still learning the ropes on what to write and what not to write on hospital charts, lifted her pen and used the Palmer Method her grandmother had taught her. "This patient will recover quickly," she wrote, "the feisty ones generally do." As she left the ward, she thought, if they fire me, they fire me, but I'm not going home. Nana expects more. Nurse Jennings stooped down and pulled up her stockings, literally fulfilling her grandmother's charge to pull herself up by her bootstraps. Then she rose like a ramrod, whistling as she scurried down the empty hallway, wondering why she heard so much thunder on a cloudless day, wondering why the hallway seemed to shake.

What the doctors couldn't figure out was why Marc Villano, a homeland security dog trainer, who was infected by the same poison in the syringe that had paralyzed Reverend Abel, wasn't affected. "He passed out, but the toxicology results are all negative. Why?"

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

At the Foggy Bottom station, David Burns realized he'd struck pay dirt when he heard the gurgling sound of running water. He turned off the exhaust fan, put on a D.C. fireman's badge and sauntered through an older wider tunnel to get to the passageway leading to the trains. Then he picked up a fire extinguisher from the storage bin next to the emergency exit and rode the escalator up to the kiosk level.

"Everything's AOK," David said, "There was a fire on the tracks, but I put it out."

"How'd you get here so fast?" Sterling Powell asked as he schlepped down the platform. "I just called it in a moment ago."

"I was about to board a train, saw the smoke, radioed ahead, grabbed an extinguisher and put it out," David did a John Wayne oh shucks shit kick with his left shoe wishing he had cowboy boots to augment his virility, and then hung his head down in quasi-humility as he pressed the button on his ersatz radio, playing back a pre-recorded message, "Unit 409 report to the station immediately."

"I've got to get back to the station," David said as he shook hands with Powell in his forgettable way avoiding chit-chat conversation and looking anyone directly into their eyes. Then he walked away. Twenty minutes later, when questioned by the authorities, Powell couldn't even remember what Burns looked like.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Rhonda Wilkerson's version of Abel's stabbing was as convoluted as Medea's chariot ride to the gods, but instead of being rescued deus ex machina, Rhonda would have preferred to have taken the 10:45 airbus to Cleveland.

As a yellow stream of urine gushed down Owen's leg and Rhonda nearly slipped in his urine, she dug into her purse, looking for her last dose of Depakote. When she couldn't find it, she began cussing so loudly that two Metro security guards approached her.

Kiefer stared at his watch, wishing he could make the minute hand reverse, knowing it was too late to make the plane, wondering how Rhonda would be without him or the kids if he just hopped on his own private Midnight Train to Georgia and left in the middle of the night.

"God damned mother fucker!" Rhonda screamed, as she rose and jabbed Kiefer in his chest with her fingers, extending her fingernails deep into him as if she were the jaguar and he the prey. "Why in the hell didn't you hail a cab when I told you?"

Kiefer understood Rhonda and was aware that she knew it was she who'd refused a cab when they left the hotel, that it was she who wanted the boys to ride the choo choo, but he also knew better than to react when Rhonda went into one of her manic moods. She's off her meds; I just hope the stress of the cops doesn't push her beyond her limits-Saint Elizabeth's Mental Hospital is nearly empty-other than Johnny Junior Hinckley.

"I asked you a God damned question," Rhonda screamed in Sissy Noland's ear. "Why the hell aren't you listening to me-e-e-e?"

Kiefer blushed, praying for a fiery red chariot to rescue him, humming, Elijah rock, rock, rock, Elijah rock, coming up Lord, a song he learned in Mama Holcomb's senior chorus at Wheaton High when he was sixteen-the night before he first had sex . . . with a girl.

Marine Corps Private First-Class Nicholas Welkin and his high school buddy, Lance Corporal Coby Zebulon Nutter, III, had been "volunteered" to help with D.C.'s perennial security nightmare and Nicholas snickered the moment he saw the cowering red-faced Kiefer Wilkerson being browbeaten by his wife. "She should be a Marine," Welkin whispered to Nutter, "he's got balls enough."

Rhonda Wilkerson, midway between her manic high and her delusions of grandeur, screamed at Kiefer and everyone in between, "I told you to take the God damned cab, but did you listen? You ball-less wonder, why don't you ever listen-n-n?" Rhonda's final 'n' sound narrowed to a lispy sibilant and later several Metro riders swore she, like Harry Potter, actually spoke in Parcel tongue.

Kiefer backed away, hiding behind the bluish glass panel at the rear of the train, out of sight and temporarily out of Rhonda's mind as she flung her hatred and words at the other witnesses. One by one the entire population of the train backed away-all that is except one elderly hard-of-hearing woman, Adrianna Brezda, a Wal-Mart retiree, who was absorbed in her third reading of Scot Walker's short story, Aardvark and Zebra, but each read brought her no closer to its understanding-the middle part is what muddled her-it was always the middle part-in sex she had no idea of the middle part at all-of what on earth cunnilingus was or meant or how it had anything to do with her body, and then there were all those middle parts in Latin class where she could always remember I love and he loves but was clueless to how you love-which probably explains how she remained celebrant all his life.

Rhonda, who was only taking half her Depakote, whacked Scot Walker's story out of Adrianna's hands and began screaming in her good ear, "I told you to hail the fucking cab. You God damned IDIOT!"

The screamed-in-the-ear woman faced off, which was the worst mistake Rhonda could have made. "Listen, lady. I don't know who the hell you are, but my husband's a cop and if you don't back off, I'm going to have you arrested."

"Go ahead. See if that scares me. I told you to hail a cab, you stupid fuck."

Welkin and Nutter hadn't been stationed long enough in Washington to know when to fade into the woodwork like typical Washingtonians, instead, they deployed as if they were Ramboesque commandos, like they had done a week earlier when they broke up a street fight opposite the Marine Corps Barracks. Welkin approached slowly, while Nutter waited for Rhonda to turn around and the moment she did, he grabbed her from behind, held her firmly by the neck and nearly knocked the wind out of her, holding her hard enough to let her know she was being controlled, pulling her back into him, into his firm hard masculinity.

"It would be a good idea if you'd back off, miss. Perhaps you've just had a bad day."

"Marie Antoinette had a bad day." Rhonda glowered at Adrianna in gasps of brilliance as she recovered until she felt a sudden surge as Nutter's manhood grew in proportion to her sweating and screaming-digging deeper and firmer into her pants. Rhonda tried to twist her body forward but only managed to drive her ass more deeply into Nutter. "I missed my plane-and it's all because of him," Rhonda screamed, more in passion than in pain.

"Him?" Welkin asked.

"Yes, him! My spineless husband-him."

Both Nutter and Welkin had worked with the homeless and they sensed the same hopelessness in Rhonda-the same sense of worthlessness and despair.

"Obviously, you're mistaken. This is not your husband. He's-" Nutter looked around for Kiefer and cleared his throat, hoping he wouldn't have to tackle a second person in as many minutes. But Kiefer, who was no stranger to his wife's outbursts, slid from behind the partition, praying for a way to escape without further marring his sons.

"I'm here, sweetheart, everything's fine." Kiefer walked toward Rhonda but stopped a body length in front of the marines, liking a good thing when he saw it.

"It's all my fault; my wife's on medication and we're on our way to the doctor. She'll be fine."

"What the fuck are you talking about? I'm as right as rain. Why don't you listen to meeeeee?" Rhonda wasn't exactly screaming-not as loudly anyway-but no one dared get closer, indeed, several of the witnesses were looking for ways to escape.

"Well, it might be your husband's fault," Welkin said, "but that doesn't give you liberty to harass anyone. Keep it in the family, okay?"

"Who in the hell are you talking to?" Rhoda screamed.

Rhoda saw three District policemen heading toward her and tried to wriggle away from the Marines, but Nutter pulled Rhonda's hands behind her back and held her firmly as she kicked him in the legs. "Don't touch me. You have no right to touch me."

Nutter held his ground until Rhonda raised her left heeled foot high enough to kick him in his groin. "I said get off me!"

Nutter dropped Rhonda's arms and grabbed his nuts, cringing in pain as the three District cops and Nicholas Welkin subdued Rhoda.

Owen, age seven, and Robbie, age three, began crying hysterically as Kiefer sheltered them in his arms.

The first cop forced Rhonda's arms behind her back as the other tried to cuff her, but she continued kicking, using her experience as a part-time Tae Kwan Do instructor and former kindergarten teacher to her full advantage.

Finally, the third cop regained control, and, as the men grabbed, shoved, pushed and struggled with the kicking screaming clawing lady, they fell en masse through the Metro door onto the red-tiled platform in front of a hundred cheering spectators.

"This is better than the mud wrestling in McPhearson Square," Pam White said to her husband as she slid her right hand deep down into his left pocket and squeezed.

Welkin sat on Rhonda as the three cops struggled to cuff her and although two of the cops were bleeding, Rhonda only suffered minor abrasions, so Welkin squeezed her tits to get even for his buddy's pain. Tit for tat, he laughed to himself as Rhonda groaned and Pam White squeezed her hand a little tighter around her husband's engorged tool.

One newly born tear slid down Kiefer's left cheek as he watched his wife being carried away and his children crying hysterically. What am I supposed to do? Kiefer thought. She's the only woman I've ever loved. She's the only woman I've ever been with, other than that quick role in the hay with Betty Jo Ferrance in the boys' locker room at Wheaton High when waited there after our track meet with High Point Senior. "Where are you taking her," Kiefer asked, in a voice that was slightly less timid than his youngest son's.

"Saint Elizabeth's Mental Hospital. Call this number when you've found someone to watch your boys. St. E's is not a pleasant place for children." Or adults, for that matter, the officer thought as he handed Kiefer his card.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The entire Georgetown fire brigade arrived at the Foggy Bottom Metro Station moments after David Burns left, spreading out their ranks, tying off their hoses, rushing into the Metro as if the city was under siege.

"Hey," Sterling Powell, the station attendant, shouted, "Wrap it up. 409 put the danged thing out ten minutes ago."

"409?"

"Yeah, a guy from 409 was riding Metro. He saw the smoke, grabbed an extinguisher and put it out." Powell breathed heavily. That much exertion was too much for him and for his stomach. No use pushing myself, he thought, I should save something for the little woman.

"What the hell have you been smoking? We don't have a Company 409: there're only seventeen stations in town."

"Well, he sure as hell took care of the fire," Powell said.

"Really?"

"Yup, the 409."

"Formula 409. The cleaning formula!"

"Who's the fastest clean-up man in town?"

"Floyd Johnson."

"He's at Fifteen, isn't he?"

"That's the next one scheduled for shut down."

"That must be it. Floyd's doing everything he can to keep his unit up and running."

"Good old Fifteen."

"You mean Good old Formula 409!"

"Right," Powell laughed moderately, but the slight of his rocking belly was enough to sicken the firefighters who rolled up their hoses and headed out of the system. "Wait until the captain hears about this. He's gonna pop his cork."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Salmi interviewed the last adult, Alejandro Rodriguez, quickly, worrying that his 'ace-in-the-hole' boy eye-witnesses were getting anxious . . . hoping his twenty big ones would hold out just a tad longer.

Salmi focused as best he could on Alejandro's left eye. It's the one that tells the truth. Wandering to the right: he's thinking up a palpable lie. Looking straight ahead: he's telling the truth. Roving left . . . he's remembering. "I understand you got a good look at the suspect. Can you describe him?"

Alejandro took a deep breath. He wanted to be honest. He wanted to lie. He wanted to go home, drop his pants and play in the gay.com chat room; he wanted to be with Carlos, fondling him, kissing him, holding him. Jason's smooth body flashed through Alejandro's mind, remembering the time he caught Jason with Carlos, naked in bed together. Smooth as a baby's butt, even his pengo was smooth. I wonder if he does it himself or if he has his own personal sereligio where they use straight edged razors on each other. Alejandro tried to relax from the neck up, a trick he learned when lying to his grandfather in Bariloche whenever he was caught with his pants down, quickly turning his neck back and forth at a forty-degree angle, listening to the popping sound, wondering if it was distracting Salmi, hoping it was, caring . . . not caring. "I'm not one hundred per cent sure, but the man reminded me a little of a close friend, but I only got a glimpse-a very quick glance." Alejandro blundered, revolving his neck in the opposite direction, eyes wandering right, wondering how much to tell, how much to keep secret. "But to tell you the truth," in his mind, Alejandro crossed himself and said a quick mea culpa, "I didn't get a long hard look at his head." Alejandro blushed, stumbling, eyes flickering up right, up right, up right, as he inadvertently accented the word 'head' too quickly before dropping his eyes to Salmi's crotch, picturing that head, turning three shades of pink, sensing the detective understood his double entendre, yet wondering why, when he looked up, Salmi stood stoically, resolute, aloof. Alejandro continued, "I haven't seen my friend in ages. I can't be sure. I just can't be sure." Eyes right. Eyes right. Eyes right. Up and hard.

Detective Salmi was tired of the adult liars and shit-kickers, They each have their own agenda. I should have started with the boys. Kids are barometers. They see people for who and what they are.

"Thank you. You have my card and I have your contact information. I'll get back to you. Have a nice day." Salmi felt as if he was that ubiquitous Metro voice that urged riders to step to the center of the train. He shook Alejandro's hand, did a quick one-eighty, and fled the scene, wishing he could be hiding out in a white Bronco, hurling South of the border, down Mexico way, as a swarm of Paparazzi dangled their canons out their car windows feverishly shooting photos and a newly painted FOX helicopter filmed him streaking to safety across the boarder-into a better, safer land.

Salmi smelled the lingering trail of cheap Moroccan cigarettes, Seven Up, and smegma as he rode the escalator to the upper mezzanine. Metro needs to stop hiring so many Larson School for the Gifted graduates. Salmi felt like pushing the 'pull' handle on the metro control room door and ripping off Powell's shirt, aching to discover if the attendant had the ubiquitous Gary Larson target birthmark on his chest-or if he had just lived in Washington so long that he acquired stupidity as a rite of passage. Dumb and dumber, he thought. Powell should run for Congress-as a member of the Mad Hatter party!

Noah and Jus were alone, self-absorbed, playing a video game called Cream Me, Mister Cowman, which involved manipulating an incessant stream of farmers running from Guernseys to Holsteins to Jerseys to Brown Swiss cows, the last of which gave chocolate milk. Salmi grimaced, wondering how long it would take for the video industry to mummify America's remaining brain cells. Five years? One? Then trying not to inhale, Salmi followed Sterling Powell's musky scent across the room: Snickers wrappers, Little Debbie's, Twinkies . . . and smegma. I'm honing in.

"Hey boys, what's up?" Salmi stooped down to the boys' level where the air was fresher.

Noah didn't take his eyes off the video screen as he dug into his pants pocket and pulled out the map. "We found this in the seat where the bad guy was."

Salmi glanced at the map long enough to notice that it was covered with childish doodles before idly stuffing it in his pocket. Boys, he thought, "Can you describe what you saw?"

"Sure. The guy musta been eating a bunch of Slim Jims and Cheetos, but I think he liked Cheetos better 'cause he didn't leave many left." Jus shook Jason's shopping bag and a pack of Slim Jims fell to the floor-

"You accidentally took our treasure map," Jus added, pointing to Salmi's pocket. "Finders Keepers. Right? You can have the Slim Jims."

"A treasure map? I don't think you'll find much hidden treasure in D.C." Salmi thought of treasure: big breasted bimbos lying beside the pool, one kissing him, the other working on his cock. He hardened, trying not to alarm the boys.

"I said you can have the Slim Jims, okay?"

I have to stay focused, get this finished, get back to the Internet, Salmi thought, "Did the station attendant call your dads?"

"Dad. Me and him is brothers."

"Are brothers," Noah said.

"Are brothers, but he didn't call no body."

"Anybody."

"We don't want our Dad getting upset. You have no idea what he's like when he gets mad."

"It might be best if I went home with you. I can tell your Dad-"

"No way. If our Dad saw a cop at the door, he'd kill us."

"For sure," they both said together.

Salmi detected a 'fer shure' inflection from the boys; something in their demeanor seemed more West than East Coast. Maybe the Pacific moved closer to the Atlantic. Maybe women's breasts are bigger. Oceans. Breasts. Oceans. Breasts. Slalmi's mind flicked back and forth like a big round beach ball at a bare-breasted women's volleyball match. What the hell . . . breasts. He didn't care which fact was politically correct anymore, only that he could remain calm in a crisis and still keep a clear vision of half-naked women at the forefront of his mind

Detective Salmi led the boys to the service area, which was excluded from the general public, along with the weight room, hot tub, sauna, TV lounge, mini-bar, and office. Metro does have its perks, Salmi thought as he tugged each boy by the hand, "We can make a copy of your treasure map and, if you're lucky, you'll have plenty of time to look for gold this afternoon."

"Treasure, not gold," Jus corrected.

"Does that machine make color pictures, mister? Our map's in color." Jus negotiated everything-it was a trick he'd learned from his father, a government analyst who negotiated for the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland.

"No, but I can mark it for you." Salmi took out a multi-ink pen, pressed the red button and drew a sloppy red line on the copy of the map.

"No, the line's up here, "Noah said. "You should give us the original and keep the copy."

Salmi didn't flinch; he had grown up the oldest of four.

(Noah's copy of the treasure map)

Click on the picture for a larger view

"It looks like it starts here at GW and goes down Constitution Avenue," Salmi said, "but the line veers down Fourth Street, past the Botanic Gardens toward the House Office Building, but why?"

"Cause it's a treasure map and treasure maps don't gotta make sense-"

"They just gotta show where the treasure is," Jus interrupted.

Noah took the pen from Detective Salmi and marked the lines exactly as they appeared on the original, tracing them with Rembrandt like finesse. He copied each symbol, each word and the series of numbers in the corner: 3-4 04 20 15.

"That's the safe's combination," Jus said.

"Don't be silly, treasure chests don't have combinations-they got big locks with big keys. But we don't gotta worry about finding the key, we can just break it open; it's probably a bazillion years old." Noah shoved his tongue in his cheek, puffing it in and out like a blowfish until Jus doubled over in laughter. Salmi didn't smile but he wanted to. When he finished, Noah held out the multi-colored pen for Detective Salmi. "This is the neatest pen I ever seen. It's got four colors in it: red, blue, green and black. Did you know that?"

"No way." Salmi thought back to the time he'd coveted a scale model of 'Old Ironsides' and his dad had never taken the hint. "That's not government issue. Homeland wants me to keep my records in black ink. I'll never be able to use this pen . . . but if you took it off my hands, they'd have to buy me a new one. Can you help me? Can you take this pen for me?"

Neither Jus nor Noah breathed, afraid the slightest respiration would reveal their innermost desire.

Noah took the proffered pen and stuck it in his pocket, aching to bring a new prize to Show and Tell. "Are you sure?" He asked, "This looks pretty 'spensive to me."

Salmi smiled and rubbed each boy's head, "You're good boys and good boys deserve to be rewarded. Now, let's make sure the maps look exactly alike. What do you think?" Salmi held up both maps to the neon desk lamp, superimposing the copy onto the original, as Jus and Noah nodded their approval. "Maybe we should go treasure hunting together. Would that be okay?"

"Do we got to split the treasure?" Jus asked.

"No, I'll make sure you get to keep it all."

"Without any income tax?" Noah asked.

Salmi smiled. "Just count on me for moral support," he said, "and remember I'm not a tax expert."

Noah and Jus had no idea what moral support meant but they were anxious to solve the mystery of the map and Jus was tugging on his brother's sleeve. "We gotta go now," Noah said. "It's almost lunch time and we're never late for meals."

"No problem, I've got your contact information, and I'll stop by next week to see if you remember anything else about this case."

"Call first, okay? Don't drop by-Daddy will have a heart attack if cops show up at our front door."

"And when you call, say you're Mr. Salmi, not Detective Salmi," Noah added.

"Of course," Salmi answered, wondering why the boys were so afraid of the law, "But here's my card just in case you think of anything else . . . and let me know when you find the treasure, okay? I'd like to help you celebrate-or maybe I could blow the lock off with my revolver."

"Sure, as long as we don't gotta split nothing. That's the deal, right?" Noah cocked his head to the side waiting for Salmi's nod in approval before he led his brother to the lower mezzanine, tacitly wishing he'd remembered to take the Slim Jims and remaining Cheetos.

"I gotta show the map to Daddy. There's something strange about that red line."

"And the X's. There's a bunch of X's," Jus whispered, "They gotta mean something."

"The X's show where the treasure is-but I bet most of them are false clues-we just have to figure out which X is where the treasure's at.

"And how deep to dig."

"Hey, mister," Noah shouted to Sterling Powell as he fumbled with the fare card machine, what happened to your ear?"

"I lost it in a poker game."

"Huh?"

"Gambling's a dangerous game, boys. Let this be your lesson." Sterling gave the boys two fare cards with enough value to get them home. Then he walked them to the edge of the platform. "Be good, boys, and don't take no wooden nickels."

"What does he mean about wood nickels," Jus whispered to his brother.

"I think he wants us to repay him for the Fare Cards, but I ain't got no wooden nickels."

"He's silly," Jus said, and the boys giggled as they boarded the train.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Herb Jenkins, the owner of We Grown On You fertilizer company in Riverdale, Maryland, hailed a cab on Washington Circle. "Fourteenth and Columbia and make it snappy," he said as he envisioned the five million dollar check he'd receive when he sold half his business to David Burns. I doubt the son of a bitch will buy into the company, but if he does, I'll move to the Islands. If he doesn't, I'll write off the God damn cab fare from my income tax. Herb laughed.

The cab raced around Washington Circle twice as the driver struggled to find his bearings, barely missing a woman being tugged by an overfed Dalmatian. The cabbie then shot South on Twenty-third and made a quick turn onto H, swerving to the left to avoid a double-parked UPS truck, before veering to the right to avoid two G. W. co-eds riding a bicycle built for two. Herb was tossed from side to side, vowing he'd inflate the price of the cab ride on his IRS receipt and deny the driver a tip. "I said step on it, not kill me."

The Ethiopian cabby, Raz Selassi, who was a distant cousin of the great emperor Hailie, feigned ignorance, mumbling sotto voice, "God damned Americans say hurry. If hurry, go crazy. Go crazy, no tip. No tip, die like Ethiopian cousins in famine." Raz's voice faded off into Amharic, praying softly for the answers to life.

Herb stood firm by his decision. There would be no tip for this cabbie. Screw the IRS, he thought.

Raz banged his foot down on the accelerator and rounded the corner, heading North on Twenty-first hoping to get to the light on Pennsylvania before it exploded red and fiery like a mooning Santa Claus. The light blew away its yellow and Raz bled his cab into the red just as an ambulance, unaware that Carlos Alvarez had already been picked up and was comfortably bedded at GW Hospital, rushed toward Foggy Bottom and broadsided the cab. Herb Jenkins banged his head against the mandated double-thick bullet proof glass that separated him from the front of the cab, but Raz's airbag worked perfectly and he walked away without a scratch a few moments before the paramedics in the ambulance raced to see how badly Herb was injured.

"Take him to GW, stat. He has a concussion; he's bleeding profusely."

Andrew Daughtry, the driver of the ambulance, thought, Why can't we just push the mother fucker across the street? It's less than twenty feet-we could slide him across the pavement, for God's sakes. Fucking regulations . . . and the District wonders why they'll never get full representation.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Danh Nguyen awoke with a song on his lips. He'd just passed his lieutenant's exam, and he fingered the stripes on his police uniform sensuously, as if he was in the final ecstasy of his first adolescent masturbation. The forty-seven dollars a week pay increase would be frittered away between taxes and extra evenings out with his boyfriend, Michael Parker, but he'd never forget the hugs his dad gave him-hugs that to a Vietnamese were tantamount to whipping Ho Chin Minh's bare ass until it glowed. Danh sang aloud, reveling in his new role as a mover and shaker on the Washington D.C. Police Force knowing this was going to be a perfect day. Then he dressed slowly, meticulously, kissing his half-awake lover on the forehead as he slipped out the door. No need to wake him up-we've got a lot of celebrating to do tonight. Danh stepped out of his condo at 1717 Q and looked for his 1989 Ford Escort. For a long moment he listened to the sound of his heart pounding, certain his car had been stolen for the third time in as many years. Then he remembered the brand-new squad car he'd been given the day before, the one he'd parked at government expense on the corner of 18th and Q. Danh strutted down Q, fully aware that his trousers were too tight for his twenty-eight-inch waist and that every gay neighbor on the block could focus his binoculars directly on his ass. Danh bent over to tie his shoe. Get a good look, boys. It might give you something to talk about at Show and Tell.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Twenty-five-year-old twins, Barby Lou and Bobby Lee Jenkins had just finished making love for the second time that afternoon as Barby Lou lit a joint and laughed.

"What's so funny, big brother?

"I was just thinking what it would be like if anyone ever found out."

"And?"

Bobby laughed loudly, "'Cause if they did, I'd tell them we were alcoholics."

"That's not funny."

"And that we'd been molested as children."

"Not that."

"By a priest."

Barby laughed as she covered her naked brother with her kisses from his head to his toes.

"We could blame Father Ignatius."

"Father Ignatius's been dead ten years. Besides he never touched us."

"I know." Bobby kissed his sister from her toes up to her furry golden crotch. "Gobble, gobble." He laughed just as the doorbell rang. "Damn, this will have to wait."

Barby slipped out of bed and threw on her robe, which fluttered gently as she hurried to the door, wishing she could marry the man she loved, wishing her heterosexual right to marry one man would not be overturned by the God damned fucking Moral Majority.

"Are you Barby Lee Jenkins?" The cop asked as Barby opened the door. "I need you to come downtown. There's been a-"

Barby fainted, sensing someone had reported her sibling love, just as Bobby, wearing nothing but his Valentine's Day boxer shorts hurried into the foyer.

"And are you Robert Jenkins?" The cop was on his knees, checking Barb's vital signs, one hand on her breast, the other on his communicator ready to call back up if necessary.

"Yes, I'm Robert Jenkins. Does this mean you found out about us?"

"Is your father Herbert Donald Jenkins, the owner of We Grow on You fertilizer?

Robert nodded.

"I'm afraid he's been involved in a serious accident. You'll need to contact the George Washington Hospital Center right away. He's in critical condition."

As the officer left, Robert cradled his sister in his arms, "This may be the break we've been waiting for. We may be able to marry after all."


On to Chapter Two
May 30th
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