LITMIR.BIZ

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on fight or flight fuel for six weeks, and my dukkha was not finished with me yet. Four nights ago, I was preparing for bed when the sound of the doorbell ignited my fight or flight. Any other time, I would have answered the door with gun in hand, but my service weapon was lying in the bottom drawer of an old dresser, and I wasn’t about to get it—ever. Since my survival skills were still mostly intact, I peeked through a side window before opening the door.

      It was Mark, standing on my porch with his overcoat collar up against the steady rain, his face glaring at me. My friend and boss has an incredible pair of thick eyebrows that crowd together just above his nose when he is angry, which isn’t often. That’s where they were that night, though his face looked more disappointed and hurt. This was not good.

      I thought about not opening the door and pretending that I wasn’t home. The old hide-under-the-blanket-from-the-monster sounded like an excellent plan.

      “Mark, come on in,” I said, opening the door. He brushed by me without speaking, without looking at me. I shivered, but not from the cold air rushing in. He knows, I thought. God help me, he knows. But he didn’t know all of it.

      I closed the door, but not before I had a fleeting thought of charging out into the night and running as fast as I could down the dark street, and off the edge of the earth.

      When I turned, Mark was standing with his back to me, his head moving from one side of the room to the other, as if it were his first time in my home, not the two hundredth, or so.

      “Mark?” I whispered, not wanting him to respond, not wanting him to turn around to show me his disappointed face.

      His shoulders seemed to sag in his long, gray overcoat as if carrying them hunched too long. He slipped out of it and draped it over his arm. He still hadn’t turned to face me when I heard him inhale deeply and exhale a long, pained breath.

      “Damn you, Sam.”

      I stared at the back of his graying head and thought again about bolting out the door.

      He turned around. The lines in his fifty-six-year-old face seemed deeper than when I saw him four days ago, his eyes glistening. “Damn you, Sam,” he said, just louder than a whisper. My heart was beating so hard it hurt. “I figured it out.” He honed in on me, his eyes accusing, tearing. “I got eighteen months to retirement and you do this.”

      His next whispered words stabbed into my chest. “I know, Sam… I know you were involved in those deaths.”

      I stepped back reflexively, as if to avoid his punch, though his arms were hanging limply along his sides as if too weak to rise. His eyes were at once, sad, disappointed, and angry. I lowered myself onto my sofa and looked up at him.

      “It took me a while to see it, to figure it out,” he said. “I don’t have any proof right now but…” He waved the air with his hand as if trying to wipe away his disgust. He plopped down on the other end of the sofa, his overcoat in his lap, and looked at the far wall. He turned and looked at me, shaking his head. “What’s going on with you, Sam? What’s—” He slammed his fist on the sofa arm, which made me jump. “Goddamn-it!”

      I was half expecting for the last several weeks for someone from the PD to confront me, but I wasn’t expecting it to be my best friend and boss. I raised my hands to indicate I didn’t know what to say.

      “Tell me,” he said softly.

      I remember shaking my head and taking a deep breath before I spoke. “Mark… I’m asking you as a friend to trust me on this. I… I didn’t have a choice in what I did and what I didn’t do. I wasn’t trying to hide it from you. Okay, maybe I was a little. Mostly I wanted to protect you and protect my family. I wouldn’t do anything to harm you, your career, and especially our friendship. You’re my best friend, my boss. Sometimes you’ve been like a father to me. I know asking you to trust me on this is huge, but that’s what I’m doing. I’m going to Vietnam in three days and try to sort out my life. I just need some time. A couple weeks.”

      For a long moment Mark didn’t say anything. He wouldn’t even look at me. Finally, he stood and picked up his overcoat. “You’re lucky you planned the trip,” he said. “And you’re lucky that I’m the only one who figured it out.” He slipped on his overcoat and said, “I need time to think too. We’ll talk when you get back. We clear?”

       *

      The airplane bumps hard, bringing forth a chorus of grunts and gasps from passengers in front and behind me, and forcing me to twist toward the boy.

      “Whoa!” Bobby says. “Good one.”

      “You do know this isn’t a rollercoaster, right? You do know that there is nothing but five miles of sky between us and a school of man-crushing squid.”

      “Oh, right,” he says, his eyes widening. “Forgot.” He looks around the cabin. “You think we’re okay?”

      I shrug.

      He scrunches his face. “You’re supposed to comfort me. I’m just a kid.”

      “Oh. Okay, we’re fine then.”

      “You really believe that?”

      I shrug.

      The plane lurches again. I hear the crash of what sounds like dishes from the galley and gasps throughout the cabin. A few feet down the aisle, an overhead storage door pops open, sending a blue backpack to the floor, drawing another gasp from passengers.

      Bobby white knuckles the arms of his seat, looking at me.

      “Air turbulence, Son,” I say, seeing that the bumps are truly frightening him. “That’s all. Lots of goofy air currents and such over the sea.”

      “Nothing like this the last two times I flew over,” he says, his eyes impossibly large.

      I wave my hand to affect nonchalance. “Air patterns change all the time, every day.”

      “Okay,” he says, gulping audibly.

      My convincing tone seems to calm the lad. Thing is, I haven’t a clue about air currents. One trip to Hawaii was my only time over the ocean.

      A sudden cant of the plane to the left sends the empty cups sliding off our trays and down onto the floor. The aircraft levels for a moment before jerking hard to the right. A female voice from somewhere behind us shouts something in what sounds like Vietnamese.

      Okay, now I’m getting spooked. Fortunately, Bobby has his eyes squeezed closed so he doesn’t see the color leave my face.

      I slowly inhale to a count of four, hold it for four, and release it for a count of four. A tad calmer now, I ask, “What did that woman cry out, do you know?” I’m still assuming that Bobby is Vietnamese.

      He opens his eyes, nods. “She said, “‘Jesus Christ.’ Then ‘Buddha, please save us.’”

      “Covering all the bases, huh.”

      “What do you mean, Sam?”

      “Nothing. How you feeling?”

      “I’m okay, I guess.” His entire body is shaking likes he’s got palsy. “You think there will be any more of those things?”

      “Maybe,” I answer, like it’s no big deal. “Just air currents. They’re unpredictable and invisible.” A tear is about to erupt from the boy’s right eye. “Tell me more about your training, Bobby. You like forms?”

      He looks away from me and wipes his eyes. When he looks back, I pretend not to notice that they’re wet. “I love them,” he says, the quiver in his voice less apparent. “I know two extreme forms. I’ve entered them in tournaments.”

      “Great. Were you nervous? Any kind of competition is a good way to face your fear and to learn something about yourself.”

      “Ooooh yeah. Seriously nervous.”

      “And

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