I

“I almost burned the whole house down, Bass,” his father tells him, “I swear I only left the kitchen for a moment, but when I came back, the chicken was on fire, and I had to waste an entire bag of baking soda putting it out, or was it baking flour? Anyway, I ordered Chinese instead.”

“Who is this?” Bass asks his father as he points at the woman at the other side of the heavy redwood table.

“It’s no one, no one at all, you should barely notice her. I’ve been so busy since that article took off, so I put an ad in the paper. It would be great to have someone answer all my calls and keep things organized. You know? A bit of feminine touch to float about the house, and she tells me she will even help keep the house clean since she will be living with us.”

“She’s going to live with us?” Bass frowns at the General Tso's chicken and fried rice, overcooked and greasy in a pliable metal tray. The cheap bamboo chopsticks are left unmolested in their paper wrapping. He pokes at the food with a fork instead.

“Yes. She tells me a truck with all her luggage will be here tomorrow. Imported straight from Japan she says. I'll even let her sleep in the top bunk since I can't chase your grandfather out of the guest bedroom. Now, now, don’t act so offended, Bass. No one is using the bed, and she’ll be doing a service by being here. She even helped me clean up all the flour on the stove and the floor.” His father runs his hands across the top of his brown greased hair, slicking it back tighter to his ponytail. The tension on his scalp pulls his youthful face into a sneer. Bass can smell his strong licorice aftershave. The hair on the underside of his neck is still bristly. “Well dear, don't be shy. Say hello to my son.”

“Konbanwa. It means good evening.” The accent is heavy and flowing. Bass looks at her, and his green eyes collide with the rich coffee color of her own. For a moment, he is withheld by dark, long crops of silk hair and a light complexion of tea-and-cream that seems to be unique to beautiful Japanese women. His adolescence is consumed by delicate lips and a sharp, petite nose that avoids taking any space that those eyes have commandeered. And then he recognizes the yellow jacket.

“It's rude to stare,” she says.

“You almost hit me earlier,” Bass accuses her.

“I know. It would have been an accident, though.” She puts a hand in front of her mouth.

“Hit what?” asks Bass's father.

“She ran me off the road. She made me ruin my shoes.” He raises a finger at her, accusing her.

“It's rude to point,” she tells him.

“You can't blame a woman for muddy shoes, Bass, and you can't blame her for lost time and dusty uniforms either. Maybe you could keep those expensive things clean if you would come home before it is too dark to see where you're walking. Where've you been?”

#

Bass's father enrolled him in a private school close to home a few years ago, so he just walks each morning and each afternoon. He wanders, counting the number of signs between school and home, now at eight of sixteen. His shoes take the steps as if they are the ones in control, but they are meant to control him, those bright white formals with black rubber soles, along with the rest of the perfect disguise of black ironed wool that makes Mabase Middle students feel so important.
He meanders down a series of lines marked only by the numbered road signs. He passes the thirteenth, Camelot Lane, which connects to a network of other Arthurian roads like Princess Drive and Lancelot Lane with huge castle-like houses on them. The houses, with coats-of -arms disguised as custom mailboxes, are close enough together that they seem to form a larger keep or wall that escorts travelers to the expansive golf course behind the neighborhood.

Not far past Camelot, he approaches the cement bridge that extends the lazy river that rounds the western perimeter of his own neighborhood. He stops and leans over near the bridge to untie his shoes where an engine roars past him, startling him into sliding down the embankment of damp weeds into a deep patch of mud off the side of the road. He chokes on the stench of gasoline and burning rubber a yellow Honda motorbike leaves behind.

He yells after the rider, but his words are lost in a rush of wind chasing the whipping black hair behind a yellow helmet and a stylish biker jacket. He grits his teeth at the ruined shoes. The black laces are reduced to muddy strings and the white leather is washed in brown with blades of wet grass stuck to the tops. Surely, his father will give him total hell for them.

Surely, it will be his fault for walking so close to mud puddles when anyone can drive by and run you off the roadside and down the embankment.

He removes the soaked shoes and socks, and rolls up his slacks before tramping farther from the edge of the road to follow the slope that leads through grass so high that the ends have died, deprived of nutrition from the wet ground by gravity and distance. Bass steps between muddy ant beds that are still dangerous to his bare feet and over dead petrified roots hinting at a time before bridges and roads. There is a natural path through the fuzzy weeds as tall as shrubs that curves to become parallel to the road and terminates under the bridge that canopies over the shallow and clear river bend. The noise of the water augments as he nears the bridge’s underside. Down here, the flow of the river changes direction and speed, causing sounds of water to echo and reverberate throughout the space below the bridge. Into this little hollow is nestled a private haven of undisturbed dust and memories. Samantha will be waiting for him here. The little seclusion is invisible to passers-by, invisible to the world. He grew up in this private corner of the Mabase universe.

The place is cool and lonesome, like a deep cavern filled with quiet aquamarine voices that whisper through trickling waters and reeds that reach up from the river like stalagmites gripping at any drifting refuse. He drops his book bag and his muddy shoes with the soggy brown socks inside onto the cracked concrete shaded by the bridge above. During this time of day the descending sun is settling into an acute angle on the horizon casting everything into lengthy shadows and reflecting off the water that flows by throwing up to the metal canopy flickering bursts of light in a luminescent menagerie.
Bass looks around at the cakes of dust disturbed by footprints around the water’s edge. There are others besides his. Sam’s little feet account for the tennis shoes and the awkward boots with elevated heels and have left the greater number while a few of his brother’s footprints, different from Bass's only by size, have become treads of ghosts, haunting the place. Somehow, they survived the months and months that have passed.

#

“I can’t take it, Bass. I need to get away from him, away from this little town and its artificial inhabitants. I feel like I am drowning, choking in the fog that covers this place. I need to go. I wish I could take you with me, kid.” His brother crosses in front of him to the verge of the river and props his foot on the cement brick that he always uses as a chair when he thinks to bring a fishing pole. He leans it on a corner with his heel. “You'll never catch anything but brim here,” he sighs as he pushes it over the brink. The river makes a gulping sound as the water sucks it in.

“So that's it?” Bass asks.

“What else do you want me to say? That I can deal with what he did, that I can just let it go and--”

“What about Sam?”

“I've been done with her for weeks. I've been done with this place for years. I've moved on, and I try to tell her that but she won't listen.”

“So that's it?”

“That's it.”

#

Sam, lurking in the shadows, predatory and feline, prowls behind Bass as he sits at the water’s edge. She sidles up to Bass before wrapping her painted black claws around him. His body shivers, and yet he does not struggle as she buries her pointed fangs into the lobe of his ear. Exhaling, she slides her face down the side of his until her chin rests on Bass’s shoulder.

“Your shoes, why are they all muddy?” She whispers.

“Why do you do that?” Bass asks.

“Iuhno… Sammy likes ears. They're fun to chew on like your last piece of gum or the end of your pen.” He tries to push her away.

“What do you mean? You’re not making any sense.” Sammy tackles him onto the flat of his back, taking care to place a hand behind his head as they tumble down. “You’re being weird and getting my uniform all dusty.” Bass sneezes and wiggles his nose. She presses her cheek to his putting her lips against his earlobe once more.

“So? It can go with your dirty shoes now,” she says into his ear.

Bass rests there, quiet and cool with Sam’s warm, soft body placed on top of him. Her breasts press against him through her dark blue uniform she has to wear for her school, a public high school. He watches the lights dance on the canopy above him as her lips nestle into his neck, warming him, making him aware of the lack of space between them.

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