he looked so innocent lying there on his cousins daybed fondling her Min Pin

his bright blue eyes and ultra pale skin was alway engaging in Canada but in Sunny California they looked completely out of place

the dog didn't care but his cousin's daughter was an estetition and she was drooling to get out her hot wax and go to work on those eyebrows

this was his usual visit

was it a birthday?

it wasn't a usual Holiday

it was the Canadian holidays that allowed him to fly down and get that several times a year sunburn that inevitably blistered and then peeled

you know the kind that made Canadians stand just a little straighter around their cohorts up North

because it signified some extra spending money he'd scraped together and an adventurous spirit on his part

if they only knew

he loved the roller coaster

the big one down at the bay... the oldest wooden roller coaster left in the US of A... that's why he was headed down there... and that's why he was getting a hard on just thinkin' 'bout it...

yeah that's why

who was he kiddin'???

blonde is the magic

he thought

blonde is the scheme

blonde is the eloquence

that dwelled in his dreams

his

dark

cold

ravenous

BITTERLY BLONDE

dream

Crosby Still Nash and Young was scratchily playing in the background

the soft female music lured Kerry and he... both loved the old word smiths of the 70's

she beckoned her cousin to drift out to the patio for a New Yorker

a smart relevant up to date drink made to be gulped rather then sipped... which they did and waited for the giggles to start... it wasn't long before they were flailing in the wooden deck chairs... his cousin actually fell out of hers... grabbing the chair as she tumbled onto the grass.... he looked toward the curb thru their laughter .... then got up and headed for her Mustang convertible...

it's time.. he thought.. to go hunting...

Kerry saw him set his chin in a resolute sort of way and a shiver ran down her spine...in her mind
she saw the sign posted on the beach

BEWARE OF THE SHARKS

he knew his cousin had entered the Ms Del Mar Cougar contest again this year but he never thought of her as a Cougar..... but she was like one of those sumptuous women he sought 45 thru 55 crowd... she was slim and still so good lookin'' her looks made most men feel like they'd been socked in the gut with a below the belt punch..... definitely there was a reaction below the belt

she had come in second a year ago

he thought her bright red hair made it a cinch for her to win but the non-freckle loving judges had given her the thumbs down 2nd place to a nearly 60 year old silver fox... wearing a fabulously simple gray straw hat and dove gray gloves to her elbows

such is the sensuous life of the awe inspiring woman of a certain age

he hurried over to Delmar for the 7th race licking his lips in anticipation

not of the ponies but of the sensuous seniors all decked out for opening day

inside he never was without the PAIN...PAIN...PAIN... pain...pain...pain... never ending...intolerable...vehement...excruciating PAIN

they writhe they say...when they're close to death...and see at last there's no way out...life has given them all it's chosen too ...there's no higher power to call on...no going back over it if you want to hold your head up and slip the bonds of earth with any amount of grace...... that snake is invisible and internal

two stiff drinks and an abundant selection of woman who know their way around a man and that peacefulness of forgetfulness comes calling and let's you wake up the snarled fluffy tortured neurons

intrigues the synapse to the rhythm of the dance ...allows them to welcome the different drummer....have that feeling like the little duck...eager to approach and reconcile itself to that brand new day QUACK QUACK DUCKIES.....may they be that way for me today!!!

to dissipate his memory of his darlin of old

she had been his little plum dumplin'...his all arms and legs eternal flame...the blonde to end all blondes...his heavenly havoc...his sexual domain...the woman who made his soul ticklish....the diminutive diva of days gone by never to come again....the Harri Kari knife he'd fallen on....the choking in his throat whenever happiness deduced he needed an infusion

the one he fell toward and never reached...but was blest in the falling to lift his eyes and there she was peeping out at him from GOD's garden...his adorable little "cabbage head"

he didn't have enough bandages...not even a tourniquet would stem the flow of blood quickly enough to save him..he knew he deserved to die...but he couldn't...that would be too easy...way to easy so he grew horns and moles and long deviant hairs all over his now gnarled body but stilled walked upright as beautiful as he ever was on the outside after she'd left him

and no one noticed he was becoming a monster...no one at all

he didn't often look for her anymore...those kinda women didn't exist except in the days of yore when men were men

and women were women

and men were glad of it

youth and stupidity drove her away...and the perceived rightness of his male stubbornness

men and rightness...how important it was then...to be right when simply her arms around him made the sun come up... her lying there like "a warm Texas breakfast".. smelling so much like sleep and womanliness... his little little little woman/little girl

Kerry was discontent with her long morning drive to work but the new condo wouldn't be a rental and it sat smack dab on the sand down near the ocean...Bill would love it..he like Kerry's BFF Lynner was born and raised down here in Imperial Beach

just a stones throw from Mexico... in the day when fences weren't up to act a a divider of boundaries between neighbors hands clasped in friendship across the border..... Bill met Kerry when she was a fired haired teen...and he was a hotshot naval pilot still living on his laurels of being a fighter pilot in Viet Nam...he was throughly unhappily married...had a son...and only gave Kerry a passing glance..even tho the curvaceous redhead had a certain effect on him walking down the sand in a bright white skirt that furled out to catch the wind and red blouse that pulled across her ample breasts and made them seem like two puppies squirming to get free

she was still moving when her cousin showed up and Booker hadn't been any help to the two of them at first.... but eventually he offered to dig right in and help them unpack the new place.... most afternoon he'd do the work and let the two of them kick back in the hammock and just drink Long Island Ice Teas and relax... but at nite in IB when it was very late and there was no moon he couldn't resist getting nakid and heading into the surf to dip beneath the water... body surf in on the waves...and watch the shoreline...for what...what was he watching for what

sometimes he seemed like a happy animal frolicing in the surf...and she'd laugh with Bill about it

and Bill never thought anything about Bookers behavior...afterall... he was a Canadian

but Kerry knew something deeper was going on with Booker

something you couldn't blame on Canada

...his vacation was nearly over...and altho she in many way always enjoyed his visits in other ways she couldn't say she was unhappy to see him leave

she didn't want to get to know his dark side

David had to pull over to the side of the road...... (his brain felt like that fried egg searing in the pan that was in the 80's commercial about drug use... the needle went into the bottle...the fluid went into the tube...his brain erupted into flames..and down down down he went into that "i'm not sure how long it'll be before i see the light of day again" drain)

then she appeared

she hovered...she swooned into his body and encapsulated the heat....trying to save him from the pain but the dark essence pushed her away cowled and narcissistic she instead reach out to torment and triplicated the burn she floated in it...as if she couldn't warm the ice water in her veins and the Arctic chill in her bones

she turned and undulated like meat on a spit begging for the sickening roast he saw her vulgar lecherous smile before he slipped again into semi-consciousness curving and sliding up at the corners of her mouth.... and her crimson eyes....ever laser fine targeted again on his soul slowly his eyelids closed as he drifted away....and halted his long but expectantly beautiful along the Pacific's coastline

these spells were coming more and more often

it was time to go home

so much of the trip was ocean viewing and he never got tired of seeing it

waves of water to eventually turn to oceans of wheat barley and rape dancing in the winds or being harvested in Canada's heartland. .. mountains getting ready for snow...the jagged saw tooths of the Canadian Rockies far surpassed any view of the Rockies below the 49th...sea terns rolling and gliding thru an overcast sky

soon he'd be taking that Transcontinental Train thru Canada from the left coast to the right coast

and the dreams of a prairie boy eager to both love and hate the small towns of the plains....... so much of the trip was ocean viewing and he never got tired of seeing it oceans of water to eventually turn to oceans of wheat barley and rape dancing in the winds or being harvested in Canada's heartland.... mountains getting ready for snow...the jagged saw tooths of the Canadian Rockies far surpassed any view of the Rockies below the 49th...sea terns rolling and gliding thru an overcast sky

he had learned to speak French..badly at first...then like a Quebec native when he jumped on the train in Ottawa he had a slight headache so he didn't fight the drooping eyelids he spent most of his vacation fighting the feeling

he leaned his head against the steering wheel of his cousin Kerry car as he drifted away he'd seen her..his muse...enveloped in deathlike irony with ravens flying out of her screaming mouth was she readying herself to send him her vicious final attack?? but he had no time as he drifted to think about it

how many beautiful women want him dead...more then you could count on your fingers and toes combined.... he'd spent his whole life falling in and out of love.... he was a scoundrel of that even he was sure

maybe he was a sociopath...or maybe he was just hard hearted..his sexual energy drove him to depths and places few could return from

and many didn't want to

bad boys...sweaty cannibalistic bad boys...probably every woman and man at sometime in their lives have succombed to one and lived to both enjoy it and regret it

he was a charmer...a definite sociopathic trait

with women he delicately tread that careful path of intimacy to reassure and influence them...until they thought that he and they were like two peas in a pod

just all warm and cozy as he nuzzled them gently under their arms....let his lips dance on the pulse of their necks...adding fuel to the fire as their pulses quickened and goosebumps flooded over their bodies

but before it was over it was always the same..he would disappear like a will o the wisp without an after thought

and that was the best ending to a scenario with David

it could be worse... with sharp cutting things... it could be their unhappy ending

Kerry was looking at the the sketch her cousin had drawn of her daughter when the phone rang

Kerry couldn't just phone Lynner to tell her the bad news after David left

the sad upheavals of her life had to be held in loving arms

and stroked away with loving hands that communicated the unconditional love she

had for her best friend from high school

Booker hadn't ever closed in on Lynner and her appreciation of him was profound

he could be the gentle protector and with Lynner he always was

she found her friend down by the wetland...

staring out over the bird estuary staring into the moving grasses and watching the bird dip for small sealife and caught fish when the tides rushed out

Lynner had fought the good fight

relinguished herself to the wrong kind of men

and withstood their deadly blows

she was scarred and fragile but one would never know it from the way she carried herself

she had been born to be the bubbles in Champange

and she still bubbled on the surface

and her eyes twinkled beneath the bruises of lovers young who stopped by to relish her remarkable body

and sup from the rare delights of her nubile soul

only Kerry her dearest friend was tortured along with her at the fledgeling promises she made to herself to get it right someday

to mean more then just an enjoyable repass for a man who was just stopping over on his way to somewhere else

but why milady

my smile is so sincere

am i a fledgling horror

just beneath my kind veneer

i'm singing the changling song

it sounds so sweet

a tenor's fragant epitaph

it soothes today

but for just how long

you shouldn't try him

fry him

defy him

die him

sacrifice him

upon your sensual flames

slice and dice him

here i'll loan you the knife

the one you need to end his life

never fear

he'll bleed out

his blood so red and clear

or sew his lying lips

disregard his fitful eyes

those tears aren't real and no surprise

just the tools of his rotten game

the ones he uses to 'cause you to be shame

he was on his way and floating in the haze with the clickity clack of the rails when his mind turn to the one

she stepped up on his porch...wide tomboy smile...slouched into a patio chair and held her hand out in a way that could be interpreted as a "shake my hand" or "please fill this with something cool"...her mind was like a buzz saw...and her mouth followed the sawdust as it flew with it's own momentum into the air

her baseball cap was turned backwards and her wispy blond hair could barely find it's way out under it

"i'm your new neighbor"

"i thought i'd come over and introduce myself"

she then told him her name which he couldn't remember...shook his hand...and hop down off the porch before a single word could come out of his mouth

he thinks he nodded...but he couldn't be sure as he watched her J Lo ass sway down the street

the only thing he could remember was the fleeting thought

she's the one

granddad's shoulders drooped and rolled forward...the arms had that slightly crooked "i'm carrying something" look old men get it was a combination of Arthritis and old age.. and ridin' to many sunfishing mustangs when he was a young one

he could still hold his back up straight when he tried too...but it didn't stay that way long... but that mean proud old fart could still break a bronc once and a while and ride a horse 20 miles without flinching

he still smoked...rolled his own...thin cheroots...and he put loco weed in em sometimes to slide into waking dreaming of youth

after he hung up the phone he threw some sht together in his tattered green Army duffle and jumped into the rusty old truck and headed West thinkin "What the fck has my Grandson gotten himself into now"

what had the doctors said

they said it was a brain bleed..an anomalous circulatory structure...that just gave way...and the curtain came down on his miserable miserable life

the conductor noticed he'd dropped his sketch book...he picked it up off the floor and laid it on the table before him...when the supper bell chimed the passenger didn't wake up...but the conductor thought little about it...as he leaned in to tell him to head for the diner he noticed a smell

the passenger had wet his pants and couldn't be roused

even after they evacuated it there wasn't much hope..some saw that as a curse...they should have considered it a blessing

the blips they saw on the encephalogram might be brain activity...maybe dreaming...

but dreaming of what???

in the muddled darkness again she came

"oh but she couldn't be trusted...even when his brain was swimming in the bloody pool she hounded him"

she brought her own heat with her

and her demon eyes

her eyes had been vividly blue green that day that the Autumn leaves fell around her as she swayed away from his porch

forever after whenever he thought of Autumn he began to hum "Autumn Leaves" and old obcure tune his momma sang

he looked so innocent in the hospital bed..like a babe sleeping.. may that always be...a sleeping monster ...unable to reek havoc on the world of women anymore