Off the Chart. James Hall

his little sister a cardiac right there at work, bumping into her long-lost brother after all these years. Vic studied the order slip. In his sister’s scrawl, Thorn was written out next to the guy’s order.

      ‘Which one’s the grouper with Swiss?’

      Vic nodded at the six plates lined up in the window.

      The hook nose took a careful look at Vic.

      ‘Which one?’ Vic said again.

      The fry cook reached out his spatula and tapped one of the sandwiches.

      Thorn’s lunch. Fried fish with a layer of melted cheese. Guy was going to choke on cholesterol if he wasn’t careful. Which suited Vic fine, as long as the jerkhole waited till after Vic was completely done with him.

      ‘Guy’s a friend of mine,’ Vic said. ‘We do this, me and him. Little pranks back and forth.’

      ‘Whatever.’ The fry cook got busy with the dressing on a cheese-burger.

      Vic peeled back the bun on the grouper sandwich and laid it on the plate. He reached into his pocket and drew out his penknife and flicked open the blade. Out on the sunny patio Anne Bonny was taking the order at another table. Two blondes and a dark-haired guy. Vic craned forward and squinted into the sunlight.

      Dark-haired Romeo smiling up at Vic’s little sister. Batting his eyes and Anne batting back.

      Vic laid the blade against the palm of his left hand. He looked over at the fry cook, but the guy was focused on his work.

      Vic gritted his teeth and sliced the blade across his palm, an inch, another inch, just deep enough to get a trickle of blood rising from the seam, spilling into the web of creases.

      He reached out to Thorn’s open sandwich and made a fist and watched the dark fluid dribble out. Six, seven drops spattering against the melted Swiss.

      He milked out a few more drips, then closed up the sandwich and set it back under the warming lights just as the fry cook smacked the signal bell.

      A few seconds later Anne headed back toward the window to pick up her order. There was a tiny smile on her lips. Probably nobody else would’ve noticed, but Vic was her brother and he’d spent years studying the looks that came and went on Anne Bonny’s face. He’d never seen that exact smile before. Not once.

      Vic ducked away from the window. He rubbed his bloody hand on the leg of his jeans and tried to shape his lips into a replay of Anne’s smile, but it felt slippery and uncertain on his face.

      When he looked back, Anne was at Thorn’s table dealing out the plates. Vic stayed in the shadows to the side of the window and watched until finally Thorn picked up his sandwich and held it for a moment near his mouth while he laughed at something one of the little girls said. Then he took a bite and munched on the fried grouper seasoned with Vic Joy’s blood.

      Vic grinned, watched Thorn swallow, watched him take another bite. Swallow that one, too. The lumps of food snaking down Thorn’s throat and into his esophagus, heading toward his belly. Wouldn’t be long until Vic Joy was slipping inside the fucker’s bloodstream, mingling, festering. Taking root.

      ‘That’s some weird prank,’ the fry cook said.

      Vic turned to the cook, then fixed his eyes on the hand holding the spatula.

      ‘Think you could still flip burgers with a metal hook on the end of your arm?’

      The guy stared down at his right hand, then back at Vic. His Adam’s apple jiggled.

      ‘Hell, Mr Joy, I wouldn’t say anything. Not a goddamn word. Really.’

      Vic winked at the kid and headed for the parking lot.

       2

      Three weeks after their meeting at the Lorelei, Daniel Salbone and Anne were having breakfast on the outside patio of the Cheeca Lodge.

      Overnight a late-season cold front had muscled in and the sky was hanging low – as heavy and ominous as a slab of slate. A few yards away from their table the Atlantic thrashed and foamed against the resort’s white beach. While they sipped their coffee Daniel’s gaze kept drifting out toward the end of the long dock where a white sport-fishing yacht was moored. For the last half hour several men had been rolling dollies down the dock, then heaving the supplies aboard.

      Anne’s mind was whirling, her body inflamed from the three-week frenzy of sex and extravagant food and full-throttle cruises on the Black Swan, both of them naked, racing the moonlight. Except for the boat rides, they’d not left their room at the Cheeca Lodge. DO NOT DISTURB on the doorknob. Room service trays piling up in the corner, their sheets growing funkier by the hour. They’d switched off the air conditioner because they wanted to marinate in their own juices, breathe the other’s true scent. They opened the windows to hear the ocean and the gulls, inhale the marshy breeze. Lying in the black night or at noon, feet tangled in the sheets, skin glistening, she trailed her fingertips across his long stretches of muscled flesh.

      A few nights ago in the dark, Daniel said, ‘Is this love?’

      ‘Hell, no,’ she said. ‘This is sex, plain and simple.’

      He laughed and she laughed with him.

      A moment later he said, ‘You don’t want it to be love.’

      ‘What does that mean?’

      ‘You want something flimsy, something you can control, something you can walk away from when you’re ready.’

      ‘This isn’t real,’ Anne said. ‘It’s heat lightning on a summer evening.’

      ‘You’re worried, aren’t you? You’re scared.’

      ‘Of what?’

      ‘That it’s real. That it’s solid.’

      She was silent. Staring up at the darkness.

      ‘I don’t scare easy,’ she said.

      ‘Then you’re a rare woman.’

      ‘You’re just noticing?’

      The ghostly curtains stirred with a warm breeze.

      ‘So who was that guy at the restaurant?’

      ‘Restaurant? What guy?’

      ‘The Lorelei, that day we met. I saw you kiss some guy. Your boyfriend?’

      ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘He’s nobody. A local I went out with for a while. It was finished centuries ago.’

      ‘What’s his name?’

      She hesitated a half-second and said, ‘Thorn.’

      ‘First or last?’

      ‘That’s what he goes by. I don’t know which it is.’

      ‘So it’s over, is it? He won’t be wondering where you’ve gone off to these last three weeks?’

      ‘Stone-cold over.’

      ‘You kissed him. I saw that. You still have feelings.’

      His body stiff, Daniel stared up into the dark.

      ‘Hey, what is this? You store away a meaningless kiss from weeks ago. Are you some kind of green-eyed control freak? Tell me now. I don’t want any big surprises later on.’

      Her words hung in the darkness. When he answered, his voice was solemn, almost apologetic.

      ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I won’t lie to you. I suppose I can be fiercely protective of what I care about. Is that a crime?’

      ‘Well, there’s nobody to be jealous of, Daniel. Nobody at all.’

      He