He walked away.

The door to the house was open. Yellow light spilled out onto the gray steps and dead lawn. As Porter approached the door, he kept hearing Clyde. That perfect voice singing the song like his whole life depended on the story he was going to tell. If we should meet, just walk on by.

Oh, darlin’, please don’t cry.

A gentle smile crossed his lips as his mind exploded in black light flickering with violent white swirls.

Someone had hit him across the back of his head as soon as he stepped over the landing. He fell into a macrame rug and rolled onto the brown tile floor and felt boots kicking at him. Blood rushed through his ears and he covered his head with his hands. He saw there were two of them in leather and black, ski masks covering their faces.

One jerked Porter to his feet, his head still reeling with Clyde’s song. Tonight we meet

At the dark end of the street.

The kitchen was bright and obscenely yellow and covered with thick smears of maroon blood. Porter tried as hard as hell to get loose, but the man just shoved his face into a Formica breakfast table and laughed. He felt his teeth in the back of his throat.

And then he saw her.

Mary, clutching her fat stomach in her hands, blood across her thin yellow top. Blousy sleeves, daisy edges.

Goddamn. They’re gonna to find us.

They’re gonna find us, Lord, someday.

A man, smelling of onions and cigarette butts, tied Porter to the chair facing her. He felt the cold cylinder sink into the soft spot at the base of his skull.

“Where is it?” the man asked.

Porter leaned forward and vomited onto his shoes. The ticket to Buffalo twirled down to the floor catching into the sticky mess. Through blurred eyes he stared into Mary’s face. She bit her lip, and her eyes went soft, and he heard her praying like a child, like a twelve year old. It was something simple and quiet and for a moment Porter felt more like her father than her lover. But tonight we’ll meet