Something was going on. He could feel it in his gut. The certainty of it uncoiled every night as she walked out the door, slithered through their daily silences, tightened round his throat as he watched her sleeping face. Finally, when he could stand it no longer, he asked her. And she turned that perfectly innocent face to him, looked him straight in the eye, and told him. Nothing was happening. She was out with friends. It was all in his head.

End of conversation.

Honesty was implicit in their relationship; Syd literally didn't know how not to trust her. He asked her a question; she gave him an answer. He had to believe her. He knew she was lying. It drove him mad.

Bit by bit, the mirror began to crack.

One day Karen stopped wearing her wedding rings. Vaughn had told her it made him uncomfortable to be seen in public with a married woman. He told her to take them off.

That night, in bed, Vaughn told her that he loved her. He told her that Syd was an uncaring b.a.s.t.a.r.d who could never make her happy. He fed her insecurities carefully, nurturing the hurts with hugs and smiles and his throbbing, burning love until at last they blossomed and ripened.

Until at last, it was harvest time.

It was a sticky-hot August night, and Syd had been up for hours: staring down the darkened street, waiting for the swell of headlights that would herald her homecoming. He felt time slow to a crawl, then stop altogether, the excruciating drag of one second into the next advancing nothing. Each tick was punctuated by the same nagging litany: where was she? Was she dead in a dumpster somewhere, was she wrecked and bleeding in a ditch? Was she okay? Why was she doing this?

It drove him crazy. He resented the inconsideration, dreaded the implications, felt hijacked by his own concern. Worry was not optional. She was a part of him. She was out there somewhere. She was lying.

Through the night, he paced: a caged animal, trapped within the boundaries of civility, suffering the crimes of the polite. It was an unwritten law of the domesticated: wreak whatever emotional havoc thou wilt, but never, ever make a scene. Any violation was acceptable, so long as you did it neatly. As long as you didn't make a mess.

He felt an urge rise up from somewhere deep within. It was a living thing: b.e.s.t.i.a.l in its simplicity, unfettered by caution or reason. It made him want to howl and scream and rip through the lies, feel them kick and squirm as he tore them to b.l.o.o.d.y shreds. Feel them hurt, like he hurt. Feel them shudder. Feel them die.

It was a good feeling. It was clean. Strong. Real. It gnawed clear through to the core of his being. Taunting. Torturing. Beckoning to him, over and over and over.

Release me.

Syd wrestled with it all night. And when Karen sauntered in sometime the next morning, he was waiting: sunken-eyed and unshaven in the darkened living room. Steeped in shadow, eyes ablaze, he looked up from his lair. His voice croaked one question. One word.

Why?

She looked at him, innocence incarnate. Whatever did he mean? Syd's reply came on a leash pulled tight. Was she genuinely stupid, or just incredibly cruel?

Still feigning that perfect blankness, she faced him. Are you saying you don't want me to go out? she asked.

No, he said quietly, looking across the miles-wide chasm between them. I want you to leave.

Karen couldn't believe her ears. Syd said it again. He told her, in that dreadful, constricted whisper, that this was no longer her home. He told her if she ever wanted to figure out what went wrong, to let him know. But until that day came, if ever, she was not welcome here.

And she had to leave. Now.

There was danger in his voice. She left, that very day.

Two days later, she returned. Her world had begun to crumble. She confessed her sins reluctantly. She was confused. There was someone else.

Syd felt his world come unglued. He needed the truth, in all its ugly grandeur. He needed to know it for what it was. Slowly, he pulled it out of her. Yes, she was involved. Yes, it was an affair. Yes, she had feelings for him.

The words punctured Syd. Breaking up he could deal with. A random f.u.c.k was not fatal, either. But this . . .

This was different. He knew by the tone of it, her euphemistic phraseology delicate as a dull knife to the windpipe. Involved. Feelings.

This was more than a sleazy little series of one-nighters. This was betrayal.

Syd reeled, his guts twisting into tiny inextricable knots. He asked her what his name was. She wouldn't tell him. He asked her again. She fought to hide it. He asked her again and again: doggedly pursuing, cornering her. Until she broke down and told him.

Syd heard the name.

And he went berserk.

He could feel his soul split, torn between the horror of it all and the animal writhing inside him, snapping at its chains. Something must pay. Not like this. Something must die. He told her Vaughn was sc.u.m. She said nothing, shielding him with her silence. Vaughn was good. Vaughn's heart was pure. The thing inside him howled. He told her that Vaughn was a legend in slime. She defended his honor. Vaughn loved her, she said. Syd told her she had to choose. She said she couldn't hurt him.

What about me, he asked.

She said nothing at all. Karen stood frozen: unable to turn back. Unable to go forward. Unable to move.

Syd turned, heading for the door. She watched, eyes glazed with fear.

Please don't kill him, she said.

Please don't kill him.

It was a hard request to honor. Killing him was a palpable option. To feel his flesh rend, to hold his bruised and bleeding face, drinking in his destruction as the light guttered, winked out. It would be perfection. It would be sublime.

But he looked at her shivering, terrified. And he still loved her.

And he said that he wouldn't.

On the way out a voice popped into his head, clear as you please. Take your gun, it said. Syd had to stop and think about that one for a moment, as the whole scenario sprang full-blown into his mind. He would bring the gun. He would pull the gun. Vaughn would feign toughness, say something stupid like what are you gonna do, shoot me? And then he would.

And that would be that.

No, he decided. Not like that. The act was too easy, the repercussions too messy. He called Jules, screaming for a reality check. Jules concurred: guns were a bad idea. He proceeded to trot out a host of sound, rational reasons why Syd didn't want to waste his life on behalf of these people. Syd heard them all, understood them implicitly. Yes, violence was not an answer. No, he didn't want to go to jail. None of it meant anything to the part of him that was in pain. The part that l.u.s.ted for blood, and death, and destruction.

Jules ended up urging Syd not to do anything stupid, held him on the line until he promised he wouldn't. Eventually, Syd relented.

Besides, he knew: if it came to that, he wanted to do it with his bare hands.

Vaughn was drunk by the time Syd got to the refurbished yuppie love nest he called home. For all of his great undying devotion, Vaughn was quick to deny everything. First he told Syd that nothing had happened. Syd called him a liar.

Then he said it was just a joke. Syd said it wasn't funny. He said that it was nothing personal. Syd told him he took it kind of personal when someone f.u.c.ked his wife. Vaughn said he didn't want to get physical. Syd told Vaughn he'd already gotten physical, the moment he'd f.u.c.ked his wife. Vaughn cracked, blurted out that it was all Syd's fault: if Syd had been doing his job, this never would have happened. . . .

And that was when Syd hit him.

And it was wonderful, it was bliss, the dull crunch of broken bone like sweet music as the thing inside him uncoiled and rose, l.u.s.ting for the clarity of chaos, begging for more. Syd felt alive, unbound: every cell awake, aware, as if he were smashing through the lies while he pounded Vaughn's face into pulp, wanting nothing more than to keep right on going, to rip his smug and preening face off, to hack through flesh to bone and beyond, to tear him down to essence, to fundament, to miserable withered soul-shrieking bits. . . .

It was an epiphany rendered in blood; and like all epiphanies, it was fleeting. A police cruiser came and hovered on the periphery, restoring order by proximity. Syd's rational mind regained dominion, reining the other side in. Don't ruin your life. Don't go to jail for this. It's not worth it.

The police car sat, not moving, not reacting.

Waiting.

Reason won, but barely. Syd backed off just enough to permit Vaughn to slither away, the better to lick his wounds. Syd allowed him to, tethering the murderous urge, aware of how tenuous his grip on it was. Knowing how easily it could get loose again. Knowing what it wanted.

Liking what it wanted.

Vaughn resurfaced days later, mumbling into his beer about having walked into a door. It didn't matter. Vile as he was, Vaughn was but a symptom. The disease lay elsewhere. The damage was already done.

And if there was any hope of survival, there was healing to be done.

Syd tried. Whatever else might be said, no one could take that from him. He tried. For the better part of the next year Syd limped in and out of counseling; crutching like a zombie, trying to piece the shattered fragments together. Trying to undo the thing that could not be undone.

It was no use. The trust was gone. As Karen's secret world shattered into a million glittering fragments she retreated, the better to protect herself from the truth she could no longer bear to face. She found out through the grapevine that Vaughn Restal had been f.u.c.king three other women the whole time he was helping himself to her, and that each and every one of them got his special slime-coated vow of true love and deep, caring commitment as well. It only drove her deeper and deeper inside.

For months Syd played cheerleader to the faltering cause: buying her flowers, courting her constantly, apologizing for his part in their undoing. Trying to make her feel his love. Trying to ignore the fact that he was dying inside. Hoping that she would return to him before he could go no further.

She never said she was sorry, or that it would never happen again, or any of a hundred other things that could have eased the pain, helped to heal their suffering.

Worst of all, she could never bring herself to tell him the one thing that could have restored him, the one thing that might have helped to wipe the slate clean. The thing he needed most to hear, more than anything in the world.

I love you.

One day he realized that he just couldn't do it anymore. There was no blank check he could write her from his bottomless emotional reserves. He'd given her every chance he had to give, and quite a few that he hadn't. He was all used up.

Syd packed his things, filed the papers, and walked away; trading his home for a skeevy little two-room walk-up in another part of town, the woman he loved for an empty bed, and a pocketful of dreams for what was left of his pride. That was a year ago. In the process he got his life back, such as it was. And with it, his integrity.

All it cost him was his past and present, and the only future he knew.

The one with Karen.

The one that officially ended, today.

Syd looked up. It was dark outside. The CD had long since played out, wrapping him in silence. The cigarette was a three-inch-long ash, poised between his fingers. The decree lay on the table, where it had fallen from his grasp. Droplets spattered its surface; it took Syd a moment to realize that they were his own tears.

"G.o.d," he whispered. "I gotta get out of here."

He looked at the papers with disdain, then crumpled them into a tiny little ball. Keeping it around was like hanging on to a severed limb. Syd had tried to hold on to the good that he could still feel, only to have it slip away-wraithlike, ephemeral.

The bad was much more durable. It was as though the trauma of the breakup had all but blotted out his ability to connect with anything but the pain.

But he had loved her; of that, he was certain. He had the scars to prove it. The memory of his love was seared into his soul and etched into the marrow of his bones. Ten years took up a substantial piece of your heart; it left a big hole when you finally cut it out.

He was tired of whipping himself with her memory. He had st.i.tched up the hole, spent months waiting for the scars to scab over. He'd heard his friends' polite inquiries a hundred times; felt innocence turn suddenly awkward as they asked how's Karen, oh really, gee, I'm so sorry to hear that. Then, silence.

His responses had winnowed down, too-the heart-wrenching outpourings of the first few months gradually giving way to fewer and fewer details, like colors fading from a painting, or a vital sign slowly going flatline. Until finally people stopped asking altogether, grateful to be relieved of the burden.

Until finally, it was reduced to its lowest common denominator of truth. Things just didn't work out.

It's in the past, he told himself, choking back a wrecking-ball-sized lump in his throat. It's behind me now. Just let it go.

Syd grabbed another cigarette, picked up his lighter. He flicked it on, listened to the tiny hissing flame. Just let it all go. . . .

The balled-up wad of paper blossomed into flame as he placed it in the ashtray. Syd picked up the photo. He hadn't seen her in over six months. He doubted that he would ever see her again.

"Good-bye," he said. Then consigned her to the pyre as well.

Karen's face turned black as the emulsion bubbled and crisped. The fire flared bright for an instant, then receded, leaving only ash. Syd stood, looked at his watch. Seven-fifty. Jesus. If he hurried, he'd have just enough time to change and get the h.e.l.l over to Chameleon's before either Queen Bee started or he blew his brains out.

Whichever came first.

4.

Chameleon's was a creaky little roadhouse dive that specialized in cheap drinks, so-so pizza, and superlative rhythm and blues. Its capacious gravel parking lot gobbled a sizable chunk of turf at the foot of Mt. Royle and Dirks Mill Pike, well on the outskirts of town. At night, you could see the lights of the city splayed out before you, from miles away. It underscored how far out in the boonies you were. How far removed from, quote, CIVILIZATION. Unquote.

The music always. .h.i.t you first. It was loud, even during the daytime, banging out through the double doors and into the lot; and it was always, always good. One thing you had to give the owners: they didn't skimp when it came down to the tunes. Though the kitchen, lighting and overall decor were decidedly low-tech, they had popped some serious bucks on the house sound system, and it wailed.

They also had a new-fangled CD jukebox, which Jules had crammed to the hilt with coolness: little independent-label reissues of vintage, seminal recordings rammed right up against the latest in showy big-budget technique. So you got Johnny Winter's mid-'60s alb.u.m "Progressive Blues Experiment" back to back with Albert King and Gary Moore's British 1990 duet. Prehistoric T-Bone Walker. Posthistoric Robben Ford. Johnny "Guitar" Watson and Roy Buchanan. Jimi Hendrix and Buddy Boy Hawkins. Muddy Waters and Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Jules liked all kinds of down 'n' dirty music, but his love was the blues. Jules was the most authoritative and genuinely pa.s.sionate lover of the blues that Syd had ever met. He had tintypes from the Mississippi Delta to go with his old 78 rpm's, musty hardbound volumes on the music's history that he'd picked up over the years at all those book fairs and flea markets he loved to attend.

What's more, Jules had actually spent a big chunk of his youth wandering the country, by his own telling "searching for the heart of the blues." It was something Syd had always admired him for. And in working Chameleon's for the last decade, he'd managed to book-then meet and, in many cases, befriend-more than half the living legends still at large. From there, he'd become both a walking encyclopedia and self-styled curator, playing steward to every shred of data or memorabilia he picked up along the way. Not bad for a big ugly inbred b.a.s.t.a.r.d from the white-trash backwaters of Washington, Pa.

And that was the most amazing thing about Jules. He moved at what might look like a leisurely pace, but he always followed through. When he examined an issue, he tended to examine it thoroughly; if he let a person or thing get close enough to nestle its hooks in him, he was in for the duration. Jules would not volunteer an uninformed opinion; and he wouldn't volunteer an opinion at all until he felt he had earned the right. These were issues of trust, and of adequate information. Issues he took very seriously indeed.

Jules had been there for Syd, all through the divorce and the whole painful sequence of events leading up to, around, and through it. He had been Syd's sounding board, till the wee hours of the morning, on more occasions than Syd frankly cared to admit. He had offered encouragement, support, friendship, and-when it came down to it-some painfully honest criticism.

Which was why Syd felt the need to talk with him tonight. He needed a little comprehensive perspective. On his encounter with the wolf. On those papers in the mail. And on what weird tenuous connection, if any, there might possibly be between them.

Syd rolled in at eight forty-nine. Red was stationed just inside the double doors, as usual, collecting the five-dollar cover charge. Red was there mostly to inspire awe and dread, help deter excessive rowdiness and the criminal element. He was ugly and large and he excelled at his job. Fights didn't tend to last long at Chameleon's. He gave a poker-faced nod of recognition as Syd ambled up, then let him slip in ahead of the throng without paying. Privilege of the insider.

Syd continued on. He knew maybe a third of the people there by name, two-thirds of them by sight; but he could deduce what ninety-eight percent of them were drinking, all the way from the door. Tommy was there, with a couple other guys from work. Their pitchers were loaded with Genuine Draft: too pale to be Ba.s.s, too rich to be Schaefer or Rolling Rock. Budd and his main squeeze Holly huddled by the popcorn machine, smooching over strong Cuba Libres with extra lime. Trent, the second-string bartender, was whipping up what appeared to be a Slippery Nipple for Tammy Eberhardt. And the Knucklehead Brothers, Gary and Steve, were getting ready to perform some serious Jaegermeister damage; they took their liquid hallucinations very seriously.

Jane the barmaid smiled at him as she approached, tray of drinks in hand. She was a mischievous spirit, on the lean side of twenty-something, with a presence that belied her age and her pet.i.te stature. She always seemed to have energy and enthusiasm to spare. Syd liked the way her dark hair spilled over her shoulders, the way her face was shaped: angular cheekbones framing a thin-lipped, intelligent smile, a slightly crooked nose, and wise, dark eyes that picked up on everything and seemed to constantly sparkle with secret amus.e.m.e.nt.

She also had a kicka.s.s sense of humor, and a habit of not taking a sc.r.a.p of s.h.i.t off of anyone. Syd also greatly appreciated the fact that she hated Vaughn Restal. In fact, at that moment he wondered why he hadn't ever thought to marry her, instead . . . or virtually anyone else, for that matter.

"Hi," he said, perking up a little in her presence.

"Nice to see you changed your pants," she said.

"Oh, G.o.d." Mortified. "Does everybody know about this now?"

Jane just smiled and sashayed past. His spirits both rose and fell, pleased by the strokes but completely embarra.s.sed. Did she think he'd peed himself? And where the h.e.l.l had she seen him? He eyed the crotch of his pants unconsciously, just making sure it hadn't happened again.