Chapter 2

Ed was sitting in his small apartment, trying to relax in the heat. Even with the front door wide open, and all the windows opened as well, the apartment was sweltering. This seldom happened in Santa Cruz, this unbearable dry heat. Usually the off shore ocean breezes assured residents of moderate temperatures and pleasant, comfortable weather. For the past few days though, the air had been hot and dry, and there was only a gentle little warm current of air moving in from the desert and then out to the sea. Further south and along the coast, the natives referred to these as Santa Ana winds, but down there, the winds were much stronger than they were here. The various chambers of commerce never mentioned this particular weather condition when they put out their advertising blurbs in the travel magazines, trying to entice more tourists to come there for a visit.

It had been a month since Maria had shown back up on his doorstep. He'd sent her away as soon as she told him what her intentions were, and had then tried his best to get her out of his mind. As far as he was concerned, she was just another runaway, one making choices for herself that could only lead to a wasted life, probably cut short too soon by drug use and disease. It wasn't his problem though, and he wasn't about to let himself get involved.

Not getting involved was something Ed Harris was good at. Twelve years he'd put in with the Air Force, doing his work, but keeping mostly to himself. He stayed out of trouble, mostly by refusing to get involved with anything he wasn't absolutely required to be involved with. His needs and wants were simple, both nearly identical to each other, as a matter of fact. In his entire adult life, the most radical decision he'd ever made, other than first signing up to join the Air Force, had been renting his off base apartment.

It was his discontentment with barracks living that was the first real sign that he was no longer happy just drifting through life aimlessly. Ed didn't particularly like the military service life, and, if you'd have asked him, he wouldn't have claimed to be particularly patriotic, or to have served for so long out of any strong sense of duty. It had simply been easier to keep signing up for another four years of service, each time his previous enlistment had been close to expiring. He had nothing else he wanted to do, no one that he cared enough about to even consider visiting.

Ed got thirty days of annual leave a year. He used half of it, usually doing nothing, and the other half he would sell back to the government, every time he reenlisted. For the average person, Ed's life would have been extremely dull and boring. For Ed, it was all that he had ever been used to. He had no real firm goals in his life, and harbored very few aspirations. He was thirty two years old, was responsible to or for no one else, and was very content with caring for no one. He didn't want trouble, but, want it or not, trouble was about to descend on his doorstep in a hurry.

"Hey. Are you awake in there?"

Ed looked up from the near stupor of extreme heat exhaustion. He'd been almost asleep when the voice had disturbed the quiet tranquility of his attempt at getting some rest for his weary body. At his front door stood that girl, Maria. This time she had a large green duffel bag, balancing the weight of it on her hip, held there by the long strap she had slung over her head and pressed against her neck and shoulder.

"You've come back? I thought I told you there was nothing around here for you? Either beat it right now, or else I'm calling that detective again."

"Can I come in for a minute? Maybe just to pee, and get a little glass of ice water? I'm tired, and I didn't have no other place I could think of where I could go."

Ed sat there, trying to think of some other way of telling her he didn't want to get involved with her in any way. She was nothing to him. He sure didn't want or need to get himself caught up in any of the problems she was likely to be bringing.

"I don't have any ice. Look, I don't want to sound mean, but I really don't want to get myself involved in whatever this is you think you're doing. I thought you were going to go back to doing whatever it was you were doing with Ted before? Why don't you go see some of those people, instead of coming here to pester me?"

"That didn't work out so good, so I left. Can I come in? I gotta pee, really bad too."

Ed was getting ready to tell her that she couldn't come in, when she did. She unslung her huge tote, or whatever that thing was called, and walked quickly over to Ed's bathroom. Without her even bothering with closing the bathroom door, Ed soon heard the unmistakable sound of the girl's pissing. From the sound of things, she hadn't been exaggerating one bit when she'd said she'd really had to go. He heard his toilet flush, and then the sound of water running in the bathroom sink. A minute later, Maria emerged from his bathroom.

"Thanks. I was afraid for a second there that I wasn't going to make it. Can I get some water now too?"

Ed nodded his head, not wanting to have a fight with her about anything so small as her getting a simple glass of water. Maria moved over to his tiny kitchen and went right for his refrigerator. Less than five seconds later, Ed heard the metallic click of one of his diet Pepsi's being opened up. A second after that, he saw the refrigerator door closing and Maria hurriedly gulping down the contents of the can of soda. It looked like she wanted to get as much as she could down her, in case Ed wanted to raise some objections about her just taking one of his sodas like she had.

"You can take the can with you and leave."

"Can I stay here inside with you until it gets dark? I'll sit over there, on the floor. You won't even know I'm here. Please?" She pointed to the front corner of the living room, at the far wall away from his door.

"I'm sorry, no. Please leave. I told you I'm not comfortable with any of this, so I'd rather you just leave, now. There's nothing here for you. You need to be on your way."

Maria stood there, looking at him. He returned her stare, noticing as he did, the dark bags under her eyes, and the obvious signs of strain and fatigue on her face. She looked like she felt lost and alone, so sad and defeated too. This wasn't the same girl he'd seen only one short month ago. That girl had been confident and full of life and hope. He knew this was the same girl, but something must have happened for her to start looking so run down and unsettled, which was how she now appeared to him.

"If you let me stay, I'll do you. Just for long enough so it will be dark out. Then I'll leave, I promise."

"I don't want you to do me. Look, if you're broke, I can let you borrow a few dollars. You can go over to the movie theater and take in one of the movies over there until it gets dark. They have air conditioning in the theaters. You'd be a lot more comfortable being there." As he spoke, Ed stood up and reached for his wallet. He found a ten dollar bill inside and pulled it out, thinking to walk over and hand it to her.

"I've got money myself, more than you do, that's for sure. I just don't want to go anywhere where someone might see me right now. Just let me stay here until it gets dark, okay? I'll clean up your kitchen or something. I could mop the floor in the kitchen for you. It could sure use it too."

Ed knew his apartment was already clean. He kept it that way all the time, out of force of habit. A habit he'd gotten into from all his years of having to be ready for those surprise military room inspections over in the barracks. If it hadn't been so warm, and if all his energy hadn't already been used up from too many nights of it having been too hot for him to get a good night of sleep. Maybe it would have been different too, if he hadn't just gotten home after pulling a fourteen hour double shift out at the base the night before, Ed would have probably kept on resisting her. He knew all it would take was a little bit of firm resistance to make Maria give up and leave him in peace. Instead of putting up that resistance though, he just shrugged his shoulders and went over to turn on the television set. He'd let her stay, but only until after it got dark.

Maria went and reclaimed her large duffel, taking it over to the one bare corner of the small living room, before dropping it right there in that corner. She then sat down heavily, right in front of the bag, leaning her back up against it and the wall. Ed tried to ignore her, and mostly succeeded in this, because his channel surfing had turned up a fishing program that he'd never seen before.

Ed liked watching fishing shows. He'd never been fishing himself, and had no intentions at all of ever doing so. Still, in spite of that, he liked watching shows like this one, because he enjoyed seeing other people catching fish.

He sat there in his chair, engrossed in the show, forgetting that Maria was even in the apartment. When he did remember, during a particularly long and boring commercial break, and turned his head to look at her, she was already sleeping. Her head had slumped forward, until her chin was resting on her chest. Ed went back to watching his show, just as soon as the commercials were over.

The remainder of Ed's afternoon and early evening were spent like that, him watching the television, and Maria sleeping. At around eight thirty, a half hour before it would be getting dark, Ed awakened Maria. He had heated up two TV dinners before he awakened her, thinking that she might like to eat something before she took off. All he had were Banquet Mexican TV dinners. They had been on sale for twelve for ten dollars, and Ed had taken advantage of that good price by filling his small freezer with them.

The two of them sat at his tiny dinette table, quietly eating their meals, each thinking their own thoughts as they did so. It only took a few minutes to finish off their meal.

"Thank you, that was good. Can I take a quick shower before I go?"

Hearing her voice had startled Ed out of whatever thoughts he'd been having. He looked up at her as she spoke, and then told her he guessed it would be okay for her to do that. She stood right up after he had given her permission, walking over to the living room corner to retrieve her bag to take it into the bathroom with her. Ed heard the sound of the shower water starting up as he began to clear away the mess left over from their dinner.

Ed started looking at his watch after Maria had been in the shower for fifteen or twenty minutes. He could usually shower just fine in five minutes or less. He wasn't used to having anyone else in his apartment using his shower. He looked at his watch a second time and told himself he'd give her five more minutes before telling her she had to turn off the damn water and get out of his bathroom. He waited five more minutes, and then another five minutes after that, before finally deciding that enough was enough. He really was going to get her out of his bathroom, out of his apartment, and out of his life. He went over to the bathroom and began knocking loudly on the door.

"Maria, come on, let's go. You've been in there long enough. You've got to be clean by now."

He waited, but she wasn't responding to him. The shower was still running, and she hadn't ever responded to his many knocks, or to his shouted instructions. After another two or three minutes of him calling out to her, but not getting any answer back, he reached down and tried the door handle He was surprised to find that the door hadn't even been locked.

Inside the bathroom, he found Maria slumped over on the toilet, naked, her left arm tied off with a rubber tourniquet, and, on a plastic cutting board covering her lap, an empty used syringe. Ed had taken all of this in during the time it took him to reach in to turn off the water in his shower.

Maria was oblivious to all he was doing, completely out of it. For a minute, Ed thought she might have taken a fatal overdose of some narcotic. In front of the toilet, right near her feet, was the green canvas bag she'd brought into the bathroom with her earlier.

Inside the bag were several smaller plastic bags, each containing four or five ounces of some kind of a white, powdery, substance. He also found two fully loaded automatic pistols, and a few items of girl's clothing. He discovered a large cardboard shoe box, which, after he had opened it and looked inside, had turned out to be filled with several syringes, five or six smaller boxes of hypodermic needles, three Bic butane lighters, a small opened bag of cotton balls, and several metal kitchen spoons, all with bent handles. All of these spoons also carried the tell tale black burn marks on their bottoms. All the way in the far back of the bag was a brown paper grocery bag that had been rolled up at the top and clipped closed with two of those plastic clips people often bought and used to reseal the tops of their potato chip bags.