Exclusive Excerpt: "Fugue"
A New Novel by Paul A.Toth

Chapter 7 Continued:  She pulled the sheet around her body

     She pulled the sheet around her body: Show over, curtains closed. I found the turtle, put him in his cage and closed the box. I started toward the door but looked back one more time. I knew it was a boy because -- because I knew, that's all.
     "I bet you're really tired," she said. "I hope you fall asleep on the road and drive into a ditch."
     The turtle and I left. The last thing we heard from her apartment was the recorded sounds of the sea. There was one thing left to do in San Diego, and then it was time to visit Azal.
     I set the box next to me and started the car. My green friend must have been getting pretty tired of the pranks, but I had a place in mind for him. So together we drove back through the suburbs and down a stretch of road I knew. I noticed a car behind me, but there were two others and I wasn't getting paranoid yet.
     When we turned down the avenue toward the beach, the car was still behind me. I spun off into a parking lot, but the other car stayed behind mine. I watched it turn around the block and figured it was a cop or maybe kids cruising for girls coming off the beach.
     I took Yertle out of the car and headed for a lifeguard stand. I opened the box. I angled Yertle toward the sand. He crawled out, stopped.
     "Run," I said. "Wander on."
     He wasn't going anywhere. I almost wanted to take him with me, but I couldn't leave him in a box forever, and I was pretty sure the seatbelt wouldn't fit. So I stood there looking down at him, saying,      "Scoot. Move. Beat it."
     Headlights brightened the beach. I turned. For a second, I was blinded, but then I heard keys and tools jingling toward me. Dennis the Menace. He was carrying my suitcase, which he must have taken from my car.
     "Ola," he said.
     "Leave us alone."
     "'Can't,'" he said, mimicking me with a soprano voice. "'I just can't.'"
     "Pervert. Creep."
     His sandals splattered sand. "Only the ones I love."
     "But as you can see, you're not her type."
     "Forget that. Here's your fucking clothes."
     He flung my suitcase twenty yards into the ocean. I watched it bob away.
     We stood two feet apart. I wasn't running this time. For one thing, I didn't want to step on Yertle, and for another, what little pride I had could be called to attention on rare occasions. "You forgot the laptop," I thought about saying. Instead:
     "I guess you plan to hit me?"
     "I was thinking about it. Guy wandering around, living off women, showing up years later like everybody owes him something. Get a job."
"I had one. I worked with ten thousand assholes just like you and then the company up and moved the factory clear down to Mexico. But I got mine before they left, so here I am. I win."
     "You owe me."
     "For what?"
     "Mary."
     Since a punch was coming, and I was running out of lines, I rushed him. I grabbed his waist and swung a quick uppercut into his waist. Instead, my knuckles caught a wrench. The skin split, but I held on while he spun me in circles, punching me in the sides until I fell off like a kid on a merry-go-round. I found my footing in the sand and retreated, trying to regain my balance. He gripped a hammer. Now murder was a real and immediate possibility. It crossed my mind Mary had sent that letter, posting Dennis outside the door to carry out my sentencing when I left, just as she had predicted would occur.
     But he let go of the hammer. He came at me and hit me in the face. The headlights spraypainted the black sky in my head, my brain a satellite flown amok. I crash landed on the beach. The true sounds of the ocean made a fine static...until the world began to move.

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