Page 41 of Lone Wolf

Debate erupted.

Surreptitiously Evan worked a splinter out of the heel of his left hand. He pictured Jayla Hill writhing on the butcher block, her throat cinched, oxygen just out of reach. The meth-heads in the squat house, their human features worn down to wreckage. All those souls scraping by in the tent city with cloudy eyes and dirt-blackened skin. The splinter worked its way to the surface, and he inconspicuously tugged it free with a pinch of his fingernails.

“So to review,” Lorilee said, cutting in on his reverie, “the key lessons to remember are: One, make sure no one feels left out at cake time.” She ticked off the points on manicured fingers. “Two, no squirreling away of corner pieces. And thirdly, let us all reward kindness.” Boba ran over to Evan and yapped at his shins. With his boot, he nudged the little annoyance aside. Boba yapped at him twice, stood up on tiny hind legs, and started licking at his cargo pocket, slick with melted ice and the scent of human meat. Using his index finger, Evan pushed her triangular face away, drawing a nip of needle teeth in response.

“In keeping with my policy of full transparency,” Lorilee forged on, “I’d like to review the minutes from today’s meeting to ensure open channels of communication. But not before a special shout-out to my cousin, Coretta, who designed the lobby centerpieces.”

A scattered round of applause began, but Lorilee shrieked, “Please snap! Clapping startles Boba.”

With zero fucks to give regarding clapping or snapping, the teacup poodle sniffed at the grocery bag holding the blood-soiled clothes at Evan’s feet. When he picked up the bag and set it in his lap, the dog went back to his cargo pocket, lapping relentlessly.

He stood up abruptly, Boba tumbling away from his leg. “I’m sorry,” he said, too loudly. “I’m not feeling well.”

“Looks like you’ve had an accident,” Johnny Middleton pointed out helpfully, gesturing at the wet spot at Evan’s pocket.

Before the exclamation could draw the crowd’s attention, Hugh cried out, “But we haven’t voted on the presidency!”

Lorilee said, “In our previous quorum—”

Hugh, once more on his feet: “A quorum of one!”

“We voted to delay any future presidential vote until the next meeting—”

“Is that a royal ‘we,’ you nip-and-tucked nincompoop? Because I’m pretty sure it was just you at that sham of a proceeding!”

Lorilee’s eyes fluttered from the rebuke. “Only a misogynist would mock a woman’s physical appearance in such violent terms.”

“Misogynist? How dare you accuse me of—”

“Words can’t be violent,” Clutterbuck said, with a sudden burst of intensity. “As anyone who’s seen actual violence knows.”

An explosion of opinions, buzz phrases hurled from left and right.

When Evan shoved Boba aside with his boot, he felt the day’s damage in his tailbone and lower back, kneecaps and palms, shoulders and neck.

As several residents moved to comfort Lorilee, he slipped away.

Evan set the chunk of the Wolf’s ear in a bowl of ice on the poured-concrete island in the kitchen.

Then he burned the blood-spattered clothes along with the foil-lined grocery bag.

Then he burned the clothes he’d worn moments ago.

Then he took an extraordinarily hot shower, finished off with two minutes maxed on cold to reduce inflammation and to encourage blood flow and nitric oxide delivery.

Then he applied two butterfly stitches to a thin gash on the ball of his right shoulder that he hadn’t bothered to notice until now.

Then he took five milligrams of meloxicam, washing it down with a half gallon of water.

Then he shook himself out on a mini fitness trampoline, bouncing so gently that his feet didn’t leave the polypropylene mat. Shuddering the day out of him, memory shards flurrying in his mind—the shot past Jayla’s face, the round to the cop’s Kevlar vest, the exploding can of spray paint close to the vicinity of beating hearts and makeshift homes. Making mental adjustments, improvements, searching for errors and near misses that could be made less near next time.

Pretty good, he thought. Pretty good day.

The timer on his RoamZone dinged seven minutes, long enough to stimulate his lymphatic system and enhance circulation, and he stepped off the tramp.

He was still very, very sore.

The cycle of pain and healing grew more arduous with the years. He missed his twenties.