The Chosen

drove off, leaving the guy to stare off with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth.

It reminded Paul of his own plight, the end result: destruction. Love chopped up like raw meat on a butcher block. The universe was an extraordinary butcher. Why did these things happen? How could people love each other one minute and hate each other the next? Where was the line of demarcation?

The heart, Paul answered himself. Vera gave me her heart, and I threw it back in her face.

He went in the back way, and cleaned himself up as best he could in the John. Not to be born is best, someone had written on the wall. Paul washed his face off and got all the garbage off him. From the back room someone could be heard doing Dice Clay imitations: “… a fuckin’ tree trunk!” Paul went downstairs and pulled up a stool at the bar.

Craig, the ’Croft’s most infamous barkeep, was juggling shot glasses around the lit Marlboro Light in his mouth. “Long time no see, Paul. Where ya been?”

“Sick,” Paul said. It was no lie. That stepped-on crap he’d snorted with those girls had rocked him pretty bad. “Newcastle. A pint.”

Craig poured the beer from the line of ten taps, slid it to him. Paul and Craig were good friends, but Paul was not surprised to see the barkeep’s back turn to him. “So you’re giving me the cold shoulder too, huh?”

Craig shrugged, sliding clean Pilsner glasses into the rack. “I’ve been hearing some pretty shitty things about you. They true?”

“N—” Paul began. He stared into the depths of his beer. Then he said: “Yes. I guess they are.”

“Vera really catch you in bed with two girls?”

Paul nodded. Only one of ’em wasn’t really a girl. “She tell you that?”

“No, she disappeared. Just something I’ve been hearing. You know how word gets around downtown. That’s not like you, man. And coke? Since when do you do drugs?”

“Never,” Paul said. Never in my life. “I don’t know what came over me. Got shitfaced, met two girls, next thing I know I’m in bed with both of them. I’ve never been so out of control in my life.”

“I heard one of the girls was Daisy Traynor.”

Paul squinted. “Never heard of her. In fact, I never seen either of these girls before.”

“Daisy Traynor’s a hooker. They call her ‘Daisy Train,’ on account of she pulls trains—you know, gangbangs. You’re out of your mind going anywhere near that. She’s a crack addict. Every now and then she’ll stumble in here real late, all fucked up on cocaine, and I’ll just throw her right the fuck out. Last summer me and Luce hear about this big party going down at Cruiser’s Creek, near the water off of Bestgate, so we check it out. Some party. When the kegs went dry some of the locals started passing around coke and PCP, so me and Luce leave. But before we’re out of there, we see Daisy back in the woods behind some guy’s house, doing a whole motorcycle gang. She’s pure scum, man. Probably got every disease in the book.”

Paul groaned. Once he’d gotten his shit together, he’d gone to the doctor’s for blood tests. Thank God they’d been negative. “What’s this Daisy look like?”

“Skinny, short blond hair, ragged-out. She’s like twenty-two but looks ten years older. She’s got a little cross tattooed in the pit of her throat.”

“That’s her,” Paul lamented. He