Stone Junction

Breathing deeply, Volta opened the vault as Shamus covered him from ten feet away, his disfigured hand still hovering at his ear, but silent now, as if it too were watching. As soon as the vault door sprang open, Shamus ordered, ‘Now step away from the vault, move ten feet to your right along the wall, and then I want you to assume the position against the wall. You die if you twitch.’

Volta calmly spread his legs and stretched his hands over his head, supporting the weight of his leaning body.

He heard Shamus run the gun barrel down the boxed and stacked cassettes, scanning the codes. There was a sudden silence when he found it.

‘I’d be glad to put it on the deck,’ Volta offered. He felt helpless leaning against the wall.

‘Don’t move,’ Shamus warned. ‘Don’t even jiggle.’

Volta listened as Shamus crossed to the desk and inserted the cassette.

‘Don’t do it, you stupid fucking sentimental fool. You weak-willed, self- pitying failure. Yellow, spineless whipping-boy idiot of such heroic, soaring dreams. Give me that gun. You make the decision; I’ll execute it.’

Shamus handed the gun to his ravaged hand and then punched the play button on the deck. He moved ten feet from Volta, his back inches from the open vault.

On the tape, a phone rang seven times before Volta answered, ‘Yes?’

ANNALEE: A woman will plant a bomb at an alley between Livermore warehouses at Las Postas Avenue this evening. She must be stopped. She will have a child with her. The child must not be harmed. If the woman is arrested, the child must be cared for. No one––

VOLTA: [cutting in] Annalee, I can’t pretend this is an anonymous call.

ANNALEE: Then I want you to promise me with all your soul that you’ll never tell anyone who made it. Never. Even if you have to die.

VOLTA: Annalee, I can admire what you’re trying to do, even if it’s too late for safety; I admire your love for him that you would risk yourself to preserve its possibility; but it’s nonetheless a betrayal of his trust, a necessity that might have been forestalled if you’d called when he first returned. I’ll honor your secret as completely as I can, but I will not die for it.

ANNALEE: Fine, yes, as far as you can. But stop me from planting that bomb.

VOLTA: I assume it’s diversionary. Livermore? Plutonium?

ANNALEE: Just stop me. And if anything happens, take care of Daniel.

VOLTA: I’ll try, Annalee. That’s all I can do.

ANNALEE: Do it.

The tape clicked off.

Volta, face to the wall, couldn’t see Shamus’s reaction, so he said what he felt: ‘I’m sorry you had to hear it, Shamus. I know it’s painful.’

‘Painful?’ Shamus laughed wildly. ‘That fake? That cruel, cowardly, chickenshit fake? Who was it, one of the legendary AMO mimics? Maybe even this Jean Bluer I’ve been hearing about? Fuck, you can hear the splices! It isn’t even close to her voice. I remember her voice. I remember her laughter and skin! Proof? Bullshit! Truth? Here, Volta, turn around here, I’ll show you the fucking truth.’

Volta turned to face Shamus. When he saw the gun in Shamus’s scarred hand, Volta knew he was about to die.

Shamus wailed, ‘You want the truth, huh, the whole truth and nothing but, and not any of your bullshit lies?’ He grabbed the mirror leaning against the wall and thrust it toward Volta, holding it up for him to see his face. ‘There! That’s your truth. Look at it! Look! Look at yourself! Look at what you are!’

Volta met himself on the surface of the mirror. He looked into his own eyes. No escape. He lifted his head and met Shamus’s gaze. ‘I know who I am,’ Volta said.

The bullet hit Volta above the left eye, the impact snapping his head back as it blew away the back of his skull. He staggered for an instant, took a stumbling step forward, swayed as he gathered his last living breath, and then, just as Shamus lifted the mirror to shield himself, Volta drove his fist through it, shattering the glass. A splintered shard sliced the carotid artery an inch below Shamus’s left ear, and another nearly severed his scarred hand at the wrist.

Volta wanted to stay on his feet, to walk outside and watch the moon and stars as he died, but Shamus – howling, blinded by glass slivers – shoved him backward. Volta collapsed against the table, sending the goldfish bowl smashing to the floor.

Shamus, his spurting wrist pressed against his shirt, his other hand clamped against his neck, staggered along the wall until he found the door, fumbled the knob open with his blood-slick hand, and lurched outside.

Volta lay dead face down alongside the table, his arms stretched out slightly above his head, the spreading pool of blood just touching his fingertips.

Spilled free of its shattered bowl, the tiny goldfish flopped on the oak floor, trying to fling itself back into the lake, the spherical river. A last wild leap carried it to the edge of the pooling blood. The goldfish thrashed itself upright, then, its back shining above the shallow pool, half squirmed, half swam through Volta’s blood, splashed up the shallows like a golden salmon battling upriver to spawning grounds, its movement mirrored in the sinuous