Haven Beach
by Kirk Bjornsgaard

HAVEN BEACH

"Markie was a suicide?"
Roxy nodded at my question. "Only a gay performance artist would end it all by charging down that bridge on a ten-speed and launching himself head-first into the tree." Her voice was husky----, sex-as-sound.
The causeway arched across the bay through afternoon haze and met Ocean Boulevard beside our postage-stamp yard. "The cops ruled it an accident," I said, focusing on the scrub pine in the lawn. "Riding after dark with no helmet, headlight, or common sense."
Sunlight flashed off a wide bracelet hugging Roxy's bronzed right forearm. "Markie didn't believe in accidents," she said.
I felt charged with the thrill of the hunt and by its macabre twist. Roxy had established a rhythm to our exchange and I didn't want to break it. "Markie must have been unhappy," I said.
Her gaze drilled through me. "No more unhappy than the rest of us."
She slipped through the back door like the fickle breeze, her silver bracelet clanking on the counter like a warning bell.
My brother came into the kitchen and retrieved a beer from the 'fridge.
"Roxy belongs to Mr. D," he said.
"Who's Mr. D?" I asked, accepting a second brew.
Sam's voice rumbled like breakers along the beach in front of the rooming house. "He charters boats for the heavyweights who own Atlantic City," he said. "Knows lots of ways to kill a man."
Anguish tempered desire---. Another male in the herd had marked her! But I suspected that Roxy could drive men to do stupid things and I wanted to find out how.

I'd moved into Sam's ramshackle rooming house after I left my lounge band and slunk back to the Eastern Time Zone of my birth. "My music never came out right. I worked 300 nights a year but never felt anyone was listening. No one cared. I had to come to where I could feel sand between my toes."
So I told Roxy one morning the following week, as she slipped naked into my bed after Mr. D left on a charter.
"What'll you do when winter comes?" she asked.
"Walk really quickly when I go outside?"
Her high-spirited laugh intoxicated me. Most people I know had long ago became too demoralized to laugh.
"I can't figure you out," she said.
I smiled and considered her challenge. "Sit on a bar stool and lean back," I replied. "Back to where you're not sure if you're going to recover or go over backwards. That's where I exist right now."
She leaned closer, satiny lips pursed. "Could you kill someone?"
Her violet eyes were sizing up a mate­­or a victim; I couldn't tell which. I thought again of Markie's tree. If the cops ruled it an accident and Roxy claimed it was suicide, could the truth lie on some bloody middle ground? "It would depend how badly I wanted to do it," I said. "And why."
Roxy wrapped her hands around my neck and kissed me. I swam deeply into the kiss. Our tongues played. I combed her dark curls with my fingers and then wrapped my hands around her slim, muscular waist. The ingot bracelet caressed my neck.
As she left my room, Sam stepped inside. He was glowering at me again. "I can handle it," I told him.
"Lots of dead men say otherwise," he replied.
"Markie?" I asked.
"Do you really wanna find out?"
I began to find out later that day when I walked out the back door and a primate's punch glanced off the side of my head. I bounced against the house and dropped to the sand. Recoiling to a sitting position, convinced Mr. D had torn off my ear, I saw him herd Roxy into a pick-up. Her terror-filled eyes suggested a caged animal. The image stayed with me as the truck sped off.
My eyes snagged on something rattling in the truck bed. I smiled. "I believe I know how to kill him for you, Roxy."

At first, Roxy's laugh was a byproduct of my moonstruck drowse as I lay across the dune. Then it came again. Her laugh­­our signal.
I released the safety on the spear gun and watched the path that meandered between the dunes. Icy moonlight gleamed off breakers that crashed to shore behind me, bearing the shriek of every sailor damned to a watery grave. I fit the weapon to my right shoulder. It reminded me of my guitar. I felt ambivalence in the plastic pistol grip, cold certainty in the brushed chrome frame, commitment in the hardened steel shaft. I wished I'd stolen the larger of the two spear guns from his truck bed that afternoon.
The hell-chorus of breakers purged all thoughts when Mr. D strode into view on the path. I squeezed the trigger, then relaxed my finger and lowered the weapon.
Roxy screamed. It was a lusty counterpoint to the cold blue subtlety of sea sounds and night air. I froze in the dune grass. When Roxy screamed again, I tumbled to the path, spear gun clattering to the ground. Three yards away, Mr. D lay face down in the sand, the spear shaft through his temples. I peered closer. He held the other spear gun. The double-slug weapon was loaded. The safety was off.
Now Roxy's banshee wail slurred the words, "Oh God! He's killed him!""
I sprang to Mr. D's side, grabbed the weapon from his hand, and dashed up the trail to the sea wall. With my free hand, I grabbed Roxy by the shoulder and turned her to face me. Her luxuriant violet eyes and wide smile were insanely familiar. This turned her on as much as making love to me.
"You set me up!" I howled.
The wind swirled her hair swirl, Medusa-like. "You told me to get him down on the beach." Her voice was an intoxicating hiss.
I brandished the spear gun. "Does he always carry one of these?"
Her laugh felt like a violent kick in the balls. As she caressed the gun her bracelet lightly clanged against its shaft. "I did everything you asked," she said, "then I told him you swiped the gun from his truck, and that you were gonna ambush him. Of course, I also told him you were behind the last dune­­not the first one."
The spear gun's weight seemed to double: Two police cars turned on to the short street leading to the sea wall. Flashing red and blue lights formed a psychedelic halo around Roxy's cherubic face and wind-socked hair. Had I planned to lose my mind that summer? I wondered. If so, I was close to achieving my goal.
I forced out a single, rusty syllable: "Why?"
"Because Markie couldn't."
"Mr. D. killed him when he tried."
Her shrug seemed to offer redemption. "After Mr. D. rammed Markie's head into the tree, I put the bicycle next to his body. The police came up with the rest of it." Her smile made me want to vomit over the sea wall. "You were clever. You fought dirty," she said. "You were superb."
 The police cars halted at the sea wall. A uniformed cop slithered gingerly from each one and approached us.
"They're not going to be sorry he's dead," she purred, nodding at the cops. "You might get a break."
I was out of time. I had nowhere to run. I didn't even want to run. I only wanted my last question answered. "I loved you."
Her gaze sliced open my soul, exposing the rot festering there. "Mr. D always told me, use whatever tools get the job done. That's all you and I were ever about."
A cop stood behind her and behind me. Their guns remained holstered. The cop facing me said, "Throw the spear gun onto the beach. Ma'am, take a step to your right."
Roxy's angelic face exploded into tears. She dropped to her knees and covered her face with her hands. "He killed my husband!"
I raised the gun as if to toss it aside and fired the spear between Roxy's prayerful hands.

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