As he sat by the phone he feared what she might say. What had she seen, and what of that did she believe? Did she think him a monster because of the way he treated the man in the black suit? Should he have left their house? Would she know to call his office? Would she even call, knowing the awful things she knew now? He sat there, by the phone, agonizing, waiting. He sipped on the brandy, which he carefully balanced in his bandaged hand, and then placed the glass on the coaster next to the phone. The decanter was not to too far from his reach, for this was the instrument, that he needed to drown his agony.

He sat there at his desk, the only noise, outside of the commotion in his head, was of the city traffic outside his office window. The city was his home, yet he was not welcome there. The city welcomed no one. He had come to the city five years ago looking for a dream. He had no delusions of grandeur as he arrived, but once he saw the many lights and sins of the streets, he was changed forever. Marcus was his given name, but everyone had the habit of calling him Max. He was not by any stretch of the imagination a country fool, but he was forced to become wise to the city’s evil ways so as not to be killed. It was a dogfight of immense proportions, the city would kill you as soon as look at you, and Max found out quickly that in a dog-eat-dog world, it was best to be the one with the bigger bite.

In the distance he heard a train, and the ripples in his glass made him realize that it was far closer than first thought. The cars now were passing far less frequently, and the darkness of the office was disturbed by the flickering of the street lamp outside his window. He knew that Julia couldn’t call him at this time, for no doubt she was somewhere far over the Atlantic on her way back to England. He hated thinking that Julia would think any less of him in lieu of recent events, but as he thought more and more, he couldn’t see how she could respect him after his betrayal of her. He just hoped that she would call him, if only to hear her voice: her angelic voice.

Max stumbled drunkenly from his chair, and he began to stare blankly into the mirror, which was adjacent to the window overlooking the street below. He looked at the mirror and saw exactly what Julia saw. He knew why she had run away from his embrace. Max hated what he saw, and it frightened him to a degree, which he had never been frightened before. He had nearly killed a man. The shirt that he wore was a bloody memento of this deed. A deed of which he indeed was not proud. He had defended himself justly. At least that is what he kept telling himself. This, however, is not what she saw. Max didn’t remember a time in his life when he had been so ashamed of himself. He was not ashamed of what he had done to the man in the black suit, for that was a hazard of the job which Max had come to accept, but ashamed of the way he had betrayed Julia’s trust.

He looked closely in the mirror and saw the scar on his chin, which he had received the first week he arrived in the city. It was a constant reminder that in Max’s line of work, you could not trust a soul. He looked next at his forehead and to the gash, which he had received that night. He touched it gingerly, for it was still bleeding, and he cared not to go to the hospital to receive stitches. They asked far too many questions there. He cared not to speak to anyone tonight, all save Julia.

In the mirror he saw a man who was far to old for his age. His brow showed the state in which he had lived for the past two years. Before coming to the city, Max was a successful college student, who graduated third in his class from a respectable school. He had a degree in business, but that degree was just another piece of paper on his wall. Meaningless, except that it reminded him of the better times. That paper on the wall gave him hope. He thought that he had left his past, his family behind. He thought that this paper was proof of this. However, tonight was proof that he could never escape himself. His mother had tried to take Max away from the city, the family, but they were everywhere. When he had insisted on returning to his birthplace, the city, his mother pleaded with him, but like a stubborn mule Max pushed forward. He now wished to hell that he had stayed with her, for now they were both alone.

As Max stared at the mirror he saw himself in a new light. The streetlight was just outside his window, and it cast a yellow glow on his darkened face. Here his brown eyes, which had witnessed more pain that he cared to admit, wept a solitary tear. He had not shaved in two days, and the stubble was now matted with the deep crimson of his own blood. His blue pinstripe shirt was riddled with blood, both his and the man’s. Max’s jacket too was torn. His hair, also matted with the blood of some unseen wound, shone in the light of the street lamp. The wound, though, that bled the most rhythmically throbbed in his chest. As his heart beat and the warm blood issued forth into his veins, Max felt a rush of emotions. Foremost, though, was anger.

Now Max stared at the mirror, not at himself, but at the mirror. He was so angry that he couldn’t believe the image in the mirror of a bloodied and troubled soul was his. Overcome with rage and drink, he threw his warmed glass at the mirror. With drunken aim, he shattered the mirror, and the vision of the Family’s son was gone. As the liquor ran down the wall and mixed with the shards of the broken mirror, Max staggered back to the chair next to the phone, and it is there that he cried himself to sleep. He had in the course of one night driven away the only person he had cared about, and reached a level of desperation that was driving him to the edge of sanity.

It was midnight, and the darkness in the room was all encompassing. The streetlight’s illumination seemed to be dwindling, and coupled with the desperation Max was facing, the room was devoid of light, devoid of life. Max lay asleep in his chair, but his slumber was anything but peaceful. His vivid nightmares violently shook him awake more than once, and the force of the last resulted in his deposition onto the floor of his office. As his head struck the wooden floor, he opened his eyes. Max awoke, and the light of his desk lamp was blinding. He reached to turn it off, but in his drunken anger, grabbed the light and hurled it too into the empty frame of the mirror. Illumination gone, the last thing he saw was the phone. Silent. Hopeless.

As Max awoke the next morning, he felt a headache such that he had never experienced before. He rose and saw that the mirror had been shattered, and there was an empty decanter on its side next to the phone. His entire body hurt, most of all though, the wound deep inside his chest. Max hoped to hell that he had not let himself fall asleep, and in turn missed her call. He checked to see that he had in fact not missed her call. He began to remember the prior night in agonizing detail. Again doubt entered his mind as to whether or not she would truly call. He walked to the window, and he gazed forlornly into the horizon. He had witnessed some of the most magnificent sunrises from his office, but today the sky was overcast. Overcast and dark.

Max looked down at his bloodied shirt, and realized that he needed to change, to change not only his shirt, but also this way of life. As he left his office and walked down the dark hall to his bedroom, he tried to imagine what it would have been like if his father had not been the father of organized crime in the city. He imagined a much easier life, but realized that his apartment, his money, his life, was a result of his father. He was indignant of this, for before he had known who his father was Max had worked for everything. If he needed to buy something, he would earn the money to do so. Now, however, it was given to him – no questions asked. That it seemed was Max’s sole purpose in life, not to ask questions. And he hated this, because he had so very many questions to ask. Why had his mother run away with her newborn son? Why had his father not sought his son? In retrospect, did his father know where Max was all along, and if so, did all of Max’s accomplishments amount to anything? Was it Max’s intelligence that earned him acceptance into college, and guided him to third in his class, or was it his father’s contacts throughout the country that had given him this chance? It was this self-doubt that plagued Max through his adult life.

Now he had lost Julia. And as Max thought about the events of the prior night he realized that he had lost himself too. Max had lost the last shred of dignity and integrity that he had so carefully sought to hold on to over the years. He saw the vision of the man in the black suit, and the look on Julia’s face. It was that look on her face, not the man’s blood on his, which haunted Max now. It was a look not of terror, but of betrayal. Julia had instilled in Max her trust, a trust not lightly given, and he had betrayed her. As he walked back towards his office Max began to limp. It was not apparent to him whether or not the cause of the limp was a result of the fight with the man in the black suit, or the events of the prior night, but it only added further burden to his load. As he limped down the dimly lit hallway, Max tried to reconstruct the prior day’s events. The most important fact to him, though, was that he began the day closer to Julia than ever before and ended it a thousand miles apart.

The man in the black suit was Noah Morgan. Morgan was as crooked as they came, more crooked even than Max’s father. He was a man of nearly fifty, balding, and slimy. Max had met Morgan when he first came to the city to find his father, and it was a friendship quickly dissolved. Max’s father was a mob boss, nothing more nothing less. Max cared not to know all that his father did, but was forced to learn. And learn he did.

Max had hidden away in the deep recesses of his soul all of the questions he had about his father, for he knew that his mother would have died from fear. Max’s mother had refused to tell him anything about his father, her husband. She refused because she was afraid. She was afraid because she knew what kind of a man Max’s father truly was. Max, nonetheless, pushed onwards. He knew that they had come from the city when he was too young to remember. All he had was a photograph of the three of them on which to base his search.

This photograph, though, was significant. It was his only memory of his father. They all looked so happy, but there was something wrong with the picture. It wasn’t the fact that it had been worn and torn through years of admiration, but there was something sinister with his father’s smile. It was not a smile as much as a smirk or a sheepish grin, and until recently it hadn’t bothered Max. Now however the frayed corners of the picture carried with it, like unwanted baggage, a sullied dream.

Max went to the city a naïve individual and it was in this capacity that he sought out his father. Thus he was far from prepared for what he was soon to find. He had no friends in the city, and moreover no leads as to his father’s whereabouts. Moreover, he didn’t even know his father’s name, for his mother had shed it like a snake its skin. Max questioned whether his father even wished to see him after the years of separation. But when one of his cronies appeared at Max’s doorstep one August evening, his dreams and fears were realized.

Max was told that his father wished to meet him, and that he had sought his son over the years to no avail. Like an innocent child – for that in fact was what he was – Max followed. He was driven to an Italian restaurant, which he later learned his father owned. Upon arrival, Max felt only one emotion and that was hope. This hope though was short lived, for the dinner was far from a happy reunion. Max learned what his father did for a living, if you can call it a living. Max realized why his mother had run away with her infant son, and why she had fought so hard to keep him away from this life, if you could call it a life. Immediately Max was forced into the family business, and his first job was the closest to hell he had ever been, until today. Coincidentally both included Noah Morgan.

Max’s father ordered his son to broker a deal with a shipyard owner, whereas the shipyard owner would grant him sole use of the docks. These docks were located at the farthest end of the shipyard, and thus an ideal location for his business. There was only one problem, other than the owner’s duplicity, and that was the fact that they were already leased to a nameless bookie who used the dock house as a center of operation. Apparently the bookie had the same intentions as Max’s father, and when Max went to approach the bookie about procuring the docks he was met by three knife wielding gentleman, who were anything but. One of the three men was Morgan, and it is he who gave Max the scar on his chin that he forever had as a memory that no one was to be trusted. This was what he lived by, and he had only trusted one person since, and it was Max who broke that trust.

It was now ten in the morning and this meant Julia had landed, yet she still had not called. For the third time in as many hours the same questions ran through Max’s head, and he knew he had to leave, for an hour at least. He opened the door and the sunlight entering his eyes made him wince with pain. Though it was overcast, the outside was still far brighter than his office. The streets were wet from some forgotten rain, and the puddles were slicked with the oil of a thousand passing cars. The cars always passed but never stopped. He walked on, and Max pulled his jacket closer to his raw skin. The cold of the winter was attacking his wounds, and like before with the light in his eyes, Max winced. He crossed the street, but the pain was no better on this side. As Max walked on, he noticed that the street was devoid of life; there was no one to be seen. It seemed that no one wished to share in his agony and self-defeat. A newspaper from a happier day lay strewn across a park bench, the rain having molded it into the bench’s shape, like a skeleton. The bench’s white paint was peeling, and these chips revealed that the bench was once an entirely different color. Too was Max, once different, and now frayed around the edges. It is on this bench that Max sat, and it is here that he remained for the next hour, all the while questioning his existence.

He had met Julia while they were in their first year at college, and thus he was still unaware of his father’s business. As the story goes, they fell in love. After college, they parted ways with Julia returning to England and Max seeking out his father. Business brought Julia back to the States, and it is here where they stayed together for the next three years, all the while Julia thinking that Max was a successful businessman. Max always wanted to tell her who he really was, but all the while he feared her reaction. As time passed, it became increasingly harder to tell Julia the truth about his double life. Regardless, Max knew he had to tell her somehow, someway. He was meant to meet her for dinner at a restaurant in the heart of the city, however, Julia at the last minute cancelled, and so Max, despondent, left the restaurant and drove to their house – still intent upon telling her the truth. As he walked to the door, Max heard a familiar voice behind him. Slowly he turned around and saw a large man in a black suit, his old friend Noah Morgan. Morgan was sent there to speak to Max, to teach him a lesson, but Max couldn’t be seen with him tonight – tonight of all nights. Max wanted Julia to know the truth, but not this way. Morgan didn’t understand the sense of urgency in Max’s voice and resented being pushed away. This resentment was aptly voiced by the wielding of a rather large knife. As Max struggled with Morgan, he never saw Julia’s car coming up the drive. And as quickly as it began, so it ended.

Max didn’t see her car coming up the drive, he didn’t hear the engine idle then stop, he didn’t even hear the driver’s side door shut with a pronounced slam. All she saw was Max and an older, graying man in a black suit, saturated with his own blood. Max was beating Noah because he stood for everything that Max hated about this life he had been forced into. If it wasn’t Noah today, it would have been someone else tomorrow. Max was angry about his life. Immediately upon seeing her, he stopped and turned toward her, as if to articulate an explanation. Her expression said it all. The moment lasted a lifetime, or so it seemed. Both staring at one another – one the betrayer one the betrayed. As Max stood staring at Julia, Morgan struck him on the brow, the ring on his middle finger making the deep gash on Max’s forehead. Max caught Morgan on the left temple, and as he did so Morgan fell to the ground. As he tried to talk to Julia, Max felt a sharp pain in his thigh and he fell. As he lay in a semiconscious state, Morgan left and Julia was left to ask questions. Questions which, as far as Max knew, would forever remain unanswered.

As Max left the sodden bench, he was faced with so many questions. Max hated these questions, for they perpetually plagued him. The worst type of questions began with "What if?" and ended without an answer. These were the questions which Max was faced with as he limped back to his apartment. Julia was a thousand miles away and he could not bear that he was the one who drove her there.

She paced to and fro in the pale colored bedroom. Julia was never one to sit and think. The moon was full, and it shone brightly on her misfortune. She was always on the move, and this troubled night was no different. She always paced when she was worried or angry or mad. Today she was all of those emotions and some new ones to boot. What had Noah told Max of her life? Did Max hate her now? What should she do?

The room seemingly began to get smaller, and as she opened the window, the black stench of the city leaked in. It crept slowly over the floor, engulfing everything it touched, overwhelming everything it engulfed. Julia too was overwhelmed by the city, just as her father had been when he arrived in the States. Julia couldn’t bear breathing the city’s sinful air, and therefore as quickly as it was opened, the window was shut.

Julia’s unruly strawberry blonde hair was matted with the blood of Noah, rendering it a deep shade of crimson. Her skin was caked with his blood and as that same blood reddened her blouse, the tears she shed over this spilled blood reddened her eyes. She didn’t know why she had helped her brother, but she couldn’t leave him there. She didn’t know how much her brother had told Max about their father, the one person that she had hoped to put out of her life by moving to London.

She felt the same feelings, which had overcome her some years before. A need to escape filled her marrow. She knew what her father would say. He would say that she was a coward escaping again – for indeed she was escaping. She was escaping the pain she had caused. Julia now looked at herself; she was caked with Noah’s blood. His blood made her impure. She needed to cleanse herself – to wipe away the stench of impurity.

As she stepped into the steam of the shower, she felt that no amount of scrubbing could remove the filth, which flowed in crimson streams from her body. Of course she was right that she couldn’t this easily cleanse herself of the blood, for it was not Noah’s blood on her body, but Max’s blood on her hands which so troubled her now. Furthermore Julia couldn’t stanch the wound which now was bleeding so rhythmically.

When she stepped out of the shower, her skin was a deep scarlet shade, not from the blood or the steaming water, but from the compulsive scrubbing. She could not get clean. She could not get the blood off her hands. She could not get the damned spot out. Julia, the course of the shower, had broken every previously carefully manicured nail by scraping the blood from her body.

Outwardly, she was clean and so she dressed and packed. Julia would again flee the States, the city, to seek solace. And it was this solace that she truly needed now more than ever before. As she packed her bags, the memories came back to her like a torrent of once ebbed floodwaters. Every article of clothing had a story, and each involved Max. She wept for she knew it was she who had driven him away. Damn his look.

As she called for the cab, she looked at the pictures of she and Max, now nothing more than colored paper on her pale wall. They were so happy – they were so naïve. The airport taxi arrived and as she stepped from the bottom step of the apartment building, she was lost. Everything, which surrounded her now, seemed so far away. Julia had no inkling of the time, nor where she was. The only lights, which remained on, were the yellow streetlights and a solitary window of a passing building. This light too was gone as quickly as she had seen it. She missed Max already, their light too quickly extinguished.

As the plane taxied from the international terminal, Julia wept. She was the only person on the plane, but she was accompanied by the guilt of her deeds. Julia looked out the window for the entire flight. She was in a state of shock, the reality had finally sunk in. This shock was akin to that felt when someone close to you has died. To Julia, Max was as good as dead, and it was she who killed him.

Once Julia arrived to London, she returned to her old loft overlooking a quaint park. The park was a sort of oasis in the desert of the city. She couldn’t shake the similarity of every city, every big city, that she had been to. There was of course the nauseating smell, the stench of sin, but there was so much more that troubled her. Though she was now a thousand miles away, it felt as if she had never left the States, the City. With this thought, all the anger and resentment of her family, and now herself came rushing back.

She looked at the phone, knowing Max wouldn’t call it. He didn’t have the number, no one did. This was an integral part of Julia’s safety net with which she surrounded herself. Her father had hurt her too deeply, and thus she trusted no one, not even Max. However, Julia hated that she couldn’t bring herself to tell Max of the double life she led. She had been happy in London. They couldn’t find her there. Her father’s tentacles, far reaching as they were, didn’t stretch to the lawless pubs and back alleys of London. Julia questioned the things that possessed her to come back to the States. She looked into the moon, its beauty against the black night sky. Before, it had symbolized everything that could be, but now it stood for the distance that those dreams had moved away from her. She then stared into the mirror, in it a reflection of the moon illuminating a lost child. She saw now not the woman she portrayed in the play of life, but the lost child whom she had hidden away for so many years. She again began to cry.

She couldn’t sleep; instead she remained awake, yet frightfully unaware, worrying about Max. She left him there, lying prone to the elements; he was wounded physically and in all likelihood emotionally. She cried without end, and she wanted to escape all the desperation in which she found herself. She ran away like a scared child from a stranger, but Max was no stranger. He was the most honest man she knew, and for this she was eternally grateful. Why couldn’t she have told him everything? Why did she leave him there? All of these questions tore at her heart. Her white blouse became stained a deep crimson by her tears. She stared at the mirror and hated what she saw. She saw the cowardly child her father told her she was. She saw the eighteen-year-old who fled to Europe to escape her past. She saw the woman incapable of trusting, who had just left her best friend, the only person she truly loved, on the pavement drenched in his own blood. And in the false light of the London moon, she saw the miserable person she told herself that she would never become.

Julia’s father was a crooked cop, as crooked as they came. He was lower than the lowest snitch that was working for him. Julia abhorred her father and tried as hard as she could to distance herself from him. She moved to London but it was no use. As the money ran out she was forced to crawl back to her father and his money. She never actually asked what he did and it was probably better this way. She did know that he had killed before, and by the pride in his voice, she knew that he would kill again if even marginally necessary. Noah, her wayward brother, had followed in his father’s footsteps and weaseled himself into internal affairs, thus creating a clear-cut path of lawlessness. Julia tried to distance herself from that life as much as possible, but this day’s events had proven to her that it was nearly impossible. Nearly.

Again she started pacing, but no amount of walking could help ease her pain. She looked out her window at what was before a beautiful night. It now was raining. It wasn’t pouring, yet the steady stream of rain was enough to beat rhythmically upon the window of her apartment. The streetlight outside her window gave a false illumination to the pictures of her false life, displayed on the table for no one to see. These pictures were of a happier time, but like those on her wall before, they had no meaning anymore. The far off whistle reminded her of the whistle of the kettle in England, and the good times, which surrounded that part of her life. The rain had subsided, and she decided to leave. She knew not what time it was, but the moon shone ever bright, and the street light showed no signs of stopping.

She walked to the park, shrouded in a cloak and darkness. The city’s darkness was thick and as obscuring as a thick fog. The park was empty and silent. The ground was still moist from the rain, and she sat on a white bench. It was newly painted, but for whom? What was this paint trying to cover up. The answer was all too obvious to Julia, for her life was a whitewash also. Everything that she was known for, everything that people thought about her, everything that she, herself, wished to believe was false. She was not a scholar anymore who went to London to further herself; she was a coward who would have gone anywhere to escape herself. The thing is, as far and fast as you run, you can never outrun yourself.

Julia sat on the bench and she hated herself for leaving Max at their home. They had moved in together only that day, and as quickly as it began, so it ended. There was no doubt in Julia’s wandering mind that Noah had told Max of her duplicity, therefore she couldn’t imagine him speaking to her. She had betrayed his trust. She cried on the bench, and nervously peeled away the paint from one corner. The perfect image of the bench now was shattered; the perfect image of a woman now too was gone. As she left the park, the truth fell to the ground in the form of little white paint chips and flowing tears.

The walk back to her apartment was a silent one, and nary did a single car pass. These roads would be crowded, however, soon enough. The tranquility of the blackened night would soon be shattered by the chaos of the city life. City life, it seemed had the unnatural ability to destroy one’s life, or to create a new one entirely. Julia had tried to escape her created life before, and when she left on the plane to England, owning only the shirt on her back, she thought she had. In London she stayed at a hostel until she found a job at a small bakery. Soon though the money ran out and there were no other bakeries seeking the services of a desperate girl. Julia would have rather slept on the streets than have had to return to the States, but her pride and lack of money afforded her no other options.

Upon returning she was immediately going to tell Max about her life. But she feared that Max would not be able to accept the scared girl that she truly was, but only that he could love the past image of the carefree girl with whom he fell in love. Though deep inside she knew that these fears were ungrounded, her insecurities, which were built up inside of her since the day she was born, forced her to wait to tell Max until it was too late. Now it was far too late. Too late to tell him, too late to matter.

Julia closed the door behind her, and then she stopped. She walked into the living room and collapsed on the ever-accommodating couch. She imagined Max, sitting at home crushed by the betrayal. She saw the look in his face as he looked up at her just before Noah savagely hit him. It was a look of anger mixed with fear and hurt. It was the look of a wounded man, wounded in more places than he would admit. She looked at the phone, and then at her hands, heavy with the blood of Max on them. She could not forgive herself for putting Max in a position to be hurt. After all if it had not have been her brother, he wouldn’t have gotten into a fight. Again she looked at the phone, and the events of the day overwhelmed her to the point where she cried herself to sleep.

She awoke with a start, for it was nearly eleven in the morning. The streets had not yet been traveled by the cars driven by the people who went from point A to point B without ever looking to see what lies in between. Soon though they would come out in a multitude, and there would be silence no more. She looked out of her window to the park, and the bench now white once again. She could not distinguish the mark that she had left upon it. Julia caught a glimpse of a solitary man limping up the stairs of the neighboring building, and she sympathized with his pain. Julia now welcomed the oncoming din and chaos of the city life, it would take her mind off of what she had done to Max. She waited for the noise, but it was noon and silence still was everywhere. The only noise lived in her troubled thoughts. She knew that there was only one way to stifle this noise. As she picked up the receiver, she hoped that Max would speak to her. She hoped that they could be together – even if they were now a thousand miles away.