Character Profiles

Roger raised himself on his elbow and gradually focused his eyes as the blare of the morning sun filtered through the blinds. Christ! She took everything. The walls in the bedroom looked worse than bare, for you could make out the outline of dust where the painting had hung, lighter shades of the carpet where the dresser had stood; over to the right, her make-up table gone. His clothes were tossed in a heap where his bureau had rested. Outside the mechanical mayhem abruptly stopped and he could hear shouting, he buried his head in the crux of his elbow piecing together what he could of, of the days that followed. His rise had been almost immediate in the field of journalism; the story of the decade about the second terrorist cell aimed for the Hollywood sign and the Hoover Dam. His clandestine interviews with members of Alqui’da’s inner cell in America were rewarded with SoCal President’s Award for Investigative Journalism and his celebrity was on the rise. Even the Whitehouse had to verify that the story wasn’t libel, even though they never actually admitted to the western cell per se, they never denied it. Roger went the extra mile to document conversations within the western cell, and find informants that would brave Alqui’da’s wrath. His mind slipped back to that night in 2005, when he and Fahad were forced to hide in the BP oil drums, as they listened to the men describe exactly what they would do to them, if they caught them. Roger had picked up enough Arabic in those past few months to ascertain the extent of the torture they were conjuring up. He trembled a bit, recalling those harrowing hours. Roger’s thoughts were now invaded by the growing wail of a siren; and, as the sound escalated, he propped himself up in bed mesmerized by the continuous wail as it progressed until it appeared to revolve right below his window. Sirens! Sirens! I can’t write, I can’t think, all I can do is drink, drink, drink! His voice echoed in the stillness of the room, then died suddenly in his throat. The Kiss by Rodin, the sole work of art still left hanging on the empty wall; the print he spent three weeks hunting down for her, so that he may give it to her on Valentine’s Day to mark their fifth anniversary. Even then, he could not be sure if she had been sleeping around the bitch and to what extent she was already planning her escape from him and his problems.

MacKensie Peter’s life up to that point had been an array of blues and whites. His career had stretched across both collars; from A/C technician to working on a Master’s degree in Psychology. He had been a man of resources most of his adult life, but a man still wrestling with the niche we all pursue in our life—travailed around a streak of uncertainty that had dictated itself as fate through his thirty-two years. Recently, he had finely starched his new collar to the psychotherapy banner; but he was still years away from achieving his doctorate. His friendship with Roger had prospered only through their subtle addiction to cribbage, bad jokes and football, even to the point of following Roger into the corporate world of SCAB! Magazine. He to keep moving towards his degree; Roger to use as a springboard back to the career he had once had. Their camaraderie had evolved like most until, without really realizing it; they had become pals, then good chums. Now they numbered each other amongst their close circle of friends. Mac cared little for the business, except as a rich source of watching life turn against individuals; and a good source to conduct a dissertation on the frailties of human emotions. Although, if put to it, he couldn’t decide whether or not his study would be on the people featured in the rag or the people who bought it. Being from Oklahoma, Mac grew up listening to the Texas bands from Austin, so his recollection of the band, SYN, was not a long stretch. He was still a child, when the band had disappeared from the Oklahoma airwaves, did not recall they had gone to California. But he did remember his father in the evenings, fixing the ’72 Nova; the one Mac still continuously tinkered with, with the radio blaring the Austin City Limits. A smile creased his brow as the remembrance came and went.

Several blocks away, Isabella Baum sat contemplating her future and her ever present problem. She was a woman of practical measures. Perhaps it was her upbringing in the Jewish tradition that had prepared her as a pragmatic; perhaps it was the Italian in her that caused her annoyance of people who believed half of the shit: teaching Creationism in schools, that climate change was god’s will, that the welfare state was responsible for the record high unemployment, that religion was our only salvation, the religion of commercialism. It was not so much a break with religion as a drifting away; a log upon a winnowing stream. Her religion had grown from a sense of humanitarianism toward those less fortunate than herself, the view of a vengeful god inflicting pain and suffering upon his devoted followers just so much flotsam and jetsam within her mind. But the last few nights at work in the shelter had drawn her bead closer to God and the prayers she could still remember from her youth suddenly came back to her.

She had always felt an empathy for the downtrodden; perhaps that was why she had turned her back on her father’s business; turned her back on her own pet project; why even now, as the mumbling continued from the corridor in the darkest section of the shelter; while mothers and children huddled together in disbelief on the cots at the other side of the building, she felt a duty to remain.