Genesis – Shade of the Morning Sun

Portrait of a Killer

By Christopher Marcus | February 13, 2004

I need time to think about where I will get rid of the gun, so I get off near Kearny and walk the rest of the way to Embarcadero.

There is a grainy mist in the air that makes San Francisco feel forbidding and cold like it doesn’t really want to receive me.

I work here, sure, and I live in fucking faraway Montara, but the whole Bay Area feels like a stranger every morning, even though I have come here for over three months.

Like this is someone else’s city.

I glance at my watch and try to distract myself with calculations about how fast I can walk to the pier and back to the restaurant without being late and getting fired. I have not had the best of records in being on time so far, and it’s not just because of traffic. I have to pull myself together or Mrs. Nicolo’s famous social conscience might wear thin – if it hasn’t already.

And still, there is the gun. I can feel its weight in my bag as I cross the street and make a point of passing the Financial District, without actually passing through. That is a world that is now forever out of reach, after the road I’ve been on for the last three years.

My career as a drifter would not get me anywhere in those hallowed halls of glass and concrete. And to think I once dreamed of being a lawyer who went there and made an example of some guy who did all the dirty deals, and then I showed society what justice was all about. Just like on TV.

I hurry towards the water and the Bay. I can see the green-blue stripe between the buildings and I think for a brief second about if I should take a boat to Alcatraz, which is crazy because then I could really be late and get my ass fired.

One of the few people who gave me a chance, and I would have let her down. And myself. Well, I’ll be damned if I will let that happen.

So I walk faster.

…

Shadows In The Shape Of Men

By Christopher Marcus | December 7, 2003

For a split-second, a perverse thought struck her … what would happen if she told Mr. Conway the truth?

‘Oh … by the way, I’m a former addict!’

The contract clearly said that Mr. Conway had to give her a month’s advance warning if he ever wanted her out. So if she told him outright, would that be … insane?

Maybe. But in a strange way it would feel good to prove that she still had the guts to stand by who she was. She could always go back to the motels until she found something else.

Also, doing something insensibly crazy like this would feel even better than the oh-so-sensible promise she had made to herself: That come summer she would have earned enough of her own money to pay back Jeremy and return to university and finish—guess what—her law degree. After she had become a real lawyer, she would spend the rest of her life helping people who had found themselves up to their throats in shit, just because they had made a few bad calls at a time in their lives. Yeah, she would go back to university and then she would be like that lawyer in the John Grisham-novel … what-was-its-name-again…?

But she hesitated … and then she told herself sharply not to think crazy thoughts again, not to ruin it all on a childish whim, and to smile normally to Mr. Conway.

He didn’t smile back at her.

…