In the wash of water backed up from the toilet, washed up and stranded on the lobby carpet, you can see fur. Tabby-cat fur. A thin black leather collar. Some pencil-thin bones.

 

 By now, Director Denial has followed us from her dressing room. She’s just in time to see the little-toothed skull, picked clean by someone and then coughed up by the toilet.

 

 Engraved on the collar, a tag that says “Miss Cora.”

 

 Looking away from the expression on Director Denial’s face, watching her reflected small in the mirror behind the snack bar, Mrs. Clark says, “How? How could killing anyone get any worse?”

 

  

 

 American Vacations

 

 A Poem About Agent Tattletale

 

 “Americans do drugs,” says Agent Tattletale, “because they don’t do leisure very well.”

 

 Instead, they do Percodans, Vicodins, OxyContin.

 

 

 Agent Tattletale onstage, one hand holds his video camera as a mask

 

 to hide half his face.

 

 The rest of him, off-the-rack in a brown suit. Brown shoes.

 

 A mustard-yellow vest. His straight brown hair combed back.

 

 A yellow bow tie and a white button-down dress shirt.

 

 There, the white of his shirt shimmers,

 

 patterned with movie actors.

 

 

 Instead of a spotlight, Agent Tattletale is a screen for stock footage:

 

 a shot of some theater audience.

 

 Rows and rows of people, all of them,

 

 their crowds of hands all clapping without a single

 

 sound.

 

 

 Onstage stands Agent Tattletale, favoring his left leg,

 

 leaning a little more to the right all the time.

 

 Instead of one eye, that spot filled by the red

 

 RECORD

 

 light of the video camera, watching.

 

 Instead of an ear, on that side the built-in

 

 microphone. To hear nothing but himself.

 

 

 Agent Tattletale, he says, “Americans are the world’s best at doing their work.”

 

 And studying and competition.

 

 But we suck when it comes time to relax.

 

 There’s no profit. No trophy.

 

 Nothing at the Olympic Games goes to the Most Laid-Back Athlete.

 

 No product endorsements for the World’s Laziest

 

 anything.

 

 

 His camera eye on auto-focus, he says, “We’re great at winning and losing.”

 

 And nose grindstoning,

 

 but not accepting. Not shoulder shrugging and tolerance.

 

 

 “Instead,” he tells himself, “we have marijuana and television. Beer and Valium.”

 

 And health insurance.

 

 To refill, as needed.

 

  

 

 Crippled

 

 A Story by Agent Tattletale

 

 Right this minute, Sarah Broome’s looking at her best wooden rolling pin. She swings it, testing how heavy it feels. The hard slap of it against her open palm. She’s moving around cans and bottles on the shelf above her washing machine, shaking the jug of bleach to hear how much is left.

 

 If she could hear, if she’d just listen, I’d tell her it’s okay to kill me. I’d even tell her how.

 

 My rented car is just down the road, maybe one song away if you’re listening to the radio. Maybe two hundred steps if you count steps when you’re scared. She could hike down and drive it back. A dark-red Buick, covered with dust by now from cars going past on the gravel. She could park it close enough to this toolshed or garden shed or whatever she’s got me locked inside.

 

 In case she’s outside, near enough to hear, I shout, “Sarah? Sarah Broome?”

 

 I shout, “You’ve got nothing to feel bad about.”

 

 Me locked here inside, I could coach her. Walk her through it. Tell her how. Next, she’ll need to get a screwdriver and loosen the clamps that hold the tinfoil accordion duct to the back of the clothes dryer. Then she can use this same clamp to anchor one end of the duct around the tailpipe of my car. Those ducts, they stretch out, longer than you’d expect. My gas tank is almost full. Maybe she’s got a power drill to put some holes in the wooden side of the shed, or in the door. Being a woman, she can drill where it won’t show later.

 

 How nice her place looks is important. Seeing how it’s everything she has.

 

 “Her life used to be mine,” I say. “I can see the way she thinks things are.”

 

 She can tear off strips of duct tape to hold the hose against the shed. To speed up killing me, she could throw a plastic tarp over the top half of the shed, then wrap it tight to the sides with rope. Turn this into a tight little smokehouse. In five hours, she’ll have two hundred pounds of beefstick summer sausage.

 

 Most people, they’ve never killed a chicken, much less a human being. People, they have no idea how tough this is going to be.