Michael the orderly, before it had all come down to the most private of acts, remembered his wondering if Marty and Valerie, in their lives beforehand, before the catastrophic crashes, before cement and machines and phone poles adjusted to flames around the piles of their motorcycles, he was a bull in bed, she was the puma come down to drink. Images loomed early on, lively, kicking images on how they must have cut a path to the heart of their appetites, their excitements, from what he heard up and down the entire east coast. Even pinned now to lives in rolling chairs, they evoked a fierce amount of energy, fire and brimstone, taste and distaste. Even then he thought the world of them, wanted to be god on the hill for them, Thor or Odin or a damned good magician with a damned good wand. Hell, he had the black skin; all he needed was the black hat with a few secret compartments.
