Free The Last Darling by Cloud Buchholz Page B

help, achieved a positive stability. She was hired permanently and almost immediately handed the mantel of CFO. The bookwork kept her busy and she was only able to handle three tattoos a week.
    Though she was happy, she remained distant from her co-workers. It would be four years before she openly called them friends and another two years before she spent time with them outside of work. She never spoke about her past and seldom spoke about her personal feelings. Her wardrobe consisted of long jeans and closed-collar shirts, which she wore even in hot weather in an attempt to conceal her scars. Her co-workers, each strange and displaced in their own way, were unaffected by her oddities and accepted her without explanation for they knew her silence was a kind of scar too.
    Though she continually had a number of romantic offers, she refused to have a relationship. She could barely stand looking at her own body and the thought of someone else gazing at it was too much to bear, so when she saw Leo Darling’s drawing, she felt painfully self-conscious. He had drawn her naked and so accurately she feared he had seen what she so desperately tried to hide. She fled to a back office, crouched behind a desk, and failed to keep her body from shaking. She remained there until late in the evening, hours after closing time.
    When she was certain everyone had left, she gathered her few possessions and exited the shop. She walked exactly three steps before her path was obstructed by Leo Darling. He had not intended to stop her and, in fact, did not even notice her for his attention was occupied by an angry and knife-wielding transient. The transient had been rummaging through a dumpster, haphazardly throwing garbage about and making noise. Leo Darling, doing his best to remain calm, asked the man to leave. The man grunted and threw a fist full of used coffee grounds in Leo’s direction. Leo wiped them from his shirt and cheek. He pushed the transient against the wall and punched the side of his nose – his temper matched only by his speed. The transient dropped to the ground, blood dripping from his nose and lip.
    Leo readied a second swing but the transient recoiled with a blade, slicing Leo’s forearm. Leo pivoted back, guarding his wound, as the transient lunged. They slammed and rolled against the pavement in front of Rose Fox.
    She was too startled to scream, or move. Leo got to his feet, but quickly fell against a parked car as the knife cut his shirt and jacket. The transient spit and smirked, swinging the blade again. It tore across Leo’s chest, immediately causing blood to soak through the thin shirt. Rose, startled by the blood, dropped her purse. The transient turned at the sound. He saw her horrified expression and was overcome with guilt. He dropped the knife and fled back into the alley, out of sight.
    Rose did not, nor would she ever, know the circumstances of the man she had startled, nor would she learn his purpose for trafficking the alleys behind her shop. He had once been a soldier honorably discharged after suffering a mental breakdown during an excursion in Afghanistan. A section of road, tactically invaluable, had been layered with enemy mines, a detail he was aware of only after walking half its length. He did not see his friend and fellow soldier explode; he only felt warm sludge cake his face and uniform. The three other soldiers in his unit halted, now alert of their mistake. They tried to form a line, walking in the first soldier’s footsteps, but two explosions cut their numbers by half. Eventually, only he remained. Convinced his life would end that day, he closed his eyes, then walked straight and without hesitation. He reached his destination unscathed. He could not explain why he had survived when better men had not, and so he collapsed from exhaustion and guilt. Hospitalized at the base, he sat on a bed, rocking forward and back, until the army discharged him.
    He returned to America rot with guilt and