– The big picture, Ter, I’m missing it, so fill me in.

He lowers himself to the floor, slowly bending his legs till he’s folded into a full lotus.

– The Candy Man is dead.

– Got that.

– Sure, sure you do, that’s basic. The Candy Man is dead. Which, you know, he was a guy in a high-risk market. The blood, I mean, not the candy. So getting murdered isn’t like a statistical improbability or anything. But, and this is the down the rabbit hole part, he’s killed in a fashion that suggests a pretty well-versed Van Helsing was involved. A Van Helsing with enough, I don’t know, foresight, savvy, whatever, to poison the Candy Man’s stock so no one could scavenge it. And then the final tree in this, well, not really forest, but grove, maybe, or copse is a better word. The final tree in this copse is the really relevant fact that Solomon wasn’t what a Van Helsing would call a, you know, a vampire. So that’s our copse, our thicket of trees within the forest. The question is, What’s out of place here? What tree, or shrub even, doesn’t belong in the thicket?

I light my cigarette.

– You lost me at copse.

Lydia points at the NO SMOKING sign above the door.

– You mind?

I take another drag.

– Sister, if you can get through this without a smoke or a drink, more power to you. Me, I’m made of weaker stuff.

She crosses to a black-painted window over the sink, pinches the heads of the thirty penny nails driven through the frame into the sill, draws them out with a squeak, the upside-down pink triangle tattooed on her shoulder jumping as her muscles flex, and shoves the window open.

– I’m not your sister. My sisters share my values and concerns. They don’t put money into the pockets of death merchants.

She drops the nails on the sill.

– And, Terry, a little support on the no-smoking policy would be appreciated.

He rests his hands palms up on the points of his knees.

– Trees, guys. Forest. Copse.

Lydia folds her arms.

– The Candy Man wasn’t infected. The Van Helsing killed him like he was infected. He or she knew all this other stuff, but didn’t know Solomon was a civilian. That’s your odd tree.

He snaps his fingers.

– That’s it, that’s what I’m talking about. That particular piece of foliage seen on its own is just another fragment of the ecosystem, just another link in the chain of life. But in context of our forest? It stands out like a sequoia in the Amazon. An uninfected dealer in the forest of the Vyrus. Solomon has always been an exotic, yeah? So now, now something happens, someone yanks that tree, uproots it and salts the earth. But the way they go about it, it looks like they got a handle on the terrain, like they should maybe know better. So why kill that tree like it’s a, and I don’t like this analogy any better than you will, Lydia, but I’m talking here from this gardener’s point of view, why kill this tree like it’s a weed? Seeing as you know the difference. The Van Helsing I’m talking here.

I flick my butt and it arcs out the open window and between the bars of the security gate.

– Because he’s an idiot, Terry. Because he’s the kind of asshole goes around hacking people’s heads off when he could just shoot them. Because he’s a fucked-up nut job who knows just enough about us to be dangerous, but not enough to know Solomon was clean.

Lydia is pointing at the window.

– You planning to go out there and pick that up? Litter doesn’t throw itself in the garbage, you know.

I pull out a fresh smoke.

– It bothers you, go toss it in a can.

– I swear, Joe, sometimes I think Tom was right about you, sometimes I think you’re working for the Coalition, trying to subvert everything we do down here.

– And we all know where thinking like that got Tom.

She comes away from the window.

– That a threat?

That a threat? Am I threatening the head of the Lesbian Gay and Other Gendered Alliance? Am I throwing down on a woman I might not be able to take one on one, let alone if she comes at me with a couple of her bulls behind her?

Fucking no, I am not.

But I have shit manners.

– Fuck you, Lydia.

– Fuck you twice, Joe. Fuck you all over if you ever come close to threatening me. Tom was a spy. A scumbag subverter and a counterrevolutionary and a real asshole. He got what he asked for. But you ever come close to threatening me with the sun again, I’ll bring fury down on you.

– You’ll bring fury down on me? What the hell is that supposed to-

Terry looks at the ceiling.

– Forest! Forest! Forest!

I crush the cigarette in my hand.

– Brooklyn. OK? I get it. Lydia gets it. Brooklyn is what’s going on. Brooklyn is the big picture. So what the fuck? What’s that got to do with the Candy Man?

Terry smiles.

– See, you do have wider vision, man. That’s great.

Knowing it’s the kingdom of the blind around here, what’s that say about me and my vision?

I open my hand and spill tobacco and shredded bits of white paper on the tabletop.

– Great, now we got that sorted out, can I blow?

Terry untangles his legs, straightening them, rising erect.

– Joe. Lydia. Just as we are negotiating possible alliances with these, I guess they have to be called pseudo Clans at this point, just as we’re initiating talks, a Van Helsing appears. On our back porch. An apparently seasoned and knowledgeable Van Helsing who kills in a, you know, potent style. But he does this-

Lydia coughs.

– We don’t know it’s a man. Can we please not assume the male pronoun for a change?

– Right. So the Van Helsing, he or she, kills an uninfected guy like the guy was infected. If he or she does it out of ignorance, it’s kind of, well, incongruous, to use a five-dollar word. So maybe it’s an accident. Or maybe it’s a message that even an uninfected isn’t safe if he’s trucking with the likes of us. Or maybe, maybe, it’s done just to stir up some shit.

The phone rings.

– I mean, these are delicate times. New faces coming over the bridge. Elements no one has had contact with in, like, decades, man. Talking complex ramifications here. Talking old growth forests getting new seedlings. Talking shifts in the balance of power.

The phone rings.

– And the Candy Man, for all his, no pun here, all his sweetness, he was a hard-core businessman. He was a stone reliable dealer below Houston. The only one down there all those Rogues and odd bits of Clans could rely on in a pinch.

The phone rings.

– Think that’s not gonna stir concern down there? I mean, Christian finds out about this, what’s he do? He doesn’t burn the store like would have maybe been the easy thing, he comes and gets Joe. He looks north. He sees a potentially troubling situation near his club’s turf and reaches out for some Clan involvement.

The phone rings.

– He looks for some people who can stabilize a situation and bring a little balance before things can get knocked off kilter. He knows. His riders relied on the Candy Man. So he knows what this could mean.

The phone rings.

– And, yeah, maybe it’s all as simple and screwed up as a Van Helsing. Maybe we can get him, or her, before a little panic takes place. And then, well, market forces will take over and someone will fill Solomon’s void and it’ll all be cool.

The phone rings.

– But maybe, and I’m not talking from any secret well of knowledge here, I’m just saying, maybe.

The phone rings.

– Maybe it’s someone fucking with us.

The phone rings again and Terry grabs it from its cradle on the wall.

– Hello? Hey. Hello. Yeah. How ’bout that? Been a while. OK, OK, the usual. Yeah? Wow. That was fast. Sure. Hey, we all got our ways. Who? No. Not them. Sure the Freaks did. No surprise, but not them. Uh-huh. I know. Old times, kind of. Well, sure, you know, that was different. Yeah. Uh-huh. Hang on.