Gary Dauphin

"I don't know what you're going to do with all this when I'm gone," she said, waving a half-eaten, crisp slice of bacon over the table between them. It was early and the sun was still low enough to peek behind the eastern lip of the smog roof that sat parked over Los Angeles like a smothering pillow. Fleeting shafts of bright morning light danced into their kitchen and burnished the browns of her arm with gold, set the grease on her fingers to sparkling. Eric had to admit she had a point. The traficantes he had bought the livemeat from would not take the uneaten portions back.