Mark (One of Five)

Dara's my secretary. She's one of the two females I know that ain't dames, her and my mom. Dara's like sour candy, screws your face up with a frown the first few seconds before putting a smile on your face. Leaves a funny taste in your mouth after a while.


We made a deal. I write up what's happened to me over the past thirty years, she types it into the computer. She keeps on working here for what she calls "chump change," but she makes almost as much as this slob. I ain't sexist, I'm poor, and I'm barely keeping my head above water here. Complain all you want, you can't make clients walk in the door. Well, maybe if you flashed more leg.

She's got hair red as lipstick. She's gonna get mad, start yelling about that, cause she calls it copper. Cute face, like one of those kids grew up in backwaters country, don't know about the world around her. Just the right height to be short out of heels, tall in them. She always comes in dressed so nice, if you didn't know better, you'd come in and think she was the boss. That happens a bunch.

Every day she comes in, she always carries them black heels in her purse, slips off her tennis shoes at the front door, walks to her desk and kicks off her shoes. That's some dame behavior, but I let it slide cause it's Dara. I don't understand why she even works here. Her fiancee's a doctor, her dad runs a shipping company. She says she keeps on working here cause it's interesting, which is her finishing school way of saying she's slumming it. I wrote it, Dara, but I ain't writing anything I wouldn't tell you to your face.

She said I needed to name this thing. I told her I only name guns and when we don't know someone's name. She said we didn't know this thing's name, like a newborn. I told her I didn't want to bring kids into this world. She said to pick a name, so I said Mark. Then she got all sour-candied on me, screaming like a dame. I told her I'd think about it.

No, you're not getting paid for typing this. This is all on your time. Now let's see how long this blog thing keeps up.

[Hello, I'm Dara. I'm the Information Technology Manager at Tracy Lowell Investigations, though Trace insists on referring to me as his secretary. If you consider that I am typing these blog entries on Trace's behalf, then in that aspect, I am his secretary. I do have an ulterior motive here, aside from getting him to share his experiences with the world.

A few weeks ago, Trace took a bullet wound to his left arm. As usual, he refused to go to the hospital, or to see my fiancee, Billy. He felt that because it didn't strike the bone, and passed through clean, there was no need to waste anyone else's time. I was stuck bandaging his arm. When he took off his overshirt, Trace revealed a blue cornflower tattoo on his left shoulder. I inquired why he had such a tattoo, and he glared at me and told me to drop it.

Trace can be gruff, but he has never been that outright rude about a personal detail. At the very least, he might change the subject and talk about something else, but this time, he continued glaring off into the distance as I poured some of his precious bourbon on the wound to try to anesthetize it. Honestly, with the amount of bourbon that man drinks, I'm surprised it didn't come out of the wound instead of the blood that was everywhere.

Given everything about him, that tattoo is the last thing I would expect on his arm. Borderline alcoholic, inveterate luddite, unintentional lover of malapropisms, hard-nosed boxer, personal investigator, pragmatic, a sense of honor all his own. He even dresses like a pulp detective, slacks, tie, suspenders, overcoat, and a fedora when he remembers it. He's got a face full of character, after thirty some years of boxing and hard drinking. I suppose he would call it my refined way of saying he's ugly.

Everyone should have their secrets, but this one seems too good to hide. I want to know what it means, or why he got it. It might well have been nothing more than a lost bet after a rip-roaring night drunk with his boxing friends. It could have been a promise to someone from his past. He had to have been different once upon a time, and that tattoo might have been inked on a different man. If this is the case, I want to know who that Trace Lowell was.

These are his stories, and though I will sometimes interject, or even insert an entry, for the most part, I will try to keep my comments minimal. I hope you enjoy his stories. -Dara]