There was a pounding somewhere in Detta's head, this hard knocking. It's sound rose and fell with her breathing and she felt herself rising, coming out of her pleasant state of sleep. She was lingering on the brink of awake when she heard it again, a knock but not on wood. On glass. The beat would rise and fall at uneven intervals. She moaned, disgruntled at not being able to pinpoint where it was coming from. Then came the muffled yells, screams through glass. It sounded like the noise was calling to her.

She slowly opened her eyes, at first not knowing where she was but once the sleep started to drift away, reality started to flood back in. She had felt boxed in in her office so she moved the typewriter to the dining room table. It felt like she had been working on the same column for ages. What was happening to her sense of time? Ever since she moved to Santa Carla, it was nonexistent. As her brain began to come more to the waking side, that same knocking came to her again and the yelling of what sounded like her name through glass.

She lifted her head off of her arm so her eyes could see over the typewriter but she wasn't expecting such a view. Detta let out a shot scream when she saw the outlines of what could only be Marko and Paul on her small patio. Still startled, she stood up from her chair and flicked on the outside light. The two boys winced in its brightness but stood firm, waiting to be let in.

"Damn, girl. You sleep like a corpse," Paul said as he walked in front of Marko through the open slider.

"Thanks," she replied sarcastically, trying to rub the sleep from her eyes.

Marko followed him in, looking pleasingly at Detta. "You need to stop pulling these disappearing acts," he said as he subtly brushed a finger upon the exposed skin of her thigh.

"Yeah, Marko starts to twitch if you're gone for too long," Paul chimed in from her couch.

"Is that so?" Detta looked over at Paul and he nodded enthusiastically while he reclined, situating his feet on her coffee table and proceeded to flip through the TV channels.

Her gaze turned back to Marko. "Twitch, do you?"

"He's exaggerating."

"Mmmhmm." A smirk spread across her face. He began tickling her thigh with his fingertip, running it quickly and lightly over her skin until she fell into him, giggling madly. She scratched at the spot he'd just addled. "I'll get you back."

"He smirked. "No you won't."

"Don't be so sure of that." Still holding her to him, Marko leaned in to kiss her but was stopped short by a hard pounding at the front door. "Who the hell is that?"

"Shit." Paul righted himself on the couch. "I forgot. David and Dwayne are at the front door."

"You forgot?" Detta marched over to the door and swung it open. There stood a very angry looking David and a complacent Dwayne.

She stepped aside to let them through and when David walked by, he brought his face down to Detta's, their noses nearly touching. "Thanks for leaving us outside," he growled.

Detta was taken aback. "Me? I had no idea you were even there! Paul was the one that didn't mention anything. Christ. If that's how you're going to act you can just leave." She remained planted, her arms crossed over her chest, staring David down, daring him to make a move.

He merely looked at her and smirked snidely "I'll be good."

She rolled her eyes. "Can I get anyone anything?" she asked as she walked into the kitchen and threw open the refrigerator door. Paul took a soda but that was all. She tossed the can to him and walked back over to the dining room and flicked on the light, returning to her seat. "So what can I do for you guys?" she asked, pecking at the typewriter.

"You're very elusive." Detta looked up. It was Dwayne from a chair in the living room. Marko had walked over to the rest of them.

"What do you mean?"

"We see you once and then it's days before you're around again."

"And you're worried?"

"No," he answered flatly. "Curious."

"What do you do during that time?" Marko asked her.

What was this about? Was this to appease Marko? Ease his mind that his latest interest wasn't running off with someone else? Or maybe they just wanted to know more about her. Up until now, she had told them very little.

Paul laughed. "Yeah, are you a spy?"

Detta couldn't help but chuckle as she turned to face them. "No, I'm not a spy," she answered as she got up and walked over to the island, leaning her hip against it. She crossed her arms and inhaled deeply. "I'm a columnist for the National Tribune. I used to write pieces about empowered women, politics, sports, anything really. The draw for it was that it was intelligent and came from the female species. I guess you could say it was a critique, of sorts, of the events of that week, or one in particular if it was major enough. It was witty, funny. A lot of people read it."

"And now?" Dwayne asked.

"Now I write fluff. Stupid shit about women's fashion, celebrities, gossip, pure trash." Detta was disgusted. To just mention it made her sneer.

"Why the change?" Marko asked her, his eyes searching for an answer.

Detta sighed heavily. "I caught my boss in a position she shouldn't have been in. Literally. And he's a paranoid man. He paid me to keep my mouth shut and transferred me out here. The switch in topic came not long after that."

"Still doesn't explain all your time gone," Marko said. His tone wasn't accusatory, but he was reaching for something.

"I never used to have to research for my column. Catching new game was easy. I just had to give my take on it. I could turn out a superb article in an hour. Now, I'm grasping at straws. He gave me this topic because he knew it would be difficult for me. I feel my IQ dropping by the day. I'm up for days at a time, often with nothing to come by it. This," Detta walked over to the typewriter, wrenched out the paper in it and threw it at Marko, "this is what I've come up with in seventy-two hours."

"It's just the paragraph."

"Exactly. My office is stacked with so many fashion magazines I could paper the walls with them. The man is trying to get me to quit, force me out so he can have a guilt-free conscience." Detta shook her head. "But I'm not bowing out that easily. I always said, if I go down, I'm taking people with me."

"What do you mean?" asked Paul, finally muting the TV.

"I still write my column but under the guise of an anonymous letter to the editor. I had to change it up a bit so it's not blatantly obvious who's writing it. I drop hints in the east coast column for people to pick up the west coast version too. The two editions are different but, from what I'm being told, West has gotten a surge in distribution and lots of letters coming in about that anonymous letter-writer who can't keep her mouth shut.

"That man has enough dirt on himself to bury a body and I'm the one that's digging the grave."

"He must have done some pretty bad things."

Detta looked up, almost forgetting she had an audience when Marko made that statement. All eyes were focused intently on her, except David's. He was staring at his hands, fidgeting with his gloves.

"Other than screw around on his wife and pay me to shut up? He runs an illegal gambling ring with a local low-level Mafioso; he launders money from every which country, his penchant for sexual harassment is astounding. And I've heard stories of him raping some former secretaries.

"Oh, I don't write about him directly, of course. It would be too obvious. I generalize, beat around the bush and insinuate, but never name. He'll take a big fall in the end but me, I'm just pushing the dominoes down."

Marko handed back her column and she placed it on the island. "Sounds like you have a lot on your hands."

"I do, but I manage."

"How about now? Can you manage coming out with us?"

Detta chuckled innocently. "This," she held up the paper, "needs to be about six inches longer in about, oh, twelve hours. I've been working on it three days. It's not looking good."

"Tough spot, girl," Paul called to her.

"Is that what you guys really wanted to know?"

"Houdini should be asking you for advice. We were just curious," Dwayne reiterated.

"And it gave us a change of scenery," Paul said. Dwayne shot him a look. "What? I'm just being honest!" Paul looked at her? "We were bored!"

Detta laughed. "Thanks for your honestly, Paul."

"We should be going, leave you to your work," David said, lifting himself from the couch and moving towards the door. The rest of the boys followed.

Marko walked up to her and smiled at her. She rolled her eyes and smiled back. "Maybe some day you'll tell me about you."

He chuckled. "Maybe."

Detta mouthed the word 'maybe' as he leaned in to kiss her. She felt that surge run through her, the fire that he released in her, but it was dampened by the presence of the other boys.

"Marko," David called to him, standing with the door open and waiting impatiently.

He broke their kiss but lingered for a moment, just looking at Detta before he joined the other boys outside. David was the last to leave.

"Good luck on your article," he said snidely, the corner of his mouth turning up in a twisted smile.

"Thanks," she said flatly as she watched him close the door.

David bothered her. It was as if he didn't give a damn, which is fine but he couldn't even feign interest? Where was this animosity towards her coming from and why? She mulled over the potential answers but another thought came rushing through her head, this one making her smile. That was the first time Marko had kissed her in front of his friends. What did this mean? Was he marking his territory? Staking his claim? Why now? Why not before? Was it to reassure her, and the other boys, that something was happening between the two of them? She doubted that was on the forefront of the their minds but maybe it was a subconscious act. Whatever it was, she wasn't going to let herself get in too deep too quickly. The pain from that wasn't worth the pleasure.

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