Headlights(11)

She nods slowly, bites the inside of her cheek again, finishes the glass in front of her, her eyes never leaving my face. I don’t want to feel it, don’t want to sit inside the gravity of her.

I’m in it though. I’m here. And fuck it all if being near her doesn’t just feel like home.

Is she looking at me that way because she feels the same?

“You think it’s the same guy?” she asks.

I should tell her she shouldn’t have faith in my ability to answer that question. That I’m as clueless as anyone, maybe more than everyone. I shake my head, not in answer but in a lack of one. I don’t know anything. Not who the person coercing the killers is, or whether it’s drugs—though nothing ever pops up in toxicology—a cult, or a conspiracy. Who the hairs belong to—the calling card of the actual killer most likely, but never enough as evidence to let the blacked-out murderers off the hook. Not with the juries and judges moved by their outrage, and guys like Oliver Wright pushing their might into it.

And maybe it is the individuals doing it. Maybe they’re all copycats of an original and are just the best fucking actors I’ve ever seen. We just know nothing. And the top of the pile of the nothing I know is how and why I’m sitting here again, letting myself pretend for a minute that I didn’t lose the woman in front of me a long time ago.

“What’s up with Whileago? You goin’ there tonight?” she asks.

“Fuck no,” I say, flinching at the name.

“Seriously? You’re just … not gonna go? Is it like … holding up okay?”

I shrug.

“No one’s been over there?” She says it in the disappointed, certain, accusatory tone of a woman who’s been let down a hundred times.

“I mean … not as far as I know.”

“Well, you’d be the only one to know, it’s your hou—”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I say. And I mean it. I really fucking don’t want to talk about it. Or think about it. How am I here?

Josie clears her throat. “So,” she says, her voice taking on a slight hint of uncertainty. Nervousness even. “You’re back now, which, you know, I thought you probably wouldn’t be. Like ever. But, um, there’s something I should maybe tell you.” She fidgets with her empty glass. “You know,” she says, “since you are back.”

I wait for her to speak.

“Nat,” she says, “Tillman. I mean, obviously you know who Nat is. Um, so he and I have been … seeing each other. For a while now. He … he moved into the house, with me. I just thought, you know … that you should know.”

I stare at her.

“What?” I say.

“Well, I mean, it’s been four years. And after everything that went down, you know, Nat was there. He’s been there for me. I know you never really liked him, but he’s a good guy. And … we’re happy.”

Lucinda Williams comes on over the speakers. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Leslie pouring again. As if sensing that I need to get absolutely obliterated. A shadow lingers near her behind the bar. Leslie pouring one for me and one for the woman shacking up with …

Nat fucking Tillman?

No. No to all of this.

I stand, stumble almost, over to the bathroom. I shove myself into a stall and unzip my jeans to piss. I’m shaking again. With what? Rage? Exhaustion? Déjà vu? I put my hand on the wall for stability, for something that isn’t going to be pulled out from under me.

The first day of the rest of my life is a seriously fucked-up time travel back through the rabbit hole, and now this. Tillman living in my old house with Josie. Tillman sleeping in my bed, plopping down at the end of the day on my couch that Josie and I picked out together, watching my TV and eating off our plates that we were given at our wedding.

Jesus Christ. Josie still uses my streaming logins. I thought it was sweet. The one way we’ve been tied together, the one thread holding us from afar, even if we never spoke again in the whole rest of our lives. I don’t watch movies anyway, not since I was a kid, and then again when I was married to her. But every now and then I look, see what she’s watching, try to picture what she’s doing. Sure, I did it more two years ago than now, but every so often …

But Tillman is the one watching those movies. With her. All her sci-fi movies. I remember now, the guy believes in UFOs. He drinks out of an X-Files mug at the office that says I WANT TO BELIEVE. Tillman probably in a fucking Starship Troopers T-shirt or something, making her popcorn and making her laugh because Josie would never be with anyone who didn’t make her laugh. It was maybe the biggest way I failed her in the end—any humor in me, the case did away with completely.

But those images. The look on every single one of those people who killed and didn’t remember doing it.

I believe them. Maybe I shouldn’t. I probably shouldn’t. But I can’t help it. They’re all so horrified. How do you make jokes after that? How do you do anything? Sixteen lives ruined. Now twenty. Twenty lives. And that’s not even the whole of it. There’s all the lives theirs touched. Countless victims unspoken for. Parents, siblings, children, friends. How does anyone come back from that? From the stigma and the lifetime of their names being googled to find only brutalities that had nothing to do with them. This poisonous thing spreading like rot, further and further, until it destroys all of us.