Headlights(4)

“Hey,” I say, out loud, to the empty bathroom. I close my eyes. “Please.” I mean please stop, please leave me alone, please not now. I mean, None of you have popped up here in four years, and I can’t have you start today. I can’t have you follow me to— I mean, desperately, terribly,

Please, maybe, if you’re her. Or them. If you’re any of them— It stops.

Fan blade whirring in my bedroom. Nothing else.

I dress, don’t let myself feel anything. Tape up some more boxes, let the Salt Lake City morning news play on the living room TV. I drink my coffee, stare out the window that looks out over the apartment complex’s parking lot, then beyond to an open and dying field. A handful of black birds swoops and caws, fighting over a half-eaten piece of what looks like meat. Ripping small pieces from it in the grass.

A feeling, in the gut.

It’s hard, sometimes, to differentiate them. Guilt. Fear, disappointment, anger, grief, dread. They all start to blur together, eventually amount to the generic pit in the stomach and occasional moment of confusion as to what’s causing it. The acceptance that you may never find out. Unless it’s dread. You find out pretty quick if it’s dread, because then something bad comes to follow.

What it’s not is a Bad Feeling. And what it’s not is a—I can’t even think of the word. It’s so stupid. To think that a grown man could have gotten this far in life believing that he could see …

What it’s not is her. Them.

I don’t know what’s gotten into me. I check the time, flip off the TV.

It’s my last day as an investigator in the whole of my mortal life, and I’m gonna walk in there with my head held high. Even if I don’t deserve to. I’ve got a flight after work, I’ll get to San Diego early, give myself a few days before training starts up. I paid a buddy to come and drive the boxes and my car, drop it all off in Denver at Whileago Manor, and leave it for me to grab when—if—I get back. I would’ve happily left Denver out of it entirely, would even more happily never go back at all. But I know I’ll have to, eventually. Deal with the house. Deal with … Well, we’ll see. Maybe I’ll come back in a flag-covered coffin and won’t have to do it after all. I lift my coffee cup to the birds.

“Cheers, motherfuckers,” I say.

I grab my jacket from the back of my chair for the last time, swing it over my shoulders.

There’s a knock at the door.

I pause. Jacket half on in the living room.

Again, the knock. No one’s ever knocked on my door. Not once, since I moved here. I hear someone swear on the other side.

I slowly step over and open it.

I am assaulted by a brisk bright morning. The kind that nearly blinds you with the brilliance of other people’s lives. Utah sun, Mormon God light.

And standing here in it …

Jack Murphy.

I blink.

“Dan,” Jack says.

Jack Murphy, on my doorstep. His car parked in the loading zone behind him.

“Jack,” I say. It comes out like a question, which … is how I mean it.

“I’d like to come in. If you don’t mind.”

Jack squints at me, shifts his weight from one foot to the other, his thinning hair catching the light, his signature old scratched aviators hanging from the breast pocket of his shirt. He needs a shave. He looks fuckin’ terrible. I wonder if I should say that, if he’d still find it funny, or if too much time has passed. God, I really haven’t seen him since …

“What are you doing here?” I ask.

“Dan, I’d like to come in.”

“Yeah. Uh, sure.” I step aside, and he brushes past me, and he smells like he’s been smoking. I’ve never seen him smoke.

I offer him the single La-Z-Boy chair in the living room. I sit on a packed and sealed box of books, putting myself considerably below Jack’s line of sight, which is fitting in more ways than one. Jack looks down at me, starts to say something, then stops.

Has he turned fifty already? Fifty shouldn’t look like this. Fifty’s young these days. It’s eight hours from Denver to Salt Lake, so he hasn’t slept all night, but it’s more than that. I watch my old friend take off his hat and rub his face with his hands. The pit in my stomach. The Feeling. Shit. No. It’s just a shock, to see him older. That’s all.

I worked for Jack most of my career, up until I transferred to Utah four years ago. I haven’t seen him in all this time, and the way the years have worn on him …

“Do you have any coffee?” Jack says.

“Yeah. Right.” I stand, head to the kitchen. I’m relieved to get away from him.

Jack takes in the apartment, and I glance around too. White walls, no art. One chair, the one he’s sitting on, TV tray with a lamp on it. It’s embarrassing. Him seeing this place. This place I was just feeling so grateful for and proud of. His eyes snag on one of the boxes.

“You just move in here?”

I start a new pot of coffee, glad for something to do with my hands.

“Um, no. I’m movin’ out, actually. Today.”

“Today?”

I nod. Don’t look at him. “Yeah. Uh, put in my resignation a few weeks ago. Time to move on.” I say it like Hank or Willie would, facing the coffeepot, my body angled now to keep Jack out of my line of sight. I sound stupid saying it. But still … it feels good. To remind myself.