Dead Souls (20 page)

—and stand to the screeching of brakes, traffic that has to swerve to miss me. There's a huge mass of people held back behind police tape on the sidewalk. I feel their collective gaze land on me—

“Hands on your head, hands on your head!”

Click, click, click
. Static of police walkie-talkies.
“Stop, right now! Hands on your head!”

So I do, I stop. Hold out my arms to each side, raise my hands, open palms. Then slowly turn so everyone,
everyone
sees me. Or at least they think they see me—what they see is a suit,
so recognizable that it fills in features, not from sight, but memory. Gestalt in action. They'll notice I'm slight, but their minds will jump to the most obvious conclusion. Male.

Although they'll also figure out there was an accomplice, because at that moment my car detonates.

Amazing how simple it is, when gasoline meets fire. Every car a bomb under the right circumstances.

Screams, shouts, the panicked horde run en masse, pouring past the police tape, the chaos and fear epic, unstoppable. As expected. And although officers aim at me, we're all soon absorbed by the crush of crowd, and there's no possible way to shoot me without taking some innocent lives.

As the tide of humans overtakes us, I join them, running for a yard or two before pulling off my hat, pulling off my jacket, and disappearing entirely. Leaving only the suit, and a false impression, behind.

CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN

I
T TAKES TIME TO GET HOME;
every lost moment is viscerally painful. I managed to slip on a bus for part of the way, settling next to a crazy old woman who talked to her hands for four miles—“They won't come clean, they never comes clean”—while I sat naked and invisible on a grimy vinyl seat, cold, shaken, worrying that at any moment there would be another fluctuation in my invisibility, that I'd suddenly be revealed in the harsh fluorescent light. Caught.

My time, I know, is rapidly approaching. I told Jeb to meet me at my apartment, but there's no way to know whether he'll keep his word, bring my things, or if he'll take off with Dan, try to run away, or in his case, fly.

I would.

The bus is slow, stopping too often, taking too long to let passengers off and on.
Tick, tick, tick
. Ten minutes alone spent on a vet in a wheelchair—getting him on, finding the straps to secure the wheels, lifting the front seats—so I'm a wreck by the time I get off two blocks from my apartment. A light rain starts, and I wonder if this is
his
doing, some kind of ironic replay of our first meeting. Maybe Scratch is out here hidden in
shadow, watching me panic, enjoying the show. Or filming it. Not a particularly comforting thought walking down the nearly deserted streets, but then it strikes me—this is the one common thread among all the recent horrors. They've been filmed. They've been viewed widely. Is this what Alejandro offered? Reach?

Rain beads my hair, my breath forms soft clouds of mist in the cold air. This is all someone driving by might see, small puffs of vapor, appearing and disappearing for no reason. I wrap my arms around my chest, trying to stay warm. Focused.

Alejandro once said that all evil is simply an inversion of good, that it's not possible for one to exist without the other. Trying to make the world one thing or the other is an exercise in futility, a misunderstanding of the nature of reality. Of course, he said that from the comfort of a double deal. A part of me still can't believe he's been selling us out all this time, but a part of me can. Look at all I've been capable of.

I reach my apartment and encounter the same problem the night I sold my soul—locked out. Again, irony. I could try to ghost in, but that might leave me in the gray space, or I could wait and follow someone in, but that would still leave me locked out of my own apartment. A veritable quandary.

But then the hairs on the back of my neck prickle. The sense of being watched again. Jeb? I turn around quickly, scanning the street, the rooftops, hoping I'll see him, that he's brought my things.

Nothing, and no one that I can see.

And then the electricity goes out, building by building, window by window, streetlight by streetlight, until the whole block is dark. I hear a click in the entry door. Reach out a ten
tative hand for the door handle, find it pulls open easily. No electricity, no magnetic lock.

As soon as the door's open, all the lights on the block come back on instantaneously.

A coincidence
, I tell myself as I step into the foyer.
Rolling blackouts
. But even I don't believe me.

I PRESS MY EAR
against my apartment door and hear the monotonous drone of the television, interrupted by canned laughter and applause. No idea what time it is, but the hallway is empty.

I could reappear, knock. I'm late, but not completely unthinkable, not I-fucked-someone kind of late.

Although I did.

Christ, I did
.

But that was ages ago. And I did it to buy time, so I could save Jason.

No, Justin.

Fuck
.

My heart starts a panicky roll, the kind that arrives after a fifth double-shot cappuccino, when I'm far over my stress limit and pressed against a hard print deadline. I feel unmoored, untethered, a balloon drifting into the upper atmosphere where the air is thin. For a moment, I don't know if I'm entering the gray in-between space again, or if this is some other kind of fluctuation I haven't experienced yet.

I put my hand on the doorknob, firmly. Grasping. Landing. This helps somewhat. The smooth, cool metal is familiar in my palm, worn away from the hundreds of tenants before me, the marks left by Scratch gone, no match for Opal's industrious
cleaning. I take a breath. I need to move myself into the next moment of time, and then the one after that, until I have my double deal, warnings be damned.

I could try walking through the door
. Not the same as ghosting, a lower-risk proposition. Without much of a choice, I decide to try it.

The first thing to do is relax—not easy. I imagine my right foot as porous, empty, and tentatively press my toes against the door. They pass through. It's harder than it was earlier in San Quentin though—I can feel the grain of the wood, sense the striations—and it takes more effort to push the whole foot in, but it works. Eventually I feel the hardwood of my apartment floor with the tips of my toes.

Almost there.

I push my hip against the door, feel it start to move through but then it stops. The wood seems to be hardening around me, and for a heart-pounding moment I'm stuck.

Relax
.
If worst comes to worst, you can ghost in.

I take a longer, deeper breath. Focus on my body becoming like particulate matter, empty, without flesh. My hip rushes through, so I step into the door with my shoulder, chest, and head.

Almost there
.

I taste paint, and wood, and something wriggling, moving—
termites? powder-post beetles?
—and while my left eye captures the empty hallway, my right one sees Opal and Justin slumped over opposite ends of the couch like wilted flowers. Some inane sitcom plays on the TV, a rerun better forgotten.

Are they okay?
I've seen dead bodies today, too many of them, and they are so very, very still.

With a final heave, I get the rest of my body through, stumble a few steps, and almost knock over a Tiffany lamp on the entryway mid-century table. It wobbles, but I catch it before it crashes to the floor.

Breathe
, I tell myself, righting the lamp. Then I turn toward the couch.

Tiny Opal looks even tinier curled up on the cushion, like a child just barely entering adolescence.
The Firm
has landed on the floor, facedown. Justin's head lolls back on a pillow Sarah had insisted on planting here—it's shaped like a baseball and worn through, so stuffing pokes out of its edges, a holdout from his childhood. I lock in on his chest, and to my relief it rises, falls, rises.

This smallest of movements brings me back to something like feeling, but feelings right now will serve no one. I'm a wreck, and I need to somehow make myself presentable, reenter the facade of who I used to be.

Which is becoming harder and harder to remember.

WHILE THE SHOWER RUNS,
I brush my teeth to get the taste of wood and bug out of my mouth. Spit in the sink, watch the water swirl with the foaming toothpaste. Then I turn on the hot water faucet—separate from the cold, again something that seemed charming at the time—and take a look at the state of my hands. Raw, not bleeding much, which is good, but there's grit and dirt embedded in the skin. I grab the soap and run it over my palms, ignoring the sting.

No car, no purse, no cell phone. Late. A robbery of some kind. That's the only plausible excuse. But does it make sense?

I rinse off my hands, reach for a face towel, let it sit under the faucet that's running hot now, steaming.

My car was stolen
. I could even report that to the police, make the narrative complete. Left my cell in my purse, which explains why I didn't respond to Justin's texts. All I had when I went in for the Tylenol was my wallet and keys.

I pause, catch a glimpse of my reflection in the fogging mirror of the medicine cabinet. My hair is straggly, purple bruises blooming around my neck from where Saul strangled me, there's a smudge of blood on my cheek from the bloody Santa beard. But what's more disturbing is that my dark shadow seems a tinge darker.

I turn off the hot water and hold up my hand. The shadowy aura seems to float out from it like a mist.

The word
contagion
comes to mind. Then something Saul said.
Everything I touched, I corrupted.

I quickly pop open the medicine cabinet, grab my bottle of Xanax. Shake three pills into my palm. Then I turn on the cold faucet, cup my hand underneath, swallow the pills, and chase them down with water that tastes like rusty pipes.

My cell was in the car, Officer, so I decided to just walk home. Call when I got in.

I could even report that I'd given Dan a ride once—he'd mentioned how he'd hot-wired cars for joy rides when he was a teenager. Lead them in his direction.

I step into the shower, let the water run over my body, face and hands. Doesn't take long for the Xanax to kick in, especially on an empty stomach.

I've never felt less like myself in my entire life. It's like my soul, the who-I-am, is disappearing, becoming invisible, and
something else entirely, the not-me-of-me, is shining through.

I don't know why that seems to make sense, but it does.

Don't think about it
.

My mantra for the day.

I PUT ON MY COSTUME,
which at the moment is a terry-cloth robe. Grab a small towel to rub my wet hair with. My story is straight. It's time to start my narrative.

They're both still asleep when I walk into the living room, turn off the TV. I walk over to Opal, give her shoulder a gentle shake.

Her eyes slowly blink open, like a cat.

“What?” she says, trying to sit up, still groggy. Blinks some more, trying to focus on my face. “Oh, you're home.”

Now to unroll the lies. “I got here a few minutes ago, but you looked so . . . peaceful.”

“You took a shower.” A statement, not a question, the barest hint of suspicion in her voice. “Where were you?”

I start to rub my hair with the towel. A good liar doesn't forget about body language, it conveys messaging so much better than words.

“I walked back. The car was stolen.”
Which reminds me, I still need to report that.

“Why didn't you call?”

I don't like the tone she's taking, it's borderline aggressive.

“Cell was in the car.”

But Miss Opal, she misses nothing. She crosses her arms over her chest. “You could have borrowed someone's.”

“
Thank
you. Next time my car is stolen, I'll remember that.”

She opens her mouth, about to say something else, but thinks better of it. “Did you at least
get
the Tylenol?”

No missing
that
inflection. “Like I said, my car was stolen.”

She clenches her jaw.

“Thanks for staying late,” I say in a tone that adds,
and now, you can go
.