Page 75 of When Sinners Fear
The drive back was long and unforgiving on my mind. I stopped over in Tucson to break the journey, maybe hoping to alleviate the constancy of her in my mind by finding something else to fuck. It didn't work. Blonde after blonde passed me by, hoping for engagement with their smiles and their flirtation. Not one of them was her, though. They meant no more to me than those I cage and sell. No glassy eyes. No soft lips. No light fingers on my brow. No intensity.
I’m obsessed, maybe infatuated. Stalkerish even, considering my last week following her around. Not an uncommon occurrence for a poetry scholar, I suppose. We bleed our hearts through written words, and yet we hide behind them, or inside them. We dream dreams that aren’t meant for us.
I need a fucking drink.
Chuckling at my own ironic misery, I pull out onto the freeway and continue the last of the journey home. It’s late now, and it looks like the rest of the world is driving home for Thanksgiving, too. I look at couples and families with little want for their ideals in life. The sentiment of poetry might fit well in my head, but its ability to forge a path of normality alongside my life is entirely pointless. Evil has no light to offer her. It doesn’t bend or show glimmers of change. It lives in itself, it breeds itself, it burrows deeper and taints the world around it. So, I’ll continue to be a mathematician in darkness instead, and she will, eventually, shine without me.
The phone rings as I’m approaching the outskirts of San Antonio – Dante.
I answer. “Yeah?”
“I’m gone. Thought I’d let you know this time round.”
A light smile crosses my mouth, and I stare at the city’s lights thickening. “Back to a beach?”
“Yeah. You don’t need me now you’re back in the real damn world.” I’m unsure about that. My real world is still screwed with memories and thoughts and pain, but with Reed reduced to burnt bones and ash, some amount of sanity is beginning to return. “Where have you been? We drank last night. You were supposed to be there.”
“I wandered.” Lonely as a cloud. Fucking poetry. Wordsworth needs no repeating in my head. I’d kill him if he wasn’t already dead.
“Good wandering?” Yes, and no.
“What do you want, Dante?”
“Jesus, you really are becoming an asshole.”
“Never been any different.”
He chuckles. “Yeah, well, door’s always open if you need me.”
“Is it?”
“It was never closed, Knox.”
“You didn’t answer my texts.”
“You didn’t send anything worth reading.”
“Asshole.”
“Yeah, whatever, fuck you.”
My smile broadens, and I pull in a long breath, as I weave my way through the city. “Didn’t feel like staying around for thanksgiving?”
“No. That's for Wren. I’ve got enough of an argument coming already with the amount of time I’ve been gone. I told her three days. It’s been a damn sight longer than that.” I nod and think on that potential, happy to not be in the same situation. “Look after yourself, brother, yeah?”
“Yeah. You, too.” The line cuts off.
I drive until I’m home, and without much more thought on matters of family or business or even angelic eyes that haunt me, I sleep. It only lasts a few hours, and before I know it, I’m woken with my own nightmares. This time she’s dead and I’m holding her hand through the bars. I’m pulling myself to her, shouting at her to wake up. There’s no sound coming from me, though. Nothing. There’s just her lifeless body and me not able to speak. Maybe I’m dead, too.
Morning eventually breaks. I shower and get dressed on automatic. Jeans and blue shirt, boots. I roll my sleeves, make pancakes, grab a whiskey, and sit at the small nook in the kitchen that she preferred. Sheer silence, but for birds, and even they’re muted because of the windows. I used to enjoy it.
I stare at my drink, remembering her words about early drinking and recovery, and push the half-full glass away. Peace was what I needed to recover. Lately, I can’t stand a minute of it. Not without hearing her breathe in it, anyway.
I leave and drive over to Mariana’s. She’s hosting these kinda gatherings this time. Ironic, considering she’s the one who killed the last host of these sorts of things. I wonder, as I’m driving, if she has nightmares about that day. And then I’m wondering how often Abel dreams of his time inside. Kai, too, presumably. Dante probably still berates himself for Mariana all those years ago, despite their argument. And maybe he thinks of all the blood he's spilt.
Maybe we all have nightmares now. Maybe we’re all haunted. Not one of us about our job, though. No, we’re able to do that with very little consequence to our conscience. But those girls don’t mean anything to us, do they? They’re, as Dante calls them, cattle. Profit.
“Knox?” I look sideways and up through the window. Mariana stands there. “Coming in or sitting in your car?” I don’t even remember getting here.