INTERLUDE
The Interview
Paul's body sits crumpled at the bottom of the stairs. His head is turned at a bad angle, the chin up over the shoulder and pointed at ninety degrees. The eyes, open and glassy. The mouth, closed, as if posed forever in thought. His bag lies a few feet away. A cell phone, a few feet past that.
Miriam descends the steps.
A minute ago, she watched him leave the warehouse.
Philly's chemical stink – a dull, acid perfume that rises with steaming manholes and drifts down with spitting rain, calling to mind a mixture of sewer gas and pesticide – burns her nose and burns her eyes, and she feels herself tearing up, and she convinces herself that's all it is, the stink of the city.
When he left, Paul crossed the road.
He checked that calculator watch from a bygone era as he did.
No cars struck him. No heart attack claimed him.
He stepped up on the curb. His cell phone rang.
A set of concrete steps waited for him, and he took his call, and said, "Hi, Mom," and maybe the phone was enough of a distraction, but his foot took the step at a bad angle, more heel and less toe, and he started to fall.
He would have been fine, but the body and brain don't always play well together. The body would have fallen in a way that was natural, the blow cushioned. The brain freaks out. Fight or flight. Panic response. That's what happened to Paul. He tried to save himself. Stiffened. Tightened. Twisted.
It didn't save him.
His body tumbled the rest of the way, and at the bottom, his neck twisted. The bone broke. Miriam will later read that sometimes that's called an "internal decapitation." It was over quickly.
Miriam didn't need to be there to see it. She'd already seen it play out. This was his hour.
She walks down the steps. Pauses over his body.
You could've saved him, that voice says. It always says that. As if on cue, a shadow passes over head – a balloon, she thinks, a Mylar balloon. But when she looks up, it's just a cloud passing over the sun, not a balloon at all.
"I'm sorry, Paul. I wouldn't have minded you telling the world about me. They wouldn't have believed you, of course. Nobody ever does. But it wasn't meant to be, pal."
Miriam looks through his stuff. She takes the recorder. She goes through his wallet, like a vulture picking meat off bone. Paul is a wealthy kid, that much is obvious, and he has a couple hundred bucks plus a few gift cards, a couple credit cards.
With nimble fingers, she undoes the sweet, sweet calculator watch and slides it up over her hand, tightening it too tight against her wrist. The bite of the band will always remind her where the watch came from.
She sits there for a little while longer. She gets something in her eye, and she wipes it away. Pollen, or dust. Or just the stink of the city.