THIRTY-SIX
The First Hour
Miriam feels like she's been walking for hours. She checks the phone, and every time it feels like it's five minutes forward, sometimes less.
The gravel road – "road" being the most optimistic term possible for this long stretch of sunken pits and limestone scree – is a straight ribbon through leaning pines and anemic bramble, a ribbon that seems infinitely unrolled. Her steps appear to take her no farther. The adrenalin rush is gone; her muscles stiffen with every step, and a small voice inside her head wonders: Did I actually die? Maybe this is rigor mortis setting in.
The trees have grown over the road, a canopy of skeletal hands. Sparrows and starlings flit from branch to branch. Thunder continues to rumble in the distance.
"Thatta girl," Louis says, walking next to her. "I knew you had it in you. Such a buck-up spirit. This time, you're embracing fate. You know you show up when Louis dies. So you forge ahead. I like the new you. Be a fountain, not a drain, I always say. Be the leaf in the stream that goes with the waters, not the dam that stands against them. Am I right?"
Miriam has little patience. She offers the hallucination no more than a passing glance and a throaty grunt.
"No glib commentary?" Louis asks. A yellow jacket pushes its way out from under his eye-tape and orbits his head before zipping off into the trees.
"I need a cigarette."
"That's not very glib. I'm disappointed."
"I'd like a drink."
"Still not impressed. This really is a new you."
"Choke on a turd."
"Then again," Louis says, "maybe not."