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  I shiver. This is scarier than I thought it would be.

  Then blah, blah, blah, Nate and I are trying to score points with Lisa. I push forward past the embarrassing dialog—Did I really sound so desperate?—until there, Maddy is on the floor convulsing. It’s even worse on replay; at the time, shock must have diminished some of the details now caught on glaring HD video. The veins in her face are swollen and bulging, like she’s suffering a rage attack, her thick tongue hangs from the side of her mouth, and her eyes are as flat and empty as the corpse in the morgue.

  But there’s a moment in particular I’m looking for. I forward the video to the frames right before she jumped to her feet, and there it is.

  Impossible.

  I push the play bar back, count again. After Maddy’s giggling fit and before she’s standing upright, there is barely one second between the frames. It’s even freakier encapsulated on this small video player, because it looks almost cheesy in an ultra-bad B-movie kind of way, which is probably why it’s only had about fifty views and a couple of comments, both negative: “This suckz” and “Lamer than Alien Autopsy.”

  In disbelief, I let the video roll.

  On a mountain stands a lady,

  Who she is I do not know,

  Then a glowing blur flashes across the screen. I remember Nate said something at the time, so I push it back again, but it’s so fast, it must be… what? Maybe a digital hiccup—a good reason to take your night-vision camera back to the pimply-faced RadioShack sales associate who sold you the piece of crap in the first place. But there’s something else, something… familiar. So I take it frame by jerky frame, but the light doesn’t seem to come from anywhere. In one frame it’s just Maddy standing in the corner, and then the light appears, a small orb that dances across the screen like a firefly on speed. The orb explodes into a burst of particles, and in the haze I can see something there! The face of a woman. I pause the video, bring my face closer to the computer screen.

  And gasp.

  High cheekbones, long neck, hair that seems to float in the air like it’s water; eyes that glitter with a potent, tangible fury—they seem to reach through time and space like she’s actually here, seeing me now in my ducky hospital gown. My heart freezes, my fingers turn to ice, but there’s something else too, a vague intuition, like a dream you can’t quite remember. She’d said my name, but then something else—I can hear the words bubble from her lips: “He’s coming for you.”

  “Who’s coming for me?” I whisper.

  All the lights in the hospital suddenly flicker, then go dark. For a moment I’m left with just the ghostly illumination of the laptop, the same frozen video image—until all of a sudden up pops one of the blurry cell phone pictures of the punk musician. He’s gripping the microphone like he’s in the act of strangling it, a palpable rage rippling under his skin.

  The lights come back on.

  A coincidence—a glitch—a random convergence of completely unrelated events. It must be.

  I shut down Lisa’s computer with jittery hands and restore it to its spot on the side table. But I have a strong sinking feeling I can’t quite will away that this small but happy phase of my life, this lovely little bardo of my hospital stay, is over.

  CHAPTER SIX: PICTURES

  My last Grace Memorial perk is a black stretch limousine that drives Lisa and me back to my sad apartment in one of the saddest neighborhoods in New Goshen, with its characteristic series of empty brick factory buildings, broken windows, graffiti, and sagging stoops. We pass old cars propped up on cinder blocks in the driveways of scattered tract homes, the occasional trailer park, and broken, empty lots with twisted chain-link fences. A light scattering of snow snakes across the road, and a brown skinny dog pauses on the sidewalk and sniffs around the base of a rusty drain pipe before pissing on it.

  I wonder what Lisa thinks as we pull up to the old Victorian, with its peeling blue paint and scraggly dead bushes. In the sixties it was spliced into efficiency apartments, and mine is on the second story, with a good view of the Stop & Shop rooftop and deserted rail yard beyond. I hope someone has thought to pay the heating bill, because the windows are original to the house, and even with the baseboard heaters at full blast, I usually have to wear a wool sweater and scarf.

  “My crib,” I say.

  “I see you live the high life on your obituary writer’s salary.”

  I shrug, uncomfortable. I feel revealed in some way.

  “I like it,” she says.

  It’s nice of her to say. The limo driver pops the trunk and gets out; he is actually wearing a black suit and dark sunglasses, like a secret service agent. There’s not much in the back; I’m wearing the clothes that were on me when I arrived at the hospital, which feels weird, like bad juju. I thought about throwing them away, but then I wouldn’t have had anything to wear except for my favorite ducky hospital gown. The driver takes out a plastic shopping bag filled with what Lisa calls my hospital guilt prescriptions—a ninety-day supply of Valium, Ambien, and Xanax.

  I smile at Lisa, awkward again. I take the bag from the limo driver, decide against a tip—Let the hospital cover that—and then head up the steps to the familiar entry. Lisa follows.

  The hallway is dark, and the stairs, also original to the house, are dusty. It’s strange to be back. I notice things that I never saw before, like the way the steps are worn in the middle, and the thin oriental carpet in the entry that is fading away to nothing. The air is stale and heavy.

  I have to stop on the second step, take a breath. My body still isn’t fully recovered, and my head feels light, even with this small amount of exertion.

  “You all right?” says Lisa.

  “Sure.” Actually I feel like I’ve just climbed to a high-altitude base camp on Mount Everest. Just think, only fourteen more steps to go.

  There are two apartments on the top floor, Doug’s and mine. For some strange reason his number is 12 and mine is 18. When we get to the landing, I pull out my worn steel key, an antique in itself, and it takes a few moments to catch the lock correctly.

  The apartment is sunnier and smaller than I remember. The sheets that I use for curtains have been pulled aside, there’s a stash of mail on the counter, and my dead spider plant rests in memoriam on a small, shaky table by the doorway, gathering cobwebs. My “cozy” one-bedroom consists of three small rooms. Each leads into the other, and there is no hallway to speak of, which is adequate when you live alone, as I do. The ceilings are high, with peeling yellowed plaster, and the cheap plastic light fixtures hold the remains of dead insects. My jackets and umbrella are piled on the floor as usual, and I kick them aside to make a path. To the immediate right is the one small closet, filled with the boxes from my parents’ house.

  “Are you going to give me the tour?” asks Lisa.

  “I’d just like to point out in my defense that I wasn’t expecting company when I left.”

  “What, you scared I’m not going to like you because your bed isn’t made?”

  Uh, yes, exactly. But I shrug like I don’t really care either way. “Here’s the living room.”

  “Convenient. I like the open floor plan.”

  I physically turn her away from the galley kitchen with its sink full of dishes—I can smell the trash from here, it probably needed to go out a month ago—and gesture to my brown sagging couch, Doug’s second cousin’s castoff. In front of it is a wobbly bamboo coffee table, with the petrified remains from my last dinner there: crusts of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. A small thirteen-inch television is propped up on stacks of books. I drop my guilt prescriptions on the coffee table.

  “That’s actually the casual dining room.”

  “It looks a lot like your living room.”

  “And it’s also my home office. So I guess you could call it a multipurpose room.”

  “You could seriously use another chair.”

  “For what?”

  She raises her eyebrow. “For company.”

>   I swallow. Right. Suddenly I’m counting my threadbare towels. There are two, both frayed at the ends.

  On the wall are a couple of framed black-and-white photographs—both of the same crosswalk in New Goshen. Lisa approaches them, looks closely.

  “Interesting,” she says.

  “I like that crosswalk.” Did I really just say that? Idiot, idiot, idiot.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Random. Like ninety-eight percent of my life right now.”

  The Xanax is starting to gain some appeal—maybe I should take one, or two, or six. Why was it so easy in the hospital room? Here everything feels strange, like a first date. Why does it matter that she said my photography is interesting? Why does my heart actually skip a beat?

  I cough and flick the light on in the next room, which is strangely split in two halves. There’s a small bathroom with a shower on one side, a built-in closet on the other. The tile in the bathroom is pale pink, and the sink looks like a scallop. No windows.

  “Not awful” is Lisa’s verdict.

  I snort with laughter.

  “Well, it’s not all mildewy and gross,” she says defensively. “I’ve seen worse.”

  Two more steps and then we’re in the last room, my bedroom. I can almost, but not quite, stand in the middle, reach out my arms and touch the walls on either side. The mattress is on the floor, covered with an unzipped navy-blue sleeping bag and striped pillows—no pillowcases. Next to it is an overturned milk crate that serves as a nightstand, with a lamp and pile of books. But the window here is tall, and there’s a view of the steeple of St. Joseph’s Church through the barren branches of a maple tree.

  “Your apartment is sadly deficient when it comes to band posters,” says Lisa, reaching out to touch one of the empty walls.

  “It’s not much,” I say.

  “Define much.” She turns to the window, catches my eye.

  Why is she looking at me like that, like she can see right through me and hear what I’m thinking? It’s hard to take. I go on the offensive.

  “And what’s it like where you live?”

  Now she’s the one looking down. She takes a deep breath. “I’m jealous.”

  “Jealous? Of what?”

  “You have your own space. It’s cool. No roommate; no one to ask you where you’re going, when you’re going to be back.”

  “Yeah,” I say, “no one to care if I drown in a well.”

  “Well, there is that,” she says. “But you can’t say no one. I care.”

  I take a step closer and wrap my arm around her waist. My hand idly slips up behind the back of her sweater; her skin is soft and warm. “You do?”

  “I can’t even afford to live on my own,” she says quietly, pointedly ignoring my question. But frankly at this moment I couldn’t care less where she lives or what her secrets are, or what her name is, for that matter, so although she starts to say something else, she can’t, because I pull her to me. My lips meet hers—not softly, not gently, more like a starving man finding bread, a drowning man finding air—and suddenly all I’m aware of is her breath, the curve of her neck, the slope at the base of her spine. My hands have a will of their own; they discover the elastic back of her bra and tug at the clasp.

  “Wait,” she breathes. “I don’t know you. And you don’t know me.”

  But my lips are persistent, and I press her against the wall. There is something incandescent about her skin; it tastes like salt, oceanic and breezy. There’s too much clothing between us, something I plan on rectifying immediately.

  A crash in the kitchen—a splintering, shattering sound. I pause.

  “Someone’s here,” she whispers, putting a hand between us.

  I groan, but already the moment is lost. Lisa is running her hands through her hair, straightening her clothing. “My bag, where’s my bag?” she says worriedly. “Did you lock the door behind you?”

  “Why would I lock the door?”

  As if in response, the front door slams.

  “Fuck,” mutters Lisa.

  I grab the lamp from my nightstand, gripping it tightly and suddenly wishing I was one of those guys who keep a baseball bat in the closet, because this fixture was a Kmart special, and the base is a lightweight plastic. Not really an ideal defensive weapon, unless one is being attacked by an arthritic elderly person or young child. Then something clicks, because I remember the lethal contents of Lisa’s purse—mace, knives, sharp pointy objects—and I realize that maybe there’s a reason she’s carrying all that shit.

  “Daniel?” she calls.

  No response.

  “Who’s Daniel?” I whisper.

  She doesn’t answer. Instead she takes a deep breath and strides forcefully past the bathroom into the kitchen/living/multipurpose room, me trailing behind, gripping my forlorn lamp.

  The room is empty. Lisa immediately darts to the front door, locking the deadbolt, while I look around—something feels different, but what? Everything looks the same, with nothing out of place. Maybe it was just Doug checking in?

  “Your photos,” says Lisa, pointing to the empty space on the wall where they had been hanging just moments before.

  I notice small shards of glass on the floor and then see the glittering trail that leads to the shattered frames facedown on the kitchen linoleum floor, like they’ve been thrown across the room.

  “Someone doesn’t appreciate fine art.”

  But then I notice something else—on top of my dusty stack of mail is an ominously plain white envelope with just my first name roughly written on the outside. My heart drops—Christ, I did pay the rent this month, didn’t I? Maybe not. It’s a given that my slumlord—who blusters like an extra in The Sopranos when the rent is a little late—is an asshole, but I’m surprised he’d actually trash my stuff. I always thought that was an idle threat.

  “For fuck’s sake, I died,” I mutter, grabbing the envelope. “Least he could do is give me an extra week. Lisa, I’m so sorry about all this…” I start to say, but then I realize that Lisa’s face is as white as the proverbial sheet. She’s staring with an odd intensity at the envelope.

  “Give me that.” She reaches out for the letter, but damn, I can’t imagine that sharing my eviction notice will exactly help me in the attraction department, so I hold it slightly over her head, like we’re playing keep away.

  “Look, I can straighten this out—”

  “It’s not… it’s not what you think.”

  “Well what do you think it is?”

  “I think it’s… complicated.”

  That word again. “Complicated.” It drops like a curtain between us.

  “It’s from him.” I don’t really know what I’m saying, but the way she grips her purse tighter, the tense flicker across her face, means I’m close to something.

  “Fine. Keep it, throw it away—whatever. I’ve got to go,” says Lisa. Her voice is choked, and tears are starting to bead her eyes.

  “Go? Where do you go, Lisa? Or is that complicated too?”

  “I have to check…” she murmurs, grabbing her bag, digging through it frantically. Her hands are shaking.

  And then a thought strikes me—or not a thought so much as a name. “On Daniel?”

  She visibly flinches, like I’ve cut her.

  A sudden corrupt rage rushes through my body—icy and yet strangely victorious. Daniel’s the complication.

  “Is he your boyfriend?”

  Her jaw clenches. “Is that what you think?”

  “What am I supposed to think?”

  Lisa swallows. I cross my arms over my chest so she can’t see them shaking.

  “We’re not doing this,” she finally says. “I will call you later, and then we’ll talk. But not now.”

  I don’t know who I’m more pissed at—Lisa for refusing to talk, or me for unlocking the door and opening it. “Fine,” I say. “It’s your funeral.”

  White-faced, Lisa slides her bag angrily over her shoulder, brushes
by me with palpable fury, and clatters down the stairs.

  “Tell your boyfriend I say hi,” I call after her.

  There’s a whoosh as the entry door opens, I feel a draft of cool air, then slam—the door rattles shut.

  And what I’m left with is the hollow realization that it’s not my slumlord or this Daniel who’s an asshole.

  It’s me.

  My apartment, which has always been stale and empty, now feels completely lifeless, like a bad motel room with no maid service. The shards of broken glass on the floor glitter in the dimming light, catching the few rays of the setting sun. They’re pretty, like the icy sparkle of a fresh layer of snow. Snow. For a heart-jolting moment suddenly I’m not standing in my shitty apartment surrounded by broken glass—I’m in my neat childhood bedroom, and my mother stands next to me, an arm on my shoulder. It’s winter and there was a storm the night before, so they’ve canceled school. She opens the window and points to the fairy-tale snow glistening in the morning sun. “Angel tears” she calls it. Her laugh is deep and throaty, and a cold breeze pushes through, which makes me shiver in my flannel baseball pajamas. Then she reaches out and pulls an icicle from the roof, gives it to me to taste; it’s slick, like a giant ice cube. In it I can see our warped reflections.

  Fuck, not now.

  I reel with a visceral, choking wave of grief and drop to my knees, very much alone in my shitty apartment, and press my hands to the floor like a prayer. Distantly I register the glass cutting into my palms, and I sob. I sob in a way that’s like vomiting—an overpowering, stomach-twisting, and wrenching pain. Tears stream down my face; snot runs like a current from my nose. God I miss her, God I miss her, God I miss you.

  Time passes.

  Finally I manage to sit up, back on my heels, and rub my sleeve across my nose. I’m several degrees past spent, but it’s an empty, holy kind of exhaustion. I pick up one of the frames that are facedown on the floor, smearing blood on the glass in the process.