Am I alive or dead?
I ask it for the fourth time.
“Am I alive or dead?”
“You’re alive,” Fuji laughs. “But ask me one more time, and the answer is going to change.”
“Is this a good place to stop? That’s the end of it.”
“No, you need to pick back up from when you woke up next.”
“Can we do it tomorrow?”
“At the hospital. Please continue there.”
“That was 99 percent of the story. There’s not much more. It would only feel like an epilogue.”
“You woke up, and you were in the hospital. Who did you see first?”
“How many more days this week will you make me do this?”
“As many times as necessary. The exercise requires repetition. Otherwise, the traumatic effects will never diminish. The last thing you need is anything else left unresolved.”
The device pulsates my index finger. Beeps every few seconds. The wires run with disorganized freedom from my hand and along the floor, connecting back to the machine Fuji holds in her lap.
“Please,” she says. “For me? Continue with the story. Pick back up at the hospital and remember—tell it like you’re reliving it moment to moment.”
Glitch remains by the salon chairs, snoring like the lucky dog he is—lucky twice over, luckily for me. Eyes closed, I wrap the story. Recall the details to her and the room and to myself. About how I woke up in the hospital—a twelve-inch knife wound treated, though the postsurgical pain still hasn’t left. The third-degree burns along my back from the bomb blast. Headaches from the concussion. Fuji intervenes and asks a guiding question whenever I struggle for details.
“Aside from a doctor or nurse, who’s the first person you saw?”
“People. Two of them together.”
And how else do Officers Affleck and Damon travel but in combination?
“What did they say or ask?”
I tell Fuji about their change in tone from the last time I saw them at the newspaper. More concerned. A pinch of apology in their voice as they told me how the police and medics found me at the killer’s compound. At the mansion. Told me what they were able to gather. The identity of the dead man they found in the gas mask. The Death Professor himself.
“That lawyer always creeped me out with those car accident commercials.”
877-Rick-Sues.
“All this time. The slimy lawyer.”
“That’s what they seem to think.”
“His commercials are still coming on after the six o’clock news.”
“He was in the Subterraneans, you know?”
“Never thought he was anything but an ambulance chaser.”
“Saw him once at a bar, but that was before my story ran in the paper.”
“Do the cops know he was in the Subterraneans?”
“If they do, they didn’t say so to me. And I still need to be careful about what I tell them. I did break the law.”
“The ambulance chaser. I’ll be damned.”
“They kept asking me about the mansion and the property—the cops. ‘Had you ever been there before?’ ‘Was anyone else there with you?’ But other than that—they took my account of what happened. Seemed less interested in the data facility, which pisses me off. But all in all, I told the truth.”
“Doesn’t that feel good?”
“What?”
“Telling the truth.”
I finish up. Recount Cal picking me up from the hospital once I was released several days later. How Joan took care of Glitch while I was recovering. Having to stay at a Holiday Inn for another few days while my apartment remained a crime scene.
“And work?”
“I assume you’re not talking about Golden Home Medical?”
“What? You no longer want to refill my oxygen?”
Terry has called a few times. Left a couple of voicemails. He killed the investigation and lifted my suspension once he got word about what happened. It’s been great for the Coast News. Every story about the killer includes mentions of them. But he wants me to come back and write a firsthand story about it all.
“And will you?”
“I don’t think so, no.”
“Why?”
“Maybe I’ll become a reporter again. Maybe not. Need to feel myself out for a bit.”
“And what do you feel right now, after everything you’ve gone through?”
“Like this is life number two.”
Fuji wrestles with the couch cushion, shimmying and pushing herself off, scooching her walker toward me. She removes the device from my index finger. Puts it in her basket. “All done for today.”
“And we do it again tomorrow?”
“Yes—don’t try and get out of it. You’re still processing.”
Pains fire off throughout my body as I stand—the tax of survival. The gauze and tape attached to my oblique pull taut.
“Going?”
“If you don’t mind. I’m seeing Cal and Joan later and thought I’d take a nap beforehand.”
Fuji looks back toward the hallway and then again at me. Her face strains but she packs the forlorn away.
“Do you need anything?”
“No, no. Don’t want to trouble you.”
“Fuji—I’ll do anything for you.”
“No—you have plans.”
“Not until later. Please, what is it?”
“I thought maybe the time was right to do some reorganizing.”
“Do you mean Richard’s stuff?”
“Yes, but you’re still injured, and maybe I shouldn’t.”
“Fuji—this is wonderful. Let me help you.”
“It’s not too much to ask?”
“Of course not.”
The rest of the afternoon is a repetitive loop of filling up garbage bags with Richard’s knickknacks and clothes and other items that serve no other purpose than filling an insecure void within Fuji. One that she’s finally ready to abandon. She stands in the doorway and responds to each thing I hold up. Her replies fall into one of three categories—“garbage,” “don’t know yet,” and “leave it.” I ready items she still wants but not in the house for storage. I grab a fountain pen off the desk. Golden tip, sharp enough to prick a finger. Embossed engraving tattooed into the handle spelling out Richard. Fuji hesitates. Voice lowers. “He loved writing letters. Wrote them to his brother in Texas. Postcards to friends when we were on vacation.” I tell her we should keep it, but she shakes her head. “No. It’s the memories that matter.” We finish dehoarding half of the first room before she’s ready to call it. “That’s plenty enough of your time. We’ll finish the rest later this week, Amir.”
“I’m not Dash to you anymore?”
“You look more like an Amir.”
“Yeah, yeah. Any theories why my dad called me Amir and everyone else calls me Dash?”
“Not yet. But that’s why we’ll continue processing it all together.”
Glitch and I start to leave when she stops me at the door.
“Wait. Throw this out on your way.”
She hands me a VHS tape. Jeopardy! is written across its label.
“Time for new episodes.”
* * *
Dominick’s never budges for circumstance or time of day, remaining relentlessly dim and populated with the same hardened faces passing judgmental looks across the bar, playing Neil Young tunes off the jukebox, nodding with a vacant stare whenever the bartender asks if they want another and grunting back their obvious answer. Cal is already there when Glitch and I arrive. Tells me he wanted to make sure we got a table and I look around at the stools and empty chairs and the five or six others scattered about the space and laugh but I’m not sure he’s joking. Joan shows up a short while later, dressed in breeches and riding boots. Hair pulled back with a tortoiseshell clip. She stinks not of horses or stables but somehow only of her typical scent, which seemingly was crafted based on my weaknesses. She wears a silver necklace with a clover pendant. She once told me that it was a gift from her mother for high school graduation. She only wears it for special occasions. We sit around a square table, sipping Budweiser from the bottle because that’s safer than taking beer from Dominick’s tap and drinking from a glass that may or may not have been washed this month. Glitch presses against the leg of my chair, wearing his service dog harness—a nonvoidable ticket into any establishment.
“Ready for your first night back at your apartment?” Joan asks.
“Yeah, is that going to be too much?” Cal leans in, elbows onto the table.
“I’m not sure how I’ll feel, to be honest.”
They ask about the apartment’s condition but do so in a careful manner. They aren’t asking if someone fixed the door. They are asking if any traces of Enzo remain.
“Cleaners and maintenance have been through it two or three times over. The city is footing the bill. The building manager says everything is ready—walls painted over, new bed, the whole nine.”
Joan holds the base of her beer bottle and spins it in her palms. Asks the question slowly. “How long did you know him?”
“A few months. Long enough to know he was a good person. A friend.” The word “friend” exits my mouth, and guilt enters on the inhale. My relationship with Enzo is complicated through our connection to the Subterraneans. That is an unavoidable fact. But he was a friend. He showed trust in me. Concern for what I was doing to myself. That all matters in the final analysis.
“Did he have any family around here?”
“He might have family, but I have no idea where they live. Don’t even know Enzo’s real name. Maybe they’re in Detroit. That’s the first place his file mentioned.”
The conversation turns away from Enzo because serious discussion jeopardizes the potential for joy, and why else do we get together with those who know us best other than to find joy anew? And soon, they’re both sharing stories from the Coast News, and we’re laughing about Cynthia’s apoplectic reaction to Terry reinstating me and then about Terry’s growing irritation over his unreturned phone calls. The mood among us is easier and less concerned about the immediate past but rather the more manageable uncertainty of the present and near future.
Cal checks the time on his phone. Joan mentions she has an early morning. I play along and add to the indirect cues that the get-together is concluding. “Better take Glitch out one more time tonight.”
Outside we stand in the formation of a stalemate. Joan is the first to relent and says goodbye but leans in to hug me—that junior high nervous excitement coursing through my cardiovascular system—and she holds it a second longer than the conventional guidelines to platonic behavior stipulate. Maybe. Just maybe.
Cal walks me to my car. Fuji’s van.
“Listen, there’s something I want to tell you.”
“That doesn’t sound good.”
“No,” he says, “it’s good news. But not a lot of people know yet. I had a few conversations with Stu at the Herald. Good guy. Nothing like Terry, from what I can tell. Anyway, he asked me to come on board. Deputy editor. I’d be his number two.”
“Are you going to do it?”
“I’m going to give Terry my notice tomorrow.”
“Holy shit.” I congratulate him. Tell him what a big deal this is because it really is a big deal. Monterey rarely deviates from gifting stagnation to its residents. Advancement is a unicorn.
“So, if you want to come back to the world of news—and actually report the truth—you’ll have a friend in high places.”
“I’ll let you know.”
I open the driver’s-side door and get in. Cal leans over it with his head resting on his forearm. Looks into the van.
“I will have to meet this old lady,” he says.
“Lay off—she’s my girlfriend.”
He laughs but this conveniently opens the door for what I know he will ask next. “Think you’ll ever work yourself up and ask Joan out on a real date? You know, without me as a chaperone?”
“Yeah, I’ll give her a call on my drive home.”
“Really?”
“No, dipshit. I’m obviously too scared.”
“Before you go—I have to ask. Do you think this is all over?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. Like, are you safe?”
“I think the Subterraneans are done with Monterey. I doubt I’m worth it to them to risk coming back while the police are still actively looking for Rocket. And the killer—he’s dead now.”
“And you’re sure that was him?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Just gut-checking. It does seem weird, right? That the Coast Killer is simultaneously in the Subterraneans?”
“You know something?”
“I made a few calls. That property didn’t belong to that lawyer.”
“He was trying to kill me, Cal.”
“I get he makes good money. But that mansion is for real one-percenters.”
“He had a knife halfway into my soul.”
“I know, I know. But isn’t that weird? Why him and why there?”
“Who owns the property?”
“That’s the thing. It’s impossible to tell. Nothing but fake aliases associated with the deed.”
* * *
Raindrops patter against the windshield, blurring the outside world for a half-second at a time, only as long as it takes for the windshield wipers to grant clarity, the never-ending push and pull from left to right, good and bad. I turn onto my street, where this started only a few weeks back. Drive past the point I first manifested my father—the dormant guardian in my head fighting for me—past my apartment complex, keep moving through the neighborhood and back onto main streets and now on the freeway, green exit signs passing on the right, gripping the steering wheel tighter and anxiety is now blocking my reasoning, more prominent signs above noting the coming towns, Glitch’s head is out the back window whooshing in the long-fought war between dog and high-speed wind, asking myself if I should or shouldn’t—Sixty Miles to Santa Cruz—and I decide I should.
Because I need to know.
I dial her number. Wait for her to pick up.
“I was wondering if I’d hear from you,” she says, her voice starched with exhaustion. “I was getting bored waiting for an update.”
“How many Lobotomy Pills did you take?”
Laura doesn’t respond.
“The killer—did he play your testimony over the speakers?”
Her irritation and soft breathing crackle into the phone. “How’d you figure that out?”
“Because I no longer believe in coincidences. Why didn’t you ever tell the police?”
“The same reasons I’m guessing you didn’t tell them everything either. We’re better off as innocent victims rather than criminals.”
“You didn’t think it would be valuable info for me?”
“How was I supposed to know you got mixed up with those pills too?”
“He never wore a wolf mask. A gas mask at one point, but I think that was functional more than anything.”
“Why am I getting interrogated?”
“He didn’t kill you either. Why?”
“You think I don’t ask myself the same thing? Like, every hour on the hour?”
“Do you think it’s the same guy? My killer and yours?”
“I hope. But maybe I also have my doubts.”
“Did you ever think these two things were connected?”
“A couple of pills. That’s how far I got before I chickened out.”
The indicator ticks as I change lanes to the right. Take the next exit.
“At first, I thought the best approach was to drop the Subterraneans,” Laura says. “I totally ghosted them. Never answered my phone when my sponsor called.”
The off-ramp gives way to a streetlight. Soon I find a small parking lot for a twenty-four-hour laundromat. I put the van in park.
Laura continues. “Wasn’t too long after that he snuck up on me on the bicycle path. Since you never mentioned it to me either, the first time I made the connection was reading the news about you.”
“Rocket was oddly interested in my story on the killer. Not necessarily spooked but, I don’t know, cautious to say the least.”
“So let’s play devil’s advocate—if your killer and my killer aren’t the same guy, what purpose does it serve the Subterraneans?”
My Adam’s apple lifts like an elevator, rising a few floors up before descending back down while I think through her question. “Well, we know they can do whatever they want with anyone that’s taken their pills.”
“Right.”
“And if anyone leaves the Subterraneans, they pose some kind of a threat to them.”
“Why?”
“They can expose them,” I say. “And the killer becomes their fail-safe in that situation.”
“He’s also anyone and everyone at any given time. There could have been six or seven people they rebooted into the killer.”
“If you can’t control someone, you dispose of them.”
“And you posed a different kind of risk.”
“But why the wait? Why kill my neighbors and play the games at the end?”
“Maybe there’s something about you that’s more important to them.”
“Like what? I’m just a nobody writer in a small-ass coastal town.”
“Dash,” Laura says, her voice transitioning to a caring friend for the first time since I’ve met her. “I don’t want to raise an obvious question if you’re not ready—and believe me, this is sort of a biggie to consider—but have you ever thought about the possibility that maybe this wasn’t the first time you took those pills?”
The question depletes me of any energy I’d accrued over the last couple of weeks recovering. And all I’m left thinking—or hearing in my head—is my father calling me Amir, not Dash.
“Sometimes I think it’s the only explanation.” I rub the cell phone against my forehead and its creases.
“I try and remember that everyone was someone else at some point,” Laura says. “Maybe it’s more definite for you and me. But maybe not. Maybe this is who we’ve always been.”
The laundromat and its cycles of washers and dryers beat and pound and vibrate against the wall and floor so loudly I can hear it from the car. And as the light from inside brushes back the swelling cover of night, Laura and I stay on the line with each other, saying nothing, but in the silence rests the comradery and comfort of shared experience.
“We both know who has answers,” she says.
“Rocket?”
“Of course.”
“Wouldn’t know how to find him.”
“But if you did—would you?”
The van is back in motion, quiet but for the turbulence from the road rattling coins in the cupholders. Aimlessly, we venture, dog and man, man and dog, riding the backstreets in the direction of Monterey, searching. The wipers whip faster as the rain falls harder, brake lights smearing through the windshield—the drenched canvas on which tonight’s weather paints—the lines dividing lanes, they become harder to navigate, and what should I do and how do I move forward and what is there left to save and doesn’t the universe feel so big when it rains down on us? The sandy dunes rise up into view, the ocean and its water milky under the moon, the rain thudding against the van’s roof as I wait at a red light—one, two, three—wonder why I’m making this so hard and why I can’t do the most obvious thing I’ve earned, the red light turning green—one, two, three—and I’m headed back to my neighborhood, where the people I’ve passed by and never spoken with are about to find themselves in the comfort of sleep, and now I’m on my street where maybe he’ll be waiting there, please be waiting there because I’d love to see him again but I know it wouldn’t be real but so what, and I’m in front of my apartment and we’re out of the van and walking up to it, step-by-step climbing the stairs, nearer and nearer to the front door until it opens—I open it—and Glitch scooches past my leg, crosses the finish line first and into the apartment he goes and I follow, closing the door, locking out everything of the outside world from this place because now I am home, and this is the right thing to do because the only thing left to save is myself because there is nothing left to prove—no more doubt about right or wrong, good or bad—because I remember.
I am my father’s son.
The apartment is in order, and it doesn’t feel as tarnished or impossible to absorb as I initially feared. The chessboard is atop the nook, and I move a piece. I wait and see what happens, but nothing comes flashing back. I thank the chessboard. It thanks me back.
Take a deep breath in. Let it out.
There is only one thing left to do, and I turn off the lights, using my phone to illuminate the path between rooms, and undo the made bed so I can become one with it. Glitch circles around before finding his resting spot on the floor nearby. Tomorrow is tomorrow, and it is merely hours away, and there is always another one, always a tomorrow. And if I want to find him, I know how. I lay my head down, cool pillow meeting skull, and close my eyes, wondering where I’ll go next—not fearing the farm because there are so many other memories, joyful memories, painful memories, and pain is but the echo of joy. My mind moves away from the unanswered questions and will I or won’t I seek the answers, will I or won’t I go after Rocket and find out more, but instead I start the process of drifting off into the subconscious, ignoring the noises from the outside world—footsteps of a neighbor, of a stranger, maybe of someone I know—doesn’t matter now because I’m already on my way, mind detaching more and more, venturing into the cradle of dreams—and is that a knock at the door?—ignoring the noise again and letting myself, finally, at last, fall asleep, waiting until I see him in a familiar landscape—together again within our kingdom of night, forever moving through it.
For now.