‘What do you think he was thinking when he died?’ Reggie asked.
They sat at the edge of the precipice with their legs dangling off, like children dabbling their feet in a stream. Down far below them the hand was sticking out, waving at them, pale against the green surrounding it. Across the stretch of forestland laid out below them, a tall length of stone poking out of the canopy, crooked like a finger, seemed to be returning the dead man’s gesture, beckoning him thither.
‘I don’t know,’ said the killer, ‘what would you be thinking?’
‘I don’t know,’ Reggie said. ‘The things I’d done wrong, maybe. The things I’d done right. I’d be thinking about everything I guess.’
‘That’s if you knew death was coming,’ said the killer. ‘Like if you have cancer and you have the time to think of the end as you slowly waste away. When you’re fighting just to breathe, you probably don’t have time to think much at all.’
Reggie thought about that. That was a good point. But he wasn’t entirely convinced.
‘Still,’ he pushed, ‘once you know fighting isn’t working, that you’re going to die any moment now, you’ve got to be thinking of something.’
‘Maybe,’ said the killer.
‘What were you thinking?’ Reggie asked. ‘When you were strangling him?’
Ivan looked at him askance. He had a curious wrinkling of his face as if he wondered about Reggie. Wondered about the questions he was asking and why he was asking them. But still the big man answered.
‘I was thinking that many officers are out of shape,’ the killer said. ‘But he wasn’t. He wasn’t huge, but he was strong, and me being in the condition I was I had to strike fast. Once I had the wire around his throat, I couldn’t let go no matter what. Because if I let go for any reason, I might be the one to die.
‘So I pulled tighter,’ said the killer. ‘I could feel the wire biting into his flesh, sinking deeper. I could feel the strain of my body, working against the pain of my injuries. I pushed away the pain until I couldn’t feel it. I couldn’t afford to feel it, not then. And so there was only the man and the wire in my hands, around his throat.
‘I could feel his heartbeat,’ the killer continued, ‘we were so close together. It thumped and I could feel it. His body rattled as it died, and each rattle passed through me. When he died, his last breath left his body in a puff. I could hear it and I felt that too.’
‘How’d you feel then?’ Reggie asked. ‘When he was dead?’
‘I don’t know quite how to say it,’ the killer said. ‘I was aware of the absence of something inside him. Whatever it was, I had taken it from him. Yet the significance of it was lost on me.
‘Society says killing is wrong,’ the killer said, ‘but I don’t understand why. Killing doesn’t change anything. He’s dead down there,’ the killer motioned with a nod toward the pale hand below, ‘and we’re alive up here. But things could be different. He could be the one alive, and we could be dead. It wouldn’t really matter.’
Reggie didn’t agree with this. He couldn’t verbalize his disagreement, couldn’t put his thoughts rightly to words. There seemed a very real difference between Reggie being alive, and the deputy not, though he didn’t know exactly what it was. What the dead man deserved for the things he’d said and done (You know what rape is, kid? We’ve got pictures.) seemed a part of this equation. But if that were the case, didn’t the things that Reggie and Ivan had done apply as well? Did that change the balance of what was deserved, and who should be alive?
These questions made him uncomfortable. He shifted on the hard ground, as if finding a comfortable position would translate to peace of mind. It didn’t, so he remained silent and just listened.
Ivan turned to Reggie. Reached out and held him under the chin. He turned Reggie’s face until they were looking at each other.
‘There’s no purpose to anything,’ the killer said. ‘It’s just life and death. Those are your choices. Remember that. Make decisions that are good for you, fend for yourself, and you’ll be okay.’
Then he stood and started back, leaving Reggie with the sled and the dead man waving below. Reggie stood, looped the ropes about his shoulders, lifted the sled on his back, and followed.
As they made their way along the path through the woods, there seemed a greater weight upon Reggie’s shoulders than merely that of the sled, and it bore down on him the entire way back.
They had to get rid of the deputy’s cruiser next.
Fortunately, Reggie’s mom still wasn’t home.
Ivan got behind the wheel and started the patrol car with the keys he’d taken from the deputy. ‘I’ll be back,’ he said before pulling away and driving the car around the bend in the road and out of sight.
Reggie went back inside and stared about the living room. Everything seemed in place, as if nothing had happened. As if a man hadn’t died in that very room. And with the body gone, and now the patrol car, as far as anyone else was concerned that was the case.
Nothing had happened.
At least not here.
They might say he met with foul play. Or that he ran off with a woman. Or any of a thousand other stories.
Reggie could see that was exactly what would happen. No one would ever know what happened, unless he or Ivan told them. And that wasn’t an option – they had a deal. There were consequences for breaking a deal. The killer had made that perfectly clear.
Ivan was right: it was almost as if it didn’t matter.
Some things lived. Some things died.
As he had after he and Ivan had run off to set their false trails in the woods for the police, Reggie sat down on the sofa, switched on the television, and waited. He clicked fast through the news stations.
In a big budget movie with a big name star, the hero would be watching the news or monitoring the radio, staying one step ahead of those in pursuit. Yet Reggie had also seen Missing Persons alerts on TV, and the last thing he wanted was to see Deputy Collins’s face peering back at him from the screen.
No doubt his colleagues in the sheriff’s department would all testify to the deputy’s character. Hats in hand, held sombrely over their hearts, other officers would regale the viewing audience with stories about their missing comrade. Clips would be shown of the man bringing an old lady’s cat down from a tree, or carrying a toddler through floodwaters. Maybe he’d foiled a bank robbery a couple years ago and been given the Key to the City.
Of course, Reggie would know the lies for what they were. But he wasn’t sure that mattered.
Didn’t everyone have different sides to them? Couldn’t the deputy be both the asshole that had taunted Reggie at the side of the highway and barged into his house, and a cherished friend and colleague at the same time?
Trying to push these uncomfortable thoughts aside, Reggie found a reality show about married couples swapping spouses. When this ended, another featuring an ex-boxer who now raised pigeons took its place. Realizing why some grown-ups called it the idiot box, Reggie turned the television off.
In the sudden silence, the knock at the door was loud and unexpected. Reggie leapt up from the sofa, smacked his shin on the edge of the coffee table.
Limping, rubbing his leg, he made his way quietly to the door, peered through the peephole. What he saw surprised him almost as much as seeing a SWAT team charging the door with a battering ram would have.
He opened the door.
‘Hey Reggie,’ Rodrigo Ramos said.
The lanky boy always looked like he was in the middle of shrinking, his jeans and shirts a size or two too big for him. The Hispanic kid was always adjusting the loose, hanging sleeves and pulling at the hems, as if worried he’d trip up on the fabric or lose himself in the folds.
Despite having not seen him in months, despite having only hours ago watched a dead man thrown off a cliff, Reggie smiled at his friend.
‘How’s it going, Rigo?’ He held out his hand palm up, received a slap, gave one back.
‘Fine,’ the other boy said. ‘I just wanted to … you know … see how you’re doing. Can I come in?’
And just like that, the events of the day came crashing back. Reggie stepped forward into the threshold, pulling the door behind him so that the view into the house was narrower.
He knew he’d straightened the foyer space. He was pretty sure there hadn’t been any blood. But he couldn’t take any chances.
The deputy’s waving hand came to mind. Waving even at this distance. Greeting Reggie or motioning him forward, down, down into the tangled grave.
‘I’m not supposed to have anyone in the house when my parents aren’t around,’ he said, stepping now onto the porch and pulling the door completely shut. ‘Sorry.’
This was true enough. No friends inside when his mom and dad weren’t home was indeed the rule. With his mom still out and about giving away his dad’s things, and his dad … well, dead, Reggie found the excuse easy to deliver.
More than that, however, Reggie found it easy to block his friend’s entrance because, he realized, he didn’t exactly want him there.
They sat together on the top step. Reggie fiddled idly with his thumbs in his lap. Rigo pulled and folded his drooping sleeves.
‘Haven’t seen you in awhile,’ the Mexican kid said. ‘We all still do the ballgames on the weekends.’
‘We all’ meant the loose group of guys from school. Weekly summer baseball scrimmages at the local park were as close to a tradition as they had. As many as a dozen of them would meander on over and meet in the field around noon every Saturday and Sunday until school started up again. Teams and team captains were chosen not by any established process, but by whoever showed up first.
When Reggie didn’t immediately respond, Rigo pressed a little more.
‘You’re one of our best pitchers. Everyone asks about you. When you’re coming back, how you’re doing. You know, stuff like that.’
‘Yeah,’ Reggie said, not sure what that single word was directed at or what it even meant.
‘You know,’ Rigo said, ‘if you’re not up for that, maybe you and me could do something. Ride out to the comic book store. Maybe go catch a movie. Whatever.’
Reggie only shook his head; even less of an answer than before.
A part of him felt shitty, being this way to his friend. But another part of him had come to rely on being alone, he realized. Alone, there were no pressures, no expectations. He could say whatever he wanted, or say nothing at all. And not have to worry about what other people thought, or felt.
‘When my grandpa died …’ Rigo began, and Reggie felt his twirling thumbs tuck in, curl around his other fingers, as the hands became fists.
This wasn’t what he’d opened the door for. This wasn’t what he wanted.
Luckily, that was when his mom’s car came rolling up the drive, and Reggie rose to meet her. He walked away from his friend when he saw his mom pop the trunk, and reach in to bring out the grocery bags.
Reggie’s mom smiled at Rigo, and it seemed a genuine smile. Reggie didn’t, however, and with heavy bags in hand told his friend he had chores to do, said goodbye, and closed the front door behind him.
But a closed door couldn’t keep out the dead.
A lesson Reggie soon learned was that the dead were as different as the living.
Whereas the lone waving hand at the bottom of the cliff made him uneasy, the urge to visit his dad was a nudging, old sorrow. The scars of time, like scars of the flesh, had memories of their origins affixed to them. Considering them brought back the events in a wash of recall that pushed aside all other considerations. This was a haunting of the mind, and it demanded an exorcism.
‘I’d like to see him now,’ he said when his mom returned from the last trip to the car, holding a bag under either arm.
She wasn’t even completely through the door, but she saw him there leaning against the kitchen island counter, looking at her, and she nodded.
‘Let me run to the restroom,’ she said. ‘Put the groceries away. Then we’ll go.’
***
They didn’t speak on the drive there. The morning was bright – almost unbearably so – the sun striking from the west, the world alight in its fire. The hum of the car rolling along the highway had an hypnotic effect. Reggie hung in a middle space between wakefulness and sleep. In this space he remembered his dad, and it was almost real.
When they pulled into the parking lot of the cemetery and his mom turned the car off, this middle space of almost-reality shut off with it. True reality remained, consisting of bright grass and grey tombstones and statuary.
‘Want me to go with you?’ his mom asked.
There was no anger left in her voice. Neither was she subdued as she’d been previously. There was only concern, love unfiltered, directionless and needing a focus.
‘Sure,’ he said, surprising himself. ‘If you want.’
Together they got out of the car and started across the asphalt towards the grass. From unyielding cement to cushioned earth, the change of terrain was a startling shift in Reggie’s hyper aware state. It was a passage between worlds. Behind him was what he’d known; the pain, old and dull and part of him. Now he was in a different place, of rules he didn’t know, and an outcome he couldn’t foresee.
‘Do you remember where it is?’ his mom asked.
Taking a moment to gather his bearings, Reggie nodded and started to walk again. The place was bordered by upright cypresses, giving a wall of privacy to the mournful living, and perhaps the dead as well. Drooping willows hunched scattered about the grounds itself, like old battle-weary sentinels. He found the low hill easy enough, though last he’d seen it the area had been populated by men and women and children in black, so much like phantoms themselves in this land of the dead. Quiet, respectful, uneasy, they’d watched the coffin lowered into the ground, perhaps envisioning the day when the earth would have them and others would likewise watch their descent into a similar hole.
The headstone was simple. Only his name and the years of his life. It was the way Reggie’s father would have wanted it; unadorned, sobering. He’d want his wife and son to remember him in their hearts and minds, not by some fanciful, elaborate stone.
Reggie understood these things as he never had before.
Thinking on them, it was almost his dad’s voice in the silence of Reggie’s head, patiently explaining, pointing things out.
Morbidly, he found himself picturing the corpse beneath, rotting, falling apart. Then he was thinking of what had been. The days almost indistinguishable in a span of time that should have continued for decades more. The smiles and the laughter; the meals and trips; the mere presence of the man with them. Corpse mind-pictures and good memories wrestled for dominance, striving for the limelight.
Somewhere, someone was crying.
Reggie heard their sobs and understood. He felt for them and knew the satisfaction of a good cry. How it tired the body and the mind, releasing the things pent-up inside.
But it wasn’t for him, not this day. Just being here was enough. There might be time for tears later. This was just an acknowledgement. This opened the door and allowed for possibilities. This allowed the dead into his life, and what they brought he’d find out in the due course of time.
He kneeled on the plot.
He touched the stone.
He closed his eyes for a time, feeling the summer wind on him, the sun bearing down. The sounds about him made a background white noise; cars, people, birds. He was part of it, one thing among many. He allowed himself to be lost in the shuffle, to merge with it all; a stranger in the crowd.
He said hello to his dad.
He told him he loved him.
He said see you later.
And then he was ready to go.
‘Whatever happened to your sister?’ Reggie asked.
The two of them – boy and killer – were back in the tree house again. They were in their places once more; Reggie near the ladder, Ivan against the far wall. He looked exhausted, Reggie thought. The activity of the morning had cost him. He stunk of old sweat and dank heat. They had changed his bandage because the work of killing and corpse disposal had opened the wound. Shirtless, middle bloodied again but not as bad as before, Ivan caught his breath before speaking.
‘She went to a special care home after our father died,’ he said.
‘After you killed him,’ Reggie corrected.
‘Yes,’ the killer said. ‘It was a special hospital for children with … conditions such as hers.’
‘Did you ever visit her?’ he asked.
‘Not for a long time,’ Ivan said. ‘Laws on murder and child abuse are strange things. Especially back then. Though I was protecting my sister from a sick man, I still served a long stint in a detention facility for youths.
‘I wasn’t kept up to date with my sister’s whereabouts,’ he continued. ‘She moved from place to place as care homes closed or moved. The economy didn’t bode well for such amenities. Social programmes are always the first hit when times are tough. Records were unorganized and incomplete at best, non-existent at worst. It took me over a month to find her when I finally got out.’
Reggie thought about that, not being able to see one’s only living family member. About being punished for protecting her. What did that do to a person? Doing what was right and being punished for it. Seeing first-hand there was no justice in the world, and only suffering for the just.
‘What did you do when you found her?’ Reggie asked. ‘Did you take her home with you?’
‘I couldn’t,’ Ivan said. ‘I had no money, and no home to take her back to. The government condemned our home while we were away. I was living on the streets. Sleeping in parks and in alleyways. She at least had a roof over her head, and three meals a day. I envied her.’
‘You had no aunts or uncles? Grandparents?’ Reggie asked.
Ivan shook his head.
‘We never knew them growing up,’ he said. ‘Our parents never spoke of them, and we never asked.’
‘So you had to leave her,’ Reggie said.
‘Yes,’ Ivan said. ‘But I checked on her again when I came into some money. She was dead then. Died of pneumonia. She snuck out one evening to play outside. There was a winter storm. She wore only a night gown. She got lost in the snow and was gone for hours before one of the caregivers found her.’
‘How’d you come by the money?’ Reggie asked.
Ivan smiled.
‘Now that’s a story,’ he said, and spoke for a long time.
***
‘Like anywhere,’ the killer said, ‘life on the streets was hard. You fought for the best places to sleep, to beg, and you fought often. And the people were filthy. I’d never seen such filth before. How I hadn’t seen it before, I don’t know.
‘We’d been poor, my father, my sister, and I,’ Ivan said, ‘but this was beyond poor. Poverty wasn’t the right word either. That implied people who worked honest jobs for pitiful wages. People who were trying to be a part of the system, even as that system failed them.
‘This was quiet desperation,’ Ivan said, ‘of the basest sort. These were people lost, with no way to be found again. And they didn’t care. They just moved to survive as if by instinct, and not by any true desire to live.
‘My first night on the streets I found a sewage culvert that led under an overpass,’ Ivan said. ‘It was cold but provided some shelter. I tried to sleep but two creatures I took for men arrived soon after. They wore large, bulky clothes caked with dirt and filth. Their faces were hidden under folds of cloth wrapped around them against the cold.’
Reggie pictured these hulking creatures.
They stomped and shambled and lurched as they approached the boy huddled in the sewer culvert.
‘They beat me and threw me out,’ Ivan said. ‘I walked the city in the cold night from place to place. I found an alley and a similar creature chased me out, swinging a stick. I found a park, but the police chased me out too.
‘There was no place I belonged, and no place that would have me.
‘Until the old man found me,’ Ivan said.
‘Who was he?’ Reggie asked.
‘He was a rich man,’ said Ivan. ‘I’d seen him before, in his big, shiny cars, cruising the streets. I’d passed his home before – a large, gated castle it seemed to me. Larger than any home I’d ever seen. Larger than any home had a right to be.
‘He got out of his car sometimes,’ Ivan said, ‘and other men always got out with him. Large men in expensive suits. He walked the streets with these men. He walked slowly and deliberately with the support of a cane topped by a silver wolf’s head. I remember thinking there was a resemblance between that wolf’s head and the old man. His silver-grey hair seemed like a wolf’s mane, and his eyes were wild. Restrained, but wild. Like he was just waiting to attack something. Biding his time.
‘He walked the places where people like me hid,’ Ivan said. ‘He walked the back alleys and the dark places. He talked to some of the people there. Led them to his clean, shiny car, opening the door for them and herding them in.
‘Those that went with him were never seen again.
‘He became something of an urban legend on the streets. If you went in the cars, you were never seen again. He took you to places. He showed you things. Where he took you and what he showed you changed you forever.’
‘What happened to the people that went with him?’ Reggie asked, leaning forward eagerly, his chin on an upright knee.
‘I don’t know,’ Ivan said. ‘I can only tell you what happened to me.’
Reggie waited for him to continue.
‘I never found a place on the streets that was mine,’ Ivan said. ‘Every place I went belonged to someone else. I was beaten many times. I got little sleep. I ate from trash cans. I drank from gutter run-off and grimy streams. I wanted to die.
‘Then one day the long car pulled up beside me,’ Ivan said, ‘and the old man got out. The big men got out with him and surrounded me. I looked at them, confused and frightened. I wondered what they’d do to me.
‘“I can give you a new life,” said the old man, his hands folded on the silver wolf’s head. “I can show you new things.”
‘I was scared of them. More frightened of them than of anything else in my life. They were men of the world, men of means. They knew of things I’d never dreamed of. Seen things I never had.
‘But I had no other choice. I had nowhere else to go. So I nodded and they led me to the car. I climbed in and sat with my hands in my lap.
‘They got in after me, surrounding me again on the spacious car’s facing seats,’ Ivan said. ‘The old man sat directly across from me. His eyes were like the silver wolf’s eyes, I noticed. Somehow bright and lifeless at the same time.’
Reggie remembered thinking much the same about Ivan’s own eyes not so long ago, but kept this to himself.
‘“Sex or death?” the old man asked when the doors were shut and the car was moving again, rolling along in the cold night.
‘I was confused. I didn’t know what he meant. I said as much and expected them to laugh at me. No one laughed.
‘“Those are the businesses I deal in,” the old man said. “Sex or death. Choose.”
‘It took me only a moment to decide. I was thinking of my father in my sister’s room, his pants around his ankles. And later, the feel of the axe haft in my hands.
‘“Death,” I whispered, the word coming with a puff of mist.
‘“Yes,” the old man said, nodding. He smiled, showing bright, white teeth. “Death is indeed your business. I can see it in your eyes. You will be very good,” he said, and leaned over and patted my knee like a grandfather would.
‘And in time, I was,’ said the killer. ‘I was the best.’
***
‘What was it like when your dad died?’ Ivan asked. ‘How’d you feel?’
Reggie wasn’t sure he had the words for what Ivan wanted to know. But he tried.
‘You know how some things you just take for granted?’ he said, and Ivan nodded. ‘Like there will always be another day? The sun will always rise? Things like that? My dad always being there was one of those things. It’s just the way things were supposed to be.
‘I always thought there’d be time. I always thought we’d get to play catch. Go to the movies. Go out for lunch. He’d always make me tell about my day at school during dinner.
‘And then he was gone,’ Reggie said, ‘and it was like a betrayal, you know?’
Reggie had never spoken these thoughts before. But in the little tree house high off the ground, across from the killer, it seemed a special place with special rules. After what he’d seen, after what he’d done, he could say anything here.
‘He betrayed me,’ Reggie said. ‘But it was more than that. The world betrayed me. Nothing made sense. There were no rules that could be counted on. So I closed off the world, inside here,’ he said, tapping his chest, ‘and here,’ he said, tapping his head, ‘and numbed myself.’
‘What’s it like?’ Ivan asked. ‘The numbness?’
Reggie thought the killer already knew the answer to that, and maybe he was just seeking to have his own answer validated. To know that he wasn’t the only one who felt that way.
‘It’s like a wall,’ Reggie said. ‘It’s very high and runs for miles and the foundation’s set deep. You can’t go around it, over it, or under it. There’s a gate that only I control and I only let in what I want.
‘Sometimes it feels like it’s going to give,’ he said. ‘Sometimes things really pound on it, you know? And I’m not sure the wall will hold up. Like when my mom tries to get me to talk and I don’t want to. Or when thoughts of my dad really come at me hard. Times like that and the wall feels like it could break at any moment.’
‘Do things make sense back there?’ Ivan asked. ‘In the world behind the wall?’
Reggie thought a moment before answering.
‘It’s not about things making sense anymore,’ he said. ‘It’s about keeping out the things that don’t. It’s about having a little place for myself that’s mine, and only mine. Somewhere that’s quiet. Where I can just … wait.’
‘Wait for what?’ Ivan asked.
Reggie looked at the man, but didn’t answer.
‘Wait for what, Reggie?’ he asked again.
He couldn’t ignore those steel blue eyes. They demanded answers.
‘For the end,’ he said, and Ivan nodded as if he understood. And God help him, Reggie thought he did.
***
‘What were you paid for your first hit?’ Reggie asked.
‘Five hundred dollars,’ the killer said.
Reggie considered that. Five hundred dollars for a human life. There seemed something wrong with that, putting a dollar figure on a person’s life. Though his dad had been killed for sixteen bucks, so he guessed Ivan had got a good deal.
‘Who was it?’ he asked.
‘Just some guy,’ the killer said. ‘It’s usually best in my line of work not to know too much about the target.’
‘Did he have a wife?’ Reggie asked.
‘I don’t know,’ the killer said.
‘Did he have kids?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know,’ the killer said.
‘What did he do for a living?’ Reggie asked.
‘He was a printer,’ the killer said. ‘And an editor of a newspaper.’
‘Did he have friends at work?’ he asked.
‘I couldn’t say,’ the killer said.
‘He must’ve had people that cared about him,’ Reggie pressed.
‘Probably,’ the killer said. ‘Most of us do.’
‘But you killed him for five hundred dollars,’ Reggie said.
‘Yes,’ the killer said.
‘How’d you do it?’ he asked.
‘I shot him,’ the killer said. ‘Three times in the chest.’
‘Was there a funeral?’ he asked.
‘I assume so, yes,’ the killer said.
‘But you didn’t go to it,’ Reggie said.
‘No, I did not,’ he said.
‘So you have no idea who was there?’ Reggie asked. ‘Family, friends from work. It could have been a big turnout. Lots of people could have paid their respects.’
‘It’s entirely possible, yes,’ the killer said.
‘But you don’t know,’ Reggie said.
‘No, I don’t.’
‘But you killed him for five hundred dollars,’ Reggie said. ‘Not knowing the people that would be affected by his death.’
‘Yes,’ the killer said.
‘Why?’ Reggie asked.
‘Because it’s what I was paid to do,’ the killer said.
‘Why?’ Reggie asked again, frustrated, knowing there had to be more to it than that. There just had to be.
Maybe, after a time, it had become that way for the killer: just doing a job. Pulling the trigger, tightening the garrotte, slipping the blade between the ribs. Then collecting the payment. But not at first, Reggie thought. It had to have been different in the beginning.
‘Because it’s what I do,’ the killer said, gritting his teeth.
‘Why?’ Reggie repeated, a tone of insistence creeping into the single word.
‘Because it’s all I’ve ever known,’ the killer said, his voice rising.
‘But why?’ Reggie said, raising his voice too, stressing that last word.
‘Because I’m not a good man!’ the killer yelled, leaning towards Reggie, face red, spittle flying. ‘Don’t you get that yet, Reggie?’
Surprising himself, Reggie didn’t turn away from the killer’s rage. Not immediately. He caught a glimpse of the pistol in the holster beneath the jacket. He remembered the switchblade as well, tucked away in a pocket, possibly nestled comfortingly against the curled garrotte wire.
Then, slowly, he stood up, making as little noise as possible, like a hiker before a coiled viper. Reggie moved to the ladder. He found the rungs with his feet and scaled down them without looking up.
He had to be away. The wall he’d told Ivan about was shaking, on the verge of crumbling, collapsing. As he lowered himself to the ground, Reggie heard the man’s voice above him, trailing off: ‘Because I’m not a good man …’
The words hung for a moment in the air, like an echo captured, and then were gone. Yet they repeated themselves in Reggie’s mind well into the night, playing in a loop in his head like a song heard on the radio. An earworm, that was called.
An earworm in his head, in his brain, wriggling around, digging deeper.