Meg said you could see the lump of the mouse in the snake’s body, and when she went back a day later, it was still there, although smaller. She was fascinated by the whole thing and returned a few times to see Hendrix eat. I didn’t. Once was enough for me.
x x x
About three weeks after that day together in Seattle, I get a call from Ben.
“You don’t write; you don’t call,” he says in a joking voice. “Don’t you care about the kittens?”
“Are they okay?” I ask, worried he’s calling to tell me they got smashed by a truck or something.
“They’re fine. My housemates are looking after them.”
“Why aren’t you?” In the background, I hear lots of noise, people, clinking glasses. “Where are you?”
“Missoula,” he answers. “Bass player for Fifteen Seconds of Juliet broke her arm so we got asked to be Shug’s opening band on a mini-tour. What are you up to?”
What am I up to? I’ve been cleaning other people’s houses and festering at my own, reading and rereading the posts between Meg and All_BS, trying to figure out where to go from here. After that last set of dispatches, their communication dwindles, so it’s pretty clear they took their conversation off the boards. Only where? I couldn’t find anything on Meg’s computer. I found the new email address All_BS instructed her to set up on the boards, but when I emailed it, the message bounced. I asked Harry to look into it. He said the account was activated and disabled within three days, so Meg probably set it up solely for All_BS to instruct her how to contact him directly. “Sounds like they were being careful,” he wrote. “And so should you.”
Careful. Maybe that explains all the deleted sent emails. Meg covering her tracks, quietly so.
I also can’t stop obsessing about this friend who told her to go on meds. Who was it? Some sort of confidante? If so, did Meg also confide about the Final Solution people?
I checked with Alice to see if she’d mentioned meds to Meg, but Alice said no, nor had she seen any evidence of Meg taking prescription drugs. Alice asked Stoner Richard, who called me and said that he didn’t know anything but that I should try some of Meg’s Seattle friends. I’d already thought of Ben, and when Richard had said that, it made me think again that he might be the confidant Meg referred to. But not enough to call him.
“Same old, same old,” I tell Ben.
“What are you doing tomorrow night?” he asks.
“Nothing. I don’t know. How come?”
“You live near Spokane, right?”
“Near is a relative term out here. About a hundred miles.”
“Oh. I thought it was closer.”
“Nope. Why?”
“We’re playing in Spokane tomorrow night. Last show before we truck back home. I thought you might want to come.”
I open the file folder I have, containing printouts of Meg’s posts. I’ve been going over and over them, and I’m no closer to finding out who All_BS is. I suspect he’s a guy and that he’s older. But that’s just a gut feeling. Maybe Ben can connect me with the mystery friend. Maybe he is the mystery friend.
I don’t want to see Ben. Or maybe I don’t want to want to see him. But I need to see him, so I say yes.
x x x