I Was Here(87)

             I hadn’t thought of that. I’ve lost all track of time. We’ve already been gone two days. “Eight?” I say.

             “Seven. Truckee’s still a half hour away”

             “Okay. Seven.”

             We stand there, looking at each other. Behind us a pickup truck screeches into the parking lot. “Good night, Cody,” Ben says.

             “Good night.”

             Once in the room, I contemplate a bath, but when I see the dingy tub and the ring of dead skin, I shower instead, soaking under the weak stream. I get out, dry myself on napkin towels, and look around the room.

             Death is the ultimate rite of passage, and it can be a most sacred ritual. Sometimes, in order to make it personal, you must make it anonymous. This was the advice I found in Meg’s decrypted files. Did Bradford himself write that? It sounds like something he might say. I look around the room. This is exactly the kind of place where Meg did it.

             I imagine it all, locking the door, putting on the DO NOT DISTURB sign, leaving the note and tip for the maid. Going into the bathroom to mix the chemistry, fan on so as not to alert other motel guests with the fumes.

             I sit down on the bed. I picture Meg, waiting for the poison to take effect. Did she lie down right away, or wait for the tingling to start? Did she throw up? Was she scared? Relieved? Was there a moment when she knew she’d passed the point of no return?

             I lie down on the scratchy bedspread and imagine Meg’s last minutes. The burning, the tingling, the numbness. I hear Bradford’s voice whispering encouragement. We are born alone, we die alone. I start to see black spots; I start to feel it happening. Really happening.

             Except that I don’t want it to! I shoot upright in the bed. I put my hand over my heart, which is beating so hard, as if protesting my thoughts. It is not happening, I tell myself. You did not take poison. You would not take poison.

             With trembling hands, I grab my phone. Ben picks up right away. “Are you okay?” he asks.

             As soon as he asks it, I am. If not okay, then better. The panic subsides. I’m not Meg catching that final bus, an anonymous voice whispering in my ear. I’m alive. And I’m not alone.

             “Are you okay?” he repeats. And it’s a real voice. Solid. If I needed him to be right here with me, he would be.

             “I’m okay,” I say.

             Ben’s quiet on the line, and I just stay there, listening to the sound of him, comforted by his presence, by the sound of his breathing. We stay like that for a while, until I’m calm enough to go to sleep.





35

             I meet Ben at the car at seven with a box of donuts and two coffees.

             “What are we, cops?” he asks.

             “We are sort of on a stakeout.”

             Ben holds up a piece of paper. “I got gas. And directions to your dad’s place in Truckee.”

             Dad. Dad’s place. It’s a foreign concept. Like we’re driving to the moon. “Thanks.”

             He holds out the paper, and for a second I hesitate. Harry had said that my father had lived at six different addresses over the last ten years. It had given me a bad feeling, though I wasn’t sure if it was because I was scared I wasn’t going to find him, or scared of just what I might find.

             I snatch the paper from Ben.

             “You want the wheel?” he asks.

             I shake my head. Too nervous.