And so, I wait. As the time for my appointment approaches, Liz grows considerably more tense and obvious. She paces and sweats through her silk lavender blouse, which I can see even from across the street. I feel the fabric of my newly patched up cat suit clinging to my body, the repairs obvious and sitting on the surface of the shiny material like fat, black eels. I rub my fingers over these scars, scars that should match scars on my body, but of course don’t since my body is all magical and shit. I think I like the suit even better now. Now it’s like a history of my life.
Once six comes and goes, the policemen start to get more and more restless, less and less sure that Liz isn’t just a crazy bitch who made the whole thing up. By seven most of them have left, leaving behind only a small contingent of officers. I yawn. By eight-thirty the rest have left except two camped out in the office next to hers, dozing off in chairs, feet propped up on desks and the one in her waiting room. Liz is packing up her office and ready to go home.
I get across the street and onto the nineteenth floor. I take the stairs so nobody will hear the elevator ding. On Liz’s floor, I walk past her door and to the empty office next door with the cops resting and bored inside. It doesn’t occur to me until now that this might actually take finesse, that I’ve never killed a couple cops before and that I’ve got to do it quickly so that Liz doesn’t panic and escape. I’m not so worried that she’ll actually get away, but I do want to surprise her, and I do want our confrontation to happen in her office, where it should. There’s a table with a plant at the end of the hallway and I grab it. It’s one of those nice heavy terra cotta ones. Perfect. I open the door smoothly, as if I mean them no harm. One is asleep and snoring, but the other looks up and must recognize me from Liz’s description. He gets out only, “It’s he-” before the plant hits him in the face with a crash. I have to get the other one before he fully wakes up, so I slide behind him before he’s able to get his feet off the desk, and I snap his neck, so he doesn’t have time to shout anything. I check the pulse on plant face – he’s gone too. Nice. Nice and quiet. I’m even impressed with myself and my little plant idea. I’m not exactly the king of ideas so I’m pleased how things have worked out. There are two sets of handcuffs and some keys on the table and I pocket everything. You never know. Just then the door opens and the third cop falls backward, scrambling to get away. I spring at him like a freaking jungle cat and snap his neck the same as the other one. I drag him inside and close the door to the room casually.
I get to Liz’s door just as she turns to switch out the lights.
“Hi Doc, let’s go back inside,” I say darkly.
°
I’ve been walking south and slightly west for awhile now, probably four or five miles, and the sun has set and it’s dark and quiet and I feel a kind of peace I haven’t felt in…well, I can’t remember how long. There aren’t a lot of people out here. I see an occasional car, some lights off the road that suggest some houses dotted along near the water’s edge. Mostly what I hear is water, and wind, and animal sounds. It’s such a relief. I’ve gotten so used to being around people, and in such a large city that I’ve forgotten what bliss it is to be just away. How deeply quiet it is in comparison.
But there are pangs too. The pang of guilt. Sure I can’t feel any danger out here, but it doesn’t mean horrible things aren’t happening to people outside my immediate radius. Would it be selfish and horrible of me to live here forever in peace and quiet. My own Fortress of Solitude? And more than that, no amount of peace and quiet is worth being utterly alone. I miss Clark like someone has torn my heart from my chest and replaced it with sawdust. I miss Liesel and Ben, their laughter, their warmth.
With an old, gravely driveway to my left, the fist in my chest is as tightly clenched as it has ever been, and as I pass the driveway, it lessens just slightly. So I back up a few steps and turn down the drive. I can’t wait any longer and so I begin to run, but as the driveway turns, the feeling wants to pull me into the trees. I follow it, veering off the gravel and into the soft earth, pushing branches from my path and stumbling my way through. I break through the trees, nearly falling down onto a rocky beach and as I do, the tightness in my chest, the taut fishing line feels like it explodes, evaporating and leaving me with a strange and settled warmth in my chest. Ahead of me, bathed in a pale, partial moon is the ocean, and out a small distance from the shore, a small island. I brush myself off and walk across the rocks to the edge of the water. The way the island is situated it’s creating a slight cove, so that the water behind it that hits the shore at my feet feels more like a lake than an ocean with tiny almost imperceptible ripples. More serious waves lap at the shore of the island itself. The island hums at me, but I’m not sure what it’s humming. It’s almost as if it’s sitting on a nuclear reactor. Power, strength, mystery, and maybe even something dark and frightening seethe from it. It’s hard to pinpoint which thing I feel most intensely. I look up and down the beach, I’m surprised to see a lonely blue cottage, which must belong to the gravely driveway I veered from. Most surprising however, is that I remember it. Set back from the water a bit and up slightly on a small bluff. It is exactly as I remember, though I didn’t know there was anything to remember until just now. It’s tired looking, worn down and abandoned, but it resonates something in me. Love and happiness I think. I walk toward it, faint memories exploding in my brain gently, if that’s possible. The wooden porch is old and slightly warped, nobody has cared for it in many years, and I get a nasty splinter from the railing. As I look up to the door, I see there is something carved on it. I kneel down and trace the rough edge. The carving has deteriorated pretty severely, rotting away and bleeding into itself, but it’s the image of a bird, I think, and three conjoined circles. Touching it creates a faint hum in the tips of my fingers. I peek through the dirty windows and feel more memories bubbling up about the dark spaces inside.