Happy Anniversary

The homicide detective's name was Mitch Mackleby. He sported a derby hat and a gray suit, and he looked like something from a film noir. He enjoyed this affectation, but nobody ever seemed to notice it - hats had come back into style for men, and although clothing these days was chock-full of technical wonders like self-heating sweaters and undergarments that could monitor your blood sugar and deliver needed infusions of insulin, the fashion craze for the past couple of years had been for a more vintage look. San Francisco was a twenty-first century city with state of the art infrastructure - it had to be, to fend of rising sea levels - but the people looked as if they'd stepped out of the history vids.

As did tonight's psych case. Or stone cold killer. He claimed to be one, but was exhibiting signs and symptoms of being the other. Though, the gods knew, he could well be both. Still, for the moment, there was no hard evidence either way: No psych report, no weapon, and no body.

Detective Mackleby looked at the suspect sitting across the table from him and tried to picture what was going on inside man's mind. He was dressed nicely - not so differently from Detective Mackleby himself -- but he was disheveled, his shirt untucked and rumpled, his hair dragged into thistly clumps by nervous fingers. His eyes had a haunted look, and yet there was also a tightness to his face that suggested he was angry. Or make that, still angry. A couple of hours earlier he'd been angry enough to kill, or so he claimed. Then he'd turned himself in. It was hard to see why he'd done so, assuming he really was guilty of such a crime. He didn't seem repentant.

Nor was he being very cooperative.

"I don't understand why you're here," the detective said. "You report a murder and you tell us you're the perpetrator, but you don't say who the victim is, or where we should go to collect the body. You won't even say why you did it. Do you want us to take you seriously?"

The man just sat there.

"Look, you know it's against the law to file a false report, right?" Detective Mackleby said. "If you come in here and say you killed somebody, then you've committed a crime either way. Either you're telling the truth and you really have killed somebody - or you're telling a lie to the police, which is also a crime."

"So throw the book at me," the man said tonelessly. It was one of the few sentences he'd uttered since he'd been placed under arrest.

"Yeah, but for which?" Detective Mackleby asked. "If you won't explain yourself we'll have to investigate and that can take a long time if we don't know what we're looking for."

"A dead body," the man said.

"Uh huh," Detective Mackleby said. "But who? And where? And how'd you do it? With a knife? A gun?"

The man had nothing to say.

"Whichever crime you're actually guilty of - murder or lying to me - you seem like a good candidate to beat the rap by pleading the cuckoo clause," Detective Mackleby said, deliberately taunting him to see if he might have more luck that way.

It seemed to work. The man's eyes lifted to catch the detective's look; they were pale with anger. "I'm not crazy," he said.

"So? How about it then?" Detective Mackleby pressed. "Who's the vic? Who'd you annihilate?"

The man's eyes dropped once more and Detective Mackleby thought he'd lost him, but then the man spoke up.

"My husband."

"Okay," Mackleby said, leaning forward with interest. "Now we're making progress. For sure, I know the temptation, and I know my wife does too. So what happened? You snapped? Right?"

The man said nothing, but his mouth grew more taut than it already was, his lips thinner and more compressed. He seemed to go pale.

"You snapped," Mackleby repeated. "Because... because he cheated?"

Suddenly, the man erupted with hilarity. Mackleby, taken aback, watched him throw himself back in his chair, head lifted high, peals of laughter erupting from him. After maybe half a minute, the man settled down. "Sorry," he said, but his skin was flushed and a trace of the smile tugged at his lips, which were now plump and relaxed.

"What am I missing?" Mackleby asked. "Want to let me in on the joke?"

The man shrugged. Then: "The joke? Lieutenant Mackenbee - "

"Detective," Mackleby corrected. "Mackleby."

"Detective," the man said, "the joke is I killed him because he saved my life tonight. But that's just where we ended up. That's the end of a long story."

"So hit me up," Detective Mackleby said. "Start from the start and fill me in."

The man looked at him, head slightly tilted, eyes piercing and smart. "Okay," he said.

***

The moment I started thinking about wanting to bone him, he gave me this brilliant smile (the perp told the detective). He said to me, "You know I'm a top, don't you?" I said, "Thank the gods, because that's just what I'm looking for." And he said, "I know... but I want you to understand from the beginning that I'm not versatile in that way." Well, neither am I, so that was fine.

(Are you going to tell me about your sex life? - the detective asked. Because that's not what I'm looking for, and I don't have time for it. Just hold on, now, the perp replied. I'm getting to the part you want to hear. But you have to hear this first.)

Then, before we even got to the part where we ripped each other's clothes off, he says to me, "Did you ever do it with a psychic?" And I say, no. I'm like, what the fuck. What is this? We're talking about this now? And he's like, "No? Never with a psychic? An empath? An angel?" I'm just... No! So he says, "Ah haaa, well, just you let me take you in hand." And Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring. He did. He took me in hand!

He used to tell me, when we were making love, that he could take me where he wanted me to go by the colors. Whatever made it more orange, he said, that's what he went after. I don't know what he meant when he said that. What was "it?" What was orange? What was - what was orange, for Christ's sake? But he really knew what he was doing. And if I started to get over stimulated, or distracted, or bored, he knew just what to do to put the edge back on. Know what I mean? He'd have me dancing and panting for hours sometimes. He knew just how to take me there but then pull me back and keep me suspended. My belly was full of shuddering water - that's what it felt like. I was melting inside. And then I did understand what he meant, because it was like I'd come to a place where it was like could see myself from outside my own body - like the waves of pleasure lifted me right out of my skin and looking back into myself I saw colors. And he was right: Orange was the zone, man. Orange was that hot oil place, that toes-are-curling place. Just before the rainbow whiteness, the apex when he'd made me come so hard I went blind, I almost passed out.

(The detective, embarrassed, leaning into his hand, palm flat and shading his eyes as if trying to shield himself from the mental image of their lovemaking. Okay, the perp said. Okay, sorry, but you gotta know the story. You gotta hear how it happened, how it all worked up to... tonight.)

So a couple years go by. I'm so friggin' happy. Why wouldn't I be? He friggin' loves me. He absolutely loves to make me feel outrageous. My pleasure gives him pleasure. My - what do you call it - ecstasy. My ecstasy hooks into him, drags him out of his skin, and his skin like mine is silver sparklers over every centimeter. Every nerve, every thought - he makes my goddamn soul shoot off. I propose. Actually, he proposes and I sorta dodge the question but a while later I'm thinking to myself what, I'm waiting for something better? So I go back and I say, Listen - will you marry me? Like it was my idea in the first place, and he laughs with me and says yes. That's another thing - he always gives me credit. Always thanks me, always rewards and praises me. I don't really notice at first - not until years go by - but once I figure it out it's just so obvious. Like, I don't mind it, but I'm thinking: No wonder people like him so much. And I do too. I like his company. Well, he knows how to make people feel good, doesn't he, because he's... whatever kind of psychic or empath.

(Did you feel manipulated? The detective asks, still trying to rush to the point. But the point the perp wants to make is different from the one the detective is focused on.)

Was it manipulative? Maybe. But that's not why he was doing it. He didn't want anything from me. And see, once I caught on, that was what I thought was freaky. If he wanted something, I could understand that. But he was totally sincere. Who does that?

But even once I work it out and see him doing it, I'm liking it. I'm liking it with my eyes wide open. And I start to see how he sort of guides and shepherds me. He knows how to make me think that it's my idea that we'll start running and get in shape, or it's my idea we'll start taking supplements. Or changing our diet. And the more I catch on to how he does this, the more I'm noticing it.

Until the day he stops doing it quite so much.

(And you're enraged, the detective jumps in. But the perp just keeps talking.)

See, it was like this. I knew that he had a way of judging people's characters, or seeing if they were trustworthy, or whatever. Which homeless guys he'd give a qopa on the street. Which guys he'd let use his PCD - when I would never do that. Hell no, I'm not gonna lend some tatty looking kid my goddamn PCD. He's gonna run off with it, right? But some tatty kid comes up to us on the street, and it's like eleven at night, and he has some story, and so what does my husband do? He pulls out his PCD so the kid can make his call - to a shelter or his parole officer or fuck knows - and then on top of it when the kid's done with his call, and he's returned the PCD and he's all thank yous and gratitude, my husband gives him a twelve qopa note. Well, I mean... a twelvie! That's kind of a lot, but he just says the gods expect us to be charitable and generous and we have a debt to pay for all the good things that have come to us. So what am I gonna say to that?

So I get used to this. And he'll strike up conversations with people, total strangers, and suddenly they're like our best friends. And I make friends with them, too, and something it almost seems like he's finding people he knows I'll like. He even finds people he knows I'll want to fuck. I mean, it's like he literally reads my mind, he knows I'm so fucking super-turned on by this one guy I see on the bus this one time, and he goes and starts chatting up the guy. Just like that! So the guy comes home with us and I can tell it's a gift he's giving me. Because the guy isn't there for me -- he's there for my husband. But it's a m�nage a trois kinda thing and that's clear from the beginning, so the guy is into it because he knows he'll be with my husband. And I go along with it because I'll get to be with that hot guy. And what does my husband want? I couldn't tell you. Well, I have an idea, I can guess. He wants to please me, I think.

And life goes along like this for a few years. Six, nine, I dunno. Twelve. We're twelve years in. And one day we're walking up the street and -

(The detective is looking bored, looking like he wants to interrupt. Now hold on, the perp says. We're getting to the part you need to hear. And the detective is all, What?! Only now? Are you kidding?)

-- and all of a sudden he just stops in his tracks and a look like I never saw on him before comes over his face. And I try to nudge him along, but he's like a hunting dog or something. It's like he's pointing. It's like somehow, this aura of energy all around him is whirling into a point, and it's directed right at this guy standing there looking at his PCD, just loitering, just some guy. And then the guy looks up and he gets that same crazy look. And the whole world just disappears for the two of them for about two minutes. They're shaking their heads at each other and grinning and I think... maybe they know each other. Maybe they went to school together. But they're not high fiving or anything. They're not talking... well, I mean... I think they are talking. But it's freaky, because they're just kind of nodding and saying things like "Uh huh," and "Yeah!" and "Huh?" and "Oh!" Like ... fragments of words. But to them it's whole sentences - whole paragraphs. I mean, they're having a whole conversation and it's happening fast -- the expressions on their faces, they're like kaleidoscopes going full steam ahead. And the conversation itself, it's like a dog whistle. I can't hear it. They're not even really talking, but somehow it's like they tell each other their whole life stories in - what did I say? Two minutes?

So finally I lose my cool. I kinda yell at them both. What the hell is going on here, guys? And they start laughing, and I'm pissed, because, are you two laughing at me? And they start to apologize, and then my husband tells me, "This is Mark." And I'm like, Okay, so you know each other from someplace. And they're both like, "No - we only met just now!" And I'm completely confused. But my husband just says, "Look, it's like this. Mark and I - we can communicate telepathically." He just out and says this! He's not apologizing for it or anything. He doesn't handle it with kid gloves. He just puts it out there. It's impossible, it's bullshit, it's stupid! Except, I've seen him pull things out of the air so often, people's thoughts, people's wants, that I believe him. And I realize - this guy, this Mark guys, the thing is, he's like my husband. They have the same talent. So no wonder they can talk to each other.

Well, my husband just can't get enough of this Mark guy. He's meeting him for lunch, he's hanging out with him after work for a drink. And m husband doesn't even drink!

(So you think he's having a affair, the detective rushes in. And you catch them in bed earlier tonight and you shoot both of them. That's what happened, am I right? The perp just gives him a cold withering look. No, you idiot, he says. And then he says, Hey, if you don't want to hear my story it costs me nothing to just shut up and sit here. And the detective throws up his hands. Fine, he says, I'm sorry, You go ahead and tell me your story.)

So this Mark guy is suddenly my husband's best friend. And I'm thinking, Well, I guess I kinda understand that it's important for him. I guess it's like finding a long lost brother or something. Or if you were an alien raised here on Earth since childhood and one day you found out that you weren't alone - you weren't the last one of your kind - you'd need to spend time with your own people just to understand who they are, who you are. Because I'm pretty sure it's a rare talent and my husband must have felt lonely for many years. Like, maybe all his life. I don't know. Maybe his family were the same way. He doesn't talk about them... he didn't, I mean. He didn't talk about them.

(And for the first time the perp looks remorseful. He looks like he's about to break down in tears. Shit, the detective thinks. How much longer with this take? Am I gonna have to talk him through some kind of hysterical episode? Do we even have a box of tissues around this shit hole somewhere? But the perp shakes it off and starts talking again.)

See, the thing is, the two of them can talk for hours and it's so easy for them. And at the same time they can say so much to each other. My husband explained it to me. Thoughts are not in words. They're in pictures and concepts and associations. They can tell a whole long story in, like, three seconds - and they completely understand each other. For them it's like watching a movie, complete with lighting and music and camera movements. Except it's not in images, either. It's like a whole root ball of concepts and ideas and information all rolling from one brain straight into another. That was how he explained it: Thoughts are root balls, tangles that hook into other tangles. Mark, this one time, he spent about four heartbeats staring into my husband's eyes with this look on his face, this really sad look - and my husband told me later Mark was explaining a whole year to him. A year when his brother got sick and died, and everything his family went through, and how his mother started drinking and his dad started seeing some younger woman at work. And it was like a whole fuckin' soap opera, but it took him four heartbeats to tell the whole god damned story. That's what they were doing! It was like watching people carve pieces of themselves out of their own hides and then stick the pieces on each other, only those pieces would become part of the other person. This is happening in front of me. I'm not a participant; I can't hear them; I'm blind and deaf to their conversations and I'll never understand the depth of feeling and communion they share. But I understand enough to know... really know... that I'm totally left out.

(So it was jealousy. You killed them out of jealousy. Did you kill them both? The detective asks. The perp just rolls his eyes.)

So like I was saying, they have this total shorthand... this total first-hand, I mean, way of sharing themselves with each other. And one day they're doing this - I mean, we run into Mark at a burger kiosk. My husband says he's just gonna say a quick hello, and I know it might be quick but it's gonna be more than hello, and sure enough he's telling Mark all about everything that's happened the last week in the time it takes me to push, like, three buttons to place our order and then press my thumb to the payment pad.

And then Mark kind of smiles and tilts his head, and my husband frowns at him, and then Mark's frowning, and then they both kind of start grunting at each other. Then Mark walks away. All this takes about six seconds. Well, it turns out they had a huge argument. Anyone else would take maybe two hours to have the kind of fight they just had. And of course because they can talk so deeply to each other, they really ripped into each other. My husband couldn't even eat his lunch. I never saw him so sad and upset. He was shaking, he was - he was pinched. You know? Closed off and really hurt, disappointed, angry. He wouldn't even tell me about it for three days. I was sad for him, of course, but I was also thinking - thank the gods! At last, Mark's out of the picture. I mean, the way they turned away from each other, it looked pretty final to me.

When he finally did tell me what they were fighting about, my husband had a look of pain and apology on his face that... I can't explain it. That look enraged me more than everything else put together - the times they'd start off trying to include me in a conversation but then wander off on their own little silent exchange of thoughts, laughing and gesturing, with me standing my like a dumbass. The times my husband made plans with Mark without telling me about it, even when sometimes those plans included me. It even made me angrier than the very thing they had been arguing about - which, my husband explained, was me. Specifically, Mark suddenly suggesting that I, being "deaf" - that was Mark's word for my not being able to read their minds - I wasn't good enough for my husband. We'd never be happy. He was selling himself short, settling... I mean, for fuck's sake. I can understand that Mark would say that, because Mark is an arrogant prick. But why did my husband have to look at me with such humiliation on his face when he told me that this was Mark's attitude? Like, if he'd been laughing, or if he'd been offended, that would be okay. But he was apologizing to me for it. He was embarrassed. And why would that be the case unless he agreed with Mark that I was, like, inferior? He thought it was true. He felt bad about it. And, excuse me, but that's just bullshit.

Well, I was angry for about a week, but I tried not to let it show. Which was wasted effort, of course. When you marry a telepath, you're fucking stuck. He knew I was mad, and he knew why I was mad, and he was mortified all over again, and I think he also felt guilty. We both made such transparently engineered efforts to be kind to each other that I began to wonder if our marriage hadn't turned into some weird kind of kabuki or something, each of us dangling nice words and thoughtful gestures like shadow puppets, all to achieve an effect. I don't know. Do you do that, Detective? Do you and your wife crouch in your anger and blame and telegraph sweetness like you were making animal shapes out of the shadows falling on cave walls? Because that's what I think couples do - normal couples. Not couples like my husband and me.

(And for once the homicide detective doesn't make any comment, he just sits there looking dismayed. The suspect pauses, looks like he wants to say something reassuring or maybe take back his words, but then he sighs. It's getting late, and both of them are pining for sleep, even if it's on a prison bunk or in a marital bed where the embers long ago grew cold and lifeless.)

Okay. Well, look. That's the background. But it's not the whole story. The thing is, today is... well, look at the time. Two in the morning? No wonder I feel so beat. Yesterday was our anniversary. Our fifteenth anniversary. We kinda got through the whole Mark thing. We managed to not let his empathic or telepathic talents make life too weird and messed up. We found our way back to each other. And I think my husband felt really lonely - more than he did before, because once you meet someone who's on your own wavelength it's got to be a sad thing to lose that connection. But then again, for all that we sort of went on together, I never felt the same way. I know Mark was right. I don't fulfill... I mean, complete my husband, I hold him back, I leave him lonesome. I can't pour myself into him until he glows in neon colors. He tries all the time to reassure me. But he knows what I'm thinking and... I just can't ever quite forget that. And I don't know, don't really know what's on his mind, only what he shares with me. So who knows what he's holding back?

Okay. I've made you listen to me long enough, we gotta wrap it up.

(Thank fuck, the detective thinks, and you don't have to be a mind reader to see it on his face.)

Here's the home stretch. We went out to Pilatta's tonight. You know, fancy place. And I really did... I really did want to honor the occasion. And I was thinking... and I knew he was gonna pick up on this... well, I just wanted to feel like we were left-swiping to a new screen. Right? Because you come to places that feel like whatever was bugging you, it's time to tie it off and start fresh. I wanted that. And - he brightened up, he was chattering up a storm while we were walking to the restaurant after we parked a few blocks away. Dinner was fine. We had drinks, we got a bottle of good red wine, we had meat. Real meat from an animal. I mean, this was gonna cost us something, and we wanted it to.

But all of a sudden, just as we were finishing our food, this flicker goes across his face. Like, I'm not sure if he saw something or he felt something... I thought maybe his eyes caught on something, and he was watching for a couple seconds. I started to look around but then he said he wanted to leave. Which, okay, I'm not that big of a dessert person, but we might have lingered just a little, had coffee... and he was trying to be sprightly and carefree about it but he wasn't hiding it very well. He was antsy as hell. I was like, You really want to get right home? Right now? And, "Yeah," he says, "let's go, let's just go." So I start to reach for my pocket, and he's waving to the waiter, and then he says to me, "I got this."

And he can't catch the waiter's eye, and he's really getting worked up now. Trying very hard to act calm... too hard. Then he jumps up and says we'll just pay on the way out. I'm a little pissed because he's rushing me and that's no good, not after a nice meal. Not on our anniversary. But he's already taking off across the restaurant, and I have to pick up the pace or I'm starting to think he'd actually leave me there. And I'm feeling really conspicuous, like, everyone there must be noticing us; they all must be watching us. That really burns me, and I'm trying to let him know how mad I am about this but not say anything, not raise my voice or cause more of a scene. He's not getting it, or else he's ignoring me. I mean, I married a goddamn telepath, right? He's not getting it?

I catch up with him, and I'm like, Slow down. And he just kind half turns his head real stiffly toward me, and he's got this weird smile on his face, and it's like he's angrier than I am. And he says, "If the waiter can't fucking come when we need him, then he can damn well chase us out the door." I'm like, What? Dude? Is this a dine and dash? He doesn't even smile. He bites down on that smile. He says, "That waiter wouldn't come before but before we reach the door you can bet he'll be attending to us."

Which was true. We were walking by the service terminal and our waiter looked up, he had a little index screen he was scrolling through, and he saw us booking it and he moved fast to meet us. He's like, "Gentlemen?"

I was gonna give him my fintech. I mean, who carries cash, right? I didn't have a qopa on me, I didn't have a schilling. I went for my Intelliphone to offer the waiter my credit app, but my husband is ahead of me. He evidently has dinner money ready in his pocket, cash money at the ready, because all of a sudden he's offering the waiter two doci notes. That's plenty to pay the whole tab, plus tip. Well, the waiter doesn't know if he wants to take it. A lot of places don't take cash these days. And I can see it, the say I could see him and Mark connecting my husband reads the waiter and then he's reaching back in his pocket and he comes out with a cigar. A really good cigar, one of his prized Tennessee Golds. He offers it to the waiter, and he says to the kid, "Thank you for a lovely evening." And he's trying to sound happy, but it's just so obvious he's under some kind of strain. By this point I'm starting to wonder if he's battling an attack of diarrhea, but if that's the problem why doesn't he just go to the jakes? Why wait till we get home?

The waiter is eyeing the cigar like he doesn't know what the hell, so my husband prods him. He says to the waiter, "Please take this and enjoy it. Do you have time for a short break?" And the waiter has this look of delight and greed, like, Hell yeah! He's got time. For a Tennessee Gold? He'll make the time, the tables can fuckin' wait. "Guess you'll have to go outside to enjoy that, right? No smoking and whatever," my husband says, and why is he taking the time for all this when he's in such a hurry? And the waiter snatches the cigar and the two doci notes, and he's, "Yeah, I'll go out back."

Well, my husband tells him, "Go now. Life's too short. Go on." And the waiter looks a little perplexed, I can't figure out what's the problem now, but then my husband reaches into his pocket again and pulls out his ignus - his gold ignus, he bought that for himself to celebrate when he finished his master's degree. "Here's your light, that should do it for you. Go on, go right now," he says to the waiter, and he must be doing something telepathic, some kind of mind control because there's something about him just then, you want to do what he's telling you. The waiter takes the ignus and he heads off. Then my husband grabs my hand, and I want to remind him I hate public displays of affection, but he's dragging me out of the place. And then he looks off to the - to the right. I think it was the right. Yeah. He looks over and there's this guy I kinda half glimpse at a table across the room, looking at a menu, and he glances over our way, and I don't even put it together until we're out on the street, but it's Mark. He's grown a beard, and he's wearing a really ugly jacket, but I'm pretty sure it was him.

So, I mean to confront my husband about this when he says, "Hurry up goddammit!" and we get halfway up the block and I'm asking What's wrong, what the hell is going on?! - and then we hear the gunfire and the screams from the restaurant. My husband cusses fit to blister the air. He never swears, I didn't know he had it in him, but he sounded like an ice hauler for a minute there. He pulls me into a doorway - a deep doorway to an apartment building, the old-fashioned kind, and we step to the side into shadow. People go running past us and there are more shots fired. Then there are a lot more shouts and a bunch more shooting, and I guess some armed passersby got mixed up in the action. Suddenly, my husband kind of slumps and it's like he's been holding his breath - he lets it out. He sounds relieved. He gives me a look and then he grabs my hand again and he pulls me out onto the sidewalk. He's not in a hurry any more. We walk to the car. Ambulances are speeding up the street and garda are arriving, there's sirens screaming in. You know how fuckin' loud the sirens are. He doesn't even look. The noise is so intense, so deafening I cover my ears. He doesn't even bother. I worry he's going to have his hearing damaged. We get to the car, we climb in. and he's on the driver's side.

"I wondered why you made a reservation there," he tells me.

I'm like, What? I book us a table at the nicest place in town and... this was something wrong I did? Does he think I planned it with Mark, that he'd show up there while we were celebrating our anniversary?

He gets all that off me, of course, and he leans over and kisses me. He looks me in the eyes and I don't know what I expect him to say. I'm glad we didn't die? I knew that guy was a fuckin' snake? Or maybe he'll just tell me that he loves me, I dunno. Any of that you might expect. But he says: "He planted that idea in your mind."

He means Mark. Mark made me do it? And I'm, like, You can do that? I mean, you all, Mark can do that? So, yes - by extension - you can do that?

"He wanted us there," my husband tells me.

So I'm like, We were his targets? Or maybe I was. Just me. Was that it? I was Mark's target? Then what was he planning to do?

I ask him this out loud, or something like it.

"I don't know," he says.

He doesn't know? Mark walks into the restaurant and my husband knows he's planning to shoot the place up. He knows that Mark put the thought in my head to go there. But he doesn't know the rest? He can't see, like a flash going off, the whole devious plot?

And I get an image then. From him, I think -- from my husband. An image of a bright light flashing for a split second in deep woods, casting shadows, throwing white illumination on gnarled trees. It's a confusion of shape and shadow. "Mark wasn't directing anything toward me," my husband says. "Mark wasn't addressing me," he says. "Sure I saw his mind - his whole mind, all at once. Here..." And I get that image again, light falling across trees, prickly shadows suddenly taking form out of the darkness. Brambles and chaos, nightmares congealed into an impossible thicket... "This is the only way I can explain to you what it looked like," my husband says. "What I saw in Mark's mind. Darkness, threat, confusion. All I really knew was we had to get out."

We stare at each other for a few seconds. Blue and red lights from the garda cars flicker over us. The car's soundproofing mutes the sirens, but the sirens stop anyway as the last of the emergency vehicles arrive. Vague forms, hard to glimpse through the lights: Cops, firemen, paramedics, I don't know what all. His face looks different in the blue light and then, a second later, in the red light. Cold. Hot. Smiling. Contemptuous. Sweet, my angel. Scheming, a devil. I get the creepy feeling Mark might be emerging from the crowd, from the flashing lights. He might still have his gun. I press my thumb to the lockplate of the glove compartment and the door pops open and I grab the gun we keep there. The gun I bought years ago, when Kirsch was running for president and whipping up huge crowds, and hate was the national mood. That was a scary time, you remember it? People actually voted for him even after he made those comments about a purifying flame and his followers torched that English as a Second Language school and burned those black churches and shot up that gay club. And Kirsch congratulated them. Said they were patriots. Said he'd close all our clubs, line us up and shoot us himself, but he'd take on any volunteers that wanted to help. I can't believe he lost by as narrow a margin as he did.

(And the homicide detective sees that this is the perp's way of delaying the part of the story he doesn't want to tell. And the detective summons a part of himself that he usually reserves for when he's off duty, a part he covers over with bullet proof professionalism and cynical expectations that everyone is a goddamn criminal. He reveals a moment of real compassion - reveals it tactically, just as much as is needed, just for the few moments it takes to close the deal and get the confession. He does this the way a surgeon handles a scalpel. He knows how to use a gentle touch, a sympathetic word. "So you're sitting in the car?" he nudges. "And you're getting scared?")

Right, I'm getting scared. Because Mark. If Mark comes after us. If he plants a seed in the heads of all those garda out there, and they can't see him. If they let him by. If he approaches our car... well, he better damn well be a mind reader because I have got a surprise for him. I was ready all those years during the civil strife, when the world was going crazy. And I think my husband probably saved me. He probably did what Mark did, he put things into me - things, notions - hope, humor - I dunno. It's just, there were times back then, back when it looked like Kirsch was going to take us down the rabbit hole to Hell. I'd stop and think about the way things were going, racists and killers marching in the streets, and I'd get so bleak. But then my husband would come home and the world grew brighter.

So who knows, right? Mark could still be out there. Maybe he fooled everyone. But he can't fool my husband, can he? Mark's got to be dead. I saw the way my husband relaxed, how he let that long breath of terror and tension go.

Then I think - maybe if Mark could plant an idea in my head, he could plant his whole self in my husband's head. Maybe he doesn't fool my husband, but rather... he abandons his shot-up body and he just takes my husband over.

And the lights are flashing across his face. I see my husband. I see Mark. I see a loving angel. I see a watching demon. I see my own mind, like an evil forest at midnight, red and blue lights strobing and the shadows thick and contradictory. I see my own thoughts and impulses. Thick and contradictory. Every which way. And I see my husband watching, wanting to help. And I see Mark, his eyes full of hate, wanting me to die.

I raise the gun. I point it at my husband's face. Mark's face. My husband's face.

"You know I never hurt you," he says. "I know made you angry because I was so happy meeting Mark. You were right, I was lonely. But I was so grateful you let me have someone - just for a while - someone like me."

And this just made me fucking furious. It was the adrenaline from the gunshots, from looking our for Mark to come walking out of the confusion and the lights. But it was more, it was everything welling up that I kept down... it was his... my husband's... Mark's... both of them, their attitude about me. Poor deaf guy. Ordinary - nobody special. What are you doing hanging out with him? And what's wrong with ordinary? If he, if my husband, if he gets to go commune with someone like him, why don't I get to have that with - with someone like me? Someone who's not a goddamn freak?

And he smiles at me. And I know he's hearing all of this because I'm thinking it so loud I can almost hear my own thoughts aloud - like they were in the air, on the radio. And he smiles and says, "Think about me like your guardian angel. And I'll never leave you to harm."

Like he's the fucking master of time and space and I'm the object of his pity! I'm so mad I'm shaking. I'm crying. I'm so mad I...

And then he says, "It's okay. You can do what you have to do. You can't really hurt me."

And oh, no, asshole? I can't? So how about that? And that? And