- S -

Yes, Sometimes It's the Ghosts Who Can't Say Goodbye

         ". . . and so that's pretty much the story," Brown finished, rubbing his face with both hands. The dirt felt ingrained in his skin. Even ten minutes scrubbing still made him look like he had spent his time sunbathing at Mount Saint Helens. "With my sanity laying in tatters around my ankles, I went to the one place where the folks are kind enough to take pity on poor souls like me." He grinned. "And when I got on their nerves, I came here."
         Across from him, Lena started to laugh, but covered her mouth to muffle the sound, her eyes darting back toward a closed bedroom door. Her and Brown were sitting on opposite ends of the couch, Lena curled up cat-like while Brown sprawled over as much available space as he could cover. The entire apartment was still, the only noises the random everyday clankings and clangings of the building itself. Beyond the curtain shrouded windows was absolute darkness. The moment felt like stolen time, a pocket between the seconds they weren't supposed to have.
         Brown craned his neck to glance at the same door Lena had eyed. He could only use memory to guess its location. Even Lena was more outline than person, the ghostly flickers of her small, quick motions just barely defining her. Even her face seemed soft and featureless. An absent friend. He was always speaking to one or another these days, it seemed. In a low voice, he said, "I wouldn't worry about her . . . if we haven't woken her up by now, then I doubt anything short of a very boisterous jazz band is going to do the trick." Settling down a little into the cushion, he raised his eyebrows and added, "Of course, if she does wake up, I'm blaming it all on you."
         Lena smiled. "I figured you'd say that." Her smile became mischevious. "Which is why I'm still dressed like this," she noted, indicating her nightclothes. "I can always run back to bed." Her voice dropping even further, she said, "While you, sir, will have nowhere to run."
         Brown grimaced. "Geez, I only come here every few months and already you guys have memorized all my good material. I'd better get new writers." Cocking his head toward her, he said, "But that's clever, I must admit. You've got one heck of an sneaky streak in you, woman, it's no wonder . . ." he broke off, biting his lip, trying not to meet her narrowed eyes. She was waiting for him to say it. But he refused. He wasn't going to play that game. Besides, how could she not know? His confirmation meant nothing. All you needed were eyes. Eyes and the mention of her name.
         Instead, Brown pointed out, "And what you do mean, still dressed like this . . . it's three in the morning. Or have you taken up farming since we last met? You shouldn't even be here." He let his head loll back in a parody of slumber. "You should be in the middle of pleasant dreams, not here keeping me up. Really," he chastised cheerfully, "some people here are trying to sleep."
         "Yeah, sorry," Lena replied, a little too seriously. She was absently scratching at her leg, staring at her arm. "Some nights I can't get to sleep, so I read a book or whatever until I get tired again." Her yawn was exaggerated for his benefit. "Sorry about keeping you up . . . Jina has learned to tune me out when this happens."
         Sure she has. And how many nights does this happen? Brown thought, trying to read her face. She was lying. The signs were all there. Her hair was disheveled in the way that only pillows could manage, her eyes were bleary, almost sandy. For a little while she had been asleep. But something had roused her. And it hadn't been Brown. His presence on the couch had been just as surprising to her as Lena's emergence from her room had been to him. Brown wondered how much longer she would have stayed up until exhaustion finally took her. He wondered if Tristian knew about this. Probably no one did. This was definitely one of those instances where he would have rather had something screaming and running at him, howling for his blood. At least those things you could shoot and be done with it.
         Brown didn't want to keep her up, but then again, there was no telling how long she'd just go back into her room and lie on her back, unable to sleep. She wasn't ready now, that much he could tell. So he said, "Actually, I'm glad you were up. I had all this nervous energy I needed to get out of my system. Getting that story off my chest helped." He laughed quietly. "When I got here the first thing I wanted to do was just pace around like a madman." He ran a hand through his hair, feeling the grit sifting through his fingers. "Now I'm still mad, but at least I'm staying in one place."
         "That's good," Lena agreed. "People who pace drive me crazy . . . I would have had to tie you down or something . . ." an impish glint came to her eyes, "Or I could have just woken up Jina."
         "Yeah, no thank you, I'll just sit right here," Brown said quickly, with more than a little relief. Jina's lack of morning charm had been legendary years ago. And you know how legends tend to grow. "I came here because I was tired of fleeing danger and people screaming at me. If Jina wakes up, I'll gladly go back to the fire."
         Lena raised her eyebrows and nodded, perhaps indicating that if that situation came to pass, Brown would have company on his way return to the inferno. "How did you get in here, by the way?" she asked suddenly. "I could have sworn I locked the door." The tone was calm enough but underneath her words were rapid, almost jittery. Brown felt the couch shake a little as she moved, her vague shape curling up tighter. Maybe she was cold. Maybe she wanted to get comfortable. Maybe there was another reason entirely.
         "You did," Brown assured her. Her shape relaxed slightly, but that might have been a trick of the dark. "I was so wired that it didn't even occur to me until I was at your door. I nearly rang the doorbell, I was so out of it."
         "That wouldn't have gone over well," Lena told him, laughing. A second later she stopped and with a puzzled note to her voice, asked, "But wait, then . . . how did you get in?"
         Brown wished she could see his smirk in the dark. "I learned more in soldiers' school than how to shoot a man at a hundred paces. Remember, we're a covert army." Shrugging, he said, "I just picked the lock. I figured I could apologize later." He paused again, considering. "In fact, now seems like a good time. Sorry."
         "That's okay," Lena replied, sounding distracted. After a moment's silence, she added slowly, "But Joe . . . we have a deadbolt."
         "Yeah . . . you do," was all Brown said.
         He could sense her eyes on him, wide enough to reflect what meager light remained. Resisted the urge to laugh out loud, both for fear of offending Lena or waking up Jina, Brown thought about how much he had missed moments like these. Staying up way too late, sitting and discussing life in general with your friends, it all seemed too far gone, too many miles distant. The hushed voices, the still bodies, the sense that the same dark hour was merely repeating itself over and over, causing a kind of openness that was all too rare during the daylight times. Brown missed these moments, as few as they were. But you never knew when they might turn up again, it wasn't a thing you could plan or provoke, like just about everything else in life, no matter what your intentions, it just happened.
         Next to him, Lena was quiet and still. Even her breathing was barely even a faint rustle, birds landing on freshly scattered leaves. He wondered if she had fallen asleep. Brown wished he could. But his body was abuzz, his regenerating cells lighting new fires in his brain, his metabolism ramped up to an absurd degree to accodomate the greater need. His comment about pacing the room frantically hadn't been too far off. Even now his legs were twitching, vibrating to a beat fast enough to give a drummer a heart attack. Sleep would come eventually but not immediately. The price you pay, he guessed. And what kind of a price was it, really? In the end, could he really complain? Not particularly. Not if he had any decency.
         Lena made a small sound, reminding him of her presence. Leaning forward a little, he whispered, "Hey, you still up, there?"
         "Yeah, yeah," she answered quickly. The couch bounced again as she shifted her legs. "Sorry. I was just thinking."
         "I'll leave by morning, I swear," Brown said.
         "No, no, it's not that," Lena replied. "I was just thinking about . . . your story. About what you guys do." Her pause was the silence of words carefully weighed. "It's . . . dangerous, isn't it?"
         "Ah . . . yeah," Brown said, "it can be. It is. Sometimes." Clasping his hands together, he smiled, a slit drawn in the dark. "Keep in mind, though, that we tend to do these things to ourselves." Especially lately, he added to himself.
         "Mm," Lena said, and he wasn't sure if that signified agreement or not. "Yeah, I guess you're . . . I mean, sometimes you people just make me wonder." Her hand made a small fist on the back of the couch. "That was a burning building you ran into."
         "No, no," Brown corrected her, holding up a finger. "Just the room was on fire. The rest of the building was fine."
         "But you didn't know that," she countered. Crossing her arms, she flopped back against the arm of the couch. In the dark it looked petulant, though it probably wasn't meant that way. This opacity can be so deceiving. Her voice painfully soft, she asked, "Joe, what did Tristian do? Did he really set that place on fire?"
         Her question struck him in the chest, a missile dispersing all the tiny lies he had been telling himself about the events of the night. He could still smell smoke, perhaps trapped in the hairs of his nostrils. Or maybe memories had their own types of ghosts, too, haunting you with the truth when you refused to remember the way it had really been. A pair of alien eyes stared back at him, rooted in nothing. "I don't know," he answered after a moment, perhaps the most honest thing he could say. It didn't stop the ghost from breathing down his neck. Go away, he wanted to shout. I've got enough of you to worry about these days. "I'm pretty sure I saw one of Tristian's . . . friends in the room, and he appeared to be lighting up the place."
         Lena had already known this part of the story and the mention of it still made her inhale sharply. That's how she had reacted the first time through. "It's so hard to believe," she murmured. Her laugh was barely a sound at all. "It's weird . . . if I had heard about the fire, I would have just, you know, assumed it was arson and not thought anything of it." Shaking her head, she added, "Knowing what caused it, I mean, even with you and Tristian always saying Oh they can do anything . . . I don't know. I think the only reason I don't believe it is because I don't want to." She sounded cynical of her own skepticism, as if she perceived herself as being stubborn for no apparent reason. "I guess if it was something . . . good they did, I'd have an easier time of it."
         "Trust me, to some people, we did a very good thing." It wasn't until after his sentence had settled into the fabric of the room that he realized the inclusion of the all encompassing pronoun.
         Lena noticed, however. "That place . . . that was where your friend's . . . dealer . . . lived? Wasn't it? The address you gave Tristian." Weariness made her words sound more accusatory than they actually were. Something more than a question lingered between them.
         "That's it," Brown admitted somberly. His smile was a knife inflicted inward. "You can understand why I feel just a tad," he held up two fingers indicating a very small space, "guilty about the whole thing."
         "Do you really?" Lena asked, her voice nearly inaudible, as if afraid of the response. Perhaps her own forwardness surprised her. It shouldn't have. This night opens all doors. No one shall ever be troubled by inhibitions again. Why don't you answer the question, Joseph?
         "I don't think that's what I wanted to happen," he told her coolly. Suddenly he felt uncomfortable himself. Confined. The couch was made of steel wool. He needed to get out and walk again. But it was too cold out. And dark. The only light was from the fires that you started. He didn't belong out there. He didn't belong here. But he needed to get out. And these days, there was only one direction left.
         "But you . . . you gave Tristian the address," Lena pointed out, sounding confused herself. When someone drops all the pieces from all the puzzles on the floor, of course most of them aren't going to match. "You said so yourself."
         "I gave it to him because I was afraid of what I would do with it," Brown replied. But the ground he was defending was getting slipperier by the second. All around him were all the other men, stomping away, deserting. The only one left was Lena. But her side wasn't his own. And he couldn't see her face. Could only hear her voice. Deprived of every clue, its evenness told him nothing.
         "Did you forget it?" came her forceful counter. Stunned into silence, he was forced to concede the question as rhetorical. "Afterwards, I mean, you only gave him a piece of paper, before you gave it to him, he had no idea, only you did." She paused, as if bracing herself for another lunge. Unconsciously, Brown tensed. "Then, you both knew. You didn't pass it along, you just . . . spread it."
         Lena stopped, as if facing her own point for the first time. What it meant. What he did. Brown didn't know what to say either. Instead, he did his best to focus on one dark point in the room, finding it no different from any other featureless corner. His mind refused to conjure any shapes from the blackness, keeping it a horrifying void. Even the shadowed furniture refused to remake itself as monsters, like when he had been a child. Now the monsters didn't bother with the shadows. In this day and age, we let everything into the open. To make us less afraid. To confront our fears. Forgetting that the dragon in the dark is just as deadly as the one in the daylight. Brown had never been afraid of the dark. Now he was afraid in the dark.
         "Tristian . . . I didn't think Tristian would do anything," he told her, his voice nearly gasping. The air was suddenly heavy, dense with invisible nothingness. Tiny whiskers poked at his skin. Looking at Lena's outline was like seeing her through the wrong end of a telescope, tiny and too far away. Yet when you pulled the instrument away, she was right there. Near and far. How could the two exist at the same time? It was all a matter of perspective. "I thought he was just going around and asking questions."
         "That's all he was doing . . ." Lena noted. "But then you went and gave him a target." Sighing, she seemed to shrink into the cushion. "I know you guys are hurting from your friend's death, trust me, Jina . . . she's taking it hard and I know . . . I know you all want something or . . . or someone to blame . . ."
         "Tristian involved himself," Brown interjected, trying to anticipate her arguments and head her off. It was suddenly very important that he prove her wrong. But even his own internal motives were suspect. "He always does this, he always has, he thinks he can do everything and he gets to the point-"
         "Where you let him try and prove it?" Lena asked archly.
         "He let himself get too close," Brown shot back. In the icy stillness surrounding him, even raising his voice a notch felt like putting his fist through glass. It wasn't clear which was more surprising, hearing the brittle crack destroy the silence, or feeling the dagger of pain lance down your arm like a jagged steel rod, followed moments later by the warm flush of blood running freely. It wasn't a release, more a finale. These rivers carry the curtains. These curtains carry the end. "Instead of just helping one person he has to make the world safe for everyone from drugs." It was a ridiculous statement. Nothing was coming out right, word with two left feet dancing in stumbling circles, the type of fire drill where everyone runs toward the center. Even the alarm sounded like a calliope. His anger was churning, but it was a helpless sick feeling, the sense that all your charts were ten years out of date and the cliff rapidly approaching wasn't just a mirage. Yet you kept going anyway, on the odd chance that it wasn't. Because you had to know. Because you couldn't stop.
         "Joe . . ." Lena said quietly, carefully. He thought she might have touched him on the leg, or the arm, but all sensation was suspect now. He wasn't paranoid but there wasn't anything to trust. His friend was dead. The thought intruded like an iceberg, jutting up and displacing all his other dreams. He had forever. His friend had two dates as eternal bookends. It wasn't fair. "A lot of what you're saying about Tristian . . . it's true," but I don't care, he added silently, in her voice, "but it still . . . Joe, you gave him the address. You didn't tell him what to do or point him that way but . . . if you . . . think about it, if you really didn't want to do anything about it . . . why didn't you give it to the police? Or me or Jina?" Her voice was low, insistent, the argument burrowing right through his brain, scraping the sides of his head, dislodging all manner of things he didn't want to face. Not now. In kindergarten he wet his pants. He nurtured a crush on someone for ten years without telling them. Once he helped some friends smash a neighbor's pumpkin and a seed had gotten in his eye. The other night he had called some stranger his dead friend's name for no reason and had kept walking, hoping they didn't notice. Why was that coming back now? Was rummaging through his memories the only way to face this? Tossing out any old fragment hoping you'll cover what you don't want to see? But nothing halts a spectre. Walls do not bind the phantom.
         "You wouldn't have . . . wouldn't have . . ." and his voice was a broken down, stammering thing, all smoke and grinding parts, bent metal and rusted joints. He had known that all along of course, but like everyone else, he didn't want to see what he had suspected lurked under the hood, at the risk of confirming what he feared.
         "Done anything?" Lena said. Why did she sound sad? His friend was dead, that should be him. "You're right, we wouldn't have. And that's not what you wanted, was it?"
         "I wanted it for the wrong reasons," Brown gasped out hoarsely, finally. Something broke inside his chest and the world briefly went numb. Fingers of dark sparkles probed at the edges of his vision. "That's why I gave it to Tristian . . ." His face felt warm, almost unreasonably hot, the seasons shifting around his body. His thoughts were scattered, refusing to sort themselves out, instead forming fractal patterns, rippling like solid water every time he reached out to organize them, dissolving into a whole new shape, capering madly out of range.
         "Wrong reasons?" Having briefly sounded victorious, a therapist convincing her client that yes, he was indeed a terrible, terrible man, now she sounded confused again, as if she had been expecting an explanation, but certainly not this one.
         "My friend is dead, Lena," Brown said tersely, as if that explained everything. Every day a friend dies. What makes you so special? Give you a fancy title and an army to command and some nifty powers and now your sense of right and wrong is just that much more finely tuned than everyone else's. Lena's voice and his thoughts mingled together, oil becoming water and the pool itself overflowing. There was nothing to hold it in. These containers of yours are laughable. "What do you think a soldier's first response is going to be?" That didn't make sense. The noise he made might have been laughter in happier times. Now it was just bitter, a crater having seen one too many violent landings. "I'm trained to hurt people, on a large and a small scale. I'm good at what I do and I think I do it for the right reasons." What was he saying? He clenched his fist, held it in front of his face. In the dark it looked like a lumpy potato. "And, Lena, God, you can't understand how much I wanted to hurt someone after Don died." Dropping the fist into his lap, he bowed his head, rubbing the bridge of his nose, harshly, painfully, causing dying stars to explode behind his eyes. "So I went looking for someone to hurt and . . . I don't think I really thought I'd find anyone but . . . but then I did and I realized . . ." still hunched over as if in pain, he looked up at her, not knowing if she could see his face, if she was even still awake. "I couldn't do it. Not for revenge. Not for anger." It was a prison break in his head, searchlights shining all around, revealing areas he hadn't even considered. Don was dead? But gave him the right? Where did he get the right?
         "But then, why did you-"
         "It had to be done," Brown expelled the words softly, barbs catching his lips on the way out. The blood he tasted wasn't his. It never was. "Tristian . . . I honestly didn't know if Tristian would do anything, but I figured that if he did, it wouldn't be like me, out of vengeance . . . it would be because it needed to be done, it would be for . . . for reasons I could live with."
         Distantly he heard Lena inhale slowly. He imagined her shivering in the dark, wondering just what was sitting across from her. He had never told her, never explained to her or Jina, that he had studied with the best. That sometimes when you spend all your days and all your nights guiding forces of men, trying to outmaneuver whatever came your way, that it started to seep into every aspect of your life, consciously or not. Supermarkets become a battlefield. The local bar a foxhole. Walking across the street might as well be no man's land.
         "And were they?" Lena said finally, her voice not quite cold, but unsure, muddling through a grey she couldn't really perceive. He wondered what time it was now. If there was even time at all anymore. "Good reasons, I mean."
         "No . . . and yes," Brown replied. Folding his hands, pressing them against his forehead while his elbows rested on his thighs, he closed his eyes and said, "I won't lie to you, Lena, I won't pretend that I'm totally sad about what happened. I'm not. I wanted them dead and if . . . if I had let myself go ahead, that's what would have happened. And . . . Tristian's way was better, which I knew it would be, but at the same time . . ." he laughed brokenly, bones tumbling across a tabletop. "God, it's so strange Lena, I feel guilty, because I manipulated my friend into doing what I couldn't bring myself to do but . . . but at the same time," he ran his hands through his hair, his eyes wide but seeing nothing more, "I wish I had done it myself." Even more quietly, he added, "And I'm not sure what that makes me."
         "I'm not sure either," Lena answered, to her credit not sounding as scared as he felt. It was finally hitting him, what he had done. The impact struck him cold, ice missiles bloodying his brain. Knowing full well the result, he had taken his goal and steered Tristian toward it, and because he was a good person who wanted to do good things, his friend had gone along, striding right into the resolution that Brown had so desperately sought. Because Brown couldn't complete the act himself. Because he didn't have the nerve. The courage. The self restraint. And now? Now what? Having succeeded, what did that make him? Is this how he wanted to be?
         "Ah . . . Tristian, he always tried to tell me," Brown mused, stretching back on the couch, trying to spread out thin enough that he might disappear completely, "he always tried to explain how frustrating it was to be able to do all the things he could do . . . and find that nothing had gotten easier. The impossible things will always be impossible. All he did was become more aware of it." His face felt as if all the skin had detached from the muscle underneath. "Lena, he's still dead," and even saying it as flatly, as matter of factly, as he did, it still bent something inside his chest to the point where all he could do was open his mouth in a soundless scream. "For all I did, he's still dead." He admitted nothing, these were just empty mantras. "But . . ." and his hands trembled out of his vision, in the dark, they wouldn't stop, "it needed to be done." Did he hear Lena gasp? Or was it his own tired expulsion of breath, too weary to even exhale properly, just letting his lungs flop around where they willed. Or was there even sound at all anymore. Was he even talking? "And I don't regret it. What you said in the beginning was right, it is what I wanted to happen. I won't pretend otherwise." Even though he already had. His words weren't his. But they were. They had to be. His actions had been brutal, but far from rash. "But it doesn't make me feel any better." His slash of a smile no doubt went completely unnoticed. "And I don't mind that either because . . . this sort of thing, I don't want to ever get used to it. And if it bothers me this much . . . chances are, I won't ever get the chance. I think . . . I'm pretty sure I can live with that."
         These silences stretched out too far. One time he feared it might snap and there'd be no words ever again. His heart was fluttering like a hummingbird's wing, pitifully, frantically. What had he done? His fear came too late now, the event was already passed, the casket had been closed. There was only the aftermath, letting the sad faced mourners file past, nodding their heads, dabbing their red eyes and agreeing truly what a sad, sad thing it was. Truly.
         Near him, Lena made a small noise, a sigh of a breeze heard through an open summer window. Without seeing her, he couldn't be sure what it meant. Brown said nothing. Make her think he had fallen asleep. Let her believe that he laid there, dreaming terrible, guilty dreams. It might turn out true yet. There was still time yet in this world for the wrong kind of regret. Everything was so still. Quiet. On the east side of the world the sun was gradually clawing its way to the horizon. To brighten it all again. He should go see the sunrise. For his friend. For himself. But all the beauty that moment could muster wouldn't erase a damn thing. It didn't need to. All he wanted was the reminder. People died and the world turned. People were hurt, and the world turned. And at some point, between the rising and the falling and the turning, they healed. Somehow. Nobody quite knew just how. But it happened. Little by little.
         Lena made the soft sound again. Like a brush drawn over long hair, a gentle swishing noise. In the dark she seemed very small. Very small and very far away. Detached, the apartment's orchestral tuning, the clinks and bangs, could almost be comforting, kept in time by Lena's quiet fractured breathing
         It wasn't supposed to be like that.
         He stared at Lena without actually seeing her for a long time. Barely moving, she seemed curled away from him, not moving. Perhaps she had simply fainted dead away, like those starlets in the old movies. Loss of consciousness on cue. For some, that's how they got through the day. For a moment he wondered if he had scared her with his lack of remorse, with his flat and easy depiction of the terrible workings of his mind. That's not what he wanted to happen. Lena wasn't involved. She never had been. The only person he was supposed to frighten was himself. It wasn't right.
         Gently, so as not to disturb her, Brown leaned toward her, resting his elbow on the couch, he quietly said to her, "You okay?"
         He didn't expect an answer.
         "I know," was all she said and it was like a bubble bursting on her lips, freeing and releasing the phrase. But the larger bubble still remained. This tension never flees.
         Brown didn't reply immediately, just listened to her breathe. His eyes stared where he thought Lena was, tried to imagine how she lay, what she was doing. He hoped she wasn't crying.
         After a while, he asked her, "What do you know?"
         "What . . . what it's like," came her whispered response. He heard Lena swallow, gasp like air was a precious resource fast departing from this Earth. Maybe she sniffled. He prayed not. "When . . . when I was hurt . . ." context erupted and Brown was suddenly reminded of the thing that was done to her, what they did to try and set it right again, "when I found out who . . . and, and what, I wanted to . . . hurt him," even the name was still poison to her tongue, "as much as I've ever wanted to hurt anyone. I think . . . for a while I think I even wanted to . . . I wanted to see him dead." Her voice sounded muffled now, like it was buried under fabric, under cotton and pillows. Maybe it was. There was no light in this darkness to see by. No light anywhere. "But I don't think I would have . . . I don't think I would have been able to . . ."
         "It doesn't matter," Brown told her. He didn't touch her, but he very much wanted to forge some kind of connection, just to let it know it was okay. "It was taken care of, Lena. All of us, we saw to it."
         "I know," she said, half sobbing, half laughing. Brown wished he could see her face. All he had were flashes, shutter glimpses from split second frames of subliminal film. "I know and when I heard . . . when I was told what happened to him, what was done . . ." she sighed almost wistfully, "I was glad," and her laugh was biting, a cut across her body, "because he was hurt and . . . I didn't have to do it myself. I wanted him hurt, but I didn't want to do it myself. But . . . it had to be done. Just like you said. Sometimes . . . it's just . . ." she swallowed again, coughing quietly, "you were right. Sometimes it has to be done. As much as I try, I can't be ashamed. There was no other way." Her laugh was barely present. "God, who do I sound like now?" Suddenly he could sense her eyes on him. Brown met them unflinchingly, even though there might be nothing to see. He couldn't do any less. "So I guess that means . . . it makes us both screwed up human beings. Right?"
         "Half right," Brown said softly. "It makes us both human."
         "Sure it does," she murmured. Her laugh was brief and inwardly directed, hardly a laugh at all, more a soft mockery. "Of course." She didn't sound convinced.
         Wordlessly she shifted on the couch again, causing it to bounce gently, a boat bracing itself for a storm that was hanging back, taunting, ready to lunge forward when their eyes were averted. Even the barest second is all you need sometimes. In a moment it can all fall to pieces. But it can fly back together just as easily. The only rhyme is the one that we discern, because the words aren't ours, just the interpretation.
         "What if Tristian hadn't done anything?" Lena asked, her voice still buried, lost down the tunnel. Maybe she was facing away from him. All Brown saw were forms in the void. It was all archetypes. Everything means more than one thing. So they say. So it was said. "What would you have done then?" Her voice was insistently curious. Brown was answering more than just her spoken question, he thought.
         "I don't know," he admitted after a moment's consideration. "Tried to forget about the whole mess, probably. Sit and think of alternate plans out of frustration, knowing I wouldn't act upon them. Eventually, hopefully, I'd let go." He licked dry lips, swallowed and shrugged, a motion Lena couldn't possibly see. "But I don't know," he said again. "And, frankly, I'm glad I don't have to know."
         "Mm," was all Lena said, her voice more background than distraction, a radio fighting to be heard above a heavy rain. She seemed to be drifting, her mind no longer on the conversation. It was probably best. The winds here might tear an unprotected boat apart. Brown felt drained, but not purged. The wound was still infected, any day it could swell again, without warning, without prelude, pressing painfully without mercy on those raw, inflamed areas, until he was more likely to gouge it out and toss it away, losing part of himself in the process. Take away a wall and the cage grows tighter. It couldn't be that way. But to lance it would take a courage he was afraid he didn't possess, a shard from a mirror so detailed the edge of his backwards image might draw blood.
         "Every day I wonder . . ." Lena said hesitantly, ". . . if I saw him, ran into him . . . on the street, anywhere . . . what I would do. I like to think that I'd . . . I'd stare him down, or scream at him, or . . . or kick him or something. Something to show him that he hadn't . . . he didn't change me at all, that I bounced back, like he never did anything." Lena drew a ragged breath, as if the darkness itself had weight. "But I'd probably . . . I'd just put my head down and . . . turn and walk in the other direction," she started to laugh, intelligently stopping herself before it became pitiful. Her heart just wasn't even into bitter chuckling. "It just makes me . . . listening to you talking, about what you did . . . you and Tristian," there was the sound of air being painfully forced through gritted teeth, "I envy you guys so much sometimes . . . you take these things that are wrong and you . . . and go and try and make them right . . ." light shining from somewhere reflected off her eyes like a deer's, "I mean, Joe, you, on your own, you went and found your friend's dealer . . ." her hair rustled as she shook her head, "I'd never think of anything like that."
         "Good," Brown retorted bluntly. "Being singleminded doesn't make me a role model, Lena. What I did was dangerous . . . stupid and dangerous. Anyone could have gotten hurt, I did get hurt, and frankly I deserved it. I'm supposed to be a professional, and here I am, pursuing vicious little vendettas, so I could what? burn down someone's apartment as a means of coping?" He gestured toward the cloaked windows, to the deep night outside. "And look at all the good it did. Take a look outside . . . you'll see all the changes I've wrought with my little show. So much goddamn difference." He stifled a yawn, turning it into a nearly angry futile growl. "Don't go and sell yourself so short, Lena, you didn't lash out, you didn't let it destroy you, you and went did what you had to do, went to get past it and move on with your life. That's all anyone expects, that's all you need." This was a speech from a man who had gladly threatened a man in his hospital bed by telling him he'd blow off his head if he ever looked at a woman again, who had done his best to do everything short of killing the men who he thought had helped make his friend's life a waste. Brown wasn't one who should be talking, with his own actions a poor record of events. And Lena knew that as well as he did. Brown could tell. But there was nothing else he could say to her. Certainly he wasn't about to recommend to anybody that they use their the fullest resources at their command to crumble lives and cause useless property damage. Yet he went and disobeyed his own internal advice day after day. Do as I say but dear God in heaven don't ever ever do what I do. Even though it seems to work. It wasn't a rift he could easily reconcile.
         "Yeah, that's what they say . . . but I'm not so . . ." Lena muttered, sounding about as convinced as Brown did as she trailed off. He heard her yawn again, and when she spoke, her voice was willowy, her mouth stuffed with cotton. "In all that . . . mess, did you ever find Tristian, or . . . see him or anything?"
         Not sure whether he welcomed the shift in topic or not, Brown answered slowly, "No . . . no, I never did. I didn't see him. But he might not have been around. He might have been there hours ago and told his . . . friend to come back later, or it could have taken it upon itself . . . I don't know, " he admitted, feeling he should just tattoo the words across his forehead tonight and save himself the trouble of speaking them again. "I haven't talked to him since the wake last night. I don't know where he is."
         "I don't know either," Lena replied and Brown thought he detected a note of frustration in her tired tones. "It bothers me, I guess, a little," she admitted almost shyly, "because everyone's been saying, they're saying how upset he's been and all that's happened and . . ." she trailed off, yawning again, "I wish . . . we knew where he was." Brown almost didn't notice the pause. He wondered if it was important.
         "He's around," Brown told her. "You know how he is, he turns up at the oddest moments." A sliver of the old humor returned, a bud poking through the soil to check to see if spring had arrived yet. Alas, there were still a few more months to go.
         "Yeah . . . he does. I hope he does," Lena murmured, her voice fading as she took a deep breath and sighed. After a moment she shifted again and said, "Oh God, I think I'd better get to bed."
         "See, I told you I could bore you back to dreamtime," Brown quipped, hoping to hear her laugh or perhaps catch a glimpse of a dirty look. "You stayed awake longer than my staff does during a briefing."
         "No, no it wasn't you," Lena disagreed. She swung her feet back to the floor, sitting up and rubbing her eyes with her fingers. Her profile looked abstract in the shrivelled light. "Are you going to be okay here, on the couch?"
         "Me? No problem at all," Brown told her, waving dismissively. "Compared to some of the places I've slept in-"
         "-this is better than the Ritz," Lena finished for him, singsong fashion. Her smile brought texture to the darkness. Not for the first time, Brown saw exactly the girl that Tristian had fallen for. He hoped something worked out. Somehow. He hoped. God, he hoped.
         Comically, Brown's face fell. "So you saw that movie too." Lightly slapping his knee, he admonished himself, "Dammit, Joe you have got to start finding better material." Looking back up at Lena, he said, "I'm sorry. Next trip here I promise I'll have jokes that date from this decade. Can you wait that long?" he ended hopefully.
         Lena seemed about to say something else, but then just sniffed amusedly and shook her head. "Sure," she said finally. Yawning again, she stood up, speaking through her yawn, "Good night." As she moved around the couch, Lena stopped, looking down at Brown. "Joe . . . thanks."
         Sitting up and not looking directly at her, he folded his hands together and said, "How about we call it even? Listening's the easy part."
         Lena looked about to answer but then just smiled and shook her head again before giving him a wave and turning to leave. She vanished into the deeper darkness and seconds later Brown heard the soft sound of her door opening and then closing.
         He resisted the urge to look at his watch. It was probably set for the wrong time anyway. He always kept forgetting. One of those little things. Little details. That was life. The only big events were the bookends. Either way, he didn't want to remind himself that he had to be up in a few hours for the funeral. Wouldn't be his first night with only a few hours' sleep. At least nobody was shooting at him, or trying to sneak into his bed to slit his throat. Waking up covered in blood and with a dead body sprawled over your chest lost its novelty fairly quickly.
         Sighing, he swung his legs onto the couch, laced his hands behind his head and gladly stretched out, with his head against the arm on one end and his legs nearly straight, his heels resting on the last cushion. Not exactly comfortable, but better than a rock, for certain. He stared at the blank ceiling, marveling, before closing his eyes, how it looked like a starless night. There was hardly any difference. Without Lena, without their whispered back and forth, the apartment was so empty, even the ambient sounds had scattered, off to bother someone else. All he could hear was the raggedly even sound of his breathing, and the near subsonic hum of the refrigerator. Somehow, it made the place simultaneously spacious and confining. Brown tried to ignore it, found it wasn't easy.
         A few years ago, he'd finally mastered the ability to fall asleep no matter the situation or terrain, maintaining his alertness even when he felt dead to the world. Times like this he counted on it.
         Tonight that ability seemingly had fled.
         After a while, he wasn't sure how long, Brown opened his eyes. Hell of a time to relearn insomnia, he thought wryly, sighing inwardly and trying to think about anything but sleep. He had heard that worked. Except his thoughts kept turning to places he didn't want to go, all of it reminding him that he wasn't asleep, because otherwise he couldn't be thinking about such things. Formless and winding, the feelings curled around him, prodding at him with fine tendrils, stabbing him slowly with tiny needles, injecting nameless dread and speechless fear into his too weary body. No names were mentioned. There was no need. He knew. But Brown was too tired to be morose, too drained to even fake depression. All he could do was let his thoughts churn thickly and keep his head above the soup.
         Staring straight ahead at the wall, his eyes started to play tricks, his stimulation starved eyes creating all kinds of sights from his unconscious. Constellations wheeled and dived, a dance counted by ticks on the geological clock, each graceful pirouette signifying countless lives flaring and blinking out. Lights flashed and floated like foreign visitors coming to the old farmstead to scare the locals, their message ignored, or worse, interpreted as foolish babble. Shapes twisted and curled, testing all the colors in the spectrum, lines and angles defying logic. Squares were round, circle developed corners, combined, separated again.
         Faces hovered in the darkness, just blurry enough that he couldn't make out their features. None spoke, all just stared. One time he had a dream where a bug eyed face floated inches from his bed, numbers whirled around it while all he could do was bite his lip and try not to scream. He swore he had been awake, his father claimed he had just been asleep. Brown felt that even silently they were trying to tell him something important. Or maybe not. What do you want? he asked. What do you want me to say? Or do you want me to listen. I'm here. Tell me. Please. I'll hear. I will. But all the illusory lips remained still. What could dreams say anyway? It was all in his head.
         As if by a signal, one by one the faces blinked out.
         All but one.
         It hung there, above the couch, a photographic negative, all greys and whites and bright eyes and reversed colors. He thought it grew more solid the longer he stared at it, becoming three dimensional, a ghost falling out of its ectoplasmic solution. Oddly realistically, it blinked.
         With a start, Brown realized he recognized the face.
         His whole body tingled with a chill he couldn't describe.
         In the corners of his ears a tinny telephone kept ringing.
         The face's colors inverted, gained consistency, solidity. A body washed out of the nothingness, waves lapping at his mind. Silently, a man wavered into view. He was sitting on the arm of the couch, his feet planted on the cushion. Brown could have sworn those feet were going through his shins, but that might have been a trick of the dark. The man's elbows were resting on his knees and his hands were clasped together. He was staring at Brown, his eyes neutral. Oh. Oh no. Not again. Brown couldn't even be sure which one it was.
         So much for getting sleep. What the hell did it want now? He tried to hide his irritation, lofty goals considering it could read his brain like a travel brochure. "You know," he said, glad that he could keep his voice low and disguise his unease, "I'm starting to think that I'm the host, the way you guys keep hanging around me."
         The man nodded and seemed to shrug, as if acknowledging this, but helpless to do anything about it. "My apologies," it said politely, and Brown wasn't even sure if its lips moved, "but I saw you were awake." It puffed out its cheeks in a surprisingly human gesture, and lightly clapped its hands together before clasping them tightly together again. "I figured I could do this now, before any more time passed."
         "What?" Oh God, what now?
         "It occurred to me that I had never offered my condolences," the man said simply, "over your loss. I believe that was highly inconsiderate of us. So I'd like to offer my condolences and my sympathies now, on behalf of me and my brother."
         Brown blinked, taken aback. What? The chill still hadn't gone away. Someone must have left a window open. That had to be it. He had to be still dreaming. But he wasn't. He knew he wasn't. "Ah . . . thank you," he stammered, his head beginning to ache. His throat felt very tight suddenly. Don must really be dead if the resident gods were dropping by to say they were sorry. He couldn't stop the thought from cutting him, and closed his eyes tightly, briefly, to prevent anything else from escaping. Oh God, there were so many questions he wanted to ask. But all the important ones had been offered and rejected long ago. And now they might just lie to avoid hurting his feelings. Ah. Ah God. If only he knew. If only he was sure there was a space beyond. The man surely saw his thoughts, but didn't react, didn't say. Perhaps they were respecting his privacy. Wonderful. A first. This night was full of them. "But that's something you say to the family, he . . . he was only my friend."
         The man ducked his head, acknowledging again. "As you say," it replied mildly. "I'll let you get back to sleep now, then."
         "Wait-" Brown said suddenly.
         The man paused, though Brown didn't know what act he was halting. He peered at Brown with his head cocked slightly to the side. "Oh, would you like help with-"
         "No, no," Brown answered quickly, before it pulled a Sandman on him and he slept until the next century. What miracles he might see then. And they'd probably still be bugging him. What was as hundred years to something that watched stars grow old and die like relatives trapped in a nursing home. It was sobering, even moreso when Brown considered that one day he might just find out what it was like. Trying not to think about it only made it seem that much more frightening. "I just . . . since you were here, I thought I'd ask . . . I'd like to know . . ." he expected the man to finish his sentence for him and was surprised when he didn't. Instead the man only stared at him, waiting patiently. Of course, they had all the time in the world. Brown did too, he just kept refusing to act like it. "I saw you today. One of you, at least, and I . . ." the words became lodged, he almost shouted to eject them, "What did Tristian do?"
         The man blinked, obviously not surprised by the question. He had no doubt seen it coming a few minutes ago and was waiting for Brown to catch up. Damn immortals. But he couldn't imprint any anger into the curse. Tonight he didn't have it in him. Tonight he just wanted to kill the time and pass the minutes until he had to say goodbye. "Tristian? He did what he always winds up doing," and the man almost smiled, though his face barely twitched, "he gives people chances they won't take. This time, his intent was to talk them out of what they were doing." The man sniffed and smiled again, like Tristian was a goofy older relative who always kept trying to take the invisible dog out for a walk or attempted to rejoin his old regiment. Even the man didn't appear to think that Tristian's plan had been a good idea. Unless of course, it was just mirroring Brown's thoughts. The gauziness of the night and the way the man's face kept wavering, like it was underwater, gave Brown no answers. But then, his questions weren't the best to begin with.
         "I can only imagine how that was received," Brown noted dryly. Goddamn Tristian, he raged inwardly, why do you always have to use the moral high ground first? When will you realize that some people just don't care. They don't care what they do to themselves and they don't care what they do to other people. They'll take your talk and smile and soon as you think you've won them over they'll hold you down and laugh and rape every ideal you've ever had, until all you can do is bleed and wonder where it all went wrong. They'll coat it all in the sweetest sugar, never letting on that they'd hidden razors sharp enough to shave a diamond inside, preferring to wait until you've slit your own throat. They'll do it. Every chance they get. Every time you let them. Every single goddamn time.
         Unless, of course, you've got your own blade.
         Then it's a different story.
         "You saw the results yourself," the man said simply.
         A cold sensation entered his chest, ice swallowed down the wrong pipe. Trying to picture the room and what had been in it, Brown found that he couldn't. Not clearly. All he remembered were flames. Flames reflected in alien eyes. And that was all. No other sights, no other sounds. Tristian, no. No. Through a throat he couldn't fit a pin down, he croaked out, "Did he . . . you know, did he . . ." some soldier he was, couldn't even get the words out.
         "Kill them?" the man asked, one eyebrow raised.
         "Yes." That was easier to spit out.
         "No," the man said flatly, and Brown let himself exhale. This day had one bright spot. The man continued, "However, he did his best to convince them that future endeavors in their field would be, at best, unhealthy."
         "And the fire?" Brown asked. He could only imagine what type of convincing Tristian had done. Absently, he tapped at his chest. In his head the flames were still crackling. He couldn't stop staring at the man's hands, which were simply resting on his knees. For some reason Brown couldn't stop smelling smoke. He knew it was somatic, a ember lodged in his head. But it wouldn't stop. "How did that come about?"
         For the first time, the man's face registered an emotion other than passive idleness. Problem was, Brown couldn't identify it. Somewhere between pain and pride, as far as he could tell. "He asked us to do it. He wanted the entire room gone." A smile twitched at the corner of the man's lips. "His anger was . . . considerable. It was his way of proving that he was serious, I suppose, a reminder in case their memories somehow failed to retain his argument." Brown wasn't sure if that was meant to be a joke or not.
         "So there was no one in the room when you . . ." considering that Brown had seriously considered killing these people not too long before, his sudden concern for them mystified even himself. Maybe his decency was finally reasserting itself, swinging too far toward compassion with the weird intent of balancing all his skewed emotions and impulses. Or perhaps his conscience decided to start taking charge again. It was about time.
         "Nobody," the man stated. "He insisted, made it very clear. And so we did. Nobody was hurt, Commander," hearing his rank in this place made him shiver. Here it sounded like a foreign language, almost a curse. "I trust that's okay with you." If there was sarcasm in that statement, it was as veiled as it could be.
         "Perfect," Brown muttered, rubbing his face. Maybe an hour of sleep now, at best. Oh God, the sun had to be coming up soon. The sun coming up and his friend going into the ground. He hated funerals. He was going to too many for the wrong people too early. At some point it had to stop. Maybe he'd just declare funerals dead, hold a service, give a eulogy, wipe away a tear and never go to one again. A night like this, it was tempting. "So that's that, then, I guess. Do you know where Tristian is now?" A stupid question, but he wasn't about to demand the man's location from them. He didn't need a hundred years worth of nightmares about being lost.
         "Yes," the man said and that was all for a moment. Then, it added, "You'll see him tomorrow." A surprisingly gentle smile came over its face. "You should get some sleep now, Commander, else you'll look a fright." The statement was a seeming blend of the personalities of both of the Agents. For the first time Brown realized he didn't know which one he was talking to. The hints of rabid unpredictability revived his initial nervousness. The man's smile suggested he was in on a joke Brown couldn't possibly fathom. God. Creepy bastards. They were probably enjoying this.
         "No, we wouldn't want that," Brown said icily, stretching again, wishing that the release of tension in his muscles brought more relief than it did. "Okay, then, is there anything else I should know?"
         The man pursed his lips, appeared to ponder the matter. "No, not that I can think of," he replied after a moment.
         "Good," Brown yawned. The man already seemed to be fading, his face falling apart by degrees, becoming flat, featureless, not unlike a drawing. A copy is not the original. But what if it's an original copy? "Now let me see if I can at least an hour's sleep."
         "Very well. Pleasant dreams." But it was only his voice. The man was already gone. Not even the usual sparkles and light. He wondered if it had actually been a dream. He hoped it wasn't. Waking up to bury his friend and then discovering that his other friend had killed two people and burned down their apartment would be an ugly end to his stay here.
         Brown was left with an oddly empty feeling, like something vital had been excised from the room, thrown outside to lie pulsing and faintly steaming in the cool dawn air. The man's voice had possessed a strange timbre of sadness to it, nothing explicit, but certainly detectable. Brown had the impression that this was a conversation that shouldn't have happened and had been resisting the inevitable, only just now acknowledging that it had occurred.
         But that was only his interpretation. And he knew what that was worth. Especially lately. Especially lately.
         Still, he thought, that was uncommonly decent of them. I wonder what the real reason was. His thoughts were tinged with cynicism, but distant, ships falling off the edge of the world, waving goodbye as the horizon receded, vanishing down into the bloodstream of the sky. The world was a tide without motion. Floating dark dust seemed to hold the shape of the man's afterimage, a strange chalk shroud stapled to the wall. Why had they come? Had they sensed his thoughts? Did they really care that much, or was it just a reaction to something Tristian had said? Brown tried to focus on it for a few moments longer, but somewhere in the midst of his pondering, his breathing deepened, his face relaxed and he finally fell asleep.
         The room became absolutely still, a black and white photograph frozen in time.
         Wind whispered at the window, past it, then fell silent.
         A voice shouted something incoherent, the edges of the words swallowed by weather and distance and the newborn day.
         Grinding mournfully, a car growled and then started, purring to life.
         Pipes clanged.
         Furnaces hummed.
         And a short time later, with barely a creak, a bedroom door opened.
         Someone padded out, cautiously at first, then with surer steps, still flinching at every groan and squeak her passage made across the room but not stopping. Once at the couch she stopped, staring at a space somewhere slightly above it, at about eye level. Slowly, hesitantly, her hand reached out to touch the space, fingers probed the air. After a moment she pulled her hand away, let it dangle, as if testing the direction of the wind. Nothing. There was nothing there.
         Letting her arm drop, she continued to stare at the space for a long time, at the man sleeping beyond it, her eyes tired, searching, curious. But you can't peel the air. Or force it to reveal secrets that don't exist. That was the problem. Whatever she was seeking, it just wasn't there.
         "Tristian?" Lena asked, softly.
         Of course there was no answer.
         But then, perhaps it wasn't a question.