It was hanging directly in front of him, but his eyes were fixed on the sink and the water that swirled down the drain. Down, down, down. Where did it go? Where would it end up? Universal questions you could ask about everything and everyone.
He was a widower now. It struck him as odd that in a world where no sorry human condition was without classification or political currency, losing a spouse wasn’t a category worth dissection or exploitation. Shouldn’t there be a codified difference between being a widower whose spouse had died of natural causes versus a widower whose spouse had been murdered?
No. Dead was dead.
Sam turned off the faucet, took a deep breath, and finally looked into the mirror. It was a milestone, but it wasn’t a heart-stopping moment, not even a significant one, which stunned him. Sleepless, violet puddles under amber eyes. A good nose. Flesh marbled with scar tissue on one side, smooth on the other. He wasn’t looking at a monster, he was looking at a man. Just a man. A widower.
Sam ran his fingers along the scars. They were hard and gnarly and without sensation, a perfect analog to his cerebral state. Gnarly. He thought of Teddy, who probably said “gnarly” on a regular basis. Or maybe the slang was passé and surfers didn’t use the term anymore. And why was he thinking stupid, irrelevant things?
Because you can’t think of relevant things.
He wanted desperately to feel grief instead of deadness, but there was some indiscernible obstruction cocooning him. He could practically see grief seething all around, coagulating, pulsating, but it couldn’t push its way in. Not yet.
He opened the medicine cabinet and stared at the orange bottles of different tranquilizers. He hadn’t taken one in two months, but today was the day to snuggle up with an Ativan. Ease the anxiety, kill the pain. He shook one out, swallowed it, then stared at his face again. Why had he been avoiding his reflection all this time? It’s not like it was the sole reminder of his past—it wasn’t even the most significant one. Maybe this was a breakthrough on a day when he should be having a breakdown. Or maybe he was having a breakdown and this was what it was like.
His sluggish pulse sparked to life when his forehead suddenly misted with amorphic red. He pinched his eyes closed and took deep breaths, willing the Ativan to kick in, but it wasn’t fast-acting. He should have taken a Xanax instead.
When he finally opened his eyes again, he watched in morbid fascination as letters slowly appeared: S … U … I … C … I … D …
He turned away and stumbled out of the bathroom. The hallway floor was warping and buckling beneath his feet, and brilliant, coruscating patterns flashed on the walls. He made it to the kitchen and confronted a large, translucent projection of himself, Colt in hand, rising slowly to his temple.
“No. No, no, no, no, no!”
The phantasm flashed, then disappeared—and along with it, his consciousness.
Chapter Forty-eight
A MAN WAS STANDING OVER SAM, offering a bony hand latticed with blue veins. Half of his face was obscured in the penumbra cast by an unknown occlusion, but the visible half looked familiar: a lantern jaw stippled with whiskers, a long nose that defied symmetry, a watchful hazel eye set in a deep, shadowy socket. Undulating, psychedelic colors splashed the walls behind him.
“Get up, Sam my man.”
The voice. “Rondo?”
“You got it.”
Sam ignored the hand and scrambled to his feet. “Stop visiting me, you’re dead.”
“Yeah. But you should be used to visitors from the other side by now,” he cackled. “Ty, Shaggy, Wilson, they couldn’t make it. Did I tell you last time they send their regards?”
Sam backed into a chair, knocked it over. “You’re not real.”
“I’m obviously real enough to you, and that’s a good thing because I’m here to help you. Don’t let me go. Can you do that?”
Sam grimaced and pressed hard against his pounding temples, against the specter of death, maybe an augury of his own. He pinched his eyes shut, but Rondo was still there when he finally opened them again, the visible half of his face wavering in and out of focus.
“Nice try, but closing your eyes won’t work because you don’t want me to go.”
“Why are you here?”
“I just told you, I’m here to help.”
The neon lights faded, and Sam felt his mental fog dissipate as he faced the same question he’d asked himself the last time Rondo had visited. When dreams bled into reality, was it a psychotic break? Oh, yes, he believed it was. Game over. Charon and the straightjacket and a one-way ticket downstairs.
But maybe Rondo was here to help. Sam had been fighting the dead for so long without results. What would happen if he played along this time, pretended this was real? His mind couldn’t sustain that fantasy within a fantasy for long, and then Rondo might go away forever.
“How did you get in?”
“Ghosts can walk through walls.” He let out his phlegmy cackle again. “I’m just shitting you, Sam, ghosts can’t really walk through walls, I ought to know. Your door wasn’t locked. I tried knocking and when you didn’t answer, I looked in the window and saw you on the floor. I thought maybe they got you, thank God they didn’t. You need to lock your door, Sam, at all times. Especially now.”
He emerged from the shadows and Sam recoiled. He wasn’t in bloody camo this time, and his face didn’t belong to the man who’d died two years ago or the man who’d visited him last night. This time, it was chapped and sunken and smeared with grime. The deep eye sockets were bruise-purple. His mouth was slack, and dried spittle frosted the edges of his lips. He was wearing a tattered woolen coat that smelled like decay and should have been roasting him alive on this hot June day, but there was obviously something wrong with his thermostat.
Sam instantly understood. This version of Rondo was mentally ill, likely schizophrenic. Probably homeless, like so many veterans in LA. He’d seen enough of them to perfect the image.
Keep pretending Rondo is real. Challenge him.
“So you’re alive?”
He batted his hand in the air, either fending off the question or an imaginary swarm of predatory insects. “You need to pay attention to the message, not the messenger. I came here to warn you, Sam. Fuck, we’re in trouble. They’re going to kill us. They’ve got operatives everywhere. Everywhere.” He started shuffling and fidgeting and his eyes were suddenly wild, searching for his imaginary tormenter.
A man on fire. A potentially dangerous man his own mind had conjured, and he was afraid of what Rondo might do to him because nightmares weren’t always safe. This one didn’t feel safe, not remotely.
Calm him down.
“Why don’t you have a seat, Rondo? Can I get you some water?”
“Yeah, yeah, that would be great. Thanks.”
He didn’t sit down, but he seemed to relax a little. Sam backed into the kitchen, his eyes fixed on the disturbed dream visitor as he grabbed a bottle of water from the refrigerator.
Rondo snatched the bottle from his hand, ripped off the cap, and drank greedily, water spilling down his chin onto the front of his filthy coat. “Thanks, man.”
“No problem. Where are you staying nowadays?”