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Somewhere, in another timeline, he and DeBlanc were both still alive.
(There was one where just DeBlanc was alive and Fiore was not. He would try to imagine what that would be like, what DeBlanc would do, where he would go but Fiore never had much in the way of an imagination. Was that something others had and he did not or was it purely a human thing? He had no way of knowing. Something was either this way or that way or it was not. Other timelines was the closest he got but he had no one to tell him that so he was left to assume he was broken, or lacking, or too practical for fanciful thoughts.)
There is a place, out towards one of the spindly limbs of various branching timelines, where they had both walked out of Hell with clean hands and sore feet because you can take a bus there but you have to climb a staircase to get back to it and they had left. They had left or they had stayed in Texas (unlikely, very unlikely but still possible), there was sun burning their human skins or there wasn’t because Fiore had learned that he liked the cold better than the heat but, in either particular instance, they were together so it didn’t matter.
They had left or they had stayed.
There is also another place, in another spindly branch. Fiore holds out his own fleshy arm when he thinks about it, looks to each finger and says to himself: each one is somewhere different. The thumb was now and he curls it up against his palm. He folds down his index finger. That was the one where he himself died instead. Fold down the middle finger. That was the one where they both lived together. The ring finger was another place in time where Fiore left Hell alone, thinking that DeBlanc was gone, only to find out that he was alive and had materialized somewhere else far away from him and they needed to find each other again.
Fiore isn’t sure how he feels about that one. It would be a better story for the version of themselves in the future to recount to one another. Remember when I thought you were dead and then found you in a Kentucky diner, sitting at a booth with two burgers as if you already knew I was coming? DeBlanc would laugh. He would laugh enough for the both of them because Fiore was never good at conjuring up that particular sound from wherever it came from.
Remember how you walked in wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a neon yellow baseball hat and I was still in the same suit?
Fiore lets himself remember (let's himself imagine and, oh, maybe he could, maybe he wasn't completely broken after all) other parts of that life that never happened: he stole a car somewhere in Oklahoma because buses left a sick feeling in what he recalled later was his stomach. He stayed in a motel painted pink and made reluctant friends with the child of a traveling couple in New Mexico. A man in Iowa ate breakfast with him even though they didn’t know each other. A woman and her partner in Arkansas paid for his room when they saw him standing with an empty wallet, overhearing him tell the motel owner who he was looking for. (When they saw how little he had, they gave him a shirt that said Manatees are Just Butch Mermaids. He still has it. He doesn’t understand what any of those words mean but other humans think it’s hilarious. DeBlanc will think it’s hilarious, too.)
He bought a Hawaiian shirt in Kentucky at a tourist trap and didn’t realize how strange it was. (He’s had the neon yellow hat since Ohio when he found himself at a state fair and a gathering of young people had folded him into their group for the afternoon. They told him that he looked sad, fed him corndogs, and a redhead the same height as DeBlanc wins the hat for him in a game that he tells Fiore was rigged. Why play a game if it’s rigged, Fiore would ask. Because, the kid would say, sometimes, even if it is, you get stupidly lucky.)
He bought a Hawaiian shirt in Kentucky and, before he moved on to Tennessee, he figured he should get something to eat. He was hungry so he walked into the first diner he saw and then there he was, at a booth facing the door, and time stopped. Time will stop. Fiore will be too afraid to touch him at first and then, eventually, he won’t be able to stop. They’ll decide not to go back to where either of them came from and stay on Earth. They’ll realize they’re tired of running and Fiore will take DeBlanc to Ohio because Fiore liked it there best and, at least, it’s not Texas.
They will occupy human bodies for long enough that they become convinced that they’re human. They will never die or maybe they will die a hundred times but it doesn’t matter because they’re both alive.
They will go to Ohio because Fiore liked it there best or maybe DeBlanc will take him to North Dakota because it’s cold up there and he remembers that Fiore was always grumpy but he was less grumpy when it was cold. How did he know to get there, to come here? I had my own adventures, too, DeBlanc would say with a wink. Ohio or North Dakota but not Texas, never Texas and Fiore would think—during some nights as they lay in the bed of the house they rented or bought with money that Fiore didn’t waste time figuring out how they accumulated—about what the redhead had said to him after he fitted the hat on Fiore’s head, as the group stood under the awning of a food truck to hide from the flash rainstorm: Because, even if the game is rigged, sometimes you get stupidly lucky.
Years pass in this alternate place but there, in his hotel room, it’s only been hours.
There is another timeline to go with the smallest finger but he doesn’t know what it is. He finds himself wondering suddenly, thinking: how does he know? How does he know for sure that the ring finger timeline isn’t the one he’s currently living? They didn’t leave Hell together and Fiore isn’t dead. DeBlanc isn’t here but that didn’t mean he wasn’t here.
Maybe he wasn’t in Kentucky, but was in Virginia. Maybe Fiore would walk in wearing a t-shirt and a purple hat won for him by a blonde girl at a state fair who would tell him that, even if the game is being manipulated, sometimes you get crazy fortunate anyway.
It’s stupid but it’s something to do so Fiore packs up what little he has with him and leaves, decides to start in Oklahoma.
& & &
There is a diner in Tennessee that DeBlanc sits in, just as he has with every other diner before, and he orders two burgers, just like he has with every other diner before.
A timeline exists where Fiore doesn’t know that DeBlanc is alive, doesn’t look for him but DeBlanc wasn’t a fan of that particular one and simply chose to ignore it. There is one where he does die. There is also one where Fiore dies. He doesn’t like those either so they, too, remain ignored.
There is a diner in Tennessee that DeBlanc sits in. His food is getting cold but he’s expecting company.
The door opens, the bell hanging from the hinges rings, and Fiore walks in wearing a blue hat and a plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows.
(Even if the game is prearranged, a raven-haired person tells Fiore after they win the hat for him, sometimes you get unbelievably blessed.)