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Summary
Two men collide and talk their way out of the wreckage.
An epilogue, set five years after the night that started like any other night.
Series
- Part 1 of Amber Headlights
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Bookmark Notes:
“No, I can’t, but the closest I ever came was with you. You saw me. Max. MAX! Look at me. Open your eyes. So the way I see it, I have two options. I can kill you, or I can accept the change of terrain. Negotiate the rules of engagement. New contract, new terms. I know you’re not going to tell anyone. You didn’t even check to see if I’d cut the phone lines. Didn’t grab your cell off the nightstand, text your wife, call the fucking cops, none of it. Do you even know what time it is? . . . No. You don’t. Because it doesn’t make a difference. None of it will ever make a difference. Because for the rest of your life, whether you like it or not, you’re going to be waking up alone, in the dark, and you’re going to be thinking about me. You know it. That is the truth, and you know it. Learn to fucking live with it.”
The rest was left to implication. To say those final two words aloud would have been overkill. They were so plain and irrefutable that even a concussed, suffocating Max instantly filled in the blanks.
“You’re . . . full of shit,” he hissed, his ribs and jaw aching, lungs burning with each inhalation. Vincent’s grip tightened steadily with each sputtering fragment. “You are vengeful. That’s why you’re here . . . the real reason. Lone wolf, lone, lonely wolf, so you gotta make it . . . making sure the damage is . . . reciprocal, make sure it’s . . . permanent.”
“Yeah. Save it for your four o’clock on Thursday. Sounds like you’re on the verge of a real breakthrough.”
Vincent was sneering, but his face was an exposed nerve, contorted with resentment. There was a blurry hairline fracture splitting it down the right side. Max realized that one of the lenses on his glasses had cracked.
“Well,” Max said, riding out a railroad spike of pain down his neck. “What about you. Have you?”
“Have I what?”
He made sure to get it out unbroken.
“ . . . Learned to live with it.”
Prolonged silence, challenging him to remain conscious.
“Working on it,” Vincent said. He glanced at his own hand, blinking once as if remembering himself, and then released Max, stepping away. “So don’t push your luck. What are the odds, right? You getting the best of me twice in a row?”
Switching it off as quickly as it came on, reining it all back in, maybe even shaken, embarrassed by the slip.
Max forced himself to remain upright, gasping and coughing, propped awkwardly against the window pane.
“Blue Whale, Saturday night, ten o’clock. If you change your mind.” Vincent brushed off the arm of his jacket and tugged it down by the lapels, one last long, wrenching look at Max. “See you around.”
Dumbfounded, Max watched helplessly as Vincent departed.
It should have been some meager consolation. It should have offered a semblance of relief. He felt neither. Only a churning, incomprehensible emptiness, an ache like black hole, its destructive magnetism inescapable.
“The word is ‘oneiromancy.’ Divination by way of dreams.”
Vincent was calling blithely over his shoulder, turning for a few moments to face Max while he walked backwards, drifting toward the stairs.
Max had no idea what that meant. He heaved in a stinging breath and called back hoarsely. “What?”
“Sunday crossword in the downstairs foyer, 12 down, 11 letters. You left it blank.”
“I don’t . . . I don’t remember what the clue was.”
“‘Someday my prince will come,’” Vincent said, spinning back around. Max couldn’t see his face anymore. It was just his retreating voice, carrying through the house like the sound from a gramophone. “Then a parenthetical: ‘in dreams.’”
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