Hummingbird Salamander(73)


Instead, I just stabbed the knife through the broken boards and affixed it to the floor. Left it there.

An evil book. An evil mood.

I needed to remember not to do anything this crazy again. So there the book would stay as long as I lived in the houseboat.

I didn’t know anymore if Silvina was a false beacon. The kind that wrecked you on the rocks. But she shone so darkly in my imagination. The only light I had to guide me.





[76]


Even after I turned the space heater back on, the cold was like a slap in the face as I came to my senses. Warming my hands while my ass froze. The cold I couldn’t shake helped me think. Made me concentrate, restless, on where I put my feet, how to position the cane, so I wouldn’t slip.

I alternated shivering on the walkway, staring out at a sullen brown-gray river marsh of dead reeds, and sitting propped up against the headboard of the bed, staring down the length of the floating mobile home at the kitchen. Trying to ignore the dead, pinned Furtown. Pondering as I drank a beer from the mini fridge. The pillow at that angle helped the shoulder. The loud pain had muted itself a little, by some alchemy.

I still hadn’t responded to a single text from Jack. I’d let him stew in the silence. I’d let him wax ever less and more eloquent, unsure I would ever respond.

But sighting that almost-Hillman made me feel even more alone. I took the phone out and I texted Hellmouth. The reply was immediate, like he’d been waiting to pounce. I felt like that needed to be punished.

>>Jill!

Me: No.

>>No?

Me: You’re talking to Silvina. I’m Silvina.

>>Very funny.

Me: I killed “Jill.” She was getting too close. Now I’m coming for you.

>>Stop.

Had I caused genuine distress?

Me: I might let you live if you tell me why.

>>Silvina is dead.

Me: Then you have nothing to worry about. But tell me why anyway.

>>OK, will play along. Why what?

Me: Why did you decide to stalk Jill? Didn’t you know that could be dangerous?

>>Because it killed two birds with one stone. To use a cliché.

Me: I’m a porch light.

>>OK. You’re a porch light.

Me: Moths. You’re after the moths.

>>If that were true, any bulb would do.

Me: So why me?

No answer. For a very long time. So I went in another direction.

Me: Interesting fact. I’m right outside your door. Waiting. Me, Silvina.

>>Nice try. I’m in a car. Outside your place. Me, Langer.

Me: Nice try. I doubt Langer knows how to spell this good. And I’m in the penthouse suite of this luxury hotel in Singapore, with a guard at the door.

>>Seventh floor, right?

Now it was my turn to deflect.

Me: How do I find and kill Langer?

>>Not fond of him?

Me: Neither are you.

>>But I don’t like other people doing my work for me.

Me: That’s a big fat lie.

>>That hurts.

Me: Doubt it.

>>I don’t have a good location on Langer. Probably because I don’t have a good location on you.

Me: Nice try. How can you even text this phone? How did you do that? In the bar? Some sleight of hand?

>>No, through your Jill twin. But she only sold you out partway. I was supposed to be able to track you, too, not just text you.

So it hadn’t been my efforts. Just my conference friend feeling guilty and me ditching my work phone. How Hellmouth must have relished my use of that name in the bar.

>>How about this? You should tell me where you are, because Langer’s going to find you eventually.

Me: Not sure any of that is true.

>>I know one thing that’s true.

Me: What’s that?

>>I think you’d like to be Silvina.

Me: Dead?

>>A martyr. A dangerous martyr who lost perspective.

Me: You don’t know me.

But I knew that wasn’t true either, just from his choice of “Hellbender.”

>>I know you came up to find my room at that conference. I know that.

Somehow, that’s what got to me. The most insignificant thing. The way he kept pushing that at me.

Me: Other than a really shitty pickup artist, who are you?

No response. One last salvo across the bow a couple minutes later. I was in a houseboat, after all.

Me: I’m not sure why you decided to write your diary as texts to me the past four months. It’s kind of pathetic. Don’t you have any friends? A therapist?

I waited.

Nothing.

Tossed the phone onto the bed next to me, took out an area map. Even faux, Hillman had me thinking about the next leg.

I don’t know what had been holding me back. What better form of oblivion than to be lost in a virgin wilderness without people?

Mythic salamanders. Mythic me. I’d play detective in creeks and in rivers, look under rocks like back in the day. Forget anything that came after.

Except I hadn’t been able to ask Hellmouth the deadly question. The question I didn’t want to know the answer to.

What was the extent of the connection between Langer and Silvina?





[77]


Me and Shovel Pig and Bog and Road Newt needed to leave the houseboat behind. Another bleary morning, that was my first thought. Almost-Hillman seemed like a premonition. But I spent that day pretending to be a private eye. I went to the husband’s favorite places just as they opened for lunch, before they got busy. I asked around, in all the innocent ways I’d learned. I talked to waitstaff who were afraid of me or wary of me or amused by me. I went through the motions of showing a photo of Silvina. Langer. I never mentioned names. I tried to ask people, who I felt, by some intuition, had lived in the town a long time.

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