40 MINUTES LATER. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 2:15 AM MST. SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2025.
The watch was on the
other side of town and Arnie was exhausted. He could just run, just
this once, and it would be okay.
Less than two blocks
from his house, Aaron was jogging beside him. “It must be nice to
have a chance to visit with an old friend.”
Arnie tried to
pretend the Daybreaker wasn’t there, wasn’t close enough for him to
smell the man’s infrequently-if-ever washed body and clothes,
wasn’t already causing the sort of fuzziness in his mind that he
had now filled two notebooks trying to understand and analyze after
the fact.
“Sometimes,” Aaron
said, as if Arnie had answered him, “there is a harmless pleasure
in learning something about a former lover.” Arnie picked up the
pace but Aaron matched him. “Allie spends many nights sitting up
alone, while the president sleeps the sleep of an old, tired
man.”
Arnie ran faster
still; Aaron matched him.
“Doctor Yang, you are
thinking, ‘How would Aaron know?’ and the answer is that we have
mutual friends.”
Only a block to go.
Arnie flung himself toward his front door. Aaron was at his heels.
In a final, gasping burst, Arnie leapt and whirled, put his back to
his front door, drew his knives.
Dark, empty
street.
He
waited.
Nothing.
Finally he unlocked
his door, went inside, locked it behind him, lit an oil
lamp.
“She doesn’t sleep
with Graham anymore. Not that it’s my business, of course, but it’s
interesting,” Aaron said. He was leaning back in Arnie’s leather
armchair, legs crossed comfortably, bouncing one leg over his other
knee. “Doctor, doctor, doctus, docta, doctum, dock ta dock ta
dock.”
Arnie wanted to
speak, to shout, to scream and leap to the attack. Instead he was
captivated by the way Aaron’s foot moved in the lamplight, up down,
up down. . . .
Aaron said, “Been a
long time, been a long time, been a long lonely, lonely, lonely,
lonely . . . time. So things have been happening. Do you know where
Larry, Chris, and Jason are? Are they coming back across the
Wabash?”
Arnie felt his head
nodding. It was a tiny victory; he knew from having sneaked a look
at Heather’s notes, on her desk, that Heather had actually
instructed them to get out any way that seemed good. It wasn’t
quite a lie to nod, and it wasn’t the truth either, but Arnie
hoped, deep inside, it would turn out to be a lie.
More questions, as
Arnie cooked a meal for Aaron.
Later, writing in his
notepad, Arnie scribbled a whole page of I
must never come home without the watch.
I must never come home without the
watch.
I must never come home without the
watch.
On and on, like Bart
Simpson having a bad day, unable to think of another sentence. He
took a deep breath and made himself write
I must remember—
Something about
Allie.
Something hurt; he
looked down to see the broken pencil, and some blood where the
splinters had gone into his middle finger.
He fell asleep lying
across the still-made bed, his notebook dropping to the floor
beside him.