2 comments/ 5737 views/ 0 favorites The Memories of Trees Ch. 01-03 By: cheesy80s First word that the world was ending sneaked past Collin's ears sometime between lunch and his daily checks of Petri dishes. He tried to remember his reaction when a cadre of generals, military brass and government spooks arrived in the laboratory to call the entire research complex into an emergency meeting. Collin realized something went wrong with the project then, probably even knew intuitively that the project went deadly awry. What did he feel exactly? He couldn't remember. Cold perhaps. Stunned maybe. Reflections on memory three years after the fact didn't help clarify anything either. At the moment a freight train lumbered past the only remaining coffeehouse open in Gannis Falls, steel on steel trembling the floor beneath him with gentle, almost soothing vibrations. But the train, for no apparent reason, stirred a latent memory of an emotion he might have felt at the moment he learned the world was ending. He remembered the chilled effects of bloodless resignation. But did Collin really feel that? Or did memory and current brain chemistry betray a kind of cinematic lucidity that was more lie than truth? Collin Bainbridge got philosophical at the oddest moments. Oct 23, 2005 was often on his mind anymore, replayed over and over, as did memories of television; brief, dramatic images from news broadcasts in the months of the great plague. Mass burials, emaciated victims in hospital beds lining hallways and even subbasements of hospitals that were once relegated to rows of industrial washing machines and ductworks. There was one memory of that day that Collin knows wasn't fabricated since then. Melissa. Melissa Durden. In the frozen minutes as Jack Chang, the portly Samoan who headed the project, told them in a voice caked in worn emotions and disbelief that the virus mutated, turned deadly – something akin to influenza, but much faster, more contagious – all Collin could think about with any clarity was Melissa. What had it been that day, seven years since graduation from Gannis Falls High School? Seven years since Melissa gave him a diplomatic hug, a peck on his cheek and wished him luck as their navy gowns, made of cheap polyester that weighed like sodden tarp on their bodies. Seven years since Collin fought against the gusts that rose during the pewter morning of commencement. Seven years since Melissa pretended that nothing ever happened between she and Collin in Las Vegas just weeks before. Seven years later and as a stern looking general explained that they were to remain in the laboratory complex indefinitely, all Collin could think about was Melissa Durden. That preoccupation remained with him the following three years, and was perhaps the sole reason Collin decided to come home again. He checked his watch, its leather band caked and worn, still loose even on the last hole. Behind him the nameless bald man cleared his throat, sipping coffee and reading the local paper. Its front page still contained stories about the virus, the progress on inoculation, memories of the dead and just how the country would carry on. But those stories started to drift toward the bottom of the front page, no longer blared in deep block letters above the fold. Today Gannis Falls had a new mayor, enough to tout black ink prominently along the front without word pertaining to the virus or numbers of fatalities. Collin wanted the nameless man to disappear, but that would be a long shot. His portly form, the balding head, would shadow Collin for his entire trip to Gannis Falls. Silent, polite as well, but with him all the time. And there wasn't a damn thing Collin could do. The girl behind the counter remained absorbed in a book as she perched on a stool, ignoring the two of them drinking coffee. The silent, unnamed man behind Collin sipped and read the paper. Collin took in the coffeehouse, the rustic look, the ash-stained hearth that seemed well-used, and the counter, its face potmarked with bare patches and rogue splinters in areas. The muffled tinkling of porcelain coffee mugs kissing from the tremors was the only sound in the shop. Collin brushed his jeans off and stood while the bells of empty coffee cups rang out, masking the scrapes of the chair against the floor. But the movement was enough to gain attention. The nameless man stood as well, placed two dollars on his table and slid past Collin and out the door. The girl's eyes following him momentarily until they rested on Collin with some discovered interest. Collin smiled as he shuffled two dollars onto the table. The girl's eyes remained on him as a fingernail absently tapped her front tooth. "Thanks for the coffee. It was delicious," Collin said, not really knowing what else to say. "Are you here for the reunion?" the girl asked. Collin noticed her shirt, a black tee shirt with a worn image of the band Black Flag across the curves of her breasts. He decided she was pretty, dark hair and skin, light amounts of makeup barely camouflaging rosy blemishes on her cheeks. She was pretty in a way that promised a budding world of sexuality in the next year or so. "Uh, yea. Class of '97," he said. "That's amazing. This town's really excited about it; the first reunion since the plague," she said. Collin grimaced at that, stifling a pang of guilt. First one since the plague, and only a third of the graduating class of '97 responded. He had read in the paper that morning that two of his former classmates attempted to track down the senior class, mailing notices to all last known addresses. A third responded. Most others were returned with a postmaster stamp along the front with its glaring red letters of Household Deceased on the front. "Who are you?" she asked as he gathered his jet sport coat. "Collin Bainbridge. I grew up on Sugar Hill Plain, up the way," he said. Again, no feeling there. No sense of remorse, sadness or even stilted pain. Just a fact. He grew up in a white two-story platboard house on Sugar Hill Plain, one of many similar houses along the row. "Wow. That's cool," she said. "I think I remember you." "Really?" "Yea. You knew my cousin. Tracy Wheatley." Collin dreaded this part. It took little precognition anymore to know where the conversation was headed. "She died in the plague," the girl said. Collin mumbled an apology, a kind of half-aware apology anymore. Mostly it just came out as a trained response, much like saying bless you to those who sneezed. Everyone did it anymore. There was little else Collin could say to the survivors. But Collin wrestled with guilt over Tracy. He remembered the girl clearly, a crystal beauty as he often thought. Blondish hair, thin, but with a thin-lipped smile that seemed to dominate her face. Tracy had been disarming in high school, and she and Collin were friendly, if nothing more than acquaintances. Still, Collin printed her name in his imaginary notebook of things to feel responsible for in what was left of his life. "And you are? I'm sorry, I didn't get your name," he said after the moment he let his thoughts wander into the dreary plains of guilt. "Missy Peck. I'm in the second graduating senior class this year since school started again after the plague," she smiled, and studied Collin when he didn't respond. "Hey sweetie, don't worry. Tracy died as a wonderful wife and a true Christian believer. She's with God, you know." Collin smiled and said he didn't doubt it. CH.2 Being with God. The thought comforted. It feigned a sense of numbed acceptance, sneaking upon a person in slight degrees like a pill slipped in a drink. Most everyone Collin spoke with, met in the past few days, accepted that they survived. The comfort came with the thought that their friends, their family, children, brothers, sisters, teachers, neighbors, were with God. Collin doubted God anymore, so that wasn't a comfort. If anything, he readily avoided thoughts of afterlife. The numbers, the statistics, the images of the casualties in hospital wards, bodies dumped on streets, lovers who passed away in each others arms on a secluded hilltop in rural Arkansas. These things engulfed his brain like a hammer against sheet metal, constantly clanking in his head until he was numb. Numb from the pain. Numb from the guilt. Numb from feeling. Just memory. That remained vivid, although – as Collin would muse with a certain amount of clinical detachment – suspect at times. Much of his experience of the plague was spent watching television, cloistered under what amounted to military arrest at the laboratory while he and the rest of the scientists raced through trials – and errors – to find some form of a cure. The killer was unassuming. Silent. No one on the outside knew what really happened: A government project with the idea that a benign virus could be used to transmit antidotes for possible biowar agents mutated into one of the deadliest forms of the flu the world had ever experienced. But no one questioned influenza. It happened before and most harbinger scientists warned that it was only a matter of time before it would strike again. Collin wound along a two-lane road that skirted downtown Gannis Falls. He felt swallowed among the elder oaks that lined the shoulder; Gannis Falls had cultivated those trees for years as a sort of notable feature on the town. And every year, the town council made it a political politeness to dedicate one tree to a notable Gannis Falls resident. Collin Bainbridge was the youngest recipient of a tree in the town's history. He sped past his tree without wincing, flinching, or even diverting his eyes. It took self will and control the likes he never experienced to not look at the plaque spiked into the ground before his tree. Still, even in that moment passing it, Collin could see more than he cared to see of it – dark, freckled bark with thick overhanging limbs that seemed to almost be bare of greenery. A dead tree for a man who was responsible for millions of lives. Fitting. Or maybe the rapidly setting sun bleeding through the trees in puddles of melting gold darkened the elder oak, obscuring the leaves. Perhaps it wasn't dead after all. Collin shook he head, wondering why he cared one way or another. He recognized the road, small tell-tale signs that he was approaching the Castellaw Lodge. It was the one place in Gannis Falls that residents used for everything from the Monday night Elk Lodge meetings to innumerable wedding receptions. Tonight it was to host to Gannis Falls High Class of 1997 reunion. Collin pulled into the gravel lot, already finding space difficult with cars crammed as near to the entrance as possible. He noticed a couple of local television news vans, and a gaggle of people mulled along an elevated walkway that led to the glass double doors. From within, Collin spied deeper shadows mixed with the oscillations of colored lights from a makeshift dance floor. He scanned the various stragglers outside the lodge, seeing if he could recognize anyone. For a moment, he reconsidered attending. Too many memories, some not all good, others having the kind of cherished light one keeps for high school. There were some recognizable faces, and immediately his mind could sort them into their individual cliques with the same powerful bias that he had in high school. He was slightly amazed that his mind could revert so quickly to its old prejudices, the people he wrote off because they were friends with some group or another; those he avoided because they managed to make occasions in his life hell for being smart, smarter than most of the class. Collin turned around and parked along the street. He faltered a few yards from the lodge, feet kicking up pebbles has he halted. Collin almost forgot about his minder, the portly bald guy. Just along the oak-lined road toward a bend in the road, Collin spotted the familiar navy blue Ford Taurus, and the obscured form in the driver's seat, appearing to be reading some magazine. The man stretched his arm out the window and gave a quick wave; Collin shook his head and moved toward the ramp. A girl wearing a wispy black dress and blouse glanced to Collin as he started up the walkway, her companion dragging his attention to Collin. Collin immediately recognized the guy, as did he from the way his face lit up rich in the sort of features that caricature makers relish. "Bainbridge. Great to see you, man," the man (his name was Phillip Hoffman, good safety in highschool but also especially great at higher math) said, already offering his hand. Only a brief stretch of a moment passed before Collin remembered the guy's name. The girl fluffed back her hair, smiled slightly. Tiffany Dean. Her name rushed back to Collin as well. He introduced himself, but she responded with a limped hand that spoke more of disinterest than anything else. "A lot of surprises here tonight," Phillip said. "I'll see you inside, man." The lodge still smelled of floor polish and musty corners. And even in the dim interiors, Collin still had a profound sense of recognition. How many events in his childhood took place in the lodge? Graduation. Receptions. School award functions. Even those pained performances when he played piano through middle school. Nothing had changed about the interior as well. The walls were still covered in a laminated wooden paneling that reminded him of Crayola Crayon Brown. The floors were still made of stained and speckled white tiles and the stage at the far end of the room remained out of place in its near inadequacy. As his eyes adjusted, Collin recognized faces and even names. Eyes glanced at him as well, and one girl even waved from across the room near a small congregation of people nearest the back corner. "Hey Collin. I'm glad you could make it," said Mona Rochester, who hadn't really changed that much other than a few more creases along her forehead. "Hey Mona. Long time. You still look like you just graduated," Collin said sincerely. She giggled, checking off a name among her list. "Thanks. I think that's a good thing." He fidgeted as she tore two red raffle tickets from a roll, not really sure what to say. "How'd you make out through this?" he asked. Mona smiled, but it was weakened by a burning hurt. "Better than most, I suppose. My husband and I are fine. My parents luckily survived, but a lot of my cousins and all my aunts died. And Jim ... my husband ... his entire immediate family died when the virus his Europe. They were there on vacation." Collin again automated an apology. "How 'bout you, sweetie?" she asked. Collin cleared his throat. I was in military confinement to a lab trying to undo what I essentially created. The words would have been so easy to say, so fluid in the confession. He blushed, not from embarrassment though. Shame more than likely, but he couldn't put his finger on it in the nanoseconds of thought before his answer. "My dad passed away a few years ago, not from the flu though; mom moved to Ontario to be near her sister," he said. "Never married. I had a girlfriend, but she did succumb to the flu." "Oh, I'm sorry to hear that," she said. "Well, what did you do with your life? A lot of us expected you'd be a Nobel Prize winner or something by now. You a doctor?" "Professor at Cambridge University," he said, and could prove it to with his government-doctored papers and history. Mona was vocally impressed. But how much more impressed would she be to learn the truth. To see how his brains could turn a world into hell. "Well, Mr. Professor. Welcome home. Have fun," she said, handing him two red tickets that had the ragged white spotted edges of poor serration. The main banquet hall was more sparsely populated than Collin expected, but faces emerged from the darkness still that he remembered. Smile and nods from heads. He spent the first part floating from one small group to another, sipping on a Merlot that helped to tame a fleet of butterflies rummaging in his belly. More people shuffled through the doors, the crowd becoming dense. Every time Collin peered to see if it was her, Melissa. Her name popped in and out of conversations, one or two people saying they expected her at the reunion. About an hour into the reunion, Collin found himself dragged into a three-way conversation with Chris Miller, Hugh Tucker and Brody Airington about post-plague politics and how many representative seats each state could lose in Congress. None of the three were especially memorable in high school; he was closest to Brody since the two had been on the debate team together. He ran track with Chris, but an overhanging gut more than indicated that Chris probably hadn't picked up a pair of jogging shoes since graduation day. At least Collin found himself into a settled environment at the party. He was feeling exposed wandering the room, eyes judging, glancing, a kind of stage fright he hadn't felt in a long time. He faced his peers, fellow scientists, during those years arguing the case for using benign viruses to transmit genetic curatives to mass populations with the confidence of an aged philosopher. It took this reunion to remind Collin just how insular high school was; the politics, the dynamics. But just simply walking around the lodge was like making that awkward book report speech to his middle school class. The same nerves tore at him, threatening to expose the lie of his comfort level. Collin's brains kept him apart from most everyone at his high school. They tolerated him, even respected him, but Collin was never close to any of his classmates, and those he called friends were tacit at best. "I suppose it's easier to get into Cambridge now, huh?" Brody commented between sips. He and Hugh were evident in their strain to maintain interest in this small talk conversation. Collin realized his mind wandered as well, though. "Pardon?" Collin replied. "I mean, it's been harder here in America for colleges to fill their classes. Granted, it's only been a few months since most schools started again, but I can't imagine your student population is what it was." Collin shrugged. Actually, he had no idea. None. Hadn't been to Cambridge actually. Visited a few times, studied there briefly under a Rhodes Scholarship. But that was all. "They seem to be doing well. At least my classes," Collin said. "Really?" Brody said, eyeing Collin for a moment. What was wrong with that story? "I guess it's just state colleges that are having the problem then." Collin suddenly picked up on the ambient sounds around him, as though his ears took on a preternatural ability to sense nuances that signified something important was about to happen. A laugh, a little gravely; a glass clanking against a table, just on the verge of shattering; snippets of conversation like a snapshot at the moment the phrases "cracking in the column," "next June, I hope" and "exaggerated the numbers" were uttered. And from sunset's glow spilling through the door at that very moment, Collin saw Melissa. She had changed little since they parted. Very little. Her face was still alight with pale freckles and thin eyebrows the color of brushed straw. Her hair was a fraction shorter, but just as golden as a lazy day at his grandmother's farm he remembered as a child: bright, tinted with a hazy earthen tones of heat. Melissa hugged and greeted some people at the door. And Collin felt cold. Colder than he'd been all evening. For the first time since he became obsessed with her thought at the base, Collin wanted to back down from his vague notions that perhaps they'd be able to restart something again, that years and growth made it possible to rekindle their secret into something solid. A public acknowledgment. Melissa straightened her black summer dress and slipped strands of her hair behind her ear. She glanced around the room, smiled and said hello to others but had yet to spot Collin. The Memories of Trees Ch. 01-03 In the following minutes, Collin found himself sidetracked by others coming to greet him, people he least expected as much warmth and joviality from, people who he remembered in high school more in passing, faces that were fixtures in his memory of the halls and of various classrooms and in his year book, but little else. Suddenly the room felt warmer, friendlier toward him. Melissa disappeared in the burgeoning crowd filling the hall, and he tried to find her, silently chastising himself for his emerging obsessiveness over her. He would be cool toward her, friendly certainly, would love to listen to her. But nothing else, no expectations and certainly not allowing the thought that Melissa herself would acknowledge what happened between them in Vegas. For some time, it didn't matter. Melissa was there, so perhaps at some point he'd run into her and talk briefly, these thoughts and plottings idle in his mind because for the first time all evening – for the first time since before the plague – Collin felt lighthearted. No doubt the alcohol was aiding a surge of endorphin in his brain to lull his nerves, as much as it was helping everyone else in the room. Collin's story became easier to recite as well, truths escaping by the slip of the tongue easier to control. The bald fat man outside sitting sentinel for Collin would be proud. Tonight, he was a Cambridge professor who, by luck, by chance, escaped the virus that swept the world. And for the moment, he hadn't created it either. It was a product of happenstance, one of those devastating periodic plagues that swept the globe throughout history, the reaper come again to cull the population, thin the herd in its ambiguous way, taking other to be with God. Collin was absorbed in a conversation that he'd never be able to recall when he remembered this moment with Brody and a collection of other Gannis Fall alumni he probably never spoke to a decade ago. But the touch, the hands that grasped his shoulders gently, was rife with a familiar intimacy. The fingers, the exact pressure against his shoulders, funneled his mind back to Las Vegas many years earlier. It was a touch he would never forget, not even through the many nights since with other girlfriends and even flippant flings. It was a touch he missed since. Collin turned, his back tingling, his cheeks perked with a cold rush of blood. Melissa released his shoulders and let her hands slide tenderly to his chest, his sports coat rumpling beneath her palms. Her eyes dampened as she gazed in his stunned face, her mouth a smile of reminiscence and regret, perhaps. "Collin. I wondered if you were still alive," she said, barely above the voices, music and bad acoustics of the lodge hall. In a move that shocked him still further, and caused an eruption of curious rumblings from those around the couple, Melissa embraced him with a veracious desperation that even made Collin a little uncomfortable. "Melissa, how are you?" In hindsight, his response would rank among the all-time most insensitive and anticlimactic responses in his life. She remained in his arms. He could hear a sniffle or two from her. Collin's world turned strange and druggy and bright and purple-hued. At once, he felt cold and uncomfortable, the center of the very attention he attempted to escape just moments ago. But this disquiet came in a package so wrapped in years of fantasies about he and Melissa that it was suddenly hard to believe. She released him gently, her hands still heavy on his forearms. Her green eyes sparkled with the residue of tears. He noticed her face, how nearly unchanged it seemed after 10 years. Her skin seemed a little more dull, perhaps more earth-worn than before. And a softness around her eyes was lost, but that could be said of every survivor of the plague. "Sorry. I didn't mean to embarrass you," she said, her eyes still bright from wetness. "Hardly." It was simple, raw, certainly not eloquent. But it was the closet word he could say to sum up everything he felt at that moment. Melissa hugged him again, planting a quick kiss on his cheek. He smelled a lingering odor of wine and for a moment decided her gushing greeting was nothing more than a slip of inhibitions. A quick sting slipped through his thin veil of self-confidence he managed to exude that night. He quickly erased those thoughts when she mingled her arm into his and began to pull him away from the crowd. Melissa greeted a couple of more people, and drew Collin back toward the exit. "I hope you don't mind, but I'd love to talk to you a few minutes outside," she said glancing at him and then pulling her eyes away with a blush. Collin could barely compute everything since Melissa arrived. Their big secret, the one he so painstakingly shielded from the world for her benefit, seemed now to be insignificant to her. Melissa had not held back her emotions. Perhaps had she just enthusiastically hugged him at first glance and went about her way through the party, her friends would not suspect anything more, and the status quo would remain between them. But Melissa gushed upon him like a lost love. No. Not like a lost love. He was a lost love. A secret love consummated in a physical experience during one long, hot summer week in Las Vegas, a week he obsessed about in the confines of his mind, a memory that seeped to the surface repeatedly during the past 11 years despite everything else he was consumed with – virus propagation, cell division, milligrams, antidotes, dry runs, and tests. Countless Goddamned tests. But still that week-long memory. And the fact that she never acknowledged it, or really him, during their final year in school. Collin's eyes experienced a sharp ache once outside even though the sun barely bled above the treeline across the shadowed street. He craned his neck momentarily to see if he could spot his oak from the porch of the lodge. Some people still milled about on the outside, but began to meld into the growing darkness and wander into the lodge, and its makeshift pulsing color chaos of amateur disco lighting. "I'm sorry if I embarrassed you," Melissa began, leaning against the wooden frame of the rail. "You just don't know how relieved I am that you're here. Alive." Collin studied Melissa for a moment, but looked away at an overwhelming sense of insecurity. She smiled, and even in the darkness, her cheeks blushed noticeably. "You still are beautiful, you know that?" Collin said a little uncertainly. She chuckled. "You too. I was sort of worried I built you up in my mind more than what you looked like in reality." "Oh really?" Collin smiled. A single experiment flashed in his mind. One from his early career in graduate school. Virus A needed protein B to grow its receptors and become rampant. So he theorized a way to make the protein repel the virus. A chancy theory. But his experiments clicked, one of those serendipitous rare occasions when things just seem to work out. Collin had worked up many possible scenarios to his meeting with Melissa. This was one of those experiments that seemed to click. Their conversation flowed from one seamless topic to another, much like the chit-chat they shared during math class when Melissa, puppy-eyed and mocking the damsel in distress, huddled with him for help. He learned a lot in a short span. She married Trey after they reunited from a breakup in college. That reunion led to a unexpected blessing, as she called her daughter Karen. Melissa looked pained as she gazed beyond the encroaching darkness, staved off only by the burn of the porch lights of the lodge. Collin eyed her compassionately, but inside was an insidious burning, an confused ache that for the briefest of moments, spurred anger in him. Trey was not the boy she left him for. Or more precisely, the boy who became the reason she never acknowledged what they shared that brief, hot summer week in Las Vegas. That was Michael. And he was convinced Melissa and he would marry soon after graduation. 'Trey and I were separated when the outbreak occurred. He was living in New York," she said, and suddenly Collin's face flushed with shame. New York, millions packed onto Manhattan Island. The crowded conditions were ideal for Collin's creation to propagate the easiest, like electricity from one circuit to another, the virus killed more in the major cities of the world than anywhere else. "He didn't make it?" Collin asked, avoiding her eyes and staring at the weathered planks of the entrance ramp of the hall. Melissa shook her head. "Neither did Michael." Collin shot a look. Melissa smiled gently, easing off the railing and closing the gap between them, her hand leading itself toward his hand in an almost secretive gesture of understanding. She touched him wrist, his arm pinned in a silent, rigid form of panic, to the railing. "Collin. There are a thousand possibilities. You know, I read somewhere that for every decision we make there's another reality in existence parallel to ours where we live out our lives having made the decision we didn't make in this life." It took him a moment to realize what she was saying, to connect her words to that fringe science in physics about parallel universes and string theory. Many of his colleagues professed the same belief, fascinated as they were with the idea of matter existing on strings through many different dimensions. His face broke into a grin; she was reaching out to him in a way she believed he would appreciate, through his intellect. "I made a mistake with you once," she continued, meeting his grin with a blushing one of her own. "And there wasn't a day since I hadn't thought about what my life could have been like had a chose differently. And that maybe in some other world, I'm living with you in Cambridge, trying hard to understand your lectures and making sure your eyes don't stray to those cute coeds." Collin laughed for the first time all night, unable to say anything. Instead his hand moved to her cheek and brushed it, not caring that the rest of his high school could see this one intimate moment between two former secret lovers, a moment that was sure to be stirring a buzz inside with wonder. Melissa pushed her creamy cheek against his palm, her eyes closed and her face angelically serene for that one moment. She raised her face, her body against his, her lips parting wetly, and without looking, kissed him deeply. It was a perfect moment. One of those few that Collin wanted bottled up and kept forever so he could harness it whenever his life became overly complicated. A moment he wanted to wear around his neck like a medallion of honor. But like all perfect moments, this one too was brief. Although when he looked back upon it, Collin would always fail to pin the exact time when that moment ended. He failed to remember the guy, another face from his high school, another name lost to his dusty yearbooks, who moved down the plank ramp, onto the gravel and toward the sea of cars, coughing into a balled fist, and sniffling back throaty mucus. CH.3 The night flew by in the blurred alteration of his mentality. From fumbled confusion and uncertainty, Collin felt himself become a ball of electricity, his tendrils feeding and being fed in an unbroken circuit with Melissa's own energy. The two together, openly and publically, even when apart in the room. Even if their sudden coupling was clouded beyond the night of the reunion. But it was enough. For her friends, and for his. Enough to cause, at the very least, wondering glances at the two. Melissa was pulled aside by two of her cheerleader partners who stared with wide-eyed smirks as she confessed their past relationship. Collin, on the other hand, was more discreet. He didn't know why. Perhaps out of habit, perhaps because he wanted the confession from her mouth and not his. Brody glanced at Melissa and then back to Collin, a drink clinking in his hand. "So, did I miss something in high school?" There was no real official end to the reunion other than a stale, used smell to the lodge. The music had long since silenced, the bar closed, and the harsh lights painting many ruddy, tired and drunk faces that thinned as the minutes wore on. By three in the morning, Collin exited the hall with Melissa and gaggle of other people, not really talking or sharing, but relishing in an enjoyment to pure and simple life that he hadn't felt in years. He glanced at Melissa's gleaming smile, the color infused in her cheeks as she laughed at someone's off-color joke. Collin was feeling an enjoyment he hadn't felt since Las Vegas really. Casually he moved toward his car, scanning the darkened gravel lot for his secretive entourage. Nothing but a few remaining cars of the late party stragglers, and most of his group were splitting to those vehicles. Collin turned to Melissa, who was plying apart a thin handbag for her key. "You're okay to drive, right?" She glanced up, smiled almost too sardonically for his taste, and snaked her tongue out at him. "Yes, daddy. I'm good enough to drive through any garage door," she said. Melissa looked up at him, suddenly blushing, glancing around her again. "Are you here for awhile?" "Yes, I have a cot in the hall. I'll be here for the next day at least cleaning up." It got a chuckle out of her. But then her eyes glistened and focused; it was a subtle physical response Collin learned early on about Melissa. Evidence, pure physical response, to when she needed a moment of seriousness, of clarity. He was reminded in a fugue of lucidity the other times when he saw that look in her eyes: Moments before they made love, and the final time, when she secreted him to an empty classroom just days after the Vegas trip, pleading her case that what happened there could never be known to anyone. At her look, Collin sobered up. "I'm here for some time, Melissa. I don't know how long," he said. She smiled, found her key, bracing it between her index and thumb like a delicate prize, perhaps a little over-exuberant from the five cocktails still trailing in her blood, coloring her face, lighting those eyes that melt him, even in Collin's memory. "You know where I live, right?" she said as she turned away and moved to her car. "I think so." "Come see me sometime." Collin felt like his tires rode on gum. He took the corners at the very edge, skimming those great shadowed elms – the honorary tombstones of Gannis Falls' feigned greatness – with a speed that bordered on suicidal. He glanced at his rearview mirror, saw the yellowed headlights trailing. His balding entourage fell quickly behind, struggling to keep up with the demonic grip Collin had on the road, hugging the corners and damning the night with a howling internal fever of pent up emotions long locked away like he had been for months during the plague. Soon he was alone on the roads in Gannis Falls, open fields and homes, darkened and dead, the husks of extinguished families, passed on his shoulders. But the world was illuminated by the moon's crescent vibrant above among the star field, enough to cast a pale glow along the asphalt. Collin took a couple of random turns, just to be sure his watcher wouldn't resume his tail. He stopped at the edge of town, the buildings asleep amid the glow of its row of traffic lights rowed along the main drag. Collin left the car running, but got out and scanned the town ahead. He knew where Melissa lived, or where her parents lived; the route from the exact spot he stopped was mapped out in his mind. How many times had he surreptitiously drove past Melissa's house following there affair in Las Vegas a decade ago? Too many such treks for him to even comfortably admit silently. But tonight there was an invitation. His car shuddered violently over lumped trestle that bordered the center of Gannis Falls. At a solitary red light, the now-familiar coffeehouse just off to his left, Collin stopped and jumped out of his car. He felt the burning, mischievous grin pasting his face, felt his heart race with an ancient excitement and from his car the Psychedelic Furs were warbling his cinematic moment into the night sky. "And the world don't stop every time that you fall. There's a heartbreak beat playing all night long down on my street..." At once, Collin became the hunter and predator. He sniffed the air, his grin nearly turning maniacal and pointed down a solitary road to his right. He glanced over; it bled softly in the moonlight before disappearing into the shadowed groves of elm and cypress and oak and elder trees from his mythical youth. Tonight, he was the bard, King Arthur returning from Avalon. And his heart pumped adrenaline and crazy thoughts fueled by alcohol and elation. "There's a heartbreak beat and it feels like love. There's a heartbreak beat and it feels like love." The last strands of the Furs muffled with the metallic thud of Collin's car door; he pried the wheel right, accelerated sharply and headed along the road to Melissa's house.