I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about fingerprints or DNA, but I do take basic precautions. Since I’ve never been arrested, I know I won’t show up on any law enforcement lists, but I am aware that other databases exist in our society—such as murder databases. And so I keep nitrile gloves and disinfectant wipes in there, too. Just in case. I am careful.
All of this becomes my life. It is neither stimulating nor satisfying or even stifling. I am living. I am alive. I don’t want for anything, except there is a sort of dull hunger in me that I seem never able to fill. And there are days I wake covered in sweat, and with my heart racing, like I’ve been chasing something; like something has been chasing me. Still, I know worse existences are possible. Worse outcomes. All things considered.
I am in stasis, in a way, though I can’t imagine what I’m waiting for. Even though I have a home now, I am drifting, still. To be settled in my spirit, and to have a real life, that would not reflect the things I feel I deserve.
So I drift for a while. Time passes. This becomes my now. And I don’t think about what my tomorrow will hold or even if it will develop at all.
CHAPTER TEN
THE DAY THAT everything changes, the only thing I see coming at me is lamb stew. I’d seen a recipe in a food magazine and, suddenly, nothing will do but that I drive into town to the butcher’s for three pounds of lamb. I have the kind of life that allows self-indulgence of that nature. The drive, followed by the cooking, are the activities that will help pass this day.
Three pounds of meat is an extraordinary amount, really, considering it’s only me eating and I never entertain. But it is what I want and, anyway, I have a freezer. If I end up eating defrosted lamb stew every few weeks for the next half year, that will work out fine, too.
The ingredients called for tell me the stew will be beyond good. It will have figs and dried apricots. Pomegranate molasses, masses of garlic, a full pound of mushrooms. Other things, as well. I imagine it will be super delicious. A stew worthy of the drive necessary to gather the ingredients.
Of all the things I do have in my new life, a television is not one of them. Not missing, but not wanted. For me, television had been a family activity in the life before. The three of us huddled around a pizza and watching some PG movie. Or my husband curled up with me on the couch, binge-watching some inane show, me folded into the protective curve of his shoulder, even when many of the other warmths we’d shared had passed away. There was this: physical connection in a puddle of evening calm, our shared life whispering all around us. Not stimulating, no. But comforting somehow. At least in memory. But that’s not how it is now.
When I move into the house, I get a television right away just because one does. There is a wall in the living room that looks like the place where a television should be. But when I put it there, it leaves me feeling even more hollow and alone. The soulless voices in sitcoms and reality shows seemingly offering pale echoes of actual reality. The crime dramas all hollow and unreal. Family sagas are worse. They leave me weeping. And old movies bring back memories I have no place for. There is nothing I want to see. I keep trying, though. That’s what people do: they watch TV. And so, every so often, I turn it on again.
And then it gets worse. I am watching the news; the coverage of the inexplicable killing of a prominent person I had seen die. Television brings me the keening widow. The grief-stricken children. Traces of a life I’d contributed to ending. I don’t want to see that.
I can’t see that.
As much as possible, I want—no, need—the people I hit to be nothing more than the scraps of information shared with me upon assignment. Then perhaps a few details I ferret out myself; just enough to get the job done. Anything additional makes those lives a little too real. Anything additional is surplus to requirement.
So I shut it down, half carrying, half dragging the huge television out to the garage, then immediately forgetting about it. Without the hollow black square of a television gaping at me from the living room, even significant news events have trouble trickling down to me. Everyone has to be talking about it, or else I will never hear. Sometimes not even then. This does not concern me. In the state I am in, I no longer have room for details that don’t move my immediate concerns forward. The French president. The state of railroads in Italy. A heartbreaking car accident in Texas. None of this has meaning to me. It’s not that it doesn’t matter, no, that’s not it. It’s just that I don’t care. It doesn’t touch me. Nothing does.
And then one day that changes.
I go to the local butcher’s for my lamb. That stew. There is a television playing in the back of the shop. And I hear something drift over from the TV that I cannot, at first, believe. The clerk helping me sees me stop and listen, right between ordering my lamb and a bit of chicken I’d intended to pop in the freezer. She sees my widened eyes and makes a sympathetic sound.
“I know,” she says. “Another one. Can you believe it? How long will this go on?”
“Another? But how many have there been?”
“You really don’t know?”
“I live under a rock. Never
