“They didn’t tell you,” I say.
“No. They—the cops and the staff at the hospital were pretty insistent about me resting and healing enough to travel and then they were discharging me. An agent picked me up and drove me straight to the airport.”
“They seemed to have an unnecessary flair for the dramatic. I got your note.”
Rich comes over before she can respond and hands us our beers. He stares a moment too long at Claudia when she thanks him.
“Uh, yeah. I wrote that note in sort of a panic. They weren't—they didn't handle things very well.”
“We don't have to talk about it,” I say. She's stops looking at me and starts to frantically destroy the label on her bottle of beer.
“Do you have nightmares?” she asks.
“Yes,” I answer.
She looks up at me. “I quit my job. And I dumped my boyfriend.”
“Because of the nightmares?”
“Because neither was making me feel better when I was awake.”
“What do you do, for work?” I ask. This is something I’ve wondered for a while. One of the many things I wondered about her.
“I was a buyer for Kleinman’s flagship store. What do you do?”
“I'm a photographer for the forest service and I do some digital design work.”
She says nothing again at first. She's going to town on that label. Someone scores and there's a bit of commotion to fill the silence. I wait.
“What do you have nightmares about?” she asks.
“Shit that makes me think I should probably talk to a shrink.”
“But?”
“But I know I won't.”
“I saw a shrink.”
“How did that work out?”
“Dumped her too. And now I'm here.” Claudia takes a long swig of her beer. She avoids my eyes, but she's still very pointedly looking at my chest.
“I was worried about you, but then I realized it was more like I was worried about my own psyche if I didn't get some kind of closure about this whole shit,” I tell her.
“What kind of closure did you need?”
You. Seeing you, touching you, claiming you in a very specific way, I want to say, but I can't. I know the tricks my mind is playing on me. The months of thinking about her molded her into someone I know she isn't. A figment of my imagination. If I can just dominate that person one time, the person in my mind, bring her to the peak, break her and bring her back down safely I know we’ll both exorcise the demons that keep me up at night. That keep me from setting foot in the woods on the east side of my property.
“Just to know I did the right thing.”
“You did,” she says.
I feel my jaw tensing.You're a good boy, I hear my grandfather say.Too good. You've got to stick up for yourself.
“I know,” I say. “Seeing you helps.”
“Does it?”
