“You know about them,” Dez says.
“Careful, Desdemona. You’re playing with fire.”
She knew it. “Tell me.”
“Put it this way,” Eri says. “The films you make bring closure. They sell the idea that life has a beginning, a middle, and an end. People like that. It’s comforting.” She narrows her eyes, leans closer. “But every mortal has at least one moment in their life that does the opposite. That makes them wonder.”
“Wonder what?”
“Whether there’s something … more, beyond the three-act structure. Beyond closure. Something that doesn’t submit. Doesn’t end.”
“You mean, like, a sequel?” Dez says.
“I mean the opposite of whatever it is that makes people ready for death. If my job was to make people feel good about taking the dirt nap, I’d do whatever I could to prevent them from feeling the opposite.”
Dez considers Eri’s words. But it still doesn’t make sense. Could the moment she met Asher somehow make him feel the opposite of closure when it comes time for him to die? Is that why the scene is missing?
Where would it go?
She thinks back to the gala ceremony. Moriah had mentioned the risks of their filmmaking—
“Is this about death-killers?” Dez asks Eri.
Before Eri can answer, the back door swings open. Jet struts back into the bar. He’s still wearing the ski cap, but his sideburns drip with moisture. Eri glances at him quickly, then slides more drinks toward Dez.
“Eri,” Dez pleads.
“Not now,” Eri says quietly.
“Where are those missing scenes?” Dez says through her teeth.
Eri nods at Jet as he sits back down at the bar. She smiles her cryptic smile. “I agree, dives always have the best atmosphere.”
In a bathroom stall at the back of the bar, Dez notices a tiny star-shaped window she’s never seen before. She puts her face to it and sees the forest outside, deep and inviting in the moonlight.
She checks on her friends. They’re still laughing and drinking, oblivious to Dez’s absence, so she slips out through the dive bar’s battered back door.
The night is sharp and cold, and Dez left her parka in the booth. When she skids on a sheet of ice and tumbles down the slope to the forest’s edge, snow seeps inside her socks and the collar of her shirt.
“Dez?” Yael calls from the bar’s back door. “If you’re looking for the river, it’s three miles west.”
Breathing hard from her fallen position in the snow, Dez looks west and sees nothing but thicket and drift.
“And I don’t recommend touching the water once you get there,” Yael says.
“Why not?” Dez asks.
“Because it’ll fry your fucking hand off,” Yael says, moving down the slope toward Dez. She extends her hand to help Dez up. “Don’t you have like a thousand Life Reviews to catch up on?”
“I do.”
“Trust me,” her roommate says as Dez climbs to her feet and the two of them make their way back to the bar. “There’s nothing good for you in that river.”
FOR WEEKS AFTER THAT NIGHT, the bartender’s words ring in Dez’s mind.
Dives always have the best atmosphere …
She replays the evening over and over again. The series of strange revelations that had all made a kind of sense … until Dez asked Eri where Acheron keeps the missing scenes. The answer had been on the tip of Eri’s tongue when Jet came back into the bar.
