*******
december
She buys a Christmas card and a pint of ice cream. Not coffee-flavored, though.
She cannot send the card; she knows it. She will hold it in her hands and run her fingers over the surface and pretend she can send it somewhere. She could send it blank, address it to Will or to her father or Vaughn. She could address it to Francie, just to see where it goes. She could drop it off on a mailbox on her way out of town, in an airport on her way out of the country. It would have nothing but her scent and her fingerprints and her precise lettering on the envelope.
She closes her eyes and taps the card against her head, the sharp cardboard edges denting her forehead. She cannot risk it; she knows. She stands up off the bed, unfolding her legs. She crosses to the dusty black television set and props the card up on top, like the displayed well-wishes of a close friend.
When her mother died (at least she thought so) it was just before the holidays, just before Thanksgiving (she's always hated November) and she remembers the neat stack of Christmas cards, half signed in her mother's neat script, waiting to be addressed and stamped and placed into envelopes. She remembers drawing her favorites out of the stack, the ones with neat lettering and personal messages in a dark green pen. She propped them up on the shelf in her bedroom, in front of the droopy ragdolls and the prim plastic Barbies. She set them up there, like her mother always did, with the nice cards lined up across the mantel, like they'd been sent out, full of well-wishes and cheer and the glowing warm illusion that nothing was wrong.
******
2004, january
The idea comes to her in a museum in Assisi, down a narrow hall and into a drafty room where they hung the works not important enough to display in the brightly lit galleries in the entry. The room feels right, cool and damp and quiet, hidden away from the prying eyes of tourists. She wanders around the room just as she wandered into the museum, seeking someplace out of the revealing sun, away from the crowds with their jostling, boisterous busyness and into someplace quiet, and warm, someplace where she could map out the exits and size up the visitors and always keep one eye on the situation around her. She looks at the high, narrow window, set deeply into the aging walls of pink stone. Wide enough to crawl out, only after some struggling and the dangers of jagged glass. She shudders involuntarily, but does not delve into the reasons glass shards disturb her.
The works hang on walls, jumbled together too closely in cheap frames. A few others sit on pedestals, the cheap sheet metal and green felt displays the only thing out of place in the ancient building. Weathered pages, yellow and curling, sit atop the odd displays underneath glass covers clearly built for much smaller pedestals. The room alternates between ornate works by unknown artists and quick scribblings by minor ones. She is perusing the longest of the glass displays, containing pages from some book she's never head of, when she sees it. Her breath catches for a moment, and her fingers grip the glass (forgetting about the prints) as she tries to comprehend what she is seeing, and why it looks so familiar. There is no name on the yellowed page, only ancient Latin script annotating an odd-looking diagram. The style is familiar, but more so the faint marking on the page, noticeable only to the practiced eye, appearing like a watermark behind the text. An eye.
She steps back, drawing a breath. Up to now, she has followed no agenda or plan, only the undeniable instinct to move, to run, to keep one step ahead of the dark shadow that follows her and anyone real who might trail behind it. Anything to escape the string of deaths that marked her old life. But here, staring at the page, the beginning of a plan forms in her consciousness, the contours of it appearing like a memory, or the lyrics of a half-forgotten song. She looks around her, taking in the scene. No cameras, no security of any kind. Only the room and the long, narrow passageway that separates her from the bored tourists in the main galleries. She listens, hearing no one, and slowly lifts the glass cover from the table. The movement creates a small puff of air across the ancient pages, causing them to rock back and forth, curled edges rising in the air. She lifts the last page, so delicate it seems it might dissolve in her hands. She doesn't risk folding it, but lifts her sweater and tucks it into her waistband, smoothing the page against her skin, adjusting her bra so the top edge of the page is just trapped beneath the underwire. She lowers her sweater and unwinds the broad scarf she uses to obscure her face and cover her hair. She wipes the glass cover down methodically, inside first, and places it over the pedestal, moving slowly so as not to stir the pages beneath. She touches only the outside of the glass this time, then wipes it down, leaving nothing but greasy smudges where her fingerprints, and those of others, had been.
Moving quickly, but not too quickly, she makes her way down the narrow passage, and mingles for a moment in the gallery beyond. The crowd has thinned now; with the coming of twilight no one enters here to avoid the crowds, and this is not the kind of place anyone goes out of their way to see. The decrepit man at the door smiles at her as she exits, the way he does with all the American girls, and she inclines her head toward him as she leaves. It's probably the easiest security pass she's ever made.
She hurries trough the streets and narrow alleys, moving as quickly as she can without drawing attention, and when she reaches the hotel she nearly drops the key. She sags against the door after she's safely inside, but allows herself only that moment. She crosses to the bed, raising her sweater and carefully disengaging the page from its resting place. Bits of the edges break off in the process, sticking to her pants and her bra and leaving behind the feeling of grimy dirt against sweaty skin. She searches the room for anything she can use, looking in every pouch of her backpack and through the all drawers, hoping for something left behind. Sighing, she leaves the room, checking the door twice to make certain it's locked.
Across the street and down an alley, she comes out into a busier area and a souvenir shop, narrow shelves crammed with cheap replicas of David and gondolas and the leaning tower and every other famous sight in the country. Behind the glass checkout counter she sees an assortment of necessities hanging on metal hooks, and there she finds what she needs. She asks for it in unaccented Italian, disappointing the shopkeeper, so eager to flirt with the American girl. She passes him a bill and lets him keep the change, hurrying back to the hotel with her hand in her pocket, fingers curled around her treasure.
She locks the door, once inside, and checks it twice. She slides one arm under the page, supporting it with her other hand, using two hands to lift it from the bed like a baby. She carries it into the bathroom, kneeling on the bare tile with drain that serves as a shower. She balances the page on one arm, the other fishing in her pocket for her purchase -- a pink plastic bic lighter. She touches the flame to the ancient page, holding it to one corner, then another. The paper catches fire, the flames licking around the edges, curling them up and in, until the whole page turns to flame, blazes up, and is gone.
She holds onto it until the last possible second, feeling the heat sink into her skin, smelling the stench of her singed arm hairs. She drops the charred mess onto the tile, dissolving to ashes. She strips, shaking out her sweater, her bra, her pants, determined to rid them of the last traces of the crumbling paper. When she is done, she turns on the water overhead, letting it wash over her, her clothes, the tile. She watches the last specks of black dust wash away down the drain.
*******
february
She should feel better. She should improve. She has, physically. She studies herself in a mirror in Buenos Aires, the first full-length she's had in weeks. She leaves the curtains drawn, but the windows cracked open, letting in the warm summer air. (Sometimes travel has its advantages.) She pulls the loose blouse over her head and steps out of her skirt, folding them carefully and placing them on the bed. She steps toward the mirror, close enough to scrutinize, close enough to study. Her arms aren't so lean, her cheeks no longer sunken. She can see definition returning to her calves; by now she's much further into her workout before her heart begins to pound.
She has a mission now, a purpose -- no longer survival and instinct, but planning and care. Retribution. Success. Freedom. The words ring hollow in her ears.
She's improved. She has. She just has to keep reminding herself of that.