Miriam has little patience. She offers the hallucination no more than a passing glance and a throaty grunt.

"No glib commentary?" Louis asks. A yellow jacket pushes its way out from under his eye-tape and orbits his head before zipping off into the trees.

"I need a cigarette."

"That's not very glib. I'm disappointed."

"I'd like a drink."

"Still not impressed. This really is a new you."

"Choke on a turd."

"Then again," Louis says, "maybe not."

THIRTY-SEVEN

The Second Hour

She hears the highway before she sees it.

That familiar Doppler rush of cars. The passing growl of a motorcycle.

Miriam staggers to the edge of the seemingly infinite gravel drive, alone. (Louis's future ghost has long left her behind, though from time to time she sees him passing through the trees as she stumbles forth.)

The road ahead is two-lane. Gray macadam. A crusty, broken dividing line like a spattered stripe of golden piss.

She blinks and tucks the gun away in the back of her waistband.

She's been here before. Countless times. Standing on the highway shoulder, thumb out, hoping to catch a ride the way a remora fish wants to cling tight to a swiftly moving shark (a shark swiftly moving toward food, since the remora is like the vulture, which is like the crow, which is like Miriam herself – scavenger, carrion-feeder, and all around lazy fuck).

Once more, she seeks a ride to somebody's death.

The thumb-out hitchhiker trick won't do it this time. It's too slow. Most people know what they're getting when they pick up a highway drifter: an addict, a crazy person, a serial rapist, a big giant question mark that isn't worth answering.

Miriam just doesn't have the time.

She sees a car coming. Subaru Outback station wagon, a couple years past its prime.

Miriam steps out in front of the speeding hunk of Japanese automation. Late, too late, the gray glare on the windshield passes and Miriam can see that the woman is on her cell phone, probably not paying attention to something so insignificant as, say, the road.

Still, Miriam doesn't budge.

The car bears down. Doesn't stop.

Then, last minute, squealing brakes. The car's ass-end starts to wobble like the hips of an old dog, but it's too little, too late.

The car hits Miriam.

Luckily, by the time it does, it's only going a couple miles an hour.

It still hurts (right now, the breeze blowing hurts every micrometer of Miriam's skin; even her hair feels pain), but it's more jarring than anything else.

Still, it gives Miriam a second wind, a boot-kick of adrenalin.

The woman behind the car is dumbstruck. She's an older woman, maybe in her mid-fifties, with a white-blonde drill instructor haircut that suggests she's either a lesbian or just one of those women who no longer gives a shit or the time to fix her hair in the morning.

The phone slides out of her hand, but the hand stays held to her ear. It'd be comical if Miriam had a sense of humor left.