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the caller gave up. Dean opened the bedroom door and looked in. Mickey looked the same as before, only paler. He walked to the bedside. Her eyes were open slightly. He reached down and touched her face. She was cool. He felt her neck but could detect no pulse.
    A wisp of sadness came and went, leaving nothing behind. He looked at his right hand, curled it into a fist. He was stronger than he had thought. Well, shit happened. Now he had to deal with it. Obviously, he couldn’t call the cops. He’d be back in Lincoln, accident or no. He packed his few articles of clothing in Mickey’s gym bag, then added the John Donne book and the three hundred dollars she had stashed in her drawer. He found another forty-odd dollars in her purse, along with the keys to her Maverick.
    It was another hot day in Omaha. Not even noon yet, and the seats of the Maverick scorched him right through his jeans. He drove to Ames Avenue, turned left, no destination in mind yet, letting the flow of traffic pull him from one intersection to the next, thinking. Clenching and unclenching his fist, feeling strong. Dean the killer. A guy who you did not fuck with, who could end a life with a single blow. He was surprised how good he felt. Everything he’d heard before had led him to believe that killing another person would have severe emotional consequences. No one, not even Chip, who had killed three people, had told him how easy it would be. As with any other crime, it seemed, feelings of guilt came only when you got caught.
    Am I a monster? he wondered. He had always thought that those guys who killed their relatives were nuts, but he didn’t feel nuts at all. He felt clear and clean, as if he had shed a rotting old skin.
    He wanted to tell someone. But of course that would undermine the feeling—others could look at him and have their own inconsequential thoughts, but only he would know what he had done. He turned onto 1-80, drove east. Hours later, the sun fell behind him and the approaching headlights became balls of sparks. He felt totally alert, ready to drive all night long. As he approached Des Moines, a brown bat struck the windshield and stuck there for an instant—he could see its tiny, pointed teeth—before sliding up and over the Maverick. An omen, a sign that his life was about to get interesting. He turned north on 1-35. For the first time since he’d been sentenced to the Nebraska State Penitentiary, he knew exactly where he was going.
    The ringing telephone would not stop. Carmen opened her eyes. The room was dark except for two bright lines of daylight squeaking past the sides of the heavy curtain. She carefully elevated herself to a sitting position, feeling a little sick but overall not bad, considering that she didn’t know where she was. She cleared her throat and stared down at the ringing telephone. The last thing she remembered was Axel meeting her at the airport. She was probably in a room at the Motel 6, or so she hoped. She picked up the handset between her thumb and forefinger, the way she might handle a dead bird.
    â€œI’m sleeping,” she reported.
    â€œI can’t get my lens in. Did I wake you up?”
    It was Axel, of course, calling her from room 3. Axel had lived in room 3 ever since she had known him.
    â€œChrist, Axel. What time is it?”
    â€œEight-thirty in the morning. You’ve been sleeping for twelve hours.”
    Carmen shook her head to clear it. “Oogh,” she said, sinking slowly back onto the mattress. “Big mistake.” The pain in her head, she recalled from her studies, was due to dehydration of the lining of the brain. She needed some water.
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    â€œTalking to myself. I feel a little sick.” Carmen groped for the light switch, squeezed her eyes closed, and flipped it up. She let her eyes open slowly, taking in the light a photon at a time. Axel was still yammering on about his contact