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Now leaning over the sink, trimming his fingernails, compulsively running his thumb pad over the sharp spots and edging them with the clippers more and more until he was down to the quick.
shard-sharp glint of sunlight
Now sweeping up the clippings, washing and scrubbing the surfaces they’d touched, washing and scrubbing his hands, forcing himself from the bathroom.
IV pole starting to topple
Now dressing in the closet but there was lint on his shirt and he picked it free and walked it to the trash can in the bedroom but there was a tiny ball of dust on the poured-concrete floor and he crouched to press his thumb to it but saw that there were more specks by the baseboard and they were everywhere and how was he supposed to determine the acceptable size of dust to leave onthe floor instead of convey to the trash because how you do anything is how you do everything.
patterns on the ceiling way up above
It was his OCD screaming at him, running him, and he tried to grab hold of the errant operating system, but all he could see was dust and lint, and all he could feel were the minuscule jags on his fingernails, and he closed his eyes and tried to find his breath.
swinging his sights to the metal links of a dangling cafeteria sign, the kind of wide-open shot he never missed
The Second Commandment—How you do anything is how you do everything—warred with reality, paring him down to nothing but behavioral loops. He knew he had to put the OCD into a drawer in his mind and close it, but everything was spinning too fast for him to grab hold of.
heartbeat fluttering in the side of his throat
He reached to find his breathing, the floor beneath his bare feet, and pushing out thoughts of lint and dust sticking to his soles, he walked back into the closet and closed the door behind him.
It was dark inside—white hospital walls—save for the seam of light at the edges—Mystery Man’s eyes hidden behind Ray-Bans—so he couldn’t see all the clutter and imperfections—he doesn’t talk much—and he racked aside the Woolrich shirts on their hangers—tiny hand gripping a smooth white rail—to clear a space and lowered himself down—cuffed and barred and chained—toppling the stack of brand-new Original S.W.A.T. shoe boxes—a lion, a zebra—and an image of Joey flickered across the screen of his mind—fifty thousand volts—and he realized he’d kept her furthest away from all this in his thoughts, his Achilles’ heel, his biggest weakness, and—no brisk wind, no shadows—he hadn’t let himself entertain for a single instant—you know what it’s like to be powerless—what it would do to her if he were gone.
He put his back to the wall and tucked his knees into his chest.
He dug in a drawer to his side, and then a replacement RoamZone was in his hand, and he’d dialed before he realized who he was calling.
Tommy Stojack picked up after the fourth ring. “Yallo.”
The pop of lips around an inhale. Evan could picture the CamelWide nested beneath Tommy’s biker mustache, could hear the echo of his voice off the hard surfaces of his armorer’s lair, a rusty topography of mills and lathes, munitions crates and test-firing tubes.
Evan’s voice sounded as though it belonged to someone else. “Tommy.”
“What?”
“I’m there.”
“Where?”
“In the hurt.”
A long pause. Another inhalation, the white noise purr of smoke exhaled. “Need me to come?”
“No.”
“All right.” More silence. In the background, water dripped and a machine hummed. “Be humble as fuck,” Tommy said. “And keep gratitude.”
“Okay.” Evan pictured the twenty feet between him and the dangling cafeteria sign. No brisk wind, no shadows, no distracting reflections. He opened his mouth. Closed it. Tried again. “I missed the shot, Tommy.”
“What’d it cost you?”
“An eighth of a second.” Evan’s lips felt dry, chapped. “You know how much that is?”
“It is,” Tommy said, “a lifetime.”
More silence. Evan reminded himself to keep breathing.
“Age comes for us all.” A squeak and a faint hiss, no doubt Tommy grinding out his cigarette in that salvaged ship’s porthole he used as an ashtray. “So you learn.”
