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I didn’t want to bring the gun in earlier, in case the sight of it frightened Finley. She doesn’t need to be any more rattled than she already is. I tuck the pistol in my waistband, pull my shirt over it, and lock my car. I go back to the hotel room and tuck the pistol underneath my mattress.
The bathroom door clicks open, and I go alert.
She exits with a wave of steam, the way Martians leave spaceships in old seventies science-fiction films.
My shirt swallows her. It’s an old forest-green shirt with the white faded word ARMY. It looks like a dress on her and goes halfway down her thighs. She tilts her head and scrunches her hair in the towel.
“This shirt is clean, right? Like, you didn’t throw it in there after the gym?”
“I’ve washed it. But I do work out in it. Does it stink?”
“No. I mean, not in a bad way. It smells like you.”
“Thank you. I think.”
“I just have a thing about wearing clean clothes to bed. I get weird about dirt in my sheets. It drives me crazy when the girls in school come and sit on my bed in their day clothes. I don’t know where those pants have been.”
She’s rattling on. The shower must have woken her up, because she’s sloughed off the zombie state from before. She seems brighter, more animated.
She stands in the center of the room and looks at the beds. “Which one’s mine?”
“I’ll take the one by the door.” And the one with the gun under the mattress.
“Window it is,” she says.
She sits on the edge of the bed by the window. She dries her hair viciously, roughly scrunching it up in the towel repeatedly.
I take the opportunity to freshen up. She’s completely steamed over the mirror.
I brush my teeth blind, rinse off, and redress.
When I exit the bathroom, she’s under the covers in her bed. The small lamp between us casts a low yellow light around the room, turning the pink a peachy orange.
Finley looks rigid, her arms by her sides, eyes open and staring at the ceiling.
I took a map from the reception area. I pick it up off the table now and sit in my bed, back on the headboard. I unfurl the map and try to plan our next move.
Out of the edge of my vision, I can see Finley turn her head to watch me.
“Are you going to bed?” she asks.
“In a minute.”
“I’m not tired. Are you? I was, but now I’m wired.”
“No. But we should try to get some sleep.”
I close my eyes, but I can still feel her.
She’s lying awake, fretting. Her energy is loud and frenetic.
“Do you think he’s dead?” she asks the empty air.
“You wounded him. Not a lethal wound. His pride hurts more than his chest, I’m sure.”
“I don’t know what I want more. For him to be dead or not dead. Does that make me a bad person?”
“No.”
