“I don’t care if you’re the one who did it seven years ago, if you’re a homicidal murderer, if you’re a serial killer.”
“Is there a difference?”
“I warned Morino. Not to get close to you. I don’t know who you really are, but if she had never gotten close to you, then this whole thing would have ended without incident. It should have. But then after she called me, she got into your car. It’s beyond my understanding. I don’t know what kind of tricks you used to get the Morino I know to obediently hop into your car.”
I could have asked him the same question.
“At any rate, how about making a deal with me?”
“A deal?”
“Something simple. As long as you don’t try to have anything to do with Morino or myself, we won’t concern ourselves with you.”
I stared silently at the railroad crossing on the other side of the windshield. The tracks led into darkness. I ruminated on the boy’s words. Ridiculous. What kind of validity would a deal like this have? What the boy was saying, in effect, was “How about we have nothing to do with each other?” What was in it for me? I would ignore his request. I would find Morino and make her my subject.
No, I couldn’t. The boy knew my license plate number. That changed the situation. And this girl Morino knew what I looked like, as well as the make of my car. I thought again about the boy’s deal. Now, I could hear another meaning to his words: “If you try to lay a hand on us, I’ll report your license plate number to the police.” The police would be able to find out who I was from that and possibly search my home. In which case, I wouldn’t be able to talk my way out of it.
I didn’t seem to be in a position to promptly reject this deal. I even got the impression that I was the one at a disadvantage. I had already broken the law, after all. It didn’t matter if the boy called the police right after this phone call. The issue if he did wouldn’t be whether or not he had proof that I was the murderer. All the police would have to do was take an interest in what the boy said and focus their attention on me. Eventually, I would be destroyed.
What was the best option? Find and kill the boy before he could call the police, and then find the girl Morino and make her my subject? If I was going to do that, it would be best to do it tonight. But maybe that was impossible? And even if it was possible, there were serious risks involved. I also couldn’t say I would be completely happy once I’d succeeded. I didn’t like killing people. I thought it was repulsive. Would I actually carry out the ugly deed of killing a normal human being, someone who would never be my subject, in the name of self-preservation?
How could I bring the situation back to normal with the least fuss?
Make the deal with the boy. Keep the agreement; don’t break it. Live without interfering with each other; don’t try to remove the other. Tolerate the existence of the other; live life without taking any hostile action. I would lose my subject Morino. There was no way around it. But I would avoid having my life destroyed.
How much could I trust this boy and his deal?
Human beings are liars. I knew that. Which is why I sought the face in death. The face with no forced smile, no performance, no deliberately composed expression. I had never thought about it before, but had I ever truly trusted anyone from the heart? At some point, I had started to feel that it was obvious that the look on a person’s face was contrived and in no way reflected their actual feelings. I had lived my life, giving up on people, fully expecting them to betray me one day. When a person proposed something to me, I didn’t even think about trusting them. But now, what was required in this situation was faith. In a person.
“Why did you choose December 6 seven years ago?” the boy asked.
“I didn’t do it, so I don’t know.”
“Why do you suppose the person who did it chose today seven years ago?”
“I could make a guess. Maybe—”
“It’s the day Rosalia Lombardo died?”
Was Rosalia Lombardo special to the boy like she was for me?
“Right. She died on December 6, 1920. She passed away when she was two and still looks the same now as she did then. The expression on her face is so lively you could almost believe she’s asleep.”
“You know quite a bit about her.” I could almost hear a trust me in the boy’s stream of words. I had to trust him. Otherwise, we’d both be at a disadvantage. I knew this in my head. But in my heart, I was afraid. I was overcome with paranoia. Suspicion that he would betray me and break our agreement, while I naïvely felt secure in my trust. Wasn’t that how it would turn out in the end? Those who trusted the words of others never got ahead in this world; the deceivers were life’s winners. I had witnessed it myself. I had seen people trick and exploit others for their own gain.
My fear was actually the cause of my inability to trust people. Fear of being deceived. Fear of being lied to. My fear of people was stealing from me the freedom of thought.
Could I live my whole life like this? Or would something change if I could trust the boy right here and now? As I cradled my head in the driver’s seat and curled into myself, I heard the boy’s voice almost in a whisper.
“I know Rosalia too.” His voice was very gentle. “The most adorable corpse in history.” There was even an intimacy to it, as though he was speaking to family.
How far can I trust you?
I knew what I had to say. I had to trust a living person.
I’ll make this deal with you, so let’s not have anything to do with each other.
I just had to say it.
But.
“I’ve always wanted to trust people. But I’m scared. I can’t help it.” I didn’t really know what I was saying. But I wanted to confess, like I was seeking salvation from him.
The boy had a response. “That’s fine, no need to change. You don’t have to trust these creatures, these people. They only lie—it’s smarter not to trust them. So then, let’s do this. You can just think of me as not being a person. I’m not human, so you don’t need to be afraid of trusting me.”
“Absurd.”
“I warned Morino and had her leave her cell phone there so we could make this deal. So that you wouldn’t come after her anymore.”
When I hung up, the only sound inside the car was the vibration of the engine. No train crossed the tracks before me. No other cars came along to pass me. It was simply dark outside the car. The deeply suffocating, cavernous darkness of night. I imagined that eventually this darkness would smash through the front windshield and even compress me to the size of a milk bottle, just like the water pressure of the deep ocean crushed everything. What exactly was this boy? Morino said that he and I had the same air. I peeked in the rearview mirror and stared at my own face, but I couldn’t see it. Soon, I became afraid that the amorphous, concentrated darkness outside the car was perhaps the boy himself, and I suddenly wanted to hear a human voice. I turned the radio back on.
Before I started the car, I remembered something. Opening the driver’s side door, I shone my flashlight on the darkness. I collected the snowy-white bandage from the branch where it was still caught and stared at it. The tiniest bit of blood had soaked into it. I held it to my chest and wept.
I started driving and soon entered the town in the foothills. I slid through the flat band of fields and came out into an area with plenty of oncoming traffic. I passed by several signs for 24-hour convenience stores. The sound of the radio didn’t make it into my brain. As I drove, I remembered the exchange with the boy.