Free Dead Souls by J. Lincoln Fenn Page B

their afternoon lunch.
    Not often at all, but every once in a while, I’m drawn to someone and find they have that shadow, a dark pallor. A woman standing under the wide eave of a Laundromat, smoking—she sees me but pretends she doesn’t, shifts her weight into her other hip, scrunches her eyes into a squint, and stares hard into the gutter. A car double-parks and a man gets out of the passenger side, clutching a folded newspaper over his head. He makes a dash for the 7-Eleven, turns, and watches me pass, strangely intent. A bus passes, glowing with fluorescent light, and an elderly woman at the back sees me and presses her palm against the glass, like a greeting or a warning, I don’t know.
    It’s a way we identify each other, not through our eyes, but with our souls.
    Of course, I could just be responding to this thought he’s planted in my head, interpreting reality through his lens. In which case, he’s a better marketer than I gave him credit for.
    I’m so fucking exhausted all of a sudden. But somehow home doesn’t seem like the place to go—home is where I found the card, or where the card found me, and what if he is lurking nearby, watching, waiting to fuck with me again?
    So I drive by the Grand Lake Theatre, past the street I usually turn right on. Maybe I shouldn’t ever go home. Drive as far as my tank of gas will take me and live off of my savings—all $15,675 of it—until I can pick up a job somewhere, maybe waiting tables, something low-key, inconspicuous. Disappear.
    Leaving is something I do well; it’s almost become second nature. Never held a job more than three years, never a boyfriend more than two. I’ve lived in Los Angeles, New York, Austin, Portland, Denver, Miami. Nothing ever feels quite as good as shaking off a whole life, turning the page on everything, leaving all mistakes, judgments, failures behind. Nobody gets in, not for long. I always tell them it’s a career move. What happens to those I leave behind is only an occasional thought, easily drowned out in a cacophony of new experiences. I am now protected by the thickest of thick skins—my parents would be proud. My therapist warned that I’ve never really unpacked. But unpacking is hard, staying is hard, trusting people is hard.
    I trusted Justin, and now look what’s happened.
    A small part of me blames him for everything.
    I almost rear-end the SUV in front of me when it stops hard at a light. But the rain is starting to lift, or at least it’s not raining as hard in Piedmont. To my right, I see the cement pillars of the Mountain View Cemetery, its gates open.
    The one place where everyone has to finally unpack, stay.
    I think of all the lives the people under the ground must have lived, how important it must have seemed to them at the time. And then after, not so much.
    Christ, I don’t even believe in souls, or hell, or heaven . How can something you don’t believe in try to ruin you so completely?
    There’s a sudden flash of light, bright like a bursting star, coming from a knoll near a pyramid-shaped tomb. I see a tall, thin man standing next to a tripod, a sharp silhouette against the retreating, ominous clouds. Either he’s impervious to the rain or just doesn’t give a shit—even from three or four hundred yards away, there is something relaxed and confident about him, like a rancher surveying his land. I feel that magnetic pull again, so strong that my car drifts into the right-hand lane, almost of its own accord.
    And even though he’s so far away, I can tell he sees me. Locks on to my car like it’s a lost sheep, newly found.
    And waves me over.
    This is how I meet Alejandro.

    I DRIVE UP THE SERPENTINE ROAD, wheels crunching on gravel, past small rounded tombstones, taller ones adorned with Celtic crosses, rectangular granite monoliths. A weary angel rests his head on his hand. I pass mausoleums that look like small