Then Daniel was back. "It's all right, let's go."
"I heard something break."
"It was just a tail-light, okay?" He gave her a funny look. "What the hell areyou laughing about?"
She shook her head helplessly, unable to sort out the tears from the laughter.Then somehow they were on the Expressway, the car humming down the indistinctand warping road. She was driving but Daniel was still in control.
We were completely lost now and had been for some time. I had taken what I wascertain had to be a branch line and it had led nowhere. We'd been tracing itstwisty passage for blocks. I stopped and pulled my hand away. I couldn'tconcentrate. Not with the caustics and poisons of the Widow's past churningthrough me. "Listen," I said. "We've got to get something straight between us."
Her voice came out of nowhere, small and wary. "What?"
How to say it? The horror of those memories lay not in their brutality but intheir particularity. They nestled into empty spaces where memories of my ownshould have been. They were as familiar as old shoes. They fit.
"If I could remember any of this crap," I said, "I'd apologize. Hell, I can'tblame you for how you feel. Of course you're angry. But it's gone, can't you seethat, it's over. You've got to let go. You can't hold me accountable for thingsI can't even remember, okay? All that shit happened decades ago. I was young.I've changed." The absurdity of the thing swept over me. I'd have laughed if I'dbeen able. "I'm dead, for pity's sake!"
A long silence. Then, "So you've figured it out."
"You've known all along," I said bitterly. "Ever since I came off thehigh-tension lines in Manayunk."