"No, it's not." Her gaze was unflatteringly frank. "You're not Charlie and younever were. You're--just the sad remnant of what once was a man, and not a verygood one at that." She turned away. She was leaving me! In my confusion, I feltsuch a despair as I had never known before.
"Please ... " I said.
She stopped.
A long silence. Then what in a livingwoman would have been a sigh. "You'd thinkthat I--well, never mind." She offered her hand, and when I would not take it,said, "This way."
I followed her down Main Street, through the shallow canyon of the businessdistrict to a diner at the edge of town. It was across from Hubcap Heaven and anautomotive junkyard bordered it on two sides. The diner was closed. We settleddown on the ceiling.
"That's where the car ended up after I died," she said, gesturing toward thejunkyard. "It Was right after I got the call about Charlie. I stayed up drinkingand after a while it occurred to me that maybe they were wrong, they'd made somesort of horrible mistake and he wasn't really dead, you know?
Like maybe he was in a coma or something, some horrible kind of misdiagnosis,they'd gotten him confused with somebody else, who knows? Terrible things happenin hospitals. They make mistakes.
"I decided I had to go and straighten things out. There wasn't time to makecoffee so I went to the medicine cabinet and gulped down a bunch of pills atrandom, figuring something among them would keep me awake. Then I jumped intothe car and started off for Colorado."
"My God."
"I have no idea how fast I was going--everything was a blur when I crashed. Atleast I didn't take anybody with me, thank the Lord. There was this one horriblemoment of confusion and pain and rage and then I found myself lying on the floor