20
DETOUR
December 31, 2016
“Excuse me. I don’t mean to interrupt.”
Blair made no response. An infinitesimal rise and fall of one shoulder served as the only indication that another voice had spoken. The tall, lanky figure, dressed in jeans and a dark-gray sweatshirt, merely slumped down further in the seat of the Greyhound bus.
The middle-aged woman standing in the aisle cleared her throat again. “Is the window seat taken?”
Blair glanced up, eyes darting around the bus’s dim interior. The seats were filling in. They must have picked up twenty new passengers at the bus depot in Dallas. So much for privacy. No choice but to move the bulky canvas duffel bag that currently occupied the next seat.
“It’s all yours,” Blair grumbled, as the woman shuffled past and sank down heavily.
“Thank you kindly,” she replied. “I do appreciate it. I’m Delilah, by the way. How far are you headed?”
A chatterbox, Blair thought. Perfect. Just perfect. Every other seat had been occupied by the usual crew of bus riders—silent types, safeguarding their anonymity behind drawn-down baseball caps and hooded sweatshirts—but this lady had to be a chatterbox.
Blair ignored the woman’s question and inserted a pair of beaten-up earphones instead. Just a prop, of course. They didn’t work. Cheap drugstore earbuds, doomed from the start. The left ear blew out somewhere around Baton Rouge, and the right ear died an untimely death a few hours later, just outside Houston. But that didn’t matter. The earphones served their purpose well enough—universal sign language for “I don’t want to talk.”
“Suit yourself,” the woman muttered.
Blair ignored her, flicking on a phone instead. Twitter had signed itself back out again. It kept doing that, ever since the latest software update—a new glitch in the system that wouldn’t allow two different phones to remain signed in to the same account.
Some misguided attempt at cybersecurity, no doubt. A minor nuisance. Nothing more. Blair found it easy enough to sign back in to Twitter every time.
Username: @EricThornSucks
Password: password
Who used “password,” anyway? No one. That’s who. No one who actually wanted privacy. This couldn’t even be considered hacking, really. That password wasn’t a password at all. It was a red carpet, rolled out. An invitation.
Blair directed a fleeting glance at the woman in the window seat. She’d leaned back and closed her eyes.
Good, Blair thought, bending forward over the phone. No time for idle chitchat. Not tonight. Not when there were Twitter feeds to check. Private messages to read.
And reread.
And reread.
And reread…
Time Stamp 12/29/16, 9:03 a.m.
Tessa H: I can’t believe this is happening.
Taylor: I know. I’m so psyched. I’m all packed and ready to go. Just tell me where and when.
Tessa H: I don’t know… I’m not even sure I’m going.
Taylor: Tessa, you have to! It’s Eric Thorn. You’ve never seen him live before. When are you going to get a better chance than this?
Tessa H: Just give me a sec. I need to do my deep breathing.
Taylor: What does your therapist say?
Tessa H: She thinks I should go. Make it like a New Year’s resolution.
Taylor: Exactly! Tessa, you can do this.
Tessa H: I just have this horrible feeling. Promise me nothing bad is going to happen.
Taylor: Nothing bad. Only good. Very, very good.
Tessa H: You promise?
Taylor: I promise. Now promise me you’ll come.
Tessa H: OK, OK. It’s a club in Midland, Texas. The Trail Dust Honky-Tonk Saloon. Meet me there on New Year’s Eve at exactly 6:00 p.m.
Those messages had passed back and forth two days ago, and already Blair had read the exchange a hundred times. It always felt the same. The same ripple of elation bubbling up—the high that came back stronger every time, with every glimpse inside.
The giddiness would only last for a moment. It would be replaced again soon by the feeling that came next. Irritation, to begin with, imagining the words on the screen spoken aloud. Something about that fantasy never failed to set Blair’s teeth on edge.
Blair used to think it was the sound of the voice itself. Too high. Jarring. Juvenile. There was something slightly off in the pitch or cadence, some indefinable flaw that had never quite done justice to the perfect bone structure of the face. Such a shame, really. Some people were better as a silent image, caught on film—seen and not heard. A physical specimen, perfectly preserved, without all those inconvenient words to mar the visual.
It wasn’t just the sound of the voice though. Blair understood that now. These DM conversations made it clear. It was something in the words themselves and the thoughts they represented. Ever since Blair began following their correspondence, the feelings went far beyond mere irritation. Something deeper, darker. An undying anger. A fury at them both.
But mostly at the interloper.
The obstacle.
The one who needed to be removed. Erased. Blotted out, like a bad dream.
The one who didn’t deserve to be in the picture in the first place.
Soon, Blair thought, with eyes slowly drifting closed. It would happen. Soon enough.