INTERLUDE
The Interview
"The first rule," Miriam says, "is that I only see what I see when skin touches skin. If I touch your elbow and you're wearing a shirt, then nothing. If I wear gloves – and I used to, because I didn't want to bear witness to all this craziness – then it prevents the vision from happening."
"That must be horrible," Paul says. "I mean – sorry. I just mean, over and over again, you can never get close to somebody, I mean–"
"Relax, Paul. I can take it. I'm a big girl. But this speaks to rule number two. Or maybe number three. I should really write them down. The rule is, it's one and done. I get the vision once. It doesn't keep happening over and over again – though, I'll tell you, some of the really bad ones will keep a girl up at night." She pauses and tries not to think of any. In her mind's eye, so much blood, so much suffering, so many last moments play out. Theater of the macabre, the curtain forever open. Dancing skeletons. Chattering skulls.
"So, what is it that you see?" Paul asks. "You're like, what, an angel floating above the scene? Or are you the person who's dying?"
"An angel. That's funny. Me with my wings." She rubs some sleep boogers from the corner of her eye. "This speaks to the next rule. I'm the impartial observer. My viewpoint hovers above the whole thing, or maybe off to the side. I'm privy to certain details but not others. I know how the person tap-step-shuffles off this mortal coil, for one. Intimately. Death isn't always obvious, you know – a guy clutches his head and falls over, could be a lot of things. But I know what it is. I know if it's a brain tumor or a blood clot or a bumblebee that's burrowed its way into his cerebral cortex.
"I also know when. Year, day, hour, minute, second. It's a red pushpin stuck in the great timeline of the universe, and I can see it. The pushpin I can't see, oddly, is where. The location remains a mystery. Outside visual cues, of course. I see a chick's head explode in the parking lot of a McDonald's with street signs at the corner of Asshole Boulevard and Shitbird Lane and she's wearing a 'Don't Mess with Texas' T-shirt, then I can use my Sherlock Holmesian deductive reasoning to figure out that pesky riddle. Or I just use Google. I fucking love Google."
"So, how long?"
"How long what?"
"How long – er, how much do you see? One minute? Five minutes?"
"Oh. That. Well. I used to think it was a minute, right? Sixty seconds on the clock, go. Turns out, not so much. I seem to get whatever time I'm supposed to get, if that makes any sense. A car accident might happen over the course of thirty seconds. A heart attack or whatever could unfold over a five-minute period. I see what it lets me see. The weird part is, even if I see five minutes in my mind's eye, it doesn't take more than a second or two in real life. I'll space out, and then I'm back. It's certainly jarring."
Paul frowns, and Miriam can tell that, despite the thing with his uncle, he doesn't quite believe her. Not that she blames him. She finds times, even still, that she herself doesn't buy it. The easier answer is that she's just bugfuck nuts. A real moonbat. A shithouse spider.
"You're witness to the last minutes of human lives," he says.
"Well-put," Miriam says. "Lots of human lives. You know how many people you bump into on the subway during summer? Everybody in short-sleeves? It's all elbows, Paul. Death and elbows."
"So, why don't you stop it?"
"Stop what? Death?"
"Yeah."
Miriam chuckles, the sound of I Know Something You Don't. The sound of irony, that mirthless cad, expressed. She tips the bottle to her lips but does not yet drink.
"Why don't I stop it from happening," she ruminates over the lip of the bottle. "Well, Paul, that right there is the last – and cruelest – rule."
She sucks back a cheek-bulging mouthful of Johnny Walker and explains.