Page 117 of Jackie

Her stare now in the hospital corridor, boring through him—mystical, vacant, relentless—looking off into some middle distance caught in the grain of the wall. Her lips tighten around the cigarette, the pull of smoke into her lungs and out again, yet underneath that stone remove, he sees her still: the girl he fell in love with all those years ago.

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Admit it. Can you?

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This is a love story.

Always was.

A love story.

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He moves toward her, brushes through, and moves on.

Part IV

One day in a whirl of winged horses, the sun changed course

And turned his holy face away.

—Euripides (trans. Anne Carson)

November 22, 1963, 12:47 p.m. CST

They tell me they found no heartbeat, no breathing, no pulse.

—

In the hallway where I sit, a glacial coolness—white tiles along the wall, black linoleum floor. Clint is near me. Others cluster, voices anxious, hushed, someone walks away, someone else comes back. A nurse pushes through.

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Three and a half seconds—that’s all it was—between the first shot, which missed, and the second, which did not.

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If I’d been looking to the right.

If I’d recognized the sound for what it was.

If I had not been complaining in my head about the heat, or how close their hands and blurred faces came as the car took a turn, if I hadn’t been so focused on all that or wondering how I could slip off, with you, away from that grueling, unbearable sunlight to the cool dark of the tunnel ahead.

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Take off your glasses so they can see you, Jackie. Let them see you.

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A hypnotic burst of light off my bracelet as I waved.

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And the roses were there, on the seat between us, spilling toward the floor, petals soaked, his blood, stems broken, the dark, wet iridescence of those roses crushed in the white-hot glare as I leapt to grasp a piece of his skull flying away.

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