Page 8 of Nobody's Fool

Three: “Exactly.”

Two: “Did it work?”

Three shrugs. “Kinda, yeah. But he drove a Porsche.”

One: “What do you drive, Lenny?”

Lenny throws up his hands. “I don’t do any of that.”

One: “Feels pervy to me.”

Two: “Creepy AF. Unless, well, what car do you drive, Lenny?”

Lenny whines, “Mr. Kierce?”

“Okay,” I say, and I move next to him, picking up the first GPS and casually tossing it in the air. “I think we should…”

And that is when I see Anna.

I stop, blink. I almost do one of those headshakes to clear out the cobwebs.

I know this is impossible, and so for a few moments, I don’t really react. I try to let the moment pass.

This would not be the first time I’ve seen dead people.

Last year, I went through a stage where I would hallucinate and even have full conversations with my “other” murdered lover, Nicole.

Yes, murdered.

I guess I’m not safe to date, ladies.

Tasteless joke.

But when I had visions of Nicole, she hadn’t aged. I saw her as she was back then, the way she’d looked on the day she was murdered—the same heartachingly beautiful twenty-six-year-old that I’d known as my fiancée.

I’ve also imagined seeing Anna before. You know how it is. I’d be in a crowded park or maybe a jam-packed Manhattan bar and I would see a woman with long auburn hair and for a moment I would be certain it was Anna, but then I would blink or tap her shoulder and I would see her face and reality returned.

I do that now. I blink. I blink again. Now I go through with it andgive my head a tiny shake to clear it. But even as I do, I know this isn’t the same. In the past, the “Anna visions,” which is way too strong a term for it, was always the Anna I knew, age-twenty-one (or however old she really was) Anna. She’d have the long auburn hair and nebulous eyes, which is weird. I don’t remember Anna’s eye color—maybe because her eyes were shut the last time I saw her—but now, among the malodorous ghosts of the former bathhouse, I see the hazel in this woman’s and yes, now I remember.

Anna had hazel eyes.

Someone—I think it’s Golf Shirt Gary—says, “Kierce? You okay?”

But this woman doesn’t have long auburn hair. It’s short and blond. Anna never wore eyeglasses when I knew her. This woman has stylish round wire frames. Anna was twenty-one-ish years old. This woman is in her midforties.

It can’t be her.

The Maybe Anna startles back now. She had been leaning against the wall but moves fast, hurrying out of the room.

“Kierce?”

“Continue your show-n-tell, Lenny. I’ll be right back.”

I sprint after her.

All heads turn. The students, of course, know something is up. They’re in a criminology class and so are both inherently and situationally nosey. They’re hyperaware. I hear the squeak of chairs as if they’re readying to join me.

“Stay,” I command.

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