Hitchers by Will McIntosh Page A

of there as quickly as I could.
    â€œJesus Christ,” I said as I launched the Avalon out of the lot. “I never said I was perfect”? Why would I say that to a stranger? I felt like an idiot. I closed my hand over my throat, felt my racing pulse through my fingertips. Maybe it was a one-time fluke. Massive fatigue; a post-traumatic hiccup.

CHAPTER 8
    M aybe it was my stroll down the toy aisle at Wal-Mart, or maybe it was just getting out of the apartment, but by the time I got home the ideas were flowing. I was hungry, and suddenly had real food (well, real frozen microwavable food), but I was afraid if I stopped to eat I’d lose the mood, so I went straight to my studio.

    My throat constricted.
    â€œ One thirty-nine for a head of lettuce? ”
    Just like in the checkout line, the words forced themselves out as if they’d been trapped inside me. It sounded like gas rising from a fetid swamp, and it was something I would never say voluntarily. I was not a complainer about the price of produce. I rarely bought fresh produce, for that matter. I massaged my throat. Something was very wrong with me.
    It occurred to me as I cleaned my inking brush that I could be developing Tourette’s syndrome. The thought got me panicked.
    Turning to my computer I looked up Tourette’s on Wikipedia and read frantically, my heart thumping, until I saw that it always developed in childhood. But what else could it be? Some other, rarer, neurological disorder? Or maybe it really was a second-order symptom of anthrax exposure.
    I would call my doctor in the morning. There was nothing to do until then, so I tried not to think about it and kept working.

CHAPTER 9
    I sprawled on the couch with a carton of Ben and Jerry’s and a spoon while Letterman did his monologue against a backdrop of the New York City skyline at night. My throat was especially sore after having a scope on a rope pushed down there by Doctor Purvis earlier in the day, so the ice cream felt good. I relished these mundane moments—they made things feel normal. Things weren’t normal, not by a long shot—the city was still crawling with National Guard, many businesses were still shuttered—but things were at least moving in the direction of normal. There were olives and Snickers bars to be had, and Ben and Jerry’s ice cream.
    My throat twisted up. It was getting easier to identify the telltale signs that I was about to blurt something. I made a concerted effort to stifle it.
    â€œ Poor little thing, down in that black water .”
    I set the ice cream on the coffee table, my appetite for it vanished. The poor little thing was Kayleigh, I knew instantly. Suddenly I felt incredibly isolated in this apartment, in the middle of rusting amusements surrounded by industrial sites.

    I didn’t have a superstitious bone in my body, but the image of Kayleigh down in the black water, still twelve, gave me the shivers. For years after she died I had nightmares of discovering Kayleigh in unlikely places, her hair and clothes soaked, seaweed clinging to her face. Guilt will do that to you. When you’re partly to blame for someone’s death, they show up in the most unlikely places.
    How could this problem be psychological?
    In the meantime let’s have you consult with a psychiatrist, just to cover all of our bases , the neurologist had said matter-of-factly.
    It seemed like it had to be something physical—a brain injury or something, though I’d dutifully made my appointment with the psychiatrist Doctor Purvis had suggested.
    On the other hand I was grateful to the doctor for giving me a dignified medical-sounding term with which to refer to my weird and undignified outbursts. Vocalizations. I should practice using it in a sentence.
    Please pardon my vocalizations. My neurologist says they’re either myoclonic jerks brought on by a rare neurological disorder, or I’m batshit crazy.
    It occurred to me the