The Midnight Road by Tom Piccirilli

to salve the ego, thinking you were important enough to be on other angry people’s minds. He noticed that in the past two weeks his thoughts had been firing pretty randomly. He didn’t mind the dead French bulldog nearly as much as the fact that he was actually listening to it, doing what it told him. That he had believed in Zero.
    “I’d like to do a follow-up interview with you,” Jessie Gray said.
    “It’s only been, what, six or seven days? There’s nothing to follow up on.”
    “How you’re getting on. What life is like for you after your near-death experience.”
    He couldn’t quite make out if she was being facetious or not. Being flash frozen for a half hour wasn’t quite the same thing as missing out on a heartbeat or two. He realized it all came down to ego again. Like someone was taking something from him if they weren’t in awe that he’d driven back from the midnight road. Now he had to be called Mr. Miracle Man or what, he’d go pout?
    “Life is very much the same,” he told her. He wasn’t sure if he was lying.
    “No grand revelation or epiphany on the nature of our existence? How precious each waking moment has become?” She moved out of the seat and weaved about him, lissome, somehow ephemeral, as if she was vanishing and reappearing moment to moment. She was used to putting old men off-balance. She was turning on her appeal and dispensing pheromones. She was poking fun, probing for a deeper truth. “Have you put past regrets and bad blood behind you?”
    He thought about it for a minute and said, honestly, “I don’t have much of either.”
    “No?”
    “No.”
    “How about telling me why you conceded to speak to Mark Shepard?”
    “It was time.”
    “What’s that mean?”
    Flynn said, “It means it was time.”
    “The press has been treating you like hell, hasn’t it?”
    “Yes,” he admitted.
    “What did you think of my article?”
    “It was exact. And well written.”
    That loosened her lips a little, brought out a real smile. “Thank you. So don’t you think you could trust me to tell your story?”
    “I don’t have a story to tell,” he said.
    “Everyone does.”
    “Yeah? So what’s yours?” he asked.
    “Mine’s boring. Twice married, twice divorced, both marriages ending within a year. My fault, mostly. They didn’t want to be married, but I did, and I chased them until they cracked. I know I don’t look old enough to have two ex-husbands, but there it is. I didn’t deserve my position on the paper. My father is a journalism professor at Hofstra University. He’s got a lot of friends and pulled some strings for me. I earned my station pretty fast, though. I’m compulsive. When I see a chance to tell a unique story, I go after it. I chase the truth like my men, no matter where it leads, even if it hurts, and sometimes it does. I’m obsessive. It’s an ineradicable flaw in my character.”
    He got the sense she’d been asked the question before and had this all down as a prepared statement. Probably hit on all the proper psychological lures and decoys to get an interviewee to open right up, start spilling his own guts. Flynn had no idea why it wasn’t working on him.
    “At least you’re self-aware,” he said.
    “Very. Now, what do you think Mark Shepard wants to tell you?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “What are you hoping he’ll say?”
    “I have no idea.”
    “Is there anything you want to say to him?”
    “Miss Gray, one of us isn’t taking the hint here.”
    She nodded and stood, waited for him to move off first and when he didn’t, she gave a quick flip of that long lovely hair and started down the hall. She was a woman who would always need the final word, and most men wouldn’t mind allowing it.
    “I wonder, though, if it’s you or me, Mr. Flynn?”
             
    He decided, Screw Shepard. Maybe it wasn’t time after all. Maybe it would never be time.
    Flynn got lost in the hospital. He peeked into rooms and startled the