ON THE MOVE

The night I first saw Briggs, I was sitting in a diner with Marlowe. We’d both altered our appearances. I’d dyed my hair an awful black. With my pale skin, I looked like a ghoul. Marlowe had shaved his hair and had grown a goatee and mustache. He looked like a vampire skinhead. You’d think at this point we wouldn’t have been able to eat in public.

In the movies a killer eats at a truck stop and his picture is posted behind the counter or randomly pops up on the television screen. Someone notices him, and the chase is on.

But in the real world, people are oblivious, living in their own little heads. They barely see what’s going on around them, and when they do, they rarely believe their own eyes.

Marlowe went to the bathroom, and while I waited, staring into the depths of my coffee cup, a man walked past me too close and dropped a napkin onto the table. I turned to see his wide, heavy frame and the back of his bald head as he walked