2019-11-14 - Sad & Tragic, Reprise

The door swings shut and the apartment's empty again. Well, empty save for Harvey and dog-Harvey, the latter barely even lifting his head when the door clicks shut. She'd put her dishes away and lingered just long enough to bring about a faint glimmer of hope that he'd find the right thing to say to make her stay; but he didn't, and she left, and now the apartment was quiet. "Well," he puts his hands on his hips and looks to the dog. The dog doesn't even bother to lift it's head this time. "Guess I really fucked that up, huh?" The dog farts, resettles, and falls back asleep. "Yep. That about sums it up."

Harvey retreats to his room and pours out his satchel on the bed. Out comes a notebook and a tablet. Years of research, and this was all he had, each containing pieces from about a thousand different puzzles and no picture complete. He sags onto the edge of the mattress, leans into his pillow, and swipes open the tablet screen to the latest Google doc that he was working on. There wasn't much there, just a few notes.

Montgomery Marshall, owner(??), head (??) doc
Hailey Stevenson, resident (not doc)
Experiments? Good but bad. Necessary. Why??

He hovers a finger over Hailey's name. It takes about thirty seconds before he clicks on her name and presses the backspace key, removing the trace completely. Then he shuts the tablet off and throws it over his shoulder, rolls onto the bed properly, and groans up to the ceiling. It hadn't all been about that. Maybe at first, where he was like a dog aggressively chasing a bone, but not after the pancakes. In that moment, it'd become something else entirely, she'd become something else entirely. Not a source of information, but a person, a feeling, a spark he hadn't felt since Eliza. A spark he hadn't let himself feel since Eliza. And maybe that was it, in the end. After all, a spark can quickly become a fire, and maybe those lies he held onto were assurances that he wouldn't get caught up again. He could just let himself feel, just a little, just enough, then pull the rug out and be done with it.

Except he hadn't expected this. The reality of what it would feel like to have the rug ripped out from under him. The unsteadiness, the awfulness. The guilt. He reaches for his phone, pulls up her contact, reads the chain of texts that ended with tacos and remembered the way she looked when she finally did leave. And he sets the phone down and falls asleep.

When he wakes up, it's 2am. He pulls himself out of bed, throws his shoes on, and heads down to his car to go to the Pourhouse. Not to go in - the 'open' sign is off - but to count the miles from there to the lonely strip of highway, until his car's illuminated underneath the glow of a single lightpost. "Why was your father looking for Doctor Marshall?" but he wasn't, was he? He was just drunk. A blood alcohol level so high, he wouldn't have made it down the street, let alone all the way to the highway to wrap himself around this lightpost. "Say something that makes this better. Please."

3am and his cellphone buzzes on the seat next to him. He looks away from the lightpost to the phone. A couple of emojis, nothing else. The response is rapid fire: :( are you okay? but there's no response. No dots that signal one's being written. He tosses the phone back on the seat, closes his eyes, and tries to think of something more to say that makes this better.

It's 2 a.m. and there's no other cars on the road.Sam Cooke's It's All Right is playing low on the radio. Harvey opens his eyes, but there's no concern. He's been here before.

"You're going the wrong way," his dad says in the driver's seat.

"It didn't feel right," Harvey folds his arms over his chest, lays his cheek on the window. He stares out the windshield and counts the lightposts as they pass. "You know, what about all this 'journalistic integrity' shit? Ethics. Honesty, credibility. The whole she-bang."

"Yeah? Where'd your journalistic integrity get you, kid?" His father points out the window to the yellow caution sign they're about to pass. The car doesn't slow down, but the sign stays in Harvey's peripheral. DEAD END. "Nowhere. Back here. It's like I told you, a few little lies make the best stories. You gotta control the narrative, or else you're never getting out of here."

Harvey laughs, a dry sound, and looks to his father. The image is hazy, out of focus, but he can still make out the person that once was. "I guess I'm stuck then," is all he says. The next lightpost comes into view.

Harvey braces for impact.