Page 147 of Our Last Resort

No.

It doesn’t. Not after a couple of seconds.

The dollar bill bobs up and down. It floats.

I wait for the Hudson to take it from me, but the water won’t do it. And so I sit on the bank and watch it, this tiny piece of paper, the imprint of lipstick faded but still visible to me in the morning light.

In time, the paper will disintegrate. The water will reduce it to nothing. Émile’s dollar bill will cease to exist. The lip print will disappear for good.

Not today.

Today, I go home.

I brace myself for the end. I say a hundred goodbyes, but no one comes to get me.

Then, an email.

From:[email protected]

To:[email protected]

We should go back.

I don’t understand. I’ll go anywhere he wants to go, but I don’t understand.

From:[email protected]

To:[email protected]

Where? To Utah?

From:[email protected]

To:[email protected]

To Émile’s place. World. Whatever. We should go back.

I don’t ask why. I only ask when. Gabriel flies in the following week. We meet at Grand Central and board our train without a word.

We have never been back. There’s never been anything there for us to return to.

When we get off the train, I think I see our younger selves on the platform. I’m eighteen, throwing up in a trash can, sick with the image of the man I think we’ve just killed.

I have so many questions for Gabriel.

Do you remember the way?

What’s your plan?

Why on earth do you want to go back there?

But I don’t say anything. The silence isn’t mine to break.

Our feet find the way. We walk through the town. Joan’s bar is gone. The pharmacy endures. This completely standard convenience store, once the most confusing place we’d ever visited.

The road is still there. In fact, it looks like it’s been retarred recently.

We walk in silence.

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