She waited for him to go on, to explain why he couldn’t have coffee with her tomorrow. Not that he had to give her a reason. She didn’t believe in being the kind of girlfriend who kept constant tabs on her boyfriend, but he almost always explained what was going on if he couldn’t get together with her. He didn’t say anything right away, though, and she started to wonder if something was wrong. But before she could ask if he was okay, he went on.

“I’ve got a doctor’s appointment in the morning. It’s just a checkup, but if I cancel, it’ll be weeks before they can fit me in again. Maybe longer.”

There was nothing about this that she found unreasonable, which made her wonder why Justin sounded defensive, as if he were expecting her to challenge his explanation.

“No problem,” she said. “Maybe we can do it the day after tomorrow.”

“Sure. Yeah. Sounds great.”

He sounded distracted, and she wondered if he was just tired. He had said he’d had to stay late at work tonight. Still, something seemed off, and she couldn’t put her finger on what it was. Then she remembered something. Hadn’t he seen his doctor earlier in the month? And hadn’t that appointment also been for a checkup? Why would he need another so soon? The answer, of course, was that he wouldn’t – which meant something else was going on. Was he cheating on her, maybe seeing someone else for coffee tomorrow? Or maybe he was spending the night at her place tonight, whoever she was, and he didn’t want to leave her any earlier than he had to tomorrow morning. No, that didn’t make sense. Justin had called her. If he was at someone else’s place, or if someone was at his, why would he call her? Neither of them were teenagers and while they texted or spoke most days, it wasn’t uncommon for a day to go by now and again without any contact between them. When that happened, she’d never worried about it, so there was no reason for him to think she’d get suspicious if he didn’t get in touch tonight. Unless he was feeling guilty about cheating and needed to set up an alibi in order to decrease his anxiety about being discovered.

She almost laughed then. After all the weird shit that had gone down at FoodSaver, she was being paranoid. Maybe she simply misremembered the last time Justin had gone to the doctor. Or maybe one of the appointments was with his physician and the other was with his dentist. Whichever was the case, she highly doubted Justin would cheat on her. He believed there was a right way and a wrong way of doing things, and that the right way – whatever it was – should be followed. Always. It was a trait that made him extremely good at medical testing, even if it did make him overly conventional and a bit boring sometimes. No, if he had wanted to see someone else, he would’ve broken up with her first. She was certain of that. He wasn’t like Larry, who could be balls deep inside someone he’d just met before it occurred to him that the person he was currently dating might be displeased by his actions.

Then again, things weren’t always the way they seemed, were they?

“I hate to do this,” Lori said, “but I should go. I’m exhausted. How about I call you after work tomorrow night? Maybe we could have dinner.”

“Sounds good.”

He still sounded distracted, as if he was only partially paying attention to their conversation. It occurred to her then that maybe he’d called because he’d wanted to talk about something important, only now that they were on the phone together he was having second thoughts.

“Is there something wrong?” she asked.

He immediately became defensive again. “What? No, why would you ask that?”

“You seem a little preoccupied tonight, that’s all. It’s not like you.” Another thought occurred to her then. “Are you still upset about our conversation last week?”

“Which conversation?” He sounded honestly puzzled.

“The one where you lectured me about continuing to allow Larry to stay here.”

She could’ve said the latest conversation about Larry, since his continued presence in her life was a sore spot with Justin – especially the fact that they technically still lived together. She’d assured him a dozen times over that she and Larry were just friends. Larry had taken it upon himself to talk to Justin as well, explaining that he had nothing to worry about. Not only were he and Lori better off as friends, he was currently in a ‘guy phase’. Each time Lori addressed the issue with Justin, he seemed reassured, but only for a while, and then his jealousy would build once more until he could no longer contain it. She really couldn’t blame him. If their positions were reversed, she was sure she’d be just as insecure as he was, if not more. But she couldn’t just kick Larry out to make Justin feel more comfortable. Could she?

“I can honestly say that Larry was the furthest thing from my mind tonight,” Justin said, his tone sharp. “But now that you’ve brought up the subject, what is your friend doing tonight? Or maybe I should ask who he’s doing.”

Lori was shocked. Justin was an even-tempered person for the most part, and even when he became angry – which he always did when Larry came up in conversation – he’d never gotten mean like this before, and she found herself reacting with her own anger.

“What do you want me to say? That’s he’s in bed with me right now, head buried between my legs, sucking on my clit while his fingers piston in and out of my vagina like he’s some kind of human vibrator?”

She was shocked as much by her own words as she’d been by Justin’s. She’d never spoken to him like this before, had never spoken to anyone like this before. What the hell had gotten into her?

“Sorry,” she immediately apologized. “Like I said, I’m tired. But if it makes you feel any better, Larry’s playing a gig tonight, and I don’t….”

She trailed off when she realized she was speaking to dead air. Justin had hung up on her. She started to call him back, then thought better of it. They could both use the rest of the night to cool off before they talked to each other again. Still, she didn’t want to leave things the way they were, so she sent Justin a quick text.

I didn’t mean to snap. I’ll be more pleasant after a good night’s sleep. She hesitated a moment, and then added, Love you. Not I love you. Love you was something you said to friends and relations. I love you was a commitment, one she wasn’t ready to make yet.

She sent the text, then turned off her phone’s ringer and placed it on her nightstand. If there were going to be any emergencies tonight, the world would just have to get along without her.

She turned off her nightstand lamp, rolled onto her left side – her preferred sleeping position – and closed her eyes. Given everything that had happened since she’d left work tonight, she expected she’d be too wound up to fall asleep immediately, and she was right. She tossed and turned for a while, but eventually sleep did find her. Later, she would wish it hadn’t.

* * *

“That’s it, Lori! Take it all the way to the goal!”

Lori barely registered Coach Anderson’s words. She was in the Zone, and being in the Zone felt damn good. It was like everyone else in the world had ceased to exist, like she was the only person left. It was just her and the sun and the breeze and the grass and the ball. And, of course, the goal. She knew there was a goalie protecting it – Aashrita Dhawan, her best friend in all the world – but she didn’t actually see her. Aashrita wasn’t invisible to her, not exactly. But then again, she kind of was. The rest of the girls on their team were on the field, wearing their blue jerseys and black shorts, but half also wore green vests so they could be identified as the opposing team for this afternoon’s practice. But all of them, Aashrita included, existed on the periphery of Lori’s awareness, present but not important. All that mattered was her, the ball, and the goal.

Lori was seventeen. She’d started playing recreational league soccer in grade school, and she’d kept at it, eventually winning a place on the high school girls’ team when she was a freshman. She loved the game, loved pushing her body to its limit and beyond, loved the excitement of competition, loved the emotional high of victory, and she loved supporting her teammates and being supported by them in turn. Losing wasn’t much fun, naturally, but even then she still loved the game. She’d seen a bumper sticker once on an old battered pickup: My worst day fishing was better than my best day doing anything else. Replace fishing with soccer, and that’s exactly how she felt about the sport. She hoped to continue playing in college, but when she’d shared this ambition with Coach Anderson, she’d said that if Lori really wanted to play at college level, she needed to be more aggressive on the field, take more chances, give her all on each and every play. You’re a good player, Coach Anderson had told her, but if you want to make it in college, you’ve got to be great. So heeding her coach’s advice, she’d stolen the ball from Ashley Boone – which, to be honest, hadn’t been all that difficult – and now she was charging toward the other team’s goal, and while this was only practice and her opponents were in truth her teammates, she intended to show them no mercy. Mercy is for the weak, her father had told her on numerous occasions, and Lori knew that if she wanted to be college soccer material, she had to avoid being weak in any way. No fear, no mercy, no pity, she thought.

Her blood sang in her ears as she ran, her body operating like a superbly maintained high-performance machine, arms and legs pumping, controlling the ball as she drove toward the goal, almost as if the ball was part of her. She’d read about people having tunnel vision, where they hyper-focused on something to the exclusion of all else, but she’d never experienced it before now.

When she had closed to within fifteen feet of the goal, she lined up her shot – high and to the left, toward the one area of the goal that Aashrita always had trouble covering. She was about to make her kick, would’ve done so in another second, two at the most, when suddenly an East Indian girl wearing a green vest appeared in her vision. It was as if Aashrita had materialized out of thin air. She was way outside of the goal and charging just as hard toward Lori as Lori was charging toward her. Lori had time for a single thought – This is going to hurt like a bitch – and then she and Aashrita collided.

When she thought back on this moment in the years to come – which wasn’t often – she had no memory of actually striking Aashrita. One instant she saw her friend only inches from her face, Aashrita’s expression one of fierce determination, and the next Lori was looking up at blue sky and clouds and wondering why her ears were ringing so bad. Then the pain hit her and she heard a scream split the air. It was a moment before she realized the scream had come from her mouth. She hurt all over, but the worst pain was centered in her right knee. It felt as if the bone had been replaced with molten fire, the sensation so intense, so far beyond any type of pain she’d ever experienced, that she wasn’t sure there was a word for it.

Her eyes were squeezed shut and tears streamed down her face to wet the grass on either side of her head. She didn’t see Coach Anderson, but she heard the woman blow her whistle – a signal for the other girls to take a knee – and then she heard pounding footfalls as the coach ran toward her.

“Lori! Are you okay? How badly are you hurt?”

She opened her eyes and tried to focus on Coach Anderson’s face, but her eyes were filled with tears, and she could only see a watery, distorted image of the woman. The light hurt her eyes, caused her head to start throbbing and the ringing in her ears to intensify, so she quickly closed them again.

“Check on Aashrita,” she said, hissing the words through her pain.

She feared her idiotic desire to be the baddest badass soccer player on the team had resulted in her friend being hurt, maybe seriously so. And if that was the case, she didn’t think she’d be able to live with the guilt.

To hell with soccer, she thought. Playing in college wasn’t worth it, not if it meant having to hurt anyone who stood in her way.

“A noble sentiment.”

Startled by the voice – a male’s, one she didn’t recognize – she opened her eyes.

The pain was gone. Her head no longer pounded, the ringing in her ears had ceased, and the fire in her knee had been extinguished. The relief was so great that it was almost as overwhelming as the agony it replaced, and she drew in a gasping breath. Her vision was clear once more, and she saw she sat alone in the back seat of a car – a big one, a Cadillac or limousine – and she was her current self again, thirty-four, and wore a long-sleeved robe made of sheer white fabric. She was naked underneath, and her breasts and nipples were quite visible. Suddenly uncomfortable, she crossed her arms over her chest. The seats were upholstered in fine black leather, luxuriously soft, but cold, and her gossamer-thin robe did little to insulate her body from it. The vehicle’s only other occupant was the driver. He – Lori assumed the driver was male based on the voice she’d heard – wore a hooded red robe. She couldn’t see the back of his head, but she could see his hands gripping the steering wheel. They were broad and thick fingered, the backs covered with hair so thick it almost looked like fur. The nail of the pinky finger on his left hand was painted red, the same shade as his robe.

Like the goat-eyed woman in FoodSaver, she thought.

The radio was on, but all that came out of it was static, the volume turned low so it was almost inaudible. There was a rhythm and cadence to the sound, almost as if it were words spoken in some alien language that she could barely perceive, let alone understand. She turned to look out the right passenger window and saw nothing but blackness. She might’ve thought the window had been painted over, but she had the impression there was depth to the darkness, that it stretched outward for miles, all the way to some unseen horizon. She leaned closer to the window and looked upward. There were no stars in the empty black sky, and it seemed the darkness continued on to infinity. It made her feel very small, and she tightened her arms around herself as she shivered.

She looked forward, and through the vehicle’s windshield, she saw headlight beams illuminating a glossy obsidian surface. We’re on a road, she thought, one without any identifying features. No billboards, no dividing line painted down the middle. Nothing.

“Where am I?” she asked. “What’s going on?”

The driver answered without turning to look at her.

“Where you are is the Nightway. What’s going on is that I’m taking you to the Vermilion Tower. My associates and I want to have a little chat with you.”

The man’s voice was devoid of emotion, almost robotic. She leaned forward to look at the rearview mirror, hoping to catch a glimpse of his features in its reflection. She expected him to have goat eyes, like FoodSaver woman. He had no eyes, though, only patches of smooth skin where eyes should be. As she watched, the patches pulsed, as if in time with his breathing. He smiled then, his teeth a gleaming unnatural white.

“I suggest you relax and enjoy the ride.”