Good Behavior

by Blake Crouch

“Sorry, I didn’t know she was with you.” “She’s not. Still deserves a drink before the icecaps melt, don’t you think?”

She shut her eyes. Heard her father’s voice—all cigarette growl and whiskey-tongued—which whispered to her on nights like these, lying in the beds of strange men and the darkness spinning, or in a lonely cell, cursing her back to sleep. Words that, deep in her heart, she knew were true.

“The people I work for . . . if they want someone dead, that person’s going to die. It’s their will that causes it to happen. Not mine. They pull the trigger. I’m just the bullet. The damage. And I’m not the only bullet.

She was facing down a shotgun, on the verge of an awful death, not because she was an evil person, but because she wasn’t evil enough.

Eyes are windows to the soul. Because Javier’s weren’t. They didn’t reveal anything—so clear and blue they seemed fake. Like a pair of rhinestones, with nothing human behind them.

“It begins to go so fast,” Fitch said. “What?” “Time. You cling to every second. Savor everything. Wish you’d lived all your days like this. Excuse me.”

She’d heard somewhere that every person reaches a certain age and, though they keep getting older, they never feel any older.

The noise of the jukebox was indistinct through the concrete walls, but a new refrain had taken up residence in her head. This is my life. This is my life. This is my beautiful life.

By midnight, she could hear the thunder and smell the threat of rain in the sky like a closed-up attic. She didn’t go inside. Not even when the rain started.

“It’s like you’re in this tunnel,” she said. “It’s dark, there’s no light at the end, and you think it goes on forever.” Christian looked up at her, tears returning. “But if you keep putting one foot in front of the other—”