She was ready to die, but that shouldn’t allow any speculation as to whether she thinks the hitchhiker was justified in what he did, or that she felt guilty for spurning him forever. The willingness to bow courteously before fate is not the same as self-condemnation.

The hitchhiker was reminding himself of why he had traveled the one hundred and sixty miles, straight from San Quentin, when the gun went off. He was so shaken that he had forgot to leave the note he had hastily written the night before. It wasn’t meant for her husband, whose name he never learned, and even less for the authorities, who should be taking up the case right about now. It was for her, and included everything he had wanted to say during those three years behind bars: mostly hate-filled jibes and admonition.

Now, standing, dripping wet, in the middle of some illicit club’s dressing room, it’s a shame to think he put in all that effort, and risked the rest of his life behind bars, just to have the local authorities think it was all the lethal outcome a domestic dispute. However, if that’s enough to earn his escape, then he’d be willing to accept that everything happened for a reason.

A gurgling noise of the dying brings the hitchhiker back to the room. He turns to the junkie, sprawled in his chair and stained with….well anyway, covered in stains.

“Hey buddy, you wanna hear som’in crazy?” The man sniffs and mumbles something incomprehensible, just as his eyelids close.

“Nah, forget it. It’d be over yer head en’way.”

The hitchhiker decides he’s had enough backstage horseplay and is ready to hit the road once again. He just has to find his guy, Smokes –“remember, be cool bout th’whole Smokes thing to his face”- and get out of there.

The hitchhiker follows the long hall that had originally led him to the dressing room. He takes it back out into the main room, just to the left of the stage. The club is more crowded than he remembers it being -what?- forty-five minutes ago. Before, most of the black heads were content to gather around the perimeter, either throwing off a hostile stare or cracking up completely over something said, or nothing at all. Now, the ring of unfriendly eyes has become a monsoon of heads, seemingly without faces.