Warn me just as she is warning me now. She is the reason we can’t find the Covington house. She isn’t hiding it from us but rather hiding us from him. From the man in the woods, I thought to myself as I continued to stare into the female officer’s shimmering eyes, knowing full and well that they weren’t really my thoughts.
And then, just like that, the gleaming eyes I had been gazing into no longer belonged to a cop in a car. The only thing in sight of the rearview now was the silhouette of what appeared to be a wolf roughly the size of a lion. This wolf stared at me for a moment longer before finally turning away to trot off into the forest bordering the highway.
We were crossing the Causeway, headed back towards New Orleans, when I shook Jude awake. He straightened up, looking lost as he peered out into the inky darkness we were currently driving through. There was a vast lake out there but on moonless nights like this one, the pitch black water was often indistinguishable from the pitch black night sky.
“What’s up?” he muttered as Jude continued to study the horizonless void that surrounded us on all sides.
“This,” I said, tapping the screen on the phone in my lap. The cab of Jude’s truck was suddenly enveloped by the infectious opening drumbeat from “In the Air Tonight”, with its gated reverb and pristine 80s synth aesthetic. If cocaine made a sound, this would be it.