Patsy Klein I’m back in the truck, buttoning on my Postal Service shirt for the last time. Matty knows something is up, and she runs back and forth from the truck to Wyatt’s front door. If I could put this nasty shirt on without touching it, I would. I hated it from the first second I felt the cheap, sharp collar against my neck and the scratchy eagle patch against my chest. Now the stiffness is gone, but the essential horror of the thing is exponentially worse. I shove on the mail cap and twirl the camera button between my fingers, wishing I had looked more closely at the one I found spread out in pieces in Alistair Meade’s trailer. What exactly can Valor see and hear on the other end of this connection? How well can it see at night? For now I leave it unbuttoned and flopped over against my chest. These final minutes are private. I grab my signature machine and the last card, the one for Maxwell Beard. Every movement is familiar, rote, just like putting on shoes and socks and tying the laces in a bow.
