For the first time in her adult life, Clarice Starling does not have a plan.  No goal, no mission to guide her.  For weeks without a job, she lurks around her duplex like a prowler.  The naked white walls reflect every thought a thousand times until the echoes dissolve into a mocking cacophony.  She can do only so many loads of laundry before the chaos in her head becomes maddening.  When she finds herself stuffing clean clothes into the washer, she knows it is time to leave.  Time to get out, time to get anywhere, she thinks to herself.  She has ceased to fight the voice that rolls through her mind like a fog. 

            Getting into the Mustang provides no relief.  She places her hands on the steering wheel and grips it until her knuckles turn white.  She dares not look over to the passenger seat for she knows she will see the rusty stains of memory.  The roar of the engine as she turns the key surprises her.  She has forgotten how to scream.

            Driving, she is able to lose herself for a while.  Her hands remember the feel of the gearshift; her feet recall the vibration of the pedals.  She does not care where she is going, only that she is getting there.  Miles fly by like black-winged crows as she stares into the void beyond her windshield.

            She is unsurprised to find herself at the Chesapeake shore.  The water is gunmetal gray in the cloudy predawn, and the salt tang of the sea reminds her of the tears she has been unable to shed.  As she watches the rising of the sun, she realizes that she was holding her breath, not certain that it would come.  She is unsure of most things now.  Sometimes, even gravity seems to fail.

            The foul, sticky taste of regret washes through her mouth like a hangover. She knew now what she had wanted, what she had not had the balls to admit, what she could not go on without.  And if she could not let herself in on her dark secret, how was she supposed to have told him?  He had always known, always.  Don’t lie, or I’ll know, she thought bitterly.  Not this time, Doctor.

And did he really think she would ever ask him to stop?  Ever ask him for anything?  She had asked him for something small, once.  Only a little information, costing nothing, meaning everything.  He had turned it into a deadly game where Catherine Martin’s life had been tossed like a chip onto a green felt table.  How dare he believe she would let him do that again?  How dare he think he could play her like cards?

            “Not in a thousand years,” she rasps, her voice as harsh from disuse as the one she had heard so long ago.  The stakes had been high, she had gambled and lost.  No matter that he had stacked the cards, putting her in a situation where the war of duty and desire was inescapable.  She could still hear the click of her ace in the hole locking around his wrist.  She could not believe that his eyes had failed to penetrate the misty wisps with which she had covered her dignity, the poker face she wore.  Had he wanted her to beg to go with him?  Was linking her life to his not enough?  She should have known that only stark honesty would suffice.  He could allude, foreshadow, misdirect.  She could not.  Those were the rules, and she had broken them.  In return, he had severed them completely.  She saw the glint of the butcher knife crashing down, heard the scream ringing in her ears, felt the shock of seeing the blade embedded in the countertop, and the cold, hard gleam in his eyes as he picked the lock on her wrist.  He had not spoken again, merely turned and left her there, her hair still clasped in the refrigerator door.

            But she could not be the first to say ‘I love you.’  Love, for Clarice Starling, was not a game she could play and win.

            The drive home is interminable, the traffic impenetrable.  By the time she wearily pulls into her driveway, it is midafternoon.  She mechanically picks up the newspaper and her mail and walks inside.  The answering machine blinks incessantly, full of messages from former colleagues, reminders of a world she longs to forget.  She tosses her bundle on the coffee table and goes to the kitchen.  From the cabinet above the fridge she takes a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels.  Pouring two fingers into a glass, she wanders back into the living room, dropping her fatigued body onto the couch.  It has been more than forty-eight hours since she has last slept.

            Reflex causes her to pick up the mail.  Credit card offers, extra-value coupons, pleas for money, she discards them all into a heap beside the sofa.  There is no anonymous package, no mauve envelope, no scent of skin cream and no copperplate communion.  Desperate for some surcease from the sibilant whispers of loneliness that creep through her consciousness like snakes in grass, she reaches for the newspaper and resolves to read every single word until she is asleep or dead.  She struggles through stories of corruption and greed, tales of hope and despair.  She reads advertisements for salons and get-rich-quick schemes, windows and weight-loss, furniture and fashion.  At last she comes to the personals.  As always, her breath catches in her chest, her spine freezes, and her mouth goes dry.  She scans the “H” section quickly, and the knot in her stomach dissolves into acid when she sees there is nothing addressed to ‘Hannah.’  God damn me for a crazy fool, she thinks.  He is in Europe, by now, or South America.  If I cross his mind at all, it will be only as the vaguely dissatisfying ending to a shabby chapter in his life.

            Starling has never been a serious drinker, but she is finding the idea more attractive with every mouthful.  She takes the bottle now, not bothering with the glass, and gulps the amber liquid in great draughts.  The shadows grow longer on the floor until the table lamp beside the couch creates the only remaining illumination.  Cast adrift on a raft of light in a sea of darkness, she sits Indian-style on the sofa, the empty bottle resting in the hollow of her lap.  She nods occasionally, floating in and out of sleep in a kind of Brownian motion.  All her inhibitions have vanished into the oubliette the alcohol has kindly created in her mind.  She feels a heat between her legs as his voice rings in the vaults of her brain.  “A well-scrubbed hustling rube with a little taste.”  Oh, how she had tried to prove him wrong.  What a fool she was for thinking that she could ever be more than that.  In the Bureau.  Or to him. His words keep flowing like a broken water main.  She hears them all, everything he has ever said to her, everything she listened to on Barney's tapes.  They are etched like an engraving on her heart.

            Suddenly, she laughs, a sound eerily like the cackling of a crow.  She has found one answer, anyway, and it is the only one she will ever need.  She stands up suddenly, the bottle toppling to the floor.  Her vision darkens for a moment as her dilated blood vessels adjust to the new demands she is placing upon them.  Sliding through the dark, she makes her way into her bedroom and reaches up to the top shelf of her closet.  There is one firearm left in her arsenal, a little Saturday night special with a mother of pearl grip.  Ardelia had given it to her while they were still in school as the punch line to a joke she can barely remember.  No matter, though the weapon is hardly appropriate for the job at hand, it will do.  “Fuck taste,” she mutters, slurring the words a little.  Apparently I’m not even good enough to eat.

            She checks the tiny gun… loaded and ready.  She walks slowly back to the living room and resumes her position on the couch.  Her hand shakes only a little as she polishes the gleaming nacre.  She speaks the answer she has found as an affirmation of her intent.  “My father was indeed a deep roller, Dr. Lecter,” she speaks into the darkness.  “Now I know my mother was, too.”

            She thinks of all the cases she has studied, the methods she has seen.  The idea of putting the gun into her mouth repulses her, so she settles for pressing the cold barrel against her right temple.  Hopefully this will be one endeavor in her life she will manage to not screw up.

            As she takes a deep breath to steady her arm, her last thought is of the Doctor.  She wonders if he will feel anything when he reads of this in the papers.