"When are you gonna tell him?" the woman sitting across from him asks, and Ray lights another cigarette, the air still thick with the stench from his last.
"I'm not," he mutters. "You know I'm not. I can't."
"Bullshit. What was it you said, huh? That we was on a bus? You ain't constricted or nothing."
"Annette," he begins, then sighs and shakes his head. "The Seal of Confession isn't what's stopping me, no. But I told you, what you wanted from Enrique was wrong. I'm not going to perpetuate the cycle of violence."
"Yeah, that's easy for you to say. You sittin' there, and me sittin' here," accompanying her words with a gesture at both of them, red-clawed hand holding a scentless cigarette that never goes out.
"I'm sorry about what happened to you." God knows he is - how many nights since the accident he'd woken up in a cold sweat, screams ringing in his ears, the smell of smoke and hot metal and burning rubber filling his bedroom, the faces of the deceased flashing across his eyes.
All in his memory, except hers - left side bloody and mangled, a jagged gash across her cheek matching the one she had on her arm, the one she hadn't covered up again after their conversation. His eyes fall on it now, unable to meet her reproachful gaze.
"But I can't have any more on my conscience."
"So what, that cocksucker gets away with it because you would feel bad?" Her voice raises an octave, becomes shrill with pain. "I'm fuckin' dead, and he gets to live?"
Ray swallows hard. Why couldn't it have been anyone else, he wonders, not for the first time. Sweet Carrie Schillinger, or Eugenia Hill - even Sonsryea Arif, her eyes full of righteous fire - any of them would have been preferable as a constant companion.
But it was Annette Osorio who haunted him, his guilt manifest as a woman dressed in red, who made him feel as useless in death as she had in life.
"I'm sorry," he repeats. Useless.
"Whatever." She sucks hard on the filter, the cherry unresponsive. "You know what, Father," she purses her lips and shrugs exaggeratedly, "you do what you want. You wanna hang out some more, it don't matter to me."
Annette gestures again - at them, at the room, at nothing in particular.
"I got all the time in the world."