I have to go back, now, to the corridor — because the worst and truest thing that happened to me that day happened there, in the minutes before the car, and I skipped it only because it was the part I could least bear to say.

The hallway behind the main stage was a tunnel of polished marble and hard fluorescent light, the roar of the crowd reduced to the sound of distant waves.

I walked it like a man going to the gallows, my expensive shoes as heavy as cinder blocks, with no plan and no idea what words could bridge a chasm thirteen years wide.

But a primal hunger drove me — the need to simply stand near the blood I had discarded.