“A Toyota,” he said finally.
She capped the sunblock.
“’76 Celica,” Jack explained. “The Mustang of the seventies.”
She stood up and looked at him like she was waiting for something important.
“Really,” Jack said.
“You’re being honest with me?”
“Yeah. Of course. Why would I lie?”
“Now
“Hey, I’m
“Uh-huh.” She tossed him the sunblock. “You’d better use some of this. You’re getting a little red.”
Now Jack
“Look,” she said. “You expect me to believe that you’re the kind of guy who likes Kentucky Fried Chicken and cheap dates with sunsets and Japanese economy cars. The kind of guy who doesn’t even own a CD player. The kind of guy who’s never saved a dollar but doesn’t much think about it because he’s not the kind of guy who’s ever going to need more than the change in his pocket. The kind of guy who’s really just a big kid who likes to read about space aliens and watch movies where lots of things blow up, but the kind of guy who’s just a little bit insecure about being a big kid, gets his back up when someone asks him if he might have his old fourth grade lunch box kicking around because he sure doesn’t want anyone to figure out that he wouldn’t bust the covers of
“Jesus. The doctor is in.”
“You mean I’m wrong?”
“No, I’m not saying that. All I’m saying is-”
“No. You’ve said enough for now. Unless you want to answer one final question, champ.”
“What’s that?”
She made him wait for it, sliding off the sunglasses, giving him his first look at a pair of eyes that were cat- green, cat-curious. And then those lips of hers twisted into kind of a halfway grin and she said, “Riddle me this. Batman-if you’re telling the truth, if you’re such a
Jack’s mouth came open but nothing came out.
‘Take your time, champ.” She winked at him. “When you come up with an answer for that one, maybe we’ll talk some more.”
She tossed her sunglasses his way.
He caught them.
Then she turned and jackknifed into the pool.
Jack stared at the water in disbelief.
The splash she’d made wouldn’t have filled a shot glass.
EIGHT
Heat waves curled off the highway’s back and broke against the Saturn’s windshield in a rushing hiss. If you watched them long enough you’d swear that the horizon was doing the mambo. If you stared at the white line splitting the road you’d swear that it was an albino snake slithering over blistering blacktop. And if you ignored both those options and glanced at the desert you’d swear that you were in the same spot you’d passed twenty minutes before.
Woodrow Saad Muhammad did all of these things, and doing them-one after another in quick succession- made him exceedingly uneasy.
Ensconced within a car, air-conditioner running efficiently, Sonny Rollins on the tape deck, he felt separated from all that surrounded him. Completely alien.
By extension, he did not feel that he could stop the car and step outside. Not without a spacesuit. For all around him was another world. That was the only sane explanation for his feelings of unease.
And in that world there was nothing at all. Only the desert. Earth the color of mummified flesh. Brittle plants crippled by environment. Razor-wire tumbleweeds. Curling heat waves and a cloudless sky so blue and deep Woodrow felt as if he could drown in it.
It all seemed so unreal.
Woodrow hadn’t seen another car for at least fifteen minutes. He examined his left hand and was pleased to find that the bandage he had taken from the first aid kit in the trunk was holding firm. Though his hand still ached in spite of the aspirin he’d swallowed, the dog bite was no longer bleeding.
He had cleaned the wound thoroughly with astringent, of course. Still, it occurred to him that the dog bite might become infected. He did not wish to consider such matters as rabies. His knowledge of canine diseases was extremely limited, and he did not care to expand it through personal experience. Woodrow sincerely hoped that Jack Baddalach took his animal to the vet on a regular basis.
Perhaps he would ask Baddalach about that before he killed him.
While considering how best to pursue that particular line of questioning, Woodrow fiddled with the tape deck control knobs.
Sonny Rollins’s sax stabbed a sharp riff through Woodrow’s eardrum. It was a singularly unpleasant sensation. Quickly, Woodrow turned off the tape deck and turned up the air- conditioning.
A moment later, he found himself shivering.
His hand ached persistently.
He pressed the gas pedal to the floor.
The Saturn roared forward.
The horizon did the mambo.
Something in it, up ahead, danced to the tune.
A building.
A gas station.
***
The pump jockey looked like a poster boy for the Aryan Brotherhood, but Woodrow didn’t pay him any mind. He parked his automobile at the pump, whispered “fill ’er up” to the cracker through lips that betrayed not the slightest tremor of hatred or disdain, and went in search of a restroom.
He wandered past a Coca-Cola machine and continued around the side of the gas station, where he confronted two doors.
Both doors were metal. Long ago they had been white. Now they were pockmarked with rust spots the size of quarters. Woodrow wondered how anything could rust in an environment of such unremitting dryness, but he didn’t wonder for long because he could spare no time for idle speculation.
His need was unquestionably urgent.
He tried the door to the MEN’S. It was locked.
Tried the WOMEN’s. Locked as well.
Woodrow returned to the front of the gas station. Mr. Aryan Brotherhood was sitting in a lawn chair crisscrossed with orange and turquoise straps. He didn’t look up as Woodrow approached. Instead, he stared at the highway.
No cars in sight, but he stared just the same.
Woodrow said, “I need the key to the restroom.”
The man did not utter a word. Neither did he look in Woodrow’s direction.
“The restroom key,” Woodrow said, slowly this time, with just enough edge in his voice to provide an unmistakable emphasis. “The doors are locked. I need the key.”
