“And you aren’t the talent, anyway,” she said. “Well, at least not in that way.” She gave him a mischievous look. “I thought you were the boss.”
“Do you usually find yourself waking before the crack of dawn in your boss’s bed?”
She flung her hair behind her, showering him with a mist of tiny droplets. “Well, not typically. Only about every third boss or so.” She smiled as she stepped back into the bedroom.
He pulled a fresh white shirt from its plastic sleeve in the closet and pulled the triple-extra-large over his head, buttoning the sleeves but leaving the collar loose. He wrapped his wrist in a gold Rolex, a conflicted concession to his status.
For Silas, anything that cost more than an average man earns in six months didn’t just smack of pretension, it rang of it. It veritably gonged. But the watch rivaled the engineering tolerances of biological systems; it ran perfectly and would continue to do so, without a battery, long after time ceased to be a matter of his concern. He
“Nice watch,” she said.
He cringed.
“What are you going to do in the years the contest isn’t held in the continental United States?” she asked. She had the dress around the curve of her hips now, pulling it up.
His confusion showed.
“You can’t very well truck the contestant to Europe,” she said. “You’ll have to fly then.”
“Oh, the event is always held in the U.S.”
“Really,” she said, as if she’d never thought about it before. “I suppose they have been. How did you get the other countries to agree to that?”
“Last time’s winner gets home-court advantage. It was how the rules were written up at the beginning, and since we’ve never lost, we’re home court.”
“I bet the other countries are sorry they signed up for that.”
“I’m very certain they are. It pumps a lot of money into the local economy, not to mention American bioengineering companies.”
When they finished dressing, they carried the luggage to the car. Two small suitcases apiece.
“I think you’re the only woman I’ve ever met who knows how to pack light,” he said, as he wedged the final bag under the hatch.
“Look at this thing,” she said, gesturing to the dark blue vehicle. “I didn’t want to spend three hundred miles with luggage banging against my kidneys. There’s only so much room in this car, and I decided I’d use my share for breathing, not extra underwear.”
“So you’re leaving your underwear behind, eh? Talk like that might get you a promotion.”
“Works every time.”
Four minutes later, they were merging onto empty highway and the sun was bleeding up from the east, coloring the traffic in reds and shadows. The road felt good beneath him, as it always seemed to at the start of a road trip. But they had to make one quick stop before they were free.
When they arrived at the compound, Silas saw James Mitchell standing in the back lot, trying to assemble the convoy. Silas pulled slowly alongside the man. In Silas’s opinion, “inconspicuous” was hardly the word that jumped to mind when he looked toward the line of trucks and vans.
“Having problems?”
“No more than usual,” James answered, appearing not at all surprised to see them. “Most of these egghead types wouldn’t have lasted two days in the service. Nobody around here seems to know how to keep a schedule.”
“That’s what you’re for, James.”
Silas looked around at the chaos. The big white rig sat idling at the front of the loose collection of vehicles. It was pathetic.
“You seem to be taking this rather well,” Silas said. He would have expected James to be throwing a fit by now with the way things were shaping up.
“I was counting on it.”
Silas raised an eyebrow.
“Oh, our special traveler is already well down the road. Left last night, in fact. This big cluster-fuck is a decoy.” James gave him a wink. “Just in case.”
“Do they know that?”
“Of course not.”
“Well, your secret is safe with me, but you won’t mind if I don’t stick around here to watch the proceedings.”
James smiled and waved him on, but as Silas began to pull forward, James seemed to change his mind and motioned for them to stop. Jogging up to the car, he tossed a video cube into Silas’s lap.
“Just so we can get ahold of you,” he said.
Silas picked up the small, square video communication device. “Do you think you’ll need to?”
“You’d better hope not.”
THE OPEN road called. Silas answered with a stomp of his right foot that sat Vidonia back in her seat. He knew it was juvenile, but he couldn’t stop himself. Anyway, he didn’t actually break the speed limit; he just liked seeing how quickly he could get there. He let up on the gas pedal when Vidonia’s grip on his knee became painful. He found that her grip eased in direct proportion to the angle of his tachometer needle.
“Boys and their cars,” she said, shaking her head.
He rolled the window all the way down and laid his arm along the spine of the door. It was one hell of a morning. The sun rose high and hot into cloudless sky, and by noon they’d traded the cloying humidity of California for the dry heat of the high desert. Silas turned the air-conditioning off. The wind was enough, and besides, Silas liked the way it made Vidonia’s hair dance like a living thing, like she was some ironic, beautiful Medusa.
“This heat reminds me of home,” she said. “Except without palm trees.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“Both. But home had beaches going for it.”
“Now I’m picturing you in a bathing suit.”
“You’re assuming I wear one.”
“Now, there’s a new image in my head.”
“That was my intent.”
“I could get used to this.”
“To what?”
“To you. Being here.”
“You haven’t even eaten my cooking yet.”
“You cook, too?”
“Seafood is my specialty.”
“So you’re that rare woman I’ve heard legend of. A woman who can both perform a Southern blot analysis and grill up a grouper?”
“Oh, you have no idea,” she said.
“How did I get so lucky?”
She was quiet for a long while, and Silas suspected that when she spoke, it would be something significant. Ten more minutes passed in silence, and he knew it would be something bad.
Finally, in a soft voice that almost drowned in the wind, she said, “There’s someone back home. His name is John.”
“That’s odd,” he said, keeping his voice even. “That’s just what I’d figured his name would be. Or something like it. Jim, maybe, or Jake. Some old name, something common. I’m usually wrong on hunches, though. Funny, this is a time I’d be right.” He’d known since the beach, when he’d asked her if she was married. The answer had been no, but he’d sensed there was something more she’d almost said.
She looked out into the desert. He almost spoke but stopped himself with the question on the tip of his
