Tonight she almost broke her promise because he’d left her and died, and now her mom had died and she was alone, and if that wasn’t his fault, well, she didn’t exactly know who else to blame. So she wasn’t going to say it.
But there the star was, as bright and yellow as it had ever been, and the man stared and she couldn’t see Jed and she wished she was dead…but she whispered the words:
“Star bright, you and me always.”
A few minutes later they stopped the truck so everyone could pee and the man with the beard, the one who stared, jumped to the ground and took them to the side of the road one at a time while the knife man watched everyone else, and when it was Jed’s turn, all three brothers jumped up and attacked the guard who’d killed her mother and broke his neck before the old man and the woman shot them. The Rebuilders wrapped the body of the dead guard in a tarp and lashed it to the top of the cab. They left Jed and his brothers lying facedown on the ground. And the rest of the way Jed’s mother screamed and Sammi was silent and knew she’d never keep any promise again.
10
DOR SCALED THE FENCE ONE LAST TIME, HIS movements quick and practiced, the calluses on his hands almost numb to the wire cutting his flesh. It was important that no one see him go. People would read things into his departure, and that could lead to trouble-looting and fighting, the kinds of things that happened when too many people shared too small a space with no one in charge. If all went well, there would be a general announcement, tomorrow, when Faye and Three-High and Joe and Sam and the rest could control the message, when they could reassure everyone that nothing was wrong, that Dor would soon be back.
He dropped to the ground and melted into the darkness quickly and quietly, and if anyone had been nearby watching they would have had a hard time guessing who had slipped past them in the moonlight.
The meeting had gone well enough. Lying to his team had become both easier and harder as the weeks had turned into months and this thing he started in the spring had grown into the community it was now, in the middle of November, two seasons and thousands of trades later.
The way Dor figured, every trade changed the Box in some small and fundamental way, shifting people’s personal equations of need and loss and rebalancing the entire community’s measures of hope and satiety. He believed that he was doing good, perhaps the most good it was possible to do in these times. But he had also never felt more alone. The more he was respected, the more he was admired, the further away-the more incomprehensible-other people seemed. And being in their midst didn’t help. Paradoxically, the only thing that helped was utter solitude.
He had never shared these thoughts. No, they had formed and refined in private, up in the quiet of the apartment building, as he watched the sun set over the Sierras, the one view that-in the moments when the blazing red light at the horizon obscured the silhouette of the naked dead trees-still looked like Before. He loved to let the burning last rays of daylight blind him, loved the warmth on his face, and most of all he loved forgetting-even for a moment-that he was responsible for so much. He had never meant to let people rely on him, to look up to him the way they had.
At first it was the old instinct that drove him, to buy cheap and sell dear, to work the deal-and yes, perhaps, on occasion the sleight of hand, the scam-to chase the excitement of being the fastest, shrewdest, richest. Before, his clients were never the point-the deal itself was all he cared about. In the columns of numbers were wide-open spaces, races to be run, scrimmages to be played out. His investments quivered and bobbed like skittish ponies, and so what if it was all artificial, he loved the game. Dor played his clients’ money like a conductor coaxing a tremulous crescendo from a woodwind section, relying on instinct as much as skill, chasing the high that came from nailing the trade, so much sweeter when he’d gambled big.
But the currency of the Box had somehow gotten away from him, so that in between the small comforts and cheap highs he dealt favors and forgiveness and loans and compassion. All of it anonymously, with only his most trusted employees acting as his agents, and it came at a cost: Dor had to be ever vigilant, aware of everything going on in every corner. He couldn’t afford to slip; he had to stay strong and resolute to lead and shape the Box because, aside from him, there was no steadying standard for society. There was no system, as there had been Before, to self-regulate.
Dor had a final errand to run, but it wasn’t to the apartment. He’d said goodbye to that place earlier, and if his thoughts had been truncated by Cass’s unexpected arrival, that was all right. An unaccustomed lapse in vigilance, the cause of which did not bear considering-worry for Sammi, no doubt, when he could afford no worry.
When he returned-
Was he to blame? Jessica would have had him think so; but she blamed him for everything. Never mind that she kept the beautiful home in the mountains, the cars and clothes and club memberships. It wasn’t enough. The dissatisfied look he’d seen on her face since before Sammi was born-it was there, etched deeper than ever. He hadn’t made her happy. If he was honest, it had been years since he’d even tried.
Ever since the divorce, Dor was the absent parent, the weekend visitor, the bringer of gifts and the merchant of affections, bargaining for his daughter’s attentions. He wasn’t the first man to make that bitter trade, and he accepted it as his due, for leaving them. He’d tried to appease Jessica by padding her support checks, paying the lawn service ahead, covering her insurance for the year. He’d learned to manage his ex-wife and daughter as well as could be expected, and now that Jessica was gone he would learn to manage Sammi again, once they were safe. Maybe the Box wouldn’t be such a bad place for them to get their footing…for a few days she would be a novelty, but his staff were loyal, and they would pick up on his cues and accept her and…hell, maybe she and Cass would form a friendship, maybe Sammi could help her in the garden. Maybe Cass could tutor her, if they could round up some textbooks. It wouldn’t have to be Cass, of course; Coral Anne had taught third grade, or James-he’d coached girls’ softball in high school. Well. Those were details. And Dor knew better than to start focusing on details when the job at hand was still the big picture.
Big picture: things in Colima would go one of three ways. Easily, in which case they would soon be back here. Disastrously, in which case he would die, and presumably others as well, since failure was only an option after exhausting every other one. Or-and this was, of course, the most likely possibility-with difficulty and complications, starting over somewhere new if they got to start over at all. Each deviation from the plan, each small misstep or change of direction, would spiral outward in increasing magnitude, exacting changes he could not predict. A minor glitch could change the course of the entire operation, and this was what seized at Dor’s calm, what impelled him out into the night when he should be resting up for tomorrow.
He walked quickly along the dark street, arcing his flashlight beam expertly, his strides long and sure. He had no particular destination in mind; he purposefully emptied his mind of as much as he could and waited to be drawn by some small signal. Dor did not believe in the supernatural, in psychic energy or parapsychology or anything like that, but he acknowledged that there was a level at which events eluded the senses that he, a human, possessed. On top of that, he believed that God, the One who seemed to have turned away from this ravaged planet, kept an inattentive eye on His creation; He might return at any time.
Dor stayed on the sidewalks, passing landmarks he knew well. The moon was high and round and supplemented the light from his flashlight. There was the Laundromat with its hulking black shapes of washers and dryers silent and still through the broken windows. The Law Offices of Burris and Zieve, the sign curiously intact, gold letters inked on glass. The alley that led to a tiny restaurant where he had once taken a date, the finest restaurant in Silva, Spanish cuisine served on mismatched Limoges by pretty Portuguese sisters…they’d lit candles in iron holders in the alley and decorated it with pots of geraniums and ivy. His date had ordered flan; she’d also given wicked head. Dor didn’t remember anything else about her. Now the alley was choked with dead leaves and roof shingles, shell casings and a crushed bicycle.
Dor looked away.
