“Wouldn’t say no to a cup of coffee.”
The hell with that. He’d eat a proper breakfast. Eggs, and ham, and biscuits, and fried potatoes. But rooting around in the kitchen, she realized it’d have to be just eggs and biscuits. Funds were low, and Ocotillo Grocery, eleven miles down the road, had shut down last month.
She poured flour and water in a bowl and got down to mixing. When she thought about what Judd had told her, about the Garden raffle, her spoon got a little violent.
Giving away a piece of the Cross. She supposed that was sacrilegious. Even worse, it was unfair that some folks had so much while others had so little. It would be like her giving Bobsey away as a door prize because she had a whole crate of six-headed snakes in the attic.
It wasn’t right. The Holy City’s temples grew fat and fatter while the smaller stations along the traditional pilgrimage route faded away. The least they could do was send some of their spare relics their way.
The mixing spoon flew out of her hand and clanked against the sink.
Daddy called, “You okay in there?”
“Fine,” Em said. “I’m fine.”
Just struck by a bit of inspiration, was all. Though possibly not divine inspiration.
She came into the Holy City from the desert, sunburned, dehydrated, and nauseated. She’d walked the last mile, the van—full of pilgrims she’d hitched a ride with—having suffered a burst water pump, and Em had been too impatient to wait with them for repair. In retrospect, walking had been a mistake.
She’d been on the Strip for an hour, stumbling along on the verge of delirium. At least she assumed it was delirium, for what else could explain the obscenely lit spectacle around her? The lesser temples stretched into the distance ahead and behind her, flashing and dancing with neon lights so bright they turned the night sky a dusty orange. She staggered past the neon palm trees and Crosses and fish and halos that fronted the temples of worship and gambling. Her head pounded from the bright lights and from thirst, but as something of a professional in the business of drawing pilgrims, she could only admire the audacity of the Strip.
Her admiration was tinged with envy, for there were more pilgrims in her field of vision than would visit Oasis Town in a year, even before Via-40: parades of flagellants, retirees with white legs and sunburned faces, cripples looking for miracles, pilgrims looking for buffets.
The thirst, the noise, the midnight heat—Em realized with alarm that she was going to faint. And what then? She’d be trampled to death by pilgrims and freaks, right here on the sidewalk. She wished she’d left Daddy and Judd a note before she’d left or had managed to send them a postcard from the road. At least then they might take some comfort knowing she’d died in the Holy City. Though Daddy didn’t really go in for that sort of thing.
The world went gray.
There were steel bars digging into her back, and her flesh was burning on a griddle, just like Saladin during the Sixty-fourth English Crusade to take back the Holy Land. Em remembered learning those stories in Sunday school, and she wished she were back in Oasis Town now, with her crayons, coloring Saladin’s skin Indian Red.
Cold water splashed on her lips. She sputtered and opened her eyes to find herself staring up at a crinkly brown face.
“Now try drinking some,” the man said, putting a bottle of water in her hand. The glass felt deliciously cold, and the water felt even better when she took a good, long swallow.
She wasn’t being tortured like Saladin. The bars at her back were the railings of the gate she was leaning against, in front of one of the temples. The griddle was just the sidewalk, hot on her skin, even through her clothes.
She tried to stand, but the man put his hand on her shoulder and gently pushed down. “Don’t get up too fast. You got overheated. Desert heat’s nothing to take lightly. The Krauts found that out the hard way, didn’t they?” He winked and smiled beatifically.
With a wine-red felt tarboosh on his head and a billowing white shirt tucked into baggy sherwals, he looked like a Prohibition-era gangster. “Mark Yiska, from Queen of the City of Angels,” he said, holding out a huge, leathery paw.
His hand looked as though it could crush walnuts, but he’d probably saved her life. She gave it a weary shake. “I’m Em …from Oasis Town.”
She tried to get up again, and this time Mark helped her to her feet, not letting go of her hand until she assured him she wouldn’t fall.
“Bless you for your water and kindness,” she said, blinking through a wave of dizziness. “I should be going.”
Mark shook his head in disapproval. “Miss, you don’t look well. Let’s find you some shade to rest in. There are some nice palms outside Solomon’s Palace—”
“No, no, thank you, but I have to get to the Garden Tomb.”
“The Garden will still be there after you rest. What’s your rush?”
“I’m entering the raffle,” she said, her hand going to her money belt, but instead finding only empty belt loops. Thieves, when she’d passed out. Right here, in front of everybody, on a path full of pilgrims to the Holy City. She would not curse them, not here on the street. She would not cry.
Mark gave her a sad, knowing look. “You’re not the first to get robbed in front of the temples, and you won’t be the last,” he said with a sigh. “Besides, you know the odds on that raffle? You’d be better off playing dice.”
“Damn them,” Em spat. “Damn them, and may Albion take their souls.” And now that she’d gone and cursed them, maybe she could also go back on her intention not to cry. Her eyes filled with precious water. Without money, she didn’t know where she’d sleep, or how she’d eat and drink, and worst of all, she wouldn’t be able to enter the raffle, and the reptile farm would be buried and forgotten in the desert sands.
Not that she actually thought she would have walked away from the city with a piece of the True Cross in her pocket. Mark was right about the odds. But if she could have at least gotten close to it. Close enough maybe to be able to whittle a credible fake …
“Now, don’t you despair, miss. Things may not be all as grim as they seem. If you’re willing to do a little work for me, I can help you earn some of your money back.”
Em braced herself. She’d never been under any illusions that the Holy City was a place of virtue and clean souls. The city of Christ was home to the great, most sacred sites, where Jesus preached and died, but it was also home to the lost and the depraved, and not all favors were acts of kindness. This was where Mark would suggest she sleep with him, or sleep with his friends or business associates, or at least pose for naughty pictures.
He looked at her, deep into her, and what he said was, “Can you drive a truck?”
Even in a city of ostentatious temples, Solomon’s Temple impressed. Its high walls blazed with eye-gouging pure white light under blue domes and fiery gold minarets, an island palace in a broad lake of blood. Fountains shot jets of water, dyed and lit red, with arcs and spirals and cascades, as if the giant corpse of Jesus were bleeding under the surface and entertaining the crowds with spurting wounds, all synchronized to blaring Virginian opera. From the center of the temple complex a red neon Cross rose thirty-three stories high, shining a bright crimson beam into the heavens. The temple stated in inarguable terms that the Knights of the Templar were the wealthiest and most powerful men on the continent, and they’d built God’s own roadside attraction to prove it.
Em’s job was simple enough. Mark had some business inside the temple, and all Em needed to do was stay with his rotten-apple Chevy pickup, parked on the ramp to an underground parking lot, with the engine running.
“I could be five minutes, I could be thirty,” Mark said, getting out of the truck. “If I take longer than that …Well, just stay with the truck. Don’t turn the engine off, because we may not be able to get it started again.”
He looked at her very seriously. “Will you be here when I get back, Em?”
He didn’t ask her to swear on her immortal soul. At least not in words.
“I’ll be here,” Em said.
A man approached Mark, full of bluster and officiousness, the red cross on his brown overalls marking him as a Templar squire. After a handshake exchange so smooth Em almost missed it, the sergeant said something sharply and moved off, and Mark withdrew into a service entrance. Em supposed he’d bought himself some parking time.
Em settled in to wait. She was starting to feel nervous about this arrangement.
No, she should be honest with herself. She knew Mark was engaged in some kind of criminal enterprise and that out of desperation, she’d agreed to be his accomplice; what she should do was leave a note thanking him again
