Daniel had just denied the triangle’s very existence.
Getting what you wanted meant that somebody else was losing it. Cementing her own future with William meant that the triangle’s center could not hold.
“I knew something was up,” Melissa said.
“Me too,” William said. “You’ve been all over the place. I should have known. I should have said something.”
“Well,” Daniel said. “You didn’t.” He spun an imaginary ring on his finger.
“Do you have all kinds of special drug friends I’ve never met before?” William asked. “Do you secretly hang out in places you never go to with me, like that guy’s house with the Dodge on blocks out front?”
“This really has nothing to do with you,” Daniel said patiently. “With any of you. It should be pretty obvious why I wasn’t shouting it in the streets and wearing 420 shirts and shit. Mainly to avoid conversations like this.”
Melissa picked up her phone and gave it a few desultory swipes and stared at the screen.
“Right,” William said. “I forgot. We’re just four random assholes in a Driverless car.”
“That’s not true,” Christina said.
Melissa laughed, quick and cold. Christina wondered if one day she’d bump into ninety-year-old Melissa Faber, and the elderly woman’s rheumy eyes would glimmer with that dismissive spark to send Christina skimming angrily away on her hover-walker, muttering archaic twenty-first-century curses.
There was a disturbance up front, a sudden slippage in the car’s makeup, as if it were shedding its skin. A dashboard panel she’d never noticed slid aside, revealing what looked like vintage clocks made of shiny brass: speedometer, fuel gauge, tachometer, oil pressure. A center console rose from the bench like a newly hatched chick, shedding a web of nanotech gossamer. The console sprouted an umbilical appendage that whipped upright and solidified into a gearshift.
A steering wheel emerged from the panel.
Christina had to give Otto her grudging respect. Nothing would cheer William up like a chance to be fully in control of his car. If only she’d won some measure of authority over Otto, she could have been the one to deliver William this gift.
It would be good for William to engage with the open road. She could keep him company while Melissa and Daniel worked out their shit or just sat stewing in the back. For a little while, it would be just the two of them, alone with the highway.
She reached out for him. “Sergeant Hernandez, Space Marines, Twenty-Fourth Division. I’ll be your copilot.”
William took her hand. “Join me on the bridge?”
“Affirmative.”
Otto relinquished control like a runner passing a baton. William gripped the wheel as the newly molded driver’s seat conformed to his body. Next to him, Christina pulled up LIDAR and shunted the map to her half of the windshield, leaving William’s side clear.
“There are pedals down here now,” he said. The car jolted forward as he hit the gas.
Thick slabs of distorted guitar thundered from the speakers. Drums joined with a blast of double bass. Christina smiled: Otto was playing her favorite Dethroned Kings album, Malodorous.
On LIDAR, the black hole of Lake Pontchartrain was behind them. They’d reached the apocalyptic, cheerless landscape that meant you were five minutes from a major airport. The map reflected the desolation of the city’s outskirts, an eerie emptiness punctuated by furtive gray figures that buzzed like gnats on the periphery of the four-lane road. The only sign of automotive life was a single white car, two blocks back, steadily matching their speed without getting closer.
“I want to kiss you really bad,” William said.
“What’s stopping you?”
“I’m keeping my eyes on the road, Sergeant.” He eased Otto into the right lane, then back into the left. “This thing is so responsive.”
Christina glanced over her shoulder. Daniel was holding the bag of peas against his face while he read his book. Melissa was sitting in the back, glued to her phone.
She leaned over to give William a quick peck on the cheek. “Maybe later I’ll invite you into my shroud. If you’re lucky.”
William drew a sharp breath. “Scandal! Otto, you didn’t hear that.” He paused. “Do you think there are two people on earth who know each other the best, out of everybody in existence? Like if there’s a million things you can know about another person, and some lady in Bangladesh knows nine hundred thousand things about her husband, she’s the best at really knowing another person.”
“You’re saying this hypothetical Bangladeshi woman still has a hundred thousand things she doesn’t know about her husband?”
“I’m just making up numbers—maybe she knows everything about him. I don’t know.”
“I don’t think it’s quantifiable, babe.” She took the word babe on a spur-of-the-moment test run and was pleased with how it sounded.
“Huh,” William said, staring deep into the Louisiana night. Otto ate up the center line’s white slashes. A lighted sign on a two-story A-frame shone out of the gloom like a marquee in a dream. Christina wondered at the swirling depths of William’s thoughts. It must be troubling to have a best friend reveal a hidden side like a dark planetary hemisphere spinning into sunlight. It would be like walking upstairs one day to find that her parents’ entire hoard, all the newspaper mazes and thrift-shop VHS tapes and family packs of Candy Land toothbrushes, had materialized overnight with the flip of some sick-brained switch, leaving Christina frozen with her hand on the banister, thinking, What kind of people are these?
“I don’t know what that word means,” William said. “Quanti-whatever.”
“Fiable. Is that what you were just thinking about?”
“I was thinking that this guy behind us is getting closer. Way to warn me, copilot.”
She studied the map. The car was only a block’s length back now. “I didn’t think it was vital information. It’s just somebody headed for I-10, same as us.”
“What kind of car is it?”
Christina tapped the matchbox-size rendering, and the map fed her data about the car. “Lotus Exige. Twin turbo supercharged engine. License plate U8DUST. Sounds like we’re dealing with your standard-issue douchebag.”
“Shit.
