“I like her, too. But, I don’t know, she seems so...”
“What?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I guess she makes me feel something I’m not used to feeling around other people.”
“Oh? What’s that?”
She changed her grip on the steering wheel, as if she needed to brace herself for the admission. “Inadequate.”
“Mio has a very forceful personality,” I said. “She takes some getting used to.”
“You know,” she said, “I’m not blind or stupid.” She gave me one of those looks designed to make it clear that she wasn’t fooled by my evasions. “I didn’t see what happened, but I know it was Mio who broke that guy’s leg at Satellite.”
“You’re probably right,” I said, still reluctant to get tangled up in an explanation. “But I suspect he had it coming.”
My attempt to deflect further questions was only half-hearted. On the one hand, I didn’t want to start an explanation I wouldn’t be able to finish. But on the other hand, I was curious about how Karla rationalized the things she witnessed around Mio and me. She obviously wanted to keep her job, and that meant turning a blind eye to things that might otherwise frighten her away. But eventually she would cross a threshold beyond which the power of denial would no longer shield her. What would happen then was anyone’s guess.
“I don’t often give advice,” I said. “But since this has to do with Mio, I’ll offer a word of caution. If you should ever tell her that you’re going to do something, make sure you do it. Everything else will take care of itself.”
“That sounds a little ominous.”
“I don’t mean it to. It’s just that, as things stand, you can count Mio as your friend, and that makes you very lucky. Believe me, it’s far preferable to having her as an enemy.”
Karla looked deeply puzzled. “Is that supposed to ease my mind?” she asked.
“Ease of mind wasn’t exactly what I was aiming at.”
The tension broke and she chuckled. “If you don’t mind my saying so, Shake, you’re very calculating.”
“I suppose I am at times,” I admitted. “People tend to blunder through things, as if they were trying to make their lives interesting through mishaps. Mostly avoidable mishaps. You’re really not like that, even if it seems to you at times that you are.”
“Yeah,” she agreed, “like most of the time.”
“It only seems that way, Karla. You’re a smart girl. You have a wild streak, but the fact is, you’re cautious even when you’re wild. And that’s good. Especially where Mio is concerned. She’s not something you want to blunder into.”
Karla’s eyes were fixed on the road, but her mind was no doubt swarming with questions I wasn’t eager to be asked.
“It’s good to maintain a degree of detachment,” I continued, “because you can never be sure what’s at stake. You never really know what’s riding on your actions. None of us ever knows.”
“You’re sounding ominous again,” she said, though without the tension in her voice.
We were just passing through the Folsom area, where the freeway still paralleled the American River. In the mid-nineteenth century, right around the time of my human birth, the land along the river had all of its soil washed away through hydraulic mining. The miners took the gold and left mounds of boulders neatly spaced for miles, like a storage yard of smooth, head-sized rocks. A hundred and fifty years later, many of these mounds were still visible, covered with whatever grass and shrubs were able to fix their roots in the thin soil that had collected between the stones.
“Could I could ask you a question, Shake?”
“You can ask.”
“What do you do? For a job, I mean. For money?”
“I don’t do anything for money,” I said. “Not in the conventional sense, anyway. I don’t have to.”
“So you’re just, like, rich?”
“By some standards. I have enough money not to have to worry about it.”
Karla seemed distracted, as if she wasn’t really listening to what I’d said.
“I have the feeling there’s something else on your mind,” I ventured.
“Shit!” she said, shaking her head. “On top of everything else, I hope you’re not psychic, too.”
“Ask whatever you want, Karla.”
“I don’t want you to take this the wrong way,” she began. “I’m not having second thoughts about the job, or anything like that.”
“Okay.”
“I just have this feeling, like, at some level I’m not used to feeling, that you’re... I don’t know, dangerous.”
“You don’t have to worry about that, Karla. Like I told you, I’m on your side.”
“I believe you, Shake. I’m not sure why, but I do. And maybe that’s what gives me the courage to keep this job. But, to be honest, that’s not the question I really wanted to ask.”
I didn’t say anything, just gave her the time she needed to get to what was bothering her.
“This may sound weird, but is Mio as dangerous as you are?”
I could see then that Mio had made a very deep impression on Karla. Not that I was surprised. Mio was like a knife. A knife so sharp that it could only cut deeply. “I told you when you took the job that I wouldn’t bullshit you. I may refuse to answer a question, but if I do answer, I’ll tell you the truth, in so far as I can.”
“You can tell me the truth. I can handle it.”
Maybe so, I thought. But then, people so often think they can handle reality, right up to the moment it buries them like an avalanche. I must have been taking too long to consider my answer.
“So,” Karla asked, interrupting my thoughts, “is she as dangerous as you are?”
“In all honesty, I would have to say Mio is considerably more dangerous.”
Karla was quiet for a long time. When she spoke, it was as if she’d resolved something for herself. “Thank you, Shake,” she said. “I just needed to ask.”
•
We took the Sly Park exit off I-50. There were motels and an all-night convenience store near the exit.
“I don’t
