“You’re not funny.”
“You’re insane.”
I glared at her smirking back at me, then changed my own voice into a stiffly accented version of English.
She tilted her head slightly to one side. “Is that supposed to be me?”
She shoved me. “Shut up, stupid ass. That is not how I talk.”
“Your essay is all wrong,” she said. “All the talking that I do in your writing is wrong.”
I looked at her. “You read my essay?”
Gobi nodded. “Of course I read. On the Internet.”
“What did you think, aside from your dialogue?”
“It was-all right.” She looked up, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “Some good parts.”
“Yeah, like what?”
“Like… when we kissed in that coffee house in Brooklyn. And when we danced together at the hotel on Central Park. Those parts I like.”
“You mean before you pulled that knife on me?”
“You liked it.”
“Oh, I liked it?”
“Yes, I think-yes.”
I reached out to her again, put my hand up along her temple, and this time she let me keep it there. I could feel the blood pumping in her veins, and tried not to think about what else was going on in there, growing inside her skull, but when her eyes flicked to me, I knew she’d already picked up my thoughts.
“How bad is it?” I asked.
She hesitated, and when she spoke again her voice was low and soft, not much more than a whisper. “At first, you know, it was not so terrible. Even when I was training with Erich for the first time, three years ago? There was headaches at night, yes, and sometimes…”-she opened her mouth, mimed throwing up-“in morning, you know? Then later came the shaking, the…”
“The seizures.”
“Yes.” She moved her head up and down, almost too slowly to be a nod. “When I first came to live with you and your family. Neurologists, the first ones, they had said yes, is temporal lobe epilepsy, gave me medicine? But I think even then they knew. Because of before.”
“Your other cancer.”
She nodded, unconsciously touching the thin white scar on her throat, then reaching up to her head. “But is worse, this.”
“When did you know for sure?”
“About the tumor?” She paused. “After that night in New York. That man back there, Nolan. Approached me at the airport in Amsterdam. Told me what they wanted. They did blood work and MRI, and told me I could have surgery, if I…”
“If you did what they wanted.”
She nodded.
“And you believed them.”
She looked at me. “What choice?”
The question hung between us, a riddle without an answer, maddening in its simplicity. We sat there in the darkness for what felt like eons, and I looked out at the road in front of us. It was absolutely silent. When I turned to face her again, I realized that she’d never stopped looking at me.
“How did you get out of that helicopter, anyway?”
“I jumped.”
“You jumped.”
“Yes.”
“Out of a helicopter.”
An edge of impatience now: “I am the one with the brain damage, Perry. Are you an idiot?”
“What, like with a parachute?”
Sigh. “After liftoff I went for the gun. Was not so difficult in enclosed space.” She shrugged. “Pilot took a bullet in the head. Paula and her father and me… all grabbed parachutes. They got away before I could kill them.”
“Or they could kill you.”
She smiled wryly. “They still thought that I will work for them as an assassin, if they get me to a surgeon and take care of this.” She touched her head. “But I will stay with Kaya’s offer.”
“You can’t trust Kaya either.”
“Perry, you must promise me.”
“What?”
“Because of what is in my head, I sometimes… lose myself. Become confused. I know this is true. Erich told me that when you and I were in Switzerland-”
“Forget about it.”
“If that ever happens, and I–I put you in harm’s way, you must promise you will end it cleanly.”
“What,” I said. “You mean, break up with you?”
“Shut up.” She punched me. “I am serious.”
“Ouch! Shit!”
“Your family was very kind to me when I was in America, Perry. They gave me a home, a safe place to stay so that I could finish what I had to do.” She looked at me slowly and I realized that she had already made up her mind. “Do you want them back?”
“My family? You know I do.”
“We cannot go to police.” She opened her coat and I saw the gun that she’d taken from Paula on the helicopter, a nine-millimeter Glock semi-automatic. “Not now.”
“No,” I said.
“What would you be willing to do?”
“Whatever it takes.”
“Do you remember how it was for us in New York that night?”
I nodded.
“And you are ready to go to war again?”
“If we have to.”
Gobi took out the sheet of paper, unfolded it, and told me what she had in mind. When she finished talking, the silence came back, filling the car again, and this time the quiet felt right and easy between us and I knew it was there to stay. I took in a breath and let it out, and eased my foot back on the gas, following the road through the forest of the night.
39. “I Am the Highway” — Audioslave
“You are ready?”
It was just after dawn. We were somewhere in France, gassing up the Peugeot at a BP station, steam rising off the cups of espresso that Gobi had brought out a few minutes earlier along with a loaf of bread. On the opposite side of the road, two cows were gazing at us with unblinking bovine indifference. If American cows looked bored,
