Millie starts cackling.
Even Walt’s eyebrows manage to smile.
“I’ve got a proposition for you,” I say.
“Didja hear that, Walt? He’s propositioning me!”
This time I don’t try to interpret Walt’s eyebrows. I say, “Millie, I’ve got a five-forty appointment to be scanned today. If you’re willing to swap appointments with me, I’ll give you twenty thousand dollars cash.”
Millie gasps.
I look her in the eye. “What do you say?”
“Twenty thousand dollars…and a kiss!” She says.
Oh no, oh hell no! I’m thinking. But what I say is, “How lucky for me!”
Millie doesn’t just kiss me, she tongues the shit out of me! And hers is not an ordinary tongue, either. It’s a flippin’ freak of nature! It’s long, thick, and dry, and feels like sawdust wadding up in the back of my throat. I have to fight to hold back the gag reflex. As she extricates her tongue, her dentures dislodge. I feel like I’m going to be sick, but moments later, she speaks to the receptionist with me standing there, and before you know it, I’ve got Walt’s appointment.
I ask Jeff to check the inner offices, where I’ll have to change into one of those silly hospital gowns, even though they’re only scanning my brain. While he’s in there, I tell Norma the receptionist that if my scan turns out to be normal, I’m going to ask my girlfriend to marry me. I hand her the small gift-wrapped box.
“I haven’t told anyone about this, not even Jeff,” I say.
“Why not?” Norma says.
“I want it to be a surprise. Will you hold it for me, just until I come out?”
“Well, I’m not really supposed to hold items for patients.”
“Please? It would mean the world to me!”
“We have lockers.”
She tries to hand it back to me.
“Please? I’m not comfortable leaving it in a locker. It’ll only be twenty minutes.”
She sighs. “Okay.”
“Can you put it in your pocket?”
She sighs again. “Fine.”
“Promise not to tell anyone?”
“I promise,” she says, rolling her eyes.
“I hope my scan is normal,” I say.
Norma looks doubtful, but says, “I hope so, too.”
I get the impression she feels bad for my girlfriend.
52.
Before heading into one of the dressing rooms to change into my hospital gown, I check my messages and notice Kimberly called.
I press the play button, and frown as I hear her angry words. She waited until five minutes before the deadline to call and has the gall to be mad at me for not being available.
Great.
I see she left me a second message, minutes later. Probably worked herself into a rage after thinking about it a while longer. Her mother used to do that. I stare at the screen a minute and decide to ignore the second message. I just don’t have the strength for her sullen attitude right now. She can chew me out later.
Jeff says, “You want me to hold anything for you?”
“No, but I’d like you to guard my locker while I’m in there.”
“Will do.”
“Are you okay spending the night?” I say. “If not, I can get you a flight back to Vegas.”
“I’m good. I’ll find something to do.”
“Okay, then.”
The technician joins us for a short chat. I tell him not to freak when he sees the chip in my brain. “Let me know if it’s operable,” I say.
“We just shoot the pictures,” he says. “We don’t interpret them.”
I nod, then follow him into the scanning room, and take my position on the table.
“Just do twenty minutes worth,” I say.
“It doesn’t work that way. You’ll be here the full forty minutes,” he says.
Great.
53.
“You weren’t lying,” the technician says. “I’ve never seen anything like that before.”
“Do I get some sort of prize?”
“If you do, it won’t come from us.”
“Story of my life,” I say.
I exit the room and find Jeff standing with his back to my locker.
“Any problems?” I say.
“Were you expecting any?”
“I wasn’t sure what to expect.”
“They had you in there forty minutes,” he says. “Is your brain that much larger than you thought?”
“Yeah.”
“Did it hurt?”
“Nope.”
I think about pressing the button now, to see if the MRI worked, but then a scary thought crosses my mind. Specifically, I wonder how much damage I might do. Assuming the chip in my head has been erased, I’m safe. But when I press the button on the ceramic device four times, two hundred and twelve chips are going to explode, wherever they are in the world!
Some of the chips are bound to be attached to explosives.
Plastic explosives-plastique as we call it-is soft and easily molded by hand. How easy? Explosives engineers call them “putty explosives.” So a group of terrorists on the same plane can each walk into an airplane lavatory carrying small bits of plastique and add their bit to the others that have been placed underneath and behind areas that aren’t easily visible. Like under the sink. Push a chip into the plastique, and you’re looking at a bomb that can be detonated from virtually anywhere in the world.
Even this locker room at the MRI center.
Here’s how my brain works: what if the airplane lavatory scenario is in place on Miranda’s flight? When I press the button, maybe the plane explodes, and I wind up killing 300 innocent people, including Miranda, simply because I’d been hoping to kill a couple dozen terrorists. Would I be able to live with myself?
I doubt it.
So there’s that. On the other hand, the longer I wait before pressing the button, the more time the terrorists will have to set bombs in and around high profile targets!
Want to see how the dark side of my brain works?
What if I’m being set up?
What if George was a terrorist, and the whole lady-walking-into-a-lamp post event was staged for my benefit? A good mastermind could have put that into play. Now that I think about it, George was awfully quick to tell me there was no need to meet his arms dealer. What if there was no arms dealer? What if his terrorist
