the USA.”
She sat down on the bed with me.
“Yeah,” she said. “That.”
“That.”
“Well, you know what you have to do, right?”
“What?” She looked pointedly at my keyboard. I could see the tears rolling down her cheeks. “No! You’re out of your mind. You think I’m going to run off with some nut off the Internet? Some spy?”
“You got a better idea?”
I kicked a pile of her laundry into the air. “Whatever. Fine. I’ll talk to her some more.”
“You talk to her,” Ange said. “You tell her you and your girlfriend are getting out.”
“What?”
“Shut up, dickhead. You think you’re in danger? I’m in just as much danger, Marcus. It’s called guilt by association. When you go, I go.” She had her jaw thrust out at a mutinous angle. “You and I — we’re together now. You have to understand that.”
We sat down on the bed together.
“Unless you don’t want me,” she said, finally, in a small voice.
“You’re kidding me, right?”
“Do I look like I’m kidding?”
“There’s no way I would voluntarily go without you, Ange. I could never have asked you to come, but I’m ecstatic that you offered.”
She smiled and tossed me my keyboard.
“Email this Masha creature. Let’s see what this chick can do for us.”
I emailed her, encrypting the message, waiting for a reply. Ange nuzzled me a little and I kissed her and we necked. Something about the danger and the pact to go together — it made me forget the awkwardness of having sex, made me freaking horny as hell.
We were half naked again when Masha’s email arrived.
> Two of you? Jesus, like it won’t be hard enough already.
> I don’t get to leave except to do field intelligence after a big Xnet hit. You get me? The handlers watch my every move, but I go off the leash when something big happens with Xnetters. I get sent into the field then.
> You do something big. I get sent to it. I get us both out. All three of us, if you insist.
> Make it fast, though. I can’t send you a lot of email, understand? They watch me. They’re closing in on you. You don’t have a lot of time. Weeks? Maybe just days.
> I need you to get me out. That’s why I’m doing this, in case you’re wondering. I can’t escape on my own. I need a big Xnet distraction. That’s your department. Don’t fail me, M1k3y, or we’re both dead. Your girlie too.
> Masha
My phone rang, making us both jump. It was my mom wanting to know when I was coming home. I told her I was on my way. She didn’t mention Barbara. We’d agreed that we wouldn’t talk about any of this stuff on the phone. That was my dad’s idea. He could be as paranoid as me.
“I have to go,” I said.
“Our parents will be —”
“I know,” I said. “I saw what happened to my parents when they thought I was dead. Knowing that I’m a fugitive isn’t going to be much better. But they’d rather I be a fugitive than a prisoner. That’s what I think. Anyway, once we disappear, Barbara can publish without worrying about getting us into trouble.”
We kissed at the door of her room. Not one of the hot, sloppy numbers we usually did when parting ways. A sweet kiss this time. A slow kiss. A goodbye kind of kiss.
BART rides are introspective. When the train rocks back and forth and you try not to make eye contact with the other riders and you try not to read the ads for plastic surgery, bail bondsmen and AIDS testing, when you try to ignore the graffiti and not look too closely at the stuff in the carpeting. That’s when your mind starts to really churn and churn.
You rock back and forth and your mind goes over all the things you’ve overlooked, plays back all the movies of your life where you’re no hero, where you’re a chump or a sucker.
Your brain comes up with theories like this one:
Your brain comes up with stuff like that even when the train ride only lasts two or three stops. When you get off, and you start moving, the blood gets running and sometimes your brain helps you out again.
Sometimes your brain gives you solutions in addition to problems.
Chapter 18
This chapter is dedicated to Vancouver’s multilingual Sophia Books, a diverse and exciting store filled with the best of the strange and exciting pop culture worlds of many lands. Sophia was around the corner from my hotel when I went to Van to give a talk at Simon Fraser University, and the Sophia folks emailed me in advance to ask me to drop in and sign their stock while I was in the neighborhood. When I got there, I discovered a treasure-trove of never-before-seen works in a dizzying array of languages, from graphic novels to thick academic treatises, presided
