Structures begin to emerge ahead, carrion birds appear in the sky. Now and then, far off, human figures, robed and hooded, still, wind-ruffled, taller than the perspective would call for, stand and watch Maxine. No attempts at approach or welcome. Ahead, past the baked-mud district that now rises around her, she can feel a presence. The sky changes, beginning to pick up saturation, edging into SVG Alice Blue, the landscape acquiring a queer luminosity, moving toward her, picking up speed, rushing in to envelop her.
Where should her freakout point be set here, exactly? The town, the casbah, whatever it is, sweeps past, leaving her in what is now a Third World darkness, lit only by isolated episodes of fire. After a while, feeling her way in the dark, she strikes oil. An enormous gusher, sudden, bass-intensive, black on black, goes booming upward, prospectors appear from nowhere with generators and searchlights, in whose glare the top of the thing can’t even be seen. Every wildcatter’s dream, and for many the point of the journey. Maxine goes wow, takes a virtual snapshot, but continues on her way. Not long after, the blowout bursts into flame and remains visible behind her for miles.
A night whose length can’t be selected as a preference. A midwatch whose purpose is to turn whoever’ s out in it into a blind dowser of the unknown, all but lost in the empty quarter. Never to focus on anything that can be seen.
At virtual daybreak who should Maxine run into but Vip Epperdew, up on a ridgeline gazing at the desert. She’s not sure he recognizes her. “How are Shae and Bruno?”
“I think they’re in L.A. I’m not, I’m still in Vegas. We seem to be no longer a threesome.”
“What happened?”
“We were at the MGM Grand, I was playing one of the Stooges slots, had just got three Larrys, a Moe, and a pie on the payline, turned around to share my good fortune, Shae and Bruno were nowhere in sight. Collected my jackpot, went looking all over for them, they were gone. I always imagined if they ever did run out, I’d be left in some embarrassing public situation, handcuffed to a lamppost or whatever. But there I was, free as any normal citizen, with the room paid up and enough casino credit to last me a couple of days anyway.”
“Must’ve been unsettling.”
“At that point I was still too preoccupied with the slots, actually. By the time I understood the kids weren’t coming back, I’d won enough to sign a lease on a one-bedroom unit in North Las Vegas. The rest has been coasting on momentum.” Nowadays Vip is a professional slots jockey, somehow so far staying a fraction of a percent ahead, a regular, known all around town, from carpet joints to convenience stores. He’s picked up an attitude to go with his casino butt. He’s found a calling.
“Like my rig?” gesturing downhill at a Citroën Sahara, built back in the sixties, front and rear engines, four-wheel drive for desert terrain, rendered in affectionate detail, looks like a normal 2CV except for the spare tire on the hood. “Only 600 of ’em ever produced, won the real one on a pair of fishhooks nobody believed I had. Cut you for it if you’d like, high card. Case you’re wondering, the beauty of this site,” looking around the empty desertscape, “is it ain’t Vegas. No casinos, honest odds. Random numbers here are strictly legit.”
“So I was told once. Nowadays, not so sure. You might want to be careful, now—Vip? do you remember me?”
“Darlin, I don’t even remember the last deal.”
She finds a link that brings her into an oasis, a wraparound garden straight out of the Islamic paradise, more water than has ever flowed in all the broken country she’s come in out of, palms, swimming pools with in-pool bars, wine and pipe smoke, melons and dates, a music track heavy on the hijaz scale. This time, as a matter of fact, she has a confirmed Omar Sharif sighting, inside a tent, playing bridge and flashing that killer smile. And then, with no intro,
“Hi, Maxine.” Windust’s avatar is a younger version of himself, a not-yet-corrupted entry-level wise-ass, brighter than he deserves.
“Never expected to find you in here, Nick.”
Oh, really? This isn’t what she hoped would happen? That somebody, some all-knowing cyber-yenta her online history has always belonged to, would be logging her every click, every cursor movement? Knowing what she wants before she does?
“Did you get back to D.C. all right?” Which, if it sounds too much like where’s my money, tough shit.
“Not all the way back. There are exclusion zones now. Around my house, my family. I haven’t been getting much sleep. It looks like they’ve cut me loose. Loose at last. All gone dark, everybody in my address book, even those with no names, only numbers.”
“Where are you now, like physically?”
“Some Wi-Fi hotspot. Starbucks, I think.”
He thinks. She has to take an unexpected breath then. This is almost the first thing he’s said that she really believes. He doesn’t fucking know where he is anymore. Some transparent beam of feeling passes through her, which she won’t identify till later. This is how long it’s been since she felt pity.
Abruptly, she isn’t sure who took the first step, they’re back out on the desert again, moving at high speed, not exactly flying because that would mean she’s asleep and dreaming, beneath a crescent moon that sheds more illumination than it should, past wind-shaped rock formations that Windust tends to dodge suddenly and violently into the cover of, pulling her somehow with him.
“Somebody’s shooting at us?”
“Not yet, but we have to assume something’s tracking us, everything we do, holding it short-term. They’ll think they see a pattern of run for cover. Then we’ll surprise them and stay in the open…”
“‘We’? I kind of like hide behind the rocks myself. Are these the same people who were shooting AKs at us that time?”
“Don’t go sentimental on me.”
“Why not? We could’ve been just like this. Lovers on the run.”
“Oh, great call. Your kids, your home, your family, your business and reputation, in exchange for a cheap fatality for all those you can’t save. Works for me.” The avatar gazes at her, steady, unremorseful, all a deliberate front, granted, but whoever “they” are, she needs to believe they are far worse than anything Windust became later on, working for them. They found his careless gift of boy’s cruelty and developed it, deployed and used it, by tiny increments, till one day he was a professional sadist with a GS-1800-series job and no regrets. Nothing could touch him, and he thought that would just go on, deep into his retirement years. Chump. Asshole.
She’s furious, she’s helpless. “What can I—”
“Nothing.”
“I know. But—”
“I didn’t come looking for you. You clicked on me.”
“Did I.”
Long silence, as if he’s having an argument with himself and they finally settle it. “I’ll be at the place. I can’t guarantee an erection.”
“Aw. You OK with opening your heart to somebody?”
“I was thinking more like, bring money?”
“I’ll see how much I can steal from the children.”
37
Due to some likely 007–related mental block about packing it, she has tried to avoid the Walther PPK with the laser in the grip, depending instead on her secondary, the Beretta, which, if handguns had conscious careers, it might consider a promotion. But now she goes, gets the stepladder, roots around up in the back of the closet, and brings out the PPK. At least it isn’t the ladies’ model where the grip comes in pink pearl. Checks the batteries, cycles the laser on and off. Never know when a gal might need a laser.