“Mare.” he asked again, a little impatient now, and a little frightened all over again.
What if he’d lost his goddam driver’s license somewhere. Dropped it on the floor at Gary’s, maybe, while he’d been transferring his crap (you always seemed to carry so much more crap in your pockets while you were travelling) from one pair of jeans to the next. He hadn’t, of course, but wouldn t it just be typical if—“Little help, Mare. Get the damned registration” Please.”
“Oh. Sure, okay.”
She bent forward like some old, rusty piece of machinery goosed into life by a sudden jolt of electricity and opened the glove compartment. She began to root through it, lifting some stuff out (a half-finished bag of—Smartfood, a Bonnie Raitt tape that had suffered a miscar nage in Deirdre’s dashboard player, a map of California) so she could get at the stuff behind it. Peter could see small beads of perspiration at her left temple.
Feathers of her short black hair were damp with it, although the air conditioning vent on that side was blowing cool air directly into her face.
“I don’t. — ” she started, and then, with unmistakable relief: “Oh, here it is.”
At the same moment Peter looked in the compartment where he kept business cards and saw his license He couldn’t remember putting it in there—why in the name of God would he have. — but there it was. In the photo graph he looked not like an assistant professor of English at NYU but an unemployed petty laborer (and possible serial killer). Yet it was him, recognizably him, and he felt his spirits lift. They had their papers, God was in his heaven, all was right with the world.
Besides, he thought, handing the cop his license this isn’t Albania, you know. It may not be in our zone of per ception, but it’s definitely not Albania.
“Peter.”
He turned, took the envelope she was holding out and gave her a wink. She tried to smile an acknowledgement, but it didn’t work very well. Outside, a gust of wind threw sand against the side of the car. Tiny grains of it stung Peter’s face and he slitted his eyes against it. Suddenly he wanted to be at least two thousand miles from Nevada, in any direction.
He took Deirdre’s registration and held it out to the cop, but the cop was still looking at his license.
“I see you’re an organ donor,” the cop said, without looking up. “Do you really think that’s wise.”
Peter was nonplussed. “Well, I…
“is that the vehicle registration, sir.” the cop asked crisply. He was now looking at the canary-yellow sheet of paper.
“Yes.”
“Hand it to me, please.”
Peter handed it out the window. Now the cop, still squatting Indian-fashion in the sunlight, had Peter’s driver’s license in one hand and Deirdre’s registration in the other.
He looked back and forth between them for what seemed a very long time. Peter felt light pressure on his thigh and jumped a little before realizing it was Mary’s hand. He took it and felt her fingers wrap around his at once.
“Your sister.” the cop said finally. He looked up at them with his bright gray eyes.
“Yes—”
“Her name is Finney. Yours is Jackson.”
“Deirdre was married for a year, between high school and college,” Mary said. Her voice was firm, pleasant, unafraid. Peter would have believed it completely if not for the clutch of her fingers. “She kept her husband’s name. That’s all it is.”
“A year, hmmm. Between high school and college. Married. Tak!”
His head remained down over the documents. Peter could see the peak of his Smokey Bear hat ticking back and forth as he fell to examining them again.
Peter’s sense of relief was slipping away.
“Between high school and college,” the cop repeated, head down, big face hidden, and in his head Peter heard him say: I see you’re an organ donor. Do you really think that’s wise. Tak!
The cop looked up. “Would you step out of the car, please, Mr. Jackson.”
Mary’s fingers bore down, her nails biting into the back of Peter’s hand, but the burning sensation was far away. Suddenly his balls and the pit of his stomach were crawling with dismay, and he felt like a child again, a confused child who only knows for sure that he has done something bad.
“What—” he began.
The cop from the Desperation cruiser stood. It was like watching a freight elevator go up.
The head disappeared, then the open-collared shirt with its gleaming badge, then the diagonal strap of the Sam Browne belt. Then Peter was looking at the heavy beltbuckle again, the gun, and the khaki fold of cloth over the man’s fly.
This time what came from above the top of the window wasn’t a question. “Get out of the car, Mr. Jackson.”
Peter pulled the handle and the cop stood back so he could swing the door open. The cop’s head was cut off by the roof of the Acura. Mary squeezed Peter’s hand more violently than ever and Peter turned back to look at her. The sunburned places on her cheeks and brow were even clearer now, because her face had gone almost ashy. Her eyes were very wide.
“Don ‘t get out of the car,” she mouthed.
I have to, he mouthed back, and swung a leg out Onto the asphalt of U.S. 50. For a moment Mary clung to him, her hand entwined in his, and then Peter pulled loose and got the rest of the way out, standing on legs that felt queerly distant. The cop was looking down at him. Six—seven, Peter thought. Got to be. And he suddenly saw a quick sequence of events, like a fiimclip run at super speed: the huge cop drawing his gun and pulling the trigger, spraying Peter Jackson’s educated brains across the roof of the Acura in a slimy fan, then yanking Mary out of the car, driving her face-first into the lid of the closed trunk, bending her over, then raping her right out here beside the highway in the searing desert sunshine, his Smokey Bear hat still planted squarely on his head, screaming You want a donated organ, lady. Here you go! Here you go! as he rocked and thrust.
“What’s this about, Officer.” Peter asked, his mouth and throat suddenly dry. “I think I have a right to know.”
“Step around to the rear of the car, Mr. Jackson.”
The cop turned and walked toward the back of the Acura without bothering to see if Peter was going to obey. Peter did obey, walking on legs that still felt as if—they were relaying their sensory input by some form of telecommunications.
The cop stopped beside the trunk. When Peter joined him, he pointed with one big finger.
Peter followed it and saw there was no license plate on the back of Deirdre’ s car—just a marginally cleaner rectangle where it had been.
“Ah, shit!” Peter said, and his irritation and dismay were real enough, but so was the relief beneath them. All this had had a point after all. Thank God. He turned toward the front of the car and wasn’t exactly surprised to see the driver’s door was now closed-.
Mary had closed it. He had been so far into this… event. . occurrence this whatever it was… that he hadn’t even heard the thump.
“Mare! Hey, Mare!”
She poked her sunburned, strained face out of his window and looked back at him.
“Our damned license plate fell off!” he called, almost laughing.
“What.”
“No, it didn’t,” the Desperation cop said. He squatted again—that calm, slow, lithe movement—and reached—beneath the bumper. He fumbled there, on the other side of the place where the plate went, for a moment or two, his gray eyes gazing off toward the horizon. Pete was. invaded by an eerie sense of familiarity: he and his wife had been pulled over by the Marlboro Man.
“Ah!” the cop said. He stood up again. The hand he had—been investigating with was clenched into a loose fist. He held it out to Peter and opened it. Lying on his palm (and looking very small in that vast pinkness) was a road-dirty piece of screw. it was bright in only one place, where it had been sheared off.
Peter looked at it. then up at the cop. “I don’t get it.”