I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about their sister, Khalisah. What would she and their families do now? They’d be needing money. I didn’t know how these things were done: would George see to it that they were looked after? He’d have to, surely — he’d have a hell of a job recruiting more Lotfis and Hubba-Hubbas if they discovered their families wouldn’t be taken care of if everything went to rat shit. But there was no way I could trust him, even if he said he would. I’d do something about it myself. The Mégane would have been towed from the square in Antibes by now, but with luck the money we’d taken off Gumaa would still be under the seat. It wouldn’t be much, but it would be a start….
The bridge over the Saugus River took us into Lynn. We were nearly at Wonderland. Last time I’d come up this track I’d looked forward to a new job, a new life. But what now?
I didn’t even know if she was going to take the day off work to meet me. But if she didn’t, I’d just go and sit on the doorstep until she came home. There were some things I needed to say, and thought she needed to hear.
Hubba-Hubba had helped make my mind up.
He’d been sitting in the front of the Scudo, repairing his evil eye.
“We are a family first, no matter what disagreements we may have, no matter what pain we may suffer…. We learned long ago to meet in the middle, because otherwise the family is lost.”
I couldn’t be a student or a bartender — or anything else, for that matter. I couldn’t do anything other than what I did. Sure, I didn’t much like a lot of the stuff that went with it. But she had once said to me that she didn’t care what I did, as long as I was good at it. Well, this was what I did, and I was good at it. And, thanks to my two friends with the Rubbermaids and the shower cap fetish, I’d realized I was working for something I believed in. The people I cared for lived in the country I had played a small part in protecting, and for once in my life I felt good about what I had done. And if the angels did come down and weigh my book of destiny for a laugh, then maybe there’d be a page or two of good stuff for them to read.
Maybe Carrie would read it too. Maybe I could tell her about Lotfi and Hubba-Hubba and Khalisah, and we could take a few steps toward the middle. People can stay together if they really want to, even if there’s a whole lot of shit going on around them. I knew that now: I’d seen it happen.
The train came to a halt and people stood and reached for their hats and coats, and gathered up their bags of Christmas shopping. The automatic doors drew back to reveal the signs for Wonderland station.
I stepped out of the train. It was as cold as it ever was, and the wind was bitter. I zipped up my fleece jacket, and joined the throng heading for the barrier.