The Lariat Motel on East Broadway was small but clean, with a swimming pool behind a white fence and a sign that said Guests Only, Swim At Your Own Risk. The place had maybe a dozen rooms, all on one level. It was built to resemble a ranch house, with different brands burned into every door. George checked them in, got two rooms adjoining with free cable and complimentary Cattleman’s breakfast of biscuits and jelly with coffee or orange juice in the morning. Luke waited for them to take their bags in. Before he left he said he’d check back with them around ten o’clock that night.
They ate at the Subway, which was in a stripmall about half a mile away. Picked at their food, really, but they knew they had to get something down. Berke kept the sunglasses on, even past the point where the sun began to set. She ate half a small bag of chips. No one talked very much; it seemed somehow disrepectful to talk about any subject but Mike, and that subject could not be touched.
Finally, when everyone had eaten as much as they could and the time had come to go back to the Lariat for a night of quiet Hell and mindnumbing cable fare, Terry said, “John…”
…there’s no roadmap…
But no, Terry did not say that, as Nomad might have heard a ghost speak from a corner of the Subway where the sun had already left town.
Terry said, “What’re you going to do?”
“Going to do? When? Like in the next minute? Five minutes? A fucking hour from now?” He felt the heat rising in his face, and he saw Terry’s eyes widen behind the glasses and Terry shrank back a little from the table because the dynamite’s fuse had been lit. “Is that what you mean?”
“No, I just mean—”
“Then what do you fucking mean?”
“Sir!” said the middle-aged black man behind the counter. “Please watch the profanity.” He motioned toward a young couple with a little girl and an infant at another booth. Three sets of eyes were on Nomad.
“Oh. I’m sorry,” Nomad said, to both the counterman and the other customers. The heat of anger became a blush of shame. He took a deep breath to get himself under control, and then he levelled his gaze at Terry again. “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do,” he answered. “I’m going back to Austin tomorrow, and I’m going to go home and sleep for a couple of days. Then when I can think straight I’m going to call Ariel and Berke and see if they’re still in. If they are…and they don’t need to tell me yea or nay right now… I’m going to work with Ash to find replacements for you and for Mike. And for you,” he said to George, who sat impassively. George had a little dab of mustard on his lower lip. “Then we’ll go from there, with whoever works out. We’ll come up with a new name, we’ll start rehearsing, and coming up with some new material. If Ariel and Berke want to be in, fine. If not, fine. But I’m going to keep on doing what I do. So that’s my plan. What’s yours?”
Terry hesitated. He felt himself falter. He liked peace, liked for everybody to get along. He liked to be liked. He knew that if he came across as calm and measured, it was because nine times out of ten he was stealthily backing away from confrontation. It had been one of the hardest things ever to tell them he was leaving the band. How many weeks had it taken to get those words out of his mouth? And he might have gone many weeks more, if George hadn’t opened up first. One thing he truly feared, and he’d feared it since being in the Venomaires, was stepping into John Charles’s rage radar, of being the target of the anger he’d seen erupt way too many times. There had been some pretty hideous scenes between John and Kevin Keeler, before Kevin had suffered his mental breakdown on stage in Atlanta. But now Terry, who had thought Mike was one of the best bass players he’d ever heard and not only that but a real friend whom he would mourn in his own way, alone with one of his keyboards, decided that John was not going to blow up here in the Subway. There was no point to it; what was done was done, and even John Charles knew he couldn’t roll back time before some kid with a rifle had fired two stupid bullets.
“When we get back,” Terry replied, “I’m going to pack up my car and drive to Albuquerque. I’m going to visit Eric Gherosimini. After that, I’m driving home and take the loan from my dad. To start my business.”
Nomad took the last drink of his Coke. What could he say to that? It was a plan. He realized that Berke would probably be wanting to get to San Diego, to open those boxes her stepfather had left her. Another plan. The Little Genius had a plan too, the bastard. Nomad caught Ariel’s gaze from where she sat with George at the next table.
She said, “I’m still with you.”
Something about that, he didn’t know what it was, almost made him cry.
When they got back to the motel, twilight had deepened enough so the yellow neon sign out front was in its full glory. It was the kind rapidly disappearing from the landscape, an honest-to-God 1950s-style animated display of a smiling cowboy twirling a lariat over his head and then, in the next frame or step or whatever it was called in the neon sign lingo, twirling it around his boots. Ariel said she thought it should be in a book of photographs about motel signs, and Terry said maybe it already was, they should ask the manager. Yellow bulbs glowed in glass squares above every door. The Five had stayed in a lot of ratholes, a lot of dirty little motels where dawn brought forth a scurrying of disheveled women and sleepy-looking men to their separate vehicles of escape, but this place was all right. Nomad couldn’t help but wonder what Mike would’ve said about the lariat-twirling cowpoke. Looks like he’s aimin’ to rope hisself a big ol’ dick, bro.
Ariel and Berke took a room together. In the next room, a coin was flipped for the first elimination, and then the second coin flip pitting Nomad and George for the remaining bed earned George the small rollaway. But within a few minutes the door that connected the rooms was open and Ariel and Berke came in to watch HBO. Berke had removed the sunglasses; she looked like a swollen-eyed wreck, but she made a comment about George having to sleep on a baby bed that said she was coming back.
They weren’t in there more than half-an-hour, watching TV sprawled on chairs and beds like the members of any family on a road trip, when they heard a knock at the door. Not their door, it seemed, but the door to Berke and Ariel’s room, which was closer to the office. Ariel got up from her chair, drew aside the tan-colored curtain and peered through the blinds out the window.
“It’s a guy,” she announced. “I think…it’s the guy from today. The trooper.”
George opened their door. “Hi, can I help you?”
The trooper no longer looked so official, or so threatening. He was wearing dark brown trousers with freshly-pressed creases. Tucked neatly into the pants was a white polo shirt bearing what George recognized as the flag-and-eagle logo of the Penney’s American Living brand, since he owned a few of those himself. A brown leather belt and brown lace-up shoes completed the wardrobe. The young man’s combed hair was as shiny as fresh tar. No razor, not even the ones with four freaking blades, had ever scraped a chin closer. He looked like a nervous highschool kid but he must have been in his mid-twenties, or so George supposed.
“Um,” was the trooper’s first utterance, which did not bode well. Then: “Is the girl here? The black-haired girl?”
George almost said Who? But then he looked over his shoulder at Berke, who was the only female presence in the room with black hair, but to call her a girl was so very, very wrong. Just not feelin’ it. He said, “I think he wants to see you.”