“You know about guns and I don’t,” she said, “but I thought we decided back in Iowa…”
“Yeah, we did.” I could’ve bought a regular pistol at the Kmart where I’d bought the pellet gun. But I didn’t want to raise the ante, at the time. “I guess it was Blackstone getting killed. Like they’re playing hardball now.”
She nodded, staring at the dying sun. “Hardball. You sound like somebody on TV.”
I laughed. “Guess I do.”
“But guns are real to you, from being a soldier. That’s something we’ll never share.”
What could I say? “Hope not.”
The sun disappeared and a dozen birds swifted by overhead, talking about dinner. A good still moment.
“Would you show me how?”
“How what?”
“How to use the gun. If something happens to you that doesn’t happen to me.”
“’Course.” I stood up and stretched. “Not that I’m an expert.”
We went inside and I unzipped the red bike bag and took out the pistol, feeling a little foolish. The thin film of gun oil had collected some lint and grit. I took a tissue from the box on the desk and wiped it clean.
I thumbed the catch and the cylinder swung out. Looked down the barrel, using my thumbnail to reflect light up; it wasn’t even dusty.
Shook the cylinder into my palm but only one round dropped; I used the built-in ejector rod to push the others out. “Never had one like this,” I said apologetically. “Couldn’t fit an assault rifle into the bike bag.”
I snapped it shut and passed it to her with the nose pointed to the ceiling. “Rule Number One, they say. There’s no such thing as an unloaded gun.”
“That must save a lot on ammunition.” She took it. “Sorry; I’ll be good.”
“It does hurt a lot of soldiers, forgetting the round in the chamber. I don’t think you will, though.”
“No.” She held it like a ticking time bomb. “Heavier than it looks.”
“Always.” I passed her the handful of cartridges. “Load it up?”
She fumbled and dropped two, which was a complete lesson in its way. “Easier in the movies,” she said with a nervous laugh.
“I hear it happens to cops,” I said. “They practice for years, but when they have to reload under fire they’re all over the place.”
“I won’t be doing anything ‘under fire.’ Running, maybe.” She pushed the cylinder into place with a soft click.
“Me, neither, I hope.” I took it back from her and unloaded it again. “You don’t really aim a gun like this. You can’t hit the wall with it, anyhow, no matter how well you aim.” I pointed it at the TV and click, good-bye weather girl. “You know what a sight picture is?”
“No, I never heard the term.”
I handed it to her. “Point it at the door?”
She did, and I stood behind her and wrapped my hand over hers, and raised the pistol up to eye level. “The thing in the front is the blade sight. You line it up with the notch in the back and the bullet ought to go in that direction.”
She rocked it up and down. “You can’t focus on three things at once.”
“That’s right.” I peered over her shoulder and thought about what my eyes were doing. “I guess you look at the target, then bring the front sight in line with it, and then the rear sight, and then squeeze the trigger.” She did, and the hammer clicked down.
“I didn’t ‘squeeze’ it. I just pulled it.”
“Yeah, and the nose went up a little. But you’re just trying to hit the wall. Do it again?”
This time she held it level and the nose stayed down when it snapped.
“I never used one in combat,” I said. “The Glock, we had one day of disassembly and cleaning, and a half day on the range, mostly safety procedures. I was never really issued one.” I did carry an automatic for a week, when I was TDY’ed to Shiraz, but I was advised to keep it inside the shrink-wrap so I wouldn’t have to clean it. Not exactly hardcore.
“Well, you’re a boy; you have it in your blood.”
“You never played with cap guns as a kid?”
She laughed and it felt good on my chest. “Mom would have a heart attack.”
“With dear old Dad a soldier?”
“Especially.” She raised the back of my hand to her lips and kissed it. “He’s so jealous of you.”
“Getting shot. He can have it.”
“You know what I mean.” She set the gun down on top of the TV and rotated inside my arms. Her voice was muffled in my shoulder. “Is it true you soldiers are really good lovers?”
“I think you mean bicycle riders.” She smelled so good. “Soldiers can get it in the hole they’re aiming at, usually. Bike riders know to hug the curves, though.”
“Idiot,” she said, and pulled down my shorts.
3.
The road made us go northward for a couple of hours, which annoyed me in an obscure way. If we just wanted to go to Key West, we could’ve flown, or even hopped a train in New Orleans. False names, tickets bought with cash; in one day we’d be off the grid and almost off the map. But we’d also be, to complete the trio of clichés, at the end of the line. And not that hard to trace.
If they did follow us to Key West, we’d be cornered. Just as true with bicycles as a train or plane, but maybe after that much pedaling, we’d be in good enough shape to dive in and swim for Cuba.
I hadn’t been to Key West since I was a little boy, but from what I heard it sounded like a good place to drop out of sight. Like New Orleans, it had lots of off-the-grid work for low pay, though in fact we did have enough cash to live on for a few months, a year if we were parsimonious. Best to find a little room and disappear into it. I could write well that way, I thought, and Kit was content to read and draw.
Give “the Enemy” time to lose interest in me. We started calling them that. Sometimes you could hear the capital E in both our voices.
Agent Underwood hadn’t called. Just before noon, I called her number; someone said she was out of the office and would call tomorrow morning. That was okay by me. I can handle truck traffic, and I can handle spies, but I’d just as soon not do both simultaneously.
After a day of pretty serious riding we were dead tired. We took a couple of McDeathburgers to the Holiday Inn and almost fell asleep during the thrill of eating them. I slept ten hours, about four more than usual, and woke feeling like I’d come in second best in a bar fight. Some hard roads, and I’d been off the bike for a couple of weeks.
Holiday Inn coffee is nontoxic and the machine was quiet enough not to wake Kit. In the pool of light from the desk lamp I made a list of the facts we knew about the Enemy, and the assumptions we held. Sometimes the distinction between fact and conjecture was not clear.
1. They were not “the government” in any conventional sense. Sara Underwood would have acted differently if she worked with the Enemy. (Maybe some sinister cabal of meta-spies like in the movies. Not likely.)
2. They nevertheless seemed to have resources comparable to a government agency’s. But Kit pointed out that this might not be true if, for whatever reason, I was their only project. If you really wanted to fuck with one person’s mind this way, it wouldn’t even be a full-time job.
3. This raised the interesting possibility that I might be somebody’s hobby. An agent like Blackstone could be a one-man “Let’s drive Jack Daley insane” club, working a couple of hours a week. But why would he?
4. There might be an army connection. They had easy access to my records, and of course had plenty of M2010s lying around.