The employer started yelling then, and the Vincent pulled the pen away from his ear. When his tone finally changed the Vincent said, “Sorry, what were you saying?”
More yelling. The Vincent didn’t let it bother him. Finally the employer settled down and gave him an address. The Vincent thought, New Mexico?
The rest of the instructions were explicit. “Just to be clear,” the Vincent said. “No restrictions on Rose and Skarsten?” He was surprised at the change, but relieved. He wouldn’t have to go behind his employer’s back to get rid of witnesses.
“One more thing,” the Vincent said. “I’m running a mite low.” He did not have to say its name aloud; the employer understood that when the Vincent brought up amounts he was talking about not cash but Evanimex. There were several knockoff street drugs—Brick, Darwin, HooDoo—that purported to provide the same effect and that he could have purchased himself. But he’d tried all those, and there was no comparison; Evanimex, the pure pharmaceutical product, was the only guaranteed solution. He’d first tried it several years ago when the government treated him for PTSD. It had worked well—so well that he never wanted to go back to his old self.
The problem, of course, was tolerance. Take the drug too often and it wouldn’t have any effect at all. So, he rationed. He used it for work first and daily phobia-management second. The rest of the time he tried to distract himself with his hobby.
His employer told him that he’d already shipped the latest package of pills.
“That doesn’t do me much good out here on the road,” the Vincent said. “I’ve got enough for about a week, then—”
The employer told him he’d be done in a week, and hung up.
The Vincent stared at the pen for a moment, imagining a few things he would like to do to his employer.
“I’d like you to consider something,” Arun said. Again, calm as a houseplant. He was a smart guy; he knew that now that he’d heard the Vincent’s conversation, and heard those names, there was no way he was living through the next fifteen minutes. Still he didn’t lose his composure.
“And what would that be?” the Vincent asked. He reached into his pocket for another set of plasticuffs.
“You have our printers; you have our paper,” the pastor said. “After you’re done here, find a quiet place, and just try one of the Logos pages.”
“I will give it to you boys,” the Vincent said. “Every one of ya’s tried to witness to me.”
“Just consider it,” the pastor said. “You’ll thank me for it.”
“I sure do appreciate your concern, Arun,” the Vincent said. He looped the cuff around the man’s neck and cinched it tight. Arun fell onto his stomach and began to flop around. The sidekick heard all this and started crying. “Arun? Arun?” The Vincent lassoed him too and put him down.
No restrictions, the Vincent thought. Maybe he really would be home in a week. It sure would be good to get out of all these shitty hotel rooms. And Vinnie would be happy to get another turn at the wheel. Jesus, he loved those stinking little buffalos.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The sun hammered the freeway, turning the air above it to jelly. Still we three pushed on—Rovil, Dr. Gloria, and I—Tint Shields on full, air-conditioning turned up to eleven. Rovil tried to chat, but I had become hazardous cargo, silent and toxic. Ollie had vanished. That morning I’d tried to call her pen, but she didn’t answer, and the desk clerk claimed to have no idea who I was talking about.
I felt like shit.
Rovil couldn’t believe we were leaving without her, but I told him to keep out of it, letting him think Ollie and I had split over some female relationship thing he’d never understand. “She’s just cooling off. She’ll be fine. Ollie’s, like, hypercompetent.”
He looked worriedly out at the motel parking lot and said, “I suppose.”
“You’re still my pal, right, Rovil? You’re still with me on this?”
Rovil breathed out. “Sometimes I think you don’t need a friend so much as chauffeur.”
“A chauffeur would quit.”
That got a smile out of him. “Look, I know I’m an asshole,” I said. “But we’re almost there, kid—a few hours from Emerald City. Just take me the rest of the way.”
He relented, and after a couple of hours on the road he’d dropped the worried pout. He listened to his music, a grating form of Indonesian pop, and when we crossed the border into New Mexico he set the car to auto and let go of the steering wheel, excited to finally be in a state that allowed autonomous cars—proof that there was as much joy in surrendering free will as exercising it.
Sometime after 2 p.m. we left the interstate, and Rovil took the wheel again. Los Lunas was a surprisingly green town on the Rio Grande, with lawns and trees living the high life off the river. The car’s GPS led us confidently out of town along Highway 6, west into the desert, through brown, rolling hills. Then we left the highway for a smaller road, then exited that one as well. Each turn seemed to lead us onto narrower, sketchier roads until finally a white cement drive appeared on our right. A black steel gate blocked it, and bleached stone fences curved away in both directions.
Rovil stopped the car. “Are you okay?” he asked.
“Fine.” I was sweating in the cold air-conditioning, every pore open. I tried to think of something to say. “Hell of a driveway.”
The road ran for five miles and ended in a cul-de-sac. According to the satellite pictures there was a cluster of buildings at the end of the road, but their details were obscured in a cloud of fuzzy pixels; the rich could afford privacy agreements.
“He owns everything within ten miles of the compound,” Rovil said. He rolled up to the gate and the entry panel.
Dr. Gloria said to me, “Put your head down.”
“What?” I couldn’t concentrate.
“Cameras,” she said, and nodded toward the gates. “It’s what Ollie would have had you do.”
“Jesus, how could cameras make a difference? Edo knows we’re coming. He invited us.”
Rovil had rolled down the window. I started to tell him the gate code that had been in the text message, but he said “I remember” and typed it in.
The gates slid open. We rolled through, started to pick up speed, and I said, “Wait. Pull over. Now.”
He stopped the car and I jumped out. I marched across the pebbled ground toward a set of boulders, toward a clump of gnarled bushes, toward … fuck. Nowhere. Into the heat. Sweat poured from my face and dried almost instantly.
I stopped in front of a large juniper bush. Its limbs were gray as old bones. The plants around it were equally dead and strange, a cohort of parched alien bodies buried standing up. Humans didn’t belong out here.
Dr. Gloria descended from the sky and landed upon an Old Testament–quality boulder.
“You have absolutely no idea what’s going on in your own brain, do you?”
“Not now, Gloria.”
“Would you like me to explain?”
“I would like you to explain what the hell Edo’s doing out here in the middle of nowhere.”
“I like the desert,” she said.
“It’s the fucking waiting room of the apocalypse. In a hundred years half the planet’s going to look like this. So, what, he just had to get a preview?’
“You could have stayed with her,” Dr. Gloria said. “Called off this trip until she could come with you.”
“What do you do if you want to run out for milk?” I said. “How long do you have to wait for a fucking ambulance out here?”
“I’m concerned that you’re thinking of ambulances,” she said.