"You really want to know?"
"I asked, didn't I?"
She began with the easy stuff. Grillo, and the Reef, and how she'd traveled the states in the last five years, discovering in the progress that things were damn weird out there.
"Like how?" Phoebe said.
"This is going to sound crazy."
"I don't care," said Phoebe. "I want to know."
"I think maybe we're coming to the end of being what we are. We're going to take an evolutionary jump. And that mak es this a dangerous and wonderful time." "Why dangerous?"
"Because there are things that don't want us to take the jump. Things that'd prefer us to stay just the way we are, wandering around blindly, afraid of our own shadows, afraid of being dead and afraid of being too much alive. they want to keep us that way. But then there's people everywhere saying: I'm not going to be blind. I'm not going to be afraid. I can see invisible roads. I can hear angel's voices. I know who I was before I was born and I know what I want to be when I'm dead."
"You've met people like this?"
"Oh yes."
"That's wonderful," said Phoebe. "I don't know if I lieve any of those things, but it's still wonderful." She got to her feet and went to the refrigerator, talking on as she surveyed the contents. "What about the things that want to stop us?" she said. "I don't think I believe in the Devil, so maybe you're right about that, but if not the Devil then who are these people?"
"That's another conversation," Tesia said.
"Want to talk while we eat?" Phoebe said. "I'm getting hungry. How about you?"
"Getting that way."
"There's nothing worth having in there," she said, closing the fridge.
"We'll have to go out. You want pizza? Chicken?"
"I don't care. Anywhere but that fucking diner."
"You mean Bosley's place?"
:'What an asshole."
'The hamburgers are good." "I had the fish." they walked rather than taking the car, and while they walked Phoebe told Tesla how she'd come to gain a lover and lose a husband. The more she told, the more Testa warmed to her. She was a curious mingling of small-town pretensions (she plainly thought herself better than most of her fellow Evervillians) and charming self-deprecation (especially on the subject of her weight); funny at times (she was wittily indiscreet about the medical problems of those who, upon seeing her on the sidewalk, played the Pharisee) and at other times (speaking about Joe, and how she'd almost given up believing she could be loved that way) sweetly touching.
"You've got no idea where he's gone, then?" Tesia said. "No." Phoebe surveyed the thronged street ahead of them. "He can't hide in a crowd, that's for sure. When he comes back he'll have to be really careful."
"You're sure he'll come back?"
"Sure I'm sure. He promised." She cast Tesla a sideways glance. "You think I sound stupid."
"No, just trusting."
"We've all got to trust somebody, right?"
"Do we?"
"If you could feel what I feel," Phoebe said, "you wouldn't ask that question."
"All I know is, you're alone in the end. Always."
"Who's talking about the end?" Phoebe said.
Tesla stepped out of the stream of people into the street, taking Phoebe with her. "Listen to me," she said, "something terrible's going to happen here. I don't know exactly what and I don't know exactly when, but trust me: This place is finished."
Phoebe said nothing at first. She simply looked up and down the busy street. Then, after a moment to consider, she said, "It can't happen fast enough as far as I'm concerned."
"You mean that?"
"Just 'cause I live here doesn't mean I like it," Phoebe replied. "I'm not saying I believe you, I'm just saying if it happens you won't hear any complaints from me."
She's quite a piece of work, Raul said when they found a table at the pizza parlor, and Phoebe had gone off to relieve herself.
"I wondered where you'd got to."
I was just enjoying the girl-talk, Raul said. She's one angry lady.
"She's no lady," Tesla said, "that's what I like about her. Pity about her boyfriend."
You think he's gone for good, right?
"Don't you?"
Probably. Why are you wasting time with her? I mean she's very entertaining, but we came here to find Fletcher.
"I can't go back to Toothaker's house alone, " Tesla replied. "I just can't. Soon as I smelled that smell-"
Maybe it was just a backed-up sewer.
"And maybe it was Lix," Tesla said. "And whoever raised them's already killed Fletcher."
But we have to get in to find out.
"Right."
And you think this woman's going to lend some moral support?
"If it's not her who's it going to be? I can't wait till Lucien comes crawling back." I knew we'd get to him"I'm not blaming you, I'm just saying: I need help, and she's the only help available." Suppose she comes to some serious harm? "I don't want to think about that." You have to. "What are you, Jiminy Cricket? I'll be honest with her. I'll tell her what we're up against@' So then you're not responsible, is that it? Tesla, she's just an ordinary woman. "So was I," Tesla reminded him. Whatever you were, Tesla, I don't think you were ever ordinary.
"Thank you." My pleasure. "She's coming back. I'm going to tell her, Raul. I have to." It'll end in lears"Doesn't it always?"
It was a hell of a conversation to have over a pepperoni pizza, but Phoebe's appetite wasn't visibly curbed by anything that Tesia had to say. She listened without comment as Tesla went through her experiences in the Loop, detail by terrible detail, stopping every now and then to say: I know this sounds ridiculous or You probably think this is crazy until Phoebe told her not to bother, because yes, it was crazy, but she didn't care. Tesla took her at her word, and continued the account without further interruption, until she got to the matter of the Lix. Here she stopped.
"What's the problem?" Phoebe wanted to know.
"I'll leave this bit to later."
"Why?"
"It's disgusting, is why. And we're eating."
"If you can bear to tell it, it won't bother me. I've worked in a doctor's office for eight years, remember? I've seen everything."
"You never saw anything like a Lix," Tesla said, and went on to describe them and their conception, dropping her volume even lower than it had been. Phoebe was unfazed.
"And you think it was one of these Lix things you saw in Erwin's house?"
"I think it's possible, yes."
"This guy Fletcher made them?" "I doubt it."
"Then what?"
"Somebody who meant Fletcher harm. Somebody who, came after him, and found him there and-2' She threw up her hands. "The fact is, I don't know. And the only way I'll find out-"
"Is by going in there."
"Right."
"Seems to me," Phoebe said, "if the Lix are real-I'm not saying they are, I'm saying if they are-and if they're made of what you say they're made of, they shouldn't be that hard to kill."
"Some they grow six, seven feet long," Tesla said.
"Huh. And you've actually seen these things?"
"Oh, I've seen them." She turned her gaze out through the window, in part so as not to look at the congealing pizza on her plate, in part so that Phoebe couldn't see the fear in her eyes. "they got into my apartment in L.A.-"