I knew a lot about towns like Relent because that's where I'd spent most of my time in recent months, wandering directionless across many miles of backwoods and prairie in the country's least glamorous states. Initially I'd stayed in motels, then one afternoon I'd gone to an ATM and found there was no more money. It's amazing the difference a little brightly coloured rectangle makes to your well-being, to your sense of identity and belonging. You only really understand the card's importance when the machine coughs it back out again and tells you 'No,' and that word means not now, not later, not ever; when you are suddenly reminded the card was never some magical gold-producing chalice but just a piece of plastic you didn't even legally own. I stood in a parking lot in New Jersey turning mine over in my hands until a woman with an SUV and three fat kids told me to get the hell out of the way. She had her own card ready and every confidence it would perform its function. I envied her for that. Though not for her kids, who were ugly as sin.
I walked back to my car and climbed in. Sat and looked out through the windshield for a while. I had eighteen dollars and change, plus less than half a tank of gas. Nothing else. At all.
'So, Bobby, what are we going to do now?'
Bobby didn't answer, because he was dead. He'd been my best friend, one of the few people whose long-term fate I'd cared about. He'd died up at a place called The Halls, as we tried to catch a psychopath who called himself the Upright Man. The Halls had been blown to kingdom come, vaporizing Bobby's body along with it. He'd become an unpredictable conversationalist since. Sometimes he said what I needed him to, telling me: yes, Ward, this is a good town to stay the night, or yes, you do need another beer — and yes, we did our best to find the people who murdered your parents and it would be stupid of you to feel guilty about everything that went wrong, up to and including the fact that I am dead.
Then he'd go silent for a long while. I don't know where he went during these periods, what change took place in my mind that meant I didn't hear him. And it was only in my own head that I heard him. I knew that. Really, I did.
In the end I drove out of the bank parking lot and found myself a job washing dishes and cutting potatoes three towns away. The Ecuadorian fry cook let me sleep on his floor for two days, after which I had enough cash to get a room of my own provided I didn't mind sharing it with bugs and dust and noise, and that I didn't eat. Working in kitchens is good for people in that position, though you become heartily sick of the cheaper food groups. Relations between the Ecuadorian and myself broke down a week later when I tried to get him to share the small coke-dealing business he had going amongst the other staff and a few young and not-so-young locals who'd turn up round the back some nights. I wound up driving the hell out of town in the small hours, bleeding profusely and feeling a fool.
The next morning I was taking a rest outside a Burger King in West Virginia, still bleeding, though less steadily, when a voice finally spoke and answered a question from nine days before. I cleaned myself up in the BK's wash-rooms, treated myself to a globalized breakfast of food-like materials and drove straight down to Arizona. Once there I located a residence in Flagstaff, which took a while because I'd been there only once, somewhat drunk, and had since lost the address. I watched the place carefully for twenty-four hours before getting out my otherwise useless rectangle of plastic, which I used to break in.
And so for five days I lived in Bobby Nygard's house.
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First thing I did, once I'd had a look around and established that if anyone had robbed the place they'd done so very tidily and without being tempted by tens of thousands of dollars of computers and surveillance equipment, was get online. I hadn't done this in a while. I was semi-convinced that any attempt to trace personal information would be noticed somewhere and have people coming after me. Among the things Bobby had been expert in was the obfuscation of internet trails. I knew that if I used his home system I'd be safe, at least for a little while.
Bank accounts were my first stop. I soon established that my primary account had been closed, its contents AWOL. Not closed, but empty, was another account with a different bank. This was where the money from my parents' estate had been transferred. Someone had cleared it out, leaving credit of a single cent.
I logged out and sat back, light-headed. I wasn't surprised, but it still qualified as very bad news, and the leaving of the penny made me want to find someone and hurt them. I went through to the kitchen and found a saucer to use as an ashtray and stood looking out on the street. I heard Bobby talking then all right. He'd always been on at me to quit smoking, and in my head had evidently retained the opinion. I finished the cigarette anyway. It was nice to hear someone's voice, even if it was bugging me, and even if it was my own.
I stayed in the house. It seemed safe there, and I was tired of moving. I lived on the cans in the cupboards so I didn't have to go out. I spent a lot of time reading Bobby's notes and manuals, and I searched the house from top to bottom as respectfully as I could. I found a cache of false identities and took them, knowing Bobby would have bought them from someone he trusted. I also came across a little under six thousand dollars in cash, hidden in a computer box in the basement. I sat and looked at it for a while, feeling bad for finding it and even worse for what I was going to do. Bobby had a mother. I'd tracked her down a month before to pass on the news that he was dead. She had been drunk, and had thrown things at me, though it was not clear whether this was in response to the news — they had been far from close — or just a general policy. Probably the money should go to her, but that wasn't going to happen. It was highly likely it was dirty and I believed in my heart that Bobby would approve of me taking it.
A few days later I left the house wearing some clothes of his that more or less fit, and carrying a small bag with the money. I also had one of his laptops, having pawned my own some time before. Halfway across the street I turned and looked back at the property, wondering how long a house could go on, empty, unvisited. Weeks, certainly. So long as the bills got paid direct, and something didn't pop or burn itself out and start a fire, probably far longer. It made me wonder how many rooms and houses across the country were like that; their people disappeared, the machines in them still ticking and sighing with no one left to tend them.
— «» — «» — «»—
After that it was places of that nature I tended to hang my hat. Occasionally I dipped into Bobby's stash to stay somewhere that reminded me I'd once had a life, some big city downtown chain where you had to ring reception in the morning to be reminded which state you were in. Otherwise I took what I could find. Boarded-up motels just outside the limits; commercial zone office blocks where the glass had gone grey; anywhere forgotten and overlooked that had a sign saying KEEP OUT, because usually those two words were the only deterrent in place bar the fear of running into someone who might try to use violence to defend their temporary home. Luckily I was one of those people myself, so the prospect didn't overly bother me. There were a few confrontations, but people who have nothing are easily cowed, providing you keep your nerve and maintain the pretence you're somehow different. It's surprising just how much abandoned space there is; these places we once wanted, now home merely to emptiness and mattresses folded in odd ways and smelling of unnameable things.