“Steve would definitely do that. He’s always so helpful and nice. But he’s not been so reliable these da—” A solid thump of a thought. “What about that?”
On one of the highest shelves, there was a Mercedes, only a few years old, and once offered with urgency by a young man wearing a gray pin-striped suit stained with dirt. The luxury sedan was perfectly balanced across the drive train, resting perpendicularly on the ten-foot wooden shelf.
Jackie smiled, and then winced. It hurt to smile. It hurt not emotionally but physically, due to the trauma to her muscles. She had not smiled since the accident.
“Keys are in the ignition,” she said.
“Great,” Diane said but didn’t do anything because: “How are we going to—”
“I don’t know.”
“But how did you in the first place?”
“I don’t remember.”
“So we’re stuck again.”
“Looks like.”
No time passed and nothing happened, but the Mercedes was down from the shelf and out in the parking lot. Around them was an open toolbox, a trail of feathers, and a large quantity of ball bearings. The air smelled like a burnt match.
They took a long moment to absorb this new reality, and then, like good Night Vale citizens, categorized it as unexplainable and set it aside forever.
“Guess we took it down the same way I put it up,” said Jackie.
She couldn’t remember what way that was.
“Wow,” said Diane. “I’m impressed with us. I hope I helped somehow.”
“Dude, I’m sure you did.”
“That’s sweet of you.”
“Shall we?”
While Jackie headed upstairs to her desk to pack a couple of personal items, Diane wandered around the store, looking at what had been pawned. She found her tear, and was disappointed that no one had bought it yet, but pleased that Jackie had displayed it so prominently on her shelves. And then she saw something that gave her pause.
Below a series of cute porcelain figurines depicting young couples committing thought crimes and hiding evidence, there was a trash can. Resting on top of the trash can was a box. It was a simple brown cardboard box. She knew exactly what kind of box it was. It was the box that No. 9 envelopes come in. She was familiar with this kind of box. The only office that used No. 9 envelopes in Night Vale was the one that she had, until recently, worked at.
She crouched down to examine it. There was a long wood handle leaning against the side, belonging to a four-foot garden hoe. The metal edge of the hoe was stained and sticky with clumps of dark brown fur.
She set down the hoe and touched the lid of the box. She grew sad. She did not know why she was sad. She grew scared. She did not know why she was scared.
She lifted the lid and saw. She saw. And she felt. And for a moment she was not. And then she was. She held her hand to her mouth.
When Jackie got to the Mercedes, slow and limping, Diane was already in the passenger seat.
“Let’s do this,” Jackie said.
Diane’s elbow was on the window ledge. She had lost some of her color and was staring out the window at nothing in particular.
Jackie did not know exactly what it must be like to have a son go missing, but it must be exhausting. She knew about exhaustion. She knew about pain.
“You feeling okay?”
“I pawned that tear to you because school was starting and I needed the money,” Diane said. “That was the only reason. I made up that other stuff because I thought it might get you to come with me.”
“I know.”
“Okay then.”
Jackie started the car, pressed her feet to both pedals, and backed out with a squeal of vulcanized rubber and a puff of gray smoke. The agent in the black sedan nearby snapped photos of their going, each one ruined by the flash, each ruin followed by a muttering of curses. The women drove away leaving two black curls, like horns, across the crumbling asphalt lot.
Two beings, definitely not angels, both named Erika, stepped out from behind the pawnshop, where they had been hiding. They were drenched in sweat and their hands were covered in black grease.
Chapter 40
Jackie guided the Mercedes onto Route 800. It drove so differently from her old car. Her old car had felt like making a plan, whereas this car felt like an improvisation. Or maybe it was that she was driving with one arm.
Diane grinned at her and she grinned back. It was hard to fight the feeling of triumph. Diane clutched hard at the slip of paper that said “KING CITY” in Josh’s handwriting. She couldn’t let go of it. Or, unlike Jackie, she could, but, unlike Jackie, she wouldn’t.
They passed Old Woman Josie’s house, next to the used car lot. She was standing in the front yard with all the Erikas, as if she knew they were coming by. The Erikas seemed out of breath. Josie had her hand up but she wasn’t waving. She was gesturing, but Jackie couldn’t understand what the gesture was. She gave her own meaningless gesture back. A used car salesman stood on the roof of an old Toyota hatchback and howled. Jackie howled back. She hadn’t been this happy since before the trouble had begun. The highway was a simple path laid out for her.
Diane turned around, watching Night Vale retreat into the distance.
“Seems small,” she said. “I mean, not just from here. It just seems so small now. Such a small place to live a whole life.”
“You haven’t lived your whole life yet.”
“I really hope you’re right.”
Larry Leroy’s, out on the edge of town, was the last house they passed. Larry was nowhere to be seen. His house sagged into itself, an unmaintained heap of wood barely holding the shape of a house. It thought about nothing at all.
Then they were out in the open desert. Jackie tried to think of a time she had been even this far outside of Night Vale. All she could remember were endless days at the pawnshop. For the first time, she felt sad thinking about those days rather than nostalgic. She didn’t know what that meant.
“Diane, what does it mean when you know you’re feeling something but you don’t know what that feeling is?”
Diane considered this seriously for a long time.
“It means you’re growing older.”
“I never grow older.”
“I guess we all thought that once.”
The desert went on so far out into the distance that it was easy to imagine that it constituted the entire world. But Jackie knew, even though she didn’t quite believe it, that the desert was barely a fraction of the world. It frightened her, the possibility of space. The tininess of home. Her chest felt like a bubble about to pop, and she tried to hold still.
“Is it hard getting old?”
“Only as hard as you let it be. Easier than the alternative.”
“Dying?”
“Oh no. No, that’s actually easier than anything. I meant getting younger.”
Jackie laughed, although she didn’t find it funny. There are other reasons for laughter.
They settled in for a long drive. Diane was closing her eyes for a nap before it was her turn to drive when Jackie pointed, swerving the car since her pointing hand was also her steering hand, straightened the car back out, and said to the now wide awake Diane, “Look!”
There was a sign that said KING CITY with an arrow pointing at an exit looping away from the highway out into the sand.
“I guess we take that.”
Jackie pulled the car onto the exit. As she did, she felt her stomach start to rise, like she was being carried.
“Do you feel that?”
“Yes. Something’s not right.”
The exit loop kept turning. She couldn’t see how the loop could possibly be that long. The curve just wouldn’t end. They went and went. For ten minutes they did a long, slow curve along the exit loop.