Waves lapped at the ground beneath our feet.
She said: “I dare you to smile.”
“I’m too cold.”
“Go back to the SUV.” She angled her head to where our stolen ride sat parked on the beach lit by a full moon. “Zane’s got first sentry, hiding with the gun back in that pile of boulders. Russell will relieve him in two hours. As eager as Russell is to get the gun in his hands, he won’t oversleep. Come back with me. Pretend you like sleeping huddled in a car parked on the beach.”
We listened to the waves.
She said: “What are you worried about? We already jumped into the big wrong.”
“I just want…” Words stopped.
“Come on. Tell the girl in the moonlight what she wants to hear.”
“I want it to work. Even though what we’ve done is crazy. We’re crazy.”
“And all in it together,” she said.
I thrust words at her like daggers: “Of our own free will?”
“Whatever,” she parried. “That’s not your problem.”
“Sure it is.”
“Whatever,” she repeated. “What’s your real problem now?”
“What if I’ve totally fucked up? This whole thing. Busting out. Jumping over to this damn beach on Long Island to wait out any leaving-New-York ambushes. If the meds you scored don’t smooth us out, we’ve only got three days left before we fall apart. We’re three days on the road and we’re nowhere. What if I’m totally wrong?”
“Is Dr. F still dead?” said Hailey. “Or was that our mass hallucinogenic hysteria?”
“Oh, he’s dead. I went to his memorial shiva.”
“Quite a party, huh?” She found no smile on my face. “Did he die or was he hit?”
My silence confirmed murder.
“And instead of us taking the fall like it was framed, we busted out. We might still go down, but we aren’t just surrendering. And most of that is thanks to you.”
“But what if I fuck up? I don’t care about me, but the rest of you…”
“The world is your responsibility, right?” she said. “Maybe. But only with what you can do. What you can’t…”
“You pay for,” I said.
“Everybody pays.”
Waves lapped.
“We all know that,” she said. “We all signed on.”
“Maybe you should all think about signing off.”
Waves washed to the shore.
She said: “You know how Russell took a birth control pill by mistake?”
“Yeah.”
“Well he won’t throw the other two away.”
“That’s—”
“Crazy?” she said.
We both laughed.
“Russell figures one of them sacrificed itself for him—even if it was born to be a pill. Maybe it was what broke him through. Makes sense that something absurd like that worked after years of appropriate but useless treatment. Whatever, Russell won’t just throw out the other two pills and say forget it. Forget them. That would be wrong.”
“What’s he gonna do?”
We turned to look at each other in the moonlight.
“Russell won’t walk away from two strange pills because their buddy might have helped him,” said Hailey. “Even if it didn’t, even if it hurt, loyalty is a must for Russell. So what makes you think he would ever leave our thing?”
“He’s no quitter.”
“None of us are.”
Waves lapped.
“So don’t worry about what you’ve done wrong. We’re all in this together.”
We stood there for a long time. My bones felt like ice.
“Were you thinking about her?” asked Hailey.
“Nah,” I said, truth with a hollow heart. “Got that ‘thinking about her’ down to three times a day. Once when I wake up. Then again when I let go as I fall asleep and whoa: here come those memories.”
“When’s the third time?”
“Once a day. When it’s light and I realize I’m still alive. It’s like… one tear.”
We walked toward the Jeep.
I said: “What if you aren’t really going to die?”
“Oh, sure. Like that’s true.”
“No,” I said. “Suppose all your I’m dying right now thing is crazy?”
“OK,” she said. “Suppose. Then what?”
“Then you got what’s left.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Terrific.”
Sand crunched under our shoes.
“Was what you told me about Russell and the white pills true? Or did you just need to make a point?”
Hailey said: “What do you think?”
30
Gray fog lit the beach where I stood on Day Four. Morning tide rolled steel colored waves to shore. Our stolen Jeep sat on packed sand. I could see about fifty yards up the sloping beach to the scrub grass beside the highway. The chill made me shiver. Every inhale smelled of wet sand and cold ocean, each exhale birthed a dying cloud.
In the fog on the highway, a car door slammed.
Car motor: purring away.
Out of the fog walked a lone figure in a long coat.
Suddenly I forgot I was achy, cold, hungry and tired.
Zane and Russell took my flanks.
I said: “Target one unknown standing on the highway turnoff.”
“’Xactly,” said Zane.
“So it’s real,” said Russell.
“‘Real’ equals what we all see.”
“Man, I hope you’re right,” said Russell.
“Victor, with me,” said war boss Zane. “Russell, boots and saddles.”
Russell ran to the SUV.
Zane and I fanned out so one machinegun burst couldn’t drop us both as we marched toward the highway.
“What the hell you two doing down there?” yelled the specter.
A woman: an old woman. She wore a tan raincoat and a plastic rain cap tied over her shellacked black hair. Wrinkles mapped her chalk face with its gash of ruby. Her pale hands curled like bird’s claws as she stood on graveled apron beside the highway.
“Looking at the ocean,” said Zane as we reached her.
“Why?” Three shopping bags with loop handles and a combat sized black shoulder purse waited on the gravel behind her. “Never mind. Which bus?”
“Excuse me?”
“Which… bus?”
Zane frowned. “Our bus is… blue?”
“Like that matters,” she said. “Especially if you’re dilly dallying down on the beach when it comes. You’re either on the bus or in the fog.
“Atlantic City picks up over there.” Fog swirled to reveal two women standing further up the road. “The N J double-M stops right here.”
“The N J—”
Her waving hand shushed me. “OK, it’s got some fancy schmansy new name, but it’s still the North Jersey Mega Mall. You two taking the motel deal for the night?”
Luck is recognizing your chances.
“How far—how long is the bus ride to the Mall?” I asked.
“Ninety minutes, though in this damn fog… Can’t see nothing for nothing.”
“Too bad,” said Zane. I caught his frown.
“How does this work?” I said. “The rest of… our family, we parked off the highway where we wouldn’t get hit until—”
“More of you down there?” The bird woman squinted into the fog.
“Brother,” I said, “go have… have Uncle Sam drive you all up here.”
“If your uncle’s coming too, there’s a pull-off just up the road. Put ten bucks under your wiper, the county road crew guys let you park there couple days.”
As he hurried down the beach to our car, Zane said: “Don’t leave without us.”
Bird woman tapped my shoulder. “Stick with Bernice, you’ll be fine.”
“Counting on it,” I said. “Do you work for the bus?”
“Hell no,” she said. “Then I’d have to let things happen their way.”
Bernice scoffed at our lack of preparedness, gave us shopping bags to fill with the gobs of loot our GODS bags clearly wouldn’t hold. Other riders joined us. Retired couples. Mom and Aunt with a chattering 20ish gonna-be a bride; they smelled of hairspray. A Korean woman.
As Russell walked back from ditching the SUV, the Atlantic City bus wheeled out of the fog. Casino posters covered its metal. A dozen gamblers scurried on board. That bus rolled away with them and left us still standing by the side of the road.
Our silver bus lumbered off the highway ten minutes after the gamblers left.
“Don’t hand me your money!” shouted Bernice as she shaped our meager crowd into a ragged boarding line. “We’ll do tickets on board. Grab a seat, Honey. Nobody wants to be the one who holds us up.”
We five filled the back rows.
“This better be better,” grumbled Russell.
“We’re safer where we got tickets than in a stolen car,” I said. “Hiding in here, in the crowd… We break our trail of crimes. We’re so low profile we disappear.”
Zane sniffed his clothes. “We’re awful ripe for public transportation.”
“We need to stretch out and get real sleep,” said Hailey.
Eric nodded.
Our silver bus hummed through fog as Bernice worked her way down the aisle.
“Edna, you got your walking shoes? Janice, didn’t your daughter-in-law like that quilt? Did you tell her about doctors? No complaints, Melvin: you can always sit on a planter in the mall and watch girls. Agnes, you need tickets or you got coupons?
“Oscar!” Bernice yelled to the bus driver. “You want I should collect?
“Course you do,” she answered herself. “Get us off quicker on the other end.”
By the time she reached us, we’d learned enough for me to say: “We’ve got no coupons, and we want the full package with motel rooms.”
Bernice’d left her rain cap and tan coat on her seat. She wore a pink sweat suit. An unlit cigarette tucked over her right ear poked through her shiny black curls.
“You get breakfasts,” she said handing us vouchers. “Bus drops-off at the motel before the Mall opens, so do some damage to the buffet. The bacon goes fast.”
Her hard green eyes notched us off. “You’re room res’ numbers 17 through 21, you pick who’s what where. Give these slips to the front desk.”
“Do they want a credit card imprint?” asked Zane.
“Don’t matter. Nobody gets on the bus tomorrow if they got room charges.” She squinted at Zane’s white hair. “You got grandkids?”
“Ah… no.”
“Children: just when you think they’re done breaking your heart, they give you an encore. I might as well not have my little troubles, much as I get to see them.”
Her gaze floated over five strangers sitting in the back of her bus: That white-haired guy without grandkids. The Black woman who looked like none of these guys’ sister. The pudgy guy with thick glasses perched on the edge of his seat. The shaggy-haired rock ’n’ roll outlaw no grandma wanted her precious to bring home. The poet with ghosts in his eyes and a switchblade smile. “You’re an odd family.”
“Who isn’t?” I said.
The unlit cigarette from behind her ear rolled back and forth in her bird claw.
“Families,” Bernice told us. “Moms are in your face with what they’re not saying. Dads are gone even when they’re sitting in that damn chair. Brothers and sisters, forget about it. You carry their troubles and they eat your time. Kids won’t listen to how it was, so they know zero about how it is.”
The white tube snuck between her veteran fingers.
“I thought they banned smoking on buses,” said Zane. “Fires and cancer.”
“I ain’t smoked for years.” The killer stick slid back behind her ear.
Our silver steed rolled onto a major highway.
Bernice stared out the bus windows. “When I was a girl, we went from store to store by going outside. Then we got malls so you never had to see the sun, never had to get wet. Now there’s computers, if you got smarts and bucks. No need to leave your house, or even meet the deliveryman. Free to stay locked in where you are. Real stores run bus deals to catch us people who need a reason and a place to go.”
I sent her words back to her: “You’re either on the bus or in the fog.”
“Yeah,” she said. But she didn’t like it.
Two hours later, the five of us were in adjoining motel rooms, breakfast bar stuffed, Russell caffeinated enough to take first watch and wash our clothes in the motel’s laundry center while we collapsed into actual beds. In the hall beyond my door, Bernice urged someone to get a move on as I sank into dreamless sleep.
Seven hours later, we blew up the police car.
31
Six hours and nine minutes after Bernice crossed the road to the white stone mall, our crew stood facing its mirror doors. We carried Bernice’s donated bags, scavenged gear, matrices, our GODS. Our reflections looked slept, showered & shaved, and certain they knew what they were doing in the evening sun.
“Check it out,” said Russell. “Five maniacs in the heart of reality.”
Staring at our reflections, Hailey told him: “I thought you had the breakthrough.”
“Yeah, but turns out it’s whacky on the other side.”
“’Xactly.”
I said: “Let’s do it.”
The electric eye caught us stepping forward and slid open the mirror doors.
Our pupils absorbed the mall’s oceanic light even as it absorbed us. Breathing brought that mall smell. Industrial perfume muted a million armpits and tired feet. Shirts and skirts on store shelves exhaled an aroma of cloth. The deeper we walked into the mall, the sweeter came the food court scent of waffle cones and fried grease. Speckled white & black tiles ate the sound of shoes and showed no footprints. We heard snatches of conversation, the whoosh of vacuum, the hum of air processors, faintly-everywhere recorded instruments cheerfully torturing a vaguely familiar song.
“No!” cried Russell. “That’s The Beatles! From the Sgt. Pepper’s album. ‘A Day In The Life’ is about how they’d love to turn us on, not sell us shit!”
“Nixon was President last time I was in a place like this,” said Zane.
Two old women in stylish sweat suits quick-walked past us, their mouths flapping, their arms pumping, their pure white shoes marching in time.
“They’re here to exercise their hearts,” I told Zane’s stare.
“Oh.”
“We’re here to gear up and get gone,” I said.
Eric shuffled closer to Hailey, forced out: “Don’t leave me!”
“Won’t happen,” she told him.
We wandered to a kiosk with a backlit map and lists of money stops.
“This one mall has five different sneaker stores!” said Russell.
“Everybody’s running,” I said for the second time in less than a day.
Eric forced out: “Least we got a reason.”
But we walked like we’d lost it, drifted along the wall of chain store windows where headless mannequins sported pants and pullovers cut in communist China’s clattering factories or 10 toxic steps south of Texas. Trademarks, brand names, merchandized spin-offs, and franchises flew at our eyes like machinegun bullets. One store promised us herbal vitamin formulas to naturally fight ills suffered by vibrant people in the ads who knew they were secretly bald, fat, hollow boned, sick skinned, artery clogged, limp dicked and anxious. The next store offered miles of gold chains, rings, bracelets, designer watches that also kept time. Nearby window
s revealed salesclerks showing customers how to program massage options in leather reclining chairs or how to link a patio-mounted video telescope to a laptop computer so you could sit in your living room and scan the stars.
“How did all this happen?” said Zane.
“Right before our eyes,” I said.
“Well,” said Russell, “not our eyes. We’ve been locked up.”
Hailey said: “Don’t think that makes us innocent.”
We walked on.
Hollywood posters for movies at the mall’s Cineplex hung on a kiosk. Beautiful Actors beating the odds to find love. A volcanic world where only magic in a heartbroken boy could stop evil’s triumph. Back-to-back rebel cops blazing pistols at the brilliant bad guy no law could touch. A sexy black-leathered blonde and her sextet of cool sidekicks scoring the heist of the century. The so-lost affluent family of clueless white people saved by the street savvy of a craggy Black guru. A wildly adventurous animated sure-to-be-a-classic for the whole family in which absolutely nothing happened over and over again, the end.
“I’d love to see a movie I’d love to see,” said Russell.
The five of us stared into the glowing wonderfulness of a bookstore.
Hailey sighed. “I’d love to visit my better self.”
“I’d love to visit old friends.” Visions of Faulkner, Lewis, Steinbeck, Camus, Hammett, Marquez, Emily and Williams danced in my heart. “Make new ones.”
“They might have maps we could use,” said Russell. “Or great CDs.”
Zane shook his head: “They’ll be looking for us where we want to be.”
Eric nodded.
We turned to walk away—
“Freeze!” whispered Russell, quickly correcting himself: “No! Look natural!”
Eric overloaded, trembled.
Hailey took his arm: “Be calm!”
“What is it?” Zane’s hands crossed near his waistband that hid our gun.
“Cameras.” Russell pointed his eyes toward heaven.
White metal security cameras hung from the ceiling, swiveled slowly from side to side as they constantly swept the mall with Cyclops glass eyes.
“And in the ATM on that wall!” said Hailey.
“Behind the cash register in that sexy underwear store,” said Zane.