Rob can just see the acupuncture needles from the corners of his eyes, when he blinks out tears. The sewing is less sophisticated. It’s thick black upholstery thread, big X-shaped stitches, and they’re starting to bleed.
He’s screaming through his nose, but his limbs and jaw are locked up by Salem’s expertise. He can feel the paper corner Darlene slipped under his tongue. She’s writing something on his forehead, now: four characters. Salem bites the thread and ties it off.
“Goodbye,” Darlene says a little sadly, and wipes away the first letter.
Rob’s alone. The needles are gone. Everything’s white.
That first night they close out the Gaslamp bars, then can’t find their hotel. They sleep in the van. It’s awful. They like it; they go nocturnal (makeup would kill them if they came back bronzed).
They find the hotel. It’s being picketed. They cancel.
“I don’t have health insurance either,” says South. False dawn rosies the beach. “How different are we, us and the maids and handymen?”
“You’ll get Guild insurance,” Rebecca says, “once they pick up the pilot.”
“If.”
“When.” Six a.m. and she’s rubbing sunblock into her hands, which are thin and strong, raw knuckles and short nails.
Bonnie cranks back on the band throttle and the highway torrents out, snapping up old side roads and railroad tracks. Her vision ommatidizes: she flickers through a vast composite of Tennessee soft shoulders and medians. She races south.
It’s not until she’s collected in Mobile, trying to read fuel prices, that she notices her blind spot.
“Dropped a packet, huh?” says the quantum mechanic.
Bonnie, grumpy about it, just hands over her checksum. This shop smells like compressed air and beryllium, not the burnt oil of the old days, but for some reason he still wipes his hands on a rag.
Cathy remembers being able to assign emotions to the changes she sees in eyebrows, mouths and nostrils–she just can’t remember the trick of it.
There must be a trick.
“Try it,” soothes Dr. Baum. She puts the pencil gently into Cathy’s hand. “Draw me a happy face. Good! Now a face that’s angry. That’s broken. That’s brilliant.”
Cathy looks at the paper, but all she sees is dots and lines.
On her way out she notices her chart, halfway out of its slot in the wall. She laughs, involuntarily, to see a diagnosis and half of her name:
ASPERGER’S?
CAT
Comet and the posse ride under a zep shadow for most of the day, keeping cool, until the dry riverbed turns east. It’s warmer now, but at least the sun’s going down.
“Remind me again why we gotta find this feller, boss?” asks Dough Flats, sweating.
“I ain’t no source of exposition,” snaps Comet. Comet’s wise, and bitter for it. “Posses ride. We’re a posse! You put the rest together your own self.”
They follow the dry bed through small towns, two-family towns, the kind of places that are named after the horse that died and made them stop there.
“They’re dancing Wick today,” murmurs Brello over his gruel, as Coin sets his tray on the table.
“Impossible,” Coin says. “Wick’s got secrets, nobody would be stupid enough to turn him–”
“I heard different,” says Labret, leaning over them. “I heard somebody decided to call all those bluffs.” He grins. The iris of his left eye is yellow.
“What?” he asks, as they stare. The Wardens drag Wick, on parade, into the dining hall.
Coin stands and drives his thumb into Labret’s eye. He looks at Wick, and everything’s yellow. He closes his fist. Wick falls, flailing, his throat sealed shut.
Seviche insists on going to the bathroom alone, and promptly gets lost in it. After twenty minutes Tracy sighs and goes in.
“Coming, Mom?”
Seviche is washing her hands, which are shaking. “I’m just waiting for the water to warm up,” she says. “I don’t know why it takes so long.”
“You didn’t turn the hot water knob,” says Tracy. “The movie’s going to start.”
“Well,” sniffs Seviche, and tries to turn off the water but turns both knobs on instead. “After you, Babette.”
“Tracy, Mom.” Seviche’s hands are still dripping. Tracy opens the door, holding eye contact. Eye contact helps.
Nina’s talk with the old Japanese man is quick, quiet and furious, but when they’re done they both look happy.
“Essence of what?” asks Jax, back on the street.
“Kitsch,” Nina giggles, and sprinkles a few drops from the bottle on her shirt. It blooms an iron-on St. Pauli Girl.
Jax is awed. “Let me try!” He sprinkles his arms, sprouting dozens of bangle bracelets. He tries his shirt and gets Mister Rogers with a gun.
“You don’t need much–” Nina says, but Jax is splashing himself now. Shoes with wheels. Pink bows up his jean seams. Doc Holliday moustache.
Brooklyn plays piano with his thumbs, like nobody plays anything: sideways, wrists loose, swing out and snap in 12/4. He’s grimacing, when Verry catches his face. He must be bruising the sides of his knuckles.
He moves quickly, but of course with two keys at a time he can’t play chords–until he leans in and stomps the sustain. The felts roar up, thunder like a kick drum. The chords leap out. He stops.
“No!” Verry can’t help saying. Brooklyn laughs a little in the mirror.
“Always a journeyman, never a proper,” he says. “Never a climax, always a tease.”