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.”
“Well?” asks the flat voice.
His empty revolver clatters on the floor.
“The prisoner brings five bodies,” says one of the Ad Hocs ringing the room. “In the van’s cargo compartment.”
“What?”
“Scan indicates no heartbeat or biothermals,” says another.
“You fools! You fools!” The voice isn’t flat anymore.
The five dead men are up and out, guns cold, unblinking. He peels off his jacket and its pocket heat pads; he pulls off his sunglasses.
“G-got g-g-gotcha,” smiles the Cold Man.
Then the Ad Hocs are tumbling away, pulse and crack as the Numismata loose their iron bullets.
Kay’s good at faking work, so when Houchens walks in she just lets him stand there. Especially when he coughs.
“Can I help you, Professor?” she says, finally.
“I wasn’t aware they had students in charge of the IT office,” he says.
She waits.
“Well. Uh.” He holds out a pathetic bag. “I think my… hard drive crashed. On my laptop. Can you fix it?”
“Not school property?”
He looks guilty. “I was hoping you could make an–”
“Yes.” Kay smiles. “Let’s talk about exceptions, shall we?” She stands, goes to the door, and locks it. Houchens is beginning to blush.
Adele’s pulse dropped to eighteen in the surgeon’s chair: the anesthesiologist had overcompensated (Adele’s hair is red). She never knew, except in nightmares.
“I wanted to keep the teeth,” she tells the doctor a week later. Her cheeks are finally receding.
“They were impacted,” the doctor replies, “the roots were wrapped around your jaw. There were only dust and fragments left. We had to use a tiny jackhammer to get them out. Pow!”
But the explanation doesn’t ease her dreams. How did it happen, and why, she wonders. What madness is there, hidden in her body, to teach bone to tangle?
When it’s healthy, Twenty-One grows decoys, dull-eyed swaying humanoid figures that attach to a seat and sigh. The bus prefers adults–they’re meatier–but Jenkins would like the occasional kid.
At night, Jenkins coaxes the bus’s belly open and hauls out the remains of the day’s catch. Twenty-One’s gastric juices leave them white and clean, along with whatever plastic they were carrying: buttons and credit cards, condoms, phones. He throws all that away.
When Twenty-One is bedded down, Jenkins will be in his room, making patterns. Knucklebones to tell the future. Ribs to sing in the wind.