American Elsewhere - By Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,158

NOT BE THERE

“What? At the canyon?” Bolan realizes this is wrong. “Wait, you mean at the meeting? Then where will you be?”

Another extremely long pause.

The machine types:

DEAD

Bolan is utterly flabbergasted to read such a response. “What the fuck? Are you serious?”

It types:

AM ABOUT TO ATTEMPT SOMETHING DRASTIC

“Wait, like… more than what we’ve already done?”

It responds:

YES

“Well… then don’t fucking do it!”

The machine types:

IF I AM NOT THERE TONIGHT YOU WILL STILL BE MET

“By who?” asks Bolan.

The ticker is silent.

“By who?” he asks again. “What’s going on? What are you about to do?”

But no matter how long he waits, he receives no answer.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Evening is falling by the time Mona returns to Wink. She feels as if she is seeing it for the first time. She looks at the quaint adobe homes and the little cottages with sky-blue siding, the old men at the drugstore and the children playing tag at the greenbelt. The streetlamps are pristine, the grass moist, the trees thick and tall. A place of quiet days and quieter evenings.

And yet.

A man stands on the sidewalk, perfectly still, with his hands at his sides. He wears a charmingly cheap suit that is a few sizes too large for him. He stares at the sky with his head cocked as if he is listening to something only he can hear, and when she passes him in the huge truck he looks at her and smiles wistfully. She keeps watching him in the rearview mirror: he returns to staring at the powder-blue sky, a wide smile on his face.

Is he one of them? Are any of the people she sees?

A young woman stands in a gravel alley between two homes. A frail thing with skinny wrists. She holds an empty tin can in her hands and she turns it over again and again, feeling its metal sides, and as she does she twirls about in a slow shuffle, as if dancing with it.

What does she feel when she touches this mundane little trinket? Mona wonders. What do they see when they look at the world?

An old man stands in the window of the hardware store, staring out with eyes rimmed blue-black. His hands are spattered with what looks like ink, maybe black paint. He holds a bowl and a fork, and he dips the fork down into the bowl and brings up a steaming pile of mashed potatoes. He opens his mouth hugely, far wider than he should, and paints his tongue with the forkful, unblinking, not swallowing. As his hands rise the black ink runs down his forearms in rivulets to stain his shirtsleeves.

He is one. There is no doubt.

How many are there? They seem to be everywhere, when you look: stragglers occupying drab little between-places in the town, ditches and empty parking lots and alleys behind shops. The interstitial parts of a city no one ever thinks about. These places, perhaps, are where these dazed wanderers go to collect their thoughts, to be themselves.

To be themselves, thinks Mona. Whatever they are, behind their eyes.

And when they are done, will they return home, cheery smiles on their faces, ready to put food on the table? To cut the grass or play a game of cards or share a pipe? To gossip and scratch off yet another day in their peaceful, small-town lives? Is that it?

What do they do? What do such people do? Why are they here?

She circles the block twice, easing through the alleys, counting all the cars and memorizing the license plates. She sees no one watching, no shift of a curtain or movement in any of the cars, and she certainly sees no one tailing her—road traffic here is so sparse it’d be almost impossible to stay hidden.

When she’s as satisfied as she can get, she parks down the street from Mrs. Benjamin’s house and watches it.

Once she had lunch there, only a few days ago. Yet now she wonders what lives in that house, or pretends to live there, and what it does when no one’s watching.

She takes out the Glock and wipes sweat from her brow. She does not want to do this. Yet she must know.

She gets out of the truck and walks to the front door, barely bothering to hide the gun in her hand. She goes to the window and peers in. The house is dark, but she is not sure that means anything.

She goes to the door, and is not surprised to find it is unlocked. After all—why would such a