But I’m game. She lets me touch her everywhere now. She’d let me do anything I damn well want, in the name of pleasing her. It’s me that’s in the way, treading a fine line between sanity and madness.
I don’t get the chance. She jumps into the air, pretty damn limber for a girl who wrecked that confidence course yesterday. “Oh hell! Oh fuck! It’s eight thirty! We missed check-in!”
I don’t know how we do it, but we manage to get dressed, throw our stuff together, and race downstairs to the check-in platform in five minutes. Will Wang is nowhere to be found. He couldn’t be bothered to wait around for our sorry asses. The only people standing there are a backup staff member and a single cameraman. He scolds us as he hands us the next envelope, then says into the camera, “Our first-place team is now in last place, thanks to oversleeping! Whoops! And so late in the game! Let’s hope this doesn’t mean doom for Dr. and Mr. Cross!”
Fuck you, she’s Dr. Carpenter, I think as we grab a cab and slide into the back seat. Fucking great. I’d wanted more time with Penny, and now I’ll probably never get a chance to finish that massage. Put a fork in us. We’re probably done.
Or are we? All we’ve ever done is talk about getting back to Atlanta and annulling the marriage. But wouldn’t it be so crazy, wouldn’t it totally blow everyone’s mind if we . . .
I can’t think about that right now. “Slab City,” she barks at the driver in a voice I never knew she had. “We’ve got to get there. As fast as you can. Please. Step on it.”
Our driver doesn’t mess around. He guns it ninety down Interstate 8, getting us up to the place in what has to be record time. As he does, Penny sighs. “I can’t believe we did that! I can’t believe we were so stupid. We gave up our lead! For what?”
For what? It’s still hanging in the air as I wait for her to realize what she said. She doesn’t.
Does she really not think it was worth it?
Maybe it wasn’t. It’s a hell of a lot of money in the balance. The chance to pay off her student loans and get out of that hole. Maybe that’s more important.
She looks at the clue in her lap and reads, “This place used to be a naval base. But now it is an art community where many people live. We need to find the toilet bowl sculpture. Our next clue is in there.”
“That shouldn’t be hard.”
The driver laughs a little but doesn’t say anything, and when we pull up, I see what’s so funny. The place is overrun with junk, as far as the eye can see. The hunks of gleaming metal in the California desert may pass for sculptures to some people, but all I see is a bunch of shit it’s going to take forever to get through.
And it’s balls hot. Like a hundred, at least, the sun beating down on us full force, no trees or any source of shade anywhere. There are no other cabs in sight, though, which tells me the other teams have already found their clues and driven off.
Shit. I don’t want to tell Penny, because I don’t want to make her think last night was a mistake any more than she already does.
But it’s true. We fucked up. And it might be a million dollar mistake.
“Let’s go!” she says, rushing off into the scrub brush. We end up climbing over mountains of discarded landfill shit that people have set out on the desert floor. It’s fucking insane. The sweat’s pouring off me, and all I can think is that an hour ago I was in heaven, and this sure as hell feels like the other place.
Then I hear her calling to me. “I found it! Luke, I found it!”
I run down the hill toward her. She’s standing at the edge of a large, crumbling concrete slab, reading the clue.
“Yuma,” she says. “We’ve got to get to the airport in Yuma.”
Another flight. To think I’d never set foot in an airport before a couple of weeks ago, and now I feel like a goddamn world traveler. I’ve lost count of how many hours we’ve spent on airplanes. I’m just glad that it’s not ending yet. That we get to go on, somewhere else.