“You don’t have a choice.” He looked straight at her, and she saw a face she hadn’t seen back in the parking lot of the mall. His eyes, empty. She thought of the alligators that sunned themselves in swamps around Lake Waccamaw, still as logs on the water, dull eyes focused on the surface, patient, blending quietly into the landscape, certain what they wanted would come within reach in time. Billy had told her to be careful walking around Lake Waccamaw. More than one hunter had been taken down by a gator waiting in the reeds. Poor Billy; he thought she just drove out there for the lake. He didn’t know about the man named Randy, whom she’d met when she’d been bartender for a wedding at some rich man’s house out there. Randy was handing out coke to the wedding party. He slipped her a tiny bag for a tip. “Just a taste,” he said. “One little taste, and you won’t want to quit.” Then he grinned and said, “I’m not talking about the coke, darlin’. I’m talking about me.”
Jesse nudged her lightly, as if they were old friends and she’d just lost the conversation.
“Please,” he said. “How’s that? Please? I promise I’m not going to shoot you. That isn’t what this gun is about. Come on, we gotta stay behind Mike there. Get going and you can tell me all about your fiancé.”
“I don’t want to talk about my fiancé.”
He touched her arm lightly. “Look here. I apologize for my brutish behavior. All right? My momma, she brought me up better than that. She’s done a lot of work to teach me manners. I just slip now and then. You know how that is. Don’t tell me you’ve never slipped.” He gave her a smile again, as if they shared a secret. “Now, come on. We’re halfway there. Put me out and I’m taking back that hundred-dollar bill. I know you need the cash.”
Katy looked out and saw the Datsun stopped ahead. “I don’t like it, but I’ll do it,” she said.
“Well, neither do I,” he said. He sat back, more natural, relaxed. “You think I like having to take care of his ol’ granny? You think I don’t have better things do to with my day?”
He stared ahead, and they sat like two lovers worn out from a fight, caught in the lull of silence. A car rushed by on the highway, disappeared in the distance and left Katy behind. Tears ran from her eyes.
“Relax,” he said. “I’m really not gonna shoot you. All I’m asking is for you to follow my friend. Look at him up there. He’s waiting. We don’t have much farther to go. And then you can go see Randy.” He tucked the gun back in his waistband. “Now, please, this can be over in no time. And you get that hundred-dollar bill. Would you just put this truck in gear and go?”
He reached and relit the joint. “Just take a little hit and relax. There really is nothing going on here but you helping a couple guys out.” He offered her the joint. “I promise.”
He watched her put the joint to her lips, watched her take a hit, hold it. “All right,” he said with a laugh.
Up ahead Mike rolled down the window of his car and looked back at them. Jesse reached his hand out the window, gave a thumbs-up sign.
Katy asked. “Why don’t you ride with your friend in his car? Why do you need to be here with me?”
He shook his head. “You really need an answer to that question?”
“Yes.”
“All right, then. My friend up there, he farts a lot. I hate riding with that man.”
Katy laughed. “No, really,” she said. She handed back the joint; she didn’t want to get high, just needed to level her nerves.
He took a hit, nodded. “Really.” He exhaled. “And, well, truth is, I guess I did want to make sure you came along. Now, would you please put this thing in gear and go?”
“You won’t shoot me,” she said.
“I swear by all that’s holy and all that’s not, I will not shoot you.” He mashed the joint out, flicked the roach to the floor. “Can’t have us getting too buzzed for the ride.”
Katy drove, thinking, The Lord didn’t give us a spirit of fear. . . . But with each passing mile she felt she was sinking into some soft, wet pit. Nothing sudden as an earthquake but a slow, steady sinking like a million-dollar glass house in the Hollywood hills, shifting, slipping slowly, quietly, in a mudslide rising like a tide from the earth.
She scanned the horizon for a car. Her hands shook on the wheel.
“Relax. Just tell yourself you’re being a good little Girl Scout, doing the public some kind of good.”
“I never was a Girl Scout,” she said.
He shifted. “Nah, I know your type, one of those misfits. You could play the game, but I bet you never felt you really fit in. Probably always dreaming of some other life, some other place you’d rather be.”
Fear hummed like a nest of bees whirling in her head. She couldn’t breathe. “How do you know that?”
“I pay attention. That new-age bullshit on your tag. ‘Positive.’ Like you really believe thinking positive can change a thing. You believers, man. You make me laugh. And this truck of yours. It’s the kind of car a girl who likes to dream of going places can afford. I bet you’re saving money for trips all the time. And never go anywhere, right?”
She could feel his eyes. She blocked his view of her face with her hand. She knew he could see everything she was. “Are you a friend of Randy’s? Have you been spying on me?”
“God, no, I’m telling you I just notice things. Like your fake fingernails. Fake and shiny but got dirt all under ’em. You got this thing about looking good, but you still like to spend your time playing in the dirt.” He poked the back of her hand with his fingertip. “You probably grow all those herbs healthy people eat. Basil, rosemary, dill. My mom, my legal mom, not the blood one, she grows that stuff.”
Katy looked at him. She had been transplanting seedlings to the garden that morning. Like his mother. He had mentioned his mother. She felt a little relief.
“I do grow basil. I keep meaning to make pesto.” She thought about the basil going to seed in her yard. She’d grown it last year too. Always talked about making pesto. Her mom made great pesto, but Katy never got around to it. She could never collect all those ingredients at the same time, so the basil kept growing until it went to seed and she’d tell herself she’d try it again with basil she could buy from the store.
“I look at you and figure, this is a woman believes in things.” He shook his head. “You were one of those little girls who set out cookies for Santa Claus, thought fairy things like Tinker Bell lived in the woods and the Easter Bunny really crept around your house hiding those eggs. You probably believe in things like guardian angels too.”
She looked out at the flat, empty highway. “I don’t know. I did believe in fairies when I was a girl.”
He looked out his window. “Me, I was always playing pirate. Eye patch, scarf on my head, stole this big ol’ kitchen knife.” He laughed. “I scared the shit out of some of those kids. ‘Shiver me timbers,’ man.” He laughed and propped his foot on the dash.
She didn’t want to hear about pirates and kitchen knives. She stared at his running shoes. “You an athlete?”
He laughed. “Yeah, breaking and entering—that’s my sport.” He lit another one of her cigarettes. “Nah, girl, I’m funning you. Football,” he said. “I play football.” He lifted his chin, exhaled. “Love it when the defense crumbles and you’re out there, man, just running.”
She looked him over, wouldn’t have guessed him for football. He was too little, too lean; she figured him for a wrestler, a runner, or some