Billy Summers

He asks if she’s okay. She tells him, almost curtly, that she’s fine. Outside of town they come to a scenic turnout and she asks him to stop and park away from the few other cars. Then she asks him to look the other way. He does so and sees a hang-gliding fool soaring over a ravine as deep as a stab wound. From this distance the guy hardly appears to be moving. He hears her shifting around, her zipper going down, the rattle of the bag, more rattling as she strips the paper from what she needs – a pad he assumes, she wouldn’t want to try a tampon, not yet – and then her zipper again.

‘You can look now.’

‘No, you look,’ Billy says, and points out the hang-glider. The guy is wearing a bright red singlet and a yellow helmet which will do exactly jack shit if he crashes into the side of the mountain.

‘Oh … my … God!’ Alice is shading her eyes.

‘Not to mention your sainted hat.’

Alice grins. A real grin. Very good to see. She repeats, ‘I could live here.’

‘And do that?’ Billy points.

‘Maybe not that.’ She pauses, thinking it over. ‘But maybe.’

‘Ready to roll? You all high and tight?’

‘Roger that,’ Alice replies, smart as you please.

11

Billy is glad he decided not to drive on through yesterday, because it takes them another two hours to reach Sidewinder. There’s no shopping center here, just a one-street downtown crammed with souvenir shops, restaurants, clothing stores featuring western apparel, and bars. Plenty of those, with names like Rough Rider Saloon, Boots ’N Spurs, Homestead, and 187. There’s no Edgewood Saloon, but Billy didn’t expect one.

‘Funny name for a bar,’ Alice says, pointing to 187.

‘It is,’ Billy agrees, but based on the rank of motorcycles parked out front, he doesn’t think the name is funny at all. 187 is the California Penal Code designation for murder.

Alice is using his phone to navigate because the Fusion’s GPS is jammed along with the locator. ‘Another mile, maybe a little more. On the left.’

A mile takes them out of town. Billy slows and sees the sign for Edgewood Mountain Drive. He makes the turn. They pass nice-looking homes and Swiss-style chalets set back from the street, many with their driveways chained off because ski season is still six weeks away. Beyond 108 Edgewood, the paving ends. The previously smooth road becomes first bouncy and then downright jouncy. Billy negotiates a tight S-curve and bulls the Fusion over a washed-out culvert. This time the car bounces so hard their seatbelts lock.

‘Are you sure this is right?’ Alice asks.

‘It’s right. We’re looking for 199.’

She consults the phone. ‘This says there’s no such number.’

‘I’m not surprised.’

Half a mile further on, the dirt runs out and they find themselves on a grassy track with wildflowers growing on the hump between the ruts. Billy thinks it might be the remains of an old logging road. The trees crowd in. Branches whip the Fusion’s sides. The track goes steeper. Billy steers his way around protruding rocks left over from the last ice age. Alice looks increasingly uneasy.

‘If this just ends, you’re going to have to back up for two miles, because there’s no place to—’

Billy hauls the Fusion around the tightest curve yet, and the road does end. Dead ahead is a log house jutting its long length over a steep slope, supported by posts that look like cut-off telephone poles. A Jeep Cherokee is parked underneath an open porch. Billy can hear a generator somewhere out back, the sound low but strong and steady.

Billy and Alice get out and look up at the porch, shading their eyes. Bucky Hanson rises from the rocking chair he’s been sitting in and comes to the shakepole railing. He’s wearing a New York Rangers gimme cap and smoking a cigarette.

‘Yo, Billy. I thought you got lost.’

‘She did, too. Bucky, this is Alice Maxwell.’

‘It’s a pleasure to meet you, Alice. And Billy, look at you. How long has it been since we were face to face?’

‘Got to be four years at least,’ Billy says. ‘Maybe five.’

‘Well, come on up. Steps are on the side. Are you hungry?’

12

Billy was afraid his long-time fixer and agent might resent him bringing a stranger to this place, which is pretty clearly an emergency bolthole, but Bucky treats Alice kindly. He doesn’t come right out and say that any friend of Billy’s, etc., but he makes it clear, and after her initial shyness (or maybe it’s wariness), she relaxes. Still, she’s careful to stay near Billy.

The kitchen is neat, roomy, sunshiny. Bucky heats up macaroni and cheese in the microwave. ‘I’d love to make you huevos rancheros, I’m not half-bad at it, but I’m still not completely situated here. Need to finish getting supplied. Then I’ll just hunker down until this business comes to a conclusion. A happy one would be nice.’

‘I got you into a mess and I’m sorry,’ Billy says.

Bucky flaps a hand at him. ‘I brokered the deal and knew the risks.’ He sets a steaming bowl before each of them. ‘What about you, Alice? How’d you meet this vet of Georgie Bush’s war?’