Billy Summers

This may be true, but it doesn’t help. Because it is – was, he guesses that’s the correct tense now – pink like the baby shoe in Fallujah. The one he didn’t have when they were ambushed in the Funhouse. He has lost another good luck charm. He can tell himself that’s nothing but superstition, no different than folks believing there were ghosts in that old hotel in Sidewinder that burned, but it makes him feel bad. All else aside, that picture was made for him out of love.

Go to sleep, asshole, Billy thinks.

He finally does but wakes up in the dead ditch of the morning, mouth dry, hands clenched. The dream was so vivid that at first he’s not sure if he’s in a Ramada Inn or his Gerard Tower office. He was working on his story and it must have been early days, because he was still writing in his dumb self persona. There came a knock at the door. He answered it, expecting Ken Hoff or Phil Stanhope, more likely Hoff. But it was neither of them. It was Marge, in the big blue dress she was wearing when he approached the Promontory Point service entrance. Only instead of a sombrero she had a Vegas Golden Knights gimme cap jammed down over her hair and instead of a trowel she’d got Sal’s Mossberg.

‘You forgot the flamingo, you fucking fuck,’ she said, and raised the shotgun. The barrel looked as big as the entrance to the Eisenhower Tunnel.

I pulled out of the dream before she could fire, Billy thinks as he walks to the bathroom. While he pees he thinks of Rudy Bell, aka Taco Bell. Bad dreams were common currency in Iraq, especially during the battle for Fallujah, and Taco believed (or said he believed) that if you died in a nightmare, you could actually die in your rack.

‘Frightened to death, my man,’ Tac said. ‘What a way to go, huh?’

But I got out of this one before she could pull the trigger, Billy thinks as he trudges back to bed. She was a piece of work, though. Made Dana Edison with his prissy little manbun look like a street-corner hood.

The room is cold, but he doesn’t bother turning on the heater because it will probably rattle – motel wall units always rattle. He snuggles under the blankets and goes to sleep almost at once. There are no more dreams.

9

Alice votes for fried egg sandwiches from a drive-thru instead of a sitdown breakfast because she wants to get on the road right away. ‘I want to see the mountains again. I really love them, even though I had to gasp for air until I got used to the altitude.’

Billy smiles and says, ‘Okay, let’s go.’

Shortly after they cross the Colorado line, Billy hears his laptop give a single ding-dong chime for the first time in … he can’t remember how long. Maybe years. He pulls over at the next turnout, gets it out of the back seat, and opens it. The ding-dong means he’s gotten an email from one of his several blind accounts, this one woodyed667@gmail.com. The message is from Travertine Enterprises. It’s an outfit he’s never heard of, but he has no doubt who’s behind it. He double-clicks and reads.

‘What?’ Alice asks.

He shows her. Travertine Enterprises has put three hundred thousand dollars in the account of Edward Woodley at the Royal Bank of Barbados. The only notation is ‘For services rendered.’

‘Did that come from who I think it came from?’ Alice asks.

‘No doubt,’ Billy says. They get rolling again. It’s a beautiful day.

10

They get to Bucky’s place around five in the afternoon. Billy has called ahead from Rifle with an ETA along with a head-ups about their new ride, and Bucky’s standing in the dooryard waiting for them. He’s dressed in jeans and a fleece jacket, looking nothing at all like the man who used to live and work in New York. Maybe he’s his better self out here, Billy thinks. He knows that Alice is.

She’s out of the car almost before Billy can come to a stop. Bucky holds his arms wide and shouts ‘Hey, Cookie!’ She runs into them, laughing as he enfolds her.

Look at that, Billy thinks. Would you look at that.

CHAPTER 22

1

They stay with Bucky at his mountain retreat long enough to get snowed in (for a day) by an early season blizzard. The ferocity of the storm amazes, delights, and terrifies Alice all at the same time. Yes, she says, she’s seen snow in Rhode Island, plenty of it, but never snow like this with drifts higher than her head. When it stops, she and Bucky go out and make snow angels in the backyard. After extended pleading, the hired assassin joins them. Two days later the temperatures are back in the sixties and the snow is melting. The woods are full of birdsong and the sound of meltwater.

Billy never meant to stay so long. It’s Alice’s doing. She tells him that he needs to finish his story. Her words are one thing. The quiet tone of conviction in which they are spoken is another, and more convincing. It’s too late to turn back now, she says, and after some consideration, Billy decides she’s right.