Other Earths (collection)

“Damn them,” Em spat. “Damn them, and may Albion take their souls.” And now that she’d gone and cursed them, maybe she could also go back on her intention not to cry. Her eyes filled with precious water. Without money, she didn’t know where she’d sleep, or how she’d eat and drink, and worst of all, she wouldn’t be able to enter the raffle, and the reptile farm would be buried and forgotten in the desert sands.

Not that she actually thought she would have walked away from the city with a piece of the True Cross in her pocket. Mark was right about the odds. But if she could have at least gotten close to it. Close enough maybe to be able to whittle a credible fake …

“Now, don’t you despair, miss. Things may not be all as grim as they seem. If you’re willing to do a little work for me, I can help you earn some of your money back.”

Em braced herself. She’d never been under any illusions that the Holy City was a place of virtue and clean souls. The city of Christ was home to the great, most sacred sites, where Jesus preached and died, but it was also home to the lost and the depraved, and not all favors were acts of kindness. This was where Mark would suggest she sleep with him, or sleep with his friends or business associates, or at least pose for naughty pictures.

He looked at her, deep into her, and what he said was, “Can you drive a truck?”

Even in a city of ostentatious temples, Solomon’s Temple impressed. Its high walls blazed with eye-gouging pure white light under blue domes and fiery gold minarets, an island palace in a broad lake of blood. Fountains shot jets of water, dyed and lit red, with arcs and spirals and cascades, as if the giant corpse of Jesus were bleeding under the surface and entertaining the crowds with spurting wounds, all synchronized to blaring Virginian opera. From the center of the temple complex a red neon Cross rose thirty-three stories high, shining a bright crimson beam into the heavens. The temple stated in inarguable terms that the Knights of the Templar were the wealthiest and most powerful men on the continent, and they’d built God’s own roadside attraction to prove it.

Em’s job was simple enough. Mark had some business inside the temple, and all Em needed to do was stay with his rotten-apple Chevy pickup, parked on the ramp to an underground parking lot, with the engine running.

“I could be five minutes, I could be thirty,” Mark said, getting out of the truck. “If I take longer than that …Well, just stay with the truck. Don’t turn the engine off, because we may not be able to get it started again.”

He looked at her very seriously. “Will you be here when I get back, Em?”

He didn’t ask her to swear on her immortal soul. At least not in words.

“I’ll be here,” Em said.

A man approached Mark, full of bluster and officiousness, the red cross on his brown overalls marking him as a Templar squire. After a handshake exchange so smooth Em almost missed it, the sergeant said something sharply and moved off, and Mark withdrew into a service entrance. Em supposed he’d bought himself some parking time.

Em settled in to wait. She was starting to feel nervous about this arrangement.

No, she should be honest with herself. She knew Mark was engaged in some kind of criminal enterprise and that out of desperation, she’d agreed to be his accomplice; what she should do was leave a note thanking him again for giving her water and then climb out of the driver’s seat and try to beg and hitch-hike her way back to Oasis Town.

Ten minutes passed.

Em opened the glove compartment. It contained a bag of dried dates, a well-worn Navajo Koran, and a girlie magazine. She blushed and slammed the glove box shut.

Fifteen minutes, then twenty. Then thirty, and then, the minutes crawling like a tortoise in the sand, forty.

The Templar squire came back and rapped on her window. “He’s got five minutes to get back, and then I’m having this piece of crap towed.”

“But he paid for forty-five,” Em protested. Of course, she had no idea what Mark had paid for, or why.

“He paid me to look the other way for a while, and his ‘while’ is up. I’m not a parking meter.” Not waiting for her to put up an argument, he hollered something, and in the rearview mirror Em saw a younger squire nod sharply and run off. Moments later a tow truck was backing down the driveway, its fat, rusty hook swaying menacingly.

Should she move the truck, even though Mark had issued strict instructions not to? Leave the truck and try to find Mark inside? Abandon both truck and Mark and try to figure out some other way to raise funds for the Garden Tomb raffle? Maybe she could get a job as a cocktail waitress. She wouldn’t be old enough to legally work in bars for four years, but maybe the temple saloons off the Strip wouldn’t care.