Agents of Dreamland by Caitlín R. Kiernan
For Kathryn
Eventually you’ve got to understand that an answer isn’t the same thing as a solution, and a story is sometimes only an excuse.
—Nic Pizzolatto
1. Oddfellows Local 171 (July 9, 2015)
HERE’S THE SCENE: It’s Thursday evening, and the Signalman sits smoking and nursing a flat Diet Dr Pepper, allowing himself to breathe a stingy sigh of relief as twilight finally, mercifully comes crashing down on the desert. The heavens above West Second Street are blazing like it’s 1945 all over again and the Manhattan Project has mistakenly triggered the Trinity blast one state over from the White Sands Proving Ground. Or, he thinks, like this is the moment fifty thousand years ago when a huge nickel-iron meteorite vaporized herds of mastodons, horses, and giant ground sloths just sixteen miles southwest of this shitty little diner and its cracked Naugahyde seats and flyblown windows. Either simile works just fine by the Signalman; either way, the sky’s falling. Either way is entirely apropos. He checks his wristwatch again, sees that it’s been only seven minutes since the last time, then goes back to staring out the plate glass as shadows and fire vie for control of the dingy, sunbaked soul of Winslow, Arizona. His unkind face stares at him from the glass, easily ten years older than the date on his birth certificate. He curses, stubs out his cigarette, and lights another.
It’s not that she’s late. It’s that the train from L.A. dumped him out in this den of scorpions and Navajo tchotchkes at 6:39 A.M., and by 7:15 A.M., whatever wasteland charm the town might hold had worn thin and worn out. What the f*ck do you say about a place whose sole claim to fame is a mention in an Eagles song? He got a room at La Posada, the celebrated Mary Colter masterpiece of terra-cotta and stucco, but then discovered that he couldn’t sleep. He turned on the radio and tried to read a book he’d brought, but it was impossible to concentrate; he kept reading the same paragraphs over again. So the Signalman spent the day haunting the sidewalks—restless, sweating, half blind from the sun, wearing down the heels of his JCPenney oxfords, and ocasionally ducking in somewhere for a soda, then ducking out again into the heat. Wanting to be drunk, needing to stay sober. The scalding air stank of dust and creosote, and he watched the local PD watching him, their minds clicking like locusts. Who is this scarecrow in a cheap suit and Wayfarers that the Southwest Chief has seen fit to disgorge on our doorstep? If it weren’t for the long arm of the Company, he’d likely have been arrested for loitering or vagrancy—or something else. But all his papers are in order, copacetic, so to speak, no matter how off the books and need to know this meet-up might be. Albany isn’t taking chances, not tonight. Not when Y has seen fit to cough up the likes of Immacolata Sexton for a sit-down.
The waitress comes around again and asks if he needs anything else, a refill or maybe a piece of pie. There’s lemon meringue, she tells him. There’s blueberry. He would say she’s a pretty enough girl, despite the ugly scar over her left eye, a pretty girl who’s escaped the hillside slums of Heroica Nogales to serve cheeseburgers and huevos rancheros in this gringo grease trap. Still, it’s a job, right? Better than her mother ever had, a woman who died at forty-three after twenty-five years sewing designer tags on jeans in a maquiladora. The Signalman knows the waitress’ story, just as he knows the stories of the two cooks and the dishwasher, just as he knows the names of the proprietor’s three daughters. Every little thing that the Signalman doesn’t know is a blind spot, a weakness he can’t afford and won’t abide.
“Estoy bien, gracias,” he says, but doesn’t ask for the check. On her way back to the counter, she glances over her shoulder, and he catches the glint of wariness in her eyes.
The Signalman checks his watch again.
And then the brass cowbell nailed above the diner door jingles, and he looks up as a tall, pale woman steps in off the street. She’s carrying a carbon-fiber Zero Halliburton attaché case in her left hand. For a moment, it seems to him like something is trailing behind her, as if the coming night has tangled itself about her shoulders, has snagged in her short black hair and won’t let go. But the impression passes, and he sits up a little straighter in the booth, tugs nervously at his tie, and nods to her. The Signalman’s heard stories enough to fill a fat paperback bestseller, but he never expected to actually meet this woman face-to-face. Immacolata Sexton is a long way from home.
She takes off her sunglasses, and he wishes that she hadn’t.
“They have pie,” he tells her as she settles into the seat across from him. “Lemon meringue. And blueberry, too. Welcome to Winslow.”
One of his jobs is not to flinch. It’s right there in the fine print.
“I didn’t see you at first,” she says. “I thought maybe I’d been stood up.” She has a hint of a Southern Appalachian accent—North Alabama or East Tennessee—and a funny way of moving her lips, so that they hardly seem to move at all. It’s a little like watching a ventriloquist at work.
“Has that ever actually happened?” he asks, stubbing out his cigarette, only half smoked, in the saucer he’s been using for an ashtray.
“On occasion,” she replies, “but never by the same person twice.” She points at the saucer and the cigarette butts. “You can smoke in here?”