Quicksilver(17)

I had allowed the Buick to slow to under thirty miles an hour. I accelerated, even though I felt that I was speeding toward a cliff with a void beyond.

A creepy possibility occurred to me. “Are we like in that movie, Village of the Damned? Were we fathered by aliens, something from another world?”

“Maybe,” she said. “Or maybe something else. Turns you inside out a little, doesn’t it?”

Leaning forward, gripping the backrest of the front seat to steady himself, thrusting his head between me and his granddaughter, Sparky Rainking said, “How do you propose to research your origins in Peptoe?”

“There are these three men. Nineteen years ago, they found me in a bassinet in the middle of a lonely highway. My name and date of birth were written on a card. I was three days old. When this magnetism thing started, I thought just maybe those guys might have seen something—might know something, suspect something—that they never told the county sheriff when they took me to him.”

“Do you feel pulled to Peptoe, or is it just a place to go?”

“I don’t feel drawn, no. But what else do I have?”

“Then let’s do it,” Sparky said.

“Let’s do it,” Bridget agreed.

We drove to the town of Carefree, then south toward Scottsdale, and the moon that had been ahead of us now kept pace on our port side. If the night harbored wolves that raced in time with our car, they were likely to be the human rather than the lupine kind, not in the thrall of my passenger goddess, but in pursuit of her.





|?8?|

Whether part alien or part something else, I was suddenly all appetite. My lunch had been interrupted by an attempted abduction, and thereafter I had been too busy escaping, succumbing to strange magnetism, and running people down with my Toyota to have time for even a small snack. In spite of all the weirdness associated with Sparky and Bridget, they were good company, even when they were silent, as they were for a while as we followed a serpentine route through Scottsdale and then through Tempe, where the unfortunately named Hohokam people ruled so long ago that not even the wisest and most farsighted among those ancestors had foreseen the rainbow’s end that would be Indian casinos. Like me, my companions were probably wondering if our lives would ever be normal again. We already knew the answer—which was no—so we might as well stop our pointless brooding and eat. As it turned out, they hadn’t been yearning for normality, but for dinner, so we were simpatico.

If we drove straight through to Peptoe, we wouldn’t get there until about ten o’clock in the evening, too late to seek out Hakeem Kaspar, Bailie Belshazzer, and Caesar Melchizadek. Instead, we swung onto Interstate 10 and followed it only a short way, past Chandler, to an exit for one of those truck stops that is a town unto itself, offering showers, haircuts, massages, an on-call minister, a crew of superb mechanics, and other services in addition to an archipelago of fueling islands where eighteen-wheelers schooled like whales, simple but clean motel rooms, a gift shop, and a restaurant.

The restaurant was large but as cozy as a diner, with booth banquettes and chairs upholstered in red vinyl. Lots of chrome. A long counter with swiveling stools. Large four-page menus in plastic binders. Country music piped in neither too loud nor too soft. The waitresses could balance an array of plates along an arm from hand to shoulder, navigate a crowded room without dropping an order, and almost seemed to be part of a floor show.

After the hostess seated us in a booth—Bridget and Sparky on one banquette, me on the other—Bridget went to the ladies’ room, and I was alone with her grandfather.

Putting down the tabloid-size menu, he said, “Nuns, huh?”

“Yes, sir. An order of Poor Clares.”

“Why weren’t you adopted out?”

“They couldn’t find anyone who wanted me.”

“Were you an ugly, fussy baby?”

“I’m told I was cute and happy.”

“Maybe the nuns didn’t try hard enough.”

“I came with twelve years of free tuition at the Catholic school of your choice, free diapers, and a plenary indulgence.”

“Maybe if they’d thrown in a new car.”

“One of their most generous supporters owned a Ford dealership, but after he took a look at me, he said a car wouldn’t be enough.”

“Did all this rejection traumatize you?”

“Not at all. I was an infant. I didn’t know it was happening. I was busy learning how to suck my thumb.”

He leaned over the table, drilling me with that sharp gray stare. “Are you well balanced, Quinn? Are you psychologically and emotionally stable?”

“I like to think I am, sir. Except for this recent magnetism business.”

He studied me in silence for maybe ten seconds. “It’s damn important to me that you’re psychologically and emotionally stable.”

“I understand,” I assured him. “This strange situation we’re in, the ISA on our tails, you need to know you can rely on me in a crisis.”

He dismissed that idea with a wave of his hand. “No, that’s not it. I need to know you’re fit to marry Bridget.”

I gaped at him. Some country singer was crooning about killing the man who killed his hound dog, which almost seemed more romantic than how Sparky had broached the subject of marriage.