The Passenger (The Passenger, #1)(17)

She say: Rastus you mindreadin fool get in this wagon.

They stomped around the room hooting and slapping themselves.

Excuse me, she said.

The Kid leaned back and looked at her. What is it now?

Those are the corniest most awful jokes I ever heard.

Yeah? So why is everybody laughing? What are you, a critic of some kind? Jesus.

I’ve no idea why they’re laughing.

The Kid rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. He turned to his cohorts. All right. Take ten, people.

I want to know where you came from, she said.

You mean some place we were before we were here?

Yes.

The cohorts moved slightly closer. As if to hear. All right, said the Kid. Anyone want to take that?

It’s a simple question.

Yeah, right.

How did you get here?

We came on the bus.

You came on the bus.

Yeah.

You didnt come on the bus.

We didnt? Well pardon me all to hell.

No. You didnt.

Why not?

You didnt come on the bus. How could you come on the bus?

Christ, Clarissa. The driver opens the door and you climb aboard. How hard is that?

Were there other people on the bus?

Sure. Why not?

And no one said anything?

Like what?

You didnt get any funny looks?

Funny looks.

Could they see you?

The other passengers?

Yes.

Who knows? Jesus. Probably some could and some couldnt. Some could but wouldnt. Where’s this going?

Well what kind of passenger can see you?

How did we get stuck on this passenger thing?

I just want to know.

Ask me again.

What kind of passenger is it that can see you.

I think I know what we’ve got here. Okay. What kind of passenger?

The Kid stuck what would have been his thumbs in his earholes and waggled his flippers and rolled his eyes and went blabble abble abble. She put one hand over her mouth.

I’m just jacking with you. I dont know what kind of passenger. Jesus. People will look at you and they look surprised, that’s all. You know they’re looking at you.

What do they say?

They dont say anything. What would they say?

Who do they think you are?

Who do they think we are? I dont know. Christ. I guess they think I’m a passenger. Of course you could make the case that if they’re passengers then I must be something else. But maybe not. I cant speak for them. Maybe they just see a small but pleasant fellow. Of no determinate age. Receding hairline.

Receding hairline?

The Kid rubbed his pale keloidal skull. What’s wrong with that?

You dont have any hair to recede is what. I just want to know where you come from and why you’re here.

It’s all the same question. I thought we’d just been through this?

You’re in my room.

So are you. That’s why we’re here. What room did you think we should be in? If we were in some other room we wouldnt be here at all. Look, we’ve got a certain amount of ground to cover and we’re losing the light so if it’s all the same to you can we just move it along?

It’s not all the same to me.

The question is always going to be the same question. We’re talking infinite degrees of freedom here so you can always rotate it and make it look different but it aint different. It’s the same. It’s going to keep coming up like a bad lunch. I know you’re in the inquiry business but this is a little bit different. You’re supposed to be this girl genius so maybe you’ll figure it out before we all fucking faint from tedium.

She sat with her hands folded and pressed to her lips.

That’s it? said the Kid.

No.

The Kid shook his head wearily. Yeah, well, he said. He dredged up his watch and opened it and checked the time and put the watch away again. He yawned and patted his mouth with one flipper. Look, he said. Let me put it to you this way. As the vicar said to the choirboy. To the seasoned traveler a destination is at best a rumor.

I wrote that. It’s in my diary.

Good for you. When you carry a child in your arms it will turn its head to see where it’s going. Not sure why. It’s going there anyway. You just need to grab your best hold, that’s all. You think there’s these rules about who gets to ride the bus and who gets to be here and who gets to be there. How did you get here? Well, she just rode in on her lunarcycle. I see you looking for tracks in the carpet but if we can be here at all we can leave tracks. Or not. The real issue is that every line is a broken line. You retrace your steps and nothing is familiar. So you turn around to come back only now you’ve got the same problem going the other way. Every worldline is discrete and the caesura ford a void that is bottomless. Every step traverses death.

He turned in his chair and clapped his flippers. All right, he called. Places.





He walked down to the French Market in the morning and got the paper and sat on the terrace in the cool sun and drank hot coffee with milk. He thumbed through the paper. Nothing about the JetStar. He finished his coffee and stepped into the street and hailed a cab and went down to Belle Chasse and walked into the little operations room. Lou was sitting at his desk pulling at the handle of an oldfashioned adding machine. What do you want? he said.

I need to talk to you.