VenCo(62)

“No, Lucky, come back to me. Bring his pride with you,” Ricky called. Lucky followed her voice to the parking lot.

“Okay, take these.” Ricky grabbed her wrist and dumped the slivers from her cupped palm into Lucky’s. “Place them in three different places around the front right tire of your car.”

Lucky was a bit unsteady. That unsteadiness stopped the questions that were starting to bubble up. She crouched and did as she was told, shoving some into the crevices in the rubber, jamming one into a crack in the old hubcap. “Now what?”

“Now get in.” Ricky yanked the driver’s door open with a loud creak. Both women looked over at the motel room, waiting for an interruption. But the door stayed closed, the window dark.

Lucky got in and turned the car on, keeping the lights off. Ricky stayed outside, standing by the open window.

“Put it in reverse and, when I tell you, very slowly, as slowly as you can manage, inch backward. When I say, okay?” Ricky pulled out the scrap of paper she’d dug up earlier.

“Got it.” Lucky put both hands on the wheel. She felt the weight of Seth Low and his schemes in her ribs, balanced in the curves of bone, like a marble in a ladle. She had to focus to keep it centred, to keep it held—so focused she could barely hear Ricky reciting from the page.

“O Sophia, Wisdom herself, come forth.” She repeated this three times. “Thief, allow us passage to gather the stolen goods. Thief. Thief. Thief. Guide us to the property taken against the commandments. Thou art not above consequences. This consequence is us.” She paused and nodded to Lucky, who very gently stepped off the brake. The SUV began a slow roll. Louder now, Ricky continued.

“By the wood taken from the building you stole from, we shall find your path. We will come. We will recover. God the Father. God the Son. God the Spirit. Sophia and her daughters, all the gods of heaven will see. Lead us to the stolen goods. Thief. Thief. Thief. Guide us to the goods.”

The Pathfinder had barely cleared the white lines of the room’s parking spot when Ricky lowered both her voice and her hands and pocketed the worn page she had read from.

“Okay. Now go to bed.” She turned to leave.

“What?” Lucky put the SUV in park and jumped out. “What do you mean?”

Ricky turned. “What I mean is, go to bed.” She continued on her way, which seemed to be towards the main road.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Lucky yelled after her.

Ricky stopped. “Oh shit, you’re right.” She switched directions. “My wine.”

Lucky chased after her. “No, I mean, where the hell am I going?”

“I told you.” She slung her bottle under her arm. “To bed. Hopefully straight to sleep.” She headed back towards the road.

“But where do I go after that? Christ, why are you all so secretive?” She threw her hands up and asked this question of the sky itself.

“We’re not,” Ricky called over her shoulder, pointing up to that same sky. “She is. We just need to have what you need for fishing.”

“Bait?”

She was at the road now, standing under a yellow lamp thick with frantic moths. “Patience.” Then she moved into the dark.

Lucky sighed, alone now in the parking lot. She headed back to the car to re-park it.

“I’ll be back when the sun rises,” Ricky said. Lucky was sure the voice had come from inside her own head.

She went into the room. The first thing that greeted her was a steady snore from the second queen-sized bed.

“Oh, Grandma,” she whispered. “It sucks doing this alone.” She stripped down, drank a glass of water, and crawled into the scratchy sheets. She fell asleep thinking about points of light constellating the night sky.



Stella was shaking her awake. “Lucky! Lucky, get up!”

“Jesus, what? What is it?”

A quick glance at the clock told her it was not yet six.

“Someone’s at the door. Get up!”

“Who is it?” She sat up quickly, throwing off the tangled sheets.

“A small man.” Stella was squeezing her fingers, pulling her wedding band up to her swollen knuckle and back down again.

“A small man?”

“Yes. What if it’s about the spoons?” Her eyes darted to the door and back, then to the window, the curtains pulled tight.

Lucky got up, went to the window, and peeked out.

“Oh, Grandma, that’s just Rattler Ricky.”

Stella’s fear had woken her up, but Stella remembering the existence of the spoons made her pause.

“Grandma, do you know where we are?”

“What the hell kind of question is that? Go see him. Meena said we had to. I’m going to clean up.” And she walked into the bathroom, closing the door behind her.

Lucky took the chain off and opened the front door. “Good morning. You weren’t kidding about being here early.”

“Come out.” Guess she wasn’t one for pleasantries.

Lucky grabbed a long cardigan from the chair, wrapping it around herself. She slipped into Stella’s Birkenstocks and walked outside. It wasn’t cold as much as that sense of sharpness—brisk, the word came to her. Ricky was crouched behind the Pathfinder.

“Wood says you need to head to the mountains next.” She held up her fingers and rubbed them together as if testing oil. Ashes fell to the pavement.