Page 64 of Spring's Arcana
The car gulped miles and poured over the road-ribbon, rocking gently like a boat on calm water. Nat might have even liked the scenery, but a flash in the side mirror caught her eye, a glimmer of blue in the far distance.
“Oh, shit,” she said, blankly, forgetting her resolution to stay strictly silent. “It’s a cop car?”
“FuckingOhio,” Dmitri snarled, jamming a spent cigarette butt through the window’s open crack. His hands resettled on the wheel, and his knuckles whitened again.
It went on that way for quite some time.
FRIENDLY LAW
Nat didn’t know just how fast they were going, but the twinkle in the mirror never got larger or smaller. It just hovered, a vicious little stab of repeating light. The landscape did funny things, streaking and foaming away on either side. Signs began announcing the approach of Indiana much sooner than they should have, and like they expected a tip for the information too.
Just over the state line was a rest stop; the gangster wrenched the yoke at the last moment and sent the car up a long gentle slope, speed bleeding away with eerie, stomach-lurching smoothness. “Stay in the car,” he said, his gaze flicking to each mirror in turn.
“I haven’t done anything wrong.” And really, Nat wondered, what kind of cop would follow a car like this?
Maybe de Winter wasn’t a legitimate authority. Maybe Nat could appeal to something, someone else. It was certainly worth a shot.
“You think that matters?” The gangster shook his head; the rest station was a whale of bleached, ice-starred concrete rising outside the passenger window. “Think this fellow wants nice little tea party with little Drozdova and her good friend Konets?”
Her stomach, so far, was taking this relatively calmly. “You could can the sarcasm and actually explain. It wouldn’t hurt you.”
“You sure?” At least the gangster wasn’t snarling anymore. Instead, he was coldly calm, his profile sharply severe, and the change wasn’t exactly pleasant. When the black car came to a full stop, the sense of highway motion drained in fits and starts, her body readjusting to stillness. Nat watched her side mirror; the bright bluelight acquired red strobes. Underneath both a separate ruddiness flickered, and she rubbed at her eyes.
“Is it…”
“Burning? Yeah, he in a helluva hurry.” Dmitri reached for his door handle. “I tell you to stay in car, you won’t listen.”
No, I probably won’t. “Maybe I can help you.” Nat almost winced; it wasn’t exactly a lie, even if she was halfway hoping otherwise. Of course Leo held that cops and criminals were virtually indistinguishable; the badge was only a cover for the bigger bastards, always in service to the rich. “I’d like to.”
Leo generally recited his feelings on law enforcement when the level in the vodka bottle reached a certain shallowness, and missing him rose like a dry stone in Nat’s throat.
“Sure.” The gangster stared into the rearview, all trace of mockery vanished just like the anger. His eyes were dark and serious, his hair slightly disarranged, and the traces of battering were almost gone. A bloom of stubble crept up his jaw, darkening his cheeks, and his mouth was sculpted in repose. “I bet you do. Yeah.”
Quiet bitterness rode under his words, but at least he wasn’t sneering anymore. Could a divinity change? It probably wasn’t like quitting one retail job and getting another. But even if you couldn’t get another job, you didn’t have to be a complete asshole while doing the one you had, right?
Was Mom the way she was because of divinity? It would explain a lot.
The parking lot was deserted, its fringes lost under a sheet of unbroken snow. At least the sanders and plows had come through and cleared a strip. Nat shook her head and popped her own door. “I suppose I should use the restroom.”
The car didn’t try to stop her, though Dmitri gave a sharp glance; she rose into a winter afternoon and stretched, watching the flicker in the distance as it swelled. A cold breeze bearing the metallic reek of incipient snow and an almost solid wall of freeway exhaust tugged at her knit cap and played with the hem of her peacoat; her damp braid, left lonely outside layers, would probably freeze.
“Eh.” Dmitri emerged from his side of the car, shaking his headand digging in his jacket’s breast pocket again. “You think I’m bad. I tell you, this one, he worse.”
That’s a big endorsement.“Duly noted.” Nat set off for the big concrete block. Maybe the gangster and the divinity cop would be so busy with each other she could just… what? Wait for someone to come along and hitch a ride? Was there a divinity for hitchhikers? There had to be, although they probably lost a lot of followers when thumbing a ride stopped being safe and started being an open invitation to serial killers.
Nat had watched the documentaries. She probably should’ve been reading up on comparative religions instead.
The ladies’ room was frigid, lit only by a single buzzing, dispirited fluorescent strip on the ceiling, and smelled rancid. She took one look at the stalls, decided the drain in the corner was probably the more hygienic option, and was glad she didn’t have to pee.
In fact, she hadn’t had to since yesterday afternoon. Her biological functions were all messed up.
She could have called someone, but Nat’s prepaid phone was only for emergencies, andhey how are you, I’m on a cross-country trip with a divine gangsterdidn’t really qualify, did it?
Especially since Leo already knew. Had known all along.
There was no water when she turned the sink taps, of course. Nat tried not to look at herself in the slice of fly-spotted metal passing for a mirror.
There was no point.
