I don’t really care, but it’s clear that Lacy does, so I make a show of studying the display case where pies the size of the state rotate on mechanized plates. “Uh, apple, I guess.”
Lacy’s face falls.
“What?” I ask, as she straightens.
She shakes her head as she swings opens the plastic door and pulls out the apple tin. “Nothing. It’s just that I’ve been waiting for someone. They’re supposed to order the cherry pie, though.”
“Cherry,” I blurt before Lacy can cut into the pie. “I mean, yeah, it’s me. I’ll take the cherry instead.”
Lacy tilts her head, knife hovering. “Then why didn’t you order cherry in the first place?”
“I . . . forgot. I-it’s been a long day.”
“Where are you headed, sweetie?”
She says it like it’s the bonus question on a test, and I freeze, wondering what to say. Again, I settle on the truth. “Lake Arrowhead.”
“It is you!” Lacy’s voice goes frothy, whipped and dreamy as she exchanges the apple for the cherry. “Aw, this is all so romantic!”
And for some reason she slides the entire cherry pie in front of me.
“I wish my boyfriend would set up a treasure hunt for me.” She misses my shudder at the word boyfriend, still beaming as she crosses her arms so that her nametag tilts and disappears into her cleavage. “He told me all about it. Said he was leaving you breadcrumbs that would lead you back to him. That it’d be a trip you’d never forget. I mean, how exciting.”
You will speak of this to no one.
“Is he . . . here?”
Lacy’s hoop earrings swing like a pendulum as she tilts her head. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, you don’t see him here now, do you?”
Lacy stares like I’m the one suddenly speaking in riddles. “Don’t you know what your own boyfriend looks like?”
I jerk my head. That’s not what I mean. “Of course, I was just thinking . . . maybe he’s hiding somewhere nearby to make sure I figure out each clue.”
“As if I’d tell you.” She winks at me like we’re partners in this, then instantly shrugs it all away. “Just so you know, and not to ruin anything—I haven’t seen him since last week. I been coming in every day since, waiting through the lunch crowd, then the dinner crowd, and still you don’t come. Feels like I’ve been sitting on this pie forever—was hoping it wouldn’t go bad before you finally showed up. Well?” Lacy gestured to the pie.
“Oh.” I glanced down, then back at Lacy. “Aren’t you going to cut it?”
“No, ma’am.” The diamond chip winks, the hoops swing, the eyes glow. “He said you’d want to eat it all. His exact words were, and I quote, ‘Kristine Rush is an absolute glutton for experience.’ ”
I deflate right there on that plastic swivel stool. So much for not being noticed.
A long strand of hair has fallen from my topknot, and I tuck it behind my right ear before lifting my fork. Lacy hovers, and I realize she intends to watch me eat every bite. Her hand twitches like she wants to feed me herself, but the man at the other end of the counter holds up his thick coffee mug and asks for a refill. He and Lacy immediately start whispering, stealing glances at me as I begin disassembling the pie.
“Now that’s what I like to see,” the man finally says, his complexion ruddy as he grins my way. His voice booms, Midwestern friendly. “A woman with an appetite.”
I glance at his feet, but they’re clad in worn-in runners, not boots, so I look away.
The first few bites are heaven, plump with tart cherries, warm with flaky crust. Yet all I taste after that is glazed lard, corn syrup, and fruit stripped of all nutrition. I shovel it in, stave off a gag, and—I know it’s vain, I do; I know this is not the time—but I can’t help but think of all the hours I’ve logged on the treadmill, the calories recorded in the kitchen notebook back home. Like Imogene’s phone calls, these various thoughts rear their heads at the wrong time, and that flips over the discipline that I’m so proud of, turning it into vanity. So I ignore the acidic burn in my throat and think of Daniel instead.
“Why are you so vigilant about that?” he once asked, watching me calculate my caloric intake at the end of the day. “You look great. Why obsess over the calories in a pack of Splenda? Even in a pack of Emergen-C?”
We weren’t engaged at the time, but I was already dreaming of it: a gasp-inspiring ring, delivered to me with wet eyes, on one knee. A brief period of betrothal, those halcyon days between girlfriend and wife hung like a banner for all to see, and then a white silk dress that would change my life. Change me.
I couldn’t tell him all of that, though, so I started talking about my mother instead. “Janie Mae Rush,” I said, putting down my pencil, “lived on whiskey-and-cigarette breakfasts, and as far as she was concerned, I could do the same. She put a lock on the cupboard and the key around her neck. She said I needed to earn real food for myself.”
Daniel gaped, slack-jawed, like I knew he would. Imogene hadn’t just provided for him; she’d likely given him every bite of food off of her plate as well.
“How old were you?” he finally managed.
I pursed my lips, cast my gaze up, thinking. “Ten, the first time? Eleven?”
I wasn’t sure—all I knew was that I stayed hungry for a while before I started stealing a little and begging a lot. I was babysitting by eleven. I found full-time work before it was legal to do so—small towns don’t worry much about that—and I did finally bring home real food.
I even remember the crackle of the bags as I unloaded an entire paycheck’s worth of food: whole milk, thick as whipping cream on my parched tongue. Crisp greens that’d never seen a freezer. A bag of apples handpicked by me, each one polished to a deep shine.
When my mother saw the spread, her mouth thinned into nothingness. “You think your food is better than anything I could give you? Is that what you think? Don’t you know?”
“Don’t I know what?”
“It can all kill you if you let it.”
And then she sat me down and made me eat it all at once.
“I had a stomachache for two days,” I said, not looking at Daniel. “And I never really got over how food, something vital, something that could sustain you, could also be used against you.”
I never forgot how something so basic to survival could hurt you if you let it.
Wiping my mouth, I envision Malthus listening to this story with his wiretaps or bugs or whatever the hell he’s used to spy on me. The thought makes my stomach churn, and I’m not even a quarter of the way through the pie. I glance up to find Lacy and the man still smiling at me.
“The whole thing?” I ask, and Lacy just laughs. How romantic! How exciting! I clear my throat, dislodging syrup and phlegm. “But then I get something in return, right?”
“Your next map.” Lacy’s hoop earrings swing again as she nods. Tick-tock.
I eat faster, pondering—for the first time in my life—the merits of bulimia, and how they might apply to me. I’m only vaguely aware of Lacy and the man renewing some previous argument over the motel across the street being haunted. I tune out his babble, something about meeting an online friend there, and automate the process of shoving gooey cherry between my lips. Chewchewchew. I swallow past the growing knot of bile in my throat, and I repeat; shove, chew, swallow.
Then, on a hiccup, I realize the man is talking to me.
“What do you think? Does the motel look haunted or not? I mean, it’s ripe for a ghost orgy, right?”
I wince, and he holds up a hand in apology.
“Sorry. I’m just excited. I’ve decided to be like those guys on TV. The ones who travel the country looking for paranormal activity.” Every one of his statements curl upward like questions. I am not overly worried for the ghosts. “My buddy and I are gonna stake it out and fil
m all night, as long as it takes. So what do you think?”
I think I’m not in the mood for another stranger with crazy, unanswerable questions.
Sighing, I look back down at my endless pie. Still a third left and my tongue is swollen, the roof of my mouth buzzes, and the sugar high is making my head swim. Meanwhile, my stomach grows heavier with each forced bite. I stare at the fat cherries remaining in the tin until they almost seem to glare back. We are in a contest of wills, the dessert and me, and of course I blink first.
And that’s when I see the slip of paper, singed and baked into the bottom of the pie tin.
He thinks I’m being friendly.
Pushing aside cherries with my fingers, I tug free one burned edge of the otherwise soggy slip of paper. It’s too small to be a map, but my heart still pounds, boosted by the sugar coursing through my blood stream.
This is my next clue, a way to find Daniel, and against all reason it gives me hope. Maybe running over the guard was an aberration, an impulse on Malthus’s part. Maybe, if I do as he says and keep to the script, he’ll feel no need to act impulsively. Maybe the rest of this journey will be simply a series of notes tucked into cherry pies.
I free the paper and drop it flat, smearing cherry glaze across the counter. I wait until Lacy heads to the dining room, arms full with plates, her attention on soggy fries and bacon strips and chicken paste that’s been pressed into nugget shapes, before I peel open the paper. The writing inside is blurred from heat and sugar, but it’s still legible. And it’s not writing, but numbers.
My fledgling hope plummets, a shot bird inside of my chest, and I have to close my eyes for just one moment. When I open them again, I push aside the paper I no longer need, that I never needed, and pick up Daniel’s phone. I don’t key in the numbers—I just go to the contacts list, find my name, and push CALL.
“There is a man near you.” No salutations. No small talk from that self-assured, altered voice. He doesn’t even ask if I enjoyed the pie. “He is alone, wearing a collared work shirt and khaki shorts. Do you see him?”
Of course. I’d been talking to him about ghosts not two minutes earlier . . . but Malthus probably knows that too.
“You’re going to approach him.” His voice goes gravelly, or maybe it’s just the device deepening his tone. Either way, his words rasp over the line, scraping at my eardrum. “Stand before him, and make sure you have his full attention. And then, do you know what I want you to do?”
He tells me, and the cherries and pie crust in my stomach revolt, threatening to wind up back in the tin and all over the counter.
Malthus has somehow guessed at my greatest fear. It’s as if he really does know me, but then I imagine you can learn a lot about a person via surveillance for ten long months. As he talks, my too-fast heart lifts and lodges next to my larynx and the cherries, while the adrenaline pounds so loudly in my head that I almost miss his final order: Malthus wants to hear every word.
The silence shifts again, this time into a watching, waiting thing. Lacy returns from the dining room, earrings still marking time. Tick-tock. I wipe my mouth and slowly stand.
Malthus is a silent presence, resting in my palm, phone down at my side. I take the first step, reminding myself that Daniel is traversing the entire Mojave Desert with this madman. A short walk across the diner is nothing.
Lacy’s pouring fresh coffee into yet another battered mug, but I feel her glance up when I pass. I imagine that the rest of the room is watching me as well, but I keep my eyes fastened on the thin commercial carpeting, black chains linking busy, bursting blooms. I imagine those chains tightening about my ankles with every step. The only way to keep from being trapped in place, I tell myself, is to keep moving.
I look up only after I reach the man, and then I focus my gaze on the blue and white squares of his work shirt.
Be polite.
After all, Malthus said, it wasn’t this man’s fault that Daniel had been taken.
I reach out and tap his shoulder. “Excuse me.”
The man turns, and so does Lacy, but I don’t dare look at her. I try to lick my lips, but my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth, cemented there by cherries. Humiliation. “I’m supposed . . . supposed to . . .”
My voice just fades away, as if someone turned a dial and reduced the volume. Swallowing hard, I jerk my head and try again. “I need to ask your name.”
The man’s expression shifts into one of surprise before a smile quickly blooms. He thinks I’m being friendly. “It’s Henry. Henry Becker.”
My nod is a spasm, and I don’t offer my own name. Malthus didn’t order me to, likely because Lacy already knows it. Now for the hard part. The precise phrasing is important.
Say every single word.
I look down and see that my fingers are white-tipped. They’d be curled into fists were it not for the phone. I force them to relax, take a breath so deep that I could use it to dive into white-water rapids, and then I stare directly into Henry Becker’s open, inquisitive face.
“I want to suck you off right on this counter.”
The open expression on Henry Becker’s face shatters, replaced by incomprehension, shock, and finally a dust-devil look that pitches me back in time, drops me back into another tumbleweed town. If the ability to cry hadn’t been cauterized from me eighteen years ago, I swear I’d start wailing right now. Instead, I look at Henry and see another man’s face wearing this exact expression as he takes in the length of my body. I lie brown-limbed and candlelit, like a virgin to be sacrificed in exchange for favors from the gods.
I force out the rest of my scripted words in a hard stammer. “Please. You’ll be doing me a favor. Let me blow you away.”
I clench my jaw, hoping Henry can read in my flat tone, the lost inflection, that I don’t mean a word of it. That I don’t really want to say this or be here—not in the diner, not in the desert—not in a world where a man like Malthus can exist at all.
It strikes me for the first time, as I try not to sway where I stand, that maybe that’s what he’s after with all of this: the spin on the roller coaster, the maps, the pie. The thrill of it all. He has me boxed in, unable to turn to another person for help even in the clatter of a busy diner, and I certainly can’t turn back around.
Destroying my desire to live, I suddenly realize, might be more important to Malthus than destroying my life.
A handful of shocked seconds pass before laughter erupts from Henry, a belly-blast that has him sliding one elbow on the greasy counter as he squares up on me with that decades-old look. I force myself to hold still under the weight of that stare. I am a statue; I am a rock in the desert. I will not be absorbed by those assessing eyes. Meanwhile, the phone at my side crackles under the assault of mechanized laughter. The out-of-body feeling intensifies, and I wonder, am I floating?
“I-I’m not sure what to say.” Henry blinks, trying to make sense of my actions. “What are you doing?”
I can’t blame him for the question, but I can curse him because I have my orders: if Henry questions me at all, I have to keep talking. And, as I’ve already noted, Henry makes every goddamn statement sound like a question.
“I want you to dominate me. I want you to slap me as you come on my face.”
Poor Henry. He’s still operating under real-world assumptions—that the earth is round and that people are basically good and that you are always in control of your own actions. He looks at me with naked concern.
And continues to ask stupid questions.
“Seriously,” he says, shaking his head. “What are you doing?”
“I’ll fucking kill you if I can’t have you inside of me,” I say obediently, by rote.
Suddenly, Lacy is there, palms slapping the countertop as she leans over it. “That’s enough. No one wants to hear nasty talk like that in here.”
Thank God. I blow
out a relieved breath, but hunch under the weight of Lacy’s glare.
“What’s wrong with you? I thought you were a nice lady. You want to sell your body, then go to the truck pit like all them other hookers. But you ain’t doing that in this establishment. We have standards.”
Yes. I could tell from the plastic statue out front.
“I had to,” I whisper.
Lacy crosses her arms. “No one has to go round talking like that. Don’t you have any self-respect?”
Sure, three hours ago when I still knew who I was, where I was. But that woman, and that reality, feels as far off as Daniel now.
Lacy points to the door. “Get out.”
That’s the signal that I can disconnect my call, and I do so quickly before slumping where I stand. I can’t leave, though, because I still need the next map. Face burning, I force my gaze back up to Lacy’s, but she’s wearing the look I dread. I haven’t seen it for years, but I know it well.
Krissy’s momma is an ore whore! Krissy’s gonna grow up to be a den hen just like her momma!
I shake off the memory’s lilting scorn, a dog shedding water. Forget those girls. If I leave without this map—and that’s exactly what Malthus intends—then the pie, the degradation, the entire stop in Baker, will have been for nothing.
Except to accomplish Malthus’s real purpose in sending me here.
I remember her well, Henry will be quoted as saying. She said she’d kill me if she couldn’t have me.
What respectable, sane woman would utter such nastiness in public? Lacy’s quote will be accompanied by a photo displaying her own respectably starched pink uniform. She will pose behind a perfect slice of flaky cherry pie. And who eats a whole pie in one sitting?
“I had to do it, like a dare,” I tell Lacy now that Malthus can’t hear. I don’t know what he’ll do if he finds out, but I don’t care about that now. I need that map. “It’s part of my . . .” What was the word Lacy had used? “Treasure hunt.”
The woman’s hands were in fists atop her pink polyester-clad hips. “You’re telling me your boyfriend wanted you to use that foul language on a total stranger?”
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