“True.” He rolled the r when he said it. After a moment, he went on, “We could be in Minnesota or Maine or some other place where it gets really cold. This-this is nothing much.”
Not with that fur you’ve got to keep you warm. But Vanessa swallowed the crack, even if he practically invited it by coming in here with nothing over that T-shirt. She chose another tack: “I’ve got a brother up in Maine. I think he’s still up there, anyhow. I haven’t heard from him in quite a while.”
“If he is in such a place, he may not have power for his phone. Up there, many areas have had no power at all for a long time.”
In such a place. The phrase stuck in Vanessa’s ear as the waitress set a plate in front of Bron. Few English-speakers would say anything like that. You might write it, but you wouldn’t say it.
Bron fell to. He ate with wolfish directness. His teeth were very white, or that black, black beard and mustache made them seem so. He paused halfway through the burger to remark, “Yes, could be worse or better. In the middle.”
“Uh-huh.” What came out of Vanessa’s mouth next amazed her: “I like your beard.”
That got his complete attention. He looked her up and down. For once, it didn’t feel like a groping; she knew she’d invited it. His eyes were a lighter brown than she’d thought at first. A sniper’s eyes went through her mind-they had that careful but aggressive directness to them. He held back half a beat before answering, “I like your you.”
The little pause seemed to give the handful of ordinary words extra weight. Careful, something in Vanessa’s mind warned. But she didn’t feel like being careful. She’d been careful since the eruption, not that she’d come across anybody she gave a rat’s ass about since then. And how much trouble could you get into at a Denny’s Formica counter?
“Thanks,” she said. “I’m Vanessa-Vanessa Ferguson.”
“Hallo, Vanessa Ferguson,” he said gravely. “I am Bronislav Nedic.” Those watchful eyes flicked to find Yvonne. She was over by the register, talking with another, younger, waitress. Even so, he lowered his voice a little before going on, “People who have trouble pronouncing Bronislav call me Bron.”
“I can say Bronislav.” Vanessa had a good ear. Even so, she could tell her o wasn’t just like his. And she had as much trouble with his r as he did with an American one.
He smiled just the same. “You can,” he agreed. “Good for you. I am glad.”
“Where are you going?” she asked him. She assumed he had to be going somewhere. Not even lunatics would stay at this miserable truck stop. Only soldiers who had to follow orders got stuck doing that.
“I have outside a truck full of chicken legs,” Bronislav answered. “I take them to a freezing-no, a frozen-warehouse in Los Angeles.” He raised an eyebrow. His were dark and thick, like all of his hair. They didn’t quite meet above his long, sharp nose, but they came close. “And you?”
“I’m heading for L.A., too.” Vanessa surprised herself with how glad she was to hear he was westbound. If he’d been going the other way, they would have been passing ships. Now. . Well, who the hell knew about now? “I was born there. I lived there till a little before the eruption, so I’m heading home.”
“Born in Los Angeles.” He shook his head in slow wonder.
“People are, you know,” Vanessa said with a touch of irritation. Outsiders often assumed anyone who lived in California came from somewhere else. It never failed to annoy the genuine natives.
“I am sure it must be so,” Bronislav Nedic said, shaking his head again. “It still seems very strange to me.”
Experimentally, Vanessa gave a light touch to the tattoo on the back of his hand. His flesh seemed half a degree hotter than hers. That was a good sign. She didn’t know where attraction came from, or why. She recognized it when it did, though. To cover what she was thinking, what she was feeling, she asked, “Does this mean something, or is it just a design?”
She got more than she’d bargained for. “That is the Ocilima, the four Ss with the cross,” Bronislav answered, his voice as solemn as if he were intoning prayers in church. “They look like Cs to you, I know, but the Serb alphabet is like the Russian-its C is S in yours. They stand for Samo sloga Srbina spasava: only unity will save the Serbs.” His mouth twisted into a sour, wistful smile, which made him look more like Nicolas Cage than ever. Since Vanessa liked Nicolas Cage, that wasn’t so bad. He added, “I was not born in Los Angeles, you will figure out. I was born in Yugoslavia, a country that is not a country any more.”
“Oh,” Vanessa said, and not another word. She supposed she could have found Yugoslavia on a map-back in the days when Yugoslavia was on the map-but that was as much as she knew or cared about it.
Bronislav didn’t notice her indifference. His eyes were far away from the New Mexico Denny’s. He was seeing other mountains than the ones here, other times. “I fought for the Serbs against the terrorist Bosnians and the Nazi Croats. I fought, but we did not win. And so. . I sit at this counter here, next to you, and my country is broken all in pieces.”
“Is that where you, uh, hurt your arm?” Vanessa didn’t want to touch the scar the way she’d touched the tat.
He nodded mournfully. “It is. And I was lucky, if you want to call it luck. The RPG caught the fellow standing beside me square. They never found enough of poor Vlade to bury.”
“Oh,” Vanessa said again, on a different note this time. Being her father’s daughter made her know from a very early age that human beings could do horrible things to one another. She’d seen more since the eruption. But. . “You were in a war.” That, she hadn’t seen.
“I was in a war, yes. And now I have that truck full of chicken pieces to take to California. Life does strange things.” Bronislav set money on the counter. Then he said, “If you have a number where I can call you when I am in Los Angeles. . Maybe we see what strange things life does to us.”
Or maybe I decide this was just a way to waste time in a nowhere Denny’s. But Vanessa gave him her cell number instead of making one up. He entered it in his own phone. And he gave her that number, which she took in turn-mating rituals of the twenty-first century.
She paid for her own lunch. Bronislav tipped better than she did. But then, chances were he would stop here again. She wouldn’t, not unless God had an even more twisted sense of humor than He’d already shown. Vanessa slid into her car. She half expected it to crap out right there, just to show her what kind of sense of humor God had. It started okay, though.
Back onto the Interstate. Into the fast lane. Past the trucks. Arizona ahead, then California. Home! Who woulda thunk it?
And if Bronislav called-no, when, because he would-she’d figure out what she wanted to do. Maybe she’d have other things that needed taking care of: shampooing her tortoise, or something. Maybe she wouldn’t, too. She hadn’t wanted anybody, even a little bit, for a long time. It made her feel more alive. She drove on toward L.A., happier than she remembered being since the eruption.
* * *
Louise Ferguson glumly studied her bank statement and her three credit-card bills, all of which had chosen the same day to arrive. If that didn’t prove misery loved company, she was damned if she knew what would.
She’d been robbing Peter to pay Paul ever since the ramen works let her go, and robbing James to pay Peter, and robbing Mark to pay James, and robbing Luke to pay Mark, too. She was running low on saints and apostles. Even more to the point, she was running low on money.
“Shit,” she said softly: the perfect one-word summary of the situation.
It wasn’t as if she hadn’t been looking for work since she got laid off. The California Employment Development Department had no possible complaints on that score. She sent out applications online whenever the condo had power. When it didn’t, she rode the bus all over the South Bay. She talked to personnel officers, cooks, pet-store owners. . anybody who’d listen to her and pay her more than unemployment doled out.
No one wanted to
hire her. She was on the wrong side of fifty-not far on the wrong side, but she was. Only a few movie stars managed to stay hot-looking at her age. She wasn’t bad-she knew as much-but not bad didn’t cut it. She had some office skills, but she wasn’t a computer whiz, either.
And even if she were hot and a computer whiz, chances were it wouldn’t have mattered. Nobody was hiring anybody much. When a job did open up, it was guaranteed to have a zillion people clamoring for it. Somebody in that zillion would always be better qualified or cuter or younger or more male or whatever than Louise. Which meant. .
“Shit,” she muttered again.
She looked back over her shoulder at James Henry. Little pitchers had big ears. Big mouths, too. Whatever they heard, they came out with. But he was busy with Duplos and toy cars.
And so she fished her phone out of her purse. She wondered if she’d have to give it up. Landlines were cheaper. With power so spotty, they might even be more reliable, regardless of whether they were less convenient. For now, though, she called Colin’s cell.
She hoped she wouldn’t get his voice mail. That would be a pain. He would call her back. He was nothing if not reliable. Reliable to a fault, she’d thought back in the day. Even so, returning her call would give him one more edge. As if he didn’t have enough already. Yeah, as if!
But he answered after the second ring. “Hello, Louise. What’s up?” As usual, he didn’t waste time beating around the bush.
“Colin, I need to borrow five hundred dollars.” She wasn’t normally so direct herself. Desperation did terrible things to people.
A long pause on the other end of the line. Then he said, “You need me to give you five hundred dollars, you mean.”
Louise felt the blood mount to her cheeks and ears. It wasn’t quite so bad as a hot flash, but it came close. “I’ll pay you back as soon as I can,” she said, hating to beg and knowing she had no choice. “As soon as I get work.” That sounded better.
“This isn’t the first time,” he said heavily.
“I know. Believe me, I wouldn’t be doing it unless I had to,” Louise answered. “As long as I had a job, I didn’t.”
“Yeah.” In her mind, she saw him grudge a nod, admitting she was right about that much. But then he said, “It’s not so easy for me right now, either.”
“I know Kelly’s going to have the baby.” Louise didn’t quite gloat over the word. He wouldn’t have to work so hard playing dad to the little brat as she had being single mom with James Henry, but he was no youngster himself. He’d feel it. Oh, would he ever!
“It’s not just that,” Colin said. “Vanessa’s back in town-”
“Yes, I know,” Louise broke in. “She called me. We’re going to get together for lunch in a couple of days.” God only knew when she’d see Vanessa again after that. They’d got along spikily even before she divorced Colin. There weren’t too many people Vanessa didn’t get along with spikily.
“Let me finish,” Colin said in his I’m-holding-on-to-my-patience voice. “She’s staying here right now, till she finds her own place-and till she finds some way to pay for a place of her own.”
“Oh? How’s that working out?” Louise asked with more interest than she’d expected to show. It had so many. . intriguing possibilities.
“Well. .” Another longish pause from her ex. At last, he said, “I haven’t told her to take her show on the road, anyhow. Not yet, I haven’t.”
“How’s she doing with Kelly?”
“I haven’t told her to take her show on the road yet,” Colin repeated. “Louise, I’ll write you the darn check, okay?” The line went dead.
She put the phone back in her purse. Yes, that was interesting, wasn’t it? He’d rather give her money and quit talking to her than tell her how things with Vanessa and his new wife were going. Louise nodded thoughtfully. She could paint her own pictures. She could, and she did. Having painted them, she slowly smiled. What she wouldn’t have given to be a fly on the wall at the old house!
James Henry chose that exact moment to look up from his own mayhem. The Duplos and cars had turned into something very much like a demolition-derby course. “Mommy?” he said.
“What is it, dear?”
“How come you were talking to Uncle Colin?” That was what James Henry called him. It wasn’t accurate, but there was no accurate name for what Colin was to James Henry: nothing shorter than father of my half-brothers and half-sister, anyhow.
“How do you know I was?” Louise answered one question with another.
“’Cause you were talking about money.”
“Oh.” That was more a sound of pain than a word. He was big enough to notice what was going on around him, all right.
Too many questions there, and all of them too pointed. Louise had always believed in being straight with children. She did her best now: “He’s going to loan me some money. Do you know what loan means?”
“You have to give it back?” Her son sounded doubtful.
Louise nodded. “That’s right. When I get some more of my own and I can afford to, I’ll pay it back.” She believed it when she said it. No, this wasn’t the first time she’d had to hit Colin up. She didn’t like to think about paying it all back. . and so, most of the time, she didn’t.
James Henry found another question with sharp teeth: “How come Marshall doesn’t come around and watch me any more? He’s silly!”
“He is silly,” Louise agreed. “He doesn’t watch you so much any more because he did that while I went to my job. I haven’t been able to do that for a while now.”
“Why?” James Henry asked-the little kid’s favorite comeback.
“Because the company I worked for wasn’t making as much money as it wanted to, and so it didn’t need as many people as it had before. And I was one of the ones it let go.”
“Why?” he asked again.
“I don’t know,” Louise answered, which was the Lord’s truth. How much of all this he understood was liable to be a different question altogether. Talking about money with a preschooler was much too much like getting up on a stump in Peru and spouting Estonian.
Sure as hell, he just looked at her-looked at her with Teo’s dark eyes. She was his mother. She was Mommy. Of course she knew everything. That was a law of nature, same as the sun coming up every morning and going down every evening. It was a law of nature if you hadn’t started kindergarten yet, anyhow.
Tears stung Louise’s eyes. If only the world really worked that way! Mm-hmm, if only. When you looked at it from the far side of fifty, you wondered if you truly understood even one single goddamn thing. And the older you got, the less likely it seemed. She’d been sure about Colin. Then she’d been sure about Teo. Then. . At least then she’d had a job, for Christ’s sake.
Now. . Now she wasn’t sure of anything, and she didn’t have a job or much else. “Shit.” Her lips shaped the word again-silently, she thought. James Henry giggled, anyhow. Either she hadn’t been silent enough or he could read lips. Both possibilities made her want to go Shit one more time, but she didn’t. She fixed herself a drink instead.
* * *
Kelly’d got past the worst part of the pregnancy. She didn’t fall asleep if you looked at her sideways. She didn’t work at random times any more, either. They called it morning sickness, but what did they know? It had got her whenever it felt like getting her, as when those egg yolks started staring up at her so malevolently.
She wasn’t quite out to there yet, either, out to where she just wanted to have the kid and get it over with. It was going to be a girl. She and Colin were going to name it Deborah. You couldn’t go far wrong with a name from the Bible-well, not unless you picked something like Jezebel or Habakkuk. So thought Kelly, who didn’t have that kind of name, and Colin hadn’t argued with her. They didn’t argue much, which Kelly took as one more good sign.
She should have been happy, in other words. And she had been happy, right up till that dusty Toyota pulled up in front of the house a
nd Vanessa got out.
She won’t stay for long, Kelly told herself. She kept telling herself, over and over. She won’t stay for long. Vanessa prided herself on making her own way. She couldn’t make her own way out of here soon enough to suit Kelly.
She didn’t know what the trouble was between the two of them. She believed that the first time it crossed her mind, anyhow. The first time, yes. Not the second. By then, she’d worked out what was going on-not what to do about it, but what it was.
She was a dog and Vanessa was a cat. It was about that simple. Kelly liked cats. But when you weren’t one and when you ran into somebody who was. . Life got more interesting than you really wanted it to.
Vanessa was younger than she was, prettier than she was, more graceful than she was. She’d been on the road for a while. She was grubby and looked tired as she walked up to the door. Kelly opened it. Vanessa looked at her and said, “Oh. You must be Kelly.”
In another tone of voice, or without that flat Oh, it would have been fine. As things were, Kelly’s hackles rose. She still didn’t know what they were, but, whatever they were, up they went, all right. “Uh-huh,” she said, her own voice colder than post-eruption winter at the South Pole. “Come in.” She had to make herself get out of the way so Vanessa could.
Once past the front foyer, Vanessa looked around. “It’s. . different,” she said, as if that should have been a hanging offense on the off chance it wasn’t.
“Yes. It is.” Kelly hadn’t known she could sound any chillier. She surprised herself, because she had no trouble at all. The decor everywhere but in Colin’s study had still been Louise’s when she started hanging out with him. The front room didn’t look like a rummage sale in a Russian Orthodox monastery any more.
“Well. .” Vanessa had said, and then, “It’s better than Camp Constitution, anyhow.” By the way she said it, it wasn’t one hell of a lot better than the enormous refugee camp.
“Thanks,” Kelly’d answered. “If it doesn’t suit you, I’m sure you can find a motel.” She knew that was a mistake as soon as the words were out of her mouth. Too late then, of course. Things would have been bad enough even without a formal declaration of hostilities. Now? Now they’d be worse than bad enough.
Supervolcano: All Fall Down s-2 Page 28