Читать книгу Alice Isn’t Dead - Joseph Fink, Joseph Fink - Страница 19

She crossed into California north of Lake Havasu. Then into the Inland Empire. Land that would hardly be populated if it weren’t for the tempting light of LA over the San Gabriel Mountains, a daily commute for those who want a house more than they want the hours of their day. Land that would be uninhabitable if it weren’t for the water brought in by canal, portioned out to farmers, who then sell their portions to the thirsty cities, making them nothing but water farmers. Foreclosures and cabbage and Vons supermarkets.

Victorville is a city of about a hundred thousand people, named after a man born in Ohio who died in the Inland Empire working as a manager of the California railroad. If a person is not from Southern California, it is unlikely they’ve ever even heard the name of the city. And somewhere in it was the secret that had destroyed Keisha’s life. Or so she hoped. It was thin evidence, the fact that the name had been underlined while the others were crossed out. Maybe it merely meant it was next on Officer Campbell’s list to investigate. And who even knew where he had gotten his information. What his sources were, and whether they were telling him the truth.

She had left Sylvia at an Extended Stay America in Arkansas. Keisha had paid for a couple weeks in cash. After that, Sylvia would have to figure it out. Most likely she would disappear out onto the roads again. Keisha wasn’t worried about her. She could take care of herself. Ok, Keisha was a little worried about her.

She left the truck outside of town and bought the cheapest used car she could find on Craigslist.

“This barely runs,” the man said, as she picked up the car from his driveway. “Won’t last a year.”

“Who’s thinking that far ahead?” she said and drove off, after a lesson on coaxing it into ignition.

The issue was where to even begin. Victorville is small, but not that small. A slice of suburb too far from the city to be a suburb. Strip malls and industry and agriculture. Keisha started by randomly sampling the city. Trying local businesses. Eating pizza, getting her nails done, buying shoes at Kmart, and everywhere trying to make idle conversation. Gently poking her way through to anything strange that maybe people noticed, or that they forced themselves not to notice. But it was only a city, only a place where people lived and worked and died.

Until the Burger King, where the guy behind the counter saw her copy of the third volume in the comic series she was reading, Perla la Loca, which she had brought in to read with lunch, and said, “Love and Rockets! That’s my shit!” and she explained that it was very much her shit, too, and they started talking about the series. He was getting worked up about a recent story line she hadn’t gotten to yet, and somewhere in that explanation, he referenced “the other town” as though it were a place in Victorville. She let him wind his way down, and when things seemed as friendly as they were going to be, she asked: “What other town?”

He blanched and tried to recover. “Huh? No, no other town. Or, like, Apple Valley, I guess. It’s right there, you know. The other town. So.”

She tried to keep the conversation going by talking about one of her favorite panels in Perla, the one with the dog that was actually the devil, but he muttered down toward the register that he had to get back to work and gave her the order number. After she ate she said good-bye. He only nodded slightly. But now she had a phrase. “The other town.” And with that phrase she returned to the places she had already been to.

At each business, she worked the phrase into conversation. Never as a direct question. But as though it were a piece of knowledge she already had, and she would place it out next to a few innocuous statements and then watch how people reacted.

The man at the hardware store was stoic but excused himself a minute or so after she said it and never returned.

The woman at the nail salon winced. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said. “They leave us alone. You leave it alone.” She wouldn’t be drawn back to the subject, and she rushed Keisha’s appointment.

The woman at the bike shop got angry. “Don’t even say that in here. You don’t say those words in my store. You’ll bring him in.”

“Who?”

“Get out.”

By the time she was at a party supply store, it was well after dark, and she was the last customer before they closed. The teenager behind the register shuddered. “Jeez, dude. You can’t talk about that.”

“Why not?”

He glanced out the front windows. “Because when you talk about the other town, there’s a tendency for him to show up. You haven’t been going around talking about that, have … oh shit,” he said, looking again out the window.

“What?”

“You need to hide right now.”

Given her experiences up to this point, if someone thought she needed to hide, then she hid. She crouched behind a wire bin of cheap inflatable balls. The door chime rang.

“Hey, Mike,” said a voice that was not a voice she knew but had a familiar tone. Like the hollowing of the wind.

“Oh, hey, man, so,” Mike said, in a high-pitched waver.

“Son, no need to be worried like that. Heard that someone might be asking around about the other town.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, seen anyone like that?”

“Not that I remember?”

“Don’t you think you’d remember if they mentioned the other town, son? Wouldn’t that stick out in your memory?”

She shifted slightly so she could see around the edge of the bin. The man was wearing a dirty polo shirt. His fingernails were yellow below the surface. His skin stretched oddly over his face.

Keisha had never seen this man before. It wasn’t the Thistle Man. Or, more accurately, it was a Thistle Man but not the Thistle Man she knew. There were more than one.