Interlude #3
(Everyone Is Running from Something.)
The Candle & Bell Café was never empty. Even at the exact hour that pulled evenly between sunset and dawn at least one person could be found eating in one of its booths. There were four on this night. A burly truck driver ate a huge triple-stacked burger at the counter, ketchup spots decorating the t-shirt pulled tight over his ample belly. In the furthest booth from the door sat another man, this one was well-dressed and puffy-eyed. He had driven far longer than he had anticipated that night and was fearful he would fall asleep at the wheel. The third customer was a much younger man, a young woman – the fourth customer – was only barely old enough to be one, sitting opposite him.
The door opened and the cool night air pressed in against the warmth from the kitchen. The men ignored the newcomer, but the young woman didn’t. She cast her eyes to him before glancing into the café’s forecourt. A huge truck sat where previously there was an unbroken view of the highway. It was unmarked by anything resembling a company logo. The only colour she could see on it was a rectangle of yellow that reflected the light from the café at it. She squinted to make it out, it was the licence plate.
Her temporary companion took a mouthful of unidentifiable meat and peered into the darkness. He chewed a moment, his lips popping together in a way she found uniquely revolting before he spoke.
“You finished?”
She nodded. In front of her was a neatly cleared plate, her knife and fork were placed in its centre. She let her eyes follow the man who had just entered as he approached the counter and ordered. The waitress slid a disposable travel cup from a stack and filled it.
“I’m going in the other direction.”
“You don’t know which direction I’m going.”
She looked at him. He was a young man, and some may consider him handsome, but to the young woman, he was too familiar. She had seen the same look too many times before. He bore an expectant look, and she knew all too well what it meant for her.
“I’m going in whatever direction you aren’t.” She replied, and she saw the expectant gaze replaced with sudden anger.
There was a time when Greta Muller would have offered anything to change that anger to acceptance, but not anymore. Greta Muller never liked the name Greta. It created an image in people’s minds that wasn’t what Greta thought herself to be. It was just one more mask she felt forced to wear.
When she was thirteen, she had drunk enough to be admitted to hospital for alcohol poisoning. She had woken wrapped in a silver blanket that crackled as she moved, and she had felt the one mask slip. Three months later she had a pregnancy scare which she took great pains to share with all her mother’s friends, and the mask slipped a little more. When she introduced her father to Spider, named for the tattoo on his cheek, that one mask disappeared entirely.
It didn’t end until her father could take no more. The rage released was everything Greta had hoped for, everything she had worked towards. She had told her mother what she had always wanted to say. The rage had given her licence to, and for once she didn’t need to lie, cheat, or steal to make them shudder with anger, the truth was more than enough.
She had spoken of those moments she had suffered at her father’s hands, and then she had felt his all-too-familiar hands on her again. He dragged her from the family home, and she had become acquainted with the hard freedoms of the road.
Greta would have given in to the man sitting in front of her, but the person she had become could do no such thing. She had given up the need for acceptance when she had given up the name. She traded names with each new companion. The man before her knew her as Poppy, the one before as Freya, and before that she was Grace. She rarely used the same name twice but would never again be known as Greta.
The man shifted angrily in his seat, rose, and stormed from the café. The young woman watched him leave, seeing car headlights flare a few moments later. They grew bright as they moved past the window, the red taillights of the vehicle cutting through the darkness and into the night.
She turned again to the man at the counter. He had paused long enough to eat a slice of what looked like apple pie, sipping from the travel cup through a thin hole cut into its lid.
From where he stood at the counter Ryan was oblivious to the young woman’s interest. He ate slowly and gathered his thoughts on the night’s events. It had surprised Ryan how quickly it all came back to him, he remembered those long hours hauling freight across continents, and he realised that it was ingrained into his very DNA.
The box trailer had already been connected to the cab and the route had been punched into the expensive navigational system by the time he had awoke. All Ryan had to do was hit the accelerator and follow the display. JC had told him the tiny TV bolted to the top of the dashboard was called The Electro Gyrocator and showed him how it worked. It had cost JC the better part of ten thousand dollars, but he insisted that all Ryan had to do was follow the route it showed. Ryan had never seen anything like it, but it had led him unerringly so far.
The sun was already setting when he drove under the orange highway lights. They were spots of warmth against the cool blue of the dying day. Ryan had hit the heater and had felt warm air push from one of the dashboard grills. The day had been warm, but the nights had turned, and he could feel the onset of the coming autumn.
The journey would take him most of the night, and he should reach his destination before dawn. According to JC, this was important and getting there before the sun rose would be beneficial if he wished to make a name for himself in The Organisation. By ‘beneficial’ Ryan thought he meant ‘essential,’ but the casual use of the term The Organisation stuck with him.
He didn’t think it was just a bunch of old rich guys swindling each other out of cash. Ryan was certain that was a part of it, how does an old rich guy become an old rich guy without a few scams? The earnestness on JC’s face as he gave him his instructions went beyond just numbers on a bank balance, and the instructions themselves left Ryan a little baffled.
He stood at the counter of the oddly named café and sipped at the weak coffee between bites of the surprisingly good apple pie. The clock on the wall behind the counter told him he was on time. Time was the issue with this drop. It was the one thing JC stressed repeatedly.
“You’ve delivered perishable items before have you not?” JC had asked. “This is no different, only a little more exacting, that’s all.” He had traced the route on a small tablet computer as he spoke. “The Organisation requires you to pass certain landmarks at certain times.” He spotted Ryan’s consternation and added. “It is no stranger than the action in any ritualised activity. It’s no different to the corsage you gave your sweetheart at her prom. Just tradition, though this is an important one you must observe if you intend to be noticed.”
Ryan hadn’t understood, but he wasn’t required to. He never understood the corsage thing either and never got to the prom. He had sat outside with two friends and gotten drunk until the police had been called.
He smiled at the memory and finished his pie.
When he returned to the truck, he saw the steam rising from the disposable cup as he raised it to his lips. Either the temperature had dropped even more severely, or the warmth of the café had sensitised him to it. He could feel the chill in the air now and was thankful that the truck’s heating would dispel the cold he could feel setting into his flesh.
“Which way are you going?”
The voice was soft but carried on the night air easily. In the distance vehicles could be heard rushing past on the highway, their headlights dancing through the night. Her voice carried over the sound like a lullaby.
She was young, no more than eighteen, her hair chopped in an uneven cut that may have been fashionable. Ryan couldn’t tell. Incompetence and style had clashed to a point where he wasn’t sure where one ended and the other began. Her clothes were twenty-first century homeless, a torn and ill-fitting leather jacket and denim skirt. Neither supplied any clues as to whether she was stylish or forgotten.
“Blackbridge.” He answered.
“You have room for a passenger?”
She was too young to be catching lifts in the middle of the night from strangers, he was certain of that, but she was also older than her years. He could see that look in her eyes. The carefully contrived smile through which she knew most wouldn’t see. It was the smile of someone who knew the lay of the land.
“Sure,” he said, “I’m on a schedule though, so no stopping.”
She disappeared around the far side of the cab and was already opening the door to climb in as he climbed into the driver’s seat. He waited. She settled beside him, stripping off her jacket and folding it on her seat.
Ryan twisted the ignition. The radio flared to life midway through an obscure sixties track, and Ryan eased the truck forward, turning out onto the road that would hook back to the highway. The cab shuddered slightly as he applied the brakes for the corner, and then the inertia pushed them back into their seats as he sped up to rejoin the traffic.
“I’m Penny.” The young woman said, and Ryan glanced at her.
“I’d bet you that you aren’t.” He replied, moving his eyes back to the road. People on the road were rarely what they said they were, “My name’s Ryan.”
He saw her smile in understanding. On the radio, the song ended, and a presenter’s voice slid over its final notes. The presenter’s words washed over Ryan, he didn’t make out their meaning, and he supposed it didn’t matter. The next track slid in with a muted crash of cymbals and Ryan felt a smile pull at his lips. As the music began, he sang along softly. He wasn’t entirely aware of his performance. He didn’t care even as the young woman beside him looked at him with growing amusement. The song was a favourite of his, more accurately it was a favourite of hers. The woman who had deserted him. The woman who was still always on the periphery of his thoughts.
“What was that?” Penny asked as the music faded and the patter of the presenter replaced it. The man beside her smiled, lost in thought for a moment. The radio presenter introduced another song, but the man spoke over it.
“Ah, it was just a song I liked when I was young.”
“It sounded…” She paused. “I’d have expected something different.”
Ryan smiled again, but this time the smile was forced.
“Yeah, well someone else introduced me to it.”
“Ah.” She responded knowingly. “No need to explain.”
Ryan glanced over at her. She had an elbow resting against the base of the window, her head leaning on her hand. She had slid down slightly, her knees bent, and her thigh muscle flexed. His eye went to it, then back to the road.
“So where are you running from?” he asked.
“What makes you think I’m running from something?”
“Because everyone is running from something.”
“Okay, so what is it for you?”
Ryan felt sudden tension roll over him. Her face flashed before his eyes. It was an image projected on a fifty-foot mental screen. He saw the fine hairs that created a halo around her cheeks. Her eyes glowed. She smiled.
“The past.” He said, and it was as true as a lie could be.
“Which makes the place you’re going the future, right?”
“I guess.” Again, it was a truthful lie.
“So, we’re both looking for the same thing.”
I doubt that he thought, I very much doubt that. But then the future is unwritten and murky, and her view of it would be different to his own. How would anyone know? He knew that it was a tapestry of infinite possibilities, or it should have been. But for himself the threads of choice had been burned from reality by a clumsy hand, leaving only one route, and he feared even that possibility was too severely damaged to hold for long.
“Do you have room for a passenger?” She asked suddenly, the phrase an echo from the recent past.
You don’t want to go where I’m going. He thought. He glanced at her again, and he saw the possibilities, none of them good, none that didn’t end in blood or tears, and when she glanced back, he thought he saw the same understanding reflected in her eyes. She had seen darkness, he thought, and she knew that she would see more, and the thought did not frighten her.
“I think the people I’m working for are bad people.” He said. He thought that they were worse than bad. Something bad awaited him, but he also knew he was a match for it, or at least, he believed himself to be.
Penny watched him. He could see her from the corner of his eye. Her face was set in curious anticipation. He thought that there was a hint of a smile.
“I like bad people.” She said. “Some bad people do bad things, and some bad people like to watch bad people do bad things.” She paused a moment, then added. “Which are you, Ryan?”
He didn’t think, the words came as an automatic response. They surprised him, but the admission released something within him.
“I do bad things.” He said.
It was as if a world of sudden possibility opened to him. The threads of his future were not burned, as he had believed, they were rotten, and that’s exactly what they had always been.
“And I like to watch.” She responded, reflecting on what she had sensed when she saw Ryan in the café. Her instincts had drawn her to him, as they had drawn her to others in the past. She had always known who could be pushed and who might try to pull. She had developed the ability to see what wallets would be left open to her, and what prices she may be required to pay. She had seen his glances and felt his interest, but it was a casual desire, a fleeting interest to sate a casual need for sensation. If this man wanted to cause pain it was a desire aimed with specific intent, and while she would be careful never to cross its path, she would enjoy seeing it be unleashed.
The young woman made a sound under her breath. It sounded like a quiet grunt of understanding, and Ryan wondered if she had thought the same thoughts as himself. She was an open book to him. He saw pages scrawled in childish script with its I’s dotted with little black hearts. In the margins were obscene drawings scratched with an inexperienced hand.
Penny was a broken woman-child, but that was fine, Ryan could admit he was nothing more than an equally broken man-child.
“Sure, I have room for a passenger.” He finally said. “But there are no stops, so you’re there ‘til the end.”
“I wouldn’t want to miss it.” She said, and Ryan felt in a flash of understanding that she knew his mind better than he could.
She read me in moments. He thought. If she sees me like a book, I’m little more than a children’s book written in large print.
But he had always known it, hadn’t he? That’s why she had always looked at him in that sad way that enraged him so much towards the end. She had always slowed down for him. She had always chosen simple movies for them to watch. She had known long before he had and when it had dawned on him, it fell hard. She had read him in a moment and had settled for what she had learned. Settled. Not chosen. Settled. Penny, who was not called Penny, had read him the same, but Penny hadn’t settled, Penny had chosen.
“It’s a little like falling in love. Isn’t it?”
He hadn’t meant to speak it aloud. It was barely a thought that bypassed the cognitive process, moving from feeling to expression without much input from himself, but it was true. It was like falling in love. It was love at first sight, but it also wasn’t. It wasn’t her chopped hair that attracted him to her, the curve of her thigh, or her youthful complexion. That attraction was academic. A juxtaposition of elements that were pleasing to the eye, but nothing more than a thin veneer over what had drawn him.
“Yes.” She replied with a smile. “It is.”
Ryan knew what he had seen in her, she was even sicker than himself, and this sickness had drawn him to her.