Desperation

“They catch him.”

Cynthia solemnly shook her head. “Anyway, we couldn’t let D & S go under just because one guy went crazy when his wife left him, so we all pitched in to save it. We did, too.”

“D & 5.”

“Stands for Daughters and Sisters. I got a lot of my confidence back while I was there.”

She was looking out the window at the passing desert and rubbing the ball of her thumb pensively along the bent bridge of her nose. “In a way, even the guy who did this helped me with that.”

“Norman.”

“Yep, Norman Daniels, that was his name. At least me and Gert—she’s my pal, the one who says I look like Orphan A

“Uh-huh…”

“So last month I finally wrote home to my folks. I put my return address on the letter, too. I thought when they wrote back, if they ever did, they’d be righteously pissed—my dad, especially. He used to be a minister. He’s retired now, but…

“You can take the boy out of the hellfire, but you can’t take the hellfire out of the boy,”

Steve said.

She smiled. “Well, that’s sorta what I expected, but the letter I got back was pretty great.

I called them. We talked. My dad cried.” She said this with a touch of wonder. “I mean, he cried. Can you believe that.”

“Hey, I toured for eight months with Black Sabbath Steve said. “I can believe anything.

So you’re going home, huh. Return of the Prodigal Cookie.” She gave him a look. He gave her a grin. “Sorry.”

“Yeah, sure you are. Anyway, that’s close.”

“Where’s home.”

“Bakersfield. Which reminds me, how far are you going.”

“San Francisco. But—”

She gri

“But I can’t promise to take you that far. In fact, I can’t absolutely promise to take you any farther than Austin—the one in Nevada, you know, not the one in Texas.”

“I know where Austin is, I’ve got a map,” she said, and now she was giving him a stupid—big-brother look that he liked even better than her wide-eyed Miss Prim gaze. She was a cutie, all right… and wouldn’t she just love it if he told her that.

“I’ll take you as far as I can, but this gig is a little weird. I mean, all gigs are kind of weird, show-business is weird by. nature, and this is showbiz… I guess, anyway but… I mean…

He stopped. What did he mean, exactly. His span of employment as a writer’s roadie (an ill-fitting title, you didn’t have to be a writer yourself to know that, but the only one he could think of) was almost over, and he still didn’t know what to think of it, or of Joh

“What is the gig.” she asked. “I mean, this doesn’t look big enough to be a band truck.

Are you touring with a folkie this time. Gordon Lightfoot, someone like that.”

Steve gri

That was when the cellular phone on the dashboard gave out its strident, oddly nasal cry: Hmeep! Hmeep!

Steve grabbed it off the dashboard but didn’t open it right away. He looked at the girl instead. “Don’t say a word,” he told her as the phone hmeep-ed in his hand a third time.

“You might get me trouble if you do. ‘Kay.”

Hmeep! Hmeep!

She nodded. Steve flipped the phone’s mouthpiece open and then pushed SEND on the keypad, which was how you accepted an incoming call. The first thing he was aware of when he put the phone to his ear was how heavy the static was—he was amazed the call had gone through at all.

“Hello, that you, boss.”

There was a deeper, smoother roar behind the static—the sound of a truck going by, Steve thought—and then Marinville’s voice. Steve could hear panic even through the static, and it kicked his heart into a higher gear. He had heard people talking in that tone before (it happened at least once on every rock tour, it seemed), and he recog-nized it at once. At Joh

“Steve! Steve, I’m… ouble… bad…

He stared out at the road, ru

“Were you in an accident. Is that it. What’s up, boss. Say again!”

Crackle, zit, crackle.

“Joh

“Yes, I hear you!” Shouting into the phone now, know-ing it was totally useless but doing it anyway. Aware, out of the corner of his eye, that the girl was looking at him with mounting concern. “What’s happened to you.”

No answer for so long he was positive this time he had lost Marinville. He was taking the phone away from his ear when the boss’s voice came through again, impossibly far off, like a voice coming in from another galaxy: “west… Ely… iffy.”

No, not iffy, Steve thought, not iffy but fifty. “I’m west of Ely, on Highway 50.” Maybe, anyway. Maybe that’s what he’s saying. Accident. Got to be. He drove his scoot off the road and he’s sitting out there with a bust leg and blood maybe pouring down his face and when I get back to New York his guys are going to crucify me, if for no other reason than that they can ‘t crucify him—ot sure how far… least, probably more… RV pulled off the road… ittle farther up…

The heaviest blast of static yet, then something about cops. State cops and town cops.

“What’s—” the girl in the passenger seat began.

“Shh! Not now!”

From the phone: “. . my bike… into the desert wind… mile or so east of the RV…

And that was all. Steve yelled Joh

“It’s bad, isn’t it.” Cynthia asked. Her eyes were very wide again, but there was nothing cute about them now. “I can see it in your face.”

“Maybe,” he said, then shook his head, impatient with himself. “Probably. That was my boss. He’s up the line somewhere. Seventy miles’d be my best guess, but it might be as much as a hundred. He’s riding a Harley. He—”

“Big red-and-cream bike.” she asked, suddenly ex-cited. “Does he have long gray hair, sort of like Jerry Garcia’s.”

He nodded.

“I saw him this morning, way far east of here,” she said. “He filled up at this little gas station—cafeteria place in Pretty Nice. You know that town, Pretty Nice.”

He nodded.

“I was eating breakfast and saw him out the window. I thought he looked familiar. Like I’d seen him on Oprah or maybe Ricki Lake.”

“He’s a writer.” Steve looked at the speedometer, saw he had the panel truck up to seventy, and decided he could let it out just a little more. The needle crept up toward seventy-five. Outside the windows, the desert ran back-ward a little faster. “He’s crossing the country, getting material for a book. He’s done some speaking, too, but mostly he just goes places and talks to people and makes notes. Anyway, he’s had an accident. At least I think that’s what’s happened.”

“The co

“Uh-huh.”

“Do you want to pull over. Let me out. Because it’s no problem, if that’s what you want.”