* * *
Cerulean sat in the darkness after the others had gone to sleep, camping at the cairn in the corn, turning the pages of Amo's comic by flashlight.
It was the honesty that struck Cerulean hardest. Amo didn't hide from his atrocities or his suicide attempt. He drew the dead accurately, just as bloody and horrible as Cerulean remembered them, owning his actions and trying to pay the price.
Who did that make him now? Could Cerulean rise above his own past in the same way? Reading about Amo's point of view changed his feelings a little, though he didn't really know how.
Masako slept by his side. He didn't know what to think about that; if he was leading her on cruelly, if he was lying to himself as well as to her. No answers came. Nightly he still dreamed of the dive he'd planned, and the demon that would welcome him in. Would he be comfortable putting that in a comic book of his own?
He laid the comic down and looked up at the sky, so full of stars. Maybe now was the time. He figured Jake, Cynthia and Masako could handle Julio between them. They didn't need him, really, and though he liked them well enough, they just weren't enough to make him stick around.
Too much had happened for him to turn back from this path now. A few more days, maybe. He didn't need to go all the way to LA. Seeing Amo in the flesh would just make it too hard. One night now he could just disappear…
13. ANNA
Then they found Anna.
It was two days later and they were an hour's drive west of Denver, Colorado, in the middle of a great empty orange-dirt plain. That morning they'd stopped briefly at Amo's most ambitious cairn since New York; a giant yellow Pac-Man head painted on all four faces of the Wells Fargo building in central Denver. In the lobby on the name board, there had been three names:
Amo
Lara
Anna
The others had grown excited. Jake in particular was cheery, sitting in the RV while Cerulean drove, dreaming up the kind of girl he hoped it would be. Masako encouraged him with visions of supermodels, then teased him that they'd never go for him anyway. He had a strange, enthusiastic-Labrador kind of confidence that let him bull through anything she said and have both of them come away laughing.
For Cerulean it was just another sign. One more person would lessen the blow of his departure.
Then he saw Anna. She was a little black girl in a dirty blue and white dress standing at the side of the dusty road, looking for all the world like Alice in Wonderland after she'd tumbled down the rabbit-hole.
"Oh my God," Cerulean said.
He stopped the RV and the little girl just looked back at them, waiting. She couldn't be more than six years old. Cerulean felt himself teetering on the edge of a terrible abyss, far higher than the the Empire State Building. At last the little girl waved.
That broke the spell, and Cerulean hurried out of the back so fast he almost fell. He raced over to her, thankful Julio was bringing up the rear in his Mustang for once, and when she saw him she started to cry. As he drew up she jumped into his lap, wrapped her arms tightly around his neck and sobbed against his neck.
Everything changed.
At once he knew that he wasn't going to dive. He wasn't going to leave these people behind, he wasn't going back to New York, not any more. They were all his responsibility now and he'd protect them for as long as he was able.
He hugged the little girl and whispered to her that everything was going to be all right. She was frail and slight, but wiry, and she clung to him like a barnacle. The tears broke down his cheeks and he patted her thin back. She filled the hole inside right to the brim.
* * *
Everything that followed felt floaty and fresh. They had a feast of hotdogs and beans and other bits from the RV's stores, and Anna clung to him throughout. The demon and Matthew and his dive receded far into the darkness. At first Anna didn't talk but then she did, abruptly and at length, explaining herself and her story, all the way up to watching her father walk into the Pacific Ocean.
"Wait, he went into the water?" Jake asked, as sensitively as he could. "Did he swim?"
Anna frowned seriously at him, which was about the cutest thing Cerulean had ever seen. "No, of course not. Why would he swim?"
"Why indeed?" Jake echoed cheerfully. "Quite right, that would be silly."
"They walk in, and they keep walking," Anna corrected. "They're going somewhere, whatever's past the ocean, but of course they don't swim."
Cerulean considered that while she sat on his lap and slurped up hotdogs and the others quizzed her more. West of the Pacific lay Asia, which meant Japan, China, Malaysia and so on. But if all the ocean were going west, then what had been happening in Maine? What had Matthew died for?
He didn't mention it.
"And you led the others in?" Jake was confirming. "Into the water, like a tour guide?"
Anna beamed, pleased he was finally getting it. "Yes, exactly!"
She was sweet, and resourceful and smart. She offered him grimy red licorice strings that had surely been in her pack for weeks, and he took one and mimed eating it, which delighted her.
"You didn't eat it!" she jeered. "Eat it properly."
He ate it, and she looked pleased, though she was getting sleepy.
"You're safe with us, Anna," he told her as she sagged against him. "I promise."
"Of course," she answered. "My Daddy said so. You look like him."
He stroked her hair, and over the fire Masako watched with a look like she was about to cry. Even Cynthia seemed to melt a little, while Jake was plainly besotted, and kept trying to engage her in mock arguments that she would win in imperious tones, leaving him looking totally bereft.
She laughed. They had fun.
"We're at the same height again," Anna told him later, as it got dark and he was wheeling her to the RV to tuck in along the back seat. She was sleepy and looking up at him with fuzzy eyes. "Daddy, I missed you."
For a long moment after that he felt like he couldn't breathe. Just her existence was putting a seed in his heart, and the roots growing out changed who he was. He felt it like he'd felt the ice shatter when Matthew died. This was the opposite.
"I missed you too, honey," he told her, and kissed her hot forehead and tucked her into the covers. Everybody was inside now, drowsy and warm together except for Julio, who was still out in his Mustang. Cerulean rolled back down the center of the RV, past Jake sitting hunched in his booth.
"She really likes you," he said.
Cerulean smiled. "I remind her of her father."
"I'm envious," Jake said. "I wanted a supermodel."
"You'll get that next."
Jake pointed at him. "I'll hold you to that."
Cynthia muttered something cutting from her upper deck bunk, but it was easy to ignore. It was even easy, when he rolled over to his booth opposite Masako's, to take her hand in his own, and look into her eyes and actually feel that, perhaps, he loved her, because really she was beautiful and strong, and she'd survived this long, and that made it all right.
She didn't wait for him, pressing herself close and folding onto his lap; hot and sweet, with the soft side of her belly pressed against his chest, sending shivers up and down his back.
Like that, they kissed. It felt right, or as right as anything in this new world. Her lips were soft but searching, hungry but tender, and her tears were warm on his cheeks.
"That was beautiful," she said. "All of it, every bit, the whole day."
"All right," Jake chimed in. "Beautiful, good, but kissing is in one of the tents, OK. Out there with Julio."
Cynthia cackled. Cynthia and Jake seemed to actually be getting along. She could dish out the insults all day long, and he could soak them up like they were nothing.
Masako kissed him again. "Come on," she whispered in his ear. "I picked a good place."
"I can't," he stumbled, "I don't have the…"
She stopped him with a look. "We'll make do."
For the first time he f
elt a stirring down below. To his wonderment, something was beginning to move. It felt like a miracle.
"Oh, what's this?" Masako asked huskily, feeling it through her thigh. "Why, Sir!"
"I didn't," he said, overcome with fear and excitement both, "I mean I don't-"
"Just because you're paraplegic doesn't mean this doesn't work," she whispered in his ear. "I read a book." She reached down and stroked him, holding his eyes with her own. It felt like a poker stoking a furnace to life. It wasn't how it used to be, because now he felt nothing from below the waist, but he felt something still. "There are nerves that bypass the spine and run without conscious control. You feel it still."
He tried to say something but the words and intentions got lost in his throat. She was so warm and so close and he hadn't felt anything like this for years.
She plunged into another kiss.
"Seriously," Jake said. "Should Cynthia and I go outside? Would you prefer we leave you to it?"
Cynthia tittered madly.
"Come on," Masako said, taking his hand. Together they rolled back down the RV to the rear exit. Jake gave a thumbs up on their way past.
In the darkness outside Masako led him to a tent she'd already prepared. She laid him down on the bedroll and they kissed by the hissing orange light of a camp stove. She peeled off her clothes first, sticky and warm in the summer's heat. Her skin was tan all over, with perfect half-moon breasts hanging like sweet fruit just above his reach.
She kissed him. She peeled off his clothes. She moved atop him, in the darkness, in the night, and he felt every second of it, perfectly capping the best day of his life.
14. RESPECT
They drove.
Anna slept a lot, spoke with Jake a little, and spent some of her time in the back of the RV looking out of the rear window, clutching a battered old smart phone to her chest and occasionally checking the display.
The rest of the time she was with Cerulean. She crawled up into his lap whether he was driving, not driving, eating or sleeping. Once he woke from a drowsy nap to find her tucked tightly within the arms of his wheelchair, her arms wrapped round his back, fast asleep.
"She just climbed there," Masako said, looking back from the wheel with a smile. "Her eyes were hardly even open."
"She clings tight," Cerulean said. "Like a koala."
Masako reached for his hand and he gave it.
Jake piped up from his booth in back. "We finished Alice in Wonderland. She wants you to read it to her now, I think."
Cerulean looked down at the curled-up little girl. They'd made her wash and changed her clothes, though she hadn't let them throw her blue and white dress away. Her tightly knapped hair was wiry against his chin. He kissed her head and she murmured in her sleep.
"I can't imagine what it's like for her," Jake said.
They didn't talk much as they crossed out of Colorado and into Utah. The world outside shifted from dirty, dusty scrublands to vivid orange desert with great red buttes rising up like burning glaciers. The sky was blue all the way to the horizon, and any time they stopped at a highway services to pee, the dry heat baked them like eggs frying on the blacktop.
Julio stood by his Mustang and watched everything on these stops, like he was keeping count of how many times everyone used the toilet, a tally he would present to Amo in Los Angeles. He never seemed to go himself. Jake had a theory that he peed into a bottle. Anna always followed Cerulean to the services entrance and pouted when he went into the men's room alone. When he came out she took his hand again and pulled him back to the RV.
"She's afraid you'll leave her behind," Julio said one time, as they passed him by.
Cerulean frowned at him. Everyone knew that, but why say it? "She's right here," he said. "Her name's Anna."
"That's what you're afraid of, isn't it, Anna?" Julio said. Anna ignored him completely. He shrugged.
That night they stopped near the border with Nevada in a Big Eastern motel lodged at the edge of the Red Cliffs National Conservation area. Bald red hills rose either side of the dusty road, broken by the jutting crags of pitted sandstone, like blocks of the earth's striped muscle rising through the skin. All around were scrubby stands of sagebrush, creosote bush, and the odd towering yucca, flowered with thick white blossoms.
Cerulean read Alice in Wonderland to Anna in the dark of the motel restaurant, lit by a camp light hung from the rafters and buzzing with moths, while the others bedded down in private rooms. Some time after she fell asleep, and Cerulean was gazing absently at the bugs flying around the lamplight, Julio came.
"We need to talk," he said.
Cerulean turned. Julio stood in the doorway, his brows working hard. "Sure. What's up?"
"You don't respect me enough."
Julio said it and let it hang, following up with his dark stare. Cerulean wished he would just go away, but he knew that wouldn't happen. Julio was his problem now.
"Can you explain that a little?"
"I can," said Julio, ticking off one finger on his hand, like he'd prepared it all in advance. "The first time we met, the racist hag insulted me and you attacked me. You're lucky I didn't shoot both of you then."
Cerulean nodded. "I apologized for that, and so did she. I explained we'd just met her. And she was racist to me too."
Julio ticked off a second finger. "You left us behind to quibble like we were children. I'm older than you, stronger, faster, and I'm better adapted to survive out here. You should have left her behind and been grateful to have me."
Cerulean nodded. He was starting to get a headache. "OK. We are grateful. And I can't just send Cynthia away, you know that. Is there anything else?"
Julio ticked off a third finger. "You contradict and correct me in front of the girl." He pointed at Anna. "She doesn't talk to me now. I'm on the outside. I know that little shit Jake gossips about me to her."
"You drive in your Mustang," Cerulean said, exasperated. "I know you like the car, but what do you expect? We're together all day and all night, and you're out there. Have I not invited you in with us lots of times?"
Julio flicked out a fourth finger, nodding. "On that, every time you stop for a break, I stop with you and I come out, but nobody talks to me. Nobody thanks me for scouting the route, for not resting like everybody else does. I should be getting gratitude for all my efforts."
Cerulean shook his head. Jesus, these people. Nobody benefited from Julio not stopping to pee more, and his scouting mostly consisted of driving a few hundred yards ahead of the RV, on roads plainly already scouted by Amo a few weeks ahead. What was he supposed to be grateful for?
But he couldn't say any of that. Julio was a survivor, and he'd laid down the law about that himself; they were all in this together. The headache thickened behind his eyes, like a faint memory of the demon days of old. Sometimes he wished it could be so simple as just taking the long dive.
"We do appreciate you scouting, Julio. It's an important job."
"And I need my Mustang for it, don't I? I can't scout from inside the RV, can I?"
"No, I suppose not. So we should be more grateful."
"You should. And the girl should talk to me."
Cerulean looked down at sleeping Anna.
"She talks to you," Julio went on, "to Masako, to the old racist, and I know she just loves Jake. It's only me she won't talk to."
Cerulean gave a purposefully feeble shrug. "What do you want me to do? Do you want to be the vegetables on the side of the plate, so we force her to talk to you? She's just a kid, she's scared no matter how tough she acts, and you're scary."
"I'm a serious person," Julio said. "This is work to me, not play. I've got good advice too."
Cerulean tried another tack. "You never smile. You're always severe. You just stare. It's creepy. Maybe if you-"
"It's how I am," Julio interrupted.
The two stared at each other. So it was clear, any compromise was going to have to be entirely on Cerulean's side. He'd be damned though
before he made Anna dance to Julio's whims.
"I can't make her like you, Julio. I won't. If you make an effort, I'll encourage her to be friendly, but it can't start with her."
Julio stared hard, with his brows rumbling. Then he nodded, and pointed at Cerulean, coming to what seemed a well-rehearsed summary of his grievances. "You stop them gossiping about me. You show me some appreciation for what I do. I'm not going into LA to meet your friend Amo looking like a fool. That's all I'm asking. Do you understand?"
Cerulean nodded, thinking it through. Minus the Anna stuff, was that so unreasonable? No. He had to make allowances. "All right. I promise, no more gossip. And if you could try, you know, to be friendlier?"
Julio sneered. "You should thank your lucky stars every day I didn't shoot you for jumping me in that parking lot. Remember that."
He tapped the gun at his waist then strode out.
Cerulean sighed, looking up at the camp light again, frothing now with bugs.
"Why me?" he whispered to it.
Perhaps Cynthia was right; he'd let the devil in with Julio. He'd need to start wearing a gun, too.
15. WEST
They drove on with first light, Julio 'scouting' the way ahead as ever, heading into the dark with the sun rising behind them. When they crossed over into Arizona everyone in the RV gave a whoop. Half an hour later they crossed into Nevada and the whoop was even louder.
All the way southwest toward Las Vegas excitement built, and even Anna gazed out of the front window, rather than burying her face in Cerulean's shoulder or looking at her phone. Everyone knew they were catching up to Amo, and soon they'd be on him. Nobody knew what to expect.
Mesquite, Bunkerville, Riverside; little towns passed by like strange blots on the golden desert. Here there were cacti and scattered palm trees by the roadside. Moapa and Crystal whistled by, and then out of the midst of the desert, like an oyster unfolding to reveal a great blighted pearl, was Las Vegas.
"I'm coming home!" Jake shouted, even though he wasn't from Las Vegas. They all cheered. Even Julio up ahead honked his horn. Cerulean answered with an answering honk.
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