The tooth was a molar, maybe the one from all the way in the back, judging by the tripod of thick roots on which it stood. The gooey strand of red tissue from the Hispanic guy’s shirt made more sense now, as it had once been connected to the biggest of the three roots. Two clusters of periodontal ligaments were splayed out on the dashboard on either side of the tooth, visible in the space just over the steering wheel. Rusty let out a long breath and took a moment to compose himself.
How had it all come to this? He’d had everything, once. A decent job, a strong body and handsome face that women went nuts for, a house, a kid. It seemed booze and coke expected a lot from a person in return. Now everything he’d had was gone, all of it. Now he was a scared, beaten dog.
Worse, he was a dog that owed money.
He started the truck, opened the window, and found an old Starbucks napkin on the floor. He used it to pick up the tooth and chucked it into the alley, hearing it click across the pavement in two or three skips. So, Z did teeth now. God knew what the fuck would be next, and ten grand was a lot of money.
He leaned forward and looked up at the sky as he pulled out of the alley, wondering when or if you’d ever be able to see the thing everybody said was coming.
6.
Half-Moon Bay Airfield
Brady muttered into his cell phone when they were half a mile from the airfield’s driveway, and the chain-link gate was swinging open before they pulled up to it. From the back seat, Thom could see the Gulfstream 650 parked just ahead, beyond the doors to the aviation center. The other custom Suburban was parked in front of it, and Ann-Sophie, a tall, anxious woman whose overwhelming blondness made Eva Braun look swarthy, stood beside the open rear door, fidgeting with an Hermes overnight bag. Thom admired her, even now. Oh, hell, especially now, but his admiration was really a way of appreciating himself: here he was, whisking his Swedish-model wife away to safety moments ahead of an impending apocalypse. What, exactly, was there not to like about him and his situation at this moment? Who on planet earth occupied a place higher on the food chain than he did, even in comparison with his exalted peers who had just as much money, had done just as much planning, and were possessed of a plane with the same number of seats, covered in the same creamy Italian leather upholstery? They may have made plans, but they hadn’t made Plans. Not the way Thom had.
These thoughts, Thom knew, were perfectly normal. To be pleased with one’s station, if it is advantageous, to feel possessive and desirous of one’s wife, to take honest stock of one’s fortune, if it happens to be outrageous, and think that all this is a positive thing, and to take a private moment, every now and then, to consider oneself truly hot shit—this is common fucking gratitude.
You just gotta be careful not to say it out loud.
Thom’s Suburban swung around and pulled to a stop ten feet from where Ann-Sophie stood waiting. Thom opened his door himself, moving faster than the airport worker who was lunging toward it, and he opened it with such conviction that the guy rapped his knuckles on the handle.
“Sorry,” Thom threw at him, and he meant it, but, hey, c’mon, how many times have I asked Lisa to tell you guys I open my own goddamn doors? He covered the ten feet between himself and Ann-Sophie in a rush. He pulled her into an embrace.
“You’re all right,” he murmured in her ear. “The kids are fine. We are going somewhere safe.” He was holding her tightly, and she returned the embrace for a moment, but when she moved to pull away, he held on a moment longer, not releasing her. “Just take a second. Stay calm.”
“I’m fine. Let go of me.”
He did, and she pulled back. He was surprised by the animosity in her eyes. Really? Now? Sure, they’d had that Thing they’d been trying to work through, but every married couple had their thing, and aren’t times of crisis supposed to bring people together? But he realized, as he looked into Ann-Sophie’s bottle-green eyes, that nothing had been forgiven, nothing was going to be put behind them, and he was about to trade a nineteen-thousand-square-foot house overlooking the Pacific Ocean for a thirty-two-hundred-square-foot apartment in a reconditioned nuclear-missile silo a hundred miles outside of Provo, Utah, that he would share with a vindictive Nordic witch.
For the first time that day, the end of the world was sounding like a teensy bit of a drag.
Over Ann-Sophie’s shoulder, Thom saw his second distressing sight. Lisa, his assistant, was hurrying toward him, her heels click-clicking in that self-important way he hated. She had her hands out in front of her, palms down, making a “please be calm” gesture before anybody had even begun to freak out.