‘I hope you’re right.’
‘Tell you what, the first stop we make will be either Buffalo Exchange or Common Threads. I’ll buy a cowboy hat and yank it down to my ears. Yeehaw.’ Bucky puts out his current Pall Mall. ‘She thinks the world of you, you know. Thinks you’re the tomcat’s testicles.’
‘I hope she didn’t put it like that.’
In the bathroom, the shower keeps on. She’s still singing, which is good, but Billy thinks she may be having a hard job getting clean enough to suit her.
‘Actually,’ Bucky says, ‘she called you her guardian angel.’
2
Half an hour later, after the steam has cleared out of the bathroom, Alice comes to the door while Billy is shaving.
‘You don’t mind if I go?’
‘Not a bit. Have fun, keep your eyes open, and don’t be afraid to tell him to turn the radio down when your fillings start to rattle. He always had a tendency to blast it when Creedence or Zep came on. I doubt if he’s changed.’
‘I want to get a couple of skirts and tops as well as the dye for my hair and a wig for you. A pair of cheap tennies. Also some underwear that’s not so …’ She trails off.
‘The kind of stuff your clueless uncle might pick up for you in a pinch? Don’t spare my feelings. I can take it.’
‘What you got me was fine, but I could use a little more. And a bra that doesn’t have a knot holding one of the straps together.’
Billy forgot about that. Like the Fusion’s license plates.
Although Bucky is back on the porch, smoking and drinking orange juice （Billy doesn’t know how he can bear the combination）， Alice lowers her voice. ‘But I don’t have much money.’
‘Let Bucky take care of that, and I’ll take care of Bucky.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’
She takes the hand not holding the razor and gives it a squeeze. ‘Thank you. For everything.’
Her thanking him is simultaneously crazy and perfectly reasonable. A paradox, in other words. He keeps this to himself and tells her she’s welcome.
3
Bucky and Alice leave in the Cherokee at quarter past eight. Alice has done her face and there’s no sign of the bruises. They wouldn’t show much even without the makeup, Billy thinks. It’s been over a week since her date with Tripp Donovan, and the young are fast healers.
‘Call me if you need to,’ he says.
‘Yes, Dad,’ Bucky says.
Alice tells Billy she will, but he can see that in her mind she’s already on the road, talking with Bucky the way normal people talk （as if any of this is normal） and thinking about what she will see in stores that are new to her. Maybe trying stuff on. The only sign he’s gotten this morning of the girl who was raped is the way the shower ran and ran.
Once they’re gone, Billy walks the path Alice took yesterday. He stops at the little cabin Bucky calls the summerhouse and looks inside. There’s an unpainted plank floor and the only furniture is a card table and three folding chairs, but what else does he need? Just his word-cruncher and maybe a Coke out of the fridge.
Oh for the life of a writer, he thinks, and wonders who said that to him. Irv Dean, wasn’t it? The security guy at Gerard Tower. That seems long ago, in another life. And it was. His David Lockridge life.
He walks up to where the path ends and looks across the gorge to the clearing, wondering if he might see Alice’s phantom hotel. He doesn’t, just a few charred uprights where it once stood. There’s no condor, either.
He goes back to the house for his Mac Pro and that can of Coke. He sets them on the card table in the summerhouse. With the door wide open, the light is good. He sits in one of the folding chairs gingerly at first, but it seems solid enough. He boots up his story and scrolls down to where Taco was handing the squad bullhorn to Fareed, their terp. He’s about to pick up where he left off when Merton Richter interrupted him, then notices there’s a picture on the wall. He gets up for a closer look, because it’s in the far corner – weird place for a painting – and the morning light doesn’t quite reach there. It appears to show a bunch of hedges that have been clipped into animal shapes. There’s a dog on the left, a couple of rabbits on the right, two lions in the middle, and what might be a bull behind the lions. Or maybe it’s supposed to be a rhinoceros. It’s a poorly executed thing, the greens of the animals too violent, and the artist has for some reason plinked a dab of red in the lions’ eyes to give them a devilish aspect. Billy takes the painting down and turns it to face the wall. He knows that if he doesn’t his eyes will be continually drawn to it. Not because it’s good but because it isn’t.