Well, I thought of that, she said. But its been ages since I worked with anybody but you. Once you decided you wanted to work as much as you could so you could fatten up your retirement fund, I started giving you everything that came in. One time I left a client hanging so you could do his job after you came back from the one you were working.
I remember.
Not too professional, but we got away with it. I let everything else go, because Id already decided that the day you retire is the day I hang it up myself.
He hadnt known that.
And he specifically asked for you, if that matters. Al. Please use the chap who did such nice work in Albuquerque. Isnt it nice to be appreciated?
He said chap?
Chap or fellow, I forget which. This was in a note, along with the photo and the contact information. He didnt call this time. In fact its been so long since I heard from him by phone I forget what his voice sounds like. Ive probably got the note somewhere, if it matters.
He shook his head. I guess the simplest thing, he said, is to go ahead and do it.
I dont want to push you into it, but I have to say I think youre right.
The simplest thing. Couldnt be simpler, could it?
11
Hed bought a whole days worth of food at the Burger King, but hed been thirsty to begin with and the salty food made him thirstier. And the shakes, almost too thick for the straw, didnt help much. On the way into Joliet a town he knew only as the home of a state penitentiary, which struck him as an even worse way to be famous than Dubuques he spotted a strip mall and pulled in. There was a bank of vending machines out in front of the coin laundry, with no end of sweet and salty things that he didnt want, but the Coke machine also offered sixteen-ounce bottles of water. He fed it ten dollars and got four bottles of what the label assured him was pure natural spring water. It was the same price as the soft drinks, and all they had to do was bottle it. They didnt have the expense of adding sugar or artificial sweetener or flavorings or caramel color or really anything at all. On the other hand, it was pure and natural, which was more than you could say for the other offerings, so you really couldnt complain about the price.
When Keller was a boy, the only time he ever saw water in a bottle was on his mothers ironing board; the bottle had a cap with holes punched in it, and shed sprinkle some water on whatever she was ironing, for reasons Keller had never quite understood. Keller, like everyone he knew, drank water from the tap, and it didnt cost anybody anything.
Then there came a time when stores began to stock bottled water, but the only people who bought it were the kind of people who ate sushi. Now, of course, everybody ate sushi, and everybody drank bottled water. Outlaw bikers, guys with equal space on their bodies for scars and tattoos, badass bruisers who opened beer bottles with their few remaining teeth, all had their little bottles of Evian to wash down their California rolls.
Keller sat in his car and drank one of the bottles in a few long swallows. On the far side of the coin laundry, next to the Chinese restaurant, was a wall-mounted pay phone. Keller couldnt swear to it, but it seemed to him that you didnt see as many pay phones as you used to, and he supposed it was just a matter of time before they disappeared. Everybody had a cell phone nowadays. Pretty soon youd have to have a cell phone, either that or learn how to send Indian smoke signals.
The hell with it. He got out of the car, walked over to the phone, dialed Dots number. The vending machine had given him all his change in quarters, and he actually had the $3.75 the robotic voice demanded for the first three minutes. He loaded the coins into the slot, heard that coo-wheeeet sound it made when it couldnt put a call through, followed by a recording telling him the number he had dialed was not a working number. The phone gave him back his quarters.
He tried it again, on the slim chance that hed misdialed, and the same voice told him the same thing, and once again he got his quarters back.
Well, he thought, evidently she got out, which was all to the good. But would she take the time to disconnect the phone? Would she even want to disconnect the phone? Wouldnt it be better as well as simpler to leave the phone alone, so that anyone trying to get to her would waste time looking for her at home?
Too many questions, and no way to answer them.
He stopped for gas a couple of hours after he crossed into Indiana. The station was small, just a couple of pumps in front of a Circle K convenience store, and they were all self-service. You dipped your credit card, filled your own tank, wiped your own windshield, and drove off without ever seeing or being seen by another human being.
But not if you had to pay cash. Then you had to go inside first and pay the girl behind the counter, and she would program the pump to dispense whatever youd paid for.
Hed driven in and out of a similar situation fifty miles back, unwilling to risk giving an attendant a look at his face. Now the tank was getting low, and even if he managed to find a full-service pump, that didnt mean whoever pumped the gas for him wouldnt take a good look at him while he was at it. Hed been lucky with the young fellow in Morrison, but it wasnt as if hed latched onto some magic formula.