“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!” Michael Wilson hollered, checking his flank and then banking the van right, sharp but smooth, across lines and the apron strewn with gravel bits. “Whoa. Thanks. See? We gonna help each other out!”
If I’d never said, East wondered, what would happen? Where would we be going to? Slowly the compass on the ceiling returned to E.
Michael went straight back to the story: “Anyway, these dudes on snowboards, they be zipping in there. And I think, and I’m, like, man, these dudes gotta be getting high.”
“You skiing?”
“Yeah. So I—”
“No,” said East. “I mean, what? Skiing? You, man.”
“Went up with my dad,” said Michael insouciantly. “He had business.”
“Huh.” A dad. So that was another thing Michael Wilson had. “What he do?”
“Salesman. Pharmaceuticals. He sells medicine.”
“Yeah? Why you do this, then? Why don’t you do that?”
“He don’t like his job.”
“Yeah,” East said.
“So I figure,” Michael Wilson explained, “you could sell a lot up here. Same kind of deal like UCLA. But you got to find the right people. Local.”
“So Fin lets you check things out,” East said. “On the ground.”
“Right,” said Michael Wilson. “Market research, you call it. But the mountains—not for us, E. You can’t be standing yard up here. It’s different. You’re alone. Black boys can’t hide in the snow.” He laughed at himself.
He rattled on. It didn’t matter. Michael Wilson didn’t hear him not answering. Right from the top East had known why Michael Wilson was along: to talk. To front them through. To bore any cop with his shiny record and UCLA smile.
But there was a problem. Michael Wilson was a fool. A rich boy and a gambler. Maybe that was all. You could bring worse problems. And if Fin had picked him, then Fin knew already what he was. What Michael did, that was East’s to handle. But carefully. Because Michael was a pretty face, a storyteller; because Michael did pull Walter along. Even Ty. Even his brother, the real mad dog. He wasn’t following East. He was following the tall boy with the year of college and the wad of cash out of the van.
East did not have those things, so he was pinned down. For now.
He breathed and watched the dark go past, the cold, relaxing nothing. White lines measuring it. There would be so much time just like this, waiting.
The road dipped, into a valley where no lights showed. Space like you never saw except in commercials. Strange dark land without people in it, miles of space between. For as long as he remembered, his business had been keeping people at arm’s length. Keep the U’s quiet and orderly, moving on. Keep his crew watchful, not too familiar. Keep people who didn’t have business from even passing the yard. Keep his mother from worrying.
Standing yard.
Out here, everything kept at a distance. You could go an hour on the freeway without seeing a person walking, standing. One red ghost eye of a car a mile up. Maybe the same car. Maybe different. You’d never know.
He reached back onto the floor for the thin red first-aid blanket and doubled it up between his head and the window. After a minute he closed his eyes. But they would not obey; his lids would not soften. Every rise, every little tick in the inertia: they were hard. He checked Michael, checked the road ahead, the black nothing in the side mirror.
They were to trust each other, Fin had said. But East trusted nothing.
—
East stirred. Michael Wilson was slowing the van—a long parking lot, lights hung high, angled spaces. He pulled in and killed the engine.
“Gotta sleep,” he murmured.
East sat up. Weird, sculpted land with no trees. Signs everywhere. “What is this place?”
“Rest stop, dummy.” Michael Wilson breathed, his eyes shutting. “I miss my motherfucking phone.”
East flexed his legs. He looked around outside. Nothing moving. Walter and Ty lay sleeping in back, and Michael was passing out against the window.
East took Michael’s keys from the ignition and stepped out. The pavement seemed to clutch at him like pond mud. A whole day riding, his legs and ass had gone numb.
Half a dozen cars and trucks slumbered. A back lot over the rise showed the lights of big trucks, their box tops white under the high lights. At his feet, sprinklers fed a few planters, bright yellow flowers alert in the night. A pair of small buildings. Fiercely he looked around for whatever.
Restrooms. Cautiously he approached. THIS FACILITY BUILT AND MAINTAINED BY THE STATE OF UTAH. Utah, then. He pissed sleepily into a urinal in Utah. Green light. Moths stumbled drunkenly around the walls. The strange white soap gobbed automatically onto his hands when he reached. A man came in and looked at him with interest. He ducked his head and left.
The second building had Coke machines. East bought two cans. A dollar apiece. A clock said two-something in the morning.
Near the van, atop the weedy rise, sat a picnic table with a view of everything: front lot, back lot, all there was. East sat and drank. The van was dusty. He watched a truck, tipped with light like a fantastic ship, fly past.