There were people who came to look at the accident scene just the same as you, funny little odd people in hats and scarves and sunglasses, and it took you a lot of money to find out who they were and then a lot more money to meet them – the quiet coffee colored men who were building the Arroway were happy to run you around, whispering le petit pédé and l'énorme enculé behind your back until one of them took pity on you and sent you to a closed down feed store on the edge of Rain City, where there was an old man and an old woman sitting on a couch upstairs waiting for you. Hello, the old man said to you, I am a liar and everything I say is the truth. And then the old lady, who could have been his sister or his wife, you don’t know, they were so old, the color long gone out of their skin, the lady said I am an honest woman and everything I say is a lie. They both laughed like something was funny until you asked them to stop. He is a fly trap, is all they would tell you about the kid who was driving and died and then did not; they did not explain no matter how you screamed or pleaded or threatened. They told you where you would find him; they said you would regret it for the rest of your days.


*

The diner’s back door is propped open with a crate, an old fan coated with cobwebs on the floor pulling in air. Lee steps over it and into a pantry, and this is where he finds Faye pressing the kid up against the stainless steel sink. She is licking his face and has his hands mashed against her breasts; his expression is vacant, enduring this as best he can.

Lee rushes in without thinking, shoves her hard off of him; she stumbles into the wall.

Get outta here, she says. There’s something wrong with her eyes, as if hornets have taken up residence.

The kid is pulling on his shirt, shaking his head, trying to make grumbling words that will not come out of his dissected throat.

He’s just a kid, Lee says to Faye. You can’t do that to him.

Faye bares her black teeth at him. You don’t know, she says. You don’t understand, and you’re never gonna because you’re just one of the dummies and I won’t never have a single word that something like you can understand.

The kid steps between them; Lee looks into his eyes, at how they turn and turn, and wrenches his head to the side. The kid was hypnotizing him; he backs away in horror, running for the door, knocking the fan over; stucco catches on his shirt sleeve as he rounds the diner, tearing the fabric and slashing at his skin. Everything is like razors. The heat is enormous. He sees the Calico staring languidly at him from the fence.

The kid comes out a few minutes later; he hands Lee a popsicle and Lee takes it with no feeling in his hands. The kid gives Lee his notebook, folded open to a crumpled page near the middle where the writing is large and brilliantly blue. Lee squints, and reads. And nods.