Exit Kingdom (Reapers 2)

In the madam’s office, the woman talks terms.

It’s a luxury establishment we’ve got here, she says. There’s a price for bedding down here.

What’s the price?

What’ve you got?

We’ve got pills, uppers mostly. Some electronics it looks like you could use. Some ammunition if you got the right kind of guns.

It sounds like you might be able to afford us. What is it you want?

Rooms for the night. Three near each other. Board. A girl for my brother.

What about a girl for you? Or are you with the redhead?

Ain’t nobody with her like that. A girl for me too, I reckon.

So the redhead’s left out of it, is she?

She don’t need any of that business. She’s a Vestal.

A what?

A holy type.

That girl out there? That redhead? Honey, I think you might have misread a few things. But your business is your business. Let’s go out and see what you have in that car of yours – and maybe we can seal this deal.

*

Abraham has taken to wearing the harlequin Albert Wilson Jacks’s gift to him around his neck on a leather shoelace. He plays with the black plastic thing when he is bored, picking at its exposed metal end. When Moses is done making arrangements with the madam, he returns to his brother, who points to one of the older women in the lobby.

That whore there knows what this thing is, he says. She says to me, Hey, I know what that thing is. It’s a yewess bee drive. And I says, A what kind of bee? And she says, A yewess bee. She says it plugs into a computer.

Do they have one here? Moses asks.

Huh-uh. She says they don’t have much call for computers round here.

Which woman?

Abraham points her out. She’s dressed more elegantly than the others – wearing a classy cocktail dress and sitting properly with one knee crossed over the other.

Okay, Moses says. I arranged things for the night. Your pick of the girls. But I’m warning you – go easy. This ain’t a town to get jammed up in.

You got it, brother. Easy’s my middle name.

So Abraham picks a girl – the one who looks youngest and most frightened. He pulls her along up the winding staircase, taking her by the upper arm just under her shoulder as though he is punishing a child for some misdeed.

Then the Vestal Amata is standing before Moses, speaking low.

You ain’t takin one of these girls, she says to him.

You got you your own room – right next to mine. Ain’t nothing going to happen to you.

That’s fine, but you ain’t taking one of these girls. If you do, I’ll run off – like I did before.

Where’ll you run to? Cold out there. Colorado’s not got such good walkin weather.

I don’t care. I swear to God I’ll run off. I’ll hitch a ride on out of here.

He looks at her, trying to figure the girl’s brain. It’s a muddled thing, that head of hers. She’s like an optical illusion, different each time you look at her.

What do you care about it anyway? I got the feeling you ain’t so pristine about the business of the world.

She slaps him. But ferocious as she is, she’s also a small thing, so her wee palm does little damage. She slaps him again.

This time he picks her up and tosses her over her shoulder.

I figured you might try somethin like this, he says. I got it arranged.

She kicks and strikes at his back, but he carries her up the stairs and to the room designated as hers, where he tosses her on the quilted four-poster bed. The window of this room is boarded up, and there’s a lock on the door.

Get some sleep, he says to her. And let’s keep our business in neat and tidy corners, what do you say? I’m carryin you from one place to the other, that’s all. I may port saints, but I ain’t one. Understand?

Then the expression on her face changes. The anger melts to sadness before his eyes.

Just because I ain’t a true Vestal don’t mean I ain’t of spiritual bent, she says. You mistake me, Moses Todd. I know right and wrong. I can tell the difference – in myself and in others.

How do you know for sure? he says. How do any of us? I reckon I’ll take my own counsel on such matters.

He doesn’t wait for a response but rather shuts the door and locks it up tight so she can’t get out.

Still, he can’t get the Vestal out of his head, and he can’t get comfortable with his woman once she’s taken him to her room.

It’s the older woman, the one who knew about the yewess bee.

Maybe you just want to sleep for a while, she says. Don’t worry about it – we’ve got all night.

He is silent, lying on the bed and staring at the ceiling.

We don’t get real men around here much, the woman says, winding herself around the poster at the foot of the bed like a snake.

You can quit that talk, he says. I ain’t a man in need of being built tall.

As you wish, she says and sits down in the chair in the corner near the foot of the bed. My apologies. You’re not like your brother. What would you like to talk about?

You had a name for the thing around my brother’s neck. A yewess bee. A computer gadget.

That’s right. You should have the same name for it. You look to be about my age.

I never was much of a computer person – neither before nor after. What does it do?

She shrugs.

It could do lots of things, she says. It stores data. Who knows what the data does. Probably nothing.

How come you know so much? What were you before?

I was a secretary for a real estate attorney. I was just getting started.

And now you’re here doin this.

Moses shakes his head, commiserating.

The woman recoils a bit in her expression, as if bitten. She moves to the window of the room and puts her back against it, folds her arms over her front.

You think I regret it? she says. Living didn’t used to amount to much. Now it counts. I used to be a secretary for a real estate attorney. Now I’m a survivor of the apocalypse and a whore. I endure where others don’t. It matters. Just breathing means something now. Have you got a problem with whores?

Moses cringes, chastened. He looks down at his dirty, brutish hands.

Not as a general rule, he says.

Then the woman softens a bit. She comes and sits on the edge of the bed, where Moses lies on his back looking at the ceiling.

You and that redhead, she says. You two are together somehow?

Me and the Vestal? Huh-uh. She’s just my charge is all.

You’re a hired gun?

Somethin like that.

So what are you being paid?

Moses goes silent. He gazes at the ceiling. He ponders when was the last time he laid beneath a roof and called it home. The world, for him, just keeps going on and on and on, long after he thought it ever would.