Chapter 4 #2
They worked out a system in about ten minutes, which was: don't look directly at each other, don't stand within about six feet, and under no circumstances touch, which Marlowe tested immediately by reaching out one finger, and which resulted in Sunday saying a word I'd genuinely never heard a woman use in that building.
"Sorry," Marlowe said, delighted. "Scientific curiosity."
"Do you do that to everyone?"
"Only the ones I'm going to like. It's a screening process and it's never once been wrong." She sat down eleven feet away and put her boots on a chair. "Can I ask you the thing?"
"Which thing."
"Whether you can turn it off."
"No."
"Me either," Marlowe said. "Everyone assumes there's a switch. My mother thought it was posture. She had me doing a lot of standing."
"Mine thought it was television."
"Oh, television."
"Television and a girl at school named Bethany who I have never met."
"See, that's the good stuff," Marlowe said.
"That's the specific detail. They always find a Bethany.
" She tipped her head at the table. "Here's what I've got that you don't. Mine talk back.
Which sounds better and is significantly worse, because they lie, and they whine, and about a third of them just want to complain about a sibling for an hour. "
"Mine don't say anything."
"Ever?"
"They're not people," Sunday said. "That's what I've never been able to explain. It's not a vision of a person dying. It's more like — a room, with a fact in it. There's no soul in the frame. There's just what happens and where the light comes from."
Marlowe went quiet for a second.
"That's worse," she said.
"Yes."
"That's much worse, actually, and I'd like to withdraw about half of my attitude."
"Keep it," Sunday said. "It's the only thing in this room that isn't being careful with me."
Marlowe grinned at her from eleven feet away like a woman who'd found a coin in a coat.
"What'd you get?"
"Cold water and a countdown. You?"
"A church basement full of people arguing," Sunday said, "and I'd like to never do that again."
"Agreed. Truce. I like your coat."
"I like your everything, it's obnoxious."
"Thank you."
Bishop put both hands flat on the table.
"Full run," he said. "Route 9, north end to south, four nights. Sunday's the eyes, Marlowe's the ears if we need them, and nobody rides that road alone or after midnight without me knowing." He looked up. "Rafferty. You're her escort."
"Her what."
"You heard me."
"I'm not an escort, Bishop, an escort is a man in a vest at a wedding—"
"Then be a vest," Bishop said.
"I don't want a bodyguard," Sunday said.
"Great," I said. "I don't want to be one. We're aligned."
"You went out there alone twice."
"That's different."
"How?"
"Because if it gets me, that's the job," I said, "and if it gets you, that's on me."
The room went quiet in a specific way that told me I'd said more than I'd budgeted for.
Sunday looked at me — full on, no chin, no trick — and there was that same nothing behind her eyes where the reading should have been, and I still didn't know that's what it was.
"Fine," she said.
"Fine?"
"Fine. Vest."
Marlowe, from six feet away, said, "Oh, this is going to be unbearable," and Bishop said, "Chapel's done," and eleven men stood up.
Bishop caught my arm on the way out.
"Two things."
"Go."
"One. She's not club and she's not protected and she just put every private thing she owns on my table in front of eleven men she doesn't know. You understand what that cost her."
"Yeah."
"Say it out loud so I know you do."
"She just told a room full of strangers the thing she's never told anybody," I said, "and she did it standing up, and she didn't cry, and she's going to fall apart in the parking lot in about ninety seconds."
Bishop looked at me.
"Huh," he said. "You have been paying attention."
"What's two?"
"Two is that I've watched you take an assignment about forty times," he said, "and you have never once argued with me about a word before. Escort. You've been called worse by better."
"That's not—"
"I'm not making a point, Rafferty. I'm telling you I noticed, and that I'd rather you hear it from me in a hallway than from Judah in front of everybody in about a week."
"Bishop."
"Go on," he said. "Ninety seconds."
I got Sunday out to the lot and she made it four steps before she had to put a hand on the truck.
"Hey."
"I'm okay."
"You're not."
"I'm upright," she said, "which for me is a strong finish."
I stood there and didn't touch her, because I'd been in this parking lot before with a different woman and a different gift and I'd learned exactly one thing worth knowing.
"You want a cup of something?" I said. "I'm real good at holding a cup."
Sunday Marsh looked up at me, and for a second there was something on her face that had nothing to do with dying at all.
"Yeah," she said. "Okay."
We sat on the tailgate of the borrowed truck in a gravel lot and I got her a coffee out of the machine inside, which is an act of violence, and she drank about a third of it before she said anything.
"Eleven men," she said.
"Eleven men."
"And not one of them said are you sure."
"No."
"Do you know how strange that is? I've had two people in my life get told and both of them found a way to make it my fault by the end of the conversation. Your president heard it and started assigning shifts."
"That's the thing about Bishop. He doesn't do belief. He does logistics."
"That's the kindest possible way to be believed," Sunday said, and drank the terrible coffee, and looked out at the flat for a while. "Rafferty. Why'd you fight him about the escort thing?"
"I didn't fight him."
"You fought him in front of eleven people."
I turned the cup around in my hands.
"Because escort means the thing goes for you and I stand in front of it," I said, "and I've done that job.
I'm good at that job. And I sat in a chapel this morning and listened to you explain that whatever's out there takes the ones who look at it, and worked out that there is no version of this where I can stand in front of anything. "
She didn't say anything.
"So no, I don't want the word," I said. "The word's a lie and everybody in there knows it's a lie, and I'd rather be called something honest, like the guy who's going to be forty feet away."
Sunday Marsh looked at her coffee for a long moment.
"That's a terrible name for a patch," she said.