409 p.m. （EST）
Allison Shiner came off the ramp doing eighty, steering with one hand, punching numbers into her flip phone with the other.
“Collllllin! Hel-llllooooo?! Pick up!” she shouted at his answering machine. “We got a problem, smart guy, so stop waxing your head and call me back.
It’s four p.m. on Saturday afternoon, and everything is scr-eww-ewww-ed.” She sang the last word in her finest choir girl alto.
She disconnected, then had to yank the steering wheel to keep from rear-ending an oil tanker. She cut into the left lane,
nearly sideswiping a boxy Chevy Blazer, which slammed on the brakes and laid on the horn. Allie couldn’t sweat it. If the
day ended with just one or two fatalities, she’d be doing great.
She dialed Donna next. Donna was already in Manhattan, even closer to the airport than Allie.
“What’chu doin’, babe?” Donna said when she picked up.
“I’m on my way to the airport!” Allie sang gaily. She always sang when she was stressed, as Donna would’ve known if she ever
paid attention, which she didn’t. “I’m flying to London and you’ll never guess with who!”
Donna let out a sigh. “You and Van worked out your shit? I knew when you didn’t give back the ring—well. If he was gonna take you somewhere romantic, I would’ve suggested Capri, but tickets to London were probably less expensive,
the cheap bastard.”
“Not Van,” Allie said. “Horation Matthews. He’s on the six forty out of JFK to Heathrow.”
Donna needed a moment to process that. When she spoke again, her voice was lower, husky with strain. “Why the fuck is he going to England? I thought that Jesus freak never left his compound.”
“They run. You know they run. Jayne ran. And you said it yourself. Arthur is in England.”
“He doesn’t know anything about Arthur. He can’t know.”
“Yes, he can. He could’ve riddled for Arthur’s name. He could’ve riddled for all our names. This is a guy who thinks in Old Testament terms. For all we know he’s headed to the UK to do something biblical
to our Arthur.”
“Yeah, but . . . it’s going to be Easter morning in eight hours. What happens if he’s on the flight when—” Donna’s voice trailed
off, as she figured it out for herself. “Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, FUCK.”
“Now you’re singing my song.”
As Allie blew past an eighteen-wheeler the mud flaps threw a filthy, rattling spray across her windshield. For a few moments
the road was a brownish blur. She told herself to slow down but instead her foot mashed the pedal closer to the floor.
“Do you think Matthews has any idea what could happen?” Donna asked. “Not just to him but to everyone he’s flying with?”
“I didn’t pick Horation Matthews off a list of nice, socially responsible role models, Donna. The dude watched TV while his
wife roasted to death two hundred feet away. Probably not even good TV. I bet it was one of those fishing shows on ESPN, where
fat guys in camouflage get breathless about hooking a trout. But does he know? If he does, he doesn’t care.”
“How do you know all this?”
“How do you think? King Sorrow was in my gosh-darn dryer, having a chuckle that four hundred innocent people are going to
die and it’s all my fault.”
“Hang the fuck on, that’s a good point. They’re all going to die. Did I hear you say you’re getting on the plane too? The
fuck you wanna do that for?”
“If I’m on the plane, King Sorrow can’t touch Matthews. Remember? He swore to protect us. He has to follow the rules too.
He won’t be able to touch the guy until we land.”
“Are you sure?”
“One hundred percent,” she said. She was going to add that King Sorrow had told her so himself, but she had to bang on her
brakes to keep from rear-ending a HEARSE and the words went out of her head. No doubt about it: the day was determined to
stay on theme.
“I don’t want you on that flight. I don’t want you anywhere near Matthews. He’s a dangerous goddamn paramilitary psychopath,
and for all you know he’s planning to hijack the fucking plane. There’s got to be other options. Call in a bomb threat.”
“So they look for a bomb and they don’t find it and the flight takes off anyway and then King Sorrow blows it up? And as a
bonus, the FBI has an audiotape somewhere with my voice on it, and I go to jail for a million years. Or! Or: they delay the
flight and King Sorrow takes out a whole terminal like someone dropped a bunker buster on it. Instead of four hundred dead,
you got a thousand corpses. Maybe more.”
“Can he do that?”
“He says he leveled a few Hungarian shtetls. Are those bigger than airports?”
“You’d have to ask Arthur about shtetls. I wouldn’t even know how to spell it.”
“There’s another way, Donna. You could meet me at the airport. We could waylay him in the bar and offer him a threesome, make
him skip his flight that way.”
“Don’t make jokes. You know you aren’t funny. You’ve never been funny.”
“Who’s being funny? Meet me at the airport.” Allie felt a surge of almost desperate need to have Donna with her, to be in
this together. If Donna was with her, Allie wouldn’t need to be brave. Donna was always brave enough for both of them.
“I can’t do that,” Donna said. “I have to be on the air at six.”
“Oh. Oh. Well. That’s fine. You go on TV. Do your thing and let me worry about the men, women, children who are about to burn to death and fall out of the sky. Hey, if I screw this up, do you think they’ll let you cover the whole air disaster thing on the eleven o’clock?”
But you couldn’t guilt-trip Donna—her lack of shame made her immune to such appeals.
“Call Van,” Donna said. “Get him to meet you at the terminal.”
It was in Allie’s head to say he doesn’t want to talk to me. It was in her head to say he can’t bear to look at me anymore, never mind talk to me. Instead she said, “I don’t think Horation Matthews is going to want a threesome with Van.”
“Not for a threesome. Stop talking about threesomes. For help. For support. You’re shook up and you’re scared and how much
have you had to drink?”
Not enough, Allie didn’t say. When she switched lanes too quickly, she could actually hear the gin sloshing in the bottle of Gordon’s
she had pushed into her purse on her way out the door.
“Call Van,” Donna repeated, when Allie didn’t reply. “He’d never let you face this alone.”
“Donna,” Allie said, and licked her lips, and tried again, “Donna. I . . . you don’t know how I left things. How badly I messed
it up. I think it would be easier to face a terrorist at thirty thousand feet than Van over a drink.”
Donna didn’t say anything.
“Oh, God, what did he tell you?” Allie said. “Did he tell you I’m in love with you? I’m not. I mean, I am, I love you, you’re my best friend, but I don’t . . . I’m not like that. When I get drunk, really drunk, I say stupid things. Everyone
does. It doesn’t mean I want—God, I can’t even say it. It’s so embarrassing. Please say something to me.”
Donna answered with stony silence.
“Please don’t hate me,” Allie whispered. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I went to a camp to fix it when I was sixteen
but sometimes it comes unfixed again. Please, say anything. I couldn’t bear it if you shut me out. Please, Donna? Donna? Hello?”
She didn’t know AT&T had dropped her call until she looked at her phone.
When she looked up, she was about to rear-end a station wagon loaded with kids.
She had to swerve into the breakdown lane to get around it, and the woman behind the wheel laid on the horn, a long furious wail of rage and terror.
Allie gave her a Queen Elizabeth wave of acknowledgment, couldn’t help feeling better.
In a worst-case scenario, she’d be dead by sunrise, in which case, she’d never have to find out how much Donna had just heard. Even death had an upside.