Chapter Twenty-Five

In which our heroine finds herself back at the gas station.

It was the same road on which they’d been heading west only a few hours earlier. The landscape and the highway were the same, but everything else had changed.

Lorinda reached out and lightly rested her hand on Stimpy’s shoulder, as much to make sure he hadn’t entered some kind of trance state as to offer comfort. “Hold the wheel for a second,” he said. She moved her hand to the steering wheel as he fished his earpiece out of his pocket. Once he’d secured it in his ear, he took the wheel again and Lorinda let her hand drop to the seat.

“Yeah, it’s me,” he said. “We need to stop in and regroup. Can you kill the road cameras again?” And after a pause: “I’ll fill you in when we get there.”

“Bill and Hillary?” Lorinda asked.

 It took him a few seconds before he realized she had spoken. He nodded. They drove in silence until they reached the gas station. The right-hand garage door opened. Stimpy parked the Lada next to the Zhiguli. The door slid down behind them. Bill, in the office doorway, waited for Stimpy to kill the engine, then turned and went inside.

Once again they sat around the dining table. Hillary poured red wine into four mismatched juice glasses as Lorinda stared at the empty fifth chair. Bill said, “Are you okay?”

She must have zoned out, just gone somewhere in her misery and — she realized —guilt. “Everywhere I go,” she said, as much to herself as to the others, “I get people in trouble. Those people in Little Harlem — who knows what will happen to them? And now this.” She looked around the table. All eyes were red. All cheeks were glistening with tear tracks. “I can’t put you people in danger. I should just turn myself in, get sent to that place, have the baby ...”

“And then what?” said Hillary gently.

“I don’t know,” said Lorinda. “I don’t know.”

“We do this because we want to,” Stimpy said. “Ren did it because he wanted to.”

“He was a good man,” Bill said.

“The best.” Stimpy could barely squeeze the words out. “He was my best friend.”

“You should take some time off,” Hillary said to him. “We’ll get someone else to take her to the border.”

“Which border?” Bill said.

 “I don’t know!” Hillary snapped. “We’ll figure it out.” She looked at Stimpy. “But you … you’ve done enough. More than enough.”

“She’s my responsibility,” Stimpy said.

“If I even want to go to the border,” said Lorinda. “This is all too much. It’s like a bad dream. I need to get back to my life. Or at least get out of yours.”

“Unfortunately, your path has forked,” Bill said to her. “This is your life now.” She was sitting next to him with her hand on the table by his wine glass. He placed his hand gently on hers. Her eyes once again filled with tears. “We’ll do everything we can to help,” he said.

“I never even knew his real name. Ren.” She pushed her chair back with a squeal of dragging wood. She stood up. Sitting seemed impossible. Walking seemed impossible. Everything seemed impossible. Lorinda’s eyes strayed to the turntable on the shelf. She went to it and opened the lid. The odd black disk with the funny striated surface was still there, but it wasn’t spinning. The round red label in the middle said

COLUMBIA

BLONDE ON BLONDE

Bob Dylan

“How does it work?” she asked, softly.

Hillary looked at Bill and jerked her head to prompt him to join Lorinda. He got up and stepped over.

“So,” said Bill, “that spiral groove I told you about? With the tiny bumps in it.” He picked up the tone arm so Lorinda could see its ventral side. “See that little needle? That needle goes in the groove, and rides in the groove, from the outside in, when the record is spinning. The tiny bumps in the groove correspond to sounds. So the needle is super-sensitive to those little bumps, and the movement of the needle on those bumps makes a small electrical current, and this amplifier, well, amplifies the current and sends it to the speakers. The speakers vibrate the air and the air vibrates our ear drums and … we hear the music!”

Lorinda continued staring at the black disk. Finally, she said, “Come on.”

“What do you mean?”

“That’s impossible. You expect me to believe that?”

 “It’s true!”

She took the tone arm and pointed to the needle. “So you’re saying this little tiny thing” — she put the tone arm down and gestured to the entire room — “makes all that sound we hear?”

Bill thought about it for a second. “Sort of,” he said. “That little thing, yes, when it goes through the ups and downs and ins and outs and back and forths of the record, with the help of everything connected to it. It starts small, riding those tiny bumps, making a tiny current, but by the end, when it’s amplified, its effect is huge.”

“And the people,” said Hillary, smiling and mirroring Lorinda’s room-embracing gesture, “are happy.”

Lorinda caught Hillary’s effort to cheer her up. She didn’t see herself as a stubborn person, but for some reason it felt important to defend her position, and even her mood. Everything was so awful, and now they’re screwing around with her, expecting her to go along with this silly story about the record player? “I don’t believe it,” she said flatly.

“Why not?” said Bill, surprised. He thought he’d done a good job explaining it.

“Because it can’t be true.”

“But it is true!” Bill looked to Hillary and Stimpy. “Guys, tell her.”

Stimpy suppressed a laugh and said, with great solemnity, “Bill always tells the truth. That is definitely how it works.”

Not knowing why, Lorinda said, “Shut up!”

“You shut up!” Stimpy said.

“No, you shut up! Everybody just shut the fuck up!” Yelling felt good to Lorinda. It brought some kind of release.

Hillary stood up and held out her palms. “Okay, now, look, everybody —"

Lorinda and Stimpy looked at her and said, at the same time, “Shut up!”

Silence for a moment. Then Stimpy cracked up, followed by Hillary and Bill and, finally, Lorinda herself.  She didn’t know why she was laughing, which made her laugh even harder. Finally, amid sighs and wheezing and the drying of eyes, the storm of hilarity passed. Lorinda collapsed into her chair. She shook her head and said, “I hope Ren doesn’t think we’re disrespecting him.”

“Are you kidding?” Stimpy said. “Wherever he is, he’s laughing along with us.”

“And telling us to shut the fuck up,” said Hillary, which triggered another wave of laughs.

“All right,” Lorinda said as her laughter subsided. “I guess …” She took a sip of wine. “All right. I’m not turning myself in. But if New Mexico is out, where do we go?”

Bill sat down in one of the chairs by the turntable shelf and tapped on a keyboard. The screen on the wall came to life. A few more taps and the screen displayed a map of North America. Bill zoomed in on Texas and the adjoining states. “What about that square one?” Lorinda asked. “That’s in the US, right?”

“Yeah,” said Bill, “that’s Colorado. But you have to cross this little strip of Oklahoma to get there, and that little strip of the CCSA is filled with tanks and soldiers—”

“What?” Lorinda said.

“Yeah, it’s called the Oklahoma Crossing. And the soldiers have automatic weapons, and there’s land mines —”

"But why?”

“What do you mean, why?” Stimpy said. “For the same reason that we have all of our stupid walls.”

“But the walls, they’re supposed to keep people, like from the US and Canada and Mexico, from breaking into the CCSA.”

 Stimpy took a deep breath to keep himself calm. “Our famous walls? Their purpose is not to keep people out. It’s to keep us in.”

Lorinda opened her mouth, but nothing came out. This was possibly the most shocking thing she had heard him say. She just shook her head.

“Gotta maintain the population,” Hillary said.

“It’s like the old wall between East and West Berlin,” Stimpy said. “Which I bet you’ve never heard of.”

“A lot of people have tried that Oklahoma crossing,” Hillary added. “The ones who don’t get killed, they get arrested.”

“Call me crazy,” said Bill, who had been fully focused on the map, “but I think the best way out is Georgia.”

“Georgia! That’s what? A thousand miles?” Stimpy said glumly.

“Yeah,” said Bill, “but it’s a relatively safe drive. A lot of back roads, so we’ve got a pretty good infrastructure for switching cars and all that. Plus some ability to hack cameras. And good people you can stay with. And the assholes probably won’t be looking for you in that direction.”

Lorinda gave an enormous sigh. She leaned toward Stimpy. “Look. It’s like what Hillary said. You’ve done your share. Just give me a car and some money and I’ll get there by myself. Even if it is a thousand miles. I need to do something about this. To get on with my life.”

“We’ll do it together,” Stimpy said. When she started to object he cut her off. “Like I said — I want to do this. Seriously.”

“But —”

“Especially now. After …” He gestured vaguely. “… everything that’s happened. I want to finish the fucking mission.”

She nodded and half-smiled. “Okay.” She took a sip, then looked to Hillary and held up her glass. “What is this? I love it. California? Zin?”

“That’s right,” Hillary said. “You’re good.”

“It’s my job. I tasted it once before. Smuggled in. I really liked it.”

“Friends gave us six bottles. I don’t know how they got them into the CCSA, but, yeah. Really delicious. Helps make it bearable to be here.”

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NEXT: Chapter Twenty-Six. In which Stimpy, on the road to Revelation, reveals Ren’s real name.

PREVIOUSLY in THE SPLIT!

Chapter One. In which we meet our heroine and her dainty little gun.

Chapter Two. In which Lorinda demonstrates her bartending virtuosity.

Chapter Three. In which our heroine receives a promotion and prepares to celebrate.

Chapter Four. In which our heroine proves herself an immoral citizen of the CCSA.

Chapter Five. In which our heroine goes to church.

Chapter Six. In which Lorinda contemplates her future, ignores Pastor Doug, and gets something unexpected from Emmie.

Chapter Seven. In which Lorinda learns something that threatens her big dream.

Chapter Eight. In which our heroine freaks out.

Chapter Nine. In which our heroine says the forbidden word as an unwelcome visitor arrives.

Chapter Ten. In which two unpleasant men perturb our heroine.

Chapter Eleven. In which our heroine seems to have found a solution to her problem.

Chapter Twelve. In which that black truck follows our heroine all the way to Austin.

Chapter Thirteen. In which Lorinda lashes out.

Chapter Fourteen. In which our heroine gets a taste of life in the big city.

Chapter Fifteen. In which our heroine meets a fellow bartender and has a drink.

Chapter Sixteen. In which Lorinda once again takes a swing with her little pink gun.

Chapter Seventeen. In which our heroine prepares to escape.

Chapter Eighteen. In which our heroine gets in a truck with a couple of slightly scary strangers.

Chapter Nineteen. In which our heroine learns that she’s got a long way to go.

Chapter Twenty. In which our heroine spends a night in a gas station.

Chapter Twenty-One. In which our heroine learns about the enclaves of the CCSA.

Chapter Twenty-Two. In which our heroine learns way too much about the enclaves of the CCSA.

Chapter Twenty-Three. In which our heroine experiences liberty run amok.

Chapter Twenty-Four. In which our heroine’s escape is disastrously derailed.

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