Giles Blunt - No Such Creature

“I refuse to stop anywhere with fewer than forty-three restaurants,” Max said. “A man has to have choice.”

Owen opened the CD player, pulled out the disc, and reached back for the case of Bob Hedge’s Dialect Practice Sessions . Sabrina got a look at the disc he was holding; it was labelled Australian .

Later that afternoon they passed the Continental Divide.

Owen flipped open his cell and dialed Roscoe again, but there was no answer.

“Oh, now, it’s too bad the base Hungarian isn’t here to see this,” Max said. “Him with his Great Dividing Range.”

“That’s the Continental Divide?” Sabrina said. It was little more than a flat ridge of rock baking in the sun.

She had been pretty quiet since Lordsburg. Owen tried to steer the conversation around to Max’s sales prospects in El Paso-the local theatre company, the drama department of the university, a couple of wig shops-but Max was oblivious. He recited some Lewis Carroll verses and told a funny story involving Peter Ustinov and a bottle of vintage port. Mile after mile of scrubland rolled by. The road was empty, wiser tourists realizing the desert is best travelled at night.

They passed through miles of Martian landscape, vistas, dust and weeds that eventually turned into pepper fields, and then they came to El Paso. They settled the Rocket in a campground that was near a crumbling old mission with a solitary priest smoking a cigarette by the front door. They all wanted to stretch their legs, but it was still too hot to enjoy a walk, so they ended up taking the Taurus to a shopping mall. It was like being inside a gigantic refrigerator, and they walked around the Gap and Banana Republic and American Eagle Outfitters until they felt crisp as cucumbers. They had dinner at a coffee shop that provided a car wash while they ate, and afterwards they went to see the new Tom Cruise movie. Owen had a funny sensation that the three of them must look like a family out together, as if they were normal.

Max went straight to bed when they got back to the Rocket, but not before another attempt to persuade Sabrina to visit her father.

“He’s your friend, Max,” she said without looking at him, “not mine. You go visit him if you want to.”

“Unnatural child.”

“He never really cared about my mother, never really cared about me. Why should I care about him?”

“When I wrote and told him I was planning a trip out this way, his only request was to ask me to check in on you. We wouldn’t be together if he hadn’t.”

“Listen, Max, this man you admire so much treated my mother like shit right up until the day she killed herself by swallowing every pill in the house. So forgive me if my feelings about him are not exactly tender, okay?”

Max put his hands up in uncharacteristic surrender, backed into his bedroom, and closed the door with a sensitive click.

Owen switched on the TV and flipped through newscasts, trying to find one from Tucson. Sabrina fiddled with her iPod. They sat in silence together, grazing their separate media.

After a while Sabrina said, “Are you trying to find out if that guy’s okay?”

“What guy?”

“The guy Max shot last night.”

Owen started to protest, but she held up a slim hand and shook her head. “You’re forgetting I grew up with a criminal too. I know the signs-the excitement, the adrenalin, the nerves. You have the hairpieces, Max is master of foreign accents, and I see from your CD collection that you’ve been practising Australian. I have to say, Owen, I didn’t peg you for a violent person.”

He flicked off the television. In the sudden quiet a distant siren threaded its way through the night. Someone in one of the other trailers was playing a banjo. All his life Max had taught him to never reveal what it was they did for a living, no matter who asked. “Discretion,” he had told him a hundred times, a plump finger to his lips. “The world depends upon it, boy.”

Owen had long lived in the expectation of one day facing an accuser. It just never occurred to him that it would be anyone he liked so much. Sabrina was right beside him on the couch, and he had to restrain himself from putting his arms around her. He found he wanted her to know everything about him.

“I’m not a violent person,” he finally said. “Neither is Max.”

“A man is in the hospital, Owen.”

“He attacked us. We didn’t hurt anybody, and then just as we’re leaving he comes leaping out of nowhere.” It sounded so lame, he felt his face begin to burn.

“Lucky for you,” Sabrina said, “it looks like he’s going to survive. They’re searching for the bald Australian who shot him. And you say Max is not violent?”

“He isn’t. He’s just … losing it. We never carry anything but blanks. This time, unfortunately, he forgot to replace the real bullets that came with his new gun. And he’s having these weird nightmares. He won’t admit he’s screwing up, and I can’t get him to quit.”

“Can’t you take him to see a doctor, have some tests? Maybe a specialist?”

“Max hates doctors. They always tell him to lose weight. And he would never see a shrink, are you kidding?”

A television went on in the trailer next door. The Tonight Show theme blared for a moment before it was turned down.

“Don’t let on to Max that you know about Tucson,” Owen said. “I don’t know what he’d do. Anyway, obviously it’s kind of dangerous hanging out with us at the moment.”

“Why? You’d tell the cops I was in on your jobs?”

“They might assume you are-aiding and abetting and all that. Actually, we’ve got worse things to worry about right now.”

Sabrina raised her eyebrows, and Owen found it impossible to keep anything back. He told her about the Subtractors, and about Pookie and Roscoe.

“I heard of the Subtractors,” Sabrina said. “My dad used to live in terror of those guys. I always assumed it was an exaggeration, a legend of some kind.”

“Well, maybe it is. All I know is our friends are missing, so where are they?”

Later, when he was in bed, Owen wondered if he had said too much. Not that he was worried about Sabrina telling anyone. But a more gallant sort of person would have remained silent.

He felt his bunk rise up a little and go back down. Then up again, and back down. He leaned over the side.

Sabrina was looking up at him. “You want to come down here and visit for a while?” She nudged his bunk again with her feet.

“Uh, yes,” Owen said, “but …”

“So why don’t you?”

“You told me you were a lesbian.”

“I did? Then I guess you must be my kind of girl.”

Owen climbed down and she lifted up the covers to let him in. It took some manoeuvring to get comfortable in the narrow bed.

“I probably shouldn’t tell you,” Owen said after the first tentative kiss, “but I’m actually not all that experienced at this.”

“Really,” Sabrina said. “And you think I am?”

“Well, you are a couple of years older. I assumed, you know …”

“That I’d been around the block? A few miles on the old speedometer?”

Owen laughed. “Not like that.”

She crooked a hand around the back of his neck. “I’m not a nympho, if that’s what you’re worried about. You’re the fourth, to be exact.”

Owen thought about that for a moment. “I guess you want to know how many for me too, huh?”

She shook her head and closed her eyes. “I have a strict Don’t Ask policy.”

“It’s twenty-seven,” Owen said. “Or maybe twenty-eight.”

She sat up as if she’d been hoisted by a pulley. “Jesus, Owen, are you serious? What’s the male word for slut? You’re only eighteen, and you’ve slept with twenty-eight people? That’s disgusting.”