Lindsay Buroker: Torrent

Temi parked behind Zelda. Darkness gathered in the trees, and the traffic had dwindled on the highway. Crickets chirped and some small animal scuffed about in the brown leaves carpeting the ground. I eyed the deepening gloom without favor and wished there were more miles between us and the Vendome.

Temi turned off the car and faced us, her elbow on the backrest. “So, am I hired yet?”

“Yes,” Simon said.

His hair and shirt were crusted with fire extinguisher propellant, and he already had visible burns on one cheek where the goo had spattered him. If the riders had taken the brunt of the attack, they’d be even more irked at us than they had been before. Clearing out of Prescott might be a smart move, though I had a hard time entertaining it, not with the memory of that golden disk at the forefront of my mind. I wished there’d been time to examine it. If Simon and I were the ones to break the story of some one-of-a-kind relic on our website, this time someone else couldn’t get credit for bringing awareness of it to the community, not like with the Anasazi find. I don’t know why it mattered so much to me, but I wanted my old professors and classmates to see that I hadn’t become some sleazy grave robber just because we were selling some of what we found, items that most people would consider junk anyway.

Temi was looking at me, waiting for a response.

I nodded. “If you want it, you’ve certainly earned it at this point.”

She inclined her head once. “I apologize for not getting a warning to you earlier, but you didn’t give me your phone number.”

“I know. I was thinking about that up in the room.”

“I had to call your mother. Your parents’ number has been the same for decades.”

“Erg, what’d you tell her? Not the part about us being caught in some strange guys’ room, I hope.”

“No, but I did need to relay a sense of urgency, so she’d know I couldn’t chat. In the twenty seconds we were on the phone, she managed to ask if you’re eating regularly, staying away from the booze, and how your rash is doing.” Temi smiled faintly, one of her eyebrows twitching.

“Rash?” Simon grinned. “What rash?”

“None of your business.” I glowered at him, then gave Temi a plaintive look. “What did you tell her?”

“That you’d gone for take-out and had forgotten your wallet at the hotel. I needed to call you before you tried to pay and found out you were missing your money.”

I sank into the backrest. “Oh, good. That shouldn’t alarm her.”

“No, it’ll make her happy,” Simon said. “She’ll think we’re doing well enough to afford hotels and take-out. Your grandma seemed really concerned when she saw all the ramen bags in Zelda’s cupboards when we visited this summer.”

“She was more concerned that I showed up with some scrawny Indian boy.” I said the last in my best impersonation of her accent, though Yaiyai’s words had been even more derogatory than mine. “She keeps hoping I’ll take a trip to Greece to find an appropriate Prince Charming.”

“I’m not scrawny,” Simon said, throwing a glance at Temi, who was smiling and nodding in recognition at my Yaiyai tone. Adopted or not, she had a similar mother and grandmother and knew exactly where I was coming from. “There’s a lean mean beast hiding under this innocuous packaging,” Simon added, gesturing at his clothing.

“Is it hard to be lean and mean when you’re smothered in white goo?” I asked.

“No.”

“Uh huh.” I climbed out of the car. “Temi, do you want to stay for dinner? We have peanut butter and jelly, and some carrots and apples. We can tell you all about what we do, so you can decide if you truly want to join us before committing yourself.”

“We should probably tell her about the body too.” Simon climbed out of the car as well, eschewing the door. He seemed to dig the convertible concept.

“Body?” Temi blinked.

“Yeah, we stumbled across a recently deceased fellow in the mountains.” I kept the explanation simple, not wanting to sound like a crazy person for implying unnatural predators were stalking the hills. “The sheriffs may be by eventually. If not to question us about that, then to inquire about our new habit of sneaking into people’s hotel rooms to snoop around…”

Simon clasped his hands behind his back and studied the trees, as if he were the epitome of innocence. I didn’t know who he thought he was fooling.

“I have some food back at the Motel 6, so I’ll pass on dinner.” Temi’s nose had crinkled at the mention of PB and J. She was probably used to organic this-and-that and grass-fed such-and-such. “But thank you for offering. Can I meet you here tomorrow? You mentioned something about estate sales? I’m not that knowledgeable about antiquing, but anything would be better than standing all day at some fast food place. I’ll work hard. I’ve traveled quite a bit, so maybe that can be useful.”

“Sure.” I waved my phone. “I’ve got your number now, so I’ll text you when we get rolling.”

As Simon and I washed up, I kept an eye toward the woods and an ear toward the highway, listening for the roar of motorcycles. After all that had happened that afternoon, I was flinching at shadows. What had seemed a friendly campground the day before had taken on an eerie feel, and I wished it were fuller, with families chattering in the cool evening air. It was October, though, and the beginning of the workweek, so there were only a handful of campers spread out over the site. Once again, I wondered if we were making a mistake in staying.

Nothing jumped out of the shadows, and Simon and I made it through dinner without incident. We ate inside instead of at the picnic table. Neither of us seemed to be in the mood for the great outdoors that evening, a thought that Simon confirmed when he asked, “You mind if I sleep in here tonight?”

“Not at all.”

“In case you’re wondering, I’m not worried about crazies wandering around out there ripping people’s heads off-I just think it might be chilly tonight.”

“I wasn’t going to say a thing.”

You wouldn’t have caught me sleeping out there in a tent after the day we’d had either. Tents didn’t have locks, whereas the van did. Most of them worked too. Zelda also housed weapons of a sort. In addition to my bullwhip, a wooden Navajo bow hung over one of the side windows. Incongruously, a set of fiberglass arrows in a vinyl quiver hung below it. The bow had been one of my more educational finds- educational because I fell for the story from the old man who sold it to me. He’d claimed it was a hundred years old. An expert had later told me it’d been made in the 70s and that I was lucky it wasn’t plastic. Since it was worth less than I’d paid for it, I’d kept it and took it out and shot it every now and then.

“Good,” Simon said. “Thanks.”

I shrugged the words away. Zelda was his baby, bought and paid for back when we were still in school, and he could crash in it whenever he wanted. I often volunteered to take the tent, but he had a thing about snoozing in a bed while a girl slept on the dirt outside. Two could easily bunk in the van, but after working together all day, we seemed to get along better when we had our own space at night. Besides, we always joked that one of us might bring a girl or guy home and need some privacy. The idea of Simon successfully asking a girl out was almost as funny as the idea of him showing her to his tent for a good time. He’d sworn on any number of graves that he wasn’t a virgin, but I wasn’t sure I believed him. Of course, I hadn’t dated anyone since Christmas the year before, so I guess I couldn’t judge. Making the business work had been the focus for months, and with all the traveling we did, it was hard to take the time to meet people and get to know them. Tempe was supposedly our home base, but we didn’t have an office or store yet-our storage locker with the roll-up garage door wasn’t the sort of home base that drew one to visit often.