The plot of dust that separated Route 14 from Madame Griddle’s contained six bikes, a pair of scooters, five electric cars, and one ponderous anachronism that made everything else look like dollhouse trinkets: a glossy white Buick with two domineering tail fins and so many polished chrome accents that you\u2019d think the thing was trying to catch its own reflection. The Buick\u2019s vintage was staggering in itself, but more dumbfounding still was the notion that someone wealthy enough to have filled it with petrol was sitting inside Madame Griddle\u2019s, sipping cheap coffee or forking emulated eggs down his empyrean throat. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Two men stood beside the Buick, admiring it and smoking cigars. One of them, an older man in a dress shirt, chewed on a fingernail between drags, so deep in thought that he seemed not to notice me. The other was somewhat younger — my age, about — and had a jumpstick tensil where his left leg should have been. He nodded politely as I passed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Abutting the parking lot was the diner itself, an old metal-and-glass building that wanted desperately to fit in with the Buick. But joined to the rear of this original structure was a newer one, more pragmatic than its predecessor, comprising dozens of numbered rooms overlooking a courtyard. Judging by some of the potted plants I spied in windowsills, Madame Griddle was playing landlady to more than a few semi-permanent lodgers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I imagined, for no good reason, that everything would grind to a halt when I walked through the door of the diner. All the customers would choke off their chatter and stare. Bacon would miraculously stop sizzling. Someone would unplug the jukebox. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But when I pushed open the door I was greeted by a ruddy-cheeked, apron-clad waitress who might have come off a box of cake mix somewhere in that grocery store all those years ago, when I’d negotiated with deities. Her nametag read Iva<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWelcome to Madame Griddle\u2019s,\u201d she said. \u201cTable?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n I shook my head. \u201cI\u2019ll sit at the counter, if that’s okay.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAs you please.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n At first glance, the interior of Madame Griddle\u2019s looked like it had been decorated to the exact specifications of a mid-twentieth century plan-o-gram. Kitschy specials — \u201cMadame\u2019s Meatloaf\u201d and \u201cRoute Beer Float\u201d — were scrawled in block letters on a chalkboard behind the counter. A curly-haired blonde in a pleated skirt worked a gauntlet of industrial burr grinders and drip brewers that turned out pots of coffee. At the end of the counter, a rotating glass case displayed a colorful variety of half-eaten pies. The booths and stools were upholstered in cherry-red vinyl. There was even a wall covered in license plates, like you might find in an old roadhouse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Something was odd about that wall, though. Accompanying almost every license plate was a piece of paper. The papers weren\u2019t identical, but they were all similar — landscape orientation, bordered, some kind of official seal. Vehicle registrations? Too big, though. I couldn\u2019t quite make them out. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Then there were the customers. Eleven, counting myself. One woman and two men at the counter, two couples in booths, and a pair of women standing in the middle of the diner with their hands dangling at their sides, staring at the ceiling. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Staring at the ceiling<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It wasn\u2019t just the two women. One of the men at the counter had his neck craned, and a woman in one of the booths kept rolling her eyes up when her boyfriend wasn\u2019t watching. Curious, I tilted my own head and took a look. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The ceiling was black. Completely at odds with the bright lights and the swing music. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But the customers weren’t staring at the black ceiling, per se<\/em>. They were staring at a tangle of thick, intersecting lines that spanned the whole length of the diner, drawn in the blackest of inks against the ceiling\u2019s less-black paint. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It became clear, once my eyes had adjusted to the subtle contrast, that the design on the ceiling was no accident. There were letters and symbols scrawled every so often beside the squiggles. Nor could the design have been decorative; its curves were too random, its distribution too asymmetrical. Like spilled ropes on the deck of an unmanned sailboat. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Not ropes, I realized. A rope. A single, outlandishly sinuous line that doubled back on itself ten or twelve times. Practically a knot. But with labels, and waypoints. <\/p>\n\n\n\n A road. The ceiling was a road map.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Two waypoints in particular caught my attention. The first, a black circle positioned directly over the door by which I\u2019d entered, was labeled \u201cMG.\u201d The second, labeled \u201cOutpost,\u201d was situated over the foot of a staircase in the far corner of the diner. The line continued past Outpost and up the staircase, into darkness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I found an open stool at the counter beside the craned-neck man, who sat slack-jawed before a bowl of untouched grits, eyes glued to the ceiling. A rivulet of drool on the man\u2019s chin suggested he was still alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cGet you something, pilgrim?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Pilgrim?<\/em> This from the curly-haired blonde behind the counter, a far less maternal variant of the hostess I’d met earlier. Her nametag read Eva<\/em>, I noticed, and I tried not to let my eyes wander from the letters. Eva and Iva. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cCoffee smells great,” I said. “I\u2019ll have one of those, for now. Black. Haven\u2019t had a chance to read the menu yet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Eva smiled, put her elbows on the counter, and leaned toward me. \u201cYou ought to try the meatloaf,\u201d she whispered in my ear, then winked and disappeared. <\/p>\n\n\n\n There weren\u2019t any coffee grind pancakes on the menu. Not that I’d expected them to be there. I’d assumed that they were a password, a code that would prompt Eva to usher me through some secret passageway to a room full of priceless artifacts and banned books and Eva look-alikes. I wasn\u2019t ready to hop down that rabbit hole yet, though; I wanted to experience Madame Griddle\u2019s as a regular customer for a little longer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The man to my right was still entranced by the ceiling, so I turned to my left. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The battered artifact perched on that stool was called Farmer, and much later he would become my only friend. There was smoke in his eyes and mud on his boots, and I remember thinking that he looked like he\u2019d been there forever, like he\u2019d sprouted from the barstool beneath him. His body was a map of pain, runneled by scars and cratered by lanced boils and crenellated by wrinkles, as though he\u2019d spent the last eight decades in a trench war with sharp edges and melanoma.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But for all the trauma in his skin, Farmer’s most striking feature was his right arm, which terminated not in a hand but a sickle, nicked and ruddled where it had seen the heaviest use, scattering the diner’s dim light into wild, kaleidoscopic patterns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The rest of the dismembered world — and plenty of the fully membered world — had grafted on cybernetic limbs casually referred to as utensils<\/em> — tensils, for short — that blinked and whirred like they were trying to prove something. Some were simpler, like the torch hidden in the pinkie finger of the liquor store cashier I’d met in Arc. Others were bloated, pneumatic implements capable of punching of a hole through a bank vault. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But Farmer’s tensil was recklessly analogue, an unadorned, unsheathable, unapologizing arc of sharpened steel. <\/p>\n\n\n\n He used it to flag down Eva and nodded toward his coffee mug, which she promptly refilled. <\/p>\n\n\n\n “Doesn’t that keep you up at night?” I asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He glanced at me sidelong, without bothering to swivel his stool or turn his neck, then raised his mug to his lips and spoke in a low, rumbling voice: “Not at this age.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I meant the tensil,” I said, hoping to catch him off-guard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He just grunted, which I assumed was his best impression of a laugh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “My name’s Joe,” I said. “You’ll forgive me if I offer you my left hand.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n He shook it, and I regretted my decision. The sickle might have been less painful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “What do you know about this place?” I asked. “Took me forever to find and now that I have, I’m not sure what I’m looking at.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Farmer studied me for a long moment, then pushed his coffee away as though a scorpion had crawled out of it. “What I know is that you shouldn’t believe anything you hear in this place,” he said, standing up. “But the thing is, these people believe everything<\/em> they hear in this place. And an idea doesn’t have to be real to be dangerous.” He nodded politely and headed for the door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I was about to call after him when Eva deposited a mug onto the counter in front of me and begin to fill it from a glass carafe. “Sorry to keep you waiting, pilgrim” she said. “Tell me when to stop.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n I waited until the mug was almost spilling over. “That’s good,” I said. “And you can call me Joe.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Funny,” she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Funny?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Some people call that Joe,” she said, pointing at the coffee. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I chuckled politely. \u201cCan you help me, Eva? Can you tell me where I am? What this place is? The old man didn’t have much to offer.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHe’s a quiet one. It’s incredible that he said anything to you at all,\u201d she said. \u201cBut I guess you could say that this place is a crossroads. Its where everything else ends, and where Route 14 begins.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAnd that,\u201d I said, pointing to the ceiling, \u201cis what, exactly? A map of Route 14?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOf its first leg, yes. The one that runs from here to Outpost.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt goes beyond Outpost?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n She grinned. \u201cFar beyond.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAnd these people \u2013 your customers \u2013 are here to study the map?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMost of them, yes. It\u2019s the only one of its kind, and as you\u2019ve probably noticed, it doesn\u2019t photograph well. So pilgrims study it for hours and copy it down by hand, onto old-fashioned paper, the kind you don\u2019t have to remember to charge at night, careful to transcribe its every loop, its every switchback, its every fork, lest they lose their way.\u201d She nodded toward the near-catatonic figure on the stool beside mine, whose grits were rapidly congealing. \u201cDonny here has been studying it for days. He must have made a dozen drawings of it in that little notebook of his.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIs he okay?\u201d I asked. He hadn\u2019t so much as twitched since I\u2019d sat down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She shrugged. \u201cHe\u2019s a coward. He\u2019s afraid he\u2019s got something wrong, that he\u2019ll never find his way to Outpost. And he\u2019s probably right.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf he gets lost,\u201d I said, \u201ccan\u2019t he just come back here?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cRoute 14 runs in only one direction.\u201d Eva didn\u2019t speak those words so much as she recited them, like they were an answer from some obscure catechism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then Eva’s gaze shifted to something behind me, and everyone around me began to clap their hands. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I turned to see that a man had walked into the diner with a license plate in one hand and a piece of paper in the other, and he was waving them both in the air. It was the older man that I’d seen beside the Buick outside. His companion, the one with the jumpstick, walked in a few seconds later, waving around a paper of his own. The applause intensified.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What happened next caught me very much by surprise. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Everyone started singing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tonight! Tonight! New men tonight!<\/em> If they should falter, fail or sway,<\/em> Donny stirred beside me and joined in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n North! North! Ne\u2019er east or west!<\/em> Die! Die! Die on Fourteen!<\/em> But friends, oh friends, don\u2019t yet pass on!<\/em> Spirits to vanquish<\/em> The gunfire report of a champagne cork punctuated the last line of the song, and Eva darted out from behind her counter brandishing a foaming bottle and a handful of flutes. Some of the customers rose from their seats and followed the waitress to the men by the door. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhat was that all about?” I asked Donnie. “Some kind of send-off ritual?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYes, exactly. It means those two men are going to take the road north tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBut that song was so morbid. It sounded like a funeral dirge.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s supposed to.\u201d He pointed at the men. \u201cSee what they\u2019re holding? The license plate of their car. That old Buick. Beautiful thing. And their birth certificates. The license plate they leave behind to represent their severance from law, social order, civilization. Their birth certificates symbolize their old selves, which will die here, tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Seems excessive. It’s not like they can’t just turn around and come back.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n He shrugged. \u201cThey seldom do, though. Maybe it\u2019s ironic. Is that the word? No, I don\u2019t think so. What I mean is, maybe they don\u2019t turn back precisely because<\/em> they don\u2019t want to disappoint all the people who sang their praises and toasted them at Madame Griddle\u2019s. Maybe that\u2019s part of the reason people began singing the song in the first place — to discourage people from returning.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n I nodded. It made a strange kind of sense, so far as rituals go. “I’m Joe, by the way.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Donnie,” he said. He seemed to notice his grits for the first time and began to assail them with his spoon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I let him eat, afraid of what he might do if I interrupted him. Meanwhile I watched Eva hobnob with the other customers, all glorious smiles and prurient giggles, paying special attention to the two men being feted. It made me wish I’d brought my birth certificate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis is going to get interesting,\u201d said Donnie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMadame Griddle hasn\u2019t come out yet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSo?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSometimes Madame Griddle appears when one of her customers pre-dies<\/em> — that\u2019s what they call it when someone turns in his birth certificate — and wishes him good luck. Sometimes. But tonight she hasn\u2019t come out.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAnd that\u2019s not good?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cNo. I think these men will be very angry.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n We waited. For the next half-hour, the raucous crowd drained bottles of champagne as quickly as Eva could uncork them. Donnie and I abstained, content simply to watch everyone else make merry. But while all the other customers drank and laughed and danced, the two heroes of the night grew increasingly withdrawn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I was watching them brood, eager to find out whether Donnie’s prediction would come to pass, when fingers danced across the back of my neck. I turned around to find Eva\u2019s sea-green eyes just a few inches from mine. She was doubled over again, practically sprawled out across the counter this time. She ran her fingers across my cheek and wrapped them around my chin. For a moment I thought she was going to pull me in for a kiss, but instead she turned my head sideways and brought my ear to her lips.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou really should pay more attention to me, Joe,\u201d she whispered. \u201cDon\u2019t you know who I am?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n I didn\u2019t answer. The tip of her tongue brushed my earlobe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI go by many names,\u201d she said. \u201cI am all things uninhibited. I am the god of wine and orgy. I am the keeper of spirits, the spigot of altered states, the last oasis in a desert of abstinence. And I told you to order the goddamn meatloaf.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBut I don\u2019t like to eat before I dance.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n She turned my eyes back to hers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAre you asking me to dance?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYes I am, Oasis.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n She smiled and let go of my face. Then she climbed the rest of the way over the counter and draped her arms over my shoulders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTry to keep up,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before I could, the man with the jumpstick marched over to us. It appeared as though Donnie, who\u2019d been excitedly observing my exchange with Eva, had been right, for the man looked positively irate; he was sucking in air, and one edge of his frown ticked uncontrollably. If you looked closely enough, you could watch capillaries burst in his eyeballs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He seized Eva\u2019s arm. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSlow down, Reggie,\u201d she said. \u201cI can only handle one partner at a time. You\u2019ll have to wait your turn.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou know why I stopped you,\u201d he spat, then fixed his bloodshot gaze on me. He was half-a-foot taller than me, and a scar ran from his chin down his neck, disappearing beneath his shirt. This was an intimidating man. With a jumpstick. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Most people wouldn\u2019t have considered the jumpstick a weapon. It was a glorified pogo stick with a prosthetic foot on the end of it. Jumpsticks, as their name suggests, empower their wearers to leap long distances — thirty or forty feet, sometimes more. In general, they make for a better defense than they do an offense. But kick someone with a fully charged jumpstick and you\u2019re guaranteed to shatter a few ribs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLook,\u201d he said, returning his focus to Eva. \u201cI want you to bring out Madame Griddle. Now. If she can do her little routine for convicts and runaways and countless other pricks who stumble into this cesspool, she can sure as hell do it for us. Do you have any idea how much money my client has spent here?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBy now you ought to know that Madame Griddle doesn\u2019t appear for just anyone. Who she chooses to bless and why she chooses to bless them are her decision, and hers alone. Besides, whoever your client was when he lived in Central City — whatever respect or wealth he commanded — it\u2019s all gone, now. You know that. He\u2019s pre-dead. Just one of the countless pricks.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Reggie snorted. \u201cChrist, you people. Do you really believe that because you\u2019re fifteen miles from the real world, you get to exist in some alternate, exclusive reality? Let me tell you something, Eva. Fifteen miles isn’t so far. My client — \u2018pre-dead\u2019 or not — could buy this place tonight and bulldoze it tomorrow. And don\u2019t you preach to me about the sanctity of the Passage or the River or any of that nonsense, either, because we both know I\u2019ve been farther north than you\u2019ll ever go. So spare me the helpless-servant-girl routine and go find your goddamn boss.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n I stepped forward, then. “No need to get riled up, friend,” I said. “I doubt she –“<\/p>\n\n\n\n But before I could finish, Reggie had wrapped his arm around the back of my neck and pulled my face in close to his own. This was becoming a familiar position for me, though I\u2019d preferred Eva\u2019s variation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI don\u2019t know you, friend<\/em>\u201d he said. I felt the heat of his breath on my cheek. \u201cAnd you don\u2019t know me. But you\u2019d better go home, before you put your life at risk. Now, you probably think I\u2019m threatening you. I\u2019m not, though. Because, see, I\u2019m<\/em> not the dangerous one here. It\u2019s these crazy fucks — these Route 14 people — that\u2019ll get you killed. Mark my words. Madame Griddle and this lapdog of hers –\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But Reggie didn\u2019t finish his warning; he gasped mid-sentence, then closed his eyes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Eva had recovered and was holding a knife against the man\u2019s side. She pressed the tip of its blade into flesh until blood soaked through the man’s shirt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For a few seconds, nobody moved or spoke. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Then Eva said: \u201cTell me when to stop.\u201d And she adjusted her grip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cStop, goddamn it!\u201d yelped Reggie immediately. <\/p>\n\n\n\n She stopped, but she didn\u2019t remove the knife.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI don\u2019t want to hear another word out of you for the rest of the night, Reggie,\u201d she said. Her voice was steady, collected. \u201cAnd after tomorrow, I don\u2019t want to see you around here again for another six months. If I do, I\u2019ll kill you.\u201d Then she twisted the knife. She did it playfully, with two fingers, like she was twirling a flower. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cChrist, okay! All right.\u201d Reggie released my throat and retreated, gripping his side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Most of the customers were so engrossed in conversation that they hadn\u2019t even noticed the altercation at the counter. Dale had, of course — he\u2019d been too close to miss it — and now he looked as though he might faint. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I was shaking, but not because I was frightened. For whatever reason I\u2019d believed Reggie\u2019s disclaimer almost instantly; he hadn\u2019t wanted to hurt me. I was shaking because I was excited. Wide awake. Something boiled inside of me. I wasn\u2019t sure what it was, exactly. The sight of blood, maybe, or the thick, palpable shadow of death that had hung over us for just a few moments. More probably it was Eva\u2019s unexpected ruthlessness. Whatever it was, I ought to have been ashamed of it. But I wasn\u2019t. I was tingling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Eva must have noticed my shaking, because she put her hand on my back and stroked it like I was a nervous cat. \u201cSorry about that. I\u2019m not usually that vicious,\u201d she said. Her knife, I noticed, had disappeared. \u201cDo you still want to dance with me?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAre you kidding? After that, I might ask you to marry me.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n She laughed. I wrapped my arm around her waist. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Iva, aided by the twins, had cleared some tables and chairs to create a makeshift dance floor. A frenetic big-band swing number blared from the diner\u2019s speakers, and the two couples from the booths were twirling and spinning gracefully, exchanging partners every so often. The girl who\u2019d been stealing looks at the ceiling earlier had forgotten all about it now; she giggled and stared dreamily into her boyfriend\u2019s eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The song crescendoed to a clanging, wailing finale that must have involved every brass and wind instrument known to man. Then it was over, and something slower — Sinatra, maybe? — replaced it. I pulled Eva a little closer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWho was that guy?\u201d I asked, after we\u2019d settled into a rhythm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cReggie? He calls himself a guide. Takes bored rich people up Route 14 until they freak out or die. For an exorbitant fee, of course. He\u2019s in here every couple of months with a new sucker in tow. Actually he\u2019s not such a bad guy, usually. Just full of himself, and short-tempered.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019d hate to see what you\u2019d do to a genuinely bad guy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n She shook her head. \u201cI might be giving you the wrong impression, Coffee. I don\u2019t want you behaving yourself tonight on my account.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cDon\u2019t worry,\u201d I said, dropping my hand below her waist. \u201cMy intentions are far from honorable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n There weren\u2019t any clocks in Madame Griddle\u2019s, but the corroded daylight leaking through the diner\u2019s windows meant the sun was about to take its nightly plunge off the edge of the earth. Twilight. I couldn\u2019t have been at Madame Griddle\u2019s for more than an hour, but it felt like the better part of a day. Which reminded me: this was not a pleasure trip. I had business to conduct.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The orbit of our dance had carried us over to the wall of license plates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSorry to be so curious,\u201d I said, \u201cbut I\u2019m new to this scene. Does everyone who travels north leave a license plate and a birth certificate?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Eva shrugged. \u201cNo. Some of them — people like you — wander up here on a whim and don\u2019t even know about that tradition. And others, like Reggie, simply refuse to participate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was a detour, but I decide to chance it. \u201cHe was waving around his birth certificate earlier, though, wasn\u2019t he?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cJust a photocopy. It\u2019s all theatrics. He\u2019s been up Route 14 a hundred times, and he\u2019s never left his birth certificate here. Not the original, anyway. As you may have gleaned from the little speech I heard him give you, he doesn\u2019t really put much stock in our rituals.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In that regard, anyway, I was on Reggie\u2019s side. Though I wanted to hate the man, I couldn\u2019t help but appreciate his business model. Bundle up all the preposterous Route 14 superstitions in circulation, and market them to society\u2019s most affluent weekend warriors. Ghost tours for billionaires.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHow far do you suppose he\u2019s been?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOutpost. Maybe farther, but probably not much. His clients are all miserable by the time they get that far. They usually cancel the trip early and head home. Those that survive, anyway. And Reggie\u2019s a mercenary at heart — he doesn\u2019t have any personal desire to venture any farther than is profitable to him.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n I caught a glimpse of Reggie at a table in the corner, nursing his wound and pouring shots from a bottle of something that looked dark and obscure and expensive. His wealthy client had evidently brooked the news of Madame Griddle\u2019s rebuff more elegantly than had he; the old man had refilled his champagne flute and joined the dance floor. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Time to get serious. \u201cEva, the reason I came to Madame Griddle\u2019s –\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cReally?\u201d she interjected. And she flashed an ambivalent half-smile at me. \u201cBe careful, Coffee. Most people don\u2019t know why they came to Madame Griddle\u2019s. Especially the ones with reasons.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sinatra stopped crooning. An instrumental — gramophone-old, from the early ragtime era — crackled to life, and Eva nearly swooned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI love this song!\u201d she said. Then, registering the confusion on my face: \u201cI\u2019ll lead. But I need you to pay close attention.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n She locked her body against mine and took my left hand in her right. We were so close — hugging, really — that it seemed all but certain I\u2019d be stomping on her feet for half the dance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLike this,\u201d she said. Two steps right. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But I found my focus split between Eva’s instructions and s:LastResort<\/em>. Surely someone in diner had heard of it, or at least of a dusty terminal, a blinking radio tower. I wanted to interrogate Reggie, and Madame Griddle herself, maybe even Dale. But I was trapped, fastened securely to a rollicking seductress. Oh, cruel world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Two steps left. Forward, forward. Knee raised, forward again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Eva must have sensed my distraction. She raised her lips to my ear again. \u201cPay very close attention to this dance,\u201d she repeated. \u201cYou can ask me your questions later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Funny thing, though: Eva also appeared distracted. She wasn\u2019t looking into my eyes anymore. Or at anyone else. Or at my feet, which were struggling to keep up with her own. She was, I realized, looking straight up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The ceiling, again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When I tried to follow her line of sight, Eva put a firm finger on my chin. \u201cNo,\u201d she whispered. \u201cDon\u2019t look. Just dance. And remember.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Easier said than done. Between images from Arcy Christian’s tomb and the post I’d found in Arc and — for some reason — the face of the flame-fingered liquor store clerk that kept parading through my mind’s eye, most of my brain\u2019s bandwidth was spoken for. Mercifully the dance, like most dances, had a sort of refrain; its steps repeated themselves every so often. By the third repetition, I was mostly in synch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Obviously the dance mirrored, in some unknowable way, the pattern on the ceiling above. This explained not only its complexity, but also its awkwardness; the rhythm of the music served only as an afterthought, a necessary inconvenience. If the other customers were watching us, they must surely have assumed we were either stone deaf or hammered drunk. <\/p>\n\n\n\n By the fourth repetition, I was trotting out the dance confidently, and Eva was grinning ear-to-ear. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cDon\u2019t forget it,\u201d she said as the song ended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI really–\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI know, I know. Questions. You’ve all got questions. Go ahead, then. Ask away, so we can get back to having fun.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n “I’m looking for a shard,” I started. “I think there might be one somewhere up here, on Route 14.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nodding, she took my hand and led me to the wall of license plates. There she indicated a birth certificate below most of the others, near the baseboard. We both knelt to examine it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “You’re not the first,” explained Eva. “This woman — Zainab — arrived three months ago or thereabouts. Had a similar theory, but she seemed to think the shard was right here in this diner. When Madam Griddle appeared and showed her around and convinced her that she was mistaken, she moped around for a bit. Ordered a cup of tea and sipped it with her eyes closed. Asked for food, too, but didn’t touch that. Then, around midnight, something seemed to snap. She opened her eyes, reached into her bag, grabbed her birth certificate, and stapled it to the wall where you see it now. Next morning she hitched a ride north, and that’s the last we saw of her.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Zainab Hall<\/em>. Born on May 2, 2129, in Northern Lights Laboratory in Lake City. I recognized the name. It belonged to a fellow Splitweb scholar whom I’d met a few times over the years. A polymath with a memory so photographic that she’d sworn off notebooks, and far more ambitious than I; when last I’d crossed paths with her in Ozymandeville she’d been rounding out a madcap, cross-country blitz by logging into her twentieth shard in just 30 days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I wondered if she’d unearthed a tangible record of s:LastResort<\/em>, as I had, or if she’d simply followed a trail of semi-mystical Route 14 breadcrumbs across the Splitweb to nowhere in particular. In either case, an archivist of her caliber with a three-month head start would almost certainly have discovered s:LastResort<\/em> by now. My heart sank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Hitched a ride with who?” I asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Eva pointed to another birth certificate. “This man,” she said. “One of the tallest people I’ve ever met. I swear he must have been over seven feet tall, barely fit through the door. Skin as black as our ceiling. Other than that, he was pretty unremarkable. Spent two days here studying the map. Reserved, kept to himself. He jumped at the opportunity to offer Zainab a ride, though. He could tell she was smart, and that she’d learned a thing or two from Madame Griddle that might come in useful on Route 14.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cedric Roberts<\/em>. Born on September 20, 2119 in Terminus, the old-fashioned way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n “Did Zainab study the map?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Eva shrugged. “Don’t think so. Like I said, she mostly sulked. Eyes pointed down, not up.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHow much time did she spend with Madame Griddle?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cA lot. Madame Griddle brought her upstairs. She rarely does that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Risking dismemberment (I was reasonably sure that Eva kept her knife close to hand), I rested my hand gently on her neck. \u201cEva,\u201d I said, \u201cyou know what I\u2019m going to ask you next, right?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYes,\u201d she said, \u201cand you know what I\u2019m going to tell you. You can\u2019t see Madame Griddle. It\u2019s impossible.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFine.\u201d I leaned forward — we were still on our knees — and pulled Eva\u2019s lips to my own. She tasted like something burgled from the future, like unripe cherries, like the night before Christmas, and she made a sound that blurred all the categories of feminine noise, and I wanted to fold her onto the floor and disappear under her pleated skirt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Instead, I pulled free and spoke softly into her ear: \u201cI\u2019d like to order the coffee grind pancakes, please.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The plot of dust that separated Route 14 from Madame Griddle’s contained six bikes, a pair of scooters, five electric cars, and one ponderous anachronism that made everything else look like dollhouse trinkets: a glossy white Buick with two domineering tail fins and so many polished chrome accents that you\u2019d think the thing was trying […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":185,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vincentmaling.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vincentmaling.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vincentmaling.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vincentmaling.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vincentmaling.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1305"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"http:\/\/www.vincentmaling.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1305\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1449,"href":"http:\/\/www.vincentmaling.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1305\/revisions\/1449"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vincentmaling.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vincentmaling.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vincentmaling.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vincentmaling.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
We\u2019ll show them the road<\/em>
On first sign of light.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
We\u2019ll watch them collapse<\/em>
And die and decay.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
South is for cowards,<\/em>
Who flee from the Test.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Best to die singing,<\/em>
Proud and obscene.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are bottles to empty<\/em>
Between now and dawn.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Between now and dawn.<\/em>
Whole lives to live<\/em>
Between now and dawn!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n