The Good Atheist (23 page)

“The problem is those Tolerance sweeps are bad for business. And on top of that, I got a pair of lugheads like you two who won’t order anything, sitting around all night wanting free refills.”

“Bring us some food, then. I haven’t eaten since last night, and I’m getting hungry,” I said.

Lucy smiled. “Want to see some menus?”

I waved her off impatiently. “Just cook something. Surprise us.”

“All right, if you say so, big guy.” She grinned and left us alone.

We were both quiet, deep in thought. I sipped at the coffee and added more cream and sugar to disguise the burnt oily taste. Jorge was right. I couldn’t go off grid, at least not yet, and I couldn’t drive down there myself. I’d need to buy fuel at least. Pay road tolls. Get food. And if something went wrong with the car and I needed assistance, I’d have to use my chip. Same thing if I flew or took the train. I could only buy tickets using my chip. Cash transactions hadn’t been legal since my grandfather’s day. And if I went off grid, I wouldn’t be able to travel at all.

But someone else could drive me.

I leaned forward. “You take me.”

He didn’t say anything.

“You said it yourself, I can’t drive or travel, otherwise they will be able to track me,” I said. “And I can’t go off grid. But you can drive me. Anything we need along the way, you can buy it. You said you make the trip twice a month, so there is nothing unusual in that.”

“I don’t know, Jack,” he said.

“How did you and my grandfather normally go down?”

“Simple. We would drive down in a van with a load of greenhouse tomatoes in the back,” he said.

I remembered the delivery van in the shed with ‘Grandpa Ben’s Organic Hothouse Tomatoes’ on the sides, and the greenhouses. “Tomatoes?” I said under my breath.

He grinned. “Organically grown. You’d be surprised how much they sell for in the city. We get ten Euros for a single tomato, and Zuebo has his mark-up on top of that. Ben made a nice little living selling all-natural organic tomatoes. Health nuts in New York are willing to pay a fortune for organic fruits and vegetables. Part of the whole get-back-to-nature fad that’s going on.”

Tomatoes? As a business front for the underground? I mused.

Jorge grinned, as if reading the expression on my face. I never could play poker. “Of course, it wasn’t just tomatoes we had in the back of the van. It was a cover to bring your dad cash, electronics, whatever he needed.”

“Cash? What good is that? It’s not legal…it’s not even worth anything.”

Jorge shook his head. “Not dollars. That’s just useless paper. Euros, yuan, Canadian dollars – hard currency like that is worth a lot, and you can use it on the black market to get almost anything. It’s perfect for people off the grid.”

“So then there’s nothing unusual about you driving down there. No reason for the Tolerance Police to suspect anything. I could come along for the ride. They wouldn’t need to know I was with you.”

“You would have to be very careful not to use your chip, or even let your hand get near a reader. Sometimes they go on by accident.”

That much was true. I’d once bought opera tickets by accident when my hand passed too close to a reader while reaching for a pack of chewing gum. It was the most expensive gum I’d ever bought.

Lucy interrupted us with two plates of salad, topped with strips of chicken. I poked at mine with a fork. “The chicken looks good, but what’s all the green stuff?”

“The salad is good for you. Eat up.”

“When I said surprise us, I meant something good.”

She grinned mischievously. “This is good. Stop whining.”

“I guess I can’t complain, can I?”

“If you complain, next time I spit in your salad. House rules,” she said and walked away.

I picked at the salad. “When were you planning on going down again?”

“My next regular delivery is in a week.”

“I can’t wait a week.” He didn’t say anything, and we both munched on salads. “There’s no one else I can ask to help me with this. You can’t possibly expect me not to go down there. One way or the other, I’m going to figure out a way. You can either help me or not, it’s you to up. But one way or another I’m going.”

Jorge sat back and regarded me thoughtfully for a moment. “All right, don’t get so wound up about it. I’ll take you.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow. We can leave in the morning. Meet me here at four. I don’t want to get you at the cottage. That way Selene won’t see you leave with me. The less she knows about our trip, the better.”

“Four, as in A.M?”

“You can park around back. Be waiting out front with a couple of large coffees.”

“Is it okay to leave my car here for a few days?”

“Lucy puts on an ornery act, but she’s completely reliable.”

“She threatened to spit in my salad.”

“She must like you.”

We finished our meals. I ate the chicken and most of the green stuff. Jorge got up and took his coat of the hook next to our booth. “Jack,” he said as he put his coat on.

I was still picking at the salad. “Yes.”

“Don’t be too hard on Selene.”

This surprised me. “She informed on one of your own.”

“She was a wreck when I dropped in. She’d been crying all day.”

“Good.”

“Don’t be so hard on her. You’re going to need to find a way to forgive her.”

I wiped my mouth with a napkin. “Don’t preach to me, Jorge. I got stun-gunned. I got beat up by some very large cops and nearly arrested. She betrayed me and informed on a perfectly sweet kid. After what she’s done I don’t know if I can look at her again, let alone forgive her.”

Jorge shook his head slowly. “You’ve got a hard heart, Jack.”

“My marriage is none of your concern. Just get me to New York tomorrow. I don’t want to hear any more about my wife.”

Jorge left without arguing any further. I waited another fifteen minutes, then got up and put my coat on. I went to the counter, and put my finger on the reader at the counter to pay the bill. I added a nice tip, and said goodbye to Lucy, who favored me with a scowl and returned to wiping the counter. It was late, four A.M. was just a few hours away, and I still had to go back to the cottage to pack – and face Selene.

18

Selene was standing at the window looking out as I pulled into the driveway. Lights from the cottage cast a pale glow over the ground. I got out of the car and went straight into the bedroom, passing thought the living room without a word to her. She followed me in and sat on the edge of the bed while I pulled a travel bag out of the closet.

She’d been crying. Her face was red and puffy, turning the scars on her face into angry red welts. There was smeared eyeliner where she’d been wiping at her face.

I tossed some clothes into the bag. We didn’t talk for several long minutes.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” she finally blurted.

I didn’t look at her. “What’s there to talk about?”

“Where are you going?” More tears streamed down her cheeks, mascara running in rivulets.

“I’m hardly going to tell you that.” I folded a shirt and placed it in the bag.

“You don’t expect me to just sit here waiting for you to come back, do you? Not knowing where you are or how long you will be?”

“I don’t care what you do.”

“How long will you be gone?” she pleaded. I only expected to be away two or three days, but at the moment I felt the less she knew the better. Also, I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of knowing it would be a quick trip, possibly alleviating her anxiety.

“I don’t know,” I said, after a moment’s pause.

She wiped at her face again. “Why won’t you tell me where you are going?”

I stopped what I was doing and glared at her. “Maybe,” I shouted, “because I don’t want Tolerance troopers showing up to arrest us!”

She seemed to shrink, to become small like a little girl. “Please don’t shout. I hate it when you shout.”

“Maybe you should have thought about that before you called the Inquisitors.”

“Jack, please don’t hate me for that. I did it for your own good. For you.” She paused, then added softly, “And for us.”

“How can having Paige arrested possibly be good for us?”

She straightened up on the bed. “For days now, I’ve had to watch you get more obsessive about your father. Finding out why he became a believer. Where he is. Obsessed about religion, and growing more distant from me. And then this religious woman shows up at the door and, like a fool, you take her in.”

“I don’t think helping someone in need is being a fool.”

“It was the last straw, Jack. When I came here and found this…this pretty young woman living here, well, I …” Her words trailed off but the thought was clear enough.

“You thought I was having an affair?”

She stood up suddenly from the bed and shouted. “Dammit, Jack, what the hell else was I supposed to think?”

“You should have thought better of me! You should know me better than that.”

“She’s young and pretty, and you’d seemed so distant lately.” She touched at the scars on her face. “And, well – I just don’t know how attractive you still find me.”

I pulled the zipper closed on the travel bag and picked it up. “So you thought I was attracted to her? Is that it? Selene, they’re going to take her kids!”

She didn’t answer, but she didn’t need to. I walked out of the room carrying my travel bag and headed straight for the front door. She raced ahead of me and put her hand on the door to block my way. “Jack, please. Are you leaving me?”

I looked at her. “No, Selene, I don’t suppose I’m leaving you just yet, but heaven only knows why not.” I pushed her hand off the handle, pulled the door open, and walked out.

19

My original plan had been to catch a few hours’ sleep at the cottage – I was beginning to think of it as home – but after the scene with Selene that was no longer feasible. I badly needed a shower and a change of clothes, something else that I had hoped to achieve at the cottage that didn’t happen. I was still wearing the same set of clothes I had on when I woke up on the front porch after getting electro-shocked by the police.

I had no place else to go, so I drove straight to Rosie’s and parked in the alley around back. It was a little past midnight. I decided to nap there until Jorge arrived. I put the seat back and told the car to wake me at three forty-five. Only then did I allow myself to succumb to exhaustion, and I fell into a sound sleep.

The car dutifully woke me on time. When I failed to respond to its voice prompts, it turned on the radio and played loud, awful retro rap music. When that failed to stir me, it began to jiggle my chair, rapidly adjusting it up and down until I finally came awake.

“Good morning, Jack,” the car said in a cheery voice.

“Stop shaking the blasted seat, Stella.”

“When you’ve stirred sufficiently, I will desist. Otherwise, there is the extreme likelihood that you will fall back asleep and risk missing your scheduled rendezvous.”

I sat up and slapped the dashboard. “I’m awake already. Stop it.”

The seat stopped jiggling and returned to its normal driving position. “You seem to be fully awake now.”

“Thanks.” I grabbed my travel bag, got out of the car, and locked up. I walked down the back alley and around to the street. Rosie’s was an all-nighter. Light flooded the sidewalk from its front windows. There were a few farmers having breakfast, a couple of guys at the counter chatting with Lucy. Her eyes flicked up and down my body as I approached the counter. “What happened to you? You look like you spent the night behind a dumpster.”

“Gee, thanks, Lucy. I knew you found me attractive. I could tell.”

She rolled her eyes towards the ceiling. “In your dreams. Will you have something from the menu to go with your delusions?”

“How about a hot shower and a good night’s sleep?”

She shook her head. “Sorry. Not on the menu tonight.”

“In that case, I’ll settle for three large coffees, black. And two fried-egg sandwiches to go.”

She started pouring the coffee and shouted my order at the cook in the back. Ten minutes later I was standing out front, starting my second coffee, when Jorge pulled up at the curb. He was driving the delivery van from my grandfather’s shed, the one with pictures of tomatoes and ‘Grandpa Ben’s Organic Hothouse Tomatoes’ along the sides. I slid the side door open. Several cartons of tomatoes sat on the floor. I tossed my bag into the back with the tomatoes.

Jorge turned around to look at me. “I hope you don’t mind, but I swung by the cottage and picked some tomatoes from your greenhouse.”

“I see you also picked up my van. How’d you get it to start for you?”

“Ben and I were partners, remember. I’m registered as one of the owners.”

I closed the side door and climbed into the passenger seat next to him. I handed him his coffee. “I guess that means we’re partners now. Did you happen to see Selene?”

He shook his head. “She wasn’t there. The car was gone.”

Probably left for Chicago, I thought.

Jorge eyed me as he pulled away from the curb. “You look terrible.”

“That seems to be the consensus.”

“Rough night?”

I leaned back in my seat and made myself comfortable. “Just drive.”

Twelve hours later we crossed the George Washington Bridge into Manhattan. If all went well, I was just a few hours away from being face to face with my father for the first time in seventeen years.

20

Zuebo’s Market was a high-end grocery in the East Village specializing in organically grown vegetables and all-natural foods. We pulled around back to a small loading dock. I was thankful to get out and stretch my legs after hours on the road. Jorge rapped on a small man-door next to the big sliding loading doors.

A few minutes later a short, wiry man of Chinese descent came out. “Jorge!” he said with a wide grin.

“Zuebo,” Jorge said. “Good to see you.” The two men embraced briefly, limiting it to the appropriate man-hug length. Then Zuebo glanced my way.

“Zuebo, this is Jack Callaghan,” Jorge said.

His eyebrows arched. “Callaghan?” Then he looked at Jorge. “Marcus’s son?”