"You work for ECorp."
I'd thrown my bicycle in the back of his pickup where he pulled over on that long stretch near Walker Narrows -- an act of faith, but an innocent one -- thrown it in and jumped into the cab grateful enough. Then I got the novelistic long moment, his head framed in the window of the pickup, the eyes the ears the nose the line of the hair no one I knew: no one from Voltage Temps, no one I'd passed in LISA's corridors sneaking to the john. And I considering how fast the truck might be going, how the asphalt would rasp and tear were I to jump, where or whether a point might come in which I could snag the bike from the back, snag it and have a few feet down some road before he might turn.
The pops of the shotguns just off at El Cuello Rojo Trap and Skeet spoke
Time
Time
Time .
12 gauge, 20 gauge -- For years my father reloaded shells from a huge tin of slow-burning Unique powder someone had special-ordered and abandoned. They'd flash a good foot out of a 25-inch barrel and roar; I listened for his roar.
Time.
"Yes," I answer, answer the driver who has pulled over. If he knows, what can I tell him?
"Ha! Look at yourself, man - no, your eyes: look in the mirror. You fool! Like I can't spot an engineer so close to ECorp, nothing else for fucking miles."
Nothing else. Voltage Temps signs my checks; I work for LISA, at the office there in Alambres, so of course I work for ECorp:
"Don't we all?"
"Who else but an engineer would peddle through the middle of nowhere on a bicycle with his shirt open and his tie flapping in the air like a goddamn dog's tongue."
I don't know any engineers: what I'll write comes without expertise.
"You headed down the bike trail, down the river?"
"Sure." A little out of my way, but I'd ride with no traffic, and that would do.
So I sat and looked at the ducks on the river. I decided to write you, to write this, to actually post it.
Just don't believe a word.
