The doorway in the coin opened wider when Odessa said she would go.
Not much wider. Its brass outline split across the metal, and beyond it the desert road showed itself in a sliver no broader than a fingernail. Asphalt. Yellow lane markings. A green sign blurred by distance and heat.
LAS VEGAS 18.
Femmie saw it over Odessa’s shoulder and set down the coffee cup.
“You can’t leave the Nightjar,” she said.
“I’m not the keeper.”
“The place is.”
“Then the place can keep counting while I look.”
Femmie’s expression hardened. “That’s what Roy said.”
The name settled between them. Outside, dawn had erased the impossible bus, the buried road, and the pale country beyond the pumps. The Nightjar looked ordinary again: six dark pumps, dusty windows, a diner sign missing its J, and the unmarked spur running east through the desert.
Ordinary was how the station looked when it had finished showing its teeth.
Odessa turned the receipt over. The treaty ink remained where she had written it.
CLAIM PRESENT. PARTY ABSENT. NO CARRIER DESIGNATED.
Below the words, the paper had grown a narrow blank line. No name waited at its end. No hand had filled it in.
She added one more sentence.
INVESTIGATION IS NOT ACCEPTANCE.
The ink did not run. The paper did not burn. Somewhere inside the walls, something made a dissatisfied clicking sound.
Femmie watched the receipt. “You think writing it makes it true?”
“No. I think the distinction was there before we remembered to use it.”
“Roy used distinctions too.”
“Roy used me.”
It was the first time Odessa had said it without anger doing the work for her. Femmie’s eyes softened, but she did not apologize on Roy’s behalf. That was one reason Odessa trusted her.
“What are you expecting to find?” Femmie asked.
“His next stop.”
“That voice could have been a lure.”
“It knew my name.”
“Everything here knows your name.”
“Then I’ll find out whether it knows anything else.”
Odessa took the doorway coin to the front window. She held it against the glass, where the rising sun struck its dull surface. The little road inside the stamped door lengthened. The green sign sharpened.
Next
Odessa must identify what Roy left unpaid before the count room’s ledger changes “NOT YET” into her acceptance.
Beneath it, in smaller letters, another destination appeared.
COUNT ROOM.
Her stomach tightened.
Vegas had a great many count rooms. Casinos, banks, armored-car depots, back offices where money passed through hands that never touched the gaming floor. Odessa had worked in one, though she had never told Roy which. She had dealt blackjack until the numbers stopped behaving like numbers and started behaving like exits.
The borrowed car. The missing cash. The man who kept calling from new numbers.
Her old life had not been waiting in Las Vegas. It had been waiting for a way to make itself relevant again.
Femmie reached beneath the counter and brought out a ring of keys. She removed a small brass key and held it toward Odessa.
“The booth,” she said.
Odessa looked at the key. “You said it was impossible.”
“It is. That doesn’t mean it can’t be locked.”
“What does this open?”
“Whatever is trying to open you.”
Odessa did not take it.
Femmie sighed. “Roy left it in the sugar tin nine years ago. I kept it because throwing things away is how this place gets new inventory.”
“Does it belong to him?”
“Nothing belongs to Roy for long.”
That answer was not enough, but it was honest. Odessa put the key in her pocket.
The phone rang.
Once.
Neither woman moved.
Twice.
The receipt lifted at one corner as if a breath passed beneath it.
“Not Rule Seven,” Odessa said.
“No,” Femmie replied. “This is the station asking whether you mean to leave.”
The phone rang a third time.
The doorway coin grew hot in Odessa’s palm. The crack in its little door widened into a black line.
She picked up the receiver.
There was no voice. Only road noise: tires over patched asphalt, a turn signal clicking, an engine working uphill.
“Roy,” Odessa said.
The road noise stopped.
Then Roy answered, very faintly. “You shouldn’t come through the front.”
“Where should I come through?”
“Where you came out.”
The line went dead.
Femmie’s hand closed around the edge of the counter. “What does that mean?”
Odessa thought of the impossible booth beneath the highway sign. Of the red threshold. Of the glass bearing her name. Of the figure with her face sitting on the wrong side of the count.
“Not the highway,” she said. “The count room.”
She placed the doorway coin on the counter and set the receipt beside it.
“Read it aloud,” Femmie said.
Odessa looked at the words. “Claim present. Party absent. No carrier designated. Investigation is not acceptance.”
The lights flickered once.
Again.
The Counterman spoke from the empty coffee machine. “A road is a manner of carrying.”
Odessa faced the machine. “And a question is not an answer.”
“A traveler is a party.”
“Not if they haven’t arrived.”
The machine began to pour. Nothing came from the spout, but the smell of burnt coffee filled the diner.
“Who is traveling?” it asked.
Odessa smiled without warmth. “That’s what I’m going to find out.”
She picked up the coin.
The doorway opened.
For one instant, the front window became a red-lit booth beneath a black sky. Beyond the booth lay a city of distant neon and towers without windows. A road led through it, shining wet though no rain fell. At the far end stood a green sign marked COUNT ROOM.
Something waited beside the sign.
It wore Roy’s jacket, but not his face.
Odessa stepped toward the glass.
Femmie caught her elbow. “If you go, keep the receipt visible.”
“I will.”
“If anything asks you to drive—”
“I walk.”
“If anything asks you to carry—”
“I name what’s present and what isn’t.”
“And if you see yourself?”
Odessa looked at the red booth. In its glass, her reflection stood a half-second late.
“Then I don’t answer her.”
She pressed the coin to the window.
The glass softened like cold jelly. Odessa passed through it, carrying the receipt in one hand and Femmie’s brass key in the other.
The Nightjar vanished behind her without a sound.
She stood on a Las Vegas street under a sky with no stars. The air smelled of hot dust, ozone, and the old carpet of a casino. Neon burned in the distance, but every sign displayed the same word: OPEN.
The green COUNT ROOM sign hung above a narrow service door.
Roy’s jacketed shape waited beside it.
It turned as she approached.
Its face was a blank oval, smooth as an unprinted receipt.
“Roy isn’t here,” Odessa said.
The thing nodded.
“Then what did he leave unpaid?”
It raised one hand and pointed through the service door.
On the other side, a count room waited beneath fluorescent lights. A black ledger lay open on a table. One column contained Roy Bibb’s name. The next contained a date.
The date was tomorrow.
The final column had been written in fresh ink.
CARRIER: ODESSA LARKIN.
Her grip tightened around the receipt. The words on her own paper darkened, but did not change.
CLAIM PRESENT. PARTY ABSENT. NO CARRIER DESIGNATED.