The Messenger (18 page)

She makes her first mistake where I-70 divides into another
great artery. There is a swirl of concrete ramps, too many decisions to make at too high a speed, and she opts to go straight, staying with
EISENHOWER
. A few miles later she sees a large sign welcoming her to Pennsylvania.

That’s wrong, she thinks, and having no desire to end up back in Philadelphia, she drives on, looking for a place to turn around. It takes forever until she reaches a little place called Pigeon Cove Road, where she can ramp off.

At the top of the ramp, she turns right and idles down the asphalt, but there is very little on the road: a long red barn with dozens of huge rolls of hay stacked along one side, a gravel business with a trailer for an office. She reverses and goes back over the highway, and turns again, pointing the Nissan back the way she’s come. But after a few miles of low hills and endless fields, she realizes she’s stuck on some side road with no way back onto the interstate.

She turns around yet again and drives right past the overpass at Pigeon Cove Road, and keeps on going until a few miles later she sees a red, white, and blue I-70 sign.

At the intersection there is a garage and used-car dealership, and she pulls over. Inside, a large man named Ed informs her that if she wants to go west to Cumberland, what she should do is get back on the highway and head back to the intersection and take the ramp off onto I-68.

“I don’t want to go to Cumberland, I want to go to … Las Vegas. Can I buy a map here?” she asks, looking as helpless as she can.

“Get you a road atlas out of that display by the door. Cover the entire You-nine-id States. Get you wherever you want to go.”

There are several maps in a large display rack beside the door. She rejects the local and state maps and spends twelve dollars on the road atlas, a large spiral-bound book containing maps of the United States, Canada, and Mexico. On the cover is a photo of a highway rimming the coast and a distant green farm that slopes down to the sea. There are no cars, people, or animals in the picture, but a banner below promises “pages of fabulous drives and adventures.”

“That good enough for you?” Ed asks.

“Fabulous adventures? I guess so,” Daria says, giving him her money.

“You want a big Coke with that?” he asks.

Outside, she sips her Coke, studies the maps, turns the ignition key of the Nissan, and tries to plan her getaway. That’s the most important thing, just to get away … lead a trail away and help protect the others, whoever they are.

In America, the way they do it, the east-west superhighways are even numbered, and the odds are north and south. If she had stayed on I-70, she would have driven into Pittsburgh. What’s wrong with that? It’s a famous place. Is she missing something by not going there? She finds a map of the city and looks to see if there is anything of value there. She has heard of the city. They have a famous football team … if she could log on to a computer, she could learn all about it.

As she sits paging through the maps, a pair of thickset Maryland state troopers pull up and get out of their car, adjusting their strange peaked hats—wide brims with little pyramids on top. Cowboy hats are what they are supposed to be, she supposes. Cowboy hats with crowns, like mounted policemen or light cavalry. As silly as the
carabinieri
, she thinks. More myth. More lies. What kind of country is it whose greatest lies are told to her own people?

She pulls back out onto the highway and heads west … into the afternoon sun. She’s lost her dark glasses, probably left them back at Tina’s. Now she’ll have the sun in her eyes until she can stop and buy a new pair.

A few miles down the road the state troopers blow past her, steady and sure and their speed up above eighty, she guesses. She has no clear idea how fast that actually might be, since she is still unused to the foreign measurements. She watches them vanish into the distance, stays at the limit, and cautiously tries to figure out how to work the cruise control on the Nissan as she curves and curves and curves through the undulating scenery of western Maryland.

It has been a long day already and by Cumberland she is tired. She crosses the border into West Virginia, and keeps on going until Morgantown, where there is another great joining of arteries. She takes I-79 South, heading for
CHARLESTON 142
; it’s just a name on a colossal green sign, she knows nothing about the place and doesn’t really care.

The sun is slanting low through her passenger window now, warming the seats and putting her to sleep, and she slows and ramps off; she has learned to recognize the true exits from the false ones like Pigeon Cove Road, and brakes to a stop in an attempt to get an espresso at an IHOP.

It turns out they don’t sell espresso at this IHOP and she has to settle for a horrid, acidic concoction poured out of a huge glass urn right there at her booth.

She is early for dinner and late for lunch. The IHOP, its mission to satisfy American appetites notwithstanding, is nearly empty and she can see and hear the television that hangs above a nearby counter.

There is the too-familiar clip of Tariq’s entry into the garage, then Tété’s face flashes up, followed by a series of portraits; among them she recognizes the man she’d met at the Adlon. Dressed differently, a little younger, but it’s him.
Saleem Khan
, the caption says. Surrounding him are two other sudden demons—
Bahar Wahid
, and
Colonel Jamal Ulov
.

The head shots vanish to reveal the genial, gray-haired host. Beside him is a digital map of Washington, D.C.’s inner city. He waves his hands across its surface and with deft touches zooms in on
famous landmarks. As he speaks, the photographs turn red to indicate that they have tested positive for anthrax spores. She knows some of the monuments: the Lincoln Memorial and the tall obelisk, the Washington Monument, rimmed with flags in case you didn’t get the point.

Everybody in the dining area, she sees, is watching the television. The waitress comes to take her order. “How are you today?” she says, not looking at Daria. She wears no makeup at all, and her hair is pulled back in an efficient ponytail. She is going on forty, Daria decides.

“I’m okay. Tired, that’s why I wanted the espresso.”

“Get down into Charleston around the college area and you can find it. What’ll you have today?” she asks, topping up the coffee. Daria orders a chicken salad and sits there sipping at the coffee and watching the television.

The news has shifted topics to the growing crisis along the India-Pakistan border. Footage of rioting crowds from the vantage point of what looks like a third-floor balcony. The scene changes: a crowd of boys, with balaclavas and scarves pulled over their faces to hide their identities from the police cameras. They hold all sorts of mismatched weapons—butcher’s knives, staves, machetes—and one boy, pushed to the front, hefts an automatic rifle. They are chanting and dancing, taunting the camera. They are happy, she realizes.

“There you go …” the waitress says, centering the chicken salad in front of her. She sees the direction of Daria’s gaze.

“Isn’t it just awful? My sister and her family are down in Atlanta. They spread it there too …”

“Atlanta?” Daria asks, not quite knowing where it is.

“Down at the Center of Diseases,” the waitress says. Her voice is warm. Southern and musical, everything said with a sigh. Tired, but friendly. Suddenly Daria does not want to touch her, does not want to infect this woman.

“Now … everything all right?” the waitress asks, and when Daria, unable to speak, simply nods, she turns and heads back to the counter.

The scene on the television has changed yet again. A different
correspondent stands in front of a white façade … a government building of some kind. Behind him, a ring of soldiers have barred entry into the facility.

She picks up the fork and pushes her salad around. She has opted for something called “ranch” dressing. The chicken looks like putrid white flakes drizzled over the leaves.

She takes a couple of mouthfuls, the food like paste on her tongue. On the television they are talking about the hospitals, and the strain of coping with the anthrax attack. The number of cases is building far beyond expectations.

Suddenly she feels nauseous, something about the smell of the salad, about her fatigue. She gets halfway to her feet and then vomits across the table. “Oh, my God …” she hears someone say. She is trembling. She collapses back into the seat, grabbing for a napkin.

“Here you go, ma’am. You want to come with me?” It is the nice waitress again, her voice like honey. She is helping her to her feet. Helping her. Daria pulls away, but it is too late now. They have been too close. They are not friends, but you don’t have to be someone’s friend to infect them.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry …” she says, and allows the poor doomed woman to help her find the ladies’ room. She takes some paper towels and scrubs her face, blows her nose. Stands there for a moment and looks at herself. Her hair is wild, her face pale, yellowish. Her eyes rimmed with red.

She is sick, she thinks. She is going to die. She stands there just
staring at herself, then cups her hands under the faucet and washes out her mouth once more. The water tastes brassy and has a smell as if it were laced with chemical purifiers. The aroma brings fresh tears to her eyes. All she can do is lean on the sink and try to get her breath under control. She rips a paper towel out of the dispenser and dries her face, then uses another towel to clean off the counter.

She is sick. Really sick. She is going to die.

She turns away from the mirror, walks back out to the counter. Magically the mess has all been cleaned away by the nice waitress. She has spread enough germs in this restaurant, enough for one too-short life.

“I’m sorry,” she says to the woman again.

“It’s all right, honey. You take care now …” she says, absolving Daria of what little guilt she knows about.

The parking lot is hot. The air is hotter than in the restaurant, which Daria now realizes was air-conditioned. The air is clean, despite being adjacent to the wide superhighway. She breathes deeply. Climbs into the Nissan and makes her way back down to the interstate.

“I’m sorry,” she says to the restaurant, wiping the tears from her eyes.

She drives … the movement of the car, the slow curves through the mountainous poverty of West Virginia lulling her. Staring out at the highway, the cars and trucks that pass her, and that she in turn passes. Ordinary people. Just ordinary people.

Somewhere down the road she sees a line of military vehicles, great lumbering trucks with camouflaged canvas coverings sheltering dozens of young boys in uniforms. She follows behind them for a mile or so and then passes slowly, gets in front of the convoy and lowers her windows. Maybe her spores will be carried back to the soldiers, maybe one soldier will catch whatever she has and spread it to his brothers. She has begun to cry again, and she raises the windows back up, her hands shaking on the steering wheel.

If everything is written, why is she so miserable? It must be the disease. She is an arrow; the moment she was loosed from the bow her future was determined. She drives and drives through the remainder
of the day toward a blood-red sunset, driving until she can outrun her thoughts. She should be acting differently; while there is time she should take the opportunity to come back to God. She can pray now, she can become a practicing Muslim again, can’t she? Her mind is in torment, a thousand questions crowding in on her. She ought to be able to answer them, to open her heart to God and put her mind at ease. It’s normal to be frightened, especially of the unknown. It’s normal to want to cling to life, especially when you are young. It won’t be much longer and everything will be answered. She has to have faith. She has to be strong.

But she is exhausted now, and pulls off in the darkness down the entrance to a rest stop somewhere beyond
CHARLESTON
, locks the doors, cracks her window, lowers the seat back, and closes her eyes.

She is sick. She is going to die.

T
here is a distant tapping, like a carpenter or a woodpecker. And then Daria wakes up to see a West Virginia state trooper using his ring finger to tap on the car window right next to her head. There are raindrops on the glass; it must have rained during the night. She blinks in the sun and tries to lower the window, but the ignition key has to be turned to do it.

“How are you doing in there?” the trooper asks as she reaches toward the ignition. The key sticks and then turns and she fumbles with the controls until the window slides down, and she can talk to the cop.

“Good morning …” she says. Her voice is raspy. She needs water. “Is everything okay?”

“You all right in there?”

“I … got tired driving.”

“Where you headed?”

“Uh … I’m going to … Texas.”

“That’s a long way.”

“I know.”

“Just for your information, you’re not allowed to sleep overnight at a rest area.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

“It’s for your own protection. We patrol the rest areas regularly, but it can be dangerous for a woman traveling alone.” As he lectures her, all she can see is his silhouette. The wide-brimmed hat against the sun, the blocky outline, the belt with all its paraphernalia. She raises her hand to shield her eyes from the sun and get a look at his face.