From her attitude, Dylan deduced that paying her own way was an issue of honor with her. Further, he suspected that she would no more graciously accept a nickel for a parking meter than she would take ten bucks for two beers and a tip.
After putting the tenner on the table, she counted the contents of her wallet. The calculation didn’t require much time or higher mathematics. ‘I’ll need to find an ATM, make a withdrawal.’
‘No can do,’ he said. ‘Those guys who blew up your car – if they have any kind of law-enforcement connections, which they probably do, then they’ll be able to follow a plastic trail. And quick.’
‘You mean I can’t use credit cards, either?’
‘Not for a while, anyway.’
‘Big trouble,’ she muttered, staring glumly into her wallet.
‘It’s not big trouble. Not considering our other problems.’
‘Money trouble,’ she said solemnly, ‘is never little trouble.’
In that one statement, Dylan could read whole chapters from the autobiography of her childhood.
Although he didn’t know for sure that the men in pursuit of her could have connected Jilly to him and Shep, Dylan decided not to use any of his plastic, either. When the restaurant ran his card through their point-of-sale verification machine, the transaction would register in a credit-clearing center. Any legitimate law-enforcement agency or any gifted hacker with dirty money behind him, monitoring that center either with a court order or secretly, might be running software that could track selected individuals immediately upon the execution of a credit-card purchase.
Paying with cash, Dylan was surprised to feel no charge of uncanny energy on the currency, which had passed through uncountable hands before coming into his possession in a bank withdrawal a couple days ago. This suggested that unlike fingerprints, psychic spoor faded completely away with time.
He told the waitress to keep the change, and he took Shep to the men’s room, while Jilly visited the ladies’.
‘Pee,’ Shep said as soon as they walked into the lavatory and he knew where they were. He put his book on a shelf above the sinks. ‘Pee.’
‘Pick a stall,’ Dylan said. ‘I think they’re all unused.’
‘Pee,’ Shep said, keeping his head down, peering up from under his brow as he shuffled to the first of the four stalls. From behind the door, as he latched it, he said, ‘Pee.’
A robust seventy-something man with a white mustache and white muttonchops stood at one of the sinks, washing his hands. The air smelled of orange-scented soap.
Dylan approached a urinal. Shep couldn’t produce at a urinal because he feared being spoken to while indisposed.
‘Pee,’ Shep called out from behind his stall door. ‘Pee.’
In any public restroom, Shepherd became so uncomfortable that he needed to be in continuous voice contact with his brother, to assure himself that he hadn’t been abandoned.
‘Pee,’ Shep said, growing anxious in his stall. ‘Dylan, pee. Dylan, Dylan. Pee!’
‘Pee,’ Dylan replied.
Shep’s spoken pee served a purpose similar to that of a signal broadcast by submarine sonar apparatus, and Dylan’s response was equivalent to the return ping that signified the echolocation of another vessel, in this case a known and friendly presence in the scary depths of the men’s room.
‘Pee,’ said Shep.
‘Pee,’ Dylan replied. . .
In the mirrored wall above the urinals, Dylan observed the retiree’s reaction to this verbal sonar.
‘Pee, Dylan.’
‘Pee, Shepherd.’
Puzzled and uneasy, Mr. Muttonchops looked back and forth from the closed stall to Dylan, to the stall, as if something not only strange but also perverse might be unfolding here.
‘Pee.’
‘Pee.’
When Mr. Muttonchops realized that Dylan was watching him, when their eyes met in the mirror above the urinals, the retiree quickly looked away. He turned off the water at the sink, without rinsing the orange-scented lather off his hands.
‘Pee, Dylan.’
‘Pee, Shepherd.’
Dripping frothy suds from his fingers, shedding iridescent bubbles that floated in his wake and settled slowly to the floor, the retiree went to a wall dispenser and cranked out a few paper towels.
At last came the sound of Shepherd’s healthy stream.
‘Good pee,’ said Shep.
‘Good pee.’
Reluctant to pause long enough to dry his soapy hands, the man fled the lavatory with the wad of paper towels.