He tried immediately to insulate himself from the power of the latent psychic print on the door handle, as he had learned to do with the restaurant menu. This time, however, he wasn’t able to resist the influx of energy.
With no memory of crossing the threshold, Dylan found himself outside and on the move. Even hours past sundown, the mild desert night withdrew the banked heat of the day from the blacktop, and he detected the faint scent of tar under the kitchen odors that rose from the restaurant roof vents.
Glancing back, he saw Jilly and Shep standing in the open door, already ten feet behind him. He had dropped Shep’s book, which lay on the pavement between him and them. He wanted to retrieve the book and return to Shep and Jilly. He could not. ‘Wait here for me.’
Car to pickup to SUV, he was impelled to venture farther into the parking lot, not with the urgency that had earlier caused him to turn the Expedition on a dime and leave nine cents change, but with a nonetheless motivating perception that an important opportunity would shortly be foreclosed if he didn’t act. He knew that he wasn’t out of control, that on a subconscious level he understood exactly what he was doing, and why, as he had subconsciously understood his purpose when he had driven pell-mell and hell-bent to the house on Eucalyptus Avenue, but he felt out of control just the same.
This time the magnet proved to be not a grandmotherly woman in a candy-striped uniform, but an aging cowboy wearing tan Levi’s and a chambray shirt. Arriving just as the guy settled behind the wheel of a Mercury Mountaineer, Dylan prevented him from shutting the door.
From the psychic trace on this door handle, he again encountered the heart-deadening loneliness familiar from the imprint back at the restaurant, a despondency bordering on despair.
A lifetime of outdoor work had given the man in the Mountaineer a cured-leather face, but the decades of sun that crimped and cockled his skin had not left any light in him, and the years of wind had not piped much life into his bones. Burnt out, worn thin, he seemed to be a scraggy gnarl of tumbleweed tenuously rooted to the earth, waiting only for the gust that would break him loose from life.
The old man didn’t tip his Stetson as he’d tipped it at Jilly upon leaving the restaurant, but he didn’t react with irritation or alarm, either, when Dylan blocked the door. He had the look of a guy who had always been able to take care of himself, regardless of the nature of the threat or tribulation – but there was also about him the aura of a man who didn’t much care what happened next.
‘You’ve been searching for something,’ Dylan said, although he had no idea what words were coming from him until he’d spoken them and could afterward review their meaning.
‘Don’t need Jesus, son,’ the cowboy replied. ‘Already found him twice.’ His azurite-blue eyes took in more light than they gave out. ‘Don’t need trouble, either, nor do you.’
‘Not something,’ Dylan corrected. ‘You’re looking for someone.’
‘Isn’t just about everybody, one way or another?’
‘You’ve been looking a long time,’ Dylan said, though he still had no idea where this might be leading.
Through a squint that seemed wise enough to filter truth from illusion, the old man studied him. ‘What’s your name, son?’
‘Dylan O’Conner.’
‘Never heard of you. So how’d you hear of me?’
‘Didn’t hear of you, sir. I don’t know who you are. I just…’ Words that had come without volition now failed him on command. After a hesitation, he realized that he would have to tell a piece of the truth, reveal part of his secret, if they were to proceed. ‘You see, sir, I have these moments of… intuition.’
‘Don’t count on it at the poker table.’
‘Not just intuition. I mean… I know things when there’s no way to know. I feel, I know, and… I make connections.’
‘Some sort of spiritist, you’re sayin’?’
‘Sir?’
‘You’re a diviner, soothsayer, psychic – that sort of thing?’