same genes in there somewhere. Small town, miles from anywhere.
`I made a decision,’ I said. `I have to find out what happened with Joe. So I just want to apologize in advance in case that gets in the way, OK?’
Roscoe shrugged and smiled a tender smile. Looked concerned for me.
`It won’t get in the way,’ she said. `No reason why it should.’
I sipped my coffee. It was good coffee. I remembered that from Friday.
`We got an ID on the second body,’ she said. `His prints matched with an arrest two years ago in Florida. His name was Sherman Stoller. That name mean anything at all to you?’
I shook my head.
`Never heard of him,’ I said.
Then her beeper started going. It was a little black pager thing clipped to her belt. I hadn’t seen it before. Maybe she was only required to use it during working hours. It was beeping away. She reached around and clicked it off.
`Damn,’ she said. `I’ve got to call in. Sorry. I’ll use the phone in the car.’
I slid out of the booth and stepped back to let her by.
`Order me some food, OK?’ she said. `I’ll have whatever you have.’
`OK,’ I said. `Which one is our waitress?’
`The one with the glasses,’ she said.
She walked out of the diner. I was aware of her leaning into her car, using the phone. Then she was gesturing to me from the parking lot. Miming urgency. Miming that she had to get back. Miming that I should stay put. She jumped into the
car and took off, south. I waved vaguely after her, not really looking, because I was staring at the waitresses instead. I had almost stopped breathing. I needed Hubble. And Roscoe had just told me Hubble was dead.
ELEVEN
I stared blankly over at the two blonde waitresses. One was perhaps three inches taller than the other. Perhaps fifteen pounds heavier. A couple of years older. The smaller woman looked petite in comparison. Better looking. She had longer, lighter hair. Nicer eyes behind the glasses. As a pair, the waitresses were similar in a superficial kind of a way. But not alike. There were a million differences between them. No way were they hard to distinguish one from the other.
I’d asked Roscoe which was our waitress. And how had she answered? She hadn’t said the smaller one, or the one with the long hair, or the blonder one, or the slimmer one, or the prettier one or the younger one. She’d said the one with glasses. One was wearing glasses, the other wasn’t. Ours was the one with glasses. Wearing glasses was the major difference between them. It overrode all the other differences. The other differences were matters of degree. Taller, heavier, longer, shorter, smaller, prettier, darker,
younger. The glasses were not a matter of degree. One woman wore them, the other didn’t. An absolute difference. No confusion. Our waitress was the one with glasses.
That’s what Spivey had seen on Friday night. Spivey had come into the reception bunker a little after ten o’clock. With a shotgun and a clipboard in his big red farmer’s hands. He had asked which one of us was Hubble. I remembered his high voice in the stillness of the bunker. There was no reason for his question. Why the hell should Spivey care which one of us was which? He didn’t need to know. But he’d asked. Hubble had raised his hand. Spivey had looked him over with his little snake eyes. He had seen that Hubble was smaller, shorter, lighter, sandier, balder, younger than me. But what was the major difference he had hung on to? Hubble wore glasses. I didn’t. The little gold rims. An absolute difference. Spivey had said to himself that night: Hubble’s the one with glasses.
But by the next morning I was the one with glasses, not Hubble. Because Hubble’s gold rims had been smashed up by the Red Boys outside our cell. First thing in the morning. The little gold rims were gone. I had taken some shades from one of them as a trophy. Taken them and forgotten about them. I’d leaned up against the sink in that bathroom inspecting my tender forehead in the steel mirror. I’d felt those shades in my pocket. I’d pulled them out and put them on. They weren’t dark because they were supposed to react to sunlight. They looked like ordinary glasses. I’d been standing there with them on when the Aryans came trawling into the bathroom. Spivey had just told them: find the new boys and kill the one with