would encounter police of any kind and be identified as the infamous
traitor of whom the radio reporter had spoken, her hunger and bladder
pressure were both too mild to justify the risk.
On the road between Barstow and Vegas, she would be relatively safe, for
CHiPs were rarely assigned to that long stretch of lonely highway.
In fact, the threat of being stopped for speeding was so small (and so
well and widely understood) that the traffic moved at an average speed
of seventy to eighty miles an hour.
Fridays and Sundays, the traffic was so heavy that it looked startlingly
anachronistic in this wasteland-as if all the commuters from a great
city had been simultaneously transported back in time to a barren era
prior to the Mesozoic epoch. But now, on several occasions, Rachael’s
was the only vehicle in sight on her side of the divided highway.
She drove over a skeletal landscape of scalped hills and bony plains,
where white and gray and umber rock poked up like exposed ribs-like
clavicles and scapulae, radii and ulnae, here an ilium, there a femur,
here two fibulae, and over there a cluster of tarsals and metatarsals-as
if the land were a burial ground for giants of another age, the graves
reopened by centuries of wind. The many-armed Joshua trees-like
monuments to Shiva-and the other cactuses of the higher desert were not
to be found in these lower and hotter regions.
The vegetation was limited to some worthless scrub, here and there a
patch of dry brown bunchgrass. Mostly the Mojave was sand, rock,
alkaline plains, and solidified lava beds. In the distance, to the
north, were the Calico mountains, and still farther north the Granite
Mountains rose purple and majestic at the horizon, and far to the
southeast were the Cady Mountains, all appeared to be stark, hard-edged
monoliths of bare and forbidding stone.
At 4,10, she reached the roadside rest area that she had recalled when
deciding not to stop in Barstow. She slowed, left the highway, and
drove into a large empty parking lot. She stopped in front of a low
concrete-block building that housed men’s and women’s rest rooms. To
the right of the rest rooms, a piece of ground was shaded by sturdy
metal latticework on four eight-foot metal poles, and under that
sun-foiling shelter were three picnic tables.
The scrub and bunchgrass were cleared away from the surrounding area,
leaving clean bare sand, and blue garbage cans with hinged lids bore
polite requests in white block letters-PLEASE DO NOT LITTER.
She got out of the Mercedes, taking only the keys and her purse, leaving
the thirty-two and the boxes of She pushed the Mercedes up to seventy,
and other cars passed her, so she was confident that she would not be
pulled over by a patrol car even in the unlikely event that one
appeared.
She recalled a roadside rest stop with public facilities about thirty
miles ahead. She could wait to use that bathroom. As for food, she was
not going to risk malnutrition merely by postponing dinner until she got
to Vegas.
Since coming through the El Cajon Pass, she had noticed that the number
and size of the clouds were increasing, and the farther she drove into
the Mojave, the more somber the heavens became. Itreviously the clouds
had been all white, then white with pale gray beards, and now they were
primarily gray with slate-dark streaks. The desert enjoyed little
precipitation, but during the summer the skies could sometimes open as
if in reenactment of the biblical story of Noah, sending forth a deluge
that the barren earth was unprepared to absorb. For the majority of its
course, the interstate was built above the runoff line, but here and
there road signs warned FLASH FLOODS. She was not particularly worried
about being caught in a flood. However, she was concerned that a hard
rain would slow her down considerably, and she was eager to make Vegas
by six-fifteen or six-thirty.
She would not feel half safe until she was settled in Benny’s shuttered
motel. And she would not feel entirely safe until he was with her, the
drapes drawn, the world locked out.