KEVIN AND George watched families, the wired and tired citizens of suburban California, arriving at and leaving Red Robin. Kevin was thinking how their lives were so completely different than his. George, he suspected, was thinking of how their cushy lives would end, and soon.
“How many have you picked up?” Kevin asked.
“Eh?”
“People like me. Deserters.”
George grinned. “Deserters. I like that.”
“So?”
“So I took three deserters somewhere this morning, crack of dawn. When I called you I’d just gotten back.”
“We’re going to the same place?”
“Nope.”
“Where?”
George’s smile slipped away, and for the first time Kevin felt a twinge of worry. “You’ll find out. All right?”
“A man just likes to know.”
In answer, George turned on the radio, releasing a blast of fuzzy speed metal, then scanned until he reached 90.9, the local NPR station. Florida representative Diane Trumble had announced five subpoenas in the Plains Capital–IfW investigation, dragnetting two CEOs, a chief operating officer, and two general managers. “Hearings are being set up for after the August recess, and Representative Hanes and I look forward to having our questions answered fully and honestly.”
“Preach it, sister,” George said; then both men listened as a newscaster told them of an unverified report from Nigeria, that a girls’ school had been attacked by Boko Haram, the Islamic extremist group that had, only three years ago, kidnapped nearly three hundred girls from another school in Chibok.
“There she is,” George said, switching off the radio and nodding at a blond woman—twenty-five, maybe, with a fat purse on her shoulder—leaving the restaurant. Jeans, a black polo, and a short black waitress’s apron. A Red Robin name tag identified her in big letters as TRACEY. George got out to meet her, and Kevin watched through the windshield. She was distraught, her hands fluttering. When George whispered to her, she nodded, then shook her head vigorously and raised her voice. “I’m not going back in there!”
George put a hand on her shoulder; she flinched, so he removed it. After he’d said a few more words, she nodded again and opened her bag. From it she removed her phone and wallet and held them out to him. He shook his head—he didn’t want to touch them. Instead, he pointed. She was going to have to do this herself. Dejected, she crossed the parking lot, back toward Red Robin, and dumped them in an outside trashcan as a sated trucker left the restaurant, picking at his mouth with a toothpick and staring at her.
George looked back through the windshield at Kevin and winked.
Tracey turned to leave, then hesitated and took off her name tag and apron and threw them away as well. George folded his seat forward so she could get in the back. She tossed her heavy purse in before her, then as she climbed in glanced at Kevin and said, “Hey.”
“Hey,” he answered. When she settled back into her seat, he read the words embroidered on the shoulder of her black shirt:
HONOR
INTEGRITY
SEEKING KNOWLEDGE
HAVING FUN
As George got in behind the wheel, she said, “Give a lady some warning next time, okay?”
“Gotta be this way,” he answered as he started the car. “Them’s the rules.”
She sighed loudly and looked out the side window.
Voice bright with enthusiasm, George said, “We ready?”
“Been for fucking ever,” Tracey said.