ARE YOU MOVING YET?
Janine nearly laughs when she reads the text. What a geek. It’s the stilted formality of someone so outside the norm of modern world communication. Not: R U moving? Or: allgood? Or: cool?
They’ve got a veritable Boy Scout running Operation End-of-the-Earth. An increasingly desperate Boy Scout.
Janine pulls over. She texts back: check. She thinks: I’ll see your arcane, 20th-century vernacular, and raise you.
She breathes deeply, metabolizing chaos. Changing plans, a new checklist: get the bearded Jew, but first, strike against the infidel. With her hands. What she was born to do or, maybe, shaped to do. Nature, nurture. A foolish distinction. All part of the big plan.
She sees a sign for underground parking. Can’t risk getting caught in there, having the car encased, or so easily found by the cops, should it come to that. Then she sees a space on the street, just behind her. She puts the car in reverse and speeds to the opening, narrowly beating a car coming the other direction—the correct direction. Its driver pounds the horn. The driver pulls alongside Janine. The car’s window rolls down. The driver, a student in a hooded sweatshirt, says: WhatTheFuck. Janine rolls down the window of her aging Toyota. She smiles at the young man and shrugs, then, still smiling, nearly flirtatious, channels her go-to thought: your flesh will soon burn. The young man flinches, and he drives away.
A parking spot. In Berkeley, in the rain. You take your miraculous signs where you can get them, Janine thinks. Her grim purpose confirmed. The chaos be damned.