O l i v e r B e n j a m i n
Victoria. I didn’t know. Dammit, I was only doing my job.”
Victoria listened carefully. Pure minor tones. She let him stew for
a while until he finally grumbled angrily, “Well, what do you think?
Do you think it’s
my
sin?”
“Well, I’ll tell you something darlin’. My daddy used to say this to
me: ‘Victoria,’ he would say, ‘There are two types of people in this
world—liars, and those who lie about not bein’ liars.’ That’s why I
think every time someone confesses something when there’s nothing
to gain from confessing, they’ve taken just a little step closer to God.
On the other hand, people who refuse to acknowledge their mistakes,
well, it’s no use trying to paint a pretty picture when all you got is
black paint.”
The trucker didn’t know what to say. “First off—you calling me a
liar?” he asked, “And second off—what the
hell
are you talking about,
Victoria?”
“Oh, never mind. Finish your drink, Cleatus. Beer doesn’t get any
stronger with age,” she said, and thought to herself:
Yeah, just like a
soft old hooker’s heart.
•
Harvey woke up early and stumbled out of bed. Shuffling over to the
window, he stared out into the great bleak desert in front of him, and
his sleepy gaze meandered over the hardscrabble desert sagebrush.
Righteous and determined, it all just lay there patiently waiting for
the rain to come. But the rain would never come. Nothing would
come. That was why it was called the desert. Harvey wasn’t sure
exactly what part the desert it was, not that it mattered, only that it
was somewhere east of L.A. and west of Arizona. Somewhere in the
middle of the Mojave.
He hadn’t planned to go this far. He had driven to Pasadena to
visit Dr. Fu Ling, his old mentor at Cal Tech, to ask for advice Harvey
had figured that Ling would have known what to do about the mess
he made, how to repair the damage that his work engendered. He
remembered his former teacher as a man of action, while he, on the
contrary, had spent his whole life in purely academic pursuits. Now
Harvey’s highly specific training in the field of Biotechnology
couldn’t provide him with any suggestions on how to handle this
much more immediate and personal problem. Going to the cops
would be pointless, as he couldn’t prove anything he saw, and he felt
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