Lexicon

said. “He just agreed to trade vehicles.”
    “Yeah.” Tom took a moment to check traffic, and then accelerated onto the slip road. He dug in his coat pocket with one hand. “He also threw in this cell phone.”
    Wil looked at it. “Did he.”
    “Yeah,” said Tom. “To sweeten the deal.”
    • • •
    They reentered the freeway. It was Cecilia’s birthday next week. Wil had been putting off going shopping. “Just give me money,” she’d said, and he’d been thinking maybe he would, because she was so hard to buy for. But he might have thought of something. He still had a week. He might have found exactly what she wanted.
    He remembered Rain standing in the middle of the road. The strange words she had spat through bloodstained teeth. The short man putting the gun to his own chin. He didn’t understand any of that. Maybe Tom was a serial killer, or a terrorist, or a covert government agent, or something else, but whatever he was, he must want something. Wil had to go shopping.
    “Where are we going?”
    Tom didn’t answer.
    “Who was that girl?”
    The truck hummed. The tires sluiced through wet road.
    “Why did your friend shoot himself?”
    “Shut up,” said Tom. “I’m not talking to you.”
    “You came and got me. You must want me for something.”
    “It’s not conversation.”
    “Then what?”
    Tom was silent.
    “Why did he call her a poet? Your friend said, ‘I nailed a poet.’”
    Tom dug the cell phone out of his pocket. He thumbed a number and stuck the phone under one ear. “It’s me. Where are you?” Wil watched the dashboard figurine bobble. “I’m clear. Brecht didn’t make it.” There was silence. “Because
Wolf
. Because Wolf fucking turned up five seconds after we made contact.” Wil heard a tinny voice squawk from the phone, male but unfamiliar. “Well, fuck! Whose fucking fault is that? Just tell me where you can meet. I want to get off the road.” He exhaled. “Fine. We’ll be there.” He dropped the phone into his pocket.
    “Who’s Wolf?” said Wil.
    “A bad person,” said Tom. “A bad, bad person.”
    “Like Rain?”
    “Yes.”
    “Is Wolf a poet, too?”
    “Yup,” said Tom, overtaking.
    “And when you say
poet
,” Wil said, since Tom seemed to be answering questions, “is that like the name of their organization, or do you mean—”
    “I mean she’s good with words,” Tom said. “Now shut up.”
    “I’m just trying to understand.”
    “You don’t need to understand. You need to sit there and not do anything stupid while I take care of you. That’s what you need. Look, I get that it’s been a confusing night. And now you’re all,
But how is that possible
, and,
Why did he do that
. But I’m not going to answer those questions, Wil, because you don’t have the framework to comprehend the answers. You’re like a kid asking how I can see him even though he’s closed his eyes. Just accept that this is happening.”
    “Can you give me the framework?”
    “No,” said Tom. “Shut up.”
    He was silent. “Why did you shoot that girl?”
    “I had to.”
    “She was just lying there,” Wil said. “She was already half-dead.”
    “She was dangerous, lying there, half-dead.”
    Wil said nothing.
    “Okay,” Tom said. “You hear about that bad nightclub fire in Rome a couple months back? Bunch of people died? That was Rain. And she did it because she thought one of those people might be you.”
    “Rain wanted to kill me?”
    “Yes.”
    “Why?”
    “Because eighteen months ago you survived something you shouldn’t have.”
    “In Broken Hill?”
    “Yes.”
    “I don’t remember that.”
    “No.”
    “What was it?”
    “What?”
    “The thing that should have killed me.”
    “Something bad,” Tom said. “Which shouldn’t have got out.”
    “You mean chemicals? People died in a chemical spill in Broken Hill eighteen months ago.”
    “Sure. Chemicals.”
    “So why do you care?”
    “Because it’s out again.”
    “And I can stop it?”
    “Yes.”
    “That doesn’t make sense.”
    “That’s because it’s not really chemicals,” Tom said.
    “Is it a word?”
    Tom looked at him.
    “Earlier, in the snow, you were interested in something I said about words. And you said Wolf and Rain are poets because they’re good with words.”
    Tom was silent. “Okay. It’s a word.”
    “Which should have killed me.”
    “Yes.”
    “I don’t understand how it can be a word.”
    “That’s because you don’t know