Lexicon

which would have made zero difference to the incident that inspired them. This isn’t an accident; this happens because to people at the top, the scariest thing is how many people there are below. They need to watch us. They need to monitor what we’re thinking. It’s the only thing between them and a guillotine. Every time something like this happens, anytime there’s death and fear and people demanding action, to them that’s an opportunity.

[THREE]
    One coffee shop in Broken Hill didn’t have a view of the quarry. This was what Eliot had ascertained after three months of study: that the town offered coffee at five different locations and four stared at the quarry. He patronized the fifth. It wasn’t that the quarry was ugly—although it was, deeply and thoroughly—but rather that it was everywhere. The town streets were wide, its buildings well spaced, the land as flat as any he’d seen, and this made it impossible to remain unaware of the forty-foot battlement of desiccated dirt and shattered stone that stood like a rib cage at the town’s core. He kept taking it for a wave, a great rolling crest of vomited earth about to engulf the town. Which it was, in a sense; wind and erosion and the constant addition of new mullock must push it a little closer every year. Given time, it would swallow everything. This would be a serious improvement. That was another thing Eliot had ascertained, while waiting here in case Woolf showed up.
    He sipped coffee and browsed the
Barrier Daily Truth
, an eighteen-page newspaper that came out weekly. This edition was leading with “Fifty Years of Happiness,” a story about an elderly married couple. Eliot read it twice, searching for the part that was always missing in these kinds of articles, namely, how the hell that was possible. He was genuinely unsure whether these idyllic unions existed or people merely pretended because the alternative was so unpalatable. Every time he thought he’d settled on the latter, he would see something like this, “Fifty Years of Happiness,” and start to wonder.
    These were loose thoughts, of course.
    His phone rang. He folded the paper. “Yes?”
    “She’s here. Coming down the Barrier Highway. White sedan. Alone.”
    “You’re sure?”
    “Got a lot of technology here, Eliot.”
    “Yes. Thank you. How long?”
    “Thirty minutes.”
    “Thank you. I’ll take it from here.” He tossed a few bills onto the table, left the coffee shop, and walked to his car. Once the engine was running and the air conditioner moving, he made a few short calls. Just to confirm that everyone was where they were supposed to be. It had been three months since Woolf had fled Washington with a stolen word; everything that needed to be in place already was. But still. When it was done, he put the car into gear and drove toward the wall of mullock.
    • • •
    He drove about a mile out of town and parked his car to block the road. It was symbolic: Woolf would have no trouble steering around him. The idea was that seeing him would impress upon her the futility of continuing.
    He climbed out and waited against the car. It was winter, supposedly. A rush of birds passed overhead, filling the air with their grating calls. Cockatoos. At dawn, the noise was incredible. Like the whole world was tearing apart. He was sleeping in a motel and one night woke to find an insect the size of his palm on the pillow. He didn’t even know what it was. He had never seen anything like it.
    He felt an urge to call Brontë. He had been thinking about her again. It was this assignment: too much time, too much waiting. It was Woolf. Watching her kick down the walls planted the thought in his head that it could be done.
Call Brontë
, he thought.
Right. Ask how she’s doing. No reason. Just felt like a chat
.
    They had been students together, almost twenty years ago, attending the school that she now ran. He still remembered the bounce of her hair the day she’d come to class, the books clutched to her chest, the angle of her nose. He’d basically fallen in love with her on the spot. Well, no, that wasn’t accurate; that implied a binary state, a shifting from not-love to love, remaining static thereafter, and what he’d done with Brontë was fall and fall, increasingly faster the closer they drew, like planets drawn to each other’s gravitational force. Doomed, he guessed, the same way.
    They’d held out a long time. Years? It felt like years. But maybe not. They had