UR

you useless bitch! Get a life and stop fucking up other peoples’! You’re going to kill people! Do you understand that? You are going to fucking KILL people! ”
    He slapped her a third time, the sound as loud as a pistol-shot. She staggered back against the side of the building, weeping and holding her hands up to protect her face. Blood trickled down her chin. Their shadows, turned into elongated gantries by the neon bird, winked off and on.
    He raised his hand to slap a fourth time—better to slap than to choke, which was what he really wanted to do—but Robbie grabbed him from behind and wrestled him away. “Stop it! That’s enough!”
    The bartender and a couple of goofy-looking patrons were now standing in the doorway, gawking. Candy Rymer had slid down to a sitting position. She was weeping hysterically, her hands pressed to her swelling face. “Why does everyone hate me?” she sobbed. “Why is everyone so goddam mean?”
    Wesley looked at her dully, the anger out of him. What replaced it was a kind of hopelessness. You would say that a drunk driver who caused the deaths of at least eleven people had to be evil, but there was no evil here. Only a sobbing alkie sitting on the cracked, weedy concrete of a country roadhouse parking lot. A woman who, if the off-and-on light of the stuttering rooster did not lie, had wet her pants.
    “You can get the person but you can’t get the evil,” Wesley said. “The evil always survives. Isn’t that a bitch. Just a total bitch.”
    “Yeah, I’m sure, but come on. Before they get a really good look at you.”
    Robbie was leading him back to the Malibu. Wesley went as docilely as a child. He was trembling. “The evil always survives, Robbie. In all the Urs. Remember that.”
    “You bet, absolutely. Give me the keys. I’ll drive.”
    “ Hey! ” someone shouted from behind them. “Why in the hell did you beat up that woman? She wasn’t doing nothing to you! Come back here!”
    Robbie pushed Wesley into the car, ran around the hood, threw himself behind the wheel, and drove away fast. He kept the pedal down until the stuttering rooster disappeared, then eased up. “What now?”
    Wesley ran a hand over his eyes. “I’m sorry I did that,” he said. “And yet I’m not. Do you understand?”
    “Yeah,” Robbie said. “You bet. It was for Coach Silverman. And Josie too.” He smiled. “My little mousie.”
    Wesley nodded.
    “So where do we go? Home?”
    “Not yet,” Wesley said.
    .
     
     
     
    They parked on the edge of a cornfield near the intersection of Route 139 and Highway 80, two miles west of Cadiz. They were early, and Wesley used the time to fire up the pink Kindle. When he tried to access UR LOCAL, he was greeted by a somehow unsurprising message: THIS SERVICE NO LONGER AVAILABLE.
    “Probably for the best,” he said.
    Robbie turned toward him. “Say what?”
    “Nothing. It doesn’t matter.” He put the Kindle back in his briefcase.
    “Wes?”
    “What, Robbie?”
    “Did we break the Paradox Laws?”
    “Undoubtedly,” Wes said. And with some satisfaction.
    At five to nine, they heard honking and saw lights. They got out of the Malibu and stood in front of it, waiting. Wesley observed that Robbie’s hands were clenched, and was glad he himself wasn’t the only one still afraid that Candy Rymer might still somehow appear.
    Headlights breasted the nearest hill. It was the bus, followed by a dozen cars filled with Lady Meerkat supporters, all honking deliriously and flashing their high beams off and on. As the bus passed, Wesley heard young female voices singing “We Are the Champions” and felt a chill race up his back and lift the hair on his neck.
    He raised his hand and waved.
    Beside him, Robbie did the same. Then he turned to Wesley, smiling. “What do you say, Prof? Want to join the parade?”
    Wesley clapped him on the shoulder. “That sounds like a damn fine idea.”
    When the last of the cars had passed, Robbie got in line. Like the others, he honked and flashed his lights all the way back to Moore.
    Wesley didn’t mind.
    VII—The Paradox Police
     
    When Robbie got out in front of Susan and Nan’s (where LADY MEERKATS RULE had been soaped on the window), Wesley said, “Wait a sec.”
    He came around the front of the car and embraced the kid. “You did good.”
    “Ungrammatical but appreciated.” Robbie wiped at his eyes, then grinned. “Does this mean I get a gift A for the semester?”
    “Nope, just some