The morning sun burned mercilessly out of a cloudless sky; it threw Escher shadows in front of buildings and blinded the mass of commuters stranded, unmoving, on the long expanse of I-40.
"Salmon," Glibspet said to Mindenhall as he maneuvered the Lincoln deftly from one side street to another and the interstate passed from view.
"What?" Mindenhall asked irritably. He hadn't had his morning coffee, and Glibspet knew he resented being put in a position where he had to make some actual response to conversation.
"Salmon," Glibspet repeated. "They come to the same river year after year, fight their way upstream, spawn and die." I-40 came back into view, and he waved down at the stalled traffic. "No one knows why they do it, or how, for that matter."
Mindenhall raised his sunglasses and rubbed his eyes. "Tradition, I suppose," he said, "or maybe they want a better life for their kids, something safer than growing up in the deeps."
"But the species would probably survive better in the deeps," Glibspet said. "Plenty of fish do. And people would be just as happy—probably happier—living in caves and barbecuing the odd mammoth. No hour drive just to get back-stabbed by office politics; no having to be nice to idiots on the phone all day. What makes them do it?" His eyes caught a morning jogger and her dog coming out of a neatly manicured yard. They both deserved more attention than he could give them with Craig in the car. He made a note of the address.
Mindenhall sucked his lower lip pensively. It was a sensuous mannerism, and enough to turn Glibspet's attention away from the heart-shaped ass dwindling in his (aptly named) rearview mirror. He had big plans for today and Craig. "I don't buy it," Mindenhall said finally, substituting conviction for caffeine. "The happy savage thing is a myth. People aren't salmon, and we have the God-given imperative to ask Why?—about everything. Sometimes it leads us into traffic jams, but it doesn't keep us there forever, and along the way we get the science to raise our kids without plague, and the art to make it important to us."
"You haven't watched network television lately, have you?" Glibspet asked.
Mindenhall waved the objection away. "A detour," he said, "like the traffic jams. They'll both be gone in fifty years. We'll always have dumb people—the mammoth hunters who can't see what good a bunch of seeds could do—but those 'happy savages' are in the Devil's playground, not God's. The rest of us will keep asking Why?" He paused for a second. "Which reminds me," he said. "Why am I here?"
Glibspet turned into the parking lot of a nondescript stripmall. Brown's Realty was sandwiched between Borchert's Day Care and Redpath Spediprint. He cut the engine. "That's a big question," he replied.
"You know what I mean," Mindenhall said. "I don't see why it takes two of us to ask a real estate agent some questions."
"Because we're going as a couple," Glibspet said patiently. "We want to know things that, strictly speaking, are none of our business. A gay couple in North Carolina is either going to make the agent so nervous that he won't think twice about what we're actually talking about, or if we actually somehow get a gay agent, so friendly that he'll tell us whatever we want to know." He opened the door and got out. "Just remember to pat my hand occasionally, and call me honey."
Mindenhall grinned. "You're a wicked man, Dom," he said. "Shall I swish?"
Glibspet grinned back. "Maybe," he said, "just a little."
In fact the Realtor was neither gay, nor a man. She was a short, plump woman with streaks of gray in her hair and more than a little makeup on her cheeks. On her desk, a Bible sat next to a small Elvis snow globe with blue flakes. She was staring into it now, as if the King might start making snow angels any second. Glibspet didn't think she had looked directly at them since the first time Craig had taken his hand. "Well this one just looks darling," Mindenhall said, pointing at a blurry photo in the agency's listing brochure. "Don't you think so, honey?" He stroked Glibspet's hand again. The agent caught the motion from the corner of her eye and shuddered. She swirled the snow globe frantically, leaving the King all shook up.
"I don't know, Craig," Glibspet responded. "I wonder what the karma there is. You know I can't sleep in a room where anything bad happened." The house had been owned by one of Glibspet's prospects, someone too obscure for even a newspaper obit. "Gayle," he asked, "can you tell us about the house? Were they nice people who lived there? What happened to them?"
Gayle looked up from the blizzard briefly. Mindenhall caught her eye, blew her an elaborate kiss and winked. Glibspet thought it was a bit over the top, but it was effective. Gayle hunched over in her chair—trying to expose the smallest surface area possible to them, perhaps—and started to babble.
"Such a nice woman," she said quickly, "and they say it was a very gentle death." Under Elvis's watchful eyes, she gave a complete nonstop rundown on three generations of the house's owners, replete with local gossip.
It was clear to Glibspet nearly from the start that he could mark this one off his list, but Gayle seemed oblivious to any of his visual cues of waning interest. She wasn't really talking to him anyway, and the King wasn't going to stop her. "Oh no, I'm afraid it's just not us, Craig," he said finally, rising to his feet. "It's just too, I don't know, neo-quasi-retro, don't you think?"
"Absolutely," Mindenhall agreed, taking his cue, "much too." He stood also. "Thank you, Gayle," he said, "but it just doesn't complement our modal harmony." He put his arm around Glibspet, and they walked to the door together. Behind them, Elvis was having a Blue Christmas—probably thinking about his grandchildren.
They made several more stops, none of them as much fun as the first, and none of them productive. Early morning led into lunch at The Flying Burrito, which segued into a long busy afternoon and a full supper at Angelo's. Mindenhall was laughing as they went back out into the parking lot. Glibspet was being as urbane and witty as he knew how, and he had made it a point to ply Craig with as much of the excellent Italian red as he would take. While by no means drunk, he leaned now on Glibspet's arm from time to time for guidance. Glibspet himself was playing the model designated driver, and had had nothing but coffee.
"Shit," Glibspet said as the Lincoln came into view.
The front and rear left tires were completely flat and the big car listed visibly to the side.
Mindenhall let go Glibspet's arm. "Oh, hell," he said and walked over to the car. Touching the hood for balance, he circled around to the far side. "These look fine," he reported. "What could we have hit?"
Glibspet knelt by the front tire and inspected it. "Look at this," he called. When Mindenhall came around and crouched beside him, he pointed to a single neat hole high up in the sidewall of the tire. "I'll bet the back's the same," he said. "Someone, teenagers probably, had nothing better to do with their evening."
Mindenhall got up and sat on the hood, his legs dangling over the useless wheel. "Well," he sighed, "now what?"
Glibspet considered. "I'm not going to call a tow truck for flat tires," he said. "It's not worth it. There's a Western Auto in that plaza over there." He pointed across the street. "I'll put on the spare in the morning, then roll the other one over there and let them patch it."
Mindenhall drummed his heels on the crumpled whitewall. "And what about tonight?"
"Well, we can pay outrageous taxi bills, or we can get a room over there." There was a small motel about a block down the street, where a flickering sign proclaimed Bob's Dr p Inn.
Mindenhall looked doubtful, "Well, I don't know—" he started to say then stopped himself. "A room, you said?"
Glibspet spread his arms and shrugged expressively. "Yeah," he said quietly. "It's been a good day, hasn't it? Maybe something's trying to tell us it doesn't have to end yet."
Mindenhall drew himself up straight and sat silently for a moment. "You're right," he said finally and hopped off the car. "I think I'd like that."
"I would too," Glibspet said. "I keep a shaving kit in the trunk. Let me get that, then I'm set." As the opened trunk blocked him from Mindenhall's view, Glibspet reached into his pocket, took out his Swiss Army knife and laid it down in a corner. The black rubber stains on the awl blade would be hard to explain.