Read Noise for Free Online Page B

shoulder, jammed her into the stance. Made her stand and stare. We were three, now. “Stop thinking,” I said to her.
    She swallowed.
    “Does she have special needs?”
    “Like what?”
    “Medical.”
    “No. I don’t … no.”
    “Dietary?”
    Mary shook her head. She looked down.
    “Look, Mary. You have to look. Later, you can look away.”
    She lifted her chin. We were scared. We were standing stiff. Centripetally locked. Now, with someone on each side, there was nowhere else to look. Before, Adam and I had looked away.…
Look twice…
. Before we knew how important the look would be. Now we were geometric.…
Move once…
. Trigonometric. Algorithmic. The science of sharing burdens.
    “If you’re going to help her,” Levi said, “you have to help Hiram. Do everything you’re told. Make her do everything she’s told.”
    “Okay.”
    “Do not correct the operation.”
    Her eyes were like Adam’s, back outside the grocery store, drawing in what would flow downstream. Into our own Charybdis. Into the coffer in the mud at the back of the field.
    Mary put on her jacket. Zipped it up. She capped her head with the kerchief. When Levi finished repainting my face, he handed the tin of polish to me, to use on Mary.
    She stopped my hand. “Do you have white?”
    Levi headed for the laundry room.
    “I will be white.”
    I went to get a different shirt. For her mask. Mary stood, lit by the black-and-white on one side, by the digital on the other. Standing. We hadn’t told her to move yet.
    •   •   •

    We couldn’t risk the truck—we would need it later. Mary’s had four doors, which meant two extra risks, so we’d use mine.
    Levi corked the last cocktail and handed it to Mary. She had four cradled in her arms. Rag-tongued wine bottles filled with oil and gasoline. We couldn’t smell the fumes through our masks. We checked the walkie-talkies, which we’d bought, legitimately, from the Army/Navy Store next to Meyer’s. Months ago. We would switch channels, up to the next prime number. Up to the top, then back again. Only on cue and cue-back. The radios were for the Evacuation. We hadn’t planned other operations pre-Evac. I had a crib sheet in my pocket.
    Mary adjusted her burden.
    “Everyone between us and Ruth is our enemy.”
    Gunning the engine is a daydream. It is sunroofs, waxed paint, and artificial slick on the wheels. It is a better sound system, with deeper bass than the tinny stock setup you have now. It is a girl in the next seat, wearing a cross expression. For now, she is freebasing on your adrenaline, on the
nothing will happen
that counterbalances her better sense. Later, you will be the boyfriend who is stupid and troglodytic, with an affinity for the accelerator she doesn’t understand. A boyfriend who is too easily jealous, who gets angry for idiotic reasons. A pulp thriller she can read to her friends, who will share the mythic disdain. But for now, you’re her ticket out, out, out because who the fuck understands anything anyway? Who the fuck knows the zeitgeist but her?
    •   •   •

    …
Do not render aid to Outsiders…
.
    Gunning the engine is rendering aid to Outsiders. Because you go your own way carefully. It’s the Outsiders, with the exotic needs, whose ways must go in fire and exhaust, in peripheral stare-downs with too-close drivers in other cars. Nerves of steel and cool. To be the one who can do
the thing
.
    …
Remain in your vehicle as long as possible…
.
    It is a synaptic equation, going fast. It’s the press, the delay, the calculated explosions under the hood. Even alone, driving to the same somewhere as always, gunning is always what it
could
be. The rehearsal, the performance. A mastery of escapes, races, demolition. The stories in your head.…
The journey is only a synaptic ribbon…
. Of being the guy with the fast car. The music and the bloodstream. The stories you can never finish before you think another thought. Before another thought