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seatbelt. Besides that, he’d brought his iPhone, which was currently hooked up to the car’s stereo via an auxiliary cable and playing all the songs he normally couldn’t play when Nicky was in the vehicle (rock music with what she called
whiney
lead singers).
    It was at this point that the phone rang, cutting out the music and replacing it with the ringtone selected for Nicky’s calls: “piano riff.” He rolled his eyes, not so much at the fact that it was Nicky calling, but more so that he had been enjoying the music—Thom Yorke was whining away on “Reckoner”—and hated to have it interrupted.
    “Hey,” he said.
    “Hi. Where are you?” she said.
    “Honestly, I don’t even know where I am. I’m officially nowhere.”
    “How long until you get there?”
    “About thirty miles,” he said.
    Nicole paused, and Edward wasn’t sure why until she said, “Just how fast have you been driving, Edward?”
    He realized that during the brief silence she’d calculated his speed based on when he’d left and how far he had to go. She was good.
    “There’s nobody around, hon. I figured I could cut time off the trip,” he said, then added, melodically, “so I could get home to you sooner.”
    A pronounced sigh was followed by Nicole saying, “Just be careful, you don’t have to go exactly the speed limit, just not, you know, a million kilometres …”
    Abruptly, he heard a familiar two beeps through the speakers, which meant the call had been dropped. Thom Yorke cut back in, and Edward was thrilled to hear him. He glanced down at the iPhone, saw there were no bars, and realized he was on a stretch of road where the cell phone connection was tenuous at best. He remembered the area and figured the reception would remain like this. Why would there be good reception in the first place? Who even drove in this area? He’d asked similar questions the last time he’d been through these parts with Nicole, when they were on their way to Jeff’s funeral. Edward had wondered why Jeff wanted to get buried in such a secluded area. To Edward, people who got buried in places like that either didn’t like anybody or thought nobody liked them, plain and simple. Nicole had rolled her eyes. “Or you just like the quiet,” she’d said. That could’ve been it, too. Lord knows, there was nothing but quiet out there.
    He settled into the comforts of the road: the long stretch of highway with its languid curves, the white-noise lullaby of the rubber tires against asphalt and the accompanying, pleasantly soothing vibrations, and the promise of the horizon, how it appeared close enough to catch but never got closer. It made Edward feel as though the trip could be infinite. Then, suddenly, his iPhone notified him of two missed calls and a voice-mail message. The voice mail played back as follows: “Ed, it’s me, I know you probably lost service, but you also could’ve run off the road or something, which I shouldn’t be telling you, of course, considering your tendency to … well, never mind … crap … could you just call me as soon as you can?” He dialled Nicky and, as the phone rang, slowed to a compromising speed of 110 km/h.
    “Hello?” she said upon answering the phone.
    “Considering my what, exactly?” he said, but knew damn well she was about to talk about his “problem.”
    “All I meant was that I didn’t
intend
to give you anything more to worry about, because …”
    “Because I worry about everything.”
    “Well, you do. You
know
you do.”
    “I do not worry about
everything,”
he said. He did worry about many things, but certainly not every single thing he could potentially worry about.
    “Okay, Ed, have you finished your ham sandwich yet?”
    “My ham … no, but it’s not even lunch.”
    “It’s five after one.”
    He checked his clock, and mouthed “damn it” when he saw that she was correct, to the minute even: 1:05 PM.
    “You know lunch isn’t
only
at noon. People do eat at different