The Museum of Intangible Things by Wendy Wunder

Author:Wendy Wunder
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2014-04-10T00:00:00+00:00

BELIEF

I can’t tell if Zoe is paranoid or cautious, but she keeps looking behind us, as if we’re being followed.

“I feel like we saw that Honda CRV in the Bronx,” she says.

“I’m sure there are a lot of Honda CRVs in the Bronx. Why do you think it’s that one?”

“My dear, who’s had some run-ins with the law? You or me?”

“Is it run-ins or runs-in?”

“Who’s had some runs-in with the law?”

“Okay, you,” I say. If you count getting caught by a cop fooling around with Jimmy Russo in the closet of the Municipal Building during her shift at Safe Ride a “run-in.” Safe Ride was cancelled for good after that, in the interest of safe sex.

Zoe puts on some fingerless leather gloves and switches to high gear. “I can smell a pig from a mile away,” she says.

“I don’t like calling them ‘pigs,’” I say. “They’re heroes, actually. They are like your mom. They have to treat everyone with respect and dignity. They learn that. The good ones. The good ones are not too quick to judge people.” I could see Danny as a cop one day, I think. He has the heart for it.

“Oh my god, you are so naïve. There are bad cops.”

“And there are good cops.”

“Well, good or bad, we have to ditch this one,” she says, taking some hairpin turns through the woods at sixty miles per hour and on two wheels.

I turn around and try to find who she thinks is following us, but I don’t see any headlights. “What color is the car?” I ask her.

“White,” she says. “He’s about a quarter mile behind us. Ask Squirrely. He knows, right, Squirrely?”

She has strapped Squirrely into the backseat with a seatbelt and adorned him with Officer Franz’s aviators.

She continues driving, somehow keeping the rain cloud in her line of vision above her, while keeping an eye in the rearview. She hasn’t looked straight ahead in five miles.

“Zo,” I say. “Zoe, no one’s back there.”

“Okay,” she says with a breath. “We lost them. We need to hide, though, be more careful,” she says, downshifting. She turns left into a Walmart parking lot. “No one will find us here. We’ll blend.”

The cloud that she seems to be chasing is building on top of itself into a towering thunderhead that sits on top of Walmart like a hat.

It’s three in the morning, and people are lined up around the store in pop tents in what looks like a very narrow refugee camp.

I look through the passenger window, mouth agape. “What the . . . ?”

“Welcome to Black Friday, my sweet,” Zoe says.

“What are we doing here? You hate Walmart,” I say.

“Well, it’s a safe place to spend the night, and we should probably get some clean clothes.”

I don’t say a thing. I just watch the happy campers walk back and forth sharing coupons with one another.

“Go back to sleep,” says Zoe. “They don’t open the doors for another hour or two.”

It seems like only two minutes, though, before Zoe wakes me up.

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