Page 58 of Our Last Resort

And she was never afraid to help.

We came back. The following weekend, and every weekend after that.

Joan gave us our first taste of soda (Sprite, with a lemon slice). One afternoon, she slid a plate in front of us—yellow triangles covered in mashed avocado, cheese, and diced tomatoes.

“You ever had nachos?”

I shook my head. Gabriel leaned back on his stool, away from the food.

“We can’t pay for this,” he said.

Joan smiled. She seemed venerably old to us, but looking back, she couldn’t have been more than twenty-three.

“On the house,” she said.

Every bite of food, every sip of soda, was heaven and hell. Fleeting pleasure, then guilt like a heavy blanket.

One afternoon, pointing to the bar’s TV, Joan taught us about baseball. We were Yankees fans, she informed us. She explained the rules multiple times, in vain.

“Maybe it’s like foreign languages,” she said. “Maybe it’s harder to learn when you’re not a little kid.”

Regularly, she tried to give us things—better clothes, extra food to take with us.

“I know,” she said. “I know you can’t bring anything back. I just can’t help asking.”

Years later, I would read Joan’s name in an online tabloid article. In her early thirties, she had moved to another small town in the Hudson Valley. There, she worked at a convenience store by day and played in a Rolling Stones tribute band by night. According to the article, Joan had been identified as one of the victims of a local serial killer, newly arrested.

An obituary mentioned Joan’s love of music, her work ethic, her generosity. I wished I could have added to it. Wished I could have told the world that, in her younger years, Joan gave two children their first experience of kindness.

Joan taught us, gently, one glass of soda at a time, that the outside world didn’t have to be scary. That there were wonders awaiting us.

21Escalante, Utah

The Sixth Day

We meet our fellow hikers in the lobby.

“Let’s head out as soon as possible,” our guide, a young man with long legs and a straw hat, says in a good-natured voice. “We don’t want to give the sun more of a head start than it already has.”

Gabriel and I have each grabbed a bottle of water from the minibar, a small preventative measure against the desert’s heat.

Our guide, who introduces himself as “I’m Ethan, by the way,” leads us to the hotel’s exit. We follow him onto the flatland that surrounds the compound: dirt and bitterbrush, mountains in the distance.

Fabio and Lazlo have joined the hike. Ditto the influencers and theSVUactor. The dad is here, too, though his wife and kids appear to have stayed at the pool.

“One day, this could be automated,” the dad tells Ethan as we head toward the mountains.

“What? The hike?”

“Well, not the hiking part. But the guiding. All you’ll have to do is think about where you want to go, and the algorithm will show you the best itinerary. If you get into trouble, your phone will call 911 right away. It’ll be so much more efficient.”

Oh, shut up.

It’s so hot that my thoughts melt before I can fully form them. I focus on the hypnotic pace of our collective steps, left, right, left, right, sweat trickling down my back, my calves straining as we start up our first hill.

“It’s not just hikes,” the dad tells Ethan once we’ve reached the main hiking trail. “Most processes could benefit from automation. Even”—he glances back in the direction of the hotel—“murder investigations. Just imagine what AI could do if you put all the evidence into a computer. It could come up with a list of theories, rank them by likelihood. Imagine how much more efficient the court system would be.”

I need to get away from this guy. From all of them.

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