Page 11 of Consumed
Con went inside too, reaching the bathroom just as Molina headed to the counter. “Whattaya want?” Molina bellowed.
It felt as if every person in the building turned to stare at Con, who desperately wanted to shrivel into nothingness. But Molina was waiting, so Con said something about a Big Mac and hurried into the privacy of the bathroom. Washing his hands a few moments later, he caught sight of his reflection in the mirror and sighed. Yeah, if he’d been one of those customers, he would have been tempted to stare too.
They ate in the car. Con tried to remember the last time he’d had a meal with anyone else and came up blank. He had breakfast and dinner alone at home, lunch alone in the Antarctic. He startled a little when Molina reached over and grabbed a couple of his fries. “Hey!”
Molina laughed. “Fry tax. You gotta pay it when you eat too slow. So do you wanna drive now? ’Cause I don’t mind staying behind the wheel. I like driving. When I was a kid, my family had a VW bus, of course, and we’d go on these long… wanders, my mom called them. Just going wherever we felt like. No destination, no itinerary. We’d stop at every national park and weird roadside attraction, or we’d visit some thousand-year-old guy who was painting paintings or throwing pots or whatever. It was great.” His voice had taken on a soft quality, and a slight smile played at the corners of his mouth. “How about you? Did your family do road trips?”
Con almost laughed. “No.” They hadn’t vacationed at all. He wasn’t sure whether that was due to lack of money or because his parents were afraid to expose their children to the wider world. Maybe both.
“Bummer. So, you want to drive?”
“You can.”
That brought a grin. “Thanks, dude.”
They didn’t converse as they rode through the desert. The scenery was interesting enough to almost distract Con from the ache in his joints; sitting for long periods was as hard on him as walking. Molina played more music from his childhood—Santana, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and the like—probably recreating the soundtrack from his family journeys. Con sometimes found himself tapping his foot or swaying a little.
They arrived in Kingman in the late afternoon, when the sun beat down unmercifully and the Arizona landscape seemed flat and nearly bleached out. Molina drove slowly down a street proclaiming to be part of the old Route 66. Without consulting Con, who had no opinion on the matter anyway, he pulled into the parking lot of a Best Western motel. “I wish we could stay somewhere fancier since we’re on the Bureau’s dime. But I think this is as upscale as Kingman gets. Probably comfier than an air mattress in the back of a VW, anyway. Least here we’ll have a bathroom.”
The last time Con had stayed in a hotel was three—no, four—years ago, when he went to visit the lab in Northern California. It was a strange location for a government lab, tucked away in a tiny mountain town among the pine and fir trees, but Art Gundersen had insisted on working there and Townsend had agreed. Not that Con could blame Art; the area was gorgeous. Art and his partner, Jerry, lived in a fire-lookout tower and had invited Con over for dinner. Unfortunately, Con couldn’t handle the steep steps to the top of the tower, but they’d had a nice meal outdoors instead. Con had spent a couple of nights in a little motel that hadn’t changed much since the 1950s.
Kingman’s Best Western was more modern than that, with a bright lobby that smelled of coffee and cleanser. Con got distracted by the rack of brochures advertising tours of the Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, and a giant meteor crater, and by the time he collected himself, Molina had already checked them in. He held up the keys for Con to see. “No elevator, so I got us a room on the first floor. Breakfast is included, but we can always eat somewhere else if you want.”
A room. As in one room? Con was fairly certain that the Bureau would have paid for two, but if he complained he’d look like a whiny diva.It’s fine, he told himself. It would be like sharing an office—until bedtime, at which point they’d turn off the lights and go to sleep. No big deal.
He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that the room had two beds. Molina plopped his duffel on the one closer to the door and, while Con sat on the other bed, did a quick scout of the space. There wasn’t much to see, just standard hotel furniture plus a painting of cactuses on one wall. The air-conditioning wheezed but managed to keep the room comfortable.
“I’m gonna go explore,” Molina announced, bouncing on his toes. “Wanna come with?”
“Explore what?”
“If I knew, it wouldn’t really be exploring now, would it?”
Con found himself grinning back—and also feeling tempted to join in, which was unexpected since Con wasn’t the wandering type. It might be fun to see what this little town had in store.
But then Con saw his cane leaning against the wall and remembered… well, his limitations. “I’ll stay here. I have some work to do.”
Molina shrugged. “Whatever. I’ll circle back in a couple of hours and pick you up for dinner.”
Con nodded and watched him saunter out the door.
CHAPTER5
Con didn’t really havework to do. The mission brief had given him all the information he needed. But he dutifully pulled out his laptop and sat at the desk, looking things up. Somehow, however, instead of researching the things pertinent to the mission, he found himself reading about the Grateful Dead and Volkswagen vans and a bunch of other things that had no relationship to his job.
This research turned out to be far more interesting than he’d expected, so that when Molina came bursting into the room, Con startled and then was surprised to see how late it was.
“I found the perfect place for dinner,” Molina announced. “You hungry?”
Con was. While Molina waited by the door, Con shut down the laptop and stowed it away, then slipped his shoes on. They were ugly orthopedic things that he hated with a passion, but they didn’t hurt and they allowed him to walk. Anyway, whenever he went out in public, it wasn’t his feet that people stared at.
It turned out that Molina’s discovery was only a couple of blocks away, so they walked. Night had fallen, lowering the temperatures enough to make them bearable, and the shadows cast by the streetlights camouflaged the run-down condition of some of the buildings. Crickets chirped. The air smelled of asphalt and pungent herbs.
“Did you discover anything during your explorations?” Con asked politely. He was hoping to hide his embarrassment at the way Molina had to slow his stride for Con’s sake.
“Old buildings. Old train. Museum. Had coffee and a conche at a Mexican bakery. Saw some good murals.” Molina seemed content but also contemplative, as if thoughts and memories were kicking around in his head. Con decided it would be far too personal to ask about them.
The restaurant was Yeng’s Chinese and American Food, the huge vintage neon sign pointing at a low, blocky building with a faux pagoda entrance. “Totally old-school, right?” said Molina. “It’s like a time warp.”
