The toe of her trailing foot caught the edge of the counter and
she began to tumble, headed for a face-plant into the greyed-out
industrial carpet. Alan had the presence of mind to catch her, her tit
crashing into his head, and gentle her to the floor.
"We're going," Mimi said. "Now."
Alan hardly knew where he was anymore. The card was in Mimi's hand,
though, and he reached for it, making a keening noise deep in his
throat.
"Here," she said, handing it to him. When he touched the felted card
stock, he snapped back to himself. "Sorry," he said lamely to the
mesh-back kid.
Mimi yanked his arm and they jumped into the car and he fumbled the key
into the ignition, fumbled the car to life. His head felt like a balloon
on the end of a taut string, floating some yards above his body.
He gunned the engine and the body rolled in the trunk. He'd forgotten
about it for a while in the library and now he remembered it
again. Maybe he felt something then, a twitchy twinge of grief, but he
swallowed hard and it went away. The clunk-clunk of the wheels going
over the curb as he missed the curb-cut back out onto the road, Mimi
sucking breath in a hiss as he narrowly avoided getting T-boned by a
rusted-out pickup truck, and then the hum of the road under his wheels.
"Alan?" Mimi said.
"It was my first piece of identification," he said.
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