Then she reached into the inside pocket of her jacket and pulled out her phone. The one in the sleeveless shirt snorted. "What are you doing? " "Making a phone call, " she said. "To who? " "The cops? " he shrugged. "Go ahead.
By the time they get here, we'll be gone. " Clare didn't answer him. She found the contact she was looking for, pressed call, and held the phone to her ear. The one with the camera phone kept filming. The call connected after two rings. "Ray, " Clare said.
"It's Clare. I'm at the Dusty Spoon in Ridgerest off Route 60. " She paused, listening. "No, I'm fine, but someone got into my father's bike. " Another pause. Her jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. "Yeah, yeah, it's bad. " She listened for another moment.
No, Ry, I'm not asking for anything. She looked directly at the one who had kicked her fender. I just wanted someone to know where I was. She hung up. The one in the sleeveless shirt stared at her.
Who's Rey? A friend, Clare said. What's he going to do about it? Nothing, she said. I didn't ask him to do anything.
Something about the answer unsettled the one in the sleeveless shirt. He couldn't have explained why. She hadn't threatened them. She hadn't cried or begged or bargained. She just made a phone call, said almost nothing, and put her phone away.
And now she was standing there looking at the damage on her motorcycle with an expression he couldn't read. "You're acting like this is some kind of big deal, " he said, trying to reclaim the ground he didn't realize he'd already lost. "Lare crouched down slowly beside the front fender. She ran one finger along the scratch on the tank, the long silver line where the paint had been scraped away. " She didn't say anything for a moment. Then she stood up.
You know what my father told me? She said. Nobody answered. He said a motorcycle isn't made of metal. She looked at the one with the phone.
He said it carries someone's memories. The one with the phone kept filming but didn't say anything. This bike carried his memories for 30 years, she said. And I've carried them since. She looked at the broken mirror bracket.
And you touched it like it was nothing. Lady, I'm not angry at you, she said, and she meant it completely. I'm sad for you because nobody ever taught you that things have weight. The parking lot was very quiet. The jukebox had stopped inside.
Through the diner window, a few other customers had drifted toward the glass, watching without knowing what they were watching. The one with the phone finally lowered it. He almost said something. He didn't. So, Clare sat down on the wooden step beside the diner entrance, and she waited.
She wasn't waiting for the police. She hadn't called them yet. She wasn't waiting for a tow truck, though she'd need one eventually. She was waiting because 37 minutes after she hung up with Ry, she heard something that she recognized before she saw anything. A sound that started as a vibration in the asphalt under her boots before it became a noise.
Before the noise became a rumble, before the rumble became the thing it was. Engines. Lots of them. The one in the sleeveless shirt heard it, too. He'd been leaning against his own car, arms crossed, waiting for nothing in particular, with the low-level confidence of someone who believed the world sorted itself in his favor.
He heard the engines and his arms uncrossed, and he stood up straight. The first headlight appeared at the far end of the road, then another, then five. Then because the desert road ran flat and straight for 2 mi before the diner and you could see everything coming long before it arrived. He watched as the headlights multiplied. 10 15.
He started counting and lost count. And that was when he realized he had miscounted the situation from the beginning. The sound hit the parking lot like weather. Motorcycles, Harleys, most of them. Some with high bars, some with low, some with side cars.
All of them black in chrome and moving in formation with a precision that was not aggressive and was therefore worse than aggressive. They filled the road. They peeled into the parking lot in a wide practiced arc and they parked one by one in a half circle that closed around the diner like a parenthesis. The engine shut down one by one. The last engine cut out and then there was silence so complete that the one with the camera phone could hear his own heartbeat.
He had not pressed record again. 51 motorcycles. He counted them later when he was trying to explain what had happened. 51 motorcycles and the riders were getting off them unhurried and they were wearing the colors. The patch on the back, the red and white, the one in the sleeveless shirt's voice came out differently than he intended.
Who are these people? He said. Clare looked up from where she was sitting. Friends, she said one. A man named Raymond Cortez walked through the parked motorcycles, hands in his jacket pockets, moving like someone who had been in situations that made this one look manageable.
He was 60 years old, built like someone had assembled him from spare truck parts with a white beard and dark eyes that were warm in a way that was somehow more frightening than cold. He walked to Clare first. He looked at the bike. He didn't speak for a long moment. Then he said very quietly, "Rudy's bike. " Yeah, Clare said Ray Cortez had known Rudy Whitmore for 40 years.
Had ridden with him from Arizona to the Gulf Coast three times. Had been at his hospital bed the last week. Had stood beside Clare at the grave. He looked at the broken mirror. He looked at the scratch tank.