44
“SO, SCALAWAG, DO you want to go to Pat’s King of Steaks or Geno’s?” I asked, poking Robinson awake—gently, of course. We’d made it to Philly in under two hours, and now I was parked between the two cheesesteak institutions, which stood a block away from each other like captains of opposing teams.
Robinson yawned and stretched. “You know,” he said, frowning slightly, “I’m not actually that hungry right now.” For a moment he placed his hand over his stomach—a strange kind of gesture for him. “What I’d like is a nice warm drink.”
I looked at him sharply. It was eighty degrees out, and I was sweating against the truck seat. “You’re not cold, are you?”
Being cold meant that Robinson might have a fever, and if he had a fever, that meant he might have an infection, and if he had an infection, then he needed to get to a hospital. Stat. Because infections in what doctors like to call an immunocompromised person—a person like Robinson, who’d had high-dose chemo, radiation therapy, and a stem cell transplant—could be deadly.
I reached toward his forehead to feel it, but he brushed my hand away. “No!” he said, a little too loudly. “I just thought some tea sounded nice. Then we go get the cheesesteak.”
He got out of the truck and started walking. I stayed where I was, staring at him through the windshield, feeling both mad and worried. What was I supposed to do? Drag him to the ER so they could take his temperature? He wouldn’t let me.
So I got out and caught up to him—easily, because he was walking at an old man’s pace. Like every step took concentration and effort.
“A little caffeine and I’ll be good to go,” he said, pointing to a coffee shop at the end of the block.
Please be right about that, I thought. I took his hand.
In the café we found a window table and sank into the worn but comfortable seats. Then a salesman type burst in and commandeered the table next to us, talking on his cell phone and at the same time waving the waitress over, as if it were a matter of life and death that he got served before we did. “… QR codes are going to increase the conversion rate of your sales funnel—” he was saying. When the waitress walked by he shouted, “Large Earl Grey with soy milk on the side and raw sugar, two lumps.”
Robinson glared at him for a moment. “This is the City of Brotherly Love, jerk,” he muttered. Then he rested his head on the table. “Man. I don’t know why I’m so tired.”
I wanted to scream, Because you have cancer?
Instead, I reached out and ran my fingers through his thick, dark hair. I’d almost forgotten what he looked like without it. It took a while to grow back after the chemo, but when it did, he grew it longer.
“That feels good,” he said, his voice muffled.
I took a deep breath, steeling myself for what I had to say. “Robinson, we need to get you back to a hospital—actually, our hospital. I’ll use my credit card and we’ll fly home. We can be there in ten hours.”
“I don’t like planes,” Robinson said to the tabletop.
“You have to see Dr. Suzuki. Now. She’ll know what to do.”
“Every time I hear her name, I think about violin lessons. Have you heard of the Suzuki method of teaching music?”
“Don’t change the subject.”
Robinson lifted his head from the table. His tired eyes met mine. “You say she’ll know what to do. But what if there’s nothing to be done?”
“There’s always something to be done,” I said, my voice rising. I didn’t like this new fatalistic tone of his at all.
“You’ve planned everything so perfectly, Axi. Please don’t get all freaked out now.”
I reached for his hands and gripped them hard. “But when does it end, Robinson? We can’t run like this forever.”
“We’re not going to,” he assured me. “We just have one more stop to make. It’s the last one.”
“One last stop?” I asked. “Where’s that? Please don’t say you want to go to New Orleans to eat jambalaya or something.”
He laughed and squeezed my fingers. “No. My stomach is no longer dictating our travels. But it’s … well, it’s a couple of states away.”
“A couple of states?” I repeated. I doubted Chuck the Truck would make it that far.
Next to us the salesman had begun shouting. “No, Ed, the goal is to shorten the amount of time it takes the probable purchaser to become a product owner!”
Both Robinson and I glared at him now. He’d taken a table that could have seated six, and he was treating it like his desk. Scattered across it were his iPad, a BlackBerry, a leather binder, a copy of the Philadelphia Inquirer, car keys …
His car keys.
It was then that I had an idea that would have shocked the old Axi Moore to the depths of her soul. Good thing she no longer existed.
“Axi?” Robinson said, waving a hand in front of my face. “Aren’t you going to get on my case for not telling you where I want to go?”
“Yes,” I said distractedly. “Later.” I was staring at the salesman. Get up, I thought. Get up.
“The numbers don’t add up, Ed,” he yelled.
And then, as if what I’d just imagined were totally meant to be, the salesman stood. Still yammering into his Bluetooth, he made his way toward the bathrooms.
I got up and threw a five on the table. “Meet me at the southeast corner of the block,” I said, and I was out the door before Robinson had even opened his mouth to ask me why.
Outside, I half-jogged down the street, clicking the automatic lock button on the key chain and watching for the answering flicker of headlights. Would it be the blue Acura? The silver Toyota? I had such a mighty sense of purpose that I hardly noticed the racing of my heart. I was taking care of Robinson. If he needed to go somewhere, I was going to see to it that his journey took place in a reliable vehicle.
I’d crossed onto the next block and was nearing the third without a single chirp of a car. My pulse quickened and my head began to hurt.
I was stealing a car.
In broad daylight.
Fear began to trump my sense of purpose. I started jogging faster. Where are you? Flash your lights, I whispered, like I had magical powers or something. Or phenomenal luck. It didn’t matter which.
Finally, when I was about to give up, I heard the beep of a horn answering its remote key. I turned toward the sound and gasped. It was a midnight-blue Mustang GT. A convertible.
I started cackling like a crazy person. Robinson was going to freak out.
Easy as pie, I opened the driver’s-side door and jumped in. The seats were tan leather, and the inside sparkled like that salesman spit-shined it every morning. He was going to seriously miss his ride. A wave of remorse came over me, but I shook it off.
The Mustang practically leapt into the street. I pulled up to our truck and quickly tossed our bags in at the same time I called to Robinson, who was leaning against a telephone pole as if standing up on his own were too much work. “Hurry, the bus is leaving.”
He walked toward me and his eyes widened. “Wha—”
“Just get in.”
It took him another second to wrap his head around the directive. But then he slid in next to me, and I gunned the engine.
And we were gone.
“How—what—I don’t—” Robinson stuttered. “Am I—”
“Keys, Clyde,” I said, feigning complete nonchalance. “They’re so much easier than a cordless drill.”
“I just don’t—” He couldn’t even finish a sentence.
“I borrowed them from the loud guy in the coffee shop.”
Robinson’s eyes widened even further as he looked around the car. He ran his hand over the dashboard. “Four-point-six-liter V-8 with three-fifteen horsepower and three hundred twenty-five pound-feet of torque. Pure American-made muscle. This thing is a beast, Axi.” He turned to beam at me. “Just when I thought I could not possibly love you more.”
He began to laugh—a strong laugh like I hadn’t heard in days. “Seriously, thank God,” he finally said, gasping for breath. “For a minute, I really, truly thought I’d died and gone to heaven.”