The guns are all large-palm-sized. Simone reaches out because she feels she is supposed to, though really she is frightened of them. The metal is cool, the ridges deep. She fingers the very tip of one, its power and violence.
Still the computer game muzak plays. ‘Sorry,’ Kyle says, following her gaze to his phone. ‘I lose my place if I quit now.’
‘Sure.’
The gun is $600. She must be imagining the look of concern that crosses Kyle’s young features as she handles it; he sells guns all day long, why would he care? But, nevertheless, she sees it.
‘Do you know how to use it?’ he says, adjusting his T-shirt at the neck; the sunburn is bothering him.
‘Sure,’ she says, thinking that she doesn’t want to know,certainly doesn’t want a lesson. All she needs is a threat, protection.
Perhaps Kyle doesn’t believe her, because he gets the gun out and pulls at the magazine. He lays out five gold bullets from the box on to the top of the glass and stands them upright like pawns in a chess game.
He checks it’s empty, tugging roughly at the mechanism. The noise startles Simone, her shoulders go up, fear flashing across her chest, but she tries not to react. Maybe she isn’t tough. Maybe she’s never been truly tested before. He could just load it and shoot her right now, she is thinking. She summons again the voice in her head, the parental-replacement voice.You can do this, it tells her.In fact, you have got to do this.
It works. Kyle takes two bullets and inserts them into the magazine, the same way you would an AA battery, and once again Simone is calm and focused. ‘That’s two rounds,’ he tells her. ‘Two shots.’
‘OK.’
‘Safety catch on. A trigger guard. Not all of them have one, but this one does.’ He points to a catch as the tinny music swells, and she nods. ‘Magazine in.’ He pushes it in, metal on metal. ‘Then, before you shoot, you rack the slide.’ It makes a noise like a stapler, but this time, Simone doesn’t react. ‘OK?’
‘OK.’
‘The round is in the chamber. All you need to do is take the guard off. So if you’re at the range, you’re shooting; you leave the range, you put the guard back on,’ he tells her, his voice now bored, his hands moving automatically over the gun, the prattle of a safety talk he’s given thousands of times.
The range. So this is what it’s like. This is what happens. People shoot safe things for fun. That they do other things, too, remains unsaid.
‘Shall I reverse all that, or leave it?’ he asks her. Eye contactagain, this time as loaded as that magazine chamber. It clicks into place in just the same way, mechanical, powerful, fixed.
Simone tells herself she doesn’t want to have to go through all that again, that she doesn’t understand how the magazine might slot in, that she didn’t watch closely enough, but she is good at paying attention to things that are important to her and she did. This time, she looks directly into the lie, like that sugary, starry abyss outside and upwards, and thinks it; she wants that gun loaded.
‘Leave it as is,’ she says quietly, and Kyle nods in some sort of understanding, putting the gun as carefully into the box as if it is a living, breathing animal.
The lay-by feels like somewhere she visited a year ago, not yesterday. She kills the engine and it is immediately silent. Late, no traffic, the church still shut up but somehow watchful, that cross looking down at her, and Simone finds herself wondering whether or not God would be on her side. She’s damaged many lives to save just one, but wouldn’t everyone?
In the boot of her car are the drugs and all the cash she has, the gun on the passenger seat, the flip phone in her hand. She gets out of the car now and, exactly as instructed, she destroys the phone, stamping on it in the dust, the front smashed, battery acid leaking, then bins it.
She leans against the car, and now she waits. Then she hesitates, ducks back inside and grabs the gun, putting it down the back of her shorts because she’s seen that in movies and it seems like a good place to hide it, even though it’s cold and uncomfortable against her spine.
And there she is. In a lay-by in Texas by herself, waiting for her daughter to come, her car full of drugs worth God knows how much.
She wants to be outside for this part. She wants to be outof the car, vulnerable and ready, ready to give herself over to the universe. To spread her arms wide and say,I’m here, I’m at risk, for my daughter. I’ve done every single thing that was asked of me, to the letter, and now I need her back.
Both times she has been here, nobody has driven in either direction along this highway; the kidnapper knows what he is doing. The dirty road underneath Simone’s trainers is still hot from the day, and, this time, she can smell Texas. It’s different from Mexico, drier and harsher. Up above, the stars are out, handfuls of cocaine thrown upwards and stuck.
She holds her phone close to her body, turns it on, and sends Damien a single message.
I’ve completed a transaction and now I’m here.I hope we’re home free x
She stares at it for several seconds before she presses Send.
She turns the phone off again, pockets it and looks down at the deep, dark road. The lights of some town or other are in the distance, a mini constellation on land.
She stares at it, willing something to happen, and it does finally: two headlights, two sunbeams on the horizon, coming straight for her.
She touches the gun again, removes it from her waistband and holds it in her hand this time, like making a slow and tentative acquaintanceship, the way you might extend a hand to a frightened animal. In the darkness, she brings the gun close to her face and studies the tip. It’s round and smooth, as taboo as a naked body or a corpse.
She stares at the gun in her hand, its metal skin warmed to body temperature. She doesn’t care what happens next, so long as Lucy survives. That’s the reality; this, to Simone, is maternal sacrifice, in all its blistering-hot metal gunfire.
