Page 14

Dale, for his part, just stared out the passenger window. Probably taking in the sight of trees and town houses and tantrum-throwing toddlers for the last time. If Jack really wanted, he could probably keep Dale overnight and get him to processing first thing in the morning. Give him one final night of drunken debauchery. But then, Dale couldn’t actually drink or debauch in his current condition. And frankly, with the state of his new hardware, neither could Jack. No, he’d done all he could. This was what came next. What always came next. Still, he couldn’t help but want to hold on. Not so much for Dale’s sake, if he was honest with himself, but because this was the only real friend he had left. The last You Again on his side. The last connection to his old life.

Jack opened his mouth to say something, but all that came out was a wistful sigh, which wasn’t like him. It was, if he had to guess, like Margaret Chen, and that realization made his butt cheeks clench. He was slipping loose of his tethers again. He could feel it.

A shrill ring erupted from the back seat. Jack nearly jumped out of his borrowed skin.

“You gonna get that, Jackie?” Dale asked after a second ring.

“Uh, yeah.” Jack forced himself back into the front seat of Margaret’s Mercedes and reached an arm behind himself, blindly fishing through the designer purse on the back seat floor for his old cell phone. Lipstick. Roll-on lily-of-the-valley perfume. Switchblade. Phone. He wrapped his fingers around it and dragged it to his ear.

“Hello?”

For the second time that day, Greer’s voice poured unexpectedly through the speaker.

“Where are you?” she breathed. Her tone was bordering on irritated, her volume hushed, but she’d called. For some reason she’d called. Whatever Jack said next could make or break whether that call continued.

“In a car.” Probably break. He tried again. “I’m in the car with Dale. We’re just…It’s a long story.”

“How far are you from Billy’s?”

“The diner? That Billy’s?”

“That Billy’s,” said Greer.

That Billy’s was on the other side of town. “Not far,” said Jack.

“I’m in the usual booth.”

Before Jack heard the click from the other end of the phone, he was already turning the car around.

8

Greer held a mug that had likely never seen the inside of a dishwasher. A diamond winked out of a gold band on her left ring finger, a glimmer of something pristine and luxurious that didn’t belong amid the easy grime of the diner. That didn’t belong on her hand.

Jack slid into the booth across from her. Dale followed suit. Greer still hadn’t looked up from whatever steamed in her mug. She took a sip. Dale shifted uncomfortably beside Jack, but Jack just looked on. He waited. Finally, she lifted her eyes.

“You drive a Mercedes,” she said, and the words were so far from anything Jack could have anticipated that all he could do was repeat them like a particularly dense parrot.

“I drive a Mercedes.”

“This…” She gestured at Jack’s new body. “Her. She has money.”

“Yeah.”

Greer’s gaze slipped back into her mug. “I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t have to.”

“Ask?”

“For a loan. Just a loan. I’d pay you back as soon as I could.”

“Oh,” said Jack.

“I didn’t know who else to ask. Sorry, I shouldn’t— This was a mistake.” She moved to rise, but Jack extended a hand across the booth toward her.

“Wait. Please.” He held his breath until she turned back to face him. “How much?”

“Forty.”

The worn booth cushion felt as though it had dropped out from beneath Jack at that. Dale sputtered a gasp beside him.