By the light of the moon Read Free

vengeful bitch.
    Traffic came to a full stop.
    Through a royal-purple twilight and past nightfall, they endured
another long wait, this time at the Arizona Agricultural Inspection
Station east of San Simon, which currently served state and federal law-enforcement agencies. In addition to Department of
Agriculture officers, a few flinty-eyed plainclothes agents, on
assignment from some less vegetable-oriented organization,
evidently were searching for pests more destructive than fruit
flies breeding in contraband oranges. In fact they grilled Jilly as
if they believed a chador and a submachine gun were concealed under
the car seat, and they studied Fred with wariness and skepticism,
as though convinced that he was of Mideastern origin, held
fanatical political views, and harbored evil intentions.
    Even these tough-looking men, who had reason to regard every
traveler with suspicion, could not long mistake Fred for a villain.
They stepped back and waved the Coupe DeVille through the
checkpoint.
    As Jilly put up the power window and accelerated, she said,
'It's a good thing they didn't throw you in the slammer, Freddy.
Our budget's too tight for bail money.'
    They drove a mile in silence.
    A ghost moon, like a faint ectoplasmic eye, had risen before
sundown; and with the fall of night, its Cyclops stare
brightened.
    'Maybe talking to a plant isn't just an eccentricity,' Jilly
brooded. 'Maybe I'm a little off my nut.'
    North and south of the highway lay dark desolation. The cool
lunar light could not burn away the stubborn gloom that befell the
desert after sundown.
    'I'm sorry, Fred. That was a mean thing to say.'
    The little jade was proud but also forgiving. Of the three men
with whom Jilly had explored the dysfunctional side of romance,
none would have hesitated to turn even her most innocent expression
of discontent against her; each would have used it to make her feel
guilty and to portray himself as the long-suffering victim of her
unreasonable expectations. Fred, bless him, never played those
power games.
    For a while they rode in companionable silence, conserving a
flagon of fuel by traveling in the high-suction slipstream of a
speeding Peterbilt that, judging by the advertisement on its rear
doors, was hauling ice-cream treats to hungry snackers west of New
Mexico.
    When they came upon a town radiant with the signs of motels and
service stations, Jilly exited the interstate. She tanked up from a
self-serve pump at Union 76.
    Farther along the street, she bought dinner at a burger place. A
counter clerk as wholesome and cheerful as an idealized grandmother
in a Disney film, circa 1960, insisted on fixing a smiling-toad pin
to Jilly's blouse.
    The restaurant appeared sufficiently clean to serve as an
operating theater for a quadruple by-pass in the event that one of
the customers at last achieved multiple artery blockages while
consuming another double-patty cheeseburger. Of itself, however,
mere cleanliness wasn't enough to induce Jilly to eat at one of the
small Formica-topped tables under a glare of light intense enough
to cause genetic mutations.
    In the parking lot, in the Coupe DeVille, as Jilly ate a chicken
sandwich and French fries, she and Fred listened to her favorite
radio talk show, which focused on such things as UFO sightings,
evil extraterrestrials eager to breed with human women, Big Foot
(plus his recently sighted offspring, Little Big Foot), and time
travelers from the far future who had built the pyramids for
unknown malevolent purposes. This evening, the smoky-voiced host
– Parish Lantern – and his callers were exploring the
dire threat posed by brain leeches purported to be traveling to our
world from an alternate reality.
    None of the listeners who phoned the program had a word to say
about fascistic Islamic radicals determined to destroy civilization
in order to rule the world, which was a relief. After establishing
residence in the occipital lobe, a brain leech supposedly took
control of its