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By Root 379 0

was clear he’d done it after all and there was a big fat man named Jack Nestor, who had a gun and wanted to kill them and he was involved in the first killing. The couple lost a lot of the details—just like the cops must have too—but they didn’t really need to hear any more. They had enough of the facts for a good traveling story, which they’d tell to friends and to themselves and to anybody they happened to meet on the way to Maine and which unlike a lot of the stories they’d told didn’t need much embellishment at all. Finally a tall, balding man in a plaid shirt and blue jeans and with a badge on his belt arrived and the girl fell into his arms, though she wasn’t sobbing anymore or hysterical. Then she pushed him away and went into one of her tirades again.

“Goodness,” the wife said.

When the girl calmed down she told the cop the couple had saved her life and he introduced himself to them and said thank you. They talked about Ohio for a few minutes. Then the cop said that the girls could go to the Bomb Squad and stay there until he was off duty and the little girl said, “Can we get another hand grenade? Please?”

And that was when the couple decided not to do what had crossed their Midwestern minds—ask the girls if they would like to stay with them in the camper that night—and figured it would probably be best if they pressed on to the alternate destination of Mystic, Connecticut, which came highly recommended in their guidebook.

AT ELEVEN THAT NIGHT, JACK NESTOR SAID HE NEEDED A real drink and pulled off the highway at a motel somewhere in Virginia.

“I could use some real food, too,” Randy Boggs said. He wanted a steak burnt on the outside and red inside. He’d spent a lot of time thinking about steaks when he first went Inside. Then—as with most of the things he enjoyed—he forgot about good meat. Or it was more that those things became distant. Like facts in a history book. He understood them, he remembered them, but they had no meaning for him.

Now, though, he was out and he wanted a steak. And the way Nestor had said real drink, Boggs was now thinking that he’d like his first shot of whisky in three years.

They parked the car and went into the motel office. Nestor gave a fake name and car license then asked for a room in the back, explaining to the young night clerk that he didn’t sleep well; highway noise bothered him. The young man nodded apathetically, took the cash and gave him the key. Boggs was impressed at how smoothly Nestor had handled things. Boggs himself would have been more careless, leaving the car in front. But Nestor was right. The girl had probably gotten free by now and might’ve turned them in. Or maybe someone in New York had seen the license plate. He was glad he was with somebody like Nestor, somebody who could teach him to think Outside again.

Nestor lugged his duffel bag into the room and Boggs followed with the paper bag that was his suitcase. He was relieved to see there were two large beds. He hadn’t wanted to spend his first night of freedom in bed with another man. Without commenting on the room, Nestor dropped his luggage onto the bed nearest the door and said, “Food.”

Boggs said, “Hold up. I want to wash.” He disappeared into the bathroom, amused and feeling almost heartsick with joy at how clean it was. At all the sweet smells. At the soap and wrapped glasses and a john behind a door that closed and locked. He ran the water cold, then hot, then cold again, then hot and washed his face and hands as the steam rose up and filled the room.

“I’m hungry,” Nestor bellowed over the sound of the running water.

“Minute,” Boggs shouted back and dried himself with luxurious towels that seemed thick as down comforters.

The bar-restaurant near the hotel was a local hangout, done up in prefab Tudor—dark beams, plastic windows mimicking stained glass, beige stucco walls. The place was half filled—mostly around the bar—with contractors and plumbers and truck drivers and their girlfriends. The men were in jeans and plaid shirts. A lot of beards. The women were in slacks, high heels and simple