Squats tries to slap at her, a clumsy grizzly bear move, but she steps out of the way and his meaty palm swishes through air. Miriam's elbow catches him hard in his already-busted, alreadybleeding nose, and Squats goes down.

Blondie, face red, still choking, rushes at her with all the finesse of a tumbling boulder. She pulls her upper torso back to dodge him, but lets her knee hang out there and catch him right in the bread basket. Blondie grunts, a hard oof of air, and slips on some gravel. He goes down.

"You think I come out here and I don't know how to protect myself?" she screams at them. She picks up a handful of gravel and pitches it at Blondie, who moans and protects his head. Miriam hawks up another lugey and spits it in his hair. For good measure, she grabs the Tarheel hat off Squats and pitches it onto the highway. "Assholes."

Then: harsh white. Headlights. Big shadow grumbling.

The hiss of hydraulic brakes.

A bobtail – the truck-part of an eighteen-wheeler, this one without its trailer – pulls up onto the shoulder, gravel popping underneath its massive tires.

Miriam shields her eyes, sees the driver's silhouette. Jesus, she thinks, it's a goddamn Frankenstein. Where are the torches and pitchforks when you need them?

The Frankenstein is holding a crowbar.

"Everything okay here?" Frankenstein asks. The voice booms, even over the rumble of the idling truck.

"We're just having a little friendly tussle," Miriam yells over the truck's engine.

She can't see his face, but she sees that Frankenstein pivots his cinder-block head, getting a good luck at Squats and Blondie. He shrugs. "You need a ride?"

"Me, or the two moaning assholes?"

"You."

"What the hell," she mumbles, then heads over to the cab to get in.

INTERLUDE

The Interview

Miriam takes a drink from her water bottle. Nope, still not vodka, she thinks.

Above her head, sparrows rustle their wings in the eaves of the warehouse – dark shapes, stirring.

She lights another Marlboro. Bats the ashtray back and forth the way a cat might play with a mouse. Blows smoke rings. Drums her fingers so her nails – some chewed to the cuticle, some left long – click on the top of the card table.

Finally, the door opens.

The kid comes in, a notebook and pages tucked under his arm, a laptop bag hanging at his side, a digital recorder dangling from a cord around his neck. His hair is a mess.

He pulls up a chair.

"Sorry," he says.

Miriam shrugs. "Whatever. Paul, right?"

"Paul. Yeah." He offers to shake her hand. She stares at the hand like it has a dick and balls attached to it. He doesn't get it at first, but then it dawns on him. "Oh. Ah. Right."

"Do you really want to know?" she asks.

Paul pulls his hand back and gently shakes his head no. He sits down without saying another word. He gets out the notebook, a couple copies of his 'zine (headlines like ransom notes, printed on pages of fluorescent fuchsia, eye-punching lemon, nuclear lime), and delicately places the digital recorder in the center of the table.