But it doesn't matter, because the shovel comes down again.

Miriam hears a baby crying, a hard echo in the bathroom, coming from the hallway. The squalls are suddenly drowned, like the baby's choking, gurgling in its own fluids, and then the screams are cut short entirely and all goes dark.

She hears Louis's voice whisper in her ear: "Six more days, then I'm dead."

TWENTY-SEVEN

End of the Road

The whisper, harsh in her ear, lingers as she jolts awake.

"I'm sorry," Miriam blurts.

Louis looks over at her as he wheels the truck off past the exit ramp and through a tollbooth. "Sorry for what?"

For letting you die, she thinks. Her hair is stringy, sweaty. It clings to her forehead.

"Nothing. I thought – I think I was snoring."

"You weren't."

"Well. Good."

She rubs her eyes. It's night. The windshield is wet from recent rain, but in the jaundiced streetlights it looks like someone pissed all over the glass.

"Where are we?" she asks.

"Pennsylvania. Headed toward a truck stop in Coopersburg. I got a buddy up there who's real good with trucks. Has a gift. I like him to do all my maintenance, and whenever I swing through this area, I always pay him a visit."

She smacks her lips together. Her tongue rasps against the roof of her mouth. A case of total cottonmouth. Cigarette. Coffee. Booze. One of those three would be nice right now.

"Pennsylvania. Weren't we just in Ohio?"

"We were. But then you fell asleep."

"Shit. That's a long trip, isn't it?"

He shrugs. "Not really. About eight, nine hours. That's the name of the game. Go as far as you can, fast as you can – we get paid by the mile."

"So that's why most truckers drive like a bull in a china shop."

"Yup. They're trying to feed their families, so they pop No-Doze or worse and push it. Sometimes beyond the breaking point." His voice gets quiet. "I don't have a home, don't have a family to feed, so I can take it easy. Even taking it easy, I make about thirty-five cents a mile, and today we did a five-hundred-plus mile haul – that's darn near two-hundred bucks. I pull in about sixty grand a year, and I don't have a mortgage, don't have many bills."

"Does it bother you? This life? You're basically… a nomad. You have no home."

"Neither do you."

"I know. And I love it… sometimes. I love that I'm just a piece of garbage floating down the stream – wherever it takes me, it takes me. But I also hate it. I never feel connected to anything or anybody. No anchor. No roots."

"I feel connected to you," he says.

"I feel connected to you, too," she responds, and yet she marvels at how feeling connected to him also makes her feel more distant. A paradox, an impossibility, but there it is. She's close to him, but between them lurks a great and monstrous gap: the yawning abyss betwixt life and death.