Julian was exasperated. “As long as Mom and Dad are paying for my hookup—”

“See, this is why you have to get your own editor.”

The two women exchanged a look, the meaning of which was that Sophia gave Anne-Solenne permission to yell at Sophia’s boyfriend. She did so: “Wake up! Not everyone can afford a cool hipster editor in New York.” She delivered this with the sweet/blunt blend that had caused Sophia to fall platonically in love with her during their freshman year. Together, Sophia and Anne-Solenne were token holders on three different collective PURDAHs, which was a way of saying that their identities had become commingled in ways that could never be undone. Software written by one of those had led to Anne-Solenne’s summer internship in San Francisco. Getting her there was the nominal purpose of the road trip that they were now planning.

“That’s not what I’m suggesting,” Phil said. “Manila, Calcutta, Lagos, all teeming with totally cool native-English-speaking eds who’ll cost less than what you spend on coffee.”

“It’s a sore subject in my family,” Julian said. “There’s a whole subtree of cousins who went off the rails because they went in together on a bad editor who ended up mainlining Byelorussian propaganda into their feeds. We lost a whole branch of the family, basically. So my mom in particular is super sensitive about this.”

This actually shut Phil up long enough for Sophia to lunge forward and put her thumb down on Des Moines. “Assume we solve the problem of getting our families not to lose their shit over the fact that we are venturing off-interstate for two whole days,” she said. “Like I said, we hop out of Phil’s car here, just take overnight bags, leave most of the luggage in it, and tell it to meet us in Sioux City.” For the benefit of those who did not know their Iowa geography, she pointed at same, and Anne-Solenne helpfully positioned her espresso cup on it, near where Iowa, Nebraska, and South Dakota came together. Phil pulled his glasses back down over his eyes so that he could see.

“It’ll get there in just a few hours,” Sophia went on. “After that it can drive around Sioux City at random or hang out in a parking space until we catch up with it. Meanwhile we switch to a rental vehicle that is better suited for local conditions.”

A pause as all imagined local conditions.

“And—what I will euphemistically call local guides?”

“I really don’t think that they are necessary. Not where we’re going. But the rental company won’t let us do a one-way without them.”

Chapter 13

Chapter 13