There was a tall metal fence at the back of the terminal. The gate was standing open, a broken padlock hanging from its latch. They rolled through it and onto the tarmac. A porch light glowed from a trailer near a row of palm trees, and a bulb burned in each of the two side-flanking hangars. Other than that, the only light came from the half-moon over the Banana River. Colby steered the Firebird around a forklift and a stack of wooden pallets. He maneuvered close to a trio of Sandpipers, their propellered noses pointing toward the treetops and their tails moored to the ground. “I think that story about the pot plane is bullshit,” he said as they coasted out into the middle of the tarmac. “Who’d let all that go to the cops? I’d rather crash.”

“I guess that’s the difference between you and other people,” Karen said, trying to sound bored, though she was consumed with what he had in mind, driving them around this off-limits area. It soon became at least partially obvious. He was aimed for the perimeter, where a black stem of tarmac led to the runway. “You’re not going out there,” she told him.

“Baby, you still don’t get it. I’m done being told. I’m the action and the reaction. I’m the subject and the predicament.”

“Predicate.”

He performed a rough mouthing of the word predicate with his tongue hanging over his lower teeth. “I don’t care. You’ve got the book smarts; we figured that one out a long time ago. But look at me, free as a bird, and you all holy with your piss-ass job at the Sizzler—”

“I work at Provost now.”

He steered the car in a half circle and eased them to a stop. “Remember that James Bond movie with the sharks?”

“I want to go back.”

“He had that car he drove right off the end of a pier, and it turned into a submarine.” The runway stretched out before them, extending onto a man-made jut of land surrounded on either side, and beyond its tip, by the darkness of the river. “Want to play James Bond?” he asked.

“You’re such a child.”

“Or we could play Grease. You liked Grease. That part at the end where they flew that faggot convertible into the wild blue yonder.”

“What if we play adults?” Karen said. “You’re twenty-one years old, Colby. You think you can play adult for five minutes of your life?”

His upper lip curled. It was the same twisted smile he’d given her after stepping away from the burning portable, the gas can still dangling from his hand. Being blown to smithereens with him would have been perfect, that day: the ideal comment on their misunderstood lives. Now she only felt roped into another one of his meaningless stunts, and terrified.