Echo held his gaze steady. "Remember back in California? Remember the way it was? Remember the Buick?" Remember Christina.

"That was a long time ago."

"Yesterday was a long time ago."

---

Christina and Echo met at the end of the day, one summer day in Azusa, a Friday. Her old man had a towing company and she would fill in now and then when the phone operators didn't show up. Echo was there to pick up a Javelin that we needed for parts, and she was just finishing her shift. Nobody saw either of them until the next Tuesday. She never got around to telling him she was engaged to a corporal in the marine corps. It just didn't come up.

Christina's old man had a two-door 1970 Buick LeSabre Wildcat, black with power everything. That summer Echo turned it into a beast. When he finished with it, it wouldn't even pass inspection, they had to steal the stickers off another one. Nobody saw much of Echo that summer, or Christina, and if you did see them, it was their feet sticking out from under the car. Somtimes it was twenty toes up; other times ten up and ten down. Five, ten, five.

Echo was always smiling that summer. He would say that Buick is the best thing that ever happened to me. He'd say it twice.

One day in October, Watson is sitting at the desk, drinking a Miller and reading True, the door opens and this uniform comes in, square and clean, smelling sweet. He says to Watson, "They told me Christina would be here."

Watson is a funny guy, he never looks as smart as he is. He looks up at the guy, his eyes drifting. "Christina?" he says, "I don't know any Christinas." Watson doesn't like guys that smell like flowers. or indian cooking. in uniforms.

This marine, he's been places, and he leans over close to Watson, "Listen you airy-fairy, I'll turn you inside-out so fucking fast you'll be shining a flashlight out your asshole to see your watch to find out what time it is. You tell Christina to be home at eight o'clock tonight. You tell her Ricky will be waiting for her." And he took his hand out of his pocket and put a sixty caliber machine gun bullet on the desk, and he gave it a spin and walked out the door while the bullet cwooouu-ouuuud on the formica.
Watson sat there a while, considering. He read a little more of the magazine, at least he looked at the pages. Then he wrote a note, went out back and put it under the windshield wipers of Echo's Rambler, and went home.

The next day they found the Buick, and Christina, in about a hundred pieces, where 210 and 605 meet. She must've been going 180 when she hit the concrete abutments, it was quick. The newspapers said she must've been run off the road, must've been avoiding a tractor-trailer, it must've been an accident they said, especially considering the child she was carrying.

They saw Echo one time after that, he was sitting at a light in Monrovia waiting for an old lady to cross the street, his rambler was packed with his stuff. He had a cigarette in his mouth, with a long ash hanging from it, and he was looking off into the distance, he never looked over at them. He needed a shave pretty bad.

---

"Echo, yesterday *was* a long time ago. This morning was a long fucking time ago. But you gotta ask yourself who is going to be your emperor -- yesterday or tomorrow?"

Echo looked at his glass, at his fingers gripping the glass, at the nails on the fingers. He looked up. "Now is my emperor. Right goddamn now. But you know what? This whole thing, ZDI, this project? It's the best fucking thing that ever happened to me. It's the best thing that ever fucking happened to me. And man, that is giving me bad dreams. That is a problem I can't sort out."

"Echo. You know that this project is a winner. A billion dollar winner -- more then that. And you know that without you we're hosed. If we don't make our flight this spring the Germans will screw us. But you know it's not about money, it's not about racing, or competing, it's just about a good idea, a good thing that ought to be."

Echo looked up at him, "Yeah, a good thing that ought to be... Listen. I need to take a little break, ok? I'll be back, I'll be back online soon, I'll be in touch. Right now I need a couple weeks, I gotta sort this out for myself." He stood up, and threw a twenty on the red formica tabletop. "Keep the faith, dude."
As he walked away he was whistling the theme song to I Love Lucy.



« Iota | soundcheck »