Everyone's Dirty Little Secrets by Matthew Miles Read Free Book Online

his passport.
     
    He can’t bring himself to listen to her message.   Even if it might be telling him what his real job is.  In a way, going to just cover a product la unch is a relief, even if not all that exciting .
     
    Maybe the time away is a good thing.
     
    He leaves her a note. 
     
    In Montreal, baby - wish you were there.
     
    Nothing has changed, he tells himself.
     
    Nothing has changed.
     
     
     
    *****
     
     
     
    Hands tapping the st eering wheel, Dodge races south on the Northway.  It’s time to get back.  He’s been gone three days.  He hasn’t spoken with Siobhan.  It’s eating at him.  He’s just a bundle of nerves, driving way too fast.  He d id his job in Montreal, though.  He did what she asked, though she’s never sent him on a normal, simple assignment before.
     
    This isn’t ab out the job in Montreal, he knows. 
     
    Something deeper is wrong. 
     
    Jaime.
     
    Rod Dressler.
     
    He wonders where Siobhan has been for the last three days.
     
    His leg tw itches constantly.  He thinks his cell phone is vibrating.  He is trying to learn to ignore it, despite the automatic response.  It’s just his leg twitching.  It only feels like a cell phone vibrating.  He digs it out of his pocket.  The re are no new calls.  There is the message from Siobhan.  The one she left before she sent him to Montreal.  He can’t get himself to listen to it.  The message is from when he didn’t show up at the office; from the day he was in the park, Jaime sprawled on his lap when he was supposed to meet Siobhan .
     
    He stares at the message icon, unable even to keep his eyes on the road.  The Northway, between Montreal and Lake George is perfectly straight.  There are no curves.  There are no stops.  Th ere are no other cars.  There are no cops .  It is a lawless strip of highway.  Speed limits hardly matter.  Further south, cars from Quebec are always still flying past everybody else.  It doesn’t occur to them that they’re not still on the lonesome, lawless strip that introduc es them to New York.  No one knows the difference between miles and kilometers , no one knows what the signs mean anymore.
     
    The landscape doesn’t change much crossing from New York into Canada.  But pass one little, artificial line, and people speak a different language.  Follow a different leader.  Sell drugs cheaper.  Rarely fight wars.  Let you touch strippers. Provide care to all of its citizens.
     
    Hypnotizing ours elves in our own little worlds - believing in fate, pre-destiny, God, law and order, history books - it’s easy to believe this is the way o ur world is designed, by intelligence, not the way we made it , just a tangle of individual motivations competing against each other .  Sure, there’s an order .  Not a divine one, not one in synergy with anything around it.  Cross one little line, though, and you can see how contrived that order is.  And how fragile.
     
    One little line t hat we made ourselves.
     
    Dodge stomps on the gas pedal.  He can’t get home quick ly enough.  He doesn’t want to get home at all. A sense of danger fuels him - t errifies him. 
     
    He can fracture that metaphorical line, in a fraction of a second. 
     
    It takes five hours to drive a straight line home.
     
    We like straight lines.  They’re easier to follow.
     
    Dodge feels his phone, now buried once more in his pocket, pressed against the hard, twitching muscle of his thigh, vibrate again.  He kn ows this is the same old trick - that he shouldn’t bother to pull it out again, doesn’t want to stare at a reminder that the only person to have called him is Siobhan, days ago.  And that he hasn’t called her back, hasn’t even listened to her message.
     
    But he pulls the phone out anyway.  Maybe because it only vibrated once.   Nor mally, it feels like it’s constantly buzzing in his pocket .  This time, it was just once .
     
    For real.
     
    A t ext