111 DAYS TO THE END OF THE WORLD
Lyle counted the money in his pocket: $2.84. All that remained of his weekly food budget—which still had to cover tomorrow. Sundays were easier, though, with churches opening one-day soup kitchens. Lyle had given up on permanent soup kitchens about a week ago, when a server looked at him a little too closely. Had the server recognized him? Had she reported him to the police? Or was it all completely innocent, and Lyle was jumping at shadows? It didn’t matter, in the end; Lyle couldn’t afford not to be paranoid. He was the most wanted man in America.
But he hadn’t eaten all day, trying to trace a web of lotion pushers, and now it was late, and he was starving. He found a burger joint—not a chain, just a mom-and-pop dive—and went in.
The restaurant was long and narrow; the door led to a skinny walkway past the counter, with a handful of well-worn tables in the back. The walls were plastered with stickers and flyers for local bands and clubs and churches. The register was helmed by a sturdy woman with jet-black hair pulled up under a hairnet, her arms red from the heat and scarred from a lifetime of slinging greasy burgers over a hot griddle. This comforted Lyle—to see someone scarred was to know they were real, an authentic original. ReBirth erased scars just like it erased everything else.
There were two other people in the restaurant, each sitting by himself in the back, quietly eating. Lyle stayed against the wall, as far from the counter as he could get without looking suspicious, and examined the menu. Burgers and fries and Greek food. He could afford almost none of it.
“Take your time, honey, I’m not going anywhere.” She looked to be somewhere in her forties, but her voice was older, more rugged.
He found a grilled cheese sandwich for two bucks; adding ham would bring it to three, which was out of his range, so he stepped to the counter and asked for the plain cheese version.
“That all you want?”
“That’s it.”
“No ham?”
“No.”
“Fries and a Coke?”
“No, thank you.”
She looked him up and down, probably deducing all too easily that he couldn’t afford it. She lingered on his face, and Lyle turned to the wall to examine the various posters, feigning intense interest in the announcement of an exciting new sales opportunity.
Next to the sales flyer was a poster for the Yemaya Foundation, giving the same address Lyle had used on his first meeting with Kuvam. It seemed years ago now, but it was only a few months. So much has changed. The poster seemed to be advertising not Kuvam’s medical clinic, or whatever multicultural work the Yemaya Foundation had been involved in, but some kind of meeting. Lyle frowned and leaned in closer.
Learn salvation at the feet of the Guru Kuvam. Put an end to death and suffering by embracing the light of the universe. All is as one. Every night at 6.
“Grilled cheese.”
Lyle turned around, fishing his money from his pocket. “Two dollars?”
“Two ten with tax.” She placed the plate on the counter, a greasy stack of blackened toast oozing cheese from the middle like a bleeding wound. She took the money and rang it up. “Don’t I know you?”
Lyle froze. My beard’s coming in, my hair’s growing out. There’s no way she could recognize me. “I don’t think so, I’m just passing through town.” My beard’s never been thick enough, that’s got to be it. I was stupid to come in here.
“Yeah,” she said, “you’re that guy from the news.” Lyle turned to bolt out the door, but in that moment the door opened and a large man pushed through, filling the narrow pathway with his body. The cook seemed to recognize the new man, and spoke to him eagerly. “Doug, look at this guy, this is exactly what I was telling you about.”
The big man looked at her a moment, as if trying to remember the context of her comments, then turned to Lyle in a rush, eyes wide. “Holy crap, Ted, is that you?”
Lyle opened his mouth, having no idea who Ted was but wondering, just for a moment, if it would be safer to claim his identity instead of his own. The cook answered first.
“That’s not Ted,” she said, “but that’s exactly what he looks like—it’s the guy from the news, right? The lotion guy.” She looked at Lyle as if for confirmation.
“I’m not the lotion guy,” said Lyle quickly.
“Who were you going for?” the cook asked him. “Ted—that’s my husband, Ted—he was trying to get one of those Brazilian kids, Ronaldo I think the name was.” She shot a salacious look at the big man in the doorway. “Twenty years old if he was a day. Body like that guy in the movies, the superhero movies, you know the ones. Delicious.” She turned back to Lyle. “But the kid’s got a good heart, right? That’s the important thing. Better than Ted’s, anyway, and we can’t afford another heart attack—we had to mortgage the house just to pay the doctor bills on the first one. Is that you, too? Heart attack?”
Lyle, only half sure he was following her, shook his head. “No.”
“You’re lucky,” said the cook, “they’re the worst. Ted nearly dies, we mortgage the house, and then the doctor says he’s probably going to have another one, and what else are we going to mortgage? So we look at the one hand and we look at the other, and five thousand dollars for Ronaldo is a whole lot cheaper than fifty thousand dollars for another heart attack—fifty thousand if we’re lucky—so we sell the car and find a dealer and the next thing you know Ted’s this guy, this guy from the news.”
“You used ReBirth,” said Lyle quickly, finally getting a handle on the situation. The cook gave him a dark look and he clamped his mouth shut again.
“Nobody’s using ReBirth,” she said loudly, “it’s illegal,” but she leaned in close to Lyle and the big man in the doorway. “He didn’t use ReBirth just like you didn’t use ReBirth—but here you are, and there he is, out on the street because he can’t hold a job with a criminal’s face. This lotion guy, Mr. Fontanelle or whatever—you know how many laws he’s broken? Public enemy number one, and there’s my Ted with his face.” Her eyes softened, and she pushed the grilled cheese sandwich closer toward him. “I accidentally put ham on this even though you didn’t ask for it. If you’re Jewish or anything I can make you another one.”
Lyle stared at the sandwich, both touched and terrified by the woman’s story, and by her sudden kindness at the end of it. His mumbled thanks as he took the sandwich was drowned out by the big man’s booming voice.
“Let me see you,” said the big man; the cook had addressed him as Doug. He grabbed Lyle by the shoulders and turned him, studying him with a careful eye. “Yeah, I’ve seen this one around. Ted got the same one?”
“The very same one,” said the cook.
“How many have you seen?” asked Lyle. The cook’s kindness had made him bolder.
“Five, maybe six,” said Doug. “They’re hiring them at the docks, if you’re looking for work. It’s not your fault you got a criminal’s face.”
Lyle said nothing, and took a bite of sandwich.
Where were all the Lyles coming from? None of the NewYew lotion had been imprinted on his DNA—they’d made sure of that—and as far as he knew no one else had stolen any. Certainly he’d never been ambushed in the street like so many celebrities had. So who had gotten it, and how?
And why?
He turned to the cook. “I’m trying to track down the people who did this,” he said, “to me and to Ted and to everyone else. I know you didn’t buy any ReBirth,” he said, phrasing his sentence as carefully as possible, “but if you happened to know of a place where I could find some, maybe someone Ted’s talked to recently…?” He trailed off, not sure exactly how to finish the request without coming right out and saying it. The cook stared at him a long time, then pointed at the wall behind him.
“Hand me one of those papers.”
