“Ah,” he said, nodding. “Of course.”
A long silence fell between us. It was like a whole extra person in the car, this silence, watching me expectantly. I started to imagine the silence was Billy Milsap, this kid from my grade who always sat near me in every class. He never said a word, never answered a question, and every time I glanced at him he was already staring at me. No smile, not even the good sense to look away when I caught him. The silence in the car was an invisible Billy Milsap, hunched like a goblin in the backseat. Like any silence, it wasn’t really silent at all, but had the same thick drone of Billy’s mouth breathing. And the more time passed, the bigger it got. Also, incidentally, like Billy Milsap.
When the silence hung around through the whole state of Delaware, and Billy Milsap had grown so large he was spilling out the open windows, I couldn’t take it anymore.
“I wish there was music,” I said a little pointedly.
“I am sorry,” said J.Lo.
I didn’t really like it when he apologized.
“At least you guys didn’t blow up all the roads,” I said. There had been a long stretch of broken asphalt, but now the highway was smooth again.
“The Destruction Crews, they only are exploring roads—”
“Exploding roads. Not exploring.”
“Yes. They only are exploding roads around the big humanscity. I did not understand whyfor they explode roads, on account I was not knowing about the humanscar that roll.”
He said “roll” like it was something cute.
“What were you doing out there by the MoPo anyway?” I said. “All by yourself.”
“There was there an antenna farm.”
“An antenna farm? There’s no such thing.”
“A…” He searched for the right words. “A big field filled with the tall antenna towers. For to your radios. I was to sent to modify the towers, for Boov use.”
We were passing through an abandoned city, past empty buildings like mausoleums.
“The job…” J.Lo continued, “it took too long. I missed my ride. So Gratuity nicely gives me the ride.”
I didn’t really like him complimenting me. And I got the impression he wasn’t telling me everything about his work. But then I wasn’t exactly sharing either.
“Maybe we could play some car games,” I said.
“Car games?”
I tried to think of a game he might understand. I said, “I spy, with my little eye, something that starts with…G.”
“Sausages,” guessed J.Lo.
So we didn’t play any car games.
Strange as it sounds, we actually started talking about old TV shows.
“What was the one,” said J.Lo, “the one onto where the man wears a dress?”
I frowned. “You’re going to have to give me more to go on,” I said. “There’s kind of a long tradition of men wearing dresses on television.”
“Milton Berle!” J.Lo shouted, remembering. He laughed—I think it was laughing—for two whole minutes. I had no idea who he was talking about.
“Or the shows where to the men wear helmets and run at each other?”
“Sounds like football,” I said. Or war footage, I thought.
“Yes. Also very funny.”
“Have you watched all this TV since the Boov came here?” I asked.
“Oh, no. The Boov have to been getting the Smekland shows for long time. Many years. The signals travel through the space and we catch them on Boovworld. Do you know Gunsmoked? Or I Am Loving Lucy?”
“Sort of,” I said.
“Did you to see the one where Lucy try to make the Ricky put her into the big show?”
He laughed again, like a trombone under water.
“Ah,” he said finally. “Wicked funny.”
There was that word again.
“Did you guys learn English from watching our television?”
“No,” said J.Lo. “We had tutors. But you could to understand some of the shows, even without the humanswords.”
“Oh.”
“Do you know what is interesting?” the Boov asked. “Before we to came to Smekland, I thought it would to be funnier. And more exciting, also. All I knew was fromto the television signals, so I thought it was always tripping on footstools and car chasing. It is not quite liketo the television, is Smekland?”
“No…” I said, “life isn’t like TV. On TV, everything gets wrapped up quickly. On TV there are heroes who save the world from people like you.”
I squeezed the wheel, stared at the long ribbon of yellow ahead of us. I’d sucked all the air out of the car. My stomach tightened a little as J.Lo glanced at me, then looked quickly away.
By the time we stopped for the night, Billy Milsap was as big as an ocean liner.
I chose a rest stop for our campsite. It was a little bit of human normalness that I could cling to. We could have stopped to sleep in a town, maybe even managed to get into a deserted motel. But then there would have been all of the gray empty streets and buildings surrounding me, and I didn’t like the way they already looked like ruins, like monuments to some briefly rich but now-dead civilization. At a rest stop we could almost have been any two motorists pulling over after a long day on the road.
So we parked at the James K. Polk Rest Area.
“What did that sign to say?” asked J.Lo. It was first thing he’d said in hours.
“‘James K. Polk Rest Area,’” I said. “We’re going to rest here.”
J.Lo’s eyes darted about as we hovered up to a squat little building. “Can we to do that? We are not James Kaypolk.”
“I’m sure he won’t mind.”
It turned out to be a really good place to stop. Apparently, no one had thought to loot a rest area, and the vending machines were fully stocked with candy, gum, toaster pastries, Blue Razzberry Nums, orange crackers filled with cheese so yellow it was almost a light source, peanuts, L’il Tasties, Extreme Ranch Chips, Extreme BBQ Pork Rinds, Noda (the Soda Substitute), and mints. J.Lo was only interested in the mints, so I would have the rest to myself.
“How does the food to come into the out?”
I winced. “Well, normally you have to put some money into it. But I don’t really have much.”
“And I am broken.”
“Broke.”
“Broke.”
J.Lo fetched his toolbox, which I was now convinced had everything in it, and produced something like a spray can, if spray cans were shaped like kidneys.