“What happens if you go missing?” Stew said. “It will kill her. It really will.”
“I’m not going to go missing,” Kenny said.
He looked at Mark and then back at his father. Then he took his books and went out the back door.
His truck was parked in the driveway behind Mark’s, a big red pickup he used to haul stuff around. He wasn’t about to use more than one vehicle as long as he could help it. It was always possible to make money if you just watched your expenses. That was the genius of the Internet. It was great for keeping your expenses under control.
Kenny climbed into the cab of the truck and sat back. He could look up and down their street and see the flyers posted on every telephone pole. The flyers had been there since Chester had been missing a week, and his mother refreshed them every week or two. She went around to the grocery stores and gas stations and put up new ones. She made hundreds and sent them out by bulk mail.
Kenny got the truck started and took a deep breath.
If he ran into Chester on the street, he’d kill him right there.
Everybody’s life would be better if they only had the body.
3
Shpetim Kika knew a few things, in spite of having been brought up on a sheep farm in Albania. One of the things he knew was that everything was better under capitalism, except morals, which were a mess. Sexual morals were a mess, that is. On the bribery and corruption front, Shpetim could scarcely believe how clean this place was. It had taken him only a few weeks to figure it out. If you gave some politician money to give you a job, they put both you and the politician in jail, and they didn’t care what political party you belonged to or who was the president in power in Washington. There were good things and bad things about this. The good things were that you got the job if you were good at your work, and you didn’t get accused of something and thrown in jail so that somebody with better connections could get it instead. The bad things were that you had to work your ass off.
They had been working their asses off all day on this particular job. They would be working their asses off for at least another two hours. They’d stay as long as the light lasted. It was late August and the days were already beginning to go dark a little earlier. It wasn’t much earlier, but still. It was coming. The fall was coming. The winter was coming. They had to have the shell up before the first snowstorm, or they were never going to get this thing done on time.
“It’s a matter of track records,” Shpetim said to his son, Nderi. Then he made a mental correction and said, “Dee. What a name for a man. Dee.”
“People find Nderi too hard to pronounce,” Nderi said. “I find Nderi too hard to pronounce.”
“We’ve got to bring it in on time and on budget,” Shpetim said, “or as close to both as possible. It’s our first job for the state. If we do it well, we’ll get another one. There’s a lot of money in doing construction for the state.”
“We’ll get the shell up in time,” Nderi said. “Don’t worry about that. If you’re going to worry about something, worry about the electricians. It’s the wiring that keeps me up at night.”
“You shouldn’t be keeping up at night,” Shpetim said. “You should be rested to come to work in the morning. And you should consider a girl. It’s time you were married.”
“I have considered a girl.”
“A Muslim girl.”
“I have considered a girl who will convert.”
“Yes, all right,” Shpetim said. “I know. I’m not comfortable.”
“She’s even Albanian,” Nderi said. “Born and brought up in Albania. Only came here three years ago. Modest to a fault, if you ask me.”
“Eh,” Shpetim said. “It’s that you’re young. You don’t really want those things you see on TV.”
“Every man alive wants those things I see on TV,” Nderi said, “but not in a wife, I agree. But Anya is not like that, and you know it. She’s willing to convert, and you know it. She has no family—”
“You don’t think that’s strange?” Shpetim said. “You don’t think there’s something wrong with that?”
“I think we know enough people who saw half their families vanish into Soviet jails, they weren’t the ones there was something wrong with. There’s no family to object to her conversion. Give it up. I will get married to her, one way or the other. You can’t prevent it. This is America.”
“Then calm your mother about it first,” Shpetim said. “Just because you can’t sleep nights doesn’t mean your mother should be keeping me up. Have they stopped work over there? What is going on?”