"South where?"

"I'm not quite sure."

"You don't know where you need to go?"

"I'll know it when I get there, ma'am."

She c.o.c.ked her head and regarded me in silence for a moment, and I thought of a c.o.c.katoo, perhaps because of her white hair and the birdlike brightness of her stare.

"Are you a cut-throat murderer?" she asked.

"No, ma'am."

I chose not to say that I had sometimes killed in self-defense and to protect the innocent. Killing is different from murder, though most people tend to get nervous when you try to explain why one might be acceptable but never the other.

"Are you a rapist?"

"No, ma'am."

"You don't look like a rapist."

"Thank you."

"You don't look drug-crazed, either."

"People often tell me that, ma'am."

She squinted at me but then smiled, apparently having decided that I wasn't trying to be a wisea.s.s.

"Do you have a job, child?"

"I'm a fry-cook, currently unemployed."

"I don't need a fry-cook."

"I think everyone does, ma'am, they just don't know it."

A Peterbilt, a motor home, and a Cadillac Escalade roared past, and we waited for silence.

She said, "What I need is a chauffeur."

"I thought you were the chauffeur."

"Isn't anybody in this big old boat but me. Four days ago, up in Moonlight Bay, Oscar Dunningham, my best friend and my driver for twenty-two years, dropped dead of a ma.s.sive heart attack."

"That's terrible, ma'am. I'm sorry."

"Maybe it would be a tragedy if Oscar wasn't ninety-two years old. He had a good life. Now he's ashes in an urn, flying back to Georgia where the truly sad thing is his mother will see him buried."

"His mother is still alive?"

"She's not some walking-dead zombie, child. Of course she's alive. Or was this morning. You never know. None of us does. If it matters at all, I'm eighty-six."

"You don't look it, ma'am."

"The h.e.l.l I don't. When I see myself in a mirror, I scream."

In fact, she had one of those fine-boned, perfectly symmetrical faces that time could little distort, and her soft skin was not so much wrinkled as precisely pleated to sweet effect.

She said, "Can you drive?"

"Yes. But I can't take a job right now."

"You don't look like a shiftless good-for-nothing."

"That's kind of you to say. But the problem is, I have this thing I've got to do."

"Somewhere south of here, you don't know where, but you'll know the place when you get there."

"That's right, ma'am."

Her blue eyes were neither clouded nor sorrowed by age, but were alert, quick, and clear. "This thing you've got to do-have you any idea what it is?"

"More or less," I said. "But I'd rather not talk about it."

"Okay, then," she said, putting the limo in park and applying the emergency brake, but leaving the engine running, "you be my chauffeur and just drive us where you need to go."

"You can't mean that, ma'am. What kind of chauffeur would that be?"

"The kind I can live with. A lot of the time, I don't much care where I go, just so I go somewhere."

She got out of the limousine and came around to the pa.s.senger side. She was wearing a yellow pantsuit with a white blouse that featured frilly lace-trimmed collar and cuffs, and a gold brooch with little diamonds and rubies arranged to form a glittering exclamation point.

When she looked up at me, I felt extraordinarily tall, like Alice after consuming a piece of cake labeled EAT ME.

"As my chauffeur," she said, "you need to open the door for me."

"I can't be your chauffeur, ma'am."

"I'll ride up front with you to get to know you better."

"I'm sorry, but I really can't be your-"

"I'm Edie Fischer. I don't hold with formalities, so you can just call me Edie."

"Thank you, ma'am. But-"

"I was named after St. Eadgyth. She was a virgin and martyr. I can't claim to be a virgin, but the way the world is sliding into darkness, I might yet be a martyr, even though I don't aspire to it. What's your name, child-or are you as unsure of that as you are of where you're going?"

I have in the past used aliases. Using one now made sense, if only to avoid having to explain the origin of my first name for the ten thousandth time. Instead, I said, "My name's Odd Thomas."

"Of course, it is," Mrs. Fischer said. "And if you need to be paid in cash, I am entirely comfortable with that arrangement. Please open the door for me, Oddie."

Oddie and Edie. I had seen and enjoyed Driving Miss Daisy, but I was neither as reliable nor as n.o.ble as Morgan Freeman's character, Hoke. "Ma'am-"

"Call me Edie."

"Yes, ma'am. The problem is, I'm looking for a dangerous man, this trucker who dresses like a rhinestone cowboy, and maybe he's looking for me."

Without hesitation, she zippered open her large purse to show me the pistol nestled among all the lady things. "I can take care of myself, Oddie. Don't you worry about me."

"But, ma'am, in all good conscience-"

"Now that you've gotten me intrigued," she said, "there's no way you're going to shake loose of me. Child, I need a little danger to keep the blood creeping through my veins. Last time I had some major fun was Elko, Nevada, four months ago, when Oscar and I outfoxed those government fools and helped that poor creature get home again."

"Poor creature?" I asked.

"Never you mind." She zippered shut her purse. "Let's find your rhinestone cowboy if that's what you want."

I opened the door. She got into the limousine.

Four.

THE MERCEDES LIMO HAD A TWELVE-CYLINDER ENGINE and two fuel tanks, providing both speed and range.

Not a single cloud sailed the sea of sky above, and the coastal land rolled in gentle waves.

Riding shotgun with panache, voluminous black purse on her lap, Mrs. Fischer pointed to the radar detector that was fixed to the dashboard and then to something that she called a laser foiler, which she a.s.sured me meant that, regarding velocity, we were at little risk of being caught when we broke the law. I had never heard of a laser foiler; but she claimed that it was reliable, "as cutting-edge as any technology on the planet."

She said her previous chauffeur, Oscar, had driven her across the United States, Maine to Texas, Washington State to Florida, again and again, often with the speedometer needle past the one-hundred mark, and they had never gotten a single speeding ticket. They had explored a hundred cities and a thousand small towns, mountains high and lush, deserts low and arid, anywhere a superstretch limousine could be piloted.

The current car was an impressive machine. So little vibration translated from the pavement into the frame that we seemed to be floating swiftly southward, as if the highway were a racing river.

"Oscar was a good employee and a perfect friend," Mrs. Fischer said. "And he was as restless as I am, wanted always to be going somewhere. I knew him better than I ever knew either of my brothers. I would like to know you as well as I knew him, Odd Thomas. Even if I just live to be as old as Oscar, you and I will travel many thousands of miles together, and the journey will be so much more fun if we're friends and understand each other. So ... are you gay?"

"Gay? No. Why would you think I'm gay?"

"You're chasing after this rhinestone cowboy. That's all right with me, child. I have nothing against gays. I've always liked men a lot, so I understand why you would."

"I don't like men. I mean, I like them, I'm not a man-hater, but I don't love them. Except, you know, in the sense that we should all love our fellow man. But that means man and woman. In general. You know, like the whole human species."

She favored me with a grandmotherly smile, nodded knowingly, and said, "So you're bis.e.xual."

"What? Good heavens, no. I'm not bis.e.xual. Who would have the time or energy for that? I'm just saying, I'm fine with loving all mankind in theory, which is different from dating them."

She winked and said, "So you mean, you're gay in theory but not in practice."

"No. I'm not gay in theory or practice."

"Maybe you're in denial."

"No, not at all. I love a girl. My girl, Stormy Llewellyn-she's the only one for me and always will be. We're destined to be together forever."

My contention is that I'm not a total conversational idiot, although the foregoing exchanges might indicate otherwise. Engaged once more in psychic magnetism, concerned that I might again draw the cowboy to me instead of being drawn to him, getting accustomed to handling the ma.s.sive limo, I was distracted.

Mrs. Fischer said, "'Destined to be together forever.' That's sweet. You're a sweet child."

"We once got a card from a carnival fortune-telling machine, and that's what it said."

As the speedometer needle crept past ninety, the highway might have been a runway. I felt as if we were on the brink of being airborne.

Mrs. Fischer said, "I hope you're not one of these moderns who thinks marriage isn't necessary. You're going to marry the girl, aren't you?"

"Yes, ma'am. It's all I want."

"You wouldn't be saying that just to please an old woman and keep your new job, would you?"

"No, ma'am. I haven't accepted the job. I'm not your chauffeur."

"Call me Edie."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Seems that you're driving my car, like you are a chauffeur. Of course, maybe I'm senile and imagining all this. When are you going to marry this Stormy?"

"I don't know an exact date, ma'am. I have to die first. Wait. I'll need to explain that. Stormy ... well, she died, and we can't ever be together in this world now, only in the next."

"This is true? Yes, I see it is. You believe in an afterlife?"

"Yes, ma'am. Stormy believed in two afterlives. She said this world was boot camp, to test and toughen us, to prepare us for the next life of service in some great adventure. Our third and eternal life comes after that."

"What a unique concept."

"Not so much. You've heard of Purgatory, like Catholics believe. Well, maybe the next life is Purgatory-except with lots of running, jumping, chasing, and fighting with demons or something."

"That makes sense," she said.

Surprised by her quick acceptance, I said, "It does?"

"In eighty-six years, child, I've learned the world is a far more mysterious place than most people realize and that every moment of life is woven through with meaning. In fact, I learned that much by the time I was twenty-six, one oven-hot night in the little town of Lonely Possum."