Chapter Sixteen

October 19, Wednesday, Summerlin, 8:30 AM

Clarice Starling's first thought, as she gazed at Ardelia Mapp, was that her former roommate looked older. She looked as though she had perhaps aged more in the single year that had passed since the two of them had been face to face than was normal, or right, in any sane version of the world.

Starling's second thought was that she knew exactly who was responsible for the angular, drawn lineaments of Ardelia's half-smile. She saw the faint new lines around Ardelia's mouth, the subtle hollows under her eyes, the shadow that had fallen on her closest woman friend's familiar and once-loved face. Starling saw all these things and more. She saw very well.

I did this, she thought. I'm the one who gave her twenty years worth of nightmares telescoped into one.

The two women were alone, in Margot Verger's study, the pleasant and peaceful room that had been the scene of Dr. Everett Doemling's last, fatal interview. Starling had not needed to tell either Judy or Margot she needed a little privacy for this new interview.

Clarice looked at Ardelia, and Ardelia looked back. They were so still in this moment, they might have been a pair of stone bookends.

"Hey, Ardelia," Clarice finally said, trying her best to smile. "Long time no see."

"Oh, Starling. Oh, Clarice. Look at you. What's become of you?"

Starling's awkward smile faded and she raised a hand to her cheek involuntarily. She felt herself flushing. For the first time since she'd awakened to a contrived crime scene in a high-priced hotel room, she felt self-conscious about her injured face.

"Turns out Las Vegas is kind of a rough town, I guess," Clarice said, knowing how wholly inadequate a remark it was, how stupid and flip, how ultimately dishonest. Somewhere in the course of the past year, she'd lost the easy knack of talking with Ardelia. She found she no longer knew how to speak truthfully to her friend.

Angry tears sprang to Ardelia's eyes and her posture stiffened with hurt. She took a step closer to Starling and stared into her face. Clarice saw that she wasn't missing anything. Not a bite, not a bruise, not a mark.

"I thought I'd never see you again. I thought you were dead," Ardelia said. Smothered tears and a year's worth of helpless dread roughened her voice.

"I saw you in the ground, Starling, over and over again, nights when I couldn't sleep. Lots of nights. And then day before yesterday, there you are, big as life, passing out in some parking structure in Vegas on the evening news! So you need to come up with something a little better than that to say to me, after all this time, girlfriend. You need to try again!"

How right she is, Clarice thought miserably. I do need to try again. I guess I owe her a little effort.

She reached down inside herself, rummaging through her own disarrayed soul for some appropriate words, and came up, surprisingly, with the truth. One truth, anyway.

Two stumbling steps brought her close enough to Ardelia to grasp both of her friend's hands in her own.

"But I'm not dead. Ardelia. I'm not dead. I'm right here. I may look like hell, but I'm right here. And Jesus God . . . how much I've missed you," her voice cracked as she felt her own eyes fill, and she was intensely grateful to discover that there could still be room in her heart for such love and such regret.

She tightened her grip on Ardelia's hands. "I've missed you so much, Ardelia. So much. You can't believe how glad I am to see you."

Ardelia looked down at her hands in Starling's and the tears spilled out of her eyes and down her cheeks. But when she looked up, she was grinning, wet cheeks and all. She took her hands out of Starling's grip and pulled her into a fierce hug.

"Okay. Okay, Starling, that's better. I guess maybe I can let you off the hook with that..."

Clarice grinned herself, relieved. She hugged back.

"Whew! So that's okay, then. Still the brass-plated toughie, aren't you, Drill Sergeant Mapp?"

"You don't know the half of it, Missy May. I've got a few questions for you, once we get done bawling and hugging and all this other sentimental bull. We need to have a talk."

Clarice sighed and gave Ardelia one final affectionate squeeze. Then she moved away to a chair and sat down heavily. After a pause, Ardelia followed suit and took a seat of her own. Though they did not know it, they faced each other across the same space that had separated Margot Verger and Dr. Doemling only two days earlier.

"You know, Ardelia, a talk would be nice." Clarice said, and laughed, a little. "Been a while since I had a good gab with a girlfriend. So . . . questions, huh? Yeah, I guess you must have some. But I'm afraid I've got to ask you a question, before we get started. And you're not gonna like it, either."

Ardelia fixed her with a level gaze.

"I'm a big girl, Starling. Shoot," she said. "From the hip. You always do."

"Okay. If we're gonna talk, I need to know it's just us talking, Ardelia. Just you and me. Not you, me, and the Bureau."

Ardelia's lips thinned as she considered Starling's question.

"A year ago, you wouldn't have asked me that," she observed, coldly.

Starling shrugged. "Things change. I can't help that. I'm sorry."

"Yeah, well . . ." Ardelia answered, and reached inside her purse. She brought out an opened envelope, nondescript airmail stationery, available in any variety store in the world, common as dirt. Clarice recognized her own handwriting on the address lines.

"Remember this note, Clarice? You should, because you wrote it. I got it in the mail just last month. 'I'm fine and more than fine' it says, among other things. Fairly incriminating things. Do you still want to ask me if I'm here fishing for the Bureau?"

Clarice smiled sadly. "I asked you to burn that, Ardelia. A year ago, you'd have done what I asked."

"Let's not dance around, okay? Let me ask you, now. Is it just us talking here, or is it you, me, and him?"

Clarice looked out the French doors of the study, out at the overcast morning beyond. Damn. Another dreary, drizzly day in Las Vegas. Would the rain never end?

Clarice asked herself if there was any part of her left that was still truly separate from Hannibal Lecter. Was it just Clarice and Ardelia talking together on this Wednesday morning? Or was that no longer possible?

There weren't any clear answers in the wet, grey light streaming in through the windows.

"Did you keep the ring I sent you, Ardelia?" Clarice asked inconsequently. "I was afraid you might throw it away."

"I almost did," Ardelia answered, and reached inside her blouse. She drew a fine silver chain past her collar and held her closed hand out toward Starling. When she opened her hand, a platinum ring set with emeralds gleamed on her open palm.

"Nice," Ardelia added. There was a hard, biting edge of recrimination in her voice. "You couldn't have afforded rocks like these on your old salary. I guess he can offer a girl a few solid fringe benefits, anyway."

A split second later, Starling was surprised to find herself standing, almost nose to nose with her friend. She didn't remember Ardelia rising, she didn't remember leaping to her own feet, and she couldn't remember when she had ever been so angry with Ardelia Mapp.

"Now you know it's just us here, Ardelia," she rapped out. "If it really was you, me and him, you'd be dead. He doesn't let anyone call me a whore. Not even a close friend."

"Oh, isn't that SWEET," Ardelia countered, hissing, a year of pain and fear and loss lending venom to her words. "Your rabid human attack dog will kill to defend your honor, is that the way it is? Of course, he'd do it anyway, since killing is what he is, since killing is all he is! But - hey - you don't want to talk about that, right? It's the thought that counts!"

"You ought to shut your flapping, sanctimonious jaw, Ardelia. You don't know what you're talking about. You don't know the first thing about Hannibal Lecter and you never have."

"WHY, goddamnit? Why? What in the name of God happened to you? What in hell did he do to you, to twist you around like this? Has he got you so blind you don't see what - "

"He didn't do anything to - "

"You've gone so completely crazy you've destroyed your entire life to go running off with that toxic fucking psycho from hell and you try to tell me that he hasn't done anything to-"

"The only thing he EVER did to me was love - "

"NO! NO! NO! Don't you say that to me!" Ardelia screamed, and her face twisted. Her warm brown skin had gone a sick ashy grey.

"Don't you EVER say that to me! Don't you stand there with your poor face looking like a pound of ground round and tell me that evil sonofabitch LOVES you! DON'T YOU TELL ME THAT, CLARICE!

Ardelia choked out a single, hoarse, infuriated sob and turned her back on Clarice. Clarice could see that her friend was shaking, her narrow shoulders hunched inward.

Oh, nice work, Starling, she said to herself. You're handling this beautifully. Maybe later you can shoot her.

"Ardelia . . . Ardelia." Clarice said, quietly. She hesitantly reached out to touch Ardelia's shoulder and was dismayed when Ardelia jerked away from the touch. "Listen to me. If you don't want me to tell you the truth, then what CAN I tell you? Is there some other reason you'd like better?"

"Look at you, Clarice, " Ardelia said, still unwilling to turn back toward Starling. "Look what he's done to you. Don't you know what they're saying he did to you, on the news?"

"Of course I know what they're saying, Ardelia. Exactly what we expected them to say, word for word. I told him to do this. I told him HOW to do it, for Christ's sake."

Mapp turned around to stare at her friend.

"Why? Why would you put yourself in a world of hurt like this? How could you agree to something so sick?"

"They had us trapped in that fucking hotel, Mapp. No way we could have gotten out together, and no way he'd have made it into custody alive, either. They'd have blown his damn head off for resisting arrest even if he'd put on the handcuffs himself and baked 'em a cake in the bargain. You know what I'm talking about, Ardelia, you've seen it happen."

"So, let me see if I've got this straight. You guys figured out that if he beat you to a bloody pulp and busted up your face and . . . and raped you and left you for the cops it would be a good idea?"

"He made me look like a victim so I wouldn't be arrested myself. Jeez, Ardelia, you never used to be so slow. He did it so I could blame everything on him and get away clean. And I agreed because I had to. If he'd thought for one moment that I was in danger of being charged, he never would have left me."

"And he's loyal too! What a guy! Maybe he could have massacred a few cops for you, too, like he did in Memphis."

"We had three choices. Get arrested, get killed, or get our butts in gear and do whatever it took to get out alive. We chose whatever. I chose. And I chose right. It worked. I can't help it if you've got a problem with that. Is it the fucking that bothers you the most about this? Or is it that we got away with it?"

"I've got so many problems with all of this fucked up craziness I don't even know where to begin. Tell me this. Where's your black knight now? Isn't he around to chew my face off or whatever for speaking harshly to his princess? He's so goddamned committed to you, why don't I see him here?"

Had Ardelia stabbed Clarice through the chest, she could not have pierced her heart more accurately. The emotional impact was so acute, Clarice actually experienced physical pain and staggered back a step or two, as though Ardelia had struck her. All the hot energy in her seemed to drain away like water flowing out of a vessel.

"But you wouldn't see him, Ardelia," Clarice remarked, almost absently, almost more to herself than to her friend. She turned back to her chair and sank into it, suddenly limp. "You'd never have seen him coming. No one ever does."

Ardelia flung herself into her own chair with a discouraged sigh. She stared at Starling for a long time, and some strange species of terrible pity hardened her expression, drew her skin too tight over the bones of her face.

"You sure didn't see him coming, did you, honey?" her tone was both kind and harsh, softened with grief and cold with judgment.

Clarice made one final effort to explain that which she herself could not really understand. What neither she nor Dr. Lecter had ever been able to explain or quantify, and had been obliged, finally, to learn to simply accept. The central mystery in their intertwined lives, as inexplicable and miraculous and frightening as raising the dead or walking on water.

It came to Clarice, as she gathered her thoughts, that she would never have made this doomed attempt to explain the ineffable to anyone less precious to her than Ardelia Mapp had once been.

"Neither of us could have foreseen any of it," she said to her friend. "Neither of us saw it coming. We know how crazy it is - don't you realize that? We're the ones who wasted almost ten years on games and smokescreens and obstinate denial. Ten years we can never get back again, gone. And how many years more would you give us, Ardelia? Care to lay some odds?"

She pinned Ardelia with an uncompromising gaze and went on.

"Love isn't brains, it isn't rational thought, it isn't a goal you can seek or a plan you can make or a calamity you can avoid. It moves through your life like a wind. It just happens. It's just the way it is. We didn't ask for it. People don't ask for lightning to strike either, but sometimes it does."

"Sometimes bad things happen to good people?" Ardelia asked caustically.

"And sometimes good things happen to bad people," Clarice answered. "Tell you the truth, I like to think that somehow... it all evens out."

"I've read the files, Clarice, same as you. Hannibal Lecter is a vicious, murdering, evil man. He's terror personified and he's not fit to walk the same earth as the rest of us. That's what I know about it, even if you don't. Can you even that out?"

Ardelia shook her head vigorously, as though trying to clear it of some repellent psychic substance. She obviously didn't expect any answer to her question.

"Fucking Jack Crawford," she observed bitterly. "I hope he's screaming in hell for what he did to you."

Clarice let out a brittle caw of laughter. She saw Ardelia's eyes narrow with surprise.

"There ya go, Ardelia. Loyal to end. Crawford did it to me. Lecter did it to me. The Bureau did it to me. Anyone and everyone is to blame, everyone except pure-of-heart little me, is that how you have it figured? But it's so hard to believe anything else, right? I guess I'm the first woman in the history of the world who ever fell in love with an evil man. Saint C of the Bureau falls from grace. "

"Ladies who fall for the bad guy don't come out well in the end, Starling. Eva Braun died young. And even if you're not a saint, you sure as hell aren't in the same league as Lecter."

"You know, girlfriend, I really don't want to go round and round with this any more. I'm tired of it. I've been there, done that, more than you know. And what it all boils down to is I don't care. I made my choice. I'm living with it. And you know what? I'm not obligated to defend my choices to you."

"Okay. Okay. But where is he, then? The love of your life? Why isn't he here with you now, when you need him?"

Starling laughed again, icy, tearing laughter that was horrible to hear.

"He's not here because, strange as it sounds, he thinks just like you, Ardelia. I hate to tell you this, since I know you won't want to hear it, but you guys are in agreement. He doesn't think he's good for me either. "

Ardelia blinked, surprised. "So. . .what? You're saying he-"

"He cut me loose. That's what I'm saying. First he fixed it so I'd never ever have to tell anyone the truth about us, and then he fixed it so I could never get back to him without putting his neck in a noose, and then he vanished. He's good at that, not leaving loose ends, all the i's dotted and all the t's crossed. You two are alike in that, too, Ardelia."

"I am nothing like that grotesque freak of yours, and I'm sorry I called you a whore, okay? Can we call it a draw on the name-calling contest? Why would he do something like that?"

"So I wouldn't have to play dead anymore. So I could get back to my own life. So that I could do or have anything in the world my heart might desire, except the only thing I really want. You ought to throw him a party, Ardelia. He did the 'decent' thing, the only truly selfless thing he's probably ever done in his whole adult life."

Starling's own primary pain, never far away, ground and twisted in the new wounds in her heart and she found she was suddenly weary of this fruitless conversation with Ardelia Mapp. This friendship, years old and once so important to her, was probably impossible to salvage, and that was a loss. But she had more intolerable losses to attempt to withstand now, and she honestly didn't know how, or if, she could.

She added a bitter footnote to all she'd said before. "And you can believe me when I say - I sure never saw THAT coming."

"But . . . but that's the best news I've heard in a year, if it's really true. He just let you go? No strings? That's a good thing."

"No, it is not a good thing, Ardelia. I don't expect you to understand. It's wrong and it's stupid and it'll probably kill us both, in time," she sighed desolately and went on. "We both had to pay enormous prices and fight a thousand different demons and turn ourselves inside out just to steal a few short months of happiness and now . . . after everything we've been through . . . he's left us with nothing."

She stopped to pass a shaking hand over eyes that had started to burn.

"I could just kill him for it," she said thickly, and her voice broke.

Ardelia smiled humorlessly in response, a merciless, ugly little grin that Clarice would not ever have dreamed she'd one day see disfiguring her friend's face.

"Good deal. I'll help you do it."

Clarice looked at Ardelia, and looked into her own memory, remembering so much, how they'd shared so many of the same hopes as young women at Quantico. She saw what a staunch ally Ardelia had been to her, and what an implacable enemy she now was to Hannibal Lecter. It was such a tragic irony that the two people in all the world she most loved must be so irrevocably estranged.

"Oh, Ardelia," she argued, knowing it was pointless. "He doesn't hate you. . ."

The two women were silent for a time, having reached an impasse that neither could find a way around. The desultory pattering of the rain outside filled the silence between them, and it seemed to Clarice that perhaps an ancient and dismal message about the way of the world could be discerned in the sound. Everything flows away. Nothing stays the same. The center doesn't hold.

Yeats on entropy. Not exactly encouraging.

I am so very tired, she thought. I've just about had it.

"What will you do now?" Ardelia asked, breaking into Starling's wretched reverie.

"I really don't know for sure," Clarice admitted. "I don't have a lot of options left."

Ardelia shook her head with a small exasperated snort of laughter. "You know what your problem is, Starling?"

Clarice snorted too, genuinely amused. "No fucking idea. Are you going to enlighten me, Dr. Mapp?"

Ardelia ignored the sarcastic jibe and went on. "You've got the whole world divided into two poles. The Bureau versus Lecter. You've been oscillating between them for a decade. First one, then the other, either-or, nothing in between. You suffer from an acute case of tunnel vision."

"That's strange. That's pretty much what he thinks too."

"Gosh, I'm supported by a professional opinion. I'm just so pleased I could spit. C'mon, let's get out of this dreary little room. I want to show you something outside."

"Is it my surprise? You said you'd brought me a surprise. "

"Yep. I did," Ardelia stood up and grinned at Starling. "Not that you've been a good girl and actually deserve a surprise or anything . . . but, you can think of it as a learning aid."

Clarice rose too. "Oh, that's nice. Patronize me some more, please, Ardelia? It makes me feel like I'm right at home."

They moved toward the door of the study, and stepped out into the hall beyond.

"Ah, what a cutting remark. You've been sharpening your smart-ass skills, Starling," Ardelia commented as they walked down the corridor. "Been practicing, I guess. They say every time Lecter opens his mouth, razor blades fall out."

Clarice was struck by the fantastic and not wholly inaccurate image, and laughed in spite of her sense of loyalty. The two of them moved towards the foyer that led to the front door of the house. They saw no one. Judy and Margot and those of their guests who were up must be gathered in the kitchen hunting coffee. The foyer and the great room beyond it were empty.

Ardelia moved to the front door and opened it. She turned back to her friend from the threshold.

"C'mon. It's right out here."

Clarice felt a sudden craven reluctance to see whatever Ardelia wanted to show her. Such fearful reactions were foreign to her, and she knew of no reason to be afraid. Yet she was.

"What is it?" she asked, hesitating at the threshold, unwilling, for the moment, to step past.

Ardelia smiled back at her. "Animal, vegetable, or mineral? Bigger than a bread box? C'mon, C, don't be a wuss. I think you'll be pleased."

She walked out the door then, leaving Clarice alone to follow if she would.

A familiar voice from the past asked her a question as she hovered in the doorway.

"You're tough, aren't you, Officer Starling?"

Oh yeah. Oh yeah . . . I'm tough all right. Takes a licking and keeps on ticking, that's me. Bring it on. On and on and on.

She squared her tired shoulders and went outside to see what Ardelia had brought for her.

About twenty yards past the front door, out in the circular driveway, in the misty grey light of a rainy morning, Ardelia Mapp stood beside a metal ghost.

A blast from the past crouched down like a beast about to spring in the driveway, sleek bodied, bristling muscle, still ready to rumble, too tough to die. Vintage Detroit rolling steel, the most beautiful, graceful and gleefully brutal of automotive designs ever, the once and future king of the highway.

My speedy chariot, Clarice thought, overwhelmed with wonder and pleasure to behold this old friend that she had never thought to see again. My old beast. My career may have gone to hell, and I never got to join the good ol' boys club, but I damn sure always had the coolest ride in the whole Bureau. My Mustang. My car!

"Oh . . . my . . . GOD," she breathed, stunned, delighted. "How did you find it?"

Ardelia managed to look both smug and disapproving.

"Like I told you, I can read case files just as well as you. I found it in a self-storage facility about three miles from the Chesapeake Bay. Where they found your friend and mine, Paul Krendler, by the way, floating face down with his brains scooped out."

A black impulse to laugh seized Clarice Starling, as it always did when she thought of Hannibal's mad dinner party for three on the shores of the Chesapeake. She always remembered how Paul had said the blessing, and how Dr. Lecter had kept his sleek head bowed and his eyes reverently downcast throughout the unusual grace, delivered so earnestly by Paul, esteemed guest and second course. The blackest of comedies, staged just for her. That extreme feast had been both the worst and the funniest thing she had ever seen. Or done.

"Marine life predation," she commented to Ardelia, only barely managing not to chuckle. "Always happens with the floaters. How'd you know to check the self-storage yard, Agent Mapp?"

"I remembered your boyfriend's extra special Valentine and put two and two together. Then I just checked all the self-storage facilities near the bay until I found it. And I think we'd better tell National Geographic that the sharks are using crossbows and trepanning skulls now."

Clarice walked closer to her old car, laid a hand on the hood. The paint looked a little seedy and there was a hairline crack near the top of the windshield, but Ardelia had clearly kept the car in pretty good working order all these months.

"I don't think it was the sharks, Mapp. But I'd look hard at the crustaceans if I were you," she turned away from the Mustang and looked at Mapp. "This was a bitch for you to find, wasn't it? This, more than anything else, convinced you I was dead, didn't it?"

"Yes. Yes, it did."

"But you still kept the car. Why?"

Ardelia's lips peeled back from her teeth in a pained smile.

"We weren't put here to know everything, however much we'd like to, my grandma used to say. Life always has another bend in the road for us. When I saw that car, covered with dust and sitting in the dark in that ratty storage bay, I knew you were dead, see . . . but I still hoped you weren't. Understand?"

"Yes, perfectly. Hope. It's really the best thing life can show us, isn't it? The only thing, really. At least we agree on that. So you found the papers and stuff in my safety deposit box, then."

"Well of course. You left a little message on my answer machine, didn't you? Dear Delia, in case I'm dead, blah, blah. Your will, deed to your half of the duplex, title to the car, all that stuff you left."

Clarice walked around to the driver's side of the Mustang and opened the car door. No familiar scents wafted out; it had been too long since she'd occupied this car. But the myriad scents of memory flowed from the interior in a virtual torrent. She glanced at Ardelia over the roof.

"You DO know that when I left that message for you, I really pretty much thought I WOULD be dead, right?" she asked. "We are clear on that?"

"Yes," Ardelia said, simply.

"Good," Clarice smiled. "Drive it much?"

"Hell, no. Guzzles gas like it's a double agent for OPEC, creeps up to eighty on the straight in a second. You can tell it has evil intentions, that car."

Clarice laughed, a high, clear laugh, the first truly good one since she'd read a handwritten letter in an antiseptic hospital room three days prior. She patted the roof of the car fondly, as she might have patted a big, mean dog that only she could control.

"And you brought it all this way," she said to Mapp. "For me. Thank you. Really, thank you, Ardelia. It's the nicest surprise I've had in a while."

Ardelia moved to the passenger side of the car and opened that door. She stood there a moment, staring at Clarice across the roof.

"Want to know why I brought it for you?" she asked.

Clarice sighed. Everyone she loved always had some lesson they wanted her to learn. She must strike people as inordinately stupid.

"Sure. Fire away."

No use putting it off. Ardelia would never lighten up until she'd had her say. And Clarice wanted to get the lecture over with. She felt like she might want to go for a ride.

"Once upon a time, C," Ardelia said. "You used to drive this rolling death-trap for fun, for the sheer recklessness of it, for the speed, whatever. It was yours, your thing. Mark that part - okay? Your thing. How long has it been since you did your own thing, only yours, you, Clarice Starling, separate from anyone else?"

"Three days," Clarice answered without hesitation.

"Wrong answer. It's like I was saying inside. You've got the whole world boiled down to a choice between an corrupt organization and a murderous aberration. But there's more to life than that. More to YOUR life. There are other roads to take, thousands of 'em."

Ardelia stopped and tossed something over the roof of the car to Clarice. Starling's reflexes had always been sharp, and she caught the toss without thinking. Her hand closed around metal, and she thought she could guess what Ardelia had thrown her.

A set of car keys.

"Drive, Clarice," Ardelia said, eyes serious and intent. "Road trip. Just do me that one favor, okay? Before you do anything else, before you make any decisions, take a drive, hit the road, think about all the places where the road could lead you. It's all I'm asking."

Clarice stared back at her friend a moment or two longer, then looked inside the car, at the driver's seat. Very slowly, her hand drifted away from her side, almost as if it moved to its own purpose, and need not refer to her will. She reached into the car and put her fingers on the steering wheel, felt the rich texture of the leather wheel cover, soft and cool, smooth yet with a slight drag under the pads of her fingers, an oddly intimate feeling, like touching a lover's skin. She gave the wheel a tentative little twist.

Life was a journey, and you never really knew exactly where you were going. She'd taken in that particular life lesson in spades over the past two years. Life could be a road, and ultimately, all you could do was drive on.

Not an endless road, though. One could never know where, or why, or when, but eventually every traveler must meet his or her journey's end.

But not right now, Clarice said to herself with a slightly crooked grin. Not before breakfast . . . surely? She was experiencing a sudden bizarre food craving, an insistent yen she hadn't known since she'd left the United States a year before this day, and would have sworn she'd forgotten.

"Hey, Mapp," she asked. "What time is it?"

Ardelia blinked and checked her wristwatch. "Uh . . . about a quarter past nine . . ."

"Cool!" Clarice exclaimed, and laughed, a somewhat manic laugh that made Ardelia blink again. "There's still time!"

She jumped into the Mustang and reset the seat controls by touch. She put the key into the ignition.

"C'mon, Mapp, get in. Road trip it is."

Ardelia leaned down to look in, for a time, at Clarice. Finally she shook her head, both amused and perplexed, and got into the car.

Clarice turned over the engine. The old V-8 roared aggressively as it came to life. Internal combustion. That old black magic, working just fine, after all this time. Clarice grinned hugely.

"Buckle up, baby," she told her passenger. "I'm hungry. I want some breakfast, something really special, and we're gonna have to hurry. Here we go."

She put the car in gear and as she pulled around in the driveway, she heard gravel crunching under her tires and felt it through the soles of her feet. Good surface under tires, the quintessential siren song of the road.

"Uh-huh. Oka-aay . . ." Ardelia commented, a bit warily. "Fine. Whatever you say, Starling. Ummm, can I ask where we're going?"

Clarice Starling cackled as though she'd gone mad and sprayed gravel as she stomped on the gas pedal.

"You never ask, Ardelia!" she shouted through her crazed guffaws. "You never ask! It spoils the surprise!"

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