“City Market,” Marcus said. “North end of town, right on the highway. Two carts, twelve minutes, and we are out of there.”
Samantha was pumping creek water into a bag with the filter. “From where.”
“From wherever we come off the trail.”
“We come off the trail on top of Cottonwood Pass. Twelve thousand feet.” She switched hands and kept pumping. “It’s about twenty miles down to town and it’s paved the whole way. There’s a parking lot up top with a bathroom in it. We will have to get a ride.”
“Fine. Somebody gives us a ride.”
“Then a person sees your face for twenty minutes,” Vlad said.
“I bet the person will be more interested in Sam’s face.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Samantha said. “I’ve looked at the photo forty times today. It’s of a kid, not me.”
“Marcus,” Vlad said. “You are the one who can be identified.”
Marcus shook his now bald head, and said, “Sam. When is the last time you talked to a stranger.”
“A couple of weeks ago. The gas station in Basalt. She said something about my shoes.”
“And you said thanks and you left.”
“Probably.”
“I’ve talked to someone I didn’t know a zillion times,” he said. “I’m pretty good at it.”
“I know,” Samantha said. “But two people coming off the trail to buy a few weeks of food is memorable. And once you start talking, you can’t shut up.”
“So take Vlad.”
“No,” Vlad said.
“We already played that game,” Samantha said. “It’s you.”
Marcus put both hands on top of his head.
“How? Nobody packed a disguise.”
“What do we actually have?” asked Vlad.
She went through what she saw in the packs when she had searched through the food. “Sunscreen. Half a roll of KT tape. A Sharpie. Two headlamps.”
“No dye,” Vlad said. “No glasses. No contact lenses.”
Marcus scratched his jaw. He hadn’t shaved in a couple of days.
“Is my beard coming in red?”
“Yeah,” Samantha said.
“I wonder why my beard is red. My hair isn’t.”
“Probably always. You’ve never grown one.”
“It is very red,” Vlad said.
Marcus counted the days out. Today was three. Tomorrow, and then the pass, and then down. “It won’t be a full beard in five days.”
“Five days is a hiker in the mountains,” Vlad said. “Nobody in that town shaves. Plus, you smell like you’ve been in the mountains for a couple of days.”
“That solves it. It’s like makeup,” Marcus said. “Strange and different patterns on your face break any visual detectors.”
“Yes,” Vlad said. “But you are still pretty, so every person in the store will look at you.”
“So what’s the actual problem.”
“Nobody in that town is running your face through anything. If there is a camera over the register it just writes to a disk that no one looks at. The problem is someone who rings up four hundred people a day and watches the news on TV. They will remember three things about you.”
“What three.”
“How tall you are. What you did with your hands. Whether you were friendly.”
“So I’m not friendly.”
“Be boring.”
Samantha had stopped pumping and was watching him.
“Okay,” he said. “I can give you the whole list.”
“List of what.”
“Me.” He counted them off on his fingers. “I use your name in the first sentence and again at the end. I ask you something about yourself before you can ask me anything. I hold eye contact about half a second past where people expect it to stop. I get the first laugh inside ten seconds. I stand with my weight on my front foot. I touch people on the arm, above the elbow, once.”
Samantha set the filter down in the dirt.
“What the fuck? How long have you known all that?”
“Sophomore year,” Marcus said. “I read a book.”
Vlad said, “Do the opposite of every one.”
“Laugh at things that aren’t funny,” Samantha said.
“Everything’s a little funny.”
“No,” Vlad said.
“Sam,” he said. “Be the person at the register.”
Samantha hopped up and stood flat footed with an empty look on her face.
“Find everything okay?”
“Yeah — thanks. Hey, we got rained out up at Cottonwood, so we bailed a day early, and I have never in my life been so happy to see a—”
“Stop,” Vlad said.
Marcus stopped.
“She did not ask you anything. She says that sentence over and over and doesn’t care what the answer is. The correct answer is yes.”
“I said yeah.”
“You said yeah and then you gave her a description of your weekend.”
“I can’t stand there and say nothing,” Marcus said. “My mouth has been doing it by itself since I was twelve.”
“Then chew on something. Eat some food while you are checking out. Add up the cart while she scans things. Every item, in your head, to the penny. Do not stop until you are out the door.”
“That’s it? Arithmetic?”
“Yes.”
Samantha’s face went empty again.
“Find everything okay?”
“Yep.”
There was silence while Marcus stood there with his hands at his sides and ran through the theoretical cart — the rice, the six cans of soup, the tortillas at two ninety-nine.
“Sixty-two forty,” Samantha said.
He got the money clip out and counted bills onto the rock in front of her and turned to go.
“You didn’t say thank you.”
“No.”
“You smiled at her, though.”
“Yeah, well.” Marcus pulled the buff over his head. “Give me a couple days.”
The fire was down to coals by the time Samantha went to sleep. Vlad was awake, sitting against a tree with the tablet dark on his knee.
“Hey,” Marcus said. “When you took yourself off everything. How long did that take.”
“A while.”
“Did it come back?”
“Did what come back.”
“You. The part people knew.”
Vlad woke the tablet, and the light came up under his face.
“You should sleep,” he said. “You are going to town soon.”