I-25 was a mess, cars off the road everywhere and snow driving into my headlights so I could barely see. I got behind a snowplow and stayed there, and it was nearly six o’clock by the time I made it to the trailer. Rosa took a good five minutes to come to the door, and when she finally got there she wasn’t dressed. She stared blearily at me, her hair out of its braids and hanging tangled around her face.
“Remember me? Carla Johnson? You promised to show me the Seven Cities?”
“Cities?” she said blankly.
“The Seven Cities of Cibola.”
“Oh, yeah,” she said, and motioned for me to come inside. “There aren’t seven. El Turco was a dumb Pawnee. He don’t know how to count.”
“How many are there?” I asked, thinking, this is the catch. There aren’t seven and they aren’t gold.
“Depends,” she said. “More than seven. You still wanta go see them?”
“Yes.”
She went into the bedroom and came out after a few minutes with her hair braided, the pants and blouse of the day before and an enormous red carcoat, and we took off toward Cibola. We went south again, past more waterbed stores and rusting railroad tracks, and out to Belleview.
It was beginning to get fairly light out, though it was impossible to tell if the sun was up or not. It was still snowing hard.
She had me turn onto Belleview, giving me at least ten yards’ warning, and we headed east toward the Tech Center. Those people at the hearing who’d complained about Denver becoming too decentralized had a point. The Tech Center looked like another downtown as we headed toward it.