“Well, shit,” Farrell said sadly. “Wouldn’t you know?”

Pierce/Harlow crouched on the seat, elbows flapping absurdly as he tried to brace himself against everything, including Farrell. “Pull over or I’ll cut you. Right here, I’ll do it.” He was almost crying, and color was puddling grotesquely under his cheekbones.

A Winnebago the size of a rural airport filled the windshield. Farrell whimpered softly himself, hung a fishtailing right turn on the wet pavement, and bucked Madame Schumann-Heink up a parking-lot driveway. At the top of the ramp, two important things happened: Pierce/Harlow grabbed him around the neck, and Madame Schumann-Heink popped blithely out of gear—her oldest trick, always most judiciously employed—and began to roll back down. Farrell bit Pierce/Harlow’s forearm, somehow contriving while chewing to wrench the Volkswagen into reverse and send her shooting back out into the street, well in the wake of the motor home, but squirting like a marble straight through a sawhorse barricade around a pothole. The lute, oh please, goddamn. A taillight exploded, and Pierce/Harlow and Farrell let go of each other and screamed. Madame Schumann-Heink popped into neutral again. Farrell pushed Pierce/Harlow away, fumbled for second gear, which was never quite where he had left it, and stood on the accelerator.

Madame Schumann-Heink, who normally required a tail wind and two days’ notice to get up to fifty miles an hour, was doing sixty by the time she hit Gonzales. Pierce/Harlow chose that moment to try another frontal assault, which was unfortunate, because Farrell took the corner, and a “Swingers Exchange” vending machine along with it, on the far side of two wheels. Pierce/Harlow ended up on Farrell’s lap, with the knife curiously snuggled into his own armpit.