MAX ORDOS DOES NOT EXIST

MAX ORDOS DOES NOT EXIST: CHAPTER FIVE

Pearl pays for two more nights in the hotel, then calls the lawyer from his room to tell her that he still hasn't heard from the records office. He also goes over what he learned from the squatter, but doesn't mention Max Ordos or the blonde girl. He does mention the key, which the lawyer jumps on.

"What's the key for?" she asks. "Is it for a room or a safe or what?"

Pearl sets the key on a white stationery pad and examines it. It has small teeth at the end of a contorted blade."It's weird looking," he says. "Looks like a key for a prison door."

"Did you see one in the house?"

"No," Pearl says. "Didn't see many doors period. That squatter guy ripped them off the hinges."

"Go back tonight and look for one," the lawyer says. "Break in if you have to. Anything he'd lock behind a prison door has to be important."

"Isn't that a bit beyond what you hired me for?" Pearl asks.

"No," the lawyer says, and hangs up the phone.

Pearl hangs up and stares at the phone for a while, laying on his side with his shoulder at an uncomfortable angle. He considers calling the lawyer back and refusing to return to the farmhouse, that the records he requested will be enough to advise her client whether or not to close the sale. It's not that he's above breaking into the house on principle — he's done worse for less — but there's no point to it in this case.

And yet. Pearl rolls over on his back and fishes the key out of his pocket. This key unlocks a door and whatever's behind it could answer some questions about the woman he keeps seeing, and the strange things he's been hearing. What if it doesn't stop when he closes this case and goes home? She might keep appearing, talking about brains and birth and the name of someone who isn't a someone. How long can he tolerate that before he cracks?

He leaves the room and starts walking, following traffic on the grass beyond the highway shoulder until a proper sidewalk slopes up about two miles from the hotel. The sidewalk leads to a gas station with a little strip mall behind it. Pearl buys more cigarettes from a convenience store that looks like the only thing open, and is waved down by two Civil War reenactors as he passes the gas station again. At least, Pearl hopes they're reenactors. That would be the only savory explanation for why they're dressed in Confederate uniforms.

"Hey, fella," the heavier one says, his straw-blonde hair matted with sweat under his cap. "You know anything about cars?" His car is behind him with its hood propped open. The other reenactor — thinner and less sweaty — is leaning against it to scratch a dog's head through the open rear window.

"Sorry, I don't," Pearl says. "What's the dog's name?"

"Early," the thinner man says. "Can I bum a smoke, at least?"

Pearl nods. "Does anyone buy their own cigarettes around here?" he asks as he hands one to the thinner man, who clicks his tongue at the dog. The dog, some kind of scent hound by the shape of his head, pokes his head out the window and grabs the cigarette with his mouth. The thin man lights it and the dog puffs away. Pearl can see his tail wagging inside the car.

"He gets real fussy on car trips," the thin man explains to Pearl, who shakes his head and wishes them good luck with the car before walking back to the hotel.

Once he's back in his room, he turns on the television and falls asleep in his rumpled gray suit. His mind follows the rolling curves that begin just over the Maryland line into Pennsylvania, the ones where little general stores and roadside produce stalls break up the monotony of trees and farmland. He watches himself park a pickup truck next to one of those stalls and get out to paint something on a canvas and easel set up next to a display of corn. He paints a blonde woman with a cherubic face, and hangs a letterman jacket with blue sleeves on the portrait when its done. The woman falls forward out of the painting, hanging halfway out. The top of her head is missing. There's nothing inside. He watches himself pull a gun from somewhere and shoot at the ground, shattering it under his feet, pure darkness underneath. He falls until he wakes up to a game show on television.