them on the seat. "So if the car breaks down, I won't die of thirst. My mother's kind of out there sometimes. Of course, if anything happened, I could always drink radiator water. I brought a knife, too, so if I had to, I could hack up a cactus."
"Or a camel," said Enoch.
Definitely weird.
"So, where are we off to?" he asked. Again, her insides jumped. The highway stretched before them, a colorless slab dissolving into a blurred horizon. Save for the sun, the sky was bare. No clouds floated by. No birds flew. In other cars, people looked half-sedated, as though hypnotized by the strobe of disappearing broken lines and the hum of tires on asphalt, the white noise of the open road. Marilee was glad to have gotten it in about the knife.
"Alamogordo," she replied. "To get married, but he doesn't know that yet. Well, he does and he doesn't. I mean, he asked me to marry him, but he doesn't know I'm on my way." Oh God, she thought, she shouldn't have told him that.
"Roll it down?" Enoch pointed to the window.
"Sure. It sticks sometimes. You have to really crank it."
The dwarf turned the handle, but the window didn't stick. He then stood on the seat and reached for his backpack on top of her suitcase. What was he reaching for? A knife? A gun? Why in God's name had she picked him up?
A small bag of granola materialized from his backpack's zippered pocket. "Have some," he offered.
Marilee considered her options. What if it were drugged? Was he going to eat some too? She took a small handful. It tasted like a clump of dried weeds.
"What's his name?" asked Enoch.
"Who?"
"Mr. Wonderful."
"Oh, Larry. He's this guy I've been going with a long time. Since high school, really. Funny how you can end up with someone you knew back in high school. I mean, I don't know anyone I knew back in high school. Except him, of course." She was babbling.
"Larry what?"
Why did he want to know? " Larry Mitchell," she said, plugging in the first surname that came to mind.
"Boring," said Enoch. " Larry Mitchell. Mr. and Mrs. Larry Mitchell. Dull as dust."
Marilee studied the stretch of desert around her. Cactus. Tumbleweeds. Dirt for miles. A few rocks, not many. Probably insects under the rocks.
"What's he do, this guy, Larry?" Enoch offered her another handful of granola, but she declined.
"He's in the military. Holloman Air Force Base."
"Does he fly jets?"
"He's a flight instructor."
"So," said Enoch, "you're going to roll into Alamogordo so you two can get hitched?"
"That's right."
"And he has no idea you're on your way?"
Heat rose off the pavement and warped vision, not unlike the aura of an impending migraine. "Well, he does, sort of. I mean he expects me. Soon. But he doesn't know when, exactly. I was going to be a surprise."
"Sort of, 'Here I am. Let's find a church,' " said Enoch.
"Sort of."
"Sort of, 'Hi, I'm moving in. Hope you don't mind.' "
"No. Not like that at all. He's going to love it when I show up. He's been wanting this for a long time."
"And you?"
"I want it," she said. "I've thought about it. It makes sense that we get married."
"Why?"
"Look, are you hungry? I'm starving. I get cranky when I don't eat. What's the next town?"
"Casa Grande."
"Let's look for a restaurant."
"Yo! Casa Grande!" Enoch shouted, raising his fist in a power salute and stomping his feet on the dashboard. A toothbrush fell out of his pants cuff.
He was definitely one weird dwarf.
"Let 's play a game," said Enoch, as soon as they'd ordered. "I'll ask you a question, then you ask me one. Whoever loses pays."
"Okay," said Marilee, although she was not sure at all that it would be okay.
"Can an irresistible force encounter an immovable object?"
"Sure." She was glad his question had been nothing personal.
"Which one gives?"
Marilee thought about it for a moment. "Well, it's really just a matter of semantics."
"Not at all," said Enoch. Two middle-aged ladies in the next booth eyed them with curiosity. Enoch's chest was level with the edge of the table; Marilee was glad the waitress hadn't offered him a booster seat.
"Okay," she said. "I guess it's impossible to answer."
"Bingo. One to nothing. Your turn."
Marilee took her time thinking of a question. She turned down the corners of her paper place mat. She traced her spoon over the outline of a hobo eating pancakes. He looked a little like Enoch. Sipping coffee, she stared out the window at the filling station next door. The attendant scratched himself when he must have thought no one was looking.
"All right, I've got one. Which came first, the chicken or the egg?"
"Impossible to know," said Enoch. "And a cliché."
" Think again." Two could play this game.
A group of teenagers erupted in laughter from across the room. They sneaked occasional glances at Enoch.
"Impossible," he said again.
"The egg," said Marilee. "It's obvious. At some point there had to be a mutation. But by the time the egg is formed, it has all its genetic material intact. It's a potential chicken. So the responsible gene, the gene that made the critical difference, had to have mutated inside the hen before it became part of the fertilized egg. And something had to pass on that altered gene. Something that was not quite a chicken but gave rise to a mutant egg that was destined to become the world's first chicken."
Enoch's face brightened. "Yes, that's logical. Very good." Their waitress appeared with their dinners. She wore a red ruffled skirt and an embroidered hat that said, "Doreen."
"I've got another."
"My turn," said Enoch, dipping a french fry in the Thousand Island dressing that ran out the side of his Hoboburger. "If God is all powerful, can he build an object too heavy for him to move?"
"Another paradox."
"Are you certain?"
"Positive."
"I
