Interface

On the forty-second page of their political thriller, “Interface,” authors Neal Stephenson & J. Frederick George wrote (emphasis added):

their broken-backed sofa in the trailer in Commerce City, his beer in his hand, meditating over this doorjamb, planning to come and take it away. Had it been eating at him ever since they had moved out?

Clarice's birthday was next week. Maybe he intended to give this to her as a birthday present. It had great sentimental value, and it was free.

"Harmon?" she said, again, and heard it echo again off the bare walls of the house. She went to check the bedrooms, but he wasn't in any of them.

The sound of music finally drew her to the garage. Faint tinny music was coming out of the Volvo's stereo. It was barely audible through the mudroom door. She went into the garage.

Harmon was sitting in the driver's seat of the Volvo, reclined all the way back. Once she got the door open, she recognized the music: Mahler's Resurrection Symphony. Harmon's favorite. Years ago, on their first trip to Colorado, they had parked on the summit of Pike's Peak and listened to this tape, loud.

She walked quietly up the flank of the Volvo and looked in the drivers window. Harmon had leaned the seat all the way back and folded up his jacket to make a little pillow on the headrest. His eyes were closed and he wasn't moving.

The keys were in the ignition, in the ON position. The tank was empty. The engine was dead. The volume on the stereo was turned all the way up. The tape had been running for hours, possibly even days, auto-reversing itself back and forth, playing the symphony over and over again, running the battery down until hardly anything came out of the speakers.

Harmon was dead. He had been dead for quite some time.

Before she did anything else she reached inside the car and pounded the garage door opener clipped to the sun visor. The big door creaked open, letting in a rush of resh clean air and opening up a clear glittering view of the suburbanized foothills.

It was a very sensible thing to do. Eleanor Richmond did it because she was not crazy, would not allow herself to be crazy, would not allow herself to succumb to the poison gas that her husband had used to kill himself. Her kids and her

More information about “Interface” (and the book itself) is available from:

• Powell's Books
• Amazon.com
• Barnes & Noble

(Spectra Books, May 2005. Paperback, 640 pages. ISBN: 0553383434; EAN: 9780553383430.)