“I’d like to show him what I think of him and his nerve.” Peter’s hands had clenched into fists. I found this endearing.

“But he’s not here, so we should write him back and tell him.”

“I’d like to, but we shouldn’t, even using the resend service. We don’t want to give him any sense of what you’re up to, even if it’s only checking e-mail.”

“You’re probably right,” I said, disappointed.

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“They should have a Kill function on e-mail. You know, Reply, Reply all, Kill, Kill all.”

“That’s not a bad idea.” He stood up and returned his chair to its original place. “I need to make one more call, and then we’ll hit the road, okay?”

“Sure,” I said, distracted. I was still fretting about Man of the People while simultaneously fuming about Jake’s e-mail.

It didn’t occur to me to wonder who Peter could be calling.

I lost the coin toss, even after we made it two out of three and then four out of seven, so Peter was at the wheel when we left State College behind. As co-pilot, my principal role was to navigate based on the route Peter had printed out from MapQuest, but since I’m not actually capable of reading maps, I held the wheel steady while Peter consulted the printout.

I was also in charge of the radio, which left a lot to be desired in rural Pennsylvania. It was unlike Luisa to skimp on luxury features like satellite radio, but skimp she had, leaving us at the mercy of local tastes, which seemed to lean toward Christian rock and bluegrass.

Peter and I had never spent much time in a car together before, and I was concerned to find that in addition to being culturally illiterate, he was woefully ignorant regarding appropriate behavior on any road trip lasting more than an hour. For example, he believed in finding a radio station, preferably NPR, and sticking to it. This was, of course, wrong, even assuming one could find NPR. The proper approach was to make continuous use of the handy seek function to ensure that we weren’t missing something better on another station. When we did find something better, it was customary to sing along.

The fast food rule was new to Peter, as well. He thought that for lunch we would pull off the highway and locate a quaint diner where we could enjoy local Amish Country delicacies like apple butter and pretzels, when it’s widely understood that being in a car for more than an hour automatically entitles one to eat fast food. The grease and salt content of the fast food to which one is entitled is a function of just how much time one has spent in the car. I’d assumed that all Americans of my generation possessed this knowledge, much as they knew the words to Free to Be You and Me and that drinking soda after eating Pop Rocks could be fatal, but Peter seemed to be the exception.

“I never knew you were such a McDonald’s fan,” he commented while we waited our turn in the drive-through line.

“You’re not?” I asked, but I wasn’t really paying attention. I was absorbed in the Big Mac versus Quarter Pounder with Cheese decision. The Big Mac had the advantage of being, well, big, but the Quarter Pounder was tasty in its own way and left more room for fries.

“Not so much,” he admitted.

This got my attention. “Are you a Communist?”

“Not liking McDonald’s makes me a Communist?”

“I don’t know which is cause and which is effect, so it could be the other way around.” A car behind us honked. “Look, it’s our turn. Do you want me to order for you?”

Peter insisted on ordering for himself and asked for a salad, which made me really wonder if he was some sort of Soviet plant, like Kevin Costner in No Way Out, who hadn’t been repatriated after the collapse of the Berlin Wall. I reminded myself that I’d met his entire extended family and spent long hours with his very American mother examining a photographic record that began with Peter in the womb, but it was the gusto with which he polished off the remainder of my Big Mac and half my fries that ultimately convinced me he wasn’t secretly named Yuri.

Twenty minutes later, and feeling only slightly queasy from lunch, we were back on the highway. The drive would probably have been scenic at a different time of year-there were a lot of trees and rolling hills and red barns-but in mid-March the trees were bare and the hills and barns were blanketed with tired, graying snow.

It was early afternoon when we reached the outskirts of Pittsburgh and the rural flavor began to give way to rusting industrialism. MapQuest got us to where we were going without too much trouble-it only tried to make us go the wrong way up one one-way street-but since Peter had the sense of direction I so sadly lacked, he was able to improvise, steering a confident course through an area that was a mix of working factories, abandoned factories, and empty lots.

“That must be it,” he said eventually, giving the map a final glance and pulling up to a corner. Across the street and to the right was our destination, the headquarters of Thunderbolt Industries. It looked pretty much like what it was: a rust-belt manufacturing plant. The building itself was a sprawling architectural hodgepodge of dingy red brick, dingy cinder block, and dingy concrete. The only shiny part was a glass-walled addition, clearly an afterthought. It extended awkwardly from one side of the factory and likely housed the executive offices. From the street, the complex appeared to be the size of a football field, but it was hard to tell how far back it extended. Only two of the many smokestacks were emitting smoke, a testament, no doubt, to the slump the company was in, and the potholed asphalt parking lot was only half-full.

Minivans seemed to be the vehicles of choice for Thunderbolt employees; in fact, they seemed to be the vehicle of choice for everyone west of the Hudson. As a result, one car really stuck out, and it gave me a sense of just how much Luisa’s car must have been sticking out during our entire trip. It was a BMW 645ci, and it occupied a space directly in front of the glass annex. The BMW in the parking lot was red instead of black, and it had a hard top while Luisa’s was a convertible, but maybe its owner used another car in better weather.

“I’ll bet you anything that’s Perry’s car,” I said, pointing it out to Peter.

“Why would I bet you on that? I never met Perry. How would I know what kind of car he’d drive? Besides, it’s red. Does that make it a Communist car? Is Perry a Communist?” Peter was still a bit testy from the Yuri discussion.

“Hardly-I think he’s pretty solidly on the capitalist pig end of the spectrum. In fact, I would have pegged him as a limousine type of guy. Or maybe just a Mercedes, but with a driver, so that he can sit in the back and read the paper and act snooty. But definitely not the sort of guy to do his own driving.”

“Maybe he’s more of a man of the people than you’re giving him credit for-” Peter caught his own words and laughed. “Hey-maybe he’s our guy.”

“You mean, he’s been sending me annoying e-mails in an attempt to derail his buyout? Somehow I don’t think so, even if he does drive his own car.”

“Me, neither. Which is too bad, because we still don’t know who or what we’re looking for, exactly, and we’re out of luck if we actually want to get in. There’s a security booth at the gate.”

“We knew there probably would be,” I answered, but I was still disappointed. I’d held the faint hope that I’d be able to walk in and pull an Erin Brockovich (minus the cleavage, unfortunately), talking my way into a look at whichever files held incriminating evidence and soliciting suggestions from helpful employees as to who Man of the People might be. Our revised, Man-of-the-People-less plan had allowed for us being unable to gain access to the building, but it had seemed worth a try. “Let’s see if maybe there’s a back way, just in case there is and it’s open.”