“We live on the edge . . . a shantytown filled with gold-seekers. We are fugitives, and the law is skinny with hunger for us.” Buster, stunned by the strangeness of it, pressed repeat, turned up the volume, and held this matchstick of a device to his ear as if listening to radio static for the voice of a long-dead lover. “ . . . the law is skinny with hunger for us,” the recorder said, and Buster took out a pen, opened to the title page of his novel, and scribbled the phrases down so that he could see the arrangement of the words on paper.
