We step into the night air, thick with ash and prophecy. The Buick Electra 225 sits there like a black altar to American mobility, its chrome catching the firelight from the hills. It’s massive – a rolling embodiment of that brief moment when American cars were designed to look like spaceships touching down on desert highways.

“She’s perfect,” Crosby says, running his hand along the fender. “Built the same year the Byrds first gathered in LA. Room enough for all the ghosts we’re going to pick up along the way.”

Lynch pats the hood with tender reverence. “Electra,” he says, “daughter of Agamemnon. Her story’s about revenge and justice and fate. But this Electra,” he gestures to the car, “she’s about the American dream turning itself inside out. We’re going to drive her backward through time, eastward against the tide of history.”

“That Porsche,” Crosby says with a knowing grin, settling into the Buick’s vast interior, “beautiful machine, but that back seat… Let’s just say it wasn’t built for the kind of company we’re about to keep. You can’t fit the ghosts of America in a European sports car. You need Detroit steel for that kind of haunting.”

Lynch takes the wheel like a man preparing to conduct an orchestra of coincidence and synchronicity. “The frontier’s closed,” he says, “but the mystery moved inward. Into the images. Into the myths. Into kisses that taste like prophecy in whiskey bars.”

The engine starts with a low rumble that sounds like distant thunder, or maybe applause. The Buick glides into the night like a dark ship setting sail on an ocean of burning hills and neon signs. Its interior is vast as a living room, all leather and chrome and dashboard dials that look like instruments for measuring cosmic radiation.

“Route 66,” Crosby muses, settling into the passenger seat. “The Mother Road. But we’re not looking for California dreams anymore. We’re tracking Gia’s kiss back to its source. Chicago. Where the road begins. Or ends, depending on which way history’s flowing.”

Behind us, Jim’s Whiskey Bar pulses once, like a star going nova, then settles back into its eternal twilight. Ahead lies Route 66, unspooling eastward like celluloid through a projector, each mile a frame in some vast American movie we’re both watching and starring in.

Time to chase Gia’s ghost back to its birthplace, to find out what her kiss really meant. Time to let the Electra carry us through the dark heart of American mythology, where every diner is a temple and every motel a potential portal to understanding.

The night opens before us like a book of revelations written in headlights and taillights, waiting to be read.