Маргарет Миллар - The Listening Walls

“Keep the scarf on.”

She retied the scarf under her chin, muttering to herself and shaking her head. He thought, she’s frightened enough to take orders. That’s one good sign, the only good one, she’s frightened.

For half an hour they had not met or passed another car, or seen a dwelling or any sign of human occupancy. It was as if the last people to have passed that way were the builders of the road, and that had been, Rupert judged from its condition, a long time ago. Parts of it had melted in the rain as if the concrete had been mixed with sugar. Sugar road, he thought grimly. If I have a future, if I live to come this way again, that will always be its name.

At the next bend a faint glow was visible between the massive trees, like a light at the end of a long, dark tunnel. He knew she had seen it too. She began again to complain of her stomach and her head.

“I feel sick. I want a glass of water.”

“We haven’t any.”

“There’s a light up ahead. Perhaps it is a store. You could buy some aspirin for my head and get some water.”

“It would be dangerous to stop.”

“I tell you, I can’t go on. I feel so sick, I feel like dying.”

“Go right ahead.”

“Oh, you are a monster, a fiend...” The rest of the epithets were lost in a series of deep, dry retches.

He said, “Stop play acting.”

She kept on retching, her body bent double, her hands against her mouth.

The glow between the trees became a neon sign identifying a group of log cabins and a dilapidated coffee shop at the Twin Trees Lodge, reas. rates, vacancy .

Rupert pulled off the road and braked the car. Most of the cabins were dark but lights were on in the coffee shop and a man was sitting behind the counter reading a paperback book. Either he hadn’t heard the car or he was at an interesting part of the book, because he didn’t look up.

In the back seat the little dog began to yelp with excitement at the forest smells and the sound of a creek running behind the cabins. Rupert told the dog to be quiet and the woman to get out of the car. Neither of them obeyed.

“You wanted to stop,” he said. “All right, we stopped. Now hurry up and buy a cup of coffee or whatever you want, and we’ll be on our way.”

He reached across her and opened the door and she half fell out of the car, at the same time making a sudden grab for her purse. The quick, cool gesture was a tip-off that her retching hadn’t been genuine. It was part of an act, though he still didn’t understand its purpose. For nearly a month now she had been acting a role, speaking lines not her own, in a voice and idiom not her own. She seemed almost to have forgotten who and what she was. On only one occasion had she stepped out of the role back into herself and that was when she stood in the kitchen talking to O’Donnell. “I’m going away” O’Donnell had said. “No hard feelings, eh? Don’t worry, I won’t talk, I don’t want trouble. Just give me the money to get home again...”

Money. The key word. He watched her as she crossed the parking lot to the coffee shop clutching her purse to her breast like a little golden monster of a baby.

He waited until she sat down at the counter before he got out of the car and closed the door as quietly as possible behind him. South of the coffee shop were the rest rooms and a public telephone booth. He headed for the booth, taking the long way around to stay out of the light of the neon sign. He knew that if he had been the one who had insisted on stopping she would have been suspicious and not let him out of her sight or hearing. As it was, she had forced the issue and so she was suspicious of nothing. She sat drinking her coffee and munching a doughnut, with the purse on the counter in front of her, where she could see it and touch it at all times.

He entered the telephone booth, put a coin in the slot and dialed long distance. It was getting late and the rush hours were over. The call went through immediately.

“Hello.”

“Mr. Dodd?”

“Speaking.”

“You don’t know me personally, Mr. Dodd, but I have a proposition you might be interested in.”

“Clean?”

“Clean enough. I know you’re looking for Amy Kellogg.”

“So?”

“I can tell you where she is. In return for certain services.”

The man behind the counter had reheated the coffee on a little butane burner. “A bit of a warm-up, ma’am?”

She looked blank. “I beg your pardon?”

“That’s my way of saying, how would you like another cup of coffee without paying for it?”

“Thank you.”

He poured more coffee for her and some for himself. “Going far?”

“We are just traveling around seeing the country.”

“Gypsying, eh? I like gypsying myself.”

The word stung her ears. It meant wandering, homeless, poverty-stricken people who would steal anything. She said sharply, one hand on her purse, “We are not gypsies. Do I look like a gypsy?”

“Heck, no, I didn’t mean that. I meant, like for instance you pick up and leave and you don’t know where you’re going.”

“I know where I’m going.”

“Sure. All right. Just making conversation anyway. Business is slow, not many folks around to talk to.”

She realized she had made a mistake being sharp to him, he would remember her more vividly. She tried to make amends by smiling at him pleasantly. “What is the next city?”

“Highway 1 ain’t long on cities. It’s for scenery, finest scenery in the world. Lemme see, San Luis Obispo I guess you’d say is the next real city. When you get there you’re on 101, that’s the main highway.”

“Is it far?”

“A good piece. If it was me, now, I’d cut across to Paso Robles from Cambria, you get to 101 faster that way.”

“Is there a bus that goes by here?”

“Not often.”

“But there is one?”

“Sure. I’ve been trying to arrange with the company to use my place as a lunch stop, only they say it ain’t big enough and the service ain’t quick enough. There’s just me and the wife to handle everything.”

“How many doughnuts do you have left?”

“Six, seven.”

“I’ll take them all.”

“Sure. That’ll be fifty-two cents all together with the coffee.”

She opened her purse under the counter so that he couldn’t see how much money she had. She wasn’t sure herself, but it looked like a great deal, enough to make her free of Rupert. If I could get away from him, if I could hide in the woods... I’m not afraid of the dark, only of the dark with him in it...

Him. It was a curse, an epithet, a dirty word.

He was sitting behind the wheel of the car when she came out of the coffee shop. She had changed to flat-heeled shoes for comfort during the trip, and she moved with leisurely grace, not the way she moved in the city, wobbling and lurching along like a little girl wearing her mother’s high heels for the first time.

Instead of coming toward the car she turned right. He thought she was going to the rest room and he settled down to wait. The clock on the dashboard clicked away the minutes as if they were merry ones. Five. Seven. Ten. At eleven, he cranked down the window of the car and called her name, as loudly as he could without attracting the attention of the man behind the counter. There was no answer.

The little dog began whimpering again, as if he realized, before Rupert did, what was happening and how to deal with it. Rupert opened the car door and the dog leaped across the back of the seat and out into the night. He circled the parking lot, nose to the ground, lifting his head at intervals to yelp in Rupert’s direction. Then he turned suddenly and streaked off toward the rear of the cabins where the creek splashed down the hill to the sea.