Джонатан Крейг - Manhunt. Volume 1, Number 12, December, 1953

They were sorry, but they were full to capacity. I shoved the Dodge into reverse, backed out onto the main road again, and kept working my way down, stopping at every colony and motel. I tried five and was ready to say the hell with it when I saw the sixth one close by. A sign swung back and forth outside, hanging from a salt-corroded iron bar, creaking on the early morning sea wind. An inexpert sign painter had tried his hand at Old English, and come up with the sloppily lettered word, “Zach’s.”

I shrugged and turned off the macadam onto a dirt road that raised a cloud of dust behind me. I pulled up alongside a gnarled oak, squinted through the dust and saw neat rows of white bungalows with red shutters. On one of the bungalows, the same tyro sign painter had lettered “Office.” I looked at the Old English and was opening the door of the car when a guy stepped out of the office and started walking toward me rapidly.

He was a tall guy, with a sort of pyramid build — narrow, rounded shoulders that expanded to a wide middle. He was wearing canvas-topped shoes that had once been blue but were now a muddy brown, like a healing skin bruise. He wore white trousers coated with a film of dust, and an open-throated short sleeve sports shirt that showed scraggly crabgrass hair on his chest. He walked to the car quickly, and I studied his face and waited.

He had narrow eyes, pale blue, a fat-lipped mouth and a wide nose. He hadn’t shaved, and he had that patchy kind of beard that always reminds me of a mandarin. His skin was bad and his eyes were puffed with sleep, and he looked like the kind of guy you could rouse out of any doorway in the Bowery. He came up alongside the car, and I said, “Are you filled up, too?”

“We got a cabin left,” he said.

He rested his arms on the metal of the door and stuck his head inside the car. He saw Anne then, and his eyes got narrower. His mouth opened a little, and the eyes traveled over Anne’s body, stopping at the full breasts that bunched against her halter, traveling over her bare midriff, down to her curving legs. His breath was foul with sleep, and he smelled of sweat.

“Why don’t you come inside?” I said. “The front seats three comfortably.”

He smiled, but he didn’t move.

“Do you run a motel, or are you the local beauty contest judge?” I asked, beginning to get a little sore at the direction of his eyes.

“I run a motel,” he said, still smiling.

“Then put your eyes back in their sockets and rustle up a cabin. We’re sleepy.”

“Sure,” he said. He gestured with his thumb toward a wide square of gravel. “You can park the car there.”

“Thanks.”

I shoved the Dodge into gear and pulled up alongside a pickup truck on the gravel. I set the emergency brake and then touched Anne’s shoulder.

“Honey,” I said.

She stirred a little, and I nudged her again. “Anne, wake up. We’re here.”

“Unh,” she said, and then her eyes opened and blinked a little. “Where are we?” she asked sleepily.

“A dump,” I said. “We’ll sleep a while and then shove off tonight. Okay?”

“Okay,” she said, still half-asleep. She swung her legs out and rubbed her eyes, and I said, “Better put a skirt on, honey.”

“A what?”

“A skirt.”

“Why? What on earth for? We’re going right to sleep, aren’t we?”

“Yes, but put a skirt on.”

“You’re a prude,” she said. “Victorian.”

“I know.” I leaned over for the valise in the back, opened it, and pulled out a skirt. “Here.”

Anne shrugged and shook her head, but she slipped on the skirt, buttoning it on the side. I swung the valise out of the car, followed Anne out, and locked all the doors. We began walking toward the office then. My friend the pyramid was nowhere in sight, so I figured he’d gone inside. I opened the screen door, and Anne and I entered a small room with a desk on one wall and two rattan chairs on the other wall. A Marilyn Monroe calendar hung over the desk, and one wall was covered with pictures of women in various stages of undress. My friend sat behind the desk.

He glanced at the skirt Anne had thrown on, and his eyes showed disappointment. “I can give you Number Four,” he said. “A nice clean cabin, and closer to the beach than the others. We don’t serve meals, you understand, but there’s a good...”

“We won’t be staying that long,” I told him. “How much is it for the day?”

“Seven-fifty,” he said. “In advance.”

“That’s a little steep, isn’t it?”

He shrugged. “You can try some of the other places,” he said, knowing damn well I’d already tried them.

“Are you the Zach advertised out front?”

“That’s me. Zachary Hobbs.”

“A good New England name,” I said drily.

“What’s your name?” he asked. “For the register.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Steve Riley.”

“A good Irish name,” he commented. “I don’t suppose I’ll need to see a marriage certificate.”

“I don’t suppose so,” I said. I paused. “If that’s why the tab is so high, you can come down to four bucks. We’ve been married for three years.”

“That’s your business,” he said. “My business is renting cabins. The price is seven-fifty. In advance.”

“You said that once already.”

“With some guys,” he said pleasantly, “you have to say it twice.”

I dug out my wallet and put a five and three singles on the desk. Hobbs opened a drawer, pulled out a green cash box, and lifted two quarters from it. “And fifty makes eight,” he said.

I took the fifty cents and said, “Where’s the cabin?”

“I’ll show you. Come on.”

He surprised me by picking up the bag, and then Anne and I followed him down a dirt path to one of the white, red-shuttered cabins. He pulled a chunk of wood with a key attached to it from his trouser pocket and unlocked the door. He stepped inside, put the bag down, and then opened the windows. I looked around the cabin, and I saw Anne was doing the same thing. It was clean enough, with a double bed against one wall, a dresser against another, and a maple butterfly-back chair near the foot of the bed. He continued opening windows, and I said, “No shades on the windows?”

“Won’t nobody look in,” he said.

“Mmm.”

“Well, that’s it. Everything okay?”

“Fine,” I said half-heartedly. “Where’s the bath?”

“No bath. Shower and toilet up at the office.”

“I see.”

“You got a sink there in the corner. I’ll send a girl down with towels and soap for you. The bedclothes are fresh, changed this morning.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Not at all.” His eyes leaped to the top of Anne’s halter. He smiled and added, “The pleasure was mine.” And then he was gone.

When the door closed behind him, Anne said, “What a scurvy character. Did you see the way he undressed me?”

“That’s why I was Victorian.”

“Oh.” Anne shrugged. “Well, I’m still sleepy.”

“Sleepy? I’m ready for cremation.” I opened the valise and pulled out one of Anne’s skirts and two of my dirty shirts. I draped these over the three windows in the room, and then pulled down the covers on the bed. I was unlacing my shoes when I heard the whine of the pickup truck outside. I went to the window, drew back the shirt covering it, and looked out.

Hobbs was behind the wheel of the truck. He backed it off the gravel patch, and I said, “Zach the Ripper is leaving.”

“Good,” Anne said. “I wanted a shower, but I’ll be damned if I’d go up there with him around.”

I watched the truck leave the grounds. “He’s gone,” I said. “Go take your shower.”