Augustus Tulare: Painful paradise

Paul unlocked the door, leaving it wide open as he went into the dark interior. Instead of switching on the lights, he went through the room into another, and she saw a subdued gleam as he turned on a light somewhere beyond. She heard him rattling hangers, then there were sounds of drawers being opened and closed.

After a few minutes, just as she was growing uneasy and peering intently at the dark shrub-shapes around her, she heard Paul coming back. He was muttering stifled curses as he approached.

"I'm awfully sorry, Pal. I can't find those damned tickets anywhere. Maybe I'm rushing too fast. Come on in and latch the door while I take another look, will you, please?"

She made no move to comply, wondering about the advisability of enclosing herself in a remote motel unit like this with a man she knew so little about. Why did he want her inside all of a sudden, she wondered.

"With all the narcotic samples I have to keep in my quarters," he explained, providing the answer to her unvoiced question, "I have to be careful."

Pal stepped inside and closed the door without further thought. Her own training had instilled the same caution in her daily routine. One always kept narcotics and other drugs locked away from unauthorized personnel.

"Have a seat, Pal. I'll try not to be too long," he promised. He was outlined in the faint light beyond him as he went through the door to the adjoining room. Then he disappeared. Pal sat on the edge of a sofa she could just barely identify in the grayish darkness. Again she could hear his searching sounds and his annoyed mutterings.

Finally he came back into the room and stood there, once more a silhouette against the pale light of the doorway. He uttered a solitary "Damn!" and then come over to plop himself down beside Pal on the sofa. He heaved an exasperated sigh.

"I've never felt so much like an ass in all my life," he complained. "I had those tickets before I left to pick you up, and now they've vanished into thin air."

"I don't suppose there's any way of getting past the formalities when you've lost your tickets?" Pal wanted to know. "I mean, like telling them what happened and what the seat numbers are?"

"You're making me feel even more asinine than I was," said Paul. His sheepish grin softened the imitation she had been to feel at his inept handling of what she would have considered a simple thing. "I didn't even notice what seats they were. The lady told me they were the best ones available, so I didn't even look at the diagram of the auditorium."

"Look," said Pal, thinking that Fate might have handed her some sort of relief on this obligatory date. "Maybe we just weren't meant to see the show. Perhaps the roof's going to crumble or something, and we were supposed to be saved from the disaster." She made her tone light and humorous, thinking that he would be easily conned into calling it an evening. "I'm actually a little tired tonight, as it is. It's been one of those harrowing days for me in surgery."

"Poor kid," said Paul, getting up and heading out of the dimness into the faintly lighted hall. "I shouldn't have pressured you into such a full evening. Well, I'm going to pour us a small drink, then we're going to take you home."

He disappeared before she could protest. She half-arose, then sank back with a sigh of resignation. It would be simpler to accept his final choice of activity before the evening ended. Considering the various doubts she had entertained about him, a drink in his motel apartment seemed pretty tame.

Again, she found herself remembering the strange look on his face as he leaned forward in the surgery amphitheater. And the wild comments of Sick Jack, the intern. Before she could do any effective sorting in her mind, Paul was back with two tinkling glasses.

"Here you go, Pal," he said, handing her one of the cool, wet tumblers. "Hope you like Scotch. This is a favorite of mine… the only stuff I take with me on the road. If you're not a Scotch drinker, that heavy, peaty taste may seem medicinal, according to my bourbon… and martini-drinking friends. But it'll give you a bit of a pickup to counteract the boredom of this stupidly handled evening. To your health, Pal!" He took a deep sip.

She was going to make a polite protest, but decided to drink with him instead of what might be a less convincing courtesy. She was just beginning to realize how disappointed she was in not getting to see that show.

She wasn't a genuine Scotch enthusiast, but she didn't mind the heavy, smoky flavor. It was cool and wet, and she was suddenly quite anxious to get it down and leave.

"I enjoyed the dinner very much, Paul," she said after her first swallow. "And don't feel so guilty about the ticket thing. That sort of thing happens to everyone, sometime. To a fumble-fingers like me, it seems like a pretty natural thing to lose a couple of small pieces of cardboard. Bottoms up?" She tilted the glass and downed the contents.

Paul took her empty glass with one hand, tipped up his own for the final drops hiding around the ice cubes, then went back to leave the tumblers in the kitchenette, or wherever he had gotten them.

It seemed as if the tiresomeness of the entire day finally got the best of Pal. She leaned back, resting her head on the back of the sofa, and wished Paul would hurry. She was anxious to be in bed. He seemed to be taking an awfully long time to get rid of two glasses.

It struck her that the drink had been pretty potent. Usually, she could put away several average drinks before getting woozy.

A tiny alarm tried to sound somewhere at the back of her mind. Something was attempting to creep through her thoughts. Something from the pages of the current drug handbook – quick-acting sedatives – Nembutal – Cyclopal Evipal – Neraval…

She tried to sit up, thinking how silly it would be for Paul to come back and find her asleep. But it seemed much easier to just relax and let go…

Paul pulled the station wagon to a halt at the gas pumps, and climbed out, stretching elaborately. While the station attendant filled the tank and checked under the hood, Paul glanced into the rear window and satisfied himself that the interior betrayed no trace of his illegal cargo.

He went into the rest room, and by the time he had returned, the bronzed, wrinkled old operator had finished with the vehicle and was sucking at a can of beer by the battered old desk in the office.

Paul spotted the clipboard and signed the invoice, waited while the old character took a final sip of beer, then accepted his copy of the paperwork and the plastic credit card.

"Keep cool, Pop," he said. And he walked out, taking the long way around the station wagon to get another peek into the back of the vehicle. The rear glass was just as dirty as when he came in. He grinned to himself. Few operators would have spent the time to clean a rear window on a scorching day like this. And he wasn't eager to improve the visibility of that glass.

As he headed back out onto the freeway, he was thankful that he had no glass in the sides of this salesman's special wagon. He had to wait on traffic for a while, before he could get into the flow of the slow lane. While his rear wheels were still in the driveway of the service station, a motorcycle patrolman swerved in beside him. The bike moved very slowly across the sidewalk area of the drive, and the officer glanced toward the side of Paul's vehicle.

A momentary chill traveled up his back, but he told himself it wasn't fear of discovery. There was nothing basically suspicious about his car, and he knew that even if someone took a look inside, there was little chance that the unconscious Pal would be found.

A hole opened in the traffic, and he slipped out onto the highway with normal speed. He watched in the mirror as the motorcycle moved on into the service station and pulled up in the relative coolness of the shade beneath the service canopy. He grinned and picked up speed, gradually working over into the faster lanes, until he was barreling along at seventy in the speed lane.