Дэймон Найт: Orbit 8

“Is there a hotel?” A woman, fur coat, shiny patent boots, kid gloves. She had got on at the same station that Crane had; he remembered the whiff of expensive perfume as she had passed him.

“There’s the Laughton Inn, ma’am, but it’s two miles outside town and there’s no way to get there.”

“Oh, for God’s sake! You mean this crummy burg doesn’t even have a hotel of its own?”

“Four of them, in fact, but they’re closed, open again in April. Don’t get many people to stay overnight in the winter times.”

“Okay, okay. Which way’s the diner?” She swept a disapproving glance over the bleak station and went to the door, carrying an overnight bag with her.

“Come on, honey, I’m going there, too,” the driver said. He pulled on gloves and turned up his collar. He took her arm firmly, transferred the bag to his other hand, then turned to look at the other three or four people in the station. “Anyone else?”

Diner. Glaring lights, jukebox noise without end, the smell of hamburgers and onions, rank coffee and doughnuts saturated with grease. Everyone smoking. Someone would have cards probably, someone a bottle. The woman would sing or cry, or get a fight going. She was a nasty one, he could tell. She’d be bored within an hour. She’d have the guys groping her under the table, in the end booth. The man half turned, his back shielding her from view, his hand slipping between her buttons, under the blouse, under the slip, the slippery smooth nylon, the tightness of the bra, unfastening it with his other hand. Her low laugh, busy hands. The hard nipple between his fingers now, his own responsive hardness. She had turned to look at the stranded passengers when the driver spoke, and she caught Crane’s glance.

“It’s a long wait for a Scranton bus, honey,” she said.

“I’d just get soaked going to the diner,” Crane said, and turned his back on her. His hand hurt, and he opened his clenched fingers and rubbed his hands together hard.

“I sure as hell don’t want to wait all night in this rat hole,” someone else said. “Do you have lockers? I can’t carry all this gear.”

“Lock them up in the office for you,” the ticket agent said.

He pulled out a bunch of keys and opened a door at the end of the room. A heavy-set man followed him, carrying three suitcases. They returned; the door squeaked. The agent locked it again.

“Now, you boys will hold me up, won’t you? I don’t want to fall down in all that snow.”

“Doll, if you fall on your pretty little ass, I’ll dry you off personally,” the driver said.

“Oh, you will, will you?”

Crane tightened his jaw, trying not to hear them. The outside door opened and a blast of frigid air shook the room. A curtain of snow swept across the floor before the door banged again, and the laughing voices were gone.

“You sure you want to wait here?” the ticket agent asked. “Not very warm in here. And I’m going home in a minute, you know.”

“I’m not dressed to walk across the street in this weather, much less four blocks,” Crane said.

The agent still hesitated, one hand on his coat. He looked around, as if checking on loose valuables. There was a woman on one of the benches. She was sitting with her head lowered, hands in her lap, legs crossed at the ankles. She wore a dark cloth coat, and her shoes were skimpier than Crane’s, three crossing strips of leather attached to paper-thin soles. Black cloth gloves hid her hands. She didn’t look up, in the silence that followed, while the two men scrutinized her. It was impossible to guess her age in that pose, with only the dark clothes to go by.

“Ma’am, are you all right?” the agent asked finally.

“Yes, of course. Like the gentleman, I didn’t care to wade through the snow. I can wait here.”

She raised her head and with a touch of disappointment Crane saw that she was as nondescript as her clothing. When he stopped looking at her, he couldn’t remember what she looked like. A woman. Thirty. Thirty-five. Forty. He didn’t know. And yet. There was something vaguely familiar about her, as if he should remember her, as if he might have seen her or met her at one time or another. He had a very good memory for faces and names, an invaluable asset for a salesman, and he searched his memory for. this woman and came up with nothing.

“Don’t you have nothing with you that you could change into?” the agent asked peevishly. “You’d be more comfortable down at the diner.”

“I don’t have anything but some work with me,” she said. Her voice was very patient. “I thought I’d be in the city before the storm came. Late bus, early storm. I’ll be fine here.”

Again his eyes swept through the dingy room, searching for something to say, not finding anything. He began to pull on his coat, and he seemed to gain forty pounds. “Telephone under the counter, back there,” he said finally. “Pay phone’s outside under a drift, I reckon.”

“Thank you,” she said.

The agent continued to dawdle. He pulled on his gloves, checked the rest rooms to make sure the doors were not locked, that the lights worked. He peered at a thermostat, muttering that you couldn’t believe what it said anyways. At the door he stopped once more. He looked like a walking heap of outdoor garments, a clothes pile that had swallowed a man. “Mr.-uh-”

“Crane. Randolph Crane. Manhattan.”

“Uh, yes. Mr. Crane, I’ll tell the troopers that you two are up here. And the road boys. Plow’ll be out soon’s it lets up some. They’ll keep an eye open for you, if you need anything. Maybe drop in with some coffee later on.”

“Great,” Crane said. “That’d be great.”

“Okay, then. I wouldn’t wander out if I was you. See you in the morning, then. Night.”

The icy blast and the inrushing snow made Crane start to shake again. He looked over at the woman, who was huddling down, trying to wrap herself up in the skimpy coat.

His shivering eased and he sat down and opened his briefcase and pulled out one of the policies he had taken along to study. This was the first time he had touched it. He hoped the woman would fall asleep and stay asleep until the bus came in the morning. He knew that he wouldn’t be able to stretch out on the short benches, not that it would matter anyway. He wasn’t the type to relax enough to fall asleep anywhere but in bed.

He stared at the policy, a twenty-year endowment, two years to go to maturity, on the life of William Sanders, age twenty-two. He held it higher, trying to catch the light, but the print was a blur; all he could make out were the headings of the clauses, and these he already knew by heart. He turned the policy over; it was the same on the back, the old familiar print, and the rest a blur. He started to refold the paper to return it to the briefcase. She would think he was crazy, taking it out, looking at it a moment, turning it this way and that, and then putting it back. He pursed his lips and pretended to read.

Sanders, Sanders. What did he want? Four policies, the endowment, a health and accident, a straight life, and mortgage policy. Covered, protected. Insurance-poor, Sanders had said, throwing the bulky envelope onto Crane’s desk. “Consolidate these things somehow. I want cash if I can get it, and out from under the rest.”

“‘But what about your wife, the kids?”

“Ex-wife. If I go, she’ll manage. Let her carry insurance on me.”

Crane had been as persuasive as he knew how to be, and in the end he had had to promise to assess the policies, to have figures to show cash values, and so on. Disapprovingly, of course.

“You know, dear, you really are getting more stuffy every day,” Mary Louise said.

“And if he dies, and his children are left destitute, then will I be so stuffy?”