Дэймон Найт: Orbit 8

“Near Lake Michigan?”

“On the shores almost.”

She nodded.

“I guess all kids play games like that in the snow,” he said.

“Strange that we should have come from the same general area. Did your milk freeze on the back steps, stick up out of the bottle, with the cap at an angle?”

“Yes. And those awful cloakrooms at school, where you bad to strip off snowsuits and boots, and step in icy water before you could get your indoors shoes on.”

“And sloshing through the thaws, wet every damn day. I was wet more than I was dry all through grade school.”

“We all were,” she said, smiling faintly, looking past him.

He almost laughed in his relief. He went to the radiator and put his hands out over it, his back to her. Similar backgrounds, that’s all, he said to himself, framing the words carefully. Nothing strange. Nothing eerie. She was just a plain woman who came from the same state, probably the same county that he came from. They might have gone to the same schools, and he would not have noticed her. She was too common, too nondescript to have noticed at the time. And he had been a quiet boy, not particularly note-worthy himself. No sports besides the required ones. No clubs. A few friends, but even there, below average, because they had lived in an area too far removed from most of the kids who went to his school.

“It’s only two. Seems like it ought to be morning already, doesn’t it?” She was moving about and he turned to see what she was doing. She had gone behind the counter, where the ticket agent had said there was a telephone. “A foam cushion,” she said, holding it up. “I feel like one of the Swiss Family Robinson, salvaging what might be useful.”

“Too bad there isn’t some coffee under there.”

“Wish you were in the diner?”

“No. That bitch probably has them all at each other’s throats by now, as it is.”

“That girl? The one who was so afraid?”

He laughed harshly and sat down. “Girl!”

“No more than twenty, if that much.”

He laughed again and shook his head.

“Describe her to me,” the woman said. She left the counter and sat down on the bench opposite him, still carrying the foam cushion. It had a black plastic cover; gray foam bulged from a crack. It was disgusting.

Crane said, “The broad was in her late twenties, or possibly thirties-”

“Eighteen to twenty.”

“She had a pound of makeup on, nails like a cat.”

“Fake nails, chapped hands, calluses. Ten-cent-store makeup.”

“She had expensive perfume, and a beaver coat. I think beaver.”

She laughed gently. “Drugstore spray cologne. Macy’s Basement fake fur, about fifty-nine to sixty-five dollars, unless she hit a sale.”

“And the kid gloves, and the high patent leather boots?”

“Vinyl, both of them.” She looked-at him for an uncomfortable minute, then examined the pillow she had found. “On second thought, I’m not sure that I would want to rest my head on this. It’s a little bit disgusting, isn’t it?”

“Why did you want me to describe that woman? You have your opinion of what she is; I have mine. There’s no way to prove either of our cases without having her before us.”

“I don’t need to prove anything. I don’t care if you think you’re right and I’m wrong. I felt very sorry for the girl. I noticed her.”

“I noticed her, too.”

“What color was her hair, her eyes? How about her mouth-big, small, full? And her nose? Straight, snub, broad?”

He regarded her bitterly for a moment, then shrugged and turned toward the window. He didn’t speak.

“You can’t describe what she really was like because you didn’t see her. You saw the package and made up your mind about the contents. Believe me, she was terrified of the storm, of those men, everything. She needed the security of the driver and people. What about me? Can you describe me?”

He looked, but she was holding the pillow between them and he could see only her hands, long, pale, slender fingers, no rings.

“This is ridiculous,” he said after a second. “I have one of those reputations for names and faces. You know, never forget a name, always know the names of the kids, the wife, occupation and so on.”

“Not this side of you. This side refuses to see anyone at all. I wonder why.”

“What face are you wearing tonight, Randy?” Mary Louise touching him. “Do you see me? Why don’t you look at me?”

Wind whistling past his ears, not really cold yet, not when he was standing still anyway, with the sun warm on him. But racing down’ the slope, trees to his right, the precipice to his left, the wind was icy. Mary Louise a red streak ahead of him, and somewhere behind him the navy and white blur that was McCone. Holding his ,. own between them. The curve of the trail ahead, the thrill of the downward plummet, and suddenly the open-mouthed face of his wife, silent scream, add in the same instant, the ski pole against his legs, tripping him up, the more exciting plunge downward, face in the snow, blinded, over and over, skis gone now, trying to grasp the snow, trying to stop the tumbling, over and over in the snow.

Had his wife tried to kill him?

“Are you all right, Mr. Crane?”

“Yes, of course. Let me describe the last man I sold insurance to, a week ago.

Twenty-four, six feet one inch, a tiny, almost invisible scar over his right eyebrow, crinkle lines about his eyes, because he’s an outdoor type, very tanned and muscular. He’s a professional baseball player, incidentally. His left hand has larger knuckles than the right . . . .”

The woman was not listening. She had crossed the station and was standing at the window, trying to see out. “Computer talk,” ,. she said. “A meaningless rundown of facts. So he bought a policy for one hundred thousand dollars, straight life, and from now on you won’t have to deal with him, be concerned with him at all.”

“Why did you say one hundred thousand dollars?”

“No reason. I don’t know, obviously.”

He chewed his lip and watched her. “Any change out there?”

“Worse, if anything. I don’t think you’ll be able to use this door at all now.

You’d never get it closed. It’s half covered with a drift.”

“There must be a window or another door that isn’t drifted over.”

“Storm windows. Maybe there’s a back door; but I bet it opens to the office, and the ticket agent locked that.”

Crane looked at the windows and found that she was right. The storm windows couldn’t be opened from inside. And there wasn’t . another outside door. The men’s room was like a freezer now. He tried to run the water, thinking that possibly cold water would work on the thermostat as well as snow, but nothing came out. The. pipes must have frozen-As he started to close the door, he saw a small block-printed sign: “Don’t close door all the way, no heat in here, water will freeze up.” The toweling wouldn’t hold water anyway.

He left the door open a crack and rejoined the woman near the window. “It’s got to be this door,” he said. “I guess I could open it an inch or two, let that much of the drift fall inside and use it.”

“Maybe. But you’ll have to be careful.”

“Right out of Jack London,” he said. “It’s seventy-two on the thermometer. How do you feel?”

“Coolish, not bad.”

“Okay, we’ll wait awhile. Maybe the wind will let up.”

He stared at the puddle under the thermostat, and at the other larger one across the room near the door, where the snowdrift had entered the room the last time. The drift had been only a foot high then, and now it was three or four feet. Could he move that much snow without anything to work with, if it came inside?