Chapter45 – I’m here
I saw the Cadillac trailing the bus and didn’t need to
notice the New York license plates to know it meant trouble.
I had seen similar vehicles parked in front of the Alexander
Hamilton Hotel in Paterson when I worked at the Fabian Theater, always driven
by grim men with mean expression. I had even seen these men beat up a poor fool
on the street when the man could not produce his loan payment. Once or twice, I
had even seen such men in the company of my uncle, Harry.
Harry drove one of those cars, too.
Although I knew the car behind the bus was not my uncle’s, I
could see the same grim faces seated inside, their gazes fixed on the back of
the bus as if taking aim. Then I saw the license plates, sending deeper chills
through me than increasingly higher banks of snow piled along the sides of the
road.
Somewhere
in the hours of traveling, and waiting, and walking, and traveling again, night
gave way to morning, and the sky grew lighter as the bus huffed and puffed its
way up the steep inclines.
The clear roads of Denver vanished as bus wheels churned
snow that apparently had fallen over night in the mountains but not in downtown
where I had waited. Any sign of asphalt vanished.
But day light couldn’t reach us directly as high peaks rose
on every side, jagged teeth through which pale light flowed.
I felt locked in the jaws of a saber tooth tiger, the
movement of the bus making it feel as if the tiger was grinding its teeth.
If this affected the men in the car behind us, their grim
faces did not show it.
The bus heater churned out dry heat but had little effect in
making the bus feel warm. I could even see my breath as it steamed the window,
and I had to wipe away the moisture repeatedly in order to keep track of our
progress and our pursuers.
My legs hurt – whether from cold, the cramped seat or too
much walking in Denver, I could not tell. My fingers and toes hurt at first, burned,
then went a little numb.
I kept thinking about how I ought to have bought gloves
during my wanderings in Denver. I hadn’t needed them in LA, but the thought of
gloves and the harsh winter, reminded me of home, and of the car behind us,
drawing my attention back to where the car was.
Remarkably, the trip to Boulder took less time than I had
thought, and while I half dozed from need of sleep, the bus driver shouted:
“Hey Boulder, are you getting off or what?”
A man in a green flap-eared hat leaned over and tugged at my
sleeve. “Is that you?”
“Yes,” I said, and jumped up, fumbled with the bags I had
stashed in the overhead rack, everybody on the bus looking at me, their
impatience painted across their faces like tattoos.
Finally I bumbled my way to the front of the bus, and
staggered down the stairs to the side of the road where the bus had stopped. A
mound of plowed snow three feet taller than I was stood between me and where
the curb should have been, part of a wall that had no break except for the intersecting
street.
The bus door hissed closed behind me without another word
from the driver, and the bus wheels slipped for a moment kicking up fresh snow,
before catching and propelling the bus back onto the highway, leaving me and my
bags in a white, frigid world I would never have described as a wonderland.
The black Cadillac had apparently passed while the bus was
pulled over, leaving the highway mostly vacant except for a 1940s era pick up
truck with bald tires and a load of workers swerving in its attempt to follow
the track left by the bus.
But I knew the Cadillac
would be back.
I drew the worn envelop with Louise’s address out of my
pocket.
I had asked the driver to let me off near the address. He
had left me off too soon at the street rather than near any building. I
couldn’t even read the addresses. So I started to walk, dread growing that the Cadillac
would pull up before I could find cover.
The wind blew bits of snow into my face as I walked, my
knuckles red from gripping the handle to my suitcase, my toes aching with each
step as snow seeped through the leather.
Could you even buy boots in LA, I wondered.
A car passed. But it wasn’t the Cadillac, just a work truck
full of cowboys who hooted at me out the windows. People didn’t walk in snow
storms here, I supposed.
I was so miserable by the time I reached the cleared
driveway to the nearest motel, though I knew it was not address on the envelop.
I must have looked an incredible sight, stumbling through
the door with my bags in tow like children, leather jacket glistening with
melting snow, my eyebrows and military-shaven hair still peppered with the
still frozen variety.
The clerk – a middle aged woman that might have made a good
welfare department clerk for her lack of emotion – simply watched me cross to
the counter, making no objection to the trail of wet I left from the door.
Outside, a car pulled into the parking lot – with tinted
windows like the one I had seen from the bus – my imagination painting it into
the Cadillac from the highway when it was not.
“Can I help you?” the
clerk asked in a sharp voice I had most often heard at the library as a young
boy when I had more or less deliberately wandered into the adult section
looking for anything that even remotely had anything to do with sex.
“I need a room,” I said without thinking, since I had
intended to ask directions to Louise’s hotel, not to stay. But the more I
thought about it, the more staying here or finding my own place made sense. I
didn’t know what reception I would get with Louise, whether she would want to
take me in, whether she was living with someone making my own trip here
pointless. I also didn’t want to go back outside to the cold storm, fearing the
Cadillac would really pass and spot where I had taken refuge.
“Twenty five a day and check out is at 11,” the woman said,
reaching for a key that she kept on a board of hooks behind the desk.
I pulled out the bills and counted them slowly, my freezing
fingers finding it difficult to separate the stiff money. I also stalled for
time hoping the car would pass.
The woman fetched a shawl, draped it around her shoulders,
then led me out the door again and along the slick but snow-free walk that ran
along the length of the motel, a canopy over it making it into one long porch.
My fears about the Cadillac proven unfounded for no car darkened the snow
except those already parked. But I knew sooner or later Cadillac would make its
way back in this direction seeking to pick up my trail again, and I hoped to be
inside my room by the time he did.
The room looked like every other motel room I had passed
through with bed, dresser, table and lamp in one room and toilet, sink and tub
in the other. The place smelled of cleanser, with brown stains in the rug that
might or might not have been drips of dried blood.
I dumped my things in the middle of the floor, nodded to the
clerk that the room was acceptable, then locked the door and attached the chain
once she left.
While the room had a telephone, I didn’t trust it, and
waited until the lady reentered the office lobby before I eased back outside
for the short trip to the vending area where I had seen a public telephone
perched between soda and snack machines. I dialed Louise’s number from the
wrinkled and faded letter. It was now a local call.
An operator answered – maybe the one I had talked to earlier
in trying to reach Louise – all operators sounded the same to me. She told me
to hold on, and then passed the call on, a duller ring sounding in the ear
piece replaced by a click and then Louise’s voice.
“It’s me, Kenny,” I said.
“I recognized your voice,” she said. “We have better
reception than before.”
“That’s because I’m in Boulder,” I said.
“Boulder? You’re here?”
“Somewhere down the road. I don’t know how far. A place
called --,” I found a pack of matches I
had taken up from the table in my room and read the name off the top, “—The
Lazy J. Can I see you?”
A profound pause followed. “You’re right down the road from
me,” she said.
“I just told you that.”
“I mean you’re really here.”
“I said I was. Can I come over and see you?”
“Yes,” she said with a breathlessness that eases some of my
fears. “Come straight away. I’ll be waiting.”
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