Chapter48 – Haunted by Tim
Morning light streamed through the window, sneaking through
the cracks of the curtain I had pulled tight during the night. The world seemed
more friendly now, and larger than the cage I had imagined it during my waking
nightmare.
“So have you thought about coming with me to California?” I
asked, when Louise had woken up again after another long doze.
My toe still throbbed with the encounter outside, and a few
sniffles suggested I was getting more ill, the climate change and the tension
taking their toll on me.
“California?” Louise said, sitting up, blinking at me as if
she could not recall our conversation over dinner the night before.
“You remember? You said the cold was getting to you here,” I
said. “You also said that you hated the people you lived with.”
“I don’t hate them,” Louise mumbled. “I’m just sick of them.
Having lived with them for a while, I can’t stand their habits.”
“So come with me.”
She stared at me for a long time. Something stirred in her
eyes that I could not identify, something dark lurking behind the mask of blue
and her innocent expression, reminding me of what Sledge Hammer Harry – my
supervisor at the print factory – had said when warning me against her: “She’s
not what she seems, boy, and if you mess with her, you’ll get hurt.”
The warning had scared me, and yet had also intrigued me,
the way a flickering flame intrigued a moth. I got nearer to Louise, not
farther away, and took note of looks such as these, as if some other more
calculating mind was at work behind the guise of the pretty girl.
Her gaze grew more focused as she thought over my
suggestion.
“What would we do in California?” she asked.
“Do?”
“Do – would we work? How would we live? Where would we
live?”
“Well, I think we could relax for a while, have some fun,
take in the warm weather,” I said, distracted by the sound of a car outside the
door, real wheels spinning in the slick of the freshly fallen snow.
The fears of the night before eased back into me, lending
urgency to my request.
“It would be warm there,” I said. “You could heal.”
“I know, but…”
“But what? Is something holding you here?”
“There is Tim.”
“Tim?” I asked, a shiver of panic rolling through me. “Who
is Tim?”
“He’s the guy I’ve been seeing lately.”
“A boyfriend?”
“Sort of,” she said. “He’s a race car driver.”
Hope sank in me like a heavy stone down a well, the echo of
her words rattling through me and leaving me shaken. I fell back into the
chair, exhausted again, as if I had jogged the whole distance across the United
States and back, and had just arrived to find my efforts wasted.
A dull pain started in my stomach, a tightening that made me
feel like an expired tube of toothpaste.
“Do you love him?” I asked.
She only shrugged.
*************
With nearly two hours to wait for the bus to LA., Louise and
I decided to get another meal, knowing we most likely would not get anything
good at any of the rest stops the rest of the way.
“I want lobster,” Louise said.
“What about your lip?” I asked. “Won’t it hurt?”
“To hell with my lip,” she growled. “I’ve wanted lobster
ever since I got to this god forsaken landlocked place, and now when I have a
chance to get it, I’m going to have it.”
“All right,” I said half sighing, looking up at the waiter
standing at our table side. “That’s two orders of lobster.”
“Very good, sir,” the waiter said, then moved off, leaving
us to indulge in the luxury of the place. I had never eaten at a restaurant
with linen table cloths, except at family weddings. I felt inappropriately
dressed, although we had come early enough to be among a sparse few customers.
I had the curious suspicion Louise had selected the place
primarily because of its largely red interior.
Crimson walls outlined in gold. Even the napkins had the
same pattern, as did the rugs, drapes and waiters’ uniforms.
Louise nervously fingered the silverware, her expression
growing sadder despite the luxurious atmosphere. Tears appeared at the corners
of her eyes and she rooted through her purse looking for tissues. She did not
want to wipe the tears or blow her nose with the linen napkin.
“Tim again?” I asked.
“I’m sorry, Ken,” she mumbled. “I know this isn’t fair to
you.”
“It’s all right,” I said, but didn’t mean it.
I was more than half out of my mind with the expectation
that Tim might walk through the door on us at any moment, and hated the idea
that we had to wait here in his back yard for the bus.
I knew I would only feel better when the bus had left,
carrying us back over the mountains out of range an accidental encounter. Even
then, I would feel best when we reached the safety of LA where we would be on
more neutral ground.
I wanted dinner to end so that we could duck into some dark
corner to wait for the bus. But dinner dragged on, as waiters served course
after course with the slow diligence of snails.
I almost suspected them of being part of some vast plot, as
if Tim’s Boston upbringing gave him and the workers here a natural affinity I
could not share in. I ate quickly, but Louise could not. So I waited and
watched, full of fear.
Eventually, Louise put down her fork, shaking her head,
saying that she could not continue the meal because of her pained lip. I was
secretly relieved. I waved for the waiter and the check, as Louise stood and
eased on her mohair coat. I slipped my leather jacket on. We looked like
something out of a 1950s motorcycle gang movie and new patrons in the
restaurant eyed us with the same thought, expecting some violence.
We simply paid the check and left.
I guided Louise out onto the street, where a cold wind blew
down from the snowy canyons hidden by the darkness above us. We clung together
for warmth, although I was stirred by memories of our times back east on the
bus stop and let my hands feel for the softness of her breasts.
“Kenny!” Louise scolded, pushing my fingers away. “Behave
yourself.”
We laughed.
But something in the air made me nervous, as if I had
developed some new sense of picking up on danger.
Then I saw the cop car cruising down the street behind us.
Perhaps this had nothing to do with us at all, and the
patrol car was simply making its regular rounds. But the closer it got the
crazier the fear I felt so I yanked Louise into one of the alleys and urged her
towards the deeper shadows.
I’ve got to creep down the alley ways…
I stared back as we fled, the echo of our shuffled footsteps
magnified by the cobble stones and the brick walls. At first, I thought the cop
car would keep going as it appeared across the mouth of the alley, but with a
jerk it turned in, headlight high beams casting a reddish glow across the wet
cobblestones that looked like spreading fire or blood.
The black splash of light on the windshield, however, kept
me from seeing the faces of the officers inside, and gave off the eerie feeling
that no one was inside at all.
I yanked Louise into another alley to the left, a dark space
littered with beer bottles and trash cans lying on their sides. Louise pulled
back telling me to calm down, asking me why we needed to run.
“Just believe me we have to keep going,” I told her. “Those
police don’t mean us well, if my guess is right.”
“Are you telling me you’re uncles have something to do
with….?”
“Will you just come on,” I pleaded, but too late.
The cop car slid across the mouth of the new alley and a
bright search beam pinned us before we could duck out of sight again.
“You two, stop there,” an amplified voice said.
We did not move, although my hand slid into the pocket where
I had dumped the small pistol earlier.
Did I really think I could shoot it out with the police?
I eased my hand out again, and wondered if I could ditch the
pistol before the cop car – which now turned into our alley – reached us. But
the headlights so thoroughly bathed us in illumination, no move I made would go
unobserved and the cops would certainly see me throwing the gun away.
If they search me I’m doomed, I thought, but also knew that
if they went so far as that, they would also know or suspect who I was and the
gun would add only a little to deeper troubles I’ve already created.
Finally, the cop car reached us, the officer on the
passenger side rolling down his window to glare out of us.
“Don’t you two love birds know better than to wander around
in these alleys,” he said. “These are dangerous streets, and we don’t need to
find your bodies in here tonight. Now get. We’ll keep the lights on you until
you get back out to the street. And when you get there, stay there, or we’ll
run you in just for your own safety.”
We nodded and moved, my knees buckling with each step so
that I feared that I would fall on my face. Louise clutched my arm, keeping me
steady until we reached the street, where she continued to grip me, both of us
breathing so hard we might have run a marathon.
“That was close,” I said.
Yet, I felt strangely elated, as if we had come through some
important trial and had survived despite our danger. I even laughed, drawing a
look of concern from Louise who must have thought me crazy.
“What is the matter with you?” she asked sternly.
I shook my head. I could not articulate the feeling or
express the sense that we had come through the fire and were now clearly on the
other side of some psychological divide, even before we had left Denver.
She sighed, took my arm, and led me back to the bus station.
The bus was huffing and puffing in its stall. We gathered
our things from the locker, deposited most of them with the driver to install
in the belly of the beast, then climbed abroad.
We were on our way, I thought. We were well fed, wealthy and
perhaps wise.
The combination went straight into my blood stream like a
drug.
No more lonely nights in LA, I thought. No more empty
Thanksgivings.
And yet, despite the elation, the nagging sense of
foreboding hit me. I tried to dismiss it as we slid into our seats, telling
myself I had been wrong about the cops in the alley, so I must be wrong about
this.
I had a nasty feeling that Denver was not yet through with
us, and that this part of the planet still flexed its fingers at us.
I closed my eyes and tried to go to sleep.
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