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She turned on the radio and found a stationplaying “Amazing Grace.” The next time she looked at her strange companion, shesaw that he was looking out at the darkening sky and weeping. Then she chancedto look down and saw something much odder, something that moved her heart as ithad not been moved in fifteen years, when she had miscarried her one and onlyeffort to have a child.
The animal, the not-dog, the Oy… he wascrying, too.
Fourteen
She got off 95 just over the Massachusettsstate line and checked them into a pair of side-by-side rooms in a dump calledthe Sea Breeze I
“Plus,” she told Roland, “if this TetCorporation you’re looking for is in a business building, you won’t be able toget inside until Monday, anyway.” Probably not true; this was the sort of manwho got into places when he wanted. You couldn’t keep him out. She guessed thatwas part of his attraction to a certain kind of woman.
In any case, he did not object to themotel. No, he would not go out to di
“Why do they call this the Sea Breeze?”Roland asked. Unlike Oy, he was eating some of everything, but he did it withno sign of pleasure. He ate like a man doing work. “I get no smell of theocean.”
“Well, probably you can when the wind’s inthe right quarter and blowing a hurricane,” she said. “It’s what we call poeticlicense, Roland.”
He nodded, showing unexpected (to her, atleast) understanding. “Pretty lies,” he said.
“Yes, I suppose.”
She turned on the television, thinking itwould divert him, and was shocked by his reaction (although she told herselfthat what she felt was amusement). When he told her he couldn’t see it, she hadno idea how to take what he was saying; her first thought that it was some sortof oblique and teddibly intellectual criticism of the medium itself.Then she thought he might be speaking (in equally oblique fashion) of hissorrow, his state of mourning. It wasn’t until he told her that he heardvoices, yes, but saw only lines which made his eyes water that she realized hewas telling her the literal truth: he could not see the pictures on the screen.Not the rerun of Rosea
She bussed up the trash—there wasalways so much more of it from a KFC meal, somehow—bade Roland anuncertain goodnight (which he returned in a distracted, I’m-not-really-here waythat made her nervous and sad), then went to her own room next door. There shewatched an hour of an old movie in which Yul Bry
When she couldn’t stand the quiet from theother side of the wall any longer she got up, put her clothes back on, and wentoutside to look at the stars. There, sitting on the curb, she found Roland,with the not-dog at his side. She wanted to ask how he had gotten out of hisroom without her being aware of it (the walls were so thin and she had beenlistening so hard), but she didn’t. She asked him what he was doing outhere, instead, and found herself unprepared for both his answer and for theutter nakedness of the face he turned to hers. She kept expecting a patina ofcivilization from him—a nod in the direction of the niceties—but therewas none of that. His honesty was terrifying.
“I’m afraid to go to sleep,” he said. “I’mafraid my dead friends will come to me, and that seeing them will kill me.”
She looked at him steadily in the mixtureof light: that which fell from her room and the horrible heartless Halloweenglare of the parking-lot arc sodiums. Her heart was beating hard enough toshake her entire chest, but when she spoke her voice sounded calm enough:“Would it help if I lay down with you?”
He considered this, and nodded. “I think itwould.”
She took his hand and they went into theroom she had rented him. He stripped off his clothes with no sign ofembarrassment and she looked, awestruck and afraid, at the scars which lappedand dented his upper body: the red pucker of a knife-slash on one bicep, themilky weal of a burn on another, the white crisscross of lash-marks between andon the shoulderblades, three deep dimples that could only be old bullet-holes.And, of course, there were the missing fingers on his right hand. She wascurious but knew she’d never dare ask about those.
She took off her own outer clothes,hesitated, then took off her bra, as well. Her breasts hung down, and there wasa dented scar of her own on one, from a lumpectomy instead of a bullet. And sowhat? She never would have been a Victoria’s Secret model, even in her prime.And even in her prime she’d never mistaken herself for tits and ass attached toa life-support system. Nor had ever let anyone else—including herhusband—make the same mistake.
She left her panties on, however. If shehad trimmed her bush, maybe she would have taken them off. If she’d known,getting up that morning, that she would be lying down with a strange man in acheap hotel room while some weird animal snoozed on the bathmat in front of thetub. Of course she would have packed a toothbrush and a tube of Crest, too.
When he put her arms around her, she gaspedand stiffened, then relaxed. But very slowly. His hips pressed against herbottom and she felt the considerable weight of his package, but it wasapparently only comfort he had in mind; his penis was limp.
He clasped her left breast, and ran histhumb into the hollow of the scar left by the lumpectomy. “What’s this?” heasked.
“Well,” she said (now her voice was nolonger even), “according to my doctor, in another five years it would have beencancer. So they cut it out before it could… I don’t know,exactly—metastasizing comes later, if it comes at all.”
“Before it could flower?” he asked.
“Yes. Right. Good.” Her nipple was now ashard as a rock, and surely he must feel that. Oh, this was so weird.
“Why is your heart beating so hard?” heasked. “Do I frighten you?”
“I… yes.”
“Don’t be frightened,” he said. “Killing’sdone.” A long pause in the dark. They could hear the faint drone of cars on theturnpike. “For now,” he added.
“Oh,” she said in a small voice. “Good.”
His hand on her breast. His breath on herneck. After some endless time that might have been an hour or only fiveminutes, his breathing lengthened, and she knew he had gone to sleep. She waspleased and disappointed at the same time. A few minutes later she went tosleep herself, and it was the best rest she’d had in years. If he had baddreams of his gone friends, he did not disturb her with them. When she woke in themorning it was eight o’clock and he was standing naked at the window, lookingout through a slit he’d made in the curtains with one finger.