Night passage

“It’s my business to know this sort of thing,” Elliott said to Jesse. “And your wife here has the goods.”

Jesse nodded.

“Oh, Elliott,” Je

“My right hand to God,” Elliott said, and put his right hand in the air. “I see twenty girls a day. All of them are good-looking. Everybody out here is good-looking, you know? But none of them come alive through the lens like you do, Je

Jesse sipped the tall scotch and soda he’d ordered.

“What are you working on now, Elliott?” Je

“Got a thing in development at Universal,” Elliott said. “Absolutely amazing story about a plastic surgeon, got an Oedipal deal going with his mother. Women come to him for a makeover and he does a surgical reconstruction so that they look like his mother, then he kills them. Great vehicle for Tommy Cruise.”

“I love the concept,” Je

“Love it,” Jesse said. Tommy Cruise.

“Maybe I can bring you aboard, Jesse, you know, you being a cop and all, could use a little professional consult on this. You ever dealt with psychopathic killers?”

“Not my job to decide if they’re psychopaths,” Jesse said.

“Oh, Jesse,” Je

“Well, you murder somebody,” Jesse said, “probably something wrong with you.”

“Well, I may give you a ringo, soon as I teach this idiot writer I’m working with how to write a screenplay.”

“He’s never written one?” Je

“No, he’s a damn novelist, you know?”

“The worst.”

“You got that right,” Elliott said. “Can’t tell them shit.”

He sighed thoughtfully for a moment, looking around the room, then he patted his chest over his shirt pocket, and frowned, and took a twenty-dollar bill out of his pants pocket and handed it to his girlfriend.

“Taffy,” he said, “go get me some cigarettes.”

Taffy took the money and headed for the bar near the waiting area out front.

“I like it back here,” Elliott said. “Lotta people like it out front where everyone can see them. Real Hollywood, right? I’m not into that.”

“Don’t blame you,” Jesse said. He knew Je

“I’m a blue-collar guy, you know, Jesse. I make pictures.”

Jesse had never heard of any picture that Elliott had made. But he didn’t pay much attention to movies. He thought they were boring, except for westerns. Of which there weren’t many new ones. Taffy came back with the cigarettes. The waitress brought them another round of drinks.

Elliott said, “Lemme tell you a little more about this picture, Je

Jesse took a long pull on his scotch and soda, feeling the cold thrust of it down his throat, waiting for the good feeling to follow. . . . In Oklahoma City he turned northeast, toward St. Louis. He was in the central time zone now. He could remember listening to Vin Scully broadcasting the games from St. Louis, right at suppertime. It was as if he knew St. Louis, the ballpark glowing in the close summer night, the Mississippi ru

“Stan Musial,” he said.

Je

“Why were they so boring?” Je

“They don’t know anything that matters,” he said.

“They are successful people in the business,” Je

“Nobody in the business knows what matters,” Jesse had said.

“For Christ’s sake, they talked with you about baseball all night.”

“They don’t know anything about baseball,” Jesse said. “They just knew the names of a bunch of players.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Je

As he left St. Louis it began to rain, spitting at first, and then more of a steady mist. He stayed the night in a motel in Zanesville, Ohio, and when he came out to the car in the morning it was still dark after sunrise and the rain was coming steadily. He pulled into the Exxon station next to the motel, a half block from the interstate ramp. Most people weren’t up yet in Zanesville. The empty roadways gleamed in the rain reflecting the bright lights of the gas station. He pumped his own gas and when he went in to pay bought himself coffee and two plain donuts in the convenience section. The man behind the counter had a shiny bald head and a neat beard. He wore a crisp white shirt with the cuffs turned back and there was a small tattoo on his right forearm that said “Duke” in ornate blue script.

“Early start,” the man said.

“Long way to go,” Jesse said.

“Where you heading?”

The man made change automatically, as if his hands did the counting.

“Massachusetts.”

“Long way is right,” the man said. “Never been there myself.”

Jesse pocketed his change and took his coffee and donuts.

“Safe trip,” the man said.

There were places like this all across the country, dependent on the interstate, open early, bright, smelling of coffee, not unfriendly. The interstate was an entity of its own, a kind of transcontinental neighborhood, filled with single people, who hung out in the neighborhood places. He swung up onto Interstate 70 and drove east into the rain, drinking his coffee. . . . He still didn’t know exactly when she started sleeping with Elliott Krueger. He knew she was out more and later. He would stand sometimes at the window, looking out at North Genesee Street and thinking maybe the next car will be her. He was embarrassed with himself about that, but it seemed as if he had to do it. Sometimes when they were having dutiful sex, a voice in his head, which seemed not even his, would say, This isn’t the first time today she’s done this. The voice was not uncertain. The voice knew. He knew. But then he didn’t know. Despite the passion of their courtship, she had become perfunctory about sex. He couldn’t imagine her being so consumed by desire that she would cheat on him. And he couldn’t imagine that she would even if she were. She wouldn’t do that to me, his own voice would say in his head. She wouldn’t do that to me. As he drove through the wet gray morning toward West Virginia he smiled at himself. It wasn’t about me. It was about her, about what she needed, about being an actress. She needed to be an actress more than she needed to be a cop’s wife. He wondered sometimes what he needed from her. A kind of richness, maybe. The palpability of her, the odd combination of intellect and ditz that she balanced so beautifully. Maybe it made no sense to try to figure. Could anyone list the reasons they loved someone? Probably not. He crossed the Ohio River at Wheeling, the rain dimpling the iron-colored surface of the wide water below the bridge. He liked rivers. They always hinted to him of possibility. The interstate was uphill now in West Virginia, and it curved around the slopes. The big trailer trucks roared through it, sending up a sheet of water as they passed him on the down slopes. On the next hill they would slow, and he would either have to slow to their speed or pass them, only to have them roar past him again as they made up the time on the downgrade. Time was money to truckers. He sympathized with that. But, especially in bad weather, trucks were a pain in the ass. It was part of his own problem, he thought, that he understood Je