Preston Falls : a novel (47 page)

"The fuck are you doing?'' says Willis.

"I have to wait on these assbags all day."

"You're going to get us fucking arrested."

"Failure to dim," Champ says. "Book 'em, Danno." The light changes and the BMW bolts away, squealing left on Route 9. Champ turns right, northbound. "Oh Mother dear, I sadly fear, our Beemer we have lost. What, lost your Beemer? You naughty—fuck, what rhymes with Beemer?"

"Reamer?"

"You naughty reamer. That's stupid. Unless they were like reamin' the guy. So anyway, you want me to come in? I don't care. Jean thinks I'm the shit of the earth anyway. I can teU her we went to Atlantic City for a couple weeks."

"Atlantic GV3;?"

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"Well, fuck, it sounds better than some motel a mile up the fuckin' road. How sick is that}"

"Look, in the first place, you were talking to her on the phone all week, so how could you be in Atlantic City?"

"I don't know; it doesn't fuckin' matter," Champ says. "All you have to do is go in and eat shit, that's all that's required. You were shacked up with somebody, you were drunk on your ass, you had some shit to work through—who the fuck knows. You can recoup this, you really can. Plenty of guys do a lot crazier shit, and they're back, you know, in their life and everything."

''That's depressing," says Willis. "Here, take a right—right here." Champ puts on his blinker and they swing onto Vance. "This is good," Willis says when they get to Crofts. "Just drop me here and I'll walk over."

Champ pulls over to the curb. "You're going to fuckin' skedaddle, I know it."

"Would you do me a favor?"

"This is a favor. Or didn't you notice?" Champ puts the car in Park. "Yeah, okay. What?"

"Would you wait for me at the corner of Bonner, for maybe fifteen minutes? It's like two blocks up. Or maybe actually, give it twenty. There's McDonald's and shit just up Route 9 if you want to go get coffee or something and come back. Dunkin' Donuts."

"I'm supposed to wait for you?"

"I just want to have a fallback, you know? I mean, I can always walk to the motel, but it's so fucking cold, and I don't have any gloves. Twenty minutes."

"Hey, I'll give it half an hour. But I don't want to fuckin' see you."

"Yeah, well." Willis opens his door and gets out. "Thanks, bro. And you'll be at the corner of Crofts and Bonner. Two blocks." He points north on Crofts.

"Thirty minutes, Mr. Whiteside."

"Thanks." Willis slams the door shut, and the convertible jerks into gear—Champ's transmission seems a little funky too—and rumbles up Crofts. Plus his muffler's shot. At least he's white; maybe the Chesterton cops won't puU him over.

Willis sticks his hands in his jacket pockets and starts walking. He sees Champ's left blinker go on, then his brake lights, and the convert-

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ible turns onto Bonner, back toward Route 9. It's quiet now: Willis can hear his own footfalls on the sidewalk. And he can see his breath. He switches his hands to his pants pockets. Better. Maybe. Having his palms against his warm thighs makes the backs of his fingers feel even colder. He turns right onto Stebbins and sees snowflakes, a few, falling through streetlight. Won't amount to shit. But this is how it begins.

And now left, onto their block.

He stops at the stockade fence between the Levys' yard and theirs. The house is dark and the Cherokee's not in the driveway. Jesus, what if for some weird reason they don't even live here anymore? But of course she must have put it in the garage. And the house is dark because they're all in bed. He sees she got somebody to put up the storm sash on those upstairs windows. Miserable fucking job.

Well, now that he's here, what? He could just stand gazing for a minute—it would make a sad little tableau, with the snow falling and shit—and then walk around the corner and get Champ to drive him home. Meaning the Birlstone Motel, apparently. This is fucking insane; he really should've called. Probably, since he's here, he should just grab the key that's taped to the bottom of one of the garbage cans, so if need be he could let himself in sometime.

But he can't cross the open yard, lit up by the pink streetlight: that's begging to be spotted. Instead he walks past the house, across the driveway, and stops by the other fence, between his yard and the Durkins'. Okay, this is a little dicey. He looks around, in case somebody's walking a dog or watching from a window. The Durkins have a downstairs light on, but it's probably just so they won't break their necks in the middle of the night. No cars coming either way. He cuts along the fence and makes it safely into the shadow between the fence and his garage; looking in the dirty side window, he can make out the Cherokee. He creeps around the back and stops at the corner of the garage. Now: from here to the back steps, where the cans are—^what, fifty feet?—you can be seen from the bedroom window.

He takes a breath and steps out of the shadow, crosses the crispy grass to the concrete slab, and squats by the garbage cans. Jesus, this is hairy: the bedroom's right up there. If there was ever a way to tell which one the key's under, he's forgotten it now. He grabs one can by a side handle with his freezing left hand, tilts it to feel up under with his right hand and— shit! —the lid clatters onto the concrete. Key's not under this

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can, and when he tries to set it upright again, his numb fingers lose their grip, the can teeters and down // goes, the son of a bitch. He hears Rathbone barking upstairs. Fuck. He runs and flattens himself against the wall of the house, directly under their bedroom window. God damn fucking dog's still carrying on in there. He's going to have the whole house awake.

Jean stows the clean towels and washcloths in the bathroom closet, tiptoes into the kids' rooms and lays their folded clothes in drawers, then brings her own stuff into the bedroom. In her bottom drawer, she finds eight evenly stacked columns of Pogs. She counts them, fearing Roger's tried to get away with fewer than two hundred. Nope, right on the nose. While putting her things away—including a nicely faded green t-shirt of Carol's she guesses is now hers—she remembers she's got to fix Mel's lunch for tomorrow. (Thank God Roger will still eat the school lunches.) It's already after one in the morning. And then she remembers tomorrow's only Sunday. She sits down on the bed, unties her running shoes and works them off, pulls off her sweatpants (leaving her sweatshirt on), plumps up both pillows against the headboard and gets under the covers, sheets smooth and cool against her bare legs. Rathbone trots in, circles and sinks down with a sigh.

She picks up Emma from the night table and reads the part where Emma breaks the news to Harriet about Mr. Elton. When she understands that she's dreaming instead of reading, she puts the book aside and snaps off the light. Which wakes her up a little. She slips a hand into her underpants, and she's arguing with herself over whether or not she deserves this one stinky little pleasure, when she hears Rathbone growling. At her} He's over by the window. God, somebody's out there: sounds like they knocked over a can. Rathbone goes into a fit of barking, growls more, then barks again. If she had that gun-in-the-safe thing . . . She rips back the covers, creeps to the window and lifts just the corner of the shade. One of the garbage cans lies gaping on its side by the steps, the lid nearby. Could it just be a raccoon? Crap—she forgot bungee cords.

She tugs down on the shade to make it go up and throws open the window, but there's another window, as if in a bad dream: the storm sash

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she put up this afternoon. Rathbone keeps growling, the hair all up on the back of his neck. She stands there, bare-legged, in her underpants, thighs cold; colder still where she's wet. She's made every stupid choice possible, she's taken no care of anything—and it's only beginning. She can see snowflakes falling slantwise under the streetlight. Rathbone barks again. What? What? She pulls on her sweatpants; the dog charges out the door, and she follows, barefoot, down the stairs.

In the dark kitchen, he's standing up and drumming his paws against the back door, giving little yelps. Definitely something out there he wants to get at—probably a raccoon, probably rabid. She goes to the door and puts her face to the cold glass. Nothing she can see. It's bright enough out there with the streetlights, but she switches on the outside light, which she should keep on all night anyway if she and the kids are going to be here alone, and sees a man dart from the side of the house— God, he was right under the bedroom window —toward the street and she very stupidly opens the door a crack and yells, "The police are on their way!" In a second, Rathbone has nosed and muscled his way out through—if this man's got a gun, he'll kill Rathbone—and then Rath-bone's jumping up and wagging his tail, and the man's dropping to his knees and tousling Rathbone's ears and rubbing heads with him.

Willis.

How could she not have known.

She opens the door the rest of the way and watches the scene. A man and his dog in the falling snow. An upstairs light goes on in the Levys' house. Her bare feet are freezing. Willis is still loving up Rathbone, but she sees him sneak a look her way, like a husband eyeing some other woman over his wife's shoulder. Then he gets to his feet, brushes off his knees and trots toward her, Rathbone capering at his side. He says, "You called the police?"

"No," she says.

"Thank God for little mercies," he says. What big mercy does he think he's been denied?

"Are you coming in? Or should we stage this little drama for the neighbors' benefit?" She's gone right back into bitch mode. But this is beyond the pale. He steps into the kitchen, squaring his shoulders as if he's trying not to slink, Rathbone right at his side.

She closes the door behind them and leans her back against it. "So what is this about?"

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"Okay, fine, I deserve this," he says. He sits down on the Cosco stool. Rathbone jumps up and puts paws on Willis's thigh. Willis pats his head.

"Do you realize the police are looking for you?"

"Shit, you said you didn't call them."

"I didn't call them now," she says. "I called them Monday. Where have you been? Do you know Melanie ran away to Vermont to look for you?

"What? Where is she? Get down." He pushes at Rathbone's throat; Rathbone sits, tongue out in admiration.

"Well, she's back now. I had to drive to Preston Falls to get her. The police picked her up in Burlington."

"Jesus."

"That was my second trip up there this week. The first time I went up because I thought you might be dead up there. I find you gone, the house deserted, I finally go to the police, who tell me that your truck was found on Hous —"

"Right," he says.

"Well. So that's my story. Short version." She takes a breath, lets it out. "Your turn—no, I take it back, there is more. According to the police, your friend the wood man and your new friend, the lawyer, are big into the drug scene up there. So I got to answer lots of questions about that."

"So what did you say?"

"What did I say? I told them the truth. That I don't know you anymore." She notices she's got her forearms X'd across her breasts, each hand clutching the opposite shoulder. "Okay, now you get to talk."

"I don't have really all that much to say."

"You incredible bastard," she says, and grips her shoulders harder. Her nails dig in.

"No, go lie down." Willis points under the table; Rathbone goes and curls up. "Good dog."

"What were you doing just now?" she says.

"Outside? Looking for the key."

"So you intended to come in."

"I honestly don't know," he says.

"Okay, I don't have time for this." She goes over to the phone. Rathbone gets up, ready for action.

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"What are you doing?" he says.

"Calling a nice man in the Vermont State Police." She jabs One. Eight. Oh. Two. Then checks the yellow Post-it stuck to the phone for the rest. "So he can call off the manhunt.''

"You actually did that," he says.

"'^Iiat did you expect? What would you have done? Captain Petrosky, please."

"Shit," says Willis. "And the kids know about all this?"

"Sorry," says the man on the phone. "He won't be in till Monday. If you'd like to leave a message."

"Yes, if you could tell him that Jean Karnes called. K-a-r-n-e-s. Or actually Jean Willis, you'd better tell him. W-i-1-l-i-s. Would you just tell him that my husband has turned up safely? He'll know what this is about."

"WiUdo."

"Thanks. He has the number." She hangs up. "Sorry," she says to Willis. "You were saying something about the kids?"

"Do they know about all this?"

"All what}'' she says. "They did notice you were missing, yes. Let's see, they've already seen you taken away in handcuffs . . . Yeah, I'd say there's not much they don't know. But of course I don't know how much else there is." He's looking at the floor. "I want to know: have you been with somebody? Is that what this is about?"

"GoJ no." The implication being, she gathers, that she's such a bitch it's put him off women for good. "I've just been sort of on the road."

"But they found your truck in the city."

"Right," he says. "Rathbone. Lie? Downnn." Rathbone goes back under the table and flops down. Sighs.

"I don't get it."

"Well," he says, "I took a room."

"A room? But—oh God. Okay, fine. You took a room." She digs the heels of her hands into her eye sockets and rubs. "They itch," she says.

"Are Mel and Roger asleep?"

"Yes. Don't you have any idea what time it is?" She looks at him: he's lost some weight, which he needed to do, and has these bruise-colored pouches under his eyes. He looks exhausted. But otherwise he doesn't seem uncared for. He's let his beard grow in—a little gray, not much—and it looks like he even trims it. Under his jacket he's got these

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garage clothes on, or like janitor clothes, the matching blue shirt and pants. So this must be his new thing: Willis the Working Man. Except wasn't that also his old thing? You can see a little of that look he had, in the cheekbones, the night he said This is very cool. The mouth and eyebrows have never changed.