The Deceivers (15 page)

“Tomorrow you’ll be taking some steps,” the nurse said. “We’ll have you running around the block before you know it.”

“How do you really feel?” he asked her.

“Well … I still feel as if everything could fall out. And the incision feels so strange. It feels as if a piece of that sort of hard rope, you know, about this big around, was sewed right across here, under my skin.”

“Are you in much pain?”

“When I hurt they keep giving me things, but I don’t think they’re as strong as before. They’re pills now, not shots. I had some shots in the night. The night nurse is nice, but I can’t remember her name.”

“Gallowell,” Nurse Calhoun said. “I’ll be right back, Mrs. Garrett.”

After she had gone Joan lowered her voice and said, “All the money for nurses is making me nervous, Carl.”

“I told you before, the insurance takes care of it.”

“Does it really? Or are you just saying that?”

“It really does,” he lied.

“I was so foggy yesterday. I can hardly remember a thing that happened. And now I’m utterly exhausted, just from hanging my legs over the side of the bed. Are you going back to work now?”

“No. I’m goofing off. I’m using you as an excuse.”

“It looks like such a nice day out there. Why don’t you play golf, dear? It would do you good.”

“The grass is getting shaggy. If I feel the need of exercise, I better break out the mower. Who sent the yellow roses?”

“Oh, they came from the garden club. Aren’t they lovely? They must have come from Molly’s garden.”

Nurse Calhoun came back and studied Joan with a professional eye. “This is a lady who needs a nap, I think.”

So, at ten minutes of three he was on the turnpike heading east at sixty-five miles an hour.

As the new turnpike was a limited access highway, the group of new motels were on a parallel strip at one of the exits. As he turned off he was distressed to see how many cars were parked at the motels at this hour of the afternoon. But he was heartened by the vacancy signs. He cruised the strip slowly, turned around in the parking lot of a Howard Johnson’s, and, on the way back, turned in at a motel called The Traveler, and parked near the office. It had an imposing façade that faced the highway, a high glass wall, a startling angle of roof. The units, of redwood and gray stone, stretched back in two parallel lines at right angles to the highway. The highway sign told of air-conditioning, television, swimming pool. The pool was a garish blue against a green lawn. There were chairs on the lawn and children in the pool.

When Carl walked in, a man came out of a rear office to wait upon him. He was an imposing man, large and stately, with ruddy face, white hair, a gray military mustache.

“May I help you?” he asked in a rich and measured baritone with a slight trace of British accent.

“I would like a double room, please.”

The man placed the registration card in front of him and pushed the pen stand an inch closer. “We can accommodate you, sir.”

Carl picked up the pen and said, “We don’t want to take occupancy right now. We’ll be in later on in the evening.”

One white eyebrow went up in question.

“It’s like this. My wife and I are remodeling our house. We live … just outside of Hillton. The carpenters and the painters started on the bedroom this morning. And we thought we’d rather … stay out here than down in the city. With the pool and all. And it is only a forty minute trip.” He heard himself talking too much and too rapidly, but he could not seem to stop.

“Of course, sir.”

“So if we could take it for three nights. That’s the estimate of how long before we can use our own bedroom. I’ll pay you in advance of course.”

The man gave him a weary and very knowing look, and Carl felt his face get hot, and he knew that this was something that had happened before and would happen again, and that the man had made his decision to accept him not on any moral basis, but merely because he looked quiet and decent and reasonably prosperous.

“The room will be fifteen dollars a night, sir. Would you care to see it before you register?”

Carl saw how neatly he had been trapped. This man would not be the owner, merely a resident manager. If Carl’s story was legitimate, he would yelp at the high rate and then be shown a room he could have at their regular rates. If he was setting up a clandestine arrangement, he would swallow the financial penalty without a murmur, and the imposing man could pocket the difference.

“No. No thanks. I’m sure the room will be fine. Very attractive place here.” “Thank you, sir.”

In his confusion he forgot his intention of signing the false name he had made up until he had written
Mr. and Mrs. Carl A. Garr
 … After a frozen moment, he finished the name as Garroway and gave a false and empty laugh and said, “Absolutely no relation to Dave.”

The manager gave him a wooden smile. Carl wrote a false address, wrote in the make of his car and the proper license number. He put two twenties and a ten on the counter top, and received a five dollar bill. It left him with eight dollars in his wallet.

The man placed the key in front of him. “Number twenty, sir. In the right wing, halfway down. You’ll see the ice machine near the public telephone. I hope you’ll be very comfortable, sir.”

When Carl walked out to the car he felt shaken and sweaty. He tried to believe that it made no difference what that man might believe. Maybe the aura of disbelief had been all in his own mind. Maybe their rates were that high.

He drove back through the arch beside the office and parked in the marked slot numbered twenty, unlocked the room door and went in. The room was about fifteen by twenty, and contained two double beds. There was a central air-conditioning system, and a soft sound came from a wall grid, a sound like an unending sigh. The Venetian blinds were a dark wine red, the wall-to-wall carpeting a deep soft blue-green. The furniture was squatty and pale and modern. On the table between the beds was a double gooseneck lamp with spun aluminum shades. The television set was angled into a corner, looking out at the room through its single blind oppressive eye. On the bureau, on a glass tray, was a red plastic pitcher and two squat tumblers sealed in cellophane. The room was clean and hushed and impersonal.

He walked to the bathroom, found the soundless mercury switch. A circular fluorescent fixture went on over the sink, filling the small room with glaring white. There was a tub with semi-opaque plastic screens that slid in a channel along the edge of the tub to turn it into a shower stall. Two bath towels, two hand towels, two paper bath mats, and a wide strip of paper that sealed the closed toilet lid and announced how sanitary it was.

He turned off the light, went back into the bedroom, sat on one of the beds and tapped ashes into the glass tray on the dividing table. He could not believe that it could happen. He could not visualize her in this impersonal efficiency. And then all the anticipation started again. It started with a hollow throbbing feeling in his belly that moved up and fluttered violently under his heart so that he could not take a deep breath.

He drove out of The Traveler, and remembered the problem of her car. Two hundred yards from The Traveler, at the corner of the commercial strip and the exit road, was a large gas station. He pulled up to the pumps and a crewcut boy in gray coveralls filled his tank and checked under the hood. As he was cleaning the windshield, Carl said, “Can I park a car here overnight for two or three nights?”

“Park here?”

“Yes. Leave a car here.”

“Sure, I guess so, but we couldn’t take no responsibility.
You should lock it up good. There’s nobody here after eleven, and we open up at seven.”

“Where’ll I put it where it won’t be in your way?”

“Put it back over there on the grass, mister, right next to my old Chev. Will you bring it in tonight?”

“Yes, tonight.”

“Okay, I’m on to eleven every night. I’ll tell the boss. Let’s say a buck a night. That sound okay?”

“That’s fine,” Carl said. After he paid for the gas and gave the boy three dollars, he had less than two dollars left.

It was just five o’clock when he pulled into his driveway and parked beside Joan’s Hillman. He went out into the back yard and looked down into the back yard of the Cable house. Cindy, in a white sun suit with small red polka dots, lay prone on a rubberized beach mattress on the lawn, her body greased with sun lotion, her book and sun glasses beside her.

He went down the abrupt terrace into her yard. She heard him and sat up quickly, and one hand went to her throat.

“What is it?” she said. “Why are you home? Is something wrong?”

He sat on his heels beside her. “I left the office early and went to the hospital and then went out the turnpike.”

She met his glance and looked away. “We shouldn’t do this. I can’t think of anything else. I can’t read or eat or anything. We shouldn’t, Carl.”

“I know that, damn it!”

“I feel so strange and horrible.”

He took the key out of his pocket and showed it to her, a shining brass key fastened to a dark red plastic plaque.

“Number twenty,” she said.

“And I’ve got a place for your car. I’ll leave the hospital at eight-thirty. You park at the corner of Crescent Road and Route 80. I’ll meet you there, and then you follow me out the pike.”

“It’s all so … cold and conspiratorial.”

“Instead of clumsy and careless. What should we do? Go down and check in at the Brower Hotel?”

“I know, darling, I know. But it’s so contrived. So sort of cold-blooded. I wish …”

“What do you wish?”

“Nothing. I’m just in sort of a flap, I guess. It isn’t the sort of thing I’m all practiced up on.”

“Shall we skip it?”

“Don’t be cross and cruel, please. It’s making us both
nervous, but let’s not snap at each other, darling. If you want me to take the responsibility, I will. No. We won’t skip it.”

“I didn’t mean it that way. I’m sorry. This horrible grimace is supposed to be a warm and loving smile.”

She smiled back at him. “Do you know what I was thinking about when you arrived? The stupidest thing. What to wear. It makes a very special problem of what to wear. How does a girl dress for an assignation? There isn’t a word in the etiquette books, honestly.”

“I won’t be any help. I just hope I remember to notice what you wear. But you should bring something along you can wear in the morning too, when you come back.” He stood up. “I’ve got things to do now. I should be along at about twenty to nine.”

“At the corner of Route 80 and Crescent Road.”

He went back to his house and got a check and drove to the new shopping center a mile away and got the okay of the supermarket manager to cash it for fifty dollars. From there he went to the liquor store he patronized and bought two bottles of good champagne. As soon as he got home he put the champagne in the refrigerator. He took a long and thorough shower, dressed carefully, packed a small suitcase and stowed the champagne and the Contents of two ice trays in the scotch cooler, and put them in the car.

He walked, smiling, into Room 314 at exactly seven o’clock, to spend the entire hour and a half with Joan. Miss Pierce left when he arrived.

Joan looked more tired than when he had seen her earlier in the day. She said she had “dangled” again, that Bernie had stopped by an hour ago to check her over again and he said the incision was coming along fine.

She smiled at him and said, “My goodness, you’re certainly all decked out tonight. If I didn’t know you better, I’d say you were going out for an evening on the town.”

“I got all dressed up to see you,” he said, vividly aware of the motel key in his pocket. He looked beyond Joan and, for a moment, caught the bright, wise and skeptical look of Rosa Myers before she turned back to her book.

“Well,” Joan said, “if you did go out on the town, I don’t think you’d have many problems. You look very handsome.”

“As a matter of fact, after I leave here I may go on into town. Jim Hardy is entertaining some of the New York people at Steuben’s. I may decide to join them for a drink.”

“Then you don’t want to hang around here, dear! Why don’t you run along?”

“No. I’ll stay here. I’d rather.”

“Did you decide to play golf or mow the lawn?”

“Neither. I spent the afternoon being a slob.”

“Speaking of being a slob, how is Cindy coming with her project?”

“Project?”

“You know, dear. What she said about doing absolutely nothing.”

“I guess she’s working at it. She was in her back yard this afternoon, sunning herself. I … I went over and talked to her for a couple of minutes, told her how you’re coming along. She says to give you her best.”

“Tell her that I go back on the visiting list tomorrow, will you? I always enjoy Cindy. She says such crazy wonderful things. Bernie says I can let the night nurse go after tonight, and after tomorrow, I can let Miss Pierce go, but I should keep Ruth Calhoun for another few days, to help me with my bath and learning to walk all over again. You know, this is Wednesday, and it doesn’t seem possible I can come home next Monday. It doesn’t really seem possible.”

“You’ll mend fast. You are mending fast.”

“Did Molly get hold of you yet? They want you to have dinner over there.”

“Not yet. Maybe she’s tried. I’ve been on the run.”

“I’ve been wondering about the refrigerator. It was making a funny noise every once in a while and I forgot to tell you about it. Have you heard the funny noise it makes?”

“What kind of a noise?”

“Sort of a thumping, just before it turns off.”

“I haven’t noticed anything.”

“You listen for it. Maybe we ought to have somebody look at it. It’s five years old and I don’t think a repair man has ever even looked at it. In fact, I know no one has looked at it. Dear, have you been getting enough sleep? You’re not staying up reading until all hours, are you?”

“No.”

“Oh, before I forget, I wrote the kids. Would you put stamps on these and mail them, please?”

He put the letters in the inside pocket of his suit coat.

“Now don’t carry them around for weeks. And really, darling, don’t try to come and see me tomorrow afternoon. I don’t think you should spend so much time away from
the office. And I’m really not sick any more. Look, dear, at the card I got from Jill. I haven’t heard from her in ages.”