The Shelter Cycle (4 page)

“Whatever, Wells.”

“I saw him,” he said.

“Colville?”

“The last couple mornings I've seen him. Just walking up the street.”

“Our street?” she said. “Why didn't you tell me?”

“You have enough to worry about.”

Francine didn't say anything. The curtains shifted faint shadows along the ceiling. Kilo, in the kitchen, pushed his bowl across the linoleum, lapped water from his dish.

“He went to all the trouble to find you,” Wells said. “There must be some reason.”

“Maybe that was the reason.”

“What?”

“Just to find me, to check up on me. I don't know.”

“Creepy.”

“To me, he just seemed lonely.”

Francine reached back and pulled the blanket up over her shoulder, covering her ear. Her toes pressed down on the tops of his feet. Reaching for her hip, he rested his hand on her belly.

“I wonder where that girl is now,” she said. “I wonder what her parents are doing.”

“They're probably asleep.”

“Right now?” she said. “With everything? They can't sleep.”

“We're the ones who are awake.”

Francine reached back, patted his leg. “Let's sleep now. Sleep.”

“Do you think he knows anything about her?” Wells said. “Colville, I mean. He had that newspaper and everything. Maybe he knows something.”

“He's probably just searching, like he said.”

“So he saw the raccoon, then read the newspaper, and all of a sudden he's knocking on your door?”

“What are you saying?”

“Did you ever talk to anyone?” he said. “A reporter?”

“No.”

“If your name was in that article,” he said, “then he'd know where you were, where to find you.”

“Wells,” she said. “Colville wouldn't make it all up.”

“How do you know?”

“I know him.”

“You knew him.” Wells rolled onto his back, stared up at the pale ceiling.

“People,” she said, her voice drifting toward sleep. “People don't change that much.”

 

•

 

Wells awakened in the middle of the night, and Francine wasn't in bed. He lay still, listening. Beyond, through the cold wind in the trees, he heard a tapping. Not rain; something else.

He rolled over, checked the alarm clock: it was half past three. Pulling the covers aside, he stood and moved quietly into the hallway, careful where floorboards creaked. He went into the bathroom, the tile cold beneath his feet. The tapping was louder here. Francine was typing on the computer in the guest room, the room that would be the baby's.

He wondered if he should switch on the light, flush the toilet, so she would know he was awake and it wouldn't seem that he was sneaking around. Back in the hallway he moved closer, leaned his ear against the door. The doorknob rattled; the typing stopped.

“You're up?” she said.

“Only because you are,” he said, the door still between them. “You okay?”

“Can't sleep.”

“Come back to bed.”

“It's better to do something than to lie awake,” she said.

Wells leaned away from the door. He did not open it, did not put his hand on the knob and turn it.

“Are you still out there?” she said.

“Yes,” he said.

“Why?”

“What is it?” he said. “Something at work?”

“Go to sleep,” she said.

When he turned the knob and the door opened, Francine looked up, startled. The blue light of the computer screen glowed on the skin of her face, cast shadows in the folds of her bathrobe. Two books and some papers rested on the desk, next to the keyboard.

“What are you typing?”

“Nothing,” she said, turning back to the screen. “Things for the baby. To be prepared, I guess.”

“Are those the books Colville gave you?”

“Yes.”

“What are they?”

“They're about babies, how to care for babies. That's all.” She lifted them, held them up for him to see, then slid them away, into the shadows.

“How did he know?”

“He saw me out searching for the girl,” she said. “He said that, remember? Why are you being so weird about him?”

“Maybe because he's so weird?”

Francine smiled. “Anyone who saw me out walking around those hills would know that I'm pregnant. I hope they would, anyway.”

He stood there, halfway in the room. “You really feel all right?”

“You asked that. I'll see you in the morning.”

He stepped back and closed the door, then stood still for a moment, waiting. He listened as the tapping resumed, then turned and walked down the hallway to the bedroom.

 

•

 

In the morning he spread his arms wide, hands gripping the edges of the mattress. He stared at the ceiling, its hairline cracks visible in the half-light. The sheets on Francine's side felt tight, as if she'd made the bed around him. Had he heard her get into bed, or had she never returned?

It was now past seven. He pulled the covers aside, swung his legs around, put his bare feet on the cold floor. In the bathroom the tub was drained, dry, clean, the towels on the rack barely damp. He stepped over Francine's white cotton underwear on the floor, her maternity corduroys. Her toothbrush stuck up from the cup, its bristles still wet.

In the kitchen the dishwasher was open, the dishes clean but not put away. Francine's mug, her plate full of toast crumbs, rested in the sink. The morning looked cold, the sun just clearing the ridges.

He could see, down the hallway, that the door of the baby's room was ajar. He moved closer, touched it with his finger, pushed it a few inches further: the guest mattress propped against the wall, the new crib with its mobile of colored horses, the desk. Stepping inside, closer, he saw the books on the other side of the computer monitor. He unstacked them, spread them out so he could read the titles:
Nurturing Your Baby's Soul: A Spiritual Guide for Expectant Parents;
Saint Germain, Master Alchemist;
and the third, more of a pamphlet, with a photocopied cover of Mary and baby Jesus, its title in rough calligraphy:
The Science of Motherhood for the New Age.

He shuffled through the pamphlet's pages—some dog-eared, underlined, ringed by old coffee cups. He stopped at a passage highlighted in yellow:
If you really follow this path, with all your heart, use the Violet Flame, use all the meditations and the proper diet—really pursue God—you can have control over your families. You can reach the place where souls of Light and great attainment are born to you. And by the science of the spoken Word and your own decrees, you can bring forth advanced souls with bodies and with genes that are adequate to their consciousness. The sacred fire in your heart determines what sort of soul you can magnetize to your temple.

Had Colville highlighted this passage for Francine, or had someone else done it, in another place, another time? Now Wells touched the words, imagined Francine reading about souls and magnetism and consciousness. Would she laugh? Would this all seem somehow familiar?

I
T WAS LATE AFTERNOON
and Wells sat in the living room, watching the street through the window. Waiting. He'd gotten off work early, the last few days; he was trying to figure out what Colville was doing.

And here the man came, walking quickly, not even glancing at the house. The way he walked—he lifted his feet higher than was necessary, his spine rigidly straight despite the heavy frame pack he wore.

Wells went out the side door, onto the driveway, then into his truck. He drove slowly, staying a half block back. The orange pack made the following easier. He knew where Colville was going—first to Jackson's, to pick up some food, and then to some motel, where he'd get a room. Wells had learned, in the last few days, that Colville shuttled between motels; he'd stay two or three nights in a place, or sometimes only one. He'd double back, sleep one place on Monday, someplace else on Tuesday and Wednesday, then return to the first place again on Thursday.

Today was Friday, and Colville came out of the store with a bunch of bananas in his hand. He ate them as he walked, that orange pack bobbing along, swaying slightly from side to side. Wells shifted back into gear, eased out into traffic. When he got too close, he pulled over, waited, then resumed his pursuit. If Colville saw him, that would be fine. Perhaps today was the day they'd talk; perhaps Colville knew he was here right now.

At the Econo Lodge, Wells parked on the street, where he could watch the office that Colville had entered. He could also see the narrow parking lot, the low wall that shielded the pool from sight. The doors' brass numbers glinted in the cold sun. No one opened the doors, or the curtains in the windows; no one stood on the balcony except a maid moving her cart of fresh towels and sheets slowly along.

Five minutes passed, and then Colville reappeared. Fifty feet away, carrying a small blue bucket in one hand, walking in front of the white wall so his shadow slid next to him like a tilting companion.

Wells opened the door of his truck and started across the parking lot, almost tripping on the curb.

Colville glanced up. “I thought that was you over there, Wells.”

“I wanted to talk to you.”

Colville smiled. “We're talking.” He was so skinny. He wore a black sweater with holes in the elbows; his pants were actually coveralls, the arms tied off around his waist. The square top of the pack framed his face with orange, tinting his skin.

“I've seen you,” Wells said. “Walking past our house in the morning, coming back the other way in the afternoon.”

“Probably so,” Colville said. “I suspect I do.”

“I'm asking you to stop it. That's all I'm asking.” Wells tried to keep his voice down. “Francine doesn't need you hanging around like that.”

Colville laughed. “I see,” he said. “I understand how that might look now. But you've misunderstood things. I'm here to find the girl, like I told you. Or that's why I came here. That's what I'm doing, though Francine being here can't be a coincidence.”

“I'm asking you to stop. How you think I understand things doesn't matter.”

“Francine and I,” Colville said. “You couldn't really understand where we're from, the path we started on. She's my oldest friend—”

“But that was a long time ago,” Wells said. “Things are different now. You're different people.”

“We're not so different.” Colville held up his hands, palms facing out. “I like you, Wells,” he said, his voice soft. “It's so fine that Francine's with a person like you, looking out for her, trying to protect her. We have to help her in every way we can.”

Turning away, he began to walk toward the motel. Wells followed; at first he rushed, but then he tried to slow down, to calm himself.

“What I'm saying,” he said, “is that we don't need your help. We don't want to see you outside our house.”

Colville now stood in the shade of the motel, facing Wells. He set his ice bucket on the roof of a parked car, then swung his pack around, leaned it there. He untied the sleeves of his coveralls and pulled the whole thing up over his shoulders, the sleeves going straight and his hands appearing at the cuffs.

“I understand how it is,” he said. “You might see me pass in the morning and then again in the afternoon. And all day you're in those tall aisles at the Home Depot, wearing your orange vest, answering questions, finding things for people, and you're wondering if I'm outside your house, trying to get someone's attention, looking in your windows and over your fence, getting your dog riled up. But that's not how it is.”

The car Colville leaned against was an old blue station wagon, half its plastic wood paneling torn off. A tattered dream-catcher hung from the rearview mirror; the seats were folded down flat in back. Colville rubbed at the side mirror with a finger as he talked, and Wells tried to look past him, into the car, to see what it held. A rolled-up camouflage sleeping bag, an empty birdcage, a half-deflated soccer ball, a tangle of wire.

“It's true,” Colville said. “I do pass by your house, but what it is is that your house just happens to be on my way to where I'm headed, when I'm searching for your neighbor girl. I'll simply take another route if it's bothering you. Believe me, I have nothing to hide from you, I'm not trying to hide anything, but I don't understand it all yet myself, everything that's happening, or why. I do believe it'll all make sense eventually—”

A voice interrupted him, shouting from the balcony above. A red-faced man in a white dress shirt and tie was pointing down at them.

“That's my car! Don't lean on it!”

“No harm, no harm,” Colville said, picking up his ice bucket. He pretended to polish the car with the cuff of his sleeve, where he had touched it.

“You want me to lean on your car?” the man said. “What are you thinking?”

“I don't have a car,” Colville said.

“And that was you last night, wasn't it? All that singing?”

“Pardon me?” Colville said.

“You think I can't hear that, through the floor?”

“I apologize for leaning on your car.” Colville tipped his bucket to spill the melted water on the asphalt, then peered into it as if disappointed with the amount of ice that remained. He lifted his pack to one shoulder as he moved under the balcony, out of the man's view.

“I'll stop walking past your house, Wells,” he said, his voice lower. “I have some things to do now.”

Stepping to a door with a brass 12 on it, he fit the key into the lock, turned it. He went in without looking back and closed the door quickly behind him, as if he didn't want anyone to see inside.

Wells drove away, toward home. He called Francine's cell and it went straight to voicemail; he didn't leave a message. He hoped she was waiting at home, awake, though he couldn't blame her for sleeping, considering the hours she'd been working.