The Wild Zone (24 page)

TWENTY-FOUR

T
HE
SUN WAS STILL
shining when Jeff got out of the taxi at exactly ten minutes to nine that evening, although it was that peculiar kind of light—intense and yet strangely flat—that belongs to neither day nor night. A borrowed light, Jeff was thinking as he paid the cabbie and crossed the empty street toward the lobby of the oddly named Bayshore Motel—odd because there was neither bay nor shore anywhere in sight. Buffalo was like that, he thought, looking back over his shoulder at the departing taxi. Nothing here had ever made any sense. At least for him.

So what was he doing back here?

He barely remembered boarding the plane, let alone buying the ticket.

A sudden image, like a jagged bolt of lightning, streaked across his line of vision. He saw Dave’s face twisted with exertion, Larry’s face contorted with anger, his own face flush with disbelief at his abrupt dismissal. And then the good doctor’s twisted smile as he waved his victorious good-bye. The best man had won, those fluttering fingers had told Jeff in no uncertain terms. He’d been out-manipulated and outplayed, seduced and then cruelly abandoned, beaten at his own game, Jeff thought, not for the first time, not even for the tenth time, as his fists clenched at his sides.

He saw himself bounding down the stairs from the gym to the street, fleeing the normally comforting smell of freshly baked bread that now threatened to suffocate him, and running full-out until he found himself, sweating and out of breath, back in front of the nearby travel agency with its enticing handwritten offers of discount holidays to far-off, exotic locales. He saw his face pressed up against the glass, like a child in front of a Macy’s window at Christmas, as the woman behind the glass beckoned him inside, offering him coffee and a smile crowded with too many teeth. He heard his voice informing her that he suddenly found himself with time on his hands and the irresistible urge to travel. An assortment of colorful brochures had immediately materialized, as if by magic, as the woman’s voice droned seductively on about the beauties of Barcelona, the wonders of ancient Greece. And then another voice, this one small and unsteady, a child’s voice really, quivering with the threat of tears—not his voice, surely not his voice—interrupting her to say that his mother was dying and was there any way she could get him on the first available plane to Buffalo? And the woman’s upper lip falling like a curtain over all those teeth as the smile died on her face and her hand reached for his, lingering perhaps a beat too long. Of course, she’d whispered. Anything she could do to help . . .

“Just get me on that plane,” he’d said.

What had he been thinking?

Clearly he hadn’t been, Jeff decided now, pulling open the heavy glass door to the entrance of the empty motel lobby and bursting into the too warm, stale-smelling space with such force it caused the sleepy-looking clerk behind the reception desk to take a step back.

“Can I help you?” the young man asked, tugging at the collar of his white shirt with one hand while reaching for the panic button under the counter with the other. He was very tall and almost alarmingly thin, although his voice was surprisingly deep. His skin was freckled with the remains of teenage acne and his reddish-brown hair refused to lie the way it had been combed, preferring to branch out in several different directions at once, so that he managed to look both bored and surprised at the same time.

“I need a room,” Jeff heard himself say, his eyes casually absorbing the uninteresting watercolor of a bunch of sailboats that occupied much of the pale blue wall behind the registration desk.

The young man shrugged, his hand relaxing over the buzzer. “How long you staying?”

“Just for one night.”

“Air-conditioning’s not working.”

“I thought it felt a little warm.”

“I can give you a break on the price,” the young man offered unprompted. “Sixty bucks instead of eighty-five. How’s that?”

“Very thoughtful.”

The young man’s lips curled into a tentative smile, as if he wasn’t sure whether or not he was being toyed with. “If you stay an extra night, I gotta charge you full price.”

“I won’t be staying.”

“Where you from?”

“Miami.”

“Always wanted to go to Miami. I hear the women are really something.”

Jeff nodded, staring into the memory of Suzy’s sea-blue eyes. It felt like weeks since he’d seen her, touched her. Could it really have been just this morning that he’d held her in his arms?

“So what brings you up this way?” the boy was asking.

“My mother’s dying,” Jeff said simply.

The young man took a step back, as if her impending death might be contagious. “Yeah? Sorry to hear that.”

Jeff shrugged. “What can you do?”

“Not much, I guess. So how do you want to take care of this?”

For an instant Jeff thought they were still talking about his mother. “I don’t understand. . . .”

“MasterCard, Visa, American Express?” the clerk prompted.

Jeff pulled his wallet out of his back pocket, removed his credit card, pushed it across the counter. The motion reminded him of Kristin pushing drinks along the bar of the Wild Zone. He checked his watch. It was nine o’clock. I should call her, he thought. She’d probably be wondering where he was.

Or maybe not.

Kristin had always been remarkably sanguine about his comings and goings. It was one of the things he liked best about her. Still, he thought he probably should have called her to tell her of his plans. Although how could he have told her anything when he hadn’t known—still didn’t know—what those plans were? Plans, by their very nature, implied a certain level of conscious thought, and he’d been operating on nothing but adrenaline for the past week. How else to explain the events of the last several days?

How else to explain what the hell he was doing here?

He’d always hated this bloody city, he thought, swiveling back toward the street, barely recognizing the seemingly deserted neighborhood, even though the house he’d grown up in was less than a mile away. Was that why he’d directed the taxi here and not to a more comfortable downtown hotel? “The corner of Branch and Charles,” he’d instructed the dark-skinned cabbie, not even sure whether the motel he remembered from his childhood would still be standing and only half-surprised to see that it was, although the name had been changed. Not for the first time, he suspected.

The rest of the city looked pretty much the same, he’d decided on the drive in from the airport. Swallowing his growing sense of dread as the taxi bypassed the downtown core, Jeff had watched the seemingly random series of abandoned and derelict warehouses in the surrounding slums gradually give way to a succession of neat, working-class suburban homes. He didn’t look too closely, aware of the incipient decay lurking just out of sight—a collapsing eaves trough here, some crumbling front steps there, the damage of last winter’s lake-effect snow bubbling like oil beneath each smooth, painted surface. The city even smelled the same, Jeff had noted, a slight breeze blowing the grit and grime of the streets through the cab’s open rear window. Jeff felt it sink into his pores like tiny pebbles. Rationally he knew he was being overly sensitive, that the city of his unhappy youth smelled no different than any other midsize American city: an uneasy combination of nature and industry, earth and concrete, decay and renewal, success and failure. Mostly failure, he thought now, standing in the stifling, nautically themed lobby, reluctant to take a breath.

“You want one keycard or two?” the clerk asked, handing Jeff back his credit card.

“One is fine.”

“One it is.” The young man lifted the plastic keycard above his head as if it were a trophy. “This way.”

Jeff followed him out of the lobby, reflexively assessing the boy’s flaccid frame, absently drawing up a series of exercises that would add bulk to the scrawny arms that hung lifelessly at his sides. As was often the case with men who were self-conscious about their height, the boy’s posture was horrible, his head hunched between his shoulder blades and held in, turtle-like, as if he was already bracing himself for a doorway that was too short to comfortably walk through. “I’m sure I can find the room on my own,” Jeff said, wondering if it was a good idea for the boy to leave the front desk unattended.

“Got nothing better to do.”

He sounds just like Tom, Jeff thought, shielding his eyes from the preternaturally bright light of the evening sun as he followed the young man along the side of the one-story structure. For the second time that day he felt the uncomfortable sensation of someone shining a flashlight directly in his face.

“You don’t have any luggage?” the boy asked.

Not even a toothbrush, Jeff thought. “I travel light.”

“That’s the best way,” the clerk agreed, as if he knew.

Probably never been out of Buffalo in his life, Jeff mused, again thinking of Tom. The first trip Tom had ever taken out of Buffalo had been to Miami. Next stop, Afghanistan.

They stopped in front of a door that was painted navy blue and embossed with a brass number 9 in the shape of a fish. “Here we are,” the young man said, slipping the keycard into its slot and then having to do it three more times when the door failed to open. “They get temperamental sometimes,” he explained, finally pushing it open and flipping on the inside light to reveal a king-size bed whose blue and silver bedspread was a pattern of quilted waves. “Thought you might appreciate some extra room to thrash around. I’m a pretty restless sleeper myself,” he said, handing Jeff the keycard. “Especially in this heat. You want me to open the window? It’s kind of stuffy in here.”

“It’s fine,” Jeff said, although in truth, it was oppressive. Still, he was anxious to be alone. He needed to lie down, to think things through, decide his next move.

“There’s a drugstore two blocks down, if you need a toothbrush or some deodorant,” the clerk offered, leaning against the doorway and transferring his weight from one foot to the other, “and there’s a McDonald’s around the corner, if you get hungry.”

“Maybe later,” Jeff said, feeling his stomach cramp at the thought of food.

“Name’s Rick. If you need anything—”

“I won’t. Thank you.”

Jeff stepped inside the room, kicking the door closed with the heel of his right foot, watching Rick’s puzzled face quickly disappear from view. Had he been expecting a tip? Jeff wondered. Or maybe he’d been hoping for an invitation to come inside. Maybe that’s why he’d been so accommodating, personally accompanying Jeff to his room, giving him a discount he hadn’t asked for and a king-size bed he didn’t need.

Or maybe the kid was just lonely.

Jeff sat down on the end of the bed, his hands sinking into the blue and silver waves of the bedspread, his tired face reflected in the large, shell-framed mirror on the opposite wall. A rectangular TV sat on the right side of the low dresser, its blank screen reflecting the turbulent green waters of a roiling sea depicted in a painting that hung above the headboard. What am I doing here? Jeff wondered again, falling backward across the bed.

He checked his watch, saw that it was almost nine fifteen. No point in going to the hospital now, he decided. Visiting hours were no doubt over, and besides, he had no energy to confront his mother now. Even in her weakened condition, he’d be no match for her. He wasn’t even sure what hospital she was in, he realized with a start. He’d assumed it was Mercy, which was about ten blocks from there, but maybe she was somewhere else. He’d have to call Ellie, find out.

Although not now. Now he was too exhausted. He’d call his sister first thing in the morning, he decided, pulling his cell phone out of his pocket and checking for messages, laughing when he heard Tom’s indignant voice demanding to know where the hell he was. Damned if I know, Jeff thought, dropping the phone to his side.

He closed his eyes, feeling the weight of the stale air fall across his body like a heavy blanket and listening to the fan of the broken-down air-conditioning unit whirring impotently from the far end of the room.

Seconds later, he was asleep.

He dreamed he was walking along the wooden pier of a busy marina, a variety of expensive boats bobbing up and down in the nearby ocean, women in tiny bikinis laughing and raising tall glasses of champagne as their husbands threw heavy anchors overboard and their ships set sail in the wind. Above him, an army helicopter circled noisily, so that at first he didn’t hear her calling out his name. But then suddenly there she was, standing in the shadow of a high mast: his mother, looking young and lovely, although even from a distance of fifty feet he could make out a hint of reproach in her eyes, as if he’d already done something to disappoint her. “Jeff,” she called excitedly, waving him toward her. “Hurry up. Over here.”

And then he was running toward her, except that no matter how close he got, there was always one more boat to get past, one more sail to circumvent, and then another, and another. And suddenly the helicopter that had been hovering above was lowering itself to the pier and his mother was skipping toward it, lifting her skirt above her knees, preparing to climb inside. “Mom,” he called out, but she refused to look at him. Just then a marching band of pimply-faced teenage boys appeared, their brass horns and woodwinds blasting out a raucous version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” as his mother took her seat beside the pilot, laughing uproariously as the helicopter lifted off into the sky.

“Mom, wait!”

His mother stared down at him reproachfully. “You look just like your father,” she said.

And suddenly the helicopter began spinning around in a series of increasingly small circles, and his mother’s laughter changed into screams of panic. The national anthem grew louder, rising toward the sky, as the helicopter began careening wildly out of control. Jeff watched helplessly as it crashed against the side of a fast-moving cloud and plummeted into the sea.

He sat up with a gasp, fresh beads of perspiration breaking out across his forehead. Beside him “The Star-Spangled Banner” continued its insistent tune. “Jesus,” he muttered, the word as much a prayer as an exhortation, as his hand groped through the waves of the bedspread for his cell phone. What the hell was that all about? he wondered, the dream breaking up like a bad signal as he flipped open the phone. “Hello,” he said groggily, what remained of his dream evaporating with the sound of his voice.