He kept a pretty clear mental picture of Ed, despite having never seen him. To him Ed was a big, shambling, unshaven man in gray clothing and unlaced shoes, who’d once been physically powerful, even intimidating, but was no longer the man he once was, and so had become sulky and capable of saying cruel and unfair things to innocent people, all because life hadn’t been perfect. As it wasn’t, of course, for anybody. The expression “block of wood” and the wounded, weathered face of the old movie actor Lon Chaney, Jr., had become linked to Ed and with the nonexistent sex Frances intimated he provided.
Whenever Howard thought about Ed, it eventually involved some imagined confrontation in which he— Howard — would be cool and collected while Ed would be seething and confused. Howard would try to be generous and friendly, but Ed inevitably would begin being cutting and sarcastic. He’d try to make Ed realize that Frances really loved him, but that sometimes other tents had to be brought in and pitched. And then it always became necessary to kick Ed’s ass, though not enough to do any real damage. Later, when both their marriages had been repaired and time had elapsed, he and Ed could become grudging friends based on a shared understanding about reality and the fact that they both cared deeply for the same woman. He imagined going to Ed’s funeral and standing solemnly at the back of a Catholic church.
Ahead in the pale headlights, the figures of a man and a woman appeared on the opposite shoulder — at first small and indistinct and then hyper-real as they came up out of the dark, walking side by side. Two Indians — dressed shabbily, heading the other direction. Both the man and the woman looked at the big red Town Car as it shot past. The man was wearing a bright turquoise shirt and a reddish headband, the woman a flimsy gray dress. In an instant they were gone.
“Those were our ancient spirits,” Frances said. She’d been silent, and her words carried unexpected gravity. “It’s a sign. But I don’t know what of. Something not good, I’d say.”
He quit thinking about Ed.
“I guess if they were going in the other direction, we could’ve given our ancient spirits a ride. Drop them off at a convenience store.”
“They were coming back from where we’re going,” Frances pronounced in a grave voice.
“The Grand Canyon?”
“It’s a completely spiritual place. I already told you the Indians thought it was the door to the underworld.”
“Maybe we’ll see Teddy Roosevelt, too.” He felt pleased with himself. “We oughta turn around and go back and ask them what else we need to see.”
“We wouldn’t find them,” Frances said. “They’d be gone.”
“Gone where?” he said. “Just disappeared into thin air?”
“Maybe.” Frances looked at him gravely now. He knew she disapproved of him. “I want to tell you something, okay?” She looked back at the streaming white center line.
Up ahead was a string of white lights — a motel, he hoped. It was long after eleven, and he was suddenly flattened. Those two Indians might’ve been phantoms of fatigue, though it was strange they’d both see them.
“If anything happens to me, you know?” Frances said, without waiting for his answer. “I mean, if I have a heart attack in the motel, or in the car, or if I just keel over dead, do you know what I expect you to do?”
“Call Ed,” Howard said. “Confess everything.”
“That’s what I don’t want,” she said, her voice edgy with certainty. Her eyes found him again in the green-lit interior. “You understand this. You just walk away. Leave it. It’d require too much explanation. Just fade away like those Indians. I mean it. I’ll be dead anyway, right?”
“What the shit,” Howard said. He could see the magic letters M-O-T-E-L. “Don’t get fucking weird on me. I don’t know what happened when you talked to Ed, but you don’t need to start planning your funeral. Jesus.” He didn’t want to talk about anything more serious than sex now. It was too late in the day. He was sorry all over again to be here.
“Promise me,” Frances said, driving, but flicking her eyes back to him.
“I won’t promise anything,” he said. “Except I’ll promise you a good time if we can get out of this hearse and find a bed.”
Obviously she was stone serious. Except he wasn’t the kind of person who walked away, and there was no use promising. His family had raised him better than that.
“You know what I’d do if you got hit by a car or struck by lightning?” Frances said.
“Let me guess.”
“You don’t need to. Some complications aren’t worth getting into. You don’t know what I mean, do you?”
The motel sign was off to the right. On the left — like a little oasis — was a bright red neon casino sign with rotating blue police lights on top, and a big red neon rattlesnake, underneath, coiled and ready to strike. Beside the snake the neon lettering said strike it rich. The casino itself was only a low, windowless cube with a single, middle door and a lot of beater cars and pickups and a couple of sheriff’s vehicles nosed into the front. “Womans some-time velly hard to prease,” Howard said in Japanese, just to break up the gloom.
“I wish you’d do what I ask you to,” Frances said disappointedly, steering them into the motel’s gravel lot. A lighted office building inside of which a man was visible behind a counter, talking on the phone, sat beside the highway. The units, in a row behind it, were white stucco teepees with phony lodge poles showing through phony smoke holes. There were ten teepees, each with a small round window on either side of its front door. Two other cars were parked outside individual units. Lights shone from their windows.
“If you have a heart attack,” he said, “I promise I’ll ride with your body back to Willamantic. Just like whoever that was. President Kennedy.”
“Then you’re an idiot,” Frances said, stopping in front of the office, and staring ahead disgustedly.
“I’m your idiot, though. At least tonight,” Howard said.
He was out the car door fast, his sneakers in the gravel, the sky all around suddenly dazzlingly full of pale stars, though a strong disinfectant odor was floating all through the little parking lot, and there was country music coming from the casino. Frances continued talking inside the car— more about leaving her behind — but he didn’t hear. He looked up and breathed the stinging disinfectant smell all the way deep down in his lungs. This was a relief. They’d driven way too far. The whole idea sucked to begin with. But he just wanted to get her off her stupid subject — heart attacks and deaths, etc. — and back to why they’d come. People talked and talked and none of it mattered to the big picture. It was like buyer’s remorse — but tomorrow would be different, no matter what you worried about today. You rode it out. He thought quite briefly about having been named agent of the year. It made him, for a moment, happy.
. .
From the driver’s seat Frances watched a large, long-tailed rat as it pestered and deviled a snake while the snake tried to make its way across the gravel from the line of teepees to the scrub ground where the desert began. The motel sign hummed and made the floodlit lot feel electrified, and kept the entire little skirmish visible. She wasn’t aware things like this even occurred. The snake, she thought, was the natural enemy and physical superior to the rat. The rat had things to fear. But here was the surprising truth. As she watched out the window, several times the snake stopped, coiled and struck at the rat, who reared up on its little hind legs like a tiny stallion and danced around. Then the snake, having missed, would start to slither off again toward the vegetation and shadows. The rat pursued almost idly, nipping then hopping back, then nipping again, as if it knew the snake personally. Eventually she let the window down to hear if they were making noise — if rattles were rattling or anyone hissed or growled. But the country music from the casino was too loud. Eventually the snake found the edge of the gravel and slid away, and the rat, its work complete, scurried back across the lot and disappeared under one of the dark teepees — not, she hoped, the one they’d be staying in.