After a while a couple of the other guys showed up, and then somebody said why didn’t we go over to Pandora’s and get us a few cold ones? So we did that. Regulation pool table in Pandora’s, better balanced than most you find in bars, and we started playing eight ball, loser buys a round. Before you knew it it was past noon and I’d had seven or eight Buds and was about half in the bag. Feeling good, yeah, and horny, too. Beer always does that to me, fires up the blood, puts lead in the old pencil. The guys wanted to shoot another game, but I said no, I was gonna go home and eat my old lady for lunch. They all laughed, and I walked out and headed for my Ford.
And who did I see across the street, leaving the Rexall Pharmacy with a big sack in her hot little hands? Yeah. Lori. My sweet, lying wife, supposed to be home, says to me this morning she was just gonna putter around the house all day.
She wasn’t alone, neither. Had a passenger, somebody waiting for her in that little Jap car of hers. I couldn’t see who it was, wrong angle and the windshield being dirty, but I figured it must be some lousy son of a bitch she’d picked up somewhere and I was about ready to charge over there and drag both their asses out into the street. But then she was inside and putting the car in gear and coming my way, so I ducked down behind a parked car. When I looked up again as they were passing I seen her passenger was a woman. No, not even that — a teenage kid. Brian Marx’s kid, Trisha.
What the hell?
I ran around the corner to the Ford and made a fast U-turn and swung out onto Main. The Jap car was stopped at the light two blocks north. She could’ve been on her way to do more shopping, or going to Brian’s house to drop the kid off, or going home — only she wasn’t, none of those things. She stayed right on Main, and once she was clear of the business district she goosed it up to forty-five. Usually she don’t drive no more than the speed limit, scared to death of getting a ticket. Heading for the Northlake Cutoff, on her way to someplace she had no business being, by God, her and that tight-assed little Trisha Marx.
Wherever she was going, she was gonna have company she didn’t expect. Yeah, and if she was looking to let some other guy eat her for lunch, she’d be one sorry babe. I didn’t feel horny no more. I felt mean as a snake with a gopher’s balls stuck in its throat.
Trisha Marx
I didn’t tell Lori where we were going until we were almost there. It wasn’t a trust thing; I’d been pretty sure back there at her homestead and she hadn’t done or said anything to make me change my mind: She wouldn’t give John away to the cops. I guess what it was was that John and I had this secret together, a really special secret, the kind you’d be reluctant to let your best friend in on, and now I had to share it with somebody who was practically a stranger. You want to keep a secret like that all to yourself as long as you can, sort of savor it, because when you finally do share it it’s never quite so special anymore.
When I finally told Lori it was Nucooee Point Lodge she said, “How’d he get all the way over here?”
“I took him.”
“You took him? How?”
So I had to tell her about that, too. And afterward I felt kind of let down, not nearly so torqued as before. Right. Share a secret and it’s never quite the same.
“A good thing you know how to drive a boat,” she said. “If it’d been me, I don’t think I could’ve done it.”
That picked me up again, a little. “I didn’t have any trouble.”
“Must’ve been scary, though. All the way across the lake in a borrowed boat.”
“No,” I lied. “I wasn’t scared a bit.”
The turn for the lodge was just ahead. Once, the driveway was wide enough for a semi, but grass and oleanders had grown in on both sides and choked it down to one narrow lane. There was a chain across it, and a No Trespassing sign, but you could squeeze around the chain through high grass on the south side; that’s how the bunch of us got in the three times we’d been over to party. I pointed out the way to Lori and we bounced over behind a screen of trees, onto what used to be a packed-dirt parking lot. The earth was all chewed up now, and tangled with blackberry bushes, and you had to go slow. But once you were at the back end, there was no way anybody could see in from the road.
We unloaded the food and clothes and medical stuff, took them around to the service door. As soon as we were inside I called out to John, so he’d know right away who was coming. When we got to the lobby he was sitting up on the couch, the blankets pulled around him to his chin.
“Any trouble?”
I said, “No. We’ve got all the stuff.”
Lori said, “Let’s have some light.” I found the flashlight and switched it on. “Hold it steady, Trisha.” I did that while she knelt beside the couch, laid her hand on his forehead. “How you doing?” she asked him.
“Holding my own.”
“Well, you’re not feverish. That’s a good sign.”
“Lori, I’m sorry to drag you into this...”
“Nobody dragged me here. I came because I wanted to. Are you in much pain?”
“Not as long as I stay still.”
“Bleeding?”
“Doesn’t feel like it.”
She unwrapped the blankets and then took off the tape and pads. I saw the way she looked at the wounds and at him and I thought: She really cares about him. I felt this little pang of jealousy. Stupid, but I couldn’t help it. I didn’t like sharing John any more than I liked sharing his rescue.
“How bad?” he asked.
“Could be worse. Good thing Trisha found the peroxide. Holes look clean — no inflammation.”
Well, okay. John probably wouldn’t even be alive right now if I hadn’t heard him moaning and did what I did to help him. That was something I’d never have to share.
“So I’ll live.”
“Chances are. When’d you last have a tetanus shot?”
“... Can’t remember.”
“Within the past five years?”
“No, longer ago than that.”
“Within the last ten?”
“Seven or eight, about.”
“Should be okay, then. I wish I had a way to give you one, to be safe, but I don’t.” She was opening up one of the sacks, taking out stuff she’d bought at the pharmacy. Thin rubber gloves. Bottled water. A package of sponges. A thermometer. Lots of gauze and tape. Some tubes of Neosporin. A big bottle of aspirin. “I’ll clean the wounds, put antibiotic ointment on, and pack them tight. That should do it for now. You’ll have to change the dressing, put on more ointment, at least once a day. More often if there’s any bleeding. Watch me and you’ll know how to do it.”
“Will I be okay to travel?”
“I’d say no if we were someplace else. You should rest a couple of days, minimum. But this place, all the dirt and dust and rodent crap... you’d be better off in a clean bed.”
“A clean bed far away from Pomo County. Question is, how do I get there?”
Lori didn’t answer. She had the gloves on and was sponging the wounds with bottled water. It was yucky to watch and I looked away. Nothing else to look at in the lobby except shapes and shadows. Something creaked upstairs. Back in the summer, some of the guys had climbed up there to explore; but not me, not after that bat flew so close to my head. Old hotels are weird places, all right. That one in the Stephen King flick, where Jack Nicholson goes around grinning and waving an ax... wow.