“Probably.”
Beth was silent for a long time. Then she said, “You’re most likely right with this choice of hideaways, Carver, but I’m not gonna like this.”
“You might change your mind. It’s rustic.”
“Back in Chicago, rustic means old.”
He said, “Old’s what I want us to live to be.”
They reached Dark Glades just before nightfall. Even in the soft dusk, the flat-roofed wooden buildings lining Cypress Avenue, the main street, didn’t seem rustic. They looked ancient and ready to collapse beneath the weight of their years. The swamp humidity had turned whatever colors the wooden buildings had been painted to a dreary, mottled gray. The only brick buildings Carver saw were the combination fire department and police headquarters, a small restaurant, and the office of an auto-repair shop with a couple of gas pumps standing outside it like bored sentries. The Olds was the only vehicle moving on the roughly paved street. Several old cars and pickup trucks were parked on the gravel shoulder or angled in front of some of the small shops. Half a dozen pedestrians, the men rough-looking in cut-off shirts with jeans or denim overalls, stood slouched on the edge of the road and stared at the Olds. A strange car usually meant fishermen from outside town, or maybe some lost motorist. Or trouble.
Beth said, “Pissant place don’t even have a McDonald’s.” Though she spoke better English than Carver did, she’d let herself ease into occasional echoes of street dialect on the hot and exhausting drive. She was more comfortable with him now. Less guarded. Maybe she liked him. He wondered why he thought that. What difference did it make?
“There’s where we can dine out,” he said, motioning with his head toward the restaurant.
“I dunno if I wanna eat at a place called Wiff’s,” Beth said dubiously.
“It’s ‘Whiffy’s,’ ” Carver corrected her. “See, part of the neon sign’s burned out, but it’s lettered there on the window.”
“Yeah, right near the dusty fern.” She pointed at a leaning clapboard building with a sign over its door. “Looka that, there’s moss on City Hall.”
Carver looked. Sure enough, the flimsy structure was the city hall, and sure enough there was a greenish film of moss near the roof on the north side. There was also moss on a statue of what looked like a World War I doughboy standing erect and aiming a rifle. Might even have been moss on the old man slumped on the bench near the statue.
As they neared the edge of town, the buildings became even more rundown, and many of them were up on stilts and in the shade of towering cypress trees.
Beth said, “Must flood a lot around here, people gotta live up in the air.”
“Keeps the alligators out,” Carver told her.
The road outside town became narrower and paved with gravel. It was raised a few feet above the level of the swamp water, flanked by tall saw grass and trees with exposed, gnarled roots that resembled massive, bare vines. Insects droned almost deafeningly and the air was suddenly cooler.
Carver saw a wooden sign up ahead; the Casa Grande Motel was where he’d remembered it. Soon another sign came into view, shaped like a Spanish castle and outlined in neon.
As he made a sharp right turn and parked near the office, Beth said, “I can’t like alligators.”
“Takes another alligator,” Carver said.
When he switched off the engine, she seemed surprised. She must have thought he’d driven into the lot to turn around. She studied the motel through the windshield, then said, “Oh-oh. This it?”
“It,” he confirmed. He knew how she must feel. The Casa Grande was a U-shaped stucco building with mock-Spanish decor. Ornate wrought-iron window grilles, a sun-faded red tile roof, heavy wooden doors. It had been white but was now a grayish color splotched with yellow where the stucco had been patched; webbed with cracks and exposed lathing where broken stucco had been ignored. Now that the car’s motor wasn’t running, the screaming and grinding of insects was even louder. The swamp grew close to the back and sides of Casa Grande, seeming to loom over it as if waiting for it to surrender to time and vine so the ground on which the motel sat could be reclaimed. There was a battered green Chevy pickup parked near the farthest end unit, a big, dark Harley-Davidson motorcycle parked close to it. Near the center of the low stucco building, a rapacious vine laden with dark red blossoms seemed to be gradually but surely devouring the building. It had once been confined to a trellis, but now only rotting, splintered remnants of fragile wood spindles remained visible, here and there protruding like bleached bones from the mass of waxy-looking leaves. Carver sensed Beth’s apprehension. He said, “It’s nicer inside.”
“Ever stay here?”
“No,” he admitted.
“Then how do you know it’s nicer inside?”
“Must be.”
He opened the car door and set the tip of his cane in the gravel. Levered himself up and out from behind the steering wheel so he was standing beside the car. The warm air was humid enough to grab by the handful. It carried the fetid, sulfurous smell of the swamp. Carver glanced around at the green isolation. He bent down over the cane slightly so he could see Beth, still inside the car, and said, “I’ll go make sure they have a vacancy.”
“You taking any bets?”
He ignored her and limped toward the office. He was perspiring heavily and his clothes were stuck to him. A film of sweat clung to his face like a mask. A cloud of gnats followed him; he had to wave them away from his eyes and nose.
A large black-and-yellow butterfly of a type he’d never seen lay fluttering feebly on the wooden steps to the office door, being devoured by huge red ants. Carver stepped on the unfortunate insect to end its misery, then kicked the mess, including some of the ants, aside. A weathered sign on the office door said FREE COFFEE AND DONUTS EVERY MORNING. He pushed the door open with his cane, gripped the wooden doorjamb, and moved inside.
The office was small, painted dead white, probably to make it appear larger. There was a single, blue vinyl-covered chair, a table with a Mr. Coffee on it, and a wooden wall rack of the sort usually stuffed with tourist brochures. This rack was empty.
The registration desk looked homemade out of cheap lumber. It was painted white, like the walls, over a rough sandpaper job, and had a top covered with speckled linoleum. An old GE air conditioner mounted high on the back wall had the office cold enough to chill beer, and the bearded little man behind the desk sat as perfectly still as if he’d been frozen. But his eyes moved, watching Carver.
Carver said, “Got a vacancy?”
The bearded guy smiled and stood up. Or down. When he slid off his stool, his chin was barely higher than the desk. He said, “A single?”
“No, my friend’s in the car. Two rooms next to each other, with a connecting door.”
The man gave Carver a neutral look. “No hitch, I can do that. Thirty a night each.”
“Good enough.”
“Got a credit card?”
“I’ll pay cash in advance. We’ll be here about a week. Maybe longer.” Carver reached in his pocket and dragged out his wallet. He peeled off three hundred-dollar bills and laid them on the desk. An offering to no-questions-asked commerce.
The bearded man said, “Well, glad to have a guest like you. Whatever your reason for being in Dark Glades.” He waited for Carver to toss back the conversational ball. When there was no response, he picked up the bills and laid a registration card on the desk. He said, “My name’s Eddie Watts. Just Watts is what I’m called, though. I be of any help, you lemme know.”
Carver finished signing the card, using his real name. Why not? If Roberto Gomez traced them this far, he wouldn’t be thrown by a Smith or a Jones on a motel register. But Carver signed Beth in simply as “and friend.” Some sort of subconscious sense of chivalry? Protecting her reputation, for God’s sake? Do you underestimate me because I’m a woman?