She sat hugging herself, directly across the aisle from Jeff. A peculiar mannerism, that. Her arms crossed in front of her body, one elbow fitted inside the other, her hands clutching her shoulders. Periodically, her body would shake visibly, and the forearms would press in against her breast, fingers digging into the shoulders like claws. Once he heard her teeth grinding. As if she were cold. But it wasn’t cold in the bus. Too hot, rather. Steamy hot. A chill, maybe. Fever and chills. Like Jeff had once had on an island he wanted to forget. She was a looker, all right, but not exactly in the chips. Fur coat ratty. Heels, if you bothered to notice, a bit run over. He wondered if she needed help. He wondered if he should offer.
With a start of surprise, he noticed that they had stopped. The bus had been crawling so slowly that the change was barely apparent. Leaning over to peer more closely out the streaming glass, he saw a watery yellow blur of light and knew that they had crept into Hogan.
Up front, the driver slipped out from under the wheel and turned.
“This is Hogan, folks. We’ll be here about five minutes.”
The doors folded back with a soft, pneumatic hiss, and he dove out, vanishing into the gray downpour. No one else made a motion to leave the bus. The mouse sat beside her companion, her head back, the dull misery in her eyes. The little doctor turned once to look over his shoulder and then settled a little lower, with obvious resignation, in his seat. The naked strip of scalp between hair and hat had a kind of subtle obscenity about it. Across the aisle, the lean and hungry and pretty woman hugged herself and shivered and ground her teeth.
Cleo Constance sat militarily erect with fifty thousand dollars in his pocket. Cold and remote. Spiritually exiled. Don’t touch me, peasants.
It was nearer ten than five minutes when the driver returned. He climbed in soaked, water running out of his shoes and clothes onto the rubber mat on the floor.
“Sorry, folks,” he announced. “We can’t go on tonight. The highway’s flooded between here and Darrowville. It’s a flash flood and will recede in a hurry when the rain stops. By morning, traffic should be going through.”
His voice had a relieved sound, and he was openly happy to escape the responsibility of more blind driving. In the bus, following his words, there was a hiatus of suspended sound and motion, and then the pretty woman jerked violently, as if she’d had a sharp, excruciating pain. An abbreviated cry of anguish burst from her lips.
“I must get to Darrowville. I must get to Darrowville tonight.”
The driver lifted his shoulders in an expansive shrug. One man’s meat is another man’s poison. Himself, he was damned happy.
“Sorry, lady. Nothing’s moving on the highway.”
She huddled in her seat, hugging herself. Across the aisle, Jeff could hear her whimpering like a hurt pup.
Dr. Newman straightened. His voice was querulous.
“Are we expected to stay in this bus all night?”
“Not at all.” The driver gestured at the yellow blur outside. “This is the hotel. Only one in Hogan. It’s nothing fancy, folks, but there’s accommodation for everyone. If you’ll all unload, please. I’ll have to move the bus away from here.”
Another hiatus. Sullen reluctance to face the occasion. Then the little doctor got up briskly, retrieving his bag and moving up to the door. The rain swallowed him. The young guy up front followed, leaving the mouse on her own. She went down the steps into the rain slowly, clinging to the handrail with one hand, clutching her thin coat over the beginning swell of her belly with the other. Cleo Constance moved in behind her with measured precision and filled the exit briefly with his broad blue shoulders. The pretty woman whimpered in her seat, and Jeff stood beside her.
“May I help you off?”
She looked up with furtive, anguished eyes, and he saw that her teeth had brought blood to her lips. Staring down into the eyes, he understood finally that it was neither cold nor fever that fed her anguish, and he felt a vast compassion and a sickness that filtered through his guts.
She struggled for control. “No, thanks, I’m all right. I’m perfectly all right.”
Wrenching herself up and forward, she fled down the aisle as if she feared his pursuit. But it was more than him that she fled. Far more than a man.
Run, run, he thought. Run from the monkey. But it’s always there. Always on your shoulder.
And he was thankful, stepping from the bus, for the clean, cold wash of rain.
The lobby had a worn carpet on the floor and a sickly rubber plant growing in a wooden tub in a corner. The carpet still displayed, between large patches where the fiber backing was exposed, a pattern of roses that had once been florid and were now faded and dirty. A solitary and lethargic elevator served the three floors up.
Jeff arranged for a room with an adolescent clerk who was plainly stimulated by the unexpected influx of guests. He spun the register and extended a pen with a flourish. Jeff signed and received his key. Turning away, he saw across the room an entrance to a small and dimly lighted taproom. The light was not the calculated soft stuff that goes for romance in better places. It was only the result of low wattage. A short bar and a few tables and chairs were visible in the dusk. At the bar, separated by three vacant stools, were Dr. Newman and Cleo Constance. The other three passengers from the bus had vanished, presumably up the shaft in the reluctant elevator.
Jeff threaded his way through the litter of tables and chairs and chose the center one of the three vacant stools. Right in the middle, he thought. If these are the two, right in the middle. He ordered a bourbon with water, and was grateful for the warm diffusion through his insides. He relaxed a little.
“Tough luck,” he said.
Dr. Newman nodded curtly. “Damned nuisance.”
Cleo Constance said nothing. He lifted his glass and drained it, setting it empty on the bar and standing with that damned clipped motion of his. He left without speaking.
Jeff finished his bourbon. “Think I’ll turn in,” he said.
Dr. Newman shrugged, irritation manifest in his plump twitch. “Might as well. Be along myself shortly.”
Since he was only one up, Jeff walked. Coming off the stairs into the hall, he saw Constance unlock a door and disappear. Checking the tab on his key against door numbers, he discovered that he was beyond Constance about half the length of the hall. The door across from his was slightly ajar. He could hear, within the room, the desperate cadence of pacing footsteps, broken at brief intervals for the time it took to reverse direction. Back and forth, back and forth, across the trap of a room. Listening more closely, he detected with the sound of pacing the soft accompaniment of tortured animal whimpering.
Abruptly, on impulse, he crossed the hall and, without knocking, entered the room and closed the door behind him.
She had taken off the ratty fur coat and the jacket of her wool gabardine suit. She held herself, even walking, in that cross-armed embrace, and the pointed red nails of her fingers had ripped the thin stuff of her blouse where it stretched tight over her shoulders. When he entered, she stopped, twisting around from the hips to face him, her eyes bright and terrible, her lower lip fastened between her teeth.
“Go away,” she said. “Go away from me.”
He shook his head, wishing he could free himself of the compulsion to pity. Wishing he could always use the other side of the road and never give a damn. Knowing he never could.