She never should have left the buttes, she thought.
She made herself rise and start the engine. The light was copper through the car but B. did not notice it. She repeated to herself the nursery rhyme. Then she repeated to herself to the rhythm of the concrete breaks: get there, get there, get there. Her foot throbbed. Images of the realtor and the blue-smeared eyes of the girl returned. And it was not until the sky turned gray and the fields had dimmed that she finally realized: the banks were closed.
19
When she entered the next town, a college town, there was already a sliver of moon. In the absence of a bank she must get to a motel and lie down, she told herself. But first a bandage. She scanned the streets for a drugstore. Everything deserted, the campus empty. The student-rented houses looked derelict even in the dark, couches on sidewalks, sagging stairs and porches, overgrown straw lawns. She parked the car to find a corner store at least. She walked through the abandoned campus. Crickets buzzed loudly. Her feet were raw in the bone-colored heels, the wound oozing through the paper. She sat on a bench. A few young people passed along the cement paths, in and out of pools of lamplight. The crickets droned on, the air smelled of grass, the night was hot. From nowhere it seemed a man came out of the dark and sat next to her.
“Best time to be here,” the man said. “No students.”
“It’s very quiet.”
“Quiet. Obscured.”
She did not turn her head to him, in part because she knew she must look terrible, in part because she was afraid to see his face, she did not know why. “I’m trying to find a drugstore,” she finally said.
“Are you alright?” He turned toward her then, and she made herself look. He was maybe a decade older than she, but tanned and handsome, thick brown hair that had begun to gray at the temples. She wished she had the energy to take out her compact.
“Yes. My foot is cut a little, that’s all.”
“Everything’s closed now,” he said. Dozens of sprinklers exploded on, the jagged arcs thrusting in the dark.
“I have some bandages at my house,” the man eventually said. “It’s just down across the way there.”
“Oh. I don’t know. .”
“I’m harmless, I promise. You could infect the cut walking on it like that.”
She’d seen his wedding ring, wide and shiny. He spoke in a slow liquid manner, possibly from drinking, she thought. But a quality in his voice was reassuringly authoritative (he must be a professor, she decided); she felt too tired to argue.
“Alright. Thank you.”
She put back on her heels. They walked along one of the paths, the sprinklers catching their ankles. The house, opposite the quad, was a small Craftsman with every light on. The woodwork inside was mahogany, the ceilings low and the walls crowded with bookshelves, a comforting feel, although she wished the blazing lights would go away. B. noticed various charcoal sketches on the walls of nude women with giant engorged nipples. In one corner a tall heavy African mask. Piles of papers scattered across the tables and chairs.
He led her into the bathroom. There was a shaving kit open on a shelf, a can of woman’s hairspray and an open jar of cold cream, as if two people were still in the midst of getting ready. The man motioned her to sit on the side of the tub and ran the water until it was warm, then bent down next to her and washed her hands, then her feet. She smelled the man’s aftershave and the liquor on his breath; his tanned hands on her skin briefly made her stiffen. The white washcloth turned brown with dirt; B. blushed, embarrassed. When her foot was washed he moved her to the toilet seat and swabbed the cut with antiseptic, then reached for her dress and picked off a few spurs. B. waited for him to finish with gauze and tape for her foot but he stood up and put everything away.
“Shouldn’t it be bandaged?”
“No. It needs to develop a protective layer. Open air.”
“Stay for a drink,” he added.
He left the bathroom before she could respond and she hobbled behind him on the side of her foot. She realized then a radio had been on, beating out a twisting, low and mournful jazz that made the house drowsy. She sat down on a couch next to more papers.
“You don’t live around here,” he said, handing her a glass.
“No. Visiting.” She thought briefly she should not be drinking with a stranger, she should get back on the road and find a motel. But the tiredness and light-headedness (did she have a bit of sunstroke?) made her unable to move.
“And why on earth, dear lady, would you visit Chico? You have an Aunt Alma here or some other bad luck?”
“No, I’ve just been driving.” She did not feel like knitting together the explanation in her mind. She drank her scotch.
“We haven’t been here long,” the man said. “Still finishing the dissertation. We’re out from New York. That’s where my wife is now. That faraway galaxy called New York. .” He peered dolefully into his drink.
“I’m from the East too.”
He did not seem to hear her. “So you’re really just driving? No obligations, no appointments? Sounds lawless.”
She fidgeted. Some of the papers from the couch fell onto the floor. She bent to pick them up.
“Don’t bother about those. No point.”
“Does your wife like it out here?”
“Oh, she’s busy enough keeping me in line, you know.” He laughed but it was not cheery. He fiddled with a thread on the arm of his chair. “It’s been an adjustment for her, cooking more, keeping up a house instead of an apartment. I mean, she paints and sketches too, of course.” He pointed at the charcoals.
The drawings troubled B. She tried to find them modern, but the nipples were out of proportion, bellicose. “They’re very interesting,” she said.
“How old are you?”
Suddenly a chorus of drunk voices crowded in through the windows. “Well, helloooo, Professor! Helloooo, helloooo! Another one of your ‘conferences’?” Howls of laughter, catcalls.
The man raised his hand in embarrassed greeting. It was impossible with all the lights to make out any faces in the dark.
“Don’t give that grade ’til she earns it!” someone yelled, then more howls of laughter. The man’s face looked like it would turn red if it weren’t so mellowed. A few more mutterings and hoots and the commotion faded out.
“The frats stay here all summer,” he explained. “Amazing they survive to fall.”
“Thirty.”
“Pardon?”
“I’m thirty years old.”
He looked her up and down. “Well. What a nice change. I’m usually in the company of nubile student-girls — severely off-limits, of course — or mommies and widows.” He got up and went into the kitchen. She heard the slamming of cabinets and the suction of a freezer door, ice clinking.