“What’s so selfish? Why can’t I come? I won’t get in the way. You’re the selfish one. You don’t want me to come. Why not? What’s so wrong with me being there?” Her tone was injured, a wronged child’s voice full of that hectoring self-righteousness which appears when children know they’ve got an adult on the run.
He ranted on for a while, but he knew it was too late now. What was worse, he knew she knew.
“I can’t understand why you’re so fired up,” she said with arch, false innocence. “Look how pleased Mom was. Don’t you think that’s nice?”
She was right, but he didn’t admit it. Perhaps it was a sign: that he should concentrate on Melissa, forget Irene…
He lay awake for hours, itchy between the nylon sheets of the Scaggsville Motor Hotel. He ran through the burgeoning options that had suddenly appeared in his life. The road ahead had seemed so straight and sure; now he faced a fan of avenues. He fretfully pondered the alternatives as the cold drinks dispenser shuddered dismally outside his door and the ice-machine’s thin lonely rattle punctuated the very slow progress of the night.
Chapter Three
Interstate 85 carried them safely through the Carolinas. The weather had grown steadily warmer as they drove south. Now, in Georgia, the late-afternoon sun burned down from a clear blue sky and Henderson switched on the air conditioning in the car. They motored along, windows up, in a chill cell. Outside the country was — to his eyes — surprisingly, but monotonously, wooded, with a tough-looking breed of average-sized pine predominant. The highway cut straight through this consistent greenery, the only variation coming with the thin towering signs of the gas stations, roadside motels and supermarkets at junctions and intersections. Holiday Inn, Omlette Shoppe, Cowboy Barbeque, Bi-Lo, Starvin’ Marvin’, Food Giant, Steak and Ale, Wife-Saver. These signs, a hundred feet high, like enormous cocktail stirrers, loomed over the forest.
On the drive south from Skaggsville Henderson had remained terse, resolutely maintaining his anger. But Bryant seemed not to care: indeed, she was almost cheerful, singing along or beating out a rhythm to the songs — now exclusively country and western — that came over the radio. Henderson had traversed every wave band in fruitless search for music that wasn’t gravid with sentiment, but in vain. The only alternatives were religious stations offering prayer-ins, waterproof bibles (“for pool-side reading”) or ghastly homilies.
“Don’t you like country and western?” Bryant asked.
“I loathe it.”
“I like it. It’s sort of…true.”
“My God,” Henderson said, “if that’s your version of ‘true’ then I feel sorry for you.”
“OK. So what’s not true about them?” Bryant persisted.
“Look, I don’t want to talk about it,” Henderson said. “It’s bad enough having to listen to that…that pap, without having to indulge in close reading of the lyrics.”
Bryant shrugged, and found a new station. Henderson looked at her thin arm with its shine of blond hairs as she twiddled the dial. He felt edgy and uncomfortable beside her now. He was almost sure, moreover, that she wasn’t wearing a bra. He wished devoutly that he hadn’t caught a glimpse of her breasts last night. It was curious the changes it had wrought in his view of her: no longer a petulant minx whom, for the sake of her mother, he had to tolerate, the ‘glimpse’ had introduced new ingredients into her personality — femininity, nubility…sex.
♦
They saw Atlanta from a long way off, the towers of its downtown district silhouetted against the sinking sun, a few small, bruise-coloured clouds dawdling above the city.
“We’d better phone now, I suppose,” Henderson said.
“Do you think it’s far away?”
“What?”
“Luxora Beach.”
“Well, it’s one hell of a drive to a coast, that’s for sure.” The same thought had occurred to him earlier.
“Maybe it’s on a lake.” She was looking at a road map. “There are a lot of lakes around here.”
“Maybe.”
They pulled off the freeway at the next junction. Henderson found a phone booth while Bryant went in search of a ‘comfort station’, whatever that was.
He tapped out the number Beeby had given him. It rang for a very long time and he was just about to hang up when a woman answered.
“Yeah?”
“May I speak to — with — Mr Loomis Gage.”
“What?”
“Loomis Gage. May I speak—”
“What?”
Jesus Christ. “Loo-mis. Gage.”
He heard her shout someone’s name. Through the phone came a faint noise of a television set, then a man’s voice.
“Yeah? Who is it?”
“Mr Gage? Mr Loomis Gage?”
“No. Who are you?”
“My name is Dores. From Mulholland, Melhuish — New York. I’d like to speak to Mr Loomis Gage.”
He had to repeat this three times; the man seemed to be some sort of imbecile.
“Oh yeah.” Then suspiciously, “Oh yeah… Don’t hang up.”
Henderson fed more money into the phone. The man came back.
“You was expected this morning.”
“There must be some mistake.”
“Beckman’s been waiting in Atlanta all day.”
“I couldn’t have got here any sooner, I’m sorry.”
“Well, he’ll be at the corner of Peachtree Street and Edgewood on the hour. Can you make it for six?”
“I think so.”
“He’ll look after you.”
This is preposterous, Henderson thought. “What does he look like?”
“Thin, kinda long fair hair.”
The man hung up.
Henderson realized his palms were sweating. He suddenly felt a bit fearful. The set up was so weird; mad, even. He thought of his usual valuation trips: a pleasant weekend in some sumptuous house; civilized, cultured talk about art. Christ only knew what Beeby had landed him in. He began to wish that he’d let Ian Toothe come in his place; it certainly would have saved him a lot of problems.
Bryant returned from her comfort station.
“So what happens?” she asked.
“We’ve got to meet a man called Beckman at a street corner in Atlanta.”
“Sounds good.” Her eyes widened. “What then?”
“I’m not absolutely sure.”
♦
They drove down the extreme length of Peachtree Street. Atlanta seemed halfway through some sort of massive redevelopment programme: crumbling façades on old buildings gave way to empty brick-strewn lots, then some spanking new skyscraper surged up from a multi-level piazza with thickets of trees and gurgling fountains and fishponds. As they got near the city centre the buildings grew higher and more impressive: vast circular hotels, mirror glass cliffs dominating small landscaped parks and squares.
The streets seemed oddly quiet, in strong contrast to New York at this hour. They were a little early for their rendezvous, only three blacks lounged at the corner of Peachtree and Edgewood, so they parked the car and wandered around for a while. They went into a concrete cave and took an escalator deep down into the earth. At the bottom they emerged into the immaculate concourse of a vast subway station, clean, shiny and vacant. A couple of ticket collectors looked curiously at them.
“Where is everybody?” Bryant whispered. “It’s like being in the future.”
They went back up. A very thin white man with straggling long blond hair twitched and shimmied on the corner, looking edgily at the blacks.
“Mr Beckman?” Henderson said.
The man whirled round in alarm, arm raised as if to ward off a blow. Henderson leapt back.