“Can you be more specific, sir?”
Billy said, “She’s in a cabin on the mountain. There’s a man and two boys. You go through a field and along some rusted tracks. There’s a kind of lane or alley or something in the woods.”
“I’ll need an address, sir.”
“There is no address.”
“I need to know where the woman is, sir,” the operator said.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Sir?”
“I’m not sure.”
He hung up.
He turned off the phone and put it in the glove compartment. He put the driving glove back on his hand. He buckled his seat belt, steered up to the road, and looked both ways.
It was too late to make the trip to the dump. Mary was coming, and he had to get ready. He’d thought of braising a rabbit. Did he still have time for that?
Left or right? He turned the car to the left.
As he drove, he decided that he would keep Julia’s paintings a while longer. He could clear some space in the attic, or stow them under a tarp in the barn.
He went over and down a hill. He had the mountains on one side and a cow pasture on the other. The sky above the mountains glowed. Soon the sun would come out and the day would be blue again. He was certain that the road would lead him somewhere familiar if he drove long enough. He rolled down the window and felt the fresh air on his face. The damp, shining road curved over the foothills, and the trees alongside seemed to become greener and lusher in the growing light, and before long a car passed him going the other direction; and, a little farther down the road, he did in fact come upon a house that he recognized. He slowed the car and pulled into the driveway. How had he got so far from home? He was all the way up past White Hall.
Soft white clouds and a few birds were in the air. The thunder and lightning were over at last.
Billy circled the drive, eased the Mercedes to the road, checked both directions, and went back the way he’d come.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Donald Antrim is the author of the novels Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World, The Hundred Brothers, and The Verificationist, as well as a memoir, The Afterlife. He is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and an associate professor in the writing program at Columbia University. He is a 2013 MacArthur Fellow.