by Jack Martin
“I’m not ready for this.” She sat back. “We need a plan.”
Challis reached for a cigarette but his jacket pocket was empty. He remembered that it had been empty for a long time.
“How about this?” he suggested. “We drive down that road, get some more beer, and go to the beach?”
“I’m serious.”
He was feeling fresh and awake now and was determined not to let the day end on a note of despair, no matter what. There was always hope. I for one don’t need to drive all afternoon to find more doom and gloom, he thought. I can get that at home.
He tried another tack.
“All right, here’s one. We go back to that gas station and see if they know anything. We could pose as buyers. Maybe even rent a room at that motel.” That sounds eminently reasonable, he thought. Realistic. And realism is what we need. “Then we’d have someplace to talk without the whole town watching.”
She accepted that without a blink. “Good point. It’s getting late, anyway.” She drew her jacket liner closed, pulled her sweater sleeves down over her arms.
They bounded back over the railroad tracks. He thought of taking over the driving for her, letting her rest. But it was a little late for that. Besides, she was doing fine on her own. And he did like that. He liked it a lot.
“What’s that?” she said, her eyes riveted to the rearview mirror.
Challis stretched around.
A winglike metal garage door in the side of the factory was lifting, reflecting like a signal mirror. A long silver limousine purred out into the street, hovered to get its bearings. It was impossible to see the driver behind the tinted windows.
“Probably the boss,” said Challis.
They drove on.
The Irishman at Rafferty’s Deluxe saw Ellie’s car coming. Now his flushed face was all smiles, all charm. As if he were expecting them.
Ellie smiled back.
“Good day to ye! Fill ’er up?”
“Please.”
“Ahh, and another grand day it’s been in Santa Mira, where the sun smiles down and takes care of its own. A grand day, so it is!”
He chuckled his way to the pump.
My God, thought Challis, is he for real? He’s more Irish than that guy who sells green deodorant soap on TV.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” said Ellie under her breath.
She and Challis met each other’s eyes.
Challis grinned. “Welcome to Santa Mira, yourself,” he told her. “Dublin West.”
Rafferty, if that was his name, poked his head back in, quick as an elf.
“Just passing through?”
He was all spongy red nose and uneven teeth from this close. A drinker, thought Challis. That fit the stereotype. Perhaps too well.
Ellie kept her eyes down so as not to let go. She touched her mouth with her fingers and pretended to cough. “No, I—my husband and I—”
Challis chewed his lip.
“—Own a toy store. And we’ve come to pick up some more masks.”
“Ah,” waxed Rafferty, “and beauties they are, too!”
Challis could not let the moment pass. He had been biting down for too long. He surprised himself by sliding his left arm around Ellie’s shoulders. She was small but soft beneath the jacket liner. He liked that, too.
“You can say that again!” he said too loudly, getting into the role. “Selling like hotcakes, too!
Rafferty fairly davened at the news. “Good! Good!”
Challis slid even closer. He left his leg against hers. She did not resist. Good clean fun. “Say, pardner. Do you know whether there’s a vacancy next door? My wife and I need a place to stay.” He gave her a patronizing squeeze and felt a suppressed laugh implode through her body. “Don’t we, honey?”
“You’ve come to the right place.” Rafferty winked, actually winked. “I own the motel, too!”
Would wonders never cease?
“Well, rent it, really. Mr. Cochran owns it, o’course. He owns everythin’ around here. But he doesn’t try to tell me how to run my business, and I do the same for him. You see? It all works out. Now here we are . . .”
He fished in his trouser pocket, came up with a large green plastic tab. There was a key attached to it.
Challis winked back.
“Here ’tis! It’s cozy and it’s quiet! And the price is right!”
Rafferty darted ahead of them into the bungalow.
Challis drew Ellie close. “Keep him happy for a minute,” he whispered into her ear.
She nodded and went inside.
“Shower’s a good one,” Challis heard Rafferty saying, his voice magnified by the tiles of the bathroom. “Just put in new pipes last year ..!”
Plumbing clanged and knocked behind him as he moved to the motel office. He made it inside a second before Rafferty followed Ellie out to the car.
“Any bags?”
“Er . . . well, the trunk is stuck.”
Good going, thought Challis.
“My husband knows how to do it. But he went to register.”
Challis knew he had only a moment. The guest book lay open on the counter, next to a wire rack of travel folders. He leafed through the book, searing back through the weeks.
“Got the key?” Rafferty was saying.
October 24, read Challis, October 23 . . .
“I think it’s this one . . .”
“Let me try it.”
“My goodness, it certainly isn’t stuck anymore, is it?”
“Light packers, aren’t you?”
“We—we’ve had lots of practice.”
“Why, there’s Mr. Cochran now!”
Challis left the guest book and returned in time to see the long silver limousine knife past silently in the encroaching twilight.
Ellie was staring, trying to penetrate the tinted glass.
Don’t be so obvious, he thought. We stick out enough as it is.
He had just stepped off the walkway and onto open ground between the motel and the gas station when a vehicle the size of a house on wheels drove up. It slewed off the road and charged Rafferty’s Deluxe. Challis heard it rattling toward him, its overinflated tires singing over the dirt, before he saw it. By the time he bothered to glance up it was too late. Brakes grabbed, locked, and the Winnebago skidded to a stop less than a yard from his shoes.
“Daddy! Daddeee!”
A child’s scream pierced the air as a bicycle detached itself from the top of the Winnebago and crashed down at Challis’s feet.
“Aw, it didn’t hurt it!”
A sloppy, heavy set man jumped out of the driver’s side. He ran forward. Not to Challis, but to the bike.
“Hey, sorry about that,” said the man with a sheepish grin. “Glad it didn’t hit you! And a great big thanks for pickin’ it up!” As an afterthought he added, “You all right?”
He was big, beefy and puffing with small-town enthusiasm and goodwill. He came on like a cross between a used-car salesman and the manager of an ice cream franchise, but it was impossible to dislike such an innocent purely on principle.
He offered his pudgy hand.
“No problem,” muttered Challis.
The hand was soft and moist, an overgrown child’s. Challis was obligated to shake it. Otherwise he might injure the man’s feelings, which were as transparent as water on the air.
“Buddy Kupfer,” announced the man. “And that’s my wife, Betty.”
She climbed out, proud of her dimples and bouffant hair. Perfect, thought Challis. I always wondered what sort of woman marries the president of the Boosters Club; now I know. A match made in Heaven.
“And right here’s Little Buddy!”
Which is exactly what he was. Challis was being set upon by a family of overweight Mousketeers.
“Pleased to meetcha,” said Betty Kupfer.
“Is my bike busted?” asked Little Buddy, on the verge of tears. Without waiting for an answer, the hyperactive boy ran to the bike, sp
un the wheels, hopped on it and pumped away in the direction of a field of baby melons.
“Don’t you dare go in the street, you hear me?” warned his mother.
Enough, thought Challis.
Individually each was a bit obnoxious but not without a certain degree of cornfed charm; together they were an unstoppable force of nature, like kudzu and income taxes, and at the moment Challis was not up to taking on anything of the kind without a couple of Wild Turkeys under his belt.
“I’ve got to go,” he said.
He backed into Rafferty.
“I’ll check you in now, sir.”
“I filled it out,” explained Challis. “There’s forty dollars under the blotter. That cover it?”
“Heavens, yes! Thank you, sir. Have a pleasant stay.”
Rafferty acknowledged the new arrivals.
“Mr. Kupfer, I presume? Your room is waiting!”
Buddy Kupfer’s guileless face clouded over. “Okay now, this is a freebie, right? I mean, we could always stay in the RV if we need to.”
“I assure you, sir, Mr. Cochran has taken care of everything!”
Challis withdrew to his door. It was that protracted hour of the day when the sun has reached the horizon but the sky has not yet given up the ghost. Flowers were closing, flocks of birds were straggling home from trees and telephone wires, and the first timid lights of evening were beginning to twinkle on. For a city-dweller the effect was hyperreal and hypnotically beautiful. He did not want it to end.
Observing these typecast all-Americans haggling over the family budget, even here, before trusting their sheltered lives into the hands of Rafferty and his Deluxe Motel, Challis was amused and touched rather than offended. At least he, Buddy what’s-his-name, is holding them together somehow, thought Challis, no matter what the price. He’s a low-potential overachiever with high blood pressure and a tendency to ulcers; his wife’s hypoglycemic and undoubtedly a nag, and his kid is badly in need of a prescription for Ritalin. A workaholic prone to fits of depression, not above a shady deal now and then to keep them in doubleknit polyester.
But he’s happy, after a fashion. I’ll bet he is. Or he thinks he is, most days. And that’s more than most of us can say. He’s a pretty gutsy fellow in his way, and a lot braver than his wife or Little Buddy or even he himself will ever know. I wish I knew how he does it. How he keeps himself believing in something. In anything.
“. . .Well, that’s great,” Buddy Kupfer was saying as he met his wife at the back of the recreational vehicle to help her unload a carton of plastic dinnerware. “Honey, it’s a freebie!”
Challis saluted him secretly from the doorstep.
Before he could get the door closed, another car pulled up and parked.
A brassy woman trapped in a holding pattern somewhere between thirty and forty set the brake and climbed out.
She glared at Challis.
“Damn factory!” The way she said it, the second word was a curse. “Got their orders screwed up. Now I have to stay in this dump again. It’s the same story every year, know what I mean?”
She brushed past him and marched for the office.
“I know what you mean.”
Challis smiled and closed the door.
The room was what he expected.
Ellie, however, was a great deal more. She was perched neatly on the double bed, her dark eyes alert, ready for anything.
Challis shook his head.
“This place is a zoo,” he told her.
“I saw Cochran. His car, anyway.” So she was working on it even now. She wouldn’t let go.
“By the way, your old man stayed here on the twentieth.”
She pounced on that fact with the expression of a cat at feeding time. “I was right! Then we should go directly to the factory and see if—”
“Slow down. I could use a drink. We’ve got this room. Let’s take our time.”
“It’s okay with you?” She pulled herself up short and considered him without condescension. Her question was genuine. She’s as straight as they come, he thought. Not a game-player; if she is, she’s the best at it I’ve seen.
“I guess these clothes can hold out another day,” he said. “If you can stand me.”
She unlatched her overnight bag and eyed the bathroom. Probably to change.
On the other side of the paper-thin wall, Buddy and Betty and Little Buddy were banging doors and installing the artifacts of their lifestyle with suburban abandon.
“I could always get another room,” he offered.
She eyed him up and down. Was she smirking? There wasn’t enough light to be sure.
“That would look sort of suspicious, wouldn’t it?” she asked evenly.
She was so trusting.
She doesn’t even know me, and listen to her. For all she can tell I’m some kind of psycho, Jack the Ripper with a black bag of nasty tricks concealed somewhere on my person at this very moment. She’s not naive; but her faith is alarming.
She’s made the right decision this time, of course. Very perceptive of her.
He said, “What I mean is, if it would make you more comfortable I can sleep in the car. That would probably be better than the floor, anyway.”
Without hesitation she said, “Surely we can do better than that.”
Then, in one of those rare epiphanies that make life worth living, she unfolded her legs from the bed and came to him. She stood inches away.
“Where do you want to sleep, Doctor Challis?”
Here he was fumbling around with formalities, and she had already made up her mind. Somewhere along the line he had lost the lead, if ever he had had it. She had, as the saying goes, let him continue, and all along he had been egotistical enough to believe that he had the advantage. Well, damn her sweet hide.
“That,” he said, “is a dumb question, Miss Grimbridge.”
The orange light of sundown painted the curtains in the room a color that became more intense with each passing second.
THE MASKS
COME OFF
C H A P T E R
7
He locked the motel room door behind him and walked to the office.
Rafferty was nowhere in sight, but the brassy woman from the next cabin was busy at the pay phone.
“Yes, they screwed it up!” she was saying. “What? Tomorrow, I hope. If they don’t, I’m having somebody’s head for lunch, I can tell you that!”
She acknowledged Challis and silently mouthed a question. Before he could respond she said into the phone, “All right. Hold the fort. Ciao.” She hung up. “It’s all yours.”
“What?”
“This is too much, isn’t it? No phones in the rooms, no one around when you need ’em, showers that look like something left over from a Hitchcock movie . . . You need change?”
“No. Actually, I was going to ask you if you know where a person can get something to drink.”
“Hah! I know the feeling. Good luck. There’s nothing around here for fifty miles but pumpkin fields and potato-eaters. And this cruddy motel. I knew I was going to get stuck here tonight, I just knew it!”
“If this is an Irish town, they must have a watering hole.”
“If you find one, let me know.” She busied herself reorganizing her purse. It was big enough to strap onto her back, if she were so inclined. “Picking up an order?”
“Oh,” said Challis. “Yeah.”
“I figured. There’s no other reason to be in this godforsaken place. Their masks may be fabulous, but they’re not too swift up here, know what I mean?” She tapped her head. “I’m Marge Guttman, by the way.”
They shook hands. “Dan . . . Smith,” he said. He was instantly appalled at his own lack of imagination. “I’m here with my wife.”
“Well, lotsa luck, Mr. Smith.” She was so wrapped up in her own melodrama she accepted the name without batting an eye. “I just don’t see any excuse for it. I called my order in day before yesterday. They said it would be ready
. I’ve got a business to run. If they think I’m going to stay here again just because somebody shuffled the wrong papers, then they’ve got another think coming!”
There was a great hostility pent up inside her, something disproportionately dark and vicious straining to get out. Challis hoped he wouldn’t be around when and if it found its ultimate release.
“They must be working pretty hard,” he suggested, “to get everything out by Halloween. I mean, they’re even working Saturdays and Sundays—pretty hard to believe!”
“Well, they’d better try to do it a little bit faster, that’s all I can say. Their masks are great, but since they started doing big-volume business the little guy has to stand in line, y’know what I mean? I gave up ordering by mail, but I hate trying to deal with them in person. You can’t win.”
She extracted a green witch mask from her oversized purse and waved it as evidence.
“And I hate to say it, but the merchandise is slipping. I mean, my four-year-old was throwing this thing against the wall, granted, but the trademark shouldn’t just come right off! These masks used to be the best. I’m going to complain. There it is.”
A small, round trade seal with the Silver Shamrock logo on it shook free of the folds and rolled across the floor. Challis stooped and picked it up. It was embossed metal, the size of a quarter. No, not metal. Some sort of ceramic. He turned it over in his fingers.
On the reverse was a grid of tiny engraved lines. Incredibly, it appeared to be some sort of microchip.
“See what I mean?” asked Marge.
“Where did you get this?”
“I told you, it came off the mask. Can you believe it? Hey, you don’t know anything about electronics, by any chance?”
“Not really. What’s it for?”
“Well, all I know is, this thing looks like the inside of my transister radio. Why would they put one on a mask?”
“It would be expensive,” said Challis. He handed it back to her. “I don’t get it.”
“It’s a mystery to me, too. You got any batteries with you?”
“Batteries?”
“The ones in my radio are shot. Hell, I don’t know what I’m doing, but I thought maybe I could get it to play or light up or whatever it’s supposed to do.”
