by Barry, Mike
“I’d rather call you Tamara.”
“All right. If you want.”
“Take care of yourself,” he said. “I mean that. Please. Stay there. Stay where you are now.”
“I thought I would for a while.”
“A lot of people are looking for me,” the man said over the rustle of tires, “and a lot more are going to join the list. If they hear that you were with me the trail may lead to you. I don’t think it will but it might. It could get unpleasant for you. I’m sorry.”
“That’s all right.”
“It’s not all right.”
“It is,” she said, “it is all right. I’m glad I knew you.”
She listened to his breathing. “I’m glad I knew you too,” he said. “Stay away. Stay away from the places and people you were.”
“I have no choice.”
“And if I can do it I’ll be in touch with you.”
“Will you?”
“Yes,” he said, “yes, I will. I want to see you again. But you have to understand—”
“I think I do,” she said softly. “I really think that I do understand.”
“That’s all right then,” he said. She expected him to hang up then, having completed whatever business was on his mind but he did not. She felt as if his light breath was down her neck all through the wires of the connection. “I want you to know that you’ve made me feel again,” he said then.
“That’s good.”
“I didn’t think that I ever would but you did. And that’s not so good because you’ve increased the stakes, Tamara.”
“Betty. Betty.”
“Tamara. You’ve increased the stakes, because if you feel, you’ve got more to lose.”
“But you’ll also take better care of yourself.”
“Yes,” he said, “I’m going to try. It’s a matter of what a lot of other people do, though. Goodbye, Tamara, Betty. You’ll hear from me.”
“Goodbye, Avenger,” she said over the click of the departing phone.
She still did not know his name.
She got off the bed after a while and walked out of her parents’ bedroom. She no longer resented it; it was just the way these people lived. There were all kinds of ways to come to terms with the world and her parents had merely chosen this one way as she had chosen hers. There was no one to blame. There was no evil in them, she saw now. Most people, most of the time, were victims.
She walked to her bedroom and sat on the bed. Her mother followed her nervously, stood at the open door of the room as the girl who had been named Tamara looked out the windows toward the hills.
“Are you going to be all right?” her mother said quietly. “Really, that’s all I want to know.”
She looked outside, at the fading light. Inside, for the first time in months, she was quiet. She looked up at her mother.
“Yes,” she said, “I think I’m going to be all right.”
EPILOGUE
Wulff drove. He drove through Nevada and he drove through Wyoming. He drove through Utah and then into the plains states. Night and day, dark and light chased their way across the windows, but he ignored them. When he was tired he pulled the car off to the side of the road and slept. When he was hungry he pulled off the road and ate. When the Continental needed gas he fed it. It had turned out to be a good car after all. Opened up to the eighty and ninety miles an hour of the highways, it had shaken off all of its debilities and roared as it must have in its youth. It was a road car.
He drove. The broken spokes of the wheel that was America spread out before him and he laid it down that pipe. The suitcase, locked and double-bolted into the trunk behind, now jiggled occasionally, bringing back memory but only in flashes. San Francisco was behind him. He blanked his mind.
San Francisco was done; it would never be the same again. Now it was back to the Northeast and Boston. He had his ticket; it lay in the trunk. He had his purposes, they had been assembled months before. And now, as never before, he knew his goal.
He drove and drove through the night of America, thinking every now and then of the girl—but whatever she was or could have been, the thoughts were only an aimless sea-lapping. She remained outside of him.
He drove on to Boston …
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Copyright © 1973 by Mike Barry
All rights reserved.
Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
eISBN 10: 1-4405-4235-X
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4235-0
Cover art © 123rf.com/Susan Leonard
