They all thought about that for a moment. “No reason why she couldn’t have been,” said Sonya. “Poetic justice.”
“How would she get the assignment?” said Carol Anne.
No one had a good answer.
“Maybe it was just a job,” said Kate. “They all drew cards, maybe. The officials, I mean. The queen of spades or something meant pull the switch. I would have done it.”
“I would have too,” said Sonya. “Under the hood, I think I’d have smiled.” Her teeth clicked together. “I’d have laughed.”
Dixie nodded. Vicky and Carol Anne said nothing.
The already low lights in the bar flickered momentarily and everyone jumped.
They had never met one another before today. Perhaps they would never meet again. But the five of them had, Vicky thought to herself, an incredibly strong bond tying them together. Or more precisely, maybe, they just had something lucky in common.
Sonya and Kate talked about living in Midvale, a little Utah community south of Salt Lake City. In 1974, in October, when Sonya had been 19 and Kate 17, they had been driving home from an Osmonds concert in Salt Lake. One minute the Chevy had been running fine, the next, it was making grinding noises, and the next, it was coasting off on the shoulder on 1–15, just past the exit for Taylorsville.
“It was bizarre,” said Sonya. “Here we were on an Interstate, and it was only about midnight, and nobody would stop. It was like we were invisible.”
And that was when the handsome stranger wheeled his Volkswagen off the highway and pulled in behind them. It was too dark to tell what color the VW was, but the teenagers could see his face in the domelight. He offered to give Sonya a ride into Midvale, but suggested Kate stay with the Chevy to keep an eye on things.
“We said no deal,” said Kate. “We both would go into Midvale, or none of us would.”
The stranger put his fingers around Sonya’s wrist as though to drag her into the Volkswagen. Kate held up a tire iron she had picked up from the Chevy’s floor. And that was it. The stranger let go, apologized like a gentleman, spun out on the gravel and disappeared into the Utah night.
“He killed a girl from Midvale,” said Sonya. “We knew her. We didn’t know her well, but after they finally found her bones, we went to the funeral and cried.”
Dixie’s was a lower-key story, as Vicky had suspected.
“It was 1975,” said Dixie. “I was a blonde then, just like now, and I know what you’re thinking. Well, he killed two blondes. He wanted brunettes, but he’d settle. He wasn’t that predictable.”
Vicky was glad she hadn’t said anything earlier. She’d known about the blonde victims. She simply, for whatever reason, had been suspicious of Dixie’s attitude.
“I was picking up some stuff for my mom at Safeway,” Dixie continued. “In Eugene. I remember coming up to my car with a bag of groceries in each arm, thinking about saying a dirty word because I couldn’t reach the key in my jeans without either putting a bag down or else risking scattering apples and lima beans across half the lot. Anyhow, just as I got up to the car, there was this good-looking guy – I mean, he looked way out of place in the Safeway lot – with his arm in a sling. I was concentrating on getting hold of my key, so I didn’t pay much attention to what he was saying at first, but like I said, he was pretty cute, so I didn’t ignore him completely. He wanted help getting the tire changed on his Volks, he said. Not much help, just having me jump up and down on the spider to loosen the nuts.” Dixie grinned. “I thought I’d be a Girl Scout, so I went over a few steps, still with the bags in my arms, and sure enough, there was the VW. It was a metallic brown Beetle, but I couldn’t see any flat tire. It was about then I heard my mom’s voice telling me about talking to strangers, so I said to him there was a Texaco station with a mechanic just about four blocks down Willamette, and he should get some help there.”
“That was it?” said Sonya. “He didn’t try to grab you?”
“He was a perfect gentleman,” said Dixie drily. “Didn’t say another word. Just thanked me, turned around and started walking down the street. I got in my mom’s car and left. That was that.”
Then they asked Carol Anne for her story, but the young woman demurred. “I’m really tired.” They looked at her. “I mean, I don’t want to talk about any of this right now,” she said. “I guess I’m having a little trouble just listening to what all of you are saying.”
“So why are you here?” said Dixie.
“Give her a break,” said Vicky quickly. She’s just a kid. That’s what she didn’t say. It would just have triggered more questions. She made a sudden decision to get Carol Anne off the hook. “Anyway, I’m all psyched to play confessional.”
“Okay,” said Kate.
Dixie glanced at Carol Anne, then looked back to Vicky and nodded. “Then it’s your turn.”
“I was hitchhiking,” said Vicky. “It was April 1975 and the school year was winding down.” I just flunked out, she thought, and then wondered why she just didn’t admit it. Maybe she did have a little pride left. “I was in Grand Junction, over on the western slope. I had the cash, but decided to catch a ride back to Denver just for the hell of it.” For the adventure, she thought. Right. The adventure. Hanging around the club where they’d let her dance topless for tips.
“I waited a while out on the east edge of town. It was morning and there seemed to be a lot more people driving west into the Junction. Finally I got a ride. I think you know who picked me up.”
Slow, serious nods from Kate and Sonya. Dixie’s mouth twitched. Carol Anne just looked back soberly.
“He was the most charming man I’d ever met,” said Vicky. And still is, she thought. “We drove for almost an hour before anything happened.” She fell silent.
“So?” Dixie prompted.
“He pulled off on a dirt road. He said there was something wrong with the engine. It sounded like something you’d hear from some highschool jock taking the good girl in class out to lover’s lane.”
“And?” said Kate.
Vicky took a long breath. “He tried to rape me. He had a knife and some handcuffs. When he tried to force the cuffs on my wrist nearest him, I bit him hard on his hand. I was able to get the door open, and then I was out of there.” It wasn’t rape, she thought. It was mutual seduction. She’d never seen the knife, though the cuffs were real enough. But her moment of panic had come at the point of orgasm when his strong fingers had tightened around her throat. At that moment, she had . . . flinched. Chickened out, she sometimes told herself in the blackest of moods. At any rate, she had kicked free of the stranger. “I ran into the scrub trees where I knew he couldn’t drive a car, and then I hid. After dark, I still waited until the moon rose and set, and then I walked back to the highway. I was lucky. The first car that stopped was a state trooper. I don’t think I would have gotten in a car with anyone else that night.”
Sonya and Dixie and Kate all nodded. Wisely. Then Dixie started to turn toward Carol Anne again.
Vicky said, “Sorry to break this up, but it’s getting late and I’m exhausted. We’ll all have the chance to talk tomorrow.” She glanced pointedly at Carol Anne. The younger woman got the hint.
“I’m going to call it a night too,” she said. “Tomorrow,” she said to Dixie. “I promise.”
The sisters from Utah decided to stay a while longer and finish their soda waters, though the ice was long since melted. Dixie headed for the elevator.
Carol Anne said to Vicky, “I want to get some fresh air before bed. There’s a kind of mezzanine outside, up over the parking lot and the valley. You want to come along?”
Vicky hesitated, then nodded.
“What time is it?” said Carol Anne. They passed through the bar exit. The bartender locked the door behind them.
“I don’t have a watch on,” said Vicky.
“It’s two-thirty,” said a voice in the dimly lit hallway.
Vicky recoiled, then peered forward. “You,” she sa
id. “The guy who brought back my purse. Bobby.”
“Bobby Cowell,” he said. “At your service, ma’am.” There was something in his tone that was not deferential at all. “Always at your service.”
“Thanks again, Bobby,” Vicky said. She realized Carol Anne had retreated a step.
“Did you count the cash?” said Bobby, stepping closer. He had a musky scent.
“I trust you,” said Vicky. And she did. Sometimes she surprised herself.
Bobby must have realized that. He nodded slowly. “If there’s anything I can do for you while you’re here, anything at all . . .” The man’s voice was carefully modulated, sincere.
“Thanks again.” Vicky led Carol Anne past Bobby Cowell.
The man faded into the hallway. “I’d like to get to know you,” he called low after them.
Vicky walked faster.
“I think he likes you,” said Carol Anne.
“He’s more your age,” said Vicky. But she knew she did not completely mean that with sincerity. “Attractive guy.” She had seen his type before. Oh, yes.
Carol Anne laughed. Vicky couldn’t recall having heard her laugh aloud. “He looks like a Young Republican.” She paused.
“And he probably drives a bronze VW.” Carol Anne laughed again, but this time the sound was hollow. The two women stood against the railing overlooking the Platte Valley. Traffic below them on I-25 was minimal. To the south they could see the bright arc lamps of some sort of highway maintenance. Vicky could feel heat radiating from Carol Anne’s side.
“You know, I keep wondering about something,” said Carol Anne.
“What’s that?” Vicky found her eyes attracted to the red aircraft warning lights blinking on the skyscrapers less than a mile away.
“This is really petty and my soul’ll probably burn in hell just for thinking it.”
“Let’s hear it.” Vicky’s attention snapped back to the woman next to her.
“My dad told me once that he figured maybe a million people went to Woodstock.”
“That may be a little exaggerated,” said Vicky.
“No, I mean, a lot of people were so in love with the idea of having been there, but even if they didn’t go, they said they did. Maybe they even thought they did.”
“So are you talking about this event here?” said Vicky. “I think everybody here believes she went through whatever she went through.” She suddenly started to feel the fatigue of the night for real. Her head was buzzing.
“I guess – well, okay,” said Carol Anne.
“Let me suggest something even more troubling,” said Vicky. In the darkness, she saw the pale oval of Carol Anne’s face turn toward her. “You know about astronaut syndrome?”
“No,” said Carol Anne, sounding puzzled.
“People used to go to the moon,” said Vicky. “Men did, anyway. I read an article once, where they interviewed guys who walked on the moon. You know something, it was the biggest, most exciting, most important thing that ever happened to them.”
“So?” said Carol Anne, apparently not getting the point.
“So they had to come back to earth. So they had to spend the rest of their lives doing things that were incredibly less exciting and important. Politics and selling insurance and writing books were nothing like walking on the moon.”
Carol Anne was silent for a while. “So everyone here, I mean, all the women who came in for this gathering thing, they walked on the moon?”
“They all lived,” said Vicky. “They survived. Nothing as exciting will ever happen to them again.”
“What about you?” said Carol Anne. She clapped her hand over her mouth as if suddenly trying to stop the words.
“I fit the pattern,” said Vicky, trying to smile and soften the words. “I’ve gone through a lot of men, a lot of jobs, a husband, more men, more dead-end jobs. Nothing so powerful has ever happened to me again.” She thought, it sounds like a religious experience. And maybe it is.
Carol Anne issued something that sounded a little like a sigh, a little bit of a sob.
“Now,” said Vicky. “What about you? You’re too young for the moon. You know it and I know it. We’ve been talking about them. Now there’s just me, and just you. And you’ve heard about me.” Well, most of it, she thought.
Carol Anne reached out blindly and took Vicky’s hand. She held it tightly. She seemed to be trying to say something. It wasn’t working.
“Calm down,” said Vicky. “It’s all right. She took the younger woman in her arms. “It’s all right,” she repeated.
“I never knew him,” said Carol Anne, her words muffled against Vicky’s shoulder. “Not directly. But I think he killed my mother.” She started to cry. Vicky rocked her gently, let her work it out.
“We don’t know for sure,” Carol Anne said finally. “My dad and I, we just don’t know. They never found any remains. I was five back in 1975. My mom was really young when she had me. You know something? My birthday is January 24. And for nineteen years I didn’t know what the significance was going to be. In 1989 on my birthday, I only got one present. The execution.” She smiled mirthlessly. “Before that. 1975. It was earlier in the winter than when you got away from him. We lived in Vail. We found my mom’s car in the public parking lot. It was unlocked and the police said later someone had pulled the coil wire. They said there was no sign of violence. She just vanished. We never saw her again.” Carol Anne started again to cry. “She didn’t run away, like some people said. He got her. And there are no remains.”
After a while, Vicky pulled a clean tissue from her purse. “So why are you here?”
There was a very long silence, after which Carol Anne blew her nose noisily. “I thought maybe something someone might say would give me a clue. About my mother. I’ve read everything. I’ve seen all the tapes. Over and over. I just want to know, more than anything else, what happened.”
No, thought Vicky, I don’t think you do. She knew what would happen when she said it, but she said it anyway. “Your mother’s dead, Carol Anne. I’m sorry. I’m very sorry. But you know it.”
Carol Anne sobbed for a very long time. She took a fresh tissue from Vicky. “I know it. I know that. I just want to know more. How it happened. Who – ”
“It’s enough to accept that she’s gone,” said Vicky. “Maybe someday you’ll find out more.” She hesitated. “I hope you do.”
“I’m 22,” said Carol Anne. “My whole life’s revolved around this for seventeen years.”
“Do you have . . . someone?”
“My father died five years ago. I don’t have a boyfriend if that’s what you mean.” Her voice was mournful. “I guess I don’t have much of a life at all.”
I’m glad you said it, Vicky thought. “You will,” she said aloud. “But you’ve got to leave all this old baggage. You can’t forget it, but you can allow it to fade. Your dues are paid. Believe it.” Just say good-bye, she thought. Good night for good, and make it stick. She reached out again for Carol Anne’s hand. And then she packed the young woman off to bed. At the door of Carol Anne’s room, Vicky said, “I’ll see you in the morning. Try to get some sleep.”
Carol Anne looked like she was trying to smile bravely. Then she shut the door. Vicky heard the chain lock rattle into place.
Her own room was down a floor and at the opposite end of the wing. The windows overlooked the parking lot. If she craned her neck, Vicky could see the downtown office towers with their cycling crimson aircraft beacons.
She didn’t turn on the lights when she entered the room. Vicky lay down on the bed still dressed, the purse and briefcase nestled up against her like kittens. She stared up into the darkness as though she could still see stars. The bright, winking stars of western slope Colorado. The star patterns of 1975. She wondered if she went to the window and looked down, whether she would see moonlight glinting off the shell-like curve of a hunched VW. Bobby’s VW? There was something about his name that tickled at the edge of her attentio
n, something she couldn’t quite remember.
She found her fingers, as though of their own volition, opening the briefcase and taking out the tightly bound Barbie doll. Vicky couldn’t see it, but she could feel the taut loops of monofilament cutting into the vinyl dollflesh. She clutched the talisman and smiled invisibly.
Some men, Vicky thought, would only send flowers.
But then, as the darkness seeped through every pore, every orifice of her body, filling her with night and grief, she thought of Carol Anne and began to cry. Vicky had not cried in all too long. Not in seventeen years, to be exact.
Seventeen years without a life. Seventeen years looking.
At least, she thought, Carol Anne is young. She can go away from this weekend and re-create her life. She doesn’t have to be empty.
And what about me? Vicky thought, before clamping down savagely on self-pity.
What, indeed. Seventeen years before. It was perhaps the next-to-biggest event of her life. The most important was still to come. Perhaps. It had been on its way since 1975. And had been derailed in January 1989. No, that’s not it either, she thought, feeling the long-time confusion. All I want is to walk on the moon again.
Vicky cried herself to sleep.
She knew she was dreaming, but that did not diminish the effects.
She still lay in her bed, but now it was larger than she could envision and softer than she could hope. She lay bound tightly, so tightly she could not move.
But the thing about helplessness was, she no longer had to take responsibility for anything at all. Almost cocooned in monofilament, she could feel the line cut into her skin, deep into her flesh, thin incisions of pain that burned like lasers.
The pain, she realized, was a mercy compared to the years of numbness. The bindings that restrained her body also retained her heat, and now that heat built and built and suffused her from the core of her flesh to the outer layers of skin.
Blood ran from the corner of her mouth, where the line dug so tight, she could not extend her tongue to lick it away. But some ran back inside anyway. Her blood was warm and slick and salty.
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