“What route were you going to take tomorrow?” Schiff asked her, wiping the last remnants of gravy from his beard and folding his napkin neatly under his plate. Eddie Coolbaugh never used a napkin, though he was neat enough.
“I don’t know. I was going to study the map.”
“We should probably stick to I-5, at least until we get to Olympia. Have you been on that road lately? There was construction going on, but that was a year ago, no, a year and a half, probably.”
“I don’t know. I’ve never been there.”
“So how do you go when you go to Spokane?”
“I don’t.”
“Yakima?”
“Not there, either. I’ve never been out of Oregon.”
“No shit?”
“No shit,” Petie said grimly. He’d embarrassed her. “Christ, Schiff, I grew up in a twelve-foot camp trailer. What did you think, that my lifestyle included frequent weekends at a fucking resort?”
“Hey, I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, well,” Petie subsided.
Schiff paid up and drove them back to the motel. Petie wouldn’t let him walk her to her room. It was a bad idea. They would stand close together in the doorway, and then it might just happen that they’d be kissing, and if they kissed they’d have to involve their hands, and if that happened they might just as well go out and buy a megaphone and yell out the window, We’re screwing. On the other hand, Schiff’s reputation was already about as bad as it could get, and Carla believed it all, even about Connie at the Anchor, which was ridiculous because how could Connie lure someone to bed when she had bursitis in her shoulders so bad she couldn’t even button the back of her uniform by herself?
Petie was beginning to think that the whole trip was probably a bad idea. Lying in her motel bed, she finally let herself think about what she’d been avoiding thinking about all day: What if she never found Jim Christie? What if she got all the way to stinking Kodiak without seeing any trace of him? The man was feral, knew how to cover his tracks, knew how to slip in and out of towns so no one would even notice he’d been there. He looked like everyone; he sounded like everyone; he drove a beater truck that looked like every other beater truck. If the man walked across a beach barefoot, he’d probably leave no tracks.
And then what in hell was she supposed to say to Rose?
· · ·
IN HIS own room, Schiff faced grim reality squarely: through his own doing, he was lying alone in a cheap motel room with nothing to hold but a pillow with the loft of a bowling ball. The soap didn’t foam, the toilet paper was single ply, the towels could also be used as handkerchiefs and it was the only motel chain left on earth that didn’t give you complimentary shampoo.
And if they didn’t come up with Jim Christie by tomorrow night he was going to have to cook up a miracle of a story for Carla. The woman had extra jealousy genes, swear to God. For all the stories swirling around him, Schiff had only cheated on her twice before, neither time recently and both times out of town. Not that she or anyone else would believe him. He wished he had half the stamina he was credited with. The Man of a Thousand Lays.
And then there was the business of missed opportunities. He’d watched Petie run her fingers through that thick shining hair and he’d never wanted a woman so much in his life, or done so much to guarantee that he wouldn’t have her. Was it possible—was it just possible—that he was a good man?
He finally fell asleep just before dawn and dreamed of archery tournaments he wasn’t allowed to enter.
ALL THE worry was unnecessary, as it turned out. After seven hours of driving the next day they caught up with Jim Christie on the waterfront in Anacortes, in a tavern that might as well have been the Wayside, it felt that familiar. They agreed that Schiff would talk to him first, in case seeing Petie made him bolt. After that, they’d just have to see. When Schiff approached him, Christie was sitting alone at the bar with a beer between his forearms.
“Hey, Jim.”
If he was surprised to see Schiff pulling up a barstool, Christie didn’t show it. “Hey.”
Schiff signaled to the bartender to bring him a beer, and a second for Jim Christie.
“What brings you to Anacortes?” Christie said after a while.
“You. Petie Coolbaugh’s been trying to find you. Sounds like there was some trouble.”
“No trouble. I just don’t like the things she’s got to say,” Christie said.
Schiff could feel Petie breathing over there at her dark table in the corner. He leaned in close. “Hell, she doesn’t mean to hurt anybody. It’s just her way. She would have followed you all the way to Kodiak if she’d had to, just to talk to you. Christ, the woman’s never even been out of the state before, and here she is trying to track you down. She must want to talk to you pretty bad.”
Christie lifted his beer, drank it off in one long, slow draft. “That right?”
“Rose is pretty busted up about you taking off. Petie knows it was her fault, jumping down your throat like she did. Fact is, she’s got some history you might not know about, mainly that her father was a certified Grade A pervert. Tried to do things to her when she was about the same age as Rose’s girl.”
Christie looked at Schiff with those pale weimaraner dog-eyes of his. “Got nothing to do with me,” he said.
“Look, I know that. Hell, she knows that. But mother hens protect the brood even if no one else hears the fox.”
Christie gave a curt nod.
“Talk to her, at least. She’s dying over there.”
Christie looked around and gave Petie a curt nod, stood up and walked back to the tiny corner table where she’d been waiting, too strung out even to pretend to sip at her beer. When he scraped over a chair, she flinched.
“Hey, Jim.”
“Petie.”
“Buy you another beer?”
“Nah. Schiffen said you had something to say to me, so I came over to hear it.”
“Yeah.” Petie shook a cigarette out of her pack and put it between her lips. Her hands were shaking so badly she put out four matches before Christie held out a disposable lighter. When she’d finished with it, Petie set it before him like an offering. “Listen. I probably made a mistake, saying what I did to you.”
“Yeah, you made a mistake.”
“I’m sorry—look, I’m sorry.”
Christie watched her with his bleached-out eyes.
“I forget sometimes that not everyone is bad,” she said.
“Yeah.”
Abruptly she leaned across the table and said, fast and low, “That trailer is a bad place; bad things happened there—the kind of things that make you think if you ever start screaming you’ll never be able to stop.” Petie’s voice sank until it was nearly inaudible. “I saw you coming out with Carissa and it was like it was happening all over again.” Petie drew a deep breath and went on. “Listen, I’m hoping you’ll come home. Rose is so angry with me.”
“I can’t.”
“Oh, why? I’ve told you how sorry—”
“Got nothing to do with you,” Christie said. “I signed on with the Gillian this morning. We’re taking her up to Kodiak on the tide tomorrow.”
“Can’t you meet the boat later, fly up there in a few days, maybe?”
“No. Look,” Christie said slowly. “What you said, what you thought I’d been doing with the girl—I used to think about it sometimes. I tried to keep her away from me, but she wouldn’t.” Petie met his eyes like a head-on collision.
“But you didn’t—”
“No,” he said. “I wouldn’t. But it’s better, me leaving.” Christie stood, stowing his lighter in his chest pocket and pulling out his wallet.
“You need money to get home?”
“No. Use it to call Rose. Use it to have her meet you up there for a couple of days. Use it to say goodbye.”
Christie gave her a curt nod, reseated his cap and walked out the door into the gathering twilight.
Petie slumped over th
e remains of her beer.
HOW’D IT go, princess?” Schiff said, pulling up a new chair. “You look like crap.”
“Thanks.”
“Yeah, well. Do you want another beer? Might do you good. Is he coming home?”
“No.”
Schiff ran his hand through his thin hair. “Jesus, princess. I’m sorry.”
“Shit,” Petie said.
“Yeah.” Schiff swirled the beer around at the bottom of his bottle.
“You want to go home?”
“I don’t know. Yeah, I guess.”
“Me neither,” Schiff said.
“What’s the worst thing about going home?”
“Carla,” Schiff said instantly. “Definitely Carla.”
“But she must love you,” Petie said.
Schiff gave her a look.
“No?”
“Hell, I don’t know, princess, with her it’s hard to tell. I don’t think she likes me very much. She yells a lot. She gives me the ugliest damn pair of boots you ever saw and then rags on me for not wearing them. Jesus I hate those boots.”
“Then why do you stay?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because it’s easier than leaving. I’ve been thinking about it more lately, though.”
“Staying?”
“Leaving.”
Petie looked at him in surprise. “Why?”
“I met somebody.”
“Oh.” Petie dropped her head and flushed. “Come on—there must be something good about home.”
“You’ll be there.”
Petie kept her head down.
“Well, you asked,” Schiff said. “What about you, anyway? What’s your worst thing?”
Petie blew out a long, slow whistle. “Shit. You mean besides the fact that I don’t have a job and my only friend may never speak to me again because I ran off her boyfriend who I unfairly accused of molesting her underage daughter? Gee, give me a minute to think.”
“She’s not your only friend,” Schiff said.
“What?”
“You said Rose was your only friend. She’s not.”
“Would you be talking about yourself?” Petie looked at him dead-on. “Because I can’t speak for you, but I’ve never wanted to do with a friend the things I’d like to do with you.”
“Now, there’s someplace I’d like to go.”
Petie stood. “Take it home with you, cowboy. It’ll give you something to think about while you’re driving.”
THEY SEPARATED, of course, at the Motel 6 parking lot in Portland, where Petie had left her car. She followed Schiff’s truck for a long time, but fell behind somewhere in the Coast Range. When she pulled into her own driveway just after daybreak, she nearly ran into Carla’s car. Even from the driveway she could hear Carla’s voice, high and piercing as a steam whistle.
“Don’t tell me you didn’t know. How the fuck could you not know? There wasn’t any meeting in Portland, Eddie. There was never any meeting in Portland. Schiff just rolled home, so she should be here any minute. You should ask her about it. Everyone knows about them but you. You’d know if you weren’t so goddamn stupid. Why do you think you have such a good job? So you’ll keep quiet about him screwing your wife. Jesus, if you haven’t figured that out by now you’re even stupider than I thought.”
Petie opened the front door. Eddie flinched but he did not look away. Petie closed the door behind her and set her purse and keys on the kitchen table without ever breaking eye contact with him.
“Hey, Petie,” he said slowly. “Look who’s here.”
“Yeah.”
“She said Schiff just got home, too.”
“He probably did. It was a long drive back from Anacortes.”
“How long have you been sleeping with my husband?” Carla demanded. “Look—”
Carla shrieked, “There was no fucking meeting with any fucking boss in Portland. I called. I know.”
“Go home, Carla.”
Carla took a step towards Petie and leveled a finger at her like a gun. “You’re a whore, a pervert. I used to hear about you, about things you did.”
“Go home,” Petie said.
“If you ever go near my husband again, if you so much as talk to him again, I’ll have Eddie fired so fast it’ll make your head spin.”
Petie wheeled around, bearing down on Carla Schiffen like a train wreck. “You stinking sack of shit,” she said softly. “You worthless piece of alcoholic trash. You know what the man was doing? He was helping me track down Jim Christie. Christie—you know him, don’t you? Rose’s boyfriend? You’ve probably hoisted more than a few with him at the Wayside between all those rounds of video poker. Or—I just thought of this—maybe you were sleeping with him? Tsk, tsk, Carla. Naughty girl, drinking and playing all day while hubby’s at work. Or, wait, could it be Roy? Sure, the guy who keeps the beer and booze flowing—you’d be perfect together, you being a drinker and all.”
Carla Schiffen’s mouth dropped open.
“Go home, Carla,” Petie said wearily. “Just get the fuck out of my house.”
“Bitch!” Carla shrieked, and bolted out the door into the first tender sunlight of the morning.
Eddie stood there.
Petie dropped into a chair and put her head in her hands.
“What the fuck?” Eddie said.
“Not now,” Petie whispered. “Please, not now.”
“No, now. You’ve been keeping things from me, Petie. I know you’ve been keeping things from me. I want to know what the fuck is going on around here.”
“Did Schiff tell you anything?”
“He didn’t tell me dick. He said Rose was in trouble and you’d gone somewhere to fix it. So I call Rose and she doesn’t know what the fuck I’m talking about, you going to fix something. She says Jim is gone, though. Next thing I know, Carla’s showing up here at five forty-five chewing my ass. I’m tired of it, Petie. I’m tired of your always being angry and mean to me. Huh? I deserve some respect. I’m working hard, I need to know I’m coming home to someone who’s not going to treat me bad.”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t come home anymore,” Petie said. “You know? Maybe you just shouldn’t come home.”
“Was she right?”
“Was who right?”
“Carla.”
“About which part?” Petie said.
“The part about Schiff.”
“No.”
“So you’re not sleeping with him?”
“I’m not sleeping with him. I have never slept with him.”
“Then what the fuck were you doing in Portland or Anacortes or wherever the hell you were?”
Petie closed her eyes. It seemed to her that she might spontaneously die, sitting right there at her kitchen table, Eula’s table. She was so tired that death didn’t even sound like a bad thing. The boys would wake up in less than half an hour.
“I had an argument with Christie. I found him at the trailer, Old Man’s trailer. I said some things I shouldn’t have, and he took off. That was two days ago. I tried to find him, and Schiff came up to help. I didn’t ask him to, he just did. We found Christie in Anacortes, but he wouldn’t come home. He signed on with the Gillian. They leave this morning for Kodiak. I couldn’t stop him. I couldn’t do a goddamn thing.” She began to cry, not Rose’s sad, pretty tears but caustic, bitter ones saved up for years.
Eddie walked back and forth, pleading. “Aw, quit it, Petie, huh? Nah, don’t do that now, it’s okay, huh? We’ll figure it out.”
“I can’t do it anymore, Eddie. I’m so tired. I’m just so goddamn tired.”
Eddie ran a hand through his hair. “What are you talking about, Pete? What—me, the boys? What?”
“Everything,” Petie whispered. “I’m talking about everything.”
Chapter 17
ROSE WAS shocked by how much thinner Gordon looked—thinner, more tired, and the Kaposi’s sarcoma lesion on his forehead stood out like blood on a fresh bandage. He saw her as soon as sh
e came in, waving her over to his booth. It was a warm spring morning at Souperior’s and there should have been some trace of festivity, of improving spirits, but somehow there wasn’t.
When she reached him Rose gave a one-armed hug and pressed her cheek to his. Her lips brushed his forehead unconsciously in a mother’s perpetual vigilance for fever, but he was cool. “Does it hurt?” she asked him, slipping into the seat across from him.
Gordon raised a hand and touched the livid patch. “This? No, it doesn’t hurt. You look like hell. Has something happened?” In Gordon’s eyes she saw love—love for her. How the dying could afford such generosity she couldn’t imagine. Her heart contracted for this gentle man who had shined a light into her unseen corners and coaxed from them such accomplishments.
“Rose?” he said.
Rose smiled a little. “Spring. Spring has happened.”
“Spring is a happy thing. You don’t look happy,” Gordon said.
“No. Jim’s gone.”
“Gone?”
“It happens every spring. He goes back to work. In Alaska.”
“You said he wouldn’t leave until March.”
“No. He and Petie got into an argument about Carissa. She accused him of molesting her.”
“You’re kidding.”
Rose sighed heavily. “It’s a long story. Petie’s father was a terrible man who molested her when she was younger. I didn’t know that until a couple of days ago. So she saw Jim and Carissa coming out of this abandoned trailer up in the woods—the one Petie had lived in with her father—and accused him of abusing Carissa. He disappeared less than an hour later. He left me a note. I never even saw him.”
Gordon shook his head. “Did he molest her?”
“No.”
“You’re sure? It sounds odd, his leaving like that.”
“It would be, in anyone else. But this is Jim Christie. He gets claustrophobic real easily and I guess maybe Carissa and I crowded him, even though we tried not to. When Petie said those things to him, I think all he heard was, It’s time to go. He wouldn’t do anything to hurt Carissa, he’s always so careful with her. And Carissa’s so upset, Gordon. She thinks this is all her fault, and I can’t think of what to say because in some ways it was her fault for pressing herself on him, and Petie’s fault for thinking something terrible must be going on instead of something innocent.”
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