“Yeah,” she lied. “I always check.”
“Then it belongs to someone else,” he admonished. “We’ll turn it in to the cashier when we leave.”
He held out his hand, palm up.
Reluctant to give him the quarter, she hesitated.
He rarely touched her. Contact gave him the creeps.
Fortunately, she held the coin in her normal hand. If it had been in the left, he would still have been able to take it, but then he wouldn’t have been able to eat lunch.
Pretending that she had come here to use the lavatory, she went through the door marked GALS.
Maintaining a similar pretense, Preston entered the men’s lavatory. He was grateful it wasn’t in use. He waited inside, near the door.
He wondered who she’d intended to phone. The police?
As soon as he heard her exit the women’s restroom, he returned to the hall, as well.
He led her back to the booth. If he had followed her, he would have had to watch her walk.
Lunch arrived immediately after they were seated.
Fish Face, the ugly waitress, had a mole on the side of her nose. He thought it looked like melanoma.
If it was melanoma and she remained unaware of it even for a week or so, her nose would eventually rot away. Surgery would leave her with a crater in the center of her face.
Maybe then, if the malignancy hadn’t gotten into her brain and killed her, maybe then she would at last do the right thing with a tailpipe or a gas oven, or a shotgun.
The food was pretty good.
As usual, he didn’t look at his companions’ mouths while they were eating. He focused on their eyes or looked slightly past them, studiously avoiding the sight of their tongues, teeth, lips, and masticating jaws.
Preston assumed that occasionally someone might look at his month while he chewed or at his throat as he swallowed, but he forced himself not to dwell on this. If he dared think much about it, he would have to eat in private.
During meals, he lived even more inside himself than he did at other times. Defensively.
This posed no problem for him, required no special effort. His major at Yale and then at Harvard, through his bachelor’s and master’s and doctoral degrees, had been philosophy. By nature, philosophers lived more inside themselves than did ordinary people.
Intellectuals in general, and philosophers in particular, needed the world less than the world needed them.
Throughout lunch, he upheld his end of a conversation with the Hole while he recalled Montana.
The sound of the boy’s neck snapping…
The way the terror in his eyes darkened into bleak resignation and then had clarified into peace…
The rare smell of the final fitful exhalation that produced the death rattle in the Gimp’s throat…
Preston left a thirty-percent tip, but he didn’t surrender the quarter to the cashier. He was certain that the Hand hadn’t found the money in the pay phone. The coin was his to keep, ethically.
To avoid the government-enforced blockade of eastern Nevada, where the FBI was officially searching for drug lords but was — in his opinion — probably covering up some UFO-related event, Preston turned north from Winnemucca, toward the state of Oregon, using Federal Highway 95, an undivided two-lane road.
Fifty-six miles inside Oregon, Highway 95 swung east toward Idaho. They crossed the Owyhee River, and then the state line.
By six o’clock, they arrived at a campground north of Boise, Idaho, where they hooked up to utilities.
Preston bought takeout for dinner. Mediocre Chinese this time.
The Black Hole loved rice. And though she was wired again, she was nevertheless still compos mentis enough to eat.
As usual, the Hole directed the conversation according to her interests. She required always to be the center of attention.
When she mentioned new design ideas for carving her daughter’s
deformed hand, he encouraged her. He found the subject of decorative mutilation stupid enough to be amusing — as long as he avoided looking at the girl’s twisted appendage.
In addition, he knew that this talk terrified the Hand, though she hid her fear well. Good. Fear might eventually burn away her delusion that she had any hope of a normal life.
She had chosen to thwart her mother by shrewdly playing along with this demented game. Listening to the Black Hole enthuse about going at her with scalpels, however, she might begin to realize that she had not been born to win any game, least of all this one.
She had come out of her mother broken, imperfect. She was a loser from the moment that the physician slapped her butt to start her breathing instead of mercifully, discreetly smothering her.
When the time arrived for him to take this girl into the forest, perhaps she would have come to the conclusion that death was best for her. She should choose death before her mother could carve her. Because sooner or later, her mother would.
Death was her only possible deliverance. Otherwise, she would have to endure more years as an outsider. Life could hold nothing but disappointment for someone so damaged as she.
Of course, Preston didn’t want her to be entirely pliable and eager to die. A measure of resistance made for memories.
Dinner finished, leaving the Hand to clean the table, he and the Hole took evening showers, separately, and retired to the bedroom. Eventually, reading In Watermelon Sugar, the Hole passed out. Preston wanted to use her. But he couldn’t discern whether she’d been hammered by drugs into deep unconsciousness or whether she was just sleeping soundly.
If she were merely sleeping, she might awaken in the middle of the action. Her awareness would ruin his mood.
Waking, she would be enthusiastic. She knew that the deal they had made didn’t permit her active participation in physical intimacy. Yet she would be enthusiastic nonetheless.
The deal: The Hole received everything that she needed in return for this one thing that Preston wanted.
He was mildly nauseated by the thought of her enthusiasm, her intimate bodily participation. He had no desire to witness the functions of anyone.
And he was loath to be observed.
When suffering from a head cold, he unfailingly excused himself to blow his nose in private. He didn’t want anyone to hear his mucus draining.
Consequently, the prospect of having an orgasm in the presence of an interested partner was distressing if not unthinkable.
Discretion was underrated in contemporary society.
Uncertain as to the nature and reliability of the Hole’s current state of unconsciousness, he turned off the light and settled on his own side of the bed.
He contemplated the babies that she would bring into the world. Little twisted wizards. Ethical dilemmas awaiting firm resolutions.
SUNDAY: BOISE TO NUN’S LAKE. Three hundred fifty-one miles. More-demanding terrain than what Nevada had offered.
Usually he didn’t hit the road until nine or ten o’clock, with the f Black Hole still abed, the Hand awake. Although they were seeking a close encounter, their mission wasn’t as urgent as it was dramatic.
This morning, however, he hauled the Prevost out of Twin Falls at 6:15 A.M.
Already the Hand was dressed, eating a granola bar.
He wondered if she had discovered that all the knives and sharp utensils had been removed from the galley.
He remained convinced that she lacked the guts to stab him in the back while he drove the motor home. In fact he didn’t believe that she would prove capable of making a serious effort to defend herself when the two of them were alone in the moment of judgment.
Nevertheless, he was a careful man.
