Dan said, 'I don't wanna kill anybody, that's not where I'm at. I
'Well, it's one or the other,' Grofield said. 'Stashing him with me or anybody else is a bad idea. What if he gets loose while you're gone, kills me and Mary, and when you come back he's laying for you?'
'You'd watch him better than that.'
'Would I? Forget it, Dan. Kill him or let him go. Believe him about these old men and their tunnel or don't believe him.'
'I'll have to think about it,' Dan said grumpily.
Grofield said, 'Would you drive me back? I'm getting cold in these wet clothes.'
'Sure.' Dan nudged Myers with his foot. 'Back in the trunk.'
'Let me sit in the back seat,' Myers said. There was a whine in his voice now. 'I won't do anything, just let me sit in the back seat.'
'The only reason I'm not hitting you right now,' Dan told him, 'is because my friend doesn't like to watch that kind of thing. But don't give me a lot of aggravation to remember later on, when he's gone, or I'll make you very unhappy. Now get back in the trunk.'
Myers struggled up again, and back into the trunk. Grofield wanted to go sit in the car, but he thought he should stick around and watch until Myers was tucked away. Dan might start punching and kicking out of irritation and frustration.
Finally Myers was in, lying on his side in that cramped fetal-like position, and Dan slammed the lid again. 'Come on, I'll take you home.'
They got in the car, and Grofield gave directions, and they started up.
Driving, Dan said, 'I don't know what to do.'
'Let him go,' Grofield said. 'The aggravation isn't worth it.'
'I'll have to think about it.'
4
Mary called, 'Dinner!'
Grofield was on the platform containing the bedroom set, changing his clothes again. When Dan had dropped him off, he'd changed out of the wet stuff into different work clothes, and had gone back to washing flats, which meant he'd immediately gotten all wet again. But he didn't mind it so much when he was moving around and in sunlight. He'd gotten most of them finished by the time Mary came home from her job at the supermarket, her arms full of groceries, some of which she'd paid for, and he'd gone ahead and done the last two flats before coming in to clean up and change. The sun was going down, it was getting chillier, and he was just as glad to switch again to dry clothes.
The bedroom set had two walls, made of flats, with the double bed against one and the mirrored dresser against the other. An armless wooden kitchen chair stood out in limbo at the wall-less corner of the platform, and mismatched end tables with mismatched bedside lamps flanked the bed, completing the furnishings. Extension cords ran from the lamps back into the wings and plugged in at the lightboard.
Dressed again, Grofield stepped down from the platform and crossed from stage left to stage right. The central part of the stage, the main playing area, was done as a living room, but only with the furniture, without any flats to give the illusion of walls and doors and windows, so that behind the furniture there was only space, filled with odd pieces of stage junk, and then the rear wall of the barn. As for the living room set, a wide, low maroon mohair sofa was exactly in the middle of the stage, facing the audience, on an old faded imitation Persian rug. End tables flanked it, with a table lamp on the left and a floor lamp on the right. A black leather chair, sideways to the audience, was stage left of the sofa. A lone bookcase, eight feet high and three feet wide, stood in naked solitude about six feet back from the black leather chair. Stage right of the sofa, set back a ways, was a rocking chair, and beside it a drum table holding a fake telephone.
Grofield crossed now behind all this furniture, and stepped up on a platform on the other side that contained a dining room set. Two walls again, one with a window that looked out on the rear wall of the barn. An old but sturdy maple dining room table and four chairs, two of them matching the table and the other two odd strays. A maple bureau from some forgotten bedroom suite was standing against the windowless wall; it was in the drawers of this bureau that Mary kept their dishes and silverware and tablecloths.
And candles. Two were burning on the table now, which Mary had already set. She wasn't in sight, and as Grofield stepped up on the platform the stage lights dimmed, lowering till the candlelight became obvious on the table. Grofield bent and peered past a side drapery backstage; Mary was at the lightboard, just releasing the master lever. 'Be right there,' she called, and waved to him, and went off to the star's dressing room to get dinner off the hotplates.
Grofield sat down at his place. He was facing the audience now. The house lights were out, so all he could see was the darkness out there beyond the living room set. It was a comforting darkness, somehow, warm and pleasant, and he smiled at it. This hopeless theater was more home than anyplace else he'd ever lived.
Mary came out with dinner; meat loaf and one vegetable, broccoli from the supermarket freezer. She was on the small side, neat and compact, and looked like the heroine of a thirties musical. Grofield was out of his mind for her.
While Grofield served meat loaf and broccoli onto their plates, she went off again, this time to the refrigerator in the green room, and brought back a half-bottle of moselle; at a dollar per half bottle, it was one luxury they could go on affording.
During dinner, she said, 'Who was it came to see you today? Anybody I should know about?' She knew about his other career, he'd met her in the course of a robbery four years ago, but they didn't often go into the details together.
Grofield swallowed meat loaf and said, 'How do you know somebody came to see me?'
'Mrs. Brady told me.' That was the tenant in the farmhouse across the road. 'She said you went for a ride with him. In a Plymouth. And it was from Texas.'
