dark.”
“Thanks. Look, I know—” A crackling dead tone that made his ears buzz cut him off suddenly, and he hung up. His dad clearly had at the other end.
It was a hot day and the booth was like a sauna. He pushed the door open, the squeal of its hinges loud in the quiet afternoon, and stood by the roadside. He guessed he’d been lucky the phone had worked at all. Despite the heat and the still air, he wasn’t thirsty. He should have been – it felt like he’d been walking all day – but his mouth was moist. He wondered about the time and glanced down at his wrist, but his ever-dependable Timex wasn’t there, just the tan line, built up nicely on the golf course, outlining its ghost.
No watch, no phone, and no wallet. Thank God for Dad. Thank God for the days of actually remembering numbers instead of storing them into BlackBerrys or iPhones or whatever the next big thing was. He looked back at that empty space on his wrist. He never took his watch off.
A short burst of wind gusted from across the street and he looked up. Although the sun was still relatively high in the desert sky, dark shadows were stretching out lazily between the tired, abandoned buildings whose glass eyes glinted at him. He hadn’t seen a town sign on his walk in, and he wondered if maybe it had been blown away in a sand storm. A lot of the road had been hidden by dust blasted across it and there had been no tyre tracks at all that he could recall.
The dead buildings were still in relatively good condition. Had this place been a salt mining outpost? It might not be the largest of towns but even from where he was, on the other side of the wide road, he could make out streets that went quite far back, and he was sure that one of those signs read “Diner”, although his eyesight wasn’t what it used to be. It was a garish shopfront, at any rate, with what looked like a Betty Boop-style cartoon woman running down one side. Even under the thick layer of filth her red dress was visible.
His eyes ran over the outlines of each store and house. There was a lot of dirt. The sidewalks were lost. Most of the buildings were a uniform brown as if they really had grown out of the desert earth rather than been built, in different-coloured wooden facades, by the hand of man. The winds must blow strong through here to get that much grime embedded. Either that or the town had been empty for so long that the sand had simply claimed it, inch by inch.
The sun beat on the back of his neck as he squinted. He’d burn if he wasn’t careful. He was probably burned already. Some of those shadows across the way were really quite dark. It might be cooler over there, he decided. He’d still be able to see the road and he wouldn’t burn. He glanced up. The sun had moved another few inches across its playground of the sky. How long had he been looking at the ghost town? No more than ten minutes, surely? He glanced down at the space on his wrist with mild irritation. He never took his watch off. It bothered him that he wasn’t wearing it.
A breeze gusted sand across his shoes and he took the first step on to the road. Something scurried in the shadows on the other side. He paused, suddenly tense. What had that been? A piece of garbage, perhaps? Probably a rodent of some kind. He looked again at the buildings that stared back at him from within their strange shadows. Out here, so far from any big city, who knew what the town was now home to? Rats and probably worse. He didn’t know much about the desert. What lived out here anyway?
He took a step backwards and was sure he heard the wind moan in disappointment as it slashed its way through the streets opposite. At least he hoped it was the wind. He almost laughed. He wasn’t a child to be scared by dark shadows and the things that might live in them, but for a moment it had seemed as if those dark patches had stretched out suddenly towards him, as if they could grab him back. It was ridiculous, he chided himself. Simply a trick of the eyes.
Still, he thought, looking up at the windows, he was plenty glad he wasn’t a boy any more. There was definitely something creepy about this place. Something flashed within the small frame of a window on the darker side of the road. He frowned and his mouth dropped open slightly. Whatever had been there was now gone, but he was sure he’d seen someone in one of the upstairs rooms of the closest building. Just for the briefest moment. Had that been sunlight reflecting or had something really been clawing at the windows? A figure? Trying to get out? Was someone really in there?
“Hey.”
The voice startled him and he whirled round, going over on his ankle as he did so. Pain flared up his leg. The figure in the window was forgotten. He hobbled back to the sidewalk.
“Hey,” he said. “You made me jump. I didn’t think there was anyone out here.” He smiled and held out his hand. “Lee Moseby.”
The woman stared back at him for a moment, her brow furrowed. She was sweating under her pancake foundation and it didn’t make for a good look on a woman her age.
“It’s hot,” she said. She didn’t smile, and nor did she shake Lee’s hand. That made him feel less sorry for his unkind thought. Her clothes were dusty, just as his were, but her blouse and skirt looked more uncomfortable than his chinos and golf shirt, and her high heels must have been a bitch to walk in if she’d come to town the same way he had. Weird how he hadn’t seen her behind him. Just how long had he been here?
“Do you have the time?” he asked.
She shook her head and then they both looked up at the sky. The sun had moved further round and Lee realized they were now in the haze of the late-afternoon.
“I wondered if you had a quarter,” she asked, and then nodded at the booth. “For the phone. I need to call someone.” She chewed her lip and the warm red lipstick stuck to her teeth. “Aren’t you hot?” she asked. “Why ain’t you sweating?”
“Just must have got used to it,” Lee said. “I’ve been here a while.”
“A quarter?” she asked again.
“Sorry.” Lee shrugged and pulled his pockets out. “I don’t even have a dime.” He wondered why he’d made the ridiculous gesture. Never once in all his years had he actually turned the pockets of his pants out. But then, he realized, as he looked down at the fabric, it was rare that his pockets weren’t full. Change, keys, receipts, all the usual bric-a-brac of life. “But the phone works,” he said. “Call collect. That’s what I did.”
“You got someone coming to get you?” Her heavy face lit up slightly, and she pushed a wayward curl away from her face. She had that kind of over-styled and sprayed hair that was common amongst the older southern belles.
“Yeah,” he said. “My dad.” He thought he should feel embarrassed about that, but somehow he didn’t. “I knew his number,” he added.
“Uh-uh,” she said. She wasn’t ready to smile at him yet, but the frown had at least abated slightly. She looked past him at the town. “I guess I’ll try that. I know my folks’ number too. And my sister’s.” She turned and wiggled on her dusty heels to the phone box. “And Adele’s, but I can’t see that bitch getting off her fat ass and coming all the way out here to get me.”
She disappeared inside and Lee decided she was talking as much to herself as to him. He rubbed the back of his neck and found it was cool, not burned at all. Despite the way the nameless woman was sweating, he hadn’t found the heat overbearing during the course of the day and he still wasn’t thirsty.
With his back to the phone booth, he walked to the crossroads and peered down the road. It was empty. Surely his dad would be here soon. In the distant shimmer he couldn’t see any more walkers headed this way. Probably a good thing, he decided. He wouldn’t want to be waiting out here for a ride when it had gotten dark.
He found a boulder and squatted down on it. His knees rose up almost to his chin, so he spread his legs a little wider and rested his arms on them. He felt like a cowboy. His boots, dusty and scuffed, looked like cowboy’s boots. He smiled again, momentarily happy. His irritation at the lack of a watch disappeared. His dad would get here eventually, he was reliable like that, and sitting in the sunshine wasn’t such a bad way to spend a lazy afternoon. He stared at the ground between his feet for so long he could almost make out each grain of sand that made up the earth. Some were dull and others shone like diamonds. He picked up a handful and let it run between his fingers. It felt good.
Eventually, she came out of the booth. He’d been so lost in his study of everything and nothing that he’d almost forgotten she was there. When he got to his feet, his legs were stiff. The air had cooled slightly. The woman, however, was still sweating.
“No one was home,” she said. “Can you believe that? Not even Adele, and she’s always at home watching TV.”
“Did you dial the right numbers?” Lee asked. He wasn’t sure what else to say. She was frowning again, sharp
