. . and he was looking right back.'
Kinnell grinned and kissed the tip of her nose. 'You've got quite an imagination yourself, sweetheart.'
'Of course, it runs in the family. Are you sure you don't want to use the facility again before you go?'
He shook his head. 'That's not why I stop, anyway, not really.'
'Oh? Why do you?'
He grinned. 'Because you know who's being naughty and who's being nice. And you're not afraid to share what you know.'
'Go on, get going,' she said, pushing at his shoulder but clearly pleased. 'If I were you, I'd want to get home quick. I wouldn't want that nasty guy riding along behind me in the dark, even in the trunk. I mean, did you see his teeth? Ag!'
He got on the turnpike, trading scenery for speed, and made it as far as the Gray service area before deciding to have another look at the picture. Some of his aunt's unease had transmitted itself to him like a germ, but he didn't think that was really the problem. The. problem was his perception that the picture had changed.
The service area featured the usual gourmet chow - burgers by Roy Rogers, cones by TCBY - and had a small, littered picnic and dogwalking area at the rear. Kinnell parked next to a van with Missouri plates, drew in a deep breath, let it out. He'd driven to Boston in order to kill some plot gremlins in the new book, which was pretty ironic. He'd spent the ride down working out what he'd say on the panel if certain tough questions were tossed at him, but none had been-once they'd found out he didn't know where he got his ideas, and yes, he did sometimes scare himself, they'd only wanted to know how you got an agent.
And now, heading back, he couldn't think of anything but the damned picture.
Had it changed? If it had, if the blond kid's arm had moved enough so he, Kinnell, could read a tattoo which had been partly hidden before, then he could write a column for one of Sally's magazines. Hell, a fourpart series. If, on the other hand, it wasn't changing, then ... what? He was suffering a hallucination? Having a breakdown? That was crap. His life was pretty much in order, and he felt good. Had, anyway, until his fascination with the picture had begun to waver into something else, something darker.
'Ah, fuck, you just saw it wrong the first time,' he said out loud as he got out of the car. Well, maybe. Maybe. It wouldn't be the first time his head had screwed with his perceptions. That was also a part of what he did. Sometimes his imagination got a little ... well ...
'Feisty,' Kinnell said, and opened the trunk. He took the picture out of the trunk and looked at it, and it was during the space of the ten seconds when he looked at it without remembering to breathe that he became authentically afraid of the thing, afraid the way you were afraid of a sudden dry rattle in the bushes, afraid the way you were when you saw an insect that would probably sting if you provoked it.
The blond driver was grinning insanely at him now-yes, at him, Kinnell was sure of it-with those filed cannibal- teeth exposed all the way to the gumlines. His eyes simultaneously glared and laughed. And the Tobin Bridge was gone. So was the Boston skyline. So was the sunset. It was almost dark in the painting now, the car and its wild rider illuminated by a single streetlamp that ran a buttery glow across the road and the car's chrome. It looked to Kinnell as if the car (he was pretty sure it was a Grand Am) was on the edge of a small town on Route 1, and he was pretty sure he knew what town it was-he had driven through it himself only a few hours ago.
'Rosewood,' he muttered. 'That's Rosewood. I'm pretty sure.'
The Road Virus was heading north, all right, coming up Route 1 just as he had. The blond's left arm was still cocked out the window, but it had rotated enough back toward its original position so that Kinnell could no longer see the tattoo. But he knew it was there, didn't he? Yes, you bet.
The blond kid looked like a Metallica fan who had escaped from a mental asylum for the criminally insane.
'Jesus,' Kinnell whispered, and the word seemed to come from someplace else, not from him. The strength suddenly ran out of his body, ran out like water from a bucket with a hole in the bottom, and he sat down heavily on the curb separating the parking lot from the dog-walking zone. He suddenly understood that this was the truth he'd missed in all his fiction, this was how people really reacted when they came face-to-face with something which made no rational sense. You felt as if you were bleeding to death, only inside your head.
'No wonder the guy who painted it killed himself,' he croaked, still staring at the picture, at the ferocious grin, at the eyes that were both shrewd and stupid.
There was a note pinned to his shirt, Mrs. Diment had said. 'I can't stand what's happening to me. ' Isn't that awful, Mr. Kinnell?
Yes, it was awful, all right.
Really awful.
He got up, gripping the picture by its top, then strode across the dog-walking area. He kept his eyes trained strictly in front of him, looking for canine land mines. He did not look down at the picture. His legs felt trembly and untrustworthy, but they seemed to support him all right. just ahead, close to the belt of trees at the rear of the service area, was a pretty young thing in white shorts and a red halter. She was walking a cocker spaniel. She began to smile at Kinnell, then saw something in his face that straightened her lips out in a hurry. She headed left, and fast. The cocker didn't want to go that fast so she dragged it, coughing, in her wake.
The scrubby pines behind the service area sloped down to a boggy area that stank of plant and animal decomposition. The carpet of pine needles was a road litter fallout zone: burger wrappers, paper soft drink cups, TCBY napkins, beer cans, empty wine-cooler bottles, cigarette butts. He saw a used condom lying like a dead snail next to a torn pair of panties with the word TUESDAY stitched on them in cursive girly-girl script.
Now that he was here, he chanced another look down at the picture. He steeled himself for further changes even for the possibility that the painting would be in motion, like a movie in a frame - but there was none. There didn't have to be, Kinnell realized; the blond kid's face was enough. That stone-crazy grin. Those pointed teeth. The face said, Hey, old man, guess what? I'm done fucking with civilization. I'm a representative of the real generation X, the next millennium is tight here behind the wheel of this fine, high-steppin' mo-sheen.
Aunt Trudy's initial reaction to the painting had been to advise Kinnell that he should throw it into the Saco River. Auntie had been right. The Saco was now almost twenty miles behind him, but . .
'This'll do,' he said. 'I think this'll do just fine.'
