indulgent whim, when it deserved to be dignified with “have to” because it was a job. “Minnesota,” he said. “Up north of Minneapolis.” He hurried to spare himself the annoyance she would cause with her next couple of questions. “We’d be gone for a while, probably at least two weeks, and maybe a month. I’m driving up.”
She stared at him and tiny worry lines appeared on her forehead and beside her eyes. He realized it had occurred to her that maybe he was planning to take her somewhere and kill her. The replacement tarp she had been fearing to see on the kitchen floor wouldn’t be necessary if he took her out in some woods.
He said, “It’s a job that I got through Tracy. We drive up, I do it, and we drive home. It’s a long trip, pretty dull. If you don’t want to come, don’t do it for me.”
The lines disappeared, and her color seemed to return. “I want to,” she said. “I do. I like to go places, and I’ve never been up there.” She was suddenly animated. “I’m so excited.” She hurried to the closet and started picking hangers off the rod and putting them back. “I don’t know what to bring.”
“You don’t want a lot of luggage,” he said. “A couple of pairs of jeans, a couple of sweatshirts, sneakers . . .” He relented. “Maybe one nice outfit. Minneapolis and St. Paul are kind of big, so we may be able to go out a little to good restaurants.”
Mae was a person who could actually be seen in the act of thinking. She got through it like a person feeling a pain passing: a slight knitting of the brows, then it was over. Now it was different. She snatched a couple of hangers, threw them on the bed, went to the dresser, pulled a few items from different drawers as she was talking. “I’ll be ready in about fifteen minutes, if we need to leave right away. If we don’t, I’d like to trim your hair and touch up the highlights a little first.” She paused. “Of course, I can do that when we get there, but if you’re working, you probably want to look as good as you can, right? I mean, as different from the way you used to look.” She didn’t wait for an answer, but jumped to the next thought. “I should tell Tracy that I’m going. We should leave a light on in the apartment, and pull the shades down. Maybe the bathroom light, so it’s dim, like a night-light, and you can’t see it from outside in the day. I’ll just take this dress. If you like this dress?” She held it up on the hanger in front of her body.
Varney decided to defend his concentration from her scattered musings by dispatching all of the questions at once. “The dress will be fine. I’ll leave the bathroom light on. Tracy knows. Bring the hair stuff, and you can do me in a hotel on the way. I’d like to get going.”
He waited until she was in the bathroom before he closed and latched his suitcase, then lifted a second one to the bed and opened it. This one contained his equipment. There were a few pairs of gloves, some hats and shoes, some locksmith’s skeleton keys, a couple of sets of picks, a slim-jim for pulling car-door locks, some Mag- lites in different sizes, three nine-millimeter pistols with spare ammunition magazines, a commando knife with a guttered blade and a nearly flat handle. He added his big envelope to the suitcase, and closed it.
He changed into a comfortable pair of khaki pants, some good, casual shoes, and a blue oxford shirt, pulled down the window shade, and waited. A few minutes later, Mae had filled her small bag and looked at him anxiously.
“Do I look all right?”
“You know you do,” he said. “Hair, makeup, clothes, all that. It’s what you do for a living.” Then he frowned. “That reminds me. Where I’m going now, that’s what I do for a living. If you’re going, you’ll want to listen hard to what I say.”
“I will,” said Mae. “I promise.”
“Start now. Once we leave here, you don’t call anybody on the phone, or anything like that. You don’t strike up conversations with people in restaurants or hotels. What you want more than anything is not to be noticed or remembered. A man or woman traveling alone might get noticed—for different reasons, maybe—but if they’re traveling together, they’re just a couple. The man isn’t dangerous and the woman isn’t available, so people won’t look hard to figure those things out. So you stick close to me.”
She nodded, maybe a little too energetically. He wasn’t sure she really had taken it in and understood. “I know that,” she said. “I’m ready.” He picked up their suitcases and let her open and close the doors for him.
Varney drove out of town with a feeling that was close to joy. He was on the road, with a pretty woman at his side. She was not flashy enough to make him feel visible, but she was pleasant to look at. He knew she probably would have gotten to chattering again if she had been smart enough to realize that she was important to him, that she was the best part of his disguise. He had told her, in case it occurred to her later, but she didn’t seem to have absorbed the full meaning of it.
She was the guarantee that when men looked, they would only let their eyes pass over him on the way to her. If they heard later that somebody had been killed, they would not remember Varney as a solitary young man who looked capable of doing someone harm. They might not remember him clearly at all. He was just another family man on his way somewhere with his wife. She could do some of the driving later, after he got tired. He might even use her to go into motel offices to rent rooms, or into fast-food places to get food, so he could remain completely invisible.
The most important feeling Varney had was elation that he had broken out. He had been like a man in a hospital, his mind like a doctor delivering lectures to him every day that being there was the only thing he could do for the present, while the rest of him was screaming for release. That was over now. He had come away rested and sharp, with an envelope full of money, a clean, honest car, untraceable guns, a companion that he was confident would follow his orders. And somebody had hired him to do what he had always done better than anybody else.
He drove for three hours without stopping, without even having to slow the car for any reason except to keep from speeding. His car sliced between the gatherings of cars ahead, then occasionally edged to the left lane to pass the big box of a tractor-trailer rig and moved back into the right. Much of the time, the road was flat and straight as a surveyor could make it. When there were curves, they were gradual, made without haste, as a boat moves from one compass heading to another.
At the end of the three hours, Mae said, “I’d like to pee, if you can stop someplace,” and he realized that she must have set this time for herself in advance, waiting for a while and hoping he would spontaneously think of stopping, then telling herself she could wait, that she wouldn’t say anything until it got to be three hours.
“Okay,” he said. “Next exit.”
He pulled off the interstate and filled the car’s tank at a gas station while she went inside and got the key to the ladies’ room. He pulled the car away from the pump and parked, went to the men’s room, then came back and waited. When she came out, he saw her look at the gas pump, then whirl her head around more quickly toward him, an abrupt, unconsidered movement. He could tell that he had scared her. She had come out and seen that the car was no longer where she’d left it, and she had panicked, afraid he had stranded her. He felt a strong distaste. She was weak and stupid, like a child, somebody with all sorts of needs that he would have to take into account.
When she got to the car, she shocked him again. It was as though it had been normal. She wasn’t even embarrassed. “There you are,” she said with a smile. “I was afraid you’d gotten impatient and left me here. Want me to drive for a while?” He nodded, got into the passenger seat, and watched her closely while she drove out onto the entrance ramp and moved into the line of cars. He decided she was competent enough for this and began to relax. He leaned back in the seat and closed his eyes.
“Do you like to travel?”
He opened his eyes, astounded that she had not understood that he wasn’t interested in talking.
“I do,” she continued. “It’s one of my favorite things. I just love all of it. Being on the open road, packing, hotels. I never got much chance to do it.”
He controlled himself and asked the question. “Why is that?”
“Oh,” she said, and looked at him uncomfortably. “Just the way things worked out. My parents never seemed to think of it. I got married young, and my husband always said we’d do it, but there was never any money. He was just saying that, because he was like my parents: like a stone that just stays wherever it’s dropped, and doesn’t move an inch unless it’s kicked or something. As far as he would go was saying he would do it, which was more than my parents would do, I guess. They would just say it was stupid. He would lie to me so I wouldn’t try to convince him. If he said yes, but that there’s no money, then I couldn’t say anything, just wait until there was more money. There never was enough. Then that was over, and he was gone, but that meant I had even less money.” She shrugged. “I was doing hair and nails and makeovers, and people had to have regular appointments, so if I went away, then I knew that when I got back, they would have found somebody else. It never worked out.” He unhooked his seat belt, and she looked alarmed. “What are you doing?”
