“Just watch the road,” he muttered. He was fast and flexible from his years of martial arts training, and he easily rolled over his seat into the back of the car. He looked over her shoulder at the windshield. “Keep heading north for a couple of hours while I get some sleep.” He lay on the back seat and closed his eyes.
“Okay.”
He could hear in her voice a quiet, sad resignation. She sounded as though she was being punished. He supposed that she must know he was back here to escape her meaningless, empty talk. He was aware that there was a range of feelings he could select from and she would accept. He could be sympathetic, curious, apologetic, or even angry. He knew that people felt those things and expected him to act as though he felt them too, and he knew how to do it: how his voice should be modulated, how his face should look. But he did not feel any of them. Sometimes he imitated emotions, practiced them as he practiced his other skills, because they were useful. Right now he didn’t need the practice, and he didn’t need to know anything she was saying, and didn’t need to manipulate her into doing anything. He closed his eyes and let the steady hum of the tires on the pavement below his head soothe him and put him to sleep.
He awoke a couple of hours later, and she was still driving steadily. She went a little bit slower than he had, but she was careful and methodical and had put them a good hundred and thirty miles on. He said, “How are you holding up?”
“Fine,” she answered. “Just fine. But I’m not sorry you woke up just now. I’d like to stop again, if you don’t mind.”
“No,” said Varney. “I’m hungry.”
They parked at a truck stop, went inside, and sat in a big booth with red vinyl seats and a Formica table. Varney ordered a hamburger, then took it out of the bun, cut it up, and ate it with the garnish of lettuce, tomato, and pickle. Mae asked, “Why do you do that? If you’re worried about gaining weight, the milk and meat both have fat in them.”
He said, “I eat what I need. I need protein for my muscles. Milk builds bones. Everybody needs plants.”
“Why did you ask me to come?”
He stopped chewing and looked up. Her eyes were in his, searching for something. He swallowed. “I like having you around. I thought you might want to get out.”
“Why don’t you like to talk to me?”
“I never said that.”
“You never said anything much,” she said. “We’ve been together for three months. You never even look at me, except at night, naked. And then you don’t talk.”
“I look at you other times,” he said. He put on a false expression of apologetic concern that he had once seen on a man trying to keep his wife from embarrassing him with a fight in public. “I’ve had a lot on my mind,” he said quietly. It occurred to him that it sounded right because the man had said exactly those words. He tried to remember what else the man had said, but couldn’t. “I’m not much of a talker,” he said. “I think about you a lot, though.” He considered saying he would talk more, but it would be like breaking a dam. She would spend the rest of the trip yapping in his ear like a little terrier, and he would have to dream up things to say in return, as though he wanted to keep her talking.
“You never talk about yourself, or where you came from, or anything.”
He was astounded. It was like inviting him to step off the top of a building, and she should be smart enough to know that. “None of that stuff is very pleasant. If it had been any good, I’d probably still be there, having a good time. Instead, I got out as soon as I could.”
“You don’t have to tell me, if it makes you sad.” She reached under the table and gripped his forearm. “I was doing a lot of thinking while I was driving. Kind of catching up, because I didn’t have any time to think before we left. I was thinking that maybe we could use this trip the way some married people do, to make a fresh start, maybe make everything new again.”
He had no choice now. His hand was still clenched in a fist on his thigh. He opened it and put it over hers, then watched her look of discomfort turn into a smile. He said, “I think that’s a good idea.”
She gave his hand a quick squeeze and released it, but as she looked at her plate the smile lingered on her lips.
When they had finished eating, Varney pulled the car to the gas pumps at the end of the lot and refilled the tank. Mae didn’t begin again until he had gotten into the driver’s seat and begun to drive back to the highway. She said, “We didn’t really need gas. We’d only gone about a hundred and fifty miles.”
He resisted the impulse to shut her up. He said gently, “Remember what we said before we left?”
“I think so.”
“This is a business trip. Sometimes in my business some small thing goes wrong, and you’ve got to get away as fast and as far as you can. You don’t know in advance when that’s going to happen, or you wouldn’t let it happen. If we went a hundred and fifty miles, we used a hundred and fifty miles’ worth of gas, right?”
“Well, sure, but the tank holds—”
“It doesn’t matter what it holds,” he interrupted. “It had a hundred and fifty miles less in it than it could have. If things go wrong, you’ll be real glad to be able to get an extra hundred and fifty miles away from it before you have to stop and show your face or run out of gas. It’s a problem that never happened, because I solved it ahead of time. It’s one more thing we won’t have on our minds to distract us.”
She looked at him with appreciation. “I’m sorry.”
“What?” She had surprised him again.
“I’m sorry,” she repeated. “That was what you meant when we were leaving. That you wanted me to do what you told me to, no questions asked. I was just afraid that if you got gas now, then you wouldn’t want to stop again for a really, really long time.”
“If that was what you meant, you should have said it,” he muttered. He was silent for a mile, then remembered that he had determined to keep her happy, or at least pliable, for the duration of the trip. “Anytime you feel like stopping, just let me know.” He turned to look at her, to let her see the benevolent expression he had placed on his features. “I’ll be happy to stop. We should be enjoying this.”
That night they stopped at a motel in Wisconsin. Mae took a hot bubble bath, then asked him to get in, and let him soak for a long time. Then she had him lie on the bed so she could give him a massage that was long, elaborate, and led seamlessly into sex. When it was over and Varney was lying on the bed listening to Mae’s breathing settling into the soft, slow cadence that meant she was asleep, he looked back on the day. Talking to her in exchange for peace and all the extra attention had not been a bad bargain. But he would have to be vigilant. Women didn’t seem to care much about sex. They tolerated it to get things, and it was simple human nature that when they had traded any kind of service for something, they felt entitled to it. She would probably want more and more talk.
The next morning after his exercises, they took showers and had breakfast, then drove on. She was bursting with chatter about everything they passed, even calling out the license plates for different states. He answered direct questions and grunted now and then to show he had heard, and that seemed to satisfy her. By nightfall, they were in Minneapolis. He had her be the one to check them into a big hotel downtown. Then he left her in the room while he used the exercise machines and went for a swim in the indoor pool.
They ate in the hotel restaurant and then went back upstairs. She didn’t seem surprised when he took off the coat and tie he had been wearing, but when he began to put on jeans and sneakers, she said, “Do we have to leave already?”
He shook his head. “You don’t have to do anything. I’m driving up north to take a look around.”
“At night?”
He turned and leveled his eyes on her, without answering.
“I did it again,” she said. “I didn’t mean to.”
He said, “It’s easy, and it’s safe. This way I can look at the town where he lives, see where the police station is, what the traffic is like at night, maybe drive past his house. They don’t move the roads when the sun goes down, but people won’t get as much chance to look at me.”
She jumped up from the bed. “Can I go?” She saw his frown, and said quickly, “If I drive, you could get a better look. If there are people, you could even duck down, and they’d never have a chance to see you.” She hesitated. “You’re not going to kill him tonight, are you?”
“No,” he admitted. “Put on jeans and we’ll go.”
