But she did all the things that made her bad, that made her mother furious and embarrassed. One night, after she’d been caught coming home at two in the morning, her panicked mother had nearly slapped her. You think you’re so damned smart, her mother had shouted in her face. What would you do if you ever saw real trouble?
Now, standing on the side of a lonely road far from home, with the man’s taillights vanishing in the distance, those words came back. What would you do if you ever saw real trouble?
The August sky was turning red, the lowering sun stinging her eyes. She wore a sleeveless turquoise top, jeans with a white and silver belt, and tennis shoes. She hefted her bag on her shoulder and looked up at the motel sign. It was blue and yellow, the words SUN DOWN in the classic old-style kind of letters you saw from the fifties and sixties. Underneath that were neon letters that probably lit up at night: VACANCY. CABLE TV!
Behind the sign was a motel laid out in an L shape, the main thrust leading away from the road, the foot of the L running parallel to it. It had an overhang and a concrete walkway, the room doors lined up in the open air. An unremarkable place decorated in dark brown and dirty cream, the kind of place people drove by unless they were desperate to sleep. At the joint of the L was a set of stairs leading to the upper level. There was only one car in the parking lot, parked next to the door nearest the road that said OFFICE.
Viv wiped her forehead. The adrenaline spike from getting away from the man in the car was fading, and she was tired, her back and shoulders aching. Sweat dampened her armpits.
She had twenty dollars or so—all the cash she had left. She had a bank account with savings from her job back home at the popcorn stand at the drive-in, plus her small earnings from modeling for a local catalog. She’d stood in front of a camera for an afternoon wearing high-waisted acid-wash jeans and a bright purple button-down blouse, placing her fingertips into the pockets of the jeans and smiling.
Her entire savings totaled four hundred eighty-five dollars. It was supposed to be New York money, the money that would send her to her new life. She wasn’t supposed to spend it before she even got anywhere. Yet like everything else about this trip so far, she seemed to have miscalculated.
This didn’t look like an expensive place. Maybe twenty dollars would get her a bed and a shower. If not, maybe there was a way to sneak into one of the rooms. It didn’t look like anyone would see.
Viv approached the office door and put her hand on the cold doorknob. Somewhere far off in the trees, a bird cried. There was no traffic on the road. If the guy on the other side of this door looks like Norman Bates, she told herself, I’m turning around and running. She took a deep breath and swung the door open.
The man inside did not look like Norman Bates—it wasn’t a man at all. It was a woman sitting on a chair behind an old desk. She was about thirty, lean and vital, with brown hair in a ponytail and a face that had hard lines. She was wearing a baggy gray sweatshirt, loose-fit jeans, and heavy brown boots, which Viv could see because she had them propped right up on the desk. She was reading a magazine but looked up when the door opened.
“Help you?” the woman said without moving her feet off the desk.
Viv put her shoulders back and gave the woman her catalog-model smile. “Hi,” she said. “I’d like a room, but I only have twenty dollars in cash. How much is it, please?”
“Usually thirty,” the woman said without missing a beat or changing her pose. The magazine was still at chin height. “But I’m the owner and there’s no one else here, so I’m not going to turn down twenty bucks.”
Feeling a rush of triumph, Viv put her twenty-dollar bill down on the desk. And waited.
The woman still didn’t move. She didn’t put down her magazine, and she didn’t take the twenty. Instead her gaze moved over Viv. “You passing through, honey?” she said.
It seemed a safe enough question. “Yes.”
“Is that so? I didn’t hear a car.”
Viv shrugged, trying for vacant and harmless. Most people fell for it.
The woman finally closed the magazine and put it on her jean-clad lap. “Were you hitching on Number Six?”
“Number Six?” Viv said, confused.
“Number Six Road.” The woman’s eyebrows lowered. “If I was your mother, I would tan your hide. Hitching on that road is dangerous for lone girls.”
“I didn’t. My ride just dropped me off here. He picked me up outside Binghamton. I was heading for New York.”
“Well, honey, this isn’t New York. This is Fell. You’re going the wrong way.”
“I know.” Viv wished the woman would just give her a room. She needed to put her heavy bag down. She needed a shower. She needed something to eat, though without the twenty she didn’t know how she would pay for it. She pointed to the big book sitting open on the desk, obviously a guest registry. “Should I write my name in there?” Then, her suburban Illinois good-girl training coming through: “I can pay you the thirty if I can just get to a bank tomorrow. But they’re
