Montana.
It had been so long since I had been in Livingston that the last thing I expected was to see somebody I knew when we checked into the Murray Hotel two nights later. When I handed the night clerk, a woman who looked remarkably like Carol Channing's little sister, enough cash for three nights, she looked at the Hardy P. Malvern name on the registration card, then glanced back up at me, saying 'Don't I know you, partner?'
'Never been here before, ma'am,' I lied, but she looked as if she didn't believe me. I couldn't remember when I last stood in front of her, but she almost remembered.
'I'll need your license plate number,' she said, tapping the registration card with a long fingernail, 'and some ID.'
'I thought Montana was supposed to be a neighborly place,' I said, then turned my back to the counter to dig into my billfold for Hardy's driver's license. In the reflection of the plate glass window, I looked like the survivor of a terrible car wreck that only my hat survived. Then I couldn't remember the license plate number on the Jeep. We had driven straight through from El Paso, and my head was still ringing with road miles, my eyes blurred with the images of drifting snow, and my nose burning with the bitter cut of the coke. 'Honey,' I said, 'I've forgotten the plate number again. You want to check it for me?'
'Your driver's license expires next month, sir,' the night clerk said suspiciously as she handed it back to me.
But Molly saved us. She touched my arm, smiled, then turned, walked through the front door on her high- heeled boots as steady as a schooner in a freshening breeze. I might look like death microwaved, but Molly was a lady.
'You better take care of it, Mr. Malvern,' the night clerk said, then smiled happily as she handed the license back to me.
'You don't have a typewriter I can borrow?' I said.
'Be careful,' she said as she pulled a battered portable from under the desk. 'It's an antique. And supposedly haunted. If it starts cussing at you, throw a shot of Wild Turkey down its throat.'
When the rented Jeep was finally stuck in the lot, and the Macallan poured over ice, I sighed. The room was long and narrow, filled with comfortable old furniture. Outside, the Livingston wind, as cold as a developer's heart and as hard as a crap shooter's luck, roared down out of the Absarokas, throwing pellets of corn snow against the windows like a rattle of distant automatic gunfire. But we were safe and warm and home.
'We made it,' Molly said. 'I can't believe it.'
'At least we're this far,' I said. 'Maybe tomorrow we'll make it the rest of the way.' On the endless trip I had told Molly everything I knew about what had happened to me. I had left out the part about her hypocrite of a natural father because I assumed that she didn't need to know that. I had learned a long time before that my father had killed himself because he was in love with another woman and afraid to tell my mother. It wasn't a decision I would have made, but it was a long time ago. It had to be better for Molly to think of her father as a tough little one-armed son of a bitch who would take me on with a bottle rather than tell me where she was. 'But that won't be the end,' I said. 'I still have to go back to Texas.'
'Do what you have to,' she said, picking up my hand and holding it to her lips, 'and we'll work it out.'
I was back in Montana, right, but that wasn't the only reason my heart sang like the wind. Molly's blue eyes no longer looked like a false dawn but were shining with what I hoped was hope. Then I turned to the typewriter.
It took all the next morning to get some cold weather clothes – winter underwear, insulated coveralls, gloves, and pacs – and a set of chains for the Jeep. We were heading for dirt roads and the weather on this side of the Divide could change quicker than the price of wheat futures. I packed the remaining cocaine and weapons in my war bag, checked with Molly one more time, who sat in front of the dresser mirror trying to make her hair fit attractively under a Scotch plaid hat.
'I'm along for the ride, honey,' she said.
'I'll be back in a minute,' I said.
Downstairs I stopped by the desk and returned the typewriter to a tall man with a dark beard, then hiked across the street to the dark, dingy bar where I had spent some time in the past.
The same ex-biker still stood behind the stick, waiting for something. He bounced down the bar toward me, and I held my finger up to my lips.
'Hell, it wouldn't have mattered, man,' the bartender said. 'I almost didn't recognize you in that get-up. Where did you get that hat?'
'Ran over a cowboy outside Laramie.'
'That explains it,' he said. 'What can I do for you?'
'Let me have a shot of schnapps and a cup of coffee,' I said, pulling an envelope out of the insulated Carhart's. 'Then I want you to hold this for a while. If I don't show up in a few days, mail it.'
The bartender looked at the address. 'He's in fucking law school? Jesus, I thought he'd be in the slam by now.'
'Me, too, man. Me, too.'
When we were ready, we drove north toward winter.
The only constant things about the drive up Highway 89 were the wind falling in icy flows off the Crazies and the stretches of black ice covering the old highway. We made it to the lease roads with plenty of light left. They were hard-frozen, so I didn't bother putting the chains on the Jeep. Mostly we found dead ends, but just at dark I spotted a small, bullet-pocked sign pointing to the Punky Creek Mine. Except for random skiffs of scudding clouds, the sky had cleared, and the rising moon gave me enough light to follow the quickly freezing ruts up a dry creek that looked as if it had been washed, then dredged, and now the company was working the tailings for lost seeds and misplaced figments of gold-limned quartz.
At the head of the draw, the switchbacks led to a flat place just in front of a small metal building beside a large rock crusher and in front of a dark adit. Off to the side, a small Christmas tree was set over the natural gas well that powered the machinery and heated the building. A Chevy Suburban was parked in front. All the lights in the building were on and light smoke poured sideways from the natural gas heater's stove pipes on the roof. Through the sweep of the wind, I could hear the rumble of a generator and the boom of a bass line. A satellite dish loomed like a gray moon from the southeast corner. All the comforts of home. I turned around at the bottom of the first switchback, left the Jeep idling, then stepped out, telling Molly, 'I'm going to check it out. Any trouble, baby, you run.'
'What kind of partnership is that?'
'The kind that survives,' I said, then took off up the trail.
The building's windows hadn't been washed in a long time, but I could still see Enos sitting at a table, listlessly playing solitaire while the large television boomed with rap music, half a bottle of Crown Royal on the table in front of him beside a large pile of white powder. At the end of the table a stack of cardboard boxes sat like a wall. He was alone and didn't look like he was going anywhere anytime soon. I assumed that daylight would be a better time to renew our acquaintance. So I slipped back down to the Jeep and drove us back to Livingston just as the weather changed again. The wind suddenly boomed in from the Canadian border like an invasion of geese, thick feathers of downy snow rippling down the dark sky.
While I had a couple of warm-up drinks at the Owl, Molly had done a good job cleaning up the remains of our traveling clothes. Even my cowboy hat looked as if it had new life, and Molly looked like a million dollars in the soft sweep of the cashmere suit, the dark drapes of her black hair swinging back from her high, smooth forehead. I kissed the faint scar, then said, 'Tired of eating in the room?'
'Won't somebody recognize us?' she asked, laughing.
'We'll keep our sunglasses on,' I said. 'Maybe they'll think we're from Hollywood.'
'I gotta ask,' she said. 'What happens when this shit's over?'
'Drift through Vegas, pick up your stuff, and disappear,' I said.
'I've always wanted to go to Paris,' she said softly.
'Look out, Paris,' I said. 'Here we come.'
