white scraps that he composed so meticulously each morning. As if they hid any of his shiny scalp. As if they fooled anyone but him. Reggie was forgiving about cosmetic deception for women because that was how that particular game was played and you played the cards you were dealt, but in men it seemed nothing more than the last crow of the dying rooster. She wished she had a video camera so she could tape him and then make him watch himself acting like a foolish old man for the benefit of this young woman. No fool like an old fool, and none bigger than George Lampert.
Now he was returning to the office. Reggie busied herself behind the counter. She could have made it into the next room and settled herself in front of the television before he reached the office if she had wanted him to think she hadn’t been watching. By staying behind the counter she could keep him in doubt. Maybe she’d watched him, maybe she hadn’t. A little uncertainty would help keep him in line. The trick was to not let him think he was getting away with anything so he got cocky, but not to make him think he was spied upon so he got rebellious, either. Being a good wife required a precise understanding of nuance.
“She’s a pisser,” he said approvingly as he entered, letting the screen door slam behind him as usual. She had told him a thousand times. Just as he had promised to fix it several hundred.
“Oh?” Reggie did not bother to look up.
“Got more juice running through her veins than a dozen women. You know who she reminds me of? That girl on television, the spunky one who’s always getting herself into trouble, then getting out again. You know the one I mean; she’s on that show you like.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know her name, she’s on that show you like. What do you call it.”
“Who are you talking about?” Reggie asked, trying to conceal her annoyance. Just like him, to come in trying to cloud the issue with his very first breath, bringing in irrelevant people, television stars. Unless he was comparing her to a star now. She wasn’t that pretty. Or that young, either.
“Dee,” he said. “Full of piss and vinegar, she is.” He chuckled as if just thinking of all that piss and vinegar made him happy all over again.
“Dee? Dee? What’s-a Dee?”
“The woman in six,” he said, pretending he didn’t notice the acid creeping not very subtly into her tone. “We just had a chat.”
“Oh, is that right?”
As if you weren’t watching every second of it, he thought. As if you didn’t act like I was going to whip into one of the cabins and boff a guest every time I stepped outside the door. Well, this guest I wouldn’t mind, wouldn’t mind at all. I’m not so certain she’d mind, either. She was cute and bright and friendly and had a way of talking to a man as if she’d known him for years, as if she knew him so well she knew what he was thinking all the time-and didn’t disapprove of it, either.
“She seems like a nice person,” he said. “And she’s going to save us some work.”
“Oh?” Reggie liked the “us.” As if he did any work that anyone could notice.
“We don’t have to clean her room. She’ll take care of the linens herself, so I told her to just let me know when she wanted towels or anything.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Her husband’s got a problem with his eyes. Opto, opto something or other, I didn’t get the name. He can’t take the light. It’s all tied up with migraines and such. She doesn’t want him disturbed. So she said she’ll do the cleaning herself. We don’t need to bother.”
“He’s sick?”
“Not sick. It’s a condition, he’s got a condition. It’s not contagious or anything. It’s just a temporary thing, it will clear up. You know how it is.”
“I haven’t got any idea how it is. She didn’t say anything about a condition when she checked in.”
“You’re not going to catch it,” he said, beginning to wish he hadn’t brought it up, not so soon after he had been seen talking to Dee, anyway. Reggie was bound to think it was some kind of trick. As if he were being manipulated and duped in some way. She was the most distrusting woman he had ever seen. He should have left her when he had the chance, before they’d sunk all their savings in this motel, while he was still young… Not that he wasn’t still young enough. He might take a hike to Utah at any moment. And maybe he’d take Dee with him. She must be getting pretty weary of being saddled with a husband with a condition. Not that you could tell it by talking to her. Not a whisper of complaint. Unlike some women he knew.
“In other words, we’re supposed to keep out,” Reggie said.
“She’s entitled to privacy, for Christ’s sake! The man has got a condition, he needs to be left alone. What do you care? It’s one less cabin to worry about.”
“It’s one cabin to worry more about, if you ask me. What’s she up to?”
“Maybe she keeps him naked and tied to the bed with the sheets. That’s why she doesn’t want you to change them, because he’d get loose and ravage all the women in the neighborhood.”
Instead of dignifying his statement with a response, Reggie pulled aside the curtain and studied cabin six. The curtains were drawn, the door closed. It might as well have been empty for all the signs of life it revealed. Number six was the farthest from the office of any of the cabins, and Reggie remembered now that the woman, “Dee,” had requested it especially. At the time she had said she thought it was the cutest, and in truth it did have rather better shrubbery in front than the others. The angle of its alignment had kept the sun at its back and consequently it had weathered less than the others… Now, however, Reggie wondered if it wasn’t simply that it was the farthest away from scrutiny. “I told her it was fine with us,” George said.
Reggie looked at him. He was puffing out his chest, preparing for a battle. Just like a rooster. All strut and puff and bluster. “Oh, you did, did you?”
“I sure did.” He lifted his hand, waving currency in her face. “She’s paying two weeks in advance. In cash. I figure that entities her to as much privacy as she wants.”
Reggie took the money from his hand, counted it, and made an entry into the books. As if money had anything to do with it, she thought. It was all about control, and she knew that “Dee” knew it, too, even if George was too charmed to realize it. Money had nothing to do with it.
He was still spoiling for a fight. Nothing he’d like better, Reggie saw, than to tangle with her in defense of another woman. A rooster with his comb engorged and flaming. Well, she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
“Well, that’s fine, then,” she said, closing the books as if that put a period to the discussion. As if some woman could keep her out of the cabins she owned and cared for and depended on her livelihood from just because she was full of piss and vinegar.
George was left with his fists balled for a fight and no one to swing at. She watched him with amusement as he tried to adjust. His relief almost outweighed his surprise.
“That show you like is coming on,” he said, glancing into their living room. “Come on and watch.”
Strutting out of the office, as if he were personally responsible for bringing her show onto the television. Little banty-legged bald-headed rooster, thinking he’d cowed the world with his crow. Well, hens laid eggs with or without a rooster. Everyone knew that-except maybe the roosters.
Ash lay on the backseat of the car, hidden under the blanket. The blanket was coarse and cheap, stolen long ago from some motel or other, and it had been used for a dozen purposes over the years, every one of which Ash could smell when the itchy cloth covered his face and nose. There was the odor of grease and oil upon the blanket, the smell of the spare tire against which the blanket was usually stored in the trunk of the car, the scent of grass, and even of Dee herself, who had often been wrapped in the blanket while she lay inert and mournful during her bad times. Ash could catch whiffs of himself, not only now but from the other times he had hidden under here, waiting for Dee to give the signal to come out.
And he could smell the boys. Their young bodies, their fresh skins. Their fear.
On one of the nature shows Ash had seen a wolf spider that built itself a den, complete with a camouflaged opening. When the spider’s prey approached too closely to the mouth of the den, the spider popped out and grabbed it, sucking it back into the lair in an instant. Ash had watched the show with fascination, wondering how the spider knew how to do what it did, how it knew that something edible would ever come by, how it knew the method to construct its elaborate web and den. He knew that he could never do anything that intricate himself.
