girl.
They walked across a grassy lawn to the Inn’s main building, where they cut across the parking lot to the highway, then they crossed on the overpass and then on to the all night mini market. A quarter mile in all. A silent quarter mile.
They entered the market and Roma picked up two Snickers while Jim went to the magazine section and flipped through Business Week. Roma held up the candy bars for him to see and beamed a smile at him. Then she screamed and jumped back as a gecko went scurrying across the floor.
“ I’ve never seen anything like that in here,” the girl behind the counter said, screwing up her face and accenting her pimples. “Looked like a slimy lizard.”
“ I saw one in my room, over at the Inn,” Roma said.
“ Wait till I tell Dad,” the girl said. “He thinks he knows everything there is to know about every kind of animal we’ve got out here, but I bet he’s never seen slimy lizards.”
“ It’s only a gecko.” Jim said, thinking it strange. This was the second one he’d seen, so far away from where they were supposed to be.
“ Let’s go back,” Roma said, clearly embarrassed by her outburst. Jim paid and she put the candy bars in the handbag she’d gotten from Edna, next to the gun.
They walked back over the interstate, stopping to watch the late night travelers and truckers tunnel through the night below. White headlights approaching, headed toward San Francisco, red tail lights receding, going south to Los Angeles.
Jim moved closer to Roma, looked up as the full moon found a hole in the clouds, briefly brightening the night.
“ You know I’ve always loved you,” Roma said as she gently pushed him away, so she could see his face lit up by the passing headlights. Then she asked, “Were you happy?”
“ I thought we were. I loved your sister with all my heart, like I used to love you so long ago. We wanted the same things, enjoyed the same friends, shopped, spent money. I honestly don’t know where it went wrong.”
“ I want you, Jimmy,” she said.
“ Right here?” he smiled.
“ No, not here. I want you forever.”
“ We have to give it time.”
“ No, I don’t want to give it time.”
“ What about Julia?”
“ She’s got her doctor. She can’t have you.”
“ She’s your sister.”
“ And she loves me and will understand.”
“ There’s so much happening right now. I really do need some time,” he said. “Time to find out what’s going on. Who’s trying to kill me and why. Right now I believe it’s Kohler, but what if it isn’t?”
“ Dammit, I don’t want you out there risking your life. Come back with us. Let the police handle it.”
“ I can’t run away,” he said.
“ Then come back with us and work with the police. That makes more sense. I don’t want to lose you. I need you.”
Part of him wanted to go back with her. But the common sense part of him knew it would never work. The press would have a field day. They would hound him unmercifully about marrying his wife’s twin. There would always be talk. Heads would always turn. They would become the fodder for gossip magazines and tabloids. It wasn’t the kind of life he wanted to lead. His privacy would be over.
“ They would never leave us alone. They’d make our lives miserable.”
“ We don’t have to let them. We can go away. Someplace where they’ve never heard of you. Spain, maybe, or an island in the South Pacific, or Greece. There’s lots of places where they don’t watch the news or read the Times, places where the sun always shines and it’s safe to go out after dark.”
She hugged him tightly and he kissed her long and slow and his heart cried out to her.
“ All right,” he said, breaking the kiss, “I’ll go back with you.”
“ Oh Jimmy!” She squeezed him like a little girl on Christmas morning. “It’ll be okay. I just know it. Together we can face anything.”
He smiled at her through the dark and they started back for the inn. Roma, planning a new life and Jim already missing his old one. He loved his country and the thought of living someplace else made him feel like a traitor. He’d fought and paid dearly for America and he didn’t begrudge his country the price she asked. It was worth it and if she asked it again, especially in light of what happened on 9/11, he would pay it again.
But if he had to decide between his country and Roma, he would have to take Roma and make a life somewhere else. In Europe, England probably. He was too old to learn a foreign language.
“ We could live in England or Scotland. Maybe in a small town,” he said.
“ I’d like that.” She leaned into him as they walked under a dark, starless sky.
They stopped again, halfway between the inn and the interstate and hugged.
“ Listen!” Donna interrupted Jim’s thoughts.
“ Don’t move.” Jim tensed up as he whispered in Roma’s ear.
She froze, sensing the urgency in his voice. She clutched the handbag, looping her finger through the hole and onto the trigger and she remained perfectly quiet. She didn’t have to be told twice.
“ Something up ahead, between you and the inn, can you hear?”
He listened.
“ Yes.” He heard a faint breathing sound, like a man with asthma, trying to hide a wheeze, and it was coming closer, and the wheeze was getting deeper.
“ Time to move on. Now!” Donna urged.
Jim squeezed Roma’s arm to get her attention and they backed away from the wheezing, back toward the sounds of the interstate and the brightly lit up mini market on the other side.
The wheezing moved off to their left and away from them and for a second Jim thought about making a dash for the inn. But he didn’t want to run, to put his back to whatever was out there. He wasn’t afraid of the animal, it was probably only a stray coyote. It sounded sick. It wasn’t anything he couldn’t handle, even without the gun and Roma’s deadeye aim. But it only seemed prudent to move out of the dark and into the light.
Then the sound faded all together.
“ I feel like a frightened child,” Roma said. “Like I’m standing in the hall by the fire alarm, in school and the big kids are coming for my lunch money. I want to break the glass and call the firemen, but I’m too afraid.”
“ Don’t worry, you’ve got the fire extinguisher in your purse.”
“ I know,” she said, clutching the gun.
“ All of a sudden I want a cigarette,” he said, leading the way back toward the overpass and the mini market beyond.
“ But you don’t smoke.”
“ I do tonight.” He didn’t know why he needed to smoke, he never had, but the desire was strong and now the mini market was closer than the inn, presenting a safe haven.
“ It’s me, I want the cigarette.”
“ But I don’t smoke,” he thought.
“ You want to go to the market anyway, I can tell, and I really need a cigarette.”
He cut her thoughts off and stopped as Roma’s fingers dug into his arm. The wheezing coyote was ahead of them, still cloaked in darkness, blocking their path. Stalking them.
Her grip tightened as it moved around to their left and moved in closer, still in the dark, but Jim could tell by the sounds it was making that it was no coyote.
“ Come on.” He led her north, parallel to the interstate, but separated from it by a drainage ditch and a chain link fence. There would be no mad dash across the highway.
“ What is it?” she asked, fright beginning to creep into her voice.
As if hearing her, the animal responded with a deep throated sound, a cross between a raspy roar and a baby’s cry, that brought the fright rushing full force into her voice.
“ Come on, quick,” she urged, picking up the pace.
