Shivers 7 (36 page)

“If you don’t do that right now, sir, I’ll have to call a wrecker to come and remove your car from the highway.”

Seeing no way out of this, Mark reached under the dashboard and popped the latch to release the trunk. The sudden snapping sound was like a kick to the gut, and Mark’s left hand was greasy with sweat that slipped on the handle when he opened the driver’s door.

“You’re fucked for sure now,” the GPS said, but its metallic voice was so low Mark could barely hear it. He knew the patrolman hadn’t.

His legs felt like they were stuffed with straw as he walked to the back of the car. A sudden concussion slammed the air when an eighteen-wheeler—
the
eighteen wheeler—sped by followed by a long, trailing blast of its air horn.

Mark smiled wanly, convinced now that the GPS had been right.

This cop
did
know!

So did the truck driver!

Everyone
knew!

“All I have is one of them donut spare tires,” Mark said, glancing at the expressionless face of the patrolman. The curvature of his mirror shades reflected the roadside and Mark and his car. “It ain’t much.”

“It’ll get you to the next town. The exit’s less than six miles from here. You can buy a new tire there.”

Mark nodded but still was unable to move to the car trunk. He couldn’t open it, not with this cop standing here; but he also couldn’t avoid it or talk his way out of it. A sudden high-pitched buzzing filled his head like he’d stepped on a beehive. It took him a paralyzed moment to realize that it was the GPS unit, talking in the car. He couldn’t make out anything it was saying, but the patrolman cocked his head to one side and listened. His expression remained perfectly fixed as the voice of the GPS filled Mark’s head.

“Whatever you do, don’t look in the trunk!” the GPS unit said.

Mark glanced at the patrolman and saw that he was staring at him, now, with a cold, downright mean expression.

“Go on,” the cop said, his voice as toneless and merciless as the GPS’s. “Open the trunk.”

Mark swallowed once—hard—and then his fingers hooked under the metal edge of the trunk latch and pulled up. The trunk rose slowly on rusted hinges, and there on the floor of the trunk, lying in tight fetal positions, was the body of his son, Jeff. The stench of rotting flesh after four days arose like a noxious cloud. Jeff’s abdomen was swollen with gas, looking like he had a huge beach ball tucked under his shirt. The skin around his mouth had turned purple, and his pale lips were pulled back, exposing his teeth in wide, gruesome grin. His eyes were closed as though he slept, but there was no peace in the expression on his face.

Mark had to turn away, but he could still see his dead son reflected in the patrolman’s mirrored shades. The patrolman turned away, too, and let out a long, agonized moan from somewhere deep inside him. Then he leaned over, his hands braced on both knees, and vomited onto the side of the road.

“He’s my son…” Mark said, his voice strangled with emotion. “They’ll find her back at the house, but I…I couldn’t leave him back there with her…not with that bitch!”

Room 8

Roberta Lannes

Six, seven…room
eight
. She stopped, her suitcase bumping her calf. The key felt cold in her hand.

The door was only slightly more familiar than the previous thirty-odd doors marked “8.” Most were plain, without features. Most had a glossy coat of paint, with a raised metal numeral, sometimes the “8” falling halfway into a mocking infinity symbol. Exhausted from her seemingly never-ending quest, she was still compelled to open the door and risk the possibility that once again, she’d been wrong. Yet this one, the color of rotting pomegranates that complemented the carpeting at her feet, had to be right. The abstract pattern in the carpet made her dizzy, slightly nauseous. When had she last eaten?

She maneuvered the key into the doorknob, turned it, and held her breath.
Be inside, be here
. She pushed the door open, blinking into the late afternoon sun as it flared into the room through a wide window.

She adjusted to the glare and details began to take shape. With each object—the simple brass lamp by the bed, the shiny golden bedspread, oak veneered desk topped by a room service menu and
Sights of the City
guide—her memory was reinforced. And the crib was there, just below the window! Sunlight imbued the translucent drapery above it with a moiré haloed effect.

Her heart thudded with blows born of fear and rusty hope. She moved inside, allowing the door to slam shut behind her. She jumped, dropping her suitcase and handbag, but didn’t turn. Her eyes were on the crib. She heard infant mewling sounds coming from the froth of baby blankets and she clasped her hands to her chest.

She whispered his name in a husky voice.
Joseph
.

She stepped toward the crib, her legs like foreign objects that she had to concentrate with all her might to move. They felt weak, stiff. Standing three feet away, she smelled him, that ripe, sweet baby smell, inexplicable and impossible to imitate.
Her son
. At last.

She exhaled, suddenly light-headed. She staggered, her high heels catching at the shag, nearly throwing her into the guard rail. She gripped it as if her legs might give way and peered in, taking in the small round head with its pale downy hair, recognizing that pudgy profile that was like no other child’s. She listened for the faintest sound of breathing, wondering if the slightly bluish tinge of his skin was a result of the abrupt shift of light in the room. He was sleeping so soundly. How finicky a sleeper he was! She’d let him slumber on, though her body ached to hold him, let him suckle at her breast.

She stood staring down at him, rocking side-to-side, humming the song she’d sang to her growing belly her entire pregnancy. It always helped him sleep, calmed him. Tears dropped from her cheeks to her dress before she realized she was crying. That happened from time to time, and she wondered if they came because she’d finally found him, or for all that lost time when they were apart. At least she wasn’t weeping, wailing with grief. That always woke him.

She knew she’d find him. After she ran off with her baby and her husband had found her, he took Joseph away, hid him from her, then locked her away. But he’d underestimated just how long and hard she’d search for her child. Men didn’t understand the bond between a mother and child. Certainly, her husband hadn’t, nor that cruel doctor he’d hired to watch her.

She reached out her hand, brushing lightly over the blanket, feeling the warmth of her boy. Satisfied, she turned away.

She plucked out cigarettes and lighter from her handbag. She kicked off her heels, and crawled across the satiny expanse of quilted gold sateen bedspread. The bed felt as hard as she remembered. She propped herself up with the pillows, pulling a heavy glass ashtray into her lap and she lit up. The nicotine relaxed her, slowed the slamming of her heart. With each breath, the bluish light warmed, and at last she could relish the end of her search.

Thinking back, she realized there had been clues to the
rightness
of this city. This train station
had
seemed more familiar than the others, with its seven sets of rails, the girders arching over the opening of the station, the green lacquered benches. At the previous train stations, she’d seen perhaps one recognizable landmark—the benches or the seven sets of rails—but not all the attributes together. As her train pulled into this station, she’d seen the large, rolling luggage carts with their oval signs, green on custard-yellow, and it was the last piece. She even felt, without a doubt, she knew which direction to exit to the street.

Farad, her taxi driver, treated her the same way the others had in all the cities prior. When she described the hotel (she didn’t know the name, but it was old-fashioned, had a long lobby that ended in a wine-colored marble tile and mahogany desk, where the staff wore uniforms the color of bruised apples, or was it grape?) and asked to be taken there, said that she’d know the hotel when she got a glimpse of it, she saw in the rear view mirror that he rolled his eyes. They all rolled their eyes. He told her there were fifty hotels like that in the city, that he could drive her around but it would cost her. When she opened her purse and showed him a thick stack of bills, he warmed to the idea of a mid-morning drive, and to her. She was still beautiful, after all. He even winked at her before turning back to drive.

Her reverie was broken by the thought of her husband. Older, extremely wealthy, James Prescott was used to getting his way. It pleased him to have a gorgeous wife who had no interest in a career of her own, who wanted children, and would make him look good. With five former wives he’d discarded when they disappointed him, he thought he’d found someone young and sufficiently pliable to make into the perfect wife. He treated her with the same careful consideration he gave all his businesses; measured attention, just enough, and threw money at her as if coinage equaled affection. Then he sat back and expected a good return for his investment. Naïve and grateful, she was obediently pregnant eight months after they married.

In the beginning, she’d thought him the most attractive man she’d ever seen, powerful, yet generous and thoughtful. But within weeks of the lavish wedding he’d paid for, he began to browbeat her about her smoking and drinking, the pills she took for her
sensitivities
. He forbid her to see the friends she’d made before they started dating (They’re beneath us!). When she was five months pregnant, he didn’t want her seen in public (That belly!), and stopped having clients to the house (Once the baby’s born, and you look good again, we’ll have parties…lots of them!). Captive in her enormous bedroom suite with a television, telephone, and personal maid, her smoking, drinking and medications were all that kept her sane. The pregnancy was uneventful, but she looked forward to doctor’s appointments because then, for a few hours, she escaped the gilded trappings.

She smiled at that last thought, then exhaustion stole her pleasure and she drifted into sleep. Dreamless, but restful, she slept for hours. When she woke, it was with the baby’s cry.

The room was dark except for the dim glow of a streetlight a few dozen feet down the street. She glanced about, looking for the crib, heard pounding, expecting it to be beneath the window. Now it stood against the wall next to the door. When she saw the light puddled beneath the door, she wondered if someone had come in and moved the crib while she slept. The growing chill of dread spread in her gut.

Had he found her? Was he playing his games with her again? Or had she simply forgotten where the crib had been?

As she started toward the crib, the crying stopped. She crept up, tucked the blankets in around the slumbering form, and tip-toed back to the bed. She stripped off her suit, her hosiery and crawled into bed in her underwear, too tired to open her suitcase.

In the middle of the next day, she ordered breakfast. Room service delivered it and when the boy reached out for his tip, she held back, asking him why someone might come in during the night and move the crib from under the window. He’d looked at her oddly and told her that they never put cribs under the window. It was too cold there at night, and the sun baked in during daylight hours. They were always put where it was now. It made perfect sense to her. She handed him a dollar and he left.

The bacon, eggs, potatoes and buttery toast were delicious. She drank the entire pot of tea and then settled in to smoke a cigarette. The baby was quiet. She went to the window of the room and looked out. The windows were a bit dirty, she noticed, as if there had been spotty rain since the last time they were washed.

Below her, she saw the movement of traffic, strangers walking to or from their destinations. She wondered if they were tourists or lived in the city. It saddened her that as anonymous as she was to them, so were they to her. The loneliness of running, searching, got to her. The familiar warm ache in her throat signaled the onset of a weeping assault. She fought it, knowing she’d be useless if she indulged the emotional slide into sorrow. Joseph. He was all that mattered now.

Soon, the rhythm of the cars and purposefulness of the people dissolved her anguish. Cities fascinated and terrified her. That had been why she’d taken Joseph someplace her husband wouldn’t have suspected; to a roiling city, not a small, quiet town like Buskirk, where she’d been raised. As she moved from one city to another, seeking the most unlikely place he’d look for them, everyone had been so solicitous to her and Joseph. He was only two months old, and she was traveling on her own. People suspected she was on the run from an abusive husband, she thought. After all, she had scads of cash, dressed well, wore a huge wedding ring, and had the kind of movie star looks that made others think they needed to be discreet about seeing her.

But he’d found her. He told her, “Nobody goes anywhere in this country without me knowing where, how and when. You want to disappear? Go to China.” He’d laughed. “Good luck with that…you have a passport, darling?” Of course she hadn’t. She didn’t even have a driver’s license. He wouldn’t let her drive. He’d given her a chauffeured car. She still had the tiny gray card with her social security number on it, but she couldn’t recall where.

The light in the room seemed to shift, go blue again. She felt grimy from traveling, but didn’t dare take a bath and leave Joseph alone. She wasn’t going to lose him again. Maybe it was her pills. She hadn’t taken them when she got up.

She laid her suitcase on the bed, plied it open and sighed. Her two dresses, low-heeled shoes, and cloth case of toiletries barely filled the small piece of luggage. Her pills were lined up along the inside edge, tucked behind the silk ruched fabric. She took a pill from each vial and went into the bathroom to drink them down. The water from the faucet in the sink was cold and fresh.

She glanced at herself in the mirror and had one of her moments when she didn’t recognize herself. The woman she saw was in her late sixties, with graying hair swept up in a loose spinster’s bun. The deep blue eyes were ringed with dark skin, wrinkled and drooping. The lips were thin, colorless, and the smile, when it came, was yellowed to near brown, tar-stained. Sometimes the woman wore glasses that made her eyes seem larger. Not today.

Hurrying from the bathroom, she looked out into the room and didn’t recognize it. Panic set in and her heart raced. She felt her face, the smooth unlined skin, and the lively auburn curls over her shoulders, and knew she was herself, but the room! It was dark. Hadn’t it just been morning? The bed was under the window and the crib was beside it. The railing was down and she ran to see if Joseph was still there.

Gone! She felt around the crib for him, throwing off the blankets. The sheet was still warm. He’d just been there! Turning on the brass lamp by the bed, she could see her suitcase in the corner on the folding carrier, closed tight. She blinked as she swept the room, looking for signs of her son. The bed was unmade and she saw then that next to where she’d slept was the nest of pillows she’d set up to protect him from rolling off. There he was, on his back, his head turned to the side, his tiny fists against the curves of the pillows.

Once she saw he was all right, she lay beside him, staring at his perfect little face. Was he hungry? No, he’d be crying if he was. But her stomach growled. She reached for the phone and ordered a meal.

A different boy brought her a steak dinner, more a man than a boy. He stared at her, his eyes searching as if to identify an actress or celebrity, she thought. Hadn’t strangers often asked her if she was famous? Thrown a movie star’s name at her? But when she handed him the dollar, he told her they had to substitute the brand of baby formula for the one she’d ordered; they didn’t make it anymore. She nodded, put her index finger over her lips to shush him, pointing to the empty crib, and told him her son was sleeping. He squinted over her shoulder, shrugged and turned away. She shut the door quietly behind him.

She felt as if it had been days since she’d last eaten. She filled herself with baked potato slathered in butter and chives, an enormous rib-eye, and vegetables topped with fried onions. Had she ordered the wine that gleamed in the glass on the table? How she loved white wine! The bottle was empty when she went to refill her glass. The alcohol mixed with her pills made her groggy. She had a cigarette, then put it out in the remains of her rib-eye. She threw herself onto the bed, careful of Joseph.

She dreamed. Nightmares really. Babies falling, bursting into flames or casting blood on sidewalks like water-filled balloons breaking, spewing water on hot cement. Her pills were gigantic, like dinner plates, trying to enter her belly through her cesarean section scar. As she flailed, she felt the pressure of a straitjacket reining her in until she couldn’t move. She woke drenched in sweat, wrapped in the sheets.

The pillow nest was gone and the crib was again by the door. She sat up and noticed two ashtrays on the floor beside the crib, filled with a week’s worth of cigarette butts. Three full bottles of infant formula stood in a row on the night stand. Empty wine bottles filled the waste basket, and crumpled chip packets littered the carpet around it. Outside, clouds obscured the sun, so the room had that blue quality she now associated with losing time. Her memory playing tricks.