The Waiting Room (21 page)

I opened my eyes. The cop was as tall as I, dark-haired, thin-faced; his nametag said "Sgt. A. Luciano." Steve Gresham stood just behind him. Steve is short, rotund, swarthy-complexioned
^.
He and I shared a few beers once and found that we had little in common.

Sergeant Luciano said, grinning ever so slightly, "Hey, you better put some clothes on there, huh?" I realized that the towel was around my ankles and that I was stark naked.

I took a deep breath to steady myself. I wanted to believe that I was beyond simple embarrassment. But I wasn't. I bent over, picked the towel up, wrapped it around myself again. I apologized; "Sorry for all the noise," I said.

The cop said, "Whatcha got, some kinda epilepsy or somethin'?'' He was concerned; it touched me a little.

I shook my head. "No. I don't think so."

Steve Gresham said again, "What the hell were you doin' in here, Feary?"

I shook my head again, then let myself enjoy the luxury of a long, weary sigh. "Nothing, Steve." I could speak just barely above a harsh whisper. "I didn't mean to disturb you."

The cop said, "You want I should call for an ambulance?"

"No, please," I answered, "I don't need an ambulance." I was starting to get my voice back. "I'm okay. I've just got to get some rest, I think. I'm going away for a few days. A vacation—"

Eventually I persuaded Steve Gresham and Sergeant Luciano that I was indeed okay, that they could leave me alone.

When they were gone, I climbed into a pair of jeans and a warm shirt, packed a suitcase, and left the apartment. I went to an auto teller, withdrew most of my savings—about $240—and was out of Manhattan and on my way to Brookfield, Vermont, in Abner's beat-up Malibu a half hour later.

I
t's odd, but many of us, even under perfectly normal circumstances, can convince ourselves that we're being followed—either because we're paranoid or simply because we like to play games. We glance in the rearview mirror and we see a car behind us that looks like it's following a little too steadily, a car that stays the same distance behind, its driver's adjustments in speed, to compensate for our own, a bit too precise. Maybe that car has only been there for a minute or so. Maybe it's only made one or two of the same turns we've made, but still we wonder, mock seriously,
Is he following me?
Of course, 999 times out of a thousand, it's only Joe Schmo out for a drive and eventually he turns off, because practically none of us is ever actually followed by anyone. It's just a game we play.

It was a game that I played on my way to Brookfield that early April afternoon. It was a wonderful, blue-sky, warm afternoon, and I was enjoying a cautious sense of relief and freedom, as if, as long as I was driving, as long as the landscape was moving past at a good clip, nothing could touch me. I'd rolled the driver's window down, had put my elbow up on the rim of the door, and I was listening to a Manhattan AM station playing rock and roll hits of the sixties. I was looking forward to my long drive in the country.

I'd stopped at a Texaco station just inside Connecticut for gasoline and a map and had found that the best route to Brookfield would take me through a dozen or more small towns. Some of them close to New York were the original "bedroom communities" —Glenville, Norwalk, Riversville, South Wilton, Cannondale—all of them comfortable Connecticut towns and villages whose primary reason for existence is that their inhabitants can work in New York but don't have to live there.

It was as I was driving north out of Riversville, Connecticut, where the narrow two-lane road, Highway 15, was straight and smooth and bordered by an on-again, off-again succession of fields and pine trees that crowded the shoulders, that I saw a dark blue Ford behind me. There were other cars on the road, of course; I remember, particularly, some crazy man in a silver Chevette Scooter who had stayed only inches from my bumper for a mile or so and then had catapulted past me around a curve, sending a station wagon careening onto the shoulder. "Shit for brains!" I breathed at him. It was a couple of minutes later that the Ford appeared, hung a precise couple of hundred feet back, and I said to myself, "Is he following me?"

When I got on the four-lane Merritt Parkway, which would lead me north of Norwalk, Connecticut, to U.S. Route 7—which would take me, eventually, to Brookfield, Vermont—I lost the Ford in what seemed like a crowd of 10 million midafternoon commuters. But when I got past Norwalk, and was on Route 7 heading north toward South Wilton, I saw the Ford again, still a precise couple of hundred feet back, dogging me.

I whispered into the rearview mirror, at the Ford's reflection, "So you want to play games, huh?" and took the first right-hand turn that came up, about a half mile later.

The Ford stayed on Route 7.

I was a little disappointed. I was up for a bit of harmless fun. I drove a mile or two down the road I'd turned onto, found a small shopping center where I could safely turn around, and headed back toward Route. 7.

The Ford, going like a bat out of hell in the other direction, passed me on the way.

"Jesus Christ!" I squawked when he passed, because his air turbulence had flung the road dust into my face like tiny shotgun pellets.

I glanced in the rearview mirror, fully expecting that he'd screech to a halt and turn around. But he kept going. He was crazy, I decided. Just like the man in the silver Chevette was crazy. At that moment, on that marvelous spring day, I did not want to deal with crazy people.

~ * ~

I didn't see the Ford again until I was past the tiny village of Kent Furnace, Connecticut. The Ford was only four or five car lengths back so I could easily read "LTD" in tall chrome block letters on the front of what looked like ten acres of dark blue hood. And I could see the suggestion of a driver, too—someone who was hunched over slightly, someone above average height, because even hunched over, the top of his head intersected the top of the windshield.

In South Canaan, ten miles or so from the Massachusetts line, on Route 7, I lost sight of the Ford. It was about 5:00
P.M.

And that was when I made my second stop, in South Canaan, at a quaint and tidy restaurant called the Tea Kettle.

When I went in, I was stared at by two men in red plaid hunting jackets and baseball caps who were seated in a booth at the back of the restaurant. There were three booths with dark wood seats that looked like church pews; and there were a half-dozen small round wooden tables,
sans
tablecloths, three ladder-back pine chairs at each of these tables, and a dark wood counter with five or six revolving stools with wicker seats. The whole effect was, I guessed, what some mid-sixties entrepreneur thought "Connecticut Country" should be.

I sat at the counter. The place was empty except for the two men in hunting jackets. A chunky, red-faced waitress whose tight reddish-blond curls were mashed into a hairnet and whose small, round, light
green
eyes twinkled with affability came over.

"What can I do ya for?" she asked.

I smiled; that was a phrase I hadn't heard since I was a kid in Bangor. "I'd like to see a menu," I said.

She shook her head; her eyes twinkled. "No menu as such," she said, and nodded to indicate a chalkboard behind her, above an ice-cream freezer. "Got real New England style clam chowder on special today, though. Whyn'ch I bring you some?"

I glanced at the chalkboard. It read, in bold green letters on black, "REAL NEW ENGLAND CLAM CHOWDER—FRESH !—$1.50/cup--$2.50/bowl."

"I like the red clam chowder," I said.

She got her order pad from beneath the counter and stood with her pen poised on it. "Whyn'ch I bring you some real New England style clam chowder? You don't like it, you don't pay for it. That's fair, ah?"

I heard from behind me, "Go ahead. Florence made it fresh this mawnin'."

I turned in the seat. One of the hunters was smiling toothlessly at me. I smiled back, made what I hoped was a friendly noise (though I'm not sure how it came out; casual friendliness was something I had grown to mistrust in my months in New York), and turned back to Florence. I nodded. "Sure, thanks," I said, and she jotted in her order pad.

"Coffee, too?" she asked.

"Milk," I answered.

"Milk," she said, eyes twinkling mightily. "Large or small?"

"Large, please."

"Milk's fresh this mawnin', too," called the same hunter, and I turned halfway on the stool and gave him another smile, because he was again smiling at me, and now so was his friend, who looked a hell of a lot like him, enough, in fact, that I turned to Florence and said, "Twins?"

She nodded happily, as if eager to share big news. "The Haislip boys," she said, eyes twinkling, pen poised over her order pad. "Trippe and Ryan," she went on, voice lowered, "so named 'cuz their ma had a crush on two state troopers by the name of Officer Trippe and Officer Ryan, and she weren't sure who the father was, you know, and she didn't want the troopers gettin' mad. You gawna have somethin' with that chowder? A sandwich, mebbe?"

I nodded, said, "Grilled cheese on whole wheat," and added, "That's an interesting story."

Her eyes twinkled a thank-you. "I don't tell nothin' but interesting stories." She looked over at Ryan and Trippe Haislip. "Ain't that right, boys?"

And, as if they'd been listening in, they answered in unison, "That's right, Florence."

She shook her head. "Ain't got whole wheat, though. We got white and rye and pumpernickel."

"Pumpernickel. Thanks."

Her eyes twinkled. "Right polite young man, you are," she said, and disappeared into the kitchen.

From behind me, one of the Haislip boys called, "Thatchore Malibu parked out there?" I looked at him, then looked where he was nodding, at Abner's Malibu parked in front of the restaurant. "Yes," I said.

"Well," he said, "I'd go an' check it if I was you 'cuz there was a man lookin' at it jus' now."

"A man?"

"Big man," he answered, and his brother nodded and agreed, "Ver'a big man."

"Fat man," said the other brother.

I thought,
Damn, it's the man driving the Ford.
I went to the front door and peered out. A few cars were moving slowly down the narrow main street of South Canaan. An old couple, hand in hand, was going into the South Canaan Hardware Store across from the restaurant, a young woman carrying a baby in a backpack and a bag of groceries in her arms was coming out of an IGA store next to the hardware store. But there was no fat man looking at the Malibu, and no dark blue LTD.

I stepped outside, keeping the door open with my arm. I looked right, then left. Still nothing. I heard just behind me, as if from a short distance, "And that little girl, she put those cats in that Igloo cooler, Ryan, she locked 'em up in there—musta' been a hundred degrees that day—and she plumb forgot about 'em, an' you know"—the distance shortened— "when her ma found those cats she said they looked god-awful. I guess that'd be kinda like bein' buried alive, don'tcha think, Ryan? Kinda like bein' buried alive. And it'd be kinda sad, too, I guess, if it wasn't so damned funny."

I turned my head; the Haislip brothers were standing just behind me, they were apparently waiting for me to get out of the way. I stepped aside.

One of them said, "Nice cars, those old Malibus," as they both stepped past me.

"Sure," I said.

And they said in unison, "You have yourself a good day now."

I went back into the restaurant and ate my clam chowder and grilled cheese sandwich.

~ * ~

I was in Massachusetts a half hour later, on U.S. Route 7, heading toward the town of Ashley Falls. I'd developed a little tickle in my throat, and every time I coughed I tasted Florence's Real New England Style Clam Chowder all over again, which was less than pleasant. (It seemed to have been seasoned right, the sauce wasn't too heavy, the potatoes and clam bits were cooked well, and I wished, even as I forced it down, that I could enjoy it, if only for Florence's sake, who looked on expectantly, hoping for a compliment. But I couldn't. It smelled the way Abner's beach house did—of wet wood. After a while I said, "It's good, Florence; really good!" She looked pleased, said "Thanks," and went back into the kitchen.)

The road to Ashley Falls from South Canaan was smooth enough, but it was narrow and as twisted as a Slinky. It had so many twists and turns, in fact, that the Massachusetts Department of Transportation had, I guessed, given up trying to erect enough hazard signs on it. Eventually, there were no signs at all, and I was left to guess what the road was going to do within the next five hundred or a thousand feet. And that meant, of course, that I had to slow
down
from fifty-five to about forty.

I had just come out of a severe left-hand turn—and had noticed happily that the road was straight for another half mile or so—when I looked in the rearview mirror and saw the blue LTD a good five car lengths back, its speed precisely matching mine.

The glare of the late afternoon sun put a glaze of light on its windshield, but when we passed a line of tall trees that blocked the sun, I saw that there were several people in it—two in front and two in back.