Rot (9 page)

When they reached the top of the trail Kyle picked up the pace, half dragging the girl across the deserted parking lot. At every step he expected someone to call his name.

Hey, Kyle, who’s the babe? Whew, what’s that smell? She carrying seaweed in that outfit?

How the hell would he ever explain Marianne?

I know she doesn’t look too great, and you don’t want to get downwind of her, but she can’t help it. Dead, you see.

Blessedly, no one was afoot on the road above the secluded beach on this gloomy day. The mismatched couple traversed the parking lot unseen. The sight of his faithful Jeep Wrangler waiting where he had left it cheered him a little.

Kyle got in, making no effort to assist Marianne beyond unlocking the passenger side door from inside. No more points would be awarded for courtesy. Any need for observing etiquette was long gone. And he sure as hell did not want to touch her. She climbed in and sat beside him without comment. He started to buckle up, decided the hell with it, left the seatbelt dangling, and peeled out of the lot.

Once on Pacific Coast Highway he cranked both side windows all the way down. For the first time he regretted not choosing the Sahara model that included the khaki soft top. He kept the Jeep right at the speed limit through light traffic south to Sunset Boulevard, then headed inland to his parents’ home in Brentwood. Marianne did not speak during the 30-minute drive, and Kyle gratefully used the respite to invent a story for his parents. He was crazy eager to get this ugly business over with as soon as possible. That meant little time for explaining the unexplainable before hitting the highway.

He pulled into the driveway of his parents’ white neo-Colonial house and stopped.

“Wait here,” he said to Marianne.

She gave him a gummy, gap-toothed smile that made his stomach lurch. “What’s the matter, lover? Ashamed of me?”

He jerked away from her and hurried inside.

• • •

Valerie Brubaker always pretended she didn’t believe it, but took a secret pleasure from hearing people say she couldn’t possibly have a 21-year-old son. At 46 Valerie had rich brown hair, maintained without the aid of chemicals. Moisturizers kept her face soft and unlined, and she followed a rigorous aerobics regimen to keep the body firm. She had turned an unused upstairs bedroom into an office from which she conducted her modest real estate business. What had started as a hobby — helping friends find suitable homes — had grown into a profitable part-time profession as she discovered a natural aptitude for the business.

Kyle knocked on the open door before going in.

His mother hit the
Save
key on her computer and turned to smile at him.

“You’re home early. Bad surf?”

“No surf. Uh, Mom, something came up.”

“Trouble?” Mothers have a sixth sense.

“No, no,” he lied quickly. “But I’ve got a chance to drive up to British Columbia with Brian. He knows these people up there who have a cabin who aren’t using it this year, and …” He let the sentence hang, hoping his mother would pick up on it before he spun the story out too thin.

“I thought Brian was in Europe or somewhere with his parents,” she said.

“Oh, yeah, Greece. He, uh, decided not to go.” Kyle had never been an adept liar, and lying to his mother caused him physical pain.

“I see. How soon would you be leaving?”

“Well, it would be right away. There’s kind of a tight schedule and stuff.”

“Oh dear, you mean today?”

“Yeah. Right now, actually.”

“Before your father gets home?”

“We want to head out of town before the evening rush clogs the freeway.”

“Who’s driving?”

“I am. But we’ll split the gas.”

Mrs. Brubaker frowned, but then relaxed into a fond smile. “I suppose, since this is really your last carefree summer, you might as well do it up right. Do you need any money?”

“Well …”

“Use the MasterCard. Just be sure to keep all your receipts.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

“And pack some warm clothes.”

“I will. Tell Dad goodbye for me. I’ll tell you both all about the trip when I get back.” He started out the door.

“Wait a minute, when
will
you be back?”

“A week, maybe two. Nothing’s definite. I’ll let you know.”

She stood up and came over to stand facing her son. He had inherited her good bone structure.

“There’s nothing wrong, is there, Kyle?”

“Wrong?”

“Just asking. You know, I haven’t heard anything from your Uncle Bob since you came back from Wisconsin, and now this sudden trip to Canada …”

He gave her a strong hug. “Nothing’s wrong, Mom. This thing just came up suddenly. Don’t worry.”

He went to his own room and swiftly threw clothes and toilet articles into his bag, feeling like an utter asshole.
Nothing’s wrong, Mom
. The tongue should be ripped out of his mouth for that one.
Everything was
wrong.

No time to think about it now, though. He had to get down to the Jeep and get Marianne the hell out of here before somebody saw her, or she came shambling into the house.

Shuddering at the prospect of his mother encountering the decaying girl, he quickly finished packing, planted a goodbye kiss on his mother’s cheek, and ran out to the Jeep. Marianne was waiting for him.

• • •

Driving east on Sunset Boulevard, before he had even reached the San Diego Freeway, Kyle realized he had no idea how to get from Los Angeles to Chicago. His mind had slid into the lie he told his mother, and he was subliminally planning the fantasy trip up the coast to British Columbia. He desperately wished that were the case, instead of the hellish journey he had before him.

He drove on into Beverly Hills and stopped at an Auto Club office for the necessary maps. A helpful clerk outlined with Magic Marker a route that would take him to San Bernadino, up Interstate 15 through Las Vegas to Salt Lake City. Then east 80 through Wyoming, Nebraska and Iowa to Chicago. Looking down at the fat, yellow-inked path twisting two-thirds of the way across the country he saw a bloated graveyard worm. Shivering, he gathered up the maps and left the counter.

“Enjoy your trip,” the clerk called after him.

Kyle could only groan.

• • •

“Do you have a gun?”

Kyle froze halfway into the Jeep. “Gun?”

“You know, bang bang, you’re dead.”

“No, I don’t have a gun.”

“You’d better get one.”

“Why?”

She reached across the seat with a gray, scaly hand and stroked his face. “Because I’m asking you to, lover. And you want to keep me happy.”

How the hell did you go about buying a gun? Kyle had paid little attention to the political flap about gun control. He had never fired a gun in his life. Never expected to. Guns were for police and the juvenile gangs that infested Los Angeles.

He found the O-K Corral Gunshop on Western Avenue in the gritty end of Hollywood. Iron gratings that folded across the front of the store told him what the neighborhood was like.

Under the heavy glass counter top lay a deadly looking array of revolvers and semi-automatic pistols. A clerk in checked shirt and string tie sauntered over.

“Help you?”

“I’m, uh, looking for a gun.”

“We got ‘em. Have anything special in mind?”

Kyle peered down at the deadly little weapons. He tapped the glass above a smooth looking number that reminded him of something James Bond might carry.

“How about this one?”

The clerk unlocked the rear of the cabinet, reached in, and brought out the pistol. “Nice little weapon. Walther PP three-eighty. Holds seven rounds in the magazine, one in the chamber. Comes with an extra magazine.”

“How much is it?”

“Reconditioned police trade-in, I can let you have it for $349.99.”

“That much?”

“This is a precision piece of West German machinery, friend. They do not come cheap.”

“Do you take MasterCard?”

“Sure. Happy to.”

While Kyle dug into his wallet for the credit card. He could worry about explaining the purchase later. The clerk reached under the counter and brought up a triplicate form.

“Just fill this out, and we’ll let you know when you can come in and pick up the piece.”

“You’ll let me know?”

“Usually takes about three weeks for the state to okay it.”

“Three weeks? I need it right now.”

The clerk returned the Walther to the showcase and relocked the sliding door in back. “No can do. You know how touchy they are these days about the handgun business.”

Kyle fingered the bills in his wallet. He had about a hundred dollars in cash. “Maybe if I added something to the price?”

“No way, pal. If the boss thought I was doing business on my own I’d be outta here so fast my head would swim.”

Kyle’s heart sank. At least he had tried. Maybe when he explained Marianne would forget about the gun.

“Wait a minute.”

Kyle turned back. The clerk looked around the store to assure himself there were no other customers. “How much cash you got?”

“About a hundred dollars.”

“No way you can touch a piece like this one, but I’ve got a little peashooter in the back room I could let you have. It’s not registered, no questions asked.”

“I’ll take it.”

The gun was a short-barreled .22-caliber revolver with a scarred wooden handgrip and a cylinder that felt loose. The clerk threw in half a box of .22 long rifle cartridges and hurried Kyle out of the store.

As he walked up Western Avenue to where he had parked the Jeep Kyle wondered what it would be like to take the little gun out of the plastic bag, load the cylinder, put the muzzle to the side of his head and pull the trigger. Would he feel anything? Would there be any last thoughts before the bullet burrowed into his brain? Would there be anything afterward? At least he would then be free of the ghastly Marianne.

But even as he conjured the image he knew he could not do it. With his luck he would botch the job, blow away some vital portion of his brain, and live on as a drooling vegetable. No, he would have to find another escape. There had to be one. Didn’t there?

He climbed into the Jeep and passed the package to Marianne. She gave the .22 a cursory look and dropped it into her bag along with the bullets.

“Not much of a gun, but it will have to do,” she said. “Now let’s get going.”

It was early afternoon when Kyle pulled onto the Hollywood Freeway at Western Avenue and headed southeast across the four-level interchange. The traffic was moderate where in a couple of hours it would be bumper-to-bumper with homeward bound commuters. He turned east on the San Bernardino Freeway. Ironically, the sun chose that moment to break through the overcast and shine down benevolently to mock his mood.

Once they had made it past San Bernardino Kyle floored the accelerator and the Jeep flew over the long straight stretches of Interstate 15 through the California desert, barely slowing down as he bypassed Victorville and Barstow. He had no fear of being stopped by the California Highway Patrol. A speeding ticket would be a minor irritation compared to his larger troubles.

He kept the windows all the way down and his eyes straight ahead. He tuned the radio to whatever heavy rock station was receivable and cranked the volume to the max to blast unwelcome images out of his head.

At Baker he pulled into a Chevron station for gas and to use the rest room. He bought a billed cap with a Marlboro logo to cover the ugly hole in the back of Marianne’s head. She took the cap without comment and put it on.

His stomach growled, reminding him that he had not eaten since breakfast, and that had been a quick cup of instant coffee and a muffin before he left for the beach. It was now after six and he was hungry. He spoke his first words to Marianne since they left the gun shop in Hollywood.

“You hungry?”

She pulled the Marlboro hat down low and looked at him with flat, dead eyes. “I don’t eat.”

His own appetite faded. Still, he went into a convenience store next to the gas station and bought a bag of tortilla chips and a Hershey bar.

At the Nevada border night lay ahead of them in the east while the horizon behind still glowed with the sunset. Kyle polished off the last of the chips and the chocolate and tossed the wrappers out the window to pollute the desert. He wished he had thought to buy a Coke too.

Marianne sat like a wax figure in the seat next to him. A wax figure seriously in need of restoration. From time to time he glanced over at her, only to look quickly away when the headlights of an oncoming car illuminated her face under the bill of the cap.

Las Vegas flowed past on both sides of the highway, an island of glitter in the black desert sea. Kyle remembered the happier trips he had made to the gambling city. Once with his parents, half-a-dozen times with friends. He recalled the lacquered look of the women, the watchful eyes of the pit bosses. It all seemed like another life. This time the city was a meaningless cluster of neon that he put behind him as swiftly as possible.

The desert at night is a cold and lonely place. Seen from a speeding car it is a vast blackness relieved only by the lights of scattered dwellings. Part of Kyle’s mind wondered how people could live like that, isolated beyond any reasonable limit. Another part of his mind reminded him that at this moment he would gladly change places with any of those unseen lonely people.

He stopped outside of Cedar City to refill the tank and use the bathroom. He found an Automatic Teller Machine where his MasterCard would work and withdrew two hundred dollars. He let Marianne wait in the Jeep while he bolted a Cheese Whopper in Burger King and washed it down with two cups of black coffee.

Back on the road and into the desert night. Mile after mile of pavement hummed under the Jeep’s nubby tires. The minutes and hours clicked inexorably away on the digital dashboard clock. The only stations he could get on the radio were a country western yowler and an unctuous Christian couple telling him where to mail his offering. He regretted not grabbing a handful of tapes before he left, but at the time all he wanted to do was get moving.

At some point before dawn he began to hallucinate. Ghostly forms flitted across the highway in front of him. Once he hit the brakes hard enough to send Marianne’s head banging into the dash panel. She looked at him without expression and said nothing.

Finally he had to fight to keep his eyes open. His shoulders and arms ached from driving, his fingers cramped into claws around the steering wheel. The second time the Jeep drifted to the shoulder of the road at 80 mph, he knew he’d had it for this night.

“I’ve got to get some sleep,” he muttered through cracked lips.

“Go ahead,” she told him. “I’ll wake you when it’s time to go.”

He found a dusty two-lane road that led off into the desert. At a wide spot he turned off, killed the lights and the engine, closed his eyes and tried to will himself to sleep. No good. Now his eyes would not stay closed. The morning sun stabbed into the Jeep, and without the rush of air through the windows, the smell of Marianne made him gag. He would have to find a bed. With every muscle aching, every nerve protesting, he fired the engine and drove back onto the highway.

Passing up a TravelLodge and a Holiday Inn, he pulled into a dusty clump of cabins called the Desert Flower Motor Hotel. He asked for a room with two beds, registered as Mr. and Mrs. George Romero, and took Marianne inside. He pulled the blinds, turned the air conditioner up full, stripped to his skivvies, and fell into the bed nearest the blower. Marianne sat in a chair throughout the rest of the morning, staring at something only she could see.

Kyle awoke with a jolt and a moment’s terror of
Where the hell am I?
Too soon he remembered. Marianne sat where he had last seen her, watching him. The atmosphere was foul despite the air conditioner. He groped his wristwatch from the night stand, read
10:05
, and piled out of bed.

He washed quickly, no time for a shower or shave. In a truck stop café he wolfed a plate of scrambled eggs, sausage, and home fries, drinking as much black coffee as he could swallow. Marianne, as always, sat silently waiting in the Jeep.

He filled the tank and dug back onto the highway. They sailed past a town called Spanish Forks. A radio time signal told him they were now in the mountain time zone. With his watch adjusted it was 11 a.m. Tuesday. Chicago was still far away.

By noon they reached Salt Lake City. Kyle did not linger. Throughout the state of Utah he had imagined the clean-living Mormons staring at the California Jeep with the unshaven young man and the decomposing girl and shaking their heads in righteous disapproval.

Under other circumstances he would have enjoyed immensely the spectacular vistas of Wyoming. But on this cheerless journey the majestic mountains, the surging rivers, the unspoiled forests were nothing more than generic scenery to put behind him.

He made it through Cheyenne and across the flat expanse of Nebraska to North Platte before exhaustion forced him into another anonymous motel. He remembered to set his watch for the central time zone. It was 2:50 a.m., Wednesday, when he fell dirty and exhausted into bed.

He had barely closed his eyes when he was awakened by something moving next to him. He jerked erect and back against the headboard in horror when he realized it was the moldering body of Marianne snuggling close to him.

“Jesus, what are you doing?”

She turned her face to him, made more ghastly by the light of a flickering blue neon sign outside the window.

“I can still do it, you know.”

His stomach lurched. “Oh, God, Marianne …”

She grasped his limp member. He pulled violently away.

“But apparently you can’t.”

“Hell no, I can’t.” He rolled out onto the floor and stumbled to the other bed. “What do you expect?”

“You’re not much fun, you know that?”

“Fun?
Fun?!
Are you crazy?”

“No, lover, I’m dead. Remember?”

“Leave me alone, can’t you? I’ve got to sleep.”

Several times before daylight he awoke shouting and brushing frantically at his body. Marianne sat now in a chair across the room.

At 10 a.m. they were underway again. Kyle tanked up on black coffee and bought a bottle of caffeine pills in a drug store. He vowed not to sleep again until they reached Chicago.

They bypassed Omaha and crossed the Missouri River into Iowa at five in the afternoon. The water towers and not much else of the small towns were visible from the interstate. Kyle stopped only when absolutely necessary for fuel or bathroom purposes, or for a quick sandwich and more black coffee.

They skirted Des Moines to the north and Davenport to the south and rolled on across the Mississippi River. Kyle’s eyelids were crusted, his nerves jangling from coffee and pills, but with his goal just over three hours away, nothing short of a brick wall was going to stop him.

When they entered Illinois at Moline, Kyle felt they were almost there, even though the entire state lay between him and Chicago. He drove with a crazed intensity through Joliet, a name he associated with prison. It was not an image he wanted to hold right now.

He turned north on 57 and angled toward Lake Michigan through the suburbs of Oak Forest, Markham, Harvey, Riverdale, and Blue Island. At the first motel sign visible from the expressway he pulled it off. In the office he rented a room, not bothering to use an alias, and bought a map of Chicago. He took the map to the room, spread it out on the bed, and fell asleep squinting at the small print of the street names.

The cleaning woman awakened him at noon to tell him it was checkout time. He looked wildly around for Marianne, saw the bathroom door closed, and told the woman he would be out in five minutes.

While Marianne stood silently watching, he returned his attention to the map of Chicago. After some hunting, he found Judson Street. It ran in broken sections like a chopped-up snake across the south side of the city. He deposited Marianne in the Jeep and took the map with him when he went into the office to return the key. A fat Arabic looking man with a sooty moustache was working the desk.

Kyle pointed out on the map the section of Judson Street that would include the address Marianne had written down. “Can you tell me how to get there from here?”

The man peered at the map, then up at Kyle. His irises were so dark his eyes seemed to have no pupils. “You sure you want to go there?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

The clerk shrugged, ridding himself of any responsibility for this young man’s actions. He took a ballpoint pen from his pocket and traced a route up the Dan Ryan Expressway past the University of Chicago and off before 35
^th
Street and Comiskey Park. He inked a heavy “X” in a crosshatch of streets where one broken section of Judson lay. Kyle folded up the map and left.

He drove slowly with the map spread out on his lap, following the route marked by the desk clerk. Beside him Marianne sat leaning forward, her sunken eyes scanning the Expressway as though she might spy Lloyd Gerstner walking along the shoulder. When Kyle steered the Jeep down into the neighborhood “X”ed on the map it was like driving into a garbage dump.

There were as many graffiti-scarred, boarded-up store fronts as there were shops open for business. Bottles, rags, scum, and bums littered the street. The Jeep with its California plates and weird occupants drew hard, hostile stares from the dark-skinned people who drifted aimlessly along the sidewalks or stood in clusters at the corners of the mean streets.

The segment of Judson Street that lay here was meaner than most. The fading light of late afternoon did not make it lovelier. Stripped and gutted cars lined the curb. The fronts of the old buildings were blackened with layers of grime, the windows opaque. The address Marianne had for Lloyd Gerstner was a sooty five-story brick that might, in the forgotten past, have been a townhouse. A faded cardboard sign in a downstairs window read:
ROOMS FOR RENT
.

“There it is,” Kyle said.

“I know,” said Marianne in the terrible rasp that her voice had become.

“Are you going in?”

“That’s what I came for.”

“Do you want me to wait for you?”
Please, please say no
.

“No. I won’t need you for this.”

Kyle drew a great sigh of blessed relief that he tried to hide. He reached across to open the door on her side, being careful not to come in contact with the pulpy flesh.

Bony fingers clutched his arm and squeezed with inhuman strength.

“But don’t try to run away from me, lover. You know I’ll find you. I’ll always find you.”

The words were a knife in his heart, all the more painful because he knew they were true. He ground the Jeep into gear and drove off without looking back. He turned several corners aimlessly, finally parking across from a black-painted window with a flickering green neon tube in the shape of a lizard. The lettering read: Salamander Lounge.

Kyle got out of the Jeep and exchanged icy stares with two husky black men who leaned against the wall next to the Salamander.

Go ahead, jump me. Nobody can do more to me than I’ve done to myself.

The silent men watched him with hooded eyes, but made no move to impede him.

The interior of the Salamander Lounge smelled like a toilet. So accustomed was Kyle to the odor of rot, that he barely noticed. The lighting was dim to the point of gloom. The patrons were indistinguishable from the derelicts who shuffled along the street outside. Grimy hands, unshaven faces, ragged clothes, and narrow, nervous eyes. None of them paid much attention, and Kyle realized with a jolt that after his marathon drive across the country he looked like one of them.

“Beer,” he told the bartender, a black man with the upper torso of a pro lineman.

“What kind?”

“Whatever you got.”

“Two dollars.” He waited until Kyle had fished out the change and laid it on the bar before heading for the cooler. He brought back a can of Old Milwaukee. “You need a glass?”

Kyle shook his head. He popped the can and tilted it to his lips. The beer was cold and good and went down with a bite. He set the can down and belched.

“Excuse me,” he said, purely by reflex. Nobody paid any attention.

A movement reflected in the streaky mirror behind the bar caught his eye. He turned. In the doorway stood the frail Gypsy boy from the carnival.

“Hey!” he called.