Night of Violence

by Louis Charbonneau

  “One … one couple,” he blurted. “But they were d-driving a Dodge. A—a green one.”

  The big man released him. His eyes were small and cold and lifeless. He nodded curtly at his companion and they walked out.

  Murray held onto the counter. The room swam slightly before his eyes. Something started to come up from his stomach and he swallowed hard. He held it down, but the painfully bitter taste stuck in his throat.

  “Jesus,” he said aloud. He ought to call the cops.

  The tremor shivered through his legs again. He thought of the big man’s eyes, and he knew he wasn’t going to do anything.

  8

  In the Route 77 Café, Jeff Peters wiped the sweat from his forehead with his arm and slapped three more hamburgers on the hot griddle.

  Jesus! he thought. What a night!

  He glanced at the row of order slips. He ought to have more help on nights like this, but they never stayed if they were any good, and if they weren’t they couldn’t keep up with the orders and they ended up costing him money, more than they were worth.

  He looked back toward the packed café, and he saw Marina standing patiently at the counter. She raised an eyebrow and smiled at him. Oh, my God! he groaned. The ham sandwich. She must have been standing there for twenty minutes.

  He looked at the order slips again. Where the hell was it? Out of the corner of his eye he saw the slip on the floor, and he knew before he picked it up that it was the order for Marina’s ham sandwich. He threw her a helpless glance of apology, and she smiled again. A good thing she wasn’t like most of them, Jeff thought, as he deftly turned the hamburgers and reached for some bread for the ham sandwich and gauged the time left before the basket of french fries had to be lifted out and estimated the time when the rare steak should go on so that it would be done at the same time as the medium well on the same ticket. Lucky for him it was Marina’s order. Most of them would have walked out or made a scene.

  Marina was a good kid, and Art Durbin was a damned fool not to marry her quick while he had the chance, Jeff thought, slicing the ham with a quick, clean stroke of the long knife.

  In a corner booth Burt Herman glowered at the menu. Two bucks for a T-Bone. He licked his lips.

  “I think I’d just like a salad,” Bess said.

  Burt glanced quickly at the salad listing on the menu. The cheapest one was the tossed salad for thirty cents, and he knew that wasn’t what Bess meant. She meant the cottage cheese and fruit salad for eighty-five cents. A couple of lousy peach halves and a scoop of cottage cheese on some wilted lettuce and they had the nerve to charge eighty-five cents.

  “That’s no dinner,” Burt said.

  “It’s all I want,” she said, sighing. “Besides, it’s not fattening.”

  Frank was studying the menu with a frown. “I’ll have a cheeseburger and french fries,” he announced. “And apple pie à Ta mode.”

  “I’ll just have the cheeseburger and french fries,” Lois said. She giggled. “I have to watch my figure.”

  Frank leered. “If you don’t, nobody else will.”

  Burt felt better. If Bess had the salad and the kids had cheeseburgers, maybe he could have the T-Bone, after all. What the hell, it was supposed to be a vacation, wasn’t it?

  “Daddy, can I have a dime?” Lois asked eagerly.

  “What for?”

  “Just for the juke box.”

  “For Chrissake, you been listening to music all day.”

  Lois pouted, and Burt, remembering the scene in the car when he had grabbed her arm, reached into his pocket for some change.

  Bess watched Lois walk over to the juke box. She sighed. Lois was getting so pretty now. Unexpectedly pretty. It was always surprising Bess these days that this child could be her own. Bess knew that she had never been pretty. She had been big breasted, but her hips and legs had always been heavy, and her face just a pleasant face, smiling too much, too eager, too friendly.

  Lois had a different face, and it didn’t come from either Bess or Burt. She looked like a feminine version of Bess’s Uncle Jeffrey, a ne’er-do-well, the traditional drinking uncle, who had had too many jobs and too many women.

  Bess watched Lois turn away from the juke box. The slow, moody, guitar-strumming opening of a Sleepy Summers’ tune exploded softly behind her, and the girl’s slim hips moved rhythmically with the beat. She slid onto the seat opposite Bess, next to her father, and leaned back with a soft, dreamy smile, her eyes half-closing in languorous ecstasy as the husky, sleepy voice droned through the loudspeakers.

  “You’re my … baby doll….”

  The face was no longer a child’s face. The blue eyes were too wise, and the full, red-painted mouth curved in a too knowing smile. Bess tried to remember what it was to be sixteen, and she tried to understand this child’s wisdom, but it was beyond her. At sixteen Bess had been a stupid, awkward, self-conscious girl, red-blushing-faced, her mouth unkissed. She remembered hearing Lois laugh, that spring, when Burt had been out one night and Bess had gone to her bedroom to leave Lois alone in the living room with the boy who had brought her home from a movie date.

  Bess had tried not to listen, but she had heard the whispers from the front room, and long periods of silence. Then Lois laughed. Remembering that sound, Bess felt ashamed at the pictures the laughter had conjured up in her mind … that low, husky, knowing laugh. A woman’s laugh, heard from the shadows, mocking and bold.

  Bess didn’t mind the infatuation with Sleepy Summers. She could understand that. It was this young-old wisdom in the pretty face framed in the too-blonde hair which baffled her. Bess didn’t know how to talk to Lois any more. She always had the feeling that the child was laughing at her….

  On the seat next to Burt, Lois Herman leaned back, her eyes half-closed, hearing the husky words. “Baby, baby doll….” They were like the whisper in her ear, lips close, brushing against her ear, so close that she could feel the warm breath, and the hot-shivery feeling, like a fever, that made her breasts harden, that made them ache, made them acutely sensitive, so that even the pressure of the bra was a conscious sensation, and she stirred slightly, making the cloth rub.

  And she pictured the tall singer’s lean body, dressed in black, as hard and unbending as a long spike. And his brooding face, the drowsy eyes, black and baleful, the lips hardly moving as he sang, the nasal voice droning low, intimate and sleepy, then sometimes gathering force with a surprising, exciting surge of power, leaping upward to a cry of passion and of pain that left her breathless and trembling.

  She heard Frank give a low whistle, and, opening her eyes, she saw him staring at a tall, dark-haired girl over by the counter. Lois smiled, half-indulgent, half-contemptuous. He was such a kid, just like all the teenage kids who could get so pantingly excited if you simply let them touch you.

  Not like Sleepy, nail-hard and hungry-faced, whose sad eyes probed into your very soul….

  9

  Art liked the look of the Wallaces. He liked Richard Wallace’s easy manner, the clean handsome cut of his clothes, and the young, friendly smile which gave the lie to his gray hair. Art appreciated the lines of the Wallace’s new, white, Ford convertible, and the even better lines of Irene Wallace’s figure. She was one of those rare women who, at the end of a long day’s motoring through the desert, can still look as if they’re just setting off in the morning after a tingling shower and a leisurely breakfast.

  He took them to Unit 4 himself, locking the cash drawer automatically but not bothering to lock the office door. Richard Wallace thanked him and Irene Wallace smiled at him in a gracious way that managed to make him feel as if he had been uniquely favored.

  As he walked back across the courtyard, Art glanced toward the Stockwells’ unit, and the cool crisp image of Irene Wallace faded. No woman seemed to be able to survive comparison with the image of Lucy’s ripe, full body.

  Guiltily, Art looked across the highway toward the café, half expecting to see Marina coming toward him. There w
as no one in sight. It was taking her a long time. Jeff probably had his hands full with the evening crowd. It had even turned out to be a busy night for the Hideaway Motel. Six units taken out of the eight, and it was still early enough to pick up another stray who hadn’t been able to find a place in Albuquerque. Nice of Joe Murray to send the Wallaces to him.

  Art wasn’t expecting anyone in the office, and he had entered and closed the door before he saw Lucy. She was leaning against the counter, her lips curving in that slow, sensual smile no man could ever misunderstand.

  Art walked slowly over to the counter and looked down at her, feeling as if he were an inanimate, helpless piece of iron being drawn by a powerful magnet.

  “I wanted some Alka-Seltzer,” Lucy said, her voice low and husky. “I’ve got a headache.”

  “Have you?” Art’s voice shook, and the fact angered him.

  “I thought maybe you could help me.”

  “Why me?” Art remembered how she had left him, remembered those first blind, aimless weeks when nothing had mattered but the feeling of pain and loss, remembered the abrupt, callous news of the Nevada divorce and her marriage to the salesman—whose face he could not remember.

  “You’ve never forgiven me, have you?” Lucy asked.

  She looked at his chest, then raised her eyes slowly. Art saw the maneuver, understood it, recognized its ancient lineage, dating back to Eve, but he still felt the full impact of that bold stare. He looked at her hair, redder than he remembered it, and he wanted to bury his fingers in the heavy mass of curls.

  “No,” he said. “Should I? Let bygones be bygones?”

  “The past isn’t dead,” Lucy said slowly. “Is it?”

  He wanted to say yes. More than anything he wanted to say that he had forgotten her, that there wasn’t even a scar to remind him of the momentary wound made when her body was ripped away from his. But it was no use. The wound still festered and Lucy knew it.

  “I’d better get your Alka-Seltzer,” Art said harshly. “Your husband will wonder what’s keeping you.”

  He turned away abruptly, lifted the section of counter and stepped through, leaving the pass-through open. There was a bottle of Alka-Seltzer in the lower right hand drawer of his desk. His fingers shook when he picked up the bottle. Before he turned around he knew that Lucy had followed him through the counter, as he had wanted her to follow him. He turned, and she was so close that his arm pressed against her breasts.

  Her face was inches away from him, her lips slightly parted, her eyelids drooping as if they were very heavy, and he saw the mascara thick on her lashes, moist with the heat, and the penciled blue line defining the lid above the eyes, that line, too, blurred and heavy, like the line a pen makes on blotting paper.

  “Why did you have to come back?” he said angrily.

  Then her breasts were pushing against his chest, and he could feel the weight of them, and her hips moved and suddenly her whole body was pressing against him, enveloping him, her arms sliding sinuously around his neck, and he brought his mouth down over hers in a brutal, angry kiss, feeling the blood pound in his head, the urgent driving need of her surging upward through his body.

  She broke the kiss at last, but still clung to him, and the smell of her hair was strong in his nostrils, familiar and strangely exciting.

  “Damn you,” he whispered savagely. “Damn you!”

  “Oh, Art,” she murmured. “It’s been such a long time.”

  He heard the banal, empty words, and they angered him even more, but he wanted them to be true, and his fingers dug into the hollow of her spine. She arched her back, gave a low moan and raised her lips.

  Outside a motor barked sharply, coughed, then caught and exploded into a roar. For a moment Art didn’t understand the sound, or why it should make him hesitate. Then he was pushing Lucy roughly away from him and running for the door. He bumped against the counter, spun away from it and stumbled forward, no longer angry but sick with a new emptiness, a new knowledge of loss.

  He jerked the door open and saw Marina’s MG skid as it hit the highway, its rear fishtailing, then straightening out as the car gathered speed.

  “Marina!” he shouted.

  But the cry was lost in the roar of the little car’s engine. He stood in the doorway watching as the red taillights rapidly dwindled and the mutter of the engine died away.

  He looked down. On the step outside the door there was a small brown paper sack. He picked it up and automatically opened the top of the sack. Inside there were two paper cups, the coffee spilling out slightly, and a sandwich wrapped in wax paper. He stood looking at the sack stupidly, not moving, until he felt Lucy’s hand on his arm.

  “Who is Marina?” Lucy asked.

  Art glared at her. “Just a girl,” he said. “She works here.”

  “Oh?” Lucy reached out and tilted the top of the paper sack. “She brought you a sandwich. That’s nice.”

  “She saw us,’ Art said flatly.

  “Is that so bad, darling? Will she be hurt?”

  “It’s not funny, Lucy.”

  Her eyes mocked him. “Isn’t it?”

  She began to laugh, low and throaty, a woman’s laughter full of triumph, rich with the knowledge that she had conquered, taking a man out of another woman’s arms with ridiculous ease, laughter that was without pity for the woman who had fled.

  Art’s face was stony. He felt the tightness pulling across his cheeks, the hardness in his jaws.

  “You’re a bitch,” he said. “You always were.”

  The laughter caught, broke off. For a moment anger flitted across Lucy’s face, but amusement returned to chase it away.

  “Is that what you like about me?” she asked him softly.

  She pushed past him through the door, letting her body rub casually against his.

  “Thanks for the Alka-Seltzer,” she said.

  She walked out, and Art stood in the doorway, watching the slow, hip-rolling rhythm of her walk until she had crossed the courtyard. Horace Stockwell opened the door of their room as she reached it, and for a moment the two men confronted each other across the no man’s land of the bare courtyard.

  The door closed behind Lucy, and the courtyard was silent and empty. Art felt the dark chill of evening brooding over the desert.

  10

  When Marina left the Route 77 Café with Art’s sandwich and the two coffees, she was feeling better than she had all evening. Even the long delay in the café, and Jeff’s carelessness with the order, hadn’t been able to touch the exhilaration she had felt singing through her when she left the office, her ears full of the sound of gentle humor in Art’s voice, in her mind a lingering image of the warm appreciation she had seen in his eyes.

  She stopped at the edge of the highway to let an approaching car go by. She looked up at the immense darkness of the sky, sprinkled with diamonds. A thousand million shameless brides, she thought, flaunting their jeweled third fingers.

  And I guess that shows you were you stand, she thought. You and your pretense that you work for him because he’s a nice guy, and anyway you need the money. He says you have nice legs and already you start seeing diamonds. Next thing the air will be full of wedding bells. The tintinnabulation of the bells, bells, bells. What a world of merriment….

  The car passed and she started across the road. There was a smile on her wide, red mouth, and she felt absurdly happy, smiling to herself in the middle of the road, swinging the paper sack with a careless exuberance until she remembered the coffee and the fact that Jeff didn’t always put the tops of the cups on tight.

  Oh, you’ve found your man, she thought, in a little town in the middle of nowhere, not in the busy office in Manhattan or the drugstore on Sunset Boulevard, where the men looked at you with a calculating glint in their eyes. Some of the smart girls would say, “My God, what is he, a prospector?”

  But she wouldn’t have to explain or say anything at all, because it wouldn’t matter what they thought or said—and
anyway, when they saw him, their smiles would be forced, and they would look at him with a calculating glint in their eyes, because you didn’t often see shoulders like his in Schwab’s.

  If they ever saw him. That, too, no longer mattered. She liked this desert where her father had come to die, where the clean air filled the lungs and the skin turned gold-then-brown (how they would envy her the desert tan!) and the sun was a brutal force to be treated with respect, and the bride-filled nights held an uncanny silence and the promise of a new bride’s fulfilling wisdom.

  She crossed the road and reached the drive leading into the motel’s courtyard. There were two cars there which had arrived while she was gone—the Cadillac in front of Unit 3 and the white convertible next to it. They might fill up tonight. They could fill up every night if Art could only forget Lucy and—

  The bells stopped ringing and the sky darkened, sprinkled now only with cold, distant stars.

  Aren’t you a dreamer, she thought bitterly. Cheerful little dreamer, living in the best of all possible worlds. But he could love me, one part of her mind challenged. He even thinks he does, sometimes, and he feels guilty about it because of Lucy, and that’s why he won’t let himself touch you, that’s why he kisses you good night like a brother. And why not, her bitter self demanded angrily, thinking with distaste of her small breasts and her boy-slim hips and the way her lips instinctively tightened when he kissed his brother’s kiss, tightened because she didn’t want him to know the fire whose flames leaped upward in her body when he touched her. Why not treat you like a sister? He wants a woman!

  She glanced in the office window as she approached the door, and for a moment the image behind the glass had so little reality that she almost opened the door. Understanding came in time, and she stepped back. For a long moment she stood outside the window looking in, feeling the child’s hunger for the Christmas treasures behind the glass of the store window, feeling the warmth of her love curl up inside of her, shrinking into a protective ball.