The Edge of Sleep jb-3

by David Wiltse

  “Yes,” said Ash, pumping his head up and down, urging Bobby to agree. “Yes.”

  “Do you?”

  Bobby nodded. “Uh-huh.”

  “Imagine how it makes me feel, when you pull away,” Dee said. Bobby noticed that the thing behind her eyes had slithered away and she was Dee again, a little wound up, a little too enthusiastic, but still a woman, still the same person he knew.

  Bobby nodded in agreement once more.

  “After all I do for you,” she said. “When I love you so much and you pull away-it disappoints me.”

  She released his arms and Bobby saw how her grip had left white marks that only slowly became pink again.

  “Okay, case closed,” she said, brightening once more. “No harm done, right. Ash?”

  “No harm,” said Ash.

  “All right. Tommy? All done?” She smiled broadly. “I know you’re sorry. I know you didn’t mean to do it, but you must try very hard not to disappoint me. And I’ll try very hard not to disappoint you. Okay, sweetheart?”

  She smiled at him, awaiting a response.

  “Yes,” said Bobby.

  Her smile broadened even further. “You make me so happy!” she said.

  She clasped him in her arms again. Her clothing was stiff with starch and scraped against his naked skin.

  “Who do you love?” she asked.

  “I love you. Dee,” he said.

  “I know you do, sweetheart. Just try not to let me down. It makes me feel so bad.”

  And then she was away from him, into the whirl of activity that always seemed to accompany, her. She swept into the bathroom, out again to her night table, gathering her things, perfecting her look. When she went out the door it was as if a wind had swept through the room and now was gone. Through the open door Bobby had a glimpse of the outdoors: a car parked in front of their room, a patch of grass that looked unnaturally green, a low hedge, a sampling of sky that hinted of rain. Then the door was closed and Ash was in front of it again.

  “Don’t disappoint her,” Ash said.

  “Okay,” Bobby said, dismissing it.

  “No,” Ash said, shaking his head, trying to convey to Bobby the seriousness of what he said. “You mustn’t. You mustn’t.”

  “Can I wear some clothes today?” Bobby asked.

  Ash waggled his head in frustration. They never believed him when he tried to warn them. He was never able to make them understand ahead of time. Only Dee could make them understand, and then it was too late.

  “No clothes yet,” Ash said. “But listen, listen. Don’t make her mad.”

  “I didn’t do anything,” Bobby said. “She just got mad on her own. It wasn’t my fault.”

  “No,” Ash said. “No.” But it was no use. After the first day or two they were never really afraid of him anymore. No matter what he did they seemed to understand that he was not a threat. They obeyed him because they recognized he could force them to do whatever he wanted, but they didn’t take him seriously. They knew how stupid he was, Ash realized, and as a result they never really credited what he tried to tell them. He knew he was stupid, but he also knew that he understood things they would never believe until it no longer mattered if they believed them or not.

  “Maybe tomorrow you’ll get clothes,” he said.

  “Really?” Bobby was excited.

  “Maybe she’ll take you out.”

  “Out? Out of here? You mean tomorrow we can leave the room?”

  “Don’t disappoint her,” Ash said.

  “I won’t. I won’t. You mean we’ll leave the room, Ash?”

  “She’s going to want to show you off,” Ash said. “She’s very proud of you.”

  “Really? Do you mean it?”

  Ash wanted to tell him not to get so excited. He wanted to explain that Bobby was safest at this stage, before Dee’s expectations got too high. Before she loved him too much.

  “You mustn’t disappoint her,” Ash said.

  “I won’t. Stop saying that. I’ll be good.”

  “You have to be so good.” Ash said. “So good.”

  The old fool was dispensing towels again. Like clockwork, as soon as the woman’s car appeared, George jumped up from his chair and grabbed the towels. Reggie thought he looked like his damned chair was rigged. Like the gas station where you ran over a rubber hose and the bell rang, only here there was no bell, just a shot of adrenaline straight into the old fool’s ass. Reggie watched him hovering around the office until “Dee” came home, pretending to work, pretending he knew how to read the books and count the figures. And all for a younger woman’s smile.

  Reggie watched with growing anger as he scurried out the door, holding the towels with one hand, patting his hairs into place atop his pate with the other. It was enough to make her spit. If he didn’t look so damned ludicrous it would be sad, but as it was it was pathetic. Just pathetic.

  The woman, of course, greeted him like a long lost friend. Good old George, her personal laundry man, grinning and patting himself like a gigolo. If they had gigolos that age. Reggie looked at “Dee” waiting by the car, containers of take-out food stacked on top. She was very careful not to give George a peek inside the room, Reggie noticed. She would take the towels, smile and chatter away for a bit while George stood there and drooled, then, as he finally turned and walked away-and he usually wouldn’t have sense enough to do that until Reggie stepped out of the office onto the porch-then, and only then, when George’s back was turned, would she knock on her door and when it was opened a crack, slip inside with the towels and take-out food.

  There was something suspicious going on in cabin six, and no doubt about it. George was too besotted to see it, of course, and there was no point in trying to convince him, but Reggie didn’t need his help to find out what was afoot. She had been a motel owner for seven years and nobody’s fool for long before that.

  She left George safely watching a rerun of a sitcom that featured a famously stupid blonde with a chest that Reggie considered indecent and an equally famous vacuous young man who worked obviously at his acting, but very hard. As long as the blonde was on the screen, which was most of the time, George would never know that Reggie was gone. Not that it mattered if he did know, she thought. She had a perfect right, after all.

  She slipped out of the office door and paused for a moment on the front porch. The cabins stood in pools of light from their own outdoor lamps. Some of the lights were out and the guests already retired for the evening. Some of the cabins stood empty, unrented and dark. Cabin six was lighted.

  Reggie stepped off the porch and walked to the edge of the illumination that came from her own porch light. A few steps beyond it and she moved in darkness, which was the way she wanted it. She knew the way well enough. There were no surprises between here and cabin six, even though her eyes had not yet adjusted to the night. Reggie caught herself tiptoeing even though she was forty yards away from the cabin. She had no reason to sneak, she told herself. It was her motel, her property, her livelihood, and she had every right in the world to know what was going on in any one of her cabins. Especially when it was something undeniably fishy. Unconsciously she slipped back into her stealthy mode after a few steps.

  When Reggie was halfway there, the light on cabin six went out with a suddenness that startled her. The transition from light to dark was so abrupt she thought she could almost hear a snap. A body came out of the cabin and opened the door of the car parked in front of the building. The interior light of the car showed Reggie that it was the woman. Dee, and then the car light, too, went off.

  Reggie froze where she was, covered by a blanket of darkness that lay between the office and the cabin. She was certain that Dee did not see her watching. Reggie could only make out Dee’s shape without the cabin light because she knew where to look. Dee hurried to the cabin. There was a brief glimpse of pale blue-green light from the television set in the cabin, and Reggie had the impression of someone very large scurrying from the cabin
and into the car. He seemed to be carrying something, but Reggie had no idea what it was. He was into the backseat of the car in an instant and the cabin door was closed even before that. Another shape hurried through the dark toward the car and Reggie knew it was Dee again.

  Car doors slammed, the engine roared to life, but still there were no lights. Dee drove with her headlights off across the curved gravel drive. As it approached the road the car came under the light from the Restawhile sign that stood beside the highway and Reggie could see Dee behind the wheel, but there was no sign of anyone else in the car. The car’s headlights came on as the car pulled onto the highway and Dee was lighted again by the sweep of oncoming beams, but still there was no indication of another soul in the car.

  Reggie waited until Dee’s automobile was off, heading toward town, then she waited a minute longer, forcing herself to count to sixty to make sure the woman didn’t remember something and come sweeping back. Finally, her heart beating faster, Reggie turned toward cabin six again. The woman had claimed her husband had trouble with his eyes, which might account for the strange, unlighted dash into the car, but it certainly wouldn’t have made him invisible. Why would a man run into the backseat of a car and flop down out of sight immediately? Reggie could not think of any legitimate reason for such behavior.

  With a glance back at the highway, Reggie fumbled through her keys, selected the right one, and opened the door to cabin six.

  It smelled funny, she realized immediately. Heavy, musky, stale. Not like unwashed bodies, she thought, not that exactly, but more like something that you couldn’t wash away. It wasn’t sex either, which was what Reggie had expected. There was a milky cast to the odor, and something sharp and acrid that she could not identify.

  She eased the door closed behind her before turning on the interior light, because even though she had a perfect right to be where she was, there was no need to advertise her presence.

  The bedspread was missing, she saw that immediately. Some guests removed it on purpose and stored it on the shelf in the closet where it was intended to go, but most never bothered and slept with it over them, piling a blanket on top of the spread if it got cold. But, of course, no one was cold now. Reggie felt her skin prickling as if she were about to break a sweat just from the exertion of walking here from the office. The spread was nowhere to be found, which was all the reason Reggie would require to get rid of George’s little favorite. Even he could not argue against theft of motel property. Sneaking off with a towel was one thing, and certainly a major nuisance, but an entire bedspread was another matter entirely.

  It did not take long for Reggie to inventory the room. There was evidence enough of the “husband.” A shirt of his hung in the closet, an old-fashioned razor with two-sided blades was beside the sink. Even George used a disposable cartridge razor these days. The woman’s cosmetics were strewn throughout the bathroom, atop the sink, on the top of the toilet tank, some spilling onto the floor. Reggie had known she would be a sloven. Three toothbrushes stood upright in the motel’s bathroom glass. Two adult-size models with slanted heads and one children’s size, baby blue. Wasn’t she just too cute to bear, Reggie thought. Her little teeth were just too delicate for an adult brush. It was enough to make you sick. The woman’s nightgown hung on the back of the bathroom door. Reggie flicked it with a finger, disgusted by the frilliness of it. She could just picture the harlot flitting around the room in her lacey nightie, her face painted like a whore’s, her child’s toothbrush in her mouth. She probably talked baby talk, too, Reggie thought. George would like that, of course. He wasn’t many years removed from a second childhood himself.

  Reggie returned to the closet, a doorless recess with a shelf above and a single metal bar below. The woman had four pairs of shoes in there, the man had none, which meant he was wearing his only pair now. There were no trousers hanging in the closet, either. They had been in the cabin more than three weeks now, Reggie calculated, and the only change of clothes she could see for the man was that one forlorn-looking shirt. She knew other men who would live like that if their women allowed it. Not George. The old fool had more clothes than Reggie did. A peacock, he thought he was a peacock. Reggie snorted at the image, but in fact she felt rather fondly toward George at that moment. Despite his age he tried to maintain a certain standard of appearance. She was grateful for it, too, although she made fun of his passion for color coordination more often than she applauded it.

  The woman had a number of outfits hanging on the motel’s unremovable hangers. Two wire hangers held freshly laundered garments still wrapped in see-through plastic. A single suitcase lay atop the motel’s collapsible canvas-ribbed stand. Reggie opened it and rummaged quickly through the collection of women’s underthings. Again, everything was Dee’s. Her husband seemed to live only with the clothes on his back.

  Except for the spreading cosmetics, the belongings of the room’s occupants seemed surprisingly well contained. Things looked as if they could all be swept into the suit- case in less than a minute. Reggie resolved to not let them fall behind in their rent by so much as a day. They could bolt and be out of here before she could stop them if she so much as blinked in her vigilance.

  She pulled the sheet back on the bed, then gasped as she heard the noise at the door.

  Ash covered the boy like a shell, his great body hunched over the smaller one, concealing and protecting it both at once. Bobby could feel the man’s form against his but his weight did not crush him as it so easily could have. There was no sense of threat. He knew that Ash would not harm him, so he did not struggle against the bedspread that surrounded him, or the hovering presence of the big man himself. Bobby lay still, waiting for the moment to pass. He no longer questioned the things that happened to him but tried to flow with them, offering the least resistance possible.

  Once they were well away from the motel Ash sat up in the backseat and took the bedspread off the boy, who rose slowly, blinking, at first not daring to believe he was seeing the real, familiar world flashing past the car windows.

  Bobby looked at Ash for confirmation, and the big man smiled gleefully. The boy could sense Dee’s jubilation without even glancing at the front seat. Her excitement poured off of her in waves, as palpable as heat. She had twisted the rearview mirror so that she could watch his reaction. Bobby could see her eye, part of her nose. The arch of her eyebrow told him without question of her mood. She was exhilarated by their outing and Bobby knew she expected him to be the same.

  “Well? What do you think?” Dee asked.

  “This is great,” Bobby said. He looked out the window and tried to act as if all the passing scene of auto body shops and fast-food restaurants were brass rings on the merry-go-round. He was careful not to look directly into Dee’s eyes in the mirror. She was much too quick to tell when he was feigning interest. Ash was easier to fool and Bobby played him as a foil for his enthusiasm.

  “Look,” he cried, tugging Ash’s arm. “Burger King!” Ash nodded approval.

  “Do you like Burger King, Ash?”

  “I like Burger King.”

  “Can we eat there. Dee?”

  “Is it a good one?” Dee asked.

  “Yeah, it’s great. They have great french fries.”

  “Let’s go somewhere new,” Dee said. Bobby noticed a change in her tone. A darker, more calculating note. He knew by now that she was never so excited that she stopped thinking. He had made a mistake in letting her know he had been there before. She would find a place where there was no chance that he would be recognized. They passed a billboard for mattresses that Bobby recognized, a shop selling wicker furniture where his mother sometimes made them stop, the state patrol building where Bobby’s father always slowed as he passed. They were going the wrong way. They were going away from home.

  The sudden loss of hope infused his face despite his efforts, and Dee saw it immediately.

  “You don’t like it,” she announced.

  “What? Yes, I do. I like i
t,” Bobby was not certain what he was supposed to like.

  “No, you don’t.” Her voice was flat, the excitement gone completely.

  Ash gripped Bobby’s arm and squeezed, shaking his head in warning.

  “I do like it!” Bobby said, hearing the desperation in his voice.

  “You’re not having fun.”

  “Yes, I am. I am.”

  “We can just turn around right now and go home.”

  “No, Dee, please…”

  “If what I give you isn’t good enough for you, then we’ll just do without.”

  “It is good enough. Honest, it really is.”

  “I just thought you’d enjoy going out to eat for a change,” she said, her voice now full of self-pity. “Naturally I want to show you off, what’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing…”

  “But I don’t want to show off an ungrateful little boy.”

  “He wants to go,” Ash said.

  “I do, I do.”

  “Well… ”

  “I think it’s great! It’s fun being out here. It’s fun being with you and Ash.”

  “Well…”

  “I don’t care what we eat. Whatever you want. You choose.”

  “I did have someplace special in mind,” Dee said.

  “Great!”

  “Well… ”

  She kept on driving and did not wheel the car around and head back to the motel as Bobby had feared, but her enthusiasm was gone entirely. The face that he could see in the mirror was now hurt, sullen, and wary. Disappointed.

  They drove for half an hour and eventually Dee’s mood lightened and she began to talk again, but without the buoyancy of before. Ash seemed genuinely delighted by their outing and he studied the passing scene with interest. His face was close to the window, his nose nearly pressing against the glass. He reminded Bobby of a dog.

  Bobby began to relax. He was out of the motel room. They had allowed him to wear his clothes for the first time since the kidnapping. They were not taking him home, but he was going out. Out meant a chance. Ash could not block every exit now that they were outside the room. There would be people around them if they ever stopped the car. He could yell for help, he could outwit Ash-he knew he could outsmart him-and run. Maybe a policeman would be there. Maybe someone who knew him. Maybe his parents.