The Edge of Sleep

by Wiltse, David

  “I’m not taking him to work. We were on our way to camp ...” Karen stopped, thinking her only hope for dignity was to remain silent.

  “I’m sure you try your best,” Dee said. She squeezed Karen’s arm dismissively, then turned abruptly to Becker. Her tears seemed to have evaporated within a second.

  “And just what are you contributing to all this?” Dee asked, smiling.

  “Just standing around,” Becker said.

  “That’s what they do best, isn’t it?” Dee said to Karen.

  Karen, still smarting from the implied criticism of her parenting skills, refused to be drawn into Dee’s conspiracy. The woman was a reflexive flirt, Karen thought, turning on her overwrought charm for everyone she encountered, man or woman. It was heavy-handed as a club with women, but it seemed to work with men. She was annoyed to see Becker smiling as broadly as the woman.

  “Well then, come on in and help me out,” Dee said to Becker, and again she was on the move, skipping up the steps and into the office before Becker or Karen could react.

  “She seems to have her own agenda,” Becker said, still smiling.

  “You find her funny, too?”

  “I think she likes me, what do you think?” Becker said.

  “I think she needs a Valium.”

  “She’s more fun than a midget, though.”

  Becker and Karen followed Dee toward the office and heard her already engaged in a shouting match with the woman owner before they reached the door.

  “Is it too late to just turn and run?” Karen whispered. Becker grinned sardonically and with a low, sweeping bow, ushered Karen into the office before him.

  Ash washed the boy meticulously, wearing the plastic gloves as Dee had taught him. He sat in the tub with the boy, holding his body with one arm and soaping and scrubbing with the other. Using one of Dee’s nail files, he cleaned under Bobby’s fingernails. He scoured the boy’s ears, laved away the last of the tears, the scent of fear. When he had finished. Ash left the boy in the tub to let the water soak away the last traces of his earthly ordeal.

  Ash dressed himself and waited impatiently for Dee to come home in response to his phone call. He was unable to lose himself in the television stories, his mind wandering again and again to the boy in the bathtub. He held Bobby’s good luck charm in his hand, squeezing it for luck, hoping that somehow it could change things. The boy had insisted that it had always worked for him; perhaps now it would work for Ash. He rubbed the coin between his thumb and finger, looking at the face of the man embossed on the metal, wondering who he was that he could bring such good fortune.

  Ash was at the door when Dee arrived. She took in the situation in a glance and her voice was crisp and authoritarian. Ash had known she would be certain of exactly what to do.

  “Put your gloves on and put him in the bag,” Dee said. She peered through the drawn blinds at the small convocation outside the motel office. Reggie was talking and pointing at Dee’s cabin.

  “When I get everyone inside the office, you get that bag out of here, understand?”

  “Yes, Dee.”

  “Get it to the edge of the highway, but out of sight. We don’t want anyone finding it now. We’ll pick it up tonight when we leave.”

  “Are we leaving for good?”

  She gave him a harsh look. “Stop sniveling now, Ash. We have to act quickly. Put your gloves on and hurry up. When I get them all into the office, you get out the door and into the woods as fast as you can with the bag. Got it?”

  “Yes, Dee.”

  She looked at him again, holding him with her fiery eyes.

  “Who do you love?” she asked.

  Ash smiled. “I love you. Dee.”

  Dee slipped out the door. Ash pulled on another pair of plastic gloves and picked up the trash bag from the floor and entered the bathroom. When he came out, holding the bag gently in both arms, he saw the good luck charm lying where he had dropped it on the bed.

  It did not seem right to keep it. Bobby had loved it so much. And maybe it would continue to bring him luck, Ash did not know. But it belonged to Bobby, no matter how much Ash wanted to keep it.

  Ash undid the tie of the trash bag and gently placed the Kennedy half dollar and its chain inside. He tied the bag once more, then peeked through the blinds to watch the people outside the office. Dee was leaning into a car, then she was talking to a man and a woman whom Ash had never seen before, then she was moving rapidly into the office.

  The man and woman talked to each other and Ash willed them to follow Dee. It worked, they went into the office, too, and Ash wondered if it had been Bobby’s charm that made it happen. One last favor of good luck.

  Ash picked up the bag in both arms and slipped out the door and into the woods that waited for him only a few steps away.

  From the backseat of the car Jack saw the hulking man come out of the cabin and glance anxiously toward the office before hurrying into the thin stand of trees. The man was carrying a trash bag, but not as if it contained trash. He cradled it in his arms as if it were a treasure. Or a baby, Jack thought. A baby in a bag. Jack liked the sound of the phrase, the silliness of it. It was the kind of nonsensical notion that Becker liked to joke about with Jack. Poo on your shoe, baby in a bag. Jack vowed to remember and tell Becker, but by the time he and his mother returned to the car. Jack had forgotten.

  He watched the big man hurry through the trees, heading in the direction of the highway, the bag held delicately in front of him. The man disappeared for a minute behind a squat building that adjoined the motel property. When he came back, he no longer carried the bag.

  The big man glanced furtively at the office again, and then rushed back into his room. To Jack, he looked exactly like someone playing hide-and-seek, except that he was an adult and, in Jack’s experience, adults did not play games. The man never looked at the car, never noticed Jack, which did not surprise the boy at all. So many people never noticed kids. Jack thought. Like they didn’t exist, or something. Like they were invisible. Or else they did notice and made a huge fuss, like the nurse who had come from the same cabin. Jack hoped she wouldn’t make another pass at befriending him when she came out of the office. Given the choice, he would rather be ignored than made too much of, but, being a kid, he was never given the choice. When accosted by a gusher like the nurse. Jack tried to be polite and not withdraw because that made his mother proud, but inside he tried to make himself as small as possible, to pull his spirit into the tiniest ball and disappear.

  Dee led them all out of the office, irrepressible and determined. Karen had given up trying to take control of the situation between Dee and Reggie. It was a mare’s nest of charge and countercharge and of interest only to the participants. What surprised her was the continuing high spirits that Dee showed even after the shouting match with the motel owner. She marched along the drive toward her cabin with an impatient stride, looking back at the others to see why they were lagging behind.

  Only a sense of duty forced Karen to play out the farce to its conclusion, a duty held not to the Bureau because this was clearly a tenant-owner dispute and of no concern to the FBI, but duty to herself not to appear a fool in public. She would look less foolish seeing this business to the end, going through the proper motions, than she would if she did what she wanted, which was to throw her hands in the air, declare it all a mistake, and drive away. How much time did she waste in her life, she wondered, trying not to appear foolish? Becker did not seem to care; he freely acted the fool for Jack, and won Jack’s affection in the process. If he were in charge of this operation, he would have cut and run already, she thought. He would flirt with the woman as much as amused him and then just leave, not caring about anyone else’s opinion but his own. He would make a very poor woman, Karen thought.

  Ash sat upon the edge of the bed, his eyes cast down toward the floor, his hands folded neatly in his lap. Like a pair of bear paws, thought Becker. The man’s size was remarkable, but he was not in any way inti
midating; he seemed as docile as a cow, and just about as bright. He was breathing heavily, as if he had just been running, or exercising. Becker tried to imagine spending all day, every day, in a room the size of the motel cabin. It was better than a prison cell, but not a great deal better. The battle against cabin fever must be a difficult one, and the man’s arms appeared pumped by regular, strenuous exercise. Becker imagined the man doing pushups before the surprise visit by two FBI agents. A lifetime spent in a darkened room, hiding from the painful light, then two intrusions in the same day, the first from the landlady, contentious, aggressive, seeing kidnapped boys under the bed and in the shadows, and then two more authority figures, compelled by duty to ask questions and look stern. No wonder the man seemed stunned and dazed.

  That did not explain the mud on his shoes, however.

  Becker asked if he might use the bathroom and started for it without awaiting a reply. He squeezed past the nurse, who seemed to be whirling and turning even as she stood still. Confinement would be hell for her. Becker thought. Why had she chosen to spend weeks at a time in a holding pen like this when the same rent money could probably have afforded a small house somewhere?

  Dee made a show out of getting out of his way, arching her back and leaning into a wall that wasn’t there, as if she stood in a narrow corridor with dimensions known only to her. Her breasts brushed against Becker and she touched his upper arm with her hand, as if to guide him past her.

  Once in the bathroom, with the door closed, Becker could still feel the touch of the woman, the sensation of moving against the soft resistance of her breasts, the grip of her hand. There was something electric about the experience and it was there, he knew, because she wanted it to be there. The contact had been unnecessary; she had done it deliberately, and the result had been what she wanted, Becker realized. With the simplest of stratagems on her part, he was no longer thinking of her as just another person, but as a woman. As a woman to be desired.

  Becker looked into the mirror and grinned at himself. You jerk, he thought. Despite the years, despite the experience, despite being very actively involved with another woman who was immensely satisfying sexually, he still had the indiscriminate sexual response of an adolescent. Huge and irredeemable jerk, he thought, but he continued to grin at his reflection. He did not hold it against himself.

  At first glance the bathroom was unremarkable. There was a clutter of feminine cosmetics and appliances for her, a razor that might have served both of them, a woman’s hair brush, a brassiere hanging from the towel rod along with a moist towel that had been used recently. A few drops of water still clung to the shower curtain where it had been tucked into the tub, a few more that had spilled onto the floor had not yet evaporated. The man had obviously taken a bath or shower within the past hour or so, since the woman had only just arrived at the motel at the same time as Becker and Karen. It seemed an odd time of the day for bathing, but then living a life indoors might well change your sense of time entirely, Becker thought. Except for the man’s shoes, that is. He didn’t get fresh dirt on the soles of his shoes by staying indoors. So he had taken a shower, gone outside and scuffed his shoes in the dirt, then come back inside. Or had he run outside and back in again, which would account for his breathing hard? And what difference did it make? Becker wasn’t here to fathom the secrets of the man’s life; he was looking for a boy, and there was no sign of a boy in the motel, and, indeed, scarcely any sign of the man except his physical presence. There was no comb—did he use the woman’s? There was a tube of woman’s cream for shaving her legs, but no shaving cream for him. Did he use hers? Did he use soap? It was as if the man had been slapped onto the relationship like an afterthought. As if the man were totally dependent on her for the simplest comfort.

  Becker flushed the toilet to maintain the fiction that he had needed it and glanced into the wastebasket. There were tissues blotted with lipstick, several Band-Aids that had been used and discarded—the man was a lousy shaver, and why not with nothing to soften his beard—and along the side of the basket, as if it were thrust into it rather than tossed, was the tip of something bright blue. Becker pulled it out and held up a child’s toothbrush. The brush had been used, but not much, the bristles were still firm, the ends whole, unsplit by wear and tear. The old woman had been right about that much, Becker thought. There was a toothbrush—which could have been used by either the man or the woman, of course—but if a child had ever been in this room, he had left no other sign of his passing.

  As he returned to the main room Becker realized that the old woman had been right about something else as well. There was definitely something weird afoot in this cabin; the occupants seemed as mismatched as possible, the passive, hulking dimwitted giant, the bright, animated, sexually radiant young woman. Ash was still sitting on the bed as Becker had last seen him, studying the floor. The woman was engaged in an animated but one-sided conversation with Karen, who seemed beleaguered and seeking a fast way out. She wore the pained expression of someone forced to be polite for too long. As nearly as Becker could tell, the woman was talking about men and the impossibility of ever teaching them to be truly civilized. Her husband, for instance, was responsible for the sloppy housekeeping in the room. Alone all day, you’d think he could extend himself to tidy up, wouldn’t you, she wanted to know. Becker thought that, all things considered, the big guy did pretty well in the housekeeping department. If Becker were cooped up all day in this cell, he’d be writing on the walls with the woman’s lipstick. Or out kicking his feet in the dirt when the woman didn’t know about it. Or maybe sitting on the edge of the bed with the woebegone look of a boy whose dog has just died, Becker thought. Living like this, he would have to be depressed.

  Karen caught his eye with a frantic look and together they left the room, apologizing for taking up their time, although the woman had appeared delighted by the diversion and the man had scarcely seemed to notice.

  Dee followed them to their car, where she once more leaned into the rear window and gushed over Jack. She reached in and touched his cheek.

  “You’re precious.” she said. “Just perfect.”

  Jack pulled back from her touch and Becker was reminded of an illustration from his childhood of the witch reaching into the cage to test whether Hansel was yet fat enough to cook. Hansel had held up a stick, which the near-sighted crone had mistaken for his emaciated finger, Becker remembered. Jack had been forced to surrender his cheek.

  Karen drove off with Dee still standing by the window.

  “You take good care of my little boy, now,” she called after them.

  Becker could see her in the rearview mirror, watching and waving for much too long.

  “The woman is crazy,” Karen said with relief to be away finally. “She had me confused with a long-lost friend. But if I ever had a friend like that, she wouldn’t be my friend. Where does she get off, trying to tell me how to take care of my own son? Did you hear that? ‘You mustn’t leave him in the car with the windows up.’ It was all I could do to keep from slamming her against the wall and reading her her rights.”

  “Got under your skin a little, did she?”

  “And she didn’t affect you, I suppose? I’ve never seen a grown man bat his eyelashes like that.”

  Becker laughed.

  “What did you think of her, Jack?” Becker asked. “She acted like she wanted to eat you up.”

  “Gah,” said Jack.

  “She showed good taste in boys, though, to give her credit,” Karen said. “I can’t think of any boy I’d rather gobble up myself.” She reached into the backseat and patted Jack. “You put up with it very politely. I’m proud of you.”

  “Strange taste in men, though,” Becker said.

  “Meaning you?”

  “I was thinking of her ‘husband.’ ”

  “One thing’s certain,” Karen said after they had regained the highway, “that is no average married couple.”

  “Certainly not average.”

/>   “Not married either,” Karen said.

  “How do you know?”

  “Apart from the fact that he has one hanger in the closet and she has eight? That he has no other shoes? I don’t know what there was in the bathroom, but there was practically no sign whatever that he even lived there.”

  “Nothing in the bathroom, either,” Becker said. “Except for two toothbrushes. And a child’s toothbrush in the wastebasket.”

  “The old lady had that much right, at least.”

  “She had it all right,” Becker said. “She said they were a strange couple, and she was right, she said the man was something spooky, and I’d have to agree with that, she said there was something odd going on in the room, and I’m certain that’s true, although I’m not sure I know what it was.”

  “So she was right on all counts except the one we came for,” Karen said.

  “There’s no law against being strange, however,” Becker said.

  “Or none we care to enforce,” Karen said. “I don’t know what those two get up to together, but I’m sure it’s in violation of some code or other.”

  “Flagrant weirdness,” Becker volunteered.

  “Worse than that. Something ... I don’t know, unclean. I left feeling as if I wanted to wash, as if I have oil on my skin ... No sign of a child other than the toothbrush, I suppose?”

  “None,” said Becker. “But there was the toothbrush.”

  Karen grinned and shook her head.

  “What?”

  “Feminine secret,” she said.

  “Terrific.”

  “Okay. I have a child’s toothbrush, too. I use it to brush my eyebrows sometimes.”

  “You do?”

  “You men have no idea what we go through, do you? I put hair spray on the brush, then sort of comb them up so they don’t go every which way.”

  Becker stared at her., Karen moved uneasily behind the wheel.

  “Some-times,” she said. “Only some-times.”