Center of what town? She didn’t remember having seen an address on anything. “I’d like to eat, yes.” As Patsy Orr got out plates and uncovered pans, she said, “It’s so beautiful around here. Even though I didn’t see much. But I looked out of the window at sunrise. Those mountains—” She waited.
“The Sandias? Yes. That’s only one of the mountain ranges. The country around here is beautiful, all right. I guess it’s why it’s such a tourist draw. That’s why we—my husband and I—moved from Los Angeles. Getting old, but took a chance.” She smiled again, that broad, flat smile. She slid eggs onto the plate with the corn bread.
She took a chance too. “It’s certainly much more beautiful than where we come from.” Please tell me.
At this the woman looked astonished. “Do you really think so? That’s a surprise. You can’t beat Idaho—or did he say Colorado?—for natural beauty.” Mrs. Orr smiled, awaiting confirmation.
“Yes, they’re both beautiful, aren’t they?”
“But which one are you—? Oh, now I remember. You’re from Idaho, but you’ve just come from Colorado. That was it. You’ve been traveling around. Well, breakfast is ready. So come on.” Patsy Orr led the way into the dining room.
She sighed as she took her place in front of spotless crystal and cut flowers. If it was Idaho, probably it was some little town. “Maybe some people like it, but it’s pretty dull for me.”
“Well, but there’s all of that gorgeous skiing and beautiful rivers and mountains.” Patsy Orr shrugged. “I’d think a young person might like that.”
Picking up her fork, she smiled a thankful, heartfelt smile. “I don’t ski.”
4
Maybe she’d been interesting. She was trying to recollect the kind of girl she was, or had been. Yet she knew she was wasting precious moments by sitting on the bed in this casita, looking at the mountains. The mountains pulled at her; she did not know why.
It wasn’t yet eleven o’clock, and if he’d told Patsy Orr the truth about the appointments, he’d be back in another hour or so. But, dear God, why was he taking such a chance? While he was gone she could so easily have told someone, asked for help from Patsy Orr, gone to the police, asked for a doctor, a hospital—someone. Why did he think she’d stay? Why wouldn’t she run? Why hadn’t she?
She tried to think about what she’d been like in Idaho, if Idaho really was home. She might have been interesting, an interesting person. Then she wondered why she would have wanted to be that instead of popular or beautiful or plain smart. Annette. Arleen. Why couldn’t she remember? After putting on her down jacket, she positioned the backpack so that it was more comfortable. The lightweight thermal blanket wouldn’t go in the backpack; she’d rolled it into the sleeping bag. She picked that up now and stood looking around the room. Anything else? She’d already taken the soap and small bottles from the bathroom, together with a washcloth and towel.
Over the back of the straight chair hung his jacket. It made her shiver, but she picked it up. At some point, the police, whoever, might be able to trace him from one of his belongings. She might need something else, another coat. (It had been very cold on the short walk from the casita to the main house.) If worse came to worst, she could wear it underneath the parka.
It would have to be “worst,” wouldn’t it? The idea of putting on something that belonged to him. . . . She’d get over it; she’d already got over a lot of it, the part she could do nothing about. If he’d kidnapped her, he’d kidnapped her. If he’d raped her, he’d raped her. It made that icy sweat stand out on her forehead, and she wiped it away. There’s nothing you can do about that part was what she’d told herself.
Yes, she could certainly ask Mrs. Orr to get her a doctor. But why? It would keep her here until he came back and then he would probably lie his way—their way—out of it. Out of whatever had happened. She had a feeling, just a feeling, that this man could talk his way out of anything.
The backpack, loaded down with the blanket and the bedroll, would be a lot to carry, but if she changed her mind about where she was going, she could always dispose of some stuff. She was glad she had eaten; it might have to last her for a time. She had found a crumpled ten-dollar bill in her backpack. That wouldn’t go far.
As she folded the jacket, she felt something in an inside pocket, a pocket sewn into the silk lining. She reached in and pulled out several bills. At first she thought they were one-dollar bills, and then she looked again. A one-dollar bill on top, but underneath, there were one hundreds. Six of them. Six hundred-dollar bills! She could not remember ever having seen a hundred-dollar bill—but then, she couldn’t remember much else, could she? She laughed and clasped the money to her chest.
Shouldering the sleeping bag, she left the room again and walked to the main house.
Patsy Orr wasn’t around. All that she could hear was the longcase clock ticking into emptiness. The guest register lay closed on the desk. She opened it and found yesterday’s date written in. C. R. Crick and daughter. No name, just “daughter.” C. R. She frowned because there was something familiar about it. Did the R stand for Robert? Bobby. She shivered. Was that the name he’d used with her? Bobby Crick. It was like a splinter of light, the tiniest sliver showing through a crack. She closed her eyes against it and thought of the last name—Crick—but her memory was blunted. It wouldn’t have been his real name anyway. The address written in was Idaho City, Idaho. Then she looked around the surface of the desk for any letters that had come here, found nothing. She turned to the front of the guest register and there it was: MI CASA SU CASA, SANTA FE, NM. Santa Fe. She only wished she had seen it under other circumstances.
On the bookshelves in the entry room were a lot of travel books and guides. She grabbed up the one on New Mexico, shouldered the bedroll again, and left.
In the small gravel-surfaced parking lot three cars sat beneath a canopy of leaves on the overhanging branches of a huge oak. One was an expensive-looking Toyota 4-by-4; another was a battered station wagon with New Mexico plates, probably the Orrs’; the third was a Camaro. The Toyota was too new to be needing a part replaced. So it must be the Camaro. It had Idaho plates. Was he really from Idaho? Maybe he had to lie the way some people had to drink; maybe that was what was meant by “pathological.” This was a man, she thought, who must enjoy inventing life as he went along. And she wondered from what separate well in her mind, a well unaffected by the amnesia, she was dredging up bits of knowledge like this.
She tried the car’s doors: locked. When she tented her hands to look inside, she saw nothing that appeared to hold an answer, or at least a clue, as to what had happened. Nothing jarred her memory. There were only a couple of paperback books, but she couldn’t see the titles; a Coke can stuck in a pullout holder; some maps and papers spread around. She moved around to the trunk on the off-chance he might have forgotten to lock it. She was surprised to find that one of the smaller willowy, overhanging branches had lodged in the seam. It must have swept down from the tree just as the trunk was closing and stayed wedged in.
She put her fingers under the handle, pushed it and pulled it, and raised the top. The trunk held nothing but old newspapers and a bundle of grease- and oil-smeared rags. Her forehead against the edge of the lid, she studied the pile for a moment before she reached in and pulled the bundle out. It was too heavy for cloth; the rags were wrapped around something.
It took her breath away. It was a gun, a pistol. SMITH & WESSON was written on the barrel, together with a number. It wasn’t loaded; at least she could tell that. Still, she handled it very carefully, feeling that guns seemed to have lives of their own, as if they could leap into action at a mere touch, could recant their emptiness, could fire at will. She wrapped it again in the rags, rested the bundle on the back bumper, and went looking again. There must be ammunition. Near where the gun had been hidden was a soft black case that looked as if it held a camera. When she opened it she saw too metal containers—what she thought were called “clips”—
with cartridges in them. They seemed to hold a lot. Feeling around some more, she came upon a box of cartridges more than half full. She took the gun, the clips, and the extra ammunition back to the casita.
• • •
It wasn’t as hard or as heavy as she’d thought it would be. Every once in a while she’d stop to adjust the weight on her back and take a drink from a plastic bottle of water, the sport type that had a strap and would serve her as a canteen for a while. In the Allsup’s at the filling station where she’d bought the jug, she’d also picked up a couple of wrapped sandwiches, candy, an apple, and a packet of trail mix. The trail mix gave her some quick energy.
She’d been walking for an hour and a half; it was twelve-thirty. Surely, he would have been back by now, found her gone, started looking. It would have been easier to hitch a ride on the main road, but she wanted to avoid main roads. “Daddy” struck her as a main-road kind of person. He might come racing along the highway and see her with her thumb out. She’d stick to the dirt roads; even so, in this open country a person could feel exposed on almost any road. It stretched for miles, eerily empty, garishly bright. There was no judging distances because the light was so transparent things appeared closer than they really were. Or so she believed, since those mountains in front of her seemed to recede the more she walked toward them.
That was where she wanted to go. It would take her all day and maybe most of the night to get to those mountains, but that was all right. To be away, to be free—at least as free as you can be when somebody was looking for you. And then she thought, But somebody must be looking for her besides him. Her parents must be.
Suddenly, she stopped: my God, in all of that time at the bed-and-breakfast when she’d been in the room alone, why hadn’t she turned on the television? It was possible she’d have seen a news program and possible that she might even hear about herself. If she’d been so clever as to get information out of Patsy Orr, why hadn’t she thought of the TV?
Maybe she hadn’t wanted to know who was looking for her. Or that no one was. Maybe she wouldn’t like that much better than C. R. Crick.
No one came along this road. She kept on walking, stopping once to eat the tuna sandwich and, still hungry, half of the synthetic-looking cheese. She had never known food to taste so good, so good it seemed to awaken in her a whole spectrum of tastes and hungers she didn’t know she possessed. And she knew she wouldn’t go hungry because she also knew that along the old highway (which this dirt road more or less paralleled) there would be at least a filling station and possibly a general store. There were too many houses spotted around for this not to be true.
Not that there were, relatively speaking, that many houses. Each one had a lot of land to sit on. If it did turn out that along the highway there was nowhere to get food, she would just go up to one of those houses. It was better to plan out what she’d do while she still had the benefit of sandwiches and a candy bar inside of her, rather than waiting until she was starving. Panic was not a good position to bargain from.
She stopped again for a minute to sit on a flat rock that seemed so perfectly smooth and clean it could have been waiting for some tired traveler. It was as if—she liked to think this—the natural world was making way for her, inviting her in, where the man-made world had thrown her out.
Leaning back and feeling the sun burn her face, she threw her arm across her eyes. Sun-crazy, sun-mad she might go, like some old miner. Shielding her eyes, she looked west, where the sun still held the sky by brute force, though it was dropping closer to the horizon. The sun was powerful for winter. She could see the white tracery of snow atop the Sandias, to the south, and another range off in the east. The Jemez, was that the range? The guidebook had listed so many. She was afraid of a snowstorm, though; how could she survive in a storm with only a sleeping bag and a thin blanket for warmth?
Oh, forget it, forget it, you were doing good, feeling almost happy before you thought of the snow. Forget it. Nothing you can do will make any difference now anyway.
Less than an hour later, she saw way across the road what looked like a gas station and possibly a store, judging from the cars parked there. She repositioned the backpack and bedroll, felt the weight of the gun to be heavier, and headed west.
5
It was a filling station and a fairly large store: groceries, a deli counter, odds and ends of household goods, and even some T-shirts and baseball caps. Liquor, too. She closed her eyes for a moment, just to let the comfort of the cool, dark interior wash over her.
She plucked a blue cap from the stack on the shelf. It was made of stiff material with mesh on the sides and an elastic at the back. She tried it on and snapped the bill. It was a little big, but it would still do the job. She liked the bright blue. On the front of the cap above the bill was a red rooster, and she wondered what that meant.
After this, she went to the deli counter and ordered a sandwich of lunch meat and cheese and another of ham. The first was a submarine, and she could see it would be enough for two meals. She asked the fellow who made it to cut it in thirds. He smiled and did this and handed her the package, the paper already damp with oil. From the cooler she took a six-pack of orange juice cartons and from the freezer a can of frozen lemonade. Then she went back to the cooler for a pint of milk. She could wedge these items into the bedroll, and the frozen lemonade would keep the rest cool, at least for a while. She considered the packs of Coke but knew she couldn’t take anything so weighty. She got one can from the cold drink dispenser.
The store had obligingly set out three tables with chairs, and she set down her purchases and then herself. It felt so good, the chair. It was a simple wooden straight-backed and straight-seated chair, but it seemed to fit her body better than any chair ever had.
The chair faced the deli, so that she could see the fellow who worked there making sandwiches. She had watched him doing hers, carefully constructing the layers and judging just how much lettuce and cutting the tomato so that she wouldn’t get the whole slice in one bite. On his hands he wore clear plastic gloves, but she could see the hands were graceful, like an artist’s or a surgeon’s. Her eyes had riveted on the fingers making the sandwich, not (she realized now) because she was hungry but because she wanted to keep her eyes off his face. He was just too handsome. She felt that strongly. He was too handsome. She did not know for what. Probably too handsome for a girl to see once and then never again.
Welling up in her, she felt a longing so overwhelming, so severely constricting, that her throat closed in the middle of swallowing and she thought she’d choke. Then it eased up and she could go on eating the sandwich—except her appetite was gone. Closing her eyes, she thought, This is the way it’s going to be from now on. There would be nothing to stand between herself and her feelings; self-deception would be difficult because there wasn’t much of her left to deceive.
But again, this might be a good thing. It didn’t have to bother her, the craziness of falling in love with the sandwich maker. She would not have to explain it to her friends or defend it. She looked over at the counter where he was helping another customer, smiling. Yes, he was too handsome for her, for a girl who would never see him again. For a girl who was going to the mountains. He was part of a world she’d be leaving behind, and she felt a terrible stab of regret. She sat for a few moments looking at nothing and then gathered up her packages.
She took the things to where a woman with heavy black hair was ringing up purchases for the other customer on an old metal cash register. The woman turned to her and said, “That’ll be it?” When she nodded, the woman pulled a used bag from a jumble of used bags—they really conserved things here—but then decided she didn’t want that one and yanked out another. Then she said, with a little incline of her dark head toward the backpack, “Looks like you got your life on your back, there, caro.”
Her face was wide and flat and friendly, and she probably owned the place, or was perhaps the manager, for there was that extra little bit of
authority in her words and movements. She watched the woman pack up her sandwiches and drinks into this new bag, a smaller glossy-white one decorated with zigzags of turquoise and a huge yellow smiley face. “Yes, it’s a lot of stuff to carry,” she said, looking at the smiley face, smiling herself.
“Where you bound for?”
“Just sightseeing. You know, camping, hiking, mostly,” she said smoothly, as she held up the guidebook by way of proof that she was a genuine tourist. The woman nodded and took the money. “I thought I’d see the Sandias.”
“That’s miles and miles.” The owner frowned, shook her head.
“Yes, of course, you need a car. They’re picking me up out front.” She said this so smoothly and with such authority the woman didn’t question who “they” might be. “They told me to try and get information. You know, maps and stuff.” Again she held up the book. “But this doesn’t tell much. You wouldn’t know the best way up into the mountains, would you?”
“Sandias? Well, there’s that tram you can take that goes up to Sandia Peak, but”—she frowned—“I dunno if it’s open. Hey, Andy!” she called. “Andrew! Hey!”
The owner was calling over to the deli counter. He called back, “What?”
“You know if that tram’s running?” The woman was motioning with her arm, waving him over to the cash register. And then he was there. Andy. She kept her head bent, pretending to be looking through the guidebook.
“No, I don’t think so, but there’s the ski lift.”
He was standing so close to her, she could feel his breath. It was warm and soft.
“Are you going up there to ski?”
She dragged her hair back from her face, for she felt she might be hiding behind it. Because she was determined to see and feel things as they were, she forced herself to look at him. “Yes.”
Biting the Moon Page 4