Page 2 (2/2)
Ao inside with this nice man for a minute, okay? You just look at your picture book, honey
He was polite enough, going about his business, calling her baby and such, and before he left he put fifty dollars on the nightstand-enough for Jeanette to buy a rooht for her and Aht, she’d lock Amy in the roohway in front of the motel and just kind of stand there, and it didn’t take long Somebody would stop, always a s out, she’d take hio into the room by herself and carry Amy to the bathroom, where she’d made a bed for her in the tub out of some extra blankets and pillows
Amy was six She was quiet, barely talked ht herself to read so at the same books over and over, and could do her nu Wheel of Fortune, and when the time came for the woirl knew just what she could buy, that she couldn’t afford the vacation to Cancun but could have the living rooolf clubs Jeanette thought it was probably sure this out, uessed she should probably be in school, but Jeanette didn’t knohere there were any schools around there It was all auto-body-repair and pawn shops and motels like the one they lived in, the SuperSix The oas a man who looked a lot like Elvis Presley, not the handso one but the old fat one with the sweaty hair and chunky gold glasses thatin a tank, and he wore a satin jacket with a lightning bolt down the back, just like Elvis had Mostly he just sat at his desk behind the counter, playing solitaire and sar with a plastic tip Jeanette paid him in cash each week for the room and if she threw in an extra fifty he didn’t bother her any One day he asked her if she had anything for protection, if un from him She said sure, how much, and he told her another hundred He showed her a rusty-looking little revolver, a 22, and when she put it in her hand right there in the office it didn’t see that could shoot a person But it was shway and she didn’t think it would be a bad thing to have around -Careful where you point that, the er said, and Jeanette said, Okay, if you’re afraid of it, it lad she had it Just knowing it was in her purse made her realize she’d been afraid before and noasn’t, or at least not so un was like a secret, the secret of who she was, like she was carrying the last bit of herself in her purse The other Jeanette, the one who stood on the highway in her stretchy top and skirt, who cocked her hip and s I can help you with tonight?-that Jeanette was a made-up person, like a woman in a story she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the end of
The ht it happened wasn’t the one she would have thought The bad ones you could usually tell right off, and so But this one looked nice, a college boy she guessed, or at least young enough to go to college, and nicely dressed, wearing crisp khaki pants and one of those shirts with the little oing on a date, whichFord Expo with a rack on the top for a bike or so happened He wouldn’t drive to the ht there, in the car, not even bothering to pull over, but when she started in on this, thinking that hat he wanted, he pushed her gently away He wanted to take her out, he said She asked, What do you mean, out?
-Soo someplace nice? I’ll pay you ht about Auessed it wouldn’tas it ain’t ot to take me back
But it was ot where they were going, Jeanette was afraid He pulled up to a house with a big sign over the porch showing three shapes that looked almost like letters but not quite, and Jeanette knehat it was: a fraternity Soot drunk on their daddy’s o to school to become doctors and lawyers
-You’ll like my friends, he said Co in there, she said You take me back now
He paused, both hands on the wheel, and when she saw his face and as in his eyes, the slow er, he suddenly didn’t look like such a nice boy anymore
-That, he said, is not an option I’d have to say that’s not on the menu just now
-The hell it ain’t
She threw the door of the truck open and made to walk away, never mind she didn’t knohere she was, but then he was out too, and he grabbed her by the ar inside the house, what he wanted, how everything was going to shape up It was her fault for not understanding this before-long before, maybe as far back as the Box on the day Bill Reynolds had come in She realized the boy was afraid, too-that so him do this, the friends inside the house, or it felt like it to hiot behind her and tried to get his arm around her neck to lock her with his elbow, and she hit him, hard, where it counted, with the back of her fist, whichher bitch and whore and all the rest, and strike her across the face She lost her balance and fell backward, and then he was on top of her, his legs astride her waist like a jockey riding a horse, slapping and hitting, trying to pin her arms Once he did this it would all be over He probably wouldn’t care if she was conscious or not, she thought, when he did it; none of therass Her life was so strange to her it didn’t seem like it was even her own any un knehat it was, and she felt the cool metal of the revolver slide into her palm, like it wanted to be there Her mind said, Don’t think, Jeanette, and she pushed the barrel against the side of the boy’s head, feeling the skin and bone where it pressed against hih she couldn’t er
It took her the rest of the night to get home After the boy had fallen off her, she’d run as fast as she could to the biggest road she could see, a wide boulevard glowing under streetlights, just in tirab a bus She didn’t know if there was blood on her clothes or what, but the driver hardly looked at her as he explained how to get back to the airport, and she sat in the back where no one could see In any case, the bus was almost e through neighborhoods of houses and stores, all dark, past a big church and then signs for the zoo, and finally entered dohere she stood in a Plexiglas shelter, shivering in the damp, and waited for a second bus She’d lost her watch somehow and didn’t know the ti and the police could use it as a clue But it was just a Tiht it couldn’t tell theun ould do it; she’d tossed it on the lawn, or so she remembered Her hand was still a little nu off in her fist, the bones chi fork that wouldn’t stop