I don't know when, precisely, I became aware of the woman in red. I'd dozed off (which normally would not be an easy thing for me to do in the bucket seat of a Chevette Scooter, but I'd had a long and tiring day), my head to the side, so I was facing Whelan, and as I came around I noticed, out of the corner of my eye, someone sitting stiffly in the cramped back seat. I lurched in surprise.
"What's the matter," Whelan asked, "you got a pain or something?"
I didn't answer at once. I stared hard at the woman in red sitting so very stiffly in the back seat. The only light in the car was from the dashboard and some reflection from the high beams, but I could see well enough. She looked seedier than when I'd first seen her, as if she were a vegetable that had been left out on a table for a day or two.
She was wearing a kind of wretched smile. Not the I've-just-swallowed-a-canary smile of the Mona Lisa, but a smile that said, I'm going to do something murderous; you wait and see.
I said to Whelan, "I think you'd better stop the car."
"Why?" he asked.
"For your own good, you'd better stop the car, Mr. Whelan."
"That's not a threat, is it? I don't like threats; they give me asthma."
I shook my head. "No, it's not a threat. It's just that there's someone—" Out of the corner of my eye I saw movement in the back seat; I looked. The woman in red had raised her hands and was moving her upper body with aching, stiff slowness toward Whelan. "Jesus," I screamed at her, "no, for God's sake!" She continued moving her upper body forward, arms outstretched, fingers spread wide, that wretched, murderous smile stuck on her mouth.
Whelan said, "What in the fuck is wrong with you?"
"You'll kill us both!" I screamed at the woman in red.
"No, I won't!" Whelan protested.
"He's driving!" I screamed. "He'll go off the damned road!"
The woman hesitated. Her murderous smile altered, as if she was thinking about what I'd just said. She cocked her head toward me, then, with equal slowness, settled back and let her hands fall to her lap. Her murderous, expectant smile returned.
"You're a crazy man," Whelan snapped. He'd lost the classical station and had found a station that was playing big band music.
I said, "Yes, I know. I'm sorry. It's just that I . . . see things." I looked quickly at the woman in red, saw her hands rise again. I said stiffly to her, "You'll kill both of us, dammit!" Her hands lowered.
Whelan said, "We all see things, Mr. Feary. I hope that the things you see are pleasant." This sounded strangely philosophical, I thought, for a man who was trying hard to cultivate a hard-boiled-former-detective persona.
"Not all the time," I said, and added, "We'd better drive straight through to Brookfield, Mr. Whelan."
"No problem," he said, "it's only twenty-five miles."
I glanced again at the woman in red. She was sitting very stiff and still, that awful smile stuck on her mouth. I looked out the back window at the LTD; it was still a precise five car lengths behind the Chevette. I looked at Whelan. I said, "I'd give anything to be somewhere else right now."
"Yeah," he said gloomily. "Florida."
"Bangor," I said. "1962."
~ * ~
We had to stop eventually, I realized. But he did it so quickly that I had precious little time to react.
"Nature calls," he said, and pulled the Chevette onto the shoulder of the narrow road. A white sign with black letters a hundred feet ahead read "TOWNSHIP OF BROOKFIELD.
Behind us, the LTD stopped five car lengths back.
In the rear seat of the Chevette the woman in red moved her upper body inexorably forward, arms out-stretched, fingers wide. Her murderous grin was now a leer. Whelan opened his door.
My arm shot across the seat, over Whelan's lap. I grabbed the door handle and slammed the door shut. It didn't close; I'd shut some of his overcoat in it. He looked at me, frightened. He began to wheeze.
The woman in red had the collar of his coat in her hand now. I said to him, nodding at her fingers, my words slow and measured, "Do you see that, Mr. Whelan?"
He said nothing. He continued wheezing.
I took a deep breath. "Mr. Whelan," I said, "please listen to me." The hands of the woman crept forward spiderlike over his collar and found the sides of his neck. "You must continue driving. Please continue driving!"
He said nothing. His wheezing was very bad now.
I asked, "Where's your inhaler, Mr. Whelan?"
He thumped his right-hand coat pocket with his open hand. I reached in, found his inhaler, held it up to his mouth. The fingers of the woman in red were at the front of his throat now. I squeezed the inhaler once, then again, and again. He waved frantically in the air. I pulled the inhaler away. His wheezing stopped. He started choking, as if he had a piece of meat caught in his throat. "Drive!" I screamed. He continued choking. I reached out, grabbed the arm of the woman in red. It was like grabbing a steel pipe. I let go. Whelan continued to choke. He tumbled forward; his head hit the steering wheel, the horn sounded. The woman in red came forward with him, so the back of the bucket seat cut into her stomach and her head pushed into the area just above the windshield. "Stop it!" I screamed. "For God's sake, stop it!"
Whelan's choking grew quieter; he was beginning to gurgle.
"Oh, shit, shit, goddammit!" I breathed. I aimed the inhaler at the woman in red and squeezed.
The scream that came from her was pitiful, like the scream a rabbit makes when it dies. She folded backward, like an accordion, into the back seat. Her body began to liquefy just as it had in my apartment a billion years ago—and at last there was only a small dark pool on the seat. The pool evaporated quickly.
And I realized all at once what had happened. I had shown her that her murderous love for me was unrequited. So she went away.
~ * ~
Whelan came around by and by, and after clearing his throat for several minutes, and a couple of applications of the asthma inhaler, he said, "Peed my pants, anyway," and pulled back onto the road, the LTD dogging us.
"Do you have any idea what was happening to you back there?" I asked.
"Yeah," he answered, "I had a fucking asthma attack, a fucking doozie of an asthma attack." "No," I whispered.
"I didn't hear you, Mr. Feary."
"Nothing," I said. "Call me Sam."
"Okay. Call me Mr. Whelan. Everybody does. My first name's Kennedy, but I hate it, so even my girlfriends call me Mr. Whelan."
"Sure," I said. "Mr. Whelan."
We were on the main street of Brookfield less than a minute later.