21

It was morning again, judging by the dull gray light slowly overtaking the room. Robbie sat up gingerly in bed—his feet hurt, his fingertips hurt, his eyes hurt, his skin hurt, his teeth hurt—and pulled back the window blind just slightly to glimpse, again, falling snow. He was in an upstairs room, and past the snow-laden bough of a big fir tree he could see a street, or what used to be a street, and on the other side of the street a boxy white house of the sort, he guessed, that he himself was in. A good three feet of snow covered the roof of the house and there were berms of snow where even more had slid from the roof or been shoveled off. A wall of snow rose on each side of the walkway leading to the front door. The walk had been shoveled very recently, as only a light coating with a fresh set of footprints kept it from being clean. Smoke rose in steady white puffs from the chimney. Clearly the place was inhabited, but the curtains were drawn, and up and down the street, at the other similar houses, there were signs of life but no actual people. And the street itself was impassable. No plow had touched it since the storm began, and now Robbie wondered if you could even get through it with a plow. Or a monster truck. Or a tank. The only moving thing in view, other than the chimney smoke, was the snow, of which the gray sky seemed to hold an endless supply. The heartbeat of the world seemed almost to have stopped, the earth itself lulled into a state of hibernation by the silent, hypnotic whiteness all around, this invasion of the whole of visible space.

Grunting, he lay back down in the bed, and Stephanie, without appearing to wake up, curled herself against him. She reminded him of a large cat.

He’d been with her in this house for what…two days now? There had been another morning, yesterday, presumably, when he had woken up feeling like a half-thawed loaf of bread, his nerves and skin tingling and his insides frozen solid. He’d told Stephanie to take him to the hospital, and she’d laughed her soft laugh, like a cat’s purr, and told him not to be ridiculous, there wasn’t anything seriously wrong with him and there wasn’t a hospital they could get to anyway. He fell back asleep and, sure enough, when he woke up again he felt much better, warm and buttery and soft all the way through. Stephanie made him eat some hot oatmeal and orange slices, and then they’d had a few shots of Jack Daniel’s apiece and played several games of gin rummy sitting in bed. Stephanie gave him a guided tour of the house, sort of, without making him get up, explaining to him where the kitchen was downstairs and the TV and the shower and the closet with the towels in it and, here in the bedroom a drawer with clothes for him if he needed any. Then she was gone all day, most likely at work, and he slept for long stretches, getting up only to use the bathroom and find the bottle of Jack Daniel’s, which, it turned out, was in plain view right next to the kitchen sink—she hadn’t even tried to hide it, which he took to be a good sign. He carried the bottle back upstairs and finished off a fair portion of it before Stephanie returned from work, poured herself a glass, crawled in next to him, and sat reading by the light of a bedside lamp. He was mostly asleep, but he occasionally opened his eyes drowsily to see her there, her dark blonde hair tucked behind her ear, her black reading glasses perched on the end of her nose, her round arms and breasts, which she didn’t bother to hide, above the covers.

And now here he was this morning feeling sore everywhere, and there Stephanie was still asleep beside him. She’d seemed like an angel, he could dimly recollect, when she’d opened the door for him and led him into the back room of the bar, half dead, dirty, piss-stained, to a table where he slept hunched over, shivering, until closing time. Then there had been a walk through the snowy streets, and again, here he was. He had no plans beyond the next thirty seconds (which he intended to spend studying Stephanie’s closed eyes and the smooth skin of her cheeks and the downy blonde hair by her right ear, all of which made him feel calm for the moment and not so badly injured), but he knew what was not in the plan, and that was to set foot on any stairway or in any secret passage in this town ever again as long as he lived, or to go anywhere near that goddamn hotel.

So where did all this leave him? Here with Stephanie. This Stephanie, who was, insofar as it was possible these days, at this point in his life, a woman after his own heart. What wasn’t to like? She had a pretty face and an even temperament. She kept a bottle of Jack Daniel’s within reach, and she knew where to get pot and probably more if he pressed the issue. This house seemed to be hers alone, no roommates or, worse, a boyfriend. She appeared to be within a decade or so of his own age, in one direction or the other, and, as far as he could tell, she didn’t behave as childishly as he did. He had no idea how much of Tonio’s money he had left—come to think of it, he had no idea where his wallet was or when was the last time he’d seen it. Same with his cell phone. So the question was, how long would it be possible to string the current situation along before it became so ugly and painful that the long-term regret outweighed the short-term pleasures?

He’d gotten good at all the factoring. There had been a lot of Stephanies. In this case, the Stephanie in question appeared to be particularly durable and even unusually enjoyable in certain ways. As best he could tell, she was prepared—he had no idea why—to stick with him, defend him, come hell or high water, against anybody and everybody, for as long as he cared to hang around. All offers of the sort became invalid after a certain point, but this one appeared to be good for quite a while.

What was there, then, to look forward to? A long stretch of drinking and hibernation in this snowbound ghost town? He could do worse. It didn’t appear that he’d have to worry about Tonio either. Although he’d lost track, what with all the drinking and the near-death experiences, it must have been three or four days since they’d arrived in town, and there was no way Tonio would stick around that long, blizzard or no blizzard. He would have paid somebody to put on snow tires and chains, and off he would have gone. True, when Robbie was lost in the hotel (or wherever he was), he’d heard Julia calling his name—that was puzzling. But he was inclined now to consider it just another strange moment in the whole strange experience, probably just his imagination, whatever that meant anymore, and even if it had been Julia, it was two days ago. And if Tonio had gone hunting for him while he was holed up here in bed, how hard could it have been to find him? A couple questions here, a call to the police there…Was there any way you could escape notice for four days in a place as small as this? He felt pretty sure he could have tracked himself down in half an hour, and he’d been drunk or high most of the time.

So he was going to get to know this Stephanie better. Might as well get started. He moved in closer and she curled in tighter without opening her eyes, and soon, despite the prickling sensation he felt at her initial touch, they were working together under the heavy down comforter as smoothly and pleasantly as you could hope for. She made hardly any noise but she held on to him tight, as if she were falling from someplace, and he came hard, his mouth against a wisp of hair that had strayed across her cheek, and then they loosened and he stroked her leg lightly with his fingers and she finally opened her eyes and stared at him calmly while she ran her hand across the hair on his chest, as if she were inspecting him for ticks or fleas.

“What?” she said when he laughed at her.

“Nothing,” he said. “Thank you.”

“For what?” she said, and laughed herself. “Having sex with you?” She reached over his head with her breast up against his neck and plucked a hair band from the nightstand and sat up and wound her hair into a ponytail. She did it very prettily, and in fact the more you looked at her, the way she did things, easily and unself-consciously, the prettier she got in general. She had good, healthy, sturdy country girl looks and habits, a tribute to her solid Northwest roots. Robbie imagined that she voted for Tea Party candidates and spoke fondly of Randy Weaver and Ted Kaczynski. This didn’t bother him a bit. “I didn’t think you were desperate enough to have to thank people for it,” she said. “And anyway, I had fun, too.”

“I just mean thank you for taking such good care of me all around,” he said. “I wasn’t in very good shape when you found me.”

She shrugged and pulled her legs up to her chest so that her breasts were covered. There was something a little troubled in her expression.

“Is it okay for me to be staying here?” he asked. He tried to make it sound like he was merely being polite, but what he really wanted to know was whether the look on her face had anything to do with a husband (unlikely) or a boyfriend (not unlikely at all) who might come barging in the door at any minute.

“Yes,” she said with what seemed like real conviction. “Why shouldn’t you? I want you to stay as long as you want to stay.”

He smiled and turned back to the white square of windowpane. “Careful what you ask for,” he said.

“Why?” she said. “I’m guessing you’re not that dangerous.”

That was slightly insulting, since Robbie had made a pretty long career of being a danger to himself and others, but he supposed that, in this town, only physical danger mattered, and he wasn’t much for ass whippings or assault and battery, he would have to admit. The danger he represented was restricted to the realms of the emotional, psychological, petty criminal, and fiscal. “And when I get ready to leave, I just pack up and go on my merry way?” he asked her.

She squinted at him. “You didn’t think we were going to get married or anything.”

“Good,” he said. “That’s good to know. I’ll just stay here awhile and hang out with you and all our buddies.”

Again that look on her face, the drawing in around the corners of the eyes.

“You don’t think that’s a good idea?” he said.

She sat up and moved her feet over the side of the bed and reached down for a T-shirt she’d tossed on the floor. She glanced at him over her shoulder and pulled the shirt over one arm. “I just don’t think I would call those guys my buddies if I were you,” she said.

“You don’t think their intentions are good?”

She was standing up now, pulling the T-shirt down over her hips. “I’m not trying to be funny,” she said, tilting her head back as if she could inspect him better from a higher angle. “I am telling you that those people are not your friends. You have a grand total of one friend in this town. That’s me.”

Her tone depressed him and made him feel tired again, even though he’d slept most of the past two days. The tone suggested problems and arguments and deceptions practiced upon him rather than by him. It also suggested that his more or less friendless condition was something you could predict based solely on his appearance, and he didn’t like to look like someone who had no friends. Robbie thought of the world as his friend and was genuinely surprised sometimes when the world didn’t return the feeling. Although it was true that at other times it did not surprise him one bit.

She was in the bathroom now washing her face, the door partially closed. “This place really isn’t all that bad,” she called out. “But I can promise you it’s different from anything you’re imagining.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve been to lots of places. I can imagine lots of things.”

“Yeah,” she said, “well,” and left it at that.

He heard water splashing in the sink and then the door closed the rest of the way and he heard the curtain rod and then the shower started up. He lay there and closed his eyes for a few minutes, remembering all the stairs that had seemingly run everywhere, forever, and how he’d felt so desperate to get out, and then he fell asleep and he was having a dream in which he sat in a completely white space with stairways ascending all around him and a crowd of people talking to him in voices that sounded like Julia’s, and all the people were confused about something that seemed obvious but that he couldn’t find the words to explain. It made him feel uncomfortable and frustrated to understand something that no one else did.

Then Stephanie was standing over him, putting her hair back into a ponytail. She wore a sweatshirt, jeans, and heavy boots. Dressed that way, she seemed determined to get something done. “I’m walking to the grocery store,” she said. “We need food.” She leaned over the bed and kissed him on the forehead the way he guessed somebody’s mother would. “Maybe you should get up and around before I get back,” she said. “You’ll probably feel better if you do.”

She opened a closet door and took out a coat that appeared to be made at least partially from the skin of some animal. He lay there gazing at her, this big but still quite attractive girl who looked like she was dressed to go mountain climbing. He liked her, he really did. He closed his eyes and then he heard her boots on the stairs and he heard the door open and the whoosh of cold air come in. He figured he would wait awhile before he took her advice. Right now he felt better than he had in quite some time.

Eventually he got up and took a shower and then checked out the drawer Stephanie had pointed him toward. In it were his clothes—his clothes, his own clothes, the ones he’d left behind that night when he snuck out of the hotel.