WHEN THEY got back to the motel, they found the beds had been made up with clean sheets, and fresh white towels had been piled on a chrome rack by the shower. There was even a paper band around the toilet seat that said it had been sanitized for their protection.
The girl decided that they should take showers. He didn’t much feel like it, but she insisted. Neither of them had washed their hair or feet since they had left the island.
The boy went first. When he had finished he felt lightheaded, and his nose and throat were parched. He drank two glasses of water and got into one of the beds with his clothes on.
“Hey,” said the girl, who was studying the plastic laminated sheet on top of the television. “They have adult movies. Do you want to watch an adult movie?”
“What is it?”
“Chaste Coed. That’s a joke, I think.”
“Gross.”
“Yeah. You have to pay extra at the office to have it hooked up,” she said after a moment’s further study. “So I guess that’s out. There’s a Benji movie. You want to see that? We don’t have to pay.”
He nodded and she turned on the television. Then she went in the bathroom to take her shower.
He lay in the bed with his eyes closed and listened to the television. It was funny: before, he had felt hot, and now, under the covers, he felt cold. He thought about the chased coed. He couldn’t see what the joke was.
When the girl was finished with her shower, he watched her comb out her hair at the dresser. Her red shirt clung to her pointed shoulder blades as she raised her arms.
The light of the late-afternoon sun shining through the curtains made the room seem like a burrow. A hiding place. She had been right. It was better to stay there than to run around in the woods, he told himself. But the faint uneasiness that he had felt earlier refused to go away. There was something they had overlooked, but his cold made it too hard to think what it was.
When the girl’s hair was combed out, she wrapped
it in a towel on top of her head. He had never seen anyone actually do this. It gave him pleasure to watch the casual, deft way in which she did it. He wondered if he would ever learn everything there was to know about her. When she brushed her teeth, she spit out in the toilet and not in the washbowl. That was interesting.
“What’s happening?” asked the girl.
“What?”
“On the television.”
“I don’t know. I was watching you.”
“Creep,” she said, grinning at him in the mirror.
She walked over to the bed and looked down at him. “Why are you shivering? Are you cold?”
“Yeah. I can’t seem to get warm.”
“Shall I get in bed with you?”
“Yes, please.”
She kicked off her shoes and got under the covers. She piled up the pillows so that she could sit up and hold him against her as they watched the movie. After a while he stopped shivering.
For some reason the movie was difficult to understand. Perhaps it was because they had missed the first few moments or because it had been cut in some way. It all seemed very peculiar. A blond girl and a boy in neat polyester clothes were being chased by a man with slick black hair. Or perhaps they weren’t being chased. They never got dirty. They were never out of breath or hungry. They were excited about something, but they didn’t seem to be afraid.
Benji was being chased, too, by a large Doberman. Every now and then he did something cute. The movie would stop for a minute so everyone could see what a cute dog he was.
“I don’t get it,” said the girl after a few minutes. “Do you?”
The boy shook his head. “It’s funny, because I think I saw this movie before.”
“Yeah, me too. I didn’t know it was so boring. Did you know it was so boring?”
“No. I thought it was great, but I was just a little kid, then.”
The girl got up and turned off the television. “Tell me some more about Greece,” she said, flopping down on the bed again. “Not the cave. Some nice stuff.”
“The cave’s nice.”
“No, it isn’t. I mean, it’s not bad, but it’s so weird. Tell me about some stuff that isn’t so weird.”
The boy thought for a minute. “Well, once my dad and I walked all the way from Delphi to the sea. I think that was about the best day I ever had.”
“Until now,” said the girl so quickly they were both surprised. She turned red, but he nodded.
“Until now.”
“What was so special about it?” she asked, trying not to sound too interested.
“I don’t know. Partly it was doing something with my dad. He was so busy we didn’t do much together. Lots of times I would just sit around in hotels and
read comics. But we went on this walk for some reason. I forget why.
“We didn’t walk on the road. We walked straight down the mountain and through this great grove of olive trees. It was a sacred wood. Back in ancient times. If you killed anything there, that offended the god.”
“Was that the god in the cave?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. You want to hear something crazy?”
“What?”
“While we were walking in the wood I got this strange idea that he was still there. That’s crazy, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, sort of. It’s weird. Didn’t you do anything there that wasn’t weird?”
“No, listen. It wasn’t weird. I was so happy. Everything was so clear. Do you remember when you first got glasses? When you put them on and you could see?”
“Yeah, I remember that. I read all the street signs when I rode home on the bus from the eye doctor. I read them all out loud. My mom thought I was nuts. I must have thought nobody can read street signs.”
“Well, that’s what it was like. Only it wasn’t just street signs. It was everything. I’d look at a tree, and Oh wow, I’d say. So that’s what a tree is. And then I’d look at a leaf …”
“And you’d say, Oh wow. That’s a leaf.”
He was so goofy he made her laugh.
“It’s really true,” he insisted, but laughing as well. “I could smell everything, too. The sea, the dry grass. Even the sun.”
“Come on. What does the sun smell like?”
“It smells like fire. Like a charcoal fire when you can’t see the flames anymore.”
“No, it doesn’t. You know when you’ve been swimming and you lie down all wet on the float and stick your nose against the wood? That’s what the sun smells like.”
“Yeah. That, too.” He smiled at the ceiling, drowsy and happy. “We followed a river for a while. It was dry. Nothing but white stones. It hurt your eyes to look at it. A river of bones. I wanted to stay there forever.”
The girl picked up his hand and studied it, curling up his fingers with hers one at a time.
“Do you think we could go there sometime? I mean together?” she asked. She touched the palm of his hand with the tip of her tongue experimentally.
“Hey. That feels funny.”
“Hey, yourself. Do you think we could?” She held up their hands palm to palm. Her fingers were longer than his.
“Of course. We can if we want to. We may have to wait until we’re, you know, older.”
“Oh yeah, I know that. But we could if we want to. If we don’t all get blown up or something.”
She suddenly flopped over on her back so that her turban fell off. She didn’t seem to notice.
“Do you know something?” she asked.
“What?”
“I should have asked you before, but I didn’t.”
“What? Tell me.”
She took a deep breath and held it for a second. “I don’t know your name,” she said all at once. She covered her face with her hands and looked at him through her fingers. “That’s pretty stupid, isn’t it?”
“No, it isn’t. It’s kind of a stupid name, though. It’s Howard. Howie. Your name’s Laura, isn’t it? I didn’t remember at first, but then I did.”
“Yeah. Laura Golden. But you want to know something else? That’s not my real name. Did you know that?”
“No. What is it?”
“You promise you won’t tell?”
“Yes, I promise.”
“Then it’s Shadow. Isn’t that a weird name? It’s on my birth certificate and everything.”
He laced his fingers over his stomach, considering. “Shadow Golden.” He pronounced it very carefully. “I think it’s kind of neat.”
“Yeah. My mom and dad thought they were going to have a boy, and they were going to call him Sun. You know. S-U-N. It was supposed to be this really subtle joke, but they had me instead.
“They were hippies. My dad still is, but we don’t
see him anymore. He took a lot of drugs and did something to his brain.
“You know something else?” She propped herself up on one elbow so that she could look at him. She was getting excited. “I was almost born in a tepee. They were going to have this big party and natural childbirth and everything. But there were complications, so I got born in a hospital. God, my mother would die if she knew I was telling you all this stuff. My mom, the hippie. Can you believe it?”
“Yes. She’s probably okay.”
“Yeah, she is really. She changed my name when I started school. She was afraid—you know—that I’d have problems.”
“It’s still your name. Sort of a special name.”
She turned toward him suddenly, so that the wet ends of her damp hair swept his cheeks.
“Do you have any secrets?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.” He tried to think. Sometimes he felt as if he was all secrets, but he didn’t think there was anything he wouldn’t tell her. Well, there was one thing. He hadn’t told her about his idea of just the two of them living together in the woods. He wanted to tell her now, but he was afraid to. He wasn’t afraid that she would laugh at him anymore. It wasn’t that. He was afraid that it would lose some of its magic. That it would just sound queer.
“There is one thing. But I can’t tell you yet.”
“You can’t?” She was disappointed.
“No. It’s because it’s about you and me. There has to be this special time when I tell you.”
“Well. Will you tell me? Sometime?”
“Of course. I promise.”
The time would come. Perhaps it would be tomorrow afternoon at her mother’s apartment in the city, but that wasn’t what he pictured. He saw them walking together up a road into the woods. The sun was shining and birds were singing. It was an old road, overgrown with grass and small trees. Soon it would disappear altogether. It didn’t matter. They weren’t coming back that way.
When they woke up they were starving to death. The girl got out of bed and peeked out through the heavy curtains.
“Hey,” she said. “It’s not even dark yet. What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know. How much money have we got left?”
She went through her jeans pockets.
“Thirty-eight cents,” she said, holding the money in the palm of her hand for him to see.
“We can get a candy bar. I mean, we won’t actually starve to death, anyway. It’s just until tomorrow.”
“I wish I’d saved that banana peel,” she said, sitting down on the bed and looking desolate.
“Why? You can’t eat banana peels.”
“I guess not, but I’m really hungry.” She was so
skinny and couldn’t get enough to eat. It made him want to do something.
“Come on,” he said, getting out of bed and looking for his sneakers. “We’ll buy a candy bar and then go look for some change in cars.”
“Do you think we should do that stuff anymore?”
“Well, we could write down the license numbers this time. That way we’ll know who we have to pay back.”
When he had finished tying his shoes, he stood up and looked down at the straight white part in her hair. “You’re not sorry we didn’t go back to camp?” he asked. The idea made him nervous.
She looked up at him and smiled. “Are you kidding? I’d rather starve.”
Before they left she made him comb his hair and gave him a wad of toilet paper to put in his pocket in case he had to blow his nose. She had noticed him wiping his nose on his shirt-sleeve, but she hadn’t said anything. What had there been to say?
Outside, it was dusk. There was a smear of gold in the sky where the sun was setting, and the air was turning cold. The boy looked up into the dark wood, but he couldn’t see anything. Still, he thought, there might be something there, watching them. It might not mean them any harm, but it might still be watching.
Many of the motel rooms now had cars parked in front of them. As they walked past they could see the shadows of ordinary people moving behind closed
curtains. A faint, confident television voice predicted more sunny days.
They didn’t notice the old woman with pink hair pushing a broom along the balcony. She leaned over the railing and looked down at them as they passed beneath her.
The streetlights came on as they crossed the dusty parking lot toward the restaurant attached to the motel. They thought they would buy a candy bar there and then walk down the main street again. They were afraid to look for change in the cars parked at the motel.
The restaurant was almost full. As they waited at the cashier’s counter for an old woman to pay her bill, the boy watched a man eating a steak. The man had cut the whole thing up into little bits. He was putting them rapidly into his mouth, chewing all the time. The boy looked away.
In Turkey he and his parents would sometimes eat at a café that had set up tables on the sidewalk. A hissing gas lantern had hung over a big charcoal grill. In the white light small boys and girls with dark serious faces walked among the tables offering single roses or squirts of perfume from brightly colored bottles.
He wondered now if they looked so serious because they were hungry.
His father had always waved them away. He had explained that if you bought something from them you were a sucker.
When he and the girl went to Turkey, they would
have money and they would buy. Their hair would be damp with perfume, and they would eat from a table heaped with roses.
The old woman seemed to be taking forever. She had hooked a cane over her thin arm and was fumbling with a black purse rubbed white around the edges.
The girl was watching her closely. At first he thought she was looking at the candy beneath the glass of the counter, but then he realized that she was watching the old creased hands plucking at the purse.
The woman took out a motel key and handed it to the cashier.
The cashier copied the room number from the tag onto a charge slip, and then pointed out where the old woman was to sign.
“Thank you, Mrs. Grogan,” said the cashier, snapping the carbons out of the packet of slips. She gave a yellow receipt to the old woman and then looked at the boy. The girl had already drifted away and was studying a rack of postcards.
“Did you want something?”
“No,” he said. “No, not yet.”
“Did you see that?” whispered the girl when he joined her. She pulled a card from the rack that said Barnesville was the cherry capital of the world and looked at it hard. “She showed them her key and charged it. She put it on her motel bill.”
He knew what she was thinking, and shook his head very slightly.
“She’s a grownup. An adult.”
“So what? We’ve got a key, haven’t we? We could say our dad sent us to have supper and to charge it, if they ask.”
“I don’t know. They might want to call him or something.”
The girl put the card back in the rack, and her eyes swiveled to a baby in a high chair who was pounding a plate of spaghetti into mush with his spoon.
“I’m really hungry,” she said.
They sat down at a table near the window. The waitress who brought them their menus was biting her lip to keep from smiling. She had long blond curls hanging down in front of her ears. He couldn’t see what was funny, and didn’t look up from the menu when she came back with two glasses of ice water.
“What would you folks like?” the waitress asked. They ordered hamburgers, french fries, and malted milks. They tried not to look at the prices.
“Would you like some pie?” the waitress asked. “The pecan is special tonight.” She winked at the boy, and he wanted to say no, but the girl nodded.
“Yes, please,” he said.
The paper place mats were printed with puzzles and games, and while they waited they took turns
working them with the stub of the pencil from the little brown notebook. The puzzles were really for little kids, but they did them, anyway.
They had a race to finish the hardest puzzle. It was a maze.
“I’m done,” said the girl.
The boy looked at her. He was only halfway through. “Hey,” he said. “You don’t even have a pencil.”
“I used my finger.” She leaned over so she could look at his place mat. “Yes,” she said. “That’s the way I went, too.”
He couldn’t understand what he was grinning about. In a few minutes the cashier would be looking at them and wondering what they thought they were trying to pull, and he was grinning so much his mouth hurt.
When the food came they ate quickly because they were hungry. The boy couldn’t finish his pie. He pushed what was left across the table and went to find the bathroom.
It was very fancy. When he backed away from the urinal it flushed all by itself because there was an electric eye built into the walls of the stall. It made him nervous to have stepped into the beam without realizing it, but when he found he could make the urinal flush over and over again by passing his hand in front of the beam, he felt better. It was watching him, but it wasn’t very smart.
When he came out of the bathroom, he saw the
girl wasn’t sitting at the table. She was standing by the cashier’s counter. The old cleaning woman was holding her by the sweater and talking to the cashier. The girl kept shaking the fat hand away, but each time she did, the woman grabbed at her again.
Something had gone wrong.
The boy sidled over behind the rack of postcards. He began to study them intently. He was very still. He thought a person might walk right by and not see him.
The girl could see that the cashier didn’t want trouble. She was young and pretty. She bit at her soft lower lip with tiny, perfect teeth. She kept fingering their key with her white fingers and trying to think while the old woman jabbered at her.
“There wasn’t any luggage when I cleaned in there,” said the old woman, pointing at the key. “That’s why I checked back when I saw them leave. They spent the afternoon in the same bed. At her age.” She looked at the girl, her tiny mouth puckered with satisfaction and disapproval. “I don’t know what this world’s coming to.”
The girl felt her knees starting to shake. She didn’t think she could stand what was going on in that woman’s head. It was dirty and grubby in there, and she didn’t want the old woman thinking about her.
“My dad is really going to be upset about this,” she said as calmly as she could. She tried to get the cashier to look at her, but the young woman wouldn’t do it.
“Where’s your boyfriend?” demanded the cleaning lady, shaking her arm.
It was disgusting to be touched by her. There were patches of old-person sweat under the arms of her sleeveless dress.
“Don’t touch me. My brother went back to our room. He’s sick. When my dad gets …”
“Brother nothing. If you were my daughter I’d smack your bottom.”
The woman had talked about her bottom. She had actually said the word. The girl felt so sick with rage and shame that she could hardly breathe. She suddenly wanted the boy very much, but she was afraid to look for him. It would be awful if they caught him, too.
“I think,” said the cashier finally, “we’d better talk to Mr. Anderson about this.” She looked at the girl for the first time. “I’m sorry,” she added. “We have to be careful.”
The girl didn’t understand what she meant. What did they have to be careful about?
The cashier called over a waitress to take her place behind the counter. It was their waitress. Her eyes were big, and she wasn’t smiling. The girl couldn’t look at her. She let them lead her out of the silent restaurant. Someone scraped a knife against a plate.
Outside, she knew she should try to run. The cleaning lady was old and the cashier was wearing high heels. She could get away easily; but she couldn’t run,
she could barely walk. She had been caught, and she had never imagined what that would be like. Before, she had been happy. She had been crazy-happy, and had felt so light and airy that she had thought nothing could touch her. Now the old woman was pulling at her sweater and thinking bad thoughts about her. They clung like tar. She was wading through the dust of the parking lot, and it was so thick she could barely move.
Behind the desk in the motel lobby was a young man as neat and clean as a new piece of furniture. He seemed to have been waiting for them. He leaned forward politely. His eyes flickered.
“Some problem, Hazel?” he said to the cashier.
“You bet there is,” said the old woman. She talked as if her words were punches, rocking back and forth, jabbing at the girl.
The girl tried to think of what she might say. She knew she wasn’t going to give up. She wasn’t going to be what the cleaning lady said she was. She would talk until they stopped believing her, and then she wouldn’t say anything. She would never tell them her name. Her mother would never know. She couldn’t let that happen.
“Miss Hendricks, is it?” said the man. He had flipped through a registration file and was holding up a white card. His face was carefully neutral. “Where are your parents now?”
“They’re at the garage. Getting the car fixed. That’s
where our luggage is, too. The car broke down when we were leaving this morning, that’s why we didn’t bring the luggage back. I thought my mom told you all about this.”
The old woman with pink hair made a loud noise through her nose. The man coughed to cover the sound. He looked uncertainly, first at the girl and then at the cashier. The girl began to hope that he would believe her, at least for a while. She didn’t know why it was important, but she wanted him to believe her.
“Well, that’s right, I think. If you could just tell us the garage.”
“I don’t know the garage. Can’t we just wait until my dad gets back? He’s really going to be mad.”
“I’m sorry, miss. Of course we can wait. Mrs. Purse just wants to be sure. Isn’t that right, Mrs. Purse?” He looked at the old woman and she turned a mottled red. Even her fat upper arms.
“What about the boy?” she said, her voice tight. “I saw a boy, too, coming out of that room.”
“Boy? What boy?” asked the man.
“My brother …” the girl began, but the man dropped the card on the desk as if he didn’t want to touch it any longer.
“According to the registration there is a party of three in that room. Is that your mother and father and you?”
He looked at her very hard. Somewhere outside, a car alarm went off, but no one paid any attention.
They were all looking at her, and she didn’t know what to say.
The old woman grabbed her arm again, triumphant. “There’s just her and her boyfriend. There ain’t any luggage. Just a paper bag with tampons in it.” The woman made a disgusting noise with her mouth.
The girl thought she was going to cry. It was because the old woman had gone through her bag and found the tampons. She looked at the cashier, but the young woman looked ready to cry herself. That frightened her more than anything.
A second car alarm went off. In the motel lobby nothing moved but the man’s eyes, darting from the old woman to the cashier, and finally to the girl.
He jumped when the fire alarm began to shriek. High and warbling, the sound was almost too loud to hear.
“Damn. Hazel? Check the parking lot. Keep her here, Mrs. Purse.” He pointed a finger at the girl as he came out from behind the desk. “You’re in trouble,” he said.
A woman in a floral-print bathrobe came out into the lobby and tried to catch his arm as he brushed by.
“Is there fire?” she asked.
“I’m checking,” said the man, and disappeared through a large wooden door. The woman looked at the girl and the cleaning lady as if she was going to say something. She changed her mind and went back into her room.
Mrs. Purse hustled the girl over to a large leather
couch in front of the lobby window and pushed her down.
“You just sit there, missy,” she said, standing over her, little fists on fat hips. “I have a granddaughter about your age. I don’t know what I’d do if I thought she acted this way. I just don’t know.”
The girl wasn’t listening. There was a very peculiar expression on her small narrow face. When Mrs. Purse recognized it, it took her breath away. The girl was trying not to smile. She was looking out through the lobby window and trying not to smile. Slowly the old woman turned.
He was staring through the darkening glass, watching her. His eyes were wide and dark, and with a tingle of outrage Mrs. Purse saw that his hair was entangled with green leaves and vines. As she watched, he leaned forward and pressed his hands and face against the glass so that his nose and lips were flattened.
The girl got up and calmly walked out the door. Outside, she turned and grinned with foxy eyes.
Mrs. Purse sat down on the couch with her hands on her chest and listened to the blood and the fire alarm pound in her ears.
“Wild things,” she whispered. “Wicked wild things.”
“Come on, you dope,” said the girl. “You’re going to give her a heart attack.”
The boy smiled and climbed out of the laurel bushes planted in front of the window. They walked
slowly through the crowd of motel guests waiting for something to happen in the parking lot. As they walked, the boy unwound the vine from around his head. No one tried to stop them.