Stone Mattress: Nine Tales(43)

“Okay,” he says. “Sounds good. You can tell me more about the furniture. But suppose I accept your offer, that unit has to be cleared in twenty-four hours. Or else they’ll come in and do it themselves, and they’ll keep my cleaning deposit.”

“Oh, I’ll make sure it’s cleared,” she says. She slips her hand through his arm. “But I’ll need the key.”

“No hurry,” says Sam. “We haven’t set the price.”

She looks at him, no longer smiling. She knows he knows.

He should quit fooling around. He should take the money and run. But he’s having too much fun. A real murderess, coming on to him! It’s edgy, it’s rash, it’s erotic. He hasn’t felt this alive for some time. Will she try to poison his drink? Get him in a dark corner, whip out a penknife, go for his jugular? Would he be fast enough to grab her hand? He wants to reveal his knowledge to her in a safe place surrounded by other people. He wants to watch her face as she realizes he’s got her by the neck, so to speak. He wants to hear the story she’ll tell. Or the stories: she must have more than one. He would.

“Out of here, turn right,” he says. “Next stoplight, go past it. There’s a motel – the Silver Knight.” He knows the motel bars near all the storage outfits where he bids at auctions. “I’ll meet you in the bar. Get a booth. I just need to check my other unit.” He almost says, “Book a room while you’re at it, because we both know what this is about,” but that would be rushing things.

“The Silver Knight,” she says. “Has it got a silver knight on the outside? Riding to the rescue?” She’s trying for a light touch. Again the laugh, a little breathless. Sam doesn’t play the move back. Instead he opts for a reprimanding frown. Don’t think you can charm me out of it, lady. I’m here to collect.

“You can’t miss it,” he says. Will she skip out on him? Leave him stuck with the fiasco? No one would know how to track her, unless she’d made the mistake of using her real name when she’d rented the unit. It’s a risk, letting her out of his sight, but a risk he needs to take. He’s 99 per cent certain she’ll be sitting in the bar of the Silver Knight when he gets there.

He texts Ned: Traffic shit. Blizzard crap. We’ll PU AM. Nite. He has a strong impulse to slip the SIM card out of his phone and tuck it into the dried groom’s breast pocket, but he resists it. He does go offline, however: not dark, but dark grey.

I dunno, officer, Ned will say. He texted me from the storage place. Maybe around four. He was fine then. He was supposed to come to the shop in the morning, then we were going to take the van and clear out the units. After that, nothing.

What dried guy in a monkey suit? Really? No shit! Search me.



One thing at a time. First, he opens up Unit 56. All is as it should be: several pieces of furniture, good-enough quality, the sort of thing they can resell in Metrazzle. Rocking chair, pine, Quebec. Two end tables, ’50s, mahogany looks like, spindly ebonized legs. Among them, an Arts and Crafts desk. The sealed white baggies are in the three right-hand drawers.

It’s perfect, really. Maximum deniability. There’s no traceable line from them to him. I have no idea how it got in there! I bought the unit at an auction, I won the bid, it could’ve been anyone. I’m as surprised as you are! No, I didn’t open the drawers before I brought it back to the shop, why would I? I sell antiques, not stuff in drawers.

Then the end destination buys the desk, most likely on Monday, and that’s all there is to it. He’s just the drop box, he’s just the delivery boy.

Ned won’t open the drawers either. He has a finely developed sense of which drawers to leave closed.

Sam can leave the shipment safely where it is: no one’s going to bother this locked unit before noon the next day. Him and his van will be well on the way before then.

He checks his phone: one new message, from Gwyneth. I was wrong, please come back, we can talk it through. He has a tug of nostalgia: the familiar, the snug, the safe; the safe enough. Nice to know it’s waiting for him. But he doesn’t reply. He needs this oblong of freefall time he’s about to enter. Anything at all can happen within it.



When he walks into the bar at the Silver Knight, she’s there waiting. She even has a booth. He’s cheered by the instant acquiescence. She’s minus her coat now, wearing the sort of outfit a woman like her should wear: black, for widow, for spider. It goes well with her ash-blond hair. Her eyes are hazel, her eyelashes long.

She smiles as he slides in opposite her, but she doesn’t smile too much: a faint, melancholy smile. In front of her is a glass of white, barely touched. He orders the same. There’s a pause. Who’ll go first? All the hairs on the back of Sam’s neck are alert. On the flat screen over on the wall behind her head, the blizzard is rolling mutely towards them like a huge wave of confetti.

“I think we might be stuck here,” she says.

“Let’s drink to that,” says Sam, opening his big blue eyes. He does the direct gaze, raises his glass. What can she do but raise hers?

Yeah, that’s him all right, no question. I was tending bar that night, the night of the blizzard. He was with a sizzling blond in a black dress, they seemed on very friendly terms, if you know what I mean. Didn’t see them leave. You want to bet they’ll find her in a snowbank when it all melts?