The Passenger (The Passenger, #1)(57)

He put the bags in the car and went back into the kitchen and filled two saucepans with hot water from the tap and went out and poured them over the glass front and rear to melt away the frost. Then he set the pans on the porch steps and got in and started the car and turned on the wipers and backed the car down the drive into the road and turned and headed toward the highway.

He took I-40 west up onto the Cumberland Plateau and he was in Crossville in forty minutes. A sandcolored crust of snow lay along the edge of the road and it was very cold. He ate breakfast at a truckstop. Eggs and grits. Sausage and biscuits and coffee. He paid and left. Outside in the parkinglot a man was standing with his arm across the stainless steel roof of the Maserati while his girlfriend took his picture.



* * *





He pulled into the Quarter at four oclock in the afternoon and parked the Maserati in front of the bar and got his bags and walked in. Harold Harbenger was sitting at the end of the bar and he raised one hand in huge greeting. As if he’d been sitting there all this time waiting. Bobby boy, he called.

Where you been? said Josie.

I went to see my grandmother.

You went to Knoxville?

I did.

Josie shook her head. Knoxville, she said.

Has there been anybody in here looking for me?

I dont think so. You can check with Janice. Was there anybody looking for me in Knoxville?

Western smiled. I’m guessing you hope not. What time does the bank close?

Down on Decatur?

Yeah.

Four oclock. She looked at her watch. It’s ten after.

I know. So what time do they open?

Probably ten.

In the evening he drove the car back out to the storage locker and covered it and hooked it up to the tricklecharger and took a cab back to the Quarter and ate at the Vieux Carré. Then he went back to the bar and climbed the stairs and went to bed with the cat humming against his ribs.

In his dreams of her she wore at times a smile he tried to remember and she would say to him almost in a chant words he could scarcely follow. He knew that her lovely face would soon exist nowhere save in his memories and in his dreams and soon after that nowhere at all. She came in half nude trailing sarsenet or perhaps just her Grecian sheeting crossing a stone stage in the smoking footlamps or she would push back the cowl of her robe and her blonde hair would fall about her face as she bent to him where he lay in the damp and clammy sheets and whisper to him I’d have been your shadowlane, the keeper of that house alone wherein your soul is safe. And all the while a clangor like the labor of a foundry and dark figures in silhouette about the alchemic fires, the ash and the smoke. The floor lay littered with the stillborn forms of their efforts and still they labored on, the raw half-sentient mud quivering red in the autoclave. In that dusky penetralium they press about the crucible shoving and gibbering while the deep heresiarch dark in his folded cloak urges them on in their efforts. And then what thing unspeakable is this raised dripping up through crust and calyx from what hellish marinade. He woke sweating and switched on the bedlamp and swung his feet to the floor and sat with his face in his hands. Dont be afraid for me, she had written. When has death ever harmed anyone?



* * *



—

In the morning he went down to the Du Monde and drank coffee and read the papers. At ten oclock he walked across the street to the bank. An old white stone classic revival building that sorted oddly with the Quarter architecture. Legacy of Latrobe. He went to the desk at the rear of the lobby and signed the register and gave his key to the clerk and followed him down to the vault where the clerk unlocked the gate and offered him through with an outheld hand. They passed along a row of small engineturned steel doors until they came to his number and the clerk fitted the keys and opened the door and slid out the gray enameled steel tray and placed it on the table behind them. He opened one of the locks and handed back the keys and turned and left the room.



* * *



—

Western fitted the key and turned it and raised the lid. Inside was a fat brown manila envelope. He lifted it out and undid the string clasp and opened it and took out the letters. Her journal for the year 1972. He looked inside and then put everything back in the envelope and rewound the string on the clasp and put the envelope on the table and closed and locked the lid of the tray and slid it back and closed the small steel door and locked it. He turned and left with the envelope and he signed out on the register in the lobby and thanked the clerk and walked out into the street.



* * *



—

He stretched out on the little bunk and took a letter from the envelope at random and opened it and read it. He knew them all by heart yet he read with care. The cat walked purring up and back along the edge of the bed.

He didnt know where his own letters were. Maybe he didnt want to know. He folded the letter and put it back in the envelope and took another from the bottom of the stack. At age twelve she had a picture of Frank Ramsey in a dimestore frame standing on her bedside table. She wanted to know if you could be in love with someone who was dead. She said that in fourteen years they would be the same age. He didnt read anymore. The later ones were hard for him to read. The letters in which she told him that she was in love with him. He put them away in the manila envelope and closed it and put it under the mattress and went out and down to the bar.