The Sun Down Motel(49)

It was here that she had to admit she didn’t know what exactly to do next. The traveling salesman was supposed to be in Buffalo; she didn’t have a picture of him or know anything about him except where he lived. She had no answers to why he checked into the Sun Down with false names, or what he was doing there when he already had a home in Fell. She didn’t know where he came from or who his friends were. She didn’t know if he had children.

She didn’t know whether he had anything to do with Betty or Cathy or Victoria. All she had was a man’s name and address.

She should probably give up. Instead she parked around the corner, next to a small park. From her window she could see the driveway of the Hess house. She turned off the car and rubbed her face. I should take out my notebook, she thought, and write some notes about what to do next.

She leaned back in the driver’s seat and was asleep before she could finish the thought.



* * *



? ? ?

When she woke, it was dark. She had a brief, disoriented flash in which she thought it was the middle of the night and she was supposed to be at the Sun Down. She looked at her watch and saw that it was only six o’clock, the early dark of the end of the year. She was shivering, and a cold wind buffeted the car.

She sat up and smoothed her hair, and then she went still.

There was a second car in the Hess driveway. The traveling salesman’s car.

Without thinking she opened the driver’s door and got out. If she hesitated, she would never do it. Go, just go. She walked around the corner toward the Hess house, trying not to flinch as a car drove past her on the quiet street, some nice man coming home from work. She waited until the taillights were in the distance and then she ducked around the side of the Hess house, crouching in the shadows of the garden.

This is crazy.

I don’t care.

It was freeing, this not caring. She was unmoored from everything: family, friends, home, her real life. Even time had stopped having meaning since she started at the Sun Down, the days and nights jumbled into a long stretch that was as understandable as ancient Sanskrit. She looked at people anchored by time—get up in the morning, go to sleep at night, come home from work at six o’clock—as people she politely shared the world with but didn’t understand. Why did people bother? The nights were so long now; it was night in the morning and it was night now. It was all darkness broken briefly by muddled gray light. Even now it could be three o’clock in the morning as she sat in the traveling salesman’s garden. Who was to say it wasn’t?

A light came on in a window a few feet away. Viv sidled toward it, listening. She didn’t hear children’s voices. Somehow it would make things worse to know that children lived with the traveling salesman, like seeing a toddler walk onto an empty road. Move, move, run! If the salesman was who she thought he was, he should live alone with his wife—Viv pictured a pale, wilted woman, long given up on life—and no one else. It fit.

Viv squat-walked toward the lit window, then carefully raised herself to peek into the corner. It was the kitchen, and a woman was standing at the sink, her back to Viv, the water running as she rinsed dishes. She wore pants that were elastic at the waist and a roomy T-shirt. With the practiced eye of a girl in theater, Viv noted that the woman’s clothes were handmade on a sewing machine.

A man walked into the kitchen. He was of average height, average build, trim and clean-shaven with short hair brushed back from his forehead. He wore dress pants and a dress shirt with rolled-up sleeves and no tie. His face was square, his eyes small and nondescript. The last time she’d seen him, he’d smiled at her with a smile that didn’t fit his face and made her queasy. I guess I’m just that memorable, he’d said. Without a word he put a plate on the counter next to the woman and left the room again.

Hello, Simon Hess, Viv thought.

The woman, she knew, would tell her husband about the strange phone call she got today. The scheduling service that had thought he was in New York. And the traveling salesman would look puzzled and say to his wife, Of course they knew where I was. Why would they call? Perhaps they’d already had this little exchange; a simple phone call to his company would tip him off that someone he didn’t know had called about him. Viv had to move fast.

She ducked from the window again and squat-walked to the back yard, opening the latch to the backyard gate and peering in. It was a suburban fenced back yard, with a patio and a lawn in the dark. Still no sign of children’s toys. Viv closed the gate again and backed out.

She had no idea what she was looking for—just something. Something that would put her closer to him, reveal something about him. She walked low against the house to the front again and saw the salesman’s car in the driveway.

She crouched and moved to it. Peeked in the windows. The car was clean, as if he had bought it yesterday. No rips in the upholstery. No wrappers or junk. Nothing that said a man had just traveled in this car to Buffalo and back, that a man traveled in this car all the time.

She circled the car. If someone came by right now, she would be in plain view. The neighbor across the street could likely see her if he was looking out his window. The house across the street was dark with no car in the driveway. Still, she had to be fast.

The passenger seat had a few pieces of paper on it. Viv tried the passenger door and when it opened, unlocked, her blood went hot and pounding in her veins. She reached in and picked up the papers.