The sign said MERRITT MOTEL AND APARTMENTS, and a faded red neon “Vacancy” sign was lit underneath, the second “a” burnt out. He pulled in and saw that the office was still lit. Considering all the excitement and the near-perfect view of the lake that the place presented, this was not unexpected.
A slight, elderly woman was talking to a man about her age — seventyish, Savage guessed. They stopped as he entered. People usually did: the huge, brutish looking man with the metal claw for a right hand was a showstopper even in cosmopolitan New York.
“Yes, sir, may I help you?” she asked pleasantly, but her eyes kept drifting to the claw.
“I need a room. I saw your vacancy sign—”
“Oh, yes,” she responded, giving him one of the usual white cards to fill out. “Thirty a night. It’s the in season, you know. Only reason we’re not full up tonight is because it’s a Monday. Always slow on Mondays.”
“Uh-huh,” Savage mumbled. “I may be here a couple of days.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” she assured him. “Checkout’s eleven any day. Let us know as early as you can when you decide to leave, won’t you?”
Savage assured her that he would and, getting his key and directions, he drove down to the room.
The place was fairly new, he saw, with neat balconies all around.
The room was actually a studio apartment: a large room with full furniture and a kitchenette. The place had obviously been built more with apartments in mind than a motel, but when it hadn’t been completely rented they had supplemented.
Going over to the French windows, he saw that they led to the small railed balcony with two metal chairs. Off in the distance he could see the flashing lights of the troopers at the lake. Not a bad base, he congratulated himself, as if the choice had been deliberate.
Setting his portable alarm clock for 8 A.M., he stripped and plopped on the bed.
He awoke to the sound of somebody fumbling around with his door.
Quickly but quietly, he jumped up and pulled his .38. The clock said 7:15.
The sound went away, but he heard someone going down the hall. Putting the pistol on the bed, he went to the door and opened it chain-wide.
A woman wearing sunglasses and carrying a bamboo cane was at the next door feeling it. He instantly realized what had happened: she was blind and feeling the numerals to find hers. The sound had been the cane hitting the door as she’d reached up.
She heard Savage open the door, obviously, since she turned in his direction.
“I’m — I’m so sorry,” she said apologetically. “Did I wake you?”
“Yes,” he replied, “but that’s all right. Time I was up and about, anyway.”
He studied her for a moment. She was short, about five-two or three, and very chubby, with thick legs and pudgy fingers. But she had long auburn hair draped around her shoulders, a pleasant, almost cheery-looking face, and a pretty large set of boobs that were obviously braless under the dark overlarge t-shirt she was wearing. Dressed right, and with a little makeup, she could still be a decent-looking woman; absent a fair number of pounds, she’d be downright cute.
“I — I just had to change apartments after three years, when my air conditioner broke down,” she explained in a voice that was soft and low and very pleasing. Her somewhat halting manner of speech showed her to be, a person who didn’t talk to many people. “I’m, well, not used to where the apartment is now, how many steps and the like. You get into a habit, and it’s hard to break.”
“That’s okay,” he assured her. “I’m only a temporary guest, with work to do. But — say, had breakfast yet?” She looked hesitant for a moment. “I’m a stranger here and there’s no coffee shop in this place. If you’ll tell me a decent place to eat, I’ll treat you.”
She paused a moment more; then her face broke into a why-the-hell-not? smile and she said, “All right. No, I haven’t had breakfast and I — I don’t get out very much. Tell you what: I’ll buy. It’s the least I can do for waking you up.”
“You’re on,” he chuckled, and suddenly realized that be was nude — not even the claw was on. “Just let me get dressed.”
“I’m in 207 — no, 213,” she corrected herself, and laughed nervously. “See what I mean?”
“Okay. Be with you in five minutes,” he told her, and shut the door.
He dressed quickly, the hardest and longest thing being rigging the claw to respond to his muscle movement. Funny, he thought. Two cripples meet in a hall. What an ideal couple, he chuckled at the thought. She was probably the first girl he had ever met who wouldn’t be repulsed by his appearance.
Before going to get her, he glanced out the window and saw several Army vehicles of varying sizes parked around the lake. He felt reassured; The Team was already on the job, and all he had to do was watch. Plenty Of time for breakfast.
He went down me hall and rapped on 213. “Ready for breakfast?” he called out.
In a moment, she opened the door. The apartment was almost a duplicate of his own, but the furniture showed signs of that owned, lived-in look. It was also pretty messy, unkempt in much the way she dressed herself. As if she just didn’t give a damn.
He had known some other blind people, but almost to a one they’d been fanatically neat and led near normal lives. This girl obviously did not. He wondered what her story was.
She walked over to the door with confidence: the furniture had obviously been arranged as in the old apartment, in the manner of the blind, so that she knew the placement of every single thing. She carried no purse, but a wallet was tucked in the rear pocket of her jeans.
“I had to put some sandals on,” she explained. “They don’t allow bare feet in the diner.”
She went out and he closed the door after her.
As they walked down the hall, Savage resisted the temptation to help her. This was her territory, and he knew that the sure path to alienation was to remind her of her handicap. He had resented too many people trying to handle things for him.
“What were you doing up so early?” he asked conversationaily.
She laughed shyly.
“Promise not to tell anyone?” she whispered.
“Promise,” he replied with mock solemnity.
“There’s a sundeck up on the roof that’s not unlocked until 8. I have a key to the door and I go up there, lock myself on top, and sunbathe in the nude. The early morning sun feels great. The old people who run the place know it, but they take pity on a poor blind girl’s one pleasure, and run interference.”
“Hmmm… As a member of the Future Rapists of America, I’ll file that away.”
She laughed — a very amiable laugh, he thought.
“Just try it. I’m the best blind karate student in the county!”
“Say, will we need a car to get to this diner?”
“Yes, it’d be better than walking seven blocks,” she replied. “But you’ll have to guide me to and help me in the car.”
This he did easily, and soon, following her directions, they pulled up to THE DINER.
He thought of it all in capital letters because it looked like a million diners he’d seen: silver, long and thin, sort of like a wheelless railroad car. He helped her in and they took seats in a booth near the door. The diner wasn’t all that crowded; by 8:30 the regulars were on their way to work and any others were out gawking at the operations by the lake. He ordered sausage and eggs for the two of them.
“Well, sir,” she said playfully, “what with this being our first date and me buying, I think we ought to be properly introduced.”
“Paul Carleton Savage,” he answered. “And you?”
“Jennifer Barron.”
She put out her right band. He hesitated for a second, then shook it awkwardly with his left.
“How come the odd handshake?” she asked as the waitress poured coffee.
Savage hesitated. Here it was. Well, it was only strike one. She couldn’t see the rest of him.
“I — well, I have a handicap,” he told her.
“Well, that gives us something in common…” she replied uncertainly. “What’s yours?”
“Put out your right hand again. Careful of the coffee!”
She did, and he put the claw into it. She took it, felt it carefully, shaping its line and form. Her face was serious and intense.
“A mechanical hand?”
“Yep. Call me Lefty.”
“How’d you lose it, if I can ask?”
“Vietnam,” he replied. “It was shot off.”
A slight shiver went through her at the thought, but it passed quickly.
“In case you haven’t noticed,” she said after a moment, “I have a handicap, too. Nothing so glamorous.”
“Well, I told you about mine. Tell me about yours.”
“Nothing to tell, really,” she replied. “I was born blind.”
She reached up and took off her dark sunglasses. Her eyes were snow white. She had no pupils. She put the glasses back on.
“That usually turns everybody’s stomach,” she said sourly.
The eggs came as if on cue.
“So does the hand,” he replied. “Looks like we were made for each other!”
She laughed, and started in on the sausage.
The eyes had been a mild shock, but, as his claw had with her, they quickly became irrelevant.
“The only thing repulsive,” he told her, “is the amount of ketchup you’re pouring on perfectly good scrambled eggs.”
She laughed. “Savage,” she said. “That’s a good English name, like Barron.”
“Actually, I have no idea of my ancestry. I’m an orphan.”
“Then where’d the name come from?”
“Well, let’s just say I’m not really handsome,” he explained gingerly. “Never was. Too much hair, and a build more like an ape than anything. I was a really ugly baby. I think my parents thought I was retarded or something. At any rate, one of the wits at the orphanage thought I kind of looked like a caveman he’d seen pictures of in an anthropology book, and Savage I became. Paul was just a good name for a boy in a Lutheran orphanage, and I added the middle name, Carleton, myself because it sounded classy.”
He wolfed down the meal and started on his second cup of coffee, starting to feel fully awake for the first time. “What about you?”
“No real story,” she replied casually. “I was born here: Daddy was a real estate agent and did a pretty good business, upper-middle-class and all that. I was the only child. I think my parents blamed themselves for my blindness; anyway, they lavished all their attention on me: special tutors, braille class, Seeing Eye dog, the whole bit. But I was really sort of a prisoner in the house; it was my world. I knew it absolutely.
“The tutors helped me get state certification, and I graduated from high school sort of without ever being in a school. I could have gone, but Mama wasn’t willing to let me out of her sight, it seemed.”
“Where are your parents now?” he asked.
“Dead. Car crash coming home from a New Year’s party, ‘bout two years ago. I might’ve gone, but there were only older people there and I didn’t like to socialize much — all this ‘Please, dear, let me do this for you’ and ‘Oh, you poor, poor girl’ bullcrap. I stayed home and inherited about a hundred and fifty thousand. I hadn’t known Daddy was worth nearly that much. I sold the house for another sixty, and banked it, then: moved into the apartment. It was all I needed: I have few expenses, the money draws good interest, and I can probably last the rest of my life on the money.”
Savage decided on a calculated risk. The torrent of words that poured from her demonstrated her extreme lonliness, and told the whole story. Isolated from the mainstream of society, even blind society, by over protective parents, and told she was crippled and treated that way all her life, she had not known how to communicate. Dropped suddenly into real life, she had no experience to cope with it. She’d retreated into the small world of her apatment, and stayed. People wanted to help, of course, but their obvious motive — pity — only increased her own self-pity. She dressed sloppily because she didn’t have anyone to dress for. She kept a sloppy house because she had lost hope. When she was feeling particularly lonely, she ate.
Savage chose his words carefully. “Did you ever,” he asked softly, “wish you’d gone to that party?”
She froze, sitting straight up for an instant; then she seemed to melt. Tears welled up behind the glasses and streamed down her cheeks.
“I — I’m sorry I said that,” he apologized. “I shouldn’t have. I—”
“No, no, that’s all right,” she said. “You’re right. Yes, I’ve wished it. I — I’ve even thought of correcting the mistake.”
“What the hell for?” he chastised her. “There’s no reason for it. You’re not unattractive, and, being born blind, you’re less handicapped than somebody who goes blind. There are lots of productive things you could do. Jobs. Get out!”
“For what?” she asked bitterly. “For who? Why? So I can exchange one prison for another?”
“Maybe for — me…” he said softly.
“For you… ?” She gave a bitter, humorless laugh. “Who are you, Paul Carleton Savage? A traveler? A man of great experience? Somebody who got here last night and will be gone tomorrow morning.”
Savage sat thinking for a few seconds. How strange, he thought, how really strange. Come in on a dirty case, and in the space of an hour in the morning get caught up with somebody. She was right, after all. If the Team cleaned things up, he would be gone. Somehow, he felt very guilty about all this. Abruptly, he decided he would take a vacation — they were pretty flexible around D.C. headquarters, anyway — when this job was done. Here. Stay a while. See it through. He’d made a commitment somehow.
“I’ll be here for a while, Jennifer,” he told her. “Let’s see what develops.”
She smiled a warm smile, but she didn’t believe him. Even so, this was the first time anything had happened. It was like the excitement last night, she thought. Enjoy it while it lasts…
“Let’s go,” he said, picking up the check.
“How much is it?” she asked him.
“Never mind. My treat.”
“Oh, no!” she shot back. “Remember, this is my date.”
He, shrugged. “Three twelve.”
She brought out the wallet and counted out three ones and took a quarter from the change purse. “You leave the tip,” she said.
As Savage got in the car, he heard the buzzer alarm inside.
Jennifer heard it, too. “What’s that?” she asked.
“Car phone,” be replied, and touched the stud. “Hang on a minute while I answer this.”
She sat quietly as be picked up the receiver. “Savage here.”
“Savage! My God, been trying to reach you for some time!” came a gruff male voice.
“Breakfast with a pretty lady,” he answered, and Jenny smiled.
“Well, time to get to work. We can’t get the Team assembled there until four or so this afternoon. You’ll have to delay the dive until then.”
Savage felt a knot tighten in his stomach. “You mean that’s not the Team out there now?”
“Hell, no! What gives?”
“Hate to tell you this, but the Army is out there — and it’s not what we planned at all.”
“Oh, shit!” exclaimed the watch. “You mean the real one?”