No five-star resorts were among the accommodations, but Dylan wasn’t looking for amenities. All he wanted was a quiet place where the cockroaches were discreet.
He chose the motel farthest from service stations and other businesses likely to get noisy in the morning. At the registration counter, he presented a sleepy-eyed desk clerk with cash in advance, no credit card.
The clerk required a driver’s license. Dylan was loath to give it, but refusal would arouse suspicion. He had already given an Arizona license-plate number, and not the one on the plates that he had stolen. Fortunately, the sleepy clerk seemed not to be intrigued by the apparent conflict between a California license and Arizona plates.
Jilly didn’t want adjoining rooms. After all that had happened, even if they left the door open between rooms, she’d feel isolated.
They booked a single unit with two queen-size beds. Dylan and Shep would share one, and Jilly would take the other.
The usual decor of bold clashing patterns, calculated to conceal stains and wear, gave Dylan a faint case of motion sickness. He was bone tired, too, and grainy-eyed, suffering from a killer headache.
By 3:10 A.M., they had transferred the essential luggage to the room. Shep wanted to bring the Dickens novel, and Dylan noticed that although the boy had appeared to be absorbed in the book throughout the ride north, he was on the same page that he’d been reading in the restaurant, all the way back in Safford.
Jilly used the bathroom first, and when she came out, teeth brushed and ready for bed, she still wore street clothes. ‘No pajamas tonight. I want to be ready to move fast.’
‘Good idea,’ Dylan decided.
Shep had responded to an evening of chaos and shattered routines with remarkable equanimity, so Dylan didn’t want to push him further by making him forgo his customary sleepwear. One straw too many, and Shep might break out of his stoic silence into a hyperverbal mode, which could last for hours, ensuring that none of them got any sleep.
Besides, Shep wore pretty much the same thing in bed and out of it. His daytime wardrobe consisted of a collection of identical white T-shirts featuring Wile E. Coyote, and a collection of identical blue jeans. At night he put on a fresh Wile E. Coyote T-shirt and a pair of black pajama pants.
Seven years ago, in a state of hysterical despair over the decisions required to dress each morning, Shep had rebelled against a varied wardrobe. Thereafter, he would wear only jeans and Wile E.
The nature of his fascination with the infamous coyote was not clear. When in the mood for cartoon mayhem, he watched Road Runner videos for hours. Sometimes he laughed with delight; at other times, he followed the action as solemnly as though it were the moodiest of Swedish cinema; and on still other occasions, he watched quietly, with bottomless sorrow, tears sliding ceaselessly down his cheeks.
Shepherd O’Conner was an enigma wrapped in a mystery, but Dylan wasn’t always sure that the mystery had a solution or that the enigma possessed any meaning. The great stone heads of Easter Island, as enigmatic as anything on earth, stared with mysterious purpose toward the sea, but they were stone inside as well as out.
After brushing his teeth twice and flossing twice, after washing his hands twice before toilet and twice after, Shep returned to the bedroom. He sat on the edge of the bed and took off his slippers.
‘You’re still wearing socks,’ Dylan noted.
Shepherd always slept barefoot. But when Dylan knelt to remove the socks, the kid swung his legs into bed and pulled the covers up to his chin.
Deviations from routine were forced on Shep, always to his deep dismay; he never chose to make them.
Dylan worried, ‘Are you all right, kiddo?’
Shepherd closed his eyes. There would be no communication on the issue of socks.
Maybe his feet were cold. The in-window air conditioner didn’t cool the room evenly, but sent icy drafts chasing along the floor.
Maybe he was worried about germs. Germs on the carpet, germs on the bedclothes, but only germs that infected feet.