does not mean what another man might intend to say with those same three
words, he does not mean that he needs to be someone famous or rich or
important. Just someone. Someone with a real name. Just an ordinary
Joe, as they used to say in the movies of the forties.
Someone who has more substance than a ghost.
The pull of the unknown lodestar in the west grows stronger by the mile.
He leans forward slightly, hunching over the steering wheel, peering
intently into the night.
Beyond the horizon, in a town he can’t yet envision, a life awaits him,
a place to call home. Family, friends. Somewhere there are shoes into
which he can step, a past he can wear comfortably, purpose.
And a future in which he can be like other people accepted.
The car speeds westward, cleaving the night.
Half past midnight, on his way to bed, Marty Stillwater stopped by the
girls’ room, eased open the door, and stepped silently across the
threshold. In the butterscotch-yellow glow of the Mickey Mouse
nightlight, he could see both of his daughters sleeping peacefully.
Now and then he liked to watch them for a few minutes while they slept,
just to convince himself that they were real. He’d had more than his
share of happiness and prosperity and love, so it followed that some of
his blessings might prove transitory or even illusory, fate might
intervene to balance the scales.
To the ancient Greeks, Fate was personified in the form of three
sisters, Clotho, who spun the thread of life, Lachesis, who measured the
length of the thread, and Atropos, smallest of the three but the most
powerful, who snipped the thread at her whim.
Sometimes, to Marty, that seemed a logical way to look at things.
He could imagine the faces of those white-robed women in more detail
than he could recall his own Mission Viejo neighbors. Clotho had a kind
face with merry eyes, reminiscent of the actress Angela Lansbury, and
Lachesis was as cute as Goldie Hawn but with a saintly aura.
Ridiculous, but that’s how he saw them. Atropos was a bitch, beautiful
but cold–pinched mouth, anthracite-black eyes.
The trick was to remain in the good graces of the first two sisters
without drawing the attention of the third.
Five years ago, in the guise of a blood disorder, Atropos had descended
from her celestial home to take a whack at the thread of Charlotte’s
life and, thankfully, had failed to cut it all the way through.
But this goddess answered to many names besides Atropos, cancer,
cerebral hemorrhage, coronary thrombosis, fire, earthquake, poison,
homicide, and countless others. Now perhaps she was paying them a
return visit under one of her many pseudonyms, with Marty as her target
instead of Charlotte.
Frequently, the vivid imagination of a novelist was a curse.
A whirring-clicking noise suddenly arose from the shadows on Charlotte’s
side of the room, startling Marty. As low and menacing as a
rattlesnake’s warning. Then he realized what it was, one half of the
gerbil’s big cage was occupied by an exercise wheel, and the restless
rodent was running furiously in place.
“Go to sleep, Wayne,” he said softly.
He took one more look at his girls, then stepped out of the room and
pulled the door shut quietly behind him.
He reaches Topeka at three o’clock in the morning.
He is still drawn toward the western horizon as a migrating creature
might be pulled relentlessly southward with the approach of winter,
answering a call that is soundless, a beacon that can’t be seen, as
though it is the trace of iron in his very blood that responds to the
unknown magnet.
Exiting the freeway on the outskirts of the city, he scouts for another
car.
Somewhere there are people who know the name John Larrington, the
identity under which he rented the Ford. When he does not show up in
Seattle for whatever job awaits him, his strange and faceless superiors
will no doubt come looking for him. He suspects they have substantial
resources and influence, he must shed every connection with his past and
leave the hunters with no means of tracking him.