will.
She took in his hair and clothes again. He was not accustomed to such
frank disapproval in cities like Philly and San Francisco, and he
resented her manner.
“Well,” she said, “you must be aware that you pay-”
“in advance,” he finished for her. “Yes, silly of me not to think of
it.” He counted twelve dollars onto the registration book. “I sent in
a five-dollar deposit, you may recall.”
“But there’s tax,” she said.
“How much?”
When she told him, he paid from the loose change in the pocket of his
wrinkled dark gray jeans.
She counted the money into the cash drawer even though she had seen
him count it himself a minute ago.
Reluctantly she took a key from the pegboard and gave it to him. “Room
37,” she said, staring at the key as if it were diamond jewelry she was
committing to his care. “That’s way down the long wing.”
“Thank you,” he said, hoping to avoid a scene. He walked back across
the clean, well-lighted room toward the door.
“The Lazy Time has very nice rooms,” she said as he reached the door.
He looked back. “I’m sure it does.”
“We like to keep them that way,” she said.
He nodded grimly and got the hell out of there.
Despite the fact that he had lost sight of the Thunderbird, George
Leland began to calm down. For fifteen minutes he pushed the van along
at top speed, desperately surveying the traffic ahead for a glimpse of
the big car. But his natural empathy with machines acted as a sedative.
The fear left him. He let the van slow down. With a growing confidence
in his ability to catch up with the Thunderbird, he drove only a few
miles an hour over the speed limit. Like a man in a light trance, he
was aware only of the road and of the Chevy’s engine revving at just the
right pitch, and he was considerably quieted by these things For the
first time all day Leland smiled.
And he wished, for the first time in a long time, that he had someone to
whom he could talk . . .
“You look happy, George,” she said, startling him.
He glanced away from the road.
She was sitting in the passenger’s seat, only a couple of feet away from
him. But how was that possible’ “Courtney,” he said, voice a dry
whisper.
“It’s nice to see you so happy,” she said.
“You’re usually so sober.”
He looked back at the road, confused.
But his eyes were drawn to her magnetically an instant later. The
sunlight pierced the windshield and passed through her as if she were a
spirit. it touched her golden hair and skin, then kept right on going.
He could see the door panel on the other side of her. He could see
through her lovely face to the window behind her head and the
countryside beyond the window-as if she were transparent. He could not
understand. How could she be here? How could she know that he was
following Doyle and the boy?
A horn blared nearby.
Leland looked up, surprised to find he had drifted out of the right lane
and almost collided with a Pontiac trying to pass him. He wheeled hard
right and brought the van back into line.
“How have you been, George?” she asked.
He looked at her, then quickly back at the highway. She was wearing the
same outfit she had worn when he saw her last: clunky shoes, a short
white skirt, fancy red blouse with long printed collar.
When he followed her to the airport a week ago and watched her board the
707, he had been so excited by the way she looked in that trim little
suit that he had wanted her more than he had ever wanted a woman before.
He almost rushed up to her–but he had realized that she would think it
was strange of him to be following her.
“How have you been, George?” she asked again.
She had been worried about his problems even before he recognized that
he had any, even before he had seen that everything was going wrong.