Hearts (30 page)

Robin imagined they’d driven pretty far. They usually stopped before it was this dark. Her stomach whined with hunger and she wondered if there was a place open around there where they could get supper. As far as she could tell, Linda had not eaten since the wedding breakfast, and Robin had only had some sweet rolls she’d filched from the restaurant that morning, and the taco chips and Coke she’d bought at the movie theater in the afternoon. Linda looked exhausted, as if she just wanted to fall into the nearest bed and sleep for a few weeks.

Robin was wide awake and buzzing with need. She had to eat, to drink some water, to pee, to move her cramped legs, even to talk. She left the car, too. Her right foot had fallen asleep and it began to tingle with moving blood as she stamped on it and did a little dance in the parking lot of the Carioca Motel, which boasted
Color TV, Telephones, and In-Room Coffee
. The ones that bragged about having telephones were usually as bad as the ones that didn’t have them. And In-Room Coffee, which sounded like an interesting phenomenon the first time they saw it advertised, in Indiana, turned out to be a little water-stained Pyrex beaker sitting on an electric coil, with two Styrofoam cups and two packets of instant coffee nearby. Linda had acted as if some handsome stranger had sent champagne to their room. “Isn’t
this nice!” she exclaimed. “Isn’t this lovely!” And even though neither of them was particularly fond of coffee, she’d filled the little beaker in the bathroom and made some. It tasted peculiar, as if the water had come from a fish tank or something.

Linda came out of the Carioca office carrying a key, and she was still lurching around in that dopey, drunken way. “Come on, it’s all the way down the other end,” she said to Robin, and got back into the car.

“I’m hungry,” Robin complained. “Aren’t we going to have any supper? We didn’t even have lunch.”

“I cannot drive another inch beyond that room,” Linda said. “But I saw a machine in the office. You can go get yourself something if you want to.”

Robin held out her hand for money. She wasn’t going to dip into the small store of funds she’d been accumulating from her forays into Linda’s purse. The night before, Robin had woken up and found herself alone in the Hide-a-Bed. Tanya was snoring away on the cot, and Linda was gone, probably with Wolfie somewhere, climbing all over each other. Robin took five dollars. In the morning, in desperate daring, and because Linda looked so preoccupied, she took three more. By the time Linda noticed her loss, if she ever noticed it, she’d have to consider other suspects: Tanya, maybe, or Montie. It was Robin’s own money she was taking, anyway, kind of like withdrawing it from a bank. There was no actual question of theft, and she’d probably still come out way behind unless she found the real stash before they parted.

Now Linda gave her a handful of change, told her it was room 14, and drove away.

Robin hoped she wasn’t going to find one of those
machines with nothing but Life Savers and gum in it. Linda was so beat she might not have even noticed if it was a Dispenz-All, like they had in the bus station in Newark, a machine that coughed up combs, pocket packs of Kleenex, lipstick, little magnetic scottie dogs, and emergency vials of lilac perfume.

Robin opened the door to the office and there was nobody there. A bell above the door had tinkled, though, and soon a further door opened and a man in a bathrobe stumbled out. He didn’t even look at her. “Twelve-fifty single,” he said. “Fifteen double. TV, phone, and In-Room Coffee.”

“I’m already checked in,” Robin said. “I just came out to get something to eat.”

“Oh, good Christ,” he said, and went back behind the door, slamming it.

She was glad to be alone in the office. Sometimes it took her a while to make up her mind about the food in vending machines, and she didn’t like anyone looking over her shoulder, offering advice or rushing her. This was a sandwich dispenser, the kind with a glass front and the cut ends of the sandwiches facing the customer. There was a choice of ham, turkey, chicken, or tuna. The last three appeared indistinguishable from one another, and Robin knew that they would all taste pretty much the same, too, slick with mayonnaise and a little fishy. Still, she hesitated, trying to make up her mind. Linda had given her plenty of change. She spread it across the registration desk to count it. Two dollars and ninety-five cents. The sandwiches were seventy-five each. She could eat at least two of them, probably three, and still have a few cents left over for her fund. Linda would be too wiped out to remember to ask for her change.
Robin pushed the money into the slot and pressed the selection buttons for one turkey, one chicken, and one tuna. She could amuse herself later by trying to guess which was which. And she knew from experience that the ham, cut into see-through slices, would be salty and dry. Each time a sandwich dropped into place, the machine rang and there was a muffled answering curse from behind the inner door.

Number 14 was at the very end of the L-shaped building. It had to be pretty late, Robin thought. There were a few other cars pulled up to other numbered doors, but all those room windows were dark, and except for some crickets singing in the black distance, it was quiet, too. Nobody in there reading, or groping somebody else, or making cut-rate long-distance phone calls or lousy In-Room Coffee.

Linda was asleep already. She’d left the lock off so that Robin could get in without a key. All the lights were on in the room, but those dusty, 40-watt bulbs didn’t illuminate the place beyond a frustrating dimness. Robin, feeling lively and curious despite her hunger and other discomforts, looked around. It was one of the ugliest rooms they’d had so far. The two narrow beds didn’t even match. One had a cracked tufted headboard, and the other one was metal and severe. It looked as if it had been used previously in a hospital or an orphanage. Linda lay on the metal bed, corpselike in her pallor, arms folded across her chest. She always claimed to be such a light sleeper, but she didn’t make a move now as Robin clattered around, dropping one shoe and then the other, rattling wire hangers in the closet, and flushing the toilet.

There was a sheet of paper taped to a wall in the
bathroom, just to the left of the light switch. It was a child’s broad-handed drawing of clouds, and it was signed, in tall, careful letters,
Maureen W
. A kid who stayed here once had probably done it, maybe the daughter of a widowed traveling salesman, who went everywhere with him. Robin had a sudden image of a small, serious girl sitting cross-legged on the bed, frowning with concentration, replacing each crayon in the box after she used it. The father was in the bathroom, shaving. When he came out, he made a big fuss over the picture and insisted they hang it right up, the way her mother used to do on the door of the refrigerator at home.

It was a familiar drawing—the clouds were like cotton balls against the Crayola blue of the sky; a traditional yellow sun emerged from a corner of the page—but Robin kept staring at it as if it were extraordinary graffiti, and contained a special heavenly message. The ordinary kind was pretty much the same in every state they’d visited:
Bobbi and Pete fucked here. If you sprinkle when you tinkle, please be neat and wipe the seat. Remember God loves you
.

Robin wondered again where they were. They must have crossed into Arizona while she slept. She wished she hadn’t slept that long. It was going to be hard to fall asleep now, and even harder to stay awake alone in this crummy place. She got into the bed with the tufted headboard, still dressed, taking the sandwiches with her. The silence was going to drive her crazy. Everything she didn’t want to think about would fly into her head. Glancing at Linda once more, she got out of bed and put the television set on, careful to move the volume button to its lowest position first. There were three working
channels. One of them had nothing but a test pattern, accompanied by that irritating signal hum. The second channel was showing the kind of movie Robin hated, a war picture in which the heroes took a couple of years to die after they were shot. The third one was signing off with a film of a flapping flag and a recording of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” barely audible with the volume down, as if it were being played by an orchestra of mice. Robin shut off the set. “Linda?” she said, softly at first, and then in a louder, more conversational tone.

Linda didn’t budge either time. Maybe she’d OD’d on something because of what happened between her and Wolfie. Lots of high-school girls did that after they split up with somebody. One of them at Newark High even died, without meaning to probably, because she’d signed up that same day for cheerleader tryouts. But what would Linda OD on? Tylenol? Vitamin C? That’s all she had in the way of drugs, as far as Robin could see.

The second time Robin went through Linda’s purse, she searched in every pocket and crevice, even cased the lining, looking first for money and then, with a kind of dumb desperation, for pot. She had only that one joint of her own left and she was saving it, thinking she would need it for the encounter with her mother. How could she deal with that if she wasn’t stoned?

When Robin and Montie had danced together at the wedding reception, she had wanted to ask him if he had any grass. But he beat her to it, asking her first, and she’d lied. Robin had been appalled when he practically dragged her from her chair and out onto the floor like that, in front of everybody. She didn’t like dancing in a
public place, away from her known friends, who would not judge her, who would hardly even notice her. Robin secretly believed she was a terrible dancer, that she moved like a gorilla. After a few agonizing moments, she realized that no one was looking at her; they were all watching Linda, who was better than anyone Robin had ever seen, even on
American Bandstand
. Linda’s dancing was the only thing Robin admired about her, or envied.

When Robin told Montie that she didn’t have any grass, he seemed vaguely disappointed, but he didn’t hold her any less tightly in that slow touch-dance number, and something—his hardness, probably—pressed against her with a mind of its own. Even that was not unpleasant. She thought now that Montie would have been someone good to get high with. Ginger and Ray were like remote babies from her long-abandoned childhood.

“Linda!” she said, louder than she’d intended, and Linda sat up, clutching one hand to her breast. “Oh, God, what is it?” she cried, before her eyes were open.

“It’s nothing,” Robin said. “Hey, it’s only me, Robin. I just wanted to talk to you.”

Linda tilted onto one elbow, dazed. Then she said, “Where are we, anyway?”

“How should I know?” Robin answered. “We’re in this sleazy place somewhere.”

Linda brought her alarm clock close to her swollen eyes and she forced them open. “Ohhh,” she moaned. “I just want to sleep. I wish I could sleep forever. Why did you wake me up?” She fell back against the pillow, with her hands over her eyes as if she were shutting out the blinding glare of a searchlight.

Robin considered the question. “I don’t know,” she
said, fumbling for an idea. She certainly wasn’t going to admit to a dread of loneliness, or to that stupid vision of straight Linda wasted on drugs. Then her own eyes found the sandwiches, still untouched, on the other bed. “I thought maybe you were getting hungry,” she said, and congratulated herself on such fast thinking. This excuse sounded reasonable, and generous, besides. She watched as Linda came awake in slow stages.

“What do you have?” Linda asked finally.

“Huh?”

“To
eat
. What did you get to eat?”

“Oh. Tuna fish. Chicken. Turkey. Which do you want?”

“Chicken, I guess, if you don’t want it. Now that I’m up, I’m starving. Did you get anything to drink?”

“They didn’t have anything.”

“I guess we could have water, or some of that coffee.”

Robin went to the other bed and examined the sandwiches and sniffed them, but they withheld the secret of their contents. She chose one at random and brought it back to Linda. Then she went to the bathroom and filled the two Styrofoam cups with water. It looked suspiciously foamy.

Linda bit into her sandwich. “This tastes like tuna,” she said.

“They all do,” Robin allowed, chewing on the white soggy paste of what might have been the turkey. She wondered if she’d be able to tell the difference if she bit off a piece of the cardboard underneath the bread, by accident. Still, she ate the two remaining sandwiches with a real and demanding appetite. Linda had quickly declined half of the second one.

Then they were both thoroughly awake, with nothing to do.

“Maybe there’s something on television,” Linda suggested. “We could keep the sound low.”

“There isn’t,” Robin said. “I tried while you were sleeping.”

“Well, try it again,” Linda urged.

Robin clicked the tuner impatiently from channel to channel.

“Wait!” Linda cried. “Leave that, Robin!”

“What, this? It’s only a commercial. And there’s a jerky movie on this channel.”

“No, look! That man in the commercial. It’s Barry King, someone I used to know back in Bayonne.”

On screen, one man in a locker room was telling another that his trouble was that his smile was too dim.

“
That’s
not his trouble,” Linda murmured.

“What?”

“He’s still handsome, though, isn’t he?”

The guy in the commercial brushed his teeth with some crap and was smiling again. Now his teeth shone like the brights of an oncoming car, and two girls were hanging around his neck. “He looks like a fag to me,” Robin said.

“Maybe that was it,” Linda said.

“Maybe that was
what?
”

“Nothing,” Linda said. The commercial was over and the movie came on again. People were still killing each other all over the place.

“You can shut it off now,” Linda said, and Robin did.

After a moment, Linda moaned. “Now what? And I don’t even have anything to
read
,” she said. She
sounded desperate. “How will I ever be able to get back to sleep? I’ll have to take a couple of Tylenol and see what happens. Maybe they’ll relax me a little.”