Vanish in an Instant (20 page)

“I don't pick them off trees,” Meecham said. “They're flung into my lap.”

“No opinions about me yet?”

“None.”

“That's odd. I had quite a time-honored motive, you know. My wife was Margolis' mistress.”

“I don't think she was.”

“Very polite of you to say so, anyway.”

“It's not politeness. I'm taking Lily Margolis' word for it. Margolis had a real love—that's her phrase—but it wasn't Virginia.”

“The degree of Virginia's unfaithfulness hardly matters, does it?”

“I thought you'd be interested.”

“Yes, I am,” Barkeley said quietly. “I'm disappointed, too, that she didn't get any happiness out of all the grief she's given the rest of us. You'd think somebody would get something out of it. But no, Margolis is dead, and Virginia is running away, and I'm running after her, reluctantly and
without hope. If I find her, what then? What then?” he repeated. “I just don't know.”

Neither did Meecham. The next hour seemed as impon­derable and remote as the next year.

They were passing through a small town identified by a sign over the railroad station door as Algonquin. A layer of fresh snow hid its ugliness like frosting on a soggy cake.

“Morrisburg is only another thirty miles,” Barkeley said. “We won't catch them.”

“We might.”

“I don't think so.”

He was wrong. Meecham spotted the bright yellow Fra­zer about a half-mile beyond Algonquin. Its hood was half- buried in a pile of snow left by a snow plough at the side of the road. A tow truck was parked in front of the Frazer, its red blinker going off and on like a buoy light to warn the approaching traffic.

Barkeley parked his car a few yards beyond the tow truck and Meecham got out and walked back.

A gray-haired angry-looking woman sat behind the wheel of the truck, her arms folded aggressively across her chest. A teen-aged boy in leather cap and windbreaker was busy with a shovel digging away the snow from the Frazer's bumper.

“Need any help?” Meecham said.

The boy looked up and shook his head. “Nope.”

“A nasty thing to have happen to a new car like that.”

“Not much damage done. Didn't hit nothing except snow.”

The woman in the truck cranked down the window and stuck her head out. “What's he want, Billy?”

“Nothing.”

“He ain't one of those insurance fellows?”

“How should I know?”

“Just think,” the woman said bitterly. “Just think, if your father'd stayed
home
tonight where he
belongs
. But no. Not
him
. He had to go and . . .”

“Oh, for heck's sake, Mom, stop crabbing.”

The woman's lips continued moving, but no one heard what she said because she'd closed the window again.

Meecham asked the boy, “Anyone hurt in the accident?”

“One of the women was riding up front and got her head bumped on the windshield. Nothing much.”

“Where are the people now?”

“They're waiting for the car at my Dad's place, about five hundred yards up the road. We got a garage and a hamburger stand.”

“Good. I'll drop in.”

The boy resumed his shoveling and Meecham began walking back to the car.

The woman had opened the window of the truck again. “I bet it was one of those insurance fellows.”

“It don't matter anyway.”

“It's after eight. I missed Guest Star. Your father knows Wednesday's the best night. And here I sit, in the middle of a snowstorm when I could be . . .”

The snow gradually covered her voice as it covers cat tracks.

21

The Hamburger
stand
was one large room built onto the front of an old brick farmhouse. It was equipped with three oilcloth-covered tables, a dozen chairs and a long wooden counter. At one end of the counter, facing the door, there was a small television set on a crude home­made shelf attached to the wall. A boxing match was on the screen showing two boxers, bodies close and heads together in a clinch. They looked as though they were sobbing on each other's shoulders.

A waitress was languidly drying a pile of cups and sau­cers, her eyes glued to the screen.

Hearst sat at the counter alone. There was a sandwich and a cup of coffee in front of him, but he was too absorbed in the boxers to eat or drink. His face, like that of the wait­ress, had a curious stupor, as if they were both drugged by the motions on the screen. He didn't turn his head, or even blink when the door opened and Meecham and Barkeley came in.

There was no sign of either Virginia or her mother.

“One of them's getting all bloody,” the waitress said, apparently to Hearst though she didn't look at him. “Why can't we get something more cheerful, I'd like to know.”

“Leave it on,” Hearst said. “It's not real anyway.”

Barkeley and Meecham sat down at the counter. The waitress didn't notice, or pretended not to.

“It looks real,” she said.

“The whole thing's phony, like wrestling. For blood they use ketchup.”

“Is that a fact?”

“Sure it is. I know one of the head guys at the biggest station in Detroit.”

“I bet.”

“Sure I do.”

“Well, I'd just as soon have blood running down my face as ketchup. I hate the smell of ketchup, reminds me of every joint I ever worked in.” She wheeled around sud­denly and said to Meecham, “We don't have menus, just what's written on the mirror up there.”

Hearst turned at the same instant, and recognized Mee­cham.

“Hello, Hearst,” Meecham said.

Hearst's expression of apathy didn't change. He never did anything right and he never expected to do anything right, so his failures were no surprise to him. He cleared his throat. “I didn't know anyone was looking for me. I . . .”

“Where's Mrs. Hamilton?”

“In the washroom. The girl's in there too. Washing up, I guess.” He looked at Barkeley as if he thought Barkeley was a policeman. “I didn't hurt the car much. Maybe the headlights are bust, but it wasn't my fault. I went into a skid.”

“You were born in a skid,” Meecham said, “and never got out of it.”

Ignoring the remark, Hearst continued to address Barkeley with earnest righteousness in the manner of a petty crook caught in a misdemeanor on his way to commit a felony. “I didn't steal the car. She hired me to drive out to the Coast. I got the contract right here in my pocket. It's all written down. What's written down is legal, isn't that right, Mr. Meecham?”

“Let's see it.”

The “contract” was a piece of paper torn from a scratch pad. The signature was Mrs. Hamilton's, but the rest of it had obviously been written by Hearst himself in an awk­ward hand, so heavy in places that the ink was blotched and the paper torn by the pen. “I, the undersigned, on this December thirteen, 1950, agree to hire Jameson Ralph Hearst as chauffer for my new Frazer and to retain his serv­ices for a period of two years at a salary of $150.00 per monthly plus full maintenance (room and board). Signed, Rachel Mills Hamilton.”

Hearst watched Meecham as he read it. “That's legal, isn't it? I made up the words myself but it's legal.”

“You did a great job.” Meecham folded the paper and put it in his own pocket.

“Hey, give it back. That's my contract. I need it. When I get to California . . .”

“You're never getting to California.”

Hearst looked a little sick. “I am. Some day I am. Some day I'll . . .”

“All right, some day,” Meecham said. All Hearst's days were
some days
, he thought. There was no definite tomor­row or week after next, just a shady avenue of
some days.

Virginia came out of the washroom followed by her mother. There was a bluish lump on the right side of Vir­ginia's forehead and the skin around her right eye was slightly darkened. Her hair was smooth, her face powdered and her lips freshly rouged. She looked as tidy and life­less as a corpse primped for the funeral service. When she saw Barkeley she turned immediately, and brushing past her mother she went back into the washroom and closed the door.

Mrs. Hamilton continued walking toward the three men at the counter, unsteadily, and listing slightly, as if she'd just gotten off a boat and couldn't adjust to the stability of land.

She wore a dark beaver coat that looked like one of Vir­ginia's coats; it reached to her ears at the top, and to her snowboots at the hemline. She was clasping the ill-fitting coat around her with both hands, as if its thick heavy fur was a new skin that held her body together.

She was smiling, but the smile, like the coat, seemed to belong to someone else.

“Well, Paul. I—didn't expect to see you here.”

“I guess not,” Barkeley said.

“I hardly know what to—to say. I mean . . .”

“Are you all right?”

“C-certainly I'm all right. I'm just fine.”

“You don't look it,” Barkeley said sharply. “I'm driving you home right away, all three of you.”

“Not me, you aren't,” Hearst said.

“You, too.”

“No, sir. I got this far, I'm not going back. I told Emmy she'd never see me again. You think I'm going to walk in that door and let her think I'm a sap? No, sir. I'm staying here. I got a
legal contract.
”

Mrs. Hamilton turned to him. “Mr. Hearst, please. You must realize that we can't go on with our trip right now. Perhaps—perhaps later. Some other day.”

“I got this far. I don't want to go back.” He wiped the sweat off his forehead with his coat sleeve. It left a damp dingy stain on the glossy blue serge. “I don't want to walk in that front door and face her like I was a sap that couldn't get along without her.”

“We all have to go back,” Mrs. Hamilton said gently, as if she was addressing an animal that couldn't under­stand words, only the tone in which the words were spoken. “I'll go and get Virginia.”

“No, I will,” Barkeley said. “You sit down and take it easy. Meecham, see that she drinks a glass of milk.”

Barkeley went toward the washroom. There was no lock on the door, only a hole where the lock had once been.

“Virginia.”

He pushed the door open slowly. Virginia was standing motionless at the washbasin looking at herself in the cheap dust-smeared mirror above it, both fists clenched against her abdomen as if to ease a cramp. The mirror, and the lump over her eye distorted her features.

“I'm ugly,” she said. “Look at me. You never knew that before, how ugly I am.”

“It's a bad mirror.”

“Is it? Is it really?”

“Yes.”

She shook her head back and forth in a slow melancholy way. “No, that's not right. I can't blame the mirror. It's too easy.”

“You never do anything easy,” he said. “You run too fast and stumble. Then other people have to pick you up off the ground.”

“Is that why you came—to pick me up off the ground?” She smiled, and the ugly girl in the mirror smiled too, her face doubly distorted. “Well, don't bother. I
like
it here on the ground. Me and Hearst, a couple of flops. Maybe the two of us should just keep on going west together.”

“You wouldn't get very far.”

“Would you send the police after me?”

“I'm afraid I'd have to.”

“Because of Claude.”

“Yes.”

She reached out her hand and with her forefinger traced an x in the dust on the mirror, then a whole row of x's. “Do you think I killed him?”

“I don't know.”

“Why don't you ask my mother? She'll tell you. She knows everything. You and my mother would make almost as good a pair as Hearst and I. She knows everything, and you never do anything wrong. Wonderful combination, isn't it? Unbeatable. I can't beat it anyway and I've quit trying. I can't keep up with all you nice virtuous people who never do anything wrong, who never even
feel
like doing anything wrong!”

He caught her by the shoulders and turned her around so that she had to look at him instead of the ugly girl in the mirror. “Where did you get the idea that there are only white saints and black sinners in this world?”

She stared at him, mute and suffering.

“It's an impossible standard to live by, Virginia. It doesn't leave any room for ordinary human mistakes.”

“Like Claude?”

“Like Claude.”

Her mouth began to tremble uncontrollably, as if the muscles around it had been stretched too tight and sud­denly snapped like elastic bands. “I never—I wasn't any­thing to him. My mother won't believe that. She says she does, she always says she trusts me and has faith in me, but I know it isn't true. The way she
looks
at me, always expecting that I've done something, that I'm bad. And the awful part is I can't help feeling that she's right, that I
am
bad. It's been like that ever since I can remember.”

“You're not bad,” he said. “And I believe you. Whatever you say about Margolis, I believe you.”

“Do you, honestly?”

“Yes.” He was conscious of the passage of time, of the three people waiting for him in the next room, but he didn't want to leave. In the whole year of his marriage he had never understood Virginia's nature so completely, or felt closer to her than he did now in the sordid little wash­room.

“If Claude was alive,” she said, “I could prove we were just friends, just putting in time together. I didn't have anything else to do, and Claude was waiting for someone to come back, so we both had lots of time to waste.” She rubbed the lump on her forehead vigorously with her fin­gertips. It seemed to Barkeley that the gesture, like so many of Virginia's gestures and actions and words, was a self-punishment.

“Does your head hurt?” he said.

“Yes.”

“Then don't rub it like that.”

“Was I rubbing it? I didn't mean to.”

He took both her hands and held them tightly in his. “Who was Claude waiting for?”

“A woman. Lily Margolis told me about her first. Lily came to the house one day and said she wanted to do me a favor by telling me that Claude was in love with another woman. She started out calmly enough but then she got carried away by her own words and began calling me names. I was afraid Carney or someone in your office would hear her, so I put my hand over her mouth to stop her. I guess her version of it is different, but that's what really happened—I was scared and embarrassed, and I had to shut her up. Carney heard everything, of course,” she added with a trace of bitterness. “She always does. She said if I didn't behave myself she was going to write and tell my mother. Carney doesn't like me. She pretends to. She's like my mother, she pretends all the time. That cheerful act of hers—that kindly tolerance—it's all a front.”

He didn't agree or disagree, and after a time she began talking again:

“Later on I asked Claude if it was true that he'd been in love with someone for a long time and he said yes, it was true but the woman had left him and he was afraid that this time she wasn't coming back. We didn't quarrel about it or anything like that. I even felt sorry for him. I know how it is to wait for someone who doesn't come.”

“Have you waited very often for me, Virginia?”

“You know I have.”

“I always came, though. The next time you wait, re­member that.”

“I'll remember. I promise.”

“Come on, Virginia. We're going home now.”

“Please. I can't face it.”

“You'll have to.”

“I don't know what will happen. What will they do to me? What will they do to my mother?”

“I can't answer that.”

He held the door open for her and she walked slowly past him, one hand pressed against the lump on her forehead as if it was an excrescence of evil that would shrink under the pain of atonement.