Insomnia (64 page)

Back to the studio, where Lisette Benson was looking mighty interested. ‘What’s on those cards, John?’

Back to Kirkland.

‘I guess you’d have to say it’s sort of a riddle.’ He glanced down at the card. ‘“If you have a gun loaded with only two bullets and you’re in a room with Hitler, Stalin, and an abortionist, what do you do?”’ Kirkland looked back up into the camera and said, ‘The answer printed on the other side, Lisette, is “Shoot the abortionist twice.”

‘This is John Kirkland, reporting live from the Derry Civic Center.’

‘I’m starving,’ Lois said as Ralph carefully guided the Oldsmobile down the series of parking-garage ramps which would presumably set them free . . . if Ralph didn’t miss any of the exit signs, that was. ‘And if I’m exaggerating, I’m not doing it by much.’

‘Me too,’ Ralph said. ‘And considering that we haven’t eaten since Tuesday, I guess that’s to be expected. We’ll grab a good sit-down breakfast on the way out to High Ridge.’

‘Do we have time?’

‘We’ll
make
time. After all, an army fights on its stomach.’

‘I suppose so, although I don’t feel very army-ish. Do you know where—’

‘Hush a second, Lois.’

He stopped the Oldsmobile short, put the gearshift lever in Park, and listened. There was a clacking sound from under the hood that he didn’t like very much. Of course the concrete walls of places like this tended to magnify sounds, but still . . .

‘Ralph?’ she asked nervously. ‘Don’t tell me some-thing’s wrong with the car. Just don’t tell me that, okay?’

‘I think it’s fine,’ he said, and began creeping toward daylight again. ‘I’ve just kind of fallen out of touch with old Nellie here since Carol died. Forgotten what kinds of sounds she makes. You were going to ask me something, weren’t you?’

‘If you know where that shelter is. High Ridge.’

Ralph shook his head. ‘Somewhere out near the Newport town line is all I know. I don’t think they’re supposed to tell men where it is. I was kind of hoping you might have heard.’

Lois shook her head. ‘I never had to use a place like that, thank God. We’ll have to call her. The Tillbury woman. You’ve met her with Helen, so you can talk to her. She’ll listen to you.’

She gave him a brief glance, one that warmed his heart –
Anyone with any sense would listen to you, Ralph,
it said – but Ralph shook his head. ‘I bet the only calls she’s taking today are ones that come from the Civic Center or from wherever Susan Day is.’ He shot her a glance. ‘You know, that woman’s got a lot of guts, coming here. Either that or she’s donkey-dumb.’

‘Probably a little of both. If Gretchen Tillbury won’t take a call, how will we get in touch with her?’

‘Well, I tell you what. I was a salesman for a lot of what Faye Chapin would call my real life, and I bet I can still be inventive when I need to be.’ He thought of the information-lady with the orange aura and grinned. ‘Persuasive, too, maybe.’

‘Ralph?’ Her voice was small.

‘What, Lois?’

‘This feels like real life to me.’

He patted her hand. ‘I know what you mean.’

A familiar skinny face poked out of the pay-booth of the hospital parking garage; a familiar grin – one from which at least half a dozen teeth had gone AWOL – brightened it.

‘Eyyyy, Ralph, dat you? Goddam if it ain’t! Beauty! Beauty!’

‘Trigger?’ Ralph asked slowly. ‘Trigger Vachon?’

‘None udder!’ Trigger flipped his lank brown hair out of his eyes so he could get a better look at Lois. ‘And who’s dis marigold here? I know her from somewhere, goddam if I don’t!’

‘Lois Chasse,’ Ralph said, taking his parking ticket from its place over the sun-visor. ‘You might have known her husband, Paul—’

‘Goddam right I did!’ Trigger cried. ‘We was weekend warriors togedder, back in nineteen-seb’ny, maybe seb’ny-one! Closed down Nan’s Tavern more’n once! My suds n body! How is Paul dese days, ma’am?’

‘Mr Chasse passed on a little over two years ago,’ Lois said.

‘Oh, damn! I’m sorry to hear it. He was a champ of a guy, Paul Chasse. Just an all-around champ of a guy. Everybody liked him.’ Trigger looked as distressed as he might have done if she had told him it had happened only that morning.

‘Thank you, Mr Vachon.’ Lois glanced at her watch, then looked up at Ralph. Her stomach rumbled, as if to add one final point to the argument.

Ralph handed his parking ticket through the open window of the car, and as Trigger took it, Ralph suddenly realized the stamp would show that he and Lois had been here since Tuesday night. Almost sixty hours.

‘What happened to the dry-cleaning business, Trig?’ he asked hastily.

‘Ahhh, dey laid me off,’ Trigger said. ‘Didn’t I tell you? Laid almos everybody off. I was downhearted at first, but I caught on here last April, and . . . eyyy! I like dis all kindsa better. I got my little TV for when it’s slow, and there ain’t nobody beepin their horns at me if I don’t go the firs second a traffic-light turns green, or cuttin me off out dere on the Extension. Everyone in a hurry to get to the nex place, dey are, jus why I dunno. Also, I tell you what, Ralph: dat damn van was colder’n a witch’s tit in the winter. Pardon me, ma’am.’

Lois did not reply. She seemed to be studying the backs of her hands with great interest. Ralph, meanwhile, watched with relief as Trigger crumpled up the parking ticket and tossed it into his wastebasket without so much as a glance at the time-and-date stamp. He punched one of the buttons on his cash-register, and $0.00 popped up on the screen in the booth’s window.

‘Jeez, Trig, that’s really nice of you,’ Ralph said.

‘Eyyy, don’t mention it,’ Trigger said, and grandly punched another button. This one raised the barrier in front of the booth. ‘Good to see you. Say, you member dat time out by the airport? Gosh! Hotter’n hell, it was, and dose two fella almos got in a punchup? Den it rained like a bugger. Hailed some, too. You was walkin and I give you a ride home. Oney seen you once or twice since den.’ He took a closer look at Ralph. ‘You look a hell of a lot better today than you did den, Ralphie, I’ll tell you dat. Hell, you don’t look a day over fifty-five. Beauty!’

Beside him, Lois’s stomach rumbled again, louder this time. She went on studying the backs of her hands.

‘I feel a little older than that, though,’ Ralph said. ‘Listen, Trig, it was good to see you, but we ought to—’

‘Damn,’ Trigger said, and his eyes had gone distant. ‘I had sumpin to tell you, Ralph. At least I
t’ink
I did. Bout dat day. Gosh, ain’t I got a dumb old head!’

Ralph waited a moment longer, uncomfortably poised between impatience and curiosity. ‘Well, don’t feel bad about it, Trig. That was a long time ago.’

‘What the
hell
 . . .?’ Trigger asked himself. He gazed up at the ceiling of his little booth, as if the answer might be written there.

‘Ralph, we ought to go,’ Lois said. ‘It’s not just wanting breakfast, either.’

‘Yes. You’re right.’ He got the Oldsmobile rolling slowly again. ‘If you think of it, Trig, give me a call. I’m in the book. It was good to see you.’

Trigger Vachon ignored this completely; he no longer seemed aware of Ralph at all, in fact. ‘Was it sumpin we
saw
?’ he enquired of the ceiling. ‘Or sumpin we
did
? Gosh!’

He was still looking up there and scratching the frizz of hair on the nape of his neck when Ralph turned left and, with a final wave, guided his Oldsmobile down Hospital Drive toward the low brick building which housed WomanCare.

Now that the sun was up, there was only a single security guard, and no demonstrators at all. Their absence made Ralph remember all the jungle epics he’d seen as a young man, especially the part where the native drums would stop and the hero – Jon Hall or Frank Buck – would turn to his head bearer and say he didn’t like it, it was too quiet. The guard took a clipboard from under his arm, squinted at Ralph’s Olds, and wrote something down – the plate number, Ralph supposed. Then he came ambling toward them along the leaf-strewn walk.

At this hour of the morning, Ralph had his pick of the ten-minute spaces across from the building. He parked, got out, then came around to open Lois’s door, as he had been trained.

‘How do you want to handle this?’ she asked as he took her hand and helped her out.

‘We’ll probably have to be a little cute, but let’s not get carried away. Right?’

‘Right.’ She ran a nervous, patting hand down the front of her coat as they crossed, then flashed a megawatt smile at the security guard. ‘Good morning, officer.’

‘Morning.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I don’t think there’s anyone in there just yet but the receptionist and the cleaning woman.’

‘The receptionist is who we want to see,’ Lois said cheerfully. It was news to Ralph. ‘Barbie Richards. Her aunt Simone has a message for her to pass along. Very important. Just say it’s Lois Chasse.’

The security guard thought this over, then nodded toward the door. ‘That won’t be necessary. You go on right ahead, ma’am.’

Lois said, smiling more brilliantly than ever,‘We won’t be two shakes, will we, Norton?’

‘Shake and a half, more like it,’ Ralph agreed. As they approached the building and left the security man behind he leaned toward her and murmured: ‘Norton? Good God, Lois,
Norton
?’

‘It was the first name that came into my head,’ she replied. ‘I guess I was thinking of
The Honeymooners
– Ralph and Norton, remember?’

‘Yes,’he said. ‘One of these days, Alice . . . pow! Right to da moon!’

Two of the three doors were locked, but the one on the far left opened and they went in. Ralph squeezed Lois’s hand and felt her answering squeeze. He sensed a strong focusing of his concentration at the same moment, a narrowing and brightening of will and awareness. All around him the eye of the world seemed to first blink and then open wide. All around them both.

The reception area was almost ostentatiously plain. The posters on the walls were mostly the sort foreign tourist agencies send out for the price of postage. The only exception was to the right of the receptionist’s desk: a large black-and-white photo of a young woman in a maternity smock. She was sitting on a barstool with a martini glass in one hand.
WHEN YOU
’
RE PREGNANT, YOU NEVER DRINK ALONE
, the copy beneath the photo read. There was no indication that in a room or rooms behind this pleasant, unremarkable business space, abortions were done on demand.

Well,
Ralph thought,
what did you expect? An advertisement? A poster of aborted fetuses in a galvanized garbage pail between the one showing the Isle of Capri and the one of the Italian Alps? Get real, Ralph.

To their left, a heavyset woman in her late forties or early fifties was washing the top of a glass coffee-table; there was a little cart filled with various cleaning implements parked beside her. She was buried in a dark blue aura speckled with unhealthy-looking black dots which swarmed like queer insects over the places where her heart and lungs were, and she was looking at the newcomers with undisguised suspicion.

Straight ahead, another woman was watching them carefully, although without the janitor’s suspicion. Ralph recognized her from the TV news report on the day of the doll-throwing incident. Simone Castonguay’s niece was dark-haired, about thirty-five, and close to gorgeous even at this hour of the morning. She sat behind a severe gray metal desk that perfectly complemented her looks and within a forest-green aura which looked much healthier than the cleaning woman’s. A cut-glass vase filled with fall flowers stood on one corner of her desk.

She smiled tentatively at them, showing no immediate recognition of Lois, then wiggled the tip of one finger at the clock on the wall. ‘We don’t open until eight,’ she said, ‘and I don’t think we could help you today in any case. The doctors are all off – I mean, Dr Hamilton is technically covering, but I’m not even sure I could get to her. There’s a lot going on – this is a big day for us.’

‘I know,’ Lois said, and gave Ralph’s hand another squeeze before letting it go. He heard her voice in his mind for a moment, very faint – like a bad overseas telephone conversation – but audible:

[
‘Stay where you are, Ralph. She’s got—’
]

Lois sent him a picture which was even fainter than the thought, and gone almost as soon as Ralph glimpsed it. This sort of communication was a lot easier on the upper levels, but what he got was enough. The hand with which Barbara Richards had pointed at the clock was now resting easily on top of the desk, but the other was underneath it, where a small white button was mounted on one side of the kneehole. If either of them showed the slightest sign of odd behavior, she would push the button, summoning first their friend with the clipboard who was posted outside, and then most of the private security cops in Derry.

And I’m the one she’s watching most carefully, because I’m the man,
Ralph thought.

As Lois approached the reception desk, Ralph had an unsettling thought: given the current atmosphere in Derry, that sort of sex-discrimination – unconscious but very real – could get this pretty black-haired woman hurt . . . maybe even killed. He remembered Leydecker telling him that one of Ed’s small cadre of co-crazies was a woman.
Pasty complexion,
he’d said,
lots of acne, glasses so thick they make her eyes look like poached eggs
. Sandra something, her name was. And if Sandra Something had approached Ms Richards’s desk as Lois was approaching it now, first opening her purse and then reaching into it, would the woman dressed in the forest-green aura have pushed the hidden alarm button?

‘You probably don’t remember me, Barbara,’ Lois was saying, ‘because I haven’t seen you much since you were in college, when you were going with the Sparkmeyer boy—’