Rock Springs (17 page)

For a week, the biker hung out in the Krukows' house. The bike had California plates that said
LOSER
, and once or twice Sims saw Cleo and the biker hanging clothes on the line in the back, smoking cigarettes and talking softly. The biker wore no shirt most of the time and drank beer, and kept on his pirate's bandanna. His chest and arms were stringy and pale and hard-looking, with tattoos. Sims understood this was the friend of Cleo's former husband, the one who'd tried to sacrifice her to Satan. He wondered what the two of them could have in common.

The Krukows came back two days before Marge was released from the hospital. The biker disappeared the same day, and the next morning Sims saw Stan carry Cleo's bags and some boxes out to the car, drive away with Cleo, then in a little while come back alone. Sims never saw Cleo again, though he did see the biker in a gas station while he was on his way to the hospital to bring Marge home.

Marge stayed home in bed another three weeks, but as it turned out she didn't have to take the horrible and prolonged treatments the doctor had predicted. She started getting better almost immediately and in a month was ready to go back to her job at the bar. The doctor said that sometimes
people with strong dispositions just couldn't be held down, and that Marge was lucky and would probably be fine and live a long life.

O
n the morning Marge was getting ready for her first day back at the bar, the phone rang in the kitchen and Sims answered it. It was almost nine and he was reading the paper while Marge was getting dressed.

“Vic,” a voice said, a man's voice, a voice he didn't know. There was a long pause then, during which it sounded like the receiver was being muffled and talking was going on.

“Yes,” Sims said. “Who is it?” It occurred to him that it was probably Marge's boss calling from the bar, needling Sims about being a housewife or something like that. Marge's boss, George, was a fat, good-natured Greek guy everybody liked. “Is this Big George?” Sims said. “I know what you're going to tell me, George. You better watch your step out there.”

“Vic,” the voice said again. Sims somehow sensed it wasn't George—though it could've been—and in the same instant he realized he had no earthly idea who it was or could be, but that it wasn't good. And in the silence that followed his own name, the feeling of a vast outside world opened up in him, and scared him so that he stood up beside the wall phone and stared at his own phone number. 876-8076. This was somebody calling from far away.

“This is Vic,” Sims said stiffly. “What do you want? What's this about?” He heard Marge's footsteps in another room, heard her closet door close, smelled her perfume in the air.

“We're going to kill Marge, Vic,” the man said. “If you let her out of your sight, anywhere, we'll be waiting for her. The devil needs Marge, Vic. You've given up your right to her
by being an asshole and a slime, by fucking somebody else. And now you have to pay for it.”

“Who is this?” Sims said.

“This is the devil calling,” the voice said. “Everybody's a loser today.”

Someone, a woman in the background, laughed a long, witchy, raspy laugh until she started to cough, then laughed through the cough and laughed until she couldn't stop coughing. Then a door slammed in a room at the end of the line, very far away. Sims knew who it was now. He turned and looked out the window and across the yard between his house and the Krukows'. Betty Krukow was standing at the sink, her hands down and out of sight. She looked up after an instant and saw Sims looking at her. She smiled at him through the two panes of glass and across the sunny yard with the fence in between. When Sims stared at her a moment longer, she held up a plate out of the sink, dripping with suds and dishwater, and waved it in front of her face as if it were a fan. Then her face broke into a wide laugh and she walked away from the window.

“Cleo,” Sims said. “Let me speak to Cleo. Let me speak to her right now. Right this instant.” Things didn't have to be this way, he thought.

“He wants to speak to Cleo,” the man said to someone there where he was.

“Tell him she died,” Sims heard a woman's voice say casually. “Like Marge.”

“She died,” the man said. “Like Marge. Who's Marge?” he heard the man say.

“His wife, you numb-nuts,” the woman said, then laughed raucously.

“Let me speak to her,” Sims said. “If that's Cleo, I want to talk to her. Please.”

“Don't forget us,” the man's voice said, suddenly very
close to the receiver. Then almost immediately the connection was broken.

Sims stood holding the buzzing phone to his ear. And after a moment of looking out the window into the daylight brightening the blue shingles of the Krukows' house and reflecting his own brown house in their kitchen window, reflecting, in fact, the very window he could see out of but not himself, Sims thought: this is not a thing that happened, not a thing Fll hear about again. Things you do pass away and are gone, and you need only to outlive them for your life to be better, steadily better. This is what you can count on.

I
n the chill night, the train passed slowly through another small Montana town. The business section ran along both sides of the track. Yellow crime lights were shining. Sims saw a bar with a sign that said
LIVE ENTERTAINMENT
and two car lots with strings of white bulbs stretched above the rows of older cars. A convenience store with customers parked into the curb was open at the end of the street. Several boys wearing football uniforms stood in front drinking beers, holding up the bottles in salute. In the rear windows of their cars, girls' faces were looking out at the train.

Down the highway, out of town, was a motel with a white neon sign that said
SKYLARK
. A soaring bird was oudined in delicate blue lights. He saw a woman and a man, the woman very fat and dressed in a white shift dress, walking down the row of motel rooms to where a door was ajar with light escaping. The woman was wearing high heels. Sims thought she was probably cold.

“Can you imagine a drink, Vic?” Sims looked up and Sergeant Benton was back and wearing a big grin. She was
also wearing perfume and she looked fresher, Sims thought, as though she'd had a shower since he saw her.

“I thought you'd gone to sleep,” he said. She had her big hands on her hips, and she wasn't wearing shoes. Just stockings. Sims noticed her feet weren't particularly big.

“Are we going to argue about this all night, or what?” Sergeant Benton said.

“I'm fresh out here,” Sims said. He held up his plastic cup. “I guess the bar's closed now.” He thought unhappily about the flask in Marge's purse.

“The Doris bar's still open,” Sergeant Benton said. “No cover.”

“Where's the Doris bar?” Sims said.

“In Doris's suite.” Sergeant Benton raised her plucked eyebrows in an exaggerated way to let Sims know she was having some fun. “Vic's wife wouldn't care if he had a drink, would she?”

Marge would care, Sims thought. She'd care a lot, though Marge would certainly be happy to go herself with him and Doris if somebody were to ask her. But she was asleep and needed to get her rest for Pauline's next crisis. Meanwhile, he was here by himself, wide awake with no chance of sleep and nothing to do but stare at a dark, cheerless landscape. Anything he decided to do he would do, no questions asked.

“She wouldn't mind,” Sims said. “She'd come herself if she wasn't asleep.”

“We'll drink a toast to her.” Doris held up an imaginary glass.

“Great,” Sims said, and held up a glass himself and smiled. “Here's to Marge.”

H
e followed Sergeant Benton into the lounge car, which was smoky. The snack bar was closed. Padlocks were on each of the steel cabinets. Two older men in cowboy hats and boots were arguing across a table full of beer cans. They were arguing about somebody named Heléna, a name they pronounced with a Spanish accent, “It'd be a mistake to underestimate Heléna,” one of them said. “I'll warn you of that.”

“Oh, fuck Heléna,” the other cowboy said. “That fat, ugly bitch. I'm not afraid of her
or
her family.”

Across from them a young Asian woman in a sari sat holding an Asian baby. They stared up at Sergeant Benton and at Sims. The woman's round belly was exposed and a tiny red jewel pierced her nose. She seemed frightened, Sims thought, frightened of whatever was going to happen next. He didn't feel that way at all, and was sorry she did.

Sergeant Benton led him out into the second, rumbling vestibule, tiptoeing across in her stocking feet and into the sleeping car where the lights were turned low. As the vestibule door closed, the sound of the moving train wheels was taken far away. Sergeant Benton turned and smiled and put her finger to her lips. “People are sleeping,” she whispered.

Marge was sleeping, Sims thought, right across the hall. It made his fingers tingle and feel cold. He walked right past the little silver door and didn't look at it. She'll go right on sleeping, he thought, and wake up happy tomorow.

At the far end of the corridor a black man stuck his bald head out between the curtains of a private seat and looked at Sims and Doris. Doris was fitting a key into the lock of her compartment door. The black man was the porter who'd helped Marge and him with their suitcases and offered to bring them coffee in the morning. Sergeant Benton waved at him and went “shhhh.” Sims waved at him, too, though only
halfheartedly. The porter, whose name was Lewis, said nothing, and drew his head back inside the curtains.

“Give me your tired, right?” Doris said, and laughed softly as she opened the door. A bed light was on inside, and the bed had been opened and made up—probably, Sims thought, by Lewis. Out the window he could see the empty, murky night and the moon chased by clouds, and the ground shooting by below the grass. It was dizzying. He could see his own face reflected, and was surprised to see that he was smiling.
“Entrez vous
,” Doris said behind him, “or we'll have tomorrow on our hands.”

Sims climbed in, then slid to the foot of the bed while Doris crawled around on her hands and knees reaching for things and digging in her purse behind the pillow. She pulled out an alarm clock. “It's twelve o'clock. Do you know where your kids are?” She flashed Sims a grin. “Mine are still out there in space waiting to come in. Good luck to them, is what I say.” She went back to digging in her bag.

“Mine, too,” Sims said. He was cold in Doris's roomette, but he felt like he should take his shoes off. Keeping them on made him uncomfortable, but it made him uncomfortable to be in bed with Doris in the first place.

“I just couldn't stand it,” Doris said. “They're just other little adults. Who needs that? One's enough.”

“That's right,” Sims said. Marge felt the same way he did. Children made life a misery and, once they'd finished, they did it again. That had been the first thing he and Marge had seen eye to eye on. Sims put his shoes down beside the mattress and hoped they wouldn't start to smell

“Miracles,” Doris said and held up a pint bottle of vodka. “Never fear, Doris is here,” she said. “Never a dull moment. Plus there's glasses, too.” She rumbled around in her bag. “Right now in a jiffy there'll be glasses,” she said. “Never fear. Are you just horribly bored already, Vic? Have I complctely
blown this? Are you antsy? Are you mad? Don't be mad.”

“I couldn't be happier,” Sims said. Doris, on her hands and knees in the half-light, turned and smiled at him. Sims smiled back at her.

“Good man. Excellent.” Doris held up a glass. “One glass,” she said, “the fruit of patience. Did you know I look as good as I did when I was in high school. I've been told that—recently, in fact.”

Sims looked at Doris's legs and her rear end. They were both good looking, he thought. Both slim and firm. “That's easy to believe,” he said. “How old
are
you?”

Sergeant Benton narrowed one eye at him. “How old do you think? Or, how old do I look? I'll ask that.”

She was taking all night to fix two drinks, Sims thought. “Thirty. Or near thirty, anyway,” he said.

“Cute,” Sergeant Benton said. “That's extremely cute.” She smirked at him. “Thirty-eight is my age.”

“I'm forty-two,” Sims said.

Doris didn't seem to hear him. “Glass,” she said, holding up another one for him to see. “Two glasses. Let's just go on and have a drink, what do you say?”

“Great,” Sims said. He could smell Doris's perfume, a sweet flowery smell he liked and that came from her suitcase. He was glad to be here.

Doris turned and crossed her legs in a way that stretched her skirt across her knees. She set both glasses on her skirt and poured two drinks. Sims realized he could see up her skirt if the light in the compartment was any better.

She smiled and handed Sims a glass. “Here's to your wife,” Doris said. “May sweet dreams descend.”

“Here's to that,” Sims said and drank a gulp of warm vodka. He hadn't known how much he'd wanted a drink until this one was down his throat.

“How fast do you think we're going now?” Doris said, peering toward the dark window where nothing was visible.

“I don't know,” Sims said. “Eighty, maybe. I'd guess eighty.”

“Hurding through the dark night,” Doris said and smiled. She took another drink. “What scares you ought to be interesting, right?”

“Where've you been on this trip?” Sims said.

Sergeant Benton pushed her fingers through her blond hair and gave her head another shake, then sniffed. “Visiting a relative,” she said. She stared at Sims and her eyes seemed to blaze at him suddenly and for no reason Sims could see. Possibly this was a sensitive subject. He would be happy to avoid those.