Westlake, Donald E - Novel 43 (34 page)

 
          
“Vaaaalllberie!
Oh,
VaaaalllUe
rie!” “Sing,” Valerie
sang, under her breath, beneath her breath, down among the mushrooms of her
mind. “Sing to me, and sing to me, and then I’ll run away. Oop!”

 
          
Down
again. Another scratch on the same knee. Not treating this model well at all,
take it into the shop they’ll say, Jeepers, lady, where you been driving this
model? Mountaintops and bellyflops, a poor white convertible upside down with
its whitewalls spinning, uphob stery all muddy, scratches on the fenders, this
is a dent, lady. “VaaaalllLerie! It’s Ro^eee'ta! It’s
o\\-kaaaayyyyl
ⁿ
“Vrrooommm,” Valerie said, giggling at
the idea of having the idea of being a car, and from somewhere above and behind
her left shoulder she watched herself go up the jungly slope on all fours. Mud,
dirt, roots, dangling branches. Little buggies scuttling out of the way of her
Donald Duck hands. Wflap! Wflap! Big webbed hands out of the sky. Still light
in the sky,
dark
blue light, sun gone
away to the other side of the mountain, waiting over there for Valerie.
Vaaaalllberie, I’m waiting. Here I come, here I come, here I come.

 
          
Ridge.
Downslope. Climb a tree trunk to verticality, vertiginous verticality, the
ground darker than the sky, her feet way far down there in the pool of
darkness, puddles of night all around her feet. The calling voices were
fainter, but could still be heard, the beacon behind her that gave her
direction. Keep the voices between her shoulder^ blades, hurry the opposite
way.

 
          
Splop.
Splash'splop. Stream; water. Chuckles down from the right, scurries on off to
the left, white rabbits down the hideyhole. Follow? No, go the other way.
Where’d those rabbits come from? Hide with Mister Rabbit at home.

 
          
Splush,
splush, splush. Water cold and nice on the cuts, running around her shins,
ribbons in a wind tunnel. Stop a minute, kneel in the water, get her hands and
arms all clean, throw water on her heated face. Sssss, steam from her heated
face—just kidding. Stones on the bottom of the stream, though,
that's
no joke. Up again,
up up up up up.
On.

 
          
SiwiMence.
Oh, siwiMence. How long has it been? Very very dark. No stream, no light. Reach
out and touch a telephone pole. Step. Reach out; step.

 
          
Are
there stars out tonight? Oh, gosh, oh^oh, don’t look up, it’s
awfully
dizzy up there!

 
          
Hungry
all the time for some reason. Must be all this exercise. Pig out. Only three
tortillas left between her blouse and her flesh, beneath her breasts. Munch and
munch. A little dry and tough, but tasty. Satisfying.

 
          
A
path. Yes? Yes. A narrow path angling downward, slightly to the left. Pitch
black, can’t see your face in front of your head. Walk down the path, swing the
arms, the last two tortillas stuck to her skin.

 
          
Ouch!
Tripped right
over
that log, fell on
a man! A man? Roll away— not with me you don’t, buster!

 
          
Flashlights
came on, men’s voices, they’d been asleep or resting or what, Valerie gaped
around at them, her little pinprick eyes staring in the flashlights, seeing the
camouflage uniforms on the chunky little bodies, the weapons, the bush hats.
Soldiers, British, Gurkhas. Gurkha patrol, is that a song? “Rescued!” Valerie
said in cheerful surprise, and smiled happily, and her eyes rolled back in her
head.

 
          
For
a moment after he switched off the van’s engine,
Vernon
sat on in darkness, staring at the wall of
the
Fort
George
Hotel
directly in front of himself and willing
himself to be calm. He was going to do this, he was going to come out the other
side, it was all going to be all right. All of it. All right. The chicken and
rice he’d eaten for dinner at J.B.’s on the way down from
Belmopan
sat like an auto accident in his stomach,
unmoving.

 
          
If
only the village had not already been selected—the one the journalists would be
visiting tomorrow.
Vernon
had done his best, but he’d been too late. The village had been
selected, and it was not the one the Colonel had insisted the journalists must
see.

 
          
What
choice had he had? He was racing across a tightrope, high above the rocks with
no net, already off balance, running forward as fast as he could because it was
the only way not to fall. The other side, the other side, sooner or later he
had to reach the other side. In the meantime, he could only keep running, keep
improvising, try not to miss his step.

           
The wrong village. With great
difficulty
Vernon
had arranged to be made the driver for
tomorrow’s expedition. Then, using the absent Innocent St. Michael’s authority,
he had also arranged to be ordered to come to
Belize City
tonight, ahead of time, staying at the
Fort
George
along with the journalists, ostensibly so
they could begin early tomorrow morning but actually so that
Vernon
would be beyond any countermanding orders.
He
would be the driver, and that’s all.

 
          
And
he would make a mistake. An honest mistake. He would take the journalists to a
different village, not the one the government had selected but very similar. A
simple mistake that anyone might make. And then it would all be over, he would
have reached the other side of the abyss, no more tightrope, firm ground at
last.

 
          
Vernon
whimpered, a little mewling sound. Behind
him, the dozen empty seats of the van were filled with the ghosts of wrong
turnings. He shuddered, and took the key from the ignition and his overnight
bag from the floor space between the front seats, and got out onto the
blacktop.

 
          
The
desk clerk was both cold and obsequious; obsequious because
Vernon
’s room was being paid for by a government
department, suggesting power and authority, and cold because
Vernon
himself was so clearly nothing but a minor
clerk. When I’m rich,
Vernon
thought, but this time the thought wouldn’t complete itself. Where was
his rage? Sighing, he filled out the registration form, then showed his list to
the desk clerk, saying, “These are journalists staying here, I must see them in
the morning, you’ll—”

 
          
“I
believe they are in the bar,” the desk clerk said, coldly and obsequiously.

 
          
So
Vernon went to his room and unpacked, and went to the bathroom, and washed his
hands and face and the back of his neck, and went to the bathroom, and took
some antacid pills, and went to the bathroom, and changed his shirt, and combed
his hair, and went to the bathroom, and washed his face, and turned out the
light, and went down to the bar, where two of the large round black formica
tables were occupied. The four silent gloomy beendrinking fellows at one table
with their big red faces and big red knees jutting from both ends of their
short'trousered British Army uniforms were certainly not journalists, whereas
the seven oddly assorted people clustered around the other table, all talking
at once, nobody listening, certainly were.
Vernon
went over and stood beside that group,
waiting for a simultaneous pause in all seven monologues, or for someone to
notice him.

 
          
Someone
noticed him; a skinny sharp-nosed gray-faced man in a safari shirt and bush
jacket and U.S. Army fatigue trousers and Hush Puppies, who looked up, saw
Vernon
, and in an
East London
accent said, “Right. Same again all round,
then.”

 
          
“I’m
not a waiter,”
Vernon
said.

 
          
“No?
Then be off with you.” The man turned back to his chattering companions.

 
          
“I’m
your driver,”
Vernon
said.

 
          
“The
hell you say.” The man looked him up and down. “And where am I going, then?”

 
          
“Requena,”
Vernon
said. The settlement was called that
because it was the last name of the majority of the settlers.

 
          
“That’s
tomorrow,” the man said. By now, two of the others, including the group’s lone
woman, had also stopped talking and were looking at
Vernon
, wondering what entertainment or news value
he might possess.

 
          
“I
am here tonight,”
Vernon
told them. “I am introducing myself, and I will spend the night in the
hotel, so we can get an early start tomorrow. ”

 
          
“Well,
good fellow!” the sharp-nosed man said. “Johnny on the spot, that’s the ticket.
Introducing yourself, are you?”

 
          
“My
name is
Vernon
.”

 
          
“And
how do you do,
Vernon
? You’ll find that I am Scottie. This ravishing lady to my left is
Morgan Lassiter, a world-class lesbian and ace repor—”

 
          
“Just
because
you
never got any,” Morgan
Lassiter told him, but calmly, as though she were used to him—or possibly to
his type. Her accent was anonymously Midlantic, as though she’d learned English
from machines, on Mars. She nodded in a businesslike way at
Vernon
and said, “Nice to see you.”

 
          
“And
you, Ma’am.”

 
          
“This
lot,” Scottie said, and interrupted himself to bang his whisky glass on the
table, crying, “Shut up, you berks! Vernon’s here to introduce himself. And
here
he is, our driver,
Vernon
. Bright and early on the morrow he shall
whisk us from this hellhole here out to the other hellhole over there, and then
back again. Back again is included, am I right,
Vernon
?”

 
          
“Yes,”
said
Vernon
.

 
          
Scottie
gestured this way and that. “Over there is Tom, a fine American
photojournalist, just chockablock with all the latest American photo journalist
technological advances, isn’t that right, Tommy?”

 
          
“Fuck
you in the ass,” Tommy said.

 
          
“Chahming,”
Scottie said. “Next to him is Nigel, the dregs of humanity, not only an
Australian but an Australian
newspaperman
,
until he forgot himself once, told the truth, and was exiled to
Edinburgh
.”

 
          
“What
Tommy said,” said Nigel.

 
          
“Never
does his own research,” Scottie commented. “Here beside me we have Colin, the
demon scribbler of Fleet Street, and beside him is Ralph Waldo Eckstein, who
won’t tell anybody why the
Wall Street
Journal
fired him, and—”

 
          
“What
Tommy said.”

 
          
“Yes,
yes. Now,
Vernon
, lad, you’ve probably been told we are a
party of six, is that not right?”

 
          
“That’s
right,”
Vernon
said.

 
          
“But
here we are, as you can plainly see, a party of seven. Did Morgan give birth?
Perish the thought. In fact, perish the little perisher. No, what has happened
is that even here in this pit of nullity, this farthest outpost of Empire which
Aldous Huxley quite rightly said was on the way from nowhere and to nowhere,
journalists seek one another out, come together for comfort and liquor and the
latest lies. That gentleman over there, with the truly wonderful moustache, is
one Hiram Farley, an
editor
if you
please with a most famous American magazine called
Trash.
No, I beg your pardon;
Trend.
”

 
          
Hiram
Farley leaned forward with his meaty forearms crossed on the table and looked
unsmilingly at
Vernon
. He said nothing. He seemed to be exploring
Vernon
’s eyes, looking for something, traces of
something. A cold finger touched
Vernon
’s spine.
He knows,
he thought. But he can’t know, get hold of yourself.
Vernon
blinked.

           
Scottie said, “Mr. Farley would very
much like to come along with us tomorrow, if he may. Busman’s holiday and all
that, the old fire company horse hearing the bell. Please say yes.”

 
          
“Yes,”
said
Vernon
.