Big Driver (17 page)

“No.”

“As for you . . . not planning on going home and cutting your wrists in the bathtub, are you? Or using that last bullet?”

“No.” Tess thought of how sweet the night air had smelled as she sat in the truck with the short barrel of the Lemon Squeezer in her mouth. “No, I'm good.”

“Then it's time for you to leave. I'll sit here a little longer.”

Tess started to get off the bench, then sat down again. “There's something I need to know. You're making yourself an accessory after the fact. Why would you do that for a woman you don't even know? A woman you only met once?”

“Would you believe because my gran loves your books and would be very disappointed if you went to jail for a triple murder?”

“Not a bit,” Tess said.

Betsy said nothing for a moment. She picked up her can of Dr. Brown's, then put it back down
again. “Lots of women get raped, wouldn't you say? I mean, you're not unique in that respect, are you?”

No, Tess knew she was not unique in that respect, but knowing it did not make the pain and shame any less. Nor would it help with her nerves while she waited for the results of the AIDS test she'd soon be taking.

Betsy smiled. There was nothing pleasant about it. Or pretty. “Women all over the world are being raped as we speak. Girls, too. Some who undoubtedly have favorite stuffed toys. Some are killed, and some survive. Of the survivors, how many do you think report what happened to them?”

Tess shook her head.

“I don't know, either,” Betsy said, “but I know what the National Crime Victimization Survey says, because I googled it. Sixty per cent of rapes go unreported, according to them. Three in every five. I think that might be low, but who can say for sure? Outside of math classes, it's hard to prove a negative. Impossible, really.”

“Who raped you?” Tess asked.

“My stepfather. I was twelve. He held a butter knife to my face while he did it. I kept still—I was scared—but the knife slipped when he came. Probably not on purpose, but who can say?”

Betsy pulled down the lower lid of her left eye with her left hand. The right she cupped beneath it, and the glass eye rolled neatly into that palm. The empty socket was mildly red and
uptilted, seeming to stare out at the world with surprise.

“The pain was . . . well, there's no way to describe pain like that, not really. It seemed like the end of the world to me. There was blood, too. Lots. My mother took me to the doctor. She said I was to tell him I was running in my stocking feet and slipped on the kitchen linoleum because she'd just waxed it. That I pitched forward and put out my eye on the corner of the kitchen counter. She said the doctor would want to speak to me alone, and she was depending on me. ‘I know he did a terrible thing to you,' she said, ‘but if people find out, they'll blame me. Please, baby, do this one thing for me and I'll make sure nothing bad ever happens to you again.' So that's what I did.”

“And did it happen again?”

“Three or four more times. And I always kept still, because I only had one eye left to donate to the cause. Listen, are we done here or not?”

Tess moved to embrace her, but Betsy cringed back—
like a vampire who sees a crucifix,
Tess thought.

“Don't do that,” Betsy said.

“But—”

“I know, I know, mucho thanks, solidarity, sisterhood forever, blah-blah-blah. I don't like to be hugged, that's all. Are we done here, or not?”

“We're done.”

“Then go. And I'd throw that gun of yours in the river on your way back home. Did you burn the confession?”

“Yes. You bet.”

Betsy nodded. “And I'll erase the message you left on my answering machine.”

Tess walked away. She looked back once. Betsy Neal was still sitting on the bench. She had put her eye back in.

- 48 -

In her Expedition, Tess realized it might be an extremely good idea to delete her last few journeys from her GPS. She pushed the power button, and the screen brightened. Tom said: “Hello, Tess. I see we're taking a trip.”

Tess finished making her deletions, then turned the GPS unit off again. No trip, not really; she was only going home. And she thought she could find the way by herself.

Streeter only saw the sign because he had to pull over and puke. He puked a lot now, and there was very little warning—sometimes a flutter of nausea, sometimes a brassy taste in the back of his mouth, and sometimes nothing at all; just
urk
and out it came, howdy-do. It made driving a risky proposition, yet he also drove a lot now, partly because he wouldn't be able to by late fall and partly because he had a lot to think about. He had always done his best thinking behind the wheel.

He was out on the Harris Avenue Extension, a broad thoroughfare that ran for two miles beside the Derry County Airport and the attendant businesses: mostly motels and warehouses. The Extension was busy during the daytime, because it connected Derry's west and east sides as well as servicing the airport, but in the evening it was nearly deserted. Streeter pulled over into the bike lane, snatched one of his plastic barf-bags from the pile of them on the passenger seat, dropped his face into it, and let fly. Dinner made an encore appearance. Or would have, if he'd had his eyes open. He
didn't. Once you'd seen one bellyful of puke, you'd seen them all.

When the puking phase started, there hadn't been pain. Dr. Henderson had warned him that would change, and over the last week, it had. Not agony as yet; just a quick lightning-stroke up from the gut and into the throat, like acid indigestion. It came, then faded. But it would get worse. Dr. Henderson had told him that, too.

He raised his head from the bag, opened the glove compartment, took out a wire bread-tie, and secured his dinner before the smell could permeate the car. He looked to his right and saw a providential litter basket with a cheerful lop-eared hound on the side and a stenciled message reading
DERRY DAWG SEZ “PUT LITTER IN ITS PLACE!”

Streeter got out, went to the Dawg Basket, and disposed of the latest ejecta from his failing body. The summer sun was setting red over the airport's flat (and currently deserted) acreage, and the shadow tacked to his heels was long and grotesquely thin. It was as if it were four months ahead of his body, and already fully ravaged by the cancer that would soon be eating him alive.

He turned back to his car and saw the sign across the road. At first—probably because his eyes were still watering—he thought it said HAIR EXTENSION. Then he blinked and saw it actually said FAIR EXTENSION. Below that, in smaller letters: FAIR PRICE.

Fair extension, fair price. It sounded good, and almost made sense.

There was a gravel area on the far side of the Extension, outside the Cyclone fence marking the county airport's property. Lots of people set up roadside stands there during the busy hours of the day, because it was possible for customers to pull in without getting tailgated (if you were quick and remembered to use your blinker, that was). Streeter had lived his whole life in the little Maine city of Derry, and over the years he'd seen people selling fresh fiddleheads there in the spring, fresh berries and corn on the cob in the summer, and lobsters almost year-round. In mud season, a crazy old guy known as the Snowman took over the spot, selling scavenged knickknacks that had been lost in the winter and were revealed by the melting snow. Many years ago Streeter had bought a good-looking rag dolly from this man, intending to give it to his daughter May, who had been two or three back then. He made the mistake of telling Janet that he'd gotten it from the Snowman, and she made him throw it away. “Do you think we can boil a rag doll to kill the germs?” she asked. “Sometimes I wonder how a smart man can be so stupid.”

Well, cancer didn't discriminate when it came to brains. Smart or stupid, he was about ready to leave the game and take off his uniform.

There was a card table set up where the Snowman had once displayed his wares. The pudgy man sitting behind it was shaded from the red rays of the lowering sun by a large yellow umbrella that was cocked at a rakish angle.

Streeter stood in front of his car for a minute,
almost got in (the pudgy man had taken no notice of him; he appeared to be watching a small portable TV), and then curiosity got the better of him. He checked for traffic, saw none—the Extension was predictably dead at this hour, all the commuters at home eating dinner and taking their noncancerous states for granted—and crossed the four empty lanes. His scrawny shadow, the Ghost of Streeter Yet to Come, trailed out behind him.

The pudgy man looked up. “Hello there,” he said. Before he turned the TV off, Streeter had time to see the guy was watching
Inside Edition
. “How are we tonight?”

“Well, I don't know about you, but I've been better,” Streeter said. “Kind of late to be selling, isn't it? Very little traffic out here after rush hour. It's the backside of the airport, you know. Nothing but freight deliveries. Passengers go in on Witcham Street.”

“Yes,” the pudgy man said, “but unfortunately, the zoning goes against little roadside businesses like mine on the busy side of the airport.” He shook his head at the unfairness of the world. “I was going to close up and go home at seven, but I had a feeling one more prospect might come by.”

Streeter looked at the table, saw no items for sale (unless the TV was), and smiled. “I can't really be a prospect, Mr.—?”

“George Elvid,” the pudgy man said, standing and extending an equally pudgy hand.

Streeter shook with him. “Dave Streeter. And I can't really be a prospect, because I have no idea
what you're selling. At first I thought the sign said
hair
extension.”

“Do you
want
a hair extension?” Elvid asked, giving him a critical once-over. “I ask because yours seems to be thinning.”

“And will soon be gone,” Streeter said. “I'm on chemo.”

“Oh my. Sorry.”

“Thanks. Although what the point of chemo can be . . .” He shrugged. He marveled at how easy it was to say these things to a stranger. He hadn't even told his kids, although Janet knew, of course.

“Not much chance?” Elvid asked. There was simple sympathy in his voice—no more and no less—and Streeter felt his eyes fill with tears. Crying in front of Janet embarrassed him terribly, and he'd done it only twice. Here, with this stranger, it seemed all right. Nonetheless, he took his handkerchief from his back pocket and swiped his eyes with it. A small plane was coming in for a landing. Silhouetted against the red sun, it looked like a moving crucifix.

“No chance is what I'm hearing,” Streeter said. “So I guess the chemo is just . . . I don't know . . .”

“Knee-jerk triage?”

Streeter laughed. “That's it exactly.”

“Maybe you ought to consider trading the chemo for extra painkillers. Or, you could do a little business with me.”

“As I started to say, I can't really be a prospect until I know what you're selling.”

“Oh, well, most people would call it snake-oil,”
Elvid said, smiling and bouncing on the balls of his feet behind his table. Streeter noted with some fascination that, although George Elvid was pudgy, his shadow was as thin and sick-looking as Streeter's own. He supposed everyone's shadow started to look sick as sunset approached, especially in August, when the end of the day was long and lingering and somehow not quite pleasant.

“I don't see the bottles,” Streeter said.

Elvid tented his fingers on the table and leaned over them, looking suddenly businesslike. “I sell extensions,” he said.

“Which makes the name of this particular road fortuitous.”

“Never thought of it that way, but I suppose you're right. Although sometimes a cigar is just a smoke and a coincidence is just a coincidence. Everyone wants an extension, Mr. Streeter. If you were a young woman with a love of shopping, I'd offer you a credit extension. If you were a man with a small penis—genetics can be so cruel—I'd offer you a dick extension.”

Streeter was amazed and amused by the baldness of it. For the first time in a month—since the diagnosis—he forgot he was suffering from an aggressive and extremely fast-moving form of cancer. “You're kidding.”

“Oh, I'm a great kidder, but I never joke about business. I've sold dozens of dick extensions in my time, and was for awhile known in Arizona as
El Pene Grande
. I'm being totally honest, but, fortunately for me, I neither require nor expect you
to believe it. Short men frequently want a height extension. If you
did
want more hair, Mr. Streeter, I'd be
happy
to sell you a hair extension.”

“Could a man with a big nose—you know, like Jimmy Durante—get a smaller one?”

Elvid shook his head, smiling. “Now you're the one who's kidding. The answer is no. If you need a reduction, you have to go somewhere else. I specialize only in extensions, a very American product. I've sold love extensions, sometimes called
potions,
to the lovelorn, loan extensions to the cash-strapped—plenty of those in this economy—time extensions to those under some sort of deadline, and once an eye extension to a fellow who wanted to become an Air Force pilot and knew he couldn't pass the vision test.”