NIGHT CRUISING (17 page)

"Amazing,"
Molly said.

"It is, is it
not?" the Mexican said, his bare, hairless chest puffed with
pride. "Not everyone can have a telephone." He took the
receiver, listened for the dial tone, then smiled and handed it over.
"It works. It always works unless we get a lot of rain."

"Wonderful."

"This will be
collect, si?"

"Oh, yes, it'll be
collect. Thank you. Thank you so much." She took the phone,
waited for him to return to the front sleeping room. When he did not,
she shrugged, and dialed the operator. It took several minutes to
explain to the operator that she wanted to make a collect call to the
United States, to Flor-re-da, and to give her the number. The Mexican
watched, his face beaming, his smile flaring his cheeks so that the
sideburns stood out on his face like the ties on a woman's bonnet.

Finally Molly heard the
phone ringing on the other end of the line. The connection had gone
through. It continued ringing. Ringing.
"C'mon, Daddy,"
she whispered.
"Answer the phone."

After an interminable
time the long-distance operator came on the line and said the party
was not answering. Molly almost said she knew that, she could hear,
for God's sake.

When she replaced the
receiver in its cradle she was near tears. She wondered what time it
was in Florida. Maybe her father was out for a while. If he'd been
sleeping, the ringing would have wakened him.

"Bad news?"
the Mexican asked.

"I got through,
but no one answered." She was almost in tears. The man looked
saddened by that fact along with her.

There was a racket in
the sleeping room. Goats stomping and bleating again, children
speaking unintelligible Spanish. Someone called a name and the man
pushed back the curtain. Rather than enter the room, however, he
stayed where he was, blocking Molly's way. She had meant to follow
him. Maybe she could get him to help her. Since he spoke English and
was so kind, maybe he could find her a way back to Texas before
Cruise woke up at sundown.

Suddenly the man turned
and took her arm. He led her forward through the curtain. She didn't
think to resist.

"What is it?"
she asked, confused.

Cruise stood towering
over the assembled Mexican family. His shoulders kept the sunlight
from entering through the front door. He stood silently, his gaze
never leaving her. Goats pressed against his legs and nibbled at the
cuffs of his slacks. The children were at their mother's side,
unmoving.

Molly's heart sank. She
tried to pull free of the Mexican. "Let me go!" She might
leap out the window in the kitchen.

"I didn't know she
was your girl, Senor Cruise. She asked to use the phone. I could not
say no."

"Come with me,
Molly."

"I don't want to
go with you. I want to stay here."

He smiled at that. He
looked at the Mexican. "She wants to stay here."

"Oh, no, oh, no,
she cannot do that!" The Mexican faced her. His hair had gone
wild in disarray from the shaking he was doing to his head. The
pompadour was coming apart. "You can't stay here. you must go
with Senor Cruise."

It was impossible. She
hadn't any way out. She hadn't even made it to the edge of town. He
must have followed her since she left the hotel. It was his footfalls
she had heard behind her.

"You can't stay
here, Molly," Cruise said. He crossed the space between them and
took her hand. The Mexican held out her arm as if it were a gift, as
if to say,
Take her, take her and all the trouble that comes with
her.

Molly was jerked out of
the small house and into blinding sunshine. She squinted her eyes,
tried to keep up with Cruise's long strides down the sidewalk and
into the street.

She wanted to scream,
but the people here knew Cruise, they feared him, they gave in to his
wishes. Her screams, she realized, would do her no good in this
place.

"Who were you
calling?"

"Cruise, I want to
go home. I never should have run away from home, I know that now. I
don't want to be on my own. I was just being a stupid rebellious
kid."

"Yes, you do want
to be on your own. You left home and you aren't going back. Once you
leave home, it's forever. Now. Who were you calling?"

"My father."

"What did you tell
him?"

Before she could stop
her tongue, she had told the truth. "He didn't answer." As
soon as she said it she knew it was a mistake. She should have lied
and said she told him where she was and with whom.
Damn it to
hell. How much more stupid could she get? One wrong turn after
another.

"That's good,"
Cruise said. "You don't need your daddy. You've got me."

All the way to the
hotel Molly tried to soothe Cruise's anger. It seethed beneath the
surface and deepened the tone of his voice. It made him abrupt with
her, jerking her over curbstones, up stairs, into the waiting
elevator. Nothing she said was working.

"I didn't want to
have to do this, Molly." He had her in her room and dropped her
into the chair.

"Do what?"
Punish her?

"Tie you up during
my sleep time." He stooped to the floor and picked up nylon
lengths of rope.

"Where'd you get
those?"

"As soon as you
left this room I brought them here."

"You're going to
tie me to the chair?"

"It's all your
fault." He tied her ankles first, kneeling, head bowed. Sunlight
came through the windows and lit his brown and silver hair with a
halo of gold. She stared at his hair, at the back of his head. She
knew he had a knife there. It was unbelievable, but she'd seen him
take it from his hair.

Molly wouldn't cry. Not
in front of him. Not in front of a crazy man. She wouldn't fight him
either, not now when she hadn't any chance of escape. She'd give in.
She'd endure.

"I'm disappointed
that you lied to me. Everything would have been all right if you
hadn't lied," he said, tying her hands in her lap, then looping
the rope through the arms of the chair.

He made her secure in
the chair and then he lay down on her bed. He covered his face with a
pillow, sighed into it, and soon was still.

That's when Molly cried
just as quietly as she could while wondering what was to become of
her.

#

In El Paso, Mark
Killany found a Budget Inn just off the freeway and inside the city
limits. The queerest feeling had dogged him for hours. He felt Molly
was in some sort of distress. It was nuts because he'd never heard of
a father being so close to his daughter that he had premonitions
about her. Mothers, yes. Women were born with built-in radar.
Especially when it came to their kids--knew when they had fallen and
scraped a knee, knew when their diapers were wet, later on could read
their feelings the way a blind man lays his hands on a face and reads
the contours he finds. But fathers didn't talk about those things,
never admitted to them, wouldn't have known what to think had they
ever experienced them. Yet here he was with this gnawing in his gut.
The worry spread out like a cancer taking over his body.

He couldn't sleep.
Exhaustion rode him so hard he could hardly walk, but he couldn't get
to sleep. He tossed, turned, got up for a glass of tap water from the
sink in one of those flimsy plastic glasses. Lukewarm. Metallic
tasting. He had forgotten to fill the ice bucket.

He turned on the lights
and paced around the room making a path from the dressing table past
the beds to the door and back again. Circling. Worrying.

Maybe he should get
back on the road. Maybe he shouldn't He did need sleep. Didn't want
to fall asleep behind the wheel and take out a young family with a
bunch of kids sleeping in the back seat.

Nothing could be done
about the premonition except live with it. He wished he had someone
to talk to. Anyone. The agitation was unbearable. He dressed, grabbed
the room key, and left for the motel restaurant. El Paso was lit up
like the White House Christmas tree. He couldn't see the star cover
overhead for all the lights in the city. People didn't sleep much
here. The coffee shop was crowded. He chose a booth and drank coffee.
He watched the entrance door. For what reason he didn't know. Molly
wasn't going to walk in and plunk herself across from him. It
wouldn't be that easy.
Might never see her again
. He had to
squash that thought like an ant rolled between his thumb and
forefinger.

A bum came in the door.
Dirty chinos, ragged high top sneakers, the black kind basketball
players used to wear when Mark was in high school. The bum wore two
shirts over an undershirt. An orange-and-white-striped polo beneath a
long-sleeved blue-and-purple plaid lightweight flannel rolled to the
elbows. Hanging open. Belt too big, the tongue drooping down the
front of the guy's fly. It looked as if it had been chewed by a big
dog. Mark figured the man for a wino rather than a crackhead.
Crackheads had the haunted look in their eyes that demanded instant
fulfillment. They always looked so full of hunger they might eat a
wriggling rat. Winos just looked beat and dejected.

Mari caught his eye.
Motioned him over with a nod of his head to the seat across from him.
The bum shuffled through the restaurant. He wiped the back of his
not-too-clean right hand under his nose, slid into the booth, nodded
back.

"Want something to
eat?" Mark asked.

"I could do
justice to a hamburger, man."

"Right."

The waitress took the
order for burgers, fries, milk, and apple pie for dessert. The bum
frowned when Mark asked for two milks, but the expression left as
quickly as it had come. Free food was free food.

"You get around El
Paso much?" Mark asked.

"Some. Got to stay
on the move, man, you know how it is."

"I'm looking for
my daughter. She's a runaway. You might've seen her. I know it's a
slim chance, but I have to ask." Mark took out his wallet,
slipped Molly's school picture from the plastic casing, pushed it
across the table.

The bum looked at it
hard. Then he shook his head.

"Nope. Would have
remembered that hair. Never seen her."

Mark took the picture
back and put away his wallet. A brief disappointment dimmed his eyes.
He sighed audibly. "I don't know what I'm going to do.''

"Good kid?"

"The best. We just
didn't see eye to eye."

"Old story, man."

"Yeah, I know.
Must get boring hearing it."

"Mostly I hear it
from the kids. Lot of them come through here on the way to
Cali-forn-i-aye. Some of them never make it. Maybe I shouldn't have
said that."

"I can imagine
what happens to the ones who don't make it."

"You might imagine
it, but the real thing's worse. Sometimes lots worse."

"I'm glad I'm
buying your dinner. You're cheering me right the hell up."

"I'm sorry, man, I
can see you're lost without that kid, and I don't mean nothing, but I
got to speak the truth, don't I?"

The food came and the
bum ate ravenously at the burger. Mark didn't think he took his eyes
off the plate a second. He never stopped chewing until every crumb
was devoured.

"Here, finish
mine." Mark pushed his half-eaten burger and fries across the
table. "I don't have any communicable disease." The bum
nodded his thanks and did away with the food in a few bites. He even
downed the dreaded glass of milk.

"We get apple pie
too?" he asked, a milk ring around his mouth.

"Sure. When's the
last time you ate?"

"Oh, man, I don't
need much. I don't get this hungry often. I eat enough."

Mark kept his comments
to himself. He didn't know why, but he felt a lot better after
feeding the guy. He thought he was against handouts to bums on
general principle. On the general principle that they ought to go to
work. But he knew now he didn't really believe that hard-line
bullshit. This was a human being with a deadweight around his neck.

He needed charity.
Hope. All those biblical commandments or whatever they were.

He signaled over their
waitress and said they wanted the pie now. Two big slabs came spread
out on huge saucers, slices of apple thick and long as Mark's thumb
tumbling out of the flaky brown crust. He relished eating it just as
much as his companion did. When they finished he ordered coffee for
them.

"Man, that was the
best damn meal I think I ever had. This place has got a good cook."

Mark smiled, felt
himself relaxing from the inside out where that worry cancer had
eaten at him.

"Sure wish I'd
been some help about your girl. She's awful pretty."

"And awful young."

"Thirteen?"

"Just turned
sixteen."

"That's a bad age,
all right. I was out on my own at sixteen too. It ain't no kinda
life, man."

"I was able to
track her to a truck stop in Mobile, Alabama. Since then I can't get
any breaks."

"You call the
cops, report her as a runaway?"

"She hadn't been
gone long enough. I got a lead from her friends and just lit out. I
couldn't wait for the cops."

The bum nodded his
agreement. "Mobile, eh? Truck stop. Why don't you try the Metro,
man?"

"What's that?"

"Biggest truck
stop in El Paso. Gets hundreds of trucks a night. Everybody stops in
there. It's like a fuckin' shopping mall. She riding with a trucker?"

"No, some guy in a
blue Chrysler. Picked her up in Mobile. Of course, she could be
riding with someone else by now..."

"Well, hey, man,
I'd try the Metro, I was you."

"Where is it?"

"Go back east on
I-l0 about three miles. Watch on your right off the freeway for a
great big green Metro sign. You can't miss it, man."

"I'll do that,
friend, thanks." Mark stood with the meal ticket.