What It Was Like (38 page)

It wasn't pretty, the way we got her into the trunk, and it took several attempts. I finally had to prop her top half on my knee while Rachel hoisted the bottom half onto a Flexible Flyer sled we had turned on its side. Then I could leverage her in, over the trunk gate. As I said, it wasn't pretty, or fun, or anything I want to remember. But the important thing is that we got her in and nothing fell out. No extra points for style.

“Thank God!” huffed Rachel as we finished tucking in the edges of Nanci's canvas, and pushing her all the way in next to Eleanor. They fit in easily, but it took some effort.

“Huge trunk,” I gasped as I stood back, finished with this task.

“What do you think?” asked Rachel.

Catching my breath, I looked around. The garage floor looked pretty clean. I was sure that we must have left fibers and stuff as we dragged them to the Caddy – I didn't know anything about criminology then – but it looked pretty good in the light from the two bulbs on the ceiling in the middle of the night.

“Let's go take one more look,” I said. “One last clean-up, get our stuff, and get the hell out of here.”

“Excellent idea!” said Rachel.

“Turn off the light,” I said, and she did just that.

As we fast-walked back through the house, I couldn't help but add, “We have a long way to go tonight.”

“No kidding,” she said with the same sense of dread in her voice that I felt in my gut.

Once we were back in the backroom, Rachel went straight for the cleaning stuff – the bucket, ammonia, Clorox, and paper towels – that she had been using before.

“Let me give it one more shot,” she said, snapping on the rubber gloves. “Now that I can see everything.”

With Nanci and Eleanor out of the room, it looked much emptier. But still, in a way, it was already haunted. I chose to ignore the ghosts. I made myself busy, picking up the other glasses and the pitcher of bug juice, and taking them back to the bar.

Rachel was scrubbing all the areas she hadn't been able to see before we moved Nanci.

“Try not to spread it around,” I couldn't help but say.

She sat back on her heels and said, “I am trying my best.”

I knew I said the wrong thing. I walked over to her and from behind, I could see that she had tears in her eyes.

“I'm sorry, honey,” I murmured, putting my hand on her shoulder. “I know you're –”

“It's just the ammonia!” she declared, shaking my hand off.

“OK,” I said, letting it go. I didn't want to push her. I needed her to be composed and controlled if we were going to do this insane, risky thing.

But I had to ask her another question.

“Rache', lemme ask you something else: Do you know how to get to Mooncliff? I mean, what roads and bridges?”

That stopped her paper-towel wiping.

She turned and looked up at me. “Yes. I mean, sort of.”

“Well, which is it?” I said trying to keep my voice from tensing. “‘Yes' which means yes? Or ‘sort of' which means no?”

“Well,” she said, trying hard to sound certain. “
Yes,
I
sort of
know the way. I've been
driven
there a million times over the years, and I think I could recognize the roads, but no, I can't tell you the exact names of the exact highways and everything! I mean I know you take a couple of bridges –”

“OK-OK-OK,” I said. “This is what we'll do. I think I
 
know the roads. I'll take the lead, and you'll follow me.”

“That's what I was hoping you would say,” she jumped to her feet and threw her arms around my neck, making sure that the rubber gloves didn't touch my back at all. What else could I do but put my arms around her and hold her tight, one more time? She was trembling with fear and adrenaline and need.

That's when I saw the fireplace poker with the horse's head, the one she used on Eleanor, lying on the floor by the wall. How I had missed it, I don't know. Maybe I hadn't
wanted
to see it.

I gently pushed her away from me and turned her toward the poker on the floor.

“Don't you think we should take the you-know-what with us?” I asked her.

“Oh, yeah,” she said, somewhat absently. “Good idea.”

I waited a moment and finally said, “Do you want to pick it up?”

“What?” she snapped. “You don't want to touch it? You don't want to leave your fingerprints on it?”

“No, I –”

“Fine!” she said, going to pick it up. “You're right. I guess it's my responsibility.”

You guess?
I wanted to say, but I didn't. Because I was being a loyal boyfriend.

“And I have the gloves on, right?” she said, picking it up carefully off the floor.

She looked at the spiked tip of the poker and then turned to me.

“How did
both
of them die?” she asked, with this look of pain and wonder on her face. “Isn't that just . . . astonishing?”

“We have to go,” I said. “If we're going to do this.”

“Wait a second,” she said. “You haven't kissed me in forever. I think I need a kiss.”

She looked small and frightened, transformed from that confident, forceful, vital girl at that square dance.

“Here,” I said, drawing her in for a long, numb, hopeless kiss, while she held onto the
murder weapon
in one hand, but didn't let it touch us.

It was the most unromantic kiss of our lives, and yet it was necessary at that moment, to keep us going. A killer's kiss.

I took her hand and said, “Come on. Let's put this in the trunk, make a final list, and then we gotta go.”

“Whatever you say, baby,” she said. “I totally trust you.”

We ran out to the garage, almost lightheaded with excitement and terror, carrying the fireplace poker, the bag of used paper towels, the rubber gloves, everything we could find that might need throwing. On some level, I knew that we were doing something “crazy” and trying to find logic and order in it was doomed to fail from the start. But something crazy had happened:
two
deaths. Maybe “crazy” was the only way we were going to get out of it.

I flipped on the garage light – I had no choice – and we took the poker over to the open trunk of the Caddy. I didn't look at the two bodies face-on, wrapped in the two canvas covers, but I knew they were there.

Rachel stood in front of the open trunk and looked straight in.

“Is there anything you want to say to them?” I asked Rachel.

She thought for a moment. Then she said simply, “No.”

She stepped forward, deliberately placed the poker into the trunk, and stepped back.

“OK,” I said. “That's it.”

I walked forward and put the rest of the stuff in. I went to slam the trunk closed, but just before I brought the heavy thing down, I caught sight of Eleanor's eye, staring at me through a dark crease in the canvas. Her “vulture eye” was most certainly dead, but I could see as clear as starlight that its owner was going to want revenge. Quickly I slammed the trunk closed, good and hard. Another thing to forget, even as I planned the next step.

“Come on!” I said to Rachel, who was still looking at the closed trunk.

“Right . . .” she muttered. “Sorry.”

I took her hand and we raced back into the house. I made sure to turn off the garage light.

As soon as we got inside, Max started barking again. It was the last thing we needed. More noise, more attention.

Rachel said, “Please shut up, Max!” Then she turned to me, “I have to go upstairs, one more time.”

“OK, do whatever you have to do, but we have to go. Do you have any paper and a pencil?”

“What?”

“Like a legal pad, or some typing paper. A spiral notebook. Anything. And a pen!” I added.

“Why?”

“I'm going to try and write down the directions on how to get to Mooncliff.”

“But aren't I just going to follow you?” she asked, her voice tightening with real alarm.

“Yes, but I'm gonna try to write them down too. You don't have a map, do you?”

“A map?” she said.

“Yes,” I repeated. “A road map. Of New York State. You know? Where we're going?”

“No,” she said, “I don't think so.”

I cursed.

“OK. Just get me the paper and pencil. And change: lots of change. For both of us.”

“What do you mean, ‘change'?” she asked.

“Change!” I said, raising my voice without meaning to. “Quarters! Dimes! Nickels! We're going to be going through, I think, two maybe
three
toll booths, and we want to go through the
automatic
lanes, so no toll taker will be able to identify us.”

“Wow,” she said. “You're right. That's brilliant.”

“No, it isn't,” I shot back. “It's simply necessary. We must leave no tracks, no trace of our trip up there. Nothing at all! We'll take them up there, dump them in the Quarry, and –”

“They're disappeared,” she finished my thought.

“Exactly.”

≁

I sat down at the dining room table with the pink stationery and purple pen that Rachel gave me – it was all that she said she could find – took a deep breath, and tried to remember the way to Mooncliff. (Once I got to Mooncliff, I was pretty sure that I could find the Quarry from there. But first, we had to get to Mooncliff.)

I sat there, eyes closed, and tried to clear my mind in order to visualize the way to Mooncliff. Actually, to visualize the
map
: the actual road map – the blue and red squiggles on the green, thin, hard-to-refold paper. I closed my eyes and tried to see Long Island from above, from where we were on the South Shore. I knew that I could get to Rockaway Turnpike from there, which would get me to the airport, to JFK, and then I could get to the Van Wyck from there, which would take me up to some bridge – the Whitestone, I think – which would get me to the Bronx and off the Island. My father had a New York State road map – in fact, a bunch of roadmaps – in the glove compartments of both the Chrysler and the Ford. They gave them away at Shell stations. A lot of good they did me now.

I tried to remember the trip that Dad and I took up to Cooperstown a few years ago, to the Baseball Hall of Fame (where Rachel went on her Five-Days-Without-Me as chaperone on that stupid Senior Trip: the T-shirt she got me still exists), and recall the way we drove. I could just
see
it: getting across the Hudson on some bridge. And that would be the
second
bridge. And then there would
have
to be signs for the New York State Thruway. And that would lead me to Route 17, which was the way into Mooncliff Land. I
knew
I could find it. Whether Rachel could stay behind me the whole way was a whole other question.

I started to write down everything I remembered, as fast as I could, purple on pink.

“I'm ready,” she said.

I looked up. She looked fresh and revived, in a new blouse with her purse hung from a strap on her shoulder, ready to go.

“Do you want one of Eleanor's uppers?” she offered, shaking a little pill bottle in her fist. “I don't think we want to fall asleep, driving there. And back.”

“Did you take one?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “And I advise that you take one too. Or three.”

“No, wait a second –” I said, troubled by something else, something it took me a few seconds to resolve.

“Did – did you put on make-up?”

“What?” she said.

I repeated, “
Did
 . . .
 
you
 . . .
 
put
 . . .
 
on
 . . .
 
make-up
?
”

I knew the answer to my question, but I wanted to hear what she said.

She looked me in the eye and said, “I'm sorry, but it makes me feel better. . . . Yes, I washed my face and hands,
and
combed my hair,
and
put on a little make-up. Is there something wrong with that?”

“No,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

“So,” she said. “Can we go now? . . . Please?? We don't have much time.”

I stood for a moment, stunned. There she was, right in front of me, trembling with urgency. Her life was totally in my hands. She had made an enormous mistake, but I had to try to help her. Nothing I, or anyone, could do now would bring Eleanor and Nanci back to life, but maybe I could save Rachel. She's the one I loved and who loved me.

≁

“I can hardly read your writing,” she said, trying to read my directions in the bad overhead light of the garage, even though I had printed out her copy as neatly as I could.

“Then just follow me.” Ready or not, we had to go. “I'll go slowly. If you need to stop, flash your brights. If
I
need to stop, I'll flash my right directional three times, so you'll see me.”

“Don't worry, I'll see you,” she said, reassuring me (and herself too). “Just don't go too fast.”

“And remember, if we get separated, we're looking for the Route 17 exit off the Thruway. The Harriman exit. If we get separated, just wait for me after the Harriman exit. It's all on the paper.”

“I know,” she said. “You told me that already.”

“And you're all locked up, and Max has food and water?” I asked.

“Would you stop worrying about the dog?” she said.

“You're right,” I said, taking a deep breath, trying to clear my head in the cold night air.

I had two of Eleanor's pills in my shirt pocket. I didn't take one, but it was the smart thing to take them with me. We had hours of driving in front of us – there
and back
– besides what we were going there to do. I didn't even want to
think
about that.

“Do you have Eleanor's keys?” I asked, putting out my hand, looking at the huge white car with the dark cargo in its trunk.