He reached across the table and gave her hand a squeeze. His own hand was warm and dry and despite herself she always found comfort in his touch.
“I love you, honey,” he said.
“Alan, you damn well cheat on me.”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t love you. Don’t worry about the case. You’ll think of something. Listen, I’m staying at the apartment in town tonight. I have to take a deposition first thing in the morning. You mind?”
“No, that’s okay.”
Behind him their young pretty blond waitress was approaching.
“I do,” he said. “I mind. I may be boring as spit sometimes but I know one or two sex crimes we haven’t committed yet that I’d rather try tonight.”
The waitress froze.
“It’s all right,” Janet told her. “He’s an officer of the court.”
She was on her way home when the Taurus started shuddering and then died, cresting a hill on the dark slice of two-lane country road that was Route 605 northeast of Meville. She managed to pull over to the shoulder and tried to start it up again but the ignition only screeched at her like an angry cat. She stepped out onto black macadam and a warm still moonlit night. Below and far away across the valley she could see the lights from a single farmhouse. She walked to the front of the car and then the back and looked at emptiness in both directions.
She’d been meaning to get a new cell phone for nearly a week.
This could take a while, she thought.
It did.
Nearly twenty minutes passed with her standing there smoking Winston after Winston and listening to the frogs and crickets and she was seriously considering the trek down to the farmhouse before she at last saw a pair of headlights moving north in her direction. She was relieved but apprehensive too and wondered why in hell she hadn’t had the sense to take the tire iron out of the trunk when she had a chance to. It would be nice to have it on the car seat where she could reach it through the window in case of trouble.
Especially when the moonlight revealed the outline of a pickup with a wooden frame.
By then it was too damn late.
She thought of the old joke, What’s the difference between a good ol’ boy and a redneck? A good ol' boy throws his empty beer bottles in the back of the pickup- a redneck heaves ’em out the window.
She was hoping for the former.
The headlights washed over her. A pickup wasn’t what she had in mind. Not at all. She waved anyhow.
And the truck rolled right on by.
“Jesus!” she said.
She couldn’t believe it. How the hell dare he?
She whirled and ran to the front of the Taurus. “You asshole!” she yelled.
The truck slowed.
Stopped.
Sat there idling thirty feet away.
Oh, shit, she thought. Now you did it. He fucking heard you.
You better get that goddamn tire iron after all, she thought, and started digging in her purse, watching the compartment of the cab, a man’s silhouette inside, waiting for the driver’s door to open and the light to come on, which would mean he was coming out to god knows what purpose and praying that he’d just start moving again, get moving and go the hell away and then she had the keys out and was headed toward the trunk fumbling for the right one. As the truck moved slowly into reverse and started rolling back, taillights stalking her like glowing eyes.
And then suddenly she was stabbed into bright light again and a horn blared long and loud behind her.
She turned to see a station wagon in the process of slowly passing, pulling up alongside the Taurus and stopping, and she glanced at the pickup and saw it start to roll again-this time forward, this time in the right direction. Inside the wagon the driver leaned over and pushed open the passenger-side door and she saw that the driver was a woman smiling at her and she damn near leapt inside.
“God! Thanks!”
“No problem. Car died on you, huh?”
She shut the door. “That truck. He was coming after me.”
“He was? The sonovabitch. You want to go after him?”
“God no.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Okay. We’ll just drive.”
Janet looked at her. A woman of about her own age. Tight jeans and a tight pale yellow short-sleeve blouse, braless, her long hair pulled back in a lush dark ponytail. Rings on every finger of her right hand and hooped costume-jewelry bracelets, at least half a dozen, dangling from each wrist. A good strong profile, a little too much mascara maybe but still, she thought, quite attractive in her way. And then the woman turned to her and smiled again as they pulled away, and she saw the slightly crooked left incisor.
“Marion? Marion Lane?”
It was the woman’s turn to stare now.
“I’ll be good-goddamned! It’s Janet, right? Janet… wait, don’t tell me. Don’t tell me. I can’t believe this… hold on a minute… Harris! Janet Harris!”
“Close. Morris.” She smiled.
“Morris! You lived…?”
“Plainfield Street.”
“That’s right, Plainfield Street! Up where the money was. Hell, where the money still is. God! I mean, look at you! Jesus, what’s it been?”
“Since high school? A long time. A very long time.”
“No, really… I guess it’s got to be, what…?” “Seventeen years.”
She laughed. “Oh my god. Seventeen years. Seventeen goddamn years ! You know how long that is? Hell, we were only what? eighteen when we graduated? I mean, that’s half a lifetime ago!” She laughed again. “Damn! I think I need a drink,” she said. “Maybe a few drinks.”