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or so
quarters and dimes to fall out of her pocket and roll away among the chipped
and broken dishes. "Sorry, Louie, sorry."
She shook the tears from her eyes. As she started organizing the rubble into a
pile she saw Louie's neatly polished shoes appear. "How much?" he asked,
pointing a toe toward some of her coins.
"Six dollars."
"I'll take that and dock you another twelve, we'll be even."
"Okay, Louie." Her salary was five dollars an hour and she'd been here since
6:00 A.M. It was now eleven, which meant that less these deductions, she'd
cleared only seven dollars on the morning. That was important, vitally so:
Kevin would have to eat the last of the spaghetti tonight; she would skip the
meal.
No matter what, she was not going to call Monica. The woman was slowly coming
undone, tortured by her inability to understand what had happened to Bob, and
unable to enlist the aid of any of her fellow scientists and doctors in her
research. Monica was now a haunted woman, her practice in ruins, her wealth
disappearing into the well of what the rest of her profession saw as an insane
quest.
Monica was no longer a source of money, support, or anything else. Cindy felt
so sorry for her, but there was nothing she could do. Her concern was finding
Bob again and really communicating with him. Only then, with him and
understanding him, could she and Kevin hope to have any peace.
Joe Running Fox, also, was obsessed with him. He had guided them to Olana and
then disappeared when was it, in February? Yes, and here it was the end of
March.
Joe knew that Bob was somewhere near here. If Joe found him, Cindy knew that
he would be back. As it was, he lived out in the snow, a frostbitten ruin of a
man, almost an animal himself. He prayed to the old Indian gods. He searched.
As she dumped the remains of the plates into a gray busman's tray, she
remembered that she would still be able to keep her lunch tips, which might be
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as much as eight dollars if those darned highway engineers didn't take up
table one the whole time and not leave anything again.
She took her mess out back herself, not caring to confront Willie Clair, the
dishwasher and busman, with the results of her mistake. He'd scream at her,
then subside, walking back and forth slapping his hands against his thighs and
cursing.
When she opened the back door, a blast of wind made her stagger. She glanced
up, into the clear, frozen air. Immediately beyond Ontario Street the forest
began.
She looked into the blue, shadowed fastness of it. Week after week she had
walked this forest, through what seemed an endless winter. She had come to see
it as intractable, hostile, and joyless. It was devoid of poetry, of hope: in
all the weeks of her searching she had heard wolves howling exactly once.
She and Kevin were fugitives from ordinary life. He was no longer in school.
He had become fierce and domineering. Night after night he awoke screaming, so
often that they could not keep a room for long. They'd about used up Olana, as
a matter of fact, moving from the Gracey Hotel to Mrs. Winslow's to the Indian
Inn, where the puffy, woebegone Sim Jones was beginning to shake his head
whenever he saw the boy.
"Cindy, you got customers," shouted Louie.
"On my way, Lou!" Table one was occupied by two people, a thin, sallow woman
with a cigarette between her fingers and a big man who looked like a wax
effigy of himself. That table was the big one. "Hi, folks," Cindy said, "sure
you don't want a booth?" Seeing two people at his big table would put Louie
into a funk for the rest of the afternoon.
"This's fine," the woman said. "Gimme coffee and one of them nut rolls."
"Coffee and you got cherry pie?"
"Yes, sir, we sure do."
"I want apple. Cherry's too damn sweet."
The woman laughed. "What do you do that for, Bud? You always do that. 'Got
coffee?' 'Yeah.' 'Gimme tea.' I couldn't believe that when you first did it."
She looked up at Cindy, smoke rising from her wide, tight smile. "Can you
believe this man?"
Cindy smiled. She did not laugh. It would take an extra tip to get that out of
her. She turned and posted the order on Louie's turnstile. His face, already
dark over the loss of the big table, darkened further when the highway
engineers came blundering in, knotted in the doorway, and stared at the table.
There were mutters. One of them nodded his head and the group left, tramping
back into the snow, headed no doubt for Clasby's down at the other end of
Ontario, or for the
McDonald's that stood near the high school.
Louie shook his head. "You got no sense," he said bitterly. "There goes
twenty-five bucks if it's a dollar. What the hell am I gonna do with all the
extra hamburger I got in for those guys?"
"Eat it."
"Gimme a kiss, cutie." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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