Nine
Janie Porter wasn’t completely drunk yet. It wasn’t even noon—she had awhile before she drifted into another beery coma. There was plenty of beer and half a carton of cigarettes to keep her company.
As Ashley and Vickie disappeared down the hallway, Janie let herself remember—just for a moment—when she was only sixteen. She had thought there was a future for her: A husband, a family, something that would take her from the home that made her want to run away and blend in with the horizon.
Janie thought that Ray—“Killer Ray,” as his friends called him (that should have been her clue)—would rescue her from her life. If her dad hit her again she thought he might kill her; her mother never seemed to notice what was going on. She thought Ray was the answer. They married when Janie was eighteen.
But Ray just picked up where her father left off. A year after they were married, Ashley was born, and Janie hoped Ray would settle down. He backed off some, but when the little girl started walking Ray found too many reasons to knock her around. When Ashley was twelve Ray finally left, driving off in his big rig with that blond whore sitting right next to him. Ashley saw him laughing as he left—Janie didn’t miss that. She was glad he was gone, but she knew she would now be nothing without him.
Booze and smokes were her only friends now. Her night job waitressing at the bar paid the rent, but there wasn’t much left after that. The job also kept her moving and burned off the beer—at least she still had a fairly decent body. The few guys she slept with didn’t want a future with her and she didn’t mind. The hour or so they spent together helped her forget her life for awhile.
As she heard Ashley’s bedroom door shut, Janie told herself that she’d do almost anything to escape the hopelessness of life. Yes, she’d do anything.
Ten
Jay hauled the patio furniture out to the sidewalk in front of the store. As he set the last chair in place against the table he paused to take in the morning. It would be a warm day, but autumn was coming. Sure, it was southern California, but the seasons came just as they did in Indiana or Maine. Jay always figured you had to pay close attention in order to catch the changing of the seasons anywhere south of San Francisco.
He noticed how the fall air—even here in town—carried hints of acacia and anise. Even the smell of the ocean had changed. Jay could also tell a difference in the shadows. They angled differently than they did in July or August. The shadows seemed longer and darker. Fall was, for Jay, auditory, visual and olfactory. It’s just that you had to appreciate subtlety.
As Jay looked across the street, his eyes were drawn to the shadows in the storefronts. The entrance to the old Granada Theater—closed three years ago after the multiplex across town opened up—was deep in shadows. His eyes moved past the abandoned ticket booth to the dirty glass doors where he used to enter to see Star Wars and Back to the Future; the older folks had passed through to see Bogart, Wayne, Newman and Redford. Jay’s eyes stopped at the exit door.
A shape materialized against the glass, a shape darker than the shadows surrounding it. It seemed human for a moment, then shifted to something out of focus. Jay felt as though he was being watched by the figure, but he couldn’t isolate it in his scope of vision long enough to be sure. Jay thought he could see two dull, red glows at the top of the figure. For just a moment, they looked like eyes.
Although the morning had not yet turned uncomfortably warm, Jay began to perspire. At the same time, he shivered. He wanted to run inside the store but couldn’t move. He was jarred from his frozen position by the sound of the door behind him opening.
“Hey, Jay,” said Ed Dunn. “Hurry up with that display. Phil is up to his ass in that barbecue. You need to help him before he screws the whole thing up.”
Jay stared blankly at Ed. “Uh, yeah, okay. I’ll be there in a minute.”
Ed disappeared inside the store. Jay turned toward the theater again. The glass doors appeared dirty and empty. Jay breathed deeply and gathered up the packing materials from the furniture. He pushed through the front doors and headed toward the back room to rescue Phil.
From across the street, the two red eyes reignited. After a few seconds, they disappeared.
No comments:
Post a Comment