He didn't drive that far. Refurbished and re-energized, he was now like an overly charged battery. All the immediate events played back as vividly as they had when they occurred. He relived every action and again heard every word spoken. It overwhelmed him and he had to pull off the road. It was too difficult to keep driving.
He found another motel, much more upscale, and took a room. There was a restaurant attached, one of the chain restaurants he had seen during his travels. He went right to it and ate like someone who had been on a deserted island for weeks. The waitress, a flaming redhead with an ample bosom but hips that reminded him of Mrs. Samuels, was amused by his appetite.
"How do you stay so slim eating like that?" she asked him.
"Exercise. I'm a jogger. I'm always in motion," he added, giving her his best smile and turning his shoulders.
She laughed and went off. He followed the sway of her hips, and thought how wonderful it was to still be alive and in the game, still be meeting challenges, having thirsts and hungers and wanting pleasure.
What a work of art am I, the quintessential man, the paragon of all things, the perfection of life and the ultimate goal of evolution.
When he was finished eating, he returned to his room and lay on the bed, gazing dumbly at television. Pictures and words to stave off loneliness, he thought. How pathetic it must be for some, those inferior. It was as though they were truly in God's Waiting Room, and instead of thumbing through magazines, they were watching television. A door would open and they would be beckoned. But not him. God didn't know he existed. He came from another place. As more time passed, it occurred to him that he was waiting to be beckoned. But not by Death. He was waiting for some signal, some urge. He felt good, strong, vibrant, but he had no sense of direction, no urging, no mysterious calling. Based upon past experience, he concluded that if it didn't come soon, he wasn't meant to go anywhere else.
Perhaps that was also part of this nagging and annoying feeling that returned. Something yet remained that threatened his very existence. Of course, he understood that once they realized that the body he left behind was not his, some sort of pursuit would begin again. He had renewed confidence concerning that hunt. The predator was no longer as capable. He was in far less danger. But something else threatened him. As the immediate past replayed itself again, he centered in on words and narrowed it down to what that tall man had told him. It was about this doctor. He was going to have a bit of time with her. He needed more help.
He had no confidence in the tall man. He certainly didn't want to leave his fate in that man's hands. Maybe that was why he had no calling, maybe that was why he had to stay.
"I have unfinished work here," he thought. "In fact," he decided, "I actually have to go back."
That was something he had never done yet -- retrace his steps, return to anything. It was always a forward motion, always new discoveries. Going back made him nervous, but it had to be done. What he had to do of course was be sure he was in tip-top shape for all this. He had to pay more attention to himself. At the first sign of any weakness, memory lapse, whatever, he had to go out and refuel.
He closed his eyes. A little rest is good, he thought, and drifted into a deep sleep much faster than he had anticipated. He had a strange dream, not a nightmare as such at the start, but troubling enough to make him uncomfortable. He moaned and turned on the bed. In his dream he saw himself liquefy and flow along until he poured into a river and was carried into a great pool in which there were others like him, streams of people, faces, bodies meandering about, locked in by the shoreline and a dam at the very south end of it all. As he drew closer to that, he saw a very tiny opening through which some flowed before the opening was closed down again.
It was when it opened once more and it was his turn to go that the dream turned into a nightmare. He started out and then fell forever until he hit a bed of sand into which he gradually seeped and disappeared. This was his grave. He woke with a start, pounding on the bed to keep himself from sinking. He was screaming, too. Finally, he realized it and stopped. His face was coated with sweat. He looked around and realized he had slept through the day. When he sat up, he didn't like the dizzy feeling. It took a moment to settle. Then he went into the shower. As he was drying himself, he gazed into the mirror. There was something different. What was it? He drew closer to the mirror and studied himself. Those were very distinct gray hairs, he realized. And there were lines around his eyes he had never seen before.
He pulled back from the mirror as he would had he looked through a window at his own death.
I'm getting old, he thought. That process to mature me -- it's running amok. I'm like a vehicle that's lost its brakes and is going down a steep hill. I need to slow it up. I need whatever fights aging.
With a new sense of desperation, he dressed and went out into the night. He got into his vehicle and drove. The direction didn't matter. Movement mattered. Concentrate, he told himself. It will come to you. What you have to do will come to you. You don't just need to feed off a healthy woman. You need something more. You need something of youth. You need....
He slowed down.
He had pulled into a mall parking lot and three of them were walking toward the movie theater complex. They were laughing and their voices were so full of vibrancy. Three teenage girls. Young girls with young thyroids, their skin soft and healthy, their bones strong, all the juices within them fresh. Go younger, he told himself.
Simply go younger and you will be all right.
You can still go on forever, even if it means going younger and younger and younger.
He parked his car and he waited. Eventually, they would come out and he would follow them and he would find an opportunity.
Afterward, when he was rejuvenated, he would turn his attention to that bigger problem, that threat he had left behind. Just be patient, he thought. Just be patient and calculating and you won't fail.
After all, now you had to carry on for more than just yourself. You had to do it for him so that he wouldn't be dead and gone, so that he would never die. That was about all the conscience he possessed and all the remorse he could mine in himself. But it was enough. It gave him more purpose, and when he thought about it, he concluded what was any life if it didn't have reason for its existence?
His reason happened to be existence itself.
Like an echo trapped and bouncing back and forth forever, he would go on and on.
What difference did it make who heard him?
He heard himself and that was all that mattered.
"It'll be like a test run for our honeymoon," Terri told Curt when he showed some resistance. "I need the week off and so do you. I don't like the idea of your going back gradually. That prescription was given to you by a doctor without courage. You frightened him. Doctors are afraid of lawyers," she continued and Curt finally threw up his hands in surrender and laughed.
"Okay, okay. It's Hyman's cabin. We'll live like wild mountain people."
"Yes, wild in nature with Hyman's big-screen television set, the electric stove, central heating, and downy pillows on the beds, not to mention the full bar and the pool table."
"I do like to fish," Curt said.
"Hyman has the boat for us to use, but I hate putting worms on the hook." He laughed.
"You can sew up people but you can't put a worm on a hook?"
"I am trained to end pain and suffering, not initiate it," she replied.
"Okay, forget fishing. We'll read, take walks, make love, eat, make love, read, make love."
"I get the idea," she said and kissed him. He touched her bandage.