At six-thirty he ate dinner in a restaurant. Then he stopped off at his motel to see if Lumky had called. Lumky had not called. So again he resumed his driving.
If Lumky was sick, what was the nature of his sickness? How sick was he? Had he had an accident on the road? Or was it nothing more than an excuse to get out of his appointment at the dairy? Suppose, he thought, that Lumky had not gotten to Pocatello at all; suppose he had stopped off in some other town and phoned from there. He might not get to Pocatello at all this time. It might not be until his next round that he showed up at the dairy, in a matter of weeks.
But he kept on driving.
The traffic around him remained heavy until nine or ten o’clock and then, as it had done the night before, it began to thin. By one in the morning he saw only an occasional car.
At two o’clock in the morning he saw the Mercedes.
Ahead of him, at a stoplight, the Mercedes coasted through on the yellow. He had to stop and watch it as it continued on. When the light changed he followed after it, memorizing the pattern of its tail lights. The license plate could not be read; he could not get close enough to it. Maybe it’s another Mercedes, he thought to himself. At night all cars, except bright pastel ones or very dark ones, look gray. He stuck with it, getting closer and closer, and at last he came up beside it. On the door of the car he saw the painted inscription:
WHALEN PAPER PRODUCTS
SERVE THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST
So it was Lumky. He began tapping his horn. The street being dark he could not see Lumky; he had no way of knowing if Lumky recognized him. The Mercedes kept on. He kept on with it, sometimes in front, sometimes beside it. Toward the end of town it began to pick up speed. So he did so, too.
At a stop sign he managed to stop in front of it. Setting the parking brake he jumped out and ran back to the Mercedes. It had started to back away, wanting to pull around his Merc.
“Hey,” he said, banging on the door. The Mercedes continued to back, and then the driver shifted gear and moved forward, swinging out toward him so that he had to leap from its path. He managed to catch hold of the door handle and get it open.
Inside the car, behind the wheel, was a girl, wide-eyed and frightened. She wore a billowy skirt, and her hair was arranged in long curls, very blond hair, so that she reminded him of a carefully brushed and groomed grammar school child scrubbed until she shone. At a guess she was no more than sixteen or seventeen.
“I’m looking for Milt,” he said, hanging onto the door handle as the car drifted forward.
“What?” she said, in a faint squeak.
“Stop your damn car,” he said. “I know this is Milt’s car. Why is he sick?”
The girl put her foot on the brake; she had on laceless slippers. “Milt Lumky?” she said, in her clear, high-pitched soprano.
“I drove all the way up from Reno to talk to him,” he said, panting and nearly incoherent.
Staring at him, she said, “Let me get my breath.”
“Pull over off the road,” he said. Other cars had begun honking at them. He ran back to the Merc, hopped in, and drove to the curb. The Mercedes wobbled over behind him and also stopped. This time he came around on the passenger’s side; he rattled the door handle and she unlocked the door for him. Now she did not seem as scared, but her pale, fragile features were certainly those of a child; he could not believe she was supposed to be driving the car, or any car. Her feet scarcely reached the pedals. In fact, she was propped up on a pillow. He saw, now, that she had a ribbon tied in the midst of her blond curls. The front of her dress was cut low, but she had no figure at all. It was a child’s dress and a child’s body.
“Are you a friend of Milt’s?” she asked, in her little voice.
“Yes,” he said. “I tried to get hold of him at the dairy.”
“He couldn’t keep his appointment,” she said. “I was driving around trying to find a grocery store still open, or some place I could buy a can of frozen orange juice for him.”
“Where is he?” he said.
The girl said, “He’s staying at my apartment. We’ve been living together.”
That explained why he had not seen the Mercedes parked at any of the Motels. “I noticed a grocery store still open,” he said. He had gone down so many streets that he had seen every part of Pocatello. “I’ll show you where it is, if you want to follow.”
Shortly, they had parked in front of a dinky, family-owned grocery store that still had its lights and sign on.
“What’s your name?” the girl said, as they entered the store. When he had told her she said, “He never mentioned you.”
“He didn’t know I was coming,” he said.
While the owner of the store rang up the purchase he got the girl to give him the address. Now, even if they became separated, he could still find Milt. He became elated. What did he have to worry about? One chance in a million … after two days of driving around town. Because Milt wanted frozen orange juice.
Ordinarily he would not have expected such a long shot to work out, but here in Milt Lumky territory it seemed perfectly natural. Now that it had happened it failed to astonish him.
Standing beside him in the grocery store, the girl asked him what he wanted to see Milt about. In her slippers, without heels, she came up to the second button of his coat. He guessed that she was not over five foot one. Now, in better light, he saw that her skin was dry and rougher than a child’s, and her hands, when she reached out for the bag of groceries, had nothing in common with a child’s hands. Her fingers were knobby and the knuckles were rubbed red. Her nails, painted once but now chipped and irregular, had apparently been gnawed short. The palms of her hands had deep grooves in them. Her arms were unusually muscular; she wore a sleeveless blouse, and he saw, on her arm, a white vaccination scar that undoubtedly was years old. On one finger she had a gold band, what appeared to be a wedding ring.
He answered that he had business he wanted to discuss with Milt. The girl nodded, evidently accepting that as natural. He asked what her name was, and she told him that she was Cathy Hermes and that she was married. Her husband, Jack, lived somewhere in Pocatello but not with her; they had separated a year or so ago. She had met Milt at the place she worked, an office in the Pocatello City Hall; she was a clerk-typist, and Milt had dropped by selling paper supplies to the city. For months now they had been living together, exactly as if they were married.
“How long has Milt been in Pocatello?” he asked her, as they walked back to their cars.
She answered that Milt had been in town almost a week; he had not gotten past Pocatello, but had come down sick on his way east to Montpelier and gone no farther.
“What’s the matter with him?” he asked. He held the door of the Mercedes open for her.
She replied that neither of them knew; or, if he knew, he didn’t let on. It was a chronic condition that got inflamed now and then. In a few minutes he could see for himself; her apartment was not far off.
Getting into his Merc he followed the tail lights of the Mercedes until at last she turned off into a driveway on a residential street and parked in a wooden doorless garage. He parked behind her, in the driveway itself. Cathy approached him carrying the bag of groceries.
“It’s upstairs,” she said. “We can go up the back way.” She led him up an outside flight of wooden steps, past washing hanging on lines and piles of newspapers and bottles and flower pots, past several doors and at last to the top floor. Balancing the grocery bag she brought out a key and unlocked the door; he and she passed on inside a hallway that smelled of soap.